by Eden Myles
I had a feeling we weren’t talking about the dragon anymore.
We watched half of the move before Devon said, “Do you want to hear a story about Ian?”
“Yes, of course.”
“He grew up in London, the East End. His parents were very poor. His mother was burned in a kitchen fire when he was young, about three or four, I believe. The whole left side of her face was scarred. Bad scars. Not like that pussy stuff you see in movies. Ugly, horrible scars. So Ian never really knew what his mother looked like whole, except from pictures. Eventually, his father left them on their own. I guess he couldn’t handle what happened, and his mother never remarried. But every day, before she went to work, Ian helped her with her makeup. He got very good at covering her scars. When she died a few years ago, Malcolm was with Ian, and I remember Malcolm telling me that Ian said she was the most beautiful woman in the world, even with the scars.”
I worked at not crying. It was very hard. I didn’t say anything for a long while.
“Do you know why he chose you, Evelyn?”
I kept my face blanked of all expression, though I could feel the terrible burn of tears in my nose. “Because he wanted a virgin. Because I’m plain and he can make me look anyway he wants.” Because I’m desperate and I’ll do whatever he asks like a good little courtesan, I added silently to myself.
“You told your friend Clarissa that you give your mother money, and Clarissa likes to talk. A lot.”
“Of course I give my mom money.”
Devon stared at me wisely.
“Did he say that?”
“He doesn’t have to say that, doll. Ian is really very easy to read, if you stop to think about it. He’s practically an open book.”
I looked down at my hands in my lap, my poor, chewed nails. “What if he doesn’t like the pictures?”
“He’ll love the pictures. You look like Ingrid Bergman. You’re hot and you look good in furs and taste better than ice cream.” He licked cherry ice cream off the spoon. “You’re the woman.”
“I don’t feel like the woman, Devon. I’m not a dragon slayer,” I told him, looking him in the eye. “I can’t help him with his wife. I can’t help him with his pain. I can’t help him with any of that.”
“How do you know you haven’t already?” he asked.
We were finishing the movie when Malcolm appeared with a sampling of the pictures. I thought they looked very pretty, very much not like me. I realized that the way Devon had dressed me up and positioned me, they could go in a gallery and no one would ever recognize the girl in the pictures as me. I hoped they would cheer Mr. Sterling up. I hoped he would realize I wasn’t angry with him. I hoped he would see them and call me to tell me everything was all right between us.
“I love her on the dark furs,” Devon commented to his gentleman. “You should have used that for the first series.”
“I do believe you are right, sir,” said Malcolm, studying the samples.
I was immediately confused. I looked at them both. “Sir?”
Devon offered me a wolfish grin as we all sat together on the sofa, eating ice cream and watching Dragonslayer again. “On Saturdays, we do role reversal and Malcolm becomes my courtier for the day.” He leaned forward, palmed Malcolm’s face, and kissed him lovingly. “You did an excellent job, my pet.”
***
The following Friday, two weeks after the debacle at the Dollhouse, I received my termination notice. Not from my day job in the secretarial pool at Sterling of New York, but as professional courtesan to Mr. Ian Sterling. I had been half expecting it, though, so it didn’t come as too big a surprise. I hadn’t seen Mr. Sterling since the night I found him drunk, and he hadn’t come round to pick me up in two weeks. Obviously, the pictures hadn’t won him over.
Mr. Sterling sent me a dozen tiger lilies, a round trip flight to see France and England, and the balance of my pay, which was roughly enough for a girl like myself to retire on. He included instructions for how I was to return the gold card he had given me, since I obviously wasn’t going to use it (his exact words), but he instructed me to keep the necklace of pink diamonds. At first, I planned to return the necklace with the card, but then I decided to keep the diamonds. My grandmother’s pearls were gone. I thought it would be all right to keep the necklace.
I slid the card into the envelope he had provided with his corporate seal on it, considered including a note, but then quickly mailed it as is, without a note. I wouldn’t make a fool of myself by pouring my heart out to him.
