Chapter Text
/1.
Vincetta is lying on her back, panting, the dull light breaking on her sweaty skin as she stares at the ugly leak on the ceiling and the lazily circling ceiling fan. The latter makes the smell of sex thick, makes her nauseate, and she feels acid in the throat.
The wet emptiness between her legs makes her shiver as she rolls on her stomach and reaches for her blouse. She kicks her panties under the bed, takes on her skirt, and combs her unkept hair with her fingers.
“Your stuff is in the drawer,” says the man from the bathroom, and Vincetta pulls the drawer of the nightstand so fast the casters clap to the rails loudly.
“It’s much less than the last time,” she says while wrinkling her nose while looking at the used condom in the bin. The queasy, sweet, fluent smell of rotting fills her senses, but she’s pretty sure she’s imagining it.
“Do you wanna kill yourself, you stupid cunt?”
Vincetta doesn’t answer; she waits until the other turns the shower on, the tubes are creaking in the walls, the showerhead seethes, and she leaves when he starts to whistle on a wrong note. With his wallet in her pocket and with the tiny bag of white dust in her palm. She feels dirty, and her headache is growing.
The night in Richmond is cold, stinky, and loud when she steps out to the street. The pavement is wet from a long forgotten rain, trash covering the concrete from a black trashbag’s torn apart corpse. And she just wants a smoke and a drink. Getting high that much, the world shutters around her, and she turns into a bodiless monster from beyond the grave.
But first she has to settle with a half package of chewing gum, which takes out the disgusting salty taste from her mouth and maybe helps her to calm down.
She’s calling Valentina from a telephone box, using her last coins as she curls the wire around her fingers while she’s waiting for the connection. The booth is cold, she pushes her forehead to the frosty glass, taking deep breaths and closing her eyes with relief when the line clicks.
“You’re calling the V&P ArtStudio, Valentina speaking. If you’re not an agent who discovered my talent, fuck off,” jabbers the woman on the other side, and Vincetta makes a wobbly, lamentable laugh.
“Val,” she whispers as she presses the heavy phenolic phone to her face. “It’s me, Vinnie.”
Valentina’s saying nothing, there’s a familiar wooden noise, the legs of a chair squeak, and a lighter clicking quickly.
“What’s up, sweetie? You sound like someone who got fucked very rough,” she says commiseratingly. “I’m in the studio. You can come here if you want.”
“No, no… I thought we could go to eat something, if you are free. You know, me, you, and Vel,” she explains while not wanting to look pathetic. At all. “I had a shitty day, and I craved something greasy. And booze. My treat.”
“I’m going to Wawa,” Valentina decides.
Vincetta wants to ask her if she’s calling Vance or picking her up somewhere, but Valentina hangs up already. Sometimes it’s useful that Valentina doesn’t think over anything and thinks everyone takes life as easily as she does. And sometimes she deranges her by not listening.
Their friendship started somehow like this seven years ago. They both were media majors, then they both had the same boyfriend, and when it turned out Valentina just shrugged and made a horrible sex joke about it. Then brought her a margarita and introduced her to the fashion major Vance.
Who’s the most beautiful man she's ever seen, and Vincetta did literally everything far beyond debauchery to get a bite from him. But the man said no, and rather they became friends. Because if she can’t get him, no one can.
She’s crouching in the phone box as she tears up the plastic bag. She puts from the powder to the thin skin between her thumb and pointing finger, presses one of her nostrils, and sniffs it quickly. It burns her nasal septum hotly; she feels the bitter aftertaste down in her throat, but it doesn’t matter. She sniffs; she is used to it, so after licking her finger, she’s counting the crisps to flag a cab.
Vincetta tries to ignore the disgusting, sticky wetness between her thighs. She can take care of that in the Wawa’s bathroom. Valentina always has a make-up bag and some wet wipes anyway.
She overpays the driver who doesn’t ask questions, doesn’t talk or judge, just takes her to Brook Road. Probably because of the coke, Vincetta gives him her number and asks him if he wants to join them.
He says no.
