Authors: Charlotte Stein
It’s just a snow globe.
There’s nothing threatening or confusing about a snow globe. They’re pretty and decorative and sometimes they hold down your flyaway pieces of paper. There’s no hidden hurtful meaning in them, or suggestion of a contract I didn’t sign. I don’t even think the thing is so expensive that I should be offended, in some way.
Our little dalliance ended, so here’s a parting pay-off, my mind says, but it isn’t that. He could have got this from Hallmark, and when I lift it out that suspicion is confirmed. There are no diamonds, no crystal domes. It’s just glass.
And inside …
Inside is an island. It’s an island, like the one we talked about. There’s a strip of dark jungle on one side and an ocean on the other, everything so simple you could almost call it crude. The whole thing reminds me of those creaking Plasticine kids’ programmes I used to love, with thickly made figures that move awkwardly around on their doughy, basic limbs.
That’s what the people on the beach look like.
But I can also see that they look like me, and they look like him.
He’s had this made, I realise, and suddenly all thoughts of it being inexpensive and not a concern fly right out of the window. I don’t even know how much it would cost to create something like this – and on such short notice, too. Even if he did it right after we first spoke about the island, that’s still a remarkably small amount of time to craft glass and wood and something like modelling clay into this beautiful little thing.
Obviously he’s rich. And obviously this is a rich man’s gift.
So why doesn’t it feel like a rich man’s gift? I don’t feel bought, looking at it. I feel something else instead. There’s this fluttering in my chest and my palms are all sweaty, and when I let my mind go it takes me to that beach. It shows me what it’s like to have a secret story with someone, and when it does I know I want more.
I don’t care that he couldn’t kiss me. That he may be averse to intimacy, or something like it. I’d trade a thousand intimate kisses for this – I would, I would. In its own way, this is more. It tells a thousand tales about the world behind his eyes, lonely as that distant shore, dark as those forests, sharp with jagged rocks and so dangerous.
I should really beware, I think – but it’s not a surprise that I don’t.
If he’s still in this deep, then so am I.
* * *
I jump every time the phone rings, despite the fact that a ringing phone is practically in my job description. I have to keep reminding myself that him calling is the unusual occurrence and everything else is reality: some woman wants to change her policy, someone else has an enquiry, a third person wants to know if he’s speaking to his wife.
Stay cool, I tell myself, but it’s hard to.
He didn’t stay cool. He went all weird then sent me an amazing gift, and now I’m on tenterhooks for whatever comes next. I have questions on the tip of my tongue and all of this fizzing excitement for more of that unspeakable pleasure, and waiting is agony. It’s like counting the days until Christmas, if Christmas was heaven and my workplace was hell.
My workplace
is
hell. My boss comes over to me after I’ve made myself a cup of coffee, and I can tell he’s not going to say anything good. I don’t even know why I expect him to, in all honesty, because he
never
says anything good.
He always looks the same: deeply suspicious and unaccountably angry. He has this permanent line between his brows, so deep and strange he could have made it with a marker. And he’s always so … so full of this uncomfortable energy. Michaela says it’s because of the stick up his ass, but that’s not the impression I get.
A stick would probably improve his mood.
As it is, his mood is this:
‘Is that your third cup of coffee?’
It’s actually my first, but there’s no real sense in saying that to him. He gets these ideas into his head, and they don’t go away. I’m not even sure if he wants them to go away. I think he clings to them, the way I’m clinging to the idea of some different life I could be leading, if I was brave enough to call him instead of waiting like a drip for him to call me.
‘I don’t have to drink it,’ I say, and he nods once, sharply.
‘You shouldn’t be drinking it at your desk, anyway.’
I glance around at the dozens and dozens of people who are doing just that, but as always he doesn’t catch my drift. He never catches anyone’s drift, but if you spell it out for him he nails you for it. Suddenly you don’t get that day off you wanted, or there’s a problem with your bonus this year. Maybe you don’t get invited to the Christmas party, accidentally on purpose, and then he behaves as though you really care.
