Born Savages - Cora Brent Page 0,2

that as a cocktail waitress out there on the Vegas strip?”

Her words have a sharp edge. They taunt. They are supposed to.

I answer back just as sharply. “I’m not a cocktail waitress.”

“You’re not far off.”

“I deal blackjack to frat boys, party girls and sad sacks with deep pockets who sometimes get the mistaken impression that I’m for sale too. And you know damn well I can’t beat that take in six months.”

I pause and swallow, wishing I had something fiery at hand, something on the high end of the alcohol proof scale. I could use some fire right now. Whatever fight I had seems to be evaporating. Maybe a different tactic would work. I clear my throat and put on my best voice of reason.

“Bree, I can’t help but feel that you’re diving right into the dark water without any idea how deep it is. You don’t know what you’re asking for.”

“Stop,” she scoffs. “I’m not asking for anything I’m not willing to do myself.”

I picture her waving a petite hand in the air and rolling her eyes. No one needs to tell Brigitte what is best. Complaints are unwelcome here. She’s never liked her nickname, Bree, and is in the habit of demanding that everyone draw out the second syllable of her full name with a chic, foreign-sounding lilt.

“This is a great opportunity,” insists Brijeeeet and she suddenly sounds whiny, agitated. Goddamn her, she’s probably thinking. Selfish jerk.

She really does need me to cooperate. The deal for the show only stands if all five of us sign on.

When I don’t answer she sighs with exasperation and her pitch escalates. Brigitte only has so much patience for playing nice.

“Dammit Ren! Don’t you ever get tired of being a fucking joke? A punch line? An ‘Oh god, look what happened to those Savages!’ kind of sneering sympathy which isn’t really sympathy at all. They gloat. They laugh. We’re fucking funny to them. You know it’s true.”

I soften. Only a little. The permanent dent in our status hurts her the most. I’ve gotten used to it. A long time ago I figured out that no matter the circumstances I wouldn’t have chosen that insane life. It was never my fate. But Brigitte isn’t over it. She never will be.

“Bree,” I start to say but she’s on a roll. She hasn’t made her point yet.

“Down the rabbit hole we went,” she howls. “The Savages, in one sad scandalous lump. Took us only a generation to go from America’s sweethearts to American baggage. And I’m not talking about the boutique shit. I’m talking about a low end department store kind of baggage made of dog hide and imported from some part of the world where people are forced to live in six foot tin kennels and work in the goddamn baggage factory twenty-two hours a day.”

I’ve stopped listening somewhere in the middle of that garbled monologue. I don’t know where she comes up with this crap. It was probably vomited from the mines of some focus group stuffed with Armani suits.

“Don’t you ever get tired of being a fucking joke?”

“Hmm,” I grunt when she pauses for breath. I’m startled to find myself actually considering it. Mostly I’m considering how much I’d like to tell my florid-faced overseer at the casino that he’s rubbed his knobby hard-on across my ass for the last time.

Not that I’m destitute. Living in Vegas can be done cheaply and my single bedroom is comfortable enough for me and a semi-annual guest or two, which is about all I can brag about besides faceless bronzed muscle dreams. Any extra money I come across I immediately send Ava’s way, no matter how much she tries to argue that I shouldn’t.

The thing is, the world has largely forgotten about me and I’ve blended into the scenery here. Anonymity is comfortable. If you’ve never been attached to celebrities you wouldn’t understand. My sister’s demands would destroy that comfort. I know how it works. Even if the show is only marginally successful we’ll be stalked. We’ll be wild prey on the loose in America. They would find us as we tiptoe out of a steakhouse, slither into traffic court, and stumble from the dentist. The weapons would be anything capable of basic photography. We would return to being the curious oddities that the world would like to own.

We would be….Famous.

Brigitte’s voice grows small and uncertain. My silence is hurting her, deflating her ambitions. She begins to sound the opposite of confident. She sounds like