Scar Flowers (16 page)

Was anyone indecipherable? W
ho had not received messages as clear as spoken words—
he desires me
or
she is unhappy
—from the tiniest signals? Indelible moments, like being held in the midst of a family gathering too long by her uncle, his fingers pressing and sliding from her waist to hips, his hand skimming her breast as though by accident—an invasion unseen by everyone else. Or the leer in the reprimands of the priest during confession, the way he worked the words
whore
and
unclean
into his fatherly rebuke, as if the whispered words thrilled his tongue like salt. Sensitive, yes; she made an excellent living by exploring those feelings that everyone else blinded themselves to.

A fourth arrow sang, and Simon’s face twisted in an expression so raw that she had to look away, as if she had glimpsed herself in a mirror while making love—no, while fucking. Sweating, grimacing animal response.
The camera moved away to focus on Simon’s hands, bound against rough wood.

Simon had slumped forward against his bonds, his
head sunk on his chest. Too many arrows to count now. His fingers spread wide, then collapsed inward against his palms. Through a rent in his clothing a shadow pulsed at the base of the oblique muscle that ran from his hip to his groin. He had reached that point of sweetness in surrender that would leave him humbled, aching, open. A portrait of Beauty Conquered.

Nothing gleamed brighter, or inspired such tenderness and desire, as the struggle of the sacrificed hero. Even if it meant causing the torment herself.

Lover. Pain.
So often entwined. Better that than to feel nothing.

Guards
untied Simon and took him down from the plat-form. He was streaked with dust, smudged with bloody handprints, his torso feathered with arrows. The ropes left red grooves in his wrists and ankles. Soldiers bore him away.

D
ents and grooves. Not makeup.

Leah sat forward. To tie
limbs that tightly, especially with something as thin as rope, could cause nerve damage. When some-one is bound that securely, each time they move their hands, tendons press against bone in a jolt of pain like an electric shock.

Why had
he risked pain and injury? Not even method actors would go so far.

She rewound the video to Simon’s face as the first arrow struck. As his expression changed
, she felt it in her stomach—a hot rash of pain, a constriction of fear. Why, after watching this scene, did she feel she was the one who had been revealed?

“I know what
you
are,” she whispered at the screen. “A born submissive.”

Leah switched the television off. Rain pattered across the skylight, cast weeping shadows on the floor.
The muffled sound of closet doors opening and closing were followed by the grip and slide of Faith’s palm down the spiral staircase railing, the slow thump of a man’s tread echoing her steps. Downstairs, the inner foyer door that led to the private part of the house creaked and slammed, followed by the front door. A creak but no slam. Not even the click of the latch.

The rain died away.

As Leah descended the spiral staircase to the dining room, the throb of an engine built outside. A swirl of air swept her cheek. The front door stood agape, as did the oak gate. Drew’s green Dodge Charger pulled away in the alley, the top of Faith’s head visible in the back seat.

With
all that Leah paid for the security system and video monitoring, the girl had left the front gate open.

She
caught sight of her carry-on bag, stacked on top of her luggage. Two parcels were inside it, still in their paper bags. A hinged black leather box from an L.A. jeweler’s for Faith and a set of sable brushes for Angel. Leah tossed them both in the garbage.

Thursday, June 8, 7:45 p.m.

The basement stairs creaked under Leah’s feet, and inside the wall
, pipes rushed with the noise of water running. Had Faith left a tap on upstairs? The girl’s room stood empty, her bed made up smooth and flat with a single pillow. Leah glanced at the peep-hole in Faith’s door to make sure that it was not taped over from the inside. A red light bulb protected by a wire cage glowed from the ceiling—both basement rooms had such a light, and the switch, which Leah never turned off, was accessible only from a locked panel in the garage. Faith did not spend much time in this room; she usually slept upstairs with Leah. At one point sharing a bed had been something more than a practical arrangement, but the girl no longer seemed to care, and for Leah to suggest they change the habit came too close to admitting that she was the only one who still did.

Leah
entered the guest bedroom.
Angel’s room now
, she reminded herself. His bed was straightened but not made properly. She bent to smooth the dark wool blankets and saw the foxgloves.

Three stems of pink flowers tied with
gray ribbon leaned against the pillow, their brown-spotted throats drooping like empty cornucopias. One blossom was pinched shut with a paper clip. A note dangled from the ribbon, written on notebook paper in blunt strokes of artist’s charcoal:
I picked you these night flowers. –A
.

Leah slid the paper clip off. A
gray filament, maybe a pistil dusted with pollen, clung to the inside of the bloom. She set the flowers down and reached for the note again, but before she could pick it up, a pale moth emerged from the newly opened blossom and fluttered to the window.

Night flowers.

Leah touched the foxgloves to her cheek, then pulled out her phone. The dial tone hummed against the still air of the room.

