The beautiful blonde leant over and extended a hand. ‘Josephine,’ she said brightly. ‘This is Halle.’
No hand from Halle, just a curt nod of acknowledgement.
‘You’re new?’ asked Josephine.
She had no idea just how new I was.
‘Yes,’ I said, putting on my best please-donate-$50,000-to-this-fundraiser smile.
‘You met Abby?’ asked Halle in mock enthusiasm. I sensed she did not care for the manager either.
‘Yes, she is …’ I stumbled for words.
‘A big bitch?’ offered Halle.
No, not an Abby fan.
Josephine chided her friend, ‘She’s not that bad. I’ve seen worse.’
Halle wrapped an arm around her friend. ‘Sweetie, you grew up bouncing around the foster system, worse is subjective. Doesn’t make the still-shitty people in your life today any nicer. Shades of bastards, darling, shades of bastards.’
‘I find her shoes confusing,’ I said honestly.
They both peered at me in confusion.
‘Yes, it is just, if she owns this place, and she charges what she says she charges, and keeps 75 per cent, why does she wear such cheap shoes?’
A smile blossomed on Halle’s face. ‘Fuck me, Elizabeth Bay, you scanned her footwear?’ She laughed. ‘You’ll go far.’
Josephine was lost. ‘Her shoes are cheap?’
Halle patted her friend on the knee. ‘Yes sweetie, she wears cheapass shoes because her ass is cheap.’
Halle leant into me. ‘You’re obviously new to this.’
I nodded. She had me there.
‘Are you sure you want to stay in? I mean you sound like you grew up somewhere fancy.’
‘At this point, I’m out of options.’ And I was. Jail was not an option.
She looked me over. ‘Okay, I believe you, but I have to ask, you’re not a cop, are you?’
‘No,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘Why? Prostitution is not illegal. I looked it up.’
Well, Esmerelda had.
They both blanched immediately. I could see lines of aggression erupt through Halle’s previously seamless face.
‘No, no honey, we don’t call it prostitution,’ said Josephine, patting Halle’s hand, her straight blonde hair sliding down her cheek as she leant over to speak to me in hushed tones. ‘We say sex work, we’re sex workers. Or escorts. Or models. Never prostitutes.’
‘Did I just insult you?’ I said, astonished at my faux pas, especially considering the number of awareness benefits I had attended. I became conscious of, and increasingly embarrassed by, the number of times I had used the word ‘prostitute’ in the past week. Or two weeks. How long had it been?
Halle gave me a single decisive nod, both eyebrows arched, her expression saying, ‘Obviously!’
Josephine’s head moved up and down in several small motions, she closed and then opened her eyes slowly and spread her thumb and forefinger apart an inch or two. A little insulting.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. And I was. These were women who owned both skinny and fat wardrobes. Women who hurt under laser. And admitted it. Real people.
Halle quickly gave up on being irritated with me and brushed something invisible in front of her away with her hand. ‘Anyway, Elizabeth Bay, being a sex worker is not illegal no, but owning and profiting from a brothel is illegal if,’ she paused, ‘you’re a man.’
I was confused. ‘But Abby is a woman? Isn’t she? Is she?’
Who knew these days? I was willing to say no more lest I insulted another marginalised group.
‘Yeah she’s a woman, but she’s a woman in cheap shoes,’ said Halle cryptically.
An expression of understanding spread across Josephine’s face. ‘Oh I get it. Because Abby doesn’t get to spend all that money on shoes. Because she doesn’t get to keep it all.’
I was still confused.
‘Even with costs,’ I waved my hand around the expensive, if not tasteful room, filled with women Abby was supposedly making 75 per cent profit on, ‘she must still make a small fortune.’
I watched another French maid-waitress tote a bottle of vintage Dom to a table. ‘The mark-up she must put on a single bottle of Champagne alone should be enough for a nice pair of leather pumps. If you bought on sale. Online. Online on sale.’
You run enough global charity events and you learn these things about Champagne margins and online designer shoe sales.
Josephine looked at Halle and giggled. ‘I think they get the Champagne for a steal!’
I was even more confused.
Halle grinned and rolled her eyes at Josephine, then shook her head at me. ‘Abby’s a female front, Elizabeth Bay.’
