choose the betrayer Robbie and his bed of luxury, damn that taxi got away from me, ah life’s a string of betrayals, traitors all, that sophisticated drunk can talk all the crap he likes Robbie told Petites Cendres, those are the phantasms he spends his nights with, not with me anyway, at dawn I practically always walk home alone to the house we all share, and the other girls will be hanging out in the kitchen still practically in shock from the night’s onstage high, chatting and nibbling cookies, watching Cobra’s Yorkies as we laugh at our petals falling out and our faces getting whiter in the dawning day that sends chills right down our spines, I mean how are you supposed to march down the same dark, deathly hallway as Fatalité, we all can’t help thinking about her, and I dream that she’s still alive, and I think I even know where she is now Robbie says, I see myself buying her dresses and even houses, and she says to me would you hold on to this white coat for me, I’m just going out for a minute, I’ll be right back, so I hold the collar between my fingers and I wait but she never returns, her cigarettes are there in the pocket and she’d never go for long without them I’m thinking, so I wait some more, this is a house with its own inside lake and I figure Fatalité will be back to take a swim with me, the house is sort of on neutral ground, uninhabited and uninhabitable, but here I am waiting on the shore of the lake with her coat on my knees, and I wait so long I wind up smoking all her cigarettes, just a long, blah, desperate day, and I don’t know where I am or even where she lives, and when I shake myself out of it, there’s Yinn sitting next to me, okay sleep now he says, just sleep, it’s all right, you can, and I see the pencilled eyebrows on his bare face staring at me with irritation yet he cares just the same, he’s tired, very tired of shows and street parades, tired of the girls, everything, that’s what he seems to be saying without actually saying anything at all, I can’t do this alone, it’s too hard, well get used to it, Fatalité’s not coming back he finally does say, you’re wearing me out with Fatalité, I don’t know where she is any more than you do, just be still now and sleep he says before leaving, I close my eyes as if I’m still holding the coat, a coat for February nights, the last coat Robbie says to Petites Cendres, Fatalité is history now and tonight I’m singing he goes on, a dark, low-cut dress and a cute hat tilted at an angle, that’ll be my look, I mean Yinn’ll come and fix the folds in it and use one of her jewellery pins for my corsage, the red hibiscus over my left breast, it’ll be just great, it’ll be our present, yours and mine, the wave will carry us far from the here and now, shores we’ve shed so many tears on and one of us is never coming back from, Fatalité, the prostitute’s girl and a hooker too that Yinn bailed out of prison, got sorted out and transformed into the great Fatalité we all know, no longer a junkie condemned to die with a police record for porn and juvenile prostitution, oh yes Yinn saw that spark in her, a spark of life bursting into the illumination of a princess no one else knew was there, and he dressed her as what she’d become right there in the street and in the cabaret, a sparkling gem too tarnished to notice, and there they were now, all of them, only too visible, a bright, noisy, outrageous splash of them with their men’s voices thought Petites Cendres, touching his pimply cheek with his fingertips, the one raked with spots that Yinn would kiss absently, saying my what a day and where are you off to Petites Cendres, why don’t you stay and hang out with us tonight, Yinn’s penetrating stare crashing into his averted gaze, as Yinn was saying to Fatalité just yesterday, why waste your time with people who don’t respect you, you don’t really have to live under a cloud do you Petites Cendres, those
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