Divas (6 page)

‘You look like the cat that’s got the cream, ’ he said, smiling at her.

‘I am. I did, ’ Evie said smugly.

His smile faded.

‘Don’t do that again, Evie.’

‘What, make you come like a train?’ Evie ran her tongue around her lips, remembering him exploding inside her.

‘Evie, I’ve
told
you.’ Lawrence’s brow furrowed, which it only did when the subject was of vital importance to him. ‘When you have a Tantric orgasm,
it’s
transcendent
. It’s worth the wait. And it’s not like you didn’t have tons of orgasms along the way. I’m not making you wait with me. I can’t believe
we have to go through this every single time.’

Evie rolled her eyes. How ironic was it that of the two men in her life, one was really tough to make come (God, the
things
she had to do for Benny sometimes!) and one was really easy,
but bitched and moaned about it afterwards?

Men. The thing she was best at. Her specialist subject: men, and what men wanted. And still, they could be so fucking perverse that sometimes they made her want to slap them round the head till
they rang like a bell.

Evie was showering, one of her favourite ways to pass the time ever since Benny had moved her into this penthouse apartment. The shower was about as big as her mom’s
living room, and had probably cost ten times as much to do up. It had a rainforest shower head, plus surround jets, and was lined in travertine marble; the dark blue ceiling was set with a series
of tiny glittering lights that dimmed and dipped in endless permutations. Stars in the night sky, Benny had called them. It was one of the reasons he’d chosen this place: that, and the fact
that the shower was big enough for Benny and Evie to fit in it together, which was no small achievement, considering Benny’s bulk.

Benny only took showers. He was scared one day he’d take a bath and not be able to get himself out of the tub again.

Being in the shower with Benny wasn’t so bad, because the stars-in-the-night-sky lighting meant that she couldn’t see Benny all that clearly, which was always a blessing. But being
in the shower by herself was bliss. Lawrence had taken a quick one, but he’d had another training appointment across town and had to run. So now Evie was all alone, turning slowly to get
every single jet on every single part of herself, slicking herself at intervals with honey shower gel from Diptyque. In the main bathroom she had honey Diptyque candles burning in the built-in
niches, and when she eventually came out of the shower she was going to slather herself in more of their honey body lotion. Scent layering, the guy at Barneys had called it. It was amazing to have
so much money that you could just walk into a store and pretty much buy whatever you wanted. In addition to her credit cards, Benny had given her charge accounts at Henri Bendel and Barneys and
Bloomingdale’s, which pretty much covered everything. She was shopping in places she hadn’t even known existed till she met Benny. Shit, she’d have thought she was lucky to get a
Macy’s
charge card till she met him.

And she didn’t even have to look at the bills. They went straight to one of Benny’s many secretaries. Which, of course, meant she spent even more, because she had no idea how much
she was racking up.

Though, considering all she had to do was shop, work out and maybe pop to an afternoon movie if she was sure Benny wouldn’t be coming by, at least he’d given her plenty of resources.
One thing she wasn’t short of was time. These twenty-minute showers, if she was honest, were partly a way to kill the time before she turned on the TV and flicked through some gossip
magazines.

But just then, Evie’s ears pricked up. Even through the pounding jets of water, she thought she’d heard something. Growing up in the projects made you alert even when you were
sleeping, always on the lookout for something that might be a threat to you. The urban jungle trained its kids well. Benny might have taken her away from the slums, but you couldn’t take the
slums out of the girl. So Evie stuck one hand out to whip off the water jets, and with the other she pushed open the heavy glass shower door and stepped out onto the plush bath mat, reaching for a
bath sheet.

She stood, listening, her feet toasty on the bath mat, warmed by the constant underfloor heating. Yes, there was definitely someone in the apartment. Benny? But he always called first, always.
Not that he suspected about Lawrence – Jesus, she damn well hoped he didn’t! But Benny liked her to look a certain way. Dressed up, made up, hair done, and, of course, in some form of
sexy legwear and high high heels. Often he’d specify exactly what he wanted her to wear when he called. He had a freaky memory: he’d say stuff like: ‘Those knee-highs I bought you
in that SoHo boutique, the white ones with the dots, and the mules with the Lucite heels and the red trim on the third shelf up, OK, baby?’ And he was always right: the shoes were just where
he’d said they’d be. She couldn’t give him points for good taste when he thought up her outfits, but then, good taste wasn’t exactly what most men wanted in a mistress.

