9. Jeffrey
Chapter nine
Jeffrey
June 5, 1885, cont.
I did find a hole, a walled-up part of the caves that had to have been put there by a person, and when I dug away at those stones, what I found within, chained like some Greek Titan, was worth any danger or toil I had suffered through thus far.
Although this Titan looked even more devilish than one might imagine, with fierce features, wings, claws, and horns too, when his amethyst eyes opened, there was no malice in them. Only longing. Only desperation to be free.
Anyone reading this might think me mad for believing the intentions and pleas of a chained beast, but I know that kind of longing. When you have sought freedom all your life, you recognize it in those who stand before you.
He urged me to accept his amulet, a treasure by itself that, if sold, would have seen me freed all on its own from my current life scrounging for scraps. But he assured me that if I accepted it on his terms, I could have so much more. I could wish for and be granted almost anything I desired.
Naturally, I agreed, and his chains shattered like glass. He transformed before my eyes into a man, and with a shake of our hands like true partners, I vowed then and there to never be under the mercy of anyone else’s desires again, lest I set the terms to fulfill them. If this meant I had just made a deal with the Devil, so be it. I was already in Hell, and as they say, ’tis better to rule there than to serve in Heaven.
The entry ends there, and a glance at the next one dates it weeks later, starting to describe Mattie’s hunt for “seamstresses” to begin building her empire and eventually acquire one of those new buildings being built above the tunnels.
I’m guessing she got busy fast. She wouldn’t have been like me, unsure of what to wish for beyond the most basic of desires. It’s a relief though to read how different her first encounter was with Odai compared to mine, confirming what he said about them never having slept together. It makes me feel just a little bit special that he was so ravenous with me.
This was my first chance to look at the journal again, but I should get downstairs. I slip it back under my pillow. I zipped through a morning shower so I could take a little time with it and at least read about Odai and Mattie meeting. My hair is wet. It takes way too long to blow-dry, but since it’s Tuesday, I don’t have to worry about being Mattie tonight. I quickly tie it into a bun .
Odai met me in the hall when I first got up, but after a very sweet kiss to my cheek, he went downstairs to work until I was ready to join him. I head there now, hearing voices as I near the door like the other day. At first, I figure the raised voice with Odai’s must be Cas, but as I turn the knob, the nasty tone of the second voice sends a chill through me.
“I don’t know you, young man, and I demand to speak with someone who has actual authority!”
Mrs. Sherman .
Knowing it’s her almost makes me turn tail back upstairs, but I can’t leave Odai to deal with her alone.
“Madame, I can assure you I have such authority,” Odai says, as I emerge and head toward him where he is keeping Mrs. Sherman at bay by the front door. “I have been contracted to revitalize this establishment—”
“Revitalize it with what? More lewd showmanship and underhanded tactics to turn the neighborhood against me?”
I scoff—loudly. How can I not, when she’s the underhanded one? But my eruption of noise draws her attention.
That woman’s gaze could pierce through titanium.
“G-good morning, Mrs. Sherman,” I stutter. “Can I—”
“How dare you tell our neighbors that I intentionally tricked them!” she bellows without so much as an attempt at being cordial. “To sully my good name when I am the only one looking out for the integrity of this neighborhood is truly even lower than I expected of this… place,” she finishes with an especially pronounced sneer, like she had a fresh collagen injection this morning to freeze her face.
Odai shifts to let me forward but still stands close to me, and the protective presence of his larger body definitely helps. He’s in harem pants again, but today, his outfit is an assortment of pinks, so he can once again wear his pansexual-colored scarf as a matching accessory.
It’s extra gratifying having him beside me as a Mrs. Sherman buffer while wearing an outfit so in-her-face queer .
“I didn’t tell anyone anything, Mrs. Sherman,” I say. “If they came to you to discuss that petition, they realized it themselves that you were trying to trick them.”
I feel her armor-piercing eyes like a literal bullet. Odai might give me confidence, but she sure knows how to shred it. “Don’t think it was everyone on that petition, young man ,” she says, like she always says, like she thinks she’s slighting me by saying it. It definitely drips with more derision than when she called Odai that. “I still have the church on my side, which carries quite a bit of sway around here. The few can have very strong voices.”
“What an odd thing to say.” Odai tilts his head at her. “Odd, when it seems you are aiming to silence the few here.”
Mrs. Sherman huffs but squares her eyes on me, as if Odai is an even lesser gnat and can be ignored. “Don’t think you’ve won. This neighborhood will be decent again someday.”
“Again, such an odd statement.” Odai has yet to look away from her and waits to continue until after her eyes move back to him. “Because if by decent you are implying a return to before this establishment existed, this neighborhood was empty prairie with a series of caves beneath it. Unless you are implying a scorched earth approach.”
I can’t help the smirk that forms seeing how pissed he is making her, and with a flutter of elation, I watch her retreat and storm back over to Curves.
“Sometimes I wish—” I slap a hand over my mouth upon seeing Odai’s eyes twinkle. “Nope. I need to be careful what I wish for. I just don’t know how to deal with that woman.” I close the door but keep it unlocked since Cas and Mr. B are bound to be here soon. “I don’t think ignoring her is enough, even if we do get most of the other businesses on our side.”
