Phoenyx: Flesh & Fire

by Morgana Blackrose

  I got back to the Klub about an hour later.

  Bruno caught me as I came in and almost walked straight past him. “Here, you left this.” He handed me my shoulder bag. I grabbed it and carried on towards the backstage, to a job and a place which now seemed a whole lot emptier, duller, and less enticing.

  “Phoenyx?” he called after me, but I didn’t turn around. I didn’t want him to see me in that state.

  I spent fifteen minutes in the toilet, head between my knees as I sat locked in a cubicle. Gradually, I became aware of a familiar voice singing quietly to itself from outside. I raised myself painfully to my feet, pulled the plug and wandered out.

  “Evening, darling,” Olivia said. “How are you?”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “Shit.”

  “Oh. Did you not have a great time in Japan, then?”

  “Yes, I had an amazing time. Coming back wasn’t so good though.”

  “I just heard that Honey’s left us. Did that have something to do with it?”

  I nodded. “Yeah.”

  “That’s a shame. You got on very well with her, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah. I did,” I grimaced. I turned to face her and threw myself into her arms.

  “C’mon, let’s go get drinks.” She wiped a finger underneath my eye, “And get you dried up.”

  We headed back out to the bar, only to find Bruno scowling at a letter.

  “Well, looks we’re another body down now,” he said as we settled ourselves onto stools. “Never rains but it bloody pours.”

  “What?” Olivia gasped.

  He waved the letter in the air. “Petra’s pushed off. Currently somewhere in Austria, according to this – she doesn’t say where, but she won’t be back for a while yet. If at all.”

  Olivia gasped in disbelief. “Why? What the hell brought that on?”

  “Personal stuff,” he said. “She doesn’t explain it – I guess she just needed a break.”

  “Shit,” Olivia seethed. “Could at least have warned us. Well, if it’s a personal crisis, I just hope she’s okay.”

  “Guess I’d better advertise for another couple of performers,” Bruno said. “I don’t really want to, knowing how well you lot all get on together. But—”

  “Then don’t,” I told him. “Seriously. Let’s not fill Petra’s grave so quick. Honey was always a wild card anyway. I don’t mind doing an extra set or two to fill in. It’s not like I’m doing much else now, anyway.

  “We’ll survive. Won’t we?” I looked at Olivia, hoping she believed me. I didn’t believe the words myself. I didn’t really believe anything at that moment. For all I knew, Honey and Petra could have shacked up together in the least likely tryst imaginable. I was too tired, too frail, to say much more. Olivia just lit up a cigarette and drew in a long, quivering breath.

  “Yeah, we’ll survive,” she agreed at last. “We’re all Kits together, dammit. That’s why I’m a little bit pissed at Petra – she knows we would all have been there for her. We’ve helped each other through all kinds of shit in the past.”

  Bruno put the letter away underneath the bar. “Well, if I hear any more from her, or from Honey, I’ll let you know.”

  “You won’t be hearing from Honey,” I said. “I can tell you that right now.”

  “Something you want to share?” he asked, probing me for a little revelation.

  “No. It’s just not her style, that’s all. Once she’s made up her mind to do something – poof. That’s it. She came out of nowhere and she left the same way. Tokyo was a gas, but I think she was looking for a lot more than I – and this place – could ever offer her.”

  “Well, she was never a true Kit anyway,” Olivia scoffed. “Never went through her initiation, or anything. I still liked her, though.” She placed a long hand on Bruno’s shoulder. “Darling, get a bottle of wine, would you? This girl beside me looks like she needs an awful lot of cheering up. As do I now.”

  I got home that night by walking all the way from the Klub to Wilhelmsgasse, half-drunk on Olivia’s wine, most of which was offered gratis by Bruno. I had been hoping to unveil my tattoo to everyone that evening, but it lay forgotten beneath my dress, out of sight, since everyone was more concerned about Petra’s sudden departure and speculating about the reasons behind it.

