“Mm.” He kept it soft himself. “But you noticed. Got you paying attention, didn’t I.” He inclined his head even more toward me and took a breath. “And that’s Coco by Chanel. Very nice indeed. Not what I’d expected from you, though.”
“Because I’m such a simple girl?”
“Getting the picture, aren’t I. And it’s this way.” He put a light hand on my lower back and steered me to the right, and I had to fight myself not to lean into him.
“I’m kind of feeling like a chaperone right now,” Karen informed us. “So you know.”
“Yeh,” Hemi said. “That was the idea, wasn’t it.”
“Hope’s not that hard to get,” Karen said, and I gasped. What?
“I mean,” Karen went on, oblivious, “she does go out with guys. Without me along.”
“Mm,” Hemi said. “I’m a bit special, maybe.”
“Because you’re too rich?” Karen asked.
“Nah. I don’t think that’s it. Or not all of it.”
“Hmm,” she said. “Maybe it’s that you are too big, and too…sort of take-charge. She doesn’t really go for guys like you. You know. Hot guys.”
“Could be,” Hemi said. He looked at me again. “What d’you reckon?”
“Oh, now you’re asking me?” I waved an airy hand. “Go on. Please. Continue exploring your bafflement at my resistance to your animal magnetism.”
“That’s right. The animal metaphors.” He told Karen, “We’ll put it that she feels a power imbalance.” He must have heard the snort I couldn’t suppress, because he smiled. “And that she’s not sure yet whether that’s…what she wants.”
“Oh,” I sighed, and, amazingly, forgot him. Because we’d come to the rose garden, and it was enormous. I hadn’t been here in much too long, and I couldn’t imagine why not.
Long rows of flowers stretched before us to either side, a sea of color even in September, near the end of their season. Pure, creamy whites and sunny, vibrant yellows, the blush and glow of pinks and purples, the sensual promise of deep, strong crimson. All set against the glossy green of the well-tended bushes, the brighter hue of the grassy paths. The warm, humid air was so richly scented with them, I was already almost drunk with it.
So much to see. So much to smell, and I needed to start right now.
I let my hand drop from Hope’s back, but she didn’t seem to notice. She was wandering into the garden, opening her arms as if to embrace the beauty surrounding her. Bending to pull a bloom closer with a gentle hand, breathing its fragrance in before moving on, caught up in color and scent.
I’d been right. This had been a good choice.
“She’s going to be totally oblivious,” Karen informed me. “She loves flowers. Somebody sent her these flowers at work this week, and—” She stopped and laughed. “Oh. Duh. That was you.”
“Yeh.” I kept my eyes on Hope, because I couldn’t have looked away. “It was me. Did she bring them home, then?”
“Oh, yeah. Taking up about the whole kitchen table, and that smell’s powerful.”
“And that’s not good?”
She shrugged. “It’s OK. Sometimes I don’t feel great in the morning, that’s all.”
“Oh? Why not? Don’t like school?”
“No. Nothing. I’m going to go sit down in the shade and do my homework. I mean, assuming you don’t want the chaperone thing anymore. I still don’t get why I had to come.”
“Because I scare your sister a bit. I’ll do my best not to, though, so we can leave you out of it.”
“See?” she said. “That, what you just said. Why would you be scary? Hope’s so weird sometimes. Probably because she feels responsible for me and everything. It’s like she’s fifty. Anyway. I’m going to go wait for you guys.”
She was looking a bit white. Maybe just the heat. But she headed over to a bench beneath an arbor and pulled a thick textbook out of her backpack, so she probably did just need shade.
I set out to catch up with Hope. She was still stopping, bending, then moving on, though, not looking at me, or looking for me, either, so I left her alone for a bit and did my own wandering about. Finally, when she was headed slowly back my way again, I went to join her.
“Smell this one,” she said, fingering a deep yellow flower, and I bent my head and obliged. Spicy. “So pretty, too, isn’t it?” she said. “So sunny. And this one.” She was holding a deep red rose now, and I smelled that one, too. Rich and heady.
