Stilettos & Stubble (24 page)

Eventually he
spoke.  ‘I won’t state the bleeding obvious ‘cos I can see you’ve got a massive
leak out there but that can be dealt with easily enough.  It can’t just be
that
that’s upset you.’

I shook my head
and rubbed my eyes, horrified to see yet more mascara on my hand.  I could only
imagine
what I looked like!

Gulping and
stuttering, I managed to tell him the whole story.  As I put it into words the
true enormity of it hit me and I set off on another round of weeping.

Then I stood and
stormed over to get a glass.  I wanted brandy, it was good for shock and I bloody
needed it.  After a huge slug and a clumsy wipe across my mouth, I turned to
Luke and said, ‘
And
I can’t believe you walked in on me looking like
this
. 
Not exactly my usual standard, is it?’

Luke shook his
head, took in a massive lungful of air through his nose and then exhaled
through his mouth.  ‘Shut up, Percy.  I’m going to make some calls.’

And he left me
doing what I’d come to do best.  Sobbing.

*****

Half an hour later
Luke had organised for a group of workmen to come in and deal with the damage -
another favour he was owed, he told me.  Once more, I didn’t think to question
him - I was just glad to have someone taking control.

He’d also ripped
up the ruined carpet and put a call in to a friend to bring a replacement.  I
should have been down on my knees with gratitude but I was working on auto
pilot and clearly not thinking straight.

What did I
actually
do?  I went to the girls’ dressing room and gave myself a makeover.  Mad, I
know, but shock makes you do funny things.  All I could think was that I didn’t
want Luke to see me looking so positively scummy for a moment longer.

Little did I know
that this particular act would be my downfall.

Luke returned to
the office to find me attempting my impression of bright eyed and bushy tailed
- full slap in place but still in my manky dungarees.  The act of applying make
up had left me drained and with no energy left for changing my clothes.

I spotted a look cross
his face - a look I didn’t recognise - and I noticed a muscle pulsing in his
cheek.

‘Why can’t you
just be yourself, Percy?’

His words hit me
like a slap.

‘I … I don’t
understand.  What do you mean?’

He ruffled his
hair in an act of frustration and then turned to look at me.  ‘Right now your
appearance really shouldn’t be high priority but you’re always trying to be
something that you’re not.  Don’t you see it?’

‘No I’m not!’  I
said defiantly.  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘You’re just fine
the way you are, Perce.  I don’t know why you can’t see that.  Just be
you. 
I don’t care if you’ve forgotten to shave your legs, got a zit or can’t be
bothered to put make up on but you need to have the confidence to stop this
act.’

‘
Act?  Act?’ 
 I
spluttered, horrified that I’d been caught out.  ‘Oh don’t be so ridiculous! 
This
is who I am.  Take it or leave it.’  I regretted these last words the moment
they left my mouth.  I hadn’t meant to sound so harsh and certainly not to
prompt him to actually consider leaving me.

Luke looked at
me, eyes bright with anger and possibly a hint of another emotion.  ‘You can
kid yourself all you like, Perce, but I know the truth.  It’s the same with
your writing.  You’re not being honest with yourself
there
either.  You
know it’s no good but you refuse to move on.  How many times have I told you to
write about what you
know
?  To write the book that
you
would want
to read?  But, no, Persephone knows best and she just keeps on with the
pretence.  I’m getting kinda sick of it, Perce.’

Sick of it?
  That didn’t sound good.  Even in my shocked and exhausted state I
could figure that much out.  Had I been blind to the fact that he’d harboured
such deep feelings these past weeks?

Pride and
stubbornness had never been qualities I’d possessed in much measure but, for
some reason, they kicked in on that day.  I refused to be told I was being a
phoney but I also refused to be dumped
again
.  This time I’d be one step
ahead of the game.

‘Oh, you’re sick
of it, are you Luke?  Well then I think we know the answer to
that
then,
don’t we?’

I stood and
opened the door for him and then I watched him leave.

Chapter
Twenty-Four

Luke’s workers
performed miracles.  Like thieves in the night, they came in, made good and
left.

I was oblivious
to any of the noise or mayhem.  Numb.  Disconnected.  Heart-broken.

When it came to
seven o’clock, I vacuumed the newly laid carpet - barely noticing the clever join
that had been made - dusted the debris from the reception area and then cleaned
the now fixed loo.

I threw the
nearest dress I could find onto my weary body, topped up my make up and ran a comb
through my hair.  Once again, all I really wanted was to be alone - hiding under
my duvet and sulking - but the show had to go on and I wouldn’t let the girls
down.

Lady and Vi took
one look at me when they arrived and I lifted my hand to stop them commenting
on what was obviously a pretty miz face.  If anyone tried to be nice to me, I
knew I’d go to pieces.  I didn’t need people siding with me or condemning Luke
- there would be plenty of time for that and it wasn’t then.  I just needed to
get through the night.

