Nine Ten Begin Again: A Grasshopper Lawns affair (6 page)

He dropped gracefully onto her sofa and smiled sardonically up at her. ‘You did say you were bored.’

‘Well—if I trust anyone, I trust you. I definitely won’t be the only woman there?’

‘Definately,’ he promised. ‘I checked. We’ll get there about ten, plan to leave before midnight. Even the sedate places start getting a little too lively for a visitor by then. I promise you I’ll keep you well away from anything shocking, Miss Prim.’ There was definitely a challenge in his blue eyes, and she smiled involuntarily. He smiled back. ‘I’ll collect you around eight, okay?’

‘For ten? I don’t think I’d better eat first,’ she said doubtfully. ‘The outfit is pretty tight as it is. What time is your friend expecting us, and why aren’t we going to Gillie Campbell? I like her.’

‘Gillie doesn’t know about the leather side of my life, and anyway, it’s quite specialized. I told Angie to expect us around half past eight,’ he told her back as she switched the kettle off, and she spun around, astonished.

‘However long does a makeover take? Oh, but I suppose you get made-up too.’

‘No.’ He looked, for once, slightly sheepish. ‘I prefer a half-hood. But don’t tell Angie that.’

~~~

Close on an hour had passed, and Angie still hadn’t allowed her to see her reflection. She stood cautiously, then took a careful step, half-convinced she would fall over. The boots were alarmingly high, platform-soled, and flared out above the knee, and she glanced doubtfully at Angie, who nodded, unsmiling. She wasn’t particularly friendly and hadn’t yet missed a chance to prick at Edge’s confidence, but Donald had said she was excellent at her job.

‘You need them, hen. Pulls your bottom into shape, tightens up your whole leg. Without them, you’re a pudding in a leather bag. With them, you pass for sexy. You can walk around in a minute, practice your stalk. Now, your daggers go
here
,’ she bent to slot one into a sheath on the right boot, ‘
here
—give me your right arm—into the forearm sheath, like so. Twist your hand back to shoot it free, see? Other arm.’

Edge obediently held out her other arm, and glanced across at Donald who was standing watching, arms crossed across his chest. She had to fight down the urge to say she’d changed her mind, that she wasn’t enjoying herself at all and was becoming increasingly anxious. He was in black leather from head to foot, including a peaked leather cap, alarmingly remote and unfamiliar. The minute they got out of here she’d apologise, say she’d changed her mind, insist on reimbursing him for Angie’s time and hope their friendship survived this. He was such a very good friend; if he would only talk, laugh, take off that hideous jacket!

‘
Daggers
,’ she repeated in a half-whisper, and Angie shot her a glance.

‘Blunted tips, you cannae cut yourself, but the idea is that you are declaring you’re no cowed bitch. Even if you wear the leash, it will look like Mac is holding it for their protection, not yours. The whole leather thing is power. Image is
everything
. You look at someone, you know exactly what to expect. The way I’ve made you up, you’re your own person, subservient to no-one, remember that. No nervous whispers about daggers, not if you are dressing like this. You’re not representing yourself, you’re representing a type. We choose, and no man says otherwise. Mac gave me his word you won’t let us down. These are my personal daggers, but I usually wear red. They look good with black, though, I may try that sometime.’ Angie tried once again to make eye-contact with Donald, who looked away. ‘Well, hen, I guess you can look now. Walk down the passage, there’s a full-length mirror on the door. You can watch yourself.’

The boots forced her to adopt a very stiff and precise walk, but the effect was astonishing as she approached her reflection. She’d worn the outfit twice before and knew it exaggerated her trim figure into unfamiliar curves, but the woman in the mirror was now also impossibly long-legged and predatory. The wig was heavy black hair cut in the Cleopatra style. A very full floor-length black and gold cape was clipped to her shoulders, and the extraordinary boots and daggers made her a total stranger.

Even in close-up her reflection was completely alien. Angie had quite literally sprayed on her makeup, using a miniature spray-gun powered by a tiny chugging compressor. The effect was eerie, leaving her face smoothed and very nearly line-free. Heavy kohl around her eyes, and an exaggerated dark lip-line filled in with a high-gloss scarlet, concealed more than accentuated her features. He’d been right, not even Vivian would know her, and she felt very slightly better.