“You could wish for me to discover a way to deal with her,” Odai suggests.
I try to gauge if his twinkle has any menace to it. “What would you do?”
“All solutions start with research, do they not? I will simply learn more about her. I will always put your interests first, Jeffrey, and to accomplish that, anyone can be dealt with.” Those words do sound a little menacing, but I figure whatever he digs up about Mrs. Sherman she’ll have earned being wielded against her.
“Then I wish for you to do that,” I say.
“What was that all about?” Mr. B comes out of the office, startling me. I didn’t realize he was already here.
“Nothing to worry about, Mr. Bevilaqua,” Odai says .
We meet him near the checkout counter, and I can tell he’s excited, practically bouncing, as he holds a small stack of papers. “Then worry I won’t! Have you seen some of these mockups of Odai’s?” He shows me the printouts and begins to page through them. They’re posters and ad ideas for our joint venture plans with Tony’s and the hotel. “He is a real wizard, isn’t he? I’ll admit, the graphic design side of marketing has never been my forte. These are fantastic!”
They really are. It amuses me imagining Odai, an ancient incubus, spending his evening hours while I’m asleep working in Photoshop. The ad for the hotel is my favorite, since it looks like a mockup of something from the 1880s, with an image of the hotel that honestly looks hand-drawn—and maybe was—with that sort of coffee-stained beige look to it.
EXPERIENCE THE LUXURY OF THE 19 TH CENTURY WHERE THE GREATS DID.
It lists some of the historical figures we discussed, like Sarah Bernhardt, with Madame Mattie listed at the bottom—because she was one of the greats too.
Who then threw Odai away when she was done with him.
That thought hits me as Odai and Mr. Bevilaqua begin to discuss what I assume they were talking about before Mrs. Sherman came knocking, such as when to approach the other businesses with our ideas. It is important to discuss, but my mind is suddenly back upstairs .
There is so much more of Mattie’s journal for me to read, and I am insanely curious to understand why she chained Odai back up. Why would anyone, ever, when they could have their hearts’ desires with him beside them. And Odai was, well, perfect, even if, like Mattie, other masters of his didn’t want to be with him the way I do.
“Jeffrey?”
“Hm? Sorry, what was that?”
Odai’s brow scrunches with honest concern, because he cares, he cares , so why would anyone throw him away? “Shall we discuss more in the office?”
“Yes! That sounds great. And Cas should be here soon too. She is going to love all this.”
It is a great morning. We cover so many ideas, so much that makes us excited, even before the doors open for day tours. I am starting to really believe we can save this place, Mrs. Sherman be damned.
Please .
We need new shelving in the storage room next to the office, so Cas has been trying to sneak in building some during down time. While Mr. B is downstairs with the first tour of the day, and Odai is in the office finalizing a few things, I can’t help gushing at her, even if I have to yell over her use of power tools.
Cas is the only one among the three of us—although Odai is basically an official fourth now—who I’d trust with a power tool. Years as a backstage theater kid and actually having biceps puts Cas leagues above me or Mr. B .
“Okay already!” She finally stops me, powering down her drill with a swipe at her brow. She is finishing number two of the four needed shelves. “You’re psyched and falling even harder for your new beau because he is making all this possible, I get it. Just remember to take stock of reality once in a while.”
“What do you mean?” I frown at her. I should be manning the checkout counter, ready for when the next group of patrons arrives, but I was so excited, I needed to share that excitement with someone. I thought Cas was as pumped as I am.
“It’s just… you’re expecting the best right now, and that’s great, but things don’t always work out that way,” Cas says, totally stomping on my good mood. “Maybe Odai’s ideas will work. Maybe they won’t. We’re right at the beginning of this, so there’s still a chance it’ll fail. Odai might have Mr. B thinking positive again, but someone needs to be practical. I’m sorry, Jeffrey, but things end, and even with our best foots forward, all this might end eventually too.”
But it won’t. It can’t. I have a freaking genie on our side to prevent it! But I can’t exactly tell Cas that.
Instead, since I am admittedly a little upset that she harshed my buzz so badly, I grumble just as she turns around to start up the drill again.
“Would you say something like that to SJ?”
Cas whirls around with an equally intimidating whir of the drill, before she promptly shuts it back off. “Dude. Not fair . Geez.”
“But it is fair,” I dare to spout back, even with the business end of the drill pointed at me. “You two met here. We met here. And you did kind of drag your feet before letting SJ move in with you. Didn’t she want to after, like, a year, and you made her wait almost double that? Why? Did you think that was going to end too?”
How much of my own foot I’ve just eaten becomes clear as Cas’s eyes go from irritated to blazing rage. Shit . Even when I have valid points to make, why do I ever stand up to people?
“Jeffrey! New patrons have arrived,” Odai informs me.
I am grateful for the rescue, but stewing the rest of the day, waiting for Cas to lay into me, is way worse than just getting it over with.
Only it never happens. Cas doesn’t bring it up again. Which I kind of think is worse?
