and family relationships. Stacks of Variety , the Calendar section of the LA Times , the New York Times, and the Hollywood Reporter rose in towers around the perimeter of the room. I’d asked her repeatedly to make use of the recycle bin, but she always thought there might be one connection she missed, so she couldn’t throw away a shred of paper. In the end, she’d just relegated the mess to her room and closed the door.
— You ok? —
Jonathan’s text came in just as I was considering locking Gabby’s door for good.
— Feet hurt. Fine otherwise. I’m going to bed —
— Good night, goddess—
—We still need to talk—
—When you can talk, we will. Now get to bed. No touching. I’ll know… —
I was sure he would, somehow. The same way I was sure he knew about the diamond sitting in a baggie downtown.
CHAPTER 18
I wanted to stay in bed for days after Gabby’s wake, but I couldn’t skip work. I hustled in for the lunch shift dry-eyed and made up. I put on my stage smile for Debbie, who pursed her red lips and seemed generally unimpressed.
“Can you talk?”
I shook my head.
“So what do you think you’re going to do?”
My face must have been a complete blank because I had no answer. Debbie sighed and called Robert over from the other side of the bar where he was flirting with two women who looked like cover models. She took my pad from my hands and said to him, “Monica’s at the service bar tonight.”
“Why? It’s lunch.”
“Question me again.”
Robert was immediately cowed. The tone in Debbie’s voice triggered something in me as well. A recognition. A wakefulness. When she glanced over at me and indicated I should go around to the other side of the bar, I knew what it was because I’d heard it from Jonathan’s lips. Debbie was a dominant.
The fact that I recognized that told me more about myself than I wanted to know. I’d spent the morning and afternoon in busy sequester, puttering around the house, picking up Gabby’s things, and putting them in boxes. The copies of Variety on top of the piano. The shoes by the door. The metronome she left by the TV. Music sheets. I’d separated them into Keep and Toss and then kept everything for Darren anyway. All that time, I heard not her voice in my head, but her music. I sat at the piano and played one of her compositions, the one she played when she was feeling threatened and powerless, the bombastic thing she’d been at just the other night, and I stopped mid-way. I didn’t sound as good as she had. Some keys were off, but she never wrote down her own stuff. She only did notations on pieces she heard and was trying to figure out. I’d snapped up a few sheets of the notepaper abandoned in the Toss bin and played again, writing down the notes as I went. And then, as if the notes could not be contained as simple sounds, words flowed through them. I had run for the legal pad by my bed.
What if he collars me? Slaps me? Spanks me? Bites me? Fucks me in the ass? Whips me? Hurts me? Displays me? Gags me? Blindfolds me? Shares me? Humiliates me? Ties me down? Makes me bleed? Fucks me up?
That fucking list. I could have added another hundred things.
Chocks my mouth open. Pulls my hair. Fucks my face. Calls me whore. Tells me to lick the floor. Destroys me. Makes me hate myself. Turns me into an animal .
And that was it, wasn’t it? I was afraid of turning into something subhuman, not just to him or to the people around me, but to myself.
I’d remembered the tone in Jonathan’s voice when he demanded something of me. The calmness, the surety, the note itself. A chord. I played it, toying with the sounds until I came up with something in D, and I checked the notations I’d made of Gabby’s piece. I could do it. I could keep her alive. I could figure out how to continue with him, if at all.
Hearing that tone in Debbie’s voice threw me for a second, and I stood silent. She raised her eyebrow and made a motion with her hand,
— You ok? —
Jonathan’s text came in just as I was considering locking Gabby’s door for good.
— Feet hurt. Fine otherwise. I’m going to bed —
— Good night, goddess—
—We still need to talk—
—When you can talk, we will. Now get to bed. No touching. I’ll know… —
I was sure he would, somehow. The same way I was sure he knew about the diamond sitting in a baggie downtown.
CHAPTER 18
I wanted to stay in bed for days after Gabby’s wake, but I couldn’t skip work. I hustled in for the lunch shift dry-eyed and made up. I put on my stage smile for Debbie, who pursed her red lips and seemed generally unimpressed.
“Can you talk?”
I shook my head.
“So what do you think you’re going to do?”
My face must have been a complete blank because I had no answer. Debbie sighed and called Robert over from the other side of the bar where he was flirting with two women who looked like cover models. She took my pad from my hands and said to him, “Monica’s at the service bar tonight.”
“Why? It’s lunch.”
“Question me again.”
Robert was immediately cowed. The tone in Debbie’s voice triggered something in me as well. A recognition. A wakefulness. When she glanced over at me and indicated I should go around to the other side of the bar, I knew what it was because I’d heard it from Jonathan’s lips. Debbie was a dominant.
The fact that I recognized that told me more about myself than I wanted to know. I’d spent the morning and afternoon in busy sequester, puttering around the house, picking up Gabby’s things, and putting them in boxes. The copies of Variety on top of the piano. The shoes by the door. The metronome she left by the TV. Music sheets. I’d separated them into Keep and Toss and then kept everything for Darren anyway. All that time, I heard not her voice in my head, but her music. I sat at the piano and played one of her compositions, the one she played when she was feeling threatened and powerless, the bombastic thing she’d been at just the other night, and I stopped mid-way. I didn’t sound as good as she had. Some keys were off, but she never wrote down her own stuff. She only did notations on pieces she heard and was trying to figure out. I’d snapped up a few sheets of the notepaper abandoned in the Toss bin and played again, writing down the notes as I went. And then, as if the notes could not be contained as simple sounds, words flowed through them. I had run for the legal pad by my bed.
What if he collars me? Slaps me? Spanks me? Bites me? Fucks me in the ass? Whips me? Hurts me? Displays me? Gags me? Blindfolds me? Shares me? Humiliates me? Ties me down? Makes me bleed? Fucks me up?
That fucking list. I could have added another hundred things.
Chocks my mouth open. Pulls my hair. Fucks my face. Calls me whore. Tells me to lick the floor. Destroys me. Makes me hate myself. Turns me into an animal .
And that was it, wasn’t it? I was afraid of turning into something subhuman, not just to him or to the people around me, but to myself.
I’d remembered the tone in Jonathan’s voice when he demanded something of me. The calmness, the surety, the note itself. A chord. I played it, toying with the sounds until I came up with something in D, and I checked the notations I’d made of Gabby’s piece. I could do it. I could keep her alive. I could figure out how to continue with him, if at all.
Hearing that tone in Debbie’s voice threw me for a second, and I stood silent. She raised her eyebrow and made a motion with her hand,
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