Den of Stars

‘What’s wrong with my food?’ Kitty pricked her ears up, taking it as an insult. Her tending to the contents of the pans was uninterrupted. Corinne made sure that she wasn’t misunderstood and taken personally.

‘Nothing, dear, you’re a fabulous cook. Sometimes people don’t want fabulous. They want –’

‘Dirty,’ Katerina added flatly, though queried her own word choice.

‘Exactly. Yes. That.’

Katerina rested her head in her hands, uneasy with Jacques tending to his grief with booze in hand. She had witnessed far too many succumb to the bottle when using it to drown misery and unable to climb back out again, persuading her to avoid that pitfall. It was a worry. He was a worry. Attempting to ignore it, she recalled her fondest moment with sincerity in her voice, though she kept an eye on his secretive grumbling.

‘I remember this one time that I fell ill. I spent a few days shivering and sweating in bed – horrible it was. Of course I was just paranoid I was going to let Franco down. I had only been with you all for a couple of weeks, so I was insistent I was going to perform for the show that night. So I’m there sneezing and my teeth are chattering as I’m so cold. Misu tells him that I’m sick. He comes knocking on my door and sits on the bed and I begin to ramble. I tell him that I’ll be fine. I tell him that I can do it no problem. No problem at all.’

Corinne smiled to herself, remembering the time all too well. ‘Not in your condition, he said. I remember that. All that sneezing – and you gave it to a couple of others if I recall correctly.’

‘You know what he does?’ Katerina’s voice faded slightly in earnest. ‘He shoots me down. I won’t have you doing that, he goes. You stay here and rest; we’ll be fine without you. It’s just one show – it’s not worth doing yourself a mischief. Well I’m just a wreck at this point anyway and I just start crying. I mean, I can’t stop. He leans over and takes my hands. I tell him that he’ll get sick – that this thing is probably contagious. You know what he says? He looks at me and goes: I’ll take my chances.’

Katerina dabbed her eyes on her dress sleeve, careful not to paint mascara on the material. Her smile was cracking as her lips quivered. ‘Wasn’t that just like him?’

‘I would argue he took too many. Thieving stowaways. Bad deals. Never saw him not bounce back from it all. The man sure did know how to push that luck of his.’

‘I suppose he never believed it would run out.’

‘What about you, Corinne? You knew Misu longer than any of us here. Surely you have stories to tell.’

* * *

Sure, she had stories. Plenty of them in fact. She had stories of the pair of them trapped in a nest of vipers, forced to do things to keep themselves alive and their limbs intact. There was plenty to be told about how Corinne herself was paraded on show for folks rich in currency and broke in morals. They had met one another in what generous people called an establishment of entertainment. In reality it was a club where criminals congregated, bragged about their misdeeds, and made their plans.

It just so happened that women like them were bought and paid for, shuffled around like property. Corinne kept her mouth shut, doing enough to keep her unscarred, performing as was expected and never putting a word out of turn.

But Misu was different.

She adapted. Instead of falling into the long-drop trap, she talked to the right people and made the right impressions to ensure that nobody laid their hands upon her person. She was clever – too clever some would say – walking the thin line of cunning, though those around her would not compliment her for that. Cunning usually resulted in betrayal. And betrayal could get you killed.

So she carved her reputation among those caught up in the debacle that nobody was to cross her. She would be your best friend if you won her favour, or your greatest threat if you lacked it. Securing her place in the food chain, she and a handful of others brokered the dealings of innocent women, played the games those in power wished them to play, and did so in such a way to keep herself always one step ahead.

Corinne had stories, but none that they would want to hear, and nor were they appropriate. Instead she recalled something more light-hearted.

‘I remember the dandiest thing I got told. It was when Franco took on that stowaway, whatshername …’ She circled her hand at the wrist.

‘Wyld,’ someone added.

‘That’s her. Jacques has this girl dragged out of her hiding place and taken to the boss. She’s squirming, thinking that she’s going to be straight up executed and babbling about being heard. On the way she sees her opening and belts him one! Bam! Gives him a damn good print of her fist on the cheek, which stuns him somewhat. Jacques hits the floor and Wyld runs for it. Well she doesn’t reach the carriage door before Misu steps through. She sees Jacques all down-like and deduces that this desert rat must have been the cause.’

‘Then what?’ A handful of others parroted the question. Corinne tossed her hands out, gesturing.

‘She stands aside! Just, whoop, steps to the side in the doorway, looks her right in the eye, and says: In case you’ve not noticed, you’re stuck on this train in the middle of the hottest damn sand you ever did see. Unless you’re looking at dropping every last one of us like you did our friend there, this is all rather pointless. You’ve got nowhere to go, unless you fancy jumping. And you know what Wyld did?’

‘What?’

Jacques bit at the inside of his mouth, impatient for the anecdote to end.

‘She gives up. Just sits her ass on down and waits for Franco to turn up. A moment passes, Franco barges in, and Jacques picks himself up from the ground …’

Jacques interrupted with a sudden, sarcastic snort before Corinne continued.

