Slow Surrender (11 page)

Stefan snorted. “Women, men, long-lost relatives—fake, of course—you name it.”

“So he’s careful.”

“Very careful.”

“I’m not the slightest bit interested in his money,” I said.

“Which is one reason he’s still interested in you,” Stefan replied.

Then I heard the sound of a phone ringing.

“I’m sorry, miss,” he said. “I must pick that up.” He closed the window between us. I could make out the murmur of his voice, but I couldn’t tell who he was talking to. After a few minutes, it didn’t seem like he was going to open the window again, so I settled back against the seat in the dark. That gave me some time to think. Byron. His name was Byron? Was I sure she said Byron and not Brian? Not completely. Was James a last name? For that matter Byron could be a last name, too. But the way she had said it sounded intimate and familiar. I thought about his lesson in reading people and I wondered what her body language had been like when she said the name.

He had to be some kind of plastic surgeon, I thought. One who only worked on the super-rich. Maybe that was why he had to be so secretive. Could that also be why every trace of a name was gone from the office upstairs? And yet the woman doctor, Powers, had introduced herself. I took out her card and looked at it. No address, just a phone number. I wonder if she did house calls. Things didn’t quite add up. Maybe he was a super-skilled doctor who had lost his license to practice for some reason.

Maybe for tying up his patients and dripping hot wax on them. I nearly laughed out loud when I thought that. Not too likely. He had been scrupulously careful never to force me into anything. He’d even asked if I wanted to be tied up or not, as if being tied up were some kind of special treat. With him, maybe it was.

I felt a little like I’d found the world on the other side of the looking glass or something. Everything was familiar and yet backward from what I expected. I couldn’t help but feel like backward was an improvement, though. Maybe I’d been looking at love, sex, and relationships wrong all along.

T
he package arrived when I wasn’t home. Becky brought it in and was intensely curious about what was in it.

“I’m not supposed to look,” I told her while we sat on the futon eating takeout. “He said it’s a surprise.”

“I told you he was a big-time BDSM dom,” she said. “I bet it’s like a dildo or something. Don’t you think?”

“I don’t know what to think. Every time I think I know what’s going to happen, I’m wrong.” I was eating fried rice with a spoon straight from the container. Becky was pulling a bunch of noodles from another with chopsticks into a bowl.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, he’s not like the other guys I’ve known. Seriously. It’s like…everything’s backwards. Girls are supposed to be the ones playing hard to get and giving the guys oral sex in the back of cars, not the other way around, right?” I put down my spoon. “Oh my God, I wonder if that’s what’s going on?”

“What’s going on?” she asked, confused.

“I mean, is that it? He’s playing hard to get?”

“I thought you said you have to earn his you-know-what,” she said, slurping up a noodle.

“Well, yeah.”

“Maybe he’s afraid to let you see it. What if he’s disfigured?”

“I asked him that and he laughed it off. Seems unlikely.” Then again, what did I know? I thought about how hurriedly he’d left me last time. “I think he’s kind of freaked out by how much he wants me. It’s like he’s testing himself to see how long he can hold out.”

“And that isn’t driving you crazy?”

“Well, it is, but in a good way. I mean, he’s already proved he’s way better with his hands and his mouth than any guy I’ve ever dated. Not that I have a large sample size, but still.” I clamped my knees together. “I think about him constantly. I’ve never been so into a guy like this one before. He’s completely different. I don’t even know his real name.”

“Well, that’s why. Every other guy whips his pants off and wants you to take care of him and be his new mom the second you agree to go on a date. This one, you really have to work to get to know.”

“Does that make sense?”

“I don’t know. I’m probably the wrong person to ask.” Becky sighed. “Did I tell you about the guy my parents fixed me up with for my high school prom?”

“No.”

“Okay, so I wasn’t allowed to date when I was in high school, right? But my parents wanted me to be normal. So they knew I should go to my prom because that’s like a big deal, like a rite of passage, right?”

“Right.”

“They were always doing stuff like that. They didn’t want me to talk funny so they wouldn’t teach me Chinese and never spoke it in the house.”

“So you
are
Chinese!”

“Yeah, I am. Didn’t you know that?”

“I wasn’t sure which nationality you were.”

“You could’ve asked, you know.”

“I didn’t want to be rude…”

“So it was better to be confused?”

“Yes?” I said, but I didn’t sound too sure about that. “What about the prom?”

“Right. So they had this phobia that I wasn’t going to fit in, as if not fitting in would ruin my life or my chances for success in American society. My mother actually said that. That I had to try harder to fit in or I wouldn’t ‘succeed in American society.’ But at the same time they wouldn’t actually let me do a lot of the things other girls did. They would let me go to the mall with my friends and try things on, but I wasn’t allowed to buy anything.”

