‘H’mm,’ sighed Tiger wistfully in agreement, distracted as she watched Gravy sniffing, then decanting on the other side of the room.
‘Blue, have you taken Gravy for a walk today? He’s peeing for England.’
‘Huh, what did your last slave die of? We’ve been in between limos and meetings all day, when was I supposed to take him out? I thought you were being given an aide for this trip anyway.’
‘I didn’t bother with the aide, it’s only an overnight job. Thank god Gravy didn’t leave a parcel in the studio, that’s all I can say.’
‘Well he’s so small they don’t even cast a shadow. You could always plug him up of course. That’s what Zorita used to do with her snakes you know, she’d plug ’em up so that they didn’t shit during her shows, and when they died she’d just buy a new one.’
‘That’s just a rumour! Anyway, Gravy’s my special buddy. I’m not plugging him up.’ Tiger sniffed.
‘More special than me?’ Blue made puppy eyes.
‘Well he doesn’t get moody …’
‘Yeah, but he can’t rhinestone a bra and fluff a feather like I can.’
Tiger laughed and cooed over at the dog.
‘Keep still darling, nearly done,’ said Blue, rearranging satin over Tiger’s breasts. ‘Need to make sure you look pristine next to Joan in the green room,’ he murmured to himself happily. A loud knock at the door made them both jump. Gravy growled.
‘Miss Starr?’ came a muffled voice.
Blue tucked the grumbling dog under his arm and pounced for the door.
‘Oh hi, I was given this envelope to give to Miss Starr, it was left at reception earlier.’
Blue stared lasciviously at the young blond production runner standing before him who was craning his neck over Blue’s shoulder to catch a glimpse of Tiger.
‘And who are you, young man?’ enquired Blue politely, puffing out his large frame to block the view into the room.
‘My name’s Brady.’
‘Brady, I say.’ Blue broke into a grin. ‘Thank you so much, I shall pass this to Miss Starr. That sounds like a California accent to me. Nice. Will I be seeing you in the green room?’
‘Sure, will Miss Starr be coming up?’
‘Yes indeed. We’ll be out shortly.’ Blue winked and closed the door.
‘Who was that?’ asked Tiger.
‘Eye candy. Tanned Cally boy. Yum. God I love it over here. Hey, I’ve got fan mail for you, hand delivered no less.’
‘Thank you, darling.’ Tiger took the envelope and ripped it open.
Blue watched her take the sheet of pink paper out of the envelope, stare at the page, turn it over, then turn it back again and stare some more. She looked up at him quizzically.
‘Something the matter, babes?’ asked Blue, snatching the paper from her manicured fingers. ‘I know … where … you … live,’ he read out loud. ‘What the? What’s with the cut-out newspaper letters? Murder She Wrote or something?’ Blue looked at Tiger, bemused.
‘That’s what I thought!’ laughed Tiger. ‘Ah well, our “fan” is in the wrong country for now! If they truly know where I live then they’ll know they have zero chance of getting past the paps in my driveway without being photographed. And then there’s the full might of Gravy to contend with if they get in the house!’ she laughed, scooping up all ten inches of her scruffy Yorkshire Terrier for a cuddle.
‘Er, I’m not sure you should be laughing about this, babes.’
‘Oh, Blue, lighten up, it’s just some prankster. Either that or it’s stage door Johnnie having a laugh. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d made the trip over here the little poppet! C’mon, champagne with Joan Collins and ol’ silver fox Johnson Tyler is beckoning. You want to see Cally boy again don’t you? Put that stupid letter in the bin.’ Tiger swept out of the room, her silk dress whispering seductively against her stockings as she wafted. Blue quietly tucked the pink paper into the top pocket of his Gaultier jacket. He had a nagging feeling. He was hoping he had been dreaming earlier, but he was sure he had seen the unmistakably ugly face of Rosemary Baby in the audience.
* * *
Georgia followed Lewis anxiously through the heavy iron door of his cavernous Clerkenwell warehouse pad. He clapped his hands twice and the lights blazed on in the lounge area.
