Scar Flowers (19 page)

“Have I felt like I don’t fit in? Honey, I could write a book.” Delilah leaned back against the headboard. The tabby arched its back and stretched with a shudder, its ear folded flat, then walked over to settle on her lap.

S
he was ready to believe I’d gone over the edge.

“Yes, how
’re you doing now that Sissy’s gone?”

Delilah waved a hand. A small cloud of orange cat hairs drifted in the wake of her gesture. “We had three good years. Better and more intense than most couples have. Sometimes I wonder if it’s this town. All the rain. It’s a Scorpio city, you know. Good for suicides, for hiding in your own little damp corner alone. And the most negative energy in the whole country, because of the
ley lines.” She scratched the cat under the chin. “I know what you mean about inspiration. There are times I think it’ll never come again.”

“Did Sissy inspire you? I mean, did you ever see some
-one’s work and it was like discovering a new universe—yet it was personal, said something about them that you saw and no one else recognized it? Just sitting out there out in the open like treasure.”

“Sissy did make me some lovely gowns. But it was more our visceral connection that inspired me.” Delilah drew her brows together. “Are you talking about Angel?”

Leah blinked. “Yes. Angel. He’s very special.” She held up the piercing needle, still in her hand. “Where’s your sharps disposal? We’ve kept Faith long enough.”

4:12 p.m. 

Leah returned home
without Faith, who had gone to a coffeehouse to study. She locked the front door and went upstairs to her office.

The space
used to be the walk-in closet for the master bed-room until she remodeled it. She stared out the window a moment before she sat down. Halfway to the floating bridge, a water-skier bobbed at the end of a rope and waved to the speedboat to start another run. A tiny figure insulated from the cold water by a rubber suit but exposed to its force by the need to navigate and balance on top of it.

Above her desk hung a photograph of a
dappled net of light in sky-blue water, against white walls that curved toward the bottom.
Poolstructure 5
, by Kathleen Johnson. A tranquil, secret place. Such a contrast to the plume of spray and trail of churned water in the skier’s wake. Leah tapped her fingernails on her desk—an antique wooden roll-top hutch bolted to a thick slab of glass that had nails and razorblades encased in it.

Sasha rested her head in Leah’s lap, eyes trained on her mistress’s face.
A monitor with a screen split into quadrants ran security camera video feeds of the front porch, the gallery, and Faith’s and Angel’s rooms downstairs. She cycled through the next screen, which showed views of the velvet room, the confessional, the medical room, and the client waiting room—all were quiet and still. Though the office was on the street-facing side of the house, the angle of the building allowed her to see the dog run and part of the lake beyond, gray near the shore and glittering blue toward the center.

Faith had stacked and numbered the answering machine tapes of clients’ messages on the desk. Leah picked up the first one. Where had Delilah heard rumors about her and Simon? It could have been Faith, Angel, or Paul. Paul only visited for a day or two each month. On business and to see her—so he said. He had called several times since she came home, but she had not returned his messages.

Please don’t let it be Angel. But it would make sense if it were.

Did he care that much, to be jealous? She tried to clear her mind, to forget the look of concern on Delilah’s face
during their talk—concern or perhaps even pity for someone who had lost all judgment.

She would work instead of brooding. Leah set down the tape and turned on her computer. The hardest part of her business was taxes and recordkeeping. In
the state of Washington it was not illegal for people to pay her to do things to them, provided that she did not penetrate them sexually with anything. But most clients were happy to bring and use their own toys on themselves when she allowed it.

That had been amusing—paying a lawyer to sift the laws. “The cops could still make trouble for you,” the attorney had said. She was a square, solid woman with a buzz cut and a rainbow sticker on the back of her pickup truck. “Arrest you on suspicion of
prostitution. But it’s all legal, short of having sex with ‘em for money.”

While she
answered e-mail inquiries, the phone rang: a prospective client who had seen her ad in the local business journal and wanted a brand or a scar. Something permanent. No, he didn’t have any experience, with professionals or otherwise.

The cuts on Simon’s chest would be healed now.

Stop thinking about him. It’s over
, never should have started in the first place.

“I don’t
mark a client permanently until I’m sure he knows what he’s asking for. There are many other things we could do instead, until you’re ready.”

