by JA Huss
How does this Jordan guy know his bench will be empty? There’s so many people here. And so far, every bench I’ve seen was filled with families doing family things or old people doing old-people things.
And then… I hold my breath.
There he is. Sitting on the bench next to the flowering orange bush, one foot propped up on one knee, wearing a dark suit. Winter coat splayed out behind his shoulders like he shrugged it off as he sat down. His coffee must be empty—am I late? Did I take too long?—because it’s sitting on the ground next to him.
There’s a few children playing nearby, but he ignores them as he stares at the flora around him. Like he has a deep appreciation for plants.
I chuckle at that, which makes him look up and meet my gaze.
Shit.
I avert my eyes, but not before I get a good look at his. Blue. Piercing blue. The kind of blue that stabs you in the gut with their beauty.
I wait a few moments before looking down again, and when I do, he’s walking down a path, deeper into the gardens.
I rush along the railing, trying to follow him. One look? No. One look is not enough to make up for all the panic that came with this trip.
I come to a set of stairs just as he disappears from view. I want to jump down those stairs, but there’s people in the way, and I’m too afraid to push past, so by the time I get to the bottom and find the path he went down, he’s gone.
No!
This is not how my first watching experience is gonna end. It doesn’t even count!
I look around, wondering if X is watching me, wondering if I should go home now.
That thought is so depressing, I can’t even consider it. So I just… stay. I walk slowly along the many pathways, my eyes desperate to find this Jordan man again. Oblivious to the bustling people around me. Tuning out the too-loud children with pent-up winter energy. Forgetting myself and concentrating only on the man who got away.
He was striking.
So handsome… my heart actually aches at the missed opportunity.
Chapter Twenty-Two - Ixion
Evangeline returns home a little after two. Which surprises me. I didn’t figure she’d stay so long. In fact, I counted on her bolting out of there at her first opportunity.
This twist intrigues me.
Is she so enamored with Jordan Wells that she can put aside her ridiculous phobia and face her fears?
Why?
Was it the suit? Does she like powerful men in suits? Men with money? Driven men who grab the world by the balls and never let go? Liars? Cheaters? Sick fucks who watch people?
I ponder that and wonder how people see me when I’m just being me.
Do they see the biker with leathers on the road going nowhere? Do they see the guy in the dead-end bar in the middle of BFE buying whole bottles instead of shots? Do they see the exiled fuckup who disappointed everyone and never got his second chance because…
What do they see?
I don’t think I want to know the answer to that question.
I watch Evangeline on the screen as she fumbles with her outer clothes, tearing them off and throwing them onto random pieces of furniture as she makes her way to the kitchen where the notebook’s waiting for her.
“No,” she says, looking directly into the camera, her eyes wide, her voice shrill, and her… anger spilling out like water rushing from a dam that’s overfull and ready to burst. “That wasn’t even watching!” she screams, so loud I draw back from the monitor, surprised. “He left after five seconds! No!”
She picks up an empty vase on the kitchen counter and throws it at the wall, shattering the glass into a million shards.
I get up, ready to go out there and ask her just what the fuck she’s doing. But I take a deep breath instead, push the button on the intercom, and say, “Clean it up.”
“Fuck you!” she yells, opening a cupboard, grabbing a coffee mug, and throwing it at the same wall that is now marred with the impact of two things.
“Stop it!” I growl into the intercom. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
She’s wild. Her eyes dart to a platter propped up against the backsplash, and two quick steps later she’s got it above her head with every intention of throwing it down onto the floor.
“Evangeline!” I yell. “If you do not stop this tantrum, I’ll—”
“You’ll what?” she seethes, looking up at a camera mounted in the corner of the kitchen. She whirls around, finds the camera mounted on the breakfast nook fireplace mantle, walks towards it, and knocks it off with a wild swing of the platter.
One of my monitors turns to fuzzy, white snow.
I see red. I rage with anger at her gall. “What the fuck?”
“Come out here,” she demands. “Come out here and stop me!”
“What the hell is your problem?”
“You’ve got five seconds.”
“Evangeline—”
“One.”
“Put that—“
“Two.”
“Plate—“
“Three.”
“Down!”
“Four.” She walks quickly to the next camera and swings, not even bothering to finish the count.
Another screen turns to static and snow. Then another. And another. She takes out every camera in the kitchen and moves to the living room.
Her rage builds, her eyes wild, her hair a mess, falling across her face as she swings, and swings, and swings.
I just sit in my chair and watch her destroy at least ten thousand dollars’ worth of equipment.
Jordan is gonna be pissed.
She takes out every camera she can find. Which leaves me with two on the main floor, the one in the grand foyer chandelier—she can’t find a ladder—and the one in the ballroom chandelier. Thank fuck. Because those chandeliers are probably worth twenty grand each.
When she realizes she’s done all the damage she can, she stops and looks up the stairs. “Don’t do it, bitch,” I mutter to myself. “Don’t you fucking dare.”
She looks up at the foyer camera and smiles.
