by Tara Moss
‘Oh,’ I said.
‘I hope this is it, or heads will roll. We’re doing some big promotion for it and she hasn’t even got her coveted sample yet.’
Morticia leaned in and flipped the square parcel over to read the sender’s address. ‘Bingo! BloodofYouth. Thank the stars! We’re running a big shoot with the brand ambassador as a tie-in – who is super hot by the way – and doing some giveaway and everything. When Skye didn’t get her magic tub of the wonder cream . . . well . . .’
‘I can imagine. Get the woman her beauty cream,’ I said dramatically, as if it were a dose of lifesaving penicillin. I resisted calling our boss Medusa. Besides, it wasn’t even the original Medusa’s fault that she was a monster. A curse from the wrathful and jealous Athena turned her into the petrifying Gorgon, and I hardly thought Skye’s ill temper was the result of a curse from the gods.
‘Get the woman her beauty cream!’ Morticia repeated, and we chuckled until the tension was gone.
‘Funny,’ I added. ‘But my great-aunt looks really good for her age. Like, weirdly good. Maybe she’s using this stuff,’ I joked. Well, half joked.
‘Maybe she’s a vampire!’ Morticia joked. She lifted her hands above her head like monster claws, went bug-eyed and mouthed ‘Oooooo’ to complete the effect.
I thought of my nightmare about Celia, and bit my lip.
‘Look, you’d better give this BloodofYouth sample to Skye the moment she comes back from lunch,’ Morticia advised. ‘It might put her in a better mood.’ She looked at her watch – an amusingly retro plastic Swatch with eighties fluoro detail – and stuck out her lip a little. ‘It’s after one o’clock already. You’ll want to have a skim chai latte ready for her and have all the mail waiting in a neat pile. She likes neat piles. She likes neat everything.’
I nodded. ‘Understood.’ I was lucky Morticia had experience with Skye and was willing to help me out. ‘Wait,’ I said. ‘When she left for lunch I thought she told me she wanted a skim latte when she got back, not a skim chai latte?’
Morticia raised her eyebrows as if to say Are you willing to risk it?
Frankly, I was not.
I marched back into the main office and placed the courier packages in a stack on my desk. I proceeded to prepare a skim chai latte along with the already prepared skim latte in the little communal kitchenette a few feet from my cubicle. All the while, my eyes were constantly drawn back to the cube on my desk. The strange feeling was as strong as ever: the feeling that something wasn’t right. It was so strong that I wondered how come no one else had noticed.
It’s in your head. Stop being the weird girl.
I had to remember that I had an overactive imagination and that kind of imagination had no place here at work.
‘Okay, editorial meeting in my office, five minutes!’ came a shriek, and I dropped the spoon into the chai at the sound of the voice.
My boss had returned, and boy, did the entire office know it. The lively chatter died in an instant, and the area sprang into action. Within minutes the relevant people were crowded into Skye’s office, clutching sketches and laptops and papers. I got myself together, pushed that feeling about the parcel out of my mind and approached the open office door. I knocked, and there was an alarming scream of ‘What?!’
It was her. Skye.
‘There is nothing costs less than civility,’ Cervantes once said. Skye clearly disagreed. But I couldn’t afford to. ‘Before you begin,’ I said with exaggerated politeness, ‘was it chai or coffee you wanted?’
‘Skim chai latte,’ Skye demanded, and I smiled as if everything were just peachy. ‘Here it is then.’ I handed her the cup in my left hand. ‘You also have some couriered parcels. Your sample of BloodofYouth has arrived, I believe.’ I gave her the prized parcel. I was quite efficient for a worker on her first day, I thought. ‘Have a good meeting, everyone.’
Skye stood with her chai in one hand and her eagerly awaited parcel in the other, and I thought an impressed ‘Hmmm’ escaped her thin pastel lips. She squinted at me for a fraction of a second before putting both items on the desk and getting on with the meeting. Not a thank you. Not even a polite goodbye.
I slipped away, but not before I witnessed a wiry blonde woman rip into the parcel and exclaim, ‘Oh, good.’