‘Thanks for supper, it was nice,’ he said, throwing his door keys onto the steel Conran coffee table with a clatter. Lewis had been in a funk with Georgia ever since the afternoon’s rehearsal fiasco, and she had been trying to smooth things out ever since. She reckoned oysters and caviar at Scott’s ought to do it. Despite her meagre dancer’s wages, maxing out her credit card on supper tonight was worth it to placate Lewis. Secretly, Georgia was peeved with her stupidity in rehearsals earlier. How embarrassing in front of everyone, damn it. Lewis had seen straight through her attempt to impress Pepper with what she could do in Tiger’s place. What was it Tiger had over everyone anyway? All Lewis’ praise for her ‘fire’, ‘heat’ and ‘stage presence’; well you could just learn that like dance moves, right? thought Georgia huffily. All she needed was a bit of arse padding in her dance tights and an expensive tit job and she’d be well on the way to sex goddess of the stage. Watch out Tiger!
Georgia heard Lewis smashing the shit out of a block of ice over in the kitchen. She figured the oysters hadn’t worked their aphrodisiac magic yet. Wandering across the open-plan room to Lewis, she stood watching him with his Garrard diamond ice pick in one hand, shovelling shards of glacier into a fat tumbler with the other.
‘Let me make you a nightcap, darling,’ offered Georgia.
‘Oh okay, go on then. I’ll stick some music on,’ replied Lewis. ‘I’ll have a dirty Martini. The shaker’s there on the side. The gin’s in the mini-fridge. Help yourself, there’s vodka in the freezer too if you prefer.’
Dirty Martini. That’s Tiger’s favourite drink, damn her, thought Georgia crossly. Does Lewis have to like everything about her? Georgia carefully rinsed a Martini glass with vermouth, realising she would have to accept that the bond between Lewis and Tiger was simply the type that comes with working at such close quarters for so many years. But boy could it make a girl feel insecure.
‘Smack My Bitch Up’ blasted the music through the stereo system at deafening volume, making Georgia jolt and smash the glass on the kitchen floor. She looked despairingly at the mess as the heavy grinding techno bass lurched and thumped through the apartment, shaking the walls with every screech of the poetic lyrics. She took an executive decision to resort to Plan B immediately.
Georgia hopped over the dirty Martini carnage on the kitchen floor and ripped off her black tube skirt to expose her long lithe legs clad in silky Wolford hold ups, topped off with a pearl g-string. Only the best for Georgia Atlanta when it came to lingerie. She slinked her way over to Lewis as he stood by the stereo and before he had a chance to speak, she jumped on him and wrapped her legs about his waist, the way he always liked.
‘Uh,’ grunted Lewis, taken by surprise.
‘I can’t wait any longer, I just need your cock up me, baby,’ breathed Georgia, feeling an instant hardening in Lewis’ crotch area. Men are so predictable, she thought, relieved. Lewis clamped his hands round her sinewy thighs and threw her onto the sofa, unzipping himself to release his raging hard on. He thrust himself into her. Without a word passing between them, they sweated their way through several positions in quick succession.
Once safely on top, Georgia grabbed the sound system’s remote and changed the music to her favourite, Prince. Fuelled with that night’s oysters and champagne she performed like a seasoned acrobat, staying focused on the job of placating Lewis after today. He was one guy she wasn’t going to lose for anything. He just knew the answers to everything, it was like nothing fazed him; plus he had a Titanium Amex card. Georgia loved his stormy ways, it kept her on her toes and longing to please him. Most importantly, he could help her career in ways other men just couldn’t.
Georg
ia suddenly realised Lewis hadn’t come yet. Her heart sank as she looked down to see his handsomely weathered face looking bored as she worked on his cock rhythmically as she sat on him.
‘Look at me,’ she whispered softly in his ear.
Lewis opened his eyes and stared up at her as she slowly rocked her hips back and forth.
‘Say my name,’ she whispered, pushing him deep inside her, ‘say my name.’
Georgia grabbed his hand and placed it on her buttock, ‘Just say my name,’ she whispered urgently.
Lewis smiled awkwardly, and said nothing. His eyes closed and his hand fell away from her as the opening bars of ‘Money Don’t Matter Tonight’ filtered into the room.
‘Tiger, oh Tiger. Oh baby. Oh my.’
Johnson Tyler ran his fingers softly over Tiger’s exposed back. He let out a soft moan as she skilfully massaged his cock, giving a delicate tug on his balls with her other hand.
‘Argh. Oh Tiger baby. Oh that’s too good.’
Seeing Johnson close to orgasm, Tiger pulled away with one last firm stroke.
‘More champagne, darling?’ she purred.
