The Dollhouse Society Volume I: Evelyn (Includes Indecent Proposal, Dreams in Black & White, Playing House, Freeze Frame, plus a bonus story!) (2 page)

I was getting more and more nervous as I headed down the long, polished white marble corridor to the glass doors with the etching that read IAN STERLING, CEO, STERLING OF NEW YORK. My hand was slicked with sweat when I finally grasped the brass handle of the door and let myself in. At least I’d gotten a look of the penthouse before I was canned, I thought. It was almost worth it. I knew I wouldn’t forget the photographs for a long time to come. It was very inspiring for a girl like me, like the photographs were telling me I
could
be pretty without being a different person. 

A young, blonde receptionist sat at a huge glass desk, talking into her cell phone. I looked her over, noting that she was one of
those
girls. Slim, petite, almost ludicrously beautiful. She looked like a former model, or someone you might see on reality TV. I wasn’t surprised. Mr. Sterling was a
very
unattached widower, from what I understood.
I bet he’s all over that
, I thought. It wasn’t a kind thought, but at least my time with Shawn had taught me something of the world. I wasn’t the naïve little college co-ed anymore.

The receptionist looked up as I approached, a strange, almost hostile look beaming across her face. It surprised me because I was used to women, and most men, looking right through me like I was a ghost, just not that interesting. Her look had a strange effect on me, and as I came to a halt before the big glass desk that looked more like a piece of art than anything functional, I realized I was spoiling for a fight. I was about to lose the best job I’d ever had. I wasn’t in the mood for her shit. “Can I help you?” she asked, somehow looking both bemused and contemptuous at the same time. She was probably using the same expression she normally reserved for the janitor.

“Mr. Sterling called me up?” I said, automatically making it sound like a question so I didn’t come off as
too
confrontational. It would be so easy to fight now. I showed her the appointment card.

She looked at it blankly like she couldn’t read at all, then flipped open a leather-bound date planner to look for a corresponding entry. I was surprised to find Mr. Sterling had penciled me into his schedule like that. I reflected on how dismal my life had become when the idea of someone entering my name in a real life leather-bound ledger made me feel special. “It says ten o’clock,” she said.

“Yes, I’m aware of that. Hence the reason I’m here now,” I answered, glancing up at the sunburst clock on the wall behind her. It was five to ten.

She looked me over like she didn’t approve. “I guess you can go in,” she said, almost sniffing like she smelled something bad in the room with her.

Gee, thanks.

I moved past her and walked down another corridor with more of those photographs decorating the walls. Ahead loomed a huge pair of oaken doors that looked like they belonged to an English study in a manor house by the sea somewhere with flappers and a murderer on the loose. Yes, I know. I read too many British cozies. I knocked, perhaps too softly. I thought about knocking on the door again, but a terse voice from the other side said, “Come.”

I let myself into a vast suite done in arctic white and proceeded to gape like the Brooklyn-born cretin that I was. There were white walls and white Italian marble floors. There were Greek-inspired statues of Roman generals and gods, arms reaching, spears upraised. Almost all the furniture was glass. It was a little like stepping into an icy palace in the Himalayas, or maybe a hidden cavern in the Greek isles where some ancient creature dwelled, turning everyone to stone with its lurid gaze. I shook my head to clear the morbid image away.

The only color came from the almost hypnotically beautiful, lovingly framed photographs on the walls. These were different from the ones I’d seen in the corridors. These, unlike the photos of Sterling girls, were antiques. I saw Rubenesque women in bodice-fitted gowns and men in waistcoats and top hats engaged in all manner of undress and carnal knowledge. Bold young women with big peacock hats sat on gentlemen’s laps, kissing and fondling them for the camera. Men with mustachioed faces suckled at the breasts and loins of young debutantes on fainting couches. I had never seen anything like it before and I tried not to blush too furiously. The word
pornographic
came to mind, but I immediately dismissed it. The photographs were far too old and expensive to be categorized so easily. I looked away and saw the entire far wall was constructed of tinted Plexiglas, offering a panoramic view of Central Park West. The sight of it gave me a sickening sense of vertigo.