I called Tittie
and insisted that he take over the running of the club for a few days.  I
wasn’t the perfect advertisement for front of house in my current state of mind
and I needed some time off.  He didn’t argue and I sensed he too had no fight
left in him.  He was obviously having a tough time with Annie but, when I began
to have a touch of the guilts, I figured it might do him good to get back on
the drag horse for a while.

Once I was
dressed and ready to face the evening, I went through to the girls’ changing
room and said I needed to talk to all of them.  Lubov emerged from his locked
loo, fully dressed and partly made up, a strained look about him.

‘Guys, you won’t
have noticed, because it’s all been fixed now,’ I started.  ‘We had a major
leak in reception today and one of the loos overflowed.’  My voice caught in my
throat.  I wanted to add,
‘… and someone trampled all over my heart,’
but
I didn’t.  ‘Please be careful with the toilets in future.  No wads of cotton
wool or stuff in them.  This place is a bit of an antique and we need to
remember that.’

I turned to leave
and then added, ‘By the way, I’m having a few days off.  Tittie will be back
tomorrow.  Be kind to him and make sure you don’t give him any hassles.  He
doesn’t need them right now.’

As I reached the doorway,
Lady called to me, ‘Percy, if there’s anything …?’

‘Not now, Lady,’ I
said, fighting back the tears.  ‘Thanks, but not now.’

*****

The rest of the
night felt like it was happening to someone else.  It had a dreamlike quality
as I went through the motions of greeting guests and taking their money.

But the one face
I wanted to see didn’t show.

During the quiet
times my mind was filled with snippets of conversation, questions and
recriminations.

Not being
myself?  Drop the act.  Write what you know.

If I was honest
with myself, I knew that what Luke had said made perfect sense.  The fact was,
I’d been caught out and it hurt.  I couldn’t admit to it though - my pride
wouldn’t let me.  So instead, I stuck my head in the sand and acted the wounded
one.  How dare he?

Somehow I got through
the shift.  The punters left, tipsy and on a high from the hilarity of the
acts.  The girls kissed me, mumbling soothing words, and I finally put the lock
on the door for the night.

I kicked off my
heels and made my way through to the dressing room to have a final check and
switch the lights off.

I suddenly had
the feeling I wasn’t alone.  Far from unnerving me, my spirits lifted as I
stupidly thought that maybe Luke was there again, waiting to take me in his
arms and apologise.

I looked all around
me.  No one there.  Wishful thinking on my part.

But the uneasy feeling
increased and I tentatively pushed the unlocked door to the girl’s loo.

There, in all ‘
his
’
glory, was Lubov - semi naked and with finest pair of breasts I’d ever seen in
my life.

*****

Now I know it’s
rude to stare.  I’d been taught it from a very young age.  But - A) they were
truly magnificent boobies and B) Lubov was supposed to be
drag
queen!

We both stood
frozen to the spot for what seemed like an eternity.  Lubov emitted a little
scream and grabbed a pair of tights in a poor attempt at covering ‘his’ buoyant
appendages.

I eventually
found my voice, realising that one of us had to break the spell.

‘Oh my!’  OK, it
wasn’t great and it didn’t really open the floodgates of conversation but it
was all my poor befuddled brain could come up with.

‘Percy … oh vot a
mess!  Percy, just give me vun second please.’  Lubov sounded close to breaking
down and I pulled the cubicle door closed on ‘him’ allowing ‘him’ ‘his’
privacy.

I sat at the
dressing table, fiddling with discarded wigs and various bits of padding.  I
tried to link my thoughts into a coherent stream but they kept coming back to ‘
what
the fuck?’

Eventually Lubov
emerged and sat next to me.  ‘I am a voman, Percy.  I can lie to you no
longer.’  She looked down at her hands and picked at the skin around her cuticles. 
‘Zere, it is out.  A voman.  And a very sad one.’

She then burst
into floods of noisy sobs and, with all that had gone on that day, I shamelessly
joined her.

*****

We left the club,
after grabbing four bottles of wine from the bar, hailed a cab back to my place
and travelled in companionable silence.

We knew we had
the night ahead of us to talk and we fully intended to put one another to good
use - two miserable women together could talk for a long time.

During the
journey I couldn’t help wonder why I hadn’t realised her secret before.  Why
hadn’t
anyone
?  The locked door, the androgynous look, the shapeless and
bland clothes.  And more importantly, the way she could get any straight man in
the club drooling.

It all seemed so glaringly
obvious.  But then, as they say, hindsight is a wonderful thing.  And I hadn’t
been the only one taken in by the act, so I didn’t feel
totally
stupid.

