Donna Joy Usher - Chanel 02 - Goons 'n' Roses (9 page)

I dragged an outfit that appeared to be my size off a hanger and climbed into it while Martine had her make-up done. I chose a bright red wig and tucked my piggy-tail under it. Then I shoved our shoes into our handbags.

‘Here’s your noses,’ the woman said, handing us each a red rubber nose. ‘This way.’ She waited till we had attached the noses and then led us down another corridor.

It took a little while to adjust to the shoes. The trick was to shuffle your foot forwards, rather than go for a normal walking motion. I almost tripped a couple of times before I got it, but when I finally had the motion right I noticed my shoes making noises whenever I put my foot down.

‘Through there,’ our make-up artist said, beckoning at an open door.

We walked through the door into a large room. A single light illuminated a patch of wooden floor. We stood in the light and looked around, straining to see into the shadows.

‘What are we waiting for?’ Martine asked, her voice echoing strangely.

‘No idea. Where are the rest of the clowns?’ I looked up at her with her curly yellow wig and her fake, red nose and I started to giggle. She reached out and squeezed my nose and it made a little honk. I reached up and squashed hers and it let out a squeak.

‘Check this out.’ I jumped up and down a few times and my shoes made whoopee-cushion-like farting noises.

We both started to laugh, our mirth building until I was bent over clutching my stomach. Every time one of us would start to get it together the other one would jump up and down. Farting shoes! It was priceless.

Martine was jumping up and down and I was honking my nose in time to her farting when all of a sudden a super bright light blasted onto us.

‘Aghhh,’ I said, stumbling back onto my left foot. The shoe let out a high-pitched fart, and I heard laughter coming from the direction of the light.

I put an arm up to shade my eyes and walked across the wooden floor towards the brightness. I was so busy peering into it that I didn’t notice the wooden floor end. With one foot suddenly unsupported, I started to pitch forwards.

‘Careful.’ Martine grabbed my arm and jerked me back. There was more laughter.

‘What the hell?’ Martine said.

We both stood on the edge of the drop-off and stared into the light. Our eyes must have adjusted at the same time because I yelled, ‘Shit,’ simultaneously with Martine’s squealed, ‘Sweet mother,’ and we both stumbled backwards away from the edge.

There was more laughter.

We were on a stage, and there was a crowd of people staring at us.

I backed up a few more paces and tripped over what turned out to be a unicycle. I went down with a clatter, to more laughter and some applause, and lay there with my feet in the air.

Martine grabbed my arm and hauled me up, but the backs of my large shoes were still caught in the unicycle. I pivoted forwards into her and we both went down in a heap. The crowd let out a roar of amused approval.

They were only going to be entertained by our natural klutziness for so long, and then things were going to get ugly. I climbed to my feet, helped Martine up and started pulling her to the left side of the stage. It was time to get out of there.

The problem with
that
plan was that Boris was standing there with a wide grin on his face. ‘Shit,’ I said, backpedalling with my arms and legs.

We turned and rushed to the other side of the stage but the other two were already there. Vladimir opened his jacket and we could see the metal of a gun tucked into the waist of his jeans.

It raised quite a few questions. How had they recognised us? Why did they want us so badly? And how the hell were we going to get out of there?

We moved back to the very centre of the stage and Martine picked up the unicycle. She held it with the seat against her chest and pedalled the wheels with her hands while she ran in circles. I followed close behind her. The audience seemed to like that.

Then she settled the seat on top of my head and I pedalled and ran around the stage like a loony. I put it on the ground and tried to use it as a seat but it zipped out from under me and I landed on my arse. The crowd
really
liked that one.

Martine did the same thing but she put it with the seat down and the wheel up. The result was quite spectacular, and I found myself hoping that her pen-knife hadn’t caused any permanent damage.

I could see the Russians waiting and I knew we could only go on for so long finding stupid things to do with the unicycle. I also knew there was no way we were going out those side exits. That left only one option.

I put the unicycle on the ground and wheeled it forwards, using my hands on the pedals. Then, when I got close to the edge, I gave it a little push. It sailed off the platform and crashed onto the floor in front of the first row or people. I dropped to my bottom on the edge of the stage and dangled my feet over while I scratched my head as if trying to work out what to do.

Martine sat beside me and whispered, ‘What’s the plan?’

‘We’re going out that exit.’ I nodded at a door up behind the crowd. Then before the Russians could work out what was happening we both dropped off the stage. I followed Martine up the stairs, trying to lift my farting shoes high enough not to trip. To the crowd’s great amusement I wasn’t totally successful and I had to scramble to my feet a few times before I made it to the top.