‘No … no, no don’t stop I was …’
‘Oh darling, I like to pace myself, you know, savour every moment.’ Tiger leaned in and spoke with her lips close to his. She smelled his musky scent, mixed with sweat. She closed her eyes and savoured the aroma. Hmm. Rex. Tiger guiltily pushed all thoughts of him aside and concentrated on Johnson. Maybe Blue was right when he’d suggested that the easiest way to get over one man was to get on top of another. It was certainly worth a try. In one movement she stood, unclipped the halter of her gown and let it slip to the floor with a swish.
‘Oh. God. Tiger. Don’t leave me hanging …’ gasped Johnson, rising from the black satin sheets of the circular bed and reaching straight for her hips. Black satin sheets? Bachelor taste was still very much at large amongst men of a certain age, thought Tiger with a little chuckle as she slid from out of his hands and onto the bed like a prowling cat.
‘Oh baby,’ gasped Johnson, ‘stay just there. That’s an ass. God, you’re perfect.’
Tiger rose up onto all fours and kicked her stilettoed feet playfully behind her as she felt Johnson approaching her from behind.
‘Ooh that tickles!’ squealed Tiger, arching her back as she felt Johnson stroking her buttock.
‘Keep still, baby,’ whispered Johnson. Tiger heard soft crinkling of paper. That doesn’t sound like a condom wrapper, thought Tiger. Johnson had gone quiet, but Tiger could still feel tickling.
‘What are you …’
She glanced over her smooth, bronzed shoulder. Sure enough, Johnson was racking up a line of white powder on her smooth bare arse.
Tiger rolled her eyes, sighed and flipped quickly and elegantly onto her back, her perky breasts rising like zeppelins.
‘Oh shit! I said stay still, baby,’ exclaimed Johnson, a half rolled hundred dollar bill mid air in one hand. Tiger gracefully swept up her long legs and wrapped them round his neck, pulling him towards her.
‘Darling, my ass is an unspoilt landscape, I don’t need you racking up Colombia’s finest on it thank you,’ she murmured softly. Tiger was certainly no prude, having had her own chemical dramas in years gone by, but she had emerged on the other side a wiser woman, and now found the whole Class-A culture rather passé. She certainly wasn’t going to be used as Johnson Tyler’s serving dish.
‘Aw c’mon, baby. It’s a massive compliment. It’s usually a blue pill,’ said Johnson with a serious face.
‘Oh thanks, that’s a relief then!’ laughed Tiger heartily. She couldn’t be annoyed with such a downright charmer.
Johnson kissed her tenderly. Tiger suddenly felt relieved for the interruption. Deep down she knew she was still trying to get Rex out of her head. Thank god, she was better than this. Black satin sheets indeed! And cocaine! How eighties!
Tiger rose. ‘I should leave, my darling. I have a long day tomorrow. Thank you for drinks and dinner and … I’m sorry, I just can’t …’
‘Yeah I shouldn’t have – shit, what was I thinking – we’re cool, aren’t we?’ asked Johnson, suddenly looking like a spoilt schoolboy in his high-tech playground.
‘You bet. Look me up when you’re in the UK and I’ll take you out for dinner.’
‘Okay, baby. You’re a rare broad, you know, Tiger.’
‘Well, if I do the job of a blue pill then I could make billions!’
They both laughed as Tiger smoothed her hair, dressed, and ran out to the warmth of her waiting limo.
Chapter 9
The gloved hand slowly turns over the front cover of the ‘Funtime Playtime’ scrapbook. The leaves of coloured sugar paper are turned over one by one, first blue, then pink, then yellow. Each page proffers another image of Tiger Starr, cut from a magazine or a faded newspaper. Beautiful smiles and sultry gazes radiate from each page; moments captured in time. The gloved hand reaches for a scalpel blade from the desk, and the blade is guided slowly towards Tiger’s image. It is scraped deliberately and repeatedly over her heaving bosom in long, leisurely strokes, scoring the paper as she twinkles from the page. Trembling, both hands now methodically scratch gashes into her breasts, faster, shorter, faster, harder, faster; until all that remains is an ugly wound of sugar paper. The page now hangs sorrowfully from the binding by a thread, the picture a mass of angry slashes.
