Dangerous (28 page)

Here was a wholly new side of my Keeper. When I imagined her playing with other dolls, I naively assumed the scenes proceeded much like ours. Now it struck how differently she must treat each doll. Yes, Val had been intensely physical with me on occasion, but never like this. And while Grace was obviously frightened, I sensed the game was familiar to her, even welcome.

Grace was quickly reduced to gasps and, after a few minutes of rough handling, something like weeping. It might almost have aroused my pity if I didn’t find the sound utterly annoying: a kind of hoarse barking quite unlike Millie’s sweet cries.

At length Val pushed free and stood. She looked down upon the huddled girl whose face was now a ruin of streaked mascara.

“I have news for you, doll,” Val told her. “I am putting you in Miss Koishi’s care for the time being. If you do not obey her exactly as you do me, I will release you. Is that clear?”

“Yes, Ma’am,” she blubbered, wiping a stained cheek with the back of her hand. But she was still collecting herself, and the news didn’t seem to have penetrated her awareness yet.

“Good grief, look at you,” Val spat. “Go make yourself presentable. Quickly!” With a hand on the wall to steady herself, the girl scrambled to her feet, pulled down her skirt, and curtsied to us both before hurrying from the room.

“I trust you found that instructive,” Val said with bright eyes, when we were alone.

I scarcely knew what to say. “Yes, Ma’am.”
Electric guitar
was right: something you beat on to produce loud, raucous squeals. “Am I supposed to do
that
to her?”

“You may do whatever you want, doll. Be as cruel as you like.” It was both a hint and a challenge.

“What if I do something to make her leave you?”

Val laughed. “Highly unlikely. In fact, I encourage you to try.”

When Grace returned, having regained her composure, she knelt primly. “I am back, Ma’am,” she said. And then, as an afterthought, she added, “And Miss Koishi.” Was that an honest mistake, or a deliberate insult?

“Are you always so annoying, Grace?” I said with sudden heat.

“Oh no, Miss. Hardly ever,” she said, in a serious tone that somehow carried a note of impudence. Damn her.

“Yeah, so why are you being annoying now?”

She made no answer.

Val aimed a remote at her sleek black stereo, and the room thumped with electronic music, sinister yet a little playful. The singer’s voice had a touch of Bjork’s elfin menace.

“Grace, dear, stand up,” Val commanded, and the girl obeyed. “Why don’t you show Miss Koishi your true feelings, hmm?”

Grace’s eyes grew wide. “Ma’am?”

“Let’s have a demonstration of how little respect you have for your new Keeper. Slap her.”

“But Ma’am—”

“
Slap her.
”

Val’s command was so unexpected that I was still processing it myself when Grace’s hand stung my left cheek. There was a ring on her hand, and its heavy impact caused a star of pain against my cheekbone. For a moment, I was too stunned to move.

“Again,” Val said, firm but calm.

When the second blow landed, I turned to look at Val in disbelief. My mouth opened in protest, but my brain could not yet supply the words to fill it.

“Again.”

By now, however, I had sufficiently collected my wits to catch Grace’s hand in my own, and grip it tightly. Breathing hard, my face aflame, I glared at the girl, whose expression was a strange mixture of aggression and fear.

“Enough of
that
,” I said, with more heat than I intended. “On your belly!”

She fell to the rug. Val’s ruse worked; I had forgotten my insecurity and only desired to grind her into the floor like a worm. I set my shoe against her neck and pressed just hard enough with the heel to know it hurt. Grace mewed.

That was better.

Then it was a simple matter of using Val’s favorite trick questions to force the girl to incriminate herself. How well I knew their effect firsthand! When she inevitably fell into my trap, I lashed her with insults and bitter scorn until her hands trembled, flat on the floor on either side of her head like pink starfish. My cheek, where the ring had struck, ached in a way that promised a bruise tomorrow. A velvet fire blazed in my chest. I
enjoyed
stripping this creature of her airs and revealing just how ridiculous she truly was.