I heard a yell from below and turned to see the Russians run out onto the stage. I kicked off my shoes and Martine did the same, then we burst out through the exit door and ran down another set of stairs. I spied a door off to the right with ‘Employees Only’ written on it. We took that door, hurtling down a passage until suddenly we were in the make-up room. We grabbed our handbags as we ran past and then turned right and took the second left, running back down the hallway and out into the main entrance.

It was still crowded with clowns. ‘They’re coming,’ Martine shrieked as we dived into their mass. ‘Run!’

There was a moment of total stillness and then the Russians burst out through the door we had just exited. They were all holding guns.

The clowns went crazy, stampeding towards the exit. They were shoving and pushing and a lot of them were screaming hysterically. It was the perfect diversion.

‘Look for the orange arm,’ Boris yelled.

We ran with the clowns, out onto The Strip and down the boulevard. I could see a cab on the side of the road up ahead. The passengers had climbed out and were staring at the scattering clowns. We jumped into the back of the cab, and I yelled, ‘Drive,’ as Martine pulled the door shut.

‘Get down,’ I said to Martine. I pulled my wig off and stuck my head up just enough to look out the back window. I could see the clowns, with Boris towering over them, disappearing behind us. I let out a sigh of relief and sagged back down into my seat. That had been seriously scary.

I heard Martine tell the driver to take us to The Luxor. I stared out the window while I went through the events of the evening in my head.

Why had they been so keen to recapture us? What did they think we knew that made it vital to stop us?

I had absolutely no idea. All I knew was that we were still no closer to finding Mum.

There was no message waiting for us at reception and no answer when I rang Mum and Trent’s room. I had lost Trent’s mobile number with my phone.

I checked my watch. It was twenty minutes to midnight. ‘We have to get to the dress rehearsal,’ I said to Martine.

To be honest, after the day I’d had the last thing I felt like doing was trying to pretend that everything was business as usual. But I couldn’t let the girls down, and more importantly, I couldn’t let them suspect something had happened to Mum. They would insist we go to the police, and while perhaps they might be right, with Trent’s warning of crooked cops still ringing in my ears, I didn’t want to risk it.

While Martine went back to her room to dress and get a wig I washed off the white make-up. The goopy material smeared with my attempts to remove it and by the time I had achieved my aim my cheeks were red from the scrubbing. The fact that Martine had waxed my face earlier with the Duct Tape certainly didn’t help.

While Martine was gone, I used the spare key Mum had given me to access her room, holding my breath as I opened the door in case Trent had found Mum and the reason they weren’t answering the phone was because the room was a rockin’.

It was empty. Mum’s toiletries still lay in the chaotic mess of powder and open bottles they had been in when she had answered the door. I placed the lids back on the bottles and wiped up her face powder with some wet toilet paper. I didn’t want her coming home to the mess.

What if she doesn’t come home at all?

She’ll come home.

What if she doesn’t?

Stop.

You have to consider the possibility that she’s already…

Shut up.

She could be…

Shut up, shut up shutupshutupshutupshutup.

I screwed up my face, clenched my fists and took deep breaths until the moment of panic passed. Then I went through Mum’s bag until I found the CD with the performance music on it. I dug her phone out and rang Trent. His mobile was still switched off.

I had to assume that he was with Mum and that they were safe; otherwise the crazy side of me might take over.

Martine was waiting for me and we headed back downstairs and grabbed a cab to The Big Blue.

‘I’ll need help with my costume,’ Martine said as she ran off to get changed. We had made it with only 45 minutes to spare. A drag queen needed more than that to get ready.

I handed the music over and went out the back to the change rooms. The costumes had arrived earlier that day and someone had unpacked them. They hung on long dress racks, gleaming and glinting as light flashed off the squillions of sequins. Feathers floated in the breeze from the air conditioning and I had an urge to sneeze.

‘OMG,’ Ronnie said as she stalked up to me. ‘I’ve been having a coronary. Where have you been? Where’s Lorraine?’

‘Mum’s got gastro,’ I said. ‘I’ll be doing her job tonight.’

‘Well you’d better zip me up.’ Ronnie, in full prima-donna mode, turned so I could wrestle with the zip on her skin-tight dress. She started lala-ing up and down some scales, warming her voice up. I wasn’t sure how she could breathe, let alone sing in that dress.

Most drag queens mime to music, and some of our acts were like that. But Ronnie had a sweet, powerful, feminine voice, and she sang about 70 per cent of the songs. She contributed the femaleness of it to a football accident at school. I wasn’t sure if she were joking or not and hadn’t felt comfortable asking. Things had been a little strained between Ronnie and me since she’d groped my breast the previous year.

