Frida and I assumed we were immune to the city’s seamy side because we were poor and quiet. My stomach turns when I realize the only valuable thing someone like me has to give. Guy knew all along I was ripe for the picking.
I unclench my hands and finger the fine lace with the delicacy it deserves. I might’ve liked to wear this for someone like Calvin one day, though there’s a good chance he’d not even notice me in it.
I chase the thought away and throw the garment on the floor. I slam the drawer shut, praying I’ll never have to open it again.
———
I choose an outfit and wait until Carter knocks. He comes in and goes straight for my ankle without looking at me. The cuff unlocks with a loud click, and he stands.
“This is my job,” he says.
“What?”
“You didn’t have to stab me with a fucking fork. I got a family, you know. There’s no escaping, not unless the Master of the House says so. So just chill out.”
“What does he want with me?” I ask, unintentionally glancing toward the closet.
He shrugs. “Like I said, I’m just doing my job. Easier for me if we lock you in a room all day and feed you pills, but they say it’s okay for you to wander around. Fine, but that can be taken away. You know? I got no problem doing what I have to do. Norman’s an old man. You hurt him, and I might be forced to hurt you back.”
I turn my face away, and he leaves. He doesn’t take the cuff and chain with him. I change into a chunky sweater, hiding my hands in the sleeves. Jeans cling like a second skin. I expect resistance when I pull on the bedroom door, but it opens. In the empty hallway, I venture the opposite direction of the stairs. Socks, purposely chosen, mute my steps. Even in the unlit corridor, I can see the house is magnificent. I gently try the handle of each door I pass with no results.
Defeated, I trudge back the way I came. Down two flights of curving staircase, I take each step slowly, as though I’m descending into hell. Norman is there as I reach the final bend, and when I hit the bottom, he holds his hand out to me. I automatically place mine in his, jerking it back just as quickly.
“When the Master of the House is in, dinner attire is required. But when it’s just us,” Norman says with a friendly wink, “this will do.”
His attempt at comfort is lost on me. All I hear is someone I don’t know telling me what to do. He ignores my scowl and leads me through a gold-lighted foyer into a high-ceilinged dining room.
Calling attention to the center of the room is a sturdy table with fat, carved legs. It’s long and imposing, with a high-backed chair at each end and ten in between, five on each side. The red runner down the middle is edged with gold trim. I feel insignificant when I sit in the oversized end chair that Norman directs me to. As soon as I hit the cushion, a considerably rotund man is setting a dish in front of me.
“Normally Norman will deliver your food,” he says, shoving his hand between us, “but I’ve been waiting all day to meet you. I’m Chef Michael.”
I can almost feel the dark bags sagging under my eyes when I stare blankly at him.
He straightens up and clears his throat. “It’s not often that we have guests.” He laughs in a quick burst, touches his strawberry-blond hair, and shrugs at Norman. “Not often at all, actually. I’ve made this especially for your arrival. Asian-style quail on a bed of wild rice.”
His tone is irritatingly proud, so I say, “I’m a vegetarian.”
Norman looks down his nose at me. “No, you are not.”
I frown, incensed that he’s called my bluff. I look up at the chef with pleading, watery eyes. “I’m being held hostage,” I tell him. “Please. You have to help me.”
He visibly tenses, but his gaze shifts from mine. “Can I get you anything else, Ms. Ford?”
I just shake my head.
Whatever they gave me turned me ravenous. I clear my plate quickly, along with the warm chocolate soufflé delivered immediately after. The only sound in the room is the echo of my fork clinking against the plate. I’m satisfied, but I eat until the last bite and set my silverware down. I wonder why Guy isn’t here for dinner and when he’ll finally show up. Crude ideas of what our meeting will be like come easily because of an afternoon spent agonizing.
My gaze flits around grand surroundings, noting the long, skinny windows that frame freedom like a painting. Where would I go? Where am I? Am I even near New Rhone anymore? When I look over my shoulder, my eyes land on Norman in the doorway. “I’m ready for the tour,” I say.
