Suzie and the Monsters

by Francis Franklin

  Aphra listens to this melodramatic outpouring with sad and serious eyes. ‘What mischiefs she would do, if she should live!’ she replies eventually, and returns to her scribbling. But her words themselves are mischievous, ambivalent with warning and encouragement, and my conflicted soul keeps me awake through the long night.

  It Had Better Be Tonight (Tuesday)

  Today is my last day as Suzie Kew, and I’m going to miss her. Tomorrow morning she’ll check out of the hotel, and a few minutes later someone else will be carrying her last few possessions through security to catch the Eurostar to Paris. Partly to say farewell to her, and partly because I want to talk to Waterfront Dave, I spend the day at Dave’s Place.

  The club is open most days from 8 a.m. until 6 a.m. the following morning, but can be quite eerie during the morning, often without customers, just staff cleaning and polishing a vast expanse of glass, mirrors, leather seats, oak table tops, scarlet red curtains and shiny chrome surfaces, or chatting to bored dancers. But it gives me plenty of time and freedom to invent and practise new pole dances, and there are a couple of other dancers who are willing to learn what I can teach them. There are always a few dancers on shift in case customers come in. The rota is organised by Gloria, a forty-something ex-dancer with large fake breasts, fake blonde hair and a fierce attitude. She hates me because I ignore her and she has to work her schedule around me, but every time she tries to chase me away Dave intervenes. Maybe that’s why, so John Smith says, everyone knows I’m Dave’s girl.

  I’m not, of course. I like Dave, and he loves to watch me dance, but our real value to each other is the gossip we trade about the criminal underworld. Lots of gang members hang out at Dave’s, and there’s plenty of drugs changing hands in and around the club. I have a very good sense of this kind of stuff. And Dave knows everyone who’s anyone, from gang members to politicians. They all come here. And that’s why I want to talk to him, to ask about Valon.

  Today, he’s not here, which is very unusual. I’ve been here since 7 a.m., so nearly sixteen hours now, and no sign of Dave. It’s clear no one else knows where he is or why he’s not here. Even Gloria is nervous to the point of panic. It’s nearly eleven, nearly time for the main event. I do other dances during the day, some on stage, some on tables, strictly no touching, some in private, where rules are different. No one has ever paid me for sex, but I don’t object to a little physical contact so long as I stay in charge. One of my regulars, Eric, pays me handsomely just so that he can sleep for an hour using my naked breasts as a pillow. Another, Stuart, gets me to talk dirty to him in my most aristocratic voice while he masturbates, and after he comes I whip him with a cat-o’-nine-tails. I have no objection to being paid to play the dominatrix. Sometimes a customer just wants me to sit with him for a while and talk, which I’m happy to do for a glass of wine. Dave keeps the bar stocked with a fine selection of vintage reds.

  But eleven o’clock is definitely the main event, and now it’s time. I stride out through the curtain onto the stage to LaTour’s People Are Still Having Sex, the original 1991 version. It’s a classic, and makes the pole dance both electrifying and seductive. I’m keeping an eye on a man who is sitting at the bar, drinking beer slowly by himself. He’s been sitting at the bar since seven o’clock this evening, and while he has glanced at the other girls he has ignored their advances. His attention has been mainly on me, and our eyes have met often enough that we both know the other knows we’re watching each other. His expression is cold, hard, certainly not admiring or lustful. He’s wearing a cheap, ill-fitting grey suit, and his hair is cut very short, so that you can see the long scars crossing his scalp.

  LaTour finishes with a final ‘Sex!’ and my second song fills the room with warmth. Touch and Go’s Straight To... Number One is another classic that I dance to with a slower, more elegant seductiveness. This is my last night and I’m enjoying myself. It has taken a lot of practice to make my pole dancing look so fluent and effortless. It’s easy to lose myself in the music and movement, so much so that I barely notice the transition to Moby’s hypnotic Porcelain with its warm colours and echoes. This particular dance is more demanding and artistic than the others, less seductive, but I doubt that anyone watching really understands just how difficult it is. This dance is purely for me, a perfection of movement to ‘this is goodbye, this is goodbye.’

