Cabaret Delancey 05 - Invitation
Vanessa gets a personal invitation.
The text came at around ten on a Saturday. A text from Margot. “You home?”
Vanessa nearly fell off the couch as she responded that she was, and in a few moments her door buzzed.
She waited, confused, with bated breath, until she heard the elevator ding outside of her apartment door. Through the peephole she saw a short woman in what seemed to be a red bellhop uniform.
“Are you Miss Vanessa Silva?” The chipper young woman asked. The woman’s presence and look were so incongruous with the reality of her dingy hallway, Vanessa was momentarily unable to speak. Eventually, she nodded and was handed a square white envelope. With that, the bellhop snapped to attention and left.
The means of delivery tripled Vanessa’s interest and halved her trepidation. Her heart nearly burst when she saw the roaring 20s style font proclaiming “We invite you to the Cabaret Delancey’s fifth performance. The theme being: The Rude Mechanicals.”
She gasped out loud. It was a reference many people might not get, even people who had seen the play it was referencing. To Vanessa, though, it was etched into her soul. A Midsummer Night’s Dream being by far her favorite Shakespeare play. The Rude Mechanicals. The silly little troupe of amateur actors in the little play within a play, Pyramus and Thisbe. They included Nick Bottom, who later has his head turned into a donkey’s head by Puck. The very character Vanessa had played once in high school.
The name alone brought so many ideas into Vanessa’s head. Meta narratives. Plays within plays. It was so ripe with both imagery and allusion.
She read on, feeling the toothsome texture of the cream-colored cardstock the invitation was printed on with her thumb.
“This secret performance will take place on the seventeenth day of March, in the Cabaret Delancey Theater. The show will begin promptly at ten in the evening. If you are not yet aware of the theater’s location, please ask whomever initially told you about our troupe, in person. Please do not discuss this on any digital medium. Please do not photograph this invitation. There will be absolutely no outside photography, audio recordings, or phones permitted at the performance. All devices will be stored in lockers on site. Please note, this invitation is for the admittance of one person only. Also note, this performance will include nudity, sexually explicit performances, and may include real or simulated violence.”
Vanessa reread the last few sentences a few times. Nudity? Well, sure, it was experimental theater. Sexually explicit performances? Did that mean burlesque, or something more? Real or simulated violence?
The warning crept through her with equal parts dread and fascination, neither one winning. She sat with both feelings for a moment, then texted Margot. “Hi! Can we meet for coffee or something? I have some information I think I need from you.”
She replied a few minutes later with a little winky emoji. “8 at The Cup and Bell.”
Vanessa felt like something big was happening. She’d felt like that when she’d applied for college. She’d felt like that at her job interview at the firm. She’d felt it when she posted her first photos of the mirror. Some seismic shift. Some hand of fate.
She took the train downtown to the Lower East Side. It was her college stomping ground, and it still smelled the same, something between a laundromat and a bar, warm and a little sour and somehow comforting. She passed the bodega on Rivington where she used to buy scratch tickets she could never afford. The block where she once watched a man in a tuxedo get into a screaming argument with a pigeon at two in the morning. The corner she had kissed a boy for the first time in New York, her back against the scaffolding while the rain came down in sheets. By eight at night, the streets were full of drunk tourists and the locals who often preyed on them. The neighborhood had changed since college, but it still had its teeth.
The Bell and the Cup was a witchy-themed bar with bottles of murky potions behind the bar and candles everywhere. A woman read tarot on a little stage. Vanessa spotted Margot in the corner where they used to sit in their school days. She waved at her, and seemed a little more animated than in their prior meeting.
She sat and Margot leaned in conspiratorially. Margot smelled amazing, something floral and spicy that Vanessa knew you couldn’t buy at Sephora. She guessed it was some concoction made specifically for her. It made her jealous and made her want to kiss Margot’s neck.
“Okay, so you got the invite, right?” Vanessa nodded. Margot smiled brightly.
“The Cabaret is in this weird little building on Attorney Street.” She took out a pen from her purse and grabbed a square napkin. She wrote the address.
“It’s right under the Manhattan side of the Williamsburg Bridge. It’s kind of hard to find. Text me if you get lost and I can come out to get you.”
Vanessa took the napkin, slipping it into her pocketbook, between the pages of her schedule book. “Could we meet before for a drink?”
She let out a little laugh. “No, silly, I’m performing! I’m going to be getting ready. It’s only my second time and I’m super nervous.”
“What... what kind of performance are you doing?” Vanessa asked.
Margot smiled somewhat wickedly, which completely changed her angelic face into something alluring and vampiric. “I’m doing burlesque.”
Vanessa’s eyes widened and her cheeks reddened. “Burlesque, like striptease?”
Margot rolled her eyes and laughed. “Not really. They are very different art forms. There will be some nudity, though. Tasteful. Well, kind of tasteful.”
Vanessa looked at her friend. The particular way candlelight landed on her cheekbones. The loose strand of blonde hair she tucked behind her ear without thinking. She felt the familiar, useless pull of wanting. Margot on stage. Partially undressed. Vanessa tried to arrange her expression into something more like polite interest, and felt she was probably failing.
Margot flagged the waiter down and got them herbaceous gin and tonics. Vanessa noticed how Margot’s body had changed since college. She was slightly thicker, curvier, and it suited her.
Vanessa could tell Margot already had a drink or two. Her demeanor always changed when she was drinking. She became looser, more physical, and back then, very prone to go home with the tallest guy at the bar or party.
The idea of hitting on her flashed through Vanessa’s mind, quick and specific and then gone. She knew what she wanted to say. She even knew, more or less, how Margot would laugh and touch her arm and redirect the conversation gently, the way beautiful women who didn’t want to hurt you did. It wasn’t worth it. It wasn’t like that. Was it? Could it be? Her drink came and she drank it in three long pulls on the straw. The candlelight between them flickered and neither of them said anything for a moment.
Then Margot was looking at her phone.
“Oh my god! I’m late. I have to go in a minute. It was good to see you twice this week. I can’t wait to see you at the show. You’re going to fall in love with it. Then you’re going to be in it, I just know it.”
Vanessa smiled and nodded and hoped she was right. However, she couldn’t imagine being on the same kind of stage that would display Margot, nude or even semi-nude.
“Where are you off to?” She asked casually. However, when she saw Margot’s wicked grin reappear, her hope for some spicy bit of information grew.
“Well, that’s a funny story. There is this guy... I met him at one of the shows actually. He’s kind of a patron of the arts. He owns a gallery or something. He throws these little parties. In like, penthouse hotel rooms. Champagne and the most beautiful people you can imagine. Somehow I got an invite.”
Vanessa felt something shift at that. The world expanding around Margot, around all of this, in some direction she couldn’t quite name.
“Wow, that sounds amazing!” She wanted to know more, but Margot was already standing. She dropped a fifty on the table.
“Love you, Van, see you at the show!”
And just like that, she was gone. Vanessa sat for a moment, the gin still cold in her throat, the candle between their two empty seats still going. She caught her own face in the dark window beside her, flushed and watching, and looked quickly away.