Chapter 27
BIRDIE
“You look different.”
I look over to where Busy sits on the small love seat that came with the apartment. It’s Friday evening, and I’ll be leaving to work my shift at Buddy’s soon, but I stopped by to see Busy and stock her small kitchen with groceries I purchased with the card Bell gave me.
It’s the first time I’ve seen her since I went to Bell’s house, nearly two weeks now, the longest we’ve been apart since she showed up at the farmhouse last winter, ragged and hunched and low.
I think I need help, she’d whispered, and it wasn’t the first time she’d whispered that sentence to me, but something had been different that day.
Like the years had stripped her and stripped her, right down to her bones, but in her bones was a new stubbornness she’d never been able to reach before.
A stubbornness that said, I’ll give up nothing else. That said, I will live, goddammit.
And now she looks different too. Still too tired, still too thin, but no longer lank and desperate, no longer with those mean, squalid cravings scratching at the inside of her skin. She looks present, her eyes clearer than they’ve been in years.
“I got that big commission,” I tell her now, hoping the vagueness comes across as offhanded and not as misdirection.
I tell myself that it’s not really a lie—Bell has commissioned me in a way.
Just for the type of labor that might be even older than carpentry.
“It’s been enough that I’ve been able to work a little less, sleep a little more. ”
She studies me with those newly clear eyes, and they narrow slightly. “Seems like a stroke of good luck, getting this commission.”
I have to tread very carefully right now.
She wouldn’t like it, what I’m doing with Bell.
I still only know a little bit about what happened in Odessa and some of the things that happened in the years after, but I do know that she’s very familiar with arrangements like the one I have with my former student.
She wouldn’t want to hear me explain that this is different, that Bell is dangerous but not in the way she’d worry about, and she certainly wouldn’t want to hear that she is the reason I’m doing it at all.
I can’t even begin to imagine the kind of setback that could trigger.
So I settle on a noncommittal mmm.
“Seems like you’ve had extra time to spend on your hair too,” she says. “And are those new jeans?”
Damn, I should have predicted she’d notice those.
Yesterday morning, Bell had woken me with kisses to my jaw and taken me to the guest room before he went to work, where he presented me with a closet full of new clothes.
And just like the truck, I couldn’t even summon up a kind of prideful indignation, a righteous disgust at being pampered like the mistress of a Victorian duke, because it was all just so perfect.
There weren’t racks of sundresses or silk blouses and pencil skirts, and even the handful of gowns that were hanging at the back felt like the kinds of understated things I’d choose for myself if I were forced somewhere with a dress code.
The clothes were the simple items I preferred to wear, but new and of such quality that I couldn’t stop touching the hems and sleeves as Bell itemized the closet’s contents for me, a pleased arrogance to him that made me smile when he wasn’t looking.
He’d stocked the closet with T-shirts, soft and sturdy and well-made, from brands I didn’t recognize, and jeans and long-sleeved flannels from brands I did recognize and knew I could never afford.
For Mass and nicer occasions, there were high-waisted trousers and white button-downs; for working in the heat, there were clothes that felt like butter and would wick sweat away from my skin.
There were underthings—new bras, new panties, camisoles, and socks—all of them lavish not only in their excellent make and attention to detail but also fully practical, white, black, and beige.
“I love it all,” I told him, touching a black swimsuit hanging near the end.
It wasn’t skimpy or avant-garde but quietly fashionable, much prettier than any swimsuit I’d ever owned.
“I suppose if I’d guessed what you’d fill a closet with, it would have been things more for your enjoyment than mine. ”
He gave me a bashful grin then, curls toppling over his forehead as he bit his lip.
“There’s plenty for me in here,” he confessed and then pulled at the handle of one of the closet’s built-in drawers.
Laid neatly inside were several delicately embroidered bra and panty sets, and then when he opened the next four, it was the same.
Lace, straps, mesh. Leather. Vinyl. There was no consistency in the lingerie either—some of it feminine or virginal, some of it looking like it had to be ordered from sites that catered to very niche interests.
Like he’d bought lingerie to act out every fantasy he’d ever had about me.
