The Golden Locket (Unbreakable Trilogy, Book 2) Page 19

  ‘Message received! I might need your help with how best to do it, though. Maybe you can advise me over a drink later?’ When I shrugged without responding he perched one buttock on the edge of the table, swinging his long leg. ‘OK. On with the dance. Well, as you know, I want you to create a pictorial storyboard observing what we do here, impressions, moments, vignettes, the raw materials of our work, which I can then edit and collate, but there have been some approaches in the last couple of days since I outlined it to Gustav. He doesn’t know anything about this new angle, and I don’t want him to know. Not until I’ve got something concrete to show him.’

  I noticed that someone had drawn elaborate sketches of a series of dance moves directly onto the whitewashed walls of the lobby.

  ‘I’m not sure I’m comfortable sharing a secret with you and excluding him.’

  ‘I admire your dogged loyalty, but I don’t want to big it up if it’s not going to come to fruition. All I’m talking about is a proposal I don’t want to jinx. Not some dastardly deal with the devil.’ He slapped his hands down on his legs. ‘No one outside these walls can know about this until the Hollywood moguls have stumped up the contracts and the cash.’

  ‘Hollywood?’ I typed in the heading Pierre. I glanced up at him. ‘I’m listening, Mr Levi.’

  The ground stopped tipping at last. We were a couple of acquaintances or colleagues. People who knew far too much about each other but were still treading uncharted territory.

  ‘So. The additional input is, they want me to direct a kind of video short, a record of a day in the life of this theatre, if you will, which will expand into – well, let’s see how this pans out first. You’ll shoot the girls dressing, and then the rehearsal, with particular emphasis on the splendour and theatricality of my costumes. The twist is that the performers think they’re preparing for a press run but it will actually be filmed, without their knowing, as a pilot for a reality show. Also, as you can see, the publicity material isn’t complete.’ He handed the programmes to me. ‘We need your stills before we can go to print.’

  He watched as I typed in a couple more bullet points, then jabbed his thumb in the direction of a wooden staircase lit by flickering bulbs, which looked as if it led to a torture chamber. ‘Just one thing. A couple of our prima donnas will be arriving in a minute to prepare. Down there is the divas’ dungeon. So, no entry.’

  I laughed, a little more at ease and eager to get cracking. Poor Polly would be so disappointed in me, but I had to be single-minded about this and ignore her request. Just for today. ‘You make it sound like the wicked witch lives down there.’

  He laughs too, points his fingers at me in that pistol gesture again, makes it look jovial and cocky. ‘You better believe it, sis. You better believe it.’

  So I’ve picked my way round the props, listened to the discordant sounds of the orchestra tuning up in the pit, interspersed with some wild percussion and a hysterical high-pitched trumpet having its say, and now a crackly recording of a Viennese waltz trails from the music machine in the pretend dressing room.

  As I pause to drink strong coffee from the cafetière that never gets cold, the mirrors start undulating and shimmering with restless reflections. One or two unearthly creatures float into the room, become a huddle, then a group, until the stage is an aviary full of twittering, fluttering birds.

  They may be gossiping and texting, and they may initially be clothed in the universal youthful uniform of jeans and sweat tops, hair (both girls and boys) pulled into scruffy topknots, yet you can instantly tell by the straight-backed way they walk with their toes turned out, the erect posture of their heads, the twitch of their hips and pelvis, that they’re not just any kid off the street. And once they sit down on the shabby stools here in midtown New York, their dreary uniform is quickly shed. They strip down to their underwear, baring their white, brown, black skin, their lean, supple bodies. And when they click their necks and wrap their ankles behind their heads to warm up and stretch, that’s when I and my camera move into action.

  ‘You’ll need to blend in a little more if you want to catch them uninhibited.’

  A large black woman with hair plaited in snaky piles on top of her head like Medusa pulls up a tiny three-legged stool behind me and plants her huge bottom. She takes my camera and puts it carefully down on my upturned case, then starts to pin up my hair.

