Citizen Girl (32 page)

‘See, Kat,’ Romy resumes discussions, all traces of giggles gone, her expression steely, ‘you don’t need some has-been beauty site posing as consultants. You don’t need consultants, period.’ Whoa, whoa, whoa! ‘Kat, selling sex is the farthest thing from rocket science. Women
want
to buy that
this
, the most commercially accepted of routes, can change their world,’ she pontificates, clearly getting turned on by having a captive audience for her marketing philosophy. ‘We sell them that liberation is performing sexually and publicly for a male viewer. And they should
feel righteous
about it.’

‘Who doesn’t want to conduct the revolution on their backs?’ Remus adds matter-of-factly. Me?

‘Get him off – change the world,’ Kat murmurs appreciatively, while around us, in darkened nooks, bobbing heads seem to be doing just that.

‘Exactly. If we could sell them
that
, Kitty Kat, we can take Bovary’s brand national inside five months.’

‘But the deal is quid pro quo,’ Remus picks up the thread. ‘We let your brand align with ours to launch stateside and next year Bovary launches Muffin in Europe.’

Romy slides her hand onto Kat’s stockinged knee. ‘We’re already in Miami and Vegas; we’re opening LA and Chicago next month.’

‘Look around …’ Remus points at the dance floor, which has evolved into a Bergdorf’s bacchanalia, manicured fingers grasping Frederic Fekkai highlights, deep St Bart’s tans bumping against sweaty torsos, drunken tongues slurping the red soles of the Christian Louboutins held aloft. ‘This is hardly an administrative crowd. Muffins think nothing of dropping three hundred on a bra – they’ll eat your stuff up.’

‘
If
we tell them to,’ Romy adds, licking her feline lips as if a canary feather might float out of her mouth. ‘I mean, who’d have thought we could get them to buy glass dildos?’ Remus erupts into laughter and drops his head into her lap. She runs her fingers through his dark curls as she enumerates. ‘He bet me I couldn’t do it, but we sold
over two hundred
online.
Glass! Dildos!
’ Her free hand still on Kat’s knee, Romy’s fingertips begin to play up Kat’s thigh.

‘That’s hilarious! I could make dildos,’ Kat says, tugging a bouncing Liz down by the scruff of her denim mini before she topples over the railing. ‘I could put the Bovary label on anything. And, as I’ve said, I want to see the corporate powerhouse woman at the party. There’s a huge, untapped market out there, just waiting for us.’

Remus straightens up to lock Kat in his gaze. ‘
If
you’re
ready to drop the charity boulder you’ve been tethered to.’ He tosses his head in Liz’s direction. Her back turned as she sits facing the dance floor below, only I see her squeeze her eyes tightly shut as he continues, ‘Tell My Company and the rest of your consultants to go fuck themselves. Bovary and Muffin will align our brands for your launch and introduce America to our kind of liberation – a highly lucrative one. Do we have a deal?’ Remus flicks his hand and a thonged waitress appears with small beakers of clear liquid nestled in ice. ‘Shall we drink to it?’

‘Oh, Remus.’ Kat tsks her finger at him. ‘You’re trying to put on the thumbscrews!’ Apparently a pathological commitment-phobe, she clinks her glass against his. ‘To monogamy! In the bedroom, if not the boardroom.’

‘Don’t waste our time, Kat,’ Remus admonishes in a stern
déjà vu
.

Kat takes a lingering sip of her drink, prolonging her last moments as a free agent. I hold my breath. Liz’s hands grip the black velvet, her eyes still clenched shut. ‘Remus, you have a deal.’ The room lurches.

‘How divine!’ Romy claps her hands together, lunging to embrace Kat as light lip kisses are exchanged amongst the new triumvirate. The VIP rope opens to allow an oiled female dancer to shake herself between me and the others, her thong serving as the engine car for a long train of women. Steadying myself on the ottoman, I feel Liz’s cold hand grip mine. The twins rise off the couch like inflating hot-air balloons to join the slithering samba line.

‘Cheers!’ Kat knocks back her drink and follows her new playmates.

Suddenly Liz and I are alone, forgotten, our hands clenched tightly together. She speaks first as she reaches into the ice bucket. ‘We should drink.’

‘What?’ My voice sounds strange to me. I feel a striking sense of falling, a falling worse than being fired. No client for Rex, no money for Julia.

