Bad Girls Read online

Page 9


  But it was still a dump. Because the whole building was rent-stabilized, the landlord, resentful at not making a market rent off his tenants, did the bare minimum of repairs. The plaster ceilings were crumbling so badly that sometimes chunks would fall on them while they were sleeping. They had to throw bottlefuls of Liquid-Plumr down the bath and sink every week to get them to drain. The Formica of the kitchen worktops was patterned with mould. Jada and Skye’s bedrooms were barely large enough for a bed and a cupboard, and they’d only managed to turn the kitchen into a sitting room by disconnecting the cooker and putting a piece of plywood over it to use it as a table instead. They lived off takeout food, which they reheated in the microwave.

  The kicker was, they paid eight hundred dollars a month each for the privilege of living there, and they could have sublet it instantly for double that sum. Girls at the Lounge commuted in from Bay Ridge, Forest Hills, Harlem, and Bushwick: Jada and Skye were envied by everyone for having had the luck to snag this place a few years ago through a friend of Skye’s mom, who knew the building super.

  And sometimes, they’d get drunk and do blow to stay out as long as possible, just to avoid having to come back to it.

  ‘I need a sugar daddy,’ Jada continued, ‘not some guy who makes less than I do!’ She flushed the toilet, stood up, and stared at herself in the mirror. ‘Ugh, I should have shares in Visine, the amount I go through,’ she said, reaching for her eyedrops.

  ‘Is DeVaughan still here?’ Skye looked down at the slip she’d pulled on; it was barely long enough to cover her ass. It wasn’t like he hadn’t seen her prancing round the Midnight Lounge with even less on, but she’d at least like to put on some panties if there was a guy in the apartment.

  ‘DeVaughan isn’t. But your guy is,’ Jada said, tilting back her head and squirting half a bottle of Visine into each eyeball.

  ‘My guy?’ Skye’s stomach turned over again.

  ‘Oh, come on. You don’t remember? Go check out the kitchen couch!’

  There was nothing in life Skye wanted to do less. She’d have given a great deal to go back to her bedroom, pull on some sweats, and sneak out for coffee. But it was like the horror movies they loved: when you knew some really gruesome murder was coming, no way you didn’t peek at the screen to see the gory details. Even though she knew she’d regret it, she just had to see what was on the damn couch.

  At first sight, it could have been worse. Even sprawled there, snoring lightly, his mouth sagging open, he was pretty cute. He was white, with short, spiky hair, and the sunlight, pouring in through the grimy windows, glinted off his multiple piercings. Early twenties, tops, with a flat belly and muscled bare thighs, he was in really good shape. Layered T-shirts had ridden up his torso, but thank God he had dragged on his boxers. No one wanted to see a strange man’s junk first thing in the morning. And, in a heap on the floor next to him, instead of jeans or combat pants, were black leggings that looked almost like tights . . .

  Oh God. They weren’t leggings. They were cycle tights.

  He was a bike messenger.

  And that was the last piece of information Skye needed to open the lock and have all the sordid, stupid, self-destructive, dumb-ass shit she’d got up to last night, or rather, this morning, come flooding back in one horrible rush of memory.

  Stumbling down 46th Street, DeVaughan in the middle, she and Jada hanging off his enormous arms, a bottle of tequila dangling from one of his hands, champagne in the other; emptying the plastic Baggie of coke onto a mirror placed flat on the kitchen ‘table’, and moaning aloud at how little there was left; DeVaughan, seeing his chance to get with Jada evaporating, calling up a dealer he knew to get a delivery made; Skye, buzzing in the delivery guy, pulling money out of her bra to pay for the blow, and flirting with him, automatically, to try to get the price down . . .

  Well, she’d gone a little further with that than she’d intended.

  She remembered pushing him onto one of the kitchen chairs, sitting on his lap; his hands on her ass, his eyes wide with excitement and shock, unable to believe he’d stumbled into a stripper party, trying to turn his head so he could watch Jada and DeVaughan taking it in turns to do body shots off each other on the couch . . .

  Jesus. She hadn’t actually fucked him. Or had she? Jada and DeVaughan had eventually headed off to Jada’s room, and Skye had turned up the stereo to drown them out. Ugh. Mrs Chen from downstairs would be on the warpath today, all the noise they’d made. She and Bike Boy had fooled around, yeah, but surely he’d be in bed with her if they’d fucked? And surely he wouldn’t still have his clothes on?

