Chapter One #2
Little by little, the blonde peels away her costume—first the gloves, then the boots.
She turns her back to the audience and eases down the zipper of her corset so slowly that Mallory is shocked to realize she’s actually impatient for the woman to get it off.
And when she finally shakes herself free, she turns to face the audience with her hands covering her breasts. Mallory is barely breathing.
The blonde moves her hands away, striking a pose like Madonna in her “Vogue” video.
Her breasts are small, pert, and perfectly shaped, her nipples covered in red sequined flowers.
When she dances in her pasties and red thong, Mallory is simultaneously relieved and disappointed—she’s probably not going to get totally nude, after all.
The crowd is in a frenzy, and now Mallory joins in, whistling and clapping. The performer seems to feed off the audience, gyrating close to the edge of the stage, where she slowly bends over, flashing her ass to the crowd, playfully squeezing both cheeks.
Once again, the cheers escalate, though Mallory didn’t think a higher decibel level was humanly possible.
The curtain closes, and the Rodeo Guy returns to the stage.
“One more round, everyone, for Poppy LaRue,” he says, though he doesn’t need to ask. The room is still going wild.
“What do you think?” Alec says, squeezing her thigh under the table.
“It’s … interesting.”
“I knew you’d like it.” He leans over and kisses her cheek.
The rodeo guy launches into a comedic monologue, surprisingly clever, full of sly political commentary and pop culture references.
She’s enjoying it, but then Billy Barton slips into the seat next to Alec.
He’s dressed in a lavender shirt and purple suspenders.
He’s so handsome and rich, he could get away with dressing like Scott Disick on Keeping Up with the Kardashians.
“Did I miss anything?” he asks.
“I don’t know. What do you think, Mal? Did he miss anything?” Alec says.
She rolls her eyes, then turns back to the stage.
“Everyone, please give it up for the gorgeous, the glamorous, the dangerous … Bette Noire.”
The regulars in the crowd chant the dancer’s first name.
The curtain remains closed, but the music begins to play.
As the deep, pounding, eerie first beats fill the room, the curtain parts to reveal two wooden chairs at a small table with a crystal ball.
A woman is seated, crouched, with a towering black witch hat obscuring her face.
She rises slowly, her body shrouded in an ankle-length black dress.
She gyrates languidly and when the song builds to its first chorus, she pulls off the witch hat to reveal glossy, dark bobbed hair.
She looks directly at the audience, moody and defiant, and Mallory sees that it’s her—the stunning, leopard-coated brunette.
The song she’s using for her performance is from a David Lynch film, a Marilyn Manson cover of the old Nina Simone song “I Put a Spell on You.” It’s a been few years since she last heard it, but it has an unforgettable early crescendo.
When it reaches that initial peak, the dancer pulls off her black dress to reveal her perfect body in only a bullet bra, black lace panties, black seamed stockings, a garter belt, and six-inch patent leather stilettos.
She holds a shiny black wand in one hand.
This time, when she looks at the audience, she points her wand at Mallory and gestures for her to come onstage.
Mallory looks away, pretending not to see. But the crowd is cheering her on, and Rodeo Guy appears at the table to assist her onto the stage. Damn Billy Barton and his front row seats! She looks back at Alec, but he just gives her a thumbs-up.
The exact mechanics of how she gets onstage are details she knows she’ll never remember.
She can hardly process it as it’s happening.
Somehow, she finds herself seated in front of the crystal ball, the performer dancing around her.
And then the woman—Bette?—stands in front of her and gestures for her to help her remove her bra.
Hands shaking, Mallory somehow manages the metal clasp.
Her fingertips brush the woman’s soft skin.
And when Bette turns to face her, bare-breasted, Mallory feels like she’s an audience of one.
She no longer hears the crowd or the music.
She doesn’t even know if Bette’s speaking to her—but it feels like she is: Bette is telling her to remove her sweater.
As if in a trance, Mallory complies, lifting her turtleneck up over her head, feeling a shock of cool air on her bare skin.
Of course she’s going along with it—she can’t possibly be responsible for ruining the show that clearly has the audience in a thrall.
But it’s more than that. Mallory feels more present in the moment than she has in as long as she can remember.
There’s no past, no future. Just … this.
Bette doesn’t smile, she doesn’t so much as flutter her fake eyelashes.
She simply takes the turtleneck from her, walks to the edge of the stage, and tosses it to the seat Mallory had vacated.
The crowd roars—yes, she hears it now, like a video that had become unmuted.
Mallory, now wearing only her long skirt and plain Gap bra, feels her heart pounding.
She wonders how much longer she’ll have to be onstage, but at the same time she doesn’t want to leave.
It’s like she’s hyper-alive—everything is louder, brighter, and bigger.
It’s dizzying, so to ground herself she looks out at the audience to find Alec.
She sees him clapping, and when they make eye contact, he winks.
She turns back to Bette, who’s now wearing only a bejeweled thong and impossibly high heels—all the while dancing, moving in the most deliberate and perfectly choreographed way.
And then the curtain descends.
Poppy LaRue peeks out at the audience from behind the curtain.
She can’t believe Bette pulled that brunette onto the stage.
