Crazy Bitch (Bitches and Queens) (12 page)

“I thought I might work from
home today,” Willow answered with strained patience. She looked up and saw Kate
watching her warily. No doubt, she could hear Hannah’s piercing screams.

“Who the
fuck
said you
could work from home? Get your ass to work!”

“I’ll be there in a bit.”

“You had better goddamn be!”

“Sorry,” Willow said to Kate
after she hung up the phone. “I’ve got to go. Keep those, and let me know what
you think. If there is anything you don’t like, we could take it out, or
anything that you want, we could add in.”

“Willow, these are gorgeous,
all of them,” Kate said quietly and then frowned. “Are you sure you should go
to the office? She sounded insane.”

“She’s Hannah,” Willow answered
flippantly. What else was there to say?

The front entry of the office
suite was locked so Willow assumed Hannah must have already left. As she walked
past the lobby, nothing looked out of place, but once she opened the door to
her office she stopped dead in her tracks. The sight was incomprehensible. It
looked like the news footage of the wreckage left behind after a tornado
touchdown. Tiny pieces and scraps were all that was left of the last four
months. All her designs, all her work, were nothing but piles of useless rubble.

Willow’s initial thought was
that some stranger had done this, but she quickly dismissed it. The attack was
too personal. It was meant to send a message. This was Hannah’s work. Falling
to her knees in the middle of the floor, Willow covered her mouth, trying to
hold back the tears. After this morning, she didn’t think it was possible for
Hannah to hurt her any more than she already had, but she was wrong.

“You didn’t play by the rules,”
Hannah whispered from the door.

Shocked because she thought she
was alone, Willow looked up. The sight of Hannah was almost as terrifying as
the ruins she left behind. Her clothes were ripped and tattered. Twin black
streaks of mascara ran down her cheeks from her crazed tears.

“What rules?” Willow cried out.

“You’re a fucking cheat!”
Hannah screamed and rushed forward with a piece of paper in her hands. As she
sank down to the floor in front of Willow, she shoved the paper in her face. “Read
it!” Hannah demanded.

With her eyes flooded with
tears, Willow could barely make out what she was seeing, but a few bolded
phrases screamed out from the cream-colored parchment.  

Grossly
inappropriate…irresponsible…refused to comply with basic requests…

“What is this?” Willow sobbed.

Hannah reached out and stroked
Willow’s hair. “This is what happens when you don’t play by the rules. This is
what you made me do. This is what I have to send to the dean because you
cheated.”

“No,” Willow choked. “Hannah, you
can’t do this to me.”

“No?” Hannah questioned with a
cruel smirk. “No, Willow, you’re wrong. I can and I will destroy you, unless…”

“Unless what?” Willow
questioned.

“Unless you come back home with
me and finish the game. This time you will play by the rules.”

Twice in less than twenty-four
hours, Willow was in the bathtub. Knowing what to expect hadn’t made it any
easier. This time was worse, far worse, because there was no hope of reason.
Hannah wasn’t just a cruel bitch—she was diabolically
insane
. Willow no
longer wanted to know Hannah’s thoughts, her motivations. She only wanted it to
be over.

Four months…four months…four
months,
Willow silently chanted the mantra in her mind. In four
months, her signed contract with Satan would be served—
if
she didn’t
destroy her first.

Once Hannah had tucked her in
bed, Willow rolled to her side away from her. She wondered how long she had to
stay before the game was finished. Would it ever be finished? She now knew and
understood what Hannah was capable of doing—the lengths she would go to win.
The time limit was arbitrary. Hannah wouldn’t let her go until she was done
playing, or until she found a new toy. Only this morning, she had still been
young and naïve, and didn’t realize all her hopes and dreams resided in the
hands of a madwoman because she had put them there.

Hannah lay down beside her and
was unnaturally still for a long moment before expelling a ragged-sounding
breath.

“Do you hate me, Willow?”

“Do you want me to?” Willow
answered with a flat question.

“No,” Hannah said.

Her voice sounded quivery, as
if she was crying. Willow was only half-tempted to turn around and see if she
was, but she didn’t really want to know so she remained motionless. If Hannah
was crying, Willow figured it was just part of the game—the game she never once
agreed to play and had yet to be explained the rules.

“I’m sorry, I overreacted,”
Hannah sniffed. “I told you it was my first time.”

“Oh my God, Hannah,” Willow
snarled. “Even if that was true, people lose their virginity every day without
going ape shit.”

“I’m not like everybody else.”

“I’m sorry,” Willow hissed
sarcastically. “I forgot—you’re
Hannah Fairbanks
. What was I thinking?”

“I’m not talking about my
career,” Hannah cried. “I’m talking about the fact that I’m a hermaphrodite. I
have spent my entire life trying to conceal what I am, and now you know. It was
a bad moment, but you fucking promised me you wouldn’t fall apart.”

“A bad moment,” Willow growled
as she finally rolled over to face Hannah. “A bad moment? You destroyed
everything I’ve worked on since November. You stole a section of my life. And
you
dare
to call that a bad moment?”

“Yes, it was a bad moment,”
Hannah affirmed as she reached for a tissue from the bedside stand. “I fucked
up, and I’m sorry.”

“Oh well, I guess that makes it
better,” Willow retorted flippantly as she closed her eyes.

“No, it doesn’t—because you don’t
understand.”

“I don’t want to understand. At
this point, it wouldn’t make a difference,” Willow said.

