Unbind (Sub Rosa Series Book 1)

by Lynch, Sarah Michelle

  You do. Admit it. You see my figure and immediately see sensuality. You think of other dreamlike creatures you’ve watched in movies and it draws to mind stories you’ve imagined before you even read my words. You see diamonds and see wealth and you see confidence and imagine breeding and… the mind conjures. I don’t want to sully the magic of fashion, art, image and wealth. Each to their own. The purpose, or rather the wonder of the photographer’s gift in this shoot, was that he caught me in all the most wonderful ways—carefree, relaxed, sultry, indifferent, unidentified yet alluring. Pore over facets of the glamorous lifestyle that are wonderful—jewels, money, style, elegance, opportunity, freedom, expression, exploration—endless possibilities. We seek escape in stories unlike our own, seek intrigue and wonder and eventual resolution, though it not always be happy.

  If you look closer, you may see more. Not interpretations or metaphors or stories loosely based on life. Look closer and you shall see, I have a disfigurement hiding amongst my tresses. The sequence of the starlet’s awakening in this article finishes with one, last close-up the photographer submitted to the editor with my repeated pre-approval. Please, take a look. The disfigurement is there in plain sight, only you probably didn’t look hard enough. You saw what the eye immediately caught, and nought else. You saw my beauty and my curves and the allure of the poses and the suggestive nature of the shots, but not the three-inch scar sitting jagged at the back of my scalp, right in front of your eyes.

  True, the photographer took some liberties here. He carefully dressed my hair so that most of the scar remained hidden, all except that dark-pink, hairline contusion sitting in the middle of still-uncomfortable, rubbery white scar tissue. Now you see it, don’t you? Glaring now as you stare. My hair moved apart reveals follicles that simply will never sprout again. Those storytellers and story-readers of you with me might conclude any number of theories on this scar and its origin. Perhaps brain surgery, a fall on the ski slope, I don’t know… a mishap down a dark alley. One little idea planted in the mind and the nodules spark with images and trains of thought. Would it surprise you to know the greatest secrets are often the ones hidden in plain sight? Glaring, without words, or an explanation made plain?

  Do we no longer have the ability to ask questions and find out what the cause is? Do we not want to see the grisly truth some days, so we find empty comfort in an old film, a rom-com or a bucket of chicken? Add multiple escape methods here […] and discover, all of us are guilty of them. Do we want all things spelled out? All horrors eradicated?

  Whatever happened to give me this scar? Was it some malevolent force? Well yes, yes it was. There. I have sated your appetite for the wicked and controversial. We all feed that appetite now and again, no matter who we are. Again, the real issue isn’t the manner in which I gained this scar, it is the way in which I lived for ten years afterwards. I didn’t realise it had affected me so greatly, not until recently. Reason being I had been able to hide it for so many years and like those starlets with their personas and their images hiding painful pasts, I hid mine behind my hair. I didn’t grow up especially poor, nor did I luck out on opportunities. I just got very unlucky being in the wrong place, at the wrong time, in the worst circumstances. Yet it changed my life forever and I couldn’t go back.

  Scars run deeper with some, harsher and less treatable for others, but we all suffer in similar ways. To show you my scar isn’t painful but to remember who did this to me, and why it happened, hurts more than any other physical reminder of the day I met the rough end of a broken beer bottle. The way in which we all treat disfigurement is similarly subjective, from person to person. Avoid the evidence or acknowledge it? Who will be more offended then? Stare at the woman who had acid thrown in her face? Or ignore it totally and downgrade the importance of what she survived? Congratulate the war veteran on keeping his life or apologise for his missing limbs? Give the burns victim a medal for bravery or encourage them to tell their story, like me? You’d never feel adequate in their presence because you can’t measure up to the superiority of their aggrandised station as Survivor. These are my own experiences of how people have reacted to my scar in the past—and the number of people to have seen it is few.