His reply comes with a clasp of his hands. “Delightful.”
Carter appears from the kitchen as if he’d been waiting there. My fists shove into the shallow pockets of my jeans as I follow Norman and Carter follows me.
“If a room is unlocked, you are free to enjoy,” Norman explains cheerfully. He takes me around the ground floor, and I count doors and windows. None of the closed doors are included on the tour. There’s a chapel specially installed for the staff at Norman’s request. When he tells me to use it anytime I want, I can’t tell if it’s an invitation or a suggestion. Carter is our silent shadow and makes neither invitations nor suggestions.
Norman seems excited to show me the second floor, which has a game room, home cinema, gym, and another smaller, more intimate dining room. His smile vanishes when I don’t react. But then his eyes light up. “I saved the best for last,” he says.
He leads me down the marble stairs, back to the ground floor. On the way, I think how if I weren’t forced to stay here, I’d have died and gone to heaven. But I don’t realize how true that is until we reach my first slice of happiness in twenty-four hours: the most impressive library I’ve ever seen. Endless books line the walls of a room that somehow manages to be both overwhelming and cozy.
My lips part, inching open until I’m gaping. My head tilts to take in the sheer quantity of books surrounding me. I trace my finger over leather binding, embossed titles, glossy authors. Everything from Atlas Shrugged to Interview with the Vampire to The Velveteen Rabbit. My hearts skips and swells as I recognize stories I’ve read, ones I want to read, and even more thrilling, so many I’ve never heard of.
Norman’s voice disrupts my literary worship. “Perhaps it’s time to rest again. You’ve had a trying day.”
I sigh. “And still no answers.”
“I can’t promise you will ever get your answers; that’s up to the Master of the House. For now, dear, that will have to be answer enough.”
I swallow down the curse I’m tempted to hurl at him. Despite his involvement in keeping me here, I’m not so sure he has any more choice in the matter than I do. So far he’s been kind to me, and though I’m distrustful, it doesn’t seem that taking my anger out on him gets me anywhere. I decide to reserve that for Guy Fowler.
Even having slept much of the day, Norman is right that I’m exhausted. Sleep sounds welcoming. Carter fades into the shadows after a warning look, but Norman follows me up the steps to the third floor.
“Cataline,” he says when we reach the landing.
I turn and face him.
“There’s nothing much to see on your floor. It’s mostly guest bedrooms and storage. However . . .” He points up stairs that fade into darkness, where not a light that I can see shines. “Do not go to the fourth floor.”
“Why not?”
He inhales deeply. “That floor is meant only for the Master of the House, and when necessary, staff. He is very particular about his space.”
I shrug my shoulders with defeat. “Whatever. Goodnight.”
With that, I leave Norman and his sudden grimness at the mouth of floor four.
The equipment’s hum suits the room’s grey, steely surroundings. Machinery that never rests heats the space, but warmth seems inherently wrong for all the sharp edges. Indiscriminate file cabinets filled with data close us in. Files are labeled, alphabetized, slid, shut, and locked into place. Cameras guard the most important corners of the mansion and transmit here. From th
is underground security chamber, I am even more transcendent than usual. My shoulders depress with a deep and overdue exhale.
“I can handle this, sir,” Norman says to my back. “You have more important things to worry about.”
I ignore him as screen number four of twelve distorts, erratic scribbles marring the black-and-white dining room.
“I know how this type of behavior upsets you,” Carter mutters as he rewinds the footage.
“You say this isn’t the first time?”
“She has fits now and then. So far only during the day when you aren’t around.”
“She should be thankful for that.”
“Give her time,” Norman says. “There’s bound to be some wreckage until she settles.”
I turn to face him with an arched eyebrow. “It’s not the wreckage that concerns me. It’s the disregard for your authority and the lack of a routine. We don’t ask much of her. It shouldn’t be so difficult to acclimate.”