During this process Val sat on the couch and watched with languid satisfaction. The harsher I was the more color bloomed on Val’s pale cheeks, the quicker her breath, the brighter her shining eyes. I’d never before seen Val so obviously aroused, but then I was usually too busy shielding myself from her lash to notice such palimpsests of desire in the book of my Keeper’s flesh. Now I read them plainly, revealed in the bright flame of my wrath upon the bleating creature before me. I half-expected Val to touch herself then, but she did not. Her legs remained crossed, her hands neatly folded upon her lap.

I demanded a haiku of Grace, and when at last she blubbered her train wreck of seventeen syllables, ordered another. But at this second, even more dreadful offering, Val said:

“That’s
quite
enough, thank you,” Val said, “Or do you intend to make your Keeper’s ears bleed?” I laughed before realizing the question was aimed at me, not Grace. Abashed, I quit that game.

“Perhaps the doll needs to practice her positions, hmm?” Val suggested.

I walked about the room while Grace, forbidden to stand, crawled on hands and knees and struggled to keep the proper distance, kneeling whenever I stopped.

By now I had learned a great many more hand signs. There are countless ways to pose a doll at a Keeper’s feet; some are quite humiliating, others are difficult and exhausting; a kind of evil yoga. I enjoyed inflicting them upon Grace, but the greater joy was seeing Val’s pleasure mount as the hapless girl trembled with exertion.

It was alarming how easily I drew upon my own doll experiences to keep Grace under steady physical and mental pressure. I learned that it wasn’t necessary to have a master plan, one simply laid traps and waited for the doll to spring them. Then one improvised, based on the precise nature of the doll’s failure, and things known to cause her the greatest humiliation, or arousal, or dread.

But soon Val tired of that too, and sensed the girl’s growing fatigue. She told me to stop, to sit with her on the couch while the doll massaged our feet. I was amused by the gravity and tenderness with which Grace removed our shoes and attended to her foot worship.

Val began to stroke my cheek and kiss me ravenously, in a very different way than I was accustomed to as her doll. Then, I was simply a tool for attaining her own release, or something to be teased, humiliated, and controlled. Now she was drawn to me, responded to me as…well, if not exactly a peer, then as someone in whom she saw a little of herself, rather than food to play with.

Now, for the first time, I tasted something close to real love on the lips of this noble monster named Valeria Stregazzi. It was like brandy to me: sanguine, sweet, intoxicating. I wanted more of it,
all
of it, no matter the cost. Even if it meant the sacrifice of Grace herself.

22     
dislocation

“VAL,” I SAID, “I have some…um, some unexpected news.”

It was the Tuesday following my first session with Grace, and my cheek still ached from the impact of her ring. Val and I had met for a late dinner at a small Italian restaurant in The Commons, in Calabasas just off the Ventura freeway, about five miles from her house in the hills. For this dinner, as sometimes happened, I was not in doll mode.

“Oh?” she said, and sipped her Chianti.

“Well…” I dithered, unsure about how to proceed. “My boss asked me to fly to London to help set up a new post-production facility there.”

“He must think very highly of you, to give you such a responsibility. Congratulations.”

“Val…he’s offered me a supervisor’s position. It would be a permanent gig. And a lot more money.” I said it as gently as I could.

This set her back. “Hmm. That does rather alter things, doesn’t it?”

We were silent for a little while.

When Val did speak, her tone was unexpectedly light. “London’s a fine city. You should find it quite pleasant. How soon do you leave?”

I had expected Val to be stoic about it, but I wasn’t prepared for this display of complete unconcern.

“Let’s see,” I said. “I’m supposed to fly there on April twentieth, and today is the first…” I let that float in the air for a second.

But Val didn’t make the connection. Her eyes were distant, a little hard.

I decided it was best to abandon the joke. “April fools, Val,” I said with a meek smile, hoping she’d take the joke in good humor. Perhaps it hadn’t been such a good idea after all.

“Ah.” Val set her glass down with exaggerated care. “I suppose you think you’re a clever girl.”

“Sorry, Val. It was a stupid joke.”

“Yes, I daresay it was. And do you know why?” Her voice was low, dark, threatening.

My stomach contracted into a tight ball, and I grew dizzy. “No, Ma’am.”

“Of course not, because the doll stupidly believes itself to be the center of the universe. Listen carefully. Of all the idiotic popular customs I detest, April Fools’ is the most vapid. I am
profoundly
disappointed.”

