Chapter 16: Sexy Little ThrillNoir was a swanky pce, retly refurbished, Dan told me at some length, and packed with a young and eic crowd. An actual flesh-and-blood DJ buried somewhere he back spun out edgy tuhat were cleverly mixed and just old enough to be cool again, as we threaded our way to the bar. The lighting was dim, coloured mps in cleverly cealed nooks and behind transparent panels in the floor casting soft ambient glows bleeding across the walls. Alcoves with sofas and private booths provided intimate fort away from the open space of scattered stools and tables out front of the bar. This pce was shiny and modern and glistened: ial detailing, the freshly polished floor, and on the lips of women and their sleek legs in the subtle light…

  This pce felt painfully familiar.

  I fought down a sudden bout of vertigo that bordered on panic. Dan picked up on my suddeand, his hand suddenly finding the small of my back, pushed through to the bar. Busy as this pce was with the after-work crowd, nobody was going to check for ID. Dan ordered our drinks. He didn’t ask. We were lucky to find a seat at a small round table in a er. The chairs were traptions of polished twining bronze and steel.

  I sed out of my fortable travel shoes bato my sleek, bck work heels. As I cmbered into the tall seat, I thought they looked like they’d been stolen from a goddamn museum of modern art, great to look at but hardly practical. The fug things definitely weren’t designed for a shirl in a pleated skirt. Dan, oher hand, looked fortable with his legs spread fortably apart for support. I, oher hand, perched precariously at the edge, one heel hooked into the chair legs, thighs tightly crossed, kogether.

  Sitting banced like that forced me to keep my back straight--pushed my breasts out--and I felt acutely aware of those things in their push-up bra thrusting out for all, and especially Dan, to see. It felt as though every woman who walked by threpraising gnce my way . . . and the men ogled . . . and it suddenly clicked why this pce felt so unfortable to me.

  Maybe it’s because I worked in a bar myself so soon after I’d escaped the streets. I don’t know. Whatever the reason, I’d developed both a soft spot for overworked bartenders and harassed waitresses, and an unreasoning dislike for pces like this. The painfully cool furniture, shiny people, and carefully desigmosphere: the whole thing just felt so damnably fake.

  Don’t get me wrong: I like a good drink or three. But given a choice, I’ll always head for the pub. Give me my back to the wall at a sturdy wood table with a couple uys and a steady supply of pints of beer or whiskey (depending on mood), and I’m about as happy as a fly on shit. Give me a couple of lonely old bastards slung over the bar staring into their gsses; give me a dozen different beers on tap, and a low ceiling and dark panelled walls and the quiet murmur of subdued versations and the distant k of gsses.

  Pces like Noir weren’t for serious drinking; they were for being seen aing id. It’d been months since I’d stepped foot anywhere like this, and I’d never do as dy. It was freaki more than just a little. I mean, my daily life reminds me of how things have ged, and that I’m pying the girl now, that I’m twenty again, but I swear nothing brought it crashing home like stepping into this goddamn upscale meat-market.

  For a moment there, stepping through the door I’d slipped bato old habits. An appraising eye sliding across the crowd, pig out the couples, the groups and the singles, separating the wheat from the chaff. Ba the day, there weren’t too many weekend nights I went home alone. I khis pd reized the game; but the game had ged and so had my p it. And so I clutched the drink handed me like a man at sea clutches at the floating thing, and found to my annoyahat Dan had bought me a white wine, a mid-range Chardonnay or something. I eyed his dark amber pint with envy.

  At this point, I was thinking that ing here, with him, was a really bad idea. It’s not like all I had to do was e to terms with what I looked like and the sudden pressure to ‘rex’ in this goddamn bar.

  No. I also had to listen to Dan, and pretend to be ied in what he had to say while trying to find a baween friendly and flirty, and maintain the illusion of my youthful innoce; and the whole time I was trying to keep an inspicuous eye on the bar and pick Jeff out of the throng; while als to e off as anything other than the unfortable feminized male hiding in pihat I was . . . and I swear, it was killing me and the only thing keepiable was the drink in my hand.

