Eat My Heart Out Page 13

  ‘I heard that they were gonna like film this,’ said the flamingo girl to her friend.

  ‘Really? Oh my god, who is?’ said the friend.

  ‘I don’t know, some kind of crazy fashion blogging thing. Or art thing. Definitely not a sex thing.’

  ‘No, this is definitely not a sex thing.’ The friend paused. ‘But Chloe, I don’t want my mum to see this. You said no one would see this.’

  ‘No one’s gonna see it, Milly,’ said Chloe.

  ‘Yeah, except on the internet,’ said Milly. ‘And what if it like goes viral.’

  ‘Your mum just wishes she had your tits,’ said Chloe.

  They both laughed.

  I tapped Chloe the flamingo on the shoulder.

  She turned eyes flicked with black on me.

  ‘What exactly is this place?’ I said.

  Chloe looked at her friend and laughed. ‘What do you mean, what is this?’

  ‘What are we auditioning for?’

  ‘Erm, it’s like a neo-burlesque social innovation start-up? It’s a pop-up?’

  ‘Oh great.’

  ‘It’s not like stripping,’ said Chloe. ‘It’s beautiful. It’s like art. It celebrates a woman’s curves even if she’s got no curves.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Milly.

  ‘Shouldn’t you be at school?’ I said. ‘Or are you going for the whole Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver thing?’

  They looked at me blankly.

  Then Chloe said: ‘We’re on our gap year.’

  The queue moved through a door and down a flight of stairs. Red light washed us out. We went through another door. The girls cooed and tittered like well-tamed doves. Their mouths looked like internal organs in the red light. There seemed to be no end to it, this slow walking. The girls checked their reflections in antique-looking compacts incessantly until I was forced to check my own reflection.

  ‘You haven’t done yourself up at all,’ Chloe told me.

  I was still wearing Steph’s dungaree-dress.

  ‘Didn’t you get the thing about the rules?’ said Milly.

  ‘The rules,’ echoed Chloe.

  We were approaching the end of a corridor. It smelt of wet concrete. A piano started and a woman’s rich, kittenish voice began: ‘You Better Go Now’ by Billie Holiday. We entered a room. There was a circular stage in the centre and a pole. Cardboard cut-outs of retro hourglass starlets winked at us. The music swelled. The singer was wearing a red rose behind her ear and a white dress. Her eyes closed. Another woman got on the stage and clapped her hands three times, very loudly.

  The song stopped.

  The woman was holding an iPad. She wore a headset. Her hair was curled like a wartime pin-up but otherwise she was plain. She wore a pair of jeans and a T-shirt that said: Sparkle Hard … er.

  ‘Right, guys,’ she said. ‘My name is Sarah and I’m the captain of your ship today!!’

  Everyone whooped.

  Her voice was bureaucratic, a drone. ‘Now we’re all so glad here at Sparkle Hard that you have been lured.’

  Another whoop.

  ‘Into this net of female entitlement. That is the word we use here. Entitlement. Because for too long men have been entitled but we haven’t.’

  People clapped.

  ‘Men are the eyes that see. But women are the bodies that make the eyes see. So the sexes need each other, like yin and yang.’

  A cheer.

  ‘Unlike yesteryear when us girls could sparkle soft, we’re now fully entitled to sparkle as hard as we possibly can!! As though our lives depend on it!’ She became serious. ‘Because our lives do depend on it.’ There was silence. ‘To fulfil our potential as women and as human beings. Let’s do a show of hands. Who here is dying to fulfil their potential?’

  All the hands went up.

  ‘But who has felt inhibited from doing it 110 per cent in the past?’

  Most of the hands went up. Milly’s went up, but Chloe’s didn’t.

  ‘Wicked!!’ shouted Sarah. ‘Now – this side of the room, I wanna hear you say: Sparkle.’

  ‘Sparkle!’ roared the crowd.

  ‘And this side …’

  The chanting assumed the intensity of a fascist rally.

  Sarah the captain was interrogating me in a back room.

  ‘Are you claustrophobic?’ she said.

  ‘Depends what you mean,’ I said. ‘I don’t want my head shut in a box of any kind.’

