Fly With Fire Read Online Free

he reminded them of their
importance to the success of that night’s show. Luciana smiled graciously
avoiding Mo’s eyes.
    “You
go get ready, Mo. The Mayor await your entrance.” Roddy offered Luciana his
arm. Lu gave Mo a once over, her lips twisted with annoyance.
    The
bustle continued as performers shed their garb and their makeup. Mo took a long
hot shower scrubbing the heavy makeup and the glitter off her face. With a
towel around her head, she donned a terry bathrobe. It felt good to be clean
and cool again. The lights in the arena were hot, the tension hotter, “Just add
fire,” she said to herself. She rubbed moisturizer on her skin, essential after
the scubbing her skin had needed. She saw the sparkle of glitter in her hair.
There was always some no matter how much you rinsed. At least one sparkle in
her hair, on a lash, on her chest. She was rubbing her hair with the towel and eyeing
how dry Ling’s hair was. Mo’s dryer had arrived broken so she waited to borrow
the contortionists’.
    “You
know, I just don’t like the way it transitions. When I come back out to hell I
have to do that quick change. The intermission doesn’t work. We need to rework
this. Roddy agrees but home office says do the intermission. Claude is becoming
a pain in the ass.” Mo frowned into the mirror.
    “Well,
you’re the Queen of Hell. Your hero is the Devil. What do you expect? Besides,
front office ought to know by now that they need to leave those decisions to
Roddy and the production designers, with Roddy being the final word. But they
just don’t get it.” Ling was bent over so her short hair hung down from the top
of her head and waved the dryer over it, shouting to hear herself. “It’s been
so successful so fast they all think they’re geniuses up there. Where would
they be without Roddy?” She bounced up and looked at Mo with disgust. “God, we
need to lose the lion sniffing me. It’s creepy.”
    “Takes
one to know one, Ling. A genius, not a creep.” Mo talked loud over the dryer.
Deb smoked a cigarette illegally while Mo frowned at her in annoyance. “But
your work was perfect, Ling. You must have great empathy with snakes. I just
don’t think it flows. This new production designer needs to work the bugs out.
New show. Always stuff. I just wish we’d worked it in a smaller venue first.
Are you almost done?”
    “Sorry
Mo, Deb’s next. You’re after her. I’m going downtown Monday, wanna go?”
     “I
don’t…”
        “It’s
Chicago, Mo. They have hairdryers and everything. They also have about a
million single men.” Ling handed the dryer to Deb and ran gel through her short
hair to spike it up.
    “Even
though there’s not a show Monday, you know Rodrigo likes to practice every day.
A million?” Mo rubbed an ankle.
    “Don’t
blame Roddy. You’re the one who doesn’t know what to do if you’re not in the
air. A million single men, Mo. A statistical fact.” Mo smiled at how often Ling
created statistics out of thin air to suit her purposes. “The greater area,
anyway. Let’s go. I’m sick of hotel rooms and I wanna have some fun while I’m
here.” Ling ran black liner around her delicate black eyes so they became the
eyes of a gothic vixen. Which in fact she had tattooed on the pulse point of
her neck. “Gothic Vixen.” Mo laughed at the incongruity. Ling for all her devil
may care bluster was as sweet as they came. Her gothic alter ego a put on. Not
that she couldn’t party when the stage lights went off.
    “You
want to have fun where ever you are. Don’t you wear enough of that for the
show?” She asked Ling who just stuck out her tongue and hissed. “
    “So,
you and Claude done?” Ling assessed her makeup.
    “Yeah,
show’s over.” Mo waited patiently while Deb blew the dryer at her curls. “It
was just a couple dates, Ling.” This she said a little defensively at Ling’s
probing gaze. “You thinking on Claude?”
    “No.
I did ‘im the first week I was with