Scar Flowers (32 page)

Leah rubbed Sasha’s ears. It would be several minutes yet before he entered the gallery. The blinking light on the answering machine caught her eye, and she pressed the playback button.

“Leah, I’m sorry.” Paul’s voice, his words choked and muffled as if by a bad connection. Was he crying? “I’m sorry. Don’t listen to any rumors, I’ll fix things, I promise. Please call me back. Not for me, but so I can explain. I have to talk to you.”

So
Babylon
was not going to be released, even after she had given in to Paul.

All Simon’s work, lost. And she had given herself away trying to save it.

She felt old and foolish, as if one more betrayal would make her collapse like an empty wasp’s nest. What did she think was going on? That Simon was sick with love for her? That sort of schoolgirl fantasy belonged to Faith. Mostly likely he wanted to know what had happened to his film.

She would end it today: no more Simon. All she had done to him was damage.

Leah erased the message.

4:57 p.m.

Helmetless, Simon dodged a pickup truck covered with Grateful Dead stickers and gave the driver the finger as he revved his bike’s engine and roared past.

Babylon
is dead.

A Volvo station wagon appeared in the road in front of him, and he diverted the bike into a driveway and onto the sidewalk for a spinning, crazy moment, bumping over another driveway to cut in front. A branch whipped his face, and a plastic garbage can skidded off his knee. The bike was a beautiful ma
-chine, its suspension flawless, and normally this would require his full attention to properly savor it. Today it meant nothing.

Sunlight slanted across the fender, dazzling him. This would be the last hot day of the year, the checkout girl at the grocery store had told him that morning.

The last of the red-hot days. That could describe his career.

With a big-budget failure on his hands, even independent backers would shy away from financing him, and no major studios would.
Hollywood law decreed that he was only as good as his last film.

After his conversation with Fran, he locked the house and mailed his belongings to
Alaska. It had taken less than a day to get fired, go broke, and be back on the road.

That’s what his life amounted to in hours. In dollars,
the money from
Babylon
that he hadn’t blown or sent home to his family had already gone toward his debts.

The breeze on his neck whistled and scraped. His T-shirt scratched like wool, and the passing neighborhoods reeked of car exhaust, the bruised green smell of mowed lawns, the sidewalks dotted with dog shit and gobs of spit.
Every time he closed his eyes, the main street of Skagway appeared, as though its shabby gold-rush false-front buildings waited for his return—there should be a nice job for him at the drugstore, behind the photo finishing counter. He could hear it now: “I came by for my daughter’s bachelorette party pictures. Hey, you know film pretty well—can I hire you to video the wedding?”

What better way to celebrate his accomplishments than to visit the woman who had pried into his life and conspired with Paul Jonas to sabotage his film? He had checked the clock several times to make sure that he was on time; the bike purred to a stop outside Leah’s house.

Today, she would reply to his questions. About Paul, about Faith, about herself.

Had he begun to believe
that he was what she said he was? A slave, prey to his own nature? No. He was what he wanted to make of himself. Not what Hollywood wanted, nor what his family and Tom expected.

Simon rang the buzzer. His reflection in the security cam
-era lens smiled. She would let him in. She had to. He had planned this. The muffled exclamation of a female voice floated out an open window on the top floor, followed by a door slamming.

After several minutes, he rang the bell again and the gate clicked open, followed a moment later by the front door.
He tossed a penny in the fountain of gaping mouths in the entryway and winked at the somber wooden masks as he climbed the stairs. In the waiting room, he pulled off his boots and stacked his clothes on the table. As he rang the buzzer by the wrought-iron gate, he touched the inside of his cheek with his tongue to make sure that the tiny paper-cutting blade he’d concealed there was still in its plastic sheath. A capsule of stage blood lay under his tongue.

