Divas (20 page)

‘Of course I’m not kidding!’ Lola retorted, getting angry now. ‘I’m his daughter! Who the hell are you?’

The girl was genuinely appalled. She put one hand to her mouth. The nails, Lola noticed, though French-manicured, were longer and tartier than anyone in Lola’s circle would have chosen,
their tips aggressively square.

Carin started to clap, the kind of long slow hand-claps an audience makes when the act onstage is so terrible it deserves to be rewarded with sarcasm.

‘What a
fantastic
scene, ’ she said. ‘Do keep going, Lola. I’m really going to enjoy the part where Daddy’s little princess realises that Daddy had another
princess on the side.’ She looked at the girl. ‘Though you’re not a princess any more, are you? You never really were. Just another cheap whore pretending to be better than she
was.’

‘Hey, join the club!’ the girl spat back. ‘You screwed him for money just as much as I did! Where I come from, lady, that makes you a whore too!’

In a small, shadowy back of her mind, Lola was very impressed at the way the girl was standing up to Carin. But the front part of her brain was fully occupied with the horrific revelation that,
according to what the girl and Carin had just said, this twin sister standing in front of her was in fact—

‘You were Daddy’s
mistress?
’ she said, utterly horrified.

The girl actually ducked her head for a second, refusing to meet Lola’s gaze. So it was true.

Colours spun before Lola’s eyes. The girl’s face, so like her own, split into a thousand little pieces. Lola felt suddenly weightless, dizzy, her vision blurring. Then everything
went dark, and she had the sensation of being pulled down a long, twisting tunnel—

Even though she was standing still, she somehow lost her balance. She stumbled, and someone caught her by the forearms, helping her right herself. When she could open her eyes again, she saw
that face, eerily close to her own, and she realised it was the girl who had saved her from falling.

Outraged, Lola pushed the girl away so violently that she stumbled in her turn.

‘How dare you
touch
me!’ Lola screamed.

‘Catfight!’ Rico said appreciatively, so close that Lola could feel his hot, eager breath on her neck. ‘My money’s on the little ho. The trashy ones always fight dirty.
What d’you say, Panio? You wanna put some money on the princess? Hey, as long as they both strip off, I’ll be more ’an happy—’

The girl had got her balance now. She advanced on Lola furiously.

‘Hey, I was trying to
help
you, ’ she hissed at her. ‘Don’t you shove me away like I’m not good enough to touch you!’

‘You aren’t!’ Lola retorted furiously. ‘You’re
disgusting!
’

The girl’s cheeks were pink with fury, her eyes sparkling with rage.

‘This has made my day, ’ Carin announced, her voice ripe with amusement, ‘but I can’t have a scene for too long on the doorstep. So you’ll both have to take this
somewhere else.’ She stared at them. ‘And don’t come back. Either of you. Panio, get the door.’

‘It isn’t much fun for me either!’ the girl said to Lola, almost defiantly, as the door slammed shut in their faces. ‘You think someone likes you because you’re
pretty, and you dance really well, and then you find out it was just because you looked like—’

‘
Stop!
’ Lola screamed, clapping her hands to her ears so she couldn’t hear another word. She scrambled down the steps to the sidewalk and ran along it, not even sure
which direction she was taking, until, mercifully, she saw a cab dropping someone off down the street and she sprinted towards it, arms flailing in a wild semaphore to catch the driver’s
attention. Even by New York standards, it was a frenzied way to hail a cab. The cabbie didn’t even have the time to switch his light on and then off again: Lola was already collapsed in the
back seat.

‘Where to, lady?’

Lola managed to give the address of Madison’s building. And then she wrapped her arms around herself, making as tight a little ball of her body as she could, and rocked herself, keening,
trying vainly to console herself for the worst shock that had ever happened to her in her life.

Evie watched Benny’s daughter dash off down the sidewalk and fall into a cab. She couldn’t blame the girl – Lola, that was her name – for being so
upset. Fuck, if she’d just found out her daddy had a mistress on the side who looked exactly like her, she wouldn’t exactly deal with it any better.

There weren’t many times Evie was glad she didn’t know who her father was. But this was definitely one of them.

