| |
“Thorne! Come on! Watch me!” Through my bedroom door, I heard Kirti dragging her guardian down the hall.
“Last night you didn't want anything to do with it!”
“That was last night!”
I opened my door and peeked into the hall, just in time to see Mr. Thorne roll his eyes. “So like your mother,” he muttered. “Fine. Get your veil and—”
Here he caught me watching them. Pointing at me, he continued, “—we will meet you outside. And bring that maid of yours. What's'ername—”
“Deepali,” I supplied.
“Deepali,” Mr. Thorne said.
Kirti shoved the collapsed bike at Thorne then shot for her room, shouting “Shavaa!” along the way.
Mr. Thorne wrinkled his lip at the blob in his hands then looked back at me. “Well, come on, then, Miss Jane. I'm paying you to watch that child, aren't I?”
“I thought I had the day off, sir.”
“Oh? You have something better to do?”
“Well, no, I—”
“Mrs. Fairfacs, please!”
She appeared, “Hello, sir, how may I—”
“Send water to the main exit. Miss Jane, the brat, her maid and I are going outside. Thank you. That will be all, Mrs. Fairfacs.” He proceeded to walk through her nodding, disappearing image.
I had to quicken my steps to keep up with his broad strides. “The terrain outside is quite rough, sir, in case you hadn't noticed. How will that thing's wheels stand up to it?”
“You really are sheltered,” he said as I lost sight of him around one of the hall's labyrinthine twists. “It has those—those, y'know, whatd'youcall'em.”
“Beg your pardon, sir?” I was nearly breathless at this point, having had to break into a jog.
“Those wheels, you know,” he said as I finally fell into step with him. “Made from that stuff, anticipates, reacts to the surfaces it touches. Anyway. You think I'd give my ward a present that would get her killed using it? What kind of a guardian do you think I am? Wait—don't answer that question.”
At last we'd reached the exit. A cart waited with four water packs.
“Take those,” Mr. Thorne said. “Please. Miss Jane.”
I did, and together we ascended the stairs outside into the burning heat of the desert's late morning. I squinted at the unforgiving sun, having left in such a hurry that my UV-protectant duppetta was behind in my room.
At my squinting, Mr. Thorne said, “You could use the color. Just put the water down on the ground. If we need it, we'll come back to it. I don't expect the child will go far enough to get lost. And by the way, can I ask you a question, Miss Jane?”
“Of course, sir.”
“When was the last time Kirti had a day off?”
“I give her Saturdays off, so that I may work on lesson plans.”
“And the last time you had a day off?”
“I don't recall. Perhaps the day I came here.”
“Months ago?” Mr. Thorne was looking at me so intently I thought he might ask what I was thinking. He did not. He merely nodded. “Then, Miss Jane, how do you plan on spending this day?”
I fidgeted with the hem of my kameeze. “I don't know, sir.”
“Good. Then once we've let the little gnat show off for us, you'll spend it entertaining me.”
I felt myself blush. “Entertaining you, sir? I'm the least entertaining person I know.”
“First, you don't know many people. Second—” Here he stopped to let Kirti barrel past us, Deepali in tow, stopping only to snatch the SAB out of her guardian's hands.
“Second,” Mr. Thorne resumed, dusting off his hands, “You amuse me. You treat me with respect when I don't deserve it, and you don't cut me any slack when I'm being an idiot. I expect you'll keep my mind off less agreeable things.”
I bristled a bit his calling me a “thing,” pursing my lips.
He raised his eyebrows at me. “Go on now, Miss Jane. Tell me you're not at least tempted by the thought of a somewhat adult conversation, even if it's with someone whose arse you pulled from a doggie door.”
Silently, I admitted to myself that the thought of escaping Kirti for a while did not sound disagreeable. By now I was smiling a little. Mr. Thorne took that for acquiescence.
“Brilliant!” He turned toward the entrance. “Follow me, then.”
First glancing at Kirti and Deepali to make sure they'd be okay, I then followed Mr. Thorne to the study. He took a book from the shelf—these years later, I can't recall which—and brought it to the couch. He gestured with the book for me to take the seat beside him, asking, “Have you ever read this?”
I took the indicated place, admitted I didn't know the book, and so began our first duet conversation. I don't remember any real details of it all these years later, but I do remember the general mood: light, friendly. By the end of the conversation, several hours later, I'd told him some of my stories about my runner days, he'd told me some jokes he'd learned “on the road,” as he called it, and I'd been lent several of his precious, fragile books.
