Dangerous (15 page)

“I’m so sorry, Ma’am,” Millie said, over and over again. “I don’t deserve to be your doll.”

“No, you don’t. But I’ll keep you. Hush now,” Val replied. She stroked her hair and let her cry. Eventually Val bent to give her a lingering kiss, and Millie surrendered to it, completely.

I should have been insanely jealous. In a sense, Millie had won our game, by losing. But the violent and contradictory emotions of the evening gave me a curious dispassion, the calm after a shock. This was a sacred moment and I had played an important part. I leaned against Val’s leg and watched them kiss, in a kind of trance.

They cuddled for some time before Val stood up.

“The doll is spent. Let’s put it to bed,” she said. We helped Millie up the stairs and into the bedroom kept for visiting dolls, when they didn’t sleep with Val. After she was put down and covered we watched over her for a time. When Val bent to kiss her forehead Millie was already asleep.

Val took me out into the hall, and stopped me from kneeling.

“Are you okay?” she asked with unusual informality.

“I…I guess I’m all right.” Though I wasn’t sure if that was true or not.

“Do you understand what just happened?”

“No, Ma’am. But it seemed important to Millie.”

“Every doll has their own reason for submitting. Do you know what yours is? Don’t answer, you can’t possibly know yet. But Millie is a very strong, selfish woman. A part of her yearns to be to be broken, cherished, after her ego’s been stripped away. I daresay very few people can provide what she needs. That is why she is my doll. She adores the whip, by the way. Even though it terrifies her.”

I nodded, not really processing this information. I would never learn to crave
that
.

“You’ve had quite a night, my little koi. You’re free to drive home or stay, as you like. What do you want to do?”

“I don’t think I want to be alone tonight, Ma’am.”

She smiled. “Understandable. Very well, then.” The Keeper voice was back. She brought me into Millie’s room, saying, “You will sleep here. Undress.”

After removing the pendant, I stripped and carefully placed everything into an empty dresser drawer.

Val tucked me in beside Millie and kissed my cheek. “Rest well,” she said, and left.

But sleep eluded me. The evening replayed endlessly in my mind. And that night Millie never once moved or made a sound, she had crashed that hard.

Not until the sky outside began to glow steely blue with the approaching dawn did I finally drop into a fitful, dreamless sleep.

11     
details

SUNDAY MORNING WAS a fragile, uncertain affair.

I woke late, just after ten, to an empty bed and a feeling of disorientation, as if the magnetic poles had changed places in the night. Being a morning person, oversleeping leaves me feeling out-of-sorts the rest of the day. And the echoes of last night’s extremities still rang in my head.

An unhurried shower helped a little. I dressed in last night’s clothes and made my way downstairs.

The two women were in the bright kitchen, Val cooking omelets while Millie read the comics in pajamas. I knelt on the hard tiles two paces from Val. “I’m here for you Ma’am."

“At ease,” she said, with a wave of her spatula. “You’re just in time to set the table.” I stood up and set out three places before sitting at the table. Millie was quiet but cheerful, though she winced with every movement. I didn’t ask if she was okay. She was a veteran in such things compared to me.

Val, I discovered, made excellent spinach and cheese omelets, and fizzy mimosas added a touch of decadence to the brunch. But the champagne’s buzz did not diminish my sense of dislocation.

Thankfully the conversation was light and undemanding. Val had an air of complete satiety, a reptilian contentment which left her on the quiet side. Millie, too, was unusually reserved. How long that would last before her old haughty self returned?

“I’ve some things to attend to, shortly,” Val said to us. “Millie, you have no duties today beyond resting. Koishi, on the other hand…I believe you still owe me a painting. Your deadline is exactly one week from today.”

“Yes, Ma’am, I’ll go home and work on it. After I wash the dishes.”

Val grinned. “Good girl."

“When do you fly back to New York, Millie?” I asked.

“Tuesday morning,” she answered.

“Back to your cohort?”

She grinned. I might not ever like the woman, but I understood her better now.

§

Later, when I dug out the car keys, I discovered the flash drive had been returned to my purse. So very Val.

