Dangerous (32 page)

Val noticed this, and took the balloon from me.

“Don’t tell me you’re afraid of reptiles, Grace.”

The girl didn’t answer. Val continued:

“Oh come now, there’s nothing to fear. The glass keeps you quite safe from this…” and Val consulted the placard over the nearest specimen, “lovely Sidewinder. It can’t possibly bite you. Come, look.”

But Grace would not go any closer.

“Meh,” said Val, and we followed her as she walked past the exhibits, stopping periodically to study the more interesting specimens.

Presently we came upon the large, multi-window boa constrictor exhibit which occupied one of the points of the star-shaped structure and offered three different viewing angles. The snake was huge, at least twelve feet in length, and as big around as a man’s thigh, with supple, smooth skin that hinted at powerful musculature beneath. Even I found it intimidating, but poor Grace was beside herself.

“Come here,” Val said with such a tone of command that Grace actually took a couple of steps closer. She was breathing rapidly now. But it wasn’t close enough for Val, who used her left hand to grip Grace’s hair and yank her within a step of the glass.

“Are you frightened, doll?”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“Do you deserve my affection?”

“Um, I try to be good, Ma’am,” said Grace, her eyes fixed on the coiled, unblinking snake. It breathed with a slow swelling, and flicked its tongue to taste the air.

“Then bend down, and get a good look.” Gripping hair, Val pulled Grace so far down she was forced to put her hands on the glass for support. Her eyes were closed now, and her breath came in gasps as she tried to twist away.

But Val’s hold was much too tight. She leaned beside Grace’s ear and hissed, “Don’t move. Not a muscle.”

Val let go of the balloon and thrust her right hand under Grace’s skirt, began to roughly caress her. I saw the poor girl tremble, heard her whimper with fear and maybe a little desire, I wasn’t sure.

I scanned in both directions, but saw no one else in the building, so I returned my attention to the two women. I felt a pang of guilt over Val’s sudden cruelty toward Grace, and my heart went out to her.

Grace was crying now, a quiet sound which echoed in the enclosed space. Tears fell wetly upon the dirty concrete. Val’s caresses grew more forceful, but I could tell Grace was too frightened to reach any sort of gratification.

After another minute of effort, Val stopped and withdrew her hand.

“Do you appreciate my attentions, doll?” Val asked.

“Oh yes, Ma’am!”

“Then kiss the glass and thank me.” Val said.

Grace remained frozen, eyes squeezed shut, and now a small squeal of fear came out of her.

“I won’t ask again,” Val said.

Grace began to cry loudly, a jagged, painful sound, and she quaked with fear. But she obeyed.

“Thank you thank you thank you,” she sobbed.

“Enough. Get up,” growled Val. She gave me Grace’s balloon string and walked away.

Grace lurched back, turned away from the glass and pressed herself against the outer wall. She wiped her eyes on the backs of her hands and pulled herself back together. I wanted to say something reassuring. No words came.

We left the reptile house in search of Val. We found her walking out of the women’s restroom, wiping her hands with a paper towel before tossing it in the trash. Sneering, she commanded Grace to get herself tidied up, too.

A nearby mother detected our strange energy and watched distrustfully as she fed her two children a pretzel. When Grace was done, we continued down the path along in our original direction.

The three of us spent the rest of the outing in our different silences. Val, languorous as a newly-gorged python. Grace, beaten but vaguely happy. Myself, uneasy about Val’s treatment of her.

A crisscross of contrails slowly spread out into a feathery layer of cloud, turning the sky a wan, milky color in patches. The warm air was cooling slightly.

“Time to go,” Val said, around two o’ clock. We left.

In the rear view mirror I could see Grace in the back seat, staring idly out the window. The balloon, still tied to her wrist and held close in her lap, swayed with the car’s motion.

§

On the sidewalk in front of my condo, Val cut the balloon string from Grace’s wrist. She allowed a kiss before sending her home.

“Thank you, Ma’am and Miss,” Grace said, and left.

“Is there a problem?” Val asked, noting my expression as I watched Grace’s car drive away.

“You were pretty harsh with her,” I said.

