Nobody answered, until Olivia said, “Until I fall over?”
Mel skated over that swiftly and cleanly. “Here’s my thing. Our new hires are ambitious. We’re not giving them anything here to keep their interest. Things were different when we started – there’s almost a whole new generation now out there who want everything now, who aren’t willing to wait for it, and have dreams far beyond what we might have had.
“Plus the added embarrassment of sharing a stage with someone who’s almost old enough to be their mother.”
“What are you saying, Mel?” I asked nervously, knowing exactly what she was saying – the thoughts I’d already had, but could never bring myself to speak.
“It’s like seeing your grandmother drunk, and grabbing some young guy’s crotch in a bar,” she sighed. “That’s how I see us becoming before too long. A bit crass, vulgar, and maybe even funny, but for all the wrong reasons. Big saggy tits and wrinkles that don’t go away. More and more make-up needed just to keep us looking presentable. Now we’re not quite there yet, none of us look past it – you’re all so wonderful, it makes me cry looking at you all now, how well we’ve worn together – but the beautiful summer days are over. We’re heading into autumn now. And we all know how cold and horrible winter can be.”
Svetlana sniffed. “Try a fucking Medynsky winter sometime,” she muttered through her cigarette.
“No, dear,” Melissa said simply. “I’d rather not. I want us to go out on a blaze of glory, and be remembered for something nice, not fading away in a flea circus in a dirty corner of some red-light area.”
“Glory?” I asked, skeptical.
“I’m thinking about a big charity gala. We get us all up, for one more night only. Twenty marks on the door, all the beer you can drink and all the pussy your poor eyes can bear. And then, we call it quits.”
The tears rolled down Gloria’s tanned cheekbones as she stretched out a beautifully manicured hand across the table. I noticed that with a glowing sense of inner pride, for that was the one great thing about being at the Klub – it kept us immaculate, physically trim and highly presentable at all times. Where other women might have slipped into those comfortable, cozy slippers of apathy on the shallow yet slippery slope towards middle age, being settled and complacent with all home comforts and luxuries (and usually someone else on hand to do all the really hard and difficult work), we were burning off more calories in a single night’s performance than most of the pampered housewives could muster up in a whole week of gym visits and keep-fit classes. Live performance of any kind was stressful by its very nature, and that ate up energy too, forever keeping us firmly in the ‘lean and mean’ category of body types, although Svetlana continued to outshine us all – even Gloria – with her rock-solid, marbled torso and muscles in places most women didn’t even have places.
“Yes,” Gloria sobbed, “count me in.”
Melissa clutched that hand and held it tight. I added mine.
“What’s the charity? Home for retired porn queens?”
She looked down at the table, chewing her lip as she could barely bring herself to speak the words.
“Well, it came from some bad news I heard recently, but was too scared to share until now. We lost Petra last year.” She waited for the gasps and gulps of disbelief to fade, before adding; “Heroin. She never really made it beyond here, it seems.” She shrugged, finding words meaningless. “I’m sorry,” she sniffed. “That’s all. Quick and simple. Gone – like that. Painless.”
My heart plunged down into my bowels. I don’t think I had ever experienced a sensation like it in my life up to that point. I’d never known a human being who had died before, and I wasn’t quite sure what I should feel, or what I should do just then. Should I cry, try to hold firm, feel sorry for myself or shower Mel in comforting hugs? I nearly blurted out, “You’re joking!” before a hand of reason tied a knot in my tongue, saving me from scorn and ridicule, and a forest of frowning eyebrows. As warped, barbed and cruel as Mel could be to us at times, that would have been several steps too far.
I just sat there at the table as stunned as all the others as the drifting smoke from untouched cigarettes filled my eyes with grit. The silence seemed to last forever. Nobody spoke, nobody even dared to make a sound.
“How did we not see—” Olivia began, but Mel jumped down her throat before she got any further.
