by Davis, Kyra
I smile. Asha’s off her game. Today she’s more impatient than devious. “I never said anyone asked me to leave. Why on earth would you come to that conclusion?”
She hesitates; her error was a stupid one. Unworthy of her. I watch as she gathers her thoughts, calms her mind, and draws herself up. “You would never leave of your own free will,” she says simply. “If you’re leaving, it’s because you’ve been asked to.”
“I’m good at my job, Asha. You acknowledged as much the other night. So again, why would I be asked to leave?”
Again a shrug, but this one more practiced. She’s thinking, perhaps wondering how far she can backpedal before I have her crashing into a brick wall. “Politics are funny” is the phrase she settles on. “Sometimes people . . . perfectly competent workers, are let go because they don’t fit within the structure as well as it was originally presumed they would. But I’m just speculating, Kasie. You’re the one who suggested you were leaving.”
“Did I suggest that?” I ask. I keep the sarcasm light, almost playful. “And here I thought I just asked a question,” I say with a smile. “I’m more than a competent worker, but let’s not spend time debating things we both know. In fact . . . now that I think about it, there’s a lot of things we both know, aren’t there?”
“I’m not following.”
“Well, let’s see.” I get up from my seat again. My anger is intense, but I like the way it feels. I like the way I’m able to give it shape, form it into a weapon of torture. It’s a slow torture, delicate and feminine . . . it has artistry. I imagine myself holding a pretty little scalpel and rubbing it gently against Asha’s throat. “We both know you shouldn’t have been at that party unless of course you came with someone else. I saw you hanging out with Mr. Freeland. Was he your date? Your way in?”
“Did I give Freeland my affection in exchange for a party invitation? No,” she says, and now it’s her turn to smile. “I don’t mix sex and commerce. Do you, Kasie?”
I stopped. This is more audacity than I expected, even from her. “Are you asking me if I’m a prostitute?”
Asha giggles. It’s a surprisingly appealing sound, almost seductive in it’s daintiness. “Don’t be silly,” she says. “You’re an honorable woman. You wear a rather expensive engagement ring to prove it.”
I glance down at the ring. It squeezes too tightly.
“Besides,” she continues, “prostitutes have sex for profit. Not you. Although after you started dating Dave, you did get a very profitable position here—”
“He got me an interview. I got the job.”
“And then you also got us a very profitable account, didn’t you?” Asha asks sweetly. Her voice is the spoonful of syrup used to mask the bitterness of a crushed pill. “You got that all by yourself. No help from Dave at all. Mr. Dade just handed it to you.”
I don’t answer. Instead I wait, to see how far she’ll push. Is her hatred enough to make her careless? Has she been spying on me, even before that day on the boat? Or is this all presumptions and speculations?
“What did you tell Tom Love?” she asks. “That you met Mr. Dade in the security line at the airport before flying home?”
“Yes,” I say. I have my back to the wall while she looks up at me from the chair I ushered her into. This is my office. I’m in the position of strength here. But the dynamic is unstable.
“It’s funny, because I’ve never gotten into a conversation with anyone I didn’t know while in those security lines. Everyone’s so focused on getting their keys out of their pockets, their watches unstrapped from their wrists, it’s not really a let’s-get-to-know-each-other kind of place, is it?”
“For every rule there are exceptions.”
“True,” Asha agrees with a nod. “And for every crime there is a criminal. When Mr. Dade called to tell Tom he wanted consultant Kasie Fitzgerald to head a team to help him prepare his company for a public offering, he had a different story of your first meeting. He said that the two of you had spoken at a blackjack table.”
I raise my chin as if the gesture could increase my height. I need to be above this, but I don’t manage it. Her words cut as they were meant to. Tom never told me that my tale contradicted the true story he had apparently already gotten from Robert.