Mr. Ian Sterling sat at
another of those vast, crouching, glass monstrosities that passed for a desk here. He wasn’t what I expected, not that I knew what to expect. I knew he’d been married, that his wife and son had died in a plane crash three years ago. All that money, and his wife and child had
still
died. The story had left me with the impression that he must be older, fifties or early sixties. Older people lost their families, not younger ones.

But the man behind the desk was youngish, early forties. He was tall like me, but slim and polished in his dark Italian pinstripe suit. He was much paler than the spray-tanned executives I saw all day, and he sported a lot of dark hair that was longer than was strictly au courant among the upper class. He had combed it carefully back over his ears, and that, combined with the round, wire-rimmed glasses he wore, lent him the look of  someone who had stepped out of one of the photographs on the walls. He was clean-shaven, but his chin and throat were shadowed by what I suspected was a strong beard if he didn’t shave twice a day. He looked up from the file he was working over, and the strangest expression passed over his face.

I was shocked by the piercing blue of his eyes and the sudden, unwavering attention he focused on me. His look was like a physical weight, pushing against me, stopping me dead in my tracks. Normally I solicited blank looks. Mr. Wilkins usually looked right through me in the morning. The other girls in the pool hardly remembered I worked there.

“Ms. Christopoulos,” he said, looking me over from head to toe. “Thank you for visiting me this morning.” His voice was deep and resonating. He spoke with long vowels and a vaguely European inflection. I knew he’d been born in London, that his parents had moved here to New York City when he was still a young boy. I knew from the records I handled that he kept flats in all the major cities throughout Europe. All very luxurious, all
very
exclusive. He was friends with some of the most powerful men in the world, yet no one seemed to really
know
Ian Sterling.

He continued to stare at me unflinchingly like he expected me to respond in some way. I didn’t know what to say, so I took a step toward him instead. His eyes were such a wintry blue that they looked like the eyes of a Siberian Husky, and I couldn’t help but wonder if that was their real color, or if he was wearing colored contact lenses.

My wandering thoughts turned me into a klutz, as usual. I stepped right into the pathway of a glass chair and nearly pitched forward, twisting my ankle as I tried to catch myself against the edge of the big glass desk. I knew I was going down whether I liked it or not, and I was halfway there when I felt Mr. Sterling catch my elbow and steady me. I never saw him leave his seat; he was just suddenly
right
there
, holding me up. He was even bigger than I’d thought.
Finally
, I thought, and it was a ridiculous thought to have under the circumstances,
someone taller than I am.

“Are you all right, Ms. Christopoulos?”

I wobbled uncertainly in my sensible pumps. “Um,” I said, which was a pretty typical response for me when faced with a beautiful man totally out of my league. I noticed he smelled good this close, something light and airy like vanilla. It didn’t quite cover up his own warm male scent. “Thank you,” I offered, my ears burning.

He kept his hand on my arm as he guided me down into one of those ludicrous glass chairs. Then, much to my surprise, he went to one knee on the floor before me to check on my ankle. “I apologize for that. I should have warned you in advance.” He let go of my arm so he could take my ankle in both hands and run his thumbs along the sides. He had strong, work-roughened hands for a CEO, and his touch made the little nerves jump along my leg, which in turn made my stomach clench up in a funny and altogether unfamiliar way. “If it hurts, I can call a paramedic for you,” he offered.

I found myself staring down at him, at all his carefully combed and jelled hair. From this angle, he was all shoulders and muscle that tampered down evenly to a trim waist and ass. “That won’t be necessary, Mr. Sterling. I’m fine,” I said, mortified that I was thinking about Mr. Sterling’s ass. It really wasn’t like me at all.