We moved on, and she pointed out her favorites and bent to smell them again, and invited me to do the same. And it wasn’t so bad at all. Watching a woman experience pleasure was one of my favorite things. And if I liked it best if I were giving her that pleasure…well, I was, in a way, wasn’t I?
“Got a favorite?” I asked her when we’d reached the end of the row.
“Yes. This one.” She took me around to the next row as if it she’d forgotten to be wary, and I walked with her, enjoying looking down at the pale-blonde head. I knew I couldn’t really smell her, not amidst so many competing aromas, but I fancied I could.
She stopped in front of a bush and pulled a bloom toward her with a reverent hand, closed her eyes, and inhaled the perfume as if it were the only scent in the world. “I think…this one. This is the one I came back to twice already. Those are the best things, you know? The ones you can’t help but come back to.”
“Yeh. They are.” I glanced down at the neatly printed green sign. Nuage. Tinted the palest lavender, the inner petals nearly white, folded tightly, preserving their secrets. The outer petals a pinkish purple, delicately ruffled at the edges, offering up their gift of feminine sensuality.
“Smell,” she said, and I bent and inhaled. A bit spicy, a bit sweet. Exactly right. Exactly Hope.
“Mm,” I said. “That’s you. Did you know that flowers have a language as well? Meanings?”
“I’ve heard that, but I don’t know anything about it. Except that roses are for love, or whatever. They have to be, don’t they, since they’re the most beautiful thing there is. And rosemary’s for remembrance.” She smiled. “Hamlet. That’s about it for my knowledge. Do you know anything more than that?”
“A bit.” I didn’t tell her that I’d done some research in preparation for today’s outing. “Do you want to hear?”
“Please,” she said, and there was that smile again, the best one. The one I’d seen only a couple of times. Like the Southern Hemisphere sun coming out after a storm, striking diamonds of light off the ruffles of blue-green water, dazzling you. “Tell me. Like the flowers in my bouquet, for example? Do you know what they meant?”
“Well, your bouquet, yeh. But they were wrong, I’m thinking. Or not so right. White roses—that’s innocence.” I smiled a little ruefully. “Obviously. And the stock—that’s meant to be ‘bonds of affection.’ Which I didn’t know at the time, but that could work, too.”
“Innocence and friendship. Not so much your thing, is it?”
“Oh, it could work for me. As I may have mentioned.”
“Mm.” She walked along the row again, and I kept pace with her. “So if white’s innocence…” she went on, “good thing my favorite wasn’t red, huh? Because I’ll bet that’s ‘passion’ or something, and as we know, I’m not so good at that. What do you suppose that one back there was?”
“Oh, I think you could do passion. I think so. But, yeh. Lavender. That one’s meant to mean ‘enchantment.’ That one’s the fairy tale.” I didn’t tell her it also meant to be “love at first sight,” because I didn’t believe in it, and I didn’t want to give her any ideas. Lust at first sight, now—that was something else. That, I believed in.
“Oh,” she said. “Too bad I don’t believe in fairy tales.”
“No?” Not that I did, either.
“No. Life isn’t Cinderella, is it?”
“Never?”
“Not as far as I’ve ever seen. Or if it is, it sure doesn’t turn out well. Because, all right. Let’s take that one.
What is Cinderella?”
“Dunno. What?”
“She’s poor, and she’s beautiful, and she’s ‘good,’ right? Which probably means she’s a doormat. And the prince sees her—well, he sees she’s beautiful, anyway, and he just…” Her arm went out. “Sweeps her away, and, poof, she’s rich, she’s a princess, and all her troubles are over. But what happens when she isn’t beautiful anymore? When somebody else is more beautiful? How’s that going to work out?”
“Could be he saw something else in her,” I said. Now fairy tales weren’t allowed? I couldn’t do this the way I wanted to, and I wasn’t allowed to be romantic, either? Or at least to try to be, or pretend to be. What was left?
