Killer Queen: A Painted Faces Novel (19 page)

She set a sandwich and some tea in front of me, but
I had no appetite. Still, I could see that she was worried, so I mustered up
the will to take a bite. She didn’t say anything more, and I was grateful. I
could feel her unanswered questions hanging in the air, though, and they
stifled me.

Then a sudden need to get it all out hit me. So,
with my back turned away from her, I started to speak. Fred sat close by the
whole time, silently listening.

I told her about how after my mother died, I sought
comfort in her things. How it had developed into a love of dressing up and
becoming a woman. Becoming a beautiful being like she was. I told her how it
was my secret and how Dad would never approve if he found out. I told her how
my Dad’s friend Kelvin came into the house one day while I was alone and
discovered my secret, how he began blackmailing me in order to keep it to
himself.

Somewhere along the way, I started crying again, and
Fred came and wrapped her arms around me, cocooning me with her openness and
understanding.

I told her how Kelvin destroyed me, stole my
innocence, and turned something I’d loved into something I felt ashamed of. I
told her that he never let me be a girl with him, always a boy. I told her that
now every time I become a woman on the stage, I’m reclaiming a little piece of
myself that he tried to ruin. I told her that when my father discovered what
Kelvin had been doing, he’d beaten him so badly he’d almost killed him, and
that afterward I’d run away to Europe and hadn’t stopped wandering from place
to place since.

“Nicholas,” she murmured, holding me tight, her
voice full of empathy.

I was on a roll, and the information just kept on
spewing forth. “I ran away to France first, and for a year I did nothing but
drink and take drugs and try to forget who I was. Then I pulled myself together
and started experimenting with shows in tiny venues, and the whole thing grew
from there. I created the Vivica Blue persona, and I haven't stopped travelling
and performing since. I get that some men want to dress up as women because
they want to be a woman. I don't want to be a woman, though, at least not when
I'm off the stage.

“I perform for the catharsis, because it's freeing.
It's the opposite of what Kelvin wanted me to be, so it's also a strange sort
of protest. Every time I put on a dress, I'm sticking two fingers up at what he
did to me. In the same way that an actor needs to become another person when
they act, I need to become another person when I sing. And now, when I'm
Nicholas, I can truly reclaim myself when I can get lost in a woman like you
because you could never be anything like
him
. I can be a man with you,
strong, in control, not a scared little boy. So, this is me, darling, a
complete and total contradiction. A fucking mess.” I was just about suffocating
in my own self-pity, but I couldn’t seem to help it.

“A beautiful mess,” Fred added.

“But a mess nonetheless.” I frowned.

“Hey, that rhymed.” She tried to make a joke, but I
wasn’t feeling the humour.

“It did, didn't it?” My voice was flat, my stomach
twisting. Now she knew who I was; all of my flaws were there for her to see,
and I felt terrible. In fact, I wished I hadn’t said anything. I didn’t want
her pity, and her beautiful eyes were simply full of it.

 “I don't think I'll ever be the man you deserve,
Freda,” I said sadly.

“You already are,” she told me, disagreeing.

“I'm not. I have issues a mile long. Issues that
might sink into the recesses, but never quite go away.”

She sat up straighter and looked me dead in the eye.
“The fact that you think you're not good enough just shows how good you are,
Nicholas. Do you know that you're the first man who's ever looked at me and
actually
seen
me? When you're fat your whole life, you get fairly used
to people looking through you, dismissing you simply because you don't fit with
their aesthetic ideals. So I either get men looking through me or men looking
at me because they think I'll have low self-esteem and will be easy to
manipulate. You didn't do any of that. You made me feel like a woman, a woman
worth getting to know.”

“You're not fat, Freda,” I told her, frowning again.

“Maybe not to you, because your beauty standard is
different from the norm. But put me standing next to someone like Nora in a
nightclub, and I might as well be a part of the furniture. So, don't you see,
you are the man I deserve. You saw me, changed my life, made it better, and I'm
completely fucking in love with you.”

I stared at her, open-mouthed, unsure whether I’d
just heard her correctly. Time moved slow, like molasses. After a long stretch
of silence, I frowned at her. “Oh, Freda, honey, no.”

I knew her words couldn’t possibly be true. I didn’t
even love myself, so I knew it was impossible that someone else might. It was
sympathy she was feeling and mistaking for love. And really, I feared the idea
of her loving me. I didn’t want the responsibility of keeping her precious
heart safe. I never knew when I was going to go off the deep end, and I cared
too much for Fred to let her invest her emotions in someone who couldn’t be
trusted.

 “You don't love me,” I told her firmly with a hint
of desperation. “I'm not the person you should love. I'll let you down.”

Her face went bright red, and she swallowed visibly.
“I – I didn't mean that,” she mumbled, trying to take it back.

I studied her for a long moment, my gaze narrowed.
“You didn't mean it.”

“Yeah, I, um, I was trying to make you feel better.”

Her response caused my gut to sink and my temper to
rise. I couldn’t believe she’d say something like that just to make me feel
better. “By lying and telling me that you're in love with me?”

“It just came out,” she replied meekly.

I sighed and ran a hand through my hair. This entire
conversation had me all twisted up inside, and I needed distance. “Okay. This
has been a long day. I tell you what, you take the night off. I'll do the show
by myself. You can go and see the sights or something.”

She sat there for a minute, looking at me like she
couldn’t figure me out. Then she got up from the bed and began searching for
her handbag.

 “I'm going to go for a walk,” she said quietly. I
nodded, and a moment later she had slipped on her shoes, opened the door, and
was gone. I flopped back on the bed, my entire body feeling as though it was in
physical pain. I wished with all my might we could rewind the clock and forget
this whole day ever happened.

