Phoenyx: Flesh & Fire (5 page)

I flew onto the pavement, hair and bag flying behind me, and was dimly aware of hissing curses floating after me from a dirty evil mouth, “My shin. Fucking bitch.”

I tripped off the pavement and into the middle of the road, not knowing if the wounded beast was following me or not, but reasoning that being out in the open was safer than running along the edges. The doors of the Klub drew nearer, and then, gloriously, like the final symbol of salvation, they opened – and I saw a familiar figure emerge onto the road, a smoking cigarette in his hand.

I ran all the way up to Bruno and threw myself around his neck, catching him totally by surprise.

“Whoa, whoa. Phoenyx, dear, you’re a bit later than expected, but you didn’t have to bust a gut, y’know. There’s still plenty of time yet.”

I pushed my face into his neck, clutching him tight as the adrenaline began to ebb out of me. The shakes and the shudders hit me like a wave of hypothermia and I felt cold, numb and empty. I’d never been so scared in all my life.

“God, girl. What’s the matter?”

I pointed dumbly behind me. He looked out, following my finger.

“What?”

“Someone...”

“
Someone
?”

“Said. Said he’d. He’d. Slit my...my...”

No, I couldn’t face it, could not bring myself to own up to the moment when I’d almost allowed myself to become like the poor girls in the grim but cautionary tales my mother had always told me before I went to sleep. Her book of fairy tales was old and very dark, its pages warped with age, and held illustrations guaranteed to terrify anyone into submission, let alone impressionable convent school girls. Children who cried
Wolf
eventually got eaten by one. Little Red Riding Hood got eaten alive by the Big Bad Wolf, too – no traditional happy ending there, either. Moral: young ladies shouldn’t go with strange men. Or
wolves
. There was a lot of devouring of innocent souls in my early childhood, and some of my earliest recollections of bad dreams were of being eaten alive by some...
thing
. Two-legged, or four-legged, I could never be sure. Perhaps some combination of the two, an amalgam of reality and fantasy, truth and metaphor, harsh warnings burned and branded into my brain with the diplomacy of an inquisitor’s red-hot poker.

It was probably no surprise that my most prominent and lingering memory of the bastard in the alley had been his gleaming teeth, as pale and deadly as the knife he carried, sharper and crueler than a bayonet. I feared teeth more than I feared knives, for I had seen very little of knives in my past; however, I had seen the teeth of the family dogs do horrible things to innocent rabbits, hares, rats, birds and other creatures. And Dear Dog was simply the cosseted cousin of Bad Wolf, was he not?

“Aw, no. Come inside, now.” Bruno clamped his cigarette between his teeth and guided me into the Klub, banging the doors behind us. He drew me in behind the bar and into the back rooms, under bright clear blue lights which hurt my eyes after so long outside in the dark.

“Someone jumped you, right?” he said, looking into my face.

I nodded.

“Jesus,” Bruno groaned, “don’t go walking around here at night, Phoenyx. Get a lift or a bus, a taxi. It’s not safe.”

“Don’t have any money,” I muttered.

“Dammit, you’re an employee here, aren’t you? Why didn’t you ask for an advance?”

“I didn’t know I could,” I moaned. “I’ve never had a real job before. And besides, I haven’t done any work for you yet.”

He brushed a wet, straggly clump of hair back from my face. “You’re on the books. Have been since your audition for me. Remember what I said then: ‘D’you want a job?’”

Olivia appeared just then from the changing room, wearing a choker and high heels and nothing else, apart from a gold chain around her hips. Even the sight of her wonderful naked physique at that moment didn’t do much to lift my soggy spirits. Her smile dissolved as she looked me up and down. If I thought I’d looked bad when I left the apartment, I couldn’t imagine what I was like now. She threw her hands up to her mouth.

“Darling, what’s the matter? You look awful.”

She was only concerned about me, and speaking the truth, but it was the last thing I needed to be told at that moment. I couldn’t hold back any longer, and the tears just burst out of me.

Bruno turned to Olivia. “I’ll let Mel know we may have to adjust the running order,” he said. “See if you can calm her down – she’s had a fright, but I think that’s all. Okay?”

