chapter 18

An hour laterVelveteen Crush was dressed to rehearse. Bryant led them to another rehearsal warehouse nearby. Classical music played through the wall.

“I want you to run in. Get all in their way. The music’s going to change. Tell them to get out of your space. The cameras are already set up. Blue, I want you to really play this up.” He pushed the door open and mouthed, Run.

Izzy didn’t need an invitation to run toward Lillian, but when she saw Lillian, she stopped. Lillian stood in the center of the room, on pointe, one leg raised straight up like human anatomy didn’t apply to her. Then she moved out of the pose and, with a running start, leapt in a series of five-forty barrel turns. Izzy remembered the term from class because the professor had called it the move that separated dancers from gods.

“Like that,” she said to one of her dancers.

“With a five-forty?” he asked.

“Not with a five-forty,” Lillian said, as though that were painfully obvious. She turned and looked directly at Izzy. “I was just showing off.”

Izzy’s professor had been right. Lillian was a goddess. Izzy closed her mouth, which was hanging open.

“Try that again,” Bryant said. “Blue, you look like a Taylor Swift fangirl. You hate Lillian, remember?”

Izzy felt a blush creeping up her neck, but she put on her best Blue Lenox smile.

They tried their entrance again. Bryant gave Izzy a thumbs-up as she got in Lillian’s face. Lillian was even more beautiful than Izzy remembered. Her lips were full and soft and commanding, glistening with a pale iridescent gloss that echoed the platinum of her almost shaved hair. And her eyes. It was the amusement in her eyes that took Izzy’s words away.

“Step off, you queenpin.” Lillian made it sound like an endearment and also like she was speaking to the queen of England… or she was the queen of England. Queen of England adjacent.

Izzy was supposed to insult her, but all she could manage was, “That was amazing.”

To hear Lillian’s feet on the floor. To feel the air displace as she passed. To watch every muscle of her body in complete control, so incredibly strong. And she’d touched that body. And Lillian had kissed her. “It’s like Mount Everest. You’ve seen calendar pages and those documentaries about people who climb up there, but you don’t know what the mountain really looks like. You could watch all the documentaries and still not know what it would feel like to be there.”

“Is that an insult? Are you comparing me to a frigid mountain where climbers get sucked into ice crevasses?”

Lillian pronounced crevasse the British way, which was sexy.

“No, I mean seeing you in real life… you’re even more amazing than you are on-screen.”

“For fuck’s sake, you look like you’re in love with each other,” Bryant called out.

Lillian cleared her throat and touched the cuff of Izzy’s suit. The show had asked her to wear one of her signature suits, this one green corduroy with orange collars, cuffs, and racing stripes on the pants. Beneath it she wore a gold corset she’d made out of a lampshade.

“The sixties wants its suit back,” Lillian said. She turned her head so the cameras couldn’t see her. “You look hot,” she whispered.

Then louder she added, “It looks like you hunted a sofa and harvested its pelt.”

Izzy burst out laughing.

“Cut! Let’s try a different pair: Sarah, Imani.” Bryant pointed.

Sarah and Imani certainly looked like opposites, if not like enemies. Sarah’s red curls bounced as she sprang toward Imani like a sexy boxer. Imani planted her hands on her hips, everything from the pose of her feet to the coil of braids on her head exuding melodramatic disdain.

“Blue. Lillian. Try to find something you hate about each other. You’re the leads, and I will have a ballet-versus-burlesque queenpin throw down.”

Lillian trailed the tips of her fingers across Izzy’s lower back as she moved out of the way so Imani and Sarah could fight over nothing. Izzy almost melted into a pool of longing. She followed Lillian to the sidelines to watch.

“My cousin Kia says I’m sending you terribly mixed messages,” Lillian said without taking her eyes off Imani and Sarah. “I’m sorry.” She sounded sincere. “Do you hate me?”

“No. Sarah says I have unresolved issues from childhood and need to read books with empowerment in the title. Do you hate me?”

“You can’t hate someone for that. It’s not their fault.”

Izzy swallowed away the tightness she suddenly felt in her throat. They were just playing, but the words felt like a warm sweater on a cold day.

“Did you make your suit?” Lillian asked.

“I did. Burlesque is all about costuming. You can buy costumes, but it doesn’t feel real to me.”

“I’m impressed.”

“I do all sorts of impressive things. Build computers. Change spark plugs.” Izzy cocked her hip out and let her suit jacket fall open. “That work for you?”