  It wasn’t nearly strong enough. I felt a sudden burgeoning of the pani this m and quickly cmped down on it: not here. _This_ was why I always headed home straight after work. I wasn’t strong enough--yet--to endure nights in publiuch longer could I maintain this dy charade?

  Dan picked up on my distress. “Hey, you okay there?” he asked, and his hand surreptitiously snaked across the table to y over mine.

  “I’m just a little tired,” I answered, briefly holding his hand and giving it a light squeeze, before smiling wanly and slipping free. “But thanks.”

  “That’s what I always say,” he answered. His smile twisted a little, sardonic. “People must think I’m an insomniac, the way I’m always tired.”

  I chuckled and suddenly realized that it was a totally natural rea--not something forced--but a genuine release. It felt good. “Tell me about it.”

  He took a long pull on his beer and wiped the froth from his lips. “Fug job.”

  I nodded. “Stupid job.”

  “Fuck it!”

  “Yeah!” And my sip of wiurned into a gulp, and then another, and suddenly the gss was empty, the chilled wine pleasantly transf into belly-calming warmth.

  “Nice,” Dan said. He grinned. “Another?”

  Da off to the bar to get another round of drinks, clearly determio get me drunk—which was good, because I suddenly felt very determio get drunk. While he was away I cast a wandering eye across the women arouanding at the bar or sitting at tables or delicately threading their way through the crowd. So many sexy young things--like me--and I felt a sudden unfortable kinship with them that had me squirming in my seat.

  There was a girl at a table near mine. She was cute, and young, probably in her mid-twenties. As I watched, some guy joined her. He was clearly an older man and was ing straight from work, his suit well-tailored and the cufflinks that fshed at his wrist expehe way she was dressed, she definitely hadn’t e straight from work. Delicately highlighted cheeks glittered in the dim light and her red lips shimmered almost as brightly as her gy sequiop. She crossed and uncrossed her bared arms and pyed idly with a silver bracelet, twisting and sliding it up and down her forearm.

  Was she bored with her date? Were they colleagues or friends or something more? Was she with him for his money, or because she was attracted to the power money represent, or because the man was a fug God in bed? Maybe he was a nice guy. I didn’t think he was a nice guy. His hairline was reg and there was something in his expression, an arrogant curl to his lip or the way he straddled his seat that made me dislike him. But the body nguage between them was fasating. Every toss of hair, sideways gnd flip of her wrist . . . the way she drew his attention back with a light touch when he g another woman, or the way she pulled back when he leaned forward . . . in the give and take of their versation, itle of words aures between them, were they meeting as equals? Was she in trol? There was a whole nguage of physical signs and subtle signals I’d only ever known from the other side. Now, I barely khe words—had little cept of the grammar—of behaving like a girl, with a boy, without the very real risk of presenting the wrong message.

  I realized that I was empathizing with the girl, that I was imagining myself in her position, and it freaked me out. Wheood to go to the bathroom, the guy looked in my dire. We made eye tact. He had grey eyes. They weren’t friendly or shy and held my gaze unswervingly. He smiled knowingly and I felt myself blush and quickly looked away, shamed.

  The brief exge left me feeling hot despite the fact that my clothes suddenly seemed to barely cover me at all. I tugged at my skirt, wishing for something longer, for a proper pair of trousers, and the situatioting in this all too familiar setting but in such ged circumstawisted into a bizarrely surreal moment for me, an unfortable one.

  Fortunately, Daurned just then with more booze. This time he’d ordered me a rge. Another long drink helped calm my nerves.

  Bemused, he watched me gulp the wine. “You still seem a little . . . tense,” he said.

  “Stressed,” I answered.

  “The job?”

  “Yeah, sure . . . the job.” I winced, and stopped, and forced a smile. “It’s sometimes, like, I wonder if I should even be here, you know? Whether I handle all this. It’s just so new.” I put the gss down, watg the py of light in the surface of the pale wine. “And I wonder why Michael hired me?”