“Nobody here is to blame,” she snapped. “So don’t go thinking back to little signs that we never saw, or turned a blind eye to. She was going through a bad patch when she returned, and after she left, she realized that she’d made a mistake. Too proud to come back to us.”
Nobody could believe it. We just looked at each other, but the truth was slowly sinking in, like a knife in the back, and I was beginning to taste the blood at the back of my throat. Life wasn’t supposed to be this crap. Being a Kit had meant being a part of a very special sisterhood where we all looked out for each other, and I felt sick at the thought that Gloria had actually been right about Petra when she returned. And it was Gloria who ran from the table in a storm of tears, with Melissa chasing her to calm her down and Svetlana, Olivia and I just trying not to do the same. I had never thought of our Russian sister as particularly emotional, but I could tell that she was having a hard time keeping her face together as much as the rest of us.
When Gloria had finally calmed down and come back, Mel went on with the details of her plan.
“I figured that donations to an anti-drugs charity would be the most fitting tribute we could give her. I can see it all in my mind now. We’ll put her picture up all around the bar, and we’ll hold that one night in her honor, so that she’ll never be forgotten, by us or by anyone who comes here. Losing her has helped me put things in perspective, y’know? And when we all split from this place, ladies, for fuck’s sake...let’s stay in touch. People always say that but I mean it. Let’s look out for each other, and not let anybody else slip under the radar ever again.”
The grim and solemn air around us had suddenly, almost miraculously, evolved into one of poignant relief. Petra’s premature passing would also help ease our own departure from the life of the Klub.
Our last night would be a celebration, not a mourning. And now that the unthinkable had finally been discussed in the open and accepted, we could begin to move towards our final destiny with pride.
I left them all to it that afternoon and went upstairs to my rooms, discovering for the first time the real downside of living above the club which was also my place of work. When the venue eventually closed, I would have to walk through those quiet, empty rooms which once had been so full of life and joy for decades, and for generations of entertainers and guests. Doing that every day, I felt, would destroy me faster than just having to leave it alone and never look back. I would have to find somewhere else to live as well as some place else to work, and that was a dilemma I had no wish to consider at that time.
Just like Boris had chosen to do.
And just as Petra had completely failed to do.
Countless stars of the old Klub stage must have died during their tenures there, but I had not known any of them, and as much as it pained me to think of that venue finally closing its doors, it also seemed right: without Petra, that little gang of mine just wouldn’t seem complete any longer. Carrying on would, of course, have been what she would have wanted, but not at the expense of all dignity and self-respect. Petra would have been better not coming back, or just finding something else to do with her life and forgetting about stripping, dancing, and all the rest of it, letting herself age gracefully rather than angrily trying to stab Chronos in the eye with a dirty needle.
Yet I could understand why she did it. She couldn’t let go, didn’t want to see it all end. Her vintage, retro act was more than a mere affectation, I realized. She had really lived in the past, even when the past was no longer reachable, or acceptable, or profitable. The poor woman had been born about half a century too late.
In many ways she was just like me, and all the others. The only difference was we knew now that we had to let go, as much as it pained us to do so.
I looked out of my windows which once had been alight with the dawn of a new era when the Wall came tumbling down. Now the view seemed to have changed to the end of an era, a time of normality, of a return to mundane existence. Of days soon to come of being walked past in the street without turning a single head, just another female among millions, no longer a goddess of wet dreams or a tormentor of hearts. I could only imagine how much stronger Petra must have experienced those same emotions to have ended up as she did, desperately clinging on to the last until she could no longer hold on and was forced to lose herself in the fake dreams of illegal substances.
A rap on the door derailed my miserable train of thought; a rap which reminded me so much of Mrs. Groenenberg. (I wondered, briefly, what she was up to now – yet another neurotic female, growing jittery at the sight of her advancing years, thrown suddenly out of everything she knew and loved at the worst possible time. I decided that she had turned her back on the material world, finding it too cruel and difficult for a forty-something divorcee by herself, and had emigrated to Switzerland to join the Cistercians, where she could spend endless glorious nights in penance for her cruel and sadistic desires.)