“Hm,” she said. “He sees her inner worth when they’re dancing at the ball? I don’t think so, do you? I think it was mostly the ‘beautiful’ thing. And the ‘good’ thing, meaning she puts up with everything everybody does to her and never fights back. Until the prince rides up and takes her away, so she can put up with him, and whatever he wants to do. Just drifting with the tide and hoping for the best. Waiting to be rescued. Not the best message, would you say?”
I was getting a bit narky now. “Am I still meant to feel bad for ‘sweeping you away’ from that Galway bloke? And yet I could’ve sworn I was trying to make your life better.”
“Uh-huh.” She glanced at me from the corner of her eye. “Altruistic, were you? You rescue all the photographer’s assistants you encounter?”
“No,” I said, and if it sounded a bit grim, that was because it was how I was feeling. “Just you.”
“Mm-hm. Because you liked how I looked, just like the prince liked Cinderella. You thought I was tiny and sweet, and that I’d do whatever you wanted. That I’d belong to you, at least for a while. At least for as long as it lasted. Which is the Cinderella thing again, right? So her life is better than before, but how much better? And how much choice was really involved in that?”
“And yet you’ve showed me again and again,” I said, my tone grimmer still, “that whatever I thought you were that day, you aren’t it, and here I still am. If you’re so convinced that I don’t want to do anything but take advantage of you, why did you come today at all? You never thought that I might want to know the real you?”
I didn’t tell her that she’d been absolutely right, at least in one aspect. That her tiny, sweet body excited me, that I wanted her to belong to me and do whatever I wanted. I didn’t think that was going to help.
“As opposed to just sleeping with me and moving on,” she said.
I didn’t lose my temper, not ever. I didn’t let anger rule me anymore. Except that it was happening, and I couldn’t shut it down.
I’d done it all. Had sent her flowers, spent a half hour in the roof garden with her, taken her to the rose garden with her sister. Had talked to her sister, and smelled roses, and talked about fairy tales. And I was still copping all this?
“You say you want the real world and not the fairy tale,” I said. “You don’t. You don’t even want to hear what the real world is, much less live there. And no, that isn’t what I want. I don’t sleep with women.”
“Oh. Oh, that’s nice.” Those eyes were flashing something other than sunshine now, and, no, sleeping with her wasn’t top of my list just then. “So they don’t even get to spend the night? You just, what? Just…just fuck them and send them home? Plus whatever else it is you’ve been hinting about and…and threatening me with, all this time?”
There was no point in holding onto my temper, even if I could’ve managed it. Which I couldn’t. “I haven’t been the one talking about spiders and butterflies,” I managed to say. “You’re the one who’s been looking up at me with those big eyes, making it clear how much you’ve liked thinking about it. You know what I want. I’m willing to date you for it if that’s what I have to do. But that doesn’t mean I’m willing to dance for you, or whatever it is you want from me. It doesn’t mean I’m going to apologize again for helping you get a better job. And you’re not allowed to talk like that to me. You hate doing it, and I hate hearing it. If there’s talking like that to do, it’ll be me doing it.”
I didn’t care that it was a double standard. There were rules. My rules.
Pity she didn’t play by them, because her breath was coming hard now, and not for the right reasons. “Oh, it’s all your way? And I’m supposed to be excited by that? I’m supposed to want that?”
My fists were clenching, and I could barely get the words out. “No. You know you want that.”
I saw the hand in time, and my own hand shot out and closed around her wrist. “Oh, no,” I told her. “Not this time.”
My grip was tight, but she struggled in it for a moment longer, even though she had no hope of getting loose as long as I wanted to hold her. She was panting. Furious. And so was I, and more, too. I knew what I wanted right now. I knew exactly. I wanted to show her that I was right in the most emphatic way possible.
And then her gaze shifted, and she said, in a completely different voice, “Let me go. Hemi. Please.”
I dropped her hand, and she was rushing past me to the shady spot under the trellis, and I put my head back and counted to ten, and then to twenty. And then I turned to look for her. She wasn’t going to be running away from me again. I’d taken the two of them out, and I was going to see that they got home safely. No matter what.
