Dangerous (12 page)

Val said evenly, “What is this.” When I couldn’t answer, she pressed, “Why did you do this. What does it mean. Answer. Me. Right. Now."

I struggled to find words. “Ma’am, I…I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything bad by it…”

She leaned close. I could smell tea on her breath as she hissed, “Do you
want
me to hurt you?”

I felt dizzy from panic. “I don’t know anything about you. You never talk about your childhood…I thought maybe…”

“Doll is a
therapist
now? Hoping to cast out my inner demons?”

I shook my head,
no no no
.

Val leaned back with a sneer, and then slapped me hard across the mouth.

I cried out automatically and the room spun. In the last ten seconds my world had turned upside down and I was falling, falling, with nothing solid to grasp.

Her face was a kabuki mask of rage. She stood and walked briskly out of the room to return a moment later with her red whip, the one that looked like a fer-de-lance. She’d never yet used that one on me, and I found it terrifying.

“You think you understand me? You think you know the
first thing
about my pain? Well, you don’t!” She let the whip uncoil, with a shake. “But you will.”

Frogspawn. Frogspawn. Frog—

I wanted to run. I began to gather the energy to stand and flee from the room, but stopped cold when I realized:
this was my fault
. I had done this. I had stupidly tried to bring comfort to a little girl with an emotional time machine. But instead of giving succor, my painting had broken the seal on a long-suppressed, white-hot inner rage.

The shock of this realization pinned me to the floor. I sobbed at the pain I’d unwittingly caused Val, the very last thing I’d intended with the painting.

Her arm raised. My vision contracted to a point.

Five strokes, ten; I didn’t count, couldn’t have. The whip struck my curled legs, my shielding arms, and my back, as my body cried out and struggled to get away. But my soul accepted her attack as proper penance for my stupid attempt to connect with that vulnerable thing I guessed was hiding inside the pale, armored monster I’d come to adore.

When the whipping stopped, I was huddled in the corner, shaking uncontrollably and weeping.

“What did you say?” Val demanded.

“…I love you,” I blubbered, staggered by my own admission.

She considered my words as if trying to understand the punchline to a failed joke.

“I don’t know what that means. Explain it to me."

And that voice, I knew, came from the little girl in the painting, grown up and daring to peek out from her hiding place, possibly for the first time in decades. I heard suspicion, but also a hint of desperate hope. Val looked suddenly smaller, unsure, as her rage faded.

I crawled to Val and hugged her legs, half lying on the floor. Now I shed new tears, out of compassion for her unknown trials and what they must have cost her. But lacking the proper words, I simply held her. After a minute she tossed the whip aside and sat, pulling me close to stroke my hair and look at me with wonder.

Val examined the angry welts on my exposed legs. “No real damage. No broken skin,” she said almost tenderly. “But they will hurt for a while."

I didn’t care. I had finally broken through Val’s armor and touched something fragile within. I didn’t know how long it would last, but it had been worth it.

It occurred to me, then, we had just acted out the scene in that last painting. And transcended it.

“I’ll do a different picture, Ma’am.”

“No, Koishi, it’s quite all right.” She paused. “You simply caught me…unprepared. Some memories are not entirely pleasant or comfortable."

I didn’t press for more detail. We cuddled in silence.

The drizzle had turned to rain, and it beat at the window as the wind picked up. Val got up and fetched a small bottle of pungent liquid, from another room. “Witch hazel,” she said as she sprayed some on the whip marks, after I’d removed the sweater dress. “It’ll reduce the bruising, later.” She worked it delicately into the skin with her hands, and it felt good even as the pressure of her touch hurt terribly.

Later, she wrapped me in a blanket and served me cocoa before putting on a pretty, baffling fantasy movie from a French director I’d never heard of. We watched it without subtitles, and when I grew drowsy, she helped me upstairs to her bedroom. The last thing I remember was Val curled naked against my back, gliding her hands over my body, gentle as night-mist.

