“Was it something I said?” asked the blonde as Kat headed for the door.
The place hadn’t seemed that crowded before, and now everyone in the whole damn place was between her and her pants. She got to them at last and tugged them on. Then she headed to the door.
“Katrina, can we talk?” She knew who it was the moment he put his hand on her shoulder, but the voice confirmed it.
“We have nothing to talk about,” Katrina said, shaking the hand off. “Thanks for a great time, Sir. Have a nice life.”
She rushed through the curtains. She heard his footsteps following her.
“Red,” she said, loud enough to be heard. He stopped, as she’d known he would. She didn’t know why she was so sure, but she couldn’t imagine it any other way. Even if he did have a collared sub he hadn’t bothered to mention, she still trusted him at least that far.
She hurried on into the warm night, got into her car, and started it up. Her old sedan had made it all the way from California, and now it would take her “home,” such as it was, where she’d sleep. Tomorrow she was going to start working on her career. She hadn’t come to Le Petit Mort to find a dom or a relationship; she’d come to satisfy some needs. She’d done that. Now it was time to get on with life.
Chapter Three
Brett couldn’t get Katrina out of his head. She’d been angry with him—he could tell that—and he didn’t know why. Maybe she was an angry person. He would have left it at that if it weren’t for the fact that she looked so familiar. He’d definitely seen her somewhere before.
He’d been a cop most of his life, first in New York and then in DC, but he’d taken law classes and was working as a defense lawyer. He had gotten tired of busting kids for doing drugs while the real kingpins walked free. Drugs were a bottomless pit, not only for the kids who used them but for the cops who tried to enforce the laws. There would never be enough cops for the drug problem. Brett didn’t know what the solution was, but he knew he was tired of being on the front lines. Maybe he’d busted Katrina for drugs sometime, but he didn’t think so.
In his spare time he made corsets. At first it had started as a meditative exercise, something to keep his hands busy and his mind away from the disturbing things he’d seen on the streets. Now he was known from Richmond to Boston in the BDSM community for his skill. He mostly did custom orders, but when things were slow, he made extras.
The next two weekends he manned his vendor table at Le Petit Mort. He’d get back to playing soon, but he wasn’t in any rush. He kept an eye out for Katrina, but she never showed.
“You need to get out more,” said Lisa, idly fingering a brown corset. There was no way Lisa was going to be wearing something brown, so her pretense that she was chattering while looking at corsets was a failure. She had come over specifically to tell him that. And she was holding something behind her back.
“I’m out now.”
“You’re running a shop. It just happens to be in a club with lots of kinky people. There,” she said, pointing to the floor where every play station was in use by a kinky couple, except for the one occupied by a threesome, “is out. This is in.” She tapped on the desk. “Here.” She tossed a copy of the City Paper, Washington’s local free weekly, onto his table. He picked it up quickly to stop newsprint from getting on the silk clothes.
“Do something that gets you out from mooning about that girl,” Lisa said.
“I am not mooning. And since when did you get to be so bossy?” When he first met Lisa, she was dressed in nothing but lingerie and wandering the club alone looking quite lost, the victim of a cruel prank. For a while, he’d thought Lisa was afraid of him. Not anymore. Lisa might be a submissive, but that only applied to her relationship with Darren. She owned her own business, and the longer she and Darren were together, the more assertive she seemed to get.
“Do something that gets you out from mooning about that girl, Sir.” Lisa smiled sweetly.
“Go pester Master Darren.”
Lisa shrugged and left. Brett waited until she was across the room to flip open the paper. Getting out seemed like a good idea. He’d just wrapped up a case, so he had some extra free time. Lisa was right there was no sense in thinking about Katrina. He had no way to get in touch with her, and it wasn’t even as if they’d parted on good terms. The woman had issues. It wasn’t his job to solve them.