Once I had man-handled Ronnie into her costume I found Martine. She was working on her make-up. I watched as she pulled a lump off a glue stick and massaged it between the fingertips of her second fingers. She stretched it out into a thin sheath and laid it over an eyebrow.

‘What the hell?’ I said as she massaged the glue along the hair follicles.

She dipped a finger into a glass of water and smoothed down the edges before doing the same to the other eyebrow.

‘It covers the hair,’ she said. ‘Beats shaving them off.’ She picked up a hairdryer and aimed it at her face.

‘You’d shave off your eyebrows?’

‘Martyn won’t let me.’ She shrugged. ‘He needs them for his day job. Simone shaves off hers.’ She started painting on layers of foundation.

‘What are the different colours for?’ I asked as she placed a lighter colour down the sides and bridge of her nose, at the inner corner of her eyes and under her cheek bones. Using a dark pencil, she drew two straight lines down the side of her nose and around the tip.

‘I’m contouring and contrasting.’ She picked up a large brush and stippled it over her face, blending the different colours together. ‘See how my nose appears straighter and narrower?’

Another, smaller paint brush was used to draw a delicate eyebrow arching high onto her forehead. She followed it with an identical one on the other side. I wasn’t sure if my abilities lent themselves to doing what she was doing. It was art, and I had failed art.

‘Who stole my orange pen?’ Jocelyn shrieked from the other side of the room. ‘Wanda, was it you? Give it back now!’ Jocelyn rose from her chair, her fully sequined leotard showing off her rock hard buttocks as she strode towards Wanda.

Jocelyn and Wanda were the girls most likely to pass as supermodels. There was always a competitive air between the two and I’d witnessed them having a cat fight before; a combination of bitch slapping, hair pulling and name calling with the odd uppercut and hook thrown in. It was the last thing we needed thirty minutes before show time.

I raced to Jocelyn’s make-up station and spied the orange pencil lying on the floor. ‘Jocelyn, it’s here.’

She looked back at me and I waved the orange pen at her. She rolled her eyes and turned back to Wanda. ‘Soz Wan,’ she said, not sounding at all sorry.

Wanda mumbled a barely audible reply which sounded vaguely like, ‘Stupid drama queen,’ as Jocelyn stomped back to take the pencil from me.

‘Is it an eyeliner?’ I asked as I handed it over.

She coloured in her chin and cheeks with it. ‘It masks the colour of my stubble,’ she said. ‘Otherwise it appears grey through the foundation.’

Jocelyn with visible stubble? That orange pen must have been a miracle worker ‘cause I had never seen
anything
resembling stubble on Jocelyn’s flawless face.

By the time I got back, Martine was applying her eye colour. Her day make-up, while still far more complex than anything I ever wore, was subdued compared to what she was doing now. Bright colours winged their way across her lids. Then she added the black, looping it in a dramatic arch that hooked back into the outer corners of her eyes. With a fine pencil she added twirls that fanned from the corners.

‘Can you grab me the eyelashes?’ She picked up mascara and started spooning it onto her natural lashes.

It took me a few minutes to find the case that contained the many sets of lashes they would need while they were here. By the time I got back, Martine had placed some eyelash glue out to get tacky. She had taught me how to apply fake eyelashes, but where I still struggled to get them into the correct position, she applied the glue and expertly positioned them, pushing them into place with a pair of fine tweezers.

‘Time check,’ she said, turning her head from side-to-side as she examined her work.

‘Fifteen minutes.’

I went to get her first costume while she smudged and blurred sharp lines and set the make-up. By the time we got her into her dress (a racy, hot-pink number coated in feathers) and her shoes (sparkly, silver, six-inch stilettos) it was time to begin.

I hovered at the side of the stage while the girls positioned themselves for the first act. The curtain started to rise after the theme song from ‘Fame’ started and I made a mental note to talk to the sound technician about it.

Mum’s job during a show wasn’t that hard. All the hard work for her was in the choreography and rehearsing to get them to this point. I stood off to the side, ready to prompt them if they got lost. I’d seen the show so many times that I knew it off by heart. Luckily, so did the girls and apart from the initial timing issue, the dress rehearsal ran flawlessly.

‘That’s a wrap,’ I said when they’d finished. I’d always wanted to say that.

They headed back to change their clothes and make-up and I took a seat in the front row to wait for them. They wouldn’t be out for a while yet.

‘You’re right,’ a husky voice said, ‘they
are
good.’

I turned to find Billy sitting in the seat behind me. He was leaning forward so far that our faces were only inches apart. A shiver ran down my spine and I had an urge to lean forward that last few inches.

‘I thought tonight was your night off.’

‘It is. I came to see if you wanted to have a drink with me, to make up for that coffee today.’

