by Nya Rayne
He glanced back at her, shot her a broken smile, and then turned his attention back to the window. “Are you finished working?”
“For today, yes. Why? Do you want to do something? We could go out.”
He was quiet for a long moment before he spoke, “Why are all your music programs by women? All of the people who report your news are women too, and down there,” he pointed, “are mostly women, as well, and if they’re not, they’re those machines you told me about.” He turned away from the window, twisting out of her grasp. “Why aren’t there more men like me here? There should be more men, shouldn’t there?”
The perplexity of his gaze disturbed Phia for reasons she couldn’t explain. She looked away from him and down at the street, where there were several women walking alone and a few walking with FAPs and PAPs. There was nothing unnatural about the scene she was witnessing. This was the norm for a world run by and for women, where men were nearly extinct. Without turning around to face him, she said, “In a perfect world, I guess there would be more men like you down there, Donté, but men like you don’t, for the most part, exist anymore.”
“Don’t exist?” he repeated, befuddled. “I don’t understand.”
She turned to him. The X racing across his chest was an eye-catching thing in itself. “I don’t know how to answer such a question and make you understand.”
He gazed down at her for a pregnant moment before he relaxed, his hand coming out to grasp hers. “I don’t mean to make you sad, Phia, but I’m confused. I feel like I should know things I don’t know, and I don’t know why I don’t know these things.”
Phia brushed a few thick brown locks from his face, and cupped his cheek as she stepped closer to him. “Dr. Lobush told me you might be confused at times, so I think this is normal.” He looked at her as though he didn’t believe her or didn’t trust what she’d said to him. Phia truly couldn’t blame him. Even to her ears it sounded like more of an evasion than an explanation. “How about this, we’ll give Dr. Lobush a call to…”
“I’m not broken,” he said, cutting her off.
For a brief second everything about him changed—his stance, his grip on her, the normal softness of his eyes—and she was looking at a stranger. With a blink of his eyes, his gaze softened again, and he was staring at her once more in bewilderment.
“I know you’re not broken, but I was thinking maybe she could explain the things you’re confused about better than I can.”
He exhaled and tightened his hold on her hand. “I don’t want her to explain it to me, Phia. I want you to do it.”
“Why me? I think she would do a much better job at it.”
“I trust you,” he said. “I don’t know why, but I do.”
Before she could acknowledge what he’d told her, a chime sounded around them, and the soft music they were listening to was replaced by “Beethoven’s Fifth.”
“The Wicked Witch of the South is calling again. Should I take another message?” the masculine Australian-accented voice living in her speaker system asked.
Knowing she could only ignore her mother’s calls for so long before she popped up unannounced, Phia sighed and said to Donté, “Let me take this call and then we’ll talk, okay? I don’t know how much help I’ll be, but together we’ll figure it out.”
He smiled at her, and Phia couldn’t help but smile back at him. Did he honestly think so highly of her? Could he actually trust her as much as his eyes told her he did?
“Phia, do you want me to connect the call or take a message?” the voice asked.
She leaned up on her toes and brushed a kiss on Donté’s lips. “Yes, please connect it.”
“Mother, this really isn’t a good time,” Donté heard Phia say more than a few times before he moved away from her and stepped out of the viewing room altogether. He didn’t understand the relationship she and her mother shared, and honestly he didn’t feel it was necessary for him to do so. What he did understand, though, was that Phia didn’t deserve the kind of treatment she got. The woman, Varonda, treated her as if she was a doll she could control at whim.
From what he could gather from their current conversation, Varonda was dictating to Phia that she should be at some function for someone tomorrow afternoon, and there were no ifs, ands, or buts about it.
Whatever that meant.
Donté blocked out the rest of their conversation as he strolled into the eastern section of the condo. He hadn’t ventured into this portion before, but he found it was decorated as nicely as the remainder of the home, in warm colors of soft yellows and rich browns. He also noticed that unlike the other parts, there were no hologram photographs of people Phia had called family members. The end tables and walls were bare of any detritus which would have labeled the space as belonging to someone. On each console table there was a single beautiful vase filled with orange and lavender flowers he’d never seen before.
He stopped at each vase and sniffed the flowers, trying to commit their fragrance to memory.
As he stepped further down the hallway, he trailed his fingers across a few of the gold framed pictures hanging on either side on the walls. There were pictures of landscapes, waterfalls, a group of dogs running in a green pasture, and one was of a stoic woman sitting up straight, her eyes defiant. He continued down the hall and stopped short as he stepped into an open room with a sleek baby grand piano.
Sunlight filtered into the windows, danced off the dustless surface of the piano, and created crystalline creatures on three walls of the room and the ceiling. A crystal chandelier hung directly over the center of the piano. With the mixture of sunlight reflecting through the chandelier, beautiful rainbows filled with various shades of reds, blues, yellows, and greens danced alongside the crystalline creatures.
Donté stepped to the solitary seat in the room, a white, heavily cushioned chaise longue. He trailed his fingers across it, reveling in the rich texture and at the same time marveling at the room in its entirety. Some people would have thought the room was underdressed and held very little personality, but this room, he knew, was Phia’s room. Even though she owned every room in the condo, she had only claimed this room. There was a quiet undertone to the manner in which the room was decorated that spoke to his heart in the same manner she did.