‘Garcia says the shoot with Athanasia last night came up really well,’ the one male staff member said. ‘Very edg y. Good cover options. He’s uploading the pics now and apparently she is coming in herself for final shot approval this afternoon.’
‘We’ve got a deadline, people . . .’ was the last thing I heard before I shut the door of the office.
I took a seat at my cubicle.
And exhaled.
At five-thirty the winter sun set outside the windows of Pandora magazine’s SoHo office. I watched the sky turn red and begin to darken. The office fluoros provided unnatural light, turning each of us wan. My first day of work in New York City had involved a lot of preparation of hot beverages (I was getting to be quite the barista) and monotonous and mind-numbing filing. Not quite what I had envisaged back in Gretchenville, but it was a job in the media and therefore exciting.
I’d spent half my day sorting little piles of stuff my predecessor had left behind. One pile was Samantha’s unfinished filing, of which there was plenty (oh joy), one pile was garbage, and the third was miscellaneous items. I’d found the expected pens and pencils, paperclips, a hair band, a stray lipstick (not my colour), a few coins and a partially torn photograph of a young woman with a female relative. This last miscellaneous item was creased and curved to the shape of a wallet. I assumed it was an image of Samantha with her mother. The two women had similar features – curly blonde hair, wide blue eyes and round faces. They wore their hair in a similar style, just above the shoulders. If this was Samantha, she looked like a nice girl, and fashionable, of course, more fashionable than me – although that was changing now I had Celia’s help. My predecessor looked to be about my age. I wondered what had happened to her.
I gathered my things, and stood. It was time for me to head home and thank Celia for her uncanny suggestion, and as my thoughts turned to Celia, I again wondered about the woman who had taken me into her home. Why had she invited me here? Why now? What was the secret of her youthful looks? What a strangely deserted place she lived in. Well, not all deserted. Would handsome Lieutenant Luke visit me for a third time? I found myself hoping he would.
‘I am super excited about Athanasia coming in!’ Morticia declared, hovering around my desk after clocking off. ‘She’ll be here any second now, I know it. I’m so excited I could spontaneously combust!’
I drew a blank. ‘Athanasia?’
‘Athanasia, the supermodel!’
Oh. So the supermodel’s parents had given her a weird name too. Thanks to the books my mother left around the house, I knew a bit about ancient mythology and names. Athanasia was from the Greek, meaning ‘Immortal’. It was better than Pandora, that was for sure. Morticia was clearly hanging around in the hopes of a glimpse of this Athanasia, her supermodel crush.
‘I’ve always wondered about the term “supermodel”,’ I ventured. ‘What special powers do supermodels have over non-super models?’
X-ray vision or the ability to shoot lasers out of their eyes, maybe?
Morticia shrugged. ‘They are more beautiful and more famous, I guess.’
I nodded. ‘I guess.’
I was mildly curious to see what impressive charms Morticia’s supermodel might possess, if she ever did show up. The atmosphere in the office had become increasingly strained as the time grew later and their magazine cover model had not shown up to execute the required approvals. She sure had the office in a state. I did not know much about models and magazines and photo shoots, but it seemed to me that this model must be special to demand photo approval for her shoot. Or was it simply that she had a good agent? Perhaps this was her special super power?
Most of the other office staff were
in for a late one, it seemed.
Oh . . .
There was a soft chime and everyone looked up at the same instant. All of the staff of Pandora magazine stopped their hurried work, their chatter, their business, and gaped at the tall visitor who had arrived. The energy in the office changed as dramatically as if a tiger had strolled in.
Good grief, she is gorgeous.
This was clearly the supermodel. I realise it is redundant and quite unnecessary to point out that a professional model is gorgeous. That’s basically their sole job description. But this one really was. She appeared ageless, statuesque and as pale as snow. Her auburn hair was glossy and thick, and trailed around her shoulders with the soft movement of slithering serpents. Her lips were plump, red and inviting, her eyes were feline and set wide, giving her a striking, almost alien look. Her body was willowy and stretched, with a waspish waist even smaller than my own. A pair of fashionably skinny dark denim jeans showed off the shape of her long legs. She wore her jeans with tight, calf-height heeled leather boots and a slightly futuristic-looking black leather vest that showcased her feminine waist and slender arms. Some unusual jewellery shone around her neck.
