Strange Flesh (35 page)

“James, I need a moment alone with my sister,” he says.

I
had no desire to linger as Blake took in the sight of his wounded twin. Their voices were just audible through the door. Quiet but edged with fury.

Blythe’s apartment has filled with serious men conducting themselves as if at a crime scene. Someone is checking the door for tampering, someone else photographs the damage to the reading room cabinet. None of these people are police. I doubt if anyone not directly accountable to the Randalls will ever see the inside of her home.

I look at the shattered remnants of the picture lying on the ground and think back to what Billy said to Blythe: “The pieces are coming together.”

What “pieces” is he talking about?

Well, he stole videos from Robert Randall’s hidden cache, and
Savant
is a game wherein the primary currency is video clips. Recordings of one’s crimes and outrages. It stands to reason that Billy’s planning to deploy his morbid home movies in some way. But he said he needed “one more” before his brother would be held to account.

Does he mean one more video?

Blythe said Gina Delaney’s death is driving Billy’s actions. Detective Nash told me that she videotaped her suicide. Which Billy blames on Olya, though according to Blythe, perhaps he’s implicated Blake somehow as well.

So is Billy planning to use Gina’s death video in his game?

Publishing an actual snuff film seems extreme, though he hasn’t shown any tendency to flinch from strong content. He’ll want his players to see Gina’s sickening final moments and, by following his slowly unwinding narrative, come to blame his enemies for them as he does. I already assumed it was Billy who tried to buy the video from Nash’s bent crime scene tech. And that implies a crucial detail about his agenda:

He doesn’t have the video yet. And that means I can get a step ahead of him.

I start typing an email to Detective Nash.

I’m too charged up from my encounter with Blythe to sleep, so I decide to console myself in the immaterial arms of my digital dalliance.

Around one in the morning, I head back to the Orifice and find the place abandoned.

After spending some time to synch up to Xan’s latest updates, I’m bending over to plug in our Ginger simulator when I get that shivery feeling that someone’s watching me from behind. I turn around to see Olya silhouetted in the dim light of the doorway. She looks like she’s just rushed away from an awards show after-party, wearing the kind of dress you have to use industrial adhesives to keep on. She glares at me with such rage that a ripple of fear runs through my guts. Like I’m a small child who has done something unmentionable and is about to receive the full wrath of my evil stepmother.

“Olya, hey . . . what’s going—”

Two long strides bring her near. I can see her wind up from over her left shoulder, but I just watch, fascinated, as she unloads on me with a vicious backhand that hammers into my face. Her rings dig long welts in my cheek. My hand flies up to cover the damage and feels the slickness of blood.

“What the fuck?”

She’s not listening. I barely get my arm up to deflect her forehand follow-up. She takes this in stride, grabbing a handful of my shirt at the shoulder. She steps in close, her foot just behind mine, and then uses all her weight to shove me backward over my chair. I sprawl disgracefully on the floor.

Olya seems ready to bolster this treatment with a good kicking. Maybe it’s her heels, or maybe my abject state, but she decides against it and just looms over me.

“Who the fuck do you think you are?” Her voice is a fearsome hiss.

Trying to lever myself up against the wall, I say, “Look, I don’t know what—”

This infuriates her enough that she bends down, plants a knee in my crotch, and grabs me by the hair. “Don’t fucking lie to me!”

This time I’m better prepared. I take her hand and twist it back so she has to let go. Then I snatch her other hand and force it across her chest, so she can’t hit me again. She fights it all the way, and I’m dismayed at how strong she is.

“Olya, you need to stop this shit now!”

She writhes violently, and I push her off me. I get up slowly, examining my torn cheek again. “What is your problem?”

She stands, and I check my guard since it doesn’t look like she’s finished. But she straightens her posture, composing herself. She says, “You think you can take this over? You think this, Zhames?”

“Would you calm down?”

“I spoke with Benito. You go and start making threats to our partner? How stupid a man—”

“Olya, relax. Let’s talk about this.”

“You want to talk? You don’t talk to anyone but me. You’re nothing. How could you think to do this?”

“Listen, I understand why you’re upset. I’m sorry. It was a mistake.”

“Oh, you make mistake?”

“Well, did you ever think maybe you were making a mistake?”

She closes her eyes. A long susurrant exhale is followed by, “I know what I am doing, James.”

“Are you really sure about that? I know about Blake as well.”

Her expression darkens again. She’s about to deny it but then shrugs irritably. “So what? We will need lots of money. He has it. And he owns half the media in this shitty country.”

“Well, let’s leave the good old USA out of it. But Blake Randall is the leader of a public company, and so if he has to invest through this shady porno proxy—”

“Exotica knows the industry. Their experience is essential.”

“Exotica is a mobbed-up filth factory that sells giant black dildos called ‘the Negro Problem.’ You want your brilliant invention competing for shelf space with that?”