  ‘We in trouble?’ she called to Jada over her shoulder. ‘’Cause of him not getting back to blow headquarters last night with the money?’

  ‘Nah.’ Jada shuffled down the corridor, having slipped on the big green fluffy slippers that matched her PJs. ‘DeVaughan rang the guy before we crashed. Said we’d send him back this morning. DeVaughan said the guy thought it was pretty funny, actually. He was laughing his ass off. Said every guy deserves one free night with a drunken stripper.’ She yawned, long and deep.

  Skye stood there, staring down at the guy on the couch. The bright sunlight had ceased to bother her, and that was only partially because the Advil had kicked in. She had something much bigger to worry about. Not the guy in front of her, his lip ring wobbling slightly every time he blew air out of his mouth; he was just a symptom, not the problem itself.

  This is my life. Getting toasted with my best friend, doing bouncers and delivery boys. This is so not where I want to be.

  But the real shitter is, I’ve got no idea where I do want to be. Or how to get there.

  Her phone rang. She was in no mood to talk to anyone, so she didn’t answer it, just stood and watched her bag vibrate wildly with the ringing of her phone. It stopped, and after a few seconds she expected the beep that said a message had been left on her voice-mail: but no. It just started ringing again. Muttering curses under her breath, Skye cracked and lunged for her bag. The number wasn’t showing up on Caller ID, but that meant nothing.

  ‘Yeah?’ she said crossly.

  ‘Skye? Skye, baby, this is Lew. From the National Investigator.’

  Skye’s eyebrows rose to the ceiling. ‘How did you get hold of my number?’

  He chuckled. ‘Straight to the chase. I like that. Well, I talked Paulie into giving it to me.’

  Skye had thought her eyebrows couldn’t go any higher. She’d been wrong. It was unheard of for Paulie, the manager of the Midnight Lounge, to give a dancer’s number out to a client. Literally unheard of. It was the first thing they taught you at strip-club-manager school, class 101: you do not give a dancer’s number to anyone.

  ‘You’re kidding,’ she said dubiously.

  ‘And untrusting! Better and better!’ Lew sounded happy as Larry; Skye couldn’t imagine why. ‘You wouldn’t believe what I had to promise him. I need to talk to you, babe. I got an offer for you I think you’re going to like.’

  Skye opened her mouth, but Lew was way ahead of her.

  ‘Don’t worry. You don’t gotta do me, and you don’t gotta do Kevin. You don’t gotta do anyone you don’t wanna.’ He chortled to himself, in what was clearly some private joke he found very amusing. ‘All you gotta do is let me and Kevin take you out for a drink this evening, OK? You name the place and time, we’ll bring our credit cards.’

  ‘And Paulie knows I’m meeting you?’ Skye was wary. ‘I’m not supposed to see clients out of the Lounge. I could get the sack for that.’

  ‘Don’t worry, babe. You call Paulie and check it out. It’s all legit. Why don’t we set a time and place now?’

  Skye thought quickly. He probably assumed she’d pick the kind of expensive, flashy place that a stripper would be expected to go for, something in the Meatpacking District: the Buddha Bar, Lotus, a bar where the bridge and tunnellers would go because it cost a ton of money and they thought that meant quality. Well, she wasn’t going to fall into tha
t kind of trap.

  ‘The Cellar Bar at the Bryant Park Hotel,’ she said instead, naming somewhere she’d seen mentioned on page six of the New York Post – some hip young movie director had been hanging out there with his equally trendy singer girlfriend. ‘Seven tonight.’

  Lew whistled down the phone. ‘Classy choice!’ he said. ‘It’s going to be a pleasure doing business with you.’

  ‘What was that?’ Jada asked, unselfconsciously lifting up her pyjama jacket to scratch her muscled stomach.

  The springs of the old couch groaned as Skye’s love interest of the night before stirred, groaning as he sat up, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. The first thing he saw was Jada, her PJ jacket pulled up just below her breasts, her entire stomach above her hipster panties bare, and his eyes bugged out as he fixated on the sight.