I opened up and found Olivia there.
“Hi, darling. How goes it?”
I shrugged, unwilling to articulate my deepest thoughts. She deserved the truth, having been everything to me where the Klub was concerned; my first love, my tutor, my partner, my confidante. I owed it to her to be honest now, yet I couldn’t bring myself to say the words: I don’t want it to end. I want to do this forever. Saying it would just enforce the idea in my mind and make it even harder to follow through on what I had to do. I couldn’t give energy or currency to thoughts which would only serve to cripple me.
She crossed my creaky floorboards and went straight to the spot I’d been standing on a moment before.
“I don’t want this any more than you do,” she said at last, echoing my thoughts so clearly that I briefly speculated on the existence of ESP. “Head says: yes. Heart says: dear God, no. It feels like leaving home for the first time all over again. Leaving school and having to go out into the big wide horrible, scary world. Doesn’t it, darling?”
She turned to me with dripping eyes, and I couldn’t hold back any longer. I threw myself at her and buried my face in her shoulder, the pair of us standing there in a deep, passionate hug.
“I would do it all again if I could,” she told me. “If I could turn back time – and get the chance to take all those other paths that I might have taken over the years – well, I wouldn’t have done a single thing differently. This place made me, Phoenyx. And I’m going to feel so incomplete – bereaved – without it. Yet what else can we do?”
Her nails had begun to bite into me, chewing little gouges out of my arms and shoulder like a bigger and blunter version of Boris. She was actually taking this pretty bad, literally needing someone to cling to, and shivering as she spoke.
“Be glad that it happened,” I sniffed. “And be proud of what we were, and what we did. Without entertainers, the world would be such a grey and miserable place.
“Even animals have entertainers in their packs, you know,” I went on, comforting myself, and her, with scraps of facts absorbed from a random reading of a National Geographic magazine the week before. “Jesters who break up the tension between angry alphas and battling betas. And they’re rewarded for it too, with good portions of prey.”
She stood back from me admiringly, looking me up and down. “I’m so proud of you, you know,” she said. “I’ve seen you grow up from an anxious girl to our star attraction. I’d like to think that I helped you along in some small way, but I reckon at least 99% of the effort was yours, and yours alone, darling; that you would have made it regardless. That passion and determination will take you further, I know. You’re strong and single-minded. You take no crap and you never gave any in return either. I just wish we—” she broke off to dry her eyes. “Aw, no. There’s no point in going over it again. What will you do after this, darling?”
“I’ve no idea,” I mumbled, unwilling to look further than a few minutes into the future at that point. I had come upstairs to get away from all that, after all. “I’ll take it as it comes. Go with the flow, I guess.”
She turned away and fumbled with a lighter and cigarettes. “I can’t believe I’m going to have to start looking for another job at this age,” she groaned. “I can’t do anything else. What about you? Do you have any secret, hidden talents?”
I flashed a smile. I’d considered a smart-ass response, but couldn’t think of anything sufficiently amusing to say, not having been blessed with Honey’s razor-blade wit. “No, not really.”
“Well, I’ve thought about going to college or something. But now I realize the folly in not making myself financially independent when I had the chance. Maybe that was the one thing in the past I should have done differently. Prepared for this day.” She blew a puff of smoke towards my window and the light shimmered across it, picking out the millions of particles. And I felt just like one of those particles, a tiny speck blown away into oblivion. She turned to me with a more familiar sideways smirk. “Although you still look hot enough to go down on at the drop of a hat, darling.”
I took two steps back and closed the door behind me.
“Come on, then,” I said. If she was offering, then I was definitely accepting. She still had it all, and in some ways I couldn’t believe that the woman was still single and worrying about her future. Surely one with her charm, grace and looks would have no difficulty finding security in her post-Klub days?
