Chapter Two
She heard it long before she saw it. Donna Summer's orgasmic "Love to Love You" was blasting through the streets of Manhattan above all other noise. The sun had set hours ago and the night had cloaked the busy city in midnight blue. Lights of the skyscraping buildings dotted the sky and reflected onto the water; blue, green, red streamers in that ocean. Manhattan was so alive with music and life that even the Statue of Liberty seemed to dance.
"Viva la boheme!" Lucy howled to the night sky, tipping up the empty glass of Kahlua to catch the last few fiery drops.
"The children of the revolution!" Satine added her voice to the gaiety her friends shared, throwing her arms drunkenly (though she'd only had one martini) around Chocolat and kissing his smooth, Hershey's-chocolate- scented cheek.
"Have you ever seen anything like this before?" Amalia asked, draping her legs out the side of Chocolat's black convertible.
"Vegas," Satine answered absently. Her attention was more fixed on the flashing city than on Amalia's question. It was such a swirl, more so than Las Vegas could ever be. In Vegas, there were thousands of people. But in Manhattan, they possessed a different quality. During the day, the people here were pale and rushed, carrying briefcases. But at night, they changed and became glittering mirages, wearing Versace and Chanel, clicking expensive heels three times to be transported to the magical land of Studio 54, Manhattan's very own Land of Oz.
She entered trembling in excitement and fear. What Satine saw before her was amazing. It was dark, crowded, and loud upon first entering. Scents mingled provocatively as the audience: perfume, smoke, liquor, sweat. Dancing bodies shimmered in the flashing pink, red, blue, green, silver lights, blinding her momentarily with their bright, flamboyant clothing. "I Love the Nightlife" was blaring from the speakers and Satine watched, transfixed, as a young woman gyrated wildly, roller skates on her feet, dangerously rolling atop a platform. "What do you think?" Mari asked, a mass of gold hair, eyes, skin, and clothing.
"It's---it's unbelievable."
"It is," she agreed. "Let's dance." Gold-painted fingernails dug into Satine's skin as the Oscar on heels pulled her out onto the dance floor, followed by Jackie O. -Deb and cool silver Amalia. Lucy had pressed a margarita into her hand and Satine downed it greedily; she could now feel the wooziness of liquor pulsing in her veins. Her blood was pumping in overdrive and she was unable to stop laughing. While dancing, she could be wild, sexy, free. She wasn't self-conscious. While dancing, she was not just Satine but everyone else, Donna Summer included. She could feel their hearts pounding alongside hers, feel the pulse of the music floating through their veins, hear their thoughts.
The music stopped and so did the loud chatter-dance of the crowd. Stillness seeped into everything for a few fleeting moments. The lights were the color of grenadine on their bodies, illuminating them in red nearly as thick as the silence.
Suddenly, music exploded. Andrea True was singing her blatantly sexual "More, More, More" and couples were swaying and grinding as though there would be no tomorrow.
And alone he stood, the now silver-blue lights on his shimmering skin. Satine quit dancing and grabbed Deb's arm. "Who is THAT?" She asked, pointing to the beautiful man.
"Christian," was Deb's answer.
Christian. He was beautiful. Sweat glistened on his bare chest. Black hair was tousled like a little boy's and the green-gray-blue chameleon eyes were electric. Glitter that had fallen from the ceiling like rain coated his perfect body and reflected against the light of the disco ball, making him sparkle like a diamond. He moved with an easy grace, something special that no other man on the floor could capture.
"God." She whispered, unable to say more.
"Isn't he perfection? He's like a legend here. The Great Christian, we call him. He's a friend of Lucy's, mostly. Gorgeous. Everyone wants to sleep with him but I guess he doesn't give in. You gotta be special to catch his eye."
In the three minutes of the song, glances between shy rhinestoned redhead and glitter-god became more and more frequent. When Andrea True was finally done gasping out the words and something slow took over, he approached her. She hadn't known that eight short footsteps could send her heart racing and pounding like they did. He held out his hand. She extended hers to grab it and when they touched, electricity crackled between them.