Oh, how sad for you that you missed it. I don’t know why you didn’t get the email …
‘I’ll pour it down the sink, Mr Henderson. It’s not a problem.’
‘No, no. You can have it, this time.’ He laughs in this big, false way. And I know it’s a false way, because the line never leaves. His eyes remain as flat and grey as always, like he’s a robot mimicking human emotion. ‘I’ll look the other way!’
He’s so kind I can hardly stand it.
I can hardly stand
any
of this, in truth. My skin feels as though it’s about to crawl off my body. It’s all I can do to stop myself grabbing my pencil and stabbing it deep into his right eye, and to be honest I doubt I’d stop there. I can see myself smashing the copy machine. I’ve got a deep desire to pour this coffee somewhere other than the sink, and the longer this day goes on the worse the weird feelings get.
By the time it’s over I’m almost beside myself, walking with pins pricking into the balls of my feet, unable to stay inside my suit jacket. I rip it off in the elevator, even though I know I’ll be cold outside. We’re running at a pace towards winter now, and the day outside is bristling with frost.
Darkness is coming already, and it’s through this darkness that I see the car. Everyone sees the car. You couldn’t miss it if you tried, in a parking lot filled with Pintos and Peugeots and that moped of Mike Riley’s. This car takes up the entire entrance – enormous and slick and so obviously him it might as well have his name painted across the side.
Though I still pretend otherwise, for a little while. I have to. Michaela nudges me and says, ‘Check out Mr Big Shot,’ and when she does my insides go all funny. Is that who I’m associated with? Mr Big Shot?
‘I know, how awful,’ I say, but doing so only makes me feel funnier. I’m going to have to eat my words in a second, and I know it. I can see someone getting out of the car – someone with a cap and a uniform and oh, God, he’s an actual
chauffeur
– and even though I’m still pretending I’m not looking, I can feel him lasering in on me.
One side of my body prickles as I pass him, just waiting for the words I know are coming. They’re definitely coming. Oh, no, are they not coming? And if they’re not, why on earth am I panicking about this? I should be more worried that Michaela is going to think I’m a hypocrite, and that everyone’s going to see.
But I can’t be.
‘Miss Layton?’ the chauffeur says, and my first instinct is to almost die of excitement. Later on I can be affronted or aggrieved or disgusted by excess. Right now I just want to revel in something so insanely different it makes Michaela grab my shoulder and shake me.
‘I think he’s talking to you,’ she says, because apparently she also forgets her contempt for all things big-shotty when it’s someone she knows who might reap the benefits. It’s not a CEO, lording it over the rest of us. It’s not something Mr Henderson did, to show off in front of his staff. This is something else, and she immediately appreciates that.
Or at least she’s immediately curious about that.
‘What are you into?’ she asks, as though it might be drug deals or international cartels or something. I suppose for all I know it could be. Maybe he’s the head of some League of Evil, and the only reason I don’t know it is because I’m blinded by my own silly feelings. Be rational, I tell myself, but it’s almost impossible to maintain that state when the chauffeur is saying, ‘Mr Kovacs requests the pleasure of your company.’
My mind just hears ‘pleasure’ and ‘company’, and all other considerations are rescinded.
‘Oh, it’s just a friend of my dad’s,’ I say to her, absentmindedly. I don’t even really care if she knows I don’t have a dad, or that no father of mine could possibly be involved in anything like this. All that matters is moving towards that car, on slow solemn feet that seem as if hypnotised. My whole body is hypnotised.
I barely feel her hand leave my shoulder, or hear her slightly confused goodbye.
This could be my real life now, I think.
And the second I slip into the leather-lined confines of the car, it is.
I can’t help noticing that he’s arranged the chairs differently this time. His seat is still by the table, and in front of the double glass doors that lead to the balcony. Mine is now all the way across the room. We’re going to have to shout at each other like passing acquaintances on the street, though maybe that’s the point.
He can be intimate with me in the abstract, but not while we’re in the same room.
