Painted Faces (21 page)

For the final song of the set The Wilting Willow sit idly and watch as Nicholas prepares to sing a capella. The entire club is reduced to hushed whispers once Miss Vivica Blue's demeanour turns serious.

“
This last song is about love, it's sad but it's real. I'd like to dedicate it to my new home and the wonderful friends I've made, who have welcomed me with open arms and made me feel like I've always been here. This one's called “The Wind That Shakes the Barley”.

Nicholas' voice echoes around the silent club, eerily filling the space despite the fact that it's only him singing. I look up at him and he catches me with his eyes, like he always does when our gazes meet. He holds me there, like a prisoner, as goosebumps wash over my skin with the haunting lyrics. He sings each word with meaning, as though he wrote the song himself and felt every moment of the love and tragedy that the story tells. He continues singing, but comes and sits down right in front of me on the edge of the stage.

I sat within the valley green, I sat me with my true love
My sad heart strove the two between, the old love and the new love
The old for her, the new that made me think on Ireland dearly
While soft the wind blew down the glen and shook the golden barley

When he says the word “golden” he reaches down and drifts a hand through my hair. My entire body comes alive, like he's singing for me and only me. Like the hundred odd people packed into the club aren't here at all. It's just the two of us.

While sad I kissed away her tears, my fond arms round her flinging
The foeman's shot burst on our ears from out the wildwood ringing
A bullet pierced my true love's side in life's young spring so early
And on my breast in blood she died while soft winds shook the barley

He's so caught up in the song now, caught up in the story, that an actual tear runs down his face. God, he really is good at this, I think to myself. My eyes go a little watery too. He can put so much genuine feeling into his voice. He shouldn't be singing in some obscure little club in Dublin, he should be on a proper stage, sharing his wonderful voice and his ability to convey emotion with the world. Suddenly, when Nicholas gets to the final verse, people in the audience begin singing along with him.

But blood for blood without remorse I've taken at Oulart Hollow
And laid my true love's clay cold corpse where I full soon may follow
As round her grave I wander drear, noon, night and morning early
With breaking heart when ever I hear the wind that shakes the barley.

When he's finished singing, quiet encapsulates the building, before people rise to give him a standing ovation. Nicholas bows three times, blows me a discreet kiss and disappears behind the red velvet curtains. I say goodbye to the men I'd been sitting with and make my way to the dressing room.

Once there, I find Nicholas sitting by the mirror, having already made a start on removing his make-up. His mood is sombre, perhaps he's still feeling the after effects of the song. It's an iconic Irish Sean N
ó
s song, but I'm surprised he knew it at all since he normally sings songs from musicals or big band numbers.

Then a realisation hits me like a ton of bricks. He sat and sang an Irish song to me, just like he sang the Italian inspired song to Dorotea last week. Oh no. Disappointment fills my gut as I think how despite the heartfelt story of tragic love he told, it was all just a ploy to get me to sleep with him. After all, the same thing worked a treat with Dorotea. I'm such an idiot for getting so taken in by it all. A mixture of sadness and anger fills me as I step forward and carefully remove his wig, not breathing a word.

He watches the movements of my hands in the mirror, as he swipes the make-up wipe across his cheek. I take out all the clips that had been keeping his hair in place beneath the wig. His gaze is speculative, like he doesn't know how to broach a conversation with me.

God, I'm so ridiculously upset with him right now, and it takes everything that's in me not to burst into tears and flee the room like the cliché of a spurned admirer. I really am just another potential fuck to him, some stupid girl he thinks he can manipulate into bed with an emotional song and a fake tear or two. He played Dorotea like a fucking piano. I'm not going to go the same way.

“
Why did you sing that song?” I ask him finally, after a silence that was beginning to feel like it would go on forever.

“
I wanted to pay respects to the country I'm trying to make my home,” Nicholas answers after thinking about it for a second. His brow furrows slightly as he regards me.

“
And why did you sit by the edge of the stage and sing it directly to me, touching my hair like it meant something?” I keep my voice steady. It's difficult but I just about manage it.

Nicholas looks at me long and hard now, no trace of his usual humour on his face. “It's a show Fred,” he answers low and soft. “I was giving the audience a show.”

“
So it's all fake then?” I go on, steeling myself for what he might say next.

He looks away and stares up at the ceiling for a minute. “Not all of it, but I do act. It's all a part of the performance. Do you think I mean it when I blow kisses to the men in the audience and flirt with them? I'll admit I feel things when I sing, lots of lyrics hold meaning for me, but 95% of what I do on stage isn't real Fred. I'm Vivica Blue up there, not Nicholas.”