  We effect images to be easier on the eye, more consumable, more available to the masses. Beauty comes in all shapes and forms and more and more, models in their variety are embraced. I am no model nor do I have any misconceptions about that. For one, I obviously find it difficult to get out of bed so the whole awakening theme would soon get tired. They say a picture tells a thousand stories and it is photographers, in their skill and craft, that enable this. I was allowed to feel like a goddess for a day, wrapped in silk and spoiled with champagne and soft lighting. I escaped from myself into someone else. Let us not forget that some scars are present, some past. Some hidden. Some on display.

  I won’t go into detail about my own experiences. They are my own. You must know the culprit was rightly punished however and that in the spirit of justice, I did pay for speaking out and speaking up. Yet I wouldn’t go back and do anything differently—it has taken a lot of work for me to be able to say that. As a professional writer, I get asked to write about a lot of different topics but this was one I felt passionate about. I am not writing up someone else’s story—for a change, these words are my own. They are real and written by someone who was brutally attacked by another human being. With so much going on in the world, shouldn’t we try to remember the marks on our bodies show the journey we have taken? That if we survive challenges that often make us singular, we should try to embrace that in ourselves and each other? If stories like mine can give hope, perhaps all the pain was worth it.

  Give some purpose to the hurt you suffered because if there wasn’t any grand scheme for the mark thrust upon you, there might still be something you could do to help someone else who didn’t have a choice. Another story springs free, yet I save that for another day…

  Chapter 52

  ON MONDAY MORNING when I dropped the article on Carl’s desk, I warned, “This goes nowhere outside this room. For now, it goes nowhere else except bouncing between you and Ben.”

  “Nasty woman,” he accused.

  “I didn’t mean it like that, Carl. Read it and tell me what you think.”

  I knew I sounded abrasive but this was a big, bloody deal!

  “Where are the photos?”

  “They remain hidden… dependent on whether you like the words.”

  I went back to my desk and waited ten minutes. Oh, what if he hated my angle? What if? What if? What if?

  Tiff beeped me on the phone, “He wants you.”

  I lumbered back to his office; my legs wobbly, shaky stilts. He hated it. He must hate it! Damn me and my stupid openness.

  I got inside his office, sitting opposite. He was just staring at the paper with this tense jaw thing, his mouth ajar.

  “So? You hate it. It’s crap. You hate it!”

  He held up a hand. “Say that once more and I’ll hit you round the head with this!”

  He glared at what laid in his hands, taking a few dramatic moments to keep me waiting. “I absolutely love it. Where are the images, though?”

  “Here,” I offered, after pulling a memory stick from my jeans pocket. “He’s arranged them in sequence already and he doesn’t want any credit either. This is either take it, or leave it. Non-negotiable. We spent all weekend doing this.”

  Carl’s clammy fingers struggled with the USB but he got it in a port and waited until the spread came up on his iMac screen. “You seen these?”

  “Yes,” I replied. “I didn’t know what he was going to do with them, but don’t you love it?”

  “If you don’t have his babies, I fucking will. This boy has got some incredible talent!” He covered his mouth, his body slouched low for a man usually so poised. He shouted out of character, to Ben outside: “Ben, get in here and close the freaking door.”

  The guys, together, rambled on for quite some time, exa
mining and commenting on all the inspiration that had gone into our work. Carl even glazed the doors of his office and we got all the images up on the flat-screen TV behind his desk.

  “Holy fuck, these… these will sell.”

  It was all about the imagery. The seductive, beautiful actress with her unique, sincere sadness bristling under the surface. Of course nobody needed to know that it was me and that the woman in real life was happy enough.

  “This is hot, this is right now. Right now,” Carl repeated, “are you feeling it, too?”

  “I am, really,” Ben agreed, “we need to get this online as soon as. This could spark a surge.”

  Carl walked around the table and hugged me. “God damn, I’d kiss you if I didn’t think the beau would punch me.”

  Ben threw his arms around me, too.