Over the next several weeks, we spent some more time together: when I returned his books to him and discussed what I thought of them, when he occasionally checked in on Kirti and me during lessons, when we would pass in the hallways and stop to chat. Often he would hear Kirti and me on our way outside and would join us there.
One such time, Kirti had asked if she could spend her break bicycling, and I had agreed. Properly veiled against the sun this time, I walked lazy circles around Emhain Macha's entrance and kept an eye on her. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Thorne emerged, followed by Chuck. Mr. Thorne and I traded greetings, and Chuck galloped off to chase Kirti.
Ambling towards me, Mr. Thorne pointed at Kirti, sighed and said, “So that's another thing we have in common. Not one of us had real fathers around to teach us how to bike.”
I did not know where to begin my response. I received some direction from the look of sadness pulling his lips into a bitter line. I asked, “Who taught you then?”
“My mother's boyfriend at the time—he wasn't my real dad, thank God.”
His bitter-dipped sadness stirred my sympathies. “Where was your real father at that time, sir?”
“Somewhere between having his ass kissed by D.C. lobbyists and 'negotiating' the Third Peace Pact in Northern Ireland, after the Catholics had started bombing the biotech labs.”
He tweaked the first two fingers of both hands in the air around the word “peace,” in sarcastic, mid-air quotation marks.
He looked down at the pebbles he was kicking with his scuffed leather boots. Shrugging, leaning his head in Chuck's direction, he said, “At least I got a dog out of the deal.”
I walked by his side, trying to organize his words into a coherent chain of events.
Mr. Thorne was chuckling now. “You look so intense when you're confused, Janee.”
“I'm not confused, sir.”
“No? Then what are you?”
“I suppose I could be described best as 'uninformed.'“
He made a grunt of acknowledgement. “Then allow me to inform you. For starts, Chuck turned twenty-seven in May.”
I was astonished. “That's old for a dog, isn't it?”
Thorne nodded. “He is the fine product of a life extension research company that tried lobbying with my 'father' for federal funds. They gave him, the Senator from Arizona, one of their pups, and he in turn gave it to one of his.”
“So you're—Senator McDonald was—?”
“Biologically, yeah. I didn't even know it until my last year of high school.”
“How did you find out?”
He squinted into the dusty daylight with what I could tell was forced nonchalance. “My mother blackmailed him into taking the test. Mum didn't want me going to school anywhere near home. At first I thought it was because she wanted to get rid of me, but later I found out she didn't want me going to school with all those taigs.”
I made a mental note to look up the word “taigs” later.
Mr. Thorne continued his story. “Pretty damned ironic, considering she, good proddy girl, bedded one to get me.”
“'Was?' Has your mother passed on as well, sir?”
“She has.”
I wanted to reach out and pat him comfortingly on the arm, but I considered the absurdity inherent in such a gesture coming from me. I kept my hands to myself. “I'm very, very sorry to hear that, sir.”
“Me, too.” We walked in silence for a moment.
Chuck barked playfully at Kirti in the distance. Mr. Thorne took that as a cue to shrug and say, “Mum meant well, and she did get The Senator to buy my way into a good school, but at a price I still haven't been able to pay off. No. Not true. Not accurate. I did pay the bill with the credit card of piss-poor judgment. Which is why I've always hated this place.”
I was lost and knew it. “Sir?”
“This.” He motioned with one hand, indicating the house sleeping beneath us within the desert floor. “The home of the Senator. The pit of my despair. Funny. When I was a boy, the only real world I knew was a rainy, cold one. Damp that eats away at stone. I used to love playing games—that's what geezers like myself used to call acties—games set in the desert. I liked the look of them, the lack of waste. Funny how mere words can turn a wild paradise into hell on earth.”
I did not understand what he meant, but I could tell he was upset by something. I remained still and let him speak.
He shook his head, and a look of pain deepened the shadows on his face. “What an idiot I am—was. I let other people trap me with my own guilt. I even let them turn my opinions.”
Listening to him talk so was fascinating yet boggling—like trying to learn crypto from Bhenji Nealingson for the first time. “Your situation does sound unfortunate, sir,” I offered as comfort.
“Unfortunate but not undoable,” he declared, his eyes fixing on some unseeable point ahead of him. Now he began muttering through gritted teeth, as if to himself. “They took enough from me. It's time I started to take something back.”