As she spoke, the skier
on the lake disappeared from view in a plume of spray. What had Simon told her when she asked about his scar?
Outboard motor. Waterskiing.

The man
sounded faint and faraway, like an insect buzzing at a windowpane. A baby wailed in the background, then came the sound of a door closing, and the crying was muffled.

“Do you have long hair? I can tell from your voice that you’re beautiful,” the man on the phone said.

“I won’t grant you a session if you’re disrespectful. You’ll never be allowed to touch me, and I’ll never touch you the way your question implies that you want. If you insist on not listening to me, you will never meet me. Do you understand?”

“Yes. I’m sorry. I have to see you this week. I’m just here on a business trip.”

“Do you often bring your infant with you on your business travels? How sweet.”

The man
on the other end of the phone was silent. Outside, the water-skier reappeared, roiling the water.

“
I thought so. Call an escort service instead. You’re wasting my time.”

He hung up.
Leah leaned back in her chair.

The phone rang again within seconds, and she answered curtly.

“I haven’t heard from you,” said a man’s voice. “I wanted to know you’re okay.”

A
rushing sound filled the spaces between his words, like traffic or running water. Caller ID displayed Paul’s cell-phone number.

“I’m fine, thank you.”

“I need to see you. It doesn’t have to be a session.” Paul cleared his throat. “I consider you a friend, and I thought you felt the same way.”

“It’s not that simple, Paul. I don’t think people can just go straight from a professional relationship
like ours to being friends. Maybe not ever.”

A soft noise came over the line, possibly a sigh.

“It’s my fault if you got a different impression,” she said. “It was misleading of me to get involved with your life. You should see another domme. Delilah could recommend one.”

“I’d rather see you. You understand about the saints. Only I wish I’d never shown you that movie.”

“You were proud of discovering Simon for the studio. You wanted to show me.”

“You want him, not to hear about my work. It was all an excuse for that bet. Which you lost.”

Leah’s ring of keys dangled from the lock of a small cubby on her desk. She opened the door to pull out an envelope. “I shouldn’t have made the bet, you’re right.”

“You lost. You were supposed to prove he was a submissive
.”

Inside the envelope were two
murky Polaroids. Simon, in bed with his hands bound. Her knee was visible in the corner of one shot, just to the side of his waist. Her proof.

“I didn’t lose. Think back to the cliff stunt. Why’d the director suddenly decide to grab the substitute stuntwoman and jump? Was that his rational brain thinking?”

“That’s your proof? That doesn’t mean anything.”

“It did to Fran. I thought about showing you more proof, but that would compromise another person. I won’t do that, not anymore.”

“I want to see you.”

“That’s not a good idea. We can talk a little over the phone, but that’s it. You have your own life.”

“You’re leaving me.” His tone was flat. “It’s not even my fault.”

The line went dead. She hung up the phone and turned it off. From a drawer of stationery and wax seals, she retrieved a pack of matches, lit one, and set it to the photographs, which shriveled and
dropped to the thick glass desktop with a bitter smell as flaming black ash. Outside on the lake, the water-skier had vanished.

Tuesday, September 5,
10:10 a.m.

Leah stepped out of the house into a sullen morning. Mist rose from the rooftops where sunlight tried to burn through the clouds. She would have stayed in bed, but Sasha had to be walked
, so she put on her biggest pair of sunglasses, pulled her hair into a knot, and slipped into one of the track suits from her Nadia wardrobe.

Sasha pranced, collar jingling, but kept in heel. At the far end of the park stood a young couple deep in conversation, the woman leaned against the peeling trunk of a madrona tree with eyes lowered while the man kicked at a clump of grass. An old man searched the rhododendrons along one of the cedar-chip paths for aluminum cans.

Leah chose a bench and sat. She removed Sasha’s leash, and the dog stood poised, ears pricked, until she gave the hand signal for “run.” Sasha took off in an arc through the trees, finally cutting back toward the bench, where she danced close, head and shoulders crouched and rump in the air. Leah flexed the folded leash in her hands as the dog devoured bursts of freedom.

She had stopped seeing clients. Paul left messages, sent letters she did not answer.

