When it became clear no one would, she wandered around to the other side of the building, where there was a small side alley. There, standing between large plastic-wrapped crates of drink deliveries, was a woman. She looked somewhat disheveled in a pair of battered Ugg boots and denim cutoff shorts, a pale pink T-shirt with a diamanté heart missing a few of its jewels at the center. Her face, however, was another story. It was skillfully made-up, her skin powdered an ivory white, red glittery lips like bejeweled ruby slippers, and huge sweeping eyelashes with two red feathers at the corner of each eye. On her head was a nude stocking the same color as her skin. She looked like a painted china doll whose hair had not yet been attached. Lucky advanced tentatively toward her. The woman watched her approach warily.
“Can I ’elp you?”
“Um…I don’t know. I’m looking for someone.”
The woman raised her penciled eyebrow.
“You looking to dance?”
Lucky shook her head. The woman exhaled a plume of smoke.
“Shame.”
“A guy who does security here,” Lucky clarified. “At least, I think he does.”
The woman took a drag of her cigarette, which was scarred red with lipstick at the tip. She stared at Lucky wordlessly, then clearly decided she was worth answering.
“So what’s he look like? The chap you’re looking for.”
Lucky closed her eyes and tried to conjure the image of the man she’d seen on Friday night. She saw a figure like a mountain, colossal, eclipsing the lights above them.
“Big,” she said.
The woman laughed to herself.
“You’d be looking for BFG. You’re lucky he comes in early. You want me to get him for you?”
“If you could, yeah.”
But she made no suggestion of leaving, so Lucky simply waited. The woman carried on smoking, eyes flicking up and down Lucky appraisingly. Lucky looked at her feet awkwardly. What was she doing here? What did she think she was going to find? She was just killing time, she supposed. Killing time instead of killing herself. She shook the thought away immediately. What was wrong with her? Of course she wasn’t going to kill herself. She was just hungover.
“You a model?” the woman asked eventually. “You look like one.”
Lucky thought about this.
“Used to be.”
“You’re so thin,” said the woman matter-of-factly.
Lucky nodded. There was nothing much to say to this. She was.
“You got anorexia? All you models do, right? Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels. Didn’t Kate Moss say that?” She sniffed. “The cow.”
“It’s a genetics thing,” said Lucky, giving the answer she always gave. “And Kate Moss did say that, but she was quoting someone else.”
“Is that right?”
The woman looked at her, sniffed again, and spat between her feet.
“Also, I don’t eat much, and I do a lot of drugs,” said Lucky. “So there’s that.”
The woman threw her head back and cackled with delight. Lucky smiled shyly.
“I’d have died to be a model, growing up,” said the woman.
Lucky smiled ruefully.
“You didn’t miss much.”
Another raise of the arched eyebrow.
“Missed out on looking like you; I wouldn’t have minded that.”
Lucky squirmed. All her life she’d hated compliments. Since other women often resented her on sight, she did her best to make herself nonthreatening. This was usually by not saying much or finding a way to make fun of herself. Amazingly, the only people she had never worried about being jealous of her looks were her sisters. They loved her too much to hold it against her.
“You have better boobs,” Lucky offered.
The dancer cackled again.
“That’s true. Bet you can’t do this.”
She raised her pink T-shirt to reveal two pert, creamy breasts. The nipples had been painted a scarlet red, like bull’s-eyes, and her stomach was round and soft. She began whistling the tune to “We Will Rock You” through her teeth while lifting one breast at a time. Her left breast twitched, then right until—on rock you—both jumped up and down in unison. Lucky’s mouth hung slightly open.
“Nope,” she said, once the woman had completed several rounds of the chorus. “Can’t do that.”
The dancer preened, clearly pleased with herself.
“Didn’t think so. All right, I’ll go get BFG for you, hun.”
