Hers was an intense, unmistakable presence at the lakehouse: the smell of (white, white petals?) rampant wild flowers, an addict crawl of night-blooming jasmine, and the sixth sense that one has encroached upon a thing of particular exquisiteness, of rarity.
An aching testament to the human spirit and its struggle, the transmutation of it toward something greater, she had been ill-equipped as a small lost child coming up in Chicago's projects where oppressively tiny bedrooms hid a family's mistakes underneath a clot of heroin, a sicker version of love, and pillowcases that did nothing to blot out the screams when hush-hush depredations became the memories that give chase only at night. Having employed nothing but her wit, one natural talent, and pulchritude, she escalated from emancipation to rock star to killer to empress with a hunger and a consuming ambition that had not been rivaled since the vis major, the rise of Cleopatra VII.
She had the loneliest (or the fiercest), soul-bruised stare—whisper-soft veins of contusion blue twining around violent violet blooms, intensely doelike, a dominion of ridiculously thick lashes that spread their velvet black darkness over the haunting, unshakable white of her new baby's skin (untouched snow, born-again virgins.) Untouchable, unspeakable things about her (within her, deep down.) A malleable, adaptable quality that promised the parts of her that had been broken could never be broken again, though she was never softer than when she was torn asunder at the sleek, lace-licked thighs by a man who understood that sometimes faster meant harder, and that I can't means make me.
All the things she could call hers had been earned through blood, sweat, tears, and more blood. Always blood.
Often she moved through the grounds as she pleased, visiting its secret places, dainty seed pearls scattered to hardwood floors or within the shallows of grass as an older blackhaired man put her on his puppet strings—and she performed, thankful for the motion no matter how perverse. Said nothing of the devil cousin or his retreat consort, the irritating painter, or the hidden matron unless he did and avoided the shadows that seemed thicker than all the rest. Sylvie spent her days with dolls and pop-up picture books and crayons, and Lucian sometimes even did less than the usual baby would do. At the lakehouse, she was equal parts mother and lover though most of her hours were devotedly spent with Marius Vega in order to remind him just why he didn't need anything else but the wet warmth between her thighs, her lilting murmur in his ear.
(She even caught him once in the kitchen, pouring over another woman's casserole, and waited with the patience of a sociopath until he retired from the room wherein she dumped each dish into the trash from the refrigerator, just enough violence applied to crack glass. Suspended by a magnet on the refrigerator's front, she scrawled out in succinct letters upon a piece of stationary: Dear Shannon, Keep cooking for my man and I'll fucking kill your stupid ass. Love, Jill.)
There was a moment, just one, where she had seen Severin alone. Coming down one of the scattered hallways, freshly rumped from a quick hard screw with his master, she had been as soundless on bare feet as he was on his shoes until turning a corner had them almost colliding, blind to the approach of the other. But she'd slid back quick, too quick, a diaphanous muslin flutter on moist pale skin, red swollen mouth tender with shock and (what, what, Jill Ann?), unconsciously parted while her spine pressed itself to the wall. Immediate. He might have even caught a violet-tinged glimmer before the lashes swept low as a child's; self-protective? Guarded? Only she kept close to the wall for another step, two, until they could keep moving in the opposite direction wordlessly (and wisely so.)
A few hours later, though, she had received a phone call. While she'd been visibly reluctant to leave, she did: his scent on her skin, his man in the driver's seat next to her, and nothing to do but stare out the window in order to keep the levee from breaking.
I know a girl, she puts the color inside of my world
but she's just like a maze where all of the walls
are continually changed. And I've done all I can to
stand on her steps with my heart in my hand. Now
I'm starting to think, maybe it's got nothing to do with me.
Fathers, be good to your daughters—
daughters will love like you do.
Girls become lovers who turn into mothers,
so mothers, be good to your daughters, too.
Oh, you see that skin? It's the same she's been
standing in since the day she saw him walking away;
now she's left cleaning up the mess he made.
Fathers, be good to your daughters—
daughters will love like you do.
Girls become lovers who turn into mothers,
so mothers, be good to your daughters, too.
Boys, you can break, you find out how much they can
take. Boys will be strong, and boys soldier on, but boys
would be gone without warmth from
a woman's good, good heart.
On behalf of every man, looking out for every girl,
you are the guide and the weight of her world.
Fathers, be good to your daughters—
daughters will love like you do.
Girls become lovers who turn into mothers,
so mothers, be good to your daughters, too.
(so mothers, be good to your daughters, too)
(so mothers, be good to your daughters, too)
— John Mayer
She wandered through the little Arthurian bedroom nestled in the marbled hollows of the Vega's estates—her daughter's temporarily vacant sanctuary with its exquisite doll houses, damask canopied four poster, its hauntingly delicate miniature furniture embroidered in pale lace, gold lacquer. Arranged tea set, half-dressed dolls spilling out of pink-painted princess chests: a world that Jill had meticulously constructed from children's catalogues but had never, ever had.
