Blue Angel (23 page)

“That’s a good idea.”

He shrugged. “But now that you’re telling me how she must be partying like a lunatic at this guy Justin’s place, I’m thinking I don’t know what is going to happen. Maybe she’s already moving on.”

“No! No, I’m sure she’s not moving on. Forget what I said about the Baxter parties. That was just my experience. You can’t go by me.”

“I guess only Billy Barton knows for sure. And believe me: if Mallory is at that party, I’m going to hear about it.”

“It’s just a party,” Poppy said weakly, backtracking as fast as she could.

“If she is lying to me about why she is in LA, how can we work on our relationship? And I hooked up with you. God, it’s so fucked up.”

“No! It’s not. Look, we didn’t have sex. And Mallory is probably just in LA shopping and trying not to be sad.”

Alec looked at her, his head cocked to one side as if he was trying to figure out a puzzle.

“Why are you suddenly on her side?”

“I dunno,” she said with a shrug. “Maybe I’m a romantic.”

“Ah, the proverbial ‘hooker with a heart of gold.’ ”

“I’m not a hooker!”

“Sorry—stripper with a heart of gold.”

“I’m not a stripper.”

“Okay: burlesquer with a heart of gold. That doesn’t have the same ring to it. At any rate, I’m still going to check in with Billy Barton.”

Poppy looked down at her coffee cup.

W
ith the help of Mason from the front desk and two of the porters, Mallory and Bette moved most of the furniture from the center of the living room to a far corner, to make an open space. They borrowed a huge mirror from one of the other suites and propped it against one wall. In this makeshift dance studio, they got to the work of preparing Mallory to perform at the Baxter party. But three hours into their “rehearsal,” Bette had still not shown Mallory one step from the act planned for the party that would take place in twenty-four hours. Instead, Bette insisted on painstakingly teaching her the foundations of burlesque. Bette spent close to an hour just on the art of removing a glove. Mallory realized that the powerful effect of the burlesque performance was built on the tiniest motions, that it was about slowness and the reveal.

“Now you need to learn the bump ’n’ grind. I’m going to teach it to you the way I learned it from Jo Weldon.”

“Who is Jo Weldon?”

“A great performer who also runs the New York School of Burlesque. Now pay attention—it’s simple. Stand with your feet apart, knees slightly bent. Now, imagine an apple hanging from your right hip, an orange hanging from your left, and a coffee bean hanging between your legs. Okay, now bump the apple with your hip. Bump the orange. Now rotate your hips in a circle around the coffee bean.”

Mallory followed her directions, feeling stiff.

“Now do it in the opposite direction.”

She repeated it.

“Okay—good enough.”

“It doesn’t look as good as when you do it.”

“You can practice later. We have to keep moving. Now take off your shirt.”

“Why?”

“You’re going to try on some pasties, and I’m going to show you how to twirl the tassels with your breasts.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Of course you can. Everyone can.”

The pasties were gold sequined with fuchsia tassels. Bette whipped out some false eyelash glue from her cosmetics bag and coated the back of the pasties. When the glue was slightly tacky, she pressed them onto Mallory’s breasts, covering her nipples. Mallory was mesmerized just looking at herself wearing them, but she knew Bette was impatient.

“Okay, now shimmy.”

She shook her torso like she was trying to get a mosquito off her shoulder.

“Don’t just shake them—the tassles need to go in circles, not side to side. Open up your rib cage. That’s it. Try to isolate your ribcage from your hips.”

“I can’t—if I move my ribcage, my hips move. They’re attached.”

“They’re not attached. Here, sit on this chair. Now shimmy your shoulders.”

Mallory moved her shoulders and, sure enough, the deep pink tassels were airborne, twirling in circles.

“Oh, my God! It worked!” She stood up, maintaining the motion with her shoulders. She looked at herself in the mirror. With her red hair, bare, tasseled breasts, and twirling ability, she felt Moxie coming alive.

“There are a few variations I want to show you, but we need to keep moving. I wish we had a week to do this. Okay, we have to move on to using the fans.”

“Fans?”

“Yeah. I have big feather fans that I use for the act I’m doing.”

“Does that mean you’re finally going to show me the routine?”

“No, not yet. We have to do the basics of fan dancing. Then we’ll talk about the routine.”

“Can you at least tell me what song you’re using?”

“No. I don’t even want you thinking about the performance right now. I want you to learn.”

“I’m learning! So where are the fans? I didn’t even see them here.”

“One of my suitcases is all costume stuff, and I have them packed in there. I’ll be right back.”

While Bette went to retrieve the fans, Mallory practiced twirling her tassels. She imagined facing a crowd of people as she did it, and it felt okay. It didn’t feel like it was herself, Mallory Dale, standing there with bare breasts with only sequins between her nipples and a bunch of strangers. It felt like she was in a play or a movie, like she was inhabiting a character who had nothing to do with her actual self. And yet, the character was in some ways the purest form of herself.

“Check these out. Gorgeous, right?”

The fans were not at all the small, Asian variety Mallory had imagined. Instead, they were giant, shell-like wings of black feathers.

“Wow. You got those in your suitcase?”

“Yes. Carefully. They’re collapsible. Ostrich feather.”

“Where did you get them?”

“Agnes has a friend who makes them. Okay, now watch me. And notice that with the fans, as with the gloves, it’s about the reveal. The fans only work if you are effectively concealing something with them. Make the audience want to see. Just waving them around randomly does nothing. You have to be strategic.”

She cupped the fans around herself as she moved, letting Mallory have only a glimpse of her leg, her arm, the arch of her back while her ass was concealed. Mallory knew that while it looked easy, she was going to struggle.