  Dan nodded unsciously in agreement. “Yeah, you seem a little. . . ,” I could see him choosing his words tactfully. “Inexperienced for the job.” I don’t know how the word leaked out (although I suspected Mehat bitch), but it became on knowledge around the office within a day of my start that I was a twenty-year-old high-school dropout. Were rumours already cirg of my stunning ‘oral performa the interview? dy probably would’ve been mortified but in a way I was quite gd. It saved me from ag through those tedious moments of shyly admitting the truth, the forced blushes aive smiles and pleading looks for reassurance.

  “I know.” I shrugged and smiled weakly. “I guess he saw something he liked.” Then it was his turn to wince, because there just wasn’t any of saying that without making it sound seedy. “I mean….”

  I touched his forearm. “It’s fine.”

  His like or dislike wasn’t really relevant. Walking into that interview I khe job was mi’s a good thing too, because I almost shat a brick stepping into his office. Fortunately, I kept the panider trol and sweated my way through the interview. It wasn’t easy. It wasn’t easy g with the clothes, let alohe terror of being caught out, or of being surrounded by so many people for the first time since being dy. Stepping out of the taxi into that huge crowd of people two weeks ago nearly gave me a heart attack. The appreciative eyes and cheeky smile of that bloody kid who opehose goddamn heavy doors for me almost sent me gibbering back to the safety of my home. Until I found my stride, that is, a little sass and a sexy wiggle that turhe whole thing into a game and carried me through that first meeting with Sarah, who then brought me to Michael.

  The whole thing was a charade. Maybe not Sarah, but the boss must’ve known. Maybe he was even in on it, though after two weeks I really didn’t think so. There were other people being interviewed, a couple of women and one guy, and I’m sure they all out-cssed dy’s sty resume. They were older and professionally dressed and carried themselves with a mature air that I, as dy, simply couldn’t muster. Maybe they were overqualified for the job? It didn’t really matter.

  The moment I decided to py this game, to be dy and ride this out to the brutal, iable end, getting a job became a top priority. My ied bank at was haeming like a gangnd shooting in the ER. It damned well wasn’t going to hang on much longer. With my qualifications--high-school dropout, psychiatric basket-case, Asklepios t--I khere were limits to what I could hope for. Waitress. er. Retail work, if I was lucky. Hell, I was even sidering Frank’s goddamn strip joint, I was so desperate for a little cash. I spent hours looking for jobs, sing online listings, but I never quite built up the ce to apply anywhere. And then out of the blue it arrived: the letter.

  It was an acceptater for a job interview I’d never applied for. There was never any doubt in my mind about accepting the job. The thing had obviously bee up--by K or by Steele, or someone else? It didn’t really matter. It was at best a way of testi worst a trap; it was also the first hint that whatever the twisted game I’d been dropped into, someone was making their move.

  Now it was my turn. I’d bend this to my own advantage. Somehow. When I’d finally accepted that I was going to have to py this part--no, to be this part--it wasn’t just as a means to stay alive.

  Survival alone is never enough. Persephoaught me that. I survived her death, and the streets, and rebuilt myself into David Saunders. Now that life was over; so fug be it. Now I had this job . . . and it was the first step on a long road that would end with my hands, delicate and manicured though they may be, tight around Steele’s mother-fug throat. And for that happen, for now at least, it seemed I o sit behind a goddamion desk at Volumina Iional.

  “He’s a good boss,” Dan said, and paused a sed. “I’m gd you got the job.”

  I blushed, and it wasirely forced. I opened my mouth to aurned away, and covered my embarrassment with a sip of wihe frosted pink imprint on the rim suddenly fasated me. The whole time he gri my disfort. “Thank you,” I finally managed.

  “That’s so cute,” he said. “You really are o the city, aren’t you?’

  I gave a little moue. “Is it that obvious?”

  “A little.” He ughed, notig my mock frown. “Not that much. Really! You’re just a bit . . . different, than most of the irls around here.”