When we’re in the same room he stands at the glass, looking out over the city. Back to me, body language relaxed – on the surface at least. To me, there’s something a little false about the hand he’s put in one pocket. He’s done it a little too jauntily – suit jacket ruffled up to accommodate his hand – even though he’s not the jaunty sort at all.
He’s the sort to find kissing distasteful.
And the sort to not speak for a thousand years.
I have to do it, in the end, though I really don’t want to. I have too many questions crowding out all sensible thought, and the one that wins isn’t going to be pretty. I can tell it isn’t. It practically rattles on the way out.
‘Well, you summoned me. And here I am.’
I know it’s unfair of me to say. I didn’t feel summoned at all. I felt valued and excited and disbelieving, and still do in all the places that matter.
But I can’t let him know that. He already has so much power, and I have so little. There needs to be some redressing of the balance. At the very least I want to make him look at me, and I succeed. He turns at the sound of my voice, nonchalant as anything, face as unreadable as ever.
However, I definitely think he’s giving off other signs of … difference. They’re small and insignificant – like the too casual hand in the pocket – but they’re definitely visible, to someone who can’t stop looking. I can barely resist when he’s not actually around, so it’s no wonder I’m noticing tiny details.
Like the way his hair is parted today. It’s just a touch more severe, as though he wanted to make extra sure something on him was completely contained. The last time we met, there was a hint of curl just hanging down over his forehead.
But now there’s nothing.
And is it my imagination, or is this suit a little tighter than the one he wore the other day? It seems to nip right in at his waist, and there’s just a touch of strain around his burly chest. I think, unbidden, of the word ‘caged’
,
and the impression gets stronger as I watch him pace back and forth.
I’m sure he thinks he’s strolling.
He isn’t.
‘Is that what you think I did? I summoned?’ he asks, and I’m sure he thinks his question sounds like a walk in the park, too – light and breezy, with an edge of amusement.
It doesn’t.
There’s something else in there, alongside the slant of humour. Something a little brittle … something that scares me a tad. He doesn’t seem like the sort of person who could ever be wounded, but I think I got him in the gut then. He’s been so careful, so far, to respect what I want and not push too hard.
And I think I just accused him of pushing too hard.
‘Maybe “summoned” is a little strong.’
‘I wasn’t asking you to moderate your words.’
‘No? Then what were you asking for?’
‘The same thing I always do: only what you really want, and honestly feel, and truly believe. If I summoned you then I don’t wish you to take your words back. I wish you to say it, so that I might apologise.’
Damn him. Damn him. He makes it so hard to lie.
‘It wasn’t the idea of being summoned. It was the car.’
‘You didn’t like it?’
‘It felt extravagant.’
‘So you imagined you were being bought?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘Then tell me exactly.’
God, I love how greedy he sounds when he’s close to some revelation of mine. He actually clenches a fist, too, and it’s the sight of this that urges me on. I blurt words out without really thinking about them.
‘I was worried you thought you had to buy me.’
I blush once I’ve said it, but only because of the assumption that he wants me in there. In all other ways the words are real, and honest, and loved by me.
‘I see,’ he says, and then I get another little flash of
as though he could ever desire you that much,
before he finishes the thought: ‘And if you are partially right, what then?’
‘Then I’d tell you that you don’t. You don’t have to send cars for me; you don’t have to buy me gifts. Your arm around my waist meant more than a ride in the back of a Bentley did, and it will always be that way for me.’
He glances away after I’m finished, that near-smile slowly drifting over his lips. If I could see his eyes I suspect they’d be the same way – warm, like someone remembering something good that happened once.
‘I’m afraid it’s a flaw of mine.’
‘What’s a flaw of yours?’
‘The need to express things with money, instead of with words.’
‘And if you’d been forced to speak, what would you have said?’
‘Can’t you tell?’
‘Well, the car definitely meant
I can’t wait for you to be with me
. And I’ll admit, I did enjoy that element of it.’ I pause. ‘Unless I’m wrong.’
‘You’re not wrong. Stop doubting yourself.’
‘I’m trying to. And I think I’m getting better at it too.’
‘I think you are as well. Soon you’ll be like me.’