ADAW 14/52 - Green
This follows right after the story for “Night.”
The next morning, Leo woke early from a dark dream. He was distracted during his workout and distracted in the shower. When he sat down at his desk, he realized he’d been staring into space for five minutes without taking in anything.
[[When does she work again?]] he texted Vala.
[[I’m asleep.]]
[[You text well asleep.]]
[[Tonight. Usually only Friday, but she’s working again tonight.]]
Leo looked at his agenda book. His morning was open.
He headed to the roof.
***
That evening, he arrived at the club early and headed toward the dressing room. [[Come let me in.]]
Vala opened the door. “No one’s here yet.”
“I want to leave these.” He pressed a large vase into Vala’s hands. In it were a dozen roses, yellow on the inside, fading to blushy pink at the tips of their petals.
“Are they from the greenhouse?”
“Mmmhmm.”
“Leo, I don’t think this is a good idea. Just let it drop.”
“I put a note in. An apology.”
“Why don’t you just… not be around when she’s here?”
“I want to apologize?”
“To ease your guilt, you mean,” Vala said. “I don’t think you’ll make her feel any better.”
“Please, Valentine?”
Valaa growled. “Give them to me. Et dégage! Out! I don’t have time to sit down here and babysit the dancers all night.”
Leo complied. He and Victor spent the evening visiting some of their other enterprises, checking on investments. Just after eleven, Victor got a text from Françoise, asking if he wanted to drive her to a movie. Leo sent him off with the car, and took a cab back to the club. He wondered if his little sister might be sweet on Victor. It was possible, though Leo thought Victor’s scar likely to put her off him in the end. And Victor was an honorable man. More honorable than Leo himself, certainly. Her schoolgirl crush wouldn’t sway him.
By the time Leo returned, the main stage was empty, and the busty and pecs-y bar staff were encouraging guests to finish their drinks. Private rooms were emptying out as well. He stepped into the office and began going through the notes made by Vala and by Caiitan, the bartender, listing supplies to be ordered. The legitimate elements of the club business were fairly easy to run, and Leo found himself out of things to do before Vala was likely to be finished. He checked the news on his phone and, without realizing it, dozed off.
He didn’t sleep long, but it was a shock to realize he’d slept at all. He headed for the dressing room, to see if Vala needed help, but paused as he leaned into the door. He could hear a second voice talking to Vala. The girl in black. Planning a dance routine for the two of them, for a song about a train. If he’d known the song, he thought perhaps he’d be able to laugh at their jokes. He learned that the girl in black had gone to school in Japan for a time, and she thought a used panty vending machine would be very successful in the club. Their conversation wandered, and Leo realized he’d been pressed against the door for nearly half an hour when his pinned arm began to tingle.
He opened the door.
“Hello Leo! Come to take me home?” Vala asked.
“I let Victor take Françoise in the car.”
“Alas!”
The girl in black had gone quiet, focused on tidying a rack of clothes as if she hadn’t been chatting away a moment before.
“Mademoiselle,” Leo said, “I hope you received the note and flowers--”
“I did,” she said, cutting him off. “A pretty generic form of apology it seems, though. Roses. Overdone.”
Leo looked at the floor. “I grew those roses myself,” he said.
“Really?” the girl in black replied, not to Leo, but to his sister.
“Oui. He has a little greenhouse on the roof.”
“My apologies, then,” she said. “I did not mean to disrespect your work.”
“How should I make amends in future?” Leo asked.
“Why, planning to offend me again?”
“No-- I--” he stammered.
“You should have offered to make me dinner,” she replied, almost as if she wanted to save him from the foot in his mouth. “But since it’s so early now, I’ll settle for breakfast instead.”
“I don’t cook very much.”
“Vala! Your gardener has so few skills!” Vala chuckled as the girl in black continued. “Can he wash dishes?”
“That he can do,” she replied.
“Good. Well then, we’ll go to your house. What do you want for breakfast?”
“Tomago!” Vala replied.