‘A female front?’ I asked. Cogs slowly turned. Creak, creak. ‘Oh,’ I said finally, ‘for a man? A man owns Magic Models?’
‘Men own everything,’ Josephine said with 90 per cent unquestioning acceptance and 10 per cent annoyance.
Halle grunted cantankerously in agreement, her face 90 per cent annoyance and only 10 per cent unquestioning acceptance.
I came from a place where women owned everything, but we obviously lived in very different places. I was beginning to sense some deep frustration about the world these women operated in.
‘Why would she agree to that?’ I asked. ‘I mean she already runs the corporation, I mean clinic, I mean company.’ I internally rolled my eyes at myself. ‘Place. She could just take the clients and employees and set up somewhere else.’
‘Oh bless you, Elizabeth Bay!’ retorted Halle, laughing. ‘She could if she wanted to end up at the bottom of the harbour.’
Josephine quickly checked over her shoulder and then leant in so hard her heavy double C cups almost escaped from their laced moorings. ‘Magic Models is owned by the Mutants,’ she whispered loudly.
‘The Mutants?’ I said, baffled.
What was that? A band? A hedge fund?
A flicker of a memory came to the surface of my quickly melting brain. ‘The motorcycle gang?’
The two women nodded in unison.
‘Seriously?’
Did I just say ‘seriously’? I was spending way too much time with Esmerelda. And where was Esmerelda? And who ever heard of a motorcycle gang owning a venue that served sixty-year-old Scotch and hired retired Vogue models at $10,000 an hour?
I quickly scanned the room and saw no sign of Esmerelda (or of any biker-looking men). I started stammering, ‘No, not seriously. I just, I meant …’
I tried to focus but my mind kept going back to the whole motorcycle gang thing. It felt thuggish and unnerving. I tried harder to mentally file it away as ‘nothing to do with me’. Sure, it was something from the land and time feminism forgot, but it was not helpful to me in my quest to identify Crystal. I needed to move on. I berated myself as I continued to stutter.
‘I really … I need …’
Both Halle and Josephine were staring at me in anticipation.
From the corner of my eye I spotted Abby. She had wrapped up the conversation with the listless pole dancer. She was heading straight for me.
‘Crystal!’ I blurted out, my eyes tracking Abby. She was coming! ‘I just … I was … I wanted … I need … I need Crystal!’ I was sweating now. My mind was racing beyond my control, I could feel the panic surge in my veins and the bile rise up my throat.
My eyes darted back and forth from Abby. She had stopped at the group of Gucci Guys. She was speaking to Matteo or one of his friends, I couldn’t quite see. But she had stopped. One wish fulfilled. Breathe. Now to make Esmerelda magically appear.
Josephine looked at me sympathetically. ‘You knew her?’
I nodded quickly. That much was true. I definitely knew her. Hang on, knew. Past tense. Did these two know she was dead?
How was it possible that Sydney’s finest detectives could not identify Crystal, but these two very different professionals seemed pretty sure she was past tense?
If Dr Sam booked Crystal as her escort for
the Sydney Plastics cocktail party that night through Magic Models, did Crystal then tell her friends? Is that how they knew? Did escorts chat, the same way models chat, about upcoming jobs? Crystal goes to cocktail party at penthouse. Penthouse blows up. Crystal never comes back to work. It is a pretty straight line. Why then did no one report her missing? Was it because the whole place was run illegally through a biker gang? Okay, well that might make sense. I would be afraid if I worked for thugs too. Quite an education.
‘She was your friend?’ asked Josephine softly. ‘She was my friend too.’
‘You’ve got too many friends,’ Halle reprimanded her. ‘One is enough.’
‘Silly Halle,’ said Josephine, settling her sympathetic eyes with their thick black lashes and kind brown centres on her friend. Her soft eyes reminded me of Searing.
Mmm, Searing. I drifted. I imagined touching his skin. Smelling his hair … Snap back Indigo!
Was. She definitely said Crystal was her friend. Past tense.
I nodded, more enthusiastically this time. ‘Yes. We had a … unique relationship.’