His sudden if characteristic change in manner, while not inherently frightening, still set me ill at ease. Desiring to break this seeming trance, I admitted, “Now I am confused, sir.”
“I hope you stay that way. About this, at least.”
“But I still don't even know what the topic is. What did you mean by 'price,' by 'credit,' sir?”
“Well—I—” He stammered, glowered, shoved his hands deeply into his pockets. With his trademark look of self-disdain he said, “It's enough for you to know that my disease of stupidity has been with me for a long time, and just because I didn't know I was making one serious fookup—'scuse my French—doesn't mean that I couldn't escape the consequences. But I'm not a kid anymore. It's time I made my own happiness.”
We continued walking, the dust grinding beneath our feet, and in spite of his instructions I did worry. Seeing such inherent good in someone squashed by the misleading of a parent or two made me ache for him, and his flaring manner made me concerned for his judgment, regardless of whether or not his youth, as he said, was behind him. “How does one go about making one's own happiness, sir?”
Mr. Thorne shrugged. “I know one way not to. I tried escape. I ran around the world—even saw some places I bet Naomi never sent your little self. In the process, I found that people liked to hear me talk.”
“Which led you to your current profession,” I mused. “Is that how you met Kirti's mother, then, while performing?”
He lifted his eyes from the ground back to the sky. “Long story short, yeah. Hers was just another in a long line of beds where I tried and failed to find comfort and lose my embarrassment with myself.”
“And Kirti came from that bed?” Immediately, I felt myself blush. “I'm sorry, sir. I have no right to pry—”
His eyes and now his laugh, which began as a dry chuckle, broadened. “I take it Mrs. Fairfacs never explained my relationship to that child?”
“No, sir.”
“I guess she couldn't. To answer your question, no. I didn't even think so when I took her, but Kirti's tested to be—not mine. I even know whose she most likely is: the guy I caught Gayatri cheating on me with.” His voice was not bitter, merely matter-of-fact.
“Then why did you take Kirti after her mother passed on?”
“When Miss Gayatri Ranjana Sapera, not her real name, died, she left her brat to me. I took Kirti from the child prostitution of the Bollywood actie scene and put her here, the pure wilderness, the desert of testing.”
His returning callousness put me back on edge. I knew what it was like to be thrown at an adult who did not want me. “If she is so much of a brat, sir, why don't you get rid of her? Send her to her biological father?”
I tried not to sound bitter. Really, I did. I must have failed, though. Mr. Thorne looked sidelong at me, and then he softened his voice. “If you knew the rat bastard, you wouldn't even be asking.”
“So your contributing financially to Kirti's upbringing goes back to what you said about 'generating good karma?’”
“Something like that,” he said, nodding thoughtfully. Then he regarded me with a slowly growing smile. “You know, I've never told anyone all this before.”
And he hadn't even told me everything. “Why tell me now, sir?”
“For all your proper-ness, it's just the lost scrambling of a young girl trying to get a foothold in quicksand, too busy flailing for survival to see the flat, sturdy ground all around. If only that little girl took a few steps out of her current position, stability's hers for the asking.”
“You have an excellent command of imagery, sir,” I said, “but pardon my continuing confusion. What does this mean?”
He stopped and smiled so faintly at me. “It just means that someone who won't lie has integrity that inspires confidence in her listeners.”
***
Quite late that night, as I continued with a volume of Tennyson Mr. Thorne had lent me, I replayed the earlier conversation in my mind. While much of it I could not decode, I could not deny the honor I felt in being admitted to Mr. Thorne's confidence. As a Naomi runner, I'd seen the sadness in the faces of people who ached inside with the secrets they bore, as well as their relief when sharing those secrets to a dedicated listener. I was glad to provide that service once more, especially to such a genuine person as Mr. Thorne. However, even after this talk I still could sense something guarded in his face—something, in short, of fear.
I was struck by Mr. Thorne's seeming love-hate relationship with Emhain Macha. I knew that something about this house repulsed him. Was it the sad manner in which the house had become his? Or something more that he'd yet to number among the confidences already bestowed? Whatever it was obviously pained him. Seeing him so agitated made me feel as helpless for him as once I had felt for myself in his presence—back before we'd become friends.
“Friends,” I said into the solitude of my bedroom, savoring the word.