The girl laughed. “You are predictable as ever.”
“And you’re pretending I don’t know you can hardly cook anything yourself, either,” Vala said.
“Shhh! Let me get my coat,” the girl replied, and headed for the back of the dressing room.
Vala turned sternly to her brother. “Be nice to her! I like her,” she said.
“I wasn’t--” Leo began to protest, but he stopped himself. The girl had returned with Vala’s coat, sporting a green one herself. It had a wide collar and a flared shape, like a dress, and in it she seemed younger somehow, and sweeter.
“Let’s get a cab,” Vala said.
“It’s almost sunrise, we can walk,” the girl replied.
“It’s over a mile!” Vala protested.
“Well, you may not need the exercise, but I do,” the girl protested. “Let’s go.”
She headed for the exit, and Leo scrambled to grab his things while Vala locked up. The air outside was crisp, just beginning to smell of fall as a late Indian summer faded. Vala and the girl continued their chat as they walked, both managing an impressively steady clip in four inch heels.
Vala led them into their building. If the girl was impressed by the elevator that opened into their foyer, or the arched glass ceiling in the kitchen, she certainly didn’t show it.
She turned to him abruptly and said, “Can you at least make coffee?”
“I can,” he replied, and made himself busy.
Vala seemed to know how the recipe was made, and she began sitting ingredients, and a rice cooker he didn’t even know they had, on the counter. The girl rinsed some rice in a colander and put it in the rice cooker. She cracked several eggs into a bowl, mixed them with… actually he missed that part… and started slowly adding egg to a wide square pan he also hadn’t realized they had. In a very short period of time, she’d set a perfect yellow loaf of egg on a plate, then deposited it in the freezer.
“Coffee?” she said.
Leo had just poured the hot water into his French press. “How strong do you like it?”
“Very strong, as long as you have some cream and sugar to soften it up.”
“We do,” he said.
“Mmm, is that coffee?” came a voice from the hallway. Victor walked in, wearing just his trousers and undershirt. “Good morning, boss.”
“Victor,” Leo replied. He’d set his lieutenant to staying at his house to guard his sisters so many times he’d started staying overnight by default whenever Leo himself wasn’t home.
“Good morning,” Victor said.
“Morning!” Vala replied. She handed several more eggs to the girl, who began preparing another batch.
“How was the movie?” Leo asked.
“Well, no offense to your namesake, but lions are assholes. The movie was about a lion wilderness refuge, except the lions kept injuring the staff and the camera crew. Did you know Melanie Griffith had huge surgery on her face due to lion injuries?”
“Who?” Leo asked.
“She’s an actress,” the girl said. “Popular in American romance movies in the 90s. She’s in, like, Working Girl and a bunch of 90s movies. And maybe Top Gun?”
“Ah,” Leo replied. Had he seen Top Gun? Did it have planes in it?
Victor continued recounting the goriest parts of the lion movie, and Vala took the rice out of the rice cooker and began adding vinegar to it. Victor seemed to chat comfortably with the girl as well, though he was normally reticent. The girl got out sugar and cream on her own, without asking where they were. What the hell?
Françoise wandered in, rubbing her eyes sleepily. “Oh, hi Sofie!” she said. “I thought it must be you, no one else would be cooking.”
Sofie. Sofie. The only Sofie whose name Leo had ever heard was a friend of Vala’s. A school friend who went to the other Catholic school. Who studied for the SATs with Vala. But that meant… this girl was no “same age as me” 19-year-old who’d graduated or dropped out. No runaway or addict like some of the dancers were. She couldn’t even be dancing for money, not with a family that could pay her tuition for a high school as expensive as some colleges.
Leo groaned and slumped into a chair. “I’ll finish the coffee,” Victor said, and began to distribute it. Françoise had taken a green box of fake bacon from the fridge and begun to fry it. The girl-- Sofie-- was slicing the egg and setting it atop little piles of rice. The others were all talking like old friends.
The rest of breakfast was a blur. He ate politely, but he couldn’t remember saying anything. Did he stare at the girl? He didn’t think so. But when she finally told Vala she needed to get going, his thoughts came into focus. “I apologize again, miss,” he said.
“Farewell,” was all she replied, and left.
The rest of the group grew quiet.
“So you all knew the stripper whose hair I yanked on like some cro-magnon clod was Vala’s school friend?” he demanded.
“I told you to drop it,” Vala said.
Leo was breathing hard through his nose. “The club can’t be a fun little project for your spoiled rich-girl friends!” he shouted.
“And you must not have seen the numbers from last night!” Vala shouted back. “She’s popular! We advertised that she’d be working Saturday and profits were up twelve percent! I didn’t even know her before she tried out to dance! There’s no reason she can’t dance!” Vala said. “She keeps her grades up,” she added. “N’importe comment. I don’t try to butt in on your parts of the business. Leave mine alone.”
Vala stormed off.
“I like her,” Françoise said, coming around the table to hug her brother. “Don’t be too mad at Vala. I think she likes having a friend who knows about her secret life and her school life.” She butted her head against Leo’s chin until he relented and hugged her back.
“Well,” he said, “Don’t go getting any ideas. You’re going to college like Cécily. Even better, you’ll go for free because your grades will be better.”
Françoise giggled. “Okay, no pressure. I’ll just go study some more.” She padded back toward her room.
“And did you know?” Leo asked Victor.
“Yeah. Sorry. Vala didn’t quite explain to me that she was a dancer until I’d met her as Vala’s friend a few times, and then it just didn’t seem important…” his voice trailed off.
Leo sighed. “Maybe I’m overreacting.”
“It’s probably fine. Well, since you’re home, I’m gonna head out myself. Nothing on the agenda for today, right?”
“Right.”
“Okay, see you tomorrow.”
Leo found himself alone in his large and expensive kitchen, surrounded by dirty dishes. He took off his jacket and vest and set to work.
***
Leo spent the next few weeks trying to define his emotions. At first he thought he was angry at his sister for hiding things from him, but that wasn’t it. Then he blamed his own prejudices about what kind of person took their clothes off for fun, and that was certainly one element of it, but it wasn’t the whole thing, either. He studied the girl, attended her performances. She wore a nun’s habit, then took it off, to a song about prayer. She dressed like a baseball player, and undressed, with some of the male dancers as backup, to a song called “Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend.” Victor was cracking up as soon as the song started, and he leaned over to explain that the playing field in baseball is called a diamond. Leo thought he would have remembered that eventually. He even stayed for most of the performance she gave with Vala, which involved Vala leaving on a morning train in a suit, and the girl-- Sofie-- “waiting” for her return by entertaining herself with various pornographic implements.
It took this performance for Leo to realize that he was not mad at his sister. As Vala stood behind Sofie and gently slid her robe off, it hit him. He was jealous of Vala. Sofie was funny. Her dancing was lighthearted and witty, even if he was too slow to get things at first. She was easy and relaxed with Vala. She helped Vala with the dancers and the props when she was backstage, and they did homework together, and shopped together. She was Vala’s lieutenant at the club, and her friend the rest of the time. And she was beautiful. On stage, she lacked complete elegance, but her coltish limbs betrayed a deep pleasure in the act. She liked dancing. She liked receiving attention, encouraged it. Working backstage she was no showoff, but onstage she was in her element. Leo felt himself turning green with envy that other men looked at her, and threw money at her, and bought her drinks at the bar, and breathed the same air as her. He wanted her desperately.
But the girl had shown no inclination to grace him with her presence again. She greeted him politely at the club, or when he found her with Vala at his house, but that was it. He wanted to shower her with gifts, to give her flowers every day, or cook for her, little as that might sway her, or scrub her floors or lick her boots. But for the sake of his sister, he did not. He just bought a bunch of green ties and wore them Friday nights. Surely someone would catch on.
Then something happened to turn all his envy to rage.