Page 73 of Eye Candy

I laughed like he’d intended, and as he updated me on all the goings-on of our regular customers, I booked flights home for his surgery date. I told him the club I worked at was on break—which was a multitiered lie, because clubs didn’t have breaks (it wasn’t college), and I didn’t work at a club. I didn’t work anywhere, but I didn’t want him to worry about me. Classic Holliday behavior.

“Will you be traveling home alone, Bucket? Because we have space if you want to bring a friend.”

“I don’t have any friends.”

I could almost hear Lyssa’s outrage. But that wasn’t the kind of friend Dad meant.

With a seasoned performer’s timing, Chase knocked on the door. “Caroline? Is everything OK?”

“Fine!” I called, covering the mouthpiece. “Be out in a second.”

My dad made a knowing sound in my ear. “I’m no gossiping Noddy, but that sounds like a friend. Ormore. I’ll remind you, Caroline, anyone you want to bring home is welcome here.”

“Noted.”

“Let us know what time your final flight gets to Wellingtonand Mike will come down and get you. He still has the Welcome Home Shrimp sign he made for you when your Christmas trip that didn’t pan out?—”

I’d canceled that trip because I got a gig as a server for a winter wonderland cabaret, which the booker promised would become a stage spot. Then right before the end of my shift a customer grabbed my ass and I got fired. (Yes,Igot fired.)

“—and he’s keen to pull it out again. To be honest, it’s a shit sign, but he was pleased with himself.”

I groaned. Mike and poster board were the last things anyone wanted to be greeted with at an airport.

People always assumed I was the shameless extrovert of the family given that I twirled nipple pasties for a living, but my brother put me in the shade. One year, Mike took part in a fundraiser auction in Woodville and one of the prizes was coffee with him at Levitate. Mike didn’t think the bidding was going well enough so he stripped to his jocks and danced toSanta Baby, and it was ten times more graphic than any routine I’ve ever done. To this day, Josie Everitt still can’t look him in the eye, but Mike was thrilled because he made the front page of the local paper.

I’dnever made the front page of theTararua Times, and I took my clothes off all the time.

“Just text Mike and tell him what day to pick you up,” Dad said. “It’ll do him good to take a day off working with Hodges. Your brother really hates that guy.”

“Mike exaggerates. Remember when he said that watching my roommate Lyssa’s videos made him want to poke his eyes out and use them to plug his ears? That was mean. Lyssa was very angry about that.”

“Well, you didn’t need to tell her that he said it, Bucket.”

“I was making a point!”

“And what was that?”

“That the people who criticize her—like Mike, like people in her comments section—are all silly losers and she should ignorethem! Plus, when I first moved in, Lyssa saw a photo of Mike and called him a hottie. She needed to know he’s an assclown.”

“He’s watched quite a few of her videos,” Dad said thoughtfully.

“Because he knows it will annoy me.”

“Hmm.”

After we said our goodbyes, I fired off an email to Mike with my dates and a draft roster to cover Dad’s absence at the café. If we had a good plan in place before Mr. Ryman, our banker, asked, everything would be OK. Ryman wasn’t as much of a dick as Mike thought, and his daughter and I were friends, so he’d trust me if I could show him we were prepared. None of us could cook like Dad, but we could make a few clever menu changes. At home right now it was autumn going into winter—so we could freeze a whole lot of stews and serve paninis and toasties—anything with bread. Twelve weeks wasn’t so bad. Twelve weeks was nothing.

The pit of dread in my belly grew anyway.

I’d seen plenty of my friends move back home after setting off for bigger things. They always said it was temporary: they’d just hit a small speed bump and needed to regroup at home with their mother’s cooking and their dad’s fixing their cars or whatever. But they always got stuck.

I didn’t want to get stuck. I didn’t want to be a barista in the country. I wanted to be a showgirl in the big city. Tucking tips into my knickers, flirting and being the center of attention, getting home at four a.m. to a cozy apartment and wrapping my body around a sleeping blond man whose round glasses sat on the bedside table…

I had no idea how the Fonda, Jane I was going to cope back in Woodville. There was no club culture, no gigs, no burlesque. The only nightlife was one pub, where farmers who didn’t want to go home sat and drank tap beer until closing time. At best I could self-produce one show a month in the closest city, but that was a long drive on a dangerous road, and I’d only be performing to friends buying pity tickets.

This whole thing with Gerard hadn’t just been for nothing, it was worse than nothing, because in the course of this failed scam, I’d stumbled across everything I’d never dared to dream of—a regular gig in the city,Chase—only to have it ripped away.

Hopelessness settled around me, as heavy and unpleasant as a wet fur coat.

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