“Sure,” Olivia said, and drew me inside the changing room. A couple of the other women were in the middle of doing make-up and trying on costumes – I recognized Gloria and Petra. They greeted me and I managed a sad wave in reply as Olivia led me over to a chair and sat me down. She pulled a towel out of a laundry basket and put it around my shoulders, then knelt down in front of me and took my hand in hers.

“What was it?” she asked, her big brown eyes full of concern.

“Someone grabbed me, that’s all,” I sniffed. “I panicked. I kicked, screamed, ran away. I was stupid. Don’t worry about it, I’ll be fine.”

“Darling, you can’t go out on stage in that state. You’re whiter than a sheet and shivering like jelly. I won’t let you.”

“No,” I squeaked, my throat tight and clogged with tears. “I want to. I
need
to. I’ve waited so long for this. I can’t let you down now.”

“You’re not letting anyone down,” she said. “I’ll be fine. You can make your début some other night, when you’re feeling much better.”

I wiped my eyes. “I
will
feel much better, if I’m with
you
,” I whispered. “I remember what you said back in the shop. How you couldn’t wait.”

I wondered if she heard what I said, and then she leant in and hugged me tight, pushing her face into my neck.

“Oh, darling, that’s so sweet. But are you sure? Really sure?”

“You’re beautiful and wonderful,” I sobbed, not caring who else could hear me now. “You make me feel alive. I think I...” I nearly said those ridiculous words
I love you
, but quickly changed that to: “I don’t know what I think. But it’s amazing, whatever it is.”

She drew back to look me in the eye, and wiped my cheeks. Then pressed her mouth to mine, sucking me deep with a long satisfied purr of pleasure.

She let me go and stood up, hands on her hips, and I ran my eyes up and down that wonderful and sexy form of hers.

“I think so too, darling,” she whispered, and held out her hand. I took it and she drew me up to my feet. “Come with me and we’ll get your make-up done. We’ll just have enough time.”

We walked past Gloria and Petra to the end of the long dresser, which was covered in powders and sticks and bottles, wigs, and other accessories. It was a huge and massive piece of furniture, ornate and edged in gilt with beautiful Art Nouveau flowers and plants inscribed into the surfaces, and it must have been there since the Klub first opened. I stared in wonder into the antique glass, wondering how many generations of beautiful women must have looked into that surface over the years. Women who were around when jazz was a new sound – who knew nothing of the horrors to come in World War II – throughout the grey paranoia of the 1950s, the trippy Technicolor revolutions of the 60s, and now this – me, in my own small way, adding to that fifty year-history. Olivia took my hand and drew me down onto a velvet cushioned stool. At the far end of the dressing area lurked Svetlana, wiggling herself into another tightly-fitting leather outfit which was due to be peeled off by degrees during the next act.

The queen of the Kitty Klub stage back then was Gloria. She had a body like an Olympic athlete and the word was that she had once represented her college in running or swimming or something. Her star act was an American cheerleader routine, in full red, white and blue livery, which of course, went down a storm in what was then Free West Berlin, as distinct from the repressed Eastern half of the city. She always did it to the old Van Morrison song which bore her name. She had the unusual trick of sometimes leaving on part of her costume – whether her top (with her heavy natural tits swinging free out the front) or her skirt (minus panties, of course, resulting in many high kicks, splits or handstands to show off her carefully-shaved vagina, itself an uncommon sight in those naturally hairy days) and her routine left me, and most of the audience, breathless. She had incredible fitness and agility, beautifully toned and sculpted thighs and abdomen and she never was still for even half a second. Once she was sufficiently naked she got the crowd to join in with the music, chanting out the letters which spelled her name, and she always ended up in an incredible one hundred and eighty-degree splits position, head back and pigtails bouncing in ecstasy behind her.

Petra was everyone’s favorite little tramp. She made love to herself every night with passion and cheek, a deadly blend of fire and earth. She left them breathless. Small and petite, she was wholly natural and had never succumbed to cosmetic surgery. Her specialty was in retro costumes, the Victorian and 1920s eras in particular, and she was the perfect star in a venue whose inner furnishings had changed little in fifty years. Being small in the chest made her Flapper act look even more authentic, and when she was out there you could almost believe yourself decades back in time. She was a magnificent contrast to the brash and confident Gloria. Petra acted the shy coquette, forever fluttering behind fans and parasols, teasing but rarely showing until she was down to her high heels and nothing else – and only then did she start to act the sly, knowing the little cock tease that she really was, coaxing the audience into cheering for her to reveal just a little more each time. In some ways, her measured and usually brief revelations were more exhilarating than Gloria’s, being much more in the style of patience rewarded, the pay-off for undivided attention; the sight of her dark velvety bush parted by lush pink labia the treat for those half-rabid wolf dogs, who would traditionally howl in appreciation as she left their vision, shaking her pretty round little ass as she went.