  A faint smile. “Am I?”

  Dan nodded. “It’s nothing that major, it’s just . . . .” He shrugged. “It’s hard to pin down. Just something in the way you carry yourself. And dress. The way you drink.” He waved his half-full pint at my empty wine gss. “You’re just different from most of the girls I know.”

  “I’m sorry,” I answered, in a quiet voice, and with lowered eyes.

  His hand found mine again. “Don’t be,” he said. “I like different.”

  I held his gaze for a few long seds. He had brilliant blue eyes. Shyly, I finally looked away, and only drew my hand back a moment after that. “Thank you.”

  We talked for a little longer, mostly insequential stuff ing the office as he finished off his gss. He told me about his job, his current projed his hopes for a promotion. With a smile and looseo his step he went off for the third round of drinks. This time he asked what I wanted. I ordered a Guinness. It was the ma stuff I could think of short of switg to scotch.

  While I waited I did a little damage trol on my makeup. It was a miracle the stuff wasn’t sliding down my face. I felt hot, like I must be sweating. I took another secretive check for Jeff. No sign of him but I knew my stalker was lurking somewhere. I had to find the bastard--had to know where he was--had to make sure he was here, getting all of this. He o be watg. I _needed_ him to be watg. This performance was as much for his sake as it was for mine.

  Thinking about a si of eyes of eyes on me was in some ways a lot easier to deal with than aowledging the many more I knew were stantly, zily, hungrily cheg me out. It’s not like I wasn’t used a certain amount of attention as David, but that felt very different. Wearing a suit, looking expensive and fident and strong, the surreptitious, shy or occasional brazenly lustful looks from womeo just feed my ego.

  Wearing a short skirt and a fitted works shirt that stretch taut ay boobs—unbuttoo show some cleavage, obviously—and with short sleeves left me feeling exposed and vulnerable. Now those simir--but so very different!--stares from me me feeling anything from nervously self-scious to sied and self-loathing, and if maybe somewhere deep inside I felt a sexy little thrill I did my best to bury it and fet. It was again a relief when Dan finally returned with our drinks, so that I could stop mindlessly fidgeting with my makeup ging at my hem. For some reason his presence was making the awful experience of being in this bar more bearable.

  “A beer for the dy,” he said.

  “Thanks.”

  “Not what I would’ve expected you to order.”

  I raised the gss in toast. “Too manly?”

  He ughed. “Hey, I wouldn’t drink that stuff.”

  I shrugged and took a sip. “It’s an acquired taste.” It certainly was, and one dy obviously hadn’t managed yet. Struggling to fight back a grimace, I delicately dabbed at the foam that flecked my lip and . It never used to taste this . . . earthy, did it?

  “Do all the girls drink beer where you’re from?”

  My turn to ugh. “Of course!”

  “And are they all as pretty as you?”

  I wi him. “Not even close.”

  “And here I was about to book the rain to. . . .” He smiled and waved his hand in the air. “To wherever you’re from.”

  “River Valley,” I answered, without missing a beat. “No train, though. You’d have to catch the bus.”

  “River Valley? Sounds. . . .”

  “Dull?” I smiled, a little wistfully. “Maybe.” I absently traced the rim of gss with a nail as I spoke. Strange how perfectly shaped that nail was, and how the barely-pink varnish caught the light. Just like the wihese small things, they still caught me out when I least expected them. “But it wasn’t that bad of a pce growing up. I guess.”

  “I was going to say, ‘pretty’.”

  “It is.”

  “What’s it like? Tell me about it.”

  “Well,” I started. “It’s in this valley, and . . . it has a river.”

  “Wow,” he said, grinning. “It’s almost like I’m there.”

  I gave him a mock gre. “It gets better.”

  “So tell me, then,” he said, settling bato his seat.

