Painted Faces (40 page)

“
This blackmailing went on for years, but when I turned eighteen I resolved myself to telling my father. Only I knew that simply telling him about what Kelvin had been doing to me all those years wouldn't be enough. He wouldn't believe me. So I had to
show
him. I told Kelvin to come over one day when I knew my father would be coming home early. I made sure that Dad found us in a compromising position so that there would be no refuting it. He nearly killed Kelvin that day. I hadn't been prepared for the violence. I had to drive Kelvin to the hospital and leave him at the entrance to A&E. When I returned home I found my dad crying in his study. Crying. It was the first and last time I'd ever seen him cry. I couldn't believe that finding out his best friend had been systematically raping me for years would be the thing that would finally get him to show some human emotion. I told him everything then, how it started, how it had been going on for years. He looked so broken and it made me so angry, because I was the one who was broken, not him. I packed my bags that night and that was the last time I ever saw him. It was years later that I got a phone call from my aunt telling me that he had died.”

“
Nicholas,” I breathe, folding my arms so tightly around him that I'm worried he might suffocate.

He doesn't seem to hear me; he's lost in the past. He continues speaking, “I ran away to France first, and for a year I did nothing but drink and take drugs and try to forget who I was. Then I pulled myself together and started experimenting with shows in tiny venues and the whole thing grew from there. I created the Vivica Blue persona and I haven't stopped travelling and performing since. I get that some men want to dress up as women because they want to be a woman. I don't want to be a woman though, at least not when I'm off the stage.

“
I perform for the catharsis, because it's freeing. It's the opposite of what Kelvin wanted me to be, so it's also a strange sort of protest. Every time I put on a dress I'm sticking two fingers up at what he did to me. In the same way that an actor needs to become another person when they act, I need to become another person when I sing. And now, when I'm Nicholas, I can truly reclaim myself when I can get lost in a woman like you because you could never be anything like
him
. I can be a man with you, strong, in control, not a scared little boy.”

My heart thumps hard and fast against my ribcage.

“
So, this is me darling, a complete and total contradiction. A fucking mess.” He smiles sadly.

“
A beautiful mess,” I proclaim.

“
But a mess nonetheless,” he adds.

“
Hey, that rhymed,” I laugh.

“
It did, didn't it.” He doesn't laugh, he hasn't got it in him yet.

We sit in silence. Nicholas breaks it when he says, “I don't think I'll ever be the man you deserve Freda.”

“
You already are.”

“
I'm not. I have issues a mile long. Issues that might sink into the recesses, but never quite go away.”

“
The fact that you think you're not good enough just shows how good you are Nicholas.” I say. “Do you know that you're the first man who's ever looked at me and actually
seen
me? When you're fat your whole life you get fairly used to people looking through you, dismissing you simply because you don't fit with their aesthetic ideals. So I either get men looking through me or men looking at me because they think I'll have low self-esteem and will be easy to manipulate. You didn't do any of that. You made me feel like a woman, a woman worth getting to know.”

“
You're not fat Freda,” he says shaking his head.

“
Maybe not to you because your beauty standard is different from the norm. But put me standing next to someone like Nora in a night club and I might as well be a part of the furniture. So don't you see, you are the man I deserve. You saw me, changed my life, made it better, and I'm completely fucking in love with you.” I clamp my hands over my mouth after I say it. I can't believe I just said that; I hadn't meant to.

I stare at Nicholas and several agonised emotions pass over his face as he looks back at me.

“
Oh Freda, honey, no,” he says sadly.

I feel like I've been hit with a truck. The tone of his voice immediately tells me that I shouldn't have told him that. We've only been having sex for two days, what the hell was I thinking? Oh yeah, I wasn't. I was just letting my stupid mouth run away with me again.

“
You don't love me,” he says, still staring at me, as though trying to convince himself. “I'm not the person you should love. I'll let you down.”

I stand up and wrap my arms around myself. “I – I didn't mean that,” I mumble like an idiot.

He narrows his eyes. “You didn't mean it,” he repeats my words back at me, disbelieving.

“
Yeah, I um, I was trying to make you feel better.”

“
By lying and telling me that you're in love with me?” he raises his voice.

“
It just came out,” I whisper.

“
Okay,” he says, his temper simmering down and a pained look crossing his face. Why doesn't he want me to love him?

