by Amber Burns
KNOCK. KNOCK. KNOCK. KNOCK.
“Okay, what the actual fuck!” I screamed, and I pushed the pillow off of my face and threw the blankets back off of me. I slapped my hand around blindly until I felt the familiar, smooth texture of my glasses. Then I slapped them onto my face and blinked several times, adjusting myself to the morning light and blinking the sleep from my gaze.
And that was when my stomach dropped in horror.
My eyes adjusted and, with the help of my very heavy prescription glasses, I was able to realize that I was not in my own bedroom. Nor, for that matter, was I in any bedroom I had ever before laid eyes upon. I seemed to be situated upon a huge bed outfitted with a cushioned and… could it be… A ruby encrusted headboard? The sheets were made of some of the softest, most luxurious silk that had ever rubbed up against my flesh. Above the bed hung some sort of insane chandelier with what looked like real diamonds glittering and swayed around an elaborate array of hundreds of tiny, round orbs of light. The walls were dressed in a deep navy wallpaper that featured tiny flecks of gold leaf paint every few inches. To the left of the bed, floor to ceiling windows stretched across the entirety of the wall, displaying a beautiful layout of roaring fountains of pink floral arrangements that filled the grounds below. Against the opposite wall, a swimming pool sized Jacuzzi sprawled across the floor, decked out with a giant flat screen television suspended from the wall.
I gaped at my surroundings for a few moments, completely taken aback and utterly confused. Where was I? How I had ended up here? If I was not in my apartment, then where in the world could I possibly be? I glanced down at my clothes, which I seemed to be half way out of, but the quick, downwards movement of my eyes plummeted me back against the pillows and overwhelmed me with dizziness. The pounding in my brain increased, and that was the precise moment that the awful hammering decided to start up yet again.
KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK.
Being more awake, I instantly realized that the hammering was not, in fact, hammering, but was actually knocking. With much effort, I forced myself to sit upright again and continued my haggard glancing about the room. I realized then, as my dizzied eyes fell upon a set of floor to ceiling double doors, and I understood then that someone stood behind those doors, pounding upon them and causing the sound that was driving my brain to its limits. The fact that it had taken me such a lengthy, confused amount of time to discern what was happening around me proved to me right then and there that something was very, very wrong indeed.
KNOCK. KNOCK.
“Excuse me; is there someone in this room?”
The sound of a shrill voice screeching from behind the door sent goose bumps snaking down my flesh.
“Oh, fuck, oh fuck, oh no, oh fuck,” I whimpered.
I leaped from the bed and my reward was an incredible throbbing that overwhelmed my head. I drove my fists into my temples, trying to ward off some of the pain that had just confronted me so rudely. It helped a bit.
“Excuse me, can anyone hear me? Is anyone occupying this room? Hello?”
I crossed the room as quickly as my frazzled body could handle and figured out the lock on the double doors. Then I yanked one of the doors open and peeked through the crack, trying to catch a glimpse of the person who had decided to make so much noise at such an early hour.
My eyes fell upon the image of an older woman, her face crinkling around her eyes, her lips sagging with age. She squinted at me and then took a step back as she saw who stood staring at her from the other side of the door. Oh no, I thought, my hands flying, instinctively, to my face.
The woman looked at me, her tiny, wrinkly eyes blinking very quickly.
“Hello, there,” she stuttered, her nearly translucent eyebrows knitting themselves together anxiously. “My, my. You certainly are not Mister Nikko.”
My heart leaped into my throat, and I nearly choked on the words that I forced out of my very dry mouth.
“What was that? What did you just say?”
The woman looked increasingly fearful, and her invisible eyebrows rocketed even higher up her forehead, tangling themselves between her many wrinkles.
“I… I… Why, my dear missy, I simply said that… that… that you are certainly not Mister Nikko,” the poor, seeming befuddled woman stuttered. She curtsied once, and then, seeing that I still stood there, completely frozen, she decided to curtsy again, her shaking hands gripping the edges of her long black and white skirt. “It is just that Mister Nikko normally occupies this room on… well, on such nights, you know, deary,” she murmured, glancing over her shoulder quickly and then back at me. “I hope you will understand and accept my apology. I had no intention to offend.”
“No, no, no,” I said quickly, shaking my head and then, realizing just how dizzy and ill shaking my head made me feel. I squeezed my eyes shut and waved my hand at the old woman. “I just was not so sure I had heard you correctly. I just… I do not seem to understand how I ended up in Mr. Cartwright’s, erm, bedroom.” I screwed my face up and rubbed vigorously at my eyes beneath my thick lenses. “I am pretty certain that I just began working for him yesterday, and then I woke up this morning not having any idea as to where in the world I was and I just…”
I stopped, hearing my words as they fell from my lips, and realizing how they probably sounded to this woman who stood behind this door to the infamous Nikko Cartwright’s bedroom. And as I stopped speaking, a very vivid, very troubling memory suddenly came back to me and smacked me across the face. I remembered my body pressed against Mr. Cartwright’s, feathers whirling through the air and landing on the floor around us, our legs tangled, his hands tracing the shape of my breasts as they heaved and swelled, reacting to his touch, to the taste of his lips upon my own. I remembered the way his tongue felt between my legs on how his fingers slid effortlessly inside me.
