The Dollhouse Society Volume I: Evelyn (Includes Indecent Proposal, Dreams in Black & White, Playing House, Freeze Frame, plus a bonus story!) (13 page)

He did. Devon expertly moved in and out of me, playing with my body until I began thrashing under him. It had been days since I’d seen Mr. Sterling, days since anyone had touched me other than myself, and anyway, that wasn’t the same thing. I could never come alone the way I could come under him. I closed my eyes and imagined Mr. Sterling penetrating me in that way he had, so fast, so hard, so full of hunger and primal male power. “Bite me,” I said to Devon. “Please. Bite me and fuck me at the same time.”

Devon’s teeth found the little spot under my ear. He bit down as his fingers thrust up and up inside of me. I came hard and very wet against him, my back arching up off the divan as I gave a whimpering cry of surprise and release. Malcolm photographed me very wet and very sated lying on the divan amidst rumpled furs and my wild tangles of hair.

Afterward he went to start the developing process and Devon showed me to the sh
ower and let me dress. After that
, he escorted me down to the TV room. It was a huge and lavish, with a sunken living room full of white, L-shaped sofas made of buttery white suede and covered in more of those animal furs that they both seemed to favor. Devon showed me to one of the two huge sofas and I sat down and played with the terriers wrestling on the cushions beside me while he went to retrieve a snack for us.

He returned a short time later with two pints of ice cream. “Are you a Cherry Swirl girl, or a Death by Chocolate girl?” he asked grandly, holding them up.

“Death by Chocolate, please,” I said, and we settled down to eat our ice cream while Devon flipped through Netflix for something to watch.

I was feeling sad again. The ice cream reminded me of all the sleepless nights I’d spent in front of the TV with my two cats, gulping down calories while I willed Shawn to phone me, to tell me he’d broken up with his girlfriend, that he wanted to see me again. It was so stupid because even after he’d made a fool of me, I’d held out hope that he would come back. I knew he wouldn’t, just like I knew, somewhere in the back of my mind, that I’d eventually turn into the crazy old cat lady down the street. I knew that even if he did come back, he’d eventually leave me again, like the way my dad had left my mom to go find himself in the world. I was a foolish girl. I didn’t want to believe I was so forgettable, so easily kicked to the curb. Hope springs eternal, even in the middle of a parched desert, I guess.

“Oh cool!”

I looked up and saw that Devon had settled on
Dragonslayer
.

“I love this movie,” Devon informed me with a huge, evil grin. “Peter MacNicol is so cute and clueless. And
Dragonslayer
really has everything you want in a good movie…violence, dragons…and plenty of sex.”

I laughed at him. “I don’t remember there being any sex in
Dragonslayer
.”

Devon looked insulted. “Of course there is. The whole movie is permeated with themes of sex.”

“You’re making that up.”

Devon ticked off the points on his fingers. “Caitlin Clarke dresses like a boy, so we have our themes of gender reversal. We get a nice look at Peter MacNicol’s very fine ass. And the princess has sex with the dragon.”

I stared at him in horror. “The princess does
not
have sex with the dragon!”

“Sure she does. Why do you think she’s so willing to sacrifice herself at the end like all those other virgins? It’s not to save the girls of the village from the lottery. It’s because she’s secretly in love with the dragon. She goes to him so she can sacrifice her virginity to him.”

“But the princess gets eaten!”

“Exactly. Which is what happens when you sacrifice yourself to your lover. You’re utterly consumed.” He smirked again, really enjoying this. “You see, the dragon is in great pain, that’s why he rages so and destroys everything in his path. He gathers stones and scales to defend himself and breathes fire at everyone who approaches. But then, the brave princess, who is really the hero of our story, goes to him and sacrifices her virginity to him. Then, and only then, can he be defeated and slain, because only
then
is he weak. You see, he has to be
healed
before he can be defeated.”

I had a feeling we weren’t talking about the dragon anymore.