I laughed. ‘I don’t know if you can call that stuff coffee. It’s an insult to coffee beans everywhere.’

He smiled broadly at me. Even his teeth were perfect. ‘Is that a yes?’

‘Is this instead of, or as well as tomorrow?’

‘As well as.’

‘After the day I’ve had I could really use a drink.’ And besides there were things I wanted to know. I just had to work out how to get the information out of him without him realising.

‘So apart from drinking the world’s worst coffee what else happened?’

My Mum got kidnapped, Martine and I broke into a building inhabited by some Russian goons, we got captured, escaped, jumped off the top of a building, performed as clowns on stage and now Trent’s gone missing.
Phew, I felt exhausted just thinking about it.

’Nothing much,’ I said. ‘I guess I’m a bit jet lagged.’

Martine and Ronnie walked over to us and I introduced them to Billy. ‘We’re going for a drink,’ I said. Normally I would have invited them but I wanted to be able to probe him for information. Ahhh – who was I kidding? I just wanted him all to myself.

The rest of the gang showed up from the change rooms as we were walking outside to where Billy’s bike was parked. He handed me the helmet while the girls hovered over the bike oohing and aahing. That is, I
think
they were oohing and aahing about the bike. I suspect at least a couple of them were actually looking at Billy.

He was wearing his black jeans, but instead of a black t-shirt he had on a button-up, long sleeved, navy shirt. The fabric shimmered in the light. His thick, dark-blonde hair swept up from his widow’s peak and I suddenly realised who he reminded me of. James Dean.

I put on my helmet and climbed onto the bike behind him. We didn’t go far before he pulled over again. He led me to the back of a small, cosy bar where a table for two was reserved.

‘What if I’d said no?’ I asked.

‘I would have sat here and cried into my drink.’

I laughed and took a seat opposite him, and he ordered us both a beer. I wasn’t sure how to turn the conversation in the direction I wanted it. There were so many things I wanted to know. Why had Mum been taken? Where were she and Trent? Why had he been watching the Russians?

I couldn’t very well come out and ask any of these but there was something Mum had said that was playing on my mind.

He reached over and wiped a finger down the side of my face. It came away white.

‘Face painting at Circus Circus,’ I said.

‘You have been busy.’

‘We’re not here long.’

The waitress placed the beers in front of us and I sighed and rolled my eyes while she flirted with Billy. He probably couldn’t go anywhere without someone trying to hit on him.

Just like you.

Shut up. I’m not trying to hit on him; I’m trying to get information.

It wasn’t entirely true. I was going to hit on him if I got the chance. I was kind of hoping he’d hit on me first. But before any of that, I needed some information, and I needed to find Mum.

‘Who’s Big H?’ I said as he took a sip.

He gulped his beer and started coughing. ‘Where did you hear that name?’ he asked when he’d recovered.

I took a sip. ‘I was at the Mafia Museum this afternoon and I saw his name mentioned a few times. They didn’t talk about him much though.’

I was making a wild stab in the dark and hoping that my risk paid off.

‘That’s because he wasn’t a very good Mafia Boss.’

‘He was a Mafia Boss?’

‘He inherited the job from his dad. Now Jolly Jim,
there
was a Mafia Boss.’

‘Was he jolly?’

‘The story is that he used to laugh while he was killing people.’

‘Nice,’ I said. ‘A regular Santa Claus.’

He took another sip, watching me intently over the top of his bottle. Then he put the bottle on the table and started to pick at the corner of the label. ‘Big H worked out that in Las Vegas, there was easier money to be made from legitimate business.’

‘Smart,’ I said. ‘Why go through all the hassle if you don’t have to.’

He shot me a crooked grin.

‘What’d he do?’

‘He bought the rest of the mob out of the Pink Flamingo Casino. And then he went legit.’

I blew out a big puff of air. ‘How do you know all of this?’

‘Studied it at school.’

It was such a normal answer. I hadn’t expected a normal answer from Billy. I had expected something dark and dangerous.

The waitress put another couple of bottles in front of us and I took a sip. It tasted really good going down and I was enjoying the buzz from the alcohol. ‘Does he still own it?’

‘As far as I know,’ he said. ‘School was a long time ago.’

I digested the information and thought about what I was going to do with it.

I was still thinking about it when he dropped me off at the front of the hotel, with a promise to meet me there the following afternoon.

***

I slept late the next morning, the travel and the day before having taken their toll on me. The first thing I did when I woke was ring Trent’s phone. There was no answer.

I took my time in the shower, hoping the hot water would dissolve some of my tan (it didn’t), and was still deciding what to wear when Martine knocked on my door.