‘Carefully! Carefully,’ Juliana gripes as two people wrestle the golden wings onto my shoulders and tighten the leather straps of the harness. I can’t help the chill that ripples across my skin when they all step back, satisfied.
‘No shoes,’ Tommy interrupts from the side. ‘Ditch the flats, they’re so wrong. I’ve changed my mind. She can carry it off in bare feet. Just like in the banner. Look at her. Perfection.’
I glance at the full-length mirror someone has positioned alongside me and think the heavy shadow ringing my eyes, my unbound, teased up, matted, madwoman hair and glistening, blood-red mouth make me look sick. My eyes skitter away from the reflection of the golden wings that rise from Irina’s narrow shoulders. I can’t bear to look at them for too long; just seeing them makes me dizzy.
‘Half an hour!’ a woman in headphones yells as she moves through the chaos backstage. ‘Half an hour! Positions, people. Places.’
We line up in a snaking line: fourteen flat-chested, freakishly tall women of varying ages in garish make-up and fourteen very different looks, each accessorised with a pair of wings. Some, like mine, are so large that their end feathers trail upon the floor; some are so small and diaphanous they’re barely noticeable. When I look at any of them, I get a sick feeling in my stomach and have to swallow hard.
What are you waiting for? I rail silently at the six who remain. Shift me now, damn you. Why make me participate in this inglorious farce?
‘Break a leg, my beauties!’ Tommy calls out as he moves up the line towards me with Juliana and Giovanni in tow. He runs his eyes across each of us, adjusting a wing span here, a neckline there.
When the three of them reach me, Juliana and Tommy step back behind Giovanni respectfully as he raises my hands, kissing them before releasing them.
‘My dear,’ he says, ‘you and I — we have come a long way, yes? When you look like this, it makes it possible to forget how much is wrong with this world. I thank you — for putting aside your pain, your demons; for putting me first.’
I see his eyes grow shiny with emotion and look down hurriedly, feeling my eyes sting in answer. My pain is always with me, it can never be put aside, it has made me who I am.
And my demons? My own personal demons? They have not yet arrived to drive my soul into another body. And so I wait, going through the motions of Irina’s bizarre, high-octane life while They tarry, doing who knows what?
I raise my head as the classical music they’ve had playing on a loop during the lightshow winds down to its last few bars.
Tommy says, ‘Shake the floor, Irina! Like the giant you are. Bring the house down.’
And I walk out of there, the way K’el told me to. Without looking back.
The pounding techno opening track bursts out of the loudspeakers and the awe-inspiring lightshow universe immediately winks out.
I emerge onto the catwalk as if by black magic, and the spotlights go up, white hot, so it’s impossible to make out the features of the audience members in the darkness beyond the front row.
The entire room seems to give a collective gasp as I stand there motionless for a full minute — the way I’ve been told to — the light striking off the surface of the golden paillettes that cover my gown, like armour deflecting arrow strike. All down the arcade, the giant video screens show images of me from every angle. There must be cameras positioned everywhere. I know I’m dazzling. I may not be able to make out most of the audience immediately, but I can feel every eye on me as I stand, holding my pose, arms loosely at my sides, golden feathers cascading down my back and trailing onto the floor behind my bare feet.
As the track segues into something even louder, faster, fiercer, I look down the bright white line of the catwalk. All that exists, I tell myself, is this present. Don’t think about what could happen. You have no past, and no future. It’s all been erased. Or it’s about to be. And you’ll have to start again, like you always do.
That’s how it has to be from now on. Without the things that have always anchored me, without Luc, without Ryan, it will always and forever be about living in the moment. I feel a surge of pain that almost makes me crumple. Almost.
Just breathe, says my inner demon again, through my anguish. Just walk. Don’t screw it up.
Then I begin to stalk down the runway, my tousled, mussed-up, centre-parted hair flying back behind me and tangling with the beaten-metal feathers of my golden wings. As I walk, the video screen shows a magnified image of my form in side profile, the three of us moving fluidly down the runway at the same pace.
I’m walking so quickly, so surely, that I swiftly cover the distance to the circular platform beneath the overarching dome. I pause there and stare down at the expectant faces that are turned up towards me, my eyes searching for Gia in the front row as I place my hands on my hips and angle my body aggressively to the right and glare the way I remember Irina does, to remind people she’s the main event. My eyes move along the curve of the front-row patrons seated below and I catch sight of Gia’s familiar glossy, China-girl hair, her down bent head as she puts something in the handbag tucked beneath her feet.
Why isn’t she even looking at me? I think, irritated, as she turns to say something to the young man seated beside her.
The world seems to telescope weirdly as I take in his dark eyes that look almost black in the harsh light, the dark shadows beneath them, his pale face, the hectic spots of colour high on his high cheekbones. Gia may be murmuring in his ear, but she can’t hold his attention. When he pushes a familiar lock of dark hair out of his eyes, I think my confident stance falters, and he immediately stretches out one hand to me, as if he’s afraid that I might fall.
I almost bend down and take his hand.
Ryan, I think dazedly. What are you doing here?
I hadn’t thought we’d ever meet again. In any life. I feel a surge of joy that’s immediately subsumed by an intense sorrow.
Not for you, Gabriel had told me. Twice now, I’ve been forced to leave Ryan, against my will. If I’m forced to leave him again — and I know it’s coming; there’s nothing more certain — I don’t know what it would do to him. Or to me.
Gia catches my eye, and grins when she sees all the longing in my gaze, my eyes moving possessively over his face. Surprise, she mouths.
I forget where I am and actually smile at her, in thanks for this small thing of beauty she’s wrought for me.
And that smile lights up Irina’s bored-looking, haughty, high-fashion little face. I know, because I see it reflected back on all the video screens, the smile shining out of her dark eyes. People actually whistle and stamp their feet, shouting their approval.
Some of the cameras pick up Ryan’s face and project us both along the video wall. My face, then his, mine, then his, all down the length of the building on both sides.
Ryan looks down, embarrassed, and the cameras catch that, too. People laugh in sympathy, murmuring at his beauty.
Later, Gia mouths, gesturing with her hands. Keep moving.
I suddenly remember where I am and force myself to stand straighter, making subtle adjustments to my stance, the muscles of my face. Glower, smoulder, pout. Check.
It’s almost physically painful to rip my eyes away from Ryan and cross the circular platform towards the front-row patrons seated on the other side, but I promised Gia and Giovanni, Juliana and Tommy, that I could do this, that Irina would meet all her obligations. So that is what I do, even though every bone in my body is telling me to grab that boy and run. Flee. Before They find me and shift me again.
But it’s impossible, what I want. Somewhere in this building is my watcher, K’el. I’ll never be able to flee the gathered elohim. It’s just a silly pipe dream. So somehow I do it: I walk away from Ryan.
I’m right in the middle of Irina’s signature pause, angle, pause, angle manoeuvre when a golden-haired couple sitting just beneath me catch my eye. They’re so handsome together that they seem to cast the people on either side of them into a dull light. Even in the hyper-bright glare, the golden-haired couple seem to gleam faintly to my eyes.
