No luck in Diamonds either. I look over every card table, every roulette wheel, even the chips I find on the floor. Nothing.
Fuck.
I’ve looked everywhere.
Not exactly true. I haven’t looked at Rouge’s office. But I can’t get in there. And I’m sure Bianca already looked through her dressing room when she was here earlier picking up the branding irons. I can’t exactly go into either of those spaces without drawing attention to myself, anyway.
There’s the private area, but I can’t get there without a member on my arm.
I suppose I could go back to Rose…
But no. Fuck that.
I’ve been kissed by a man once. Ray Sinclair. For me, that’s enough for a fucking lifetime.
Where else could I check? That’s everywhere I currently have access to.
This and the bathrooms.
The bathrooms!
I didn’t get a good look at the ladies’ restroom when I came in. I can try the men’s first, obviously.
I go inside. Nothing as far as I can see. I look inside each of the two stalls, scan the doors to see if something was scratched into them. No ravens. No writing. A man at the urinals gives me a weird look as I pass him. I guess waitstaff don’t normally use the restrooms. Do they just fucking hold it the entire time?
Damn, OSHA would have a field day with this place.
Of course, Rouge would just get out of it like she always does.
I leave the men’s room. I can’t go into the women’s room without having someone check before me to make sure no one’s in there, though. Nothing would draw more attention to me than a female patron shrieking that one of the male waitstaff is peeping on her.
I look back over to the Hearts section. Bianca just finished up her set and is heading back to her dressing room.
I make sure Rouge isn’t looking and then discreetly slip in behind Bianca as the pink door closes behind her.
“Well, in our country,” said Alice, still panting a little, “you’d generally get to somewhere else—if you ran very fast for a long time, as we’ve been doing.”
“A slow sort of country!” said the Queen. “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”
Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass
38
BIANCA
I feel so dirty.
I told myself when I came to New York that I wouldn’t let this city change me.
So much for that.
My first big shot, and I slept with the director for the gig.
Oh, well. I’m not the first girl to do that, and I won’t be the last.
Still, my career will be forever tainted with what I did with Mr. Shippe.
His warm onions-and-cigarette-smoke breath as he kissed me, wormed his tongue into my mouth. The way he groped at my breasts until I worried they would burst. The way his untamed forest of pubes scratched at me as he fucked me on top of the audition panel’s table.