By the time we were done looking at the lingerie, he was visibly hard.
He didn’t have a condom, so he’d had me pull my sleep shorts down, stand with my feet together, and brace my hands on the full-length mirror at the end of the closet. He bid me to stay still while he slid his thick erection between my legs and slowly fucked my thighs.
I had no idea people did anything like this, but I was turned on by the raw utilitarianism of it, arrested by the look on Bell’s face in the mirror.
The cruel sort of awe as he watched his dick disappear between my thighs over and over again.
The greed as he slid a palm down my back or curled his hands around my waist to hold me still.
When he’d finished, his cum had spattered the mirror in thick, heavy spurts, and I’d panted along with him like I was coming too.
I wasn’t, of course; I was just miserably inflamed, my nipples visibly erect through my tank top, my pussy wet enough that the top of his penis was slick when he slid it free.
He put his chin on my shoulder and flattened a hand against my stomach to pull me close; his other hand teased the stiffened tips of my breasts through the fabric as he watched us in the mirror. “I have to go to work,” he said, “but you remember what we talked about last night?”
I remembered. “You want me to learn how to masturbate.”
“I want that pretty snatch kept happy, and I won’t always have time to see to it, like this morning.
And there might be times when you want to get yourself ready, before I get home from work maybe.
I’ll get inside you either way, but you might enjoy it more if you’re able to slick yourself up first.” The hand on my stomach slid down to the scarlet curls between my legs and cupped me there.
Hard. I moaned. “You remember where the toys are in my room?”
“Yes,” I breathed, trying to rub myself against his hand.
“Bottom drawer of your closet.” He’d shown me an array of vibrators and silicone phalluses, promised me that they were all new.
I’d told him that it hadn’t even occurred to me that they wouldn’t be new, since he obviously wouldn’t have a use for vibrators or for dildos, and he’d laughed a big, surprised laugh and hugged me.
Oh my God, you are so cute, he’d said into my hair, delight lacing every word.
“You’re blushing,” observes Busy in the here and now, and I realize I still haven’t answered her, that I’ve been staring down at my lap while debauched memories flickered through me, heating my blood.
“Sorry, I just—I’m thinking about the commission. Yes, these are new jeans.”
“And your hair? You decided to care after three and a half decades?” She’s not asking uncharitably, like she might have done just last year, but with pointed interest. She can tell I’m keeping something from her.
I decide I can’t hide all the truth, not for any real amount of time at least, so I say, as casually as I can, “I’m seeing someone.
And he, um, also has curly hair. A little curlier than mine, actually.
So I’ve been learning from him.” I don’t mention that learning from him has looked like him fussing over me both in the shower and out of it, scrunching my hair with that special towel, and having silk pillowcases on every pillow in the house.
He wasn’t just patient while he tended to me but openly mesmerized, completely absorbed in his work, like there was no greater fascination than the damp locks twisting around his fingers.
Busy leans back against the love seat, looking skeptical. “A boy is teaching you about hair care?”
“His sister-in-law taught him, he said. And anyway, it’s not hard to know more than me when it comes to these sorts of things.”
Fondness moves over Busy’s face. “That’s because you never had room in your head for anything that wasn’t art growing up. Or God. That’s why you had me.”
I smile a little at her, thinking of all the times she did my makeup for me, chose my clothes, told me what to say when I felt awkward in a group.
She smiles back, and even though it’s not a large smile and even though I can see the last seven years hanging around her neck like a scapular made of lead, it’s really her smiling back at me.
It’s really Busy. And that’s really a crochet project on the arm of the love seat; that’s really a basket of yarn at her feet.
That’s really a murder mystery she’s reading for fun next to the book she has to read for her group meetings.
That’s really a hamper of neatly folded laundry by the short hallway; those are her plants green and shiny and loved on the windowsill.
She has to stay here. No matter what it takes, no matter what it costs me. My soul, an eternity in Purgatory, sleeping next to a monster who’s admitted that he wants to violate me and then make me crave the violation.
I’ll pay it. I’ll do it.