I was such a charlatan. When this was over I’d buy Josephine a Dior handbag and a pair of pink flower Pensamois in recompense.
‘I think there was a lot I didn’t know about her,’ I said, attempting to elicit information while walking the fine line of truth and fiction.
I did not do a very good job apparently (I was new to it), because Halle’s eyes narrowed under her excellent lash extensions. I began to panic again. I quickly checked on Abby. She was still held up by Matteo’s Gucci Gang. But she was patting arms and smiling—a classic exit strategy. I had to keep going.
‘I mean, I knew her, of course. I knew she was an escort, I mean, sex worker. I mean, I knew she did her job, with a woman, with women, you know—other women.’
No doubt, I was a champion liar.
Josephine’s eyes widened. ‘Crystal was gay?’
Now it was my turn to be surprised. How did she not know that?
Halle nudged her. ‘The Debbie thing,’ she said in an explanatory tone.
‘Oh,’ said Josephine.
A French maid who was stretching the limits of her black satin fabric outfit delivered us a bottle of Dom and three flutes. ‘From the tubby old Spanish guy at the bar.’
‘Thank you,’ said Josephine while the waitress poured. ‘But he’s not Spanish darling, he’s Italian.’
‘Whatever, they all sound the same to me,’ said the waitress and she wandered off.
Halle winked at a full-figured, bespectacled man wearing an almost-black Armani suit and a pale blue, open-collared shirt who was seated at the bar, raised her champagne glass and mouthed, ‘Two minutes.’
I did a quick check: Abby had moved! Oh God. Oh no. Wait, she was quickly snagged by an ageing, red-faced miner in a pair of worn Underground Blundstones (I have a cousin who owns a mine) and a new Zegna suit. Abby made a fuss over the sunburnt man, but her body language showed disgust. She would try to escape quickly.
‘Yes,’ I said, desperate to get the conversation back on track and having no idea what they were talking about, ‘Debbie.’
‘Well, yeah, I guess because there was a bit of a buzz with Debbie and Crystal, when they started here, being twins and all. Guys liked the double act thing. They got booked together a lot. But they were both straight,’ said Josephine.
‘I don’t know how she did it,’ Halle said, wrinkling her nose. ‘I fucking hate my bitch of a sister, there’s no way I’d get naked with that pig.’
‘I think my sister might do it,’ said Josephine looking at Halle.
‘Yes sweetie, but your sister actually is a lesbian,’ said Halle. ‘And the white porn queen of Manila.’
‘Oh yeah,’ said Josephine. ‘Anyway, all the double act stuff stopped once Debbie got serious with Bob the Biker.’
‘Bob the Biker?’ I asked.
‘Yeah, Bob the Biker. Also known as Bob the Builder.’
I knew who Bob the Builder was. I knew people, who knew people, who had employees, who had children.
‘Bob the Builder as in, Can we fix it? Yes we can,’ said Halle, reciting the children’s show’s catchphrase with no vigour. ‘Except Bob’s not a builder, he’s a biker. A Mutant biker. He’s the fixer for the Mutants. As in, he can fix anything. Obviously having Mutants in here would be bad for business, and illegal. But just because they don’t come in here, and we don’t see them, and the clients don’t see them, doesn’t mean they don’t see us. And Bob saw Debbie.’
‘And then Debbie saw Bob,’ said Josephine.
Okay, this was all very interesting but I needed a name. I expected to be stopped by Abby at any moment. I snuck a look. Abby had escaped the ruddy miner but was now berating our waitress, pointing at her straining satin. At least I wasn’t the only one who had been on a steady diet of Happy Meals for the past few days. The waitress however, in my estimation, had blossomed into a still tiny size 8. The push of my stomach against the lookbook reminded me that I hadn’t even started as a size 8. Not even close.
I adjusted the magazine and tried to focus. ‘Oh yes, Debbie, poor Debbie, she must be devastated. Perhaps there is something I could do to help her?’ I said as sympathetically as I could.
‘I doubt that, Elizabeth Bay,’ said Halle, pulling a large sip from her Waterford champagne flute. ‘Debbie died a couple months ago.’
Josephine sat back into the lounge and took a large sip too.
‘Did Bob kill her?’ I asked.