She turned and looked up at the mansion where Benny had lived. Still lived, if she was being accurate. Jesus, it was some house. She hadn’t even known you could
have
a house like
this in Manhattan, a private one, all to yourself. Massive, imposing, everything perfectly kept, with what looked like a private garden round the back. Benny had more money than God.

Though now the Ice Queen held the purse strings. Fuck, she was a piece of work, that one. Watching Evie and the daughter go at it, standing back and laughing like it was the best bit of
entertainment she’d ever had in her life. It wasn’t as if that bitch had cared for Benny at all: Evie could tell that loud and clear. Like Evie said, that bitch had fucked him for
money, which is just what she’d done in her turn, but the Ice Queen’d managed to get a ring on her finger and all his multi-millions in her bank account. Well, good for her: but she
didn’t need to pretend she was so superior. Evie had actually cared about Benny, in her way. He’d been a gentleman. He’d looked after her, seen that she’d wanted for
nothing, promised that she’d be OK, that he would always take care of her, she’d never have to go back to the Midnight Lounge again . . .

And Evie had believed him. What a sucker she was.

But she still believed that he’d meant it. Benny hadn’t realised how sick he was: Evie had seen him, checking his blood sugar levels, making sure he was OK. He hadn’t acted
like someone who thought he might actually die if he fucked up his readings; he was always relaxed about it, joking with her about his insulin injections.

Still, an older guy with a 23-year old mistress didn’t exactly want to go on about how sick he was, did he? That was why he was screwing the 23-year-old in the first place, to make himself
feel young again. He wouldn’t want to go and fuck that all up by telling her he was an old fat diabetic one step away from going into a coma and dying.

Sighing, Evie started to walk back to the subway. She was angry with Benny for failing to take care of her like he’d promised, of course she was. But she missed him, too. He’d been
good to her. Much, much better than any sugar daddy any girl from the Midnight Lounge had ever had. She’d owed him something for that. That was why she’d made the effort to come and
visit him, even though she’d known it was very unlikely that they’d let her in, even though she’d risked humiliation at the hands of the Ice Queen for even asking.

Sorry, Benny
, she thought.
Bet your daughter finding out about me was the last thing you’d ever have wanted to happen. I really fucked up there, didn’t I?

Evie wasn’t looking forward to getting back to the loft. God knew what Autumn had been saying to Lawrence in her absence. She let herself into the building, taking a deep
breath as she started up the stairs, hoping that both of them would be out training some client. Lawrence had been so good to her, taking her in, looking after her: she didn’t like the
thought that the only reward she had for him was to bring perpetual conflict to where he lived.

Plus, she didn’t exactly like it on her own account. Fun as it was to tease Autumn by fucking Lawrence’s brains out noisily whenever she got the chance, it was beginning to get her
down.

‘Hey, ’ said someone as Evie came up the rickety stairs to the second floor.

‘Hi, ’ Evie said, taking in the person, who was lighting up.

‘You OK with me smoking on the landing?’ the woman asked. ‘It’s just, everyone freaks if I do it in the apartment.’

Evie shrugged.

‘Fuck it, I’ll join you, ’ she said, pulling her pack of menthols out of her bag.

‘I shouldn’t, ’ the woman said.

‘Me neither.’

They grinned at each other companionably as they drew in smoke.

‘You living upstairs now?’ the woman asked.

She was tiny. Really tiny, like a miniature of a person, tiny even to Evie, who wasn’t that tall herself. She had a cute ugly little face, like a monkey, full of character, and she was
dressed in layers of clothes like a refugee wearing everything she had one on top of the other, because she had no safe place to store anything she took off. Even the layers of clothing
couldn’t camouflage how skinny she was, though, like a 12-year-old girl. On her feet were huge furry slippers, beaten about and faded so you couldn’t tell what colour they had been when
new. They were much too big for her: they made her look like a hobbit, as if her feet were huge compared with the rest of her tiny frame.

‘I’m not really living up there, ’ Evie answered. ‘Just sort of camping out for a while.’

‘They friends of yours?’

‘I’m sort of seeing Lawrence, ’ Evie said. ‘Autumn’s definitely not a friend of mine.’

The woman pulled an expressive face.

‘Autumn isn’t that friendly to anyone, ’ she commented. ‘She’s always on at me about leaving our stuff in the hallway. Like it’s that big of a deal to walk
round it.’