"He's not answering his phone," she sighed out toward the direction of the cellphone's mouthpiece, stressed but calmly quiet. "Since he's being such a douchebag, I can meet up with Marius at lakehouse then send for Sylvie a week or two after that."
A pretty towheaded maid hovered behind Vega's lover as the black-haired womanchild ran a free hand over the row of closet hangers, selecting dresses to hand over, wherein the maid would take the chosen article. Gently removing the hanger, Blaise would fold the corners of petticoats and slim white hosiery and lavender velvet coveralls, retire them to the suitcase splayed open along the little girl's bed in impeccably compact squares.
"Dad?" Dad, and not Greg anymore, a transition that began after they had buried Scottie together in Chicago. "Dad, I don't want to talk about it. If you had nothing to do with it, then it's none of your business. I don't want to discuss it with you because I have a therapist I pay for things like this." Pinching the phone between an ear and the slender, round curve of a shoulder, she selected article after article of clothing, draping them over a softly hooked arm. "I am talking about it, we're talking about it right now, but I have to go. If Jett doesn't call me back before I leave—which will piss me the fuck off because I'd like to see Sylvie before I—yeah, I'll call you."
Greg was still talking when Jill ended the call to check the incoming text message, half-swiveling to hand off the armload of outfits to Blaise as if it were a languid afterthought. Doctor's appointment? from an unfamiliar number. Wordlessly, she left the maid alone in her daughter's room to finish up, escaping through the door into the maze of hallways, wide-sprawling corridors. Opulent, inkspilled French lace (the diminutive robe with the dramatic kimono sleeves) shivered above sleek fishnet thigh-highs, and so did the fat, silken dribble of ebony partial curls betwixt the eyelet-shadowed shallow valley the shoulderblades formed tenderly, so tenderly.
Saint Vincent's, thumbs typed out over the keypad, 10:45 AM. Meet me at 10:30 in the front lobby. It didn't vibrate after that so she left it face down on the bar in the master suite once she had permeated it with her decadent perfume (like wild berries on a summer's night dripping a pink-stained juice, honeysuckle dew drops over a bacchanal trickle of jasmine, caramel and vanilla, Juicy Couture's version of praline), sinking pale silverwhite fingers over a dense Baccarat, the Vega's cachaca, tilting them bonelessly into each other until the saccharine rum had nearly splashed over the glass lip.
Vega's letter had been stretched open over the bar's surface previously and she traced the edges of it with her manicured nails, the warm liquor bleeding down a delicately sleek throat demurely darkened by a lowered chin.
Open suitcases obscured the lower half of their shared bed and the upper half had been smothered with layers of her own clothes: mainly the most modest pieces in her wardrobe, which didn't count for much outside of the general effort applied, for it wasn't always easy to impress both a man and his mother. When planning a trip instead of spontaneously dropping off the face of the earth, Jill learned that she would be in a state of packing for days—doing a little here and there as she went, changing her mind, adding things, subtracting them—and even if Marius wasn't the most eloquent correspondent, individual words made her knees squeeze together desirously.
I really wanna and stresses me and ride me.
So one glass after another, and one thing to led to another; one of her weaknesses had always been a particularly hungry, hedonistic self-indulgence. One of the things that she loved about sex was the fact that she could disappear, that a bad day suddenly didn't have to mean a whole lot anymore, and that no matter what else she felt, she could share something of herself (one of the better parts) and nothing else had to matter until her body stopped twitching as if she was coming unglued at the seams.
In the plush marble bathroom, she took pictures on the phone after shouldering out of the Agent Provocateur kimono through the mirror, alternating between artistic and lewd. Ultimately there wasn't any point to that super-sleek black open bra except maybe to show off the pasties with their dusk-dark silk fringe tassels—and there was nothing at all to the matching satin thong, more fabric in the fat ribbons that had been twisted into flowery, half-flattened bows low on the small, milken sickles of her hips. Posing, arching; a rum-wet finger in her mouth, tracing downward between the subtle impressions of her ribs, disappearing into that inky knot of black between her thighs as her jaw went lax, obsidian-velvet eyelashes swerved low, low like they did when she implored Daddy in the middle of a painfully silent night.
Giving Marius ten minutes to receive the text messages, she finished off another round of alcohol, started on a joint, and found a place to sprawl belly-down on the bed between rivers of silk, tulle, leather before calling. During the course of their conversation, she let him know that she was leaving within the week and probably complained casually about Jett, someone's ass she did think he could kick, but she didn't mention a word about hospitals or men that came crawling at you from the darkness when it was late at night. Perhaps, perhaps she asked if Aden would still be there and whether he thought it would be okay, if she should really bring the baby.
And if he let her, if he cooperated, she spoke on all things filthy and verboten, smoke-feathered tongue and soft-throated voice—refusing to disconnect until her fingers were as moist as the panties she wore, until all the bad little girl words she knew had been spoken.
