Read Online City of Spies by Nina Berry - Free Book Online Page B

take the weight off your feet.
    â€œThose things make me feel like I’m about to be buried at sea,” she said.
    â€œBefore you die, this director wants to see every twitch of your derriere. It’s a part of his ‘vision,’” Madge said tartly.
    â€œTwitching, but not jiggling,” Pagan said, eyeing her clearly outlined rear end in the mirror. “So he likes ’em fake.”
    â€œWe are here to create illusion,” Rada said, her sorrowful voice lending the sentence an unexpected profundity. “Reality is of no importance.”
    â€œFilm’s an illusion, honey,” Madge said tartly. “Might as well make it pretty.”
    â€œIt’s not how we feel that’s important,” said Pagan, reciting the old, sarcastic Hollywood line. Madge joined her in saying the next part of it: “It’s how we look.”
    Madge moved expertly from sewing tulle to repinning the black suit, pegging the skirt hem a shade narrower to emphasize the curve of Pagan’s hips. She had to take mincing little steps in it. Good thing she hadn’t had to run around in this boa constrictor the night the wall went up in East Berlin.
    But then good girls didn’t do things. They liked being hobbled in tight skirts and heels so they could have things done for them, and to them. But heaven forbid they climb scaffolding or crash through a barricade manned by armed members of East Germany’s most feared soldiers.
    Or damned well walk normally.
    Not that she, Pagan, would ever do such things. Bless you, no. She was nothing but a silly teenage girl, and the most you could expect out of her was to make faces at a camera.
    Before her adventure in Berlin she’d thought that way about herself, too, if she thought about herself at all. But then she’d ended up on the wrong side of the Berlin Wall the night it went up, with people she cared about in danger. Desperation had forced her to realize that people’s condescending expectations could be used against them. She’d pretended to be exactly what the leaders of East Germany thought she was so she could escape and get Thomas and his family to safety.
    Give most people exactly what they expected and they never bothered to look deeper.
    She’d thought she could pretend to be the sort of girl who wore a suit she could barely move in, for the sake of this sad little movie. But it was challenging these days to act like a shallow little dimwit.
    On screen, sure. But in real life? Now that she knew a bit better who she was, the facade was becoming difficult to maintain.
    Madge and Rada wrestled her out of the mummifying black suit and replaced it with the foofiest big-skirted ball gown Pagan had ever worn.
    â€œI knew it,” she said, flicking the ruched trimming that wound around her torso. She was a fish caught in a very fancy net. “I know Daisy’s a small-town girl, but...”
    â€œThe director wanted frills,” Madge said flatly. “So he gets frills.”
    â€œAnd I get chills,” Pagan said, swaying the hooped skirt to and fro. “Fit’s great, but I’m going to knock over every piece of furniture I walk past.”
    â€œCan you waltz in it?” Madge asked, her lips moving around the cigarette lodged in her mouth.
    â€œIf Scarlett O’Hara can do it, so can I.” Pagan did a tentative one-two-three around the sewing machine. The skirt swung like a large white gauzy bell. “I could signal ships at sea with this thing.”
    â€œPearls,” ordered Madge.
    Rada draped a multistrand pearl necklace with a large rhinestone clasp around Pagan’s bare shoulders.
    â€œIt’s like Breakfast at Tiffany’s set in the Civil War,” Pagan said.
    Madge snorted. “Exactly what Victor requested. I told him it was derivative, that we should set the style, not follow it. He said, ‘It’s not that kind of movie.’ Of course it isn’t if you