§

And then I was adrift on the ocean of dream, where I met a frightened snake who bit my arm. I remained calm, gently stroking its tensed body, until it released the bite and let me hold its cool, smooth body coiled against my breast. From its unblinking reptilian eyes, I could not tell if it now trusted me, or simply craved my warmth.

10     
millie

I WOKE SLOWLY, as if emerging from a deep hole, disoriented by finding myself in a strange bed. Val had pulled back the covers and was kneeling beside me, making a survey of the marks on on my body, which still hurt when I moved. Her pale flesh seemed to shine in the gray predawn light from the window. An unusual weariness, and the pain of movement, rendered me passive, immobile.

Satisfied, Val slipped off the bed and drew the covers back over me. I thought I heard the shower running before passing back into unconsciousness.

I was roused, briefly, by her kiss before she left for work.

§

The growl of lawnmowers roused me from sleep, as her gardeners made their weekly rounds.
8:30
read the clock on the nightstand, so I reluctantly got up and made the bed. I probably would have done so even if the maid were on duty; my mother was a stickler about such things and it was a well-established habit.

According to the full-length bathroom mirror there were no actual cuts on my body, only angry raised welts. I counted twelve stripes. But I was forced to take a lukewarm shower because hot water made the marks feel exactly like cuts from a knife.

Wincing, I put on last night’s clothes, which Val must have folded and placed on the vanity before climbing into bed with me. I hadn’t noticed that, then. It was a good thing I’d changed before coming to Val’s the night before, because I could drive straight to work instead of rushing home for fresh clothes.

Standing in the slanted morning sunlight, I realized this was the first time Val had left me alone in her house. I looked about, wondering what might I find in her drawers and closets. After a moment’s indecision, I quietly slid open the top drawer on Val’s large minimalist dresser.

Inside were precise rows of neatly folded panties and bras. But on the side was a small open box containing strange items that gave me pause.

It held a stout pair of chrome handcuffs and a matching stubby key. What really caught my attention, though, was the taser. It looked like an oversized black flashlight, a smooth, sculpted shape ending in a claw-like business end with two metallic contacts. I might not have been able to identify it, but the word TASER embossed on the grip removed all doubt. It was unexpectedly heavy.

These were expensive, professional-grade items. The sort a cop would own. Why did this discovery unnerve me so? After all, she had a dungeon filled with all manner of horrid devices. But those existed in a narrow context, a fetishistic bubble. The cuffs and taser, on the other hand, sat squarely in the real world with intimidating authority, a kind of brute efficiency.

With a throb of guilt I carefully put the weapon back in the box, exactly as I’d found it. What other surprises might be scattered about the house?

As I closed the drawer, something moved at the edge of my vision. I jumped with a gasp, thinking it was Val. But it was only Millie, peeking around the frame of the bedroom door. She must have just arrived, as she hadn’t yet removed the heather-gray scarf from around her neck, or the soft matching knitted gloves. She stepped into the room.

“My god, Millie, you scared me half to death!”

She’d seen what I’d been doing.

“Oh, she doesn’t keep anything important in
there
,” Millie said brightly, looking toward the dresser drawer. Then she gave me a curiously strong hug, making me wince. The gesture felt controlling. “It’s good to see you again, Koishi.”

Lying bitch.

Her appearance was so utterly unexpected it rendered me speechless. If Millie ever wanted to get me in trouble with Val, she certainly had the goods on me now. Yet her conspiratorial tone implied several things all at once: she wasn’t surprised to catch me in the act, she had probably done far worse herself, and knew even greater secrets.

“How did you…” I began.

“I have a key, silly.” she laughed, and sat with a
flump
on the edge of the bed I’d just made, marring its perfection. “Val lets me come and go as I like."

I could only stare. She removed her scarf and gloves before preening herself in the mirror opposite the bed.

“Come on, I’ll make you breakfast.
Waffles and sausage
,” she offered, with a tempting, singsong melody.

“I really can’t stay, Millie. I’m going to be late for work as it is.”

“Awww,” she pouted dramatically.

How I detested that girl.

§

My purse was on the table in the entrance beside the door, and I remembered the pen-sized flash drive with my art stored on it. I’d meant to give it to Val last night, but forgot when things got crazy.