That’s how she was left alone in the empty parking lot. There are only a few people when she walks in like a queen, only an employee cleaning the floor next to the toilets, and he looks her up and down, a bunch of teens laughing in the booth at the corner, and there are her friends.
Valentina is speaking loudly, stirring her soup in the red paper cup, her hair is lilac, backcombed hurricane, her eyeliner is thick and perfectly sharp, her black lashes are framing her eyes behind her glasses. She has red lips, and her boobs are gushing out of her dress even though they aren’t so big. She’s tall, skinny, and knows how hot she is.
In front of her, Vance is rolling a cherry tomato on his lips; there’s a dark dust of stubble on his wide jawline, his hair is red, well combed, and he wears a light gansey with dark trousers, and Vincetta’s stomach sinks at the look.
She feels like they don't belong here. They deserve a five-star restaurant with ball dresses and suits. Luxury and panoply.
“We thought you got lost,” waves Vance to her with his fork that he got for her salad.
“‘m starving,” she announced without saying hi, and bore down to the fries that her friends had ordered for her and got cold.
The salty, oily fries make her full, explode her taste buds, and she pushes the potato into her mouth with closed eyes and rinses the whole with Valentina’s Diet Coke. She’s flinching when someone shoves her hair behind her ear; the touch doesn’t really matter, but she leans to it finally.
“If everything’s going well, we can open the exhibition next week,” babbles Valentina, holding the straw between her upper lip and nose. “Vel said he’s coming, but you have to come as well.”
“If I don’t have to work, sure,” nods her with a mouth full. “The promotion is already in my pocket. Even Berta waits for Patrick to make a mistake, and the show is mine.”
Her foot is tapping the floor, she’s pressing her sweaty palm to her knee, and she feels like she’s boiling. Or exploding.
“Have you been with Carter again?” sighs Vance. Pushing his water in front of her as Valentina’s taking her face in her hands. Dark eyes inspect her different coloured gaze, and Vincetta has to smile.
“For fuck’s sake, Vinnie, what did you do?”
“If we need to call the ambulance again, I swear–”
“I’m fine,” promises Vincetta, grabbing the wet paper cup.
Her thoughts are circling around the promotion like a lonely, frosty planet so far away from the Sun, and she can’t think about anything else except that she’s doing all of these for a shitty cooking show. This is what her efforts are worth, but if she were a man, she would be reading the news already in prime time. Or has her own talk show.
The anger festers in her slowly, but she has to gulp it back; she has to abide herself unless people call her hysterical if she opens her mouth. However, nobody likes hysterical women, and she’d lose the rest of her raison d’etre. Which is not much. Never is, but she has to catch every opportunity.
The spicy, bitter smoke of Valentina’s hard-twisted cigarette hits her, makes her cough in her coke and bite on the straw. The woman ashes on the table shamelessly and answers one of Vance’s questions behind her palm. Her dark eyes blink at her, saying something in Spanish and fixing her clothes.
“What’s with that runway chick? Doesn’t she let us in at the back?” asks Valentina, and Vincetta doesn’t have a clue what she is talking about. Her senses are full of smoke, grease, cleaning products, and the sweet scent of perfumes.
“Vel has a floozie?” vents Vincetta, and his eyes gaze flicker at her with rigid incomprehension.
Long, bony, coffee-color fingers tapping her face, she feels a hot blush on her face, but can do nothing about it, her pale skin reaction to everything immediately and annihilating. Vance swipes her bangs out of her eyes, smoothes the sweat over her brow, and he’s smiling at her as if she were a silly little girl who said something completely trivial and stupid thing.
“For the fashion show, honey,” he says slowly. “Val wants her pretty arse gettin’ in, but I already told her a thousand times I can’t help her. Are you still with us?”
The lights are too sharp, blinding her, and she feels like something fundamentally hot destroys her from inside, there are pearls of sweat on her tights and the small of her back, the hair on her wetly sticking to her nape, but she might be able to focus. If her friends stop screaming in her ears. She cannot think about anything else, but Vance got himself a filly, and she let it happen.