The gloved hand lays the blade down carefully, next to little piles of newsprint words arranged neatly on the desk. A sheet of wafer thin, translucent paper sits squarely next to an embellished packet out of which spills a pink writing block and matching envelopes. A small bottle of Chanel No. 5 occupies the last square of space on the desk. A pink envelope is selected and duly primed with a light spray of the amber liquid. Miniscule droplets of fragrance sparkle momentarily under the beam of light from the anglepoise lamp, before settling on the envelope. A deep sigh echoes through the room as it fills with powdery, floral notes of rose and jasmine.
Chapter 10
In the distance a lawnmower could be heard motoring up and down the playing field. The lively hum of chattering schoolgirls had been replaced by the soporific drone of the industrial floor polisher in the corridor, interspersed with sporadic shrieks of gossip barked in Polish as the cleaners noisily emptied bins and swabbed the parquet floor in the neighbouring classrooms. Poppy fiddled miserably with the novelty zipper on her Betty Boop pencil case, anxiously imagining the scene when she returned home. She had never had a detention before, and she knew her mother would be absolutely furious. Poppy prayed that Mr Rogers hadn’t noticed the cigarette butts out on the grass earlier, or the unmistakable smell of stale smoke on her clothes. The ripped shirt was bad enough, but if her mother was told about the cigarettes, Poppy was sure to be grounded for the rest of her teenage years. That’s if she wasn’t sent away to boarding school like her parents frequently threatened if Poppy was naughty.
She looked over at Emma, who was still slouched sulkily in her chair, doodling on her A4 pad with a Bic biro. She’d been huffing and puffing solidly for the past hour. Flicking an evil sideways look at Poppy, she mouthed ‘stupid cow’.
Ed Rogers looked up from his text book Playing the Game: Bats, Balls and Boules.
‘Okay, girls, it’s five-thirty, you may now leave. Please could you place your essays on the front desk for me.’ He spoke in his Australian twang, deep and husky from all that bellowing on the sports fields. ‘Your parents will be called by the secretary in a moment to let them know you are safely discharged.’ He rose from his chair and turned to the whiteboard, upon which tonight’s punitive essay title was written in marker, ‘Violence is unladylike. Discuss’.
As he swept a rag in arcs across the board, erasing the legend, Poppy stared at his tanned, muscled calves. She idly wondered why he always wore long shorts, rarely tracksuit bottoms. The chair scraped loudly next to her, and Emma rose. As she reached over to place her essay on the desk in front, she sh
oved Poppy’s open pencil case onto the floor.
‘Oops, sorry,’ said Emma loudly, smiling slyly at Poppy as she sashayed from the classroom with a wave. Poppy leapt up to gather the pens and pencils that had scattered.
Ed Rogers moved in on her. ‘Let me help you with that,’ he said kindly, crouching down and reaching out to pick up a couple of pens that had come to rest under the desk. Poppy was alarmed to find tears suddenly spilling down her cheeks and onto the bottle-green sweater that Mr Rogers had lent her to cover her ripped shirt. She snivelled in little spasms and frantically tried to rub her eyes dry with shaky hands. Crying in front of a teacher was so embarrassing, especially a man like Mr Rogers. She was fourteen now after all, no way was she a silly little girl any more.
‘Poppy, I know you’ve never had a detention before,’ said Ed gently, reaching to put a hand on her shoulder, ‘and your parents have to be informed – those are the regulations. But let’s just say …’ He paused long enough for her to look up at him with her green eyes.
‘Look, let’s just be friends, Poppy. I didn’t see anything like cigarettes and matches out there, for example. You get my drift?’ He slowly slid the biros into her pencil case.
Poppy swallowed hard, stemming the flow of unwanted tears, and nodded as she knelt there on the parquet floor. She stared back at his kind face, as he casually ran his long fingers through his tousled golden hair. He was close. He smelled of washing powder.
‘Your jumper, I need to give it back,’ started Poppy.
‘Oh that, don’t worry. No, you just keep hold of it for the moment,’ Ed laughed softly. ‘Besides, you can’t go home in your ripped shirt. Just one thing, Poppy,’ he asked suddenly. ‘Why were you rolling around the grass with Emma?’
‘Like I said, we were just playing,’ mumbled Poppy, feeling little butterflies in her tummy now that the tears had dried up. Wow. She was actually getting to keep Ed Rogers’ jumper for a while. Wow. She reckoned she could sell it to one of her classmates for a heap of money, everyone fancied him.
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