  All through these dances I have worn my glittering black rubber bra and thong, my Countess uniform. One of my rules is that I don’t dance naked on the pole. I do strip afterwards, however, and tonight I’m daring to be absurd and brilliant and dance candombe, so very sexy, while I sing along with Fran Jeffries to Mancini’s Meglio Stasera. For the first time I’m making eye contact with the men sitting around the stage. But I’ve barely started, and not started to bare, singing ‘Domani chi lo sa,’ when I find myself looking at a familiar and completely unexpected face.

  Cleo is standing by the edge of the stage, calling out ‘Suzie!’ almost unheard against the music and noise of the crowd. For a moment I am too stunned to move. Cleo? Here? Followed quickly by the thrilling realisation that Cleo here means she wants to be with me, enough that she has stupidly braved the dangers and insanity of this place to search for me.

  But far too stupid and dangerous for her to be with me here now.

  I stride away across the stage and leap over the men sitting by the stage. Jumping from such a height in six-inch heels is not a trick for amateurs, and I feel my Pleasers protesting when I land, but they survive the impact. Running over to the bar, fortunately to the opposite end from where the scarred man watches me, I reach over and grab my bag and Cleo’s pink jacket, which I work my arms into even as I run for the double doors of the exit, watched by a hundred pairs of startled eyes. ‘Bye, guys,’ I shout to Tom and Harry, the bouncers, as I burst out through the main doors. I race for the corner of the club and round into the car park.

  Cleo is hot on my heels and shouts ‘Wait!’ I slow down to let her catch up, but put my finger to my lips to tell Cleo to be silent and continue towards the dark alley that runs along the back of the club. I put on a pair of white cotton gloves from my bag. The man from the club, all muscles and scars, runs into the car park and I drag Cleo into the alley.

  ‘What the hell are you doing here, Cleo?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Suzie. I’ve been trying to phone you since Sunday. When you didn’t answer I thought maybe they killed you for real. This was the only place I knew to look for you.’

  ‘My phone’s in the skip, and this place is just as dangerous as the flat.’

  A silhouette enters the alley behind us, and I reach into my bag. ‘Run,’ I tell Cleo, ‘and don’t stop till sun-up.’ I push her away.

  To the approaching shadow I say, ‘What do you want?’

  There’s a glint of sharp steel in his hand. In a thick accent, possibly Albanian, he replies, ‘Mr Valon wants to talk to you, Miss Kew. Countess.’ The last word is a sneer.

  I take the gun with the silencer from my bag and shoot him twice in the heart. Except I’m a lousy shot. He cries out in surprise and falls to his knees, hands pressed to his chest. I can smell blood.

  I move closer, and he starts getting painfully to his knees, snarling threats in an unintelligible blend of English and Albanian, but words like whore and cunt are clear enough. This time I aim for his balls and shoot twice. Again he collapses to his knees, this time sobbing like a baby. Somehow his knife is still clenched in his left hand. Standing just out of his reach, I aim for his forehead and fire the last two shots, silencing him. After a few seconds of stillness, he collapses sideways.

  Cleo is standing right behind me. ‘Shit,’ she says, and after a moment asks, ‘Are you going to drink his blood?’

  ‘He’s dead, Cleo. I don’t drink from corpses.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Come on,’ I say, and lead her over to my car. The Mini is almost the last of my possessions in Suzie Kew’s name, but I’m not ready to give it up just yet. We
drive into the city in silence, and without slowing the car I open the window and fling the gun over the parapet of Blackfriars Bridge.

  A few minutes later I park outside Pimlico Nursery, overlooked by the beautiful Saint James The Less. After squeezing my gloves under the lid of a locked wheelie bin, I take my bag from the car and walk down the road to sit on the bench next to Andre Wallace’s roller-skating lady. The steel bench is fiercely cold against my bare skin, and I lose no time in slipping on my Oroblu Milly hold-ups and into my red velvet dress. It’s not a long dress, and when I sit there’s still bare skin in contact with the metal. Finally, I swap the Pleasers for my Burberry sandals, and start unbraiding my ponytail.

  ‘I used to live round here,’ I tell Cleo when she joins me. ‘I remember when the church back there was built, by three sisters, a century and a half ago.’ Cleo is wearing the same Armani jeans, Burberry shirt and Truffles again. ‘I hope you’ve at least changed your underwear since Saturday,’ I joke, and she blushes. ‘So, why were you trying to phone me?’