‘No sweetie, addiction killed her,’ said Halle.
Well, I was pretty sure Crystal was a drug user, perhaps her twin was too. It was beginning to feel very sad. Addict twin sisters.
‘She died of a drug overdose?’
‘No. She was clean, believe it or not, ninety days from what Crystal said,’ said Halle.
‘I don’t understand,’ I said, taking a braving sip from my Dom, which tasted a little corked.
‘She was a plastic surgery junkie,’ said Josephine. ‘She just couldn’t get enough. Couldn’t get perfect enough.’
Halle looked sadly at me. ‘It’s a fucking shame.’
The three of us looked around the room at all the young, tall, beautiful women with their flawless skin, faultless breasts and tiny waists, perfectly dressed in exquisite clothing.
‘Ninety per cent of the girls in this room have spent time with Dicky,’ said Josephine, flute to her lips.
Halle drank. ‘Eventually we all end up flat on our backs for him.’
White panic slipped up my spine. ‘Dicky? Do you mean Richard? I mean Dr Richard Bombberg?’
‘Dr “The Bomb”,’ said Halle, not sounding all that impressed.
‘From Sydney Plastics?’ Oh please do not let this be true.
‘Yeah, Dicky,’ said Josephine.
‘Richard operated on Crystal’s twin sister Debbie?’ This could not be.
‘Many, many times,’ said Halle.
‘One time too many,’ Josephine put in softly.
Wait.
‘Are you saying that Debbie died from too many surgeries?’
I had been married to a plastic surgeon and I didn’t think such a thing was even possible. I had never heard of a plastic surgery overdose. But apparently there were quite a few things I did not know about or had never heard of, which did not make them any less real or true.
Josephine nodded in a sad, knowing way.
Halle didn’t seem as convinced.
‘That’s what we heard,’ she said, shrugging. ‘Anyway, when Debbie died Crystal flipped out. She just lost her shit. They had that twin thing going, you know. Crystal went to Bob the Builder for help. Next thing,’ she paused and separated her hands in an expansive gesture, a near-empty flute of Champagne pinched between thumb and forefinger, ‘boom.’
A loud silence radiated from her hands and hit us all. I sat there for a long quiet moment. Too long as it turned out, because when my eyes came back into focus Abby was sudden
ly standing beside my chair. God, where had she come from? Well, she had only been a few metres away. But still, a very rude stealth approach. Another valid reason to dislike her intently.
We all jumped. I was not the only person Abby put on edge.
‘Violet!’ she purred abruptly. ‘What excellent company you’ve chosen to keep in your short stay.’
‘She has excellent taste,’ said Halle flatly.
‘And high aspirations,’ Abby replied.
Halle smiled tightly at her.
Okay, so I did not get Crystal’s last name, but I knew she had a twin sister and that she’d recently died. Surely that was enough information? I was once again conscious of the unique escort lookbook with Crystal’s picture still tucked into my lace lingerie.
‘Still no sign of your friend?’ Abby said to me, breaking her gaze with Halle. ‘Perhaps her bladder is bigger than you thought if it takes ten minutes to empty. Or perhaps she’s just changed her mind?’
‘No, no, you were definitely our number one choice. We wanted to be here. We still want to be here,’ I assured her. Putting the truth and a lie together was very helpful in sounding sincere. ‘It is just that Crumble’s bladder is not the only thing that is the size of a peanut. Poor dear. She probably locked herself in a stall or got lost and is wandering around the car park somewhere.’
‘She better not wander too far in that car park,’ Halle said under her breath, just loud enough for me to hear.
‘Well, perhaps you’d like to get your feet wet?’ Abby said to me.
Was she kidding? I did not wish to get any part of my body wet in this place. Except for the parts that made alcohol consumption possible. I swallowed the last of my Champagne.
‘Some of our young men are keen to meet our newest redhead,’ Abby declared.
Bingo. I conspicuously examined the room. ‘Newest? Are there others?’
‘Oh, no, we recently had our most lovely redhead retire. Too much of a good thing!’
Halle and Josephine exchanged glances but remained silent.
‘A good way to begin, with some of our younger clients.’ And to my horror she gestured to Matteo’s friends.
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