"Did you feel that?" He whispered into her ear. "I think you were expecting me."
"All my life," she murmured back.
"I'm Christian."
"I'm Satine."
"You're new."
"You're obviously not."
"To tell you the truth," he began, whipping her away from him in a quick motion. "I'm not a disco fan."
"Really?" She asked, her hands around his neck, his on her waist. They were coated with raspberry-syrup colored light and all she could smell was her perfume and his cologne. All she felt inside her liquored veins was small currents of energy.
"Nope."
"What do you like?"
"Classics," another flick of his wrist and she was gone. "Sinatra. Billie Holliday. Elton John, The Beatles, Janis Joplin."
"Me too. I just like disco when I feel like dancing."
"You're going to fall in love with me." Not a statement; this was a command.
"Oh?" She arched her eyebrows and tried to hide her surprise. "How are you so sure?"
"I can see it in your eyes. Can't you see it in mine? I'm in love with you already."
"Can I be cheesy for a minute?"
His laugh was celestial music to her ears. "Of course. I've done it. Your turn."
"What's your sign?"
"Gemini."
"Fuck."
"Right here?" His eyes were now deep green, darker than Deb's dress but just as glittering.
"No. I'm a Gemini too."
"Twins. You and me, stellar twins."
"I'm glad it's you and not that guy over there," she pointed to a man in a gold shirt unbuttoned in a V to show thick, curling chest hair decorated with about fifty gaudy gold chains. "Who does he think he is?"
"Liberace."
"Oh, my God. I hate the Bee Gees," Satine said as soon as the music changed to "Stayin' Alive." A loud whoop came from the crowd. "Damn John Travolta."
He grabbed her hand. "Let's go outside, then."
"Thank you for rescuing me from nasal chipmunks, charming prince."
"That's my job. I am Sir Christian, made to save fair princesses from the clutches of the Gibb brothers."
He took her outside where she could breathe and not inhale perfume and smoke. She sought out Chocolat's convertible and perched on the trunk with him by her side. They didn't speak for a few minutes, both of them regaining their composure. The little sparks first felt between them was now full-fledged electricity coursing through their veins.
"What do you do?" Satine asked. "For a job, I mean."
"I'm an actor."
"Oh!"
"Haven't done anything major yet. I'm waiting, though."
"Do you want to do movies? Television? Theatre?"
"Theatre."
"I can see you as Romeo, rescuing Juliet from 'Saturday Night Fever.'"
"What do you do, Miss I-Hate-the-Bee-Gees?"
"I'm a writer."
"Songs? Books? Screenplays?"
"I do a little songwriting, but I want to be a journalist."
"It must be fate, Satine."
"Why?"
"Well, I happen to work at NBC Studios."
Her eyes grew large. "You do?"
"It's fate. You and I, we're fated. Romeo and Juliet, Antony and Cleopatra, Rick and Ilsa, Gable and Lombard, Christian and Satine."
"Christian, I'm in love with you." Point blank is always the best way, Granny Jo had told her as a small girl. The lesson stuck.
"I'm in love with you too. But I can't love you."
Satine raised her eyebrows. "You're gay?"
Christian laughed again, shaking his head. "No. I just can't. It's hard to explain."
"I wouldn't have been surprised if you were gay. You're too pretty to be straight."
In all actuality, his relationship with Nina Dvorak was far from complicated. She was fortyish, married to a man twenty years older, rolling in cash. Her husband just happened to be a big theater mogul and Christian just happened to be exactly what Nina Dvorak was looking for. Their situation was simple: she paid him for favors under the guise of being his aunt. That way, her husband would think nothing of his pretty (albeit bitter and a good friend of the whiskey bottle) wife going off to see her nephew. Nina fueled Christian's acting career; there wasn't any harm in a little screwing for a bit part, was there? It pained him, though, to have to break it to Satine.
Satine was like nobody he'd ever been with before, and he'd known her only twelve minutes and eleven seconds. (But who was counting?) She was innocent and worldly, glam but naïve, sweet yet dangerously sexy, funny, beautiful, Gemini just like himself.