We watched half of the move before Devon said, “Do you want to hear a story about Ian?”

“Yes, of course.”

“He grew up in London, the East End. His parents were very poor. His mother was burned in a kitchen fire when he was young, about three or four, I believe. The whole left side of her face was scarred. Bad scars. Not like that pussy stuff you see in movies. Ugly, horrible scars. So Ian never really knew what his mother looked like whole, except from pictures. Eventually, his father left them on their own. I guess he couldn’t handle what happened, and his mother never remarried. But every day, before she went to work, Ian helped her with her makeup. He got very good at covering her scars. When she died a few years ago, Malcolm was with Ian, and I remember Malcolm telling me that Ian said she was the most beautiful woman in the world, even with the scars.”

I worked at not crying. It was very hard. I didn’t say anything for a long while.

“Do you know why he chose you, Evelyn?”

I kept my face blanked of all expression, though I could feel the terrible burn of tears in my nose. “Because he wanted a virgin. Because I’m plain and he can make me look anyway he wants.”
Because I’m desperate and I’ll do whatever he asks like a good little courtesan
, I added silently to myself.

“You told your friend Clarissa that you give your mother money, and Clarissa likes to talk. A lot.”

“Of course I give my mom money.”

Devon stared at me wisely.

“Did he say that?”

“He doesn’t have to say that, doll. Ian is really very easy to read, if you stop to think about it. He’s practically an open book.”

I looked down at my hands in my lap, my poor, chewed nails. “What if he doesn’t like the pictures?”

“He’ll love the pictures. You look like Ingrid Bergman. You’re hot and you look good in furs and taste better than ice cream.” He licked cherry ice cream off the spoon. “You’re
the
woman.”

“I don’t feel like
the
woman, Devon. I’m not a dragon slayer,” I told him, looking him in the eye. “I can’t help him with his wife. I can’t help him with his pain. I can’t help him with any of that.”

“How do you know you haven’t already?” he asked.

We were finishing the movie when Malcolm appeared with a sampling of the pictures. I thought they looked very pretty, very much
not
like me. I realized that the way Devon had dressed me up and positioned me, they could go in a gallery and no one would ever recognize the girl in the pictures as me. I hoped they would cheer Mr. Sterling up. I hoped he would realize I wasn’t angry with him. I hoped he would see them and call me to tell me everything was all right between us. 

“I love her on the dark furs,” Devon commented to his gentleman. “You should have used that for the first series.”

“I do believe you are right, sir,” said Malcolm, studying the samples.

I was immediately confused. I looked at them both.
“Sir?”

Devon offered me a wolfish grin as we all sat together on the sofa, eating ice cream and watching
Dragonslayer
again. “On Saturdays, we do role reversal and Malcolm becomes
my
courtier for the day.” He leaned forward, palmed Malcolm’s face, and kissed him lovingly. “You did an excellent job, my pet.”

***

The following Friday, two weeks after the debacle at the Dollhouse, I received my termination notice. Not from my day job in the secretarial pool at Sterling of New York, but as professional courtesan to Mr. Ian Sterling. I had been half expecting it, though, so it didn’t come as too big a surprise. I hadn’t seen Mr. Sterling since the night I found him drunk, and he hadn’t come round to pick me up in two weeks. Obviously, the pictures hadn’t won him over.

Mr. Sterling sent me a dozen tiger lilies, a round trip flight to see France and England, and the balance of my pay, which was roughly enough for a girl like myself to retire on. He included instructions for how I was to return the gold card he had given me, since I obviously wasn’t going to use it (his exact words), but he instructed me to keep the necklace of pink diamonds. At first, I planned to return the necklace with the card, but then I decided to keep the diamonds. My grandmother’s pearls were gone. I thought it would be all right to keep the necklace.

I slid the card into the envelope he had provided with his corporate seal on it, considered including a note, but then quickly mailed it as is, without a note. I wouldn’t make a fool of myself by pouring my heart out to him.

