Double Bind

by Karen Bell

  In what momentary lapse of sanity had she imagined she would be able to get up and spend the best part of her day in purgatory after only four hours sleep? Three if you included the hour it had taken her through twitching legs and buzzing brain, to finally drop off. Of course she had made the arrangement well before she had known she would be embarking on a new career last night and in her wildest dreams she’d never have imagined taking Ecstasy.

  Last night. She recalled it now, scene by scene, as she stumbled to the bathroom on leaden legs, parched with thirst, to gulp down as much water as she could.

  She recalled that she had taken Kelly’s words to heart and had not only taken off her clothes in the private rooms but also given herself up to more than one lap dance in the course of the evening, albeit – if she remembered rightly – while her G-string had still been on. She also recalled now with a sickening realization, that she had been felt up by more than one man in a group dance for someone’s buck’s night, some time between the last two scheduled shows.

  That one tiny capsule could wreak so much havoc with her brain and the body, was, in Mila’s mind unbelievable. That it could have taken her so far out of her normal comfort zone and made it seem just fine – better than fine – was nothing short of insanity. But she could already feel from the brain fog and the way her body ached, that for every up there must be an equal and opposite down.

  She desperately wanted to go back to bed and sleep for another six or eight hours and looking now at the dark circles under her eyes, she considered calling her in-laws and cancelling the arrangement. She picked up the phone but then she just couldn’t do it. Other than for the funeral, it had been months since she’d attended a service. She had seen the joyous looks they’d exchanged when she’d accepted their invitation for today.

  Maybe she could sneak in just one more hour of sleep, arrive late and leave early. Damn, and she had to front up at the club to do it all again tonight.

  She decided that going back to sleep for an hour was not going to make enough of a difference to her fatigue and thought it better to make herself a Barocca and take her time about getting showered and dressed. Dragging herself down to the kitchen she thought about calling Ryan. She knew he hadn’t worked last night but eight a.m. was early for a Sunday and he’d either be sleeping in or surfing. Either way he probably wouldn’t pick up his phone and if he did, she wouldn’t want to disturb him from either activity. Besides, she was feeling like a fraud and he would no doubt ask how she’d spent her evening. She didn’t feel like adding lies to what was already a series of omissions.

  Mila sipped the overly fizzy drink, hoping that the vitamin B might go some way to restoring her energy and a sense of well-being, both of which had deserted her. Robert had insisted on her taking vitamins to keep herself healthy for his gruelling sessions. He’d made her buy them in bulk when they were on special and the aftertaste of it now, reminding her of him, made her want to throw up.

  She remembered several patrons at Star Strip offering to buy her drinks throughout the course of the night but thankfully she’d refused most and stuck to gin and tonic for the few she’d accepted. It hardly seemed possible, but she imagined she could have ended up feeling even worse.

  It had been another twenty-four hours since she’d eaten, and Mila thought she should have some breakfast, but on opening the fridge and getting a whiff of the yogurt that she’d considered, she immediately thought better of it.

  Lunch was going to be torturous and Mila hoped her in-laws had invited another few parishioners as they sometimes did. At least then she wouldn’t have to be front and centre of every conversation. Thinking more about the events of the night before, she should have been happy with how it had gone. She’d gathered almost two hundred just in tips from the lap dances and that didn’t include what the club was paying. It just seemed on reflection such a sordid and degrading way to make money. This was no news to her but in the cold light of day it was really hitting home.

  She was not on the road to recovery that she’d hoped for after Robert’s death. She was further away if anything from finding herself, let alone fulfilling any dreams.

  Church, an hour later, did nothing to reproduce the peaceful, euphoric feelings that had enveloped her the previous night. No, if they were to be compared, God was the tortoise and MDMA was the hare when it came to glimpsing heaven. Sitting beside her mother-in-law, Mila’s vision drifted to the stained glass windows that she’d seen a thousand times before. She’d often considered them the most appealing part of the otherwise depressing church. In her drug-induced state last night, they would have been more mesmerizing than any 3D movie and certainly more engaging than the sermon on which she now struggled to focus.

  Mila stole a sideways glance at Mary, envying the gentle peace that glowed almost like a halo around her. She was transfixed by her husband’s words and those of the scriptures he was interpreting, as though it was the first time she’d heard them. How serene she looked, blissfully unaware that the child she had nurtured over all those years - the one she was probably eulogizing now - had grown into a monster capable of such indecent acts that Satan himself would have been proud. No, Mila was glad that Mary would never learn the truth about her son. The burden of that knowledge fell to her alone.

  By the time the service finished – which seemed longer than the promised eternity – Mila was feeling about as woeful as she ever had. Stewing over her many inadequacies and considering her unhappy plight over the last two hours, while listening to all the gratitude she should have been feeling, had done nothing to lift her spirits.

  To make matters worse, as she walked silently beside Mary towards their home, Mila noticed her old companion, Anxiety, had decided to join them and was now, trying to twist a knot in her belly and turn a knife in her back. Mila’s heart had leapt without warning from some hidden starting blocks in her chest and was now doing the hundred-metre dash; her shoulder and back muscles tightening as if in a cramp. She considered for a second that she might be having a heart attack as she stopped to catch her breath but of course she knew better. This was just another dialect of panic attack – she was fluent in them all – but the self-diagnosis did little to alleviate the symptoms or the irrational fear that she might be dying.