Lordy me.
There was nothing vanilla about this girl. She had real presence.
‘She’s no wallflower,’ my Aunt Georgia would have said, and I know it sounds crazy, but it was impossible to see those lips and not think about what kissing them might be like. Don’t get me wrong, I like men. (A lot. Not that I’d known many back in little Gretchenville, mind you.) But there was something about her – and I could tell the whole office felt the same as I did.
I blinked a few times and tried to rein in my wild thoughts.
Morticia seemed to be silently vibrating next to me. I thought she might go weak at the knees and actually swoon.
‘I am Athanasia,’ we all heard her declare across the hushed room, and in seconds Morticia was running over to her and I was headed towards Skye’s office to let her know that her cover model had finally arrived to complete the shot approval for the feature.
I knocked on Skye’s door.
‘What?’
‘Athanasia is here,’ I told her through the door.
The door opened without hesitation, the edge of it nearly beaning me in the head (which was perhaps what I needed to snap me out of my strange trance) and Skye breezed past me with an uncharacteristic smile painted on her face.
Looking at Athanasia across the room while she waited, arranged in a model pose with one hand on her hip, I imagined the shoot had indeed gone well, and this model would be on the cover of Pandora magazine and selling a whole lot of copies in a very short time. And perhaps this little bit of brand promotion with the magazine would sell a lot of beauty products, and keep Skye in BloodofYouth miracle cream in perpetuity. Was that how this stuff worked? Was that what was making Skye look so fresh this afternoon? I’d noticed her making herself up again in the bathroom after lunch and now it was evening and even under the unflattering fluoros her complexion was still flawless, despite the stress of the day. In fact, she looked noticeably better than she had when I first laid eyes on her. Was that possible?
Skye met with Athanasia at reception and walked the model to her office, glowing. Morticia trailed behind for a while, presumably just to be near Athanasia. Her normally animated face was slack with awe.
The supermodel passed me at my desk, and I felt a cold wall of disinterest. Then her nostrils flared, and she fixed me with a look, as if my scent had given her pause.
Death.
I froze. Those eyes seemed black – her gaze more deadly than the mythological basilisk, killing with a single glance. More deadly than the petrifying Medusa. Death, I thought again, and the thought came with terrible visions – blood running like ink. Screaming. Horror.
I shivered. Athanasia’s penetrating gaze finally broke off, and she slipped into the office with Skye. The door closed behind them. Our eyes had met for only a matter of seconds, but I was wounded by the exchange. Shaken. I looked down at myself and saw my hands clenched so hard my knuckles were white. My nerves were on violent edge, like I had just narrowly avoided being hit by a car, or crushed by the jaws of some giant T-Rex. I couldn’t believe that a mere sixty seconds earlier, I had felt like kissing this creature. I felt queasy and disoriented.
What was going on here?
‘Holy crap, she looked at you,’ Morticia whispered breathlessly at my side.
She sure did.
‘Why are you so obsessed with her?’ I snapped.
Poor Morticia recoiled like she’d been slapped. ‘You don’t think she is amazing?’
Amazing, yes. But . . .
‘I think she is very beautiful,’ I admitted cautiously. ‘But doesn’t she seem a bit . . . cold?’ ‘Cold’ was severely inadequate to describe what I’d felt, but I couldn’t think how else to describe it without seeming crazy.
‘I don’t care. She’s awesome,’ Morticia said defensively.
I left it at that. Why should I care if everyone was falling over some supermodel who had fixed me with a gaze fit to turn me to stone? I didn’t even know why I found her so confronting. So, maybe she wasn’t very nice. Who cared? Probably I was just jealous of her.
But . . .
There had been something else. The blood. The darkness. I realised I was talking myself out of what I had sensed, and whatever it was had been very, very powerful and menacing.
‘I think I’ll head home,’ I said. ‘Are you sticking around?’ I found myself wishing she wouldn’t. I found myself thinking that it would be better for Morticia if she left the office.
‘I’ve got some, ah, things to do,’ Morticia lied, not meeting my eyes. I could see that she wanted to be near Athanasia. I had probably insulted her by suggesting her model heroine was not worthy.