What else had Robert told him? Had he told Tom that we had ended up in his room? No, he wouldn’t have shared any of those secrets. For a brief moment my mind betrays me, bringing me back to that night, forcing upon me the recalled feeling of when the man I only knew as Mr. Dade had taken a scotch-soaked ice cube, briefly touched it to my clitoris, and then licked the liquor off me with the flick of his tongue. Images of his hands on my hips, his head in my lap as I grabbed the back of my chair, my skirt up around my waist . . . I had never done anything like that before.
I was paying for that now.
I could try to convince Asha that Robert is the liar. I could tell her that he had made up a false tale of how we met to insinuate things that never happened, as some men are apt to do.
But I can’t do that. I can’t load my shame onto Robert’s shoulders. Yet the price of the truth exceeds my means.
“I didn’t feel the need to tell my boss that I occasionally dabble in gambling,” I say, hoping the excuse doesn’t sound as lame to her as it does to me. “Some people don’t approve.”
“Tom Love approves of anything that brings him business, and your time in Vegas definitely did that.”
“Asha, where were you yesterday morning?”
“I was in a car,” she says, leaning back in her chair. “With your fiancé.”
And now I see that I’ve approached this all wrong. I had assumed she wouldn’t want me to think of her as a snoop, as someone so desperate to undermine me she would scurry after me, looking for bread crumbs, clues that could lead her to greater sins. But I’m the only one here who cares what people think. I’m the only one looking to hide my flaws with layers of icing. Asha cares only about power.
And that one fact gives her all the power in the world.
Her lips spread into a Cheshire grin. “Do you think I fucked him? Dave, that is. Would that upset you? Or would it just even the playing field?”
She stands up, crosses to me. She stands close, too close. “I would never fuck Dave,” she purrs. “I’d fuck you, though. Tell me, Kasie, have you ever been touched by a woman?” She reaches forward and brushes her hand against my breast. I jump back, shocked and completely thrown. When I asked Barbara to invite Asha into my office, I had a plan. I had set a trap for a wolf. I hadn’t understood that the predator I faced was a viper.
“I’m not a lesbian, not exactly,” Asha explains, answering a question no one had asked. “It’s more like authority, privilege . . . entitlement that I’m attracted to. I like to strip it away like so much unneeded clothing. I’d love to see you naked, tied to a bed, your body responding to my touch even though you wouldn’t want it to. I’d love to see you completely vulnerable with no semblance of control. Then again, you’re completely vulnerable now, aren’t you? And if there’s anyone in this room with control, it’s me.”
Is Asha trying to commit career suicide? She reports to me! If I told Human Resources what she’s saying to me now . . .
My cheeks heat up as what she already knows comes crashing home to me. Her smile is gentle, almost sympathetic.
“You’re not going to tell anyone about this conversation, Kasie. You can’t. One of us cares about her personal reputation, and I can destroy it with a word.” She leans her shoulder against the wall next to me, too close but not touching me. “I bet you made yourself vulnerable to Mr. Dade. That’s a man who can make a woman beg; I’m sure he can make you beg. And I bet that man is hung. Guys with big, rough hands like his always are. I bet your pussy’s sore for days after he’s done with you.”
“Get out of my office.”
�
�But you’re the one who asked me to come, didn’t you, Kasie?” she asks. “You brought me here to toy with me, find out what I know. Well,” she says, inching even closer. I turn my head away but I can still hear her whisper, a malicious seduction that makes me shiver: “What you’ve found out is that I know everything and now it’s my turn to play.”
She pushes herself off the wall and starts to walk toward the door.
“I don’t have as much to lose as you think,” I call after her. “If Tom already knows what I’ve done, as you suggest, then he’s known for a long time. And I still have my job. Nothing’s changed for me here.”
“Ah, but Tom is comfortable with corruption as long as it works to his purposes. But even he knows that if Dylan Freeland, the founder of our company . . . the fucking godfather of your fiancé, ever found out, your office would be mine.”
“So why are you talking to me?” I ask. “Why not tell the world?”