“She knows the safeword. And anyway, she’s suffered far worse. So have you, for that matter.”

I had no reply to that.

Val’s phone rang.

“Yes?” she said. She listened for a minute, and frowned. “All right. Yes, I’ll see you tomorrow. Goodbye.”

She hung up.

“There’s a fire at work,” she said huskily.

“A fire, Ma’am?”

“A situation. I’ll be gone for a couple of weeks, maybe three. Probably out of touch, though I can’t be sure. It’s likely to be a very stressful time for me.”

I knew better than to ask
what
, or
why
. Instead, I asked, “Is there anything I can do?”

“You can come with me,” she said, and walked to her car. It awoke with a
whoop whoop
and I got in the other side. “Are you hungry?”

§

This time her question was entirely innocent. After picking up sandwiches and drinks, Val took the 101 freeway west to the Topanga Canyon Boulevard exit. There she turned south and followed that road through an upscale neighborhood before it coiled like a snake as it ascended into the hills. She steered her sports car expertly around a dozen or so switchbacks, and after a few minutes pulled into a tiny parking lot at the crest of the hill, where an observation point overlooked the San Fernando Valley.

It was quiet up here, warm and a little breezy. There were three picnic tables in the shade beneath some low overhanging branches. A Hispanic couple sat at one table, talking quietly in Spanish while listening to cheerful, accordion-laced Mexican music on a portable radio. We sat at another, some distance away, and I took the bench across from Val before unwrapping my sandwich.

A small gray lizard sunned itself on a concrete walkway, and I was reminded of poor Grace and the reptile house. Thinking back on everything that had happened since last night, I felt a little lost.

“Ma’am?” I said.

“Yes?”

I struggled to find words, and heard myself speaking in a submissive voice, unconsciously testing the water. “Do you have any instructions for me while you’re gone?”

The unspoken question was:
Am I still your doll, or something else?

She heard it too, and answered me just as obliquely, in a softer tone than that of Keeper.

“I recall Milton saying something about an art show. Weren’t you supposed to create a few more images?”

“Yes, Ma’am.” Again, the doll.

“Relax, dear. I know I’ve kept you rather busy these last few weeks. Now would be the time to make some headway.”

“Oh, okay. Thanks,” I said familiarly, in a deliberately non-doll tone. Another test of the uncertain waters.

“Milton is very fond of you, and he’s well-connected. He can help you go far, if you apply yourself.”

It appealed to me, the idea of creating art that would be seen and appreciated as my own, not just blending invisibly into someone else’s movie.

“You know, Val, I hadn’t done anything artistic for a long time. Before meeting you, I mean. I guess you’re my Muse, huh? Thanks for getting me off my lazy ass.”

She appeared genuinely moved by this confession, and for a long moment simply gazed at me.

“I am many things to many people, Koishi. Some of them rather dreadful, to be honest. But you…” She paused again. “You’re the first to call me a Muse. It’s nice to know I can inspire something besides terror.”

This was the voice she’d used in the buildup to her April Fools’ joke: vulnerable, without guile. I felt a stab of doubt. But there was no punchline, and that warm, golden light peeked out of its hiding place. This time she was serious.

Val drew out her pocket watch, unclipped the short chain. She held it in her palm, coiled like a snake, and weighed her words.

“I want you to have this, for the times that I can’t be with you.”

I put down my sandwich, staggered; then I read a different meaning in her words and grew fearful.

“Oh my god, Val, you’re not leaving m—”

“No, no, nothing like that. It’ll only be a week or so. This is merely a gift of appreciation.”

“But I can’t take your watch. It’s really expensive. And it’s…well, it’s yours.” Meaning: part of you, not me.

“Listen well, doll.” The Keeper talking. Then, more gently, “After I left the Army I didn’t know what to do with myself. I was a professional domme for a while. Does that surprise you?”

In fact it did.

“Anyway,” she continued, “I have known many, many submissives in my life. All of them come afflicted with some inner itch they need scratched, in a place they can’t reach by themselves. They need someone like me to make the itch go away. Millie, Grace, Carly, Wayne…they’re all this way. Yes, I like the things they let me do, it keeps me from—it keeps me sane. But I’ve also grown to despise their single-mindedness, their naked need. Can you understand that?”

