Rachel is ravishing. Her lips are big and shiny and look like they have endless kisses inside them – like they are always saying the letter O. Her closet is filled with towering boots, magic coats, vintage silk, black lace and leather fringe. She winks and smolders; I flutter and stumble. Boys try to keep her with leather collars and shiny rings, boys try to catch me with butterfly nets. ‘Step into your feminine wild’ she tells me with a shimmy and she show me how to dusts rouge on my cheeks, Boudoir, burlesque, Bugatti, baby.
She dressed me up in her short shimmer dresses and we’d go out driving in the Buggati called Falcor, the wild white war beast that I suspect was born when a dragon mated with a motorcycle. In that car you are invincible – seatbelts are useless. We’d wind through the canyon with the wind twisting our hair into a lion’s manes. When we would drive in Falcor we’d turn into a parade – even in LA where star-studded glamour is the everyday – people would still wig out and yell and snap snap our picture at the red lights.
Rachel knows a magician that owns white tigers. He invited us to accompany him to the Magic Castle: a secret clubhouse of elite magicians up in the Hollywood hills. Dressed in fur and velvet, I’d wander through the secret doorways, past libraries of books containing ancient magic. I’d watch cards appear out of thin air in the order of the serial number of a dollar bill in a ladies purse. A Magician would wave his hand and the olive would disappear out of Rachel’s martini. My mind was controlled. I summoned the 4 of diamonds. Gold and diamonds and white doves.
Then we’d drive out to the desert in our white dresses and leather jackets. Out to the Joshua trees, and the hot springs, and the no-mans-lands. Cutting mangoes skins with black knives, letting the juice run all the way down our forearms. Covered in sugar and desert we’d sharpen our claws, take off our clothes, and dance around.