He moved back the way he’d come. As he drew close to the piano, he stopped, settled onto the elegant leather bench, and lifted the lid covering the celluloid keys. Closing his eyes, Donté’s fingers began to dance across the keys, strumming out a soft melody that filled the room and his soul with memories and thoughts that made absolutely no sense to him.
“Hold your wrists like this. Keep your back straight. Wrong, repeat it from the beginning. You’ll never find favor playing like this!” Sea-green eyes flecked with silver filled his head. Full lips. Long, elegant fingers. Black, waist-length hair cascading in thick ringlets over lean, honey-bronzed shoulders.
Trinity.
His eyes snapped open, his fingers skipped a note, and with the blink of an eye the memory vanished.
“I didn’t know you could play,” Phia said from behind him.
Donté blinked, shook his head, and inhaled to calm his rapidly beating heart. What had he been doing? He glanced over his shoulder at Phia, and then across at the time display on the corner table. Seven minutes had passed. He blinked again, shook his head again, and tried to remember where the time had gone.
“That was beautiful, Donté. What was it?”
He glanced down at the keys. He noticed absently that his fingers were trembling. Placing them in his lap, he forced a smile and said, “Was I playing this thing?”
“Don’t be bashful,” she said, settling on the bench next to him. “It was the most beautiful sonata I’ve ever heard.”
Donté forced himself to relax. “Do you play?”
“A little, but I don’t think I could play anything half as beautiful as what you just played.”
He could feel his face flush, so he looked away from her and aroun
d the room. “This is a lovely room.”
“It’s my little getaway,” she said glancing around at the spare décor. “I usually don’t allow anyone in here, but…” She leaned into him, brushed her lips across his cheek and finished, “I can make an exception for you.”
His face went from red to beet red in a fraction of a second. “So what did your mother want?”
“The same thing she always wants, to play on my last nerve,” she stated flippantly. “Would you play something else for me?”
Donté glanced down at the keys, unsure whether he could remember what he’d done even if he wanted to. “Play something for me,” he said quickly, hoping she wouldn’t catch on to his dodge.
Phia shot him a knowing glance. “Well, what do you want me to play?”
“Anything is fine,” he said, and then amended, “Play me your favorite melody.”
She closed her eyes and seemed to sink deep within herself for a moment, and then her fingers began to move slowly over the keys. He closed his eyes, allowed the soothing melody, which could only have come from her heart, to find a place in his soul, and suddenly nothing else mattered. No wayward dreams or thoughts. No missing time. Not her banshee of a mother or anything else for that matter.
The music ended all too soon, and she turned to him. “Donté?”
“That was beautiful.”
“It’s something I’ve been working on in my spare time. Nothing too special.”
He leaned in, kissed the corner of her mouth, and pulled her closer into the shelter of his arm. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything more beautiful. When you finish it, you’ll have to play it for me again.”
Phia brushed her hand over his cheek. “You’re so amazing, Donté. I wish other women could experience what you’ve brought into my life.”
“Why can’t they?”
She sighed heavily and looked away from him. “Almost sixty years ago, Donté, the country went to war against four different nations: Asia, Central America, Africa, and Europe. This war was called the Thirty-One-Year War, and it began the extinction of the male population.” Her fingers began to slowly move over the keys, plucking out another soothing tune, but this time one he could vaguely remember. “A lot of women died, but ninety-five percent of the men called upon to serve their country died. When the war ended, the only ones left were mostly women and babies.”
“War did this?”
“Yes, unfortunately. The baby boys that were left are now what we call frehores. Based on the 2109 census report there are about three hundred of them left nationwide. When they’re all gone we’ll be left with the FAPs and the PAPs.”
“Frehores?”
“They’re male prostitutes. They sell their time to the highest bidder.”
“You spoke about them in your journal. You were going to set an appointment with one of them.”
She reddened. “Yes, I was considering it before you came into my life.”
Donté watched her fingers skip across the keys for a moment longer before asking, “If women are sleeping with the frehores, haven’t any of them had babies? I mean, they should have had babies, right? And some of them should be boys who grew into men like me.”
Phia stopped playing altogether and turned to face him. “Women can’t carry male embryos to term, Donté. Every once and a while a woman will get pregnant with a baby boy, but the babies are either stillborn or the woman miscarries.”
He frowned at her in concentration. “If there are no men, how do women get pregnant?”
“Well, that’s pretty easy to do. We have facilities called Embryo Sites. A woman interested in getting pregnant goes to one to put in an application. When it’s approved, the Healers shoot some previously harvested or reproduced sperm into her ovaries.” She held her arms out for emphasis and finished, “And ta-da, you’re pregnant.”
Donté looked away from her to the large bay window across the room. He would have liked to say none of this made sense to him, but how could he when he did not remember any other world before this one? Still, if what Phia said was the truth, then where the hell had he come from? As far as he knew, he hadn’t fallen from the sky or crawled from beneath a rock. Could they have created him with their technology?