Upon further recollection, my master's current visit to Emhain Macha seemed anomalous, according to the information Mrs. Fairfacs had given me. Mr. Thorne so far had stayed long enough that I'd gotten to know him and genuinely like him. I looked forward to seeing him each day and was disappointed to say farewell each night. The loneliness I'd suffered before his arrival was forgotten, supplanted by memories of stories he'd told, jokes he'd shared, crooked smiles he'd bestowed. In spite of his turns of gravity and self-absorption—or perhaps because of the interest inherent in them—I did not want to see him go.
As I entertained these thoughts, I recall hearing through my closed door the sound of Mr. Thorne's door opening, followed by the claw-rattled pawsteps of Chuck in the hall on his way outside. Minutes passed. I heard Chuck bark once, twice, somewhere in the distance, but I thought nothing of it, given that the dog had as much free range about Emhain Macha as did any of the resident humans. I went to my bathroom to wash, brush and dress for bed in my light muslin pajamas.
Ablutions performed, I clambered beneath the comforter, careful not to tangle myself in my unbound hair, which fell freely beyond my waist. My eyelids heavy, I looked forward to a sweet sleep. Another fine morning at Emhain Macha waited for me on slumber’s opposite shore. I asked the lights to extinguish themselves. They obeyed.
Their compliance did not last. Just as I was drifting off, the house system had another fit. The lights in my room hiked themselves up to full blast, glaring me out of the first stage of sleep. Just as I was about to burrito myself into my comforter to block out the glare, I heard a strange noise. This noise was such a low, violent buzzing, so like the soundtrack for an earthquake that I sat bolt upright in bed, waiting for the whole house to shake with the tremor. No tremor came, but the buzzing intensified, building to a hair-prickling crescendo.
“Mrs. Fairfacs?” My voice quavered.
No answer.
“Mrs. Fairfacs, please?”
Still no answer. That was slightly odd. What was extremely odd, however, was the pungent, smoky fume now creeping into my nostrils. I sniffed the air intently, even opened my mouth a little, like a gazelle trying to detect a predator's scent.
Something smelled like the sooty cooking fire in the old Naomi basement refectory. Did Mr. Thorne have a fireplace in his bedroom? I did not think so. I went to my door. Unlocked, it opened for me. I stuck my head into the hall, looking both ways like I would have before crossing a street.
Mr. Thorne's door was slightly ajar. Arms of thick gray smoke billowed from within, backlit by a sinister, pulsating yellow glow.
“Oh, no,” I muttered, dashing for him.
I had to shield my face with my loose pajama sleeve just to breathe, much less move. My eyes couldn't have teared or stung less had someone hurled sand into them, and I was coughing like a TB patient. Behind the smoke, flames feasted on the bedclothes Mr. Thorne thankfully had kicked free of himself sometime earlier in his sleep. The fire was just beginning to lick at the tall posts of one side of the bed. Mr. Thorne himself was naked from the waist up, in a stupor on the other side of the bed, eyes closed, mouth open, arm hanging over the mattress edge like a stilled pendulum.
My bare feet took me to him in quick steps. I grabbed his massive shoulders in both my hands and shouted, pleaded, shook, scolded, “Wake up! Mr. Thorne! Get up!”
“Nnggh,” was all he said, turning his face laboriously from me, deeper into his pillow.
Why wasn't the overhead sprinkler system activating? I looked all around for something, anything, to douse even part of the fire. There was an empty tumbler next to a clear glass bottle, its label peeled ragged at the edges. “POTEEN.” Mr. Thorne's trademark drink, hardly any left. As in any other instance, alcohol would hardly help.
“Mrs. Fairfacs!” I cried, my voice cracking on the smoke. “Please! Help!”
She did not appear. Mr. Thorne did not stir. I was on my own. If the house system would not liberate that water, I had to!
Again I pulled on Mr. Thorne, but he was too heavy for me. My legs, trained to dodge, leap and scurry, were stronger than my arms. Their combined power might have a chance. I pulled myself up onto the bed, clambered to the other side of my employer, and, approaching my back as close to the flames as I dared, I gave Mr. Thorne a full-body shove onto the floor. He landed in a thudding heap of sinew, his head nearly nicking the corner of his bedside table. I scrambled to my feet on the unsteady mattress, clinging to the side of the high headboard for what little balance it afforded.
“Wha—ha—” Mr. Thorne sputtered on the floor, coming to. “Hawhtafffff—”
I was too busy to answer. Levering my feet against the nearest bedpost, I pulled myself up the rest of the slick, polished oak of the headboard until I could balance, one foot in front of the other, on the headboard's wide—but almost not wide enough—ledge. With one hand I clung to the bedpost's knobby capital, balancing myself against the wall with the other. For once I thanked my maker that I was so short, for the ceiling was still a handspan above my head.
