by Kyra Davis
It’s an obvious area for growth. Already there’s been buzz about some of the products they’ve introduced. It addresses a need, feeds into a society’s fears . . . there is always so much profit in fear. Insurance companies, Hollywood thrillers, cars with more airbags than cup-holders—they all bank on it.
My Mac chimes as a message pops up: an invitation from Mr. Dade for video conferencing.
My fingers hover over the keyboard, then move to the belt of my robe, pulling it a little tighter. I could ignore this. It’s eleven o’clock on a Friday night.
I should have waited until I was dressed to send that e-mail.
I could dress now, put on a suit, pin up my hair, but who wears a suit while at home at eleven on a Friday night? He’ll know I made an effort for him, not an effort to please but an effort nonetheless. He’ll know the affect he’s had on me, and that simply is not an acceptable option.
For some reason, rejecting the invitation doesn’t feel like an option, either. And part of me knows that my thinking, my compulsion to press Accept, is no good. But I don’t listen to that part of me. Not tonight. It’s speaking with too soft a voice for me to feel the weight of its wisdom.
I press Accept.
Mr. Dade appears on my screen like an apparition I summoned from some dark imaginings. He’s composed as he watches me from the comfort of his home. In the background I can see his bed. The duvet is a light, glowing orange that reminds me of flames.
“I didn’t expect to hear from you,” he says. “Do you always work this late on Friday nights?”
“It was just an e-mail,” I say, trying to keep my expression cool, lofty, compensating for the intimacy of the white robe. “I wasn’t expecting to conference. It was your invitation that was out of place.”
“Ah, but it was a working e-mail. I assume you’ll bill me for the time it took you to write it, and probably for the extra minutes it took you to think of it, and even to turn your computer on, probably. You choose your own schedule, Kasie. You chose this as a working hour, and right now you’re working for me. It’s my expectation that during the hours that you work for me, you make yourself fully available . . . to me.”
The words excite me but I press my lips into a hard line that I hope will help me draw the line in the sand that is necessary here. “I’m always available to talk about work, Mr. Dade.”
“You can call me Robert.”
“If we were friends, I would call you Robert.”
“And we’re not friends?”
He leans back and for the first time, I can see the graceful curves of the chair he sits in. An antique, perhaps from the eighteenth century. It’s a chair that speaks of domination and royalty, but mostly it speaks of money.
I understand money. I can handle it, manipulate it. I can handle this man in his ridiculously expensive chair.
“No,” I say firmly. “We’re not friends.”
“Lovers then? What do you call your lovers, Kasie? Do you address them by their last names? Their first? Or do you turn to words that are a bit more descriptive in nature?”
“We’re not lovers.”
“Oh, you’re wrong there. I’ve felt you beneath me, I’ve held those beautiful breasts, I’ve been inside your walls. I know where to touch you to make you lose control.”
“It was just one night.” I try to keep the chill in my tone but I can see that my line in the sand is now threatened by the tide. “An anomaly. I am not your lover now.”
“Ah, but then why do you respond to me as if you are?”
The words penetrate. They toy with my nerves and strain my willpower. I look away from the screen. This is stupid. It’s not in my plans. I’ve cleaned up the shards of glass from the dining room floor. Nothing else has to be broken.
“I want to meet with your directors, your engineers,” I say, still keeping my eyes away from the computer. I need to steady my voice, my breathing. “I want to talk to them about your capabilities.”
“Do you remember when you touched me here?”
I turn to look at the screen and with a graceful, almost languid ease he pulls off the black T-shirt he’s wearing. He’s perfect, beautiful, powerful; he runs his fingers over scratch marks on the skin that covers his heart.
Had I done that? I remember dragging my fingernails over his back but . . . oh yes, it was when he had pulled me from the wall and lowered me to the floor. He had gently pinched my nipples as I had pressed my hips against his, no control, just lust, desire, and that feeling . . . the feeling of him touching me, the feeling of him opening me up, thrusting inside of me until there were no words at all.