“How long has it been going on? Why didn’t you tell me?” she questions him, lying on her elbows. Her words were mumbled by her palms.
“Christ fuck, I can’t believe it!” cries out Vance as he drops his fork into the rest of his salad, gets up from the table, and goes around it. “Val, help me!”
While Valentina presses the stub into the box of Vincetta’s burger, Vance picks her up. Her head drops to his chest effortlessly, takes deep breaths from his spicy, tobacco scent, and tries to hold on to his arm, but her fingers are slipping on his gansey, and she gives up. She knows people are watching and stuff, can’t wait for them to leave.
The outside cold turns her stomach, Valentina’s voice is an explosion in her ears, but she doesn’t know what she’s talking about. They open the door of the fire-red Cadillac, and the smell of leather doesn’t help her dizziness as Vance throws her to the backseat. Vincetta pushes her hair out of her face as she grabs the headrest of the passenger seat. She blinks slowly and searches for Valentina’s thermos under the seats, hoping there’s coffee in it.
She never knew how her friend got a licence. Her ex-husband probably gave her permission and money, but there’s no chance she nailed the vision test. More likely, the man paid the doctor while explaining how his wife’s gonna need the licence when she has to take their kids to school. Which will never happen, because the husband left and the licence didn’t.
What did the car and the studio come from? That’s a totally different thing.
“When will you tell her, V?” Vance asks, pressing his forehead to the window when the engine roars.
“Look at her, she’s so innocent,” she babbles as looking at Vincetta from the rearview mirror. “Besides, I like us as friends. Why would I ruin it?”
“She’s an ungrateful bitch,” snorts Vance as if Vincetta couldn’t hear them. “You hear it, Vinnie? You’re gonna kill yourself, and you’re gonna fucking deserve it.”
“Trust me, babe. I’ll get this,” sings and lies down in the wide seat. She rests one of her arms on her stomach, keeps herself still with the other as she stares at the plush, beige roof of the car with burning eyes. Her own pride chokes her. “I always get it.”
Vincetta and her father are living in the suburbs, in Three Chopt, mostly due to Mr. Whittman’s military services and efforts in the war. The white rubblestone house is far too big for two people, but enough for them to live next to each other like ghosts. It was built on soldiers’ blood and the lies of history. The American flag withered on its pole, the windows are dark, the house is dumb, and just a ghost of that home, which contained her mother, too.
She’s missing the war because it took over her father, but left her mother, who at least loved her a bit. Her mother would’ve never let this happen, never let her do this with herself. Her mother would care.
Valentina has to stop the car three blocks away, because Vincetta’s father made it clear before that neither the Latina Valentina nor the black Vance are welcomed in his house, and he’s not happy about his daughter being friends with inferior races.
“Should I go inside with you?” offers Vance, partly because he’s not sure that Vincetta’s legs won't give up as soon as she gets out of the car and partly because he fears for her from something more powerful and darker.
Vincetta shakes her head; she knows well how that’d end. Instead, she opens the door slowly, gets out, and lurches as she grabs the handle at Valentina’s side until she turns off the window.
“Tomorrow?”
“Come to the studio. They’re taking a look at my pictures in the morning, and if they like ‘em, we’ll celebrate,” she smiles at her and blows a kiss from her fingertips. “Now huss. Huss! I’ll follow you slowly.”
“Val…”
“We won’t stop, just wanna make sure,” says Vance.
Make sure she doesn’t run away, make sure she’s making it to the door, or make sure they won’t hear any shots when she steps through the doorstep?
***
Alice hates Richmond at heart and deeply with its cold, dry weather and with the stinky downtown. She hates the perky river James and its lonely, arrogant curve and bunch of islands. She got a room in the Jackson district a week ago, above a fast-food restaurant near the park. The night lights and sounds are not helping her to rest. Her neighbour is a woman whom she hasn’t met yet, but she’s always on the phone and moaning at totally random times. Her flatmates usually don’t clean after themselves and forget to take out the trash, which she can forgive somehow, but they are annoyingly loud and don’t know what personal space means.
