Naked Angel (20 page)

“That’s ridiculous.”

“No, it’s true. I’ve never seen that woman even successfully perform, and you let her routine dictate the whole theme. She’s not even dancing at the festival, is she?”

“No, she’s not,” Mallory conceded. “It’s just you, Poppy, and me. Only three girls are allowed per club.”

“Yeah, and why isn’t she one of the three? Because you can’t risk her freezing on
that
night, can you?”

“Okay, ladies, let’s just dial it down a notch,” said Alec. “It’s just a fun little competition. It’s not that big a deal.”

Mallory heard the front door open. “Alec, did you forget to lock the door when you came in?” she said.

“No, I locked it. Wait here.”

Alec jumped up from the table and hurried to the front of the club.

“I’m sorry,” Bette said. “I shouldn’t be so harsh about it. I guess I’m just pissed that she’s replaced me as your muse.”

“Oh, Bette! No one could ever replace you—in any way. I just need to focus on other performers because you’re barely around anymore. I feel like this place is just a pit stop between film sets for you.”

Bette cocked her head. “Hmm. That’s true,” she said with a smile.

Mallory laughed and stretched out her leg to kick Bette’s chair. “You’re supposed to deny it!”

Alec walked in with Justin in tow.

“Bette, Justin needs to talk to Mallory and me alone for a minute,” Alec said. Mallory looked at Alec questioningly but he just shrugged. Bette was busy reading something on her phone.

“Well, what do you know,” she said. “Billy Barton finally came out of the closet.”

“What do you mean?” said Alec.

“It’s all over the Internet. Apparently he wrote something on
Gruff
online about his relationship with that super hot Burberry model dude, Tyler.”

“I had no idea he was gay,” said Alec.

“I suspected,” said Bette. “What about you, Justin? You guys used to party a lot. Ever see him let his freak flag fly?”

Justin, clearly not in the mood to revel in the latest Gotham gossip, merely shook his head.

“All right, well I’ll leave you suits to your
business
. Mal, call me later.”

Justin sat in the seat she vacated. Mallory climbed down from the stage and sat next to Alec.

“What’s going on?” she asked, a tingle of concern running down her spine.

“I have some . . . bad news,” he said.

“Are you okay?” Mallory reached out and put her hand over his.

“Yes. I’m fine. But my marriage isn’t.”

“Don’t even tell me. . . .” Mallory said.

“Martha and I are getting divorced. Martha is angry, and she’s cutting me off financially. The reason I’m telling you guys is . . . this club is going to be a casualty of the divorce.”

Mallory gasped. Now it was Alec’s turn to put his hand over hers.

“I’m really sorry about your marriage, Justin. I’m just not sure I see the connection to The Painted Lady. I thought Martha wanted the club as much as you did,” said Alec.

“She did—at the time. And I know she appreciates everything you guys have done, and she loves you, Mallory. But she’s really freaking out and wants nothing to do with me or, as she put it, any of our ‘mutual endeavors.’ ”

Mallory put her head in her hands. “I can’t believe this.”

The three sat in silence for a minute, until Justin said, “Maybe you can try to talk to her. See if she’ll reconsider if I’m not the one doing the asking.”

“I’ll try,” Mallory said.

“But if Martha doesn’t reconsider? What’s the worse case scenario?”

“She’ll pay your salaries through the end of the year. She doesn’t want to punish you guys; she made that clear. But the rent for the club and the operational expenses will only be covered for another month or two.”

Mallory looked at Alec. She knew it wasn’t right to just be thinking of the club or what she and Alec were going to lose. Justin was losing something far more significant. But she knew this had to be a result of his feelings for the woman he’d told her about the night they were out drinking. And she couldn’t believe he would throw everything away for that woman.

“This isn’t because of what you told me about. . . .” she said.

He nodded slowly.

“Oh, Justin,” she said, shaking her head.

“What? What did I miss?” said Alec.

“I don’t want to get into it right now,” said Justin. “I just wanted to tell you guys as soon as possible so you could either talk to Martha or start thinking about your exit strategy.”

“I don’t want an exit strategy!” said Mallory. “I love this place. We haven’t financed it, but we’ve put everything we have into it—all of our time, all of our creative energy, and a lot of emotional investment, too.”

“I’m sorry I let you down,” said Justin. He pushed his chair back, stood, and walked slowly out to the club exit.

“I cannot believe this,” said Mallory. “If we had six months or a year, we could maybe build a strong enough reputation to find another investor. But we just opened.”

“You’re right. We need to buy time.”

“We can’t buy anything!”

“Mal, don’t freak out. I just need to correct my earlier statement about the Vegas Burlesque Fest.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s no longer just a fun little competition. It’s going to be how we finance the club for the next six months.”

G
emma climbed the narrow, winding stairs to the second floor of Agnes’s studio. It was dark and quiet. Where was the old bat?

She couldn’t wait to quit. Five months of indentured servitude was quite enough, thank you. It was onward and upward.

Way up.

It still made her wet just thinking about the other night at the crazy fetish club. Finally, she had felt that thing that had eluded her all her life: sexual gratification. She’d thought she was forever doomed to wonder what on earth all these people were so worked up over when it came to sex. She had been so tired of feeling nothing. But how could she have imagined what it would take for her to get off? And even if she had imagined it, she never would have had the nerve to seek it out. But thanks to Violet, the riddle of her own pussy had been solved.

She descended the stairs and looked around the cutting room. The costumes she’d started working on for Justin’s dancers were in various stages of completion. She wished she could use parts of them for Violet’s “Tank Girl” costumes, but there was nothing in the “Ballet Russes” collection that was even remotely salvageable. There was absolutely no sartorial overlap between ballet and steampunk. She would have to just abandon them. Perhaps Agnes would be able to complete them in time for Mallory to use the costumes. Gemma couldn’t care less—it wasn’t her problem anymore.