  ‘What’re you looking at?’ she said amiably enough, still scratching her stomach as if he weren’t even in the room. ‘Come on, lover boy, the party’s over. Time to get back on your bike.’

  ‘You better tell us how much we owe you,’ Skye said.

  Not fully awake yet, he blinked, madly trying to work out what she meant.

  ‘Yeah, you were so good in bed we wanna pay you for it,’ Jada added, deadpan, and then the two girls burst out laughing at the expression of incredulity on his face.

  ‘Oh boy, that was totally worth making my head hurt all over again!’ Skye giggled, clutching her skull.

  But this still sucks, her headache told her. You still just spent a ton of money on blow last night and fooled around with the bike messenger, for fuck’s sake. You live in a dump and you get wasted most nights and wake up with me pounding nails into your brain. You’re not saving a cent, you’ve got no health plan, and last night some guy put his finger up you and scratched you for kicks.

  Your life is shit, Skye. You better fix it soon.

  One of the big plusses to being an exotic dancer was that your costumes didn’t take up any room at all in your handbag. The pale blue sequined Lycra hotpants and halter top that Skye was planning to wear that night folded up so small that she could easily fit them in her best bag, an oversized Dolce and Gabbana clutch on which she’d blown way too much money just a couple of weeks ago. Still, its shiny black patent was totally current, the gold D&G clasp was nice and big, so you could see even across the room who the bag was by, and it felt really expensive. After all, if you were going to spend thousands of bucks on a bag (Skye shivered briefly at the memory of exactly how much she’d paid) it should damn well look and feel as if you had.

  Skye was assuming that Lew wanted to pick her brains about gossip on the celebrities who came into the Midnight Lounge. That was more than OK with her. Exotic dancers didn’t exactly have a culture of kissing and not telling. The National Investigator would have had trouble filling its pages without all its stories about guys making out with strippers: Kiefer Sutherland, Ben Affleck, Joe Jeffreys . . .

  So, although it was weird that Paulie had given her number to Lew, Skye didn’t waste any time on speculating about other reasons he and Kevin might want to have a drink with her. What she had been determined to do was to dress as classily as possible. She knew exactly what everyone’s image was of an off-duty exotic dancer, and she had to admit, when people pictured a girl caked in makeup, dyed hair scraped back into a tight ponytail, wearing Juicy Couture sweatpants and a T-shirt straining over her artificially inflated breasts, ninety-nine per cent of the time they’d be right on the money.

  She’d noticed the way Kevin-from-the-LA-office looked at her last night; not dismissively, but as if he’d met girls like her a million times before and knew exactly what to expect. Well, if there was one thing Skye hated, it was being taken for granted. When she emerged from her bedroom, ready to go out, Jada whistled, long and slow.

  ‘Honey,’ she said admiringly, ‘it ain’t you, but it looks damn fine.’

  Maybe it is me, though, Skye thought, catching a glimpse of herself in the mirrored lobby of the Bryant Park Hotel. Just a different me. Someone who looks like she belongs in a place like this – here in her own right, not just visiting to party with some rock star.

  New York girls – classy Manhattan girls – were all about the subtle approach. They wore as much makeup as a stripper did, and spent the same amount of time applying it, but their aim was to look, not shiny and plastic, but invisibly, exquisitely groomed. It was a hell of a lot of work. Skye had spent half the time just blending stuff in. No bright colours at all: if Bobbi Brown didn’t make it, Skye didn’t have it on her face. Mocha, peach, caramel, dark brown mascara. Her hair was coiled into a chignon at the back of her head, just a couple of loose blonde strands artfully working their way free, so it looked as if she’d just twisted it up and pinned it in a couple of minutes, rather than spent half an hour with a ceramic straightener and a box of hairgrips. She was dressed all in black, of course, purchased at the boutiques on West Broadway that were her major stamping ground.

  Lovely pieces, all of them. She had just never put them together before. The shantung Alice + Olivia cigarette pants were usually worn with a tight T-shirt, and the fine silk knit sweater, caught elegantly round her slim hips with a wide laser-cut suede belt, was normally thrown over a sky-high mini. Her only jewellery was a silver Tiffany chain necklace, the classic Paloma Picasso design with a big central clasp. Her butter-soft suede wedges, from Otto Tootsi Plohound, were a mere three inches high – definitely not the spikes you’d expect an exotic dancer to flaunt.

