Everyone's Favorite Girl (4 page)

That took me a moment to process.  I was still trying to wrap my head around the idea that James and Judy had some kind of relationship.  I almost said,
What  button?

Then it hit me. 
Duh, stupid.
  The button on the device in Flora's arm, which Kate had pressed as the two fell back onto the soft white comforter, legs entangling, turning my bad dream into an all-out nightmare.

Flora was still staring at me.  She had a look of urgency on her face.

"That'll be all, thank you," I said, gesturing with a wave of my hand.  When he hesitated, I said, "Go, Errand Boy.  Shoo."

James dropped the limp banana peel on top of the fruit bowl, then sauntered out of the room, slamming the door extremely hard.

Flora returned from the kitchen, holding the unopened soda out to me.

"Thanks," I said.

"Hmm.  That's a first."

She plopped down right next to me, no longer skittish.  At least for the moment.  She seemed driven by a purpose.

"That's the most he's talked since before the experiments started," she said.  "We didn't know about the Judy thing.  That's new information."

I wasn't able to share in her excitement.  So what James was banging Judy?  What did it mean?  What was I supposed to do with that information?

"I don't get how it matters," I said.

Flora looked frustrated.  "Everything matters, Melissa.  That's what you told me.  Every little detail we can extract from James gets us one step closer."

"One step closer to what?"

"To putting an end to this.  To bringing down the company."

I laughed, and Flora all but snarled at me.

"Flora," I said, "this is hopeless."

"You always say that."

"It's true."

She closed her eyes.  "It's only hopeless if we give up.  We have to
try
, Melissa.  What else is there to do anyway?"

She certainly had a point.  After all, we had no television.  Might as well try to overthrow what was probably now the richest and most powerful company in the world.  Housewives like me have tackled bigger jobs with a broom and a dustpan, right?

I'm fucked.

Flora was quickly on her way back to weeping, so I decided to entertain her false notion that hope remained.  I was with James on this. 
Abandon hope and your life will get a lot easier.

"Okay," I said.  "James and Judy are an item.  Let's talk about it."

"It might be something else," she said immediately.

"You mean he's raping her?  He said she's loving it."

"We don't know that's true."

Of course.  James could very easily have lied.  I didn't get a good look at Judy when I came out of my spell.  It would be pretty easy to tell if she was under a lot of stress from being assaulted every night.

"Judy's the one doing this to me, you know."

"They're making her do it, Melissa."

"How do you know?"

"Because we
know
Judy and she wouldn't do that."

"Are you kidding me?  You know what she did."

"That was a spur-of-the-moment decision.  A bad one, yes, a very, very bad one, but she's not malicious.  What they're doing to you . . . it takes a lot of hate.  Judy isn't a hateful person."

I wanted to tell her she was childish and stupid for stubbornly seeking the good in people, but I was getting tired of her crying, so I agreed with her just to calm her down.

For the next ten minutes, I ate my roast beef sandwich while Flora pondered the nature of Judy's relationship with James.

The fact that Judy had told James "where to find the button" implied consent, she decided, so he was most likely
not
raping her.  If Judy
was
banging James willingly, she'd either fallen for him or was pretending.

"She's pretending," Flora asserted.  "Because she's trying to help us."

All is possible in the eyes of the naive.

"That's a theory," I said.

"It has to be true."

"Why?"

She shrugged.  "It just has to be."

Or else the world couldn't be all sunshine and rainbows.  If Judy didn't plan on saving the day, no one could.

I might as well press Flora's button myself.  We were as good as dead.  No reason not to end on a high note.  A drop of Libido and a dash of Love, the one-stop solution to all my woes.  Like a grumpy, distant husband who suddenly cheers up when you put his unwashed dick in your mouth.

Flora said I always tried to have sex with her on the first night.  Whatever had stopped me before, I couldn't see it succeeding again.

As the day progressed, Flora avoided me more and more.  Nose in a book.  Cleaning.  Taking a shower.  Whenever she completed one task, she rushed off to another, announcing her intentions as though I'd bothered to ask.  I knew what she was doing.  I've done it a million times.  Ted wore his sexual desire right on his face, and when I saw it but wasn't in the mood myself, I'd spend ten times the energy ducking and dodging his advances than I would have spent just getting it over with.

I followed her around for part of the day, starting when she took a shower.  I was tired and too lazy to find my own things to do.

Flora pretended I wasn't standing there in the doorway with my arms crossed, watching like some sort of bathing instructor as she lathered her entire body extensively and then stepped back into the shower's stream, and again when she stood in the closet with a towel around her waist sorting through what remained of Kate's wardrobe.  According to Flora, Kate came through and raided the place before moving in with Sean.

When I finally spoke up, a little of the edge was gone.  I managed to sound pleasant for the first time all day.

"That looks cute."

She'd picked out a pair of running shorts and a white, skin-tight blouse, which she wore with no bra--James being our one daily gentleman caller.

"Thanks," Flora said, clomping past me with her arms dead at her sides like a grounded teenager.

"Did they take the DVDs?"

"No."  She sat at the edge of the bed.

"Want to watch a movie?"

Shrugging, Flora ran her palm over the soft white comforter.  She didn't look up.  Another repeat from last week, I assumed.  When I said as much, Flora shook her head.

"This is the first time you've asked me to watch a movie," she said.  "Usually you just watch one yourself, and I sit on the couch and read."

