Chapter Thirty-Three
The sleek Mercedes pulls up to a mansion perched on the edge of the Pacific Ocean.
When Bette told her that the Baxters had a beach house, she’d envisioned something quaint and rustic like her parents’ summer home at the Jersey Shore.
She was not prepared—although she should have been—for the sight of the Italian Renaissance mansion, with its triple-arched entrance flanked by palm trees. Her stomach tightens like a fist.
The night began a few hours earlier, with a phone call from Bette to Justin. She told him she was sick, but that the redheaded burlesque dancer he met at Voyeur was prepared to perform in her place.
“He was fine with it,” she assured Mallory, calling from Zebra’s private plane on the way to Vegas.
“I guess he has to be, considering the party starts in three hours.”
“No, he’s really okay with it. He said he remembers you and you’re hot.
He asked if you wanted to hang out at the party before you perform but I told him no—just to send a car for you to arrive a half hour ahead of time.
That’s what I always do. If you want to stay after and mingle, that’s fine, but I never see the audience before I perform. ”
“Got it,” Mallory said. She doesn’t want to mingle with the audience at all—not before, and especially not after.
“Break a leg,” Bette said. And that was the end of the call.
Pulling up to the entrance, the car circles a Venetian fountain surrounded by Bentleys and Ferraris.
Mallory would have given anything to have Bette alongside of her, even just to walk her to the door.
The only mental trick she can play to mobilize herself out of the back seat of the car is this: Tonight she’s not Mallory Dale.
She’s Moxie, and no one will know anything different.
And the sooner she gets through the performance, the sooner she’ll be home in bed and wake up the next morning to a flight that will take her home to Alec.
“I’ll be waiting here when you’re ready to leave,” the driver says, opening the door for her.
She grabs her bag with her costume in it. It’s Bette’s, personalized with the word Noire spelled out in pink rhinestones.
“Welcome! Are you a guest or performer?” A young woman dressed in a suit greets her in the entrance foyer. Her hair is slicked back into a ponytail, her makeup barely there except for her defined brows and glossy lips.
“Performer,” Mallory says.
“Name?” She consults a clipboard.
“Mallory … I mean, Moxie.”
She speaks into a headset. “Moxie has arrived.” And then she adds, “Mr. Baxter will be right with you.”
Justin appears. He’s dressed in a black suit, black shirt, and black tie. He looks like a Hollywood agent greeting talent on the Academy Awards red carpet.
“Hey, Moxie. So glad you could fill in for Bette. Is she doing okay?”
“Yes. Fine. She’s … resting.” On Zebra’s jet.
“Poor thing. Was it something she ate?”
Mallory misses Alec with a sudden pang. If he were there, he would have deadpanned, Yes, something she ate really got to her, and they would have shared a private laugh.
“I’m not really sure,” Mallory says.
“Well, you’re an angel for stepping in at the last minute.
Everything you need should be in the dressing room upstairs.
I have hors d’oeuvres and a few bottles of Perrier and champagne, but if you want anything else just let Maria here know.
You’re on in a half hour. When you’re ready, Maria will call the party producer to escort you to the performance area.
The producer has your song cued up so when you step onto the floor it will be ready to go.
It’s not an actual stage so there’s no curtain or anything—I hope that’s okay.
I mention it because it throws some of the girls at first if they don’t know.
But trust me, it works beautifully. We’ve done dozens of shows here and by the end the girls tell me they like my room more than any club. ”
“Thanks. It will be great, I’m sure.”
“Can’t wait to see you out there.” He kisses her on the cheek, leaving her to climb the stairs alone.
Mallory steps onto the performance space, a wide, hardwood floor that has surprisingly professional lighting overhead that obscures the audience.
The space in front of her is filled with tables for ten and still more people milling around, but she can’t see people’s facial expressions the way she can at the Blue Angel.
She positions herself with her back to the audience, so they have a view of the intricate lacing of her corset, her arms outstretched in long black gloves. Her hands shake so hard she wonders how she’ll be able to remove the feathered skirt.
The first beats of the Peaches song “Lose You” fill the room. She can’t tell if the crowd has gone silent or if the music is just very loud, but either way, between the lights and the song she feels like she’s in her own world.
