“No. I mean, it fell. I knocked it over. I was snooping. I'm sorry.”
“You should choose your words more carefully; it will make it easier to breathe.”
Melissa helped Sylvia to her feet and then bought them both another drink. They spent a couple of hours drinking and sharing stories. Sylvia had liked her from the start, and when Melissa had asked her name, she surprised herself and answered truthfully.
“Sylvia. It's Sylvia.”
“Are you sure? You don't seem sure.”
“Yes. Sylvia. I just… I'm usually less forthcoming is all.”
“With your name?”
“With anything.”
Melissa stirred the bottom of her frozen daiquiri with a straw, and looked at Sylvia as if sizing her up; deciding if she was worth anymore of her time. “You saw what was in my purse and you didn't ask about it.”
“The only knowledge that I'm willing to have about people is what they decide to give me,” Sylvia said, just before burping loud enough to get the bartender's attention. She waved him off. If there was one thing she was sure of at that moment, it was that she didn't need another drink.
“I like you,” Melissa told her. “You are my kind of chick.”
“Ditto.”
“Are you working?”
At the time, Sylvia was working in a call center selling cable television. She read the same script a hundred times a day, and that was just the ones that didn't hang up on her.
“Nope,” she said.
“I may know of a job, if you're interested. It's not a typical gig, though, so you may not be up for it.”
“I could definitely use something different in my life. It's not contract killing is it?” Sylvia joked.
“Killing? No,” Melissa said as she slurped up the last of the daiquiri. “How much do you like sex?”
At that moment, Sylvia's education had begun.
Melissa taught her the art of the double life and staying off the grid. She introduced her to people that made their living forging documents. She showed her all the steps it took to rent an apartment, pay for bills, and have a safety deposit box in a bank without ever using her own name.
By now, she had accrued so many fake legal documents, passports, and driver's licenses that she had to open a second safety deposit box; in a different bank and under a different name, of course. All of her mail went to one of three different P.O. boxes. All her cell phones were pre-paid. She no longer filed taxes or voted. She had no credit cards, except those she kept under aliases for emergencies. The majority of her life was strictly a cash operation.
Sylvia had rented her apartment under the name Sasha Edmonds. She had only ever rented places that had utilities included, so that she never had to put her name on any bills, and she wouldn't stay in any one place for more than a couple of years. All of this afforded her an immense amount of freedom. The meticulous steps she took to form her life made it into one of endless wonder.
“Your world will unravel, but that only means that you will be able to wrap it around your little finger,” Melissa had said, without ever knowing how much of an affect it had on Sylvia.
The only downside to a life of limitless possibility was how easy it was to be utterly disenchanted.
Right now, she was traveling tens of thousands of feet in the air on one of the nicest private jets she had ever seen. She was wearing lingerie that was more expensive than a month's rent, despite the small amount of fabric. There were three rich and gorgeous men around her, yet they paid no attention to anything except the massive television that slid out from the wall of the jet, and Sylvia was left bored. Strawberries had infiltrated the news again.
She leaned back in her chair.
No response.
She opened her legs wide.
Still nothing.
She reached down between her legs, hooked an edge of silk with her thumb, and opened the gates.
Nada.
Strawberries could now add cock blocking to his list of atrocities.
The men were spouting lies about what they'd do to Strawberries if they got hold of him. To Sylvia, they might as well have been pounding the ground with their knuckles. She crossed her legs again and let out the tiniest of coughs. A last ditch effort to get some attention. She didn't really care, as she was paid either way, but honestly, the boredom killed.
Sylvia excused herself to the bathroom, and grabbed her emergency bag. She wasn't in danger, but needed it nonetheless. Inside, she closed and locked the door, and pulled her pill bottle from the bag. She dumped most of them into her palm to admire the Technicolor pharmacy. She liked looking at them, as a book collector enjoyed admiring his shelves. She pinched together a few with two fingers and swallowed them. Chances were that the boredom would not last much longer now.
Outside again, the men had turned the television off and were telling juvenile, and slightly racist, jokes. The paying client caught sight of her, and invited her to sit next to him with a pat of his hand. She obliged, and as the time passed, their jokes changed from horrid, unfunny things to hysterical gems. Her head was feeling lighter than air and every part of her tingled.
She laughed maniacally.
The client looked at her oddly, and she was embarrassed for a split second before laughing again. His hand was on her leg, caressing the nylon that hugged her thigh. His hand moved between her legs and her back arched at his touch. He touched her gently. Slowly. As if he were testing to see how much he could get away with.
This told Sylvia something about the man. He wasn't in it for the fuck; he wanted intimacy.
Intimacy was a lot more work for Sylvia than sex. She would have to make him believe that he was getting to her. That she liked him beyond his wallet. She looked over at the other two men, who were now sitting opposite her with their pants down. Voyeurs, she thought.
She took control.
Sylvia pushed the man's back against the seat and straddled him. Her eyes moved slower than her body, and it seemed to glide through the air creating a rainbow of flesh. He raised up then, began to nibble her neck, and grip her back. She let go, allowing her body to lean backward, arms out, with only his strength to keep her from tumbling to the floor. She could hear the men behind her in their process.
