The Savage Girl - Alex Shakar [24]
The man looks up and then floats over, carrying the women in his wake. He has a sinuous way of walking, as though propelled by small snakes fastened to the bottom of his shoes.
“Couldn’t we get someone like her?” Cabaj asks him.
Lucien presses his octagonal glasses up his nose, and he and Cabaj set about examining Ursula, tilting their heads this way and that. Bettina and Tammy follow suit, regarding her with renewed interest, and Javier begins dumbly staring as well.
Meanwhile, Ursula smiles like she doesn’t have a thought in her head, like she doesn’t know exactly what’s coming next.
“She looks like Ivy Van Urden,” Lucien concludes.
Cabaj furrows his brows, trying to place the name.
“She does, doesn’t she?” Bettina says.
“The name sounds familiar,” Cabaj says.
“You know, Ed,” Bettina says. “That wannabe model who went nuts last month?” She smiles at the memory.
Cabaj laughs. “Oh, yeah. She was some kind of streaker or something, right?”
Javier glances worriedly at Ursula.
“She ran stark naked through . . .” Bettina pauses. “Which park was it?”
“Ray E. Davis Park,” Tammy says.
“Richard W. Held Park,” Lucien says.
“Banister Park,” Ursula corrects them.
“Right!” Bettina enthuses.
“Of course!” Cabaj says gratefully. “And she cut herself, too, or something, right?”
“Carved herself like a pumpkin,” Ursula says. The others laugh, except for Javier, who runs his hand through his hair nervously.
“And . . . ,” Cabaj says, “didn’t she have on . . . warpaint?”
Ursula freezes. The memory of Chas’s reference to warpaint comes back to her. And the way he stared at her when he said it. She didn’t make the connection then. She’d never thought of it as warpaint.
“She painted her body,” Tammy confirms.
I hired you for a reason, Chas said. What reason? The fact that she’s Ivy’s sister? Why would that give him any confidence in her abilities?
Lucien picks up the conversational slack left by Ursula, a serene smile oozing across his face. “She marked the places on her body she was going to cut with red paint, and then she cut them with a straight razor. Except for the marks on her cheeks.”
“Her cheeks?” Cabaj smirks. “Which cheeks?”
Tammy laughs. “Her face cheeks.”
“Why didn’t she cut her face cheeks?”
Tammy widens her eyes. “Nobody knows.”
“She probably forgot,” Ursula says. “She seemed like kind of an airhead.”
They all laugh and fall silent, the attention then gravitating back to Ursula, who stands stiffening, shoulders tense, feet taking root in the floor.
“Do a lot of people tell you you look like her?” Cabaj asks.
She takes a breath and looks at him—calmly, she hopes. “Yes. I’ve been hearing that lately.”
“Too bad she lost her marbles,” Cabaj says. “She would have been perfect for this one.”
“Why not use Ursula, then?” Javier says.
Asshole. She shoots him a look that obviously scares him.
“Oh,” Lucien says. “No, she’s a bit too smart-looking. Too, um, wise.”
“Too old, you mean,” she says.
Lucien titters, caught out.
“But I’m sure people must tell you that you should be a model all the time,” Cabaj insists.
Ursula nods. “It’s not my style. Not that Ivy Van Urden doesn’t make the whole profession seem quite glamorous.”
They all laugh.
“Excuse me,” she says. “I’ve got to go find the bathroom.”
“The one right upstairs is probably less crowded,” Cabaj offers.
She thanks him for the tip and heads for the stairs. There’s no line for the bathroom, and two men with smallish eyes are just leaving. She goes in and locks the door and commences her ritual of self-inspection, searching her reflection for the latest punishments, meted out in the form of tiny lines, freckles that increasingly resemble age spots, slight droopings of jowl and sallowing of skin. There remain the rallying points—the dark-blond hair, the broad cheekbones—those features Nature got right the first time, before going back to the drawing board and perfecting the mold, eight and a half years later, in