The ad for the Caravan club caught his eye not because it was striking but because it was clumsy. Brett would have thought they could do better in today’s computer age, but it looked like someone had pasted a new act into the ad with glue and then photocopied it, because it didn’t quite line up with the others. “Kat, formerly of Kradle.” He had a few Kradle CDs. He’d even seen them live once a few years ago. Good, hard driving rock and roll that reminded him of the Damned and the Clash, which had been favorites of his in college, back when he used to wear all black. The singer was hot too.
The singer looked quite like Katrina, in fact, except that her hair was white instead of black, and she wore ripped T-shirts instead of silky blouses.
Exactly like Katrina.
She was playing tonight at ten. He could make it there right in time for her to start if he left now. He packed up the corsets, carried them out, and tossed them into the trunk of his Chevy sedan, and drove toward the Caravan Club.
It was in a decent section of town, better than Le Petit Mort actually. All sorts of bands played there, big and little, oldies and avant-garde. Brett hadn’t been there for a couple of years, and some of his memories were about drug busts. Brett paid the cover, hoping Kat got a good cut, and went in.
He wasn’t sure he’d ever seen such an odd crowd. He’d worn what he had on at the club—black tee, black jeans—and he fit in okay. There were guys with spiked collars and studded belts, and girls with torn fishnets and cock rings on their wrists—although they probably didn’t think of them as such. That was all about what he expected, and not unlike the Kradle concert he went to. But that was only half the crowd. The other half had Day-Glo leg warmers, glow sticks, bikini tops, pink vinyl skirts. Brett though he would go blind just looking at them.
“Do you know where we can find Molly?” asked a blue-haired girl who looked about sixteen.
“Don’t ask him,” said her androgynous-looking date, pulling her away.
I guess I still look like a cop. Molly was the latest name for Ecstasy, this time in powdered form. The girl was an idiot for asking for it so openly, but if he was an undercover cop, he’d be dressed like the other ravers. Yet another reason he’d hated working drug detail.
Whatever sort of band had been scheduled here originally, he was guessing it wasn’t a punk band. He decided not to force his way through to get a drink, even though he thought a scotch on the rocks would probably help him deal with the sea of color. He was sure the crowd would thin down once Kat started playing, and he knew which group would be leaving too.
Then Kat walked out onstage and erased all doubt that she was the same woman he’d played with in Le Petit Mort. She was wearing a short black vinyl skirt, torn fishnet stockings, and a fishnet shirt over a black bra. Her stiletto ankle boots made enough sound on the stage he could hear them over the crowd noise. As she scanned the crowd, he wondered if she had known what she was getting into. Then she walked up to the microphone and smiled. It might be an act, but she had poise.
“Is everyone ready for some noise?”
That wasn’t a bad word to describe what punk rock and whatever the ravers had come for had in common, thought Brett. But the cheers from people wearing black were louder than those of the neon group. Yeah, getting that scotch would definitely be easier in about ten minutes.
KAT HADN’T HAD a good couple of weeks. She’d hired and fired two bassists, because neither of them could learn the music fast enough. The third one had called in sick eight hours ago. She’d given up on a drummer completely and programmed a drum machine. At least she had a guitarist, Cindy, and Cindy was very good i
ndeed. After dealing with Angus and the boys, it was nice to work with a woman too. Sadly, Cindy’s girlfriend Amy couldn’t play an instrument.
Kat had spent the last few hours programming a computer to play the bass lines, and it sounded like crap to her, but it was better than having no bottom end at all. Maybe. She still wasn’t sure if they were going to go with it, or try to make do without.
The gig had been hastily arranged. They were replacing some band called Sykedelik, which apparently was one person, a couple of synthesizers, and a lot of sampling. She’d listened to a couple of tracks, and it was good stuff, but nothing like what she did. In any case, Mr. Syke had apparently decided to go to Ibiza instead. Kat had known the crowd wouldn’t all be coming to see her, but she hadn’t expected what she saw. This would be a hard audience to win over even with a full band.