She felt free, wet, and alive.
TWENTY ONE
A barn so immense that his mind claimed illusion stood before him, blocking the night. Made from old wood, it was strong as he was strong. Small amounts of light creeped through the spaces between the boards, and he could feel energy in the light, like cracks in the exoskeleton of a beast.
Though it had been dark for some time, he could hear the movement of another inside the barn.
He had been walking for two days. He thought it was two days; it may have been longer. He had passed through forest and circled lakes. Now he was in a wheat field, the crop as high as his middle. He moved his palm across the tips, letting his mind focus on the sensation. The tickle of the grain made the pain in his arms strike out at him. He needed the energy's protection.
A single flood light was all that illuminated the space at the front of the barn, but the back was black. He began walking again, and though he had spent a lot of time in the dark, his eyes growing accustomed to the obfuscation, it was the pain that guided him now.
The burning and itching built. He stopped walking. With eyes closed, he focused on the agony. The more he focused, the easier it was to control. He could never make it go away though. Never alone.
A man needs help.
When he reached the rear of the barn, he could make out the outline of a door. There was no light escaping through this part of the barn, but he could see the glow in his arms. The color of his torment glowed faintly orange in the night, proving that the energy was near. He felt along the wood and found his way in.
Inside, the only light source was a plug-in night light on the other side. He made his way to the light, feeling along the wall with his hands. At the light, he was
able to see a glow under another door that he had not been able to see before. That was where he needed to go.
He pushed the door open and it made a hushed creek. Standing at a table, a workbench, was a man with his back to him. He had not heard the door. The light came from large fixtures on the ceiling of the barn. It was so high. All around the other end of the barn were hay bales. Thousands, stacked to the sky.
He looked into the light, the fluorescent rays soaking into his irises. Near the light was a track used for hooking and moving objects. The hook dangled low to the ground, attached to a thick cable. He followed the track with his eyes back to the wall, and found a control box there. The box had a small lever, a yellow button, and a red button.
He pulled the lever down.
The motor on the track fired up, its sounds crashing through the barn, hitting each other in a thundering symphony. The man noticed him then.
The man looked at him with bewilderment, and stepped toward him. He did the same. The man rushed to the side of his workbench, grabbing a rake that leaned there, and stood his ground.
“Don't you come any closer, Mister. I don't know what you're doing here, but I suggest you leave before there's trouble.”
“Oh, it isn't any trouble at all.”
“What?”
He smiled at the man. He wanted the man to know that he was happy for him.
“What the hell is this?” the man asked.
“There is something you can help me with. A man always admits when he needs help.”
The man ran for the door. Fast. He scrambled, nearly falling to the ground, in haste. The man was so very fast.
However, he was faster.
TWENTY TWO
Sylvia felt better than usual when she returned home. Usually when she closed her dingy violet door behind her, all she felt was relief and some degree of filthy. Not because of guilt or shame, she never lowered herself to such a state, but because of actual physical murk.
Today she felt calm as the door closed; unchained even. After placing her keys in the stained glass bowl she kept expressly for that purpose, she undressed, leaving a sensual trail of clothing to her bedroom, for no one to follow but the ghosts.
For the first time in a great long while, she was going to take a bath for the sheer joy of it, and her skin was shouting its pleasure already. She pulled an old bag of tea lights from the bottom of a drawer, and placed them all around the bathroom. She put on a classical guitar CD, and as soon as the first notes twanged, she smiled at the cheesiness of it all. It was exactly what she needed. She poured half a bottle of bubble bath into the tub, and watched the heavy liquid form veins in the water before blossoming into white fluff.
She stepped in and sank down below the water, just her nose and eyes exposed to air. She had put enough water in the tub that she could almost let her body float freely.
She thought back to the night before. About her client, Richard, and how he made her feel. Simply remembering his name was a testament to his prowess. She rarely had orgasms at work, and refused to fake them, but Richard knew what he was doing. Being watched had also given the evening an extra kick of kink.
If she didn't have a strict rule about not seeing clients socially, she may have kept the business card he had given her with his personal line written on the back. Instead, she had thrown it in the first garbage can she passed after getting off the plane. Rules are rules.
She thought of his hands. His lips. His eyes. Her left hand sank into the water and nestled between her thighs. She let the rest of her body sink all the way down, and as she held her breath, she pleasured herself to her memories.
When her bath was over, Sylvia dried her body and put her hair up in a fresh towel. She would put on underwear and watch TV. Today, she would be just like everyone else. Perhaps she'd purchase a tub of cheeseballs as well.
Her plans were thwarted the moment she found Melissa lying in her bed. She had the covers pulled all the way up to her chin and was batting her eyelashes, like a Saturday morning cartoon character.
“Hello, Lovely,” she sang, “I see that you have maintained yourself remarkably well.”