Wrapping the bath sheet tightly around her, Evie looked around for her slippers. Benny would freak if she wasn’t wearing something on her feet. Shit, they were nowhere to be seen. When he
wasn’t around, she didn’t wear them: she loved the feel of heated marble, or luxury pile carpet, under her bare toes. It was a reminder of how rich she was living. She’d have to
distract him by a complaint about his scaring her shitless just using his key and coming in like that when she was in the shower. Working up a rant about how much he’d freaked her out, she
crossed the bathroom, biting her lip to get some tears starting. Benny hated it when she cried.

And after all, who could it be but Benny?

Evie flung the bathroom door wide, but the scene before her dried up both her tears and her shrieking reproaches to Benny about thinking he was a serial killer come to slaughter her in the
shower. Her mouth dropped open, and all that came out was a gulp.

Standing in the middle of the huge, open-plan living room was a woman, a woman who was taller than most men, with white-blonde hair in a short cut that emphasised her knife-sharp bone structure
and the eerie pale blue of her eyes. She was wearing a white cashmere coat, belted tightly at the waist, pearl earrings so huge it was hard to believe they were real, and knee-high brown leather
boots. She looked like the villain from a designer sci-fi movie.

‘What are you doing in my apartment?’ Evie managed to exclaim, praying to God that the woman was some interior designer Benny had sent round to surprise her.

But she had a horrible feeling that she knew
exactly
who this woman was. She’d seen photos of Benny with her in the society pages.

‘Mrs Fitzgerald? Just pile all this stuff into trash bags?’ came a man’s voice, deep and rasping, and a Hispanic guy, dressed all in black, emerged from Evie’s bedroom, a
rack of her dresses hooked over one brawny arm. He must have been at least six-foot three, and with his shaved head, bodybuilder’s walk and shoulders too big for his suit jacket, he was a
type Evie had seen all too often: bodyguard/bouncer/hired muscle. Benny had a bodyguard, sometimes, but Evie had never seen this guy before.

This guy was from the streets. She could tell by his eyes, which were hard dark shiny stones, and from the backs of his hands, which were marked with faded blue prison tattoos. Probably gang
stuff. And it looked as though he was getting them lasered off, because they were blurry in places. But still, to have a bodyguard with visible prison tats? Benny would never have gone for that.
That was gangster stuff. Hardcore.

‘That’s right, ’ the woman said, staring straight at Evie. ‘Everything into the trash.’

‘You’re kidding me!’ Evie said. ‘That’s mine! That’s my stuff!’

‘Not any more, ’ the woman – Benny’s wife – said. She smiled. It was terrifying.

‘Benny
bought
all that for me!’ Evie protested. ‘It’s mine! Look, it’s shitty you found out about us this way, but that’s all mine, you can’t
just
take
it—’

‘Keep at it, Rico. You know what you’re supposed to do, ’ the woman said to the hired muscle, who nodded and disappeared back into Evie’s bedroom.

‘You can’t just
trash
it!’ Evie stalked across the room to grab her cellphone. ‘I’m calling Benny right now, ’ she said furiously. ‘He
won’t let you do this!’

My
shoes!
she thought. All my porno sex shoes! Benny’s
obsessed
with them – no
way
is he going to let this bitch dump them in the street!

‘Call away, ’ Benny’s wife said. It was like watching a skull smile.

Evie stabbed at her speed dial key, ringing Benny’s private line, her brain racing frantically. She was used to crises, used to threats of trouble and violence – she had grown up in
one of the worst projects in Spanish Harlem, a pretty girl with no one to protect her. Her father wasn’t even a distant memory – he’d walked out on her mother when Evie’s
sister was still five months off being born. Evie’s mother Mariluz was too busy complaining about her own troubles to spare a thought for Evie, and while Mariluz cosseted Evie’s little
sister Ria, Evie was out on her own, dealing with the gangs, the dealers, the guys trying to get with her, or pimp her out, or both.

