Chapter Text
Kiki is a planner.
Her rich client has a sequin, haute couture dress that she knows would look better on her, altered and cropped, so she divulges over the Blackjack table that Chelsea Handler is donating her clothes to a charity auction for an AIDs trust and, soon enough, she’s sorting through piles of Givenchy and Prada, skimming her fingers over at least three garments before she reaches the one she wants. At that point, it’s a simple, “somethings are too nice to donate,” and the dress is hers.
Being a planner is about forethought; anticipating how things are going to play out and devising ways to ensure the correct outcome. Whether that’s claiming a dress or orchestrating the perfect meet cute, the process is just the same.
Ava is not a planner. Ava jumps from one stupid idea to the next, indulging in whatever whim crosses her mind, self-destructive or not. Kiki could tell that about her the first time they met, just from watching the way she played.
“Uh, hit me?” Would slip out her mouth as she stared at her cards, answering before she’d done the math.
Kiki had seen it then and she sees it now, the way Ava leaps up from the bed, ready to quit her job in a burst of anger, drenched in alcohol.
“I’m gonna fucking do it. Fuck that guy. He’s a fucking creep. You know, I bet he has multiple allegations against him. I’m feeding into the culture of silence if I don’t quit—“
Howard Roach is a misogynist, Kiki can’t disagree with that. His pork sausage fingers are always stuffed into heavy gold rings like maybe the Vegas glitz will distract from the stench of whiskey on his breath and the flakes of cocaine sitting in his wiry nose hairs. He calls Kiki sugar and darlin’ and the only reason he hasn’t grabbed her ass yet is because she stays firmly on her side of the meter-deep Blackjack table.
He is the golden goose of the Palmetto’s second theatre every Tuesday and Thursday night. His standup consists of I-hate-my-wife jokes, despite being three times divorced, angry rambles about cancel culture, TMI runs on the kind of porn he likes and a profuse amount of sweating. His long hair, thinned to nothing on the top, sticks to his face when he performs. He’s prone to aggressive outbursts and when he eats pastrami sandwiches, he leaves the mayonnaise in his moustache.
“I’m a writer! I can write anything from anywhere. I could get a cabin! Joan Didion did that one time, I think.”
“Maybe wait until tomorrow? You are still technically living in his hotel room.”
Kiki lays on the bed under the flickering TV screen, picking through the collection of half-smoked joints in Ava’s makeup bag. She decides to roll a new one.
“Fuck. You’re right.” Ava sighs and flops back down on the bed.
Kiki really does feel for her. She’s only been in Vegas for two months and she already looks ready to go all-in and then take a grand leap of faith out of her 9th-storey window. If only her view wasn’t the flat roof of the casino below.
“Why don’t you go back to LA if you hate it here so much?” Kiki asks, dabbing her tongue against the rolling paper.
“I can’t. I sub-letted my fucking townhouse because I thought I’d be here at least 6 months and I can’t afford to rent in LA. At least here I get a free room. I need a job before I can move back and no one will hire me.”
The lighter clicks. Smoke slips smoothly down Kiki's throat. She calls it her inner mommy, this urge to solve other people’s problems. The solutions always seem so obvious to her from the outside. Usually, it doesn’t even take that much cajoling.
“You should do what I do,” she exhales and passes the joint to Ava. “I could totally hook you up.”
“I can’t deal Blackjack, Kiki, I get sweaty when I have to do math in front of an audience.” Ava's eyebrows are furrowed as she looks up a the ceiling. The tip of the joint illuminates like a tiny sun.
“No, not that. I mean be an escort.”
A plume of smoke billows out of Ava's mouth. “What? You’re an escort?” She coughs.
“Sure." Kiki shrugs. Omitting isn’t lying — her mother taught her that. “Some men don’t even want sex. They just want a beautiful woman on their arm for events or whatever.”
“Kiki, I’m a writer, not a hooker.” Ava passes the join back. "No offence.”
“Why would I be offended?”
“Right.” She frowns. Playing on Ava’s need to prove her politics is too easy. “I don’t think I’m capable of just sitting there and looking pretty for some rich dude who’d hate me if I actually spoke.”
“Okay, true, your personality might make it a little harder for you. But you could totally work on that! Or, you know, I know people who’d totally just want you for your body.”
Ava rolls her eyes at her bluntness but smiles. “If I wanted to fuck some disgusting old Vegas creep, I’d just show up to my actual job.”
Kiki laughs. “Not all of them are ugly. I see this super hot banker, semi-regularly, and she gave me a whole ass fucking Rolls because I told her my car got totalled and she felt bad for me.”
Her mother also taught her that lying is OK as long as it’s for a greater good.
Ava’s eyelids look heavy, her eyes glassy. “Holy shit. Your car got totalled?”