And perhaps she was thinking the same thing about me.
Playing around and socializing was all very well, in a world where swear words like ‘commitment’ and ‘serious relationship’ were never heard, nor uttered; nor even known to exist, for that matter. And how strange, I thought, that it was the most mouthy, independent, all-or-nothing firebrand named Honey who was the only one out of all of us to actually speak of such abominations. (Had I ever truly gotten over her? I don’t think any of us can easily forget such moments of hesitation which end up losing us fair maid, nor truly forgive our weaknesses, or quit beating ourselves up over them in our weaker, more selfish moments. We can only wear a hair shirt for so long before it finally gets eaten away by maggots and falls apart, yet the prickly sensations can last far longer.)
She followed me towards the bed and pushed her face into the back of my neck. “You’re so wonderful, darling. But right now, I just want to hold someone close.”
I felt her arms encircle me and I leaned back, thinking of moments past in WOW’s ladies’ changing room, and elsewhere. Olivia hadn’t changed her perfume in nearly twenty years and that whiff of rose water was enough to rekindle some of the hottest moments of my life, moments that had kept me going through so many rough times. Someone once said that the olfactory sense was the best at recalling memories of the past which was why I still had all my part-empty bottles of No. 5 on the shelf.
“Sometimes I wonder if none of us ever quite grew up properly,” she reflected as she rested her chin on my shoulder. “Y’know, playing at flirting with boys and teasing like when we were at school. And God knows how many offers all of us could have had, and how many we turned down, or never even considered – being too blinded by our own beautiful lights, believing our own publicity and narcissism until the day comes when we all realize that we can’t keep it up any longer. The moment none of us prepared for. I don’t mean that to sound horrible, darling; I’m just trying to express why I feel so bad about this.”
I pushed back into her and brushed my cheek against her hair.
“Do you know something,” I said, “that every time I smell rose water, I think of you. And I always will. And those thoughts will always get me going inside.”
Her te
eth nibbled my ear lobe. “That’s so sweet, darling.”
She hung around my neck while I awaited her next move, tingling with expectation. Then I felt a swift slap on the rump and she broke off the clinch.
“Well, I’d better get on with business,” she said, and headed for the door.
I watched her go, trying hard not to feel disappointed, or rejected. Perhaps the hat had yet to be dropped, metaphorically. Perhaps she had outgrown me, or perhaps she had just changed her mind in her sometimes very fickle way. We were, after all, facing a kind of oblivion and having to cope with a number of unpleasant truths all at once, so I couldn’t blame her for not thinking too clearly.
“You know where I am,” I called after her. “If you need…”
The door clicked shut behind her and her footsteps faded down the wooden hallway to the stairs.
“…anything,” I muttered in conclusion, and as I looked at the room surrounding me, I realized how little I actually had. But there was nothing material that I needed, and nothing that could even be bought, although I hoped – more than ever – that I still had something to give.
As Olivia’s heels hit the top steps, I thought I heard a suppressed snuffle of tears, but I couldn’t be sure.
It was late into the evening when I felt the restless pangs of frustration gnawing at my spine and my hands. I was beyond boredom – I was frustrated almost to tears, helpless and impotent. I had tried reading, I tried sleeping and I tried playing records, but the noise from the bar downstairs continually danced upon my concentration. I pulled my clothes off and threw them over the bed, turned and faced the mirror. Pulled my shoulders back, relaxed. Everything still looked fine, I thought. I hadn’t suddenly developed any wrinkles, or piled on pounds of fat anywhere important. The sight didn’t do much to cheer me up, but it didn’t depress me either. I was still worth something, to somebody. That moment snapped me back to reality, to now. Not tomorrow or next month, but this evening – which was still young – and all mine to make something of, if I so wished.
Phoenyx: Flesh & Fire Page 28