I couldn’t do that, though. And the fact that Fred
knew all my shameful secrets was killing me. I had no idea what she thought,
but if she felt the need to tell me she loved me just to make me feel better,
then I didn’t know if I cared anymore. I mean, pretending you loved someone was
cruel.

At least, that was the way it felt to me. Perhaps
because nobody had ever really loved me other than my mother, it meant that
much more to me. I got up from the bed and called down to room service for a
bottle of wine. I needed to get drunk.

Before I knew it, I was running late, and the
manager from the venue where I was performing was calling my phone nonstop,
asking where I was. I finally found my way there and managed to dress myself
for the show. My performance that night was sloppy, to say the least. There was
no cheeky interaction with the audience, no upbeat numbers. I spent most of my
set sitting by the piano and singing dark, depressing songs about lost loves
and broken hearts. I was angry. Angry for allowing myself to get as close to
Fred as I did. Angry at Fred for pretending to love me when she didn’t. Angry
that I was never going to be worthy of the love of another.

I was also drunk off my face on wine. A glass sat in
front of me on top of the piano, and I was knocking it back all through my
performance. I was surprised nobody had come and taken me off the stage by that
point, because I was clearly depressing everyone. I’d been on for about thirty
minutes when my eyes met a pair of golden ones. Fred was standing at the very
back of the club, watching me. Her hair was windswept, and her clothing looked
like it had been thrown on haphazardly.

Her presence added fuel to the fire of my anger, and
I decided right there and then that I was going to push her away. I would
rather be alone than feel like this, like someone had twisted up all my
insides. As I came to a decision as to what song I was going to play next, I
brought my mouth to the microphone to address the audience. Really, though, I
was only addressing her.

“This next song is for someone who told me they
loved me today. It's called ‘I Don't Care Much,’ from
Cabaret
.”

I played messily, slamming my fingers furiously into
the piano keys, trying to expel all of the emotion and self-hatred that was
inside. I spat out the lyrics and brought my gaze to hers, hoping she felt
every word of what I was saying to her. I hadn’t even finished the song before
tears began to fill her eyes and she stormed out of the club. I swallowed down
a lump and continued playing. When I was done, I picked up what was left of my
wine, chugged it back, and stumbled off the stage to the bar.

By the time I’d worked half my way through a bottle
of whiskey, I’d already blacked out. When I woke up, I was lying on a bench in
a park, alone. It was the early hours of the morning, and I looked down at
myself, relieved to find I’d at least changed out of my stage clothes at some
point during the previous night. My head pounded, and it only took a minute for
all my memories of what I’d done to Fred to come rolling back.

I was filled with regret.

I had yet again fallen prey to the demon of
self-sabotage that seemed to lurk in the shadows of my life. After I’d sung
that song to her, I didn’t think Fred would want to speak to me ever again. I
had ruined everything. Digging in my pocket, I pulled out my phone and tried to
call her, but it went straight to voicemail. I got up from the bench and left
the park, heading for the hotel. When I got there, though, I discovered all of
her things were gone.

I called up reception to see if they’d heard from
her and was told that she’d checked out.

She’d gone home.

I tried her phone again, but still there was no
answer. I even resorted to calling Nora. It was clear that Fred had filled her
in on what had happened, because she was a total bitch to me on the phone.

This was a disaster, and it was all my fault. I
couldn’t believe how happy I was only a day ago and how miserable I was now.
And it suddenly dawned on me that I was alone again.

Back in the hotel room, I opened up the mini bar and
had at it.

August 31st, 2012.

Soundtrack:
“Fall to Pieces” by Velvet Revolver

A
number of weeks had passed since I’d laid eyes on Fred. I knew she was actively
avoiding me, because we lived right next door to one another and yet I didn’t
have a single sighting. I’d spent two weeks doing a good job of trying to
destroy my liver when Phil had to step in and talk some sense into me again.

And when I say “talk sense,” I mean he waltzed right
into my dressing room at The Glamour Patch one night and gave me a good, hard
slap across the face. You see, gay blokes can do these sorts of things and make
it seem like a fit of passion. If it were any other man, I’d have knocked his
block off, especially since I had a few shots of Jack Daniels in me.

“What the fuck, Phil?” I spat, working my jaw.

“Where’s Fred been these past two weeks, huh? You
return from Edinburgh looking like somebody pissed in your cornflakes, and now
you’re back on the booze full throttle. You need to sort your shit out,
Nicholas. I mean it.”

“Oh, piss off,” I slurred, and picked up the glass
of whiskey I was currently working my way through. Phil snatched it right out
of my hand before it even had the chance to touch my lips.

“Don’t you dare tell me to piss off! After
everything I’ve done for you, after all the progress we made, you’re just going
to throw it all away? What the hell happened over in Scotland?” He stood before
me, one hand on his hip, waiting for an answer.

A trickle of remorse sprang forth. He was right.
He’d spent three weeks of his life pulling me back from the brink, counselling
me, listening to my every woe. If anything, Phil deserved for me not to throw
all that work back in his face. Fuck, he deserved a bloody medal.

So I told him everything, every last detail of what
happened with Fred. He came and took the seat beside mine, listening quietly
all the while. And when I was done, he threw his eyes to the heavens and shook
his head.

“My God, I don’t know which one of you is worse,” he
muttered, and I stared at him, waiting for more. “That girl wasn’t pretending
when she told you she loved you, Nicholas. She took it back because of the way
you responded. She thought her feelings were unreciprocated.”

“That’s not true,” I said, frowning hard.

“It’s as true as the fact that you love her, too,”
he shot back casually, one eyebrow raised.