‘Liz, I need that million dollars. Do you think you could—’

‘Here.’ She shakes a beaker in front of me. ‘Take it. Drink it.’ We both down one, then another, and another, still holding hands as the music washes over us. When I let go, she pulls back to curl into a ball on the empty couch, lips moving over the lyrics like whispered rosary prayers, wild eyes following the darts of colored light spraying the dance floor.

I crouch down and bring my face close to hers. ‘Liz, you have the power to do a really good thing here.’

Her eyes focus on me, then close slowly. ‘I’ve come down,’ she says so softly I can only see her small lips form the shapes. Tears stream out from her lids, smudging the painted-on pretense of the butterfly, her diminutive frame shaken by her oversized emotion.

The vodka hits my bloodstream. ‘Liz!’ I take her shoulders.

She shudders. ‘I’m
done
,’ she says tearfully, opening her eyes and pulling herself up to sit. ‘She wants to buy me out,
fine
—’

‘Buy you out?’ I blink as she splits into three fuzzy images of herself.

She nods, rubbing away the tears. ‘She gave me the papers in LA. I didn’t think she meant it.’

‘That’s perfect then! You’ll have a fresh start, do a new thing, and Magdalene would be a perfect —’

‘You don’t understand a
fucking
thing, do you?’ Swerving to stand, she roots around for her trench, tugging it out of the couch in lunging jerks. She weaves down the stairs and into a throng of Muffins lap-dancing their men.

I stumble down after her into the crowd, but Liz is nowhere in sight. I weave through the dancing mob towards the exit, a remix of Madonna’s ‘Erotica’ pounding my skin as I’m enveloped by women sliding their sweaty, glittering limbs against me. They reach out for me as the alcohol opens a funnel in my brain for the music. Fingers slide up into my hair. I shut my eyes, letting my mind tumble backwards, my pelvis swaying with the lyrics, falling deeper and deeper into the music. I feel soft lips press against my neck, sending waves up my spine. And then I’m kissing. We’re kissing. And it’s not Buster. And I want to go home. I open my eyes and pull away.

From Kat.

I stumble back. But she writhes off, borne away by the current of throbbing bodies.

‘Wait!’ a cherubed hip-hop boy calls as I plow through the velvet curtain. ‘Your goodie bag!’ He presses the silver handle into my palm, his feathered wings slapping against
my shoulder. I burst onto the sidewalk, gulping the air and nearly tripping over the cardboard sign of a kid curled next to a sleeping mastiff. As three giggling blondes abandon a cab, I throw myself in, toppling onto the seat, too drunk to ballast myself.

Home, struggling with the key, I shove open my apartment door and careen into the darkness. Finding the bed, I climb on and straddle the comforting shape under the covers that is my boyfriend.

‘Wake up,’ I say, kissing his ear. Buster’s mouth responds before he’s even fully conscious.

‘You taste different,’ he says, but I’m already pulling at my clothes in a frenzy of alcohol-sodden atonement and lust. We roll over, the silver souvenir sac digging into us. ‘What’s in the bag?’

‘Don’t know,’ I murmur into his neck, tugging down his boxers.

He pulls out a black silk rope and, suddenly fully awake, smiles at me. ‘Tell me what it was like tonight.’

I stare drunkenly at him, ‘No, you tell me.’ In a swift move he rolls me over and ties my hands behind my back. I’m starting to laugh, nervous laughter into the pillow, not even able to formulate if I want it like this or not, feeling as if everything done to my body is being revealed to me minutes after it’s happening. And I’m catching up. And I’m catching up. Catching. Up. Catching. Up. I blink in and out, my face pressed into the pillow, his breath on my neck; it is faceless, wordless, loveless.

Shaking violently, I withdraw to the bathroom, where I curl up in the shower, crying under the water, unable to surface or sober up or know what just happened to us in there.

11. Hang On, You Know What You’d Be
Perfect
For?

I hover in the reception area, gripping a dented coffee cup, and bracing my splitting temples with my free hand. Ugh. I begin to make my way across the cement floor when I’m caught up in a shifting migration as every employee abandons his or her desk and converges on the far corner of the office, where I see rows of folding chairs have been set up. Ugh. I allow myself to be borne along by the current and deposited on a metal seat in the back row, where I hunker down once again. I feel revolting, so morning-after-ed I had to disembark the bus twice to relieve the nausea. But my resolve to convince Rex to shake down The Bank for Magdalene’s funding propels me. That, and the specter of a loudly snoring Buster sprawled across my mattress.

