Make Me: Twelve Tales of Dark Desire

by Aleatha Romig

  “Yes,” I said, recalling the rooftop glance between Odin and Thor.

  “It was cool, it worked out. But then we relied on her to do another thing and she got some heat on her—just cops, but still, it tied her to a robbery, and suddenly she couldn’t go home again. And she had people. She said she was fine, but she hadn’t chosen it. She was stuck with us. Sure, it was good for a while.”

  He paused, watched a man unload boxes from the back of a truck and stack them outside the Vietnamese grocery across the street.

  “She even drove for us sometimes. Then she fucked up, made a careless mistake that brought down a lot of heat on us. There’s a line you cross in this game where you want to be caught a little bit, just for the intensity to ease. Consciously you don’t, but subconsciously, you get tired. And I think she crossed it. We quit bringing her along anywhere having to do with the jobs, just brought her along to hotels, or kept her in the hideouts. That was the beginning of the end. She wasn’t entirely stable, really. Zeus thinks we broke her mind, but I don’t agree. It was there at first, her self-destructiveness. We sure didn’t help, though.”

  “Right,” I said.

  “I’m not talking against her. She was beautiful.” He looked at me hard, wanting me to get that. “She was a beautiful person. She held us together—I don’t mean we would’ve broken apart without her but she…connected us. Changed us inside. Reconfigured us—even Zeus. Venus was a little wrong, but we loved her.”

  “Sounds like,” I said, awed by how important it was to Thor that I understand that she had been beautiful and loved by them.

  “So one day, after all the trouble, we find this lipstick message on the dash of the Camaro we’d been driving around—You’re better off without me. We looked for her. Especially Zeus. Some workers in a quarry pit found her body. She’d gone and jumped off a cliff, basically. Zeus felt responsible. He’d been hard on her, and things were getting fucked up at the end. Twisted. Zeus can get very intense.” He paused.

  I thought about the blunt violence in Zeus’s kick. The surprise of it, like he knew every way to go at a man, including the unexpected ones.

  “He’s had less go right, let’s just say. He asked her to do things he shouldn’t have asked.”

  I waited, surprised Thor had divulged so much. A man in a white apron came out of the grocery across the street and talked to the one stacking boxes.

  “You’re good at this,” Thor continued. “You stay silent. You want me to tell more. But I don’t feel connected to you when you do that. I feel like you oppose me when you do that. Like you’re not part.”

  My stomach felt funny. Like you’re not part. He was right. I was pumping him for information with my silence. So many times over the past day I’d felt these flashes of togetherness among him and Odin and me—not about the sex, but more. Thor’s words now suggested to me that he was used to that deep level of connection all the time. I felt envious.

  “I didn’t mean to,” I said. “It’s something I never had, that’s all. But I want it.” I sort of didn’t know what I was talking about. All I knew was that I wanted in.

  “It’s not enough, that you want to stay part. Or that Odin and I might want you to. Here’s the thing—it’s been a year almost, and…you just throwing in with us, it’s hard on Zeus. He feels responsible for what happened with Venus, grieved her the most. It wasn’t his fault—none of us understood her state of mind, but he takes it on himself. He gets fierce about people, and the way we live right now, a year is like a decade. Everything’s bigger. The danger, the reward, the fear, the pleasure. And we pulled Venus in so fast and furious, and we got very symbiotic with her. When she died, it damaged us in a lot of ways, beyond the obvious ones of losing somebody cherished. Zeus especially.”

  I thought about the flowers, of course. But I thought about what Thor wasn’t saying. Last night I’d heard the pain in his voice loud and clear. Don’t. No. Don’t leave, Venus.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “That’s why we can’t keep you.”

  “I’m not a stray puppy. I’m not Venus.”

  A pause. “Then don’t get your hair brown.” His words were part command, part collaboration.

  A sprig of hope. “I won’t,” I said.

  I went in and told the stylist to cut my hair short, like a boy’s, and to color it platinum blonde. Thor went off to do some mysterious errands.

  “You’re sure you don’t want dark? It’s your hair,” she said.

  “Absolutely.”

  She clearly didn’t approve. She thought I was being ruled by my man. Oppressed by my man. She couldn’t know that for the first time in my life I was quite dizzyingly free, and that I longed only to stay like this.

  I mused on what Thor had said. The loss they couldn’t quite heal from. Had they found other women to fill in temporarily? Had they filled the void themselves? They seemed so hooked into each other, so in tune, even with each other’s bodies.

  Thor picked me up a couple of hours later. Literally. He walked into the salon where I’d just paid—with the money they’d stolen from FCN bank—and slid a hand under the small of my back and my butt and picked me up. And kissed me. “You are so beautiful.”

  “Thanks, boss,” I said.

  And then it was time for the message.

  We cabbed to the nice side of town, to an upscale bath and linens shop, one of a small, exclusive chain that had ordered our quilts before.

  He grabbed my hand as we walked in. With my new dress and haircut and his whole Hollywood look, I suppose we seemed quite the power couple. We pretended to browse the quilt selection. A shop girl came to help us. Nothing we saw would do.