“Do you remember where I touched you, Kasie?”
I’m blushing now and, knowing that he can see that only makes me blush more. I reach for the lapel of my robe. I don’t open it, just run my fingers over it, carefully hanging on to the last remnants of restraint I have.
“Open your robe, Kasie.”
“I can’t do that, Mr. Dade. I need you to stay focused. I have to talk to you about business . . . security . . . public perception . . . there are strategies that we can implement.”
His mouth curves into a small smile and I lose my thinly held train of thought as I remember what those lips felt like as they traveled up my inner thigh.
“Oh, I’m very focused. And trust me when I tell you that I am implementing a strategy.”
“I’m not your project, Mr. Dade.”
“No, you’re my lover, Kasie. And I’m telling you to show me where I touched you.”
This is the time to take my hands away from my robe. This is the time to turn off the computer. This is the time to hold everything together—white wine, not whiskey; quiet dinners at home, not wild nights in Vegas; no more shards of glass.
“Open your robe, Kasie.”
I pull on the edges of my lapel, my robe opens just a little wider, and he can see the inner outline of my breasts.
“A little wider, Miss Fitzgerald.” He says the last words teasingly. He’s mocking me, daring me. It’s childish and should be so easy to resist.
I pull the robe open a little wider still. I look into his eyes and again I feel his power . . . but this time I feel it entering me. I can breath it; it fills me, touches me, like a caress.
With steady hands I pull the robe all the way back. It hangs loosely from my shoulders. I hold his gaze, all trepidation suddenly gone. I roll my shoulders back, my fingers slip down to my nipples that reach out to him, hard and ready.
“You touched me here.”
And now we’re against the wall of the Venetian and again I can feel him, I can wrap myself around his fierce energy.
“Where else?”
My fingers move to the outline of breasts before tracing a line down from my ribs to my stomach. “You touched me here.”
And I can feel him kissing the base of my neck, that little hollow area where the flesh is softest and the most sensitive.
“Where else?”
My fingers keep going lower. He can’t see where they are but he knows; I can see from his eyes that he knows.
And I feel him deep inside me. I burn to be on that fire-colored bed. “You touched me here,” I gasp.
I know I’m affecting him. The power is coming from both of us now. His breathing is a little faster; his eyes convey a little more urgency. His own hands move below the screen and I know what he’s touching, I know its details, know its strength . . . I want to feel it again. I want to taste it the way he tasted me.
“You entered me here.” I breathe, feeling, stroking the dampness between my legs. He moans as I throw back my head, my control quickly leaving me. I can feel his eyes, almost as good as his hands, and oh his hands had been so good. And still, I touch myself, replicating his caresses. I am immersed in his desire, in my own.
“Kasie,” he whispers. My name is the final caress I need. My free hand grabs the armrest of my chair and my hips push forward as I follow this dangerous path to its only possible conclusion. I hear him moan
again. I know I’m not alone. I know what I’m doing, to him, to myself.
My body shakes as the orgasm comes with a convulsing and heart-wrenching power. It’s the final chord of an erotic rhapsody that leaves me with the mingled emotions of satisfaction and endless longing.
For a moment I don’t move. My eyes are closed and the only sound is of my breathing and his. Across the city, by my side, he’s everywhere.
And the little voice that had tried to talk to me before, the voice that comes from the part of me I should have listened to, now whispers in resignation, You’ve broken another glass.
My throat tightens and with a shaking hand I reach for my keyboard . . .
. . . and disconnect.
CHAPTER 5
I SIT IN MY living room waiting. Waiting for Dave. Waiting for the chaos. Something is churning inside of me. A brew of disaster mixed with an impetuous desire. I have to get it out of me. Throw it in the sewer along with all the other toxic waste that dirties our lives. But what I can’t do is add deceit to that bubbling pot of trouble. Dave has to be told . . . something.
