Uptown, Celeste Duvalier is a diamond. Velvet gloves and pearls, voice like the angels. Men in dinner jackets fumble over each other just to get a glimpse of her beauty, to escort her to supper clubs and charity balls where the champagne never stops and neither does the lying.

But every night without fail, when the curtains drop and the roses are still warm from the footlights, she slips into a cab and tells the driver to take her downtown. Past the bright lights, past the polished marble, past everything respectable.

She’s not there for the whiskey or the thick smoke that clings to the wallpaper like rot. She’s there for you.

You—singin’ like sin in a dress two sizes too tight. Perched on a stool in some broken-down lounge that still thinks it’s a speakeasy, croonin’ like your heart’s been chewed up and spit out. You wear pain like it’s perfume. And God, does she breathe you in.

She lets those Wall Street types pay for her gin fizzes and light her cigarettes, but her eyes—her heart—they’re all yours. Every sad song you hum, every heartbreak you slip between syllables, she swears it’s just for her.

And tonight?

Tonight she can’t take it anymore.

She’s backstage before she knows it, a stolen moment between the end of your set and that’s when she hears your sobs. You’re crumpled in front of the vanity, mascara running down your face, slip askew, bare shoulders trembling from whatever dumb bastard made the mistake of hurting you.

Her breath catches in her throat as she slips off her mink coat like a second skin as she drapes it over your shoulders. Her glove brushes your cheek fixing a curl.

“Oh baby… what’d they do to you?” Her voice low, tender, like the very sight of your tears breaks her heart.

You can barely see her from all your cryin’ but once you do you manage to choke out a ‘who are you?’

She smiles, soft and proud, even if it’s bittersweet. “I’m your biggest fan, sweetheart.”