“
This has been a long day,” he sighs and runs his palm over his face. “I tell you what, you take the night off. I'll do the show by myself. You can go and see the sights or something.”

His voice is closed off now, like he's intentionally trying to hide away and ignore the fact that I love him. He knows I meant it when I said it. I know I meant it when I said it too. Now it's this pink elephant in the room that we both don't want to acknowledge.

God, I'm such an idiot. This was probably the worst possible moment to tell Nicholas how I feel, after he's just relived all of the awful things he went through as a young boy.

“
I'm going to go for a walk,” I say, needing to get away from him and my own pained emotions.

He simply nods as I go to slip on my shoes and grab my handbag. Feeling like I'm in a trance, I leave the hotel room and make my way outside. The Royal Mile is crowded with tourists as usual and I start walking uphill until I find myself at the entrance to Edinburgh Castle. I decide to go inside and have a look around, thinking it might distract me from my confusion over what just happened with Nicholas.

He basically spilled his guts out to me and I ended up loving him even more once I'd heard his story. But then I'd tried to hand him my heart and he'd looked at it like it was a dead rat he didn't want to see. He turned away from me and my helpless female need for his love in return.

I knew this was going to happen all along. From the very beginning I'd told myself to stay away, but I just couldn't seem to help falling for him. I saw how he treated Dorotea when she tried to make things serious with him and he basically ended up hating her for it. Why the hell would I be any different? I'm practically sucking back tears when I get to the ticket booth and pay the entrance fee to the castle.

In the end I don't even go that far inside. I walk to a wall lined with black cannons that looks out over the city and sit down, staring at the buildings far below me. Tourists of every nationality potter around me, taking pictures and chattering. I stay there like a statue, lost to my own misery and feelings of rejection.

Perhaps it's because of what he's been through that he can't accept love or anything more than the simple gratification of sex. Surely being molested by a man your father's age when you're only fourteen years old would do a number on a person. Maybe he'll always be like this, seeking only the rush of initial attraction and nothing more, just like Dorotea had warned me.

When I get back to the hotel hours later the room is empty. I order some dinner and sit eating by myself at the table, comforting myself in the only way I know how: with food. The trouble is, everything tastes like nothing and all I feel is the aching that's radiating out from my heart and seeping into the rest of my organs. Everything in my middle hurts. I can barely breathe.

I lie in bed for hours, remembering the details of Nicholas' story in my head and trying to figure out why he looked so pained when I told him I love him. It's nine at night the next time I glance at the clock. Nicholas will be just going out on stage now, I think to myself.

I need to see him, talk to him, figure him out. I spring up in the bed, throw on some clothes (because I had been wallowing in my PJs like a complete and total lovesick stereotype) grab my handbag and rush out the door.

When I get to the club Nicholas is sitting by the piano, playing a song I've never heard before. It's not his usual upbeat number, it's slow, the lyrics introspective. The place hasn't filled out as much as it did last night or the night before, but there's still a good number of people here to see him.

It takes a few minutes for him to see me standing there. He looks through me and away, focusing on the people sitting in front of the stage.

He remains sitting at the piano when he speaks into the microphone. “This next song is for someone who told me they loved me today. It's called “I Don't Care Much” from
Cabaret
.”

My heart sinks, my organs hurt more than ever, as Nicholas starts to sing. He makes a point of looking directly at me for a brief moment,
right
at me, so there's no mistaking who the song is meant for.

He tells me that he doesn't care much whether I go or stay.

He tells me that if he kisses me, if we touch, warning's fair, he doesn't care very much.

I die inside, not a little bit, but a lot. Before he's even finished the song I run out of the club like I'll suffocate if I stay. I can't even remember how I get back to the hotel; all I know is that there are tears running furiously down my face and when I do get back I begin shoving my things into my suitcase.

Why did he do that? Why the fucking humiliation of a public rejection? Does he hate the fact that I love him so much that he had to tell me he didn't care in the cruellest way possible?

He really is a beautiful mess. A beautiful mess that sucks you in and messes you up too. If I fly too close to the sun, I can't exactly expect anything other than to get burned.

I leave the hotel and hop into a taxi, instructing the driver to bring me to the airport. On the drive I call up Nora and sob my sad little story to her down the line. She tells me to buck up and that everything is going to be okay, but those kinds of words mean nothing when your heart is breaking.