  Skye might not have a savings account or health insurance, but she had some really sharp investment dressing.

  As she passed through the lobby and down to the bar, male heads turned, as always. But their glances were completely different from the way they’d have looked at her in her itsy-bitsy blue hot-pants outfit in the Midnight Lounge. Now, the way they checked her out was downright respectful. Appreciative, sure, but it was the appreciation a man gave to a woman he saw as girlfriend, even wife, material. Skye dressed in her hooker gear was arm candy, a toy to play with. Skye dressed up in her chic black and her Tiffany was nothing short of trophy-wife potential.

  Kevin didn’t even recognize her as she rounded one of the uplit vaulted pillars of the cellar bar and approached the high table where he and Lew were sitting. It was Lew who jumped up and pulled out the padded bar stool for her, a gentlemanly courtesy he would never have paid to exotic dancer Skye.

  ‘Baby, you clean up really nice,’ he said, grinning a wide-as-water-melon smile. ‘Kevin? See? Was I right about this one, or was I right?’

  Kevin’s eyebrows had practically disappeared into his hairline.

  ‘Boy, oh boy,’ he said, as Skye hopped up on the stool, crossing her legs demurely, and flashed him her best smile. ‘Now this is what I call versatile.’

  ‘Skye, honey, why don’t you order yourself a drink?’ Lew gestured to a waiter, who glided forward smoothly.

  ‘I’ll have a mojito,’ Skye said. Mojitos were always safe; they were above fashion. She knew better than to pick something like a Cosmo or an apple martini. Only out-of-towners went for those now.

  ‘So I’m going to let Kevin do the talking,’ Lew said, grinning, as the waiter disappeared. ‘This is his baby. He’s come up with an idea so sleazy even I was shocked by it.’ Lew’s eyes gleamed behind the thick lenses of his glasses. ‘He looks all clean cut and Boy Scoutish, but I tell you, he’s got a mind as dirty as a fucking tar pit.’

  ‘Skye,’ Kevin began, leaning forward, ‘I was going to start by asking you if you really see yourself as an exotic dancer, longer term, but I can see already that I don’t need to go there. Look at you.’ He gestured at her. ‘The way you’re dressed, the way you’re presenting yourself. Picking this bar as a rendezvous. You’ve answered the question already.’

  Skye gave him her best smile and waited for him to continue.

  ‘I have an undercover investigation I’m setting up,’ Kevin continued. ‘And I need a very . . . specific kind
of operative to help me with it. And it has to be a female. We’ve got women journalists on the Investigator, of course, but none of them –’ he exchanged a smile with Lew – ‘none of them exactly have the attributes we’re looking for.’

  He wasn’t looking at her breasts when he said that: Skye gave him points. She actually wished she hadn’t had any work done on them at all. She’d gone up from a B to a D cup, and though there weren’t any scars – the surgeon had gone in through her bellybutton – you heard so many horror stories at a strip club about implants going wrong that she really just wanted to take them out now and have done with it. Right now she was wearing a minimizer bra, which she always needed when she wanted to look classy. It was nuts. She should just have bought some padded bras for work and saved the plastic surgery fee.

  ‘You mean they’re not blondes with boob jobs?’ she asked sweetly, as the waiter returned with her mojito.

  She’d wanted to see if she could embarrass Kevin, who seemed so poised, but he was made of much tougher stuff than her usual Midnight Lounge client.

  He just smiled, as if he saw exactly what she was trying to do, and responded: ‘I mean there’s no way they could pass for an exotic dancer.’ His expression grew completely serious. ‘This is something we’ve never tried before. I need a girl with your kind of beauty and brains. And believe me, that’s much harder to find than you’d think. Lew said you were sharp as a whip, and I think he might just be right.’

  ‘And the boob job doesn’t hurt,’ Lew said cheerfully, winking at Skye. ‘So? How about it? You wanna hear the rest?’

  ‘Can’t wait,’ she said, smiling back.

  Petal

  Petal was on a collision course with something, something big and scary with a lot of pointed edges. She could feel it in the dark, waiting for her, ready to cut her into pieces when she made the last in a series of very wrong moves and smashed right into it.