  ‘OK.’ She put a line through something.

  There were no mirrors framed with light-bulbs. There was no girly camaraderie now. The furniture seemed to have been borrowed from a primary school. Only rows of very small tables, and girls on very small chairs.

  ‘And I don’t want snakes,’ I said.

  She looked at me with hatred. ‘Do you pole?’

  I stared at her.

  She put a line through something else. ‘Upper body strength?’

  ‘Good,’ I said. ‘I go to the gym religiously.’

  ‘What’s your greatest ambition?’ she said.

  ‘To be a stripper.’

  She put down her iPad. ‘Sultriness is fine. Even brooding, mean and moody smouldering enigma to an extent. But sarcasm is out. Our guests want to feel that you are loving every minute of your life.’

  I did the door bitch smile.

  She looked convinced. ‘Think sunny times. California.’

  ‘Ah!’ I said. ‘The orange groves. The mythic destination.’

  She looked at me like I was crazy and said: ‘You’re gonna have to take what we give you, costume-wise. Your lack of costume might count against you. Plus you’re older than our average performer.’ She called the next girl.

  The doves had been disabused of their dark winter coats. They showed their plumage in clash upon clash of colour. I wished they’d made the purples stand next to the purples, or at least next to the complimentary yellows. I was yellow. They had decked me out in a Big Bird ensemble minus the puppet head. Yellow feathers sprouted from my hips. In the mirrored ceiling, I looked like a big ball of sunshine. A makeup woman had stuck her latexed finger in my mouth and smeared Vaseline on my teeth.

  The girls shook against the circular wall, watching each other. Many seemed to be performing a striptease for a camera in their heads. Their faces transitioned from innocence to experience and back again. There was a real camera, slung around the neck of a man. A blonde woman holding a microphone appeared to the left. She made some frantic introductory comment that had to be reshot. She seemed more nervous than the girls. I didn’t catch what website they were from.

  Sarah the captain told the camera that it was time to introduce the competition winners.

  Two men appeared.

  One was muscly and metrosexual. The other had a shaving rash. He pumped his fist in the air. The girls clapped but they laughed as well, and soon the man stopped pumping his fist. Two screens were positioned in front of the crotches of the men. The screens seemed to function as magnifying glasses.

  ‘OK, drop your drawers,’ said Sarah.

  The metrosexual complied immediately. The rash man complied, less enthusiastically. He pumped his fist again, but then he clawed at his spine.

  The girls jeered.

  ‘All of it,’ said Sarah. ‘Now get behind it properly so that we can see you. And come into the light.’

  The room darkened. A spotlight roamed, then found the men. Their penises were obscenely enlarged on the screens.

  ‘Quiet now, ladies.’ Sarah’s voice seemed to come from everywhere, all at once. ‘Remember these lads are the lucky ones. The ultimate test of a woman’s nature is to make a man hard. Let’s give them what they want.’ She turned to the men. ‘You wanted this?’

  The man’s rash got worse.

  ‘Did you want this?’ boomed Sarah.

  ‘Yes,’ they said.

  Chloe the flamingo was first. She had managed to push her way to the front of the queue and now a giant pink balloon made out of something thicker
than normal balloon material was being rolled onto the stage. The pole had contracted into the floor.

  She did some fetching arm movements, biting the tips of her gloved fingers before dragging the gloves off with her teeth. She got the arm-length gloves between her legs and pulled them back and forth. Next she did a mime of chewing gum and pretending that the giant pink balloon was in fact a bubble that she had blown by mistake. The men looked enthralled. She fastened her flamingo-pink mouth onto the balloon’s concealed air hole and by some trick of neoburlesque flexibility managed to get her whole hand inside it. The balloon was bigger than her, but lighter. She waved it around.

  The process of getting out of her costume was halted to the point of agony. There were aborted attempts to unzip this and that, but the truth was that Chloe possessed no grace. She was too self-conscious to be sexy.