I stand and walk to my window and stare up at a brightly backlit sky of gray. Can I blame Dave for my recent mistakes? I’d like to. Wedding jitters run amok, that’s all. My subconscious telling me that his proposed union isn’t as perfect as I once imagined. He had rejected me so easily last night, like he would a homeless person holding out a hand for change. Dismissed me with a smile, a polite expression of sympathy and repulsion.
It was rejection that stirred that brew, insult that spurred my rebellion. So I will talk to Dave. I’ll face the music. And if the music is rough, I’ll find a way to smooth out its edges, I’ll unplug the electric guitars and dismantle the bass until there’s nothing left but a soft, unthreatening tune that I can sway to.
It’s not until the doorbell rings that I have second thoughts.
Dave stands on my doorstep with a dozen white roses. There had been white roses at the luncheon where we first met . . . six years ago. Forever ago . . . but right now the memory’s close enough to touch. When he walked me to my car, we had passed a florist and Dave had insisted that I, too, have white roses; he bought me a dozen to take home. He had asked for my number then and I had been moved to give it to him. Most girls will give up something for a bouquet: a phone number, a smile, even anger. But of course the most frequent price for such a gift is the loss of one’s resolve.
I move aside, let him in, and watch as he disappears into my kitchen then reemerges with the roses arranged neatly in a vase. He finds the perfect place for them on my dining table.
Dave and I still haven’t said so much as hello but the roses are speaking with something more tangible than words.
“I overreacted last night,” he says. He’s starring at the roses, not me, but I don’t mind the evasion. “I didn’t want to move to LA, did you know that? I just did it for work.”
I shrug noncommittally. He’s told me this before but I don’t see how it’s relevant.
“It’s such a gaudy city,” he continues. “A place where the men smile at you with bleached white teeth and the women thrust their fake boobs in your face. Everyone here is aggressive but the women . . . they act like men. Like drag queens with a lust for exhibitionism. They’re not ladies. They’re not you.”
“I’m a lady?”
“But you’re also strong,” Dave adds quickly. He sits in one of my upholstered dining room chairs. “Strong, ambitious, controlled, quiet, beautiful.” He pauses as he works to find a metaphor. “You’re a concealed weapon. A pistol hidden inside an Hermès handbag.”
I like the image.
“The woman with the Hermès knows that she can only reach for that gun when she needs to keep the wolves at bay. Only in cases of extreme danger. Because a gun in the hand is vulgar, common,” he says. “But when it’s kept neatly in a couture bag, it becomes something else.”
As the metaphor is stretched, it loses its appeal. A gun that can’t be handled becomes useless. It’s denied its raison d’être.
But I see his point. Last night I wasn’t the woman he wanted me to be, the woman I had always been with him, the woman he had fallen in love with. Last night the gun had come out of the bag.
“I overreacted last night,” he says again. “But you scared me. Not because what you said was so extreme but because it wasn’t something you would say.”
He rises again, pulls a single rose from the bouquet, and extends it toward me. “Remember when I first bought you white roses? The day we met?”
“I had just finished graduate school,” I say, nodding at the memory. “Ellis took me to her Notre Dame alumni event because the Harvard events weren’t bringing me any interesting job offers. ”
“I remember the way you held yourself,” he says, “your modesty and your strength. . . . As soon as I saw you, I wanted to be near you.”
My eyes focus on the flowers as my mind travels back.
Dave had looked good that day. Boyish, sweet . . . maybe a little awkward in his red-pinstriped shirt and navy tie worn in a city where ties are reserved for car salesmen and bank clerks. But I liked that he didn’t play by the LA-style rules. He stood out. He was a throwback to a time and place where educated men were expected to be gentlemen and elitism wasn’t such a dirty word.
He was shy when we first started talking but he quickly gathered confidence as we delved further into our conversation. He said he would put in a good word for me with the global consulting firm I had once hoped to work for. They had declined to recruit me right out of Harvard but Dave’s godfather was the company’s founder. He could give me the perversely rare and exceedingly cultivated second chance.
