by Myles, Eden
As I was stepping out of the shower stall, I heard a dull rustling noise at the door. I bundled a big terrycloth towel around my middle and crept out of the bathroom, stopping only to grab up a pair of very sharp scissors from off my desk. I stood very still, barely breathing, dripping water all over the floor.
Yeah, someone was definitely lurking at my door. I could see a shadow as they toyed with the doorknob. Then more rustling as the unknown person slid a sheet of paper under my door.
I stood in the shadows, wet, dark tangles of hair clinging in commas to my cheeks, my heart thudding in my ears, breathing in and out, in and out, trying not to hyperventilate. I clutched the scissors close, realizing my hands were shaking.
“Stop it, Iz,” I told myself in a breathy whisper. “Just stop this shit, all right?”
I made myself set the scissors down before padding quietly to the door. The locks were still in place. No one could breach three deadbolts, I reminded myself.
Whoever had been standing there was gone now. The room was dimly lit, but I could see the scrawled letters of some funky font announcing a frat party this weekend. The students here were always handing those out. I closed my eyes and breathed out in relief, then padded back over to my highboy to pull out a pair of pajamas.
A year ago, this cute ivy league guy from uptown named Clark Bennigan asked me to a rave. It was, sad to say, my first real date. I’d never been huge on dating in high school—too shy, too clumsy. But that night I said yes. I’d thought it was time to come out of my shell, to loosen up. I didn’t want to grow old alone because I was afraid to talk to a cute boy.
Clark picked me up in his Lamborghini and we went driving into the city. The rave was fun and loud and crazy, and a lot of liquor was flowing. I wasn’t a big drinker, so I’d only stuck to one drink I planned to nurse for most of the night. I knew better than to get loaded and let someone take advantage of me.
But before I knew what was happening, I started feeling sick and needed to throw up. Clark started steering me toward the ladies room, but something happened, and it was like I was in a series of time-lapse photographs. One minute I was stumbling around like some drunken floozy, the next I remembered being carried over his shoulder while he made excuses for me. Then came some sleazy hotel room, a bed with an evil green spread.
I remembered crying, saying, “I want to go home, Clark. I want to go home!”
But as my voice steadily rose along with my panic, Clark threw me down and covered my mouth with his hand. He put a small box cutter to my throat and said, “Shut up or I’ll fucking cut your throat, bitch.”
Most of the night after that was a fuzzy kaleidoscope, but I remember Clark telling me he’d hunt me down and kill me and my family if I told anyone. He’d said he’d killed other girls for having a big mouth and that his dad owned the police. The next morning I woke up sore and bleeding and alone in that dismal little hotel room.
I only ever told Stefan, who’d had to come pick me up because I had no idea where I was and had no way to get back to campus. On the drive back, he said point-blank in the coldest voice I’d ever heard, “He gave you a roofie and he raped you. That son of a fucking bitch raped you, didn’t he, Iz?”
“No,” I told him. I was working hard to keep from breaking down into hysterics, and I didn’t want him using that word. Rape was stuff that happened to the loose girls at college. It didn’t happen to girls on their first date, to virgins. It didn’t happen to girls like me. “No, I consented.”
“Sure you did.”
“I did.”
“Let me take you to the ER, Iz, or the police. They can get DNA samples. They can find him.”
“No. I just want to go home.”
“You have to report this! You have to turn him in!” He was working himself into a rage.
“Take me home, Stef, please! Later. Please! I just want to go home.”
I was shaking, and I desperately wanted a shower. I wanted to pretend the last twenty-four hours was all a dream, that it didn’t happen.
I didn’t want to get involved in this. It was obvious the guy had money. If I made a fuss, he’d come after me, and then it would be his word against mine. He could probably hurt me. Or worse, he could hurt my grandmother.
Oh god, I couldn’t let my grandmother learn about this. She was the one who raised me after my parents died in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. She was so proud of my grades, so proud of my common sense. I couldn’t let her see me like this. Like some victim.
So no, I didn’t tell anyone, even later on. I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.