Everything is horrible in Richmond; she wants to go home to New Orleans.
Leastwise her fingers slip off from the keys, she sighs from exhaustion, even the applause and the few whistles echo in her chest. Anthonia separates her from the crowd as she’s whittling by the corner of the stage. There’s crumpled, sticky bucks in her powder-pink garter; her breasts are basically running out from her bra, which she takes off teasingly slowly while horny men yowl at her and her attention. Alice needs a cigarette.
The twingle in her temple melts the noise of the crowd, a static sound; the fact that she can work with music and gets a decent salary for it doesn’t even satisfy her enough because the behavior of men makes her stomach turn. They are all role models at home, and they might beat their wives and children half-dead sometimes, they are successful and accepted at work, then night is coming, and they turn into drooling creatures of instinct who’re putting their kids' pocket money or food allowances into girls' lingerie whose young enough to be their daughters.
When she signed the contract, Frankie asked her if she wanted to undress. She said that if she gains some weight, she can get rich with her exotic features. Her husband, Ross, helped her find a dress when she was playing on the piano, and Frankie suggested her stage name could be Aunt Jemima.
Now, she presses her back to the dirty wall of the narrow corridor, cold climbs up on her skin as she lights a cigarette, the glowing ember on the end lights her face in the dull lights, and Alice tips back her head with satisfaction and blows out the bitter smoke. She hugs herself with one arm, squeezes her tights together, and reminds herself why she came to Virginia.
A bunch of Venezuelan girls run past her, they giggle, their tiny clothes are made from glitter and lace, already missing parts, but still giving more for imagination than for eyes. There’s long tights, delicate frames, velvet skin…
“If you think they are the victims of the system, you are incorrect,” says Ross. He wears a dark red suit, his hair is ashblond, neatly cut, slicked back, an image of innocence, his smile is devastating and eerie. “Frankie and I saved them from getting beaten to death or getting turned into household machines with a basketful of pups.”
Alice shrugs, and the dull lights glow on her glasses, but she doesn’t let her feelings show on her face. This is one of her biggest weapons, and she won’t let her guard down even in front of Ross.
She herself doesn’t think marriage or having kids are necessarily bad if someone wants those, but she just is not interested in them. But if there’s any other way than selling her body out on a silver plate for freedom, she’ll find it.
And Anthonia rushes past them, holding an older man’s hand who’s wearing his tie on his forehead. He lost the buttons of his shirt somewhere, but they both blushed. The blond girl’s eyes are empty and red, and her smile is fake. Ross follows them with his gaze, and he clicks his tongue when the door of one of the private rooms shouts behind them.
“By the way, I’m here to ask if everything is fine with your room,” he said finally, sizing Alice’s breasts up.
“My neighbours are beyond endurance,” answers dryly as she tucks the stub into her pocket ashtray. “But I assume it comes with the city, so as far as the rent is tolerable, I can’t complain.”
“I’m glad. Apropos of renting–” He’s pulling out a bud of cash from his inner pocket. Alice might never get this much in her lifetime. “Here’s your weekly payment, sweetheart.”
“Twenty bucks only?” bursts out from her as she crumples the money in her hand.
“Frankie subtracted your rent,” he shrugs. “And honestly, between us, it’s still better than being on a leash, don’t you think, darling?
Alice sees red, her fingers are numb, her shoulders are tense, and her jaw is cracking as she presses her teeth together in anger, but she stays silent. Ross helped her when she needed it, but he’s not more than a privileged white man whose profits come from the trouble of different races. Because they heard somewhere, from someone who he helps, he’s an opportunity, he’s a better option than nothing.
“I want more nights,” says Alice, tilting her chin up and holding his gaze.
“Are you a virgin, am I right?”
Alice doesn’t answer; her eyes are burning, her lips are pressed to a thin line from the powerless humiliation, and when Ross silently offers an opportunity with open arms, she turns on her heels and leaves.