“Put yourself in her shoes,” Norman says under his breath. “It’s only been a week.”
“This is the time for authority. There’s no room for mistakes in our world, you know that. Even the smallest one can change everything. If I could ignore her antics, I would. I don’t give a damn what she does with her days. But disobedience has to be cut off at the source.”
“I understand, but all I’m suggesting is some patience. Maybe I can give her something to make her feel more at home. Is there anything in her apartment she can have?”
“Like I have time to go snooping in her apartment. She seems to like Mexican food—why don’t you have Michael make her some of those chicken tacos?” He frowns when I laugh. “Don’t treat her like such a child, Norman. She’ll adapt. If she doesn’t, I’ll just have to put myself in her path. How’s that for an idea?”
“Not a good one, Master.”
“If she behaves this way while I’m here, it’ll come to that. Once she sees tantrums won’t be tolerated, she’ll have no choice but to accept her situation. However, if she snoops, or if she insists on being difficult, she might unknowingly walk into a world she couldn’t even dream up. A world where I’m this,” I say, touching my chest and lowering my voice, “and that’s information she can never know.”
“Sir?”
I glance down at Carter and then the screen. Cataline sits in a tall chair at the dining table. She’s still for so long that I find myself studying her face. The camera turns her unblinking blue eyes a shade of grey. Her cheeks are probably pink to match lips that are too feminine, too shaped like a heart for my taste. As though she picked a rose from its vase and rubbed it over her white skin. In monochrome, her hair is a tangled inky web waiting for prey. Waiting for me.
“Is everything all right, sir?” Norman asks.
“Why?”
“You made a noise.”
I raise my eyebrows just as Cataline’s body jerks into motion. Without warning, she lunges across the table, reaching out for something.
“Here we go,” Carter says.
I’ve been bad. Locked in my room for five days because I tried to smash a dining room window with a candlestick. And when I noticed cameras in every shadowy corner of my room, I broke them all. They were replaced by the next morning, but I’ve been imprisoned ever since.
Days are beginning to blur together. I watch time pass on a desk calendar I sneaked into my room from the library. Each day I tear away a page, thankful that it isn’t one of those calendars with jokes or images of baby animals. I know I’m almost two weeks into captivity, and I can spend up to an hour tracing the bold, red date with my finger.
True to his word, Norman is either out of information or refuses to give it to me. Guy obviously pays him well, and I have nothing to tempt his loyalty. The thought always makes my shoulders slump, and my posture grows poorer by the day.
Norman brings me the things I ask for and checks on me from time to time. For good behavior, he has Carter free my ankle after a couple days. But he won’t engage me in conversation. Before I was confined to my room, Chef Michael was easier to get talking, but only to a point. It’s as if there’s a barrier in our conversations that nobody will leap—and it’s not very far from the starting line.
Tonight, I’m in bed, staring up at the mesh canopy. The more I want sleep, the more I need escape, the harder it is to catch. Every night I try to understand my new reality. If I’m to be sold or prostituted, why am I here? Shouldn’t I be locked up in a room with other girls, stripped of even my most basic rights? Is there some other use for someone like me I haven’t thought of?
My mind plays a constant loop of scenarios, mostly what I could’ve done differently. I imagine not holding Guy’s eye contact in the restaurant and not inviting him to sit with us. Not inviting danger into the booth next to me. I dissect my current situation, examining it for loopholes in much the same way I run my fingertips along all the mansion’s walls.
Before my outburst, I spent hours in the library finding escape in the pages of books. I also discovered a darkroom and asked Norman for a camera, which he promised to try and get from “the Master of the House.”
