Sylvia Sinclair
The Star
I step into the bathroom, to clean myself up.
That, out there, that wasn’t the good kind of attention.
It’s the other side of the coin. People looking for all the wrong reasons.
I could hear their thoughts as if they’d spoken them aloud.
Whore. See, I always think my skin’s grown as thick as the crocodile handbag I’m taking my compact out of.
But it hasn’t. My old friend is still there under everything: the shame.
I look in the mirror. Lanc?me’s best is sooty beneath my eyes and there are streaks in my powder.
My eyes are stinging. Normally when I’m hurting from martinis like this I’ve had a little grace to enjoy it and it’s at least the morning after.
I pick up one of the towels to undo the damage.
And then the stall to the toilet opens and she steps out.
‘The little wife’, Catherine. I can tell she’s been crying, but on her there’s no make-up to streak and it only looks picturesque, in the way that young women look picturesque when they cry.
She’s not even that much younger than me!
But a decade – and the rest – is a hell of a lot for a broad.
And we’re two different types, too, the two types of woman you’re allowed to be: whore and virgin.
I know this because a director once told me.
Can’t have you and Lizzy in the same picture, he said.
It’d turn the whole thing into a goddamn bordello.
Need a Grace Kelly opposite either of you to cool it all down.
I gaze into the mirror. The contrast between us, side by side at the sinks like this, really doesn’t favour me.
The lighting in here isn’t kind. I’m seeing shadows in all the wrong places (did you know Blanche DuBois was only thirty?
Thirty!). Anyway, it does all the right things for her.
Bounces off that perfect skin, those high cheekbones, that little upturned nose.
She reaches for the tissues to dab her eyes.
‘Hello,’ I say.
Her eyes meet mine, and widen in shock.
‘Nice show in there, sweetheart,’ I say. I just can’t help myself. I lift up my hands and do a little miniature round of mock applause. She opens her mouth but no sound comes out, as though she’s too outraged to even find the words.
Somewhere behind us, a flush from the stall.
Then: ‘Don’t you dare speak to me,’ she manages to hiss, whirling on her heel.
‘I’d do all of that – what did you call it, show?
– again … and more. You should be watching your step, sweetheart.
Because you won’t get him, I tell you. I’m a lot stronger than I look.
He’s mine, for always.’ And then, like the icing on the cake: ‘Whore.’
‘Oh baby,’ I say, with a smile, as a mousy Englishwoman (maybe around my age but frankly who can tell she’s made so little effort) steps out of the stall, careful not to make eye contact with either of us. ‘You can cry all you like, but he’s already mine.’
She slams out of the bathroom, the door swinging behind her.