§

Once home, I did some long-neglected laundry and fell asleep while the dryer ran. It was a fitful nap, filled with jumbled scenes wrapped in a sense of crisis…no, just urgency. At one point I had a vivid impression of stone cracking, and something soft moving within. I thought about that as I shook out my clothes, wrinkled from being left too long in the dryer.

I had my first glimmer of inspiration for the final portrait.

§

The approach of my debut in two weeks began to fill me with dread. Val had never once sought my opinion or consent on the matter; my compliance was simply assumed. Though exactly
what
she expected of me was a big unknown, for Val had not spoken of it after her first pronouncement.
All you have to do is look pretty and behave yourself
, as if it were the simplest thing in the world. But if I knew anything, it was that with Val the simple things were often the most perilous.

For example, there was the matter of a what to wear. When I phoned her about it the following night, she gave me the responsibility of choosing the dress.

“When will you want to see it?” I asked.

“Unnecessary. I’m confident you’ll find something pleasing. It should be red, but I leave the rest to you. I will reimburse any expenses, as always. If it’s above what you can comfortably float, have the salesperson call me.”

This new task only heightened my apprehension, and I spent two frantic days searching for a dress to satisfy a Keeper. Should it be long, or short? Frilly or conservative? But now that I’d been charged with the task, further questions would only vex her.

It was often quite difficult to know Val’s taste in a given matter. She was usually conservative, tasteful…unless she felt like breaking convention, which she could do quite shockingly. I often guessed wrong. But in this case I judged it her option, not mine, to break the rules, and opted for a traditional style. I’d find something strapless, form-fitting, not too revealing.

Tuesday night I stopped at the mall on the way home from work, and spent ninety minutes searching in vain. I hadn’t shopped for a dress in a couple of years and styles had changed. The current choices didn’t thrill me: babydolls, empire waists and rucking had replaced the sleeker look I preferred.

My irritation showed when a salesgirl in
Splendiferous
approached me. It was my fifth store of the evening.

“Don’t you have anything less…poofy?” I grumped, waving my hand in disgust at the racks of dresses.

“We have some specials over here,” she offered, and showed the way.

They weren’t much better. “This all looks like
sleepwear
. I’m going to an important party and I need something slimmer. Classy. You know, Marlene Dietrich. Ava Gardner. That sort of thing. Marilyn, even.”

The girl was clueless. She’d probably never seen a black and white movie in her life. The store did have one dress that wasn’t too bad, a silk strapless thing with good lines. The only problem: It was pink.

“Don’t you have this in red? I need a
red
dress.”

“No, Ma’am. Just the pink.”

Her use of the word
Ma’am
triggered something deep in my brain. Because of my time with Val, the term had a taken a profound meaning, swarming with associations that would strike most people as utterly alien, even frightening. For me, however, it stirred desire, a coiled energy waiting to strike with a sharp word, a bite, or the slap of a gloved hand. Followed by liquid caresses.

My irritation with the girl, the fruitless search, the tantalizing near-miss of a dress the wrong color put me on edge. Being addressed as
Ma’am
gave that negative energy an unexpected focus. The girl saw something of it in my face.

“The pink would be gorgeous on you,” she said lamely, hoping to turn my displeasure into a sale.

I looked at her nametag, which read CALLA DEY.

“Yes, but it’s not
red
, now is it, Calla?” I said, sharp as Val’s red whip.

“Well, the only red dresses we have are back over there,” she said, meekly pointing to the rack of babydolls.

I left then, not bothering to thank her.

§

I hadn’t expected to waste almost two hours in the mall that night, so rather than cook a late dinner I walked to the food court. As I endured a bowl of very mediocre udon, a man of about twenty-five stopped before my table with his tray in hand. There might have been a touch of the Mediterranean in his blood, given the cut of his features and faintly olive cast.

“Did you work on that?” he said, pointing at my chest. Outrage began to warm my cheeks until I realized he was referring to the graphics on my tee shirt, which read:

EARTH ANGEL
[ vfx crew - lucid dreams studio ]

It was a gift from two years ago, after we wrapped up the visual effects work on that movie, and my boss had the shirts printed for the crew. It had simply been the topmost shirt in my drawer when I dressed this morning.