‘All right, people! All eyes up here!’ Splintering my eardrums, a kinetic Jeffrey toots a gym whistle to grab our focus. With little concern for those of us seated facing the floor-to-ceiling windows, he wrenches the blinds open, revealing Muffin paraphernalia beating from every surface. My toast repeats on me.

‘Time to look lively! Take one and pass them over. Take one and pass them over.’ Jeffrey glides down the narrow makeshift aisle, handing out index cards. I try to focus my dry eyes on the small print, which begins with
a list of ‘Muffin-approved lingo’. ‘All right,
people
! I understand that you haven’t gathered in a number of months, so I expect your
full
attention. We’ve called you all together this morning to show our new client, Bovary, that MC’s greatest asset is
you
, its workforce, its brain trust. To that end, I’ve given you each a list of speaking points about Muffin. Please memorize them immediately.’ Everyone nods uneasily. ‘We’re going to brainstorm when Bovary arrives.’

About that. ‘Jeffrey?’ I raise my hand, flinching as I’m assaulted by my own voice.

‘Later, Girl. The brainstorming shall proceed as follows: I’ll enthusiastically look to you for “input”. You are to contribute the “idea” written on the card you’ve just been handed. Now, every time I straighten my tie, that’ll be the cue to jump
right
in. If you have an “A” on your card, you’re to speak in the first quarter of the hour, “Bs” speak in the second and the “Cs” are backup for the first and second quarters. Now, I want everyone to look at their watches and make sure they’re set for nine-oh-seven. Annnnddddd, go.’

‘Jeffrey, I think you should know—’ I put my hand back up to circumvent this festival of desperation.

‘Not.
Now
.’ His hiss immediately derails any Vice Presidential impulse to march to the front of the room, where, let the record show, I would either be a) handed a packet of markers, b) stuffed in a bikini, or c) beat about the head.

Fine. Suit yourself. While my colleagues’ faces pucker in confusion, I rest my throbbing eyes. Within seconds I’m slipping into unconsciousness, chin dropping, my
mind spiraling back to my bed, the rope chaffing against my wrists as I squirm, lips pressed, into the pillow.
Catching. Up. Catching. Up.
The cotton warms into skin and I’m pressed against Kat, a Toulouse-Lautrec crowd of male faces leering in.

‘Christ, where is she?’ Guy’s voice startles me awake and I check my watch. Almost ten o’clock. Noting that both neighbors are covertly playing Centipede on their Palms, I glance over a mass of restless heads to the front. Guy scratches his aggravated shaving rash. Jeffrey does not look pleased.

‘Girl!’

‘Yes?’

‘Stand, I can’t see you.’ Jeffrey waves in my direction.

The sea of heads turns to me as I pull myself up.

‘She’s not coming.’

I fold back down.

‘What? Why?’ Jeffrey asks, pulling off his spectacles.

‘Why?’ I repeat.

‘
Why?
’ Guy asks more forcefully. ‘Where is she?’ Having an incestuous threesome?

‘Let’s talk about this in your office, Guy.’

‘You were with her last night.’ Eyebrows shoot up at the MC Geisha. Titillated murmuring.

‘Guy, let’s not—’

‘Oh, Christ, just answer me,’ he blows.

‘Fine. Kat and the Muffin people really hit it off—’

‘Well, great then!’ he interrupts, throwing his hands up as his mood lifts manically. ‘So let’s get her on the phone and get started!’

‘Guy, I really don’t think—’

‘Jeffrey, do it.’

Finefinefinefine-
fine
– your fucking problem. Jeffrey turns to us. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, our client seems to be running a little late—’

‘A little?’ snorts someone beside me.
Our client?
I snort to myself.

‘So, we’re going to conduct this meeting via speaker phone. Same rules and instructions apply, only now we won’t be inhibited by her presence, therefore I’ll be able to point to each of you directly when I want you to
participate
.’ Guy drops into a chair facing the crowd as Jeffrey taps a number into the voice conferencing contraption that looks very much like a miniature UFO.

‘Mercer Hotel, how may I direct your call?’

‘Room six twelve,’ Jeffrey leans over to instruct.

‘Hullo?’ Kat’s voice crackles; acid floods my system.

‘Good
mor
-ning, Kat!’

‘Who is this?’

‘This is Jeffrey and Guy and the whole My Company family. We’re just so excited to talk to you about your Muffin that we figured if you couldn’t come to MC, Inc., MC, Inc. would come to you!’ He grins at the UFO while Guy anxiously drums the table. ‘Yes, we’ve gathered the
entire
company – and I wish you could see this, Kat, it’s pretty impressive—’