“Okay, yeah, I get the picture.”

“Now prom. They picked out this kid, a doctor’s son from a couple of towns over, so we didn’t know each other. Apparently we’d met when we were like ten or something, but I didn’t remember him. And here’s where you get the clash of expectations.” She put down the bowl. “There I am in this ball gown that’s all covered in lace and stuff, with a bouquet of flowers. It’s exactly like a wedding dress, except it’s powder blue, but you get the idea.”

“Like Cinderella,” I said.

“Exactly. And here comes Prince Charming, driving his father’s Mercedes. We took a million photos and then off we go to this big banquet. He was even in a powder-blue tuxedo. We were, like, a perfect match.” She was looking at her hands instead of at me.

“Except it wasn’t perfect?”

“Well, no. I mean, we danced, and lots of people took pictures, and it was kind of fairy-tale perfect in that way. I mean, I looked beautiful—my mother even put my makeup on, you know? And the dancing was nice. But he had the personality of a piece of broccoli.”

That made me laugh, even though she was clearly getting to the serious part of the story.

“When it was over, we get back in his car, and he tells me he got permission from my parents to take me to an after-party at some other kid’s house. I didn’t even blink. I just said okay. I knew my father had given him this big talking-to, so I figured they had discussed it. It wouldn’t be the first time no one told me anything, right? So we go to this party, and we’re not there five minutes before he takes me by the hand and leads me upstairs into a bedroom and tells me he’s so glad my parents wanted me to have this classic prom experience.”

“Wait, what? You don’t mean he thought you were going to have sex?”

“That’s exactly what he meant. Now, I’m one hundred percent sure that is
not
what my parents meant by ‘classic prom experience.’”

“Oh my God, Becky! What happened?” If I had pearls, I would have been clutching them. Seriously.

“He was such a stupid dork. He pushed me up against a wall and pushed my dress over my head, and put his thing between my legs and came in like ten seconds.”

“He raped you!”

“Not really. I mean, he didn’t come close to getting it in anywhere. What a loser, right?”

“Why did he push you up against a wall?”

“He couldn’t figure out the dress.”

“But…”

“But what? That was that. I cleaned up and then we left right away. I don’t think he had a clue we didn’t have actual sex.”

“It was against your consent!”

“Well, I didn’t actually say no. I mean, I’ve thought about it a lot since then. I don’t really consider it rape, because he was too stupid and clueless for that.”

“Becky!”

“Hey, it’s my story. I get to think what I want about it.” She gave me a stern look. “His parents did the same stupid shit to him that mine did to me. Neither of us knew anything about sex. It was never talked about. It occurred to me he probably was under the impression that I liked it, like the penis is a magic wand and it merely has to touch the girl for her to like it, you know?”

That made me laugh again.

“Anyway, he dropped me off at home and I never saw him after that. I kind of half-worried my parents were going to try to fix me up with him again, but they never said a word, which suited me fine.” She shrugged. “Anyway, why was I telling you this?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “But…wow. He was even lamer than my lamest boyfriend. Though not by much.”

“Oh, I know. I was going to say I blamed my parents for picking such a lame guy. Obviously they thought they were choosing someone safe for me.”

“Except that he—”

“Well, I mean, obviously they didn’t know he was going to try anything. But the point is, I thought, when I picked a guy to date, it wouldn’t be like that. I promised myself when I went to college I was going to stop letting them rule my life, and if they wanted me to be successful and normal, then I was going to do what normal girls did.”

“Why do I hear a ‘but’ coming?”

“Well, my first weekend at school I got horribly drunk, puked my guts out, and woke up in bed with a guy.”

“What!”

“We both had all our clothes on, and the other girls said I was puking too much for anything to happen. But then the guy kept calling me, so I figured, okay, if he could handle seeing me like that, maybe he really likes me. Well, it wasn’t any better. So I swore off guys for a while. I tried again around Thanksgiving, picked out a guy, flirted with him, asked him out, and oh my God, same basic thing. I mean, this time he actually got it in, you know, for real, but ugh. Such a waste of time. I literally had to pretend I didn’t know him after that because we were both so embarrassed at how bad it was.” She sighed. “I decided love must be the difference. Sex isn’t worth it otherwise. Explain this to me—every woman’s magazine has a ton of articles on sex tips and how to please a man. Where the hell are the articles like that for men?”

She had a point. I assumed those same kinds of articles were in men’s magazines, too, but I didn’t know for sure, having not read them myself. “Well, even if they do have those articles, maybe a magazine article isn’t the best way to learn anyway.”