Evie had had to fight for everything she’d ever got in life. Every single thing. She’d seen the worst things that could happen, and the people who’d done them and then laughed
about it afterwards. And now, appraising Benny’s wife, she knew instinctively that she was in the presence of an enemy worse than any she had ever encountered in her short hard life. Not just
because she had that look in her cold blue eyes, the killer look. Because she had more power to execute her wishes than anyone Evie had ever met before.

Apart from Benny. And Benny wasn’t answering his phone. Evie tried again, going for his cellphone number. It started to ring and, a second later, she heard Benny’s ringtone in her
ear, a classical music piece that he’d told her was his favourite. But how come she was hearing it? Was she so freaked out by this woman’s invasion of her home that she was
hallucinating Benny’s cellphone ring?

Then she realised that she wasn’t. Because Benny’s wife was reaching in her coat pocket. The woman’s smile deepened still further, like a slash, as her hand came out holding a
ringing phone.

‘Benny’s not answering his phone any more, ’ she said.‘Benny will never be answering his phone again.’

Evie’s phone dropped onto the wooden floor with an ominous cracking sound.

‘Benny’s
dead
?’ Evie gasped.

‘He might as well be. He’s in a coma, ’ Benny’s wife informed her with as much emotion as if she were reading out stock prices. ‘Which means you’re out of
here. You’ve got twenty minutes to pack up as much as you can and get out.’

‘But I
live
here! You can’t just—’

The ice-blue eyes gleamed. ‘You should have got Benny to put the apartment in your name, shouldn’t you? Stupid girl. You won’t make that mistake with the next man you whore
for.’ She lifted her wrist so the coat cuff could slide down her arm, revealing a watch so thickly studded with diamonds Evie was surprised it didn’t blind her. ‘Twenty minutes
and counting, ’ she observed.

Evie knew she wasn’t bluffing. She grabbed the towel tighter around her and sprinted for her bedroom door. The Hispanic guy – Rico – had already pulled out so many of her
lovely things that she could have cried to see them so contemptuously tossed aside, her shoes knocked off the shelves to the floor as if he’d just swiped along them with his arm, her lingerie
lying in piles on the bed and floor as if he’d lifted them out from their drawers and thrown them over his shoulder. But that wasn’t what she was focusing on. She was staring at him as
he pulled out a leather box from the built-in, cedar-lined cupboard and shouted:

‘Mrs Fitzgerald? I think I found it.’

Evie’s blood turned to ice water.

‘No!’ she screamed. ‘No! You can’t take that! It’s
mine!
’

She leaped at him, fingers hooked into claws, pretty face distorted into a mask of fury, grabbing for it. Rico knocked her away with one elbow to her jaw, still holding the box. Evie landed on
the bed face down, limbs sprawling, dazed from the blow, and then Rico did take one hand from the box. He leaned down and pulled the towel right out from under her, flipping her over like a pancake
as he did so.

‘Nice tits, ’ he said, staring at her naked body and nodding appraisingly. ‘I don’t like them too big.’

Fury gave Evie the strength to jump off the bed, drag on some sweatpants and a T-shirt and dash out of the room after Rico, despite the pounding in her jaw that was still making her dizzy.

In the living-room, he was standing holding the box open, presenting it to his boss, who was extracting from it exactly the items that Evie was desperate for. She held them up, one in each hand,
tilting them back and forth, watching them shine. Twin circles, each the diameter of a small teacup, silver fabric richly encrusted with sewn-on diamonds, glittering as if they were worth a small
fortune. Which, to Evie, they were.

‘What do you call these again?’ she inquired.

‘Pasties, Mrs Fitzgerald, ’ Rico said, winking unpleasantly at Evie. ‘Strippers wear ’em to cover their, uh –’

‘Nipples, ’ Mrs Fitzgerald finished. She looked at Evie. ‘And I suppose you generally tear them off for the grand finale and throw them into the audience, do you?’ She
was smiling still. ‘Not these ones, though. Benny paid a hundred thousand for them. That makes them strictly for private performances only.’

And she tilted her hand still more so that the diamond-covered pasties dangled temptingly from her fingers, as if she were taunting Evie, daring her to come and take them.

‘
Give them back!’
Evie yelled, running towards her.

Rico moved fast. He caught her upper arms, stopping her in her tracks. Evie wriggled and fought and kicked at him with her bare feet, but Rico’s grip just tightened till she yelped in
pain.