I nodded meekly, with a noodle hanging out of my mouth.

“I
loved
that movie,” he said. “What did you do on it?”

I covered my mouth with a napkin and slurped the noodle in, then wiped away a drop of broth. “I’m a compositor,” I said, feeling a little guilty for my initial reaction to his innocent question.

“Very cool…I think. Wait. What exactly does a compositor do?”

A point in his favor. Most people just give a wan smile and say
that’s great
.

“It’s a computer thing,” I said dismissively, but when he displayed genuine interest, I elaborated. “Like how a DJ uses software to mix music. Only I do it with film pixels, adding effects onto original footage to make them appear as if they belong together. ”

“Wow, you must enjoy your work.”

“Mostly. There’s some really tedious aspects to it. Roto, match-moving, paint fixes. A lot of time pressure, too.”

“Yeah, I can imagine. Have you worked on many other movies?”

I saw where this was going and didn’t feel like being courted. “Yeah,” I said unhelpfully. “Your food’s getting cold.”

“Mind if I join you? I’m Paul,” he said, offering a hand. I shook it carefully, so as not to make him drop the tray held precariously in his other hand.

I don’t know why I motioned for him to sit, then. Perhaps I wanted to make him squirm before he figured out I wasn’t interested. Still, he was attractive enough: short black hair, retro glasses, a vaguely East Coast accent. He had a casual, pleasantly bohemian look and a soulful spontaneity I didn’t hate. And a lot of tattoos.

He’d ordered from
Delhi Princess
, the sad-looking Indian fast food place. I pointed to his plate and asked, “Is that actually any good? I’m afraid to try that place. No one ever buys their food, no matter how many samples they give out.”

“The Chicken Tikka Masala isn’t bad. Just stay away from the Saag Paneer, it sucks.”

It turned out that Paul was a tattoo artist. I asked him what kinds of tats he did the most.

“These days? Butterflies and tribal stuff,” he said. “Back at my shop in Philly, it seemed like all I did was RIPs. The gangs were bad there. Every week somebody lost a loved one, and they’d get a tattoo to remember them by.” He gave a sad chuckle. “I got tired of making tombstones out of people, you know? So I came west to get away from all that. I still do a few RIPs here, too, but at least the weather’s nicer.”

“How many tattoos do you have?” I asked.

Eight, as it happened. And the one on his upper left arm was based on that famous scene from
Earth Angel
, where Angie kneels on the sidewalk beside her gunshot friend, kissing him tearfully as they wait for an ambulance that arrives too late. Dying gives him the gift of true seeing, and he marvels at the luminous wings with which she shields him from the icy rain. It’s a devastating moment, one that unfailingly makes people cry.

I had been the lead compositor on that effects sequence, and was struck by the coincidence.

Paul, in turn, expressed surprise at my complete lack of tattoos.

“A pretty girl like you should definitely have one. But not a butterfly. You need something different.”

“Oh, really. What, then?”

He thought for a moment, studying me intently. His gaze was gentler than Val’s penetrating inspections, but I still blushed.

“A lotus flower. No, wait…one of those gold Japanese fish. The spotted ones ones people keep in pools.”

That hit me like an electric shock. “What?”

“Oh yeah. On the nape of your neck, hiding under your hair. Because I can tell you’re a woman with secrets.”

I laughed, darkly. “Why do you say that?”

“I can tell by the way you sit. The look on your face when I said hi,” he leaned a closer, whispering, “Plus I’m psychic, a little.”

“Yeah, right,” I scoffed.

“No, really. Not like my mom, though, God bless her soul. She was
amazing
. But yeah, I get glimpses now and then.”

“All right, what’s my big secret?” It was a challenge.

“Ah, so you
do
have one.” Laughter. “But it doesn’t work like that. Stuff just comes to me.”

We ate in silence for a moment.

“You still haven’t told me your name,” Paul said.

I considered this, decided to give a little. “Koishi. But a good friend of mine calls me Koi.”

“What’s a koi?”

“The
fish
you wanted to tattoo on my neck, silly.”