The response to her opening question wasn’t exactly overwhelming. She was reminded of the scene in the Blues Brothers where the band gets booked in a country-western bar. The good news here was that this crowd was probably a lot mellower. Possibly chemically mellow. Either way, she was pretty sure most of them would be leaving soon. She and Cindy had planned to start out with some of Kradle’s more well-known tunes to win the crowd over before going into the more experimental stuff. She’d written it, even if it came with some painful memories, and she wasn’t going to back down from her life’s work. Besides, she didn’t have a whole show worth of new material. But the fans of Sykedelik wouldn’t know any of her playlist at all.
Cindy came out with her guitar. Kat thought that might make the Sykedelik fans happier. Cindy liked pink and was wearing a lot of it, as well as a lot of black. She looked like she could almost fit in with either part of the audience. There were unpleasant murmurs from the crowd, though. Maybe the guitar sent the wrong message. It didn’t matter. It was hopeless.
“Tough crowd,” whispered Cindy, just loud enough for Kat to hear.
Kat nodded. Then she spotted Brett. Great.Just what I need. She didn’t see that sub of his anywhere, but then she hadn’t seen her last time until it was too late. Cindy was looking at her expectantly. They had to start playing something. She had to decide whether to have an automated bass line or not. She couldn’t think about Brett now.
“Bass or no bass?” asked Cindy.
“Bass.” The computer was a few feet away, and she walked over to it and hovered her cursor over the Play button when she got a crazy idea. It wasn’t a good time to have a new idea, but she thought she could do it. Could Cindy roll with it on the fly? She hoped so. She walked back to the mic, grabbed it, and said, “We’re going to try something a little different tonight. I know some of you came to see—” Did one call it a band or an act? Act sounded like she was deriding it. Best not to call it anything at all. “Mr. Syke. And some of you came to see me. I’m Kat, for those who don’t know me, and I used to be in a punk band called Kradle. So we’re going to experiment and see what happens. And it’ll either be the best concert you’ve ever been too, or it will be so horrible you’ll have a story to tell.” She didn’t wait to get a reaction, because she knew she’d lose her nerve. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Cindy looking at her like she’d lost her mind. Maybe she had.
“Do what seems right,” she told Cindy as she walked back to the computer with the microphone. “If this doesn’t work, we’ll go back to our planned set without the bass.”
Cindy nodded. Cindy, she’d noticed, didn’t lose her cool very easily. Kat had never worked with anyone like that before, and it was a pleasant change. Although Cindy looked scared now. Stage fright, maybe? Cindy was so good that Kat forgot how little experience she had at playing in front of an audience, and now she was going to have to improvise. She pulled Cindy with her so that Cindy could see what she was doing, because she’d sound stupid explaining.
She was having one of those moments of clarity when she could envision how an entire piece of music would sound without even playing it. She quickly programmed some loops into the main track of “The Little Death.” With a touch of a few buttons, she changed the crappy-sounding imitation bass guitar to what she hoped would be a passable imitation of a Roland synth. She looked at Cindy, who looked aghast.
“Can you do this?” Kat asked.
“You promised them something different. Let’s try.”
Kat took a deep breath and hit Play. “Okay, people,” she purred into the mic, in her deepest, sexiest voice. “See if you can dance to this.”
She’d pushed the vocals back a good couple of minutes, and she used the time to think about how to redo the next song, noting in the background that Cindy was doing a remarkable job of improvising over the repetitive bass line. The light sticks were starting to move in the crowd. Maybe they’d dance to anything with a beat. The rockers were getting restless. She could take all that in and still focus as long as she didn’t think about Brett out there in the crowd. What was he doing there, anyway?
Better him than Angus, anyway. She stepped forward and started singing. She didn’t have a trained voice, but she knew how to belt it out and sing the lyrics with passion. It was a far cry from what Mr. Syke did, where everything was polished to perfection. She couldn’t do that, but she could pour her soul and her anger and her frustration into the song. It had been a love song once. Well, lust anyway. She rubbed the handle of the mic like she was jerking it off and closed her eyes, screaming out the words. She’d been through a hell of a month, and she wasn’t taking it anymore.