I took the hand from the wall and reached, stretched, strove for the sprinkler faucet, which perversely remained just out of my reach. I growled through gritted teeth.
“Jane?” Mr. Thorne said beneath me, his bare feet trying drunkenly to get a gain on polished hardwood floor. “Is that—Jaysis—!”
Through the shadow and flame, I was drawing a bead on that malfunctioning piece of junk sprinkler. If I didn't catch it on the first try, I'd fall into the fire. If, however, the house system still refused to turn on the damned sprinklers, or at least summon Mrs. Fairfacs to call for help, then I had no choice but to try for a manual override.
I launched myself at it with both hands. My thumbs and first two fingers hooked onto the miniature blades radiating from the sprinkler's center. The rest of my weight pulled down, hooking my fingers in harder, and I felt my skin peel back, my perks ring catching and digging in, my fingers slick with my own blood. Unbearable heat warmed my feet and ankles. As my vision, already clouded by smoke, became tunneled, I cried out—a ki-ai—and wrapped my thumbs and forefingers around the sprinkler's neck, thrashing my dangling body about in an attempt to strangle it open.
“Jane!” Thorne shouted in a fire-hoarsened voice.
The more deeply the pain drove into me, the harder I pulled. Steel dug and ground at flesh and bone. Just when I knew I could hold on no longer, something snapped. First I thought my fingers had broken, but then water poured forth. The sprinkler had opened. Kirti and Deepali—and Thorne—were safe.
I fell a millimeter. The faucet head held on by only a wisp of metal now. I looked below, and the flames were dying, quenched by the water flowing from the sprinkler, over me, down to the blaze beneath. Water spattered into my eyes and mouth, choking and blinding me so that I had to cough even harder, duck my head and squeeze the drops from my eyes.
The fire was down now, and I was wet enough, that there would be less danger in my falling. I let go, expecting charred, wet sheets to break my fall. Instead, I was caught in the arms of Mr. Thorne.
He clutched me, wavered for a moment as he gained his stance, and then hefted me more fully onto his shoulder. Before I could even struggle against his grip, he strode to the opposite side of the room, lifted me by the waist and plunked me soundly on the floor. Even in the dark I could see his eyes blazing at me, sobered by what had just transpired. “Lights, please!” he said in a harsh, urgent whisper.
To my surprise, the house system responded. I looked around. Uneven swirls of charcoal vapor mired the light. Soot even blacker than the lacquered wood smirched the tall spires of Mr. Thorne's bed, and the sheets looked a mere damp gray next to the scarring and charring left by the conflagration. A few dainty flames flickered here and there, but as the water continued to rain upon them, they floundered.
Thorne's massive hands clamped down on my shoulders, shaking me back and forth once each direction, not with anger but with alarm. “What the hell d'you think you're doing! Airey'out aff yer fff—”
He froze. His eyes widened. His jaw, already loose, went completely slack. I followed his gaze and looked down at myself. The water from the sprinklers had turned my lightweight, unbleached muslin pajamas just this side of transparent—and I wore nothing beneath them other than what the folks at Second Chance had given me.
I cringed, humiliated that Mr. Thorne should see my ugly body in such immodest detail. I shrank beneath the cotton stuck to my shame-heating skin, my shoulders drawing inward. I opened my hands and angled my elbows around my middle, but the scraping of wet fabric against my hand's briefly forgotten wounds stoked the pain. I cried out. The abrasions streaked bright red trails where I'd drawn them across the fabric.
In an instant, Mr. Thorne's expression transformed from one of dazed drunkenness to aching concern. All in one breath, first he swore, then he declared, “Jane, you're hurt.”
His hands left my shoulders and he turned from me. Droplets of water glistened through the smokescreen like diamond chips on the wide, defined landscape of his naked, retreating back. He opened his wardrobe, fumbled for a moment, then pulled something from the inside the door. He returned to me with a heather gray bathrobe. He draped it over my shoulders, looking not at my body beneath it, instead focusing an inordinate amount of attention on tying the robe's belt. Neither he nor I threaded my arms through the sleeves. I closed my eyes and breathed in the thick scent of the robe, grateful for its warmth and wicking.