It wasn’t inside my purse. Had I lost it somewhere? No big deal: flash drives were cheap, and I still had the original files at home. But I was
sure
I’d brought it along.

Then I realized Val must have taken it from my purse on her way out. I don’t know how I knew, but I did.
How strange
, I thought. While I was mortified to have been caught snooping around in Val’s things, no one seemed to have the least issue with her rooting around in mine.

I said a polite goodbye to Millie and sped off to work, only to sit in traffic and stew in my misgivings.

§

Bad traffic and a late start made me an hour late to work.

“Morning, Sunshine,” said the new security guard when I pulled up to the front gate and lowered my window.

“I forgot my badge at home, can you let me in?” It was still sitting on my dining room counter. I hadn’t planned to stay overnight at Val’s and didn’t have time this morning to fetch it.

He looked down from his chair in the gatehouse, through mirrored cop sunglasses. “I’ll need to see some identification,” he said, rising from his chair to stand beside my car.

With a quiet
grr
, I found my wallet and flipped it open to my driver’s license. He took it into the guardhouse and began to copy my information onto a clipboard.

He’d only been here a couple of weeks and I disliked him already. The heavyset man appeared fortyish, and the pink flesh of his neck formed a muffin-top over that collar. He actually looked a bit like the dog image on his jacket, snarling above the words BULLDOG SECURITY SERVICES.

Once he’d finished logging my information, he called the number for Lucid Dreams. I knew it would be Shelley, our receptionist, who answered the call.

“Good morning. This is Tyler from Security at the front gate. I have a Miss, um…Kioshi Paz here without her card, shall I let her in?” Christ, he even mispronounced my name as kee-OH-shee, the word for
quiet
. By now two cars waited behind mine, and one of them tapped their horn during the three minutes it took him to issue me a temporary badge and raise the gate. Arriving this late in the morning I was forced to park all the way on the roof of the parking structure, and take the stairs down. By the time I reached my desk I was out of breath.

“You’re late, Miss Paz,” scolded Carl, my boss. Normally it wouldn’t be an issue, but this morning our client had raised the priority of some of my shots. “I need your shots from the AN_103 sequence for the temp screening next week.”

“You’ll have them by the end of the day,” I replied, wincing as I sat to log onto my workstation. Two months ago I’d have been wrecked by his hostile greeting, but my time with Val provided a new perspective on stress. And today I felt bigger than Carl.
I just survived an actual whipping, how about you?

I did, however, worry about Millie and the taser. She’d seem unfazed by my actions but I didn’t trust her, not one inch. Yet she’d admitted worse crimes, by implication. I might have to use that admission as a counter stroke, in case of betrayal.

§

That afternoon the receptionist buzzed me on the speaker phone. “Hey Koishi. There’s a delivery for you at my desk.”

It turned out to be a single red rose, a small box, and a note. Within the box was a beautiful gold herringbone necklace with an amber pendant. When I held it up to the light I saw a spider trapped within the polished, irregular orb. The note was a haiku, saying only:

inexorable
a golden suffocation
no longer fragile

—V

Shelley brimmed with questions, which I deflected by saying it was just a gift from a friend. How could I possibly explain Val to her? Or to anyone?

The gifts were an apology of sorts. I was unaccustomed to such tenderness from Val, and it only sharpened my lingering guilt. But I wore the necklace proudly, having definitely earned it. And all afternoon the words haunted me:
no longer fragile
. Was that true?

Before I left work that evening I received an email from Val.
Are you free for dinner tomorrow night? We’ll leave my house at 8pm. Dress nicely. PS Millie says hello.

I was suddenly filled with dread.

§

By Saturday night the whip marks had turned to bruises and posed a real wardrobe challenge. Stockings weren’t enough to mask the marks on my legs, and the one on my left forearm demanded sleeves. Ultimately, I was forced to wear all black, an ankle-length skirt and a matching turtleneck sweater blouse with long sleeves. I hoped an up-hair do and the amber necklace was enough to put me in “dress nicely” territory, because I hadn’t any other options.