I glanced at the room behind me, and then down at my feet.
“Ohhhhhh shit,” I whispered.
I glanced up and remembered the old woman’s presence. She still stood behind the door, peering in at me with concern… or was it disgust?
“I’m sorry about the cursing just then,” I rushed, my cheeks reddening, “I just, you know, I’m not like that and I just…”
As my stuttering syllables slipped and tripped from my lips, I noticed the look the woman was giving me and I swallowed the rest of my words and slapped my dry and chapped lips together.
Sure enough, the older woman was eyeing me knowingly, a single, nearly translucent eyebrow arching up her forehead. I sighed, realizing that I would definitely gauge the situation the same way were I the person standing on her side of the double doors. I rubbed at my eyes again.
“Look,” I said, running a heavy hand through my mussed up hair. “Do you just… do you want to come inside?”
The old woman smiled at me sympathetically.
“Alright, missy,” she said, bobbing her wrinkled face up and down like some sort of aged novelty bobble head. “I did, after all, bring about some freshly prepared breakfast.”
I smiled weakly and pushed the door open a little bit wider. The tiny older woman scooted into the room, touting a silver domed tray balanced upon her left palm. I walked dizzily towards the bed and slowly lowered my aching body down upon the overly cushioned bed.
“What is this even made of?” I heard my voice saying, and felt my cheeks flush as I bounced lightly upon the bed.
The older woman giggled into the palm of her free hand as she set the gleaming domed tray down upon the bedside table.
“It is lavender infused silk, of course, and then memory foam. Lots and lots of memory foam.” Her hands now free, she patted the bed fondly. “It is nice,” she added, glancing my way. “Great for… romping about, and what not.”
My cheeks flushed to a deeper crimson, and I turned her way.
“No, no,” I said with urgency. “I do not engage in any sort of romping about. And I definitely did not do that last night.” As I said the words
, a flash of a memory, the ghost of a sensation, jumped across my mind’s eye: my fingers around someone’s thigh… Nikko’s thigh? My brain raced, trying to pull together more of the fragmented images.
The older woman circled around the bed and came to sit by my side. She perched tentatively on the edge of the bed and I smiled at her, as best I could, and lightly patted the bed to encourage her to relax. She giggled again, her hand leaping up to cover her tiny mouth, and scooted backward upon the bed. She rested herself comfortably on the silky, cushiony bedding.
“Oh, my,” she sighed, her hands sliding across the soft bedspread. “It really is quite lovely, I have to say. Isn’t, missy?”
I could not help but laugh a bit.
“Yes, I guess it is,” I admitted.
The older woman looked at me for a moment, her eyes confused and her brows knitting together again.
“What is it?” I forced myself to say.
The older woman shook her head and clucked her tongue against the roof of her mouth.
“Oh, well, you know, my dear…” she said, glancing up at me. “You just… you seem so nice, and so sweet, too. You are not the normal type that appears in this room. I mean, that is, you are not the normal type of girl that Mister Nikko likes to, um, well… bring here for the night.”
My mouth fell open and then immediately closed tightly again.
“No, no, no,” I repeated for, what was it, the hundredth time that morning? The thousandth? It was imperative to me that this poor, cute old lady understood that I was not some random girl who had sought Nikko’s lusty love for a single night. “I am not one of those girls, at all,” I insisted, my fists clutching handfuls of silky blanket. “Not at all, and I actually truly don’t know what the hell… sorry… what even happened last night. Which is what is scaring me. I am Nikko’s new personal assistant and, and, well, I just did not expect part of that job description to include waking up in strange, unknown rooms just twelve hours after beginning my very first shift.”
I let the balled up wads of silk sheet uncrumple and fall from my restless hands as the older woman’s sympathetic gaze fell upon my anxious fingers. She sighed and reached a comforting, wrinkled hand across the bedspread to lightly tap at my fingers.
“I did not think you were ‘one of those girls’, as you say it, my dear,” she said gently, her watery blue eyes winking at me kindly. “In fact, I know you aren’t as I helped Mr. Nikko last night. He brought you up here to help you recover, I suspect.” Her brow furrowed and she tapped at her chin suddenly, her eyes wandering off of mine and catching on something far above us both, above the ceiling even. “I think I may be able to offer you a bit of clarity,” she began, tapping slowly at her chin with a small finger, “as to what exactly happened last night, that is.” Her sky blue eyes jumping quickly back down to meet my own, as if they had succeeded in spying the unknown something that they had been seeking in the folds of the sky.
I leaned forward, my tired eyes begging the house keeper to share whatever secret knowledge she had; anything that might help me make sense of why I had woken up in this room. I need some type of confirmation to assure me that I had not made some terrible, stupid mistake last night.
