You can be a star in Chicago for a night, a week, a month, a year, maybe, if you're good at what you do or rather: better than everyone else who's trying to get their names in the papers, their pictures on the front page.

You can be a nobody in New York all your life.

Or you can sing and dance and be beautiful and remind everyone that you have killed a man, once upon a time, when you were someone else or during a handful of hours you don't remember.

---

New York in February is covered in snow, hued in shades of white and grey. Roxie thinks it looks like it needs a splash of colour ('we could paint this town,' she thinks)—Velma thinks Mama must have her reasons for wanting to be here, other than a simple whim, a sudden desire to depart for parts unknown.

The only thing shorter than Chicago's memory is the memory of its journalists; no matter what Roxie may think, Velma is quite aware that she's given something up to be here, a tit for which there should be a tat.

Mama knows people, here and everywhere, it seems, so Velma is not worried, exactly, even if she may go to the effort of putting on an act implying so. Roxie is easier to dazzle, still; Velma thinks it might be fun to make her fret a little, just a taste of despair when Mama's got her back turned.

They've changed their act, brushed off some of the dust, polished the glittery parts—Mama says there's no need to keep flaunting their past, their history, and Velma lights up another cigarette while Roxie nods solemnly, that earnest expression on her face that she does so well.

---

"I made a call to Mike's and he says he'd be glad to give you girls a try."

Velma feels Roxie's gaze on her—not asking, merely looking, checking for clues. Velma can't remember the last time her face has shown something she didn't want it to show.

"Mike's. Is that … good?" To look at her now, you wouldn't think this was the girl who told Billy Flynn to get lost. Mama's not Billy, though; Mama cares about more things than just love, and she's a woman. It means something still, these days, even if it doesn't mean quite as much as it used to.

Women kill, now, and women get hung for it. Justice gets served—they had it coming.

"If it's good enough for Gladys, it's good enough for you, my pretty one," Mama says, no more than a hint of a scowl in her tone, even if none of it shows on her face. She's a lot like Velma, is Mama; it's only that Mama is good to those who are good to her, whereas Velma prefers to simply be bad to those who are bad to her. Same philosophy, reciprocity.

Roxie nods, apparently satisfied.

Velma wonders what Mama would look like, wearing a tuxedo and a top hat, and then she wonders what she would look like herself, and then she decides that she will find out when she finds out.

---

It's a different audience, at Mike's and at the Ubangi Club and at the Clam House, where a girl can get a proper drink if she knows how to ask for one.

The stages are smaller, the shows more intimate and yet less revealing. There are night when Velma feels almost naked, wearing clothes that hint at curves and covered soft skin so subtly it can't even be called teasing.

Roxie seems less aware of it but Mama—Mama knows and is amused. Mama knows far too much about Velma, more than she'd be comfortable with any man knowing, unless he were like Charlie, safely dead and gone.

She watches Roxie glitter in Veronica's costumes, and Velma realizes she will never not be moving on. It's what she does, what she's good at.

Nobody who sees their act mistakes them for anything other than what they are.

Mama sits in the audience still, sometimes next to someone else. Velma is still capable of forgetting, of being made to hang for no worse reason than someone who had it coming (Cicero). Roxie is still playing the innocent, Mama's pretty one, even if Mama never started being fooled by her.

Some changes are yet to come, Velma decides.

---

Nobody who sees their act could mistake them for complete, for showing everything there is to see. It might be the point of the act, to leave a place empty. Perhaps what they do is still a form of teasing after all, of hinting at something hidden and secret and unrevealed, if not taboo.

From the stage, she watches Mama bend closer to a stranger's face, close enough that another stranger might mistake them for something other than strangers.

Adding a third person to a double act is easiest in the middle. Adding a third person to a double act in the middle isn't difficult at all when the third person has been there all along, from the beginning, invisible. The only difference is that there's a body between Velma and Roxie now, instead of merely a person.

The top hat and tuxedo suit Mama. Nobody could ever mistake her for a man, and to mistake her for what she is would not be a mistake at all—just the truth, unspoken of.

It changes the audience, their new act. There's a difference in what is seen, what is imagined.

Before, Velma felt people look at the empty place in between, felt longing and a bit of lust and wanting. Before, their act offered a fantasy about that which can exist between two women, one of whom hates the other. Before, Velma believed their act was an act.

Now, she sees Roxie opposite her, and she feels the audience regard her with something closer akin to jealousy, to wishing to have what she has, than to wishing to simply have her, hold her, touch her (and all that jazz).

It's a fabulous feeling.