The day after Shawn broke up with me, I wrote him a lengthy email detailing all my feelings—the anger, the betrayal, and my willingness to forgive him and take him back if he would only call me, but I never received a reply. A few months later, I ran into his sister Carly at Starbucks. Carly had always been nice to me, and after we got to talking, she told me her brother had received an email some months earlier from an ex-girlfriend who was stalking him. Shawn wouldn’t tell her exactly who it was, but when she described the contents of the email, I knew it was my email she was referring to unknowingly. I had felt so stupid. It had taken every ounce of my strength to keep from breaking down and crying in front of her.
I learned from the experience. I learned that it doesn’t pay to tell the truth, to tell people what you really feel. It was more important that you tell them what they wanted to hear and keep the truth to yourself, which I had started doing from that day forth. So I wouldn’t tell Mr. Sterling how I really felt. I wouldn’t tell anyone ever again.
The next day at work, Clarissa leaned over my partition and waggled her fingers in my face. “You like?” she asked.
I looked down at her nails. She’d had them beautifully manicured and done in gradient shades of color with a tiny jewel set in each nail. “They’re great!” I said, thinking about how I’d bitten off my French manicure some days earlier.
“Not that, silly. This.” She waggled her left hand again and I realized she was wearing an engagement ring with one of the biggest diamonds I’d ever seen.
“Oh…wow,” I said, standing up. She came around our workstation so we could girl hug and jump up and down and squeal like a couple of exuberant schoolgirls. Mr. Wilkins came out of his office to see what all the fuss was about, rolled his eyes, and said he’d be back with a catered cake for later today. Clarissa detailed all her plans for the next year and a half, the wedding in June, the honeymoon in the Caribbean, the two kids, and the house in the Hamptons. I listened with all the rapt attention befitting the best friend of an excited bride-to-be. Then I excused myself, went to the ladies’ room, threw up, and went back to work.
***
On Saturday, I paid a visit to my favorite vintage shop to look for a new dress for Clarissa’s engagement party, which I would be attending the following weekend. I had dropped two dress sizes, so it wasn’t difficult finding something that fit. I picked out a little, black strappy dress that was two inches too short for me, but that was all right because I didn’t think I looked too bad in it, and men seemed to like looking at my legs. For lunch, I went next door to a sushi shop I hadn’t visited in maybe forever. I had just started on my Dynamite roll when a man came up to my table.
He was tall and broad, so when I looked up my heart immediately began knocking hard and fast in my chest. “Evie,” Shawn said, and sat down across the table from me with a try of Futomaki. “I almost didn’t recognize you, babe.”
I looked him over. He’d changed some, but then, hadn’t we all? He’d cut his hair, and he wasn’t wearing his favorite leather jacket. His bad boy persona seemed to be fading in favor of a more generic, office-centric look, though he still had a lot of shadow at his chin and throat like all the “bad boy executives” seemed to favor these days. I thought about how Mr. Sterling had to fight that shadow tooth and nail, and I remembered what his cheek had felt like on the inside of my thigh whenever he h
eld me down and ate me out. The thought made me more sad than happy now.
I thought about telling Shawn that I was waiting for someone, but I didn’t think he’d believe me. I wasn’t a very good liar. He asked me where I was working these days and I told him, even though I had no intentions of staying on at Sterling of New York. I didn’t want to see that office every day.
“I missed you,” Shawn told me, flashing that crooked, roguish grin that had made my heart flutter once like a helpless little bird in a cage. “I was just thinking about you last week, in fact. I asked Carly if she’d seen you around the book bazaars lately, but she said she hadn’t. You been uptown or what?”
“I’ve been working a lot,” I told Shawn, which wasn’t a lie. “How’s Brie?”
His face twisted. “Not sure. I mean, she had some issues to work through, something about an ex.”