Since my punishment does not allow me even books, boredom infiltrates the days in my room—but anticipation rules them. I’m growing desperate to know what Guy’s planning, so much so that I’m tempted to investigate the fourth floor once I’m released back into the mansion. Sinister thoughts feed off my ennui, breeding fear and paranoia. I wonder if the cameras broadcast to the entire world. Maybe I’m an experiment, and people are watching me right now from their living rooms.
I must have fallen asleep, because I wake up to screams. Realizing they’re my own brings me no comfort. In my nightmare, the cameras transmitted footage right into people’s living rooms. They shoveled TV dinners into their mouths, watching as I stacked furniture to reach the camera in the corner. “Pretty girl like you ought to be more careful,” they said, ignoring my screamed begs for help.
I’m panting as the dream fades into the night and reality comes into focus. The bedroom window is open, and a breeze fondles the bed’s white drapes. My tight chest staggers with short breaths as sweat trickles down my temples. I pull off the comforter and take the few steps to the window, my only tenuous connection to the real world.
With my knees on the cushioned seat beneath the window, I hang the upper half of my body outside. It’s dark tonight, the mean moon a curved slash in obscurity, beginning and ending with two sharp points. I close my eyes to the night air’s caress. If I jumped, could I latch onto that crescent in the sky? Hang there until the sun rose? I wonder if it would matter, if daylight would frighten the monsters away or merely expose them.
I look down and down and down because darkness swallows everything beneath me. Still, I know the rosebushes are there. How fitting it would be to have my fall broken by a thousand thorns, painting crimson roses black with my blood.
I descend from the windowsill and go to the wall where I’ve defiantly marked the days I’ve been in this room. The slashes blur together, and I scream. My fingernails scrape away the wallpaper, peeling a path of coiled ringlets.
I’m at the bed, pulling at fistfuls of gossamer until my palms burn. Its heavenly appearance is unaffected by my earsplitting screams; it continues to invite, deceiving me to sleep under its feathery veil and awaken in velvet red and sunlight gold.
I release the stubborn fabric and sprint to the door where I alternate between beating on it with my fists and pulling the handle with my entire body. And it continues without breaking, this horrible screeching that starts in my stomach and destroys my throat. I want out. I want my freedom.
Relief hits with metal on metal, a key in the door. The old man has come to calm me. My throat is raw and dry, but I choke, “Please, Norman. Let me out.”
The answer I get is gritty, rolling with incredulity. “Norman? No such luck.”
I’m stunned into silence, barely leaping out of the way when the door opens. A flash
of low light illuminates a silhouette, the same one who stalked my bed the first night. When the door slams, we’re plummeted once again into darkness. Thinking only of escape, I lunge forward and dodge to what I hope is his side. Despite the blackness of the room, he catches my waist with surprising accuracy.
“Run, and I’ll chase you,” he says calmly. “Believe me, you don’t want that.”
I squirm in his tightening hold, my elbow stabbing into his side repeatedly. My screamed protests are incoherent with panic; my body’s never felt more alive and more foreign, every frantic thump of my heart diffusing fear and adrenaline through me. My fist thumps against his chest, pain shooting from my wrist, but he just grunts.
“Let go of me!” He does, and I launch myself to the ground from the force of my struggling. I retreat, crawling backward to the bed, seeking refuge in what I just sought to destroy.
“Do I not provide everything you need?” he asks. My eyes search the nothingness desperately as menacing footsteps close in on me. “Why do you insist on throwing a tantrum like a child?”
His voice is made of pure threat, so low I feel it underneath me in the floor. “Are you the M-Master of the House?”
“Get back in your bed and keep quiet,” he says. “Don’t make me come back to this room.”
My arms are trembling so hard they’re on the verge of giving out. I don’t know when I began crying, but it’s turning hysterical.
“Did you hear me?” he asks. “I said get back on the goddamn bed.”
When I don’t move, his presence abruptly surrounds me, his fingers wrapping around my bicep. I thrash more, kicking his shin, slapping his firm grip with my free hand. My teeth and nails hunt wildly for exposed skin.
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