I looked down, my face hot with shame. A tear dropped into my pasta.

But she wasn’t finished. “Doll imagined I would fall to my knees and beg it not to go? How insulting.” She opened her purse and extracted a hundred-dollar bill, which she put on the table. “Goodnight.” She rose and walked out of the restaurant with a brisk click of heels.

I grabbed my own purse and followed her, heedless of the other diners’ eyes upon me. I had to trot to catch up, and reached her just in time to interpose myself between Val and her car door.

“I’m so sorry, Ma’am!” I pleaded. “I’ll make it up to you. I’ll do anything. Anything.”

She impaled me with a bayonet glare. “The doll doesn’t have such a high opinion of itself now, does it?”

“No Ma’am,” I began to cry. “I’m stupid. I’m horrible. I—”

“Hush,” she said, softly, wiping my tears with her hand. She brought the damp fingers to her lips, and tasted my anguish. “Do you want to know the real reason I am so vexed with you, doll?”

I nodded dumbly. My knees were quaking.

“Because…” And now she actually struggled to find words, something I’d
never
seen her do before. “Because I love you, and I don’t want to lose you.”

It was a confession; quiet, vulnerable, completely unexpected. Val placed one hand behind my neck and kissed me hard upon the lips. I tasted wine and the salt of my own tears.

I gasped, involuntarily taking air from her mouth, caught in a vortex of fading terror and blooming joy. It was more than my body could contain, and I would have staggered if my hand hadn’t found the low roof of the car as a support.

Val broke the kiss, her eyes shining.

“Oh. Oh, Ma’am. Val,” I said tremulously, my heart filling with golden light so suddenly it hurt. The cool night air smelled of eucalyptus trees, their dry leaves rustling in the starlit breeze.

After a few heartbeats, her mouth twisted into a familiar shark-grin.

“April fools,” she said.

Then Val gripped me by the shoulders and moved me away from the car door. I wobbled drunkenly, struggling to deal with these sudden, conflicting dislocations. She got into the car and closed the door, then lowered the power window, an almost musical sound in the calm evening air.

“Are you free Friday night, dear? Grace will be coming by then to continue your training. Eight o’clock sharp.” Her voice was all Keeper now, as if nothing had happened.

Luckily she didn’t wait for a reply, because I was quite unable to utter a sound.

“Ta,” she said, and her stereo began to throb. The car pulled away with an electric whine.

As I stood watching her tail lights disappear, I felt as though my soul had been ripped out of my body and roughly stuffed back in. My hands trembled, and for a few moments I thought I might actually throw up.

That was the last April Fools’ joke I ever played in my life.

23     
clubbing

IT WAS 10PM on a Sunday night, and we were going clubbing.

At the 101-134 split, Val stayed on the 101 as it turned south to become the Hollywood Freeway. On our left, the hotels and offices clustered around Universal Studios formed the last big architecture before the freeway ascended into the Hollywood Hills. Like a scene from Blade Runner, the tall buildings scraped the belly of a low-hanging cloud deck, setting it aglow it with a melange of amber streetlights, animated billboards, and neon accents. The effect was magical yet somber, and I was reminded of the glowing trash can from Brent’s Christmas party, and my first encounter with Val. Though it had been only four months ago by the calendar, it felt like a year.

The bright matrix of the San Fernando Valley fell behind as the Batmobile rose into the clouds, through the foggy notch cut into the hills by the freeway. Traffic was light.

Val played snarling, Teutonic Industrial music on the stereo, but low enough to permit talking. As we passed the Barham exit, near the crest of the hills, I said:

“I think I know why Grace is your doll, Ma’am. She wants a parental figure she can respect.”

I hadn’t forgotten Val’s directive: to discover Grace’s motivations. After four scenes with her I’d formed this hypothesis, based on the girl’s actions and her answers to my probing questions.

“Oh?” Val offered no hint of her opinion of this theory, so I plunged on.

“Come on, her dad’s a total milquetoast. He gives her everything she wants, and she takes it for granted. She gets away with murder and hates his weakness. But you’re his complete opposite. She knows she can’t pull any fast ones on you.”

“If she is so hungry for a strict father figure, why is she such a dreadful brat?”