  ‘I wanted to see you again.’

  ‘Even knowing what I am?’

  She moves closer to me on the bench that we’re both straddling, so that our knees touch, and she glides her hands up my thighs and under the velvet. Her hands are wonderfully warm against my skin, and my stomach tingles with happiness and desire for this young creature.

  I place my hands over hers to slow her caresses. ‘Cleo, Cleo. I drink blood. I shoot men in dark alleys. You’ve seen this with your own eyes. Why are you even talking to me? Why aren’t you home in bed, safe from monsters?’

  ‘I don’t know. There’s a voice in my head asking the same questions. But somehow you’ve become all the colours in my world. When I’m at home, or at school, I feel like someone’s pressed the pause button, and I’m like a ghost waiting for my life to begin again.’

  I sigh. What it is to be young and in love. I return to unbraiding my hair. ‘Cleo, you’re young, intelligent, and damned sexy. Don’t waste your time on me. Find yourself someone real.’

  ‘You are real to me,’ she replies, a little angry, and digs her sharp nails deep into my skin until she sees the pain echoed in my expression.

  I finally manage to undo the braid, and shake my head to even my hair a little. I coil the glittering cord up and press it into Cleo’s right hand. ‘This is for you to remember me by.’

  ‘No!’ she cries out, and grabs my right arm tightly with both hands. ‘Stop trying to push me away, Suzie.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll stop pushing, but I can’t take you with me.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I’ve stolen a lot of money from a very dangerous man, and far too many people know me too well. I don’t mean you. I need to change my identity, go somewhere far away for a few years. This is my last night as Suzie Kew. Tomorrow I’ll be someone else, somewhere else.’

  ‘Take me with you.’

  ‘No, Cleo. You have family, friends, a whole life ahead of you. I won’t take you from that.’

  Cleo is not just deflated, she’s crushed. She wraps her arms around herself, not looking at me.

  The cold bench is killing me. I stand up to try and adjust my dress better.

  ‘Don’t go!’ Cleo panics, and grabs hold of my arm again. ‘Please! Let’s at least spend this last night together.’

  ‘Sure,’ I say. ‘I’d love to.’

  Loquito Por Ti (Wednesday)

  Back in my suite at the Renaissance, we make love like there’s no tomorrow, which in a way there isn’t. I don’t think there’s a spot on Cleo’s body I don’t kiss at least twice, and there’s one spot in particular that I could kiss all night long. Cleo’s familiarity with what excites me is growing, as is her confidence in being able to give me pleasure. By the time the sun comes up we’re both sated and exhausted. It’s a strangely human delight to sleep with Cleo curled around me.

  I don’t sleep for long, however. I never do. I slip out of bed, leaving behind me that incredible illusion of safety in Cleo’s protective and possessive arms. I settle instead for the warm embrace of the shower, taking time to clean away every trace of strip clubs, murder and sex.

  I’m rinsing the lather from my hair when Cleo joins me in the shower. We share a long tender kiss. ‘I love you, Suzie,’ she says, and plunges a knife, my hunting knife, into my chest. My body screams, and for a few agonising seconds there is nothing except that sharp, bright edge of pure pain, and then I realise that Cleo is struggling to take the knife out again. I wrap my hands around hers, around the handle, and together we pull the blade from my chest, and there is blood everywhere, running down my newly cleaned body to mix with soapy bubbles, streaks of red across Cleo’s breasts. Beautiful and obscene, she looks like a dark goddess to me.

  ‘It’s not enough,’ I tell her. ‘You need to cut out my heart.’ Suddenly dizzy, I collapse, sliding down the wall to splash into the pink froth at Cleo’s feet.

  She kneels beside me. ‘I don’t want to kill you, Suzie.’

  ‘You promised!’ I complain, suddenly terrified that she has called the police, that she will show them what I am. Oh, God. What possessed me to tell her that? I check the wound. It’s still ugly, but the flow of blood has slowed to a trickle, and the shower is still running, gradually washing away evidence. It doesn’t make sense.

