Dangerous (20 page)

“Thank you, Ma’am,” I said when done, far more sweetly than I felt.

The taped X was still on the floor, and without prompting I moved the furniture aside and knelt there, facing the camera with bowed head. The envelope and phone I placed on the floor beside me.

I took longer than necessary to open the envelope and extract its contents, even though I was desperate for the least bit of communication from Val. Would it finally explain the reason for the new rules and sudden gulf between us?

Within the envelope was a short stack of 3x5 index cards held together with a rubber band, which I removed. The top card contained a brief instruction printed with the same label-making machine used for the envelope. It said:

Read each question aloud, then give your answer.

I moved that card to the bottom of the stack, and read the question on the next.

What am I?

Of course I knew the expected answer, but gave it a moment’s thought before replying, “My Keeper.” Next card.

What are you?

“A doll.”

Not
the
doll, oh no. I had given that answer once and received a swift, painful strike with a cane. Dolls only merit the indefinite article; they are entirely replaceable and unremarkable. I placed that card at the bottom of the stack. The new one read:

Are you a proud doll?

This had the scent of a trap. Did she mean to ask if I was proud to belong to her, or if I was guilty of hubris? Val could easily twist any answer, no matter how innocent, into something punishable. I decided to err on the side of humility.

“No, Ma’am. I’m not prideful.” The slight change in the adjective was intended to make my interpretation clear. Would it be enough?

Do you deserve my attention?

“No, Ma’am.” There was no safe answer for this. Humility would have to suffice.

Then why are you here?

“I don’t kn—” I began, then decided it would be better to take a stab at an answer. “Because I
have
been proud.”

What is to be done?

These questions were cleverly designed to work with any responses I might give. It was a kind of Rorschach test. But their effect, and that of this cruel isolation, was extremely unnerving. Without seeing her reactions it was impossible to know whether my answers were pleasing or not. In truth I couldn’t be sure she was actually watching, though I believed she wouldn’t miss this show for the world.

What was to be done? I had no idea. Why should I be asked to devise a punishment? My hands shook with a sudden eruption of rage and indignation.

This was bullshit.

“Ma’am, if you’re unhappy with me, just say so,” I pleaded to the camera. “Why are you tormenting me? Don’t I do everything you ask? Is this the reward for my loyalty? Because it’s not working out. I need more, dammit!”

The cell phone, on the floor at my knees, remained silent. A minute passed. Two.

“Fuck this,” I said, and threw down the cards.

I grabbed my phone and rose, walking toward the door in a red rage. On the way I kicked the camera stand over, and heard the camera’s plastic housing crack against the floor. Then I left the room.

The driver was not in the hallway outside. I reached the elevator and pressed the button, but when it arrived I stopped myself from pressing the button for the parking level, and stabbed “L” instead. Once in the lobby I stomped out to the sidewalk and blinked against the bright noontime sun. I’d have to call a cab.

It’s a strange thing to emerge from a building you’ve never seen before, in an unknown location. I discovered I’d been inside a short, glass-fronted office building about five stories tall with no identifying signage, just the street number and a billboard for trendy vodka on its eastern side.

I walked to the nearest intersection to get my bearings, and was surprised by what I found. The street sign said
Sunset
and
Schrader
, which meant I was only about half a mile west of my work. The driver had done a good job of disorienting me, for I had thought he’d taken me much farther away, in a wholly different direction.

During the brisk walk back to work, I was tempted to shut off my phone in defiance should Val try to call me. But in my heart I knew she wouldn’t. Nor did she prove me wrong.

Back at work, I hid in the restroom and quietly wept.

§

At home I spent the entire night trying to puzzle out what had happened, and what was to come. I had absolutely no map for this territory. I couldn’t say it was over, but neither did I see how it could continue.