Brie had dumped him? I worked hard at not smiling at that. “So what are you doing to stay out of trouble these days?”
Shawn waggled his plastic fork. “This and that. You know me. Hey, you want to hang out sometime? Two lonely losers recounting their woes?”
That depends. Are you going to tell Carly I’m stalking you? I thought.
Something in my face must have showed because he said, “Not a date date. I mean a friend date. We could hang out, make each other feel better.” He looked me up and down. I wasn’t wearing my “weekend clothes” like I usually did, a man’s chambray shirt and my old cardigan and jeans and running shoes, the clothes I’d worn in college. I was wearing a strappy summer dress with big sunflowers on it and summery white slingback heels. Just because I wasn’t a courtesan anymore didn’t mean I couldn’t dress like one. I could see in his mind that he was thinking friends…with benefits. “We could see a movie or hang out on my couch or whatever.”
“Or I can stay the night,” I said, surprised by the boldness and throaty depths of my voice. “And I could throw you to your bed and fuck your brains out.”
Shawn looked shocked and interested. I could tell he never expected me to say such a forward thing. I was the good girl, and good girls don’t talk like that. He tried to look at my face, but his eyes kept dropping to my cleavage like metal filaments attracted to a magnet. “Well, sure. I guess, if you want. I mean, I ain’t gonna say no to that, babe, but…you gonna turn all Pippi Longstockings on me and tell me to stop?” Again that roguish smile.
“That depends. Are you going to bang the hell out of me and then tell everyone I won’t leave you alone?”
Shawn’s face darkened and I could tell he knew exactly what I was talking about. “Look…whatever you’ve heard…”
I held my hand up for silence. I gave him steady eyes. “I’m sorry, Shawn, but I’m not sitting on your couch while you paw at my boobs like some sex-crazed sixteen-year-old who’s never been with a girl. And I’m not letting you bang me so you can tell everyone afterward what an easy lay I am. I don’t exist to stroke your ego. I’m worth a lot more than that, don’t you think?”
Anger crowded Shawn’s face. I’d thought he was handsome once, dangerous and wild looking, but there was something desperate in his eyes that reminded me of Brian. “Shit, you’re still a tight-ass, aren’t you, Evie? Even after all this time.”
“I’m not a tight-ass, Shawn. I just deserve better than you. I won’t be your booty call until something better comes along. Enjoy the Futomaki.”
I picked up my empty tray and stalked away.
***
Once out on the street, I hailed a cab, which I almost never do. I usually took the subs, but I didn’t want any delays. I gave the cabbie the address of the Sterling Building and arrived in less than ten minutes, which was good, because my courage hadn’t slipped just yet. I breezed through the ground floor and took the elevator to the penthouse suite where I knew Mr. Sterling would be working. He worked seven days a week, rain or shine.
When I got off the elevator, I saw the perfect blonde receptionist look up as I approached the big glass desk. She put her hand over her cell and said, “Do you have an appointment?”
“I don’t need an appointment.”
She frowned. “I need to see an appointment card if you want to see Mr. Sterling.”
I leaned against her desk and said, “I’m Mr. Sterling’s professional courtesan. I don’t need an appointment to see him!”
That shut her up. I marched past her and down the long, familiar hallway to his office. I didn’t knock. I grabbed the door and let myself into his vast, ice-white suite. It looked the same as when I’d been here the first time, except that the art had changed. Much of it had been replaced with my shoot from a week ago, not the private stuff, but the pictures of me in the nightgown, posing demurely amidst the furs in a way that made me look like some silver screen actress no one had ever heard of before.
Ian Sterling sat at his vast glass desk, staring down morbidly at his laptop. He was dressed in a dark, pinstriped suit better suited to mourning, his hair gelled back professionally and silver wire frame glasses on his face. He worked with his fierce blue eyes pinned to the computer screen, but with one hand he played with a long string of saltwater pearls wound through his fingers. They were slightly pinkish, real pearls, and I immediately recognized them. They were my grandmother’s pearls, and I stopped to think about that. Had he really combed the entire playroom at the Dollhouse and found every last pearl that had been lost? Had he really put them all back together? Had he really kept the necklace?