Once I saw her come out fully naked apart from her trademark hat and velvet choker, wrapped in a long black feather boa. She worked and twirled that thing for six whole minutes and revealed little more than a cheeky flash of nipple during the whole show, but there was not one single pair of eyes in the whole house which was not glued to her every movement. Beers got flat and cigarettes burned out until she plopped herself down on her stool and crossed her legs. As if suddenly tiring of the eternal tease, she flung the boa aside, stuck out her chest and threw her legs wide apart, hands on her knees, lapping up the boisterous appreciation as she ran her tongue over her dirty little smirk while she sat there quite still, exposing everything she had, her dark bush revealing its beautiful secrets at last. It was wonderful theatre, more than mere live pornography – it was a beautiful demonstration of live tension and release, of psychology, and customer satisfaction. It was as if even she couldn’t bear to hold back any longer either.

And Svetlana was our resident S & M queen, an ex-Soviet import although the story of her arrival in the West had never been disclosed. An Amazonian six foot tall, and built like the back of a Greyhound coach, the rest of us had always assumed that she once trained for the USSR Olympic shot-putt or javelin team and had defected by kidnapping her guards and keeping them in a headlock until they capitulated. Pushing forty eight inches around the bust and squeezing them into a G cup, her assets were as formidable as her attitude, which could best be described as ‘frosty’. Her nipples, when erect, looked like 7.62mm bullets and her bullwhip technique was almost as lethal.

She generally kept herself to herself and only showed up at the Klub when she had a performance, and left straight away after it as well, although there were times I had seen her hang around long enough to order a couple of shots at the bar. She spoke with a gruff, bearish edge to her voice and acted as if she’d always been used to getting her own way. Bruno’s assumption was that she had once been an officer in the KGB, in charge of interrogations, and everybody else said that he had hired her because he had been too scared to turn her down.

“So another chapter opens in the ‘Story of O’, huh,” Gloria murmured aside as Olivia sat me down and began the difficult job of making me look reasonably presentable.

“Don’t be bitchy, darling,” Olivia sang back in reply. “This one needs a little bit of TLC.”

“Is that what it’s called now?” Petra snuffled.

“I’m sorry,” I said, hoping to put an end to the innuendos and the cross-talk which I didn’t understand. “I didn’t mean to sleep so late. It was my fault, or else I would have been here earlier.”

“There’s only one safe route into the Red Quarter, dear,” Petra said as Olivia pulled my hair back with pins and started sponging my face. “And that’s in the back way.”

“I’ve heard that’s a safe route for other things as well,” Gloria sniggered.

“Whereabouts d’you live?” Petra asked me, ignoring Gloria’s attempt at lowering the tone.

“Wilhelmsgasse,” I said. “The big block at the far end.”

“Hmm, kind of on the edge then. Look, if you can afford it – get a cab next time. It’s worth the money. You can’t buy a new throat once some idiot’s decided to slash it.”

That filled me with no confidence at all. “Is it really that bad?” I gasped, “I hoped that was just a one-off.”

“Nah,” Gloria said, “I’ve never had a moment’s trouble in all the years I’ve come here. You had a stroke of bad luck, honey. But walking around by yourself at night
anywhere
isn’t the best idea, really.”

“You could always come around to my place first,” Olivia suggested quietly. “These parts are fine in daylight and most evenings. But weekends? That’s when the crazies seem to come out. It’s like wolves running around under a full moon. Saturday night seems to be nutcase night.”

“It was a wolf that grabbed me,” I said. “Well, that’s what my mother used to call them. You know –
those
kinds of guys.”

“You’re quite alright in here,” Petra said, “we’re the only venue in the Red Quarter that isn’t hardcore and still clings to the classic, more burlesque style of show. Hell, it’s only in the last ten years that they started going bottomless here.”