“You know what—before we get started I want to show you something. Do you have a laptop with you?”

“No. Why?”

“I have to show you just a gorgeous example of fan usage— sort of the effect I want you to go for when you perform tomorrow night. Let’s go downstairs and see if Mason will let us use his computer for a few minutes.”

Mallory changed into sweats, and they traipsed down to the lobby and found Mason at his desk on the phone.

“Sorry to bother you again.”

“Not at all! Anything in the name of art. What can I do for you ladies?”

“Can we check something out on your computer?”

He stood up and gestured for Bette to go ahead. She logged onto
www.msticklearts.com
and cued up a video on the home screen.

“Sit, watch, and learn,” she said to Mallory.

Mallory bent toward the screen, watching the dancer begin slow, deliberate movements. She suspected, by the arc of her back and arms, that the dancer had serious dance training. The music was slow, melodic, and haunting. The dancer moved with excruciating precision, her body perfectly attuned to the song. From what Mallory could tell from the poor quality video, the woman’s white costume was an elaborate bodice with a broad skirt of feathers not unlike the ostrich fans Bette had just shown her.

This performer was nothing like Bette, who led with her sexuality. This woman, with her slow, delicate movements, was like a ballerina. The music moved toward its first crescendo, and the dancer pulled off the sides of her skirt, revealing them to be, in fact, large fans.

The audience in the video howled and clapped, and while that made perfect sense at the Blue Angel, it annoyed Mallory while she tried to take in this performance.

The dancer used her fans to conceal her body, at one point cupping one overhead and one underneath so that she was like a baby bird just beginning to emerge into the world.

“That’s the Clam Shell,” Bette said. “I’m going to show you how to do that next.”

Mallory barely heard her. She was mesmerized.

The music peaked again, and this time the dancer pulled the fans apart to reveal her body. She wore a spangled bikini top and bottom, and she gyrated her body like a belly dancer. The audience screamed and hooted, and again this seemed entirely inappropriate to Mallory. This woman deserved silent reverence.

When it ended, Mason spoke first.

“Is that you?”

“No!” Bette said. “But tomorrow night, that will be her.” She nudged Mallory.

“Cool,” Mason said.

Mallory looked at them like they were both crazy.

When they rode the elevator back upstairs, Mallory checked out her reflection in the mirrors. She straightened her back and held her fingers loosely posed in “ballet hands.” She remembered, as a child, how her teacher explained to her that the best way to remember ballet hands was to pretend you had to hold a fluffy cotton ball between your thumb and middle finger without crushing it.

She could tell Bette had never danced ballet.

“How did you get started doing this?” Mallory asked.

“It was a random thing. I was at NYU, stripping and nude modeling for tuition money.” She said this casually, as if she had said she had been waiting tables. “One of the photographers came to see me strip, and then she invited me to see a show at the Slit. I thought it was cool. The photographer introduced me to Penelope Lowe. She’s this rich society brat who owns the club. I auditioned but didn’t get it—they always want girls to do crazy things like stick knives up their pussies, and I was just trying to learn how to perform. It was a disaster. “

“But if you needed money, why would you leave stripping for burlesque? Strippers must make so much more money. You told me Agnes barely pays.”

“I think the idea started one day when I was reading a magazine I found in the trash compactor room of my building. One of my neighbors had a subscription to every magazine you could imagine—
Vogue, W, Vanity Fair, Us, Cosmo
. . . I think she worked for a magazine or something. Every few months she left a massive pile in the trash room. I always read
Vogue
and
W
because I ripped out the best photos to hang in my apartment. This was before I could pay for prints. I love photography, you know.”

“Yeah. The first thing I noticed in your apartment was the photographs.”

“Anyway, there was a gorgeous editorial spread of Marilyn Manson and Dita Von Teese at their wedding. It was gothic, and the spread looked like they were covering a royal wedding of the underworld. Dita Von Teese wore an incredible, dark violet Vivienne Westwood gown. I’ve never seen anything like it. But the point is, they never would have featured her so prominently if she were a stripper. But she was a burlesque performer and had made a name for herself doing a routine in a giant martini glass—props can be a big part of defining yourself as a performer, but we don’t have time to get into all that now. Anyway, I knew that was what I wanted and what I would go for: the
Vogue
spread, the celebrity wedding. A name of my own. You don’t get that as a stripper. When a celebrity marries a stripper he marries a punch line. But a burlesque performer . . . she’s a creative equal. So I eventually made a name for myself at the Blue Angel. The only thing missing was the famous boyfriend. And believe me, a few musicians and actors have come through the Angel. I knew I could sleep with them once or twice. But I’m not good enough at faking it to have a whole relationship with a guy.”

“I guess that’s where Zebra comes in,” Mallory said.

“Why do you say it like that?”

“I thought you said she was your soul mate, and you were in love and all that.”

“She is. I am.”

“I don’t know. Maybe she just conveniently serves as the famous lover you need to take you to the next level of your career,” Mallory said.

“Oh Mallory—you’re such a cynic. Look, I am crazy about her. And there is the potential for something real there—I know it. But yes, it helps that she is an extremely visible celebrity. That’s part of the attraction.”

“That’s not what makes a relationship work.”

“I know, hon. Not for you. And it’s great that you and Alec have been in love since you were kids. There’s a purity to that.But it’s more complex for me. I’ve never been in love before. And I know that being with a woman like Zebra is my best chance at feeling in love
and
getting what I want out of life.”

“Being in love is the best feeling in the world—better than any audience can give you,” Mallory said. She felt tears coming. “I miss him so much.”

“I know you do. But you had a good conversation this morning. Things will work out. But put him out of your mind for now—we have fan dancing to learn.”

It was eleven at night before they finished.