A flash of color caught her eye. A dark-haired man in a red-and-white leather jacket, watching her as he leaned against a tree. Dark eyes.

Did she know him? The way he looked at her
. . . Was he a client?

Simon.

The air left her lungs as if sucked out, and she dropped the leash. She sat frozen as he approached, her mind blank.

“She’s well-trained. What’s her name?” He patted Sasha’s head. The dog tipped her head back to be petted, tongue lolling
.

She had to react, but no words came. How had he found her here? She should be able to put the pieces together but could not think over the beating of her heart.

“Shooting’s over on
Babylon
. We’re doing postproduction here.” Simon rubbed the dog’s neck, his fingers moving firmly, rhythmically. “Mind if I sit down?”

He was going to whether she liked it or not. She moved aside, and he sat. The old man whistled as he carried his sack of cans away.

A detective—hadn’t he mentioned hiring one to investigate her, back in the hotel room? But to find her here this morning, he must have watched the house.

“We used that cliff shot. The stunt you did. It was a good idea.”

“Are you following me?” Leah picked a tiny white flower from the leg of her black pants. A spent bloom, just a ring of yellowed petals with a hole in the center. Her hand shook, and her lips felt dry, thin. She had not put on any gloss or color.

“And to think I’
d been told there’s no irony on the West Coast.” Simon unzipped his racing jacket and held it open. “I’m not wearing a camera today.”

She should say something about the night in the hotel room. An apology, an explanation. But the man who sat next to her was the one from the movie screen. Her eyes wanted to crawl over him, but she turned away with only an impression of his features. Straight brows. High, wide forehead
under tousled black hair. Broken nose. Golden skin hinted at through a white T-shirt thinned by age. His hand rested on Sasha’s head, narrow-fingered in proportion to the solidity of his frame. She felt flustered and drab, glued in place by surprise, like a mud hen startled out of its nest.

“Then why are you here?” she asked.

Beyond the last row of benches, the woman from the
tête-à-tête
couple turned her back on the man, who walked around the other side of the tree to face her.

“That night in your hotel,” said Simon. “Well, all of it. I want to know what you did. How you did it.”

I know what you really are.

“Ah.” She
clipped Sasha’s leash on and stood. “You’ve come to see the freak show. Learn the mystery behind the sideshow curtain.”

“What’s wrong with trying to learn the mystery?” He followed as she walked away. “It’s what I do
.”

She
quickened her steps, her face warm. She recalled being followed home by a knot of boys in tenth grade, the fear that rose in her chest when no one from the neat little neighborhood yards and houses investigated their shouts, the hail of names and stones. Earlier that day in gym class, one of them had kicked her between the legs as she did somersaults. He had waited until her feet were in the air. The gym teacher refused to believe her, did not seem to see the whispers and giggles. Touch the freak, follow the skank.

“You can’t just do what you did and then refuse to talk.” He matched her stride.

He was right. Maybe Paul was right too, but what could she do? Something yanked her sleeve and she stopped, the air gone from her lungs. Sasha froze. A crest of fur spiked her shoulders as she growled. Simon’s hand gripped her elbow.

A branch swayed and rustled. Small white blossoms sifted down, grazed her cheek and landed on the
padded shoulder of his jacket.

She
signaled to Sasha to be quiet.

“You have a professional interest, is that it?” Her voice rasped, dry as a husk. She would make reparations, if that was what he wanted. “All right. My schedule is open Wednesday after
-noons at five. Don’t forget your camera.”

He let her walk away this time, through the empty park, back toward her house.

Sunday, September 3,
11:00 a.m.

“Excuse me.” Simon addressed an elderly woman tending flowers across the alley from Leah’s house.

“Oh. Are you here to prune the hedges? I thought that was tomorrow.” The woman set her watering can down.

“Please don’t get up, ma’am. I’m new here is all. My name’s Simon.”

“Oh!” She leaned on her trowel to push herself up. “I’m sorry; what d’you want?”

He smiled. “Just to introduce myself. I live around the corner.”

She flipped her prescription sun lenses up to peer at him.

“Do you know your neighbor Leah Masterson? She recom
-mended this area.”

“No. She keeps a lovely yard, though. The whole time
we’ve lived here.”

“So do you. Are those dahlias?”