I stopped with the door open behind me, the cool air swirling around my ankles and under my dress, and waited for him to look up. His face was crowded with annoyance at being disturbed, but his expression quickly changed to surprise when he realized I wasn’t his receptionist.
“You let me go,” I said. “Why did you let me go?”
He looked confused, then angry. I realized that anger was his mask, the same as my empty smile was my mask. He wouldn’t let me inside. He wouldn’t let anyone inside. It made him vulnerable. In that way, he was just like me. He liked his pain. He held it close, coveting it, and he was unwilling to share it with anyone else. It was his power, his talisman, his armor, maybe his sole purpose for living.
“You didn’t call,” I said in a softer voice. “I did that photo shoot for you,” I indicated the pictures, “and you didn’t even call me to tell me you liked it or hated it or thought I was ugly, or just to go to hell.”
His face was a rock, but he said, low, “I don’t hate it, Evelyn. You’re a beautiful woman...”
“But not as beautiful as the others, obviously.”
His face darkened with insult. I could feel his anger radiating from across the room like a shockwave. “What others?”
His anger was like some contagious disease. Before I even knew what I was doing, I was shouting, “The other women! The ones Brian told me about!”
Mr. Sterling smiled, nastily. “And you believe Brian?” he said softly, the contempt dripping from his lips. “You give yourself to me. You let me in your body. You tell me you trust me…how many times, my dove? Yet you’re willing to take Brian’s word over mine when I have told you that I’ve waited three years for you?” He glared at me with glassy-eyed rage, expecting me to back down, to run away like last time. I didn’t. “What is wrong with you?” he shouted, finally. “I thought you were a smart girl, Evelyn. I thought you knew what it meant to me to be my courtesan. Obviously, I was wrong about you.”
“Obviously.” But I had started to cry.
He immediately stood up, the pearls clutched tight in his hand, as if he meant to go to me. But he forced himself to stop, to keep his distance. I could see how difficult it was for him to do that. He tried to sound harsh, but his voice came out nearly broken. “It’s obvious to me that the word of a stranger who tried to sexually assault you is more important to you than the words of your gentleman. Your lover.”
Lover.
I was crying now. The pearls…the pictures on the walls…I was starting to feel like a fool. I was a fool for believing Brian, I realized. And for not trusting my gentleman. My lover. I wiped the tears away on the backs of my hands. I knew I was making a mess of my makeup. I swallowed against the bitterness in my throat. “Why did you fire me?”
He slid back down into his seat and just sat there, staring at me with narrow, pain-filled eyes, the pearls in his hand. In his dark suit, with the pearls wound through his fingers, he looked like some wounded priest that had never quite found his salvation. “How could I have kept you after what happened at the Dollhouse? I’ve mistreated you. I’ve harmed you in negligence.” He stopped as if his words embarrassed him. “Brian hurt you…he made you scream…”
“He hurt me and you stopped him!”
“Not soon enough,” he stated imperially, as if he were passing final judgment over himself. He looked at the pearls in his hands. “I should never have left you alone…”
“And I shouldn’t have believed Brian!” I cried, and that silenced him. “So we were both wrong.” I took a deep breath to steady my rampaging heartbeat. I held his eyes so he would know I spoke truth. “I love you, Ian, but you have to stop this. You have to stop building these walls and hiding behind them. You have to stop doing this to yourself, and to me. You have to let this go now.”
His face looked like ice. His fingers tightened around the pearls until they squeaked in his grip. He looked like he wanted to speak. But I stepped forward and spoke first. “Your family died. I’m sorry they died, Ian. I am so sorry all this has happened to you, but there is nothing you can do about it. There is nothing you can do except to stop trying to die with them every day. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