We arrived back at
the flat and I poured us both huge glasses of therapeutic wine.  I told Lubov
to make herself comfy while I went to throw some pyjamas on.  I couldn’t truly
wallow in self pity in my work gear and I needed to get fully into the couch
potato mode I intended to assume for the next few days.

When I eventually
returned to Lubov, she was already topping up her glass and wiping her nose on
a tissue to add to the growing pile beside her.

‘Percy.  I am so
sorry.’  She looked at me with red, blotchy eyes and yet she was still a stunning
specimen.  ‘I did not mean for zis to happen.’

‘Lubov.  I just
don’t understand.’  I sat next to her and slurped noisily on my wine.  ‘Why
would you do it?  Why become a drag queen?’

‘Oh, it is long
story, Percy, but please do not judge me.  I voz desperate.’  She tucked her
endlessly long legs under her and ruffled her close-cut cropped hair.  ‘Ven I
came to London, I vanted to get goot job to send money back to my family.  My
daddy is a vidower and he live viz my younger brother.  I vanted to make a
better life for zem.  I knew London voz a goot place for money.  I had hopes
and dreams.’  She stopped and smiled at me. ‘Percy, maybe
you
are ze vun
people who vill understand me.  No vun vanted me.  I voz too big.  Too clumsy. 
I vould go for vaitress jobs and zey vould laugh in my face.  I vould go for
shop jobs and ze same vould happen.’

I nodded my head,
fully empathising with her misery.  Been there, done that, got the T-shirt. 
Not yet written the book, but …

‘I voz penniless
vizin two veeks.  Zen I saw an advert for ‘Ze Gossamer Glove’ and all ze big
men who vould pretend to be ladies.  It seemed so simple.  I vould be a lady,
pretending to be a man being a lady!’

God, when you
looked at it like that, it made perfectly complicated sense.  ‘Go Lubov!’ I voiced
to myself.  If I could hold a note, execute a dance move or had any comic
timing, I might have given that career path some thought myself.

‘But I did not
expect to make friends, Percy.  Goot, kind peoples who care for vun annuzer. 
It voz hard to keep my secret and it voz hard to be alvays keeping my distance.’

I took her hand
and stroked it.  She’d felt so alienated and none of us had seen it.  All she
wanted was to earn a living and to help her dad.  What was so wrong with that?

‘Please do not
hate me, Percy, but I also did not expect to fall in love.  I voz not looking
for a romance.’

Wow!  The plot
thickened.  Suddenly my own misery took a back seat and I waited for the next
instalment.

‘You may vant to
ask me to leave ven you hear dis, Percy.  But … I love your daddy.’

*****

How many shocks
was my poor old heart meant to take that day?

I sat in
disbelief - I closed my eyes, opened and stretched them wide and then asked
myself if, in my inner turmoil, I was experiencing some sort of odd, out of
body experience.

‘Please say
somesing, Percy.’  I was suddenly aware of Lubov talking again.

I shook my head vigorously
and downed the rest of my glass in one.  I then filled Lubov’s and said, ‘Carry
on.  I need to know more.’

She looked
relieved that I hadn’t opened the door and thrown her out and she chewed on the
side of her mouth before continuing.  ‘Your daddy guessed vot I voz doing.   He
is such clever man.  Ve became friends.  My only friend in zis country who knew
my secret.  And zen ve became close.’  She looked at me for my reaction but
when still none came she carried on with her story.  ‘Your daddy is such a goot
man.  He makes me laugh, he treats me like a lady but …’  She stopped and the
tears began to flow again.  ‘… zis morning he tells me zat ve must stop.  He is
too old for me, he says.  I am
fifty-four
, Percy - not zum young girl. 
Zis is just a number to me.’  She blew her nose noisily.  ‘Lubov’s heart is
broken.’

For the second
time that night, the only words to come from my mouth were, ‘Oh my!’

We sat in silence
for a while.  I had a lot to digest and it was gradually beginning to sink in. 
My father had fallen for a drag queen who wasn’t a drag queen and now he was
being attacked by guilt and using the ‘age card’.  I could just imagine how
confused he must be feeling and my heart ached for both of them.

I put my head in
my hands, rubbing my eyes with my palms.  A headache was beginning to form and
I pressed at my temples, stupidly reaching forward for my glass again.

‘Shit!  That’s
some story, Lubov.’

She looked at me
and nodded.  ‘Do you hate me?’ she asked quietly.

‘No, don’t be so
silly.  You can’t help who you fall in love with and my father was single -
it’s not as if you broke up a happy marriage, is it?  To be perfectly honest,
I’m a bit cross with Daddy.  He shouldn’t be messing you about like this.’

‘Oh, Percy, sank
you!  I am so pleased to know I can be your friend.  I voz so vorried.’

I lifted my glass
and tapped it against hers.  ‘A toast to two big girls and their stupid men. 
If there’s anything I can do to make my father see sense, I’ll try.  I
promise.’