Night flowers. I picked you these.

Flowers like a pale hand in the darkness, a bound hand that clenched and then opened, to send a fragment of hope trembling into the sky.

A pair of bound hands. Rough wood. The thump of arrows piercing flesh.

Leah
put her phone away. Angel would be at sculpture class. She would call later.

The click of the shower latch and the rattle of a towel slid
-ing off the rack made her jump. Only then did she notice the keys dangling from the lock in the door to the outside—Faith’s room also had such a door, with a lock that needed a key to open or close it. The flap of a messenger bag protruded from the closet. Leah crossed the room and reached inside, fingers closing on a sketch-book. It held charcoal drawings of women, the outlines of their faces and bodies sketched with thick, unbroken outlines and fine shadings within. No, not women; one woman. Her own image looked back at her as she riffled the pages. She slid the book back and returned to her seat on the bed as the bathroom door opened and a tall young man entered, wrapping a towel around his waist.

He froze on seeing her. His skull was shaved bare
except for a tall thatch of hair on top, and a pair of heavy silver horseshoe rings weighed down his earlobes. A thick pair of hoops hung from his nipples. A chain circled his neck, the kind used for dog leashes, fastened with a brass padlock.
Leaner and paler than Simon
, her brain whispered.

Angel. Leah’s heart tapped at her ribs. Had he always been this beautiful?
Two bright woven bracelets looped his wrist. A gift from a girl? Or had he made them?

“I got your message,” he said. “That you were coming home.”

Her fingers closed around the foxglove bouquet. Before she could speak, he knelt at her feet, head bowed. How could she not have noticed the neatly folded pile of his clothes on the chair? She felt a pang of loss at the scent of them: linseed oil and a trace of fabric softener.

She raised his chin. Shadows ringed
his eyes, either lack of sleep or smudged makeup. Yes; he had worn eyeliner recently.

“Don’t you have class tonight?”

“I didn’t go.” He shifted his weight to one knee. “I sold a painting.”

“A painting? Did you get your first gallery show and I missed it?” Leah’s throat cramped, but her voice remained steady.

“No. It sold from the café.”

“Which painting?”

“One of the Maggie portraits.”

Maggie. She had been one of Angel’s models for the series of fanciful portraits he had exhibited the night Leah met him—she of the goat horns and halo of bees, as he had painted her. A deter
-mined girl, full of nervous energy. Plain in person, in her thrift store clothes, but his painting revealed a delicate beauty.

Already her pulse had slowed. A few months ago, a visit from Angel would have had her delirious.
He had done nothing wrong, yet the thought nagged her that it was his fault, for being too available, so doggedly earnest. This was how it had gone with all her love interests, except Faith—so far. The same cold wind chilled her thoughts of Simon:
Workaholic, distant, not worth the trouble
.

But you can’t revive passion when it dies. I’m not a charity or a therapist.

That last was something her mother might say. The foxgloves’ hairy stems tickled Leah’s palm. Justine would not risk touching “weeds” like these with bare skin. Always a gloved touch from her mother’s hands once Leah turned thirteen: yellow rubber for housecleaning, silk for evening, wrist-length leather for church on Sunday mornings. One day at that age she had skipped breath-less into her mother’s room after ballet, still in her pink leotard and tights, and hugged Justine while she sat at her dressing table. Her mother recoiled, put her hand to where Leah’s chest had pressed against her. “It’s time you got a proper brassiere,” Justine muttered into her glass. Leah crossed her arms over her budding breasts as if they were tumors. “We should sit down soon and have a talk about what it means to be a young lady. About the dance career your father and I have given you, the chances you’ll have that I never could have once I got pregnant with you.”

How many times
they had fought about Justine’s sacrifices—until the day Leah screamed, “Then why
did
you get me started in ballet, if you’re so jealous?”

“
I thought it would be too hard for you.” Justine tilted her head back as she applied lipstick. “That you’d give up. And you will. You’ll see. That’s right—go run to your father.” Justine called anything that happened without her—while she was drunk, absent, or locked in her room with a migraine—
running to your father
.

“It was sweet of you to come so soon
,” Leah told Angel. “I wasn’t expecting you.” Why had he come tonight? But she knew. This was how she had been with her first love, Luis. What a disas-ter. Her family first learned about him the night she came home sobbing after their argument—about his lies, the letters from his wife that he had said were from his sister. Leah had used the plane fare her family sent to bring her home from SAB to see Luis instead, then hitchhiked back to Seattle afterward.

Angel laced his fingers over his knee, pressed his thumbs together as though they
were wrestling each other, and said, “Why did you go down there? For a client?”

“No. But Paul Jonas was there. He
’s Simon’s associate producer.” Maybe her interest had not died yet. An impulse flickered to put her arms around the boy—no, the man—who had come so quickly to see her. But all she offered was a betrayal of Paul: “Paul likes to think he’s more than a client.”