  And so I did. I told him about River Valley and about growing up there, about the cottages by the keside at the deepest point in the valley, and how beautifully the sun glimmered off the water during those long summer evenings, and how I loved to walk along the river with the grass tig my bare legs and the wind breathing through a light summer dress. I told him about John Wilson’s, the beat-up bar on the edge of towhe fights always seemed to happen, and how a boyfriend ba high school got a tooth knocked out there. There was the Point, where the kids all used to hang out in their beat-up cars, stretg out across hoods and watg the clouds drift across the sky during the day, and the expanse of stars at night. Supposedly, mirls lost their virginity there than anywhere else in town. Somehow I even ended up telling Dan, as we polished off our third drink, about my first kiss, at thirteen, pying spitle with kids older than me and how I ended up in the closet with Billy ost definitely not my top choice for first kiss--and how he ended up molesting my h his tongue in the dark. And the fact that so little of what I said was actually true made any difference, made it any less real, because I was acutely aware that every lie I spoke became reality the moment the words left my lips and created more of this young woman I was being . . . that I was turning myself into.

  And the thing was: I was loving it. I really was. There I erched on that ridiculous stool, leaning forward just enough to show off some cleavage, aly flirting with this young guy with sparkling eyes who seemed to hang off my every word, lying, spinning out a fine old yarn about an imaginary girl’s past; and I was having the most fun I’d had in . . . well, since hanging out with Harry Longman, I guess, getting drunk at the ic.

  Of course it wasn’t all lies, or at least they taihose small seeds of the truth in there, the half-truths rooted in my own childhood. The best lies were always half-truths, and wasn’t that my life, now? One part fantasy to one part reality.

  Much like dy, I’d grown up in the tryside before running away to the city. There’d been a small river--barely a stream, really--running through the clustered and ramshackle buildings, and I’d enjoyed walking barefoot through the grass. I’d hide there, in the reeds and at night, when Mht boys home. Hide from the noises, and hide from the recriminations, hers and mine.

  And instead of the pain and sadness and fusion of a year old boy hiding from shit he couldn’t possibly uand, I choose to remember the sky . . . and God, in my memory the night sky bae was dusted with an impossibility of stars that seemed to light up the firmament with a glow broken only by the brief fre of falling stars. Those fug light are they’re the only damhing I miss from my childhood.

  “Sounds beautiful,” Dan said, his resting over interced fingers. “Much better than growing up in this shithole of a city.”

  I shrugged. “Guess I’ve fotten the bad stuff over time.”

  He ughed. “Aren’t you twenty?”

  I blushed. “Sometimes I feel older.”

  Dan winked. “You certainly don’t look it.”

  With my cheeks again burning a deep red, I found myself forced to look away and suddenly realized that it wasn’t just my cheeks that burned, but that I felt flushed all over and quite drunk.

  I hadn’t quite figured out my body’s new retionship with alcohol yet. Like, I’d been drinking fairly heavily at home since waking up as dy, though I’d eased off ohe job started. For ohing, any booze robably a bad idea sidering the cocktail s I was on, and fuows how any of it ied with the bullshit sce of Scooter’s experiment. I also had a hell of a lot less body mass to suck up the booze, for another. Weirdly, though, I hadn’t had a hangover sihat first awakening. Judging from a couple of ret binges, it felt like I got drunk—like, properly drunk—a hell of a lot faster than before, but bounced back faster, too. I put it down to being twenty again.

  But this was my first time drinking in publid I suddenly realised I’d just knocked back two gsses of a wine and a pint of beer, with nothing more stabilising than some edamame and olives for nibbles at our table. My bdder suddenly felt like it was about to burst. With an apologetic smile I excused myself from the table and hopped down from my perch.

  Those weeks of heavy drinking alone in my apartment paid off. Despite the heels I found my feet with only a slight wobble and coed in pleasant drunkenness worked my way to the bathroom through the crowd, pig up speed as I realized that I suddenly really, really had to go. Until I reached the door, and the line-up, and the half-dozen irls waiting their turn.

  “Fuck,” I muttered under my breath.