It was exciting to imagine the new costumes. Gemma wasn’t a comic book fan, but she’d already starting researching images of Tank Girl online, and the character kicked ass—literally and visually. She would barely consider it work to create the costumes if it weren’t for the ridiculously tight deadline.

The front door opened, startling her out of her thoughts.

“What are
you
doing here?” she said as Justin Baxter walked in with an armful of white roses.

“I wanted to apologize,” he said, handing her the flowers with a smile. She took the bundle and dropped them on her desk as if they were on fire.

“Look, this really isn’t a good time for me,” she said, walking back to the front door and opening it for him.

“Can you just hear me out?”

She saw that he had no intention of leaving until she did, so she sighed and closed the door. She hadn’t planned on telling him that she was quitting—she’d thought she would leave that little bit of news to Agnes to break. As far as she was concerned, she and Justin Baxter had nothing left to talk about. Ever.

“Fine. Speak. You have two minutes. Agnes will be here soon, and I need to talk to her.”

“I’m sorry about the money I promised you for the Vegas costumes. I didn’t think Martha would give me a hard time about it. She never has before. I think she realized you and I have been seeing each other.”

Gemma looked at him like he was out of his mind.

“We are not seeing each other,” said Gemma.

“Did I make you feel that way? It was more than just sex to me, Gemma. I can’t stop thinking about you—I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you since opening night of The Painted Lady. And now I don’t have to sneak around anymore. Martha and I are getting divorced.”

“Are you out of your mind?” said Gemma. “How are you going to pay for the club? And the costumes?”

“I don’t know. But what does that matter to you?”

“That’s the
only
thing that ever mattered to me! It was business, Justin.”

The expression on his face could not have been more shocked if she had slapped him.

“So now that we can’t do business together, we really have nothing left to talk about.”

“You don’t want to see me anymore?”

“Um . . . no.”

“What about the Vegas costumes?”

She shrugged. “Not my problem. I’m not working at Agnes’s sweatshop any more.”

“I don’t understand. What are you going to do?”

“I’m the new costume designer for Violet’s Blue Angel.”

Nadia couldn’t stop thinking about Max. She knew that she had, in theory, done the right thing by not letting him dissuade her from working at The Painted Lady. But now, sitting in the empty club, she felt she had traded a real relationship for the idea of burlesque. And she had to wonder if she had just used burlesque as an excuse to avoid getting hurt again. After all, it was easier to let the argument over burlesque become a deal breaker than to actually have a relationship and see it end six months or a year down the line.

“Hello—Earth to Nadia,” Mallory said.

Nadia looked across the table. “Sorry.”

They were working on choreography for Vegas. For some reason, Mallory’s confidence in the Ballet Russes idea was shaken.

“I’m just afraid it’s not specific enough,” she had said.

“So let’s focus on one particular production from that time period,” Nadia had said. And then Mallory had asked her to suggest one, and Nadia had started thinking about Balanchine’s staging of
Apollo
in 1928, and then she thought of his School of American Ballet, which led her to think about Ballet Arts and Max . . . and then she zoned out.

“Where did I lose you?” Mallory said.

“I was just thinking about Max.”

“Have you spoken to him since the party?”

“I saw him later that night. He said he was sorry for what he did, but he still wants me to quit burlesque and find some way to work in ballet.”

“He’ll come around,” Mallory said.

Nadia shook her head. “No. It’s over.”

“That’s ridiculous, Nadia. You two will just have to agree to disagree on whatever he’s being so stubborn about, and move on.”

“I don’t want to talk about it anymore. I’m done thinking about him; he’s out of my life—it’s fine. Let’s just focus on Vegas. If you want a specific ballet from the Ballet Russes period, my favorite is
Apollo
. And thematically, it’s perfect for this moment in burlesque because
Apollo
was very much about the reinvention of tradition. Its artistic execution was post-baroque.”

She remembered the time her mother took her to see
Apollo
when she was in seventh grade. It was the first ballet she’d seen in New York.

“What’s the story?” Mallory said.

“It’s about the Greek god Apollo and three Muses, which is perfect for the Vegas show because you need three dancers. Okay, so most people think of Apollo as the god of the sun, but actually he represents the arts and music, in particular. In the story, Apollo helps the Muses in their arts and ultimately ascends as a god to the home of the Muses, Parnassus.”

“I don’t know. The idea of ancient Greek costumes sounds very high school musical.”

“Coco Chanel didn’t think so.”

“What do you mean?”

“She did the costumes in 1929. You don’t even know—the most brilliant artists have worked on this production. Baryshnikov did a revival in the 1970s. Suzanne Farrell did it in 2001. It’s significant, Mallory.”

“I’d have to talk to Agnes and Gemma about tailoring the costumes for this. What are the Muses?”

“They’re the Muses of dance, mime, and poetry.”

“I have to talk to Poppy and Bette and see who they want to be.” She wrote on her notepad, then looked up at Nadia. “I really want you to come to Vegas with us just to experience the festival.”

“Of course I’m going with you.” Nadia was looking forward to it.

Justin walked in, and Nadia’s first thought was that he looked as if someone had died.

“What’s wrong?” Mallory asked, clearly sharing Nadia’s assessment that Justin did not look happy.

“I need to talk to you and Alec.”

“Alec’s not here. He’s working on a piece for
New York
magazine. What’s going on?”

Justin sat down, his face pale.

“It’s about the costumes.”