  It didn’t even occur to me that something, anything, could have happened to me on the way home – I didn’t care, anyway. I walked past young, cocky hookers who sneered and jeered, swerved around a couple of obnoxious drunks and before I knew it, I was back at the old stone steps and the dark, unwelcoming entrance up to my old second-floor apartment.

  I pushed my way inside and nearly stepped on Boris in the dark. I thought about cursing him, until I remembered that he was about all I had left at that moment. I grabbed him up and went through to the living room, where I spent the rest of the night – and the morning, until the sun came up – sitting by the window, staring out at the sky with him on my lap. My head was full of everything and yet nothing. I grew colder as the darkness hung heavier and more oppressively, but I couldn’t even be bothered getting up to turn the gas on. I couldn’t be bothered doing anything.

  I think I must have finally fallen asleep at about nine or ten am, for I woke up in the early afternoon with the sound of traffic in the street below. My head was still overflowing with a waterfall of thoughts and snatches of conversation – some of which I’d had, some of which I wanted to have and some I still hoped that, one day soon, I could. I wondered if Mrs. Groenenberg would come around to visit. And the more I thought about that possibility, the more I wanted it. She would be the perfect person to talk to about this. She’d been there, more than once, and had probably cursed herself blind in the same way that I was still doing. And, though it had taken me a while to realize it, pleasing her was an incredibly erotic and liberating experience, unlike anything else I’d been introduced to. I liked the way she spoke to me, and the effects I had on her. It felt good to be wanted, desired. To be essential.

  I drifted through Sunday doing mechanical tasks around the house, things that failed to make me feel human: making food, drinking coffee, tidying up. Instead, I felt like a hopeless brain imprisoned in a robotic body, unable to function beyond a few limited and pre-programmed actions. Boris sensed it as well, and instead of coming near me for attention as he usually did, he avoided me for the whole day.

  I sat on the toilet, waiting for a pee that seemed it would never come. I knew why: I was tense and anxious, and when I had things on my mind, my bladder always seemed to get blocked as a result. I turned aside to look at my antique perfume bottles which sat on the tiled window ledge behind me. I’d previously arranged them in order of red, white and blue – or more properly, burgundy, crystal clear and teal – and started to shift them around, making idle color combinations for the outside light to shine through. I went from the flag of France to the flag of Italy, dragging in my glass green shampoo bottle to add variety. In the end I conceded that my body wasn’t going to accommodate my desires, so I got up and decided to do something else more practical.

  Having moved the shampoo, I was alarmed to see how much grime and dust had collected around it, leaving a clean white circle on the tiles where it had been. I really had been neglecting things lately, and so got busy again with the cloths and the cleanser.

  I was half-way through cleaning the bathroom when a hard, authoritative knock from the door shook me. I almost dropped the brush down the toilet, and raced out into the hallway, heart racing with expectation. A quick squint through the spy hole told me it really was, finally, what I had been longing for – it was Mrs. Groenenberg.

  I pulled open the door, eager for another secret session to take my mind off it all.

  “Hello, Mistress,” I gasped.

  She stood there dressed up in a dark blue suit, looking very severe and serious, even wearing a hat which made her look as if she was on her way to a wedding, or a funeral. And beside her, in a black three-piece and h
at, stood an older man with long flowing silver hair, looking a bit like von Karajan. I wondered what kind of game she had in mind this time. Surely he couldn’t be Mr. Groenenberg – he looked too old for her. Suddenly, my growing excitement stalled, and I felt a grim foreboding begin to creep through me, all the way to my fingertips which began to tremble as they held on to the door.

  “Good afternoon, madam,” she said sourly, as if she’d never met me before. “I can’t stay long. I’m afraid I need to give you this, and felt I ought to deliver it in person.”

  She handed me an envelope, which I shredded open with growing disquiet. I unbundled the sheet of heavy vellum within and got as far as the Gothic script at the top which stated Pfeifenfeffer, Pfeiffenberger and von der Vogelveide: Civil Lawyers. Specialists in divorce, property and business.