"You can't?" Satine's little wounded voice interrupted his thoughts. "Why?"
"I'm a kept man, Satine." Gravely the awful truth was stated, chameleon eyes meeting crystal blue ones.
"A kept man! I never would have thought. It's like we're living Breakfast at Tiffany's, isn't it?"
"You don't hate me?"
"No. You're my Gemini-fate-lover. I can't possibly hate you."
"Good. Let's go inside, Holly Golightly. Bee Gees have quit."
Now Thelma Houston's "Don't Leave Me This Way" had the partiers dancing. Satine sang along for the hell of it. She liked this song. "Don't leave me this way! I can't survive, can't stay alive without your love, oh baby, don't leave me this way!"
She'd lost Lucy, Chocolat, and the girls in the rainbow of people. But Satine didn't mind, because there was no way she was going to just leave an opportunity behind. "I can't exist; I'll surely miss your tender kiss."
"Don't leave me this way," Christian echoed into her ear when she returned to his arms. "A broken man with empty hands."
"Baby, my heart is full with love and desire for you!"
"Come on down and do what you gotta do." Christian answered in song, wiggling eyebrows suggestively and foolishly.
"For someone who doesn't like disco, you know the words pretty well," Satine stated, mirth in her eyes.
"Well, what do you think happens when I'm here almost every night?" Came his wry reply.
"You started this fire down in my soul, now can't you see? It's burning out of control!"
"Only your good lovin' can set me free." With Satine, Christian could break the chains locking him to Nina.
"Your love is so important to me, baby, I've got to have it."
"Cause it would be wrong to string along a love so true." And then he kissed her. Hard. Heart-poundingly hard. It was a kiss like eating a candy cane and then drinking icy water, refreshing and chilling at the same time. It was a kiss like Christmas morning, expectant the way you are on the morn of your birthday. It was a kiss to rival Casablanca; a kiss to overthrow any other kiss in history, for none could be as passionate, as exhilarating, as perfect as this kiss was.
"Christian?" She whispered when the kiss was finally broken. "Did you feel that?"
"Fireworks."
She heard it long before she saw it. Donna Summer's orgasmic "Love to Love You" was blasting through the streets of Manhattan above all other noise. The sun had set hours ago and the night had cloaked the busy city in midnight blue. Lights of the skyscraping buildings dotted the sky and reflected onto the water; blue, green, red streamers in that ocean. Manhattan was so alive with music and life that even the Statue of Liberty seemed to dance.
"Viva la boheme!" Lucy howled to the night sky, tipping up the empty glass of Kahlua to catch the last few fiery drops.
"The children of the revolution!" Satine added her voice to the gaiety her friends shared, throwing her arms drunkenly (though she'd only had one martini) around Chocolat and kissing his smooth, Hershey's-chocolate- scented cheek.
"Have you ever seen anything like this before?" Amalia asked, draping her legs out the side of Chocolat's black convertible.
"Vegas," Satine answered absently. Her attention was more fixed on the flashing city than on Amalia's question. It was such a swirl, more so than Las Vegas could ever be. In Vegas, there were thousands of people. But in Manhattan, they possessed a different quality. During the day, the people here were pale and rushed, carrying briefcases. But at night, they changed and became glittering mirages, wearing Versace and Chanel, clicking expensive heels three times to be transported to the magical land of Studio 54, Manhattan's very own Land of Oz.
She entered trembling in excitement and fear. What Satine saw before her was amazing. It was dark, crowded, and loud upon first entering. Scents mingled provocatively as the audience: perfume, smoke, liquor, sweat. Dancing bodies shimmered in the flashing pink, red, blue, green, silver lights, blinding her momentarily with their bright, flamboyant clothing. "I Love the Nightlife" was blaring from the speakers and Satine watched, transfixed, as a young woman gyrated wildly, roller skates on her feet, dangerously rolling atop a platform. "What do you think?" Mari asked, a mass of gold hair, eyes, skin, and clothing.
"It's---it's unbelievable."