‘However she does it, Wyld convinces Franco to give her passage. Now Misu, she doesn’t like this one bit. Change to the status quo makes her suspicious so, when the need takes her, she sits herself down and starts interviewing Wyld.’

‘Interviewing?’ Kitty scrunched her young face up, producing wrinkles before her time.

‘Interviewing. Like, asking her all the questions of initiation to make our troublesome little stowaway a showgirl. Calm as anything, she was. It’s a ruse of course but the girl don’t know this. Wyld starts protesting but Misu is too quick and starts saying this and that, asking her how good her dancing is, and makes a point that she’ll need significant work prettying her up for the shows – especially the hair. This goes on for a good few minutes until Franco, who’s been staying silent up to this point, just bursts out laughing, finding the whole thing hilarious. It took a few minutes before Wyld calmed herself but it was a joy, such a joy …’

The broad smile eventually subsided upon realizing once again that two of their number from the anecdote were missing. This was mirrored by almost everybody else in earshot.

Corinne took to her bare feet, a mite unsteady, and raised her drink up. The others followed in unison, blinking back tears of their own.

‘To the Gambler’s Den. To those who are with us today.’ Corinne held her cup aloft, trying desperately to keep it steady before sternly adding with a final push, ‘And to those we have lost along the way.’

* * *

Jacques sank the last of his tribute with one large, quick mouthful. Since he had arrived he had taken a bottle of white wine for himself and emptied its contents, first by a glass before forgoing this step completely. He slowly assessed every face around him, the collected showgirls of the Gambler’s Den, now performers without a stage, comfortable in their new home. And what a home it was! Such extravagance! What incredible generosity from the locals! How fortunate that they should land on their feet.

Then there was talk about the restaurant. It was Kitty’s idea really, what with her vested interest in the practice since a considerably young age. Being raised on a farm had its perks of becoming creative with food. Being that the Den was no more, not only could the restaurant be a source of income but it would also ensure the girls remained together.

She had tossed the thought around with one of her drinking sessions with the landlord, who excitedly proclaimed he knew someone who would happily front the money as a partner. Corinne had intervened when word got out, to ensure everything was being done on the level; but all this talk made Jacques uncomfortable. Plans were being made. Futures were being decided. All without him.

A half-hearted suggestion was made that he could work there too, but doing what exactly? Carrying plates? Scrubbing dishes? That wasn’t his forte. There would be little need for decent muscle, the only requirement being the possibility of shaking down those who hadn’t paid their bill.

It was laughable.

Good for them. They’d made a life. They’d become comfortable. They were moving on.

Good for bloody them.

It wouldn’t have occurred to them that one of their number hadn’t enjoyed such good fortune. They never had to settle for barn floors or dark alleys to sleep the drink off. It didn’t matter to them that good-natured smiles never followed warm welcomes when he made his presence known. Reminiscence bore into him like a drill, pulling and churning his temperament into frustration.

While they were spending the coin of others, what did he have to contend with? Dock work? Working in the mills or the mines? He may as well find his fortune as a singing vagabond. Sadly a man of his status, or a man in general, was not so fortunate to enjoy the generosity of strangers. His reputation had ensured anybody who was worth anything in this city would distance themselves. Associating themselves with Jacques was suicide of both status and possibly of the mortal variety too.

While the girls comfortably avoided peril, Jacques was a marked man. Franco Del Monaire had asked him to do what was necessary to protect the girls of the Gambler’s Den no matter the personal cost. To ensure this, Jacques took it upon himself to testify against Wilheim Fort, a cruel individual who riddled the great city of Windberg with his wrongdoings.

The chain reaction this caused was momentous. Once respected individuals were discovered to be in cahoots with Wilheim, arrests were made by the dozen. Powerful people fell from grace. That power had to be directed somewhere so repercussions became inevitable.

The first time it happened, a couple of goons tried to jump him at a bar, giving a quick warning and a knife to the gut. He was lucky and the resulting tussle left him with just a few cuts but the message had been delivered sternly. Jacques took to carrying iron every day after that in preparation for the inevitable reoccurrence.

Despite catching a bullet in the thigh, the next assailants caught considerably more to the chest. The one after that was tossed down a cliff after an almighty struggle. Standing on the cusp of a windswept gully, Jacques had grimly realized these attempts weren’t going to stop. He had no concerns about killing a man. He had done so plenty of times and for plenty of reasons, a handful considerably rotten, but this? The relentlessness of it was painfully apparent.

The cost of this bargain was uncomfortably high. Inconveniences he could deal with, hell it was expected, but forfeiting his life, his entire life? Nobody else was dodging bullets. Nobody else had to toss unscrupulous folks down into ravines for a dirt nap.

And here the girls were, speaking as if Franco and Misu were heroes, monuments to the people they once entertained, worthy of praise that stopped just shy of worship.