“True.” Now we were both down about the opposite sex. Well, with one exception. Then she asked me, “So what was your prom like?”

“I didn’t go to my prom. I had no date and I didn’t want to go solo.”

“Oh.” Becky blinked and changed the subject. “When do you get to open the package?”

“I’m supposed to go out Saturday and call him and then he’ll tell me what to do with it.”

“Really? That’s so interesting. It’s like James Bond or something.”

“He’s really secretive.”

“Do you think he’s married? Are you his
mistress
?”

“I have no idea.” I’d wondered the same thing that night at the bar when we met, but the idea hadn’t stuck. He seemed very solitary to me. Stefan made it sound like he was almost isolated by his money. “All I have to go on is what we do with each other, you know? It’s like the rest of the world stops mattering when we’re together.” I sighed. It was more accurate to say the rest of the world’s judgments about sex stopped mattering. But maybe that was the same thing. “You know what I think? I think he’s lonely.”

“Hmmm.” She took a dumpling out of another container with her chopsticks and nibbled it. “Well, people in loveless marriages can be lonely.”

“I don’t think it’s that. I’m not sure what it is. He’s really secretive, but…”

“But what? Do you think he’s like a mob guy or something?”

“I doubt it. I don’t know. I thought maybe he was a plastic surgeon for the rich and famous, but that doesn’t really explain it. Maybe he just wants us to know each other on our own terms and not focus on who he is or whatever it is he does for a living.” I thought about that. The most romantic thing to me in the world was that two people could love each other purely for each other and not because of money or status. It didn’t matter where we were—the back of the car, a restaurant, an office—when we were together, it was like we were in a bubble that contained nothing but us two.

Becky broke into my reverie. “Could he be a politician?”

“Wouldn’t people recognize him?”

“True.” She sighed. “You’re really not going to open it now?”

“I’m really not going to open it now.”

“Drat. You’ll tell me what it is later?”

“Maybe.”

“Hey, I told you about my horrible prom date! It couldn’t be more personal than that, could it?”

“Probably not, but I can’t make any promises, Becks. Seriously.”

“Oh, all right. You’re an awesome roomie, though, Rina.” She bounced up then. “Hey, guess where I’m going tonight?”

“Where?”

“A club! To see a band play.”

“With some of the fan club women?”

“Yeah. One of the guys who played guitar with Lord Lightning on his second album started a band, and that’s who we’re going to see.”

“That sounds like fun. Have a good time. I’ll clean this up when I’m done eating.”

She went to get dressed and I looked at the package sitting on the futon. It was in a Tyvek envelope, impossible to open and seal again.

Despite how much I wanted to open it, I was good and waited until Saturday. Becky was out again: this time at the library trying to catch up after she’d been out a couple of times that week.

I put on a pair of jeans and a clean scoop-neck T-shirt, a cardigan sweater, and my sneakers. I put the envelope in a tote bag and went downstairs. The weather was warming up, a nice day for a walk. Once I was out on the street, I called his number.

To my surprise, I got his voice mail, but it wasn’t the usual message. The message said: “Thank you for calling. If you once pretended to be a girl named Ashley, proceed to the used-clothing shop on Eighth Street.” He rattled off some other details so that I knew which one he meant. “When you arrive, the clerk has something for you.” Then came the beep.

I was so surprised I left a message. “I’m on my way.”

It didn’t take me long to get there. The shop was down a few steps from street level, and I ducked inside. No clerk was immediately visible, and there was no one behind the register, only loud music playing.

I walked up and down the aisles for a while. There were a few other people browsing. The shop was long and narrow, with two changing stalls with shuttered doors at the back that were open at the top and bottom.

A guy came out of the back room then, carrying a pile of things on hangers. I followed him as he moved to the register and laid them on the counter.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hi.” He looked me up and down. “Are you Ashley?” He had a piercing through the middle of his lip and another one in his tongue. The two piercings clicked when he talked, which seemed like bad planning to me.

“Yes, do you have something for me?”

“Yeah, one sec.” He went around behind the register and rummaged through something I couldn’t see behind the counter. He came up with a small envelope and handed it to me.

I opened it to find a gift certificate and a note. The note read,
Use this to buy something you like, something you’d never buy for yourself usually. Try it on, take a photo, and text it to me. You may also open the other package now.
At the bottom were four numbers: 3-2-4-0.

I grinned. The gift certificate was for a lot more money than I’d spent on clothes at one time in years.

“Got a sugar daddy?” the clerk asked.

“I guess so,” I said. “Hey, what do you know about the guy who left this?”

He shrugged. “Wasn’t me here. Regular manager told me to be looking for you, though.”