‘I look like a hooker,’ she remarked, turning to where Angie and Donald stood together watching her, and he smiled for the first time since their arrival.

‘An extremely expensive and accomplished one. Nice, Angie. You never cease to amaze me.’

Angie unbent slightly. ‘You’ve got that collar and lead safely in the inside pocket of the cloak,’ she reminded Edge and put her head on one side. ‘Look arrogant, don’t smile, and push your chest out. Your boobs are good,
use
them. Keep your chin up—I wish I could have got rid of the little sag under it, and the deeper creases around your eyes, but Mac’s right, they do add an air of maturity.’ Her eyes were frankly curious. ‘Until now, I was the only person in the leather world who knew who he really was. Or so I thought.’

‘Beulah’s a scriptwriter,’ Donald said shortly. ‘This is a field trip for her.’

‘So you’re not an item.’ Angela was suddenly friendlier, and looked directly at Edge. ‘You haven’t seen the tattoo.’

‘Ange—’ Donald said warningly, and she laughed.

‘Mac, you kill me, honestly you do. Your poor friend is looking absolutely blank.’

Edge leaned forward to examine her reflection more closely. ‘I don’t think I could look anything
but
blank. This makeup is extraordinary. I don’t even look young, more like I’ve never experienced anything in my life. You say you couldn’t conceal them, but I can’t even
see
a laugh line.’

‘Aw, darlin’, the way you looked when you walked in, those weren’t laugh lines.
Nothing
is that funny.’

Edge watched the stranger in the mirror turn a smouldering look on the makeup artist, and tried a smile. It didn’t make her reflection look any less dangerous, but Donald was back to himself, and she did look absolutely spectacular. One drink, then.  

Coppelia’s

‘Mac?’ she asked as she stalked carefully to his BMW and gathered her cloak around her with a little shiver. ‘That’s what Gillie Campbell calls you as well. Do you prefer that to Donald? And you said you wear a half-hood, but you’re wearing a cap in front of her. She thinks she knows you in the leather world but she doesn’t, does she?’

‘She knows me as Mac through the theatre, and a bunch of us went on a leather night once for fun. She’s been going to a few leather bars since looking for Mac in this jacket and this hat, but she’d never be so uncool as to admit it.’ He shrugged indifferently, opened her door and went round to his side. She was still trying to wrap the lavish folds of the cape around herself so she wouldn’t pull it off her shoulders, and he glanced across the roof of the car with a crooked smile. ‘You, Cleopatra, have the slightly doubtful honour of being the first person to learn my secret identity.’

‘Cleopatra, is that my name for tonight?’ She gave a slightly breathless giggle as she got inside and closed the door. ‘Thank heavens, I thought I was stuck with Beulah. What’s yours, if not Mac?’

He didn’t answer, concentrating on driving on the wet and busy roads. She’d forgotten her question by the time he nosed the car into a parking spot off the main road.

‘Eugene. Wait there a moment.’ He got out to remove the garish buckled and studded jacket he had worn to Angie’s to reveal a shirt of softest leather that fitted like a glove. He put the discarded jacket and biker cap in the boot of the BMW, and took out a plain duffel coat which he tossed onto her lap as he sat inside the car again. She watched his silhouette, fascinated, as he pulled a thin leather cowl down over his hair and eyes. Like a Batman cowl but without the pricked ears and plastic features; unlike most of the actors put into the Batman mask, he had the lean cheeks and jawline to get away with it. Just.

‘Eugene? Oh, your name. Really?’

‘It’s my real name. You didn’t think I was
christened
Donald MacDonald, did you? Can you walk about twenty yards to the corner so we can get a taxi?’

She nodded, got out and waited while he locked the car. A beautiful boy, which he would have been, who had toured with shows like the
Rocky Horror Show
and
Grease
, and was called Eugene. And Clarissa still insisted he wasn’t gay . . . he had sounded defensive. No need. She wouldn’t have made a teasing comment for the world, because she was being trusted with more of his life tonight than she had expected. Not, perhaps, so odd that he kept a name he had otherwise discarded for the most secret part of his life.