  “You really do… both of you, like it?”

  “Hell, yeah,” they agreed simultaneously. Carl added, “This won’t wait. This is exactly what people need in this dull, dull month.”

  Carl sat behind his desk and click-click-clicked. “She’s got the files. I said two words: ‘We upload?’ Let’s see what she says.”

  “I have a small bottle of emergency champagne in my desk. Back in a tick.” Ben shot off to retrieve it, leaving Carl and me there alone.

  “You really want no credit for this?” he asked with a quirk of his brow.

  “None. This is about more than issues off shelves, or names being catapulted. This is about freedom to express what I should have done a long time ago. That there my friend is about 30,000 dollars of therapy, self-administered.”

  Carl laughed and cursed, “I fucking love you. If his cock stops working, I’m your next port of call. You hear me?”

  I reached for his hand to squeeze it and almost simultaneously—Ben arrived with the champagne and Carl said, “She has spoken. We upload. If it goes viral, we stop the press.”

  “No.” I held my hands at my cheeks.

  “She said it’s ingenious.”

  It turned out, Ben’s little bottle wasn’t quite enough. So the three of us took ourselves off to a very long lunch that day, enjoying three courses and several cocktails at the Plaza. Gratis, of course. I truly felt like the luckiest girl in the whole world.

  OVER the next few days, the office turned into a mad, crazy house of gossip. For Jennifer Matthews to stop an issue—to delay printing thousands, upon thousands, of copies—halt the production line and replace them with new versions just because they included some mysterious woman’s true story—that was something everybody wanted in on. It was Sky News, even. Nobody needed to know that actually, the thing was so beautiful in its simplicity. All I hoped was that the message was clear: Try to love one another, even if it is really difficult. Try to love yourself.

  The double-page intro featured a view of my back, my hand extended in the air to hold the flute while Cai (in the background) poured champagne, wearing a pristine white serving glove. The first drink of the day. Video captured intimate moments between Cai and I, while also enabling him to edit shot by shot so that only the more ominous images were what went into the final ‘show’. Cai made use of bokeh and hazed out the more naked parts of me, while focusing in on the expressive aspects of the pose. Nobody could ignore that Cai had managed to make my waist appear tiny, my hips impossibly voluptuous. Trick of the eye, I suppose. Shapes and images sprung from the page despite the soft focus and bokeh effect. It was as he said, the pictures had life and speed though stationary.

  To be as authentic as possible, Cai developed the photos himself in a dark room, using a burning technique to product a touch of vignette, drawing the focus to the centrepiece (me) while giving the shots a feel of film stills, or the naughty French prints of the Twenties. He could have done this so much easier in Photoshop but he told me there was something about the grainy result that only a trained eye would spot he’d done it naturally. Only a true fanatic like him would take pleasure in the secrecy of how he’d gotten this down to a fine art.

  The images were black and white, yet my lips were superimposed in Photoshop from the colour versions, keeping them bright, ruby-red and glossy. The bubbles in the champagne surreptitiously golden too.

  That first double-page image of my back didn’t represent where the story began but was one of the best images to use in getting a reader hooked. Further inside, the meat and potatoes had my words spliced in a sort of storyboard type layout that captured the essence of our experience, step by step:

  The unidentified star opened her eyes to the world. Her long lashes the focus. Like a lot of Cai’s other work, there was a spotted quality to the light all around her, similar to how we see the world when we first open our eyes to the morning.

  She is next seen with the back of her hand daintily touching her forehead. A whisper on her lips, or so the viewer might imagine. The sheet falls slightly to expose more of her back—the severe dip in her waist suggesting wide hips surely as alluring to men as women—the celebration of womanhood and feminine power.

  Numerous shots that followed suggested I was chatting with a PA, instructing him/her what to do before I even considered getting out of bed.

  She stared at her own hands thoughtfully, touched her hair, let the camera see the two swells of her body at the front, covered well by ruffled, strategically placed sheeting.