He stood back up, and I felt an irrational instinct to cringe in my seat. I realized that he was at least six and a half feet tall, that his dark, suited presence filled the suite as starkly as the black-and-white antique erotica filled his wall. “I’m glad it isn’t bad,” he said in a dry, noncommittal tone as he moved around the edge of his glass desk to take his seat once more.

Great first impression, Evie
, I thought.
Now he thinks you have all the grace of a wounded water buffalo.

His desk was immaculate, unlike my workstation downstairs. I looked over the smooth stones and shells he had collected in one corner, wondering if there was any significance to them. At the other corner stood a browning, antique vase with an assortment of flowers in them, the arrangement starkly Ikebana. One of the flowers was a tiger lily, but only one. He sat down, resting his elbows on the one open manila file on the desk, and pinnacled his fingers together. He gave me a direct, non-nonsense look that left me swallowing against the knot growing in my throat. I knew I was about to be canned. “Mr. Wilkins has good things to say about your performance, Ms. Christopoulos.” He paused and blinked very slowly at me. “May I call you Evelyn?”

No one called me Evelyn, not even my parents. I wondered if that was a good sign or not. I immediately said, “Everyone calls me Evie.”

“That’s a shame. Evelyn is a beautiful name. It means ‘Desired’ in old German. I think it suits you better.”

I squirmed in my seat, then sat up a little straighter. My ankle was still very sore, but I ignored it. I thought maybe—just maybe—he wasn’t going to can me after all. “Yes,” I finally managed.

“Yes, what?”

“Yes. You can call me Evelyn.”

He quirked a smile. “And so I shall.” He stared at me directly through those old-fashioned eyeglasses and spread one heavily beringed hand over the file. He moved his fingers in a slow, circular pattern as if he were idly drawing designs there. Most people don’t know that I can read upside down. I knew it was my file he was touching. He never took his eyes off me. “Let me cut to the chase, Evelyn. A new position has opened up and I thought of you.”

My whole body heaved upward with relief, and for a long moment I couldn’t speak at all. “I’m not fired, then?” I said, and then kicked myself mentally for not thinking before opening my big, fat, Greek mouth.

“Not last I checked, no,” he said. His eyes glinted with amusement. “Would that have distressed you, were it true?”

“Yes, of course,” I answered, the first smart thing I’d said all morning. “I like working the pool.”

“You like making all those phone calls all day?”

“Oh yes.”

He pressed his lips together with interest. I couldn’t tell if he was pleased or disappointed by my answer. “What about your job interests you?”

I realized I was being interviewed for the position
right now
. My whole body broke out in an all-over sweat. I hoped I hadn’t flubbed it just yet. I didn’t know how to answer his question correctly so I opted for the truth. “I like talking to people. I like having people talk to me.”

Again he blinked. I hoped that was a good sign. “Do you like having me talk to you, Evelyn?”

I told the truth. “Yes.”

“What about talking to me do you like?”

I was at a loss for words. I thought bosses asked you more basic questions in an interview like
What are your strengths and weaknesses?
What do you think you can improve on?
I wondered what the position was that I was applying for. Was I here to replace the unfriendly receptionist out front? Was that the reason for her hostility? The silence drew out between us, making me want to squirm under the weight of his scrutiny. I started worrying about my hives. Finally, I decided I had to say something to fill the void. “I don’t know.” My voice was so low it was almost inaudible, yet in the sterile vastness of the room, it echoed.

“You don’t know why you like talking to me?” Mrs. Sterling said. He narrowed his wolfish blue eyes and the tip of his tongue wetted his mouth as he chose his next words. “Is it because you trust me?”

I watched the wet tip of his tongue moving over his lips. There was a word that Clarissa used for guys she liked.
Fuckable.
It just popped into my head in that moment. Mr. Sterling was tall and powerfully built. He wore glasses. He was so very fuckable. That was why I liked talking to him. But of course, I couldn’t say that. So I just nodded.

“How much do you trust me?” he asked. “I mean…instinctively.”