Sylvia had not made any move to get dressed. Melissa had seen her naked so many times that, if there ever was any thrill, it was gone. Then Sylvia noticed wiggling under the covers that could not have been Melissa. Before she could ask, another head poked out from under the blanket.
“Bill!”
“Hey, you remembered my name,” he said.
“What the fuck are you doing in my bed?” she questioned as she grabbed for the robe hanging from the closet door. “Melissa, God! Were you fucking in my bed?”
“Whoa, no,” Bill proclaimed, “We're fully clothed. No sex here. Melissa just thought it would be funny to surprise you. I ran into her at the bar last night and she told me that you had a great time with me, and would get a kick out of this.”
“Of course she fucking did.” Her robe on, Sylvia retreated into the bathroom and started the shower. “I need you two to leave. I'm going to take a shower. You be gone when I get out.”
“You already took a bath dear, don't be so dramatic,” Melissa said.
“Just go. Shit!”
She let the shower run for a while, sitting on the toilet seat, and tapping her foot on the floor. She hadn't a clue why the guy would have thought it a good idea to show up here, even with Melissa's encouragement, after how their last encounter ended. Maybe he really was that cocky, or maybe he was just a glutton for punishment. That must be it. He was probably the type that liked to be spanked or kicked in the crotch.
When enough time had passed, she hung her robe from a hook, opened the door, and found Bill standing naked in front of her bed. He was holding a single flower, and stood cocked to one side, swaying. It seemed like he didn't know what to do with his own nudity.
No longer concerned with her own nakedness, she walked up and slapped him.
“Who the fuck do you think you are?” she snarled.
He looked hurt.
“Mel said that I should stay. She said that you were messing with me. That you liked to play games, but really wanted me to be here. I just thought I would, I don't know, stand out a bit. Be different. I'll go. I'm really sorry.”
He grabbed his clothes and darted past her. He was out of her bedroom and halfway to the front door, and right there was her chance to let Bill exit her life for good. Every life only has a few moments as important as that one.
“Bill, stop. Don't turn around, I'm going to get dressed, and you should too. Wait in the living room, and we'll talk.”
She grabbed some raggedy pajama bottoms and a baggy t-shirt. She had had the shirt since high school when she stole it from an ex-boyfriend. It was faded, but you could still make out Iron Maiden if you squinted.
Bill had taken a seat in her favorite chair. She walked up to him and motioned to the other seat. He took the hint and moved. She wasn't ready to face him until she was snugly in her own spot, and didn't look up at him until she felt settled.
He had sad eyes; nothing like the eyes she'd seen in the restaurant when they met.
She planned to give him a gentle rundown of all the reasons that she could not see him anymore. She was flattered, but she had too much going on. The age old, tried and true, brush off. Instead, she began with, “You aren't the confident person that you were pretending to be before, are you Bill?”
“None of us are. Men, I mean. We know that women want confidence, and so some of us are good at pretending that we have it. There are actually only two kinds of men. The ones that are scared shitless of women, and the ones who are cocky–and the cocky ones are all making up for something.”
“So, you're scared shitless then?”
“Hell yes I am. I'm one of the lucky ones though, as I'm quite good at putting on the confidence show. For a night at least. After that, I turn back into a pumpkin.”
He was still holding the flower, though the stem had bent and the petals had b
egun to wilt.
“What kind of flower is that?” she asked.
“It's a calla lily. I didn't know what flower was your favorite, but I thought this one suited you.”
“I've never actually heard of it. Isn't that a character in Peter Pan?”
“That's Tiger Lily.”
“Oh. It's still pretty, though. I'm sorry it got crushed.”
Bill reached down where the empty bottle of champagne still sat.
“My housekeeper is on vacation,” Sylvia joked.
“You must be doing pretty well to have a housekeeper.”
“It's just something you fucking say, Bill. I don't have a maid.”
“Oh, well I didn't know. I figured with this bottle. Isn't this stuff really expensive? Like a thousand dollars or something?”
“Twelve thousand; and it isn't worth it.”
Bill placed the flower inside the empty bottle and set it back down where he found it.
“Aren't these two chairs the same?” he asked.
He wasn't wrong. She had bought them as a pair, and they were identical. “Yeah, Bill, but this one gives me a comfort beyond a normal chair. A comfort that that chair doesn't afford me. Don't you have something like that in your life Bill? A spot?”
“Now that you remember my name, you're saying it quite a lot,” he said, ignoring the question. “It's short for William, by the way.”
“Well, Bill, your name has become something of a sore subject in my mind recently, so I can't help it,” Sylvia chimed. Then she caught herself. She was angry for virtually no reason at all. She was simply annoyed, and it was not the fault of the man across from her. “I'm sorry for Melissa,” she said, calming herself. “She is actually the one that likes to play games. She loves to torment me, and she doesn't care if anyone else gets hurt in the process. I take that back. It's not that she doesn't care, it's like she doesn't actually notice that it's happening.”
“OK, so you didn't have quite the great time on our date that I was told you did.”
“Our date was fine.”
“Ah.”
“What?” she asked.
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