“
Right, I think I get it now,” I reply, my jaw tight.

He puts his hand on mine, stopping me from removing the final few clips from his hair. “Do you Fred?”

“
Yes, what you do on stage is a performance, it doesn't mean anything.”

“
It's entertainment Fred, and I am an entertainer. This is what I do. It's what I've always done. I wouldn't know how to be any other way.”

His words hurt me, because I know what he's really trying to say. He's telling me that he can't be changed. He'll continue to shag his way from woman to woman just like he always has. And yes, I'll admit that somewhere in the back of my mind I wanted to be special to him, different from all of the other women who've turned his head. Isn't that what every girl wants? To be loved by someone uniquely, to make a man feel something he hasn't yet felt for anyone else.

The female need for true love is a fickle bitch. It forces itself into your life and shapes your actions, always driving you to find that one guy who'll love you unconditionally. Some of us seek it in the worst of places too, in soulless pubs and night clubs filled with guys who can't see past their own shallow egos, who only see the surface of a woman. They don't look for what's underneath because they don't want that; they want the aesthetic, the long hair and the tight little dresses.

Nicholas is no different really. I want him to be more than just some flirty straight drag queen. I want him to be the one. Unfortunately, I think I'm cursed to be one of those women who sees “the one” in the wrong one.

We barely speak after that, just quietly pack up the last of his things. When we get back to the apartment building he goes inside his place and I go inside mine. Tonight has been a cold slap of reality, if nothing else. I just need to enjoy being friends with Nicholas, let him boost my confidence with his flirting and quit harbouring unrealistic romantic ideas about him.

The next day I'm like a zombie. The noise of the blender as I mix the cupcake frosting makes me want to act out Nora's fantasy and take a hammer to the bloody thing. I think I'm going to have to bake my cupcakes on Thursday evenings before I go to the club with Nicholas and refrigerate them, because getting up to make them in the early hours of the morning is going to mean I'm consistently cranky on Fridays.

They won't be as fresh as they usually are, but at least I won't mess up the icing as badly as I am now. I've just dropped a massive blob of vanilla onto the kitchen floor. I crankily get down on my hands and knees to wipe it up.

When I arrive at the charity shop, Theresa greets me with a nice cup of coffee and it wakes me up a little better.

“
You're looking tired today, Freda. Late night last night was it?” she asks, looking fresh as a daisy. The cow. I'm jealous of her full night's sleep. I only got about two hours, since I spent a while wallowing in misery over my realisation that Nicholas isn't going to be the love of my life like I subconsciously wanted him to be. Mournfully, I relived how exquisitely he kissed me and made me come, and then fretted over how I'm not going to get to experience that again.

“
Yes, I've got a new job in a night club,” I tell Theresa, bringing myself back to the present. I avoid going into detail about being a drag queen's assistant so as to avoid her questions. I don't want to talk about Nicholas right now.

“
Goodness, you're going to end up working yourself to death,” she tuts like a mother hen.

“
Not necessarily. When you add up all the hours I work in my three jobs it's more or less the same as the usual 40 hour week most people do. The hours are just a little all over the place. But I don't mind, it keeps me busy. I'll probably sleep this afternoon when I finish my shift here though. I'm going to be tired until I get used to the new routine.”

“
True,” Theresa agrees. “Oh, by the way, a young man came in here yesterday looking for you.”

“
Oh yeah, it was probably Harry. What did he look like?”

She puts her hand on her hip and squishes up her face as though trying to remember. You'd swear she saw him ten years ago instead of yesterday.

“
Blond hair, medium height, glasses, a bit of a stern expression.”

Her answer causes my stomach to drop and air to gush right out of my mouth in a gasp. Christ on a fucking bike. That does
not
sound at all like Harry. There's only one person I know fitting that description, the stern expression gave it away. My ex Aaron. How on earth did he find me? I know Dublin's hardly the biggest city in the world, but he lives in the suburbs and I don't have a Facebook page.

The only people who know where I work and live are my family and my small group of friends. I know this sounds crazy, but I actually google myself regularly out of paranoia, just to make sure nothing pops up that I didn't manage to erase.

Aaron never hurt me, but he was possessive to the extreme, and
not
in a sexy way. One time he wouldn't allow me to leave his house and he locked me in for several hours before finally agreeing to let me go. I had to sit in his living room and watch as he manically paced back and forth, ranting about how I didn't value our relationship the way he did.