“No, dummy, I was lying.”
“Oh. Wait, she? You fuck women for money?”
Kiki smirks. “I could set you up. You could be making bank and getting laid. You’d probably only have to do it for a couple of months before you could move back to LA.”
Ava stares at the ashtray next to her head. Kiki can see the cogs whirring behind her red eyes and she knows she’s planted the seed.
“You trying to get rid of me?” She asks eventually.
Kiki tilts her head, reaching out to graze Ava's cheek with her fingers. It’s obvious that Ava’s never really had anyone look out for her before. She’d said it earlier in the night: I don't really have friends, Kiki. I think that's, like, a huge red flag about me as a human being.
Kiki can take a good guess as to why; Ava hasn’t asked about her all night. But it’s not that she doesn’t care. Kiki is realising that Ava's just not used to having to ask. Kids without siblings all have the same energy, having to be the loudest in the room so someone finally pays attention to them. It looks like narcissism from the outside but peel away one layer and it's just plain loneliness.
“If it means you don’t constantly look like you’re thinking about dead puppies, then yeah, Pancake, I’m trying to get you out of here,” she says.
Ava smiles. She doesn’t need to change her entire personality. She just needs to be in a room with someone who takes up just as much space as she does.
Deborah is an observer.
She’s like Kiki in that way. She watches and she learns. She knows exactly what people want from her, what role to play, and which character to don. Not necessarily so people will like her. Mostly so they’ll leave her alone.
“So, how’s our baby Luna?” Deborah asks as she pulls out her chair. She always asks. Always uses the possessive determiner ‘our’ despite only having met Luna once when Kiki couldn’t get childcare.
“She’s good! All she wants to eat right now is french fries. She gets so mad at me whenever I tell her she has to eat at least one vegetable. I’m like, you’re only gonna be mad at yourself when you can’t go nap right after lunch like an old grandpa."
Deborah laughs. It’s sweet and it’s sad. Kiki’s been working for her for over a year now. It took all of two weeks for her to notice that Deborah Vance is an incredibly lonely woman.
“How are you? Are you seeing anyone?” Kiki asks.
Deborah snorts. “God, no. At my age, I’m lucky if I get a thorough exam from my gynaecologist.”
It’s typical Deborah-esque humour. The self-deprecation leaves a bad taste in Kiki’s mouth.
“What happened to Marty?”
“Marty is dating yet another 25-year-old." She makes a bitter face before waving it off. She looks embarrassed, keeping her eyes on her cards as Kiki deals. “It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s not like I’ll miss the sex anyway. He fucked me like I was just another obligatory high-cholesterol lunch meeting to tick off his schedule. …You know he keeps his shirt on?”
“You said.” Kiki grimaces. “You know, I was thinking, if you wanted someone to just… come in and take care of those needs, I could totally get someone here, no problem.”
Deborah finally looks up from her cards, her face split between humour and insult. She’s harder to read than Ava. She keeps her cards close to her chest, so to speak. While Ava is shouting her feelings from the rooftops, begging someone to listen without waiting for a response, Deborah sits in the corner booth of a dimly lit bar, her feelings concealed in a three thousand dollar diamanté gown, waiting for someone to unwrap her.
“Excuse me?” Her poker face is immaculate. You must get good at lying when you’ve been doing it to yourself for decades. Kiki doesn’t let the icy blues get to her.
“It could just be a one-time thing." She shrugs. "Or, if you wanted someone more regular, I could find someone.”
Deborah gives a nervous bark. “Kiki, are you suggesting I hire a prostitute?”
“It’s really not a big deal, pretty much everyone I deal for does it. And not just the men, if that’s what you’re worried about. Plenty of my lady clients do it too.” It isn’t lying if it’s probably true — that’s just estimation.
“So what, I click my fingers and Tom Selleck shows up naked in my bedroom?”
“The old guy in Friends?" Kiki's face sours. "I’m pretty sure you could get someone way younger and hotter than him.”
Deborah snorts. She turns in on herself for a second and Kiki thinks she has her. But then she shakes her head. “No. Don’t be ridiculous. I’m not getting Marcus to draw up an NDA for the hooker I’m trying to hire.”
“You know you can just download NDAs from the internet now? Plus, sex workers these days are like, totally professional.” She tries not to think about Ava eating spaghetti with her fingers just in case Deborah can see it in her eyes.
Deborah rocks on her stool for a second, sucking on her lower lip and staring at the table without hitting or standing.
Kiki watches. Watches the nervous shifts in her eyes, the slight frown between her eyebrows, the barely-there flush in her cheeks. She smiles. “Just think about it. It’s literally not a big deal.”
Deborah taps the table. “Hit me,” she says. Her face turns to a concealed smirk when she wins.