"It is," she agreed. "Let's dance." Gold-painted fingernails dug into Satine's skin as the Oscar on heels pulled her out onto the dance floor, followed by Jackie O. -Deb and cool silver Amalia. Lucy had pressed a margarita into her hand and Satine downed it greedily; she could now feel the wooziness of liquor pulsing in her veins. Her blood was pumping in overdrive and she was unable to stop laughing. While dancing, she could be wild, sexy, free. She wasn't self-conscious. While dancing, she was not just Satine but everyone else, Donna Summer included. She could feel their hearts pounding alongside hers, feel the pulse of the music floating through their veins, hear their thoughts.
The music stopped and so did the loud chatter-dance of the crowd. Stillness seeped into everything for a few fleeting moments. The lights were the color of grenadine on their bodies, illuminating them in red nearly as thick as the silence.
Suddenly, music exploded. Andrea True was singing her blatantly sexual "More, More, More" and couples were swaying and grinding as though there would be no tomorrow.
And alone he stood, the now silver-blue lights on his shimmering skin. Satine quit dancing and grabbed Deb's arm. "Who is THAT?" She asked, pointing to the beautiful man.
"Christian," was Deb's answer.
Christian. He was beautiful. Sweat glistened on his bare chest. Black hair was tousled like a little boy's and the green-gray-blue chameleon eyes were electric. Glitter that had fallen from the ceiling like rain coated his perfect body and reflected against the light of the disco ball, making him sparkle like a diamond. He moved with an easy grace, something special that no other man on the floor could capture.
"God." She whispered, unable to say more.
"Isn't he perfection? He's like a legend here. The Great Christian, we call him. He's a friend of Lucy's, mostly. Gorgeous. Everyone wants to sleep with him but I guess he doesn't give in. You gotta be special to catch his eye."
In the three minutes of the song, glances between shy rhinestoned redhead and glitter-god became more and more frequent. When Andrea True was finally done gasping out the words and something slow took over, he approached her. She hadn't known that eight short footsteps could send her heart racing and pounding like they did. He held out his hand. She extended hers to grab it and when they touched, electricity crackled between them.
"Did you feel that?" He whispered into her ear. "I think you were expecting me."
"All my life," she murmured back.
"I'm Christian."
"I'm Satine."
"You're new."
"You're obviously not."
"To tell you the truth," he began, whipping her away from him in a quick motion. "I'm not a disco fan."
"Really?" She asked, her hands around his neck, his on her waist. They were coated with raspberry-syrup colored light and all she could smell was her perfume and his cologne. All she felt inside her liquored veins was small currents of energy.
"Nope."
"What do you like?"
"Classics," another flick of his wrist and she was gone. "Sinatra. Billie Holliday. Elton John, The Beatles, Janis Joplin."
"Me too. I just like disco when I feel like dancing."
"You're going to fall in love with me." Not a statement; this was a command.
"Oh?" She arched her eyebrows and tried to hide her surprise. "How are you so sure?"
"I can see it in your eyes. Can't you see it in mine? I'm in love with you already."
"Can I be cheesy for a minute?"
His laugh was celestial music to her ears. "Of course. I've done it. Your turn."
"What's your sign?"
"Gemini."
"Fuck."
"Right here?" His eyes were now deep green, darker than Deb's dress but just as glittering.
"No. I'm a Gemini too."
"Twins. You and me, stellar twins."
"I'm glad it's you and not that guy over there," she pointed to a man in a gold shirt unbuttoned in a V to show thick, curling chest hair decorated with about fifty gaudy gold chains. "Who does he think he is?"
"Liberace."
"Oh, my God. I hate the Bee Gees," Satine said as soon as the music changed to "Stayin' Alive." A loud whoop came from the crowd. "Damn John Travolta."
He grabbed her hand. "Let's go outside, then."
"Thank you for rescuing me from nasal chipmunks, charming prince."
"That's my job. I am Sir Christian, made to save fair princesses from the clutches of the Gibb brothers."
He took her outside where she could breathe and not inhale perfume and smoke. She sought out Chocolat's convertible and perched on the trunk with him by her side. They didn't speak for a few minutes, both of them regaining their composure. The little sparks first felt between them was now full-fledged electricity coursing through their veins.