King Tsin
I’d noticed when Karen had left Hemi and gone to sit on a bench under the rose arbor with her book, but she wasn’t reading now. The book was on the ground, and she was curled on her side in a fetal position with her arm over her head.
She might have been resting, but I somehow knew she wasn’t.
I dropped into a crouch at her side, put a hand on her shoulder, and asked, “Karen? You OK?”
“Just feeling…really sick,” I barely heard. “I’ll be OK. I just need to rest.”
Hemi appeared beside me. “What is it?”
“She’s sick,” I said.
“No,” Karen said. “I just need to…rest a minute. Go away. Please.”
“Honey, no,” I said. “We’re going to take you home.” I looked at Hemi. “I know you don’t want to, but…please. Could you help me get her home?”
“No,” he said.
I gasped, but before I could say anything, Karen was unwinding herself and stumbling past us.
“I’m going to…” She stopped at the trash can, and before I could get there, was grabbing for its edges and being thoroughly sick, and all I could do was hold her and rub her back.
She finished shuddering and retching at last, but was still holding onto the filthy edges of the can, her arms shaking, tears running down her thin cheeks. “Go away,” she moaned. “Please take Hemi away. I’m so embarrassed. Please.”
I didn’t have to take Hemi away, because he’d already turned and walked off. Talking on his phone, and in another minute, he’d be gone. I’d have to get Karen home by myself. Taxi, I realized, and even in the midst of my concern for my sister, the fury and disappointment were rising. With Hemi, and with myself.
I was pulling out my own phone to call for that taxi when Hemi came over again. But he didn’t say goodbye. Instead, he said to Karen, “Let’s get you to the car.” And while she was still shaking her head, he was lifting her gently into his arms, looking back for me, and saying, “Let’s go.”
“No.” Karen’s voice was frantic. “Put me down. I’m going to…I’m going to…”
Hemi dropped to a knee and held her up as she leaned over and retched into the grass. When she was finished, he picked her up again without a word and set off. I couldn’t imagine how he could carry her all the way to the parking lot, but somehow he was doing it.
“Have you been feeling sick all day?” I asked Karen, trotting to keep up.
“No,” she said. “It’s just the sun. I can walk. Put me down.”
Hemi didn’t put her down, though, and he didn’t say anything until we were
at the parking lot and Charles had the car door open. Then he was sliding Karen into the back seat and telling me, “You sit there with her, and I’ll get in up front.”
“Thank you,” I said, because there was nothing else to say.
But when the car pulled to the curb, it wasn’t at our apartment. It was at an urgent care facility.
“No,” Karen said when Hemi would have lifted her out of the car again. “I can walk.”
“No,” I was saying at the same time. “She’s feeling better. Just give us a ride home, please.”
“What?” Hemi said. “You aren’t going to get her checked out?”
“She’s better,” I said again. “She’s got a bug, or a touch of the sun or something. If she’s still this bad tomorrow, I’ll take her.”
Hemi ignored me, to my fury. He had an arm around Karen, was supporting her inside the building and taking her up to the front desk, talking to the woman there. She was handing him a clipboard, and I was fuming.
When he helped Karen into a chair and gave the clipboard to me with a curt, “Fill that out,” I’d had enough.
I walked a few paces away so Karen wouldn’t hear me before I turned on him. “What part of “no” didn’t you understand?” I hissed. “I asked you to take us home. I didn’t ask you to take us here.”
“Thought you cared about your sister,” Hemi said, keeping his own voice low as well. “She’s ill. She was ill before she went to sit down. She told me she often feels ill in the mornings.”
“What? She never—“
“Yeh. She never told you that. Don’t you think, if you’ve got a teenage sister who’s sick in the mornings, you might want to find out why?”
“No,” I whispered. “No. She isn’t.”
“Could be you’re right. Could be it’s something else. That’s what you need to find out.”
“I’ll get a…kit or something.” Pregnant? Oh, no. No. I knew I wasn’t able to supervise Karen the way she should have been, but surely not. “She would have told me if she’d been…”
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