Page 37 of Of Socialites and Prizefights

“Now, you said yesterday you had something to show me,” said Roz, one hand planted on the car as she leaned in to poke around under the hood. “What am I looking at?”

“Nothing I’ve seen before, though I don't know why I’m surprised.” Joey snorted. “This daft git tried to spell his engine to run faster. He's got the magic all tangled up in the mechanics. It’s a right fucking mess. Excuse my language,” he added, glancing at Deepa.

“Please, don’t mind me,” she said breezily.

Leaning in, Roz must have found whatever Joey was talking about, because she let out a long, low whistle. “He meant business, didn’t he? It's a bloody miracle he managed to keep the car running long enough to bring it into the shop.”

“Right? But this isn’t engine trouble. What the bloody hell am I supposed to do with it?”

“You don’t have problems like this often?” Deepa asked, coming in to peer over Roz’s shoulder. Under the hood, the car engine was a complicated knot of machinery of which she couldn't make heads nor tails. Buried deep amid the blocky mechanics and coils of metal, she caught a glimmer of magic, tightly entangled, as Joey had said. A jolt of sympathy for the car made her sick to her stomach for just a second.

“It’s not the first time I’ve heard of some idiot trying to enchant their car to run faster, or fly, or go underwater or whatever wank they get in their head,” said Joey, “but it's the first time anyone's ever brought me the problem to fix after the fact.”

“You're not especially handy with magic, then?” Deepa asked.

“I’m handy enough,” Joey said, glaring at the car. “But this goes a bloody stretch beyond.”

“Well,” said Deepa, “as much of a mess as it might be, it’s only a little spell. It’s not as if you’re dealing with a curse.”

Roz leaned back to bump her shoulder against Deepa’s in sympathy. “I suppose if we bust the engine trying to take the spell off, we can fix that easily enough.” She sounded doubtful. “These Vauxhalls are meant to hit a hundred miles an hour; what’s he need to spell it faster for?”

Deepa wasn’t normally given to sentiment, but as Joey and Roz discussed how best to approach the problem, she couldn’t help but feel the whole situation was rather unfair to the poor car. It hadn’t asked for that magic to get tangled upin it, and it didn’t deserve to get broken apart and put back together just because someone else had been irresponsible with it. But she couldn’t express that without sounding like she was overidentifying with a hunk of machinery, so she left them to it and went to look around the rest of the shop.

Most of what she found on the shelves and in the toolkits, she couldn’t identify, so, as she browsed, her mind wandered. This was Roz’s world, and, like the gardens, she wanted to stay longer. Unlike the gardens, hazy dreamscape that they were, it was harder to imagine a place for herself in the garage.

There was no sense imagining a future with Roz, but sense had never stopped her from fantasising. It was as harmless as window-shopping, and if window-shopping had taught her anything, it was that there was always a way for her to get her hands on something if she wanted it badly enough, no matter how unrealistic or out of reach it seemed.

Deepa tiptoed her way into the fantasy as tentatively as a bird stretching her wings, preparing to leave the nest for the first time. In this fantasy world, Roz would court her just the same, but there were no men for Deepa to flit off to. There was no hunger for money or social standing hanging, like a sun-ripe mango, just out of reach in the tree. Because Deepa wasn’t blind; whatever Roz said, Deepa knew she didn’t want to watch her flirt or go out with other men, no matter how unseriously. Roz wanted awife, so a wife was how Deepa imagined herself.

When Roz dropped to one knee to present her with a modest ring in a box of brushed velvet, Deepa would blush and cry prettily from joy, both hands covering her mouth until Roz gently pulled one loose to slip the ring onto her finger. It would be a tiny diamond, but beautiful, and Deepa would cherish it as if it were the Crown Jewels. The wedding would be small — unofficial, of course, but red and gold and loud, to make hermother happy, with Deepa’s hands and feet mehndi-painted, and Roz’s hands, too.

Every day, Roz would work in her garage, elbow-deep in her motorcars, and Deepa would have supper on the table when she got home. Their house would be small but comfortable, sharing a wall with the neighbours, and Deepa would fill it with all the bright colours and patterns and spices that reminded her of home an ocean away. They would go out to Eden and Club Artemis before going home together, falling into bed and each other’s arms, and so it would go for years, for decades, until their hair turned silver and wiry, and lines permanently etched their faces.

It was a quiet life Deepa led in this fantasy, without wealth or fame. Roz would spoil her as best she could, which would amount to a perfectly respectable level of lower middle-class spoiling, and she would never miss an anniversary or fail to make Deepa feel appreciated. Deepa would cook and bake and clean, just as her mother did, albeit on her own terms instead of an employer’s. It was the sort of modest fantasy in which a great many women indulged, realistic enough as to be a decent goal when it came to finding a spouse, yet just romantic enough to keep them hopeful.

It wasn’t bad. There was nothing wrong with it. But when Deepa compared it to her fantasies of living in a stately home, with diamonds at her throat and rubies on her fingers, silk sheets on her bed, fresh fruit on her table, and sapphire-and-emerald peacocks keening from the courtyard…

Playing wife to a working woman, no matter how handsome or devoted, simply couldn’t compare. It would be nice to be satisfied with something so simple, but that wasn’t who she was. Deepa wanted that mango.

With such self-awareness, it was hard to be surprised that her curse was still intact after so many kisses.

Roz moved through the garage like she’d been born there, with motor oil running through her veins. Deepa couldn’t imagine someone like Appleton, who might be as close to her ideal man as she would ever meet, trying to do Roz’s work. It was every bit as ridiculous as trying to imagine Roz dressed up in Appleton’s fineries, asking with a posh accent if Deepa would put a price on her company.

If money were no matter, there was no question with whom Deepa would rather spend her time. She would happily cheer from the sidelines at every one of Roz’s fights, watch her work on her cars as she shed layers from the heat, engine grease streaking her skin, the perceived roughness making Deepa’s mouth water.

But money was an issue, and it always would be. Eventually, the fickle men of London would grow bored of her, and she needed to secure a future for herself and her mother before that happened. Her ability to manipulate men had a timer on it, counting down to middle-age as it counted down on all women's beauty. She couldn’t afford to throw away a single viable year, no matter how tempting the distraction.

Unlike those men, Roz couldn't possibly believe a woman’s worth was tied to her youth and beauty. She herself was nearing forty; she’d be a hypocrite to declare any woman her age of lesser value when she herself was still going so strong, and she didn’t strike Deepa as the sort.

But then, she’d been as much drawn to the bright young things in Club Artemis as any man, all of them honeybees starving for the beauty of a flower in the sun. When the flower faded and her nectar dried up, how many bees could be expected to stay? And if the bees found out that the flower turned into a leopard every night—

Deepa firmly set that metaphor aside before it could get any further out of hand.

Roz found out, and she stayed,Deepa’s sense of reason pointed out. It sounded like her mother.Roz won’t discard you like last week's milk once you reach thirty-five.

“Got it,” Roz declared triumphantly from under the hood. When she withdrew and stepped back from the car, something in the engine snapped and crackled like an electric shock, and vivid blue sparks leapt out. She and Joey both took a hurried step back.

“Blast it,” Joey muttered, wiping his hands on his coveralls.

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