“Ugh. Zhames, you think you’re not working on a sex toy? What is this stupid saying? Ah . . . ‘It is what it is.’ Now you are getting romantic about a cow-milking machine.” She steps over and grabs Ginger by her neck and drags her toward me. “So this is going to be your lovely new girlfriend? No. You will hide her under the bed.”

“I thought we were going to challenge that impulse by injecting some class. Like Fred and Ginger, remember?”

“You are naïve. We could spend years making fine design. Nice packaging, but this is still a sex toy. The only thing you inject is
spermu
.”

She moves closer, pulling Ginger with her. I put my hands up. “Olya—”

She bats them away irritably but without her former violence. “I show you.”

Lots of things about Olya have amazed me to this point, but the new pinnacle is the dexterity with which she has my fly down and my dick out before I can react. She stretches across me and dips her fingers into one of the tubs of Ginger’s special lubricant. It’s sharply cold as she applies it. Exciting. Then Olya jams Ginger’s mouth over me. Without the heating elements and wiggling air bladders, it feels plastic and alien.

“Eh, Zhimbo? It’s like fucking a Barbie, no? You will not make love with this. You will never use it with a lover. It will be strange bitches who talk dirty and disappear, and charge you for the arm and leg. Exotica knows how to do this. Make you play with this plastic toy.”

“You, ah, have to turn it on.”

“No, Zhames, you cannot turn this on. It is a machine. It does what we tell it. And not very much at that. Just this.” She jerks Ginger’s head back and forth roughly. “
Da,
you like that?”

“It feels fucking great. That’s why we’re doing it. I don’t know why you want to let them make it cheap and tawdry. Ugly, like all that other shit.”

“Oh, do I insult your girlfriend? Please. You must know that this”—she raps Ginger’s head with her rings—“is not at all like this.”

She takes my hand and places it under her dress.

Had I been asked, I would have bet that Olya doesn’t wear underwear
with formal attire, but it’s nonetheless shocking to feel bare flesh under my fingers.

“She will never be like a real woman, Zhames.” She’s close to me now, whispering in my ear. “You forget what one feels like?”

My head is still pounding from our earlier altercation, and I’m not entirely sure when this changed from an interrogation to a seduction. But it makes sense to me that Olya would operate this way. My blood was up before I got here, and I don’t need to be asked twice.

Ginger goes hard over sideways as I lunge at her. Olya steps back and I get a twitch of panic that she’s retreating. But the heavens open and hurl a bolt of sweet elation into my brain when she props herself on the table and seizes me with her legs. I go instantly inside, like our bodies are precision-milled parts finally snapping together.

It doesn’t take long. She makes very little noise, just an occasional quick intake of breath. But as we recline, she’s pushing against me with an urgency that I take to be a challenge.

For a few luscious moments I know nothing but the animal imperative to thrust for all I’m worth. Olya shakes so violently that my grip on her shoulder slips, and my knuckles thump painfully against the table. She convulses in a way that’s borderline distressing. Like she really can’t breathe, and it goes on for longer than I thought possible. Maybe I’m discomfited and hesitate, because she gasps, “Don’t stop.” I’m shaking right along with her moments later.

The end comes as suddenly as it started. She covers her face with one hand for a second. I take my weight off her and start to straighten up while remaining inside, because I can’t bring myself to leave just yet. As I shift, her right leg flashes by my face. But she’s not attacking me again, just stretching with her usual flamboyant aggression. Her lips twist slightly at my flinch, and she puts her foot on my chest and slowly pushes me out.

I gaze down at her breathtaking chest and see what looks at first like some horrible attack of hives spreading all the way up to her neck. But then I realize it’s just an uncommonly intense sex flush. I reach out to trace the boundary of her inflamed skin, marveling at the depth of sensation that it must take to cause this. Her body feels like cooling lava.

When I glance up at her face, her eyes have turned dark, and she says softly, “We have so much to do.”

W
e’re at it again the next day. By unspoken agreement, Olya and I both show up at the unheard-of hour of six
AM.
I don’t get so much as a “good morning.” She just steps into my office, hikes her skirt, and beckons with a peremptory flick of her fingers. I start to say something, but she presses her hand over my mouth and unzips my fly. Olya’s rule number one is no talking. Rather suspicious that our relationship flowered just as I started asking her uncomfortable questions. But for the moment, I’m more than happy to keep my mouth shut.

She’s pretty indifferent to foreplay as well. I start trotting out what few lovemaking niceties I possess, but before I’ve even made a single circuit around her earlobe with my tongue, she’s got me inside her and is hammering on my ass with her heels.

I’ve never been confronted with such naked physical need. Her eyes clamp shut, and I’m certain they won’t open until she’s done. Right now, my identity as a fellow human is of zero consequence to Olya. She’s totally consumed with her own body, and all she needs from me is a strong rhythm and mammalian heat. In this, she’s the opposite of Blythe, my only other experience with a goddess-level bedmate. For Blythe, ecstasy was a hollow thing if it wasn’t shared and mutually reveled in.