"Well, why don't you pick a movie and I'll make some popcorn.  Do we have popcorn?"

"I think so."

"What do you want to drink?"

She stood.  "I can get it.  You should sit down.  You look tired."

I felt it, too, but I'd hit that long and sluggish stride in which one grows numb to exhaustion.  Probably the only reason I finally stopped nipping at Flora's heels.  Being mean and bitter takes effort.

Right now I just wanted warmth and softness.  Even the most evil of men--visualize Mr. Shriver or Sean if you prefer--end their days with the same desire for comfort, rest, and security.

I gave in to Flora rather easily, and while she dawdled in the kitchen, tiptoeing on the cold ceramic floor, I lay on my back taking in the scent of butter and the oddly relaxing series of muffled explosions coming from the microwave.  I felt better already.  It's funny how your perception of reality can suddenly dissolve and reform into a fantasy with the same physical structure but a different context.  A sudden feeling swept me up like flood waters, one of being a pre-freshman year teenager, having a sleepover with my best friend.

What I wouldn't give for some flavored vodka and candy right now.  Flora and I could get hyped up and tipsy, raid the closet and play dress-up, snap risqué photos in poses suggestive of something we'd yet to experience, some pictures snapped playfully in-between outfits.  "Wouldn't the boys
love
to get their hands on these?" we would say, promising to keep them a secret.  Later we could video chat with strangers around the world in our underwear.  Call and flirt with boys.  Maybe send one a photo--not one of
those
, of course.  Settle in to watch a movie late at night, but we wouldn't pay attention.  Instead, we'd talk about the future, then boys, then the past.  And, inevitably, when the lights went off, we'd end on the subject of sex.

I used to have the kind of sleepovers boys love to imagine girls have.  Sometimes there was kissing.  Sometimes a little more.

It was my mother's doing.  She raised me on one guiding principle: I needed to learn how to make a man happy.  All other education was superfluous.

"Remember, it's all about him, making
him
feel powerful.  You can't just give in to him.  You have to make him want you enough to come after you.  He has to
conquer
you, and when he does, his reward must be worth it.  That's why you need to know what you're doing, but that doesn't mean start having sex with boys.  Your reputation plays a big role in this.  There's one tried and true way to kill two birds with one stone.  Practice with your girlfriends.  You'll learn how to be comfortable with another, and when boys find out what you've been up to they won't be able to stop thinking about you."

Sure enough, all through high school rumors echoed through the halls about what happened when girls stayed over at my house.  Most girls grew to despise me, while boys tripped over themselves just to get a booth near me in the cafeteria.  It wasn't because I was any more attractive than the popular girls.  I wasn't.  Not by a long shot.  But I spent more of my time figuring out how to make myself appealing to the right guys at the right time.

That's how I hooked Ted before I even graduated high school.

How I wound up in a miserable, one-sided marriage.

How I ended up here.

My mother had taught me audacity, and I'd learned well.

Flora brought a bowl of popcorn the size of a small laundry basket, along with drinks, a bag of pretzels, and a handful of bite-size candy bars, leftovers from before we were denied such luxuries.

We agreed on a movie--some cheap and poorly acted horror spoof--but lost interest before the opening credits sequence finished.  Instead, we ate popcorn and candy bars and talked about our predicament.

Flora sparked the conversation by flopping over on her back, swatting me in the face with her hair, and, with a sharp, almost nervous exhale, saying, "Okay, how do we get out of this?"

I sat up beside her and stole a glance over her body: long, smooth legs still warm from the shower, tiny running shorts with the waistband hugging her just below her hip bones, a sliver of exposed midriff below her skin-tight, mildly transparent shirt, through which I noted the darker shade of her nipples.

And while my description of Flora exudes sexuality, the Flora I was staring at harbored no such characteristic.  Provocative, yes, but too naive to realize it.  Imagine a cute little Shih Tzu in a zombie apocalypse, merrily tromping across the yard to shower affection on a thing that wants to eat it.

"We can't escape," I said, resting my hand on her ribcage.

"You say that every time.  Followed by . . ."

She rolled her head over to look at me and I shrugged.

"I have no idea what I'm supposed to say.  We can't escape.  Not without help, and we're cut off from everyone."

"
There
you go.  And
then
. . ." She had a strange, edgy tone now.  I didn't like it.  Whatever I'd said in our previous conversations I, of course, didn't remember.  It felt like she was mad at me for what I was about to say.  At the same time, she was coaching me into saying it.

"I'm lost, Flora."

"We can't escape," she repeated, sounding like an inept babysitter impatiently reciting instructions to a slow child--or maybe this was just how I perceived her.  Maybe my brain-fucked mind added all the harsh and distasteful details, and right now Flora was really just terrified.  "Not without help," she said, "and we're cut off from everyone. 
Everyone
."

"Everyone except James," I said.  "You know, it'll be a lot easier if you just tell me what we've already talked about instead of dangling it in my face like a carrot."

Flora giggled and covered her mouth.

"What's so funny?"

She waved her hand and shook her head.  "Sorry, you said something else last time."

"What?  What did I say?"

"Something besides carrot."

"Dick?"

Here she burst into a fit of giggles again.  I watched the subtle bouncing of her unsupported breasts, and for no particular reason I started tickling her.  Based on her reaction, I could tell I hadn't done this before.  She screamed so loud it made my ears ring, and though I wanted to pin her down and tickle her till we both wound up naked, I was too intrigued by my revelation: