The Lives Before Us by Juliet Conlin

Author:Juliet Conlin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Black & White Publishing
Published: 2019-02-26T00:00:00+00:00

KITTY

The music lilts, then slows almost imperceptibly, although the band is playing an upbeat tune – ‘Eeny Meeny Miny Mo’. The percussionist yawns and misses several beats, causing the music to waver even further. Kitty is tired too. Her dancing partner is one of the energetic ones, swinging her back and forth across the dance floor. But she supposes she should be grateful that he just wants to dance. Not rub himself against her hips, or let his rancid breath wash over her, or slide his fingers between her legs, so that she has to raise her arm to draw the bodyguard’s attention. She’s lost count of this evening’s number. But there have been many; the dance tickets are safely tucked away in a small satin bag that hangs from her wrist, waiting to be counted and handed in to Pavel, the taxi girls’ manager, when the club closes.

She wears her walnut-brown hair in a shoulder-length wave. She has let the colour grow out and knows it makes her look older, but it’s less fuss this way; she can crimp it herself, saving expensive trips to the salon. Besides, her age – twenty-six – doesn’t matter to the men who come here. The customers who want the really young girls know to go to a neon-lit strip on the other side of Nanking Road, where they are supplied with five- or six-year-old girls, kidnapped, sold or rented, whose feet have more often than not been broken – arches snapped, toes bent inwards – and then bound tightly to conform to some twisted notion of beauty. Kitty thinks of these young girls most nights, when she returns to her room and relieves her own bruised and swollen feet from her court shoes.

But for all he only wants to dance, he is a poor dancer. He steps on her toes, misses the beat when he stretches his arm out to turn her. She is glad when the song is over and he gives her the ticket. She slips from the dance floor quickly before Pavel can bring her another customer and heads to the dressing room. Two other taxi dancers, White Russian girls who claim – as they all do – to be distant relatives of the Czar, are in here kneeling over a small table sniffing choppy lines of white powder. The room is poorly ventilated and smells of sweat and greasepaint. The women look up briefly as Kitty enters, eyes alert beneath inflamed eyelids, and then turn their attention back to the table. Kitty sits down and removes her shoes. She rubs her feet, gently coaxing the blood to circulate around her pinched toes and numbed heels. The two other girls get up and leave the dressing room, one of them bumping Kitty rudely in the back as she passes. Her friend says something in Russian and the other responds with a deliberate giggle.

Kitty doesn’t catch what was said. She knows five, maybe six Russian words and most of them are curses, taught to her by Vitali as his idea of a joke.

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