They lyrics begin and she twirls twice, spinning toward the front of the “stage” and slowly peeling off one glove.
Bette choreographed a lot of turns in the dance—she said the song begs for that type of movement—and with each rotation, Mallory has to get her hands in position to remove another section of her costume.
The part of the routine making her anxious is removing her pasties at the very end.
Bette told her that Justin prefers full nudity in his shows, but she can get away with just being topless since she’s new and only filling in.
To compensate for the lack of full-frontal, Bette added a spanking to the ending: Mallory will turn her back to the audience in a final spin, wearing only a white sequined thong, bend over, and smack her own ass with a black paddle.
The audience is quieter than at the club, but they clap and occasionally whistle as she moves through her performance.
She pulls off the section of her skirt that doubles as fans, and she curls into her clamshell, exaggerating each gesture, careful not to rush through the motions.
Again, she’s grateful that Bette showed her the Ms. Tickle performance, which gives her the confidence to have moments of near stillness.
She uses one fan to obscure her waist and then removes the rest of her skirt, tossing it aside.
The audience claps their approval. Now the hard part: She turns again, dropping the fans, and unzips the side of her corset, then turns—removing it in one motion.
She feels a rush of heat through her body in those first moments wearing just a thong and the pasties.
She freezes for half a beat, then forces herself through the motion of twirling the tassels.
The audience erupts in applause and whistles, and something clicks inside her; she stops hearing Bette’s instructions in her mind, and instead moves because her body feels the choreography as automatically as her lungs push out breath.
A sense of absolute control overcomes her: control of the room, and control of herself.
Now it’s a game to elicit a reaction from the audience, and by the time she has to remove her pasties, she’s eager for a way to up the ante.
The music builds to its finale, and she takes two more turns, positioning her ass for the audience to have a full view of her spanking.
She reaches down for the carefully placed paddle, then brings her arm out in an exaggerated motion before smacking her ass hard enough to leave a mark.
Bette had told her she was lucky she was fair-skinned—it wouldn’t be hard to get a red mark.
She has to trust her on that. From the shrieks of the audience—no more polite clapping, it’s full-on screaming now—she assumes they’re seeing something.
The song progresses toward its final beats, and she drops the paddle and assumes a pose that mirrors her original position, back to the audience, arms outstretched.
The room goes wild, and Mallory is flooded with relief and a joy so pure it almost brings tears to her eyes.
There’s no curtain to signal the end of the performance, but the party producer escorts her offstage.
“You are incredible!” the woman gushes.
“Thanks,” Mallory says, breathless.
Justin meets her at the foot of the stairs. “Moxie! Oh my god, there are no words. You’re a star.”
“Thank you!” Her heart pounds, and she feels like hugging him for giving her the chance to take the stage.
“Thank you. The Marigold twins are on next but I suspect you stole the show. Bravo. Where do you perform in the city?”
“Um, I’m just starting at the Blue Angel. I’ve done a few shows, just helping out between sets.”
“I’ll call you when we get back east. We’d love to have you perform again. And you’re welcome to stay and enjoy the party. I sincerely hope you will.”
Before leaving, he hands her an envelope. She hadn’t even thought about making money tonight. She heads up the stairs, buzzing with the satisfaction of a job well-done. She can’t wait to tell Bette.
“Mallory?”
She’s surprised to hear her name. Her real name. She turns to find Billy Barton.
“Billy?” Oh my god. She never imagined someone from the city would be here. But clearly, that was an error in judgement. And so was telling Alec that she wasn’t going to this party.
She is so fucked.
The normal, polite thing to do would be to go back down the stairs and say hi to him, but her adrenaline has her in fight-or-flight mode, and she just wants to flee.
“You were fantastic! I had no idea you were a burlesque performer. How could Alec not mention this? He’s writing a feature story on it, for god’s sake. And I like the red hair, by the way.”
She slowly descends the stairs.
“Thanks.” When she’s close enough to speak without raising her voice she says, “Listen, the reason Alec never mentioned it is because he doesn’t know yet. And if you don’t mind, I’d like to be the one to tell him.”
Billy smiles like he just won the gossip lottery.
“Sure thing—no problem.” He makes a zipping motion over his mouth.
She’s certain she can’t trust him. But there’s absolutely nothing she can do about it.