The velvet curtain opened at last and Leah appeared, a collar and lead in one hand. For a moment he wondered what had happened to Faith, but then the Leah in the hallway blushed. It was Faith, in a long red wig with short bangs and chin-length side
locks. She wore the same shade of crimson lipstick Leah favored, high heels, and an embroidered green silk gown. Mascara colored her pale lashes, and her brows were arched and drawn the way Leah sometimes made hers up.

As the girl opened the gate, Leah herself appeared in the hallway, wearing the same dress. An illusion of conjoined mirror images, like a Rorschach ink blot. The real Leah curved a mirthless smile as she leaned against the wall, arms crossed.

She knew—she must know about him and Faith. Otherwise why dress the girl up in this costume? He wondered if she also knew about his plan for today, but that would be impossible. He was letting Faith’s stories get to him too much.

“Please, come in,” said Leah.

He stepped inside. Leah frowned and reached out to take the collar and leash from Faith, but Simon grabbed them and put them on, padlock and all. The last thing he wanted was any discussion. If he had to talk, he risked swallowing the blade or capsule.

No one spoke as they went down the hall. He was relieved to see no sign of the dog and surprised at how similar the two women looked now. Though Faith was more voluptuous from the waist down, the severe cut of her dress masked the difference.

They took him to a small room off the main gallery, its walls covered in red velvet. A plush black chaise longue with leather straps crouched in the middle of the room, and a small raised alcove in one wall was fronted by a locked gate. One corner held a large wooden desk; besides the furniture, only a pair of wrought-iron candle sconces and a few short lengths of chain broke the crimson monotony.

Leah
lit the candles and a cone of incense and invited him to sit on the chaise, which was shaped like three-quarters of a W, so that he reclined at an angle with his knees drawn up. Faith fastened the buckles to strap him down. The women kept their backs turned to each other—Leah striking matches as if she were opening switchblades, and Faith wavering on the verge of tears. What had they been arguing about when he rang the bell?

“Faith has a fantasy she’s been too shy to reveal until now,” said Leah. “She wants to be the lady of the house. Somehow I thought you’d be quite willing to satisfy her wish. It should be very pleasant for you; she’s much gentler than I am.”

Faith, pale under her dusting of powder, bit the inside of her mouth so that a crease formed in her cheek.

Silence
fell as Leah blindfolded Simon. Nothing more happened for many minutes except for darkness and the pressure of his bonds and the dull press of velvet.

A murmur
from the corner of the room was followed by the slithering sound of clothes being shed. Someone left the room and returned after a long pause; he was not sure if he was alone at any point or not. Then the voice continued, lulling, too soft for the words to be clear. Dusty-sweet tendrils of incense clouded his lungs.

First came footfalls on the carpet, then a pair of hands settled on
his shoulders. The hands moved over him, each at its own pace, grasping, imploring, teasing: flat palms, nail tips, fingers pressing down or fanning out, describing different rhythms. He could not tell if they both belonged to the same woman, lost track as he tried to identify the style and message of each one’s approach. He tasted the bittersweet resin of sandalwood, twitched when he could not distinguish between leather straps and his own skin.

A pair of lips brushed his ear at the same moment
that a mouth closed on his fingers. Now there were four hands on him. One reached for his mouth, but he turned away only to have some-thing smaller, softer than a fingertip, brush his lips, followed by the yielding pressure of a naked breast against his cheek. He turned away again. If he forgot himself and responded to this game, his plan would fail.

That was his reason speaking, and it never could hold out long against her.
His collective mistress was in no hurry, undis-mayed by his lack of response. Her only disadvantage this time was her silence. Not silence; merely an absence of words. She had a wealth of sighs and murmurings, caught breaths and half-whispers, at her disposal. No one was here to witness his lapse if he gave in except her, and she would never know for sure whom he was responding to.