  “What?” I gasped, not understanding. Surely I’d done nothing wrong? She couldn’t possibly be trying to take me to court? I couldn’t even bear to look at the rest of the letter to see what it contained, I was shuddering so much.

  “My soon-to-be ex-husband is suing me for everything,” she went on. “I can’t afford to keep any of my property any longer. You’ve got two weeks to find somewhere else. Your lease will be null and void after that time. The letter makes this a formal and legal request, and Mr. Pfeifenfeffer here is my witness.”

  She turned away and the tall thin man tipped his hat to me, throwing me a lop-sided smile. As the pair of them moved on to ascend the stairs to spread the horrible news to those living above me, she turned and caught me with a sideways glance.

  “I’m sorry,” she murmured, and then she was gone. I knew that she meant it, and that her life was in a turmoil ten times greater and more destructive than mine, but that didn’t make me feel any better. She had just thrown a can of kerosene onto the fire in my heart which had been reduced to glowing embers of late.

  I just stood there with the letter in one cold, sweating hand, and the handle of the door in the other, staring out into the stairwell as though it were the path to the scaffold, the stairwell I would walk for the last time before the end of the month. Now all those little things – the freedom and space of my own place, where I could come and go as I pleased, Mrs. G’s dirty nasty little games, for which I’d ended up losing Honey and everything else which I had been offered on a silver plate – were being ripped out from beneath my feet as well.

  I hurled the door shut with a devastating slam that must have echoed around the entire block. I threw myself through to the living room, angry at everything. I was angry at the noise the door made and how it prickled inside my ears; angry at my old faded, wrinkled carpet; angry at the jutting rusty nails which threatened to gash my feet and give me blood poisoning every time I dared to cross the hall barefoot.

  I was angry with the apartment around me, for having lulled me into a false sense of security all these years. Angry at Mrs. G for lifting me up, only to dash me back to the ground again like an out-of-favor doll. Angry at Honey, for having flown off and left me without even a proper goodbye, a final last-ditch attempt to coax a young and uncertain woman into making her first proper commitment. I was angry – or downright furious – at Mrs. G’s bastard ass of a soon-to-be ex-husband, who was clearly far crueler and more twisted than his wife had ever wished she could be in all her savage fantasies.

  But really, I was only angry with myself for my complacency, my lack of foresight, my inability to take life by the scruff of the neck and do things. I had done so once, when I first summoned the spirit to believe that I could ever become a stripper – but was that enough? I was in such a routine, almost a rut now at the Klub that it seemed I could never even think about doing anything else.

  Like falling in love (properly), moving in with someone, stretching my limits, making sacrifices, plans, contingencies.

  I had taken just one step over the living room threshold when my foot crunched on something soft and yielding. I must have dropped a gingerbread biscuit, I thought as I looked down, and then I screamed.

  I was staring at a dead mouse, which Boris had thoughtfully left in my path. Now I was angry with him as well, angry enough to want to grab him by the tail and fling him through the window without even bothering to open it first.

  “Aaargh,” I howled in disgust, and looking up, I saw his eyes – the blue and the green – flare up like tiny light bulbs at the other end of the room. “You little shit. Did you do that just to piss me off even more?”

  He replied by jumping down off the chair and whizzing past me into the hall, his work seemingly done. I was growing more convinced that Boris had been left for me by an evil gypsy, to curse my life with misfortune and sorrow.

  “Fuck you, Boris!” I screeched as he disappeared, becoming a noiseless shadow. I battered the door shut with my heel and the impact made the windows rattle, and cracked one of the old panes which had probably survived the war. I hoped Mrs. G wasn’t being sued for a huge sum, because it seemed the value of her property – or certainly, this one apartment at least – was diminishing by the minute.

  I threw myself over the sofa and lay there in a bubbling, shuddering heap until the sun went down and I was forced to move to put on lights.

  I drifted through the rest of that dull and miserable week in a kind of trance.