"What do you do?" Satine asked. "For a job, I mean."
"I'm an actor."
"Oh!"
"Haven't done anything major yet. I'm waiting, though."
"Do you want to do movies? Television? Theatre?"
"Theatre."
"I can see you as Romeo, rescuing Juliet from 'Saturday Night Fever.'"
"What do you do, Miss I-Hate-the-Bee-Gees?"
"I'm a writer."
"Songs? Books? Screenplays?"
"I do a little songwriting, but I want to be a journalist."
"It must be fate, Satine."
"Why?"
"Well, I happen to work at NBC Studios."
Her eyes grew large. "You do?"
"It's fate. You and I, we're fated. Romeo and Juliet, Antony and Cleopatra, Rick and Ilsa, Gable and Lombard, Christian and Satine."
"Christian, I'm in love with you." Point blank is always the best way, Granny Jo had told her as a small girl. The lesson stuck.
"I'm in love with you too. But I can't love you."
Satine raised her eyebrows. "You're gay?"
Christian laughed again, shaking his head. "No. I just can't. It's hard to explain."
"I wouldn't have been surprised if you were gay. You're too pretty to be straight."
In all actuality, his relationship with Nina Dvorak was far from complicated. She was fortyish, married to a man twenty years older, rolling in cash. Her husband just happened to be a big theater mogul and Christian just happened to be exactly what Nina Dvorak was looking for. Their situation was simple: she paid him for favors under the guise of being his aunt. That way, her husband would think nothing of his pretty (albeit bitter and a good friend of the whiskey bottle) wife going off to see her nephew. Nina fueled Christian's acting career; there wasn't any harm in a little screwing for a bit part, was there? It pained him, though, to have to break it to Satine.
Satine was like nobody he'd ever been with before, and he'd known her only twelve minutes and eleven seconds. (But who was counting?) She was innocent and worldly, glam but naïve, sweet yet dangerously sexy, funny, beautiful, Gemini just like himself.
"You can't?" Satine's little wounded voice interrupted his thoughts. "Why?"
"I'm a kept man, Satine." Gravely the awful truth was stated, chameleon eyes meeting crystal blue ones.
"A kept man! I never would have thought. It's like we're living Breakfast at Tiffany's, isn't it?"
"You don't hate me?"
"No. You're my Gemini-fate-lover. I can't possibly hate you."
"Good. Let's go inside, Holly Golightly. Bee Gees have quit."
Now Thelma Houston's "Don't Leave Me This Way" had the partiers dancing. Satine sang along for the hell of it. She liked this song. "Don't leave me this way! I can't survive, can't stay alive without your love, oh baby, don't leave me this way!"
She'd lost Lucy, Chocolat, and the girls in the rainbow of people. But Satine didn't mind, because there was no way she was going to just leave an opportunity behind. "I can't exist; I'll surely miss your tender kiss."
"Don't leave me this way," Christian echoed into her ear when she returned to his arms. "A broken man with empty hands."
"Baby, my heart is full with love and desire for you!"
"Come on down and do what you gotta do." Christian answered in song, wiggling eyebrows suggestively and foolishly.
"For someone who doesn't like disco, you know the words pretty well," Satine stated, mirth in her eyes.
"Well, what do you think happens when I'm here almost every night?" Came his wry reply.
"You started this fire down in my soul, now can't you see? It's burning out of control!"
"Only your good lovin' can set me free." With Satine, Christian could break the chains locking him to Nina.
"Your love is so important to me, baby, I've got to have it."
"Cause it would be wrong to string along a love so true." And then he kissed her. Hard. Heart-poundingly hard. It was a kiss like eating a candy cane and then drinking icy water, refreshing and chilling at the same time. It was a kiss like Christmas morning, expectant the way you are on the morn of your birthday. It was a kiss to rival Casablanca; a kiss to overthrow any other kiss in history, for none could be as passionate, as exhilarating, as perfect as this kiss was.
"Christian?" She whispered when the kiss was finally broken. "Did you feel that?"
"Fireworks."