The most shocking aspect was the suddenness of my break, which surprised me utterly. The events of the last ten weeks had been strange, difficult, but somehow thrilling, too. Yet after only a brief exposure to Val’s bizarre lunchtime deprivations, less than ninety minutes total, everything had come undone. What I’d considered accomplishments now became grievances. Yearning curdled into frustration and resentment. The unexpected pole-shift of my psychology was disorienting, troubling.

Clearly this had festered for some time, awaiting the right trigger. And if I knew
anything
at all about Val, it was that she had watched the thing grow, exposed by her shamanic dagger of clarity. True to her nature, she’d used it to advantage.

Knowing that, however, helped not at all. There was only a burning, ragged hole in my heart. I was angry, lost, bitter at the evaporation of nearly three months’ emotional investment.

After crying sporadically, curled in a comma upon the couch, my eyes fell upon the fake ice cube I’d kept from the Christmas party. Dormant, it sat on the end table beside a trio of unwashed glasses. My vision blurred with fresh tears at the painful memories it evoked. With an inarticulate cry I hurled it across the room. It left a small dent in the wall and fell to the carpet, where it shone bright and blue, having been activated by the impact.

I stared at the thing for a few moments, then rose and threw it in the trash under the kitchen sink before going to bed.

§

Two hours later, however, regret compelled me to dig the still-glowing ice cube out of the garbage can. I got up, washed off wilted lettuce and carrot peelings, and turned it back off. For lack of a better option, I placed it on the top shelf of my bookshelf, where it would stay out of sight.

It was to be another long and sleepless night.

15     
adrift

THE PROSPECT OF a post-Valeria life was unexpectedly disorienting. I once read that after the Civil War many slaves had profound difficulty adjusting to freedom, and I could well believe it. However bizarre, the structure given to my life by Val was now gone, and I became acutely aware of its lack.

Wednesday, the day after my revolt, the director of our current film project made a rush request which forced me to work through lunch. What would have been a scheduling crisis yesterday was now a welcome distraction. Also, without the excuse of an urgent deadline, I might have been tempted to sneak back to the pickup point and watch for the black car, perhaps from the safety of the large bookstore across the street. Just to see if Val would send for me again.

But I got no text messages, no emails, no phone calls that day, and that was the worst part. I craved to know what she was feeling. Was she angry? Amused? Patiently waiting? I could imagine all of these possibilities and more, all equally likely; her apparent lack of concern was maddening.

The day proved to be a long, tiring one. Despite the crush of work, I oscillated wildly between fury, despair, and desire—and, oddly, a sense of freedom—a mixture which did nothing for my productivity. When I finally left work at eight, I felt the sudden impulse to stop for a much-needed beer at a familiar pool hall on the way home. Pool and beer were two things Val despised, probably for being too common, too proletarian. It would be a fine first act of independence.

As I sipped a Stella Artois with exaggerated relish—for it had been weeks since my last—I tried not to think about the details of a disentanglement from Val. I wasn’t worried about finding scandalous pictures of myself on the internet, for Val was far too discreet for that. Nor did I really mind the thought of losing the few items I’d left at at her place. Some makeup, a few items of clothing, nothing irreplaceable.

But I was genuinely disappointed about losing my tenuous link to Milton. I had been excited about the promised art show, as well as the mystery of the weekend I’d been promised to him…as scary as that was.

Yet I couldn’t convince myself it was truly over. This was a hiatus, perhaps. A chance to catch my breath.

I can go back any time I want.

I might have believed that more if I didn’t feel so lost. The fact was, I ached for her.

I reached inside my purse for the tube of lip balm and felt something poke against my fingers, which turned out to be the business card given to me by Paul, the tattooist. And in another minute, as if on autopilot, I found myself tapping out his number on my cell phone.

“Hello?” He said after the fifth ring.

“Hi, Paul. Umm…this is Koishi. We met a couple of weeks ago, I’m the compos—”

“I remember. The girl who worked on
Earth Angel
. Have you decided to get that tattoo?”