Before she leaves for the night, I still say, “Sorry, um, about before.”
“Don’t worry about,” she dismisses.
Worrying is one of my basic character traits, so I doubt that’s possible. I just want to be happy. I want to enjoy happy times. I want to relish in the possibility of happiness lasting. And maybe, one of these days, find the real me somewhere in that bliss.
Not wanting to get bogged down by Cas’s practicality, that night, and Wednesday night, I show Odai a few more of my favorite movies. In the mornings or when I have a break from tours and bookkeeping, I read a little from Mattie’s journal. She doesn’t always mention Odai, but it all seems so perfect at the start of her journey. Perfect and easy and all around good as Odai helps her build what will eventually be her empire.
It makes me want to ignore what I know has to be coming at the end of her entries. An eventual betrayal, some great turn that has to have a catalyst… right? There has to be a reason.
Cas’s practicality is apparently contagious.
Although maybe the real answer is that Mattie wasn’t as great as I always wanted to believe. Because Odai…
Odai is everything I would ever wish for, and being with him makes me feel a little bit, finally, more like the real me I’ve been chasing.
Odai
It is Thursday evening now, the first night of the week when Jeffrey performs as Mattie for midnight tours. I watch like I did on Sunday. I banter again too, since he seemed to enjoy it then, and we play off each other well. It is strange, witnessing the retelling of events I know the truth of. How Jeffrey tells it is not wholly untrue. It is mostly quite factual—and very entertaining. His choice in persona as Mattie may not be how she truly was, but all for the better, for like this, he is still Jeffrey in my eyes.
And Jeffrey has yet to discover a reason to betray me, to fear me, as all my other masters and mistresses eventually did.
“What’s under the skirt, huh?” a man calls during the final tour of the night, but without the playfulness of others. Instead, there is a bite to his tone, a disgust that changes the otherwise jovial atmosphere to something rancid.
“A lady never tells!” Jeffrey calls back.
“You can bet I’d never go lookin’.”
One of the man’s companions smacks his shoulder with a chuckle, while another at least looks embarrassed by their friend calling attention to them in such an unsavory way.
It is Jeffrey’s embarrassment that bothers me. He doesn’t show it. Doesn’t lose a step, other than the briefest of sharp intakes of breaths to steel himself. It happens, he warned me. But he will not break character until the tour is done.
The man does not stop with his audible taunts, however feigning to keep them under his breath. I do not need to see Jeffrey’s mask break to feel it, to feel the way those jeers make him feel small and want to become smaller, to hide. Like he so often hides in clothing that drowns him. I feel through the connection of Jeffrey bearing my amulet that this lone cruel man is ruining an otherwise pleasant evening, not only for Jeffrey but the other patrons.
Something must be done .
“Excuse me.” I stop the man as the tour continues around one of the many bends in the tunnels. His friends do not notice. Cas moves past us, giving me a look that says—however I choose to handle the man, she approves.
“Yeah? What do you want?” the man demands of me.
Jeffrey wished that I never lie to him, but he did not wish that I never lie to others.
“I am on the staff here,” I say, “and we select a random winner each tour for their chance at a special prize.”
“Like a cash prize?” The man follows me without question, as I begin to lure him the way we came from.
I take a turn we did not go down before. Where there would usually be a dead end, before the man notices, the stones part for us like an illusion bending, creating a brand-new pathway out of the underground.
We wouldn’t want anyone finding him later on tour grounds.
“Perhaps,” I say. “It is a bit of a game of chance. But then, I would argue there is no chance in life, and we are all due the cards we are dealt.”
“ Wow .” The man laughs, but he is still following, expectant of his prize. “This place is lame. But better than going home empty-handed, I guess. Thought your fairy princess back there was going to make my night until that leg was attached to a dude. Ever think of putting the real thing in a dress sometime? The fake-out’s funny but, like, I’d rather have something real to look at, ya know? ”
I summon the man’s phone. Where it would have been in his pocket, it is now in my hand. His friends have noticed him missing and texted him.
dude where R U?
I message back.
too lame so i split
u dick! u owe me for the ticket!
I don’t respond this time but send the phone back to his pocket.
He does not feel it nor notice.
“Hey, if this is just some other fake-out or ends up being some stupid gold doubloons that are really chocolate or some shit, I’m going back—”
“I have a riddle for you, Mr. Kenzing. The answer is your prize.”
“How did you know my—”
“If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, what does someone who scorns beauty see?”
He huffs, but simple men rarely ask the right questions.
Or know the right answers.
“Whoa! These tunnels are wild.” He hadn’t noticed the incline as we continued, or the distance we travelled, but he notices now when we exit into an alley. He does not look back nor see that the wall closed up behind us .
I wish for there to be no more options for enemies sabotaging us in the future.
I wish for you to have whatever autonomy you need to help with saving Madame Mattie’s.
Granted.
“Hey!” the man snaps as I turn to face him. “What’s the answer, huh? What’s my prize?”
He does not notice that my hands have become claws. “Nothing.”
And well within my power, no one hears the man scream.