I nodded.

The Hispanic couple stood up and put the radio in their car, then began walking down the park path, away from us, joking and laughing. They hadn’t overheard us, they were simply moving on.

“You’re not like those people, Koishi. Yes, you have some unresolved issues with your parents, particularly your mother—”

That rocked me. Because I realized she was right. But she pressed on, yanking me out of my sudden introspection.

“—but that’s not why you give yourself to me, is it?”

I shook my head.

“No, Ma—Val. You know why I stay with you.”

“That is what I find so incomprehensible. Yet here you are. And so I want you to have this.” She pressed the watch into my hand, still warm with the heat of her body. Its chain slithered against my palm with a soft rattlesnake sound.

Val looked away, and watched a hawk ride a thermal which rose from the sun-warmed hillside, perhaps to hide her sudden intensity of feeling. I knew what it must cost her to say these things.

During the silence, I studied the watch with the gravity of one receiving a sacrament. Which, in a way, it was. The gold cover, the winding knob, the chain, all showed signs of long use, and realized I had no idea how to care for something so precious.

I gently opened the engraved cover with a snick, and marveled at the ornate, whisker-thin hands and slender roman numerals spaced about its ivory-colored dial. There was a name printed there, too: ELGIN. From the style of the thing I guessed it had been made in the early twentieth century.

I found it fascinating that my dark Keeper, who surrounded herself with the images of decay, energies of pain, would keep such a symbol of permanence and consistency so near her flesh, her heart.

“Val, it’s too much. I’m just gonna break this. What if I over-wind it or something?”

She turned back to me, took the watch, and held it in slender fingers. “You can’t over-wind it. Just turn the crown like this, until it stops, see? Do it every morning. To set the time, pull the crown and turn, then push it back down. Like so.”

She closed the front, and opened the back cover to show me the inner workings, a wonder of art and engineering. The burnished metal gleamed, a living thing of gears, one of them rocking back and forth quick as a hummingbird heart. “The mechanism is called an
escapement
. See these dimples, here on the top plate? There are seventeen jewels in there, little ruby bearings. They’re almost frictionless, and they never wear out. Have the watch cleaned every couple of years and it’ll last an eternity.”

I tried to imagine that constellation of gems, the strange metal and crystalline organs which animated such devices, and thought of Ticktock, the clockwork soldier of Oz.

She returned the gift to me. “Mind you keep the chain clipped to your belt loop. If I hear you’ve dropped that watch, I’ll whip you to an inch of your life.”

“Yes, Ma’am,” I replied, fighting the instinct to fall to my knees before her, so stern was her warning.

§

We stood beside each other at the weathered, painted rail, looking out over the San Fernando Valley. Directly below, the tree-covered hills sloped down to the valley floor, with expensive houses and swimming pools dotting the numerous ridges and canyons. Nearly ten miles away on the other side lay the Santa Susana mountains, stark in the unusually clear air.

From this angle, the entire valley between appeared more park-like than when one was down in it. The only real break in the foliage was the dozen or so office towers at Warner Center, mostly glass and metal. They gleamed dully in sunlight filtered by the even, opalescent cloud layer that had developed from the earlier contrails.

The pocket watch was a hard, smooth pressure against my thigh, reminding me of the strange new vantage point our relationship had reached.

I wanted to take Val’s hand, decided against it.

“It looks so tranquil from here,” Val said. “One would never suspect how fragile that tranquility is.”

It sounded like a confession.

“Do you know something I don’t?” I asked with a chuckle.

“One has only to read the news, or exercise a little imagination. We haven’t had a serious earthquake in a while, for one thing. Also, there are numerous groups who would thrive on a little chaos.”

“You mean like terrorists?”

“That’s a popular example.”

“You’re suggesting there are other dangers? Is this related to your work, Ma’am?”

“I’m not at liberty to say.” There was the wall again, though her disclaimer wasn’t as stony as it had been in the past.

“Are you saying something is going to happen soon?”

“Dear, something is
always
about to happen. Things
are
happening. You simply don’t notice because of a concerted effort by some very creative, motivated people.”