I lean forward in my chair, press the intercom button, and yell, “Stop!”
“Fuck you! You promised me! You promised! And he left after five seconds!”
She’s nuts. Certifiably nuts.
“You’re acting like a goddamned child!” I yell.
“I am a goddamned child!” She screams it. Top of her fucking lungs, screams it.
But her words stop both of us.
What?
She stands there, looking up at me looking down at her through the black mirror of the lens. Her chest heaving with her rapid, ragged breathing. Platter still clutched in her hands. Mouth frowning so severely, it turns her normally pretty face into something very ugly.
She starts to cry. Slumps down onto the floor, dropping the platter, which cracks into three or four large, anticlimactic chunks, and presses her face to the hard wood floor and sobs.
What the fuck just happened?
I sit back in my chair and wait. My view sucks. I have no angles to choose from. I can’t see shit aside from this unsatisfying top view of her body, jerking with the end of her manic episode.
I let out a long breath, feeling exhausted along with her.
Now what? Should I call Jordan and tell him shit’s going off the rails? Will they come take her away?
I chew on my lip as I think it through. Trying out all my options.
If I call Jordan… somehow, some way, what we did today is gonna come out and he’s gonna be pissed. Not to mention what happened last night.
If I do nothing, she’ll probably sleep on the foyer floor.
It occurs to me then—this is probably the inevitable conclusion to her completely overwhelming day.
Which means it’s all my fault.
I press the intercom button and say, in the softest, most reasonable voice I can muster up through the crackle and the static, “Go upstairs and take a long bath, Evangeline.”
She mumbles something that might be, “Fuck you,” but I’m not really sure.
“I need to clean up.”
“I want to go home,” she says. And this time I hear very clearly.
“You can’t,” I say.
This makes her look up at the chandelier. “I can do anything I want! I’m the fucking whole reason you’re here!”
“No,” I say back. “I’m here because I want to be here. I could just as easily want to be somewhere else.”
“You’re no one!” she yells, tears running down her cheeks. “You’re nothing. I’m the one who counts!”
“Are you even listening to yourself?” I ask her. “You really are a goddamned child. Sure as hell acting like one.”
“Fuck you!”
“No, fuck you!” I yell back. “You spoiled little bitch. You just destroyed about fifteen grand in cameras! Do you have the money to pay for that? Because they’re definitely gonna bill you for that stupid tantrum you just threw.”
“I don’t care. Let them take everything. I don’t even care anymore.” She gets up on her hands and knees, sways for a few seconds, like she might pass out, and then gets a foot underneath her and stands.
She raises her head to look at the camera. Her tears have left clean streaks through the filth covering her cheeks.
Silence.
“Go upstairs. Take a bath. And go to bed.”
“And then what?” she asks. “Will you call them? Tell them what I did? Leave…” She whimpers out the word and tries again. “Will you leave me here alone?”
God. She is one fucked-up person inside that head.
“Do what I say, Evangeline. You’re out of control, out of line, and out of excuses. You’re a grown woman and you just threw a tantrum because some guy you don’t even know didn’t let you stalk him today.”
Her breath hitches. Not remnants of her crying, but brand-new sobs. “It’s just… that was the first time I’ve been out during the day in a long time.” She sniffs loudly. “The first time I’ve been around people and didn’t want to die. The first time I wanted to be out with people, X. I didn’t want it to end so soon.”
I exhale, not sure how to handle that part. I’m not a fucking therapist. I’m not even supposed to be talking to her, let alone setting her up on little excursions to fulfill some latent voyeuristic fetish she never knew she had.
“Well, you handled it badly,” I say. “I don’t even know what to think right now. Do I call this off? Have them come take you out?”
“No,” she says. “No. Please. Don’t do that. I’ll fix the cameras.”
I laugh. “Just go to bed.”
“I don’t want to be alone. You’re all I have now.”
Jesus Christ. What the fuck have I done?
“Please,” she begs again. “Please don’t call anyone. Please don’t tell them.”
Sighing, and not really sure where to go next, I press the intercom one more time. “Then do what I say.”
Her body hitches from the sobs again. But she nods and begins walking up the stairs in silence.
I lean forward, panning the camera, then switching to the undamaged ones upstairs, keeping track of her as she reaches the top, turns left, and heads down the hallway. I wait for her in the bedroom, all five monitors in front of me showing the bedroom door open. Her crying is just soft whimpers now. She doesn’t take a bath, she falls forward on the bed, hugs the pillow to her face, and cries harder.
I sink back in my chair and watch. Wait for her to exhaust herself and sleep. But thirty minutes later she’s still crying and I’m torn between speaking to her again—to try to smooth things over—and letting her get it out.
Obviously that tantrum had some meaning behind it.
I am a goddamned child! she’d screamed. Some pent-up thing from when she was little, I guess. Pressure to perform, maybe? Lack of friends? I mean, her life has been pretty out of the ordinary. Special, for sure.
And terrifying too.