I wasn’t proud of that. You always hear about victim guilt, all that crap, but the reality of it was, when you actually experience it, things looked different. Things aren’t all black and white, right and wrong, like everyone says. It’s hard to be brave. It was too hard for me.
And besides, my grandma had recently had a serious heart condition. She’d already had two stents put in She didn’t need the extra stress of seeing me this way, not on top of losing her son, my dad, the way she had. If she found out, it might kill her, and she was my only family now.
With a sigh, I padded back to the bathroom and just stared at myself in the mirror in the dark. I didn’t like putting on bright lights anymore. I’d always hated my body—I was short and stocky, with huge, double-D, basketball-sized boobs, which sounds good in theory but are just plain awful for buying clothes and looked all wrong on me—and not for the first time, I desperately wished I could trade bodies with one of the tall, willowy college girls I passed in the hallways all the time. I wish I had their lives.
I picked up my lipstick off the vanity and added to the list of imperfections I’d started writing on the mirror. Under Too Short and Too Fat I wrote Mousy Hair. Under that, I added Stretch Marks. I had a lot of them since gaining weight over the last few months. As I set the lipstick down, I saw the scrap of paper that Stefan had given me lying on the floor. I figured it must have fallen out of my things as I was undressing.
I added Disorganized under Stretch Marks, then went to pick up the paper.
I didn’t want another job, frankly. After what happened last year, I’d quite the coffee house job I’d been doing so I could put my head back together. But student loans were piling up, and I couldn’t live off Ramen for the rest of my life. On top of that, my grandma was going to need another surgery soon. Poverty and the threat of being thrown out of college was forcing me back into the workforce where I didn’t want to be anymore.
I looked at the address and the time of the interview that Stefan had gotten me. It was tomorrow, Saturday, at ten in the morning. He’d underlined the word sharp. I thought about what Stefan had said about Dr. Dorian Michaels. What little I remembered of him was a cold and aloof man. But he was gay, so it was obvious I didn’t have to worry about that.
“This is important, Iz,” I told myself. “This is part of Operation Putting Your Shit Back Together.”
I nodded. I’d always been very good at talking myself into anything.
Before I went to bed, I gave my grandma a call and we chatted for a few minutes about everything and nothing. Then I got into bed and pulled the covers up to my chin. And like I had for the past year, I cried myself to sleep.
* * *
Dr. Michaels, like a lot of folks who worked in New York City, had a house in Westchester County—if you could call it a house. Actually, it was more of a mansion, like that old, rambling stone monolith you see in the Batman movies, the one with multiple levels and turrets and maybe even a Bat Cave underneath it. Like Bruce Wayne, Dr. Michaels was probably quite the player, I marveled.
I showed the gateman my ID and he buzzed me through the tall black iron gates. I drove my little secondhand Volkswagen up the long, meandering, paved driveway to the front of the house and parked in the circular drive with the stone fountain in the center. I climbed out, craning my neck to get a good look of the highest pinnacle of the old house. Jesus, I would have to clean this place?
It was only the thought that Dr. Michaels paid so well that encouraged me to walk up to the front door, inlaid with ridiculous amounts of frosted glass, and ring the doorbell. I waited, fidgeting nervously and staring down at myself. I’d dressed down and wore a simple white blouse and tartan skirt, a dark, oversized cardigan sweater, knee socks and penny loafers. After all, I wasn’t applying to be the doctor’s receptionist or anything. I mean, what did a housekeeper look like?
I flinched as someone opened the door. Maybe I’d expected Alfred to answer in his tuxedo, but the man standing there was anything but a butler. He was tall, well over six foot, and massively built, dressed in a snug white T-shirt and even more snug jeans. Sleeves of intricate tattoos covered both arms up the elbows, and his sandy blond hair was cut spiky and professionally tousled. He had three earrings in each ear and a face that was ruggedly carved and decidedly no-nonsense, with just enough stubble to make my heart kick me in the ribs.
He frowned down at me and I felt myself inch back a step. I’d had no idea that Dr. Michaels employed a bouncer. “H-hello,” I stuttered “I’m…uh…I’m…”
“Here for a consultation?” he asked. His voice was deep, but softer than I’d anticipated.
