The Dollhouse Society: Felix (11 page)

He took a deep breath as if relieved and pushed the newspaper aside. “Yes. Absolutely.”

I dressed in a flowered sundress and low heels and went downstairs. My Aunt Sarah, standing in the kitchen, saw me. She gave me a little nod of encouragement and squeezed my shoulder as I passed. I told her I’d be back soon.

The moment I stepped outside the house and onto the drive, Mr. Ishikawa started toward me, then stopped, as if afraid by approaching me, he’d spook me. I lifted my chin, tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, and said, “How did you find me?”

He took my hand. Relief, fear, and concern all played out on his face at once. I’d never noticed that before, how emotional he could become at times, usually around me. “The phone. It has a miniature tracking device in it. All the prototypes do.”

“
Ah.”

Finally, he exploded. “You didn’t answer my texts, my messages…you disappeared without a trace…!”

“
I had my reasons.”

He virtually shook with anger. I watched him close his eyes and take a deep breath. Slowly, he calmed and his face regained that beautiful, masklike peacefulness I knew so well, though it was obvious he hadn’t shaved in some time, and there were dark rings under his eyes. “Please…whatever it is, it can’t be that bad. We can talk about it.”

“
Let’s drive down to the harbor.”

We did. When we arrived, he helped me from the car and we walked down the long, wooden pier. In some ways, it reminded me of how we used to people-watch back in New York on a Sunday afternoon, but in this case, I knew many of the people here. Bob, who owned the butcher shop on the corner, the lady who ran the nail salon next to it, the kid who cut lawns locally. I waved to them as we passed.

“
There’s an ice cream shop up ahead,” Mr. Ishikawa offered. “Would you like an ice cream?”

I indicated a bench near the pier, with a glorious view of the harbor. “Let’s just sit here.”

We sat and I bowed my head. I took a deep, shaky breath, stared at my feet, and just put it out there: “I made a very stupid, elemental mistake with my birth control. I’m pregnant with your baby, but I’ve decided I won’t get an abortion so you can just forget about that.” I got angrier even as I sat there. My fists clenched up. “It’s not just your baby, Alex, it’s mine too, and you have no right to pressure me. You have no rights at all, as far as I’m concerned, so you’d be better off just getting in your car and driving back to New York.”

I was shaking and on the verge of tears when I finished. I waited, my heart thudding heavily, waited for him to shout at me, or to get up and leave, but after a long pause during which I could hear the harbor patrol passing and some buoys ringing, he said, “Felix…why on
earth
would you think I would force you to get an abortion?”

I sucked back the tears in my throat and looked askance at him. He sat there like he sat everywhere, dominating the space around him. There was insult and annoyance etched on his face. “I know you hate children. I know you don’t want to hear about any of this and you hate me.”

He frowned. “I don’t know how I feel about children, frankly. I’ve never had any, but you’re making an awful big assumption about me, Felix, and it’s making me very angry.”

I wiped at the tears on my face with the back of my hand. I wished I’d brought a handkerchief.

He sighed, withdrew one from his suit pocket, and took my face in his hand so he could wipe away my tears. “You ran away without a word because you thought I would hate you? Hate our child? That I would throw you, pregnant, into the street? Or force you to abort it? Felix, what is the matter with you?”

I started to cry then, in full. The sobs just poured out of me. “It was an accident…and this arrangement we have…I know it’s not real…I know I’m not your real courtesan…not your responsibility…”

People were looking our way, alerted to my outburst, but I didn’t care. I’d never felt so alone and miserable in all my life. I just cried and cried. Mr. Ishikawa gathered me into his lap, against his suit, held me, his big hand clutching the back of my head, until I’d wetted his suit with my tears. Finally, my crying began to subside and I was left just hiccupping. He made soft, soothing noises until I just sagged bonelessly against him.

“
Oh, Felix…” he said in reprimand. “You’re a very silly girl, do you know that?”

I sat back and looked up at him, used his handkerchief to wipe the unladylike snot running from my nose. “Y-you’re not angry?”