  Suddenly she got her whole head inside the balloon so that now she looked like a circus balloon woman – born with a balloon instead of a head. Her face was barely discernible inside the opaque plastic. Then she managed to wiggle her whole body into the balloon. She did the splits inside it. There had been no music throughout her act. A ripple of laughter could be heard from within her plastic death trap. Finally she popped the balloon and emerged with another ripple of laughter.

  There were balloon tatters all over the stage.

  The men were hard.

  ‘Next,’ said Sarah.

  Milly appeared on the stage in a flesh-coloured ensemble which outlined her sex organs in diamante. Her body was toned and open and swamped by the spotlight, as though there were no part of her that wasn’t disclosed. Fleshcoloured feathers were draped over her legs. The pole zoomed upwards. She smiled with sincerity. She fixed one leg around the pole and swung her body in circles. The piano started and the woman began to sing ‘That Ole Devil Called Love’. Milly revolved and revolved. Then she got off the pole and did a few cursory undulations. She whipped off her costume and spun her nipple tassels.

  The men were hard again.

  ‘Next, next, next.’

  Girls performed, one after the other, accompanied by that mournful music, which turned their sex into elegy and made me feel suicidal. I went and sat by myself for a long time in the toilet.

  When I returned, there were only about three girls left in the queue. The rest had been divided into the saved and the drowned. The singer had slipped into some self-induced miasma of heartache.

  Sarah pointed at me and said: ‘Next.’

  The men looked exhausted.

  ‘This is the girl who hasn’t had time to rehearse,’ said Sarah.

  The camera crew moved closer.

  A giant martini glass was wheeled out, filled with frothy liquid that smelt of magnolia. A giant plastic olive bobbed on the surface. The stage became a ramp. Some of the liquid spilled over the sides.

  Girls wearing Sparkle Hard … er T-shirts hoisted me into the glass.

  The music started. It was Flack’s funereal ‘The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face’.

  I was drowning, already. ‘This is destiny!’ I shouted.

  ‘Why?’ said the blonde presenter, coming closer. She pushed the microphone in my face.

  ‘This was my parents’ song,’ I gasped.

  The stage started to revolve; the glass started to revolve. My yellow feathers were destroyed.

  ‘What about finesse?’ boomed Sarah.

  I was clutching the edge of the glass like a dying dog, while the singer sung about a captive bird, and a trembling heart, and a – Someone was demanding something. Now I could feel the onset of a panic attack. I managed to get a look at the screens before I went under and stopped breathing.

  The men were hard!

  Then the world went black.

  Marge wasn’t there to pick me up so I had to get the tube home. I didn’t feel like reading Stephanie’s book. I got out Heidegger: An Intro instead and read about The Concept of Finitude: Things must end in order to have any meaning at all.

  Stephanie laughed like a hyena when she saw my yellow face. She stirred a few of the satanic ballerina’s marshmallows into my hot chocolate.

  I didn’t want it.

  ‘Do you mind if I go and lie down on my own for a while?’ I said.

  ‘What do you mean?’ She looked hurt. ‘You’re so jacked up with insight right now. Suffering is juice. You must squeeze it out right away.’

  ‘I’m really tired.’

  She laughed. ‘This is a crisis of healing! I should have warned you about it.’ She drank the hot chocolate herself. ‘Depression is really just buried anger.’ She stood up. ‘I know what we’ll do!’ She led me into the living room.

  The fire was on. There was the beginning of our hot-pink blanket, trailing yarns.

  ‘Stephanie,’ I said. ‘I’m not in the mood for knitting.’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘No. Not knit. Destroy.’ Her eyes looked mad. ‘We must punish ourselves for performing this hyper-feminine task.’ Her voice became soft, cloying. ‘Like Penelope. Like this.’ She tore at the blanket. Holes appeared. The ball of wool fell, unravelling. ‘Now you.’

  I watched her face while she tore at the wool some more. She looked old.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  Twelve

  I woke up to the sound of crying. It was midday.

  They were in the kitchen.

  ‘I’m sorry, Ilka,’ Steph was saying. Steph wasn’t the one crying.

  ‘But she can’t clean like I can,’ cried Ilka. She was changing out of fluffy dinosaur slippers into a pair of high, cheap court shoes. ‘I am a professional.’ Her accent was Eastern European.