“Zinnias. You sure you’re not selling something? I don’t mean to be rude, but . . .”

He smiled. “No, I’m sorry to bother you. How long did you say you and your husband have been here? You must be new like me.”

“Oh, no! We’ve been here twenty years.”

“Ah. And has she been here that long too?”

“Well, I don’t know. I have my own life to take care of. If you’ll excuse me.”

Simon tried the neighbors on either side of the house, who were polite but did not know Leah by name. He had better luck with the man next
door to the elderly gardener.

“Masterson? She’s the one with that cottonwood that blocks my view.”

“So you know her?”

“Never met her. Are you selling something?”

“No. So if you’ve never met—”

“Sent her a letter. Property ownership is a matter of public record. I’d be able to see the Cascades if she’d top that tree. Not to mention what it would do for
my house’s value. Say, if you wouldn’t mind talking to her . . .”

Simon had been in Seattle a week, sitting in his hotel room after the day’s editing sessions, writing in his journal or sketching ideas for a new script and then tearing up the pages. Running along the Burke-Gilman Trail at
midnight, trying not to think about
Babylon
. That left only Leah on his mind. The detective’s report said that she lived here. He spent the morning in her neighborhood with the hope—and fear—of seeing her.

Her house was only accessible from a locked gate on
the alley, complete with security camera and intercom. The alley was lined with fences and garages, with cars going in and out. There was no place to stand in sight of her door unnoticed. The driveway gates lay down another alley. Same story. He’d have to return another day and watch from his rental car for Leah to come out.

Crazy,
his being here. And she must be crazy, following him to L.A. But there was a story to her, a kernel of mystery of the sort that lodged in his mind and ended up becoming a film script. Inaction would be worse.

During the last few weeks
of shooting he had given in to exhaustion and worked only ten-hour days. He surprised himself by getting just as much done anyway—energy and ideas bubbled up as needed, at least for a few days after he woke up on the floor of Leah’s hotel room. But the euphoria faded, and he spent his free hours in the gym, sweating against weights and machines or running around the studio lot at dawn. Anything to try to feel alive again. He had tried drinking, but it made him maudlin, prone to dialing Leah’s number from the detective agency’s report and hanging up after one ring.

Rumors predicted that the studio would be sold. His relationship with Karen had limped to a halt, heralded by several angry monologues in which she listed his many faults, chief of which was possession of a heart of ice. One night after a tense conversation with Karen, he found himself in an even more tense budget meeting across Fran’s enormous red lacquer desk in her office. That’s when he decided to go to Seattle for postproduction—at least for the editing.

“Seattle?” Fran’s voice rose. “There’s no industry up there, Si.”

“I’ll finish the pickups here. There’s an editor in Seattle who worked on
St. Sebastian
—she costs less than anyone here. The composer you hired is in New York, so my going to Seattle won’t make a difference there.”

“Well.” Fran leaned back and drummed her fingertips on her desk. “If that’s what you want. We’ll work the numbers and see.”

Maybe the studio
was
being sold. As long as he didn’t ask for more money, Fran no longer bothered to fight him. He did not dwell on the possible fates of his film—all of them bad—should this turn out to be the case.

Monday, September 4, 11:07 p.m.

Dressage whips, parachute stretchers, pony equipment, branding irons, deprivation cages, medical tables, shock whips, hemostats, speculums, straightjackets.
Some dominatrixes posed seminude or provided wish lists of the tributes they would accept, complete with colors and sizes: leather corsets, velvet capes, thigh-high boots.

Dominatrix
and
S&M
: the two terms were enough to return hundreds of search-engine hits. Balding, middle-aged men shackled or crouched at their mistress’s feet, hoods over their heads. Zippers for mouths and eyes, twin slits to breathe through. Simon closed his laptop when he realized that the eyes he glimpsed peering out of one man’s full-face mask were his own, reflected on the screen. He left his hotel room and walked into the neighbor-hoods, where televisions glimmered and porch lights shone. A striped cat basking under a living-room lamp blinked at him as dishes rattled in the next room. He thought of his film, then of his family back in Alaska, but could not picture their faces. Nothing kept its clarity except images of leather, ropes, and flesh.

He had explored marginal topics before. How different could this one be?