“Yes, oh please,” I encouraged, my head throbbing, my tongue tripping over the dryness of my mouth. “It would seriously mean so much to me if you would!”
The woman shared a small smile and took a breath, bringing her small, knobby hands together in a graceful cross upon her knee.
“Alright then, my dear,” she said, nodding slowly. “I will share what I saw.” She gathered her hands up again in that graceful little fold upon her lap, a small homage to more modest days gone by. “Last night, as I always do at about two in the morning before I turn in for the night, I was sweeping the bits of glass that those drunken and drugged up party folk always go about scattering everywhere. I was cleaning up all that business when I heard Mister Nikko coming up the stairs. And I knew it was him, I did, because he has a very particular foot fall. That man walks with a confidence I have never before. He is a very interesting man,” she segued, “and a very upstanding one, too, I have discovered. You can tell a lot about a man from his foot fall, and Mister Nikko’s is no exception.” The elderly housekeeper cleared her throat now, her cheeks flushing pink either with exertion from the impassioned tangent or with slight attraction to Nikko. I wasn’t quite sure which.
I found myself smiling impatiently, hoping she would get to the point. She was sweet, but my mouth was so dry, and my body ached so much that all I wanted was to learn the truth of the night’s events so that I could get home and take a bath.
“Well,” she finally continued. “I heard his footfalls so I busied myself, cleaning a mess in the hallway, hoping Mr. Nikko and whatever young thing he was bringing up to the room would ignore me.”
I could feel the smile fall from my lips at the mention of Nikko with another woman. I couldn’t quite place why, but just the thought of it drew envy up through my very being. The old housekeeper seemed to notice the change in my demeanor and her eyebrows furrowed in what I took as pity.
You see,” she said, lowering her voice slightly and leaning towards me in a confidential manner. “When it is around that time in the early morning and Mister Nikko is walking on up the stairway in that ever so confident manner, he nearly always has some girl traipsing along with him. So I was there, trying to be invisible, as good housekeepers are, when Mister Nikko rounded the corner, and I could not believe what I saw. He was carrying a girl in his arms; like a man might carry a small child. Not in a sort of lusty, dangerous way, mind you,” she shook her head fervently, as if the idea of that was completely irrational. “No, no, not like that at all. I dare say he was carrying her… protectively… or, maybe even lovingly. When Mister Nikko reached the door, he caught my eye and called me over to ask me if I could help him with the door; because he was holding this girl in his arms, of course. And when I got over, he explained the situation to me, and I could not believe it, of course.” She paused for a moment and glanced upwards again as if reconsidering the words she had just spoken. “Well, I mean, I could believe it, if I must speak truly, because it is precisely the sort of thing I would expect from those rambunctious youth that frequent the party halls. What he told me was that someone had slipped something into this young girl’s drink and he wanted to ensure her safety, so he needed help getting her into bed. And so that is precisely what he did. I helped him with the door and hurried off, and a few moments later he came back down the stairs, and that was that.” She ended her story with another quick bob of her head, her nods acting as book ends, and she took a moment to catch her breath. Then she looked at me. “And that girl was you, of course,” she said.
I stared at the older woman for a few moments, not sure of what to say. Had I even had a single drink last night? I didn’t think so… and then the moment flooded back to me, all at once and all too vivid.
9
Molly – The Night Before
I had just closed the door to the lounge that Nikko and I had been in and had paused for a moment. I had let my body lean back against the cool, green painted metal of the heavy door, and I closed my eyes. I took a deep breath and tried to shake the electricity that still seemed to be surging through me. Starting this job had been one of the most terrifying things that I had ever had to work myself up to do. It even more terrifying than the first day of school at Harvard, and certainly more intimidating than the various, low brow internships I had yawned through thus far. I was to be Nikko Cartwright’s personal assistant and when I had read those words on the contract my heart had begun to beat so quickly I thought I might choke on my own heartbeats. And here I was, first night on the job and already THE Nikko Cartwright had nearly been in my pants.
Everyone in the industry knew who Nikko Cartwright was… no, who was I kidding? Everyone in North America knew who Nikko Cartwright was. He was endlessly paraded about as the poster boy for Dior’s men fragrances an
d he had already graced the cover of Vogue four times in the last two years. His chiseled face and impossibly muscled body turned heads, and his incredible accomplishments at such a young age made everyone attracted to him. Older industry professionals sometimes snubbed him, but that was only because, for them, it was impossible not to be a bit envious of him. He was not even thirty, and yet he had already accomplished so much more than many of them ever would. To be CEO of the most successful corporation on the continent, and one of the most successful corporations in the world, was no small feat. And everyone knew it. The only problem was that Nikko knew it too.
So on that morning as I stared at myself in the mirror, trying to talk down my nerves and talk up my confidence and will power. I could not help but tremble: how could I ever live up to this man’s impossible standards? What kind of insane workload was the personal assistant to THE Nikko Cartwright going to have to wade through each and every day? Was I even qualified for this? My eyes shot back open, and my spine straightened against the cool door as my thoughts began to cause my heart beat to start to pick up speed again.
