Chapter 22: Scenes From a Soap Opera

"Showtime," Angique murmured before entering the Salon. She handed her coat to the wardrobe girl and inspected her make up in the tiny mirror of her old fashioned compact. Her lips needed a fresh coating. As she applied it, she mused about the last few months. She admitted that she had felt pretty depressed. Many sweet friends had tried to convince her she had no reason to be like that. True, she agreed now. The world had conspired to offer her success and prosperity. But had she been happy? Ah, damn, she shrugged, let's call happiness overrated and move on. She squeezed her lips together to spread the fresh lipstick evenly.

Throwing her compact into her purse, she walked towards the big doors, shaking her bob of black hair.

"Showtime indeed."

Tonight she found quite a few women at the bar bright enough to chat with over a glass of wine — or three. There was Tyana who looked even deeper tanned than usual. There was a girl called Cassandra who loved to show off her body in quite extreme outfits and sexy dresses. She liked them short, tight and trashy with a penchant for shining purple — but she always surprised Angique with her profound lack of shallowness.

Ishtar shared their table too. Tonight she was in her intellectual mode, suggesting that the rumors of her academic status might be true. But whenever nobody watched, she bent over to Angique, whispering outrageous offers for later on. Angique just smiled and caressed her face with the back of her hand.

The white wine flowed easily. Angique couldn't remember exactly when it changed to scotch. But she sure felt the effect when she rose to respond to the call of nature. Her four inch heels didn't help much, but she made it to the toilets without embarrassing herself — too much. Looking into the mirror she saw that Tyana had followed her.

"The little slut isn't worth it," the Israeli girl said as she traced her lips with a nail, looking into the mirror. Angique tried to catch her gaze, but Tyana kept talking to her own reflection.

"I bet," she went on, "that the silly bitch has been begging you to take her back? She gets off on your spiel, you know? She doesn't know love if it bit her on her promiscuous ass. But she has to have what you offer. No one makes her come like you do, she told me. But don't get confused — it isn't love. She is 100% selfish. Forget her."

Angique swallowed. The alcoholic haze lifted, giving the world a merciless clarity. She had moved on, hadn't she? She was over the little tramp. It had been months now, for chrissakes. She sighed. Who was she kidding? Obviously not Tyana; probably no one.

"You are right of course," she said, wondering at the rawness of her voice. "But there is knowing and there is feeling." Tyana laughed a silver little laugh, touching Angique's shoulder.

"You tell me," she said. "You tell me."

They went into the stalls and when Angique returned, Tyana had already gone. There was another girl, though. She was black haired and big eyed, prettily dressed and very nervous.

"Hi, Licia," Angique said, despising the tremor in her voice. The girl sank to her knees on the dirty floor.

"I am so sorry," she said, her head down, her luscious curls falling over her face. "I have been horrible to you."

"Please rise," Angique said, keeping away from the girl. "We agreed to be friends, remember? Don't spoil it." She walked around Alicia to the exit. Before she left the bathroom she said, without turning,

"And don't spoil your pretty dress, honey. It isn't worth it."

Things went on like this — Alicia trying to take Angique's involvement past friendly chit-chat; Angique trying to defuse the girl's attempts. But each time they met she had to stifle her heart's gallopades.

She knew she had met with problems like this before. Cheating sluts trying to explain; groveling traitors begging to be forgiven. At first she had been soft and naïve. She had paid dearly until she learned — or thought she'd learned — how to deal with them. Why couldn't she do it now? Why not forget all niceties and just grab the slut to break her once and for all, as she had done before? Why even bother with the incurable nymph? Wasn't there an unlimited number like her to be found in the halls and rooms of this Club? Ishtar was a better fuck. Valerie had juicier tits. Bobbi was a truer slave, Anna a more interesting chat. And in terms of adventure even poor little Kimmie was a greater challenge.

Of course Angique knew the why of her wavering attitude, but even thinking about it was just too scary. It involved notions like dependence and surrender, notions she thought she had conquered long ago and would never consider again.

The why, of course, was that she loved the slut. But experience had taught her that "love" was synonymous to "heart break" and even death. Whenever she'd felt love, she'd been abandoned. Her mother divorced her father when she was four, leaving two children behind, Angique and her newborn baby brother. The woman went to live the jet set life with a never-ending chain of boy toys. She became a stranger at the very few occasions Angique saw her again.

Her father abandoned her when he took her to the nuns' convent school before she was twelve; a school that had done everything to break her spirit and turn her into a sex slave for sick priests and the arrogant élite of a demented society. She escaped when she was fifteen, discovering her father had known all along what went on there.

At the convent school she'd fallen in love with an older girl who just used her trust to enable easier domination for the nuns, a fact she only learnt later. A few years after her escape she read that the girl was found murdered in a muddy ditch in the north of France. By then Angique had fallen in love with the woman who led a business where she was an intern and came to work after fashion school. She was Swedish and very dominant. She was also a sex addict who was reported missing on a business trip in Bangkok, Thailand. They found her in a demented state, lying naked in a landfill outside the city. Angique twice visited her in a mental hospital in her native country before admitting the woman she'd fallen in love with was gone. Another love lost, another trust shattered.

It was at this moment that Angique decided to be nobody's toy ever again. From then on she herself would be the one toying. She'd be the one hardening her heart against soft feelings. She decided to reduce men to occasional cocks she loved getting off on without considering the attached person. But most of all she decided to enslave girls, by then the only save way to satisfy her emotions without exposing herself to disappointment.

Of course she ironically fell in love with the first girl she tried to break. And of course that first girl abandoned her, this time by taking her life. But once more she crawled out of the bottomless pit, feeling more heavily armored than ever. She got involved with new girls and at last found the knack how to dominate them without getting too emotionally attached. She trained girls and sold them, always looking out for new talent. She loved the thrill of the game, finding great satisfaction in the challenge of turning scared, inexperienced girls into devoted sluts and shameless creatures.

And then she met Alicia; falling in love all over again, and this time with a girl who maybe was even more allergic to love than she was. What was the expression again? "Laughing until you cry."