Her nerves had barely settled after her own act—it was flat-out masochistic that Agnes made her open the show on her second performance ever.
She contemplates telling Agnes just that, but Agnes is too busy reaming Bette for pulling that stunt.
“What are you thinking? This is not a circus!” Agnes fumes in her thick Polish accent.
Agnieszka Wieczorek, former Warsaw ballerina turned proprietress of the Blue Angel, does not take kindly to broken rules.
And for the most part, people around her don’t dare.
The Blue Angel is the oldest burlesque club on the Lower East Side.
Performing there is every burlesque dancer’s dream.
“Of course it is,” Bette says, calmly lighting a cigarette. “Why else do you think these people come here?” Bette walks past her without another word into the dressing room. She closes the door with a sharp click.
Who else but Bette Noire can get away with that?
“Shit. I need to get my shoes out of there,” Poppy says. Agnes mumbles something in her native tongue and waves vaguely in the direction of the closed door with disgust before walking off.
Poppy waits until Agnes is out of sight, then raps lightly on the dressing room door.
“Fuck off,” Bette says.
“It’s Poppy.” Silence. She takes this as an invitation to enter.
When Poppy started at the Angel a month ago, she wouldn’t have dared follow Bette Noire into a room when she was in a snit.
But she’s finally gotten close enough to feel comfortable; she only hopes she could get a lot closer.
She’s never been with a woman before, but she knows Bette only likes women, and if that’s what it takes to get Bette to take her under her wing and show her the ropes, so be it.
“I don’t think Agnes’s really mad at you,” Poppy says.
She pauses in front of the mirror and can’t help but admire herself.
She’s recently cut her platinum blond hair into a chin-length bob, much like Bette’s black one.
They’re both fair-skinned and blue-eyed, but Poppy is a few inches taller.
She’d never minded being five foot nine, but since meeting Bette she wishes she were a bit shorter.
Everything about Bette seems more perfect, more right for burlesque, more special.
Regardless of the height difference, with the brunette/blond bob thing going on, Poppy likes to think they’re like photo negatives of each other.
More and more, she imagines what it would be like to fuck Bette, her lovelier twin.
“I don’t really care,” Bette says, looking up from her phone and fixing Poppy with her unnerving cat-eyed glare. “I’m not working here to make $150 a night for the rest of my life. Do you know who that was at that table?”
“The woman you pulled onstage? No. Is she an actress?”
“Not her! The guy in the obnoxious suspenders,” Bette says, like she’s some stupid hick. Which, to be fair, she is.
Who was the guy in the suspenders? She’d barely noticed him, and decides it’s best to say nothing.
It’s like the saying: Better to be quiet and let people think you’re stupid than to open your mouth and prove it.
That’s what her grandma used to tell her, and her grandma was the only smart person she’d ever known.
“It’s Billy Barton,” Bette says.
This means absolutely nothing to Poppy, and it must show on her face because Bette sighs in exasperation.
“The owner of Gruff magazine. You know Gruff, right? They have that annual ‘Hot’ issue. I think Megan Fox was on the cover last year.”
“Oh, yeah—sure. I read it all the time,” Poppy lies.
“Well, okay. So you understand why it’s a big deal that the owner was here tonight. If the magazine writes about the club, we could get some industry people in here. Not just these horny NYU kids.”
“Cool. So … do you want to get a drink?” Poppy says hopefully.
Bette turns abruptly in her seat, narrowing her eyes, as if trying to see through Poppy’s clothes.
She eyes her up and down, her gaze lingering on her breasts.
Poppy, wearing a pink satin robe over her pasties and G-string, feels more naked than she had onstage in front of a roomful of strangers. But she doesn’t dare speak or move.
Bette stands so they’re almost face-to-face.
She reaches out and slips her hand under the robe, cupping Poppy’s breast. Poppy can’t even breathe with the thrill of it.
After months of being ignored, then barely getting conversation out of Bette …
this! She’d never felt more invisible around another human being.
But not anymore.
“Take these off,” Bette says, her thumb brushing over the red sequined flowers hiding her nipples.
Bette sits back down in her chair, content to be the audience, while Poppy slowly removes her pasties.
In the background, she hears the chords of “Fever” by Peggy Lee—it’s the performer Cookies ’n Cream’s number—the final act.
Usually, Bette closes the show. But she and Cookie had made some crazy bet and Cookie won.
They wouldn’t even tell Poppy what the bet had been about.
She always feels like such an outsider, and wonders when that will change.
How long does she have to be at the Blue Angel before she understands the place?
Before Agnes takes her seriously? Before the customers shout her name?
But none of that matters right now. All that matters is that her robe is on the floor, her pasties are in her hand, and Bette is staring at her bare breasts.
Poppy decides to be proactive. Those are her new words to live by: be proactive. She heard it on Oprah, or read it in Cosmo. Or someplace important like that. Basically, she’s not supposed to sit around waiting for things to come to her.
So she steps forward, her eyes locked with Bette’s. It’s disturbing to admit, but for once in her life, she’s with someone hotter than herself.
“Actually, I’m going to pass,” Bette says. “I’m not really in the mood to drink tonight.”
She turns back to her phone.