  ‘I said I’d pay you for today, didn’t I?’ Steph saw me. ‘Good morning.’ Her voice was flat. ‘The early bird arises.’ She turned back to Ilka. ‘I paid for your fairy princess wedding on Lake Balaton, didn’t I? That was very expensive. Those swans were very expensive. I let you record a few songs in the studio, didn’t I? I helped you achieve your dreams of becoming a singer.’

  ‘But I’m not a singer,’ said Ilka. ‘I’m a cleaner.’

  ‘You’re not my cleaner any more, unfortunately,’ said Steph. ‘Look, I’ve loved having you around.’

  I reached for the cafetiere, but Steph gripped my arm so hard that I couldn’t move.

  ‘No,’ she said.

  Ilka left.

  ‘No coffee for you,’ said Steph. ‘No stimulants. I want you to be clean for tonight.’

  ‘What’s happening tonight?’

  ‘There.’ She pointed at a plate of half-eaten pancakes and syrup that had been left on the table. It had congealed. ‘That.’

  I stared at it.

  Steph crossed her arms. Today she was wearing a loosefitting Indian smock. ‘I told Raegan deliberately not to clean up after herself this morning. She was up early.’

  ‘Who’s Raegan?’ I said.

  ‘Raegan is Marge’s daughter who you’ve met like a gazillion times! So don’t just stand there! Clean it up!’

  ‘Why should I do it?’

  ‘Because I’ve fired my gorgeous cleaning champion Ilka now, and she was good. She was real good. The first lesson of feminism is that there’s no such thing as a free lunch.’ She laughed. ‘Did you think you could stay here for nothing?’

  I didn’t move.

  ‘Don’t you like cleaning?’ she said.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I hate it.’

  ‘Excellent,’ said Stephanie, and went outside to smoke.

  Raegan the satanic ballerina had been enlisted to make a mess of the toilet. Now I was on my hands and knees, cleaning that shit up. Steph had bought me a brand new bottle of power bleach. She hadn’t bought me a pair of rubber gloves, however. The bleach was burning my knuckles, burning me all the way up to the wrist. My hair trailed over the toilet bowl. I was still wearing my pyjamas. Steph was sitting on the edge of the bath, watching me.

  Marge was spraying her curls in the mirror. ‘You know this reminds me so much of all th
e superb days I spent in the ashram in Rishikesh back in ’79,’ she was saying. ‘That was the summer after my first year at Harvard.’ She seemed a hell of a lot happier than usual.

  There were undigested marshmallows in the shit.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Steph. ‘It’s a Buddhist thing.’

  ‘It’s a Hindu karma thing,’ said Marge. ‘We did five hours of selfless service every morning at dawn, before chanting and prayer. I was hesitant at first – me being the little WASPy sorority girl with only a sense.’ Marge touched her heart. ‘That I was looking for something.’

  ‘Whatever I’m looking for I don’t think I’m going to find it down the toilet,’ I said.

  ‘That’s precisely where you will find it.’ Marge knelt beside me. ‘I didn’t wanna scrub those steps at the height of the monsoon – in the rain – either. But gradually, as I was doing it, day after day, month after month, I found peace. I found humility.’ She stood up. ‘I realised for the first time in my white ass little life that I was no better than any one of the peasants or monkeys.’ She put a hairgrip between her teeth. ‘God! The monkeys were everywhere! Clambering all over that goddamn bridge! It was wild. If you’re lucky, maybe Aunt Steph will take you to the Ganges one day.’

  ‘She’s gotta pass the test first,’ said Steph.

  They left the room.

  I texted Freddie:

  I’m sorry for what happened. Can we keep the flat?

  I got the toilet as clean as possible. I looked out the window: the snow had melted overnight. Steph was manically gathering armfuls of dead leaves in Camden Square and stuffing them into a bin liner, held open by Marge. I ran a scalding hot bath and wallowed in it, contemplating murder.

  Soon Steph was banging on the door. ‘Open up, open up.’

  I ignored her.

  ‘Open up or we’ll kick the goddamn door down,’ came Marge’s jokey voice. ‘Little pig,’ she added.