  ‘I don’t think I can come to lunch,’ Mila broke down, tears spilling from nowhere, as Mary sat her down on a bench nearby.

  ‘You poor dear. This must be a terrible time for you. But we of all people understand what you’re going through. It’s been dreadful for us too.’

  Please don’t talk about Robert… please don’t talk about God… Mila was repeating it like a mantra in her head.

  ‘The Minister and I were so hoping that the service might bring you comfort. He chose the reading especially for you dear and of course to honour our darling Robert’s spirit. Please come to lunch, we especially didn’t invite anyone else so it would be just us and I’ve made your favourite tuna salad. I knew you wouldn’t be feeling like anything heavy.’

  Mila wanted to scream but thankfully the internal hand gripping her throat prevented it. Tinned tuna salad was one of a list of calorie-controlled meals that Robert had allowed Mila to eat. If she never saw a tuna salad again, it would be too soon. Of course Mary wasn’t to know that; how could she have ever suspected anything when Robert had been such a consummate actor and Mila such a compliant participant.

  Mila made a supreme effort to find the right words, the ones that would get her off the hook without offending. ‘I’m so sorry. I know this has been even harder for you than for me,’ she sobbed, ‘and here you are, so considerate and kind, but I really don’t think I can be of any company, I really think I just need to be alone.’ There, she’d said it. She just hoped they would let it rest so that she could get the hell home.

  ‘Are you absolutely certain dear?’

  Mila nodded, apologizing again.

  ‘Very well dear,’ Mary consoled, finally letting it go. ‘But do come back to our
place for just a minute so that I can give you some salad to take home. You’re bound to be hungry later.’

  But Mila was not hungry later. Instead she sobbed for an hour on her bed before putting a pillow over her head and finally crashing-out for a further two.

  Dragging herself up, in preparation of another night’s work was a supreme effort. It was as though her worst depression had joined forces with a twenty-four hour flu and decided to wage war upon her.

  ###

  Even pushing her way in through the heavy stage door forty minutes later seemed to require superhuman strength. Mila expected to find the club as she’d left it the previous night, dark and deserted and was taken by surprise as she walked out of the long back corridor into the main club and headlong into the owner, escorting his wife and two other couples towards the foyer.

  She hadn’t known that on Sundays, the pool area and roof terrace above were open for lunch. She couldn’t have imagined that the vast exterior wall was made of metal louvers that could be thrown open to the sun as they were now, flooding the club with natural light.

  Mila was caught startled, as Mr Arnett engaged her in conversation. ‘Hello again, you’re nice and early. Let me introduce you to my wife Elise. Darling, this is Mila, she started last night in the main auditorium and was apparently a great hit. He smiled at Mila warmly.

  ‘Welcome aboard Mila,’ came the effusive reply from his wife as she slipped her arm around her husband’s waist and openly examined Mila from head to toe. She was a tall, striking brunette, impeccably dressed in designer silks that showed off her mannequin slim shape, and though Mila couldn’t see behind the huge Dior sunglasses and perfectly applied lipstick, she knew without a doubt that what lay behind would be equally flawless.

  Mila by contrast was entirely without makeup, her hair barely brushed into a low bun. There was an awkward silence at which point she was certainly meant to engage them in some kind of conversation but niceties deserted her and by the time she found an appropriate reply, Elise was already chatting to their friends. Mr Arnett congratulated Mila again and promised to watch the next performance. For her part, Mila forced a smile before slinking away to the safety of the dressing room.

  There was no one to be found there, but hearing the hum of a sewing machine from the adjacent wardrobe room, she dumped her gear into a locker and took a look inside. Kelly was hard at work on a new creation and looked up when Mila walked in.

  ‘Jeez.’ She exclaimed. ‘You look like shit. What’s happened to you?’

  Kelly looked ‘bright eyed and bushy tailed’ even though she’d taken the same quantity of MDMA as had Mila or possibly more.

  ‘I think I’m having a really bad comedown reaction to those Mollys we took last night.’

  ‘Really. You shoulda had a spliff and some 5-HTP before ya went to bed like I always do. I slept like a baby till midday.’

  Mila did not recall pharmacist Kelly co-prescribing either of those, at the time when she’d been singing the praises of the drug.

  ‘So when can I expect this to wear off? I really don’t know how I’m going to go out there again in a couple of hour’s time.’

  ‘You’ll be right. It’s never as busy on a Sunday an’ I’ve got a bottle of HTPs in me bag. Help yourself.’

  Mila pretended to be checking her phone messages while surreptitiously looking up 5-HTP on her mobile internet. All she needed was to replace one drug side-effect with another. She was somewhat comforted to learn that it was a health supplement of sorts and not chemically produced but one quick glimpse at a forum and some dubious results and Mila was put off. She wasn’t about to go out into the streets and score weed either, so she was just going to have to ride out this storm on her own.