  I took no notice of what the weather was doing, or what was happening anywhere other than inside my own head and heart, as though the rest of the universe had ceased to exist. I had no desire, no stomach for anything any more. I couldn’t even find the energy to be angry now.

  I didn’t want to be looked at, or spoken to, or complimented, or whistled after. I ran out to the shops wearing a headscarf and sunglasses and the most boring coat I owned, just to blend into the background in the hope that I wouldn’t have to interact with anyone beyond the essential exchange of money for food. I’d been given one shot at total happiness and I’d blown it. Even in the midst of it all, I wasn’t melodramatic enough to believe that Honey and I would have lasted forever and that I’d never be given another chance, but how long would I have to wait? Until I was thirty? Mrs. Groenenberg’s age? Older? All through that week I wanted to call up Bruno and tell him that I was finished, as well. Several times I went as far as standing in the phone booth at the end of the street, thinking about what I was about to say. I couldn’t figure out anything that didn’t sound like the weakest, most pathetic self-pitying nonsense, so it didn’t happen which meant that I’d have to return to the Klub after all, and get on with the rest of my life. I would never know now if my action (or lack of it) was what pushed Honey away. She might have flown off regardless, in her fluttery butterfly way. Or perhaps, the hope of keeping me had been the only thing anchoring her to Old Berlin, and I cursed the very nature of time for being a one-way street with no room to turn, or reverse.

  Bored, tired and really not looking forward to the evening ahead, I turned up at the Klub on Friday afternoon having spent a fruitless morning searching for some reasonably-priced lodgings. I found Bruno sitting at the bar, nursing a small beer.

  “Hey,” he said as I moped up to his side. “What are you having?”

  “Water.”

  “Very funny. What are you having? This is my treat.”

  “Water. You can put some squash in it if you want. But it doesn’t really matter.”

  “For God’s sake, Phoenyx – what’s bugging you now? You’re not still missing Honey, are you?”

  “Yes. And I’ve now got a week to find a new apartment, because I’ve just been kicked out of mine. My landlady’s up in court and I’m this close to going back home to my mother.”

  He sighed heavily. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me this before?”

  “I didn’t want to talk to anyone about it. I didn’t want to talk, period.”

  He pushed my juice in front of me and dropped a straw into the glass. And then some ice cubes. A slice of lemon, and then an umbrella. I wanted to smile at the sight, but it just wasn’t coming.
/>   “Well, I don’t want to have to lose you as well. Do you need a break?”

  I shook my head. “I’ll have to save up for a deposit. Need all the cash I can get. Overtime, if there’s any going. I’ll do three sets a night if need be.”

  “If you need somewhere urgently, there are rooms here, you know. Upstairs. They haven’t been used in years but you’re welcome to have a look around sometime.”

  “Could I really?”

  “Of course. They’re nothing much, and they would probably need a damn good dusting and a clean. But come back tomorrow afternoon and I’ll show you around.”

  “That would be fantastic, Bruno. Thank you, so much.”

  “Hey, if you’d come to me earlier, you could have been moved in by now. Forget this ‘deposit’ crap. Stay here until you’re ready to move on. No rent to pay, apart from the electric and the usual expenses.”

  I grabbed his hand and squeezed it. “Thanks. You probably just saved my life. And my cat.”

  “Don’t mention it. I’m not a charity, but for you I’ll make an exception. And your pussy was always worth saving.”

  And so with Honey gone, the only option left to me was to throw myself wholly into my job, and hope that I attracted the attention of someone who could happily distract me again. I had no idea who that kind of someone might be – Honey had straddled the line between male and female so fully that I realized I was, in a way, just like Olivia. I could see beauty in men as much as in women, or even in a strange, unique hybrid of the two.

  That night and the following Saturday didn’t go so badly. I managed to put a face on things, and with one less worry off my mind, I began to feel quite excited about living above the Klub and all the conveniences it would bring. There’d be no more transport problems, no fear of getting there and back in one piece. A handy telephone at the bar. Perhaps the Groenenberg thing was a blessing in disguise, after all.