“Phia, if what you say is true, where did I come from?” He squeezed his hand closed so his nails dug into his palms. A stabbing pain shot through his palm. Surely, if he had been created, he would not have been able to feel pain. “I believe I’m as real as you are, but yet you tell me women can’t have male children. Certainly, I have to have been born by a woman, right?”
Phia whispered his name sympathetically and leaned into him, her head coming to rest on his round muscular shoulder. “I really wish I had an answer for you, but I don’t. This is why I wanted you to speak with Dr. Lobush. I didn’t want to confuse you even more than you already are.”
He sighed softly and buried his hand in the roots of her thick hair. Perhaps he was worried about the wrong things. Maybe instead of worrying about what was not, he should be happy for what was. Regardless of the things which made no sense to him or the things he knew he should know but didn’t know, he should be happy to just be within this woman’s presence. Goddess. The word whispered through his mind.
“Do you want me to schedule an appointment with Dr. Lobush?” Phia asked while pushing away from him.
Donté shook his head and kissed her forehead and the tip of her nose. He brushed his lips across each corner of her mouth before kissing her directly, once, twice, three times. “No. I don’t really think it matters much. I’m right where I need to be,” he said just before he deepened the kiss even more.
Chapter Ten
Phia forced a smile and tried not to scowl at the decorously dressed and heavily painted women around her. They were sparkling in satin dresses of reds, pinks, lime greens, shimmering whites, and purples and draped in pearls and rubies. Their hair was done up at the crowns of their heads as if this were a fairy tale ball.
She scoffed to herself and swiped a flute of champagne from the passing FAP’s tray as she turned away from the cackling hens. They were all behaving as though they were delighted to see one another, when she, and they, knew they all would be gossiping about one another the minute they went their separate ways.
Phia skirted the edge of the room, the hem of her long, form-fitting, V-backed gown swirling around her stiletto heels.
When her mother had called earlier in the evening, interrupting her conversation with Donté, the last thing she’d expected the woman to say was her presence was expected at the banquet for the Higher Highness of Serenity. Phia had told her she would not be attending anything with her and attempted to hang up. However, her mother took much pride in reminding her that the position of baroness was not elected, but inherited.
Phia wanted nothing to do with being a baroness of anything, but she also knew that her failure to come and stand at the witch’s side would bring shame upon her mother and her family name. It would be a very public snub, and the people with whom her mother cavorted would subsequently see no reason why they should respect the Baroness if her own daughter did not.
Until an hour before Phia left for the banquet, she’d still been teetering between going and not going. Regardless of her bravado, she was well aware neither she nor Donté would be able to withstand her mother’s wrath. Ultimately, she’d finagled two public tickets out of her mother. One went to Ice, since Phia had been unable to attend the speech portion of the evening with her as promised, and the other to Donté, who she made Ice promise to take along.
Even though only a matter of hours had passed since she had been with Donté, it was impossible to squelch her desire to see him. Of course, had her mother not been such a wailing shrew with her objections as to why Donté couldn’t attend with her, he would be at Phia’s side now. That aside, she’d picked out a beautiful, sleeveless white tuxedo jacket for him, with a geometric black steel breastplate and matching cufflinks. He’d com
plained unmercifully about the coarse material of the spangled jeans she’d told him to wear, but he was going to look scrumptious in the ensemble and would put the rest of the PAPs and FAPs in attendance to shame.
Aside from needing to be near him, she also wanted to make sure he was all right. He hadn’t said much after their talk and had seemed to be his usual self, but she still felt the need to make certain he was okay for her own peace of mind.
Phia sighed, thankful the evening was nearing its end. At any moment the doors would be opening to the public and Ice and Donté would be allowed in to share in the rest of the festivities.
She had already performed her duties of being the good, respectful daughter. She had also listened as the Higher Highness spoke about saving our friendly felines, and she had acted proud and humble as the woman commended her mother for the exceptional job she performed as Baroness of the Carolinas. She’d even smiled and held a straight face when she told the Higher Highness she was looking forward to the torch of baroness being passed to her.
A fiery redheaded woman with beautiful tattoo enhancements of a mythical dragon running the length of her right arm and a leather-clad PAP in tow, bumped into Phia. She shook off her thoughts as she looked around to find droves of people spilling into the room, crowding her hard-won space. She began moving quickly through the crowd.
“Excuse me,” she said quietly, as she bumped into one woman and then another. “Sorry. Excuse me.” Phia stopped, glancing around, her anxiety rising as she searched the multitude, looking for one or both of those familiar faces. Moving forward again as she continued to scan the room, her eyes landed on her mother, who stood close to the head of the room, surrounded by a group of women of a range of ages.
She wondered, not for the first time, why her mother had decided not to bring her PAP, Elric, with her to such a function. As a matter of fact, she hadn’t seen her mother and Elric together in quite some time. Phia shrugged her shoulders. She refused to spend a moment longer cogitating as to why her mother did or did not do certain things. She had a sexy beast to locate and escape unbidden with.