He slid his hand around my waist as he held me against him more tightly. “I’m angry you left the city without telling me. I’m angry you kept this from me. So yes, I am angry. But, my dear, I don’t hate you. Dear god, how could you believe I could hate our child? I don’t even
know
our child yet.” He smoothed my hair away from my tearstained face. He looked at me so fiercely I felt my heart beating fast again. “Come back to the limo with me, where it’s more private. We can discuss what we’re going to do there.”

I got up and let him lead me back to the car. Once we were inside, he grabbed me by the cheeks and dragged me against him. He kissed me like he wanted to crawl inside of me. He raked his fingers through my hair, holding me in place so he could tangle his tongue with mine. Finally, his hands dropped to my dress and he lifted the hem and undid himself so I could feel his heat and strength against the front of me. He held me still and rocked his hips in a smooth up and down motion, still kissing me, teasing over my opening until I moaned into his mouth.

“
Is it safe?” he whispered against my lips. “Felix…I can’t hurt the baby?”

“
No,” I told him, smiling softly against his kiss. “You can’t, Alex. Not now. It’s still too small.”

His eyes burned with desire. He lifted me and let me plunge down upon me. He held me tightly in his embrace as he moved inside me, filled me.

I moved with him, my kisses all along his face as I felt my heart fill with love and light. “Do you want the baby? Really want the baby?”

His arms tightened around me. “Christ, Felix, I want you. I want the baby. I want both of you.”

We lunged together and came together. He filled me and I settled down upon him with a sigh. I’d never felt so full and complete as I did with him, and I wanted to stay like this forever. I wanted to spend forever in his arms.

But I still had a question. “I thought…I thought this was just an arrangement.”

“
It was,” he said. In the dark, his eyes were slits full of light and wonder. “I have a confession, my dear. That first night at the Dollhouse, the gentleman all knew you didn’t belong there. You didn’t fool us at all. But after we got together to talk about it, we decided I should approach you, try and convince you to find another subject for your article.” He paused and swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. I felt his hesitation. He smoothed his fingers down over my cheeks and I sucked them into my mouth. “That’s what it was when it began. But that’s not what it turned into.”

I was glad it was dark in the limo, that he couldn’t see me blushing like a fool. “I’m glad I didn’t write the article. It would have felt too much like I was betraying you.” I ran my hand over his braided ponytail as I kissed him. “Maybe I’m just not cut out to be a journalist. Not cutthroat enough.”

“
Perhaps not,” he agreed. “But if you ever wanted to get in touch with your inner geek and come work for my company in the research department, you have a place. Both as my employee
and
as my courtesan.”

My heart started thudding again. “Do you mean that, Alex? Really?”

He smiled in the dark, a genuine smile. “Oh, Felix my courtesan. My wonderful, wonderful courtesan.”

***

About the Author

Eden Myles lives in the rural northeast with her family and two demanding cats. She is a vixen with a laptop and the head whip-cracker at Courtesan Press. To see all of her titles, visit
http://courtesanpress.wordpress.com
.

***

Read an excerpt from
Red (50 Shades of Fairy Tales)
by Madeline Apple:

Frank Lupo was the type of guy you fell in love with at first sight—and then quickly learned the error of your ways. I know because I was one of the stupid ones who did, the first day on the job, no less.

Frank was my boss and half owner of Lupo & Mayer, Accountants. He was tall and powerfully built, with the lean, broad physique of a guy who had probably done track in high school and football in college. He wore his perfectly black hair slicked back Mafioso-style and his goatee trimmed and tight. His eyes were icy blue and his teeth the porcelain white of a man with good genetics as opposed to a good dentist. He looked like the devil, if the devil was an accountant. He wore no wedding ring, though he did have a football ring from Rutgers University. Real movie-star material, I thought dreamily that first day I found myself working in one of the biggest accounting firms in New York City.  

The competition for the job had been fierce, and I had only gotten in due to good timing. The last girl had been caught embezzling money and I had just put my resume in, thinking nothing would come of it. At twenty-four, I didn’t think I would actually get it. But suddenly there I was at Lupo & Mayer, crunching numbers. Naturally, that first week I was careful, checking and double checking my work. The last thing I needed was an error on the books. The following Monday, Frank called me into his executive suite office and told me to sit down.