  I feel the hunger building, the urge to sink my fangs deep into her neck. ‘Then you’d better tie me up, Cleo, and quickly.’

  She looks straight at me, not afraid to make full eye contact. ‘No, I’m not going to do that. I’m going to let you do exactly what you want to.’

  ‘I could kill you,’ I scream at her, confused and furious at her stupidity.

  I try to stand, but she pushes me down and kisses me. ‘Or you could save me. It’s your choice. Either kill me, or take me with you.’

  At last I understand what she has done. Part of me wants to cry, but it’s too late for emotion. I pull her towards me and bite into her neck, finding her jugular and its hot ecstasy with ease.

  Oh, Cleo! Sweet Cleo! How divine it is to kiss you like this, to feel your blood racing through my flesh!

  She’s not well balanced, however, and gravity tears the semi-conscious girl from me before I can completely consume her. It’s enough of an interruption to bring me back to myself.

  ‘Cleo!’ I cry, taking her tenderly in my arms. She’s very pale. What an absurd thing for her to do!

  I could kill her, I suppose. Or leave her here to die. Or phone for an ambulance.

  Or I could do what she wanted, what I have secretly wanted too, but dared not hope for, for the past few days.

  ‘What mischiefs she would do, if she should live!’ says the voice within. The words are spoken as a warning, powerful, but ambiguous.

  This time I know the answer: ‘Yet she must live, and live that I may prove whether this strange disorder here be love.’

  And aloud to Cleo: ‘Divine, divinest maid!’ I slice along my wrist with the blade of the knife, and let her blood, transformed, drip into her mouth. From her expression, it’s clear she doesn’t enjoy the taste, but she swallows a few mouthfuls until my wrist heals. My poor, poor Cleo. She’s about to go through hell, because I’m too selfish to deny her.

  I clean the blood from her pale skin, and my own, and cut my wrist again to feed her some more, a few more mouthfuls, then I take her out and dry her and wrap her warmly in the duvet before taking care of myself.

  I phone Alia. ‘I need you.’

  *

  She’s furious with me, of course, and I deserve it.

  ‘She stuck a knife in my heart,’ I complain, like a guilty teenager confronted by her angry mother.

  ‘She what?’ Alia is momentarily startled out of her rage. I start to explain, but Alia’s shouting again. ‘She’s just a child, for God’s sake. How could you do this to her?’

  ‘I’m lonely.’

  Alia takes a deep breath, tries to calm down. ‘I know, Suzie, but she c
an’t go home. Her family will look for her. They’ll look for her for the rest of their lives, wondering what terrible thing could have happened. I guess it’s a blessing that they’ll never suspect this.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Oh, shut up. Don’t apologise to me. And you can stop crying too.’ I can’t help it, I’m vulnerable to Alia’s wrath. She screams with frustration and throws a cushion at me. She glares at me until I control my tears. ‘What are you going to do?’ she asks.

  ‘I need to get her somewhere secluded for a few days, perhaps a few weeks.’

  ‘What do you need from me?’

  ‘I need you to find me a house in the country, somewhere by itself, and I need to move in today.’

  ‘Jamie can do that faster.’ Jamie’s into property development.

  ‘Tell her she’ll never see me again if she does.’

  Alia laughs. ‘I hope you’re not including me in that promise. Just because I’m pissed off with you doesn’t mean I don’t still love you.’

  ‘I know, but everything’s different now.’

  While Alia phones her girlfriend, I take my suitcase to Reception. I’m dressed smartly in Cleo’s jeans and shirt, my long hair falling sleek and black behind me. I ask them to bring my car round. ‘My sister’s very ill,’ I explain so that there’s no panic when they see Cleo. ‘My friend and I are taking her to the hospital.’ They offer to phone for a doctor, but I tell them that I have already spoken to my sister’s doctor and that this has happened before.

  ‘I don’t think I’ve ever heard Jamie sound so happy,’ Alia tells me with a grin when I return to the room. Together we dress Cleo in my red velvet dress and her underwear and Truffles. She looks to me like a crack-addict stripper, but her general similarity to me is still apparent. We take an arm each and guide her through the hotel. Cleo’s awake enough to put one foot in front of the other, but is too weak to stand unaided, let alone walk unaided.