The day after Shawn broke up with me, I wrote him a lengthy email detailing all my feelings—the anger, the betrayal, and my willingness to forgive him and take him back if he would only call me, but I never received a reply. A few months later, I ran into his sister Carly at Starbucks. Carly had always been nice to me, and after we got to talking, she told me her brother had received an email some months earlier from an ex-girlfriend who was stalking him. Shawn wouldn’t tell her exactly who it was, but when she described the contents of the email, I knew it was my email she was referring to unknowingly. I had felt so stupid. It had taken every ounce of my strength to keep from breaking down and crying in front of her.

I learned from the experience. I learned that it doesn’t pay to tell the truth, to tell people what you really feel. It was more important that you tell them what they wanted to hear and keep the truth to yourself, which I had started doing from that day forth. So I wouldn’t tell Mr. Sterling how I really felt. I wouldn’t tell anyone ever again.

The next day at work, Clarissa leaned over my partition and waggled her fingers in my face. “You like?” she asked.

I looked down at her nails. She’d had them beautifully manicured and done in gradient shades of color with a tiny jewel set in each nail. “They’re great!” I said, thinking about how I’d bitten off my French manicure some days earlier.

“Not that, silly.
This.
” She waggled her left hand again and I realized she was wearing an engagement ring with one of the biggest diamonds I’d ever seen.

“Oh…wow,” I said, standing up. She came around our workstation so we could girl hug and jump up and down and squeal like a couple of exuberant schoolgirls. Mr. Wilkins came out of his office to see what all the fuss was about, rolled his eyes, and said he’d be back with a catered cake for later today. Clarissa detailed all her plans for the next year and a half, the wedding in June, the honeymoon in the Caribbean, the two kids, and the house in the Hamptons. I listened with
all the
rapt attention befitting the best friend of an excited bride-to-be. Then I excused myself, went to the ladies’ room, threw up, and went back to work.

***

On Saturday, I paid a visit to my favorite vintage shop to look for a new dress for Clarissa’s engagement party, which I would be attending the following weekend. I had dropped two dress sizes, so it wasn’t difficult finding something that fit. I picked out a little, black strappy dress that was two inches too short for me, but that was all right because I didn’t think I looked too bad in it, and men seemed to like looking at my legs. For lunch, I went next door to a sushi shop I hadn’t visited in maybe forever. I had just started on my Dynamite roll when a man came up to my table.

He was tall and broad, so when I looked up my heart immediately began knocking hard and fast in my chest. “Evie,” Shawn said, and sat down across the table from me with a try of Futomaki. “I almost didn’t recognize you, babe.”

I looked him over. He’d changed some, but then, hadn’t we all? He’d cut his hair, and he wasn’t wearing his favorite leather jacket. His bad boy persona seemed to be fading in favor of a more generic, office-centric look, though he still had a lot of shadow at his chin and throat like all the “bad boy executives” seemed to favor these days. I thought about how Mr. Sterling had to fight that shadow tooth and nail, and I remembered what his cheek had felt like on the inside of my thigh whenever he held me down and ate me out. The thought made me more sad than happy now.

I thought about telling Shawn that I was waiting for someone, but I didn’t think he’d believe me. I wasn’t a very good liar. He asked me where I was working these days and I told him, even though I had no intentions of staying on at Sterling of New York. I didn’t want to see that office every day.

“I missed you,” Shawn told me, flashing that crooked, roguish grin that had made my heart flutter once like a helpless little bird in a cage. “I was just thinking about you last week, in fact. I asked Carly if she’d seen you around the book bazaars lately, but she said she hadn’t. You been uptown or what?”

“I’ve been working a lot,” I told Shawn, which wasn’t a lie. “How’s Brie?”

His face twisted. “Not sure. I mean, she had some issues to work through, something about an ex.”

Brie had dumped
him
? I worked hard at not smiling at that. “So what are you doing to stay out of trouble these days?”