I honestly thought he meant to compliment me, stupid me, but as he sat down and I concentrated on not gaping at him like some lovestruck teenager, he said, “You work too slow, Sadie.”

“
I’m…sorry?” Maybe I hadn’t heard him right.

He scooped some papers out of the file folder that I had delivered to him before the weekend. “I appreciate you graduated top of your class, and you obviously have a knack for numbers, but, Redner, you finished two accounts last week. If I had shown these to my partner, he would have canned you before the weekend.” His voice was steady and boomed around his plush, white luxury office. He put off a kind of fission as he slapped the folder down in front of me like some kind of a displeased professor put off by a project of mine.

I felt my face burn with shame and anger—shame that I had let him down, anger at being called Redner, like he was my coach back in high school. His lips pursed together, hiding his big, strong teeth, and his eyes narrowed to laser points. I thought of some big predator stalking a deer deep in the wood and the thought made me hyperaware of my body, the way my hose rubbed between my legs. My fingers pressed nervously into my sweating palms.

He lifted his chin in a gesture I could only call arrogant. “If you want to run with the big dogs someday, Redner, you’re going to need to step it up.”

I wanted to tell him I’d done my best, and I’d made no mistakes. It took me three tries to get the words out. “All right.”

As always, I never got mad fast enough, and I always let everything bother me afterward. I knew what I would do next. I would thank him and then step out of his office, dutifully reprimanded but smiling at all my coworkers as if nothing had happened. Then I would go home and overeat and cry into my pillow as all the loose parts of my self-confidence fell apart. I was the same way in high school and college. I was the same way in all my relationships. That was me, Sadie Redner, human doormat.

At least I had the good grace to not cry when I got back to my desk. But later that day, as I was leaving, Frank called me back into his office. I was shaking and I nearly collapsed to the floor as he let me back in. Had he found an error in my hastily performed work? Or maybe I still wasn’t fast enough, even though I had knocked out a whole account in a day.

“
Thanks for staying after, Sadie,” he said as he walked around his desk and picked up the file folder I had just delivered. He flipped it open and I felt my heart as it started banging around my chest. He glanced down at my figures, then up at my face. “Good work. And see, you
can
work fast and not make any errors.”

I nearly sobbed with relief. He noted my expression and said, “Look...Red…I have to be hard on you. My partner’s a nervous man, and we’ve never taken on someone as young as you are. I don’t want to see you out on the street. It’s nothing personal.”

I swallowed and nodded. He stared at me with an intensity that left me feeling pinned down and a little vulnerable, but at the same time, hopeful. I hated him for being so confident, but at the same time, I envied him. So when he asked to walk me down to the lobby, I scrambled for my coat and satchel like a desperate idiot.

I’d only had two boyfriends, one in high school and one in college that I’d actually slept with. Neither of my relationships had ended well, and after my boyfriend in college left me for my best friend, I had vowed not to fall for a pretty face again.

On the way down in the elevator, Frank asked me how I was liking New York.

“
How do you know I don’t come from New York?” I asked.

“
You have a Pennsylvania Dutch accent,” Frank noted, and I felt my face flush for the second time that day. “Are you Amish?” he asked. He sounded genuinely interested. “Or were you?”

Oh god. I hated talking about this. It made me feel like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. “No,” I immediately told him. “My grandmother and I just grew up in Lancaster, is all. There’s a large Pennsylvania Dutch settlement there.” I didn’t mention that Gramma was an ex-Amish and that she had largely raised me alone.

I tried not to talk too much the rest of the way down.

When we stepped out into the lobby, I immediately saw a beautiful, sleek woman in a smart suit and swing coat from Saks Fifth Avenue heading our way. She was carrying a Prada clutch purse. I was still about five years away from owning anything Prada. She immediately linked her arm through Frank’s and leaned down to whisper something in his ear, something that made Frank grin in his wolfish way. The two hurried toward a limo waiting for them in the curb outside the building, both their coats flying.