Maestra

Chapter One
 
If you asked me how it began, I could truthfully say that the first time, it was an accident. It was about six in the evening, the time when the city churns again on its axis, and though the streets above were full of the sharp wind of another piss-miserable May, the station was stuffy and humid, squalid with discarded tabloids and fast-food wrappings, irritable tourists in garish leisure wear crammed amid the resigned, sallow-faced commuters. I was waiting on the platform for the Piccadilly line at Green Park after another fabulous start to another fabulous week of being bullied and patronized at my super-fabulous job. As the train on the opposite side pulled away, a low collective groan rippled through the crowd. The board showed that the next Tube was stuck at Holborn. Someone on the tracks, probably. Typical, you could see people thinking. Why did they always have to top themselves at rush hour? The passengers across the line were moving off, among them a girl in crippling heels and an electric-blue bandage dress. Last season’s Alaïa via Zara, I thought. Probably on her way to the stinking tourist traps of Leicester Square with the other rube losers. She had extraordinary hair, a great cascading plum-colored mane of extensions with  some sort of gold thread bound through them that caught and held the neon light.

“Judeee! Judy! Is that you?" 

She started waving at me enthusiastically. I pretended not to hear.

“Judy! Over here!"

People were beginning to look. The girl had hobbled precariously close to the yellow safety stripe.

“It’s me! Leanne!"

“Your friend’s waving to you," said the woman next to me, helpfully.

“I’ll see you upstairs in a min!" I didn’t hear voices like hers very often anymore. I’d never expected to hear hers again. She obviously wasn’t going to disappear, and the train showed no sign of appearing, so I settled my heavy leather briefcase across my shoulder and pushed my way back through the crowd. She was waiting on the gangway between the platforms.

“Hiya! I thought it was you!"

“Hi, Leanne," I tried gingerly.

She tripped the last few steps toward me and threw her arms around me like I was her long-lost
sister.

“Look at you! Dead professional. I didn’t know you lived in London!" I didn’t point out that this was probably because I hadn’t spoken to her in a decade. Facebook friends weren’t really my style, nor did I need to be reminded, ever, of where I had come from.

Then I felt like a bitch. “You look great, Leanne. I love your hair."

“I don’t go by Leanne anymore, actually. It’s Mercedes now."

“Mercedes? That’s—nice. I use Judith mostly. Sounds more grown‑up."

“Yeah, well, look at us, eh? All grown up."

I don’t think I knew, then, what that felt like. I wondered if she did either.

“Listen, I’ve got an hour before work." Werk. “Do you fancy a quick drink? Catch up?"

I could have said I was busy, that I was in a rush, taken her number like I was actually going to call it. But where did I have to get to? And there was something in that voice, strangely welcome in its familiarity, that made me feel lonely and reassured at the same time. I had just two twenty-pound notes in the world, and there were three days before payday. Still, something might turn up.

“Sure,” I said. “Let me buy you a drink. Let’s go to the Ritz."

Two champagne cocktails in the Rivoli Bar, £38. I had twelve on my Tube card and two in hand.  I just wouldn’t have much to eat until the end of the week. It was stupid, maybe, to show off like that, but sometimes you need to show the world a bit of defiance. Leanne—Mercedes—fished enthusiastically with a fuchsia shellacked nail extension for the bobbing maraschino and took a cheerful slurp.

“That’s dead nice, thanks. Though I prefer Roederer now, myself."

Well, that served me right for being flash.

“I work round here," I volunteered. “Art. In an auction house. I do Old Masters." I didn’t, actually, but then I wasn’t sweating that Leanne would know a Rubens from a Rembrandt.

“Posh," she replied. She looked bored now, fiddling with the swizzle stick in her drink. I wondered if she was sorry she had called out to me, but instead of feeling annoyed I had a pathetic feeling that I wanted to please her.

“Sounds it,” I said confidentially, feeling the brandy and the sugar soothing their way into my blood, “but the pay’s crap. I’m skint, usually."

“Mercedes" told me she had been in London for a year. She worked in a champagne bar in St. James’s. “Reckons it’s classy, but it’s full of the same dirty old gits. Nothing dodgy,” she added hastily. “It’s only a bar. The tips are amazing, though."

She claimed she was making two grand a week. “Puts weight on you, though," she said ruefully, prodding her tiny belly. “All that drinking. Still, we don’t have to pay for it. Pour it into the plants if we have to, Olly says."
       
“Olly?"

“He’s the owner. Eh, you should come down sometime, Judy. Moonlight a bit if you’re broke. Olly’s always looking for girls. D’you want another one?"

An older couple in black tie, probably on their way to the opera, took the table opposite us. The woman ran her eyes critically over Mercedes’s fake-tanned legs, her shimmering cleavage. Mercedes swiveled in her chair, slowly and deliberately uncrossed and recrossed her legs, giving me and the poor old bugger next to her a flash of black lace G‑string, all the time staring straight into the woman’s eyes. There was no need to ask if anyone had a problem.

“As I was saying," she said when the woman turned, beet-faced, to the cocktail menu, “it’s a laugh." Laff. “The girls are from all over. You could look smashing if you got a bit dolled up. Come on."

I looked down at my black tweed Sandro suit. Nipped‑in jacket, flippy little pleated skirt. It was meant to look knowingly coquettish, professional with a little Left Bank spin, at least that’s what I told myself when I clumsily mended the hems for the umpteenth time, but next to Mercedes I looked like a depressed crow.

“Now?"

“Yeah, why not? I’ve got loads of stuff in me bag."

“I don’t know, Leanne."

“Mercedes."

“Sorry."

“Come on, you can wear my lace top. It’ll look ace with your tits. Unless you’ve got a date?"

“No,” I said, tipping my head right back to catch the last drops of bubbles and angostura. “No, I haven’t got a date."