  “I’m looking for a non-toxic organic sheep’s wool comforter,” I said. “In king. Do you have anything like that? Or can you get anything like that?”

  She asked her manager and ten minutes later we were at the checkout desk with the manager eyeing her computer, clicking around.

  “I don’t care what it costs,” I said. “I want the best, top of the line.”

  “Mmm. One of our vendors has a pretty pricey one. With handling, you’re looking at twenty-two thousand dollars.” She peered up, expression neutral.

  A markup of two thousand. I smiled. “Is it organic domestic sheep’s wool?”

  “Yes, and very high quality. This is a high quality vendor. Our Atlanta store has worked with them. The Paris Hilton comforter. Comes in cream or eggshell only.”

  They were actually the same color. When I’d made the site, I’d wanted to give people the illusion of choice. “I’ll take eggshell.”

  She furrowed her brow. “Now, here’s the thing—it’s non-returnable. I’d have to have you pay up front. We’d call when it’s ready. Six to eight weeks.” She looked up. Such an exorbitant price. I wondered if she was secretly freaking out.

  “Do you take American Express?” Thor and I had made sure they didn’t. We had the cash to pay for it, but it would look weird to whip it out right off.

  She shook her head.

  Thor rolled his eyes. “Fine. We’re going to the bank today. We’ll come back and just pay in cash. Is that okay? You take cash, right?” Thor was quite good at playing the privileged snot. It made me wonder about his past.

  “Of course,” she said.

  We walked out and went down the street to a very posh café with a secluded porch in the back. I got spaghetti with obscene amounts of cheese grated onto it. Thor got fish. The doctor, eating healthy. I teased him about it and he responded in his sexy-warning way, legs tangling with mine. As though I were crossing a line, teasing him.

  So strange to be in this new city at an outdoor cafe with this man I barely knew. Well, I didn’t know the big things. But I knew the hidden things, the secret things, and I loved that, knowing these secret things, feeling like outlaws living it up with money stolen from my hated boss. This fact alone made the food taste delicious. Even the air was delicious.

  Thor called Odin and Ze
us on his new throwaway phone—the two other members of our god pack were out buying a used vehicle and working out something with the diamonds. They were to pick us up after the comforter buy.

  Thor had a clipped conversation where he looked at me a lot. When he hung up he informed me that Zeus had planned out our next job already, for a First City National in a suburb of Omaha. They’d go for it after just two days of surveillance.

  “It was supposed to take a week,” I said.

  “It was,” Thor said. “The timetable’s sped up.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “What do you think it means?”

  “That Zeus wants me gone.”

  Thor swirled his lemonade around in the wine glass it had come in. I could tell he didn’t like that the timetable was sped up. “I think Odin will be proud of what we’ve accomplished today. I particularly think he’ll enjoy your hair,” he said, attempting a subject change.

  I broke a breadstick, ate half. He didn’t want to say more. I could respect that.

  “And I mean that in the most unwholesome way you could possibly ever take it.”

  I stopped eating. “What?”

  “The most unwholesome way.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “Are you telling me Odin will mess up my salon blowout?”

  He reached across our little table and touched my hair, like he had a right to. And he did, according to the notorious rules. “Thoroughly.”

  He was using that rough-silky-rumbly voice of his that I loved.

  I slid the other half of my breadstick into my mouth, eying him.

  His expression turned playful. “I’m only telling you because there are things—” Here he lowered his voice—“things you need to be ready for. Things you need to think about during our five-hour journey coming up. So that you can be prepared to obey us once we reach our destination.”

  My stomach tightened and I breathed out a surprised laugh. “Is that so?”

  “That is exactly so.” He went on to tell me some of those things in that rough caress of a voice of his.

  My hair, he claimed, inspired him to enjoy me in new ways. He went on to describe some of those ways in simple detail, lowering his voice to a grumbly whisper when anybody came near. I gave him warning glances and even smiled as though amused, but he kept on quite seriously.

  I found myself shifting in my seat as he described how they might position my legs. How they might restrain my arms. What my breasts would look like when my arms were totally bound together at my back.

  I felt as though his words were winding invisible tendrils around my thighs and my arms, pinning me to my seat, touching me under my clothes.

  Desire pooled in my gut.

  The man was a little bit wild, but he understood his own power. And so did I. And I reveled in it.

  He said, “I won’t, however, tell you some other things we might do, because with certain activities you just have to be there, don’t you think? Some activities that seem unpleasant in the telling can be quite enjoyable in the doing. Wasn’t that your experience?”

  “I suppose.”

  “You suppose,” Thor grated out.

  Three men entered the sunny porch dining area and sat down two tables away. He positioned his mirrored glasses back over his eyes, concealing his gaze, all the better to monitor them.

  “I know how you enjoy being told things ahead of time,” he added, “but some things are best without warning.”

  Gulp.

  He went back onto the subject of my hair. Which would be so mussed.

  Well, I didn’t love the idea of getting it mussed; the stylist had gotten it to look so wonderfully Meg Ryan. But honestly, I couldn’t wait.