When she opened them again, there were a lot of stunned looks in the faces of the crowd, but they weren’t heading toward the exits. And to her surprise Kat loved the sound she and Cindy were laying down. She glanced at Cindy, who gave her a weak smile. Kat gave Cindy a thumbs-up, and the smile got stronger. “Let’s do some more of that shit,” said Kat into the microphone and went back to the computer. She had everything planned out.
Cindy surprised her by starting to play before she was finished reprogramming, even though it only took a few seconds. But it was perfect. Kat waited until they were in sync and hit the button.
“This song is called ‘Two-Timing Mother Fucker,’” she said and looked right at Brett. “Needless to say, it didn’t get any radio airplay.” Which was fine because it got a hell of a lot of hits on YouTube. This time, she sought out Brett in the crowd and stared straight at him. “And I’m dedicating it to Jessica.”
He had the nerve to look like he had no idea what she was talking about. She remembered how he’d looked for a collar or a ring and had asked her if she was attached to anyone. God, he had a lot of nerve. With an innocent face like that, any woman would trust him, too. It made her pissed off. She could use that. She always gave her best concerts when she was angry anyway.
* * * *
An hour later she spotted a thin young man dressed in black jeans with chains and a faded Kradle T-shirt kissing a girl with neon-blue hair and a metallic fuchsia bra top. It was a moment that symbolized the concert’s success. Somehow, she’d managed to keep both her audiences. The ravers were willing to listen to a couple of straight-on punk rock songs, even. When her voice started to give, she’d stood at the computer and turned the bridge of “The Man Wants My Back” into a ten-minute dance-a-thon. There were some advantages to longer songs; Kradle always sang them fast and straight, and each one took about three minutes with the set list carefully organized so the songs that sounded best with a scratchy voice were at the end. Intermission only helped some. For a change, she was giving a concert without her voice ending up hoarse and raw.
A big man with long black hair walked in, and some of the crowd turned to watch him. Angus. She should have known word would get to him. It had been inevitable, eventually, but she’d thought that maybe with the concert announced only three days before that she’d get one in before he started getting pissed off. He didn’t have a right to get pissed off. He’d kicked her out of the band, and what did he expect her to do—become a secretary? She certainly didn�
�t expect him to show up in person.
The punk rockers made room for him out of respect, and the ravers moved because he looked as mean and vicious as he sometimes was. Kat heard someone near the stage saying, “That guy has a bad vibe,” and she couldn’t agree more. She wondered if he was going to try to climb onstage. She doubted he was there to apologize. Cindy was great to work with, but she’d have felt safer if their bassist had made it.
He walked right up to the front and then yelled, “What the fuck are you doing with my music?”
His music. She’d written it, music, lyrics, and all. She’d given him co-writing credit on the album because that was what they usually did. He claimed that their audience would give their music more credibility if they thought a man was involved in writing the songs. The only thing he’d contributed was mentioning that a song about a cop buggering someone would be “cool” often enough that Kat wrote the damn thing to get him off her case. The music was a lot better than the lyrics, in her opinion.
At least he wasn’t climbing up on the stage. She wanted to argue with him about whose music it was, but she didn’t. She didn’t want to make him angrier.
Angus turned his back on her. “What the fuck is she doing with our music?” he asked. She knew “our” didn’t mean he was acknowledging her part in it. He was talking to the punk rockers, working the crowd. “Our” meant Kradle fans. And they were looking uneasy. They’d been enjoying themselves, as far as she could tell, but it had probably been a guilty pleasure. Now they were turning sour.
“And who are these people? These pansies in faerie wings and light sticks and pastel hair. And my God, mohair leg warmers!”
Blue Desire Page 5