I nodded dumbly, like some bobblehead, then shook it suddenly. “No…I mean, I’m here to see Dr. Michaels? My friend Stefan sent me? For the housekeeping position?”
“Ah,” he said, holding the door open for me. “I’m Dr. Michaels. Come in.”
“You’re…Dr. Michaels?” I said as he ushered me inside.
“I take it Stefan didn’t warn you, Ms.—?” He looked me up and down as he spoke, obviously enjoying the impression he was making on me.
“It’s…” I almost said Iz or Izzy or Izzy Pop, which was what my friends always called me, but in the end it felt so ugly and inadequate I blurted out, “…Belle. Belle Starling. Um…no, he just said…” What, Iz, that Dr. Michaels was unbelievably smoking hot? You already knew that, dumbass.
Yeah, knowing was one thing…but actually seeing… I closed my mouth before I made a fool of myself. “I mean, he didn’t say much.”
“I see.” He led me across the vast foyer and down a long corridor. “You have a pretty name.”
“Thanks.”
I tried not to watch his perfect ass encased in those tight jeans as we turned into a massive office. It was done up in a lot of dark wood, glass and manly leather that would have seemed cold and old fashioned except for the vintage guitars and signed photos of various famous musicians on the walls. In fact, one whole wall was dedicated to the speed metal band Suicide Kings, which had been urber-popular about five years ago, before they went into early retirement. I saw all kinds of memorabilia on the wall—studded leather jackets, band photos, posters, signed photographs. Wow, I thought, my possible future employer was quite the fan.
I stared at a signed, original Les Paul until Dr. Michaels spoke up. “I used to play, before I turned to medicine. Have a seat.”
I did a double-take of Dr. Michaels, then looked back at one of the band photos. I wanted to smack my forehead. “You’re Damian, the bass man of Suicide Kings, aren’t you?” Or, that was the name he went by as a musician, anyway.
“I was,” he said with a small smirk, but then shrugged, like it was just a footnote in his history. “That was before I found my real calling in medicine.”
Stunned, I sat down opposite the big mahogany desk behind which the former bass man of Suicide Kings was sitting. I just couldn’t get over that!
Dr. Michaels moved his impressive bulk around to the chair behind the desk, ready to sit, but then the doorbell went off again. He stopped and said, “We take consultations here. If you’re hired, you’ll be handling this circus. I’ll be right back.”
“All right,” I said, trying not to sink into the leather wing chair which made me feel small and insignificant. I figured that was probably its purpose. Wow, I thought, a rock and roll doctor. I waited maybe five minutes before I started to squirm. I was about to get up and examine the guitars a little closer when Dr. Michaels suddenly swung back into the room.
He walked softly and I barely heard him enter, but suddenly he was standing by the desk, looking over an open file lying there, barely aware of my presence. He’d donned a long blue doctor’s coat, and he’d removed the earrings and had slipped on a pair of wire-frame reading glasses—probably for his consultation—but I could still see plainly that it was him. I sat for a few seconds in silence before saying, “Um…”
He turned to glare at me with cold blue eyes. “What are you doing here?”
I stiffened in my seat, unsure what to say for the moment. Did he have Alzheimer’s or something? “Um…” I said, hating the way I abused that small expression. “I’m Belle? I’m here for the housekeeping position?”
Dr. Michaels quirked a smile. “Ah. I see.” Looking bored, he picked up the file, balancing it professionally in his open palm. “Stay there. I’ll be back shortly.”
I sat and twiddled my thumbs, my brow wrinkling as I tried to make sense of Dr. Michael’s bizarre memory lapse. What strange behavior! About five minutes after that, he returned, but this time sans the coat, and he had the earrings back and no glasses. I wondered if he remembered me this time. I wondered if maybe I wasn’t losing my mind.
“There you are, Belle. Glad you didn’t run off.”
My anger got the better of me and I stood up. “I’m not sure what kind of a game you’re playing with me, Dr. Michaels, but I don’t appreciate this run around…”
Dr. Michaels set his big, slim hands upon the edge of the desk. “I’m sorry? I’m not following you.”