The noise of the street and the cold punch her drunkenly; everything is too calm, but Alie’s ears are still ringing, her head is buzzing. She crumples the bucks to her boot, and while walking, she decides the financial problems are gonna be future-Alice’s problem. For now, she has to get used to the dry air, the success-hungry, boring people, and her neighbour with the fire-red Cadillac.
The car doesn’t belong there at all. Alice hasn't seen their owner yet, but she wants to scratch the paintwork, splitting the metal until it bleeds oil and gasoline onto the asphalt. It will be a good revenge for all those late-night moans and phone calls.
She’s too tired now to fight with the world, with a part of the world that will never know her or accept her until her face is exposed. Can she succeed only with her voice and words? Probably. But with her face and name? Never. And she has enough.
If they won’t spot her here, she has to find a new bar, but in that case, Ross and Frankie will terminate her tenancy agreement, for all that she won’t be able to find a new room with this money. She’s thinking about this as heading down the stairs when she is crushing into something soft and florally powder scented. Dark hair smashes her face, and porcelain white skin in an elegant dress presses her body; she can’t breath for a moment as she grabs the handrail and holds on to the small of her back with her other hand. The other girl’s buckling dangerously. Next to them, a way too familiar voice swears in Spanish, and sharp pain burns Alice’s arm when bony arms grab her.
“Are you alright, Vinnie?” screams the other woman who burnt her and tosses on Alice. If she hadn't been holding on to the handrail, she'd have fallen down the stairs.
“What the fuck? Watch your step!” snaps the white woman, and she tries to adjust her broken heel as she can fix it only with her will. “You owe me a pair of stilettos. Not like you can afford it.”
“There’s a charity shop two blocks away,” remarks Alice with a tilted head.
Her gaze meets with cyan green and horizon blue, dark, long lashes, and perfect cateyes. There’s ethereal anger in her eyes, and Alice gets overwhelmed by this, which is not about her persona this time, but her words. Good.
They glare at each other silently; it’s a wordless duel without winners. The red lips part to speak, but the tall woman blows the smoke into Alice’s face, and the moment is over.
“Watch your mouth!” she rebukes her as she grabs the other woman’s arm and takes her down the stairs. “Don’t bother with it, my love, it doesn’t know where it belongs and what it can allow to itself.”
Alice wants to scream at her, toss her shoes after her, or stab her in the back, but she owns only this pair, and she’s better than this. She’s better than these harlots. And she cannot have a record.
***
Vincetta has a horrible day. She vomited the whole night, and she has cold sweat from the cramps in her lower belly. The wool pad chafes her tights and labia. She almost broke her neck because of Valentina’s new neighbour, but at least she can say goodbye to those hated shoes. She wants to send a bouquet to her to liberate her from bleeding heels and blisters.
Now she’s rumpling her skirt in her lap and putting up with Valentina fixing her make-up. She’s never asking, just putting the puff deeply into the powder rather than delicately setting it on the sensitive skin under her eye.
“Did you–” starts Vincetta carefully, then she stops and swallows back the nausea. Valentina puts down the puff patiently; her dark eyes are warm and receptive, which gives her the strength to ask her question. She wants to live by asking questions in the future anyway. “Did you never want to have children?”
The woman’s face turns to surprise, she blinks at her slowly before smiling, and puts the powder-box aside. She tries to search for the perfect shade of lipstick to get an excuse to do something with her hands.
“I did. Just not from Henry,” shrugs easily. “The ocean is full of fish, darling. And imagine me pregnant with kids.”
“For men it might be full…”
“No offense, Vinnie, but it’s so surreal to hear it from you,” laughs Valentina and grabs her chin as she turns her toward herself. “How many men did you spread these pretty legs to be here now, hm?”
The invisible blade, sharpened on words, ruthlessly slides into her ribs, brings out hot, keen in her eyes, and she can’t breath.
“People are still talking about your divorce,” says Vincetta as she returns the attack. It’s like water off a duck’s back for Valentina.
“And that’s how I will become famous and immortal. Now go and dazzle the peasants with the weather.”