And then he started to tell me about himself, how he had been living in LA for two years. He hated the smog, hated the traffic, hated the people and the Hollywood culture. But he liked his law firm and loved the wealth he was able to coax out of the city’s Armani-stitched pockets. It would be irresponsible for him to leave just so he could live in a city more to his taste.
And right then I knew Dave and I were alike. He followed the rules. He was responsible, pragmatic—he wasn’t governed by temptation or rash whims. Dave was steady. And standing there by his side, a Harvard grad with a mountain of student loan debt and not a single job offer from a company I had any desire to work for, well, steady seemed nice . . . even sexy.
And I had wanted to be near him, too.
He pushes the rose farther forward so now the petals are touching the base of my neck. The gesture brings me back to the present.
“Don’t change, Kasie,” he says. “You’re the only thing about this city that makes it bearable. When I’m with you, I feel like I’m not really so far from the town where I grew up. When I’m with you, it feels like home.”
And now he takes another step forward; the rose remains where it is, delicate petals against my skin. “Don’t change. Please don’t change.”
This is the man who I wanted to blame for my own misbehavior. This is the man who I betrayed twice in one week. This is the man who sees me as I want to be seen. In his eyes I’m a lady, a deadly weapon in a designer bag. Dave sees the aspiration of what I want to be while Mr. Dade sees the woman I’ve been running from. Dade sees the version of me that I tried to bury in a garment bag.
I should have seen that, should have understood before I accepted the invitation to digress.
I have never had to search for my role in life. It’s always been assigned to me. By my parents, my teachers, by this man with his white, white roses. My sister chose a different path. No one in my family talks about her anymore. Like the Ancient Egyptians who would erase the image, and names of the gods who had fallen out of favor, my family has simply erased my sister from our lives. I live the life I’m expected to live and I’m loved for it. Why change patterns now?
“I’m going to buy you a ring today,” Dave says.
And I nod and smile.
* * *
STORE AFTE
R STORE, ring after ring, none of them feel right. One’s too heavy, another too murky. Diamond after diamond, each one is sharp enough to cut glass. Each one of them speaks to a convention that dates back to the fifteenth century. A history splattered with blood and greed. There are more innocent traditions. In colonial times, men would give women thimbles as an expression of eternal companionship. I wouldn’t know what to do with a thimble.
But I’m not sure I know what to do with a diamond, either.
“Maybe another stone?” I suggest, eying the bold red of a ruby.
The woman behind the counter smiles the smile that all salespeople smile when they smell money. “It’s untreated.” She pulls the ring out of the glass case and hands it to me. “Just pulled out of the ground, cut and polished.”
Dave wrinkles his nose. He doesn’t like the sound of this but I’m entranced. I hold the gem up to the light.
“All rubies have their little imperfections,” the saleswoman continues. “Incursions of rutile needles. We call them silks. The ruby is a more complex stone than the diamond. Their imperfections distinguish them.”
Silks. I warm to the term. Even the imperfections are made to sound elegant.
“We want a diamond,” Dave says definitively. “It’s more . . . pure.”
I don’t know if that’s true. Decades of oppression of South Africans verses the brutish military dictatorship of the ruby-rich Myanmar. Injustice and pain all for pretty little stones that are supposed to symbolize love. Still, maybe that’s fitting when you consider the actual nature of love.
“Would it be so inappropriate for us to do something different?” I ask Dave.
Dave hesitates. I can see the conflict in his eyes. I know he’s measuring the size of his guilt over last night’s rudeness against his true wishes.
But the guilt wins. “If you really want the ruby, you should have it.” He kisses my cheek and slips his arm around my tensed shoulders. “I want you to be absolutely and truly happy.”
As I slip the ruby onto my finger I wonder if it’s wise to wish for anything as fleeting and insubstantial as absolute happiness.