  ‘Excuse me? I’m the photographer, not one of the cast.’ I try to turn round on the crate I’m sitting on, but she simply plants her heavy hands on my shoulders. ‘And if Pierre catches me not working–’

  ‘You are working! Participating. He’s asked me to put you into a costume to make you less conspicuous. I’m gonna make you look like the madame of a brothel, and what will happen when Pierre Levi sees you is that he’ll get a massive boner like he always does when he sets eyes on a new girl!’

  ‘He can leave me well alone,’ I say, blushing, as she drags over a long rail of clothes. The garments swaying and jangling are the same as, or similar to, the antique ball dresses that were hanging on rails and hooks all over the hopeful little boutique in Covent Garden last Halloween when the old, triumphant Polly laced me into a diaphanous white dress, calling me her vestal virgin. The reference that Toga Tomas used in the Club Crème to alert me that he knew exactly who I was.

  ‘Pierre Levi’s signature. His travelling fayre of costume and illusion. He’s perfecting the spaced-out, Marie-Antoinette-meets-Twilight look, if that makes sense.’

  ‘Perfect sense.’

  The lady picks out a crimson corset with a few gossamer rags hanging off it. The very opposite of the virginal look. The lacy sleeves and slashed skirt could have been fought over by a coven of toothsome lady vampires.

  ‘Come on, lady, play the game,’ she croons, hitching off my jacket and jumper. ‘You want your pictures to be seen on billboards all over the Hollywood Hills, dontcha?’

  ‘Yes, but not pictures of me! I’ve got a brief to fulfil, and I’ve got Pierre Levi breathing down my neck!’ Nevertheless my T-shirt and bra are ripped off and folded neatly beside my camera cases before you can say ‘birthday suit’.

  The birds in the aviary continue twittering and fluttering amongst themselves, a little quieter now, the stretches and lunges completed. They are hunched in pairs, either on the floor or perched on dressing tables or pouffes or even a couple of sagging chaise-longues, hands wandering over angular cheeks, slender arms and legs looped round each other so flexibly that it’s hard to see where one dancer ends and the next begins.

  ‘Mr Levi would call this a feast of fannies and femininity,’ remarks the dresser, waving her arms around her little domain as they turn to listen. ‘His birds of paradise. I wonder which little booty he’ll pick today?’

  They all start to laugh, big red mouths open as they point at me and each other, push their tongues into their cheeks suggestively. One or two of them give me a sly once-over with big dolly eyes beneath false eyelashes long as spiders’ legs.

  ‘He can do what the hell he likes, honey. He the boss,’ the woman says with a chuckle, holding the red corset around my body to measure it. ‘These pussy cats are queueing up to service him, believe me.’

  I wish the splintered floorboards would swallow me up. My poor Polly. How do I tell her that she was right about the casting couch?

  Could this droit de seigneur behaviour that I teased Gustav once about in Switzerland, when we were out horse-riding in the woods, be a Levi trait?

  The dancers are nearly naked now, little lace vests straining, their modesty just about covered by identically designed tiny knickers in all the colours of the rainbow. Some girls are leaning into the mirrors, their voluptuous breasts, prerequisite for the burlesque, still bouncy yet pert even when they’re bending. Others slink up behind them and run their hands over their bodies as if feeling the texture of their silky skin. At first it seems like a free-for-all as they move from one person to the next, taking turns. Young men sporting bushy stuck-on si
deburns and tweed trousers held up by braces reach to fondle and pluck at the bare nipples of girls pinning their hair into extravagant coils. Other girls straddle other boys with stiff crotches, dipping their fingers into pots of pomade and slicking the guys’ hair while they grind at each other.

  As I wait for the dresser to come back with my garment I swivel my zoom to catch the constant shimmying movement between the mirrors and clothes rails. Now the dancers are discarding their knickers and pulling on costume underwear. Everything they do looks natural and impromptu. If this is choreographed it’s with the grooming and mating rituals of the jungle in mind. Hands smooth sparkly thongs into place, fingers stroke breasts into tight corsets, tongues lick at a smear of too much rouge. Lipstick is unsheathed suggestively and after it’s applied to mouths it’s slicked up sex lips, dotted onto nipples. Dipped into navels.

  All this tactile preparation is surely leading to a virtual sex show. As they shake out their slim brown legs and feet like show ponies I see some of them brazenly tweak each other’s nipples one last time before they are dressed.