“I need…” Lillian purred.

Then she stopped, took a deep breath, and closed her eyes. Izzy could feel Lillian compose herself. Sarah would say that Lillian had a big aura. Now she’d sucked it into the outline of her body.

In a conversational tone she said, “How long have you lived in Portland?”

“You’re trying not to send me mixed messages by making small talk?”

Oddly, it wasn’t hard to call Lillian on the shift in tone. It was like they were in it together, being real, while all around them people were pretending. Izzy pressed her shoulder against Lillian’s for a second.

“Is it working?” Lillian asked.

“No.”

“Damn.”

They were both still watching the lack of drama unfolding between Imani and Sarah, but out of the corner of her eye, Izzy could see Lillian purse her lips to hold back a smile.

“I’ve got to try harder,” Lillian said.

“At what?”

“Not being attracted to you when I absolutely cannot get distracted.” The purr was back in Lillian’s voice.

“That’s not a mixed message at all.”

“I’m trying. It’s hard to resist a woman in a nineteen sixties couch.”

Bryant’s voice cut through the space.

“Imani could you please call Sarah a bitch.”

Sarah and Imani were looking at each other like new employees who hadn’t been given instructions.

Axel jumped in. “You can’t use the female as a pejorative.”

“Pick a fight with each other.” Bryant threw up his hands. “Not me.” The plaid of Bryant’s vented hiking shirt vibrated with frustration. “If someone doesn’t fight, I will make you all live in a yurt together until you eat each other. I will cut off your water supply. Wait. I’ve got it. Get over here.” He gathered the group around him. “This whole thing is about classy prep school dancers clashing with sexy burlesque. You.” He pointed to Velveteen Crush. “You tell them they’d get kicked out of the club they’re so boring.”

“What club?” Axel asked.

“Any club. Ballet, you tell them it doesn’t take any skill to do what they do. Velveteen Crush, you come back with Bet you can’t… What can you do that they can’t?”

“Twerk?” Izzy grinned at Lillian.

“You challenge them to a twerkathon,” Bryant said. “Work that ass.”

One of the ballet dancers, a petite light-skinned man, demonstrated for his colleagues.

Imani said, “Twerking actually has interesting roots in traditional African dance.”

“No.” Lillian glared at Izzy, then at Bryant, her expression cold and impenetrable. She stepped forward, putting a hand on Bryant’s elbow. “Come with me.”

Izzy had never seen something so commanding. Bryant followed her as though she were the producer and he was the contestant who’d signed a hundred contracts saying he’d do anything she asked. She moved Bryant toward the far corner of the room. Lillian’s body language said she would lock Bryant in a yurt.

The ballet dancers looked at each other. Axel shrugged.

“Hi, I’m Axel. We didn’t really get to introduce ourselves.”

The groups shook hands. There was small talk. Izzy watched Lillian. Sarah watched Izzy.

“I should see what’s up,” Izzy said to Sarah, ignoring Sarah’s look that said, I am locking you in a yurt until you read some books on not making the same bad choices over and over again.

Izzy walked toward Lillian and Bryant. A camera followed her.

When Izzy got close, she heard Bryant saying, “Contract line twenty-three point four. You are required to let us film other footage as needed.”

“This is not needed.” Lillian’s back was to Izzy. “My dancers are professionals. We are not a burlesque group. I will not have them twerking like some cheap strip show.”

Izzy felt like a vase of flowers unceremoniously swept to the floor and shattered.

Bryant stepped away from Lillian. She turned to follow him and caught sight of Izzy. In the camera’s eye, it would look like Lillian was talking to Izzy.

“That’s it!” Bryant said enthusiastically. “You won’t have your dancers twerking like some cheap strip show. Blue, what are you going to say to that?” Bryant beckoned the camera operator closer.

How could Lillian have praised her performance, then call Velveteen Crush a cheap strip show? Izzy tried to find the answer in Lillian’s face, but all she saw was chagrin. Lillian was embarrassed, not because she thought it, but because she’d gotten caught saying it. Another powerful, successful, charismatic woman who knew she was too good for Izzy. No, not knew, thought. Sarah would remind her to make that distinction.

“Nothing”—Blue Lenox’s fire rose in Izzy’s chest—“I have ever done has been cheap.”

With that, Izzy whirled on her heel and walked out. Behind her, she heard Bryant yell, “Cut. Now that’s the kind of drama I want.”