Evie remembered tripping over an enormous circle of metal in the hallway just yesterday, nearly smacking herself in the face with it, and privately she thought that Autumn had a point there. But
the last thing she was going to do was take the side of the person who was trying to kick her out of the only place she had to live right now. Especially as this little hobbit was being nicer to
her in the space of a few minutes than Autumn had been for the last week.

So she nodded sympathetically as the woman continued:

‘Plus, I sort of get the feeling she looks down on us, you know? Because we’re performers? I mean, what kind of dipshit attitude is that?’

‘You’re performers?’ Evie’s interest was immediately kindled. ‘No kidding. Me too.’

‘Oh yeah?’ The hobbit swept her with an up-and-down glance. ‘That your costume? What do you do, performance art?’

‘No, this is—’ Evie decided she wasn’t up to explaining why she was dressed up like a preppie uptown girl. She made a dismissive gesture with her cigarette, indicating
that the way she was dressed had nothing to do with her life. ‘I used to be an exotic dancer. Pole work. But I’m sort of between jobs right now. I need to make a change. I’m just
not quite sure how.’

She knew that gyrating on a pole in a G-string wasn’t quite what most people would mean when they said they were performers. But Evie took her work, and her technique, very seriously. To
her, it was an art form like any other. It was just that you earned a lot more for pole dancing. Even if it was mostly in greasy bills.

‘You know, that’s really interesting, ’ the hobbit said, as friendly as ever. She stubbed out her cigarette in an old aluminium takeout tray wedged precariously into a space in
the wall where a couple of bricks were missing. ‘I’ve always thought pole dancing’s pretty similar to the kind of stuff we do. Same sort of discipline, anyway.’

‘So what’s that?’ Evie asked, following suit with her own cigarette.

‘Trapeze, mostly. Some hoop work.’ She kicked the metal circle with her foot.

‘No shit! I’ve always loved watching trapeze!’ Evie exclaimed.

‘Yeah?’ The hobbit smiled at her. ‘You wanna come on in and see our setup?’

She turned and pushed open the big heavy door to her apartment. Evie followed her in, and the next second was gaping in astonishment. What was the kitchen, upstairs in Lawrence and
Autumn’s apartment, was here an enormous studio. Two trapezes were suspended from the ceiling, one higher than the other. Against the wall, now with ropes attached to welded-on rings at its
sides, was the hoop Evie had tripped against. The floor was covered in mats – bashed-around, fraying old blue gym mats, lightly padded. A stereo played sad, slow music, a Portuguese woman
singing fado, and, hanging from one of the trapezes, balancing somehow on the tops of his feet, was a man.

Evie had seen trapeze before, but only from a distance, at the circus, or watching Cirque du Soleil on the TV. From far away, it all seemed magical, impossible, unreal: you oohed and aahed at
the feats of the performers, but they moved so fast, you didn’t have time to take in every manoeuvre they made, how difficult it truly was. Seeing this man suspended like that, feet at
right-angles to his legs just as if he were standing upright, the only difference being that his hair was hanging down below him, pulled by gravity, made Evie’s mouth sag open with
disbelief.

He turned his head slightly, seeing Evie and the hobbit come in. Then he curled his whole body up, rising slowly, still hanging from his feet, till he was folded in two and his arms were
reaching high enough up to grab the bar. And then he bent his knees, curled his legs into his chest, and let himself fall down to the mat.

‘That foot hang’s getting better, ’ the hobbit commented.

‘You think?’ he asked.

She nodded.

‘That must hurt like hell, ’ Evie said respectfully.

She looked down at his bare feet. Sure enough, there were two big red stripes where the bar had cut into him.

‘You get used to it, ’ he said.

‘She’s crashing upstairs, ’ the hobbit informed him. ‘Guess what? She’s a pole dancer.’

‘Cool, ’ he said, reaching out his hand so he could shake Evie’s. ‘I’m Jeremy.’

‘Evie, ’ she said, thinking that never in her life had she told people what she did for a living and had such easy acceptance from them.

‘So Evie, how’s life upstairs?’ Jeremy asked.

‘Not so good, ’ she answered, grimacing.

‘Autumn’s driving her crazy, ’ added the hobbit.

Jeremy turned to look at the hobbit, who raised her eyebrows and nodded.