‘Okay, well, take it easy,’ I said, and gathered my briefcase. (Which still didn’t have any writing assignments in it, but it was only my first day . . .) I’d been told to come in to work by nine thirty, which seemed civilised.
‘See you tomorrow, Morticia,’ I said. ‘Thanks for everything today. You’ve been really nice to me. I hope you . . . have an early night.’
When I left my new job I was tired enough and hungry enough to decide to hail the first available cab on the streets of SoHo, rather than attempt the walk uptown in the dark. The ‘first available’, however, took a long time to find. Living in Gretchenville I’d known nothing of rush hour and after a frustrating twenty minutes walking from street to street, during which time it started to rain, I became desperate to get back to the comfort of my new abode.
‘Oh please, just one taxi,’ I muttered, ready to give up.
Just then a yellow cab let out a passenger but two feet from where I stood. I barely waited for the other passenger to pay before I folded my dripping umbrella and slid into the back seat with my briefcase. ‘Thanks,’ I said gratefully, and belted myself in. The taxicab was pretty clean and it smelled of fake pine scent permeating from a tree-shaped deodoriser hanging from the rear-view mirror. It had a thick plexiglass divider between the front and back seats, and the driver was sitting on one of those fluffy seat protectors.
I said, ‘Spektor, please.’
‘Pardon me?’ the driver responded with a slight accent. He was an older gentleman, and his bald spot was visible from the back seat, despite an ambitious comb-over. I had been led to believe there were a lot of cabbies in New York who weren’t polite, but this one seemed to be, if perhaps a little hard of hearing.
‘I need you to drive me to Spektor, please,’ I repeated, noticing the driver’s pale, washed-out eyes observing me in the rear-view mirror. They seemed to ask something. ‘It’s on the Upper West Side,’ I explained. ‘Only I think you have to head up the east side to take the tunnel through Central Park.’ That was the way the chauffeur had driven, and the way I had walked.
In the rear-view mirror I saw a crease form between his bushy grey brows. ‘I’v
e never heard of no Spektor Street, lady,’ he said. ‘And I’ve been driving this cab for twenty-two years.’
I resisted rolling my eyes. ‘Spektor is a suburb, not a street,’ I corrected him, but there was still no recognition in his face. ‘Just drive uptown, please. May I have your map?’
‘There’s no such suburb as Spektor in Manhattan, lady, I’m telling you,’ the driver said, this time a bit more aggressively. We had not moved from the kerb.
‘Nevertheless,’ I said patiently, ‘would you mind driving uptown and passing me your map, please?’
He slid open the little divide and chucked a heavy directory into the back seat with a thud. It flattened my hand.
Well that doesn’t seem real polite, I thought.
I flipped through the directory and, to my dismay, I couldn’t find Addams Avenue or Spektor. Oh, come on, I thought. I’d spent a long day in New York at a new and unexpected job, and I was starting to feel on edge about being out and about, alone after dark. I had been warned about it by Harold and Celia. What if I couldn’t find Spektor on this map, as I hadn’t been able to find it on my own map? Or what if this cabbie refused to take me there? Would I have to walk back to Pandora magazine and face Athanasia and my new boss in order to call another taxi? How embarrassing.
‘It’s got to be here . . . I know I’ll see it,’ I mumbled desperately.
And then I saw it. I breathed a tiny sigh of relief, and my shoulders relaxed. I marked the page and triumphantly passed the directory back through the opening in the divider. ‘Just here, please,’ I told the man as politely as I could, pointing at the spot on the map. ‘Take me to Addams Avenue, Spektor.’
All that anxiety for nothing . . .
Without a word he placed the directory open on the seat beside him and pulled into the flow of traffic. Beside us I saw a long black car, a bit like Celia’s chauffeur’s one, and I thought of how many rich New Yorkers there were who could afford such luxuries.
When my taxi driver stopped at the next set of lights he picked up the map with a sigh. ‘Let’s see now,’ he said, not sounding very convinced. But when he saw where I had been pointing he changed his tone. ‘Well, I’ll be. Huh.’