She shrugs. “Because this is fun. And if Dave hasn’t exposed you yet, it’s because he’s giving you another chance. He’ll back up any lies you spew. It’ll be his word . . . and yours and Robert’s against mine. I wouldn’t stand a chance. But if you slip up again? And Dave finds out?” She wags her finger at me. “That’s when the real fun begins.”
She smiles again knowing everything she said is perfectly clear and totally ambiguous. Then with another shrug she says, “See you at the meeting!”
I watch her leave and then, with the wall pressing into my back, I slide to the floor; my knees come to my chest and I bury my face in my hands.
CHAPTER 5
I DON’T KNOW HOW I got through that meeting. Every one of Asha’s comments and questions were completely appropriate. Her composure was perfection. Mine, not so much. I knocked over a bottle of water on my files, I tripped up on my words, I had to ask Taci to repeat her proposal for Maned Wolf’s international repositioning twice.
The problem was not what Asha knew. The problem was that Asha didn’t lie. She treasured the viciousness of complete honesty. She used truth as a weapon every bit as much as I used lies as a shield. That meant that if anyone ever asked Asha the wrong question . . .
Even now as I sit in my office, alone among a pile of paperwork, the thought makes me shudder. When did I become the fly in the web? But no, that’s wrong. The fly is an innocent. I am not.
Most of my coworkers have already gone home. Barbara left ages ago, but I’m still here, as is often the case. This office was once my sanctuary and I hope that in my solitude I can find a way to recapture that feeling.
Daylight is fading behind a smoggy sunset. The sky is a brilliant combination of pinks and lavenders. That’s the thing about smog. It’s toxic and according to the American Cancer Society it can even be deadly. But when framed the right way, at just the right moment it can make everything beautiful, and you forget. You look up at those colors as the sun rises and declines and you forget that the very thing that is enhancing the natural light, the thing that makes everything look so intensely beautiful, is slowly killing you. Eventually the sun gets a little higher and you see the ugliness of it. But by then it’s too late. You’ve been pulling it into your lungs for hours. It has you. It’s in you. That’s it.
I wonder if my affair with Robert Dade has been a little like that. Intense, brilliant, beautiful . . . but now it’s killing me. I’ve lost control and for me, for my entire life, control has been my oxygen.
I stare intently at the colors, wishing they would stay. What if I had never met Dave? What if I had found this job that I have loved so much on my own? What if when I had met Robert in Vegas, I had been free? How would things have proceeded? Would we have dated like a normal couple? No, nothing about Robert Dade is normal. But still, we would have become a couple. I’m sure of it. We would have traveled together—sometimes hiking up the Mayan pyramids; other times making love in “The Hotel of Kings” in Paris, the Tuileries Gardens below our window.
But I’m being too conventional in my thinking. We could go to Nice, to the Musée Marc Chagall, rent out the concert hall for a private performance. Not something the Musée would normally agree to, but Monsieur Dade could make it happen.
A small band of musicians is waiting for us on the stage as we walk into the room bathed in the blue light streaming through the stained glass. A pianist sits with his fingers poised over a baby grand that would be completely unremarkable if the lid of the piano wasn’t open to reveal painted lovers rising into a blue-gray landscape. Around them are villagers, a quarter of the size of the lovers. They don’t attempt to match the couple’s grandeur but they seem to rejoice in the warmth that emanates from them.
Robert leads me past rows of empty seats until we are in the front of the room, just a few feet from the stage. He steps away from me only to extend his hand in my direction, his palm up, offering a universal invitation that he reiterates with words when he asks, “Will you dance?”
As I take his hand the band starts to play and we begin to move. The bass is so low, its vibrations tremble against my skin as I follow Robert’s lead in something that resembles a waltz but is different enough to make it uniquely ours. I throw back my head and laugh as I’m twirled around the room, wrapped up in blue light and Monsieur Dade’s arms.
