Naked Angels. Judi James
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Nico was out more and Nettie just sort of moved into the hotel with them. Evangeline found her sitting there one morning, ordering juice from room service.
‘I don’t know that my grandmother would want to pay for a stranger in here, too,’ Evangeline said, but Nettie just laughed. She wasn’t fat but she had a small double chin that was pink, like the rest of her.
Her clothes arrived the following day and Evangeline had to crush up in the closet to give her some space. Her clothes were strange, not useful things at all, just cropped-off trousers and a few little tops, like a kid would wear.
Nico told Nettie to teach Evangeline the facts of life but Nettie had her own way of dealing with little things like that. One night when Evangeline got up for water Nico’s bedroom door was pushed wide open and the light was on. Evangeline walked past and saw Nico on the bed with his back towards the door and Nettie sitting naked on top of him, riding back and forward like a cowboy at the rodeo. She waved when Evangeline tiptoed past and that must have been the first Nico knew of it because she heard her father swear loudly and Nettie was gone the next day.
‘You didn’t have to get rid of her,’ Evangeline told Nico over breakfast.
Nico kept staring at the newspaper, though she could tell he wasn’t reading. ‘I know,’ he said, ‘it was what I wanted.’
Evangeline squirted syrup over the top of her boiled egg. It tasted quite good, if you didn’t mind the feel on your tongue. No one stopped her, and so she did it.
‘She smelt funny,’ Evangeline said.
‘How would you know?’ Nico was looking at her now. ‘You had the place filled with air fresheners.’
Evangeline nodded, ‘Because of her smell.’
‘Don’t be rude,’ Nico told her, ‘and stop cleaning the place up. Housekeeping is paid to do things like that.’
‘They don’t get all the dirt,’ Evangeline said. It was important to her. Grandma Klippel didn’t have dirt in her house. Evangeline wanted the place nice for Nico.
‘Stop biting your nails,’ Nico said. He said it even when she wasn’t. She let her hair flop over her face and chewed that, instead.
So Nico had to take Evangeline out to work with him. She could see how little he liked the idea but she was overcome with excitement. He wouldn’t tell her what he did. When he finally told her she didn’t even understand the word.
Paparazzi. It sounded strange, like an Italian ice-cream flavour. It wasn’t the only job he did, but it was one way he earned money. The other ways were more boring, like chauffeuring local businessmen to and from their offices. Nico was half-Italian and most of the businessmen were, too. Evangeline looked his job up in the dictionary but what she read didn’t seem to fit. Nico just photographed people in a club – ordinary sorts of people. Most of them looked pretty much like Nico himself; dark-haired and itchily nervous in their suits. They stood next to their wives and friends in groups and they all smiled warily as Nico counted to three. When the pictures were over they looked relieved and started laughing.
Evangeline wasn’t allowed inside the clubs but Nico got her in anyway. She was proud of him for being able to do that. She would wait by the door while he discussed the matter with a few men in the entrance and then he would grin and wink at her and she’d run in after him. They were never inside for long; just long enough to smell the new carpets and the alcohol, though, and to catch a glimpse of the bands that played on stage in their white tuxedos and orange toupées.
Evangeline loved it all. She loved the noise and the pushing crowds and the perfumes and the heat but most of all she loved it because she knew Grandma Klippel would have a seizure if she knew she were there.
People spoke to her. She became known as Nico’s daughter. One man gave her a fifty-dollar note and a pat on the head, and a woman in an expensive satin dress gave her the paper umbrella from her cocktail, which Evangeline liked even more than the money. Nico watched her like a hawk all the time, except when he took the photographs. Then he would sit her on a bar stool and tell the barman to check she didn’t move. The barman would wink at her and send a glass of cola spinning down the bar towards her, just like he did with the beers. Sometimes he put a small plastic stick in the glass with two cherries speared on it.
Nico would always be late up the next morning so Evangeline would order breakfast and get out the small paintbox Grandma Klippel had packed with her things. She tried to paint something every day, just as her tutor had told her to. Nothing looked like anything much, they were all small pale shapes in the middle of the page; sometimes she couldn’t even remember what it was she was painting.
One morning Nico caught her at work. He began a laugh that turned into a cough and when he had finished coughing he turned the pad around and gazed down at the smudge of pale colour in the middle of the page.
‘What’s this?’ he asked. Evangeline chewed at her hair.
‘Is it some fruit, is that what it is?’ He held it up to one eye at a time, as though he needed glasses, then he turned the picture around slowly. ‘I didn’t know you were trying to paint,’ he said quietly. Evangeline’s hair smelt of cigarette smoke.
‘Did your mother teach you?’ Nico asked.
‘No.’
His eyes looked dark, like the coffee he was drinking.
‘Who, then? Darius?’ It was the first time she had heard him say the name. It sounded strange. He pronounced it wrong: ‘Dar-i-us'. She longed to correct him but thought it might have been deliberate, like the way he was always calling Grandma Klippel ‘the old lady’.
‘My grandmother hired a tutor,’ Evangeline told him. She washed her brush in the water-pot and cleaned it carefully on a tissue. She couldn’t work with him watching.
‘You had proper lessons?’ Nico sounded surprised, ‘For how long?’ ‘Months.’ ‘Months?’
Evangeline nodded. She could feel her eyes filling up but she didn’t want to look a child in front of her father, in case he was laughing at her.
‘She wanted you to be like your mother.’
‘And Darius.’
An angry muscle twitched on Nico’s cheek.
‘And what did you want?’ he asked. Evangeline pushed more hair into her mouth. ‘Did you want this?’
‘I didn’t mind.’ Her voice sounded small. Nico was staring at her.
‘Why not, Evangeline? You mind everything else! You mind when there is dust on the table, you mind when I smoke, you mind when the coffee’s not warm, you mind when I dent the couch – why didn’t you mind something as important as this? Do you enjoy it?’
She nodded. Then she thought. Then she shook her head.
‘Then you should stop. Don’t be Thea. Be yourself.’
‘I want her to be proud of me.’ It came out in a small stupid whisper.
‘Your grandmother?’
‘No. My mother.’
Nico sighed and lit a cigarette. Evangeline wished he had done the trick where he threw it into his mouth, it might have lightened the atmosphere a little. He ran his hands through his thick dark hair. She could tell that he was thinking.
‘Come with me,’ he said at last. Evangeline got up. ‘Do I need my coat?’ ‘Bring it,’ Nico said, ‘bring your whole wardrobe if you like. Only hurry up.’
They went round to Nico’s apartment. Evangeline had never been there before and she liked it twice as much as the hotel. It was in a converted warehouse down a