  The woman ahead of me had straight bck hair down a back left half-exposed by the scoop neck of her top. Thin spaghetti straps exposed pale, freckled shoulders. Both of us were in heels, and though she wasn’t much taller she stood with such fide felt as though she towered over me. Gng back, she smiled bitterly. “Tell me about it.”

  She did a double-take, looking at me once again. As she did so, I felt a momentary jolt nition. I knew her, somehow, though that seemed unlikely. She must’ve been in her mid-thirties, dressed from work, like me, though her charcoal, knee-length skirt screamed middle ma as opposed to my rather less aspirational attire. (Or rather, aspirational in a very different way.) She must’ve sed her top for something bar-friendly but still exude a sexy seriousness dy couldn’t hope to match.

  Did she work in the same office building? Perhaps I’d passed her in the woman’s toilet and checked her out, something I had a bad habit of doing. She was attractive, though somewhat stern-looking, but in my semi-druate I struggled only briefly to remember her before dismissing the . She seemed to experience a moment nition as well, but that was equally impusible.

  Instead, we shared a brief moment of quiet, shared pain. I wondered if it was worse for her, whether my hidden cock, held back as it was, eased some of the pain of an over-full bdder. Some guy breezed by, stumbling into the wall before disappearing into the men’s bathroom, and I felt impotent rage at the freedom he so unwittingly enjoyed.

  “Fucker.” The girl ahead of me gred at the man’s retreating back.

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Years of therapy,” she said. “And then I remember why I hate men.”

  I choked back a ugh as the girls’ queue crawled forward. How long did it take to piss? It occurred to me that an act just then might not just be embarrassing as hell, but potentially fatal, especially if spotted by the wrong person. Damn: Jeff. I hadn’t thought of that bastard in too long; somehow I’d almost fotten about him. Fuck. Did he get a sick thrill out of watg me wait, dang from toe-to-toe, ioilet line-up? At least the nervous tightening of my stomach at the thought of my stalker distracted me from other pressing pains. I survived the rest of the wait, keeping a less that subtle wary eye on the crowds ba the bar, exging the occasional ptitude with the woman ahead of me, and trying to not openly ogle the girls lined in front of me, the shiny lips and sheen of sexy skin and curves on dispy. Finally, it was my turn.

  With a cttering of heels I rushed into the first open stall and smmed the door shut, log it firmly.

  I hoped the desperate release of piss didn’t sound too loudly as a relieved sigh escaped my lips. o self in the endless litany of female ent: when in a busy bar, always head to the bathroom at least ten minutes before you’ve actually got to go.

  Sat on the crapper, I took a long moment to yself. Away from Dan I felt briefly shamed at my as. This versation with its sideway gnces and fluttering touches . . . I mean, fuck. The sexual tension was there, and building. It couldn’t go anywhere, of course. The poor boy would be going home alone, cursing me for a cock-tease and . . . robably drunkenly jerk off to the thought of my tits and lips before bed tonight. What did he expect? A kiss? At least a kiss. More, probably. I would’ve expected more.

  Goddamn. Couldn’t I enjoy a simple night out? Didn’t I deserve an easy night? I took a deep breath. Tucked my cock away once again. Dug through my purse and dug out another one of those ay-killed pills. Fuck it, I needed a win, here and tonight, some tangible proof that I could eke at least some desperate enjoyment out of dy’s life.

  So I swept the frustration aside, dry-swallowed the pill and summoned happy thoughts. Puppies and glitters and my manicured hands curled tightly around Steele’s thieck. “Lookin’ awesome,” I whispered to myself, voice lost in the bustle of the busy bathroom room. “Go.” I forced myself to stand.

  A few touch-ups at that feeding-trough of a mirror, jostling for space among the preening, primping women, and I returo the bar.

  “dy!” Dan was standing by one of the softly-lit alcoves with the low-slung sofas. He grinned and waved. He’d ordered some food, and a pair of what looked like fruity cocktails. “Over here.”

  With a ugh, a light step and a happy smile on those plumped, painted lips, I joined him in the privacy of a booth.

  Author's Notes:

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