Didn’t I give him reason
to think so?

“He was there every day with you, then.” Angel slotted one thumbnail underneath the other.

“I worked with him on the set sometimes, yes. He helped get me the job.” How long ago had she met Angel? Six months? Already they were having the kind of conversation that led to jeal-ous arguments. The kind that made her ask, “Where did you get those bracelets?”

“Theresa.” He turned the bracelets around on his arm. Theresa, the sister who gave her the evil eye when Leah met her. The only time she had gone to Angel’s house.

How well did she really know him? Angel had never mentioned or shared the sketches of her, though he had given her small paintings of trees, flowers, or leaves. She recalled the broad black outlines of the drawings, the lighter lines within. That was how he saw her, as a delicate thing contained inside a barrier.

As a child,
he had drawn pictures instead of talking. In a sense, he still did. She learned more from the images in his paintings, the subjects and the boldness of the strokes, than from anything he ever said.

Not that he would ever lie to her. Not as Luis had done. She had cried herself sick when she learned
that he was married, and again when he returned to his wife. During her year at the School of American Ballet, she called him from pay phones late at night, not wanting to use the communal dormitory telephone. Instead of flying straight home to Seattle at the end of the term, she went to Luis in Wisconsin, as they had agreed—yes, he lived with his wife now, but Leah knew she could win him back. They would leave together and go . . .

Well? Where had
I thought we would go? And live on what?

Th
ose had not been happy weeks after her Seattle homecoming, with her new status as damaged goods. (“Maybe I could forgive you for the hitchhiking and the plane ticket,” her mother said, “but how could you have ruined yourself for him?”) That and her betrayal of the family in taking a scholarship for ballet in New York.

Betrayal? What would they have said if they’d known she had worked as a stripper to earn tuition? Her scholarship had been a lie.

If only she had started before she was too old for SAB—not that the school hesitated to take her money. But the law required that she be eighteen to work at Déjà Vu.

“Angel,” she said. His Adam’s apple moved, but he did not speak. “Off.” Leah hooked a finger under the towel at his waist.

She put her longest fingernail through one of the rings at his chest and twisted it, just enough so that he could feel the tug. A vein pulsed in his forehead, curved like a trickle of water on a window pane. Her other hand, its nails filed short, she reserved for Faith and Angel, for penetration. Normally, she found the inventory of objects she had used on and in him arousing, but tonight the images made her stomach contract. Angel naked on his hands and knees, while she stood behind him, teasing with the heel of her shoe, which had been sheathed in a condom. A game of inches, friction. Now she could not relive the pleasure this exchange of trust had brought; she could only wonder at her own sickness.

Leah touched the brass padlock at Angel’s neck. If she turned it over she would find her engraved initials and the date she locked the collar on him. She touched the pouch she wore around her neck, pale blue silk, large enough to hold the key.

If she returned the key to him, would he understand? She ran her fingers over his mouth, and he closed his eyes and kissed them. No. He’d think he had displeased her.

A faded green bruise covered the top of his shoulder, and
a smaller one sat over his collarbone. Her marks, from the last time she had seen him.

“Remember the day I cut your hair?”
His long black hair. Leah touched the bare skin above his ear. “Do you remember what it means?”

She buried her fingers in the remaining strands, just the right length for her to get a firm grip in, then set one foot on his shoulder. Her high heel fit his bruises exactly. She felt more than heard his intake of breath against her lap. Leah pulled his face to her, his breath warm through the fabric of
her panties as he wrapped his arms around her thighs. This is what the haircut and the padlocked chain meant: that he was hers.

The last time she saw Luis
, she had clung to him like that, after he let her in the back door at midnight.
Touch me; don’t let me go
, she had begged, and hadn’t he obliged? Soon she lay naked, sprawled like a beetle on its back, his fingers in her up to the last knuckle. Before her cries died away, he had wiped his hand on her hair and told her she was too loud. When she sat up, she saw his wife standing behind him, a Castilian beauty with her features etched in an expression of boredom.
Is this the dancer? I don’t want to smell her in here again,
the wife said, and Luis laughed. Leah hitchhiked home to Seattle, three days of forced conversation with strangers.

After
him, she promised never again to lose herself, to be a receptacle for male lust. Far better to orchestrate that desire, work it like base metal into something higher.

Leah disengaged from Angel’s embrace.
His belly was shaved smooth as a statue’s, and his sex stirred with the beginnings of an erection as he knelt, eyes lowered and palms on his knees.

“You don’t have to do this,” she wanted to say. She wanted to shout that it was all a game, that she had no more answers than he did. That he should not trust her. His body showed his uncertainty—a young man with a partial erection? Not natural.

Keep your heart,
she should tell him.
Don’t ever let anyone take it.