  The costumes and dance gear in the wardrobe room were available for any of the dancers to use, the deal being that if you borrowed them, you had to return them maintained and clean. The system seemed to work she noted, flicking through the racks but she couldn’t muster the energy needed to try any on. She made a mental note that if she was booked for any privates, she would come and grab something from here. It would save her expensive stylized vintage lingerie for the theatre shows and give her a different look. She planned to keep on the blonde wig and make-up that allowed her some disguise.

  Warming up, every muscle ached, but Mila pushed through it. She could really use the money, but half hoped that no one would request her tonight for a private.

  What was she even doing here, she asked herself for the umpteenth time. What she would be able to offer at the end of the month would seem like petty cash compared to the hundreds of thousands she would be lacking when they next showed up at her door? Was part payment really going to buy her any time? But then what was the alternative? Just give up and wait? Call their bluff and see if they chose to let it go – she doubted that – or wait to see if they sent a message to her via Holly or her parents-in-law?

  She would never sleep again if something were to happen and if she hadn’t done everything in her power to prevent it. If only she could confess it all to Ryan. If only she wasn’t certain that telling him would endanger them all even more. She still had nothing on these people that would allow the police to find them, let alone shut them down, nothing tangible to link them to the break-in. If they were to get an inkling of Ryan or any police sniffing around, there was no telling where it could lead.

  As she secured the wig to her head, Mila was aware of every nerve ending in her scalp, every pin initiating an electric current that sizzled as she could only imagine a tattooist’s needle might do.

  Girls began trickling in. It seemed that everyone else allowed less than an hour for preparations; such was the fine art they had it down to. The main show was scheduled for eight but nearly everyone had solos before.

  By the time Mila received her call, she had resigned herself to putting everything else aside for the five minutes that she would have to be on stage. She was determined to impress Mr Arnett who’d taken a chance on her and had promised to be watching. Reminded that his wife too might be in the audience, Mila realized that her nervousness was as much due to her desire to perform well, as it was for the idea of getting her gear off. Still she would have liked to possess a switch with which to turn on the effects of the MDMA when needed, and then equally easily turn them off again.

  Stealing a peek into front of house, Mila could see that James and Elise were seated at a table somewhere towards the back of an otherwise half-full auditorium. She hoped that the lights would be lower so that she didn’t have to make direct eye contact with them and she tried to run through the same affirmations that had helped the night before.

  Calling on all her reserves and an innate determination to do everything at her best, she went out and pulled off a good performance. Mila didn’t need anyone else to tell her that it lacked some of the expressiveness and drama of the previous night, but she got through all the moves without stuff-ups and was rewarded with a good response from the audience.

  An hour and a half later, the burlesque show had just finished and the dressing room was abuzz with chatter. Mila was sitting at the dressing table in her Marilyn lingerie and wig, touching up her makeup, when Ginger, dashed into the room yelling ‘Drug squad!’ before disappearing the way she’d come. All hell broke loose as girls rushed to grab whatever illegal caps and powders they had in their possession and raced towards the single entrance of the bathroom to flush them down the toilets. They’d barely made it out of their seats, when four heavily armed policemen burst through the door.

  ‘Drug Squad! Nobody move!’ They girls stopped dead in their tracks, drugs in hand and Mila who had stayed paralysed in her chair from the beginning, somehow found the wherewithal to turn her head away from the chaos and look down at the bench.

  He wasn’t wearing his regular uniform, and she couldn’t see his face for the helmet and visor, but there was no mistaking the voice that boomed out the instructions as Sergeant Ryan Blake’s.

  R
yan had been given a good description of the woman he was looking for but on entering the room, he’d found that at least a dozen were wearing the same brunette bobbed wigs that would make it harder to identify a dirty blonde amongst them. He would have to rely on names but thought it highly probable that Taz was only a nickname. Of course he could have asked for her outright, but he didn’t want her alerted to the fact that she was the real reason for the raid. Ryan was pinning his hopes on the possibility that Taz might just be the one thread that could unravel a syndicate.

  Three officers began to move along the small line of girls who’d been caught at the entrance to the bathroom. They took names as they confiscated the obvious drugs and asked to inspect bags and ID. The fourth kept a close eye on everyone else in the room. A sniffer dog was brought in soon after and unbelievably, some of the girls couldn’t help but coo over the small beagle who was walking cleverly from purse to person, discovering quite a stash. Mostly the quantities were minimal but anyone in possession was being taken for questioning and they were up to their third arrest when Ryan asked the girl at the front of the line for her name.

  ‘Tamsin Baker’ came the very pissed off reply. Sergeant Blake showed no outward recognition of the name and didn’t even look more closely at the face beneath the wig but he knew he’d found his target. He didn’t care if anyone else in the room was taken in or arrested but if their cover was to be believable, the sting had to continue.

  Tamsin was in possession of twelve caps of MDMA, about twenty grams of cocaine and four joints. Not the mother-load, but enough of a haul he hoped, to get some answers. He also knew that if he could convince her that the other girls had dobbed her in as their supplier, he’d be able to divert attention from the real snitch and hopefully scare her enough to get her to talk.