At first it was just an exercise in deduction to recall that night with Faith, to see if he could recognize her. Her softness and the creaking of her leather jacket and belt as they came off were still clear in his memory. He knew her better as a sensation than he did Leah: up against the wall with her breasts pressed to his face, her foot arched back against his leg, and her sudden sharp intake of breath. Leah’s touch so far had been the skilled application of pain or an offering of a range of styles to gauge his reaction to each. All except the kisses from last time, when she was all velvet and silk against him, her hands in his hair surprisingly strong. It could be her mouth moving down his belly, hot and slow, as if deciding whether to suck or bite, her fingertips brushing his thighs.

That thought was all it took for him to be lost—the same trick he had fallen for last time. Drowning, airless ache. Tormented by mermaids. Caught in a net of whispers, trailing hair and wet mouths.

After an hour, a day, a week, came a flurry of whispers, and the hands retreated.

“That’s enough,” Leah said.

Someone released his ankles and waist, and he felt denim against his feet, drawn up over his legs. They had given him some of his clothes back. They did not free him, and he still could not see.

Leah said something that he couldn’t make out over the rustle of fabric. Then, as far as he could tell, both women left and closed the door behind them.

Time passed.

High heels rang staccato on their way down the hall, stopping outside. The door opened, closed, and the lock turned. Whoever it was paused to undress. He waited for her to speak or remove his blindfold. Uncertain sound of movement. She must have knelt beside the couch. Not a bait-and-switch like last time; it was a woman’s body that pressed against him. She was nude, and the center of her chest touched the back of his hand, her heartbeat racing. Faith? He could not imagine Leah being so nervous. He moved his fingers but could not turn his hand over. She touched her lips to his arm so gently that it made no sound. He felt her breath on his skin, then her hand on his stomach, warm and still. And then her cheek, with the tickling of her eyelashes. As if she were praying or listening.

It was not sweet. He was still bound, manipulated, tasting anger and frustration. If it were Faith, he would understand. If it were Leah, he would not be able to forgive the deception. If it were not Leah
. . . he would not be able to forgive that either. Another dangled promise, broken. Just the thought that it might be her ached in him. Whoever this was went so slowly that he wore these feelings out and forgot to resist for a moment, opening a gap big enough for her to insinuate her way inside.

Her arms wrapped around him, voluptuous slide of her palms on his skin, the flick of her tongue, mouth closing on his side in the faintest of bites. Her hair trailed after her, cool and insubstantial, as she made a lazy circuit of his body above the waist, returning to where she had started. She said nothing, but he heard everything in her breathing: the suppression of words and emotion, the concentration, and the occasional abandonment of caution as she was lost with him in what it was the rest of her was saying.

She put her hands to his face, her lips against his ear, breast and beating heart pressed against him as if seeking shelter, and stayed like that for a long while. As if she were telling him that she was trapped in this with him too. But that only raised the question: Was it Faith? If it were, this should not be happening. He had never meant to get her involved. It must be Leah. She had by-passed all his objections, left him open to whatever final pain or humiliation was in store.

Her hands were gentle, ceaseless. Her mouth formed silent words or drew gently at his flesh, sliding and catching, pressing. Then she was up on the couch with him, her legs pressed against his hips as she straddled him. She unfastened his jeans and reached in, guiding, until he was aware only of this one point of contact as the boundaries of their bodies met and kept going in a mingled collision. It had the heat and flowing quality of entering a bath, but through his clothes and the condom he could only feel the warmth and pressure of her—muted, as though the contact were not real. He was distracted by pain in his wrists and ankles, then realized
that he had been pulling against the restraints; if he could only touch her once, he would know which one she was.

This must be Leah’s iron control he was up against. She fell still once she enveloped him. For a long moment
, there was nothing but her breathing, then a slight ripple, magnifying into a slow revolution, a relentless grip that refused to develop a rhythm. Light feathering brush of her fingers on his hair, his face, then her hands braced firmly at his shoulders. Something tickled his chest. It must be the ends of her hair. She started to move in earnest, undulatory rotations, closing around him as tightly as the straps that held him.