Page 18 of Of Socialites and Prizefights

When they reached The Songbird, Deepa hesitated. Without meaning it to sound as suggestive as it did, she asked, “Would you like to come up and see my place?”

Roz raised her brows. “It’s nearly eleven. Don’t you need to disappear in a puff of glitter?”

“Just a quick tour,” Deepa clarified. “My flatmate should be home; you can meet her, if you like…?”

“Alright, yeah. I’d like that.”

Pushing open The Songbird’s doors, Deepa led Roz by the hand through the club, briefly stopping by the dressing room. It was her habit to check there before the end of each night, and she was rewarded with a velvet case and a note addressed to her. The case held a thick gold bangle inlaid with glass rather than real diamonds, but it was pretty enough to have some aesthetic value, if not monetary. Snapping the case shut, she tucked it under her arm as she reclaimed Roz's hand to continue on.

“The punters leave you offerings?” Roz asked curiously.

“When I’m lucky.”

“You get lucky a lot?”

“It's my job to make my own luck,” Deepa said with a smile.

Guiding Roz around the bar, she took her up the stairs leading to the flat on the next floor. It was a far cry from the luxury of which Deepa dreamed, no more than two small bedrooms, a kitchen, and the lavatory, but rent was cheap as long as she worked at the club downstairs, and it let her save up for greater, more important things down the line. Cherie, curled on the loveseat in the kitchen, looked up at the pair’s entrance.

“Alright, love,” Cherie greeted her. “You’ve brought a friend around?”

“Cher, this is Roz. Roz, my friend and one of the dancers downstairs, Cherie. I'm giving her a house tour.”

“Oh, right. That won’t take a minute.” Cherie returned to her earlier work, which was painting her toenails with a glossy, dark red varnish she’d borrowed from Deepa.

“I don’t normally bring anyone up here,” Deepa admitted. “It’s a bit underwhelming.”

“But it’s yours,” Roz pointed out. “Good to have a place to call your own.”

“True enough. It’s just not all I want for myself.” Projecting confidence, Deepa tried not to cringe at the shabby state of the place.

“What happened here?” Roz nodded to the kitchen wall where a conspicuous chunk had been caved in through the drywall.

“That looks like the work of a fist or two. By all accounts, the previous lodger was an angry drunk. Or, at least a very clumsy one.”

“And here?” Roz asked, gesturing to the bottom of Cherie’s bedroom door, where claw marks gouged the frame and the floor around it.

“He was drunk, and he had a cat?” Deepa offered, her voice lilting uncertainly at the end.

“A tiger?” Roz asked dubiously.

“Severalcats.”

“I can fix all this up for you,” Roz offered, a faint furrow between her brows. “Wouldn't take long at all, these kinds of jobs.”

“No, no.” Deepa dismissed the offer with a wave. “Don’t go to the trouble. It’s not as if I own the place.”

“No, but you’ve still got to live in it. Might as well make it nice, unless you're planning on moving out anytime soon.”

“Eventually, but not immediately, no.”

“Then let me fix it. Next time I’m down here, I'll bring some things from the garage and get the wall patched, at least. And I’ll be a bloody sight faster at it than your landlord or any repairman he might call.”

“Alright,” Deepa allowed, heat creeping invisibly over her cheeks. “Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it.”

“The window latch in her bedroom is broken, too,” Cherie chimed in. “It opens fine, but we can’t lock it at night.”

---