  They are all stealing glances at me from time to time as I film them. I feel totally drawn into the scene, but it’s a relief when the dresser drops the corset dress over my head.

  I am momentarily blinded by shreds of crimson taffeta. She pushes my breasts together for a moment, creating a deep cleavage, allowing the nipples to scrape against her palms. Sensation swoons inside me. I feel warm, treacly. As if I belong here, even though I can’t dance. Even though I have a little more flesh on me than these perfectly proportioned gazelles.

  I wish Gustav could see me now.

  Now the dresser’s hands are busy lacing me up so tightly that I can hardly breathe. My breasts swell desperately, just resting on concealed pads, thrust forward yet also squeezed tightly together. My nipples are only just covered, rubbed to aching point by the trim of scratchy lace.

  And that’s when I’m sharply reminded of the black whalebone basque I tried on at the chalet in Switzerland, when I dressed up in Margot’s leather boots and strutted about like a dominatrix, flicking my whip. But this feels different. This dress-up of tight corset and raggedy skirt makes me feel like a sexy showgirl.

  ‘You could almost be one of them.’ The dresser twists my hair into tendrils and pushes me away. ‘Let the show begin.’

  I grab my camera again, cutting and framing to reflect a Degas style, sometimes showing just a leg coming down a spiral staircase or a foot pointing into the corner of the canvas. But I also compose the shots to reflect that the scene in front of me is a play as the dancers leave real life behind to transform themselves for the performance ahead.

  As the orchestra tunes up discordantly beneath the stage the dresser lumbers about the pretend dressing room, selecting various garments to hold against up against the girls’ cheeks to see which colour suits, and I realise that this is the intro to the show. She pins their hair into baroque, tumbling structures involving bows and butterflies’ wings, even tiaras and crowns. She swivels each girl this way and that, and as their little bottoms jiggle excitedly my eyes are drawn to the waxed mounds tucked between their legs.

  The troupe are clothed so that they really do look like tropical birds now, especially when they start fixing matching feathers to each other’s hair. The dresser drifts amongst them, trailing her hands down their throats, fingering the young swell of their breasts, while I work, watching, my body prickling with self-consciousness.

  Then there is a tinny crescendo of trumpets and drums, and Pierre appears at the side of the stage, in fin de siècle costume. As the dancers assemble in a can-can formation he walks along the line blowing kisses and high-fiving. He looks like the cock of the walk. This is his show. His baby. He gets to the end of the line, slaps a couple of stragglers on the bottom as they skip past and waggle their fingers at him. Then he turns in a courtly manner and, to my embarrassment, extends his hand to where I am lurking in the wings. His black eyes under the shade of the old-fashioned hat drive into me.

  As I move towards him, still shooting my pictures, I get an inkling of how this scarlet dress must look on me. Or would, if I had the grace of these dancers. The slashed material falls away, revealing the jut of their hips and the shadowy dip and cleft between their legs.

  Pierre guides me down some steps at the side of the stage and into the auditorium. I try to walk elegantly ahead of him, concentrating on keeping hold of my skirt and one camera.

  ‘This is dazzling, Pierre. You’ve got something really edgy and exciting here.’

  His face lights up. I realise he was expecting me to be touchy still, no matter how impressed I was with his show.

  ‘Wait till you see what we’ve done in the stalls, then,’ he chuckles, pressing his hand into my back. ‘We’ve tried to recreate a louche Parisian essence right here in the middle of twenty-first-century Manhattan.’

  From here the stage is bright and starlit, the backdrop painted milk-chocolate brown, similar to the sepia colours of Degas’s paintings. Behind the can-can line the other girls are positioned on their marks, lounging back in chairs, putting on make-up, or with legs cocked high on tables to adjust their stockings, the classic poses of Degas’s ballerinas.

  Around me the auditorium has been arranged to look like the Moulin Rouge, all red velvet booths and banquettes, crystal chandeliers hanging low over the seats, raised walkways between the tables so the girls can be seen more clearly as they pose and move and dance. The orchestra are seated on bentwood chairs around the front of the stage, with oiled black hair and moustaches, wearing the cropped bolero jackets and slim trousers of a flamenco or Argentine tango band.