  Back at the haute bath and bedroom store we paid the woman in hundreds. I acted excited about my new comforter. “Is there a way to send a message along with my order?” I asked. I assume it’s custom made.” I’d discussed this move with the guys. I’d assured them that my sister Vanessa handled the orders, and that she was a bright, devious twenty-three year old woman who would understand the message and not take it to the cops. And even if she did, we’d be long gone from the store.

  “They don’t take special requests,” she said.

  “I just want to say something fun to them. To the artisans who make it.” I happened to know there was a space where you could write a message, considering I’d built the site myself. “Can’t you pass along a message? I buy many fine things from artisans, and I feel that if they know you are human and appreciative of their craft, they do an extra good job. Surely for twenty-two thousand—”

  She held up a hand. “Of course. I don’t see why I can’t include a message with the order. What do you want to say?” She snapped the cash drawer shut.

  “The customer ordering this wants you to know she’s excited for her organic comforter, and—”

  “Hold on, hold on,” the woman said. She turned the monitor and started typing.

  I repeated, “The customer ordering this wants you to know she’s excited for her organic comforter, and maybe someday Paris Hilton will buy one for each room in her house, plus one for her dog, but in the meantime, it’s going to a good home. A very happy home.”

  The woman gave me a too-long stare when I was done. “Well, that’s a sweet message.” She took down my number and gave me her card.

  I went out of there feeling lighter. Happier. My sister would know it was me.

  We waited at the appointed corner.

  Zeus and Odin pulled up in a mini van, rocking out—in terms of music and clothes, all black boots and plaid shirts, looking altogether less respectable than Thor and me. We got into the back seat.

  Odin turned, watched me levelly. He liked the sundress and my hair, I could tell. The sundress was blood red, and laced up the front in a crisscross way, like tall boots. With that and my new bright crown of platinum, I felt as though I’d fully transformed into Isis. Zeus, of course, had merely flicked his eyes at me as I’d gotten in, then fixed his frowning attention back on the road as he pulled out, all stern and bullish.

  “Gods driving a mini van,” I said. “What has the world come to?”

  “Are you mocking the gods of bank robbery?” Odin asked me. “Could it be that I am hearing you mocking us?”

  I tipped my head, the slightest indication of a shrug. Yes, I was mocking them.

  Odin shook his head sadly. “Oh, dear.”

  Desire heated in my belly at those two little words.

  “How’d it go?” Zeus asked.

  “As planned.” Thor ran through the details of our day, the things he’d seen around the beauty salon and the restaurant. It shocked me, just how closely he’d been monitoring our surroundings the entire time. Odin informed Thor the diamonds were a no-go, whatever that meant.

  “And they still don’t know anything about the bank,” Zeus said. “The cops held a press conference. Your sisters were there.”

  “How did they seem?”

  “How do you think they seemed? Pretty fucking upset,” Zeus said. I caught his accusing gaze in the mirror. “You’re their sister. You were taken as a hostage. You left.”

  “I had to.”

  “In the moment we took you, sure you had to. But don’t act like you can’t be back there now. This extra job with us is your game plan. You could say the word and call it off and be back there tonight.”

  “They’ll have the message and the money now,” I said. “They’ll know I’m okay.”

  “A message and money,” Zeus said—practically spat—“can never make up for a person.”

  His words were like a punch in the gut. “I had to leave,” I said.

  “There are other ways to leave.”

  “But this is how events happened,” I snapped. I didn’t know how to make him understand that if I hadn’t left as I had, been broken out of their atmosphere as a hostage, I’d still be there. That they’d helped me.

  “How events happened.” Even through the rearview mirror
, Zeus’s eyes pierced into me. “Like you have no responsibility for it.” Zeus looked away with disdain. “How convenient.” His disdain felt sharp as a knife; Zeus seemed uniquely able to affect me like that.

  “Maybe it is convenient,” I snapped. “Maybe I’m a horrible person.”

  “Well now,” Odin said. “I do believe Isis has taken responsibility for not taking responsibility, so maybe we can tone it down.”

  “It’s in your power to put it all back together again, that’s my point,” Zeus said. “You should watch the press conference. When we get to Omaha, you can watch it for yourself.”

  “That’ll be constructive,” Thor said.

  “She needs to see,” Zeus said.

  “I want to see.” I crossed my arms over my chest. It would rip me apart a little bit, but it was only right.

  “She rode an opportunity.” Thor crossed his long, lanky legs. “She’s exploiting an opportunity. You want to act like we don’t do that every fucking day of the week?”

  Zeus’s eyes burned into mine through the rearview mirror, but hell if I’d look away. And soon enough, with an extra beam of disgust, he did, because of course, he was driving.

  Even with him looking away, though, something was growing between us, and that something was dark and angular now. And strangely alive.

  “Well, you’ll be back soon,” Zeus grumbled. “I was thinking we might be able to get away with just a day of surveillance. Just rip in and ride that bank.”

  “One day?” Odin barked. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  “We rip in, just clean out the front,” Zeus said. “It’ll still be a robbery. We have the diamonds, there’s no reason to go deep on this one.”

  “If we’re gonna do it, let’s do it right.” Thor said.

  “That is doing it right,” Zeus growled. “Best to shake up our pattern. This one’s in an urban area, too. Getting out’ll be a cakewalk.”