Kayla
Over the next three months, as spring turns to summer and then summer to autumn, I often look out of Dante’s bedroom window watching the leaves turn deep green and then green-brown and wonder if this is real.
If this blossoming—this blossoming what? That is where I always stop, wondering. The first night we shared together, the first whisky-infused night, and then the subsequent nights, some of them whisky-infused and some of them not, have all been incredible. They have allowed me to feel pleasure I have never felt before. And yet . . .
I am sitting at the window now, hand pressed against the glass, a light autumn rain making the green-brown leaves heavy. The trees stand beside the road, overlooking it like sentinels, and as I watch them I wonder if Dante is my sentinel, if there is a deep connection here, or if I am just being used for his purposes. I do not want to think this way. I do not want to question him, but I can’t help but think of Master, of how he made everybody believe he only wanted what was best for them, and then how, in the end, he only wanted what was worse.
I look into Dante’s jet-black eyes and I cannot decide if what I am seeing is real or if it is fake or if there is anything there at all. I curse myself for it. I talk to myself: Get yourself together, Kayla. Of course he wants you, Kayla. He wouldn’t sleep with you almost every night if he didn’t. He wouldn’t keep you around. But the thing is, he often behaves distantly toward me, seemingly at random, and a couple of times he has even snapped at me and told me to leave him be for a while. I do not understand behavior like this. I do not understand men’s behavior at all, even at the best of times. They bring you close, and then they push you away, as though angry at you for being so close, forgetting it was them who pulled you in to begin with.
I still cook, and sometimes I clean, too, but only the main bar area. It is good to feel like I am earning my keep, like I am not here just for Dante’s amusement, and yet, when you get down to it, I am cooking and cleaning for him, and fucking him, too. I am doing all this for him and trying to tell myself there is some real emotional connection here. I don’t know how to handle it; I was never trained. Dad died before I was born and Mom never had a boyfriend, unless you count Master, which I don’t. Anyway, what kind of example is that?
“Ah!” I mutter, walking away from the window and sitting on the edge of the bed. These past three months, I am sure something has developed between us. Sometimes, we just talk for hours on end, about nothing in particular, about everything.
He tells me about his mission to find the man who burnt down the Wraiths’ warehouse, which is going poorly, tells me about his business with guns and protection games, all things I know little about but am glad to hear about from him. And then he tells me about other things, like how when he was a boy in an orphanage he used to bare-knuckle box kids twice his age to prove himself. Once, he tells me how he stole a tub of red paint and spilled it onto a bully’s head at the orphanage, while the kid was asleep, roaring as he did it that it was blood. The kid cried, and that was the end of the bully. I tell him things, too, about running from State to State, about stealing, scurrying. I tell him how, when you run for a long time, you start to feel like a rodent, always looking for a hole to crawl into.
And that is a bond, isn’t it? Surely?
I wring my hands together. The nails are bitten down to stubs. I don’t remember biting them; I must be doing it in my sleep. There must be something there. Surely he is not just using me, just some girl to fuck, to get burger out of, a convenient cleaner.
People are so complicated. I wish you could just reach into their brains and pull out their thoughts and hold them up to the sun and see, without any possibility for confusion, what exactly they were made of. If my life in the Movement taught me anything, it’s that you can never truly know what another person is feeling. What appears on their face can easily just be what they want to appear, and the sounds which come from their lips can be just that—sounds. How can I know if Dante really wants me for me, or if he just finds it convenient to have a girl waiting for him every night? How can I ever know for sure?
And I will not be used, I reflect, squeezing my hands together so hard the skin reddens. No, I will not be used. I am not that sort of girl. I will never allow that to happen. I have seen what being used can do to a person. I remember Mom, knitting all night because she couldn’t sleep, the way she was always looking over her shoulder when she passed people in the Compound, afraid of—afraid of what? That they would just attack her? No, I think she was afraid that the person she’d just passed would turn into a demon behind her back, a horned demon, because she never knew if a person was a person or a monster.
I laugh to myself, but it is a humorless laugh. That’s the thing, I reflect as I return to the window, watch cars drive lazily by on the road. You can never know if a person is a person or a monster, not until it is too late.
And now that I’ve crossed that line—now that I’ve started wondering if Dante might be using me—I can’t uncross it. I can’t go back to blindly accepting his affection as affection, his attentions as positives. When he snaps at me I tell myself it’s because he’s had a hard day. He’s looking for the Wraiths’ killer and he’s having no luck; he’s working on gun deals and things like that, things any man would find stressful. And yet I can’t accept that I am not just here to be snapped at, and then, occasionally, seduced.
The door behind me opens. I turn, and Dante walks in, his leather in his hand. He glances at me sitting by the window, and then at the bed. “What’re you doing, sitting there?”
I don’t respond, just stare out at the cars. Dante makes a huffing noise and drops onto the edge of the bed. I hear the squeak of the mattress as it weighs down beneath muscle and leather and oil and sweat and anger.
“Is somethin’ got under your skin, or what?” Dante says. His voice is tired, as though he can’t be bothered to deal with me. “What’s wrong with you?”
“It’ll be autumn soon,” I say.
“It already is.”
“I mean, real autumn. Deep autumn.”
He makes that huffing noise again. “So?”
“So the leaves will turn. Everything will change.” I hardly know what I’m saying myself; I’m just letting the words form and sound; I’m just not blocking them. “Summer to autumn. This is the longest time I’ve stayed anywhere since the Compound.”
“Good,” Dante says. “That’s good. Good for you.”
I turn to him, study his face. For a moment he meets my eyes, but then he looks down at the ground. Dante finds it difficult to meet my gaze. I don’t know why that is. Maybe he’s just tired of looking at me. Maybe he’s tired of seeing the fuck-toy he scooped up from a burning building developing feelings for him. Maybe he wishes this fuck-toy would cut out her tongue and eyes and become nothing more than her body. I am being cruel. I am exaggerating. I tell myself these things, and yet I cannot believe it.
“Good for me?” I ask. My voice is whining, the voice of the woman I promised myself I would never become, the nagging girlfriend, the where-is-this-going girl. “Not good for us?”
He rubs his jaw, shakes his head, lets out a sigh. All whilst I sit here, staring at him, waiting.
“Good for us,” he says eventually.
“That’s not what you said at first—”
“Goddamn! Can’t a man sit down for five minutes without being fuckin’ hassled?”
He lies on the bed, on his side, facing away from me. I hear his chest heaving. I don’t respond to his outburst except to lean back near the window. He shouted at me. How long before he does something else? How long before he hurts me? That’s the way it goes, isn’t it? One moment, you’re deep in the valley of love, the next you are being dragged into the blistering desert of pain. I smile sadly to myself; that is the sort of strange thing Master would say.
We sit in silence except for Dante’s heaving chest. Slowly, he calms down. Then he says: “I didn’t mean to shout at you, Kayla. But goddamn, are you tryin’ to pick a fight with me?”
“No,” I say. “I’m not.”
That hangs there for a time, and then Dante leaves the room, going into the office, and then into the bar. I hear him, talking with the men, making them laugh, them making him laugh. I hear them clapping each other on the back and talking nonsense. And as I listen, ear pressed against the wall, I can’t but think of those men who told me to undress back in the warehouse. Would these men behave any differently if Dante told them it was okay?
If Dante set them on me, would any of them behave differently than hungry dogs?
“Maybe it’s time to leave,” I mutter under my breath.
As soon as the words are said aloud, I know I am right.