  Draping her arms over the arm of the chaise longue, still the sheet covered her modesty with a hidden knot at her side, and always, that scar was available for sight but not always plain to see.

  The final shot to end the piece—the starlet tired of the world and curled in a ball, bundled in a cocoon of silk. Almost childlike with her knees pulled up tight to her chest. The scar, there proudly then.

  Only five people at Frame knew whose words accompanied that article and all of us were eager to keep it that way. The story just wouldn’t work otherwise. If anyone knew it was me, they’d judge me for any number of reasons. Nor did I want any of my work colleagues thinking differently of me. Commercially, Jennifer knew the piece was going to be a smash hit.

  THE day it hit the shelves, I arrived home at the apartment exhausted and nervous. The office had buzzed all day while I sat praying nobody knew. I didn’t want Cai’s work being compromised either. Imagine the world misconstruing a shoot between boyfriend and girlfriend—the whole thing might no longer have appeared a serious piece of art with a subliminal message of celebration and awareness.

  “Hey, you,” he exclaimed, as I dropped my stuff at the door.

  Resting in the wingback by the window, he tried to look as calm and collected as possible, not seeming to come off as worried, though he was.

  He crooked a finger to beckon me over and I dropped my coat over the back of the sofa, heading straight for him. I sat in his lap and stretched out over him, hiding my face in his neck, my arms around his shoulders.

  “Everyone loved it,” I said quietly into his ear.

  “I knew they would. It was brilliant, start to finish.”

  “Nobody knows yet, I don’t think. I had a lot of questions from so many people, though not any that insinuated they knew it was us.”

  “What kind of questions?” he took a strand of my hair and stroked it under his nose.

  “Oh… like, ‘Do you think Jennifer will ever reveal who did this? How the heck did we not know a thing about it?’ Of course it was totally unexpected for the magazine to halt production. It could be a real game changer. A few girls said their pals at other mags bought stacks of copies for their teams to start combing through… see if they can come up with something that might match it.”

  “Jesus,” he exclaimed.

  “Kay called and said she wouldn’t tell, but I neither confirmed or denied anything,” I giggled and kissed his cheek. “Though none of it would be anything without your shots. You’re so talented, you know that don’t you?”

  “I know I love photography. I know it makes me happy and I know I’m good at it. I also realise there’s
something to be said for keeping a piece of yourself back… a tactic that takes you far, if timed right?”

  I pulled back and snaked my hands tighter around his neck. Smiling I decided, “You don’t feel ready for the fame yet? If you do a proper exhibition… it could take you to the stratosphere? Just because of who she is.”

  He nodded. “I can wait. When the time’s right, I’ll know it. Now, this is your time. So let’s celebrate.”

  He kissed me hard and lifted us both out of the chair.

  “What do you have in mind?”

  He looked all pleased with himself and wiggled his brow. “The bedroom. Maybe the desk after that. I might even give the borrowed chaise a testing… what do you think?”

  “A think it looked pretty freaking wobbly to me and needs testing right now.”

  Chapter 53

  THE MOST BIZARRE thing happened next. I arrived at work the day after ‘Mind Over Body’ went to press, only to be told by Carl that Tiff had cancelled my appointments and I was to meet Jennifer at a car downstairs, ten a.m., prompt. Jennifer then took me to the most exclusive spa in New York—her hallowed spa. I didn’t know where the place was—I had to be blindfolded in the car until we reached an underground parking facility! Once inside, I realised she had the whole place booked out, just for us. Was this usual? Or just for me? To be honest, I allowed all this because I was desperate to see if I couldn’t push her just a little bit harder.

  “You can’t be serious?” I whispered to her as we headed for the changing rooms, the spa in the style of a traditional Turkish baths. I noticed every surface appeared tiled, some incense drifted, subtle lighting absorbed us and a pleasant heat wrapped around me as soon as we stepped inside.