“What happened to you?” I ask the screen.
She turns onto her side and I zoom in, training the camera on her face. Her eyes are bloodshot and squinting, like it physically hurts her to keep them open. But still, she stares up at the chandelier camera, defying my last command to the very end.
Almost an hour later, with nothing more from her but soft sobs, she loses her battle. Turning onto her back, arms falling open like dead weight, lips slightly parted with her heavy breathing. She sleeps.
I leave the control room and go upstairs to see the damage first-hand. It’s a mess. Motherfucking mess.
Quietly, I clean up the glass first, then start picking up camera pieces. Some of them actually can be repaired by splicing the wires she tore out back together. Others—the ones with cracked lenses—are trash. And that’s exactly where they go.
I end up with three additional fully functioning cameras, one that only has video, but no sound, and one that only has sound, but no video.
I’ll take it. Not like I have a choice. I can’t exactly go buy new ones and install them without her seeing me.
But I have no eyes in the kitchen at all. Which will not do. So I take one from the hallway and remount it in the corner so I’ll have a view of the island counter where tomorrow, the notebook will be waiting for her.
In fact, that jolts my memory and I grab the notebook from my control room and read her poem again.
Have you ever felt like a number?
Just a number on a line, at a time
when no one else is there to see you stumble?
Anonymous child with preposterous guile
and an innocence that wants to take you under?
Well, I have.
That was me.
Dressed up pretty.
Rolling waves of ribbon lace
and lights above me on the stage.
And then the nothing.
The great big nothing
as you walk away and try your best
to burn the joy you’ll never know
like a brand on your mind
echoing like a cheer to the fear
of being everything you will ever be
at the age of eight.
I am just a number.
That’s why I’m here.
A number. Boo-hoo, right? I mean, it’s a little fucking entitled in my opinion. I was born a child genius and my life was a fairytale. But I am a tortured princess. And I peaked at the age of eight. Watch me cry.
Bullshit.
It’s like she never grew up. Like she’s still that small, privileged girl being carted around to play for kings and queens. Not some washed-up has-been who’s too afraid to step outside without covering herself up from head to toe.
Hold on there, Ixion, the reasonable inner me says.
She did go to a very public place today. There were tons of people there, even though it’s the fucking dead of winter. Or maybe that’s why. Parents desperate to take their kids somewhere so they can have some semblance of a life outside their mundane suburban dream house.
And what better place to go in the winter than a greenhouse?
Yeah. That’s my fault, I guess. Didn’t think that through.
So one point for Evangeline for braving an invasion of nuclear families at a public park. And one point for allowing her intrigue to overpower her fear. But minus ten points for the tantrum.
She’s eight behind, as far as I’m concerned.
When the place is as picked up as it can be—I mean, I’m not gonna fix the dings in the wall and shit. The rich assholes who normally live here can do that themselves. Or Jordan—I start for the basement stairs but end up at the bottom of the grand foyer stairs instead.
I should check on her.
You can check on her downstairs, rational me says.
Fuck rational me. I want to see her.
I climb the stairs, then climb again, until I’m standing in front of the double doors that lead to her bedroom. I lean in, listening, t
hen cautiously open them, eyes fixed on her still body in the bed.
She must’ve gotten chilled, because she’s under the covers now, that one defiant cold-seeking foot peeking out.
I smile. Partly because I do that too when I’m sleeping and get too hot. Partly because it makes her somehow… familiar. Like I know her now. I have this habit down. We’re sharing a past experience. Sort of.
That’s when I notice she’s wearing the fucking necktie blindfold.
What the hell?
Did she do that—why did she do that?
Did she want me to come up here? Was she hoping I’d be watching, see her put it on, and understand that was her way of calling me to her bed?
I want to touch her.
Without second-guessing my urge, I walk over to the bed and sit down. She shifts position, but doesn’t wake.
A few strands of hair are plastered to her cheek from sweat, or tears, or both. I reach over and pull them away so I can see her better.
“Stay,” she whispers. “Please. I just… I just want someone to stay with me. I’m so tired of being alone. That’s all I wanted from today. A chance to be with someone.”
I sigh. Loudly.
“I’m sorry. This… I never wanted anyone to see me like that again. It was childish and stupid. And if you walk out…” She sighs. “I’ll understand if you walk out.”
I want to talk to her so bad, but that will fuck up the illusion. It’s one thing to chat with her through a crackling intercom, and quite another to do it in person.
So I can’t. I take her hand instead. Squeeze. She squeezes back and beings to cry again. “Sleep next to me,” she says. “Please.”
It’s not a request. It’s a… it’s a plea. For help, I realize. That’s why she’s here. She needs help. She’s sick. Not dying. But yeah, she’s dying. She’s suffocating in her small world. She’s withering like a fading flower. Like the last ember in a fire just seconds away from being extinguished. And even though I’m not the help she’s looking for, I’m all she’s got tonight.
So I kick off my shoes, lift my shirt over my head and toss it aside, and slip under the covers next to her.