“Don’t say that,” Hannah cried.
“You have no idea how it feels to be so certain about who and what you are only
to realize it is a lie every time you see yourself without clothes. I despise
that part of myself. For a moment, I hated you for seeing the truth. I wanted
to punish you for seeing as I am, but I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

Willow kept her eyes closed, shutting
Hannah out. She didn’t want to let her in once again. Everything about Hannah’s
voice sounded so different, yet familiar, and then Willow remembered this was
the Parisian Hannah, not the high-fashion supermodel, but the commonly attired sightseer.
Last night, Willow had caught glimpses of her underneath the controlled,
polished veneer. Now, here she was back in her full glory. Willow couldn’t help
but question the timing. Did Hannah somehow know that this unguarded,
vulnerable side was the part that attracted her the most? If so, was this just
part of the game?

Tortured and confused, Willow
didn’t know how to proceed, although she could accept Hannah’s words as truth.
Never having experienced any gender-identity issues, as she knew she was a
woman and had all the necessary parts, she understood how that might be
confusing, but Hannah’s imbalance went beyond the surface. There was more to
the story, and Willow knew she couldn’t be a pawn in a game she didn’t
understand without losing a piece of her soul.

“What is the game, Hannah?”

“The game…” Hannah started
unsteadily, “…started a long time ago. I was born in a small town in Siberia. I
know nothing about my either of biological parents other than the fact I was
surrendered to the state at three days old. Sometimes I tell people that my
mommy was a whore because it was true about many of the other children in the orphanage.
She may have been, I don’t know. Or, more than likely, they took one look at
me, couldn’t figure what I was, and gave me away.”

“My name was Sasha then, and I
lived there until I was seven years old. I was always separated from the other
children. I had my own room, my own bath time. The other children realized
there was something wrong and didn’t want anything to do with me. Some of the
workers were very cruel and called me an it.”

“And then one day a young,
glamorous couple arrived from America. I couldn’t understand a word of what
they said, but when the translator told me, I think I must have fell in love
with them because they were the first people in my entire life that had ever
called me a little girl. New daddy said that they had searched all over the
world, and that I was the perfect little girl. They took me to their beautiful
home in Austin where I had a playroom filled with dolls. Everything was so
enchanted, like living a fairy tale, until new daddy wanted to start taking my
picture. I didn’t like the kind of pictures he took, but whenever I cried, new
mommy would scream and rage. She would throw away all my toys, and say I was a
horrible, selfish little brat. Whenever I was very stubborn, she would take my
clothes and put them in the litter box so I would have to go to school smelling
like cat urine. Whenever the school officials called her in, she was all smiles
and charm. She said that they were doing their best, but I had abandonment and
social issues because of my time in the orphanage. They always believed her,
too. Eventually, I would give in and let new daddy take my picture.”

“After a few years, I
discovered that new daddy belonged to secret club of perverts, and a few of
them were so taken by my photographs that they offered money to see me in
person. I had to let them look at me naked and fondle me because if I didn’t,
new mommy would threaten to kill me. I think that is what she always wanted to
do. She never wanted me, and by then she didn’t love new daddy either. She was
a horrible, miserable drunk.”

“One of the perverts was a
photographer from New York City. Unlike the others that wanted to touch me, he
just wanted to take my picture. I started to take off my clothes, but he
stopped me. He said he didn’t want a picture of my crotch. It was my face he
was after. A few weeks later, he came to my school. He told me he had found an
agent that wanted to represent me. I left that very second, before they could
stop me. I didn’t come home until after they had been murdered.”

Hannah paused in her story to
look over Willow and found silent tears streaming down her cheeks. She reached
out and tried to wipe away the tears but new ones slipped from her closed lids.
“Why are you crying?” she whispered.

Why was she crying?
Willow
was crying because she realized just how fucked up Hannah truly was. No amount
of hearts and rainbows would ever fix her shredded psyche. She was irrevocably
broken. Willow was crying because she knew despite all of that she was falling
in love with her. She was crying because she recognized that no matter how
badly she wanted to stay, Hannah would, in all probability, push her away, and
when it happened, Willow wouldn’t be whole again.

Willow opened her eyes and
caught Hannah’s hand. Holding it against her cheek, she asked, “Did you murder
them?”

Hannah blinked in surprise. “No,
I already told you I was away at the time.”

“Hannah, you can tell me the truth.”

Hannah swallowed before
answering, “They were evil people. Both of them. If they couldn’t have me, they
would find someone else. Prison wasn’t enough.”

“The game?” Willow questioned. “You
never stopped playing with dolls, did you?”

Considering all she had
confessed, Willow shouldn’t have been surprised, but she was when Hannah
admitted, “No, I haven’t.”

“New mommy said it wasn’t
normal for a girl my age to keep playing. My only regret in leaving was that I
hadn’t been able to bring them with me. My career skyrocketed almost from the
moment the plane landed in New York. I hadn’t even been there a week before I
was being booked for cover shots. Pierre Andre, the photographer, and my agent,
Margaret Harper, were both fabulous in helping me adjust and find an apartment,
but I was only sixteen. I didn’t know people recognized my name, let alone my
face. One day I went to a toy store, and I was suddenly surrounded by this
crowd of strangers. It scared me so I called Margaret as soon as I got home.
When I told her what happened, she started berating me, asking me what on earth
I was doing in a toy store. I was being marketed as a young adult, not a child
model. I didn’t go back, but I felt very alone without them. After I had been
in the city for a few months, I was invited to this ultra-posh, museum exhibit
opening. I spent the evening chatting with this very lovely woman, Lindsey. At
the end of the night, she gave me her business card. It turns out Lindsey was a
high-end prostitute who was readily available for a variety of pleasures. A few
nights later, I called her up. She came over and let me play, and after she
left, for a while, I didn’t feel so alone. Over the years, I’ve hired numerous
prostitutes, and occasionally I’ve met women elsewhere. Sometimes they turned
into long-term arrangements.”

“Why did they end?” Willow
questioned.