“You were just here. Then you were gone again, like you didn’t even know I’d been waiting…”
Another sly smile tugged the corners of Dr. Michael’s mouth. Despite my better sense, I felt my stomach flip over at the sight. “Oh. You’ve met Dorian.”
“Dorian?”
“My brother. My twin. He’s Dr. Dorian, if it makes things easier to remember. I’m Dr. Damian. He’s the plastic surgeon, the talented one. I’m the anesthesiologist.”
“Oh!” I said, and mentally kicked myself for going off on Dr. Damian the way I had. I felt like a heel and wanted to sink into the floor. I felt like I’d fallen into some weird 1980’s-style sitcom full of mix-ups and misunderstandings. “I’d no idea…I mean, Stefan never said anything about there being…um…”
“Two of us?” Dr. Damian quirked a sandy eyebrow at me.
I sat down again. “Sorry, I…um…this is awkward.” I was sweating from all the embarrassment and I quickly wrangled my cardigan off. I knew my face was beet red and I couldn’t seem to stop clenching my hands together.
Silence pressed in until I looked up at Dr. Damian.
He was staring at me in a new way, not like before, not in that teasing way he had. Instead, his focus was centered entirely on me—all over me—and his face was as sharp as a blade, his eyes an almost penetrating blue as they sparked with interest. He pressed his lips together as he gave me an all-over perusal that left me sweating and fidgeting even more. I just knew I was going to blow this interview!
Finally, he stood up. “Can you wait one moment more, please, my dear? It’s important, and I promise I’ll be right back.” His voice had grown soft and hoarse.
“Sure,” I said, not looking at him, though I wanted to roll my eyes.
He was gone maybe a minute or two at most, but returned this time with Dr. Dorian in tow. It was a little surreal to see two men so very identical. I’d gone to high school with identical twin sisters, but even they weren’t exactly identical. I mean, you could usually figure out who was who. But Drs. Damian and Dorian were exactly physically alike, except for the tats and the earrings that Dr. Damian sported and that Dr. Dorian apparently didn’t have. And Dr. Damian didn’t have the glasses his brother did. Other than those small things, they might have been clones. I wondered how their parents had told them apart. It mus
t have been a nightmare.
“This is Dr. Dorian,” Dr. Damian said, introducing his brother.
I looked up at the tall man in the long blue doctor’s coat. He stared down his long nose at me as if he were examining me. “This is she?” he said in a cold voice. It was definitely Dr. Dorian I had passed in the hallway that day at the hospital. I remembered his salty, clipped attitude all too well.
“Yeah, bro, it is.” Damian moved back behind the desk but didn’t sit down this time. “Belle Starling. The Holy Grail, am I right?”
“It’s difficult to tell,” Dr. Dorian said, canting his head. “Her clothes are so frumpy…”
“Oh come on, Dor. Just look at her!”
Dr. Dorian tapped at his chin. “You may be right.”
I was confused. Insulted. At wit’s end. I looked back and forth between the two brothers. “What are you talking about?”
Dr. Damian slid down into his seat behind the desk while Dr. Dorian perched on the edge and said, “We’ve done surgeries on literally thousands of patients over the years. Some were done pro bono, like your friend, Stefan. But most of our patients are runway models, women seeking mammoplasties—breast enhancements. They almost always choose—”
“—Double-D’s, they’re our bestseller, you might say,” Dr. Damian finished for his brother. I found that both a little unsettling and whole lot impressive.
I gripped my sweater close. “What do your patients have to do with me?”
“You have perfect breasts,” they said in unison.
I thought about standing up and telling them to go to hell, walking out, but I had to admit I was so desperate for this job that their statement left me more stunned than insulted. “I don’t understand.”
“Your breasts,” Dr. Dorian said. He spoke softer than his brother, with less flair, but there was something quietly compelling about his presence. He seemed to fill the room with a subdued heat, and I found I couldn’t look away from him, his equally chiseled features, sandy hair, broody blue eyes. “They’re perfect double-D’s, which is infinitely rare. They are real? You haven’t had work done?”