~~~

Donald cast a slightly worried look around the foyer as he handed in his coat and they went through into the room beyond, but Edge didn’t notice. All her attention was directed at her surroundings and she was utterly thrilled. There was a subtle suggestion of decadence about the décor, with stressed gilt and crackle paint in abundance, thick crimson carpet underfoot and a dance-floor ahead, surrounded with cocktail standing tables and, beyond them, glimpses of shadowed plush booths. At the far end of the dance-floor a manorial stairway rose magnificently into darkness, behind a large video screen.

Donald put a light hand on her elbow to steer her towards the heavily gilded bar, which was tended by a burly bald man wearing, well, not very much. She turned on her built-up heels to look around the room again, watching a slowly-revolving spotlight as it picked up tables and padded booths and gleams off leather-clad men and women who were sitting together but, like her, studying the room rather than each other. Three Doric columns were set around the perimeter of the dance-floor, each with a single seat at shoulder-height, padded to match the dusky red décor. The music
was
good, thudding stuff that quickened the heart to match; loud enough to be effective, not so loud as to drown conversation.

‘Oh God, do you want to dance?’ He saw her rapt face, her head nodding slightly with the music, but she laughed and shook her head. In these clumsy boots, to dance with her own local equivalent of John Travolta? No, thank you.

Once she started studying individuals she was reassured to realize that they weren’t beautiful people. Huge hips gleamed in leather tighter than hers and bellies strained behind enormous buckled belts. Some people looked rumpled in loose-fitting clothing. One woman in a tiny skirt and boots as high as her own looked on the verge of toppling forward under the weight of gargantuan breasts, while others strutted despite knock knees and skinny chests. She had been told fairly recently that confidence was more important than appearance and it was certainly being borne out here. There
were
some excellent figures, but she’d learned from Angie tonight how that had been achieved and smiled to herself as she relaxed.

She accepted her drink and leaned one elbow on the bar to carry on scanning the room. A woman near her, looking around with a combination of arrogance and world-weariness, stared at her boosted cleavage. Edge looked away indifferently, thrilling suddenly to her feeling of anonymity. She wasn’t Edge Cameron, respectable widow, expected to behave as she had always behaved, polite and conventional. She was Cleopatra, ageless and enigmatic, and the hard bold glances she was already attracting were strangely thrilling. On her own, she’d have been completely unnerved. With Donald at her elbow, her daggers on her arms and her identity a secret, she felt invincible. She hooked a heel on the bar rail and, with a creak of leather, managed to perch on the bar stool to get a better view.

‘Are those chairs, the ones on the columns, for umpires?’

Donald, unfamiliar in his half-hood, followed the direction of her gaze and his mouth quirked at the high seats.

‘I’d heard about those. The idea is that if you want a really macho partner, you climb up on one of those chairs and wait for someone to lift you down. Gets embarrassing if no-one tries, eh?’

‘And then? When she gets lifted down?’ She was fascinated and his eyes closed briefly behind the mask.

‘What do you
think
happens next, Edge?’

‘I don’t know. That’s why I asked,’ she pointed out reasonably and his mouth twisted ruefully.

‘Oh, Miss Prim. I thought you understood. This is a place where people come for sex. Either they leave together or they go up the stairs to one of the rooms.’ He gestured at the video screen. ‘If they’re exhibitionists, they go to the video room, and switch on the screen.’

Edge gasped and took a hurried gulp of her drink, then realized something.

‘Oh heavens, am I cramping your style tonight? But Donald, don’t you dare leave me!’

‘Of course not,’ he said absently, then tapped her arm and nodded across the room. ‘I think she’s going to try it. Doing a Rapunzel, they call it.’

Edge watched, fascinated, as a hard-faced blonde in skin-tight white leather deftly swung herself up into the high seat, then challenged the room with a haughty stare and a flick of her long blonde hair. A smallish Roman gladiator wearing a leather kilt, cloak, and full hood went over and turned his head up to the blonde, one hand on her ankle.