  ‘It’s perfect! A living, breathing lithograph! Just like posters of the café-concerts of Montmartre!’ I open my arms to take it all in. ‘I’m impressed. Were you involved in the set design, as well as the costumes?’

  ‘Paintbrush in every pot, but really it’s been a team effort. Now, remember you’re being watched as well as watching, so I’m only doing this because we’re in character!’

  Pierre takes my outstretched bare arm and holds my hand up to his lips. Although I’m aware he’s overacting, I still flinch as his lips brush against my skin. That raw, bullish energy pulses out of him so much more blatantly than it does with Gustav. The grip of his fingers, the flare of his nostrils, the blue-black shadow on his chin, are all so agonisingly familiar.

  Pierre presses his mouth up against my ear so that I can hear him against the music.

  ‘So you see? We can get on, and not just for Gustav’s sake. We’re all making an effort here. And to prove it I promise I will give myself up to a good browbeating and let you harangue me about your cousin. So let me buy you that drink over at the Gramercy Hotel this evening when we wrap up here.’ He draws away and taps his watch. ‘Don’t be put off by the big movie camera that’s just arrived, by the way. That’s what I meant when I said you were being watched, and they may be watching you all the way in Hollywood! Oh, and don’t be mistaken for one of the girls and get dragged up on stage. You really look the part, Serena. The semi-clad streetwalker.’

  I give a little curtsy, because I’m carried away with the atmosphere and spirit of the spectacle, then I lift my camera and take one more shot of him.

  ‘The Impresario!’ I shout above the noise. ‘All you need is an evil moustachio!’

  ‘Bring that with you to the hotel after this! The camera, not the ’tache!’ he replies with a laugh, before backing towards a row of people with clipboards and earphones who are clamouring for him. ‘I don’t just want to dissect my failed love life. I’d like to see today’s proofs, too.’

  There are mostly men in the audience wearing frock-coats and stiff-necked shirts, lounging back in their chairs. A few women in very low-cut gowns wear brassy red hair done up like mine, twisted and curled and adorned with jet beads and feathers. Black stockings and a stretch of white thigh glimmer as they cross their legs theatrically under their skirts. There�
�s even a battered copper bar set up along the side, with a barman shaking cocktails. Every shot I take is already perfectly composed.

  ‘Did you know the post-Impressionist painter Toulouse-Lautrec is supposed to have invented a drink called the Tremblement de Terre?’

  A deep voice murmurs into the back of my neck. I freeze for a moment, the camera still in front of me. Pierre has taken me unawares. It seems I always have to be on my guard, on my marks like those dancers. As the girls start to screech and whoop on the stage, rotating their knees and flashing their knickers, I turn slowly round, my ragged skirt swirling round my bare legs.

  And find myself in Gustav’s arms.

  I fling mine around his neck, practically in tears at what I might have, could have said, thinking he was Pierre. Gustav staggers with me towards one of the little tables.

  ‘Hey! You been there all along?’ I ask as we scoop up cocktails on our way past.

  ‘Since you were grabbed by that dresser and she dolled you up in this gorgeous just-ravished-in-an-alleyway get-up.’

  Gustav smiles at me, his eyes roving over my costume. Over my face, my pinned-up hair, as if he hasn’t seen me for years. Or as if he doesn’t recognise this painted creature. To add to the confusion, he is dressed in a frock-coat and top hat, just like his brother and all the other men in the place.

  ‘I’m so happy to see you.’ I tuck myself under his arm. ‘That cocktail. It sounds like a knee trembler!’

  ‘How about that? Up against the wall. Oh, I wish!’ He kisses me again, sits on one of the bentwood chairs and pulls me onto his knee to merge with the seated, watching audience. ‘But I can’t stay long. I’ve been called up to Toronto for a couple of days. My gallery up there is being transformed into a circus arena for a new show, but they’re arguing about health and safety, whether the girders are sturdy enough to take the weight of the trapeze. Or something like that. Anyhow, I dropped by to see what you and Pierre are up to before I fly off.’