“Actually…well, I hope this doesn’t sound too forward, but would you like to join me for a beer, maybe a game of pool?” Then it occurred to me I didn’t even know if he was single or not. “I mean, if it’s not a good time…”

“Hang on a sec,” he said, and I faintly heard him discuss something with another male voice. “I’d love to,” he said reassuringly. “You have a place in mind?”

“
The Break
, in Encino. Is that okay?”

“On Ventura Boulevard, right? Sure, I’ll see you there in about twenty minutes.”

He was true to his word. Paul arrived wearing slacks and a blue and fuchsia Hawaiian shirt over a white tee. The same glasses. And all those tattoos. He took the hand I offered in both of his and held it for several seconds. I thought he looked very handsome. Thankfully I wasn’t under-dressed by comparison, still dressed for work in my usual tee shirt, jeans, and sneakers.

He ordered an unremarkable American beer as we spent a few minutes in standard pleasantries.

“I hope I didn’t pull you away from anything important,” I said.

“Oh, god no,” he assured me. “I was just chilling at my friend’s place. A damsel in distress always trumps that. It’s sort of a guy rule we have.”

“Damsel in distress?” I laughed, wondering how literally he meant that. But the words had hit home.

He looked searchingly into my eyes and I glanced away, pretending to study the LED marquee above the bar. He didn’t speak, and the silence dragged on for a long beat. Two. Three.

“What?” I asked. “What is it?”

He hesitated.

“Come on…what?” I pressed.

“Is everything okay, Koishi?”

That set me back. “Is it that obvious?”

“You forget. I’m—”

“Psychic. Yeah, I remember.”

“But seriously, I don’t have to be psychic to see something’s bugging you."

I nodded. “Well, it’s nothing serious or life-threatening, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“Anything I can do to help?”

“You can help by playing some eight-ball with me. Do you know how to play?”

“You can’t grow up in the rough part of Philly without learning to play pool,” Paul chided.

He got us a table and racked the balls deftly, then let me break. He played well, far better than me, but I didn’t mind. I found myself enjoying his easy company, his knack for storytelling.

I learned, for example, he was one-quarter Hawaiian on his mother’s side, which explained the broadness of his features and not-quite olive complexion. Paul’s family had lived in the islands until he was eleven.

“Wow,” I said, surprised that his own story was so resonant with mine. “Do you ever want to go back?”

“Sometimes. I have lots of relatives back home, so I can visit anytime I like. But here is where I’m supposed to be, so here I stay.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“It’s Tutu Wailani’s fault. My great-grandma.” He gathered himself for another story. His eyes took on a distant look. “‘Wailani’ means ‘heavenly waters’. She was incredibly old and kind of scary-looking when I knew her. A shaman and a healer too, not many of those left now. My mom was afraid of her, but I never found out why—probably because of her magic. Something must have happened between them before I was born.”

He told this as he made an impressive four-ball run before scratching. I lined up my shot as he went on:

“But I loved my Tutu. She had
enormous
energy. She could make crabs crawl out of the ocean, right into a bucket on the sand. Just by singing to them.”

I found this hard to believe.

“I swear to god I’m not making this up. I saw it myself. More than once,” he insisted. I missed my shot and watched him sink another three balls.

“I’ll never forget the last time I saw her. It was just before my family moved to the mainland. She took me to the beach at dawn, and pointed northeast, over the water. She said, ‘There is a great Change coming. It will begin there, in the city of angels. That is where you must go.’ She made me promise, too, I’ll never forget that. And here I am, after all these years.”

“What sort of change?” I asked.

“I have no idea. Of course it wasn’t the
only
reason I came to L.A. instead of San Francisco, but it was a factor. I guess I’m a sucker for angels.”

“So I’ve noticed,” I said as I finished my second beer, recalling the circumstances of our first meeting.

“I only wish she’d told me what I was supposed to
do
here. Hard to imagine a tattoo artist saving the world,” he said. “Man, that sounds really lame, huh? Eight ball, side pocket.”

“No, no, it doesn’t,” I said emphatically.

He sank the eight ball exactly as called.

“Another game?” he asked.