But then he stops, right there in the middle of the floor and with a slow smile, he tells me I’m beautiful. Lifting myself onto my tiptoes, I kiss his lips, lightly at first but then his hand moves to the back of my head, pulling me in closer.
The music soars with my pulse and we begin to dance again. But this time it’s different. Our shirts drift to the floor as the sonata ends, bringing us to a new, more rhythmic melody. Then comes his belt, my skirt, everything, until we are dancing naked through the hall. A red dove on painted blue glass seems to swoop down on us as his tongue parts my lips. The music beats through me as we sway. I feel him get hard against me. The musicians don’t even seem to notice us; that’s not their place in this dream. They are only required to provide Robert and me with a soundtrack for our passion. And as he lowers me to the floor, as I roll on top of him, straddle his hips and feel him push inside of me, I know that, in the ways that count, it is just the two of us. I ride him slowly, moving with the tempo.
The musicians have the stage. We have each other.
Robert’s hands slide to my waist, guiding me, moving me so I can feel the full length of him inside of me. Painted memories of Chagall’s youth seem to fall from the sky as Robert sits up. He’s still inside me as I sit facing him in his lap. For a moment we don’t move; we just take a moment to feel what it is to be connected, with our bodies, with our eyes, by an emotion that is so much bigger than either one of us.
And then the dance starts again. I gasp as his hips buck against mine, splitting me open until it feels like it’s not just him but the music itself that’s inside of me, moving through me, resonating against every nerve ending to make me frantic with desire.
With one decisive movement he flips me over and I cling to him as he begins to pull out only to enter me again with a forceful thrust and a gentle kiss. “I love you,” he says, and I respond in kind.
He positions one of my legs above his shoulder. “Follow my lead,” he whispers.
And with that he thrusts again and my world is filled with ecstasy. The music, the art, the man who makes my heart pound . . . it brings me to the brink of nirvana and as Chagall’s lovers swirl in their blue light I come with a cry that echoes through the room.
His sweat is mingled with mine, my nose is filled with the sent of our sex . . .
. . . and we’re not done.
He turns me on my stomach and again he enters me. On the ground I can see fragmented reflections of blue, a cool contrast from the red heat inside me.
As he pushes farther and farther inside, his hand strokes the length of my back with a subtle pressure that brings me to crescendo. And as I come aga
in, I hear him cry out, too. We climax together in the blue light of Chagall’s concert hall, surrounded by music.
My name is on his lips and it’s what I hear as he lays his head between my shoulder blades. “I love you,” he says again as the musicians transition to a quieter song.
And in the perfection of that moment I know it’s true.
Just as I know the sunset I see right now is beautiful.
But like my fantasy, it’s fading. Darkness is coming.
The door opens to my office. I don’t turn to see who it is. I know just by the way my ring seems to get heavier on my hand.
“The workday’s over,” Dave says; his voice is laced with his newfound cruelty. “Get your stuff together. I have plans for us.”
CHAPTER 6
WE DON’T SAY much as we crawl along with the late rush-hour traffic of the 405. Dave keeps his eyes on the road, his hands on the wheel. I can smell the smoke of cigars on his clothes. He stopped by his men’s club before coming to me, sat in a leather armchair, chortled while some stockbroker told him a dirty joke, basked in the glory of being one of the elite. But whatever cheer he derived from those interactions fell away as soon as he got within touching distance of me.
I want to tell him that if he’s truly repelled by me, he should just let me go, spare us both. But I know it’s not that straightforward for him. There’s pride involved and maybe, to use Asha’s word, entitlement. There’s more, too, emotions and motivations I can’t yet read, but I’m too tired tonight to dip deep into that brew. I rest my head against the passenger window and wonder how long I can extend the silence.
“I talked to your parents today,” he says.
And I can feel the smog in my lungs.
I force my brain to start running through the facts rather than giving in to the panic that’s ebbing its way in. Dave is not like Asha. He can lie. He could be lying to me now. He has every reason to want to unnerve me.