The robe's hem brushed my insteps as Thorne put one arm around me, the other hand on one of my now-aching biceps. In the crook of his arm, I was led by him. On my entry, I had moved too quickly to think of locking the door behind me; it opened before us as he guided me out to the hallway. He held his arms about but not on me, leaving a hairsbreadth between his skin and the robe shielding me from his direct touch. Then he pressed my shoulders gently, wordlessly encouraging me to lean against the wall beside his door. I obeyed.
“Do you know what started this?” he asked as we walked.
I told him of hearing Chuck on his way out, of the lights flittering on and off, of that strange humming. At that last, Thorne closed his eyes, squeezed them shut, like a soldier whose old war wound had just been jabbed.
“The house system does that with the lights all the time,” I said, “but I didn't think it could set fires. A motion sensor must have shorted or something.”
“The house system,” he sneered, eyes still shut. “Or something.”
“You really should get it fixed, sir.”
This made him bark one of his trademark sardonic laughs. “Just like that. Right.” He shook his head in wry disgust. “Give me your hands.”
Again I obeyed. He studied the wounds with a barely uttered groan, as if he himself had been cut. He took the dangling sleeves of the robe and began wrapping them over the scraped flesh of my hands.
“No,” I protested, “it will stain—”
He did not heed me. “I'll be back with real gauze.”
I clenched my teeth, saying, “I'll be fine, sir.”
“Stay here,” he rasped. “I'll be back in a second. A minute. Whatever. I'll be back.”
“The lights seem to be working again,” I said. “Maybe we should call Mrs. Fairf—”
“No!” He pressed one of his fingers to my lips. His touch sent a jolt all the way down to my wet bare feet, making a return trip via the backs of my knees. I was so taken aback that I half-stepped away from him, pressing my back further to the wall.
“No,” he said more softly. He pulled his hand away just as quickly. His face relaxed, but only by microns. “The fire is out. There's no danger. None that I can't fix, at least for the time being. Here. Sit.”
He took my elbow and helped me slide to the floor. Once I was seated, he enveloped my dinky hands in his and placed them palm to palm, with the robe's absorbent fabric between them, blood-darkening where abrasions met threads.
“Apply pressure to your hands—hold them together, like this.”
“I know basic first aid, sir.”
“I'll be back. Don't go anywhere. Don't say a word!”
He tottered back into his room, reaching out to the walls and doorway for balance. Leaning to the side so I could watch him, I saw him perks his way into his personal terminal. The door sealed behind him, and I waited for his return.
I had no idea how much time had passed. I wasn't wearing my watch, and I would not call on Mrs. Fairfacs for anything, much less just to find out what time it was. My hands grew cold, and I noticed I'd been shivering. I pulled my bare feet and ankles further in, shrinking more deeply into the surrounding warmth of Thorne's bathrobe. The robe pulled the chill from my skin, and my shivering abated. On top of the stinging on my palms and fingers, all the muscles of my upper body felt scraped from their bones. Thorne's robe cushioned me from the unforgiving wall and floor.
When enough minutes had stretched by, I wearily dropped my head and found my nose pressed to the fabric at my shoulder. Through the ashen odors that spiked the air, I could smell the mellow, sweet heat that I'd caught in the atmosphere around Thorne whenever I'd allowed myself close enough to him to share in it. I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply. That warmth conducted itself all the way through me until each nerve sung.
The sound of Thorne's terminal door opening made me straighten up. I heard him padding into his bathroom, then back out to me. I moved to stand.
“No. Stay,” he said, entering the hall, holding a roll of white gauze in one hand, a roll of tape in the other, hunkering down so we were nearly eye to eye. Gesturing towards my hands with the gauze, he said, “It's not the kind that automatically sticks to the cut, so I'll wrap them for you. At least it's antivibac. Better than nothing. Here, let me see.”
I lifted my hands, now pale and shaking, and reached with smarting fingers for the bandages. “Thank you, sir. I can take care of this from here.”
He pulled the items out of my reach. “Can not.”
“Really, sir, I'm sure I can do this myself—”
He pounded his empty fist on his knee in exasperation. “Jaysis, Jane, you just hurt yourself to save my life, and you won't even let me administer minimal first aid?”
I lowered my head, only to find myself confronted anew with Thorne's enveloping scent. I pulled my head back up and said, “I was only doing my job, sir.”
“I don't recall giving the employment agency a job description that included 'endanger own life for boss!'“
He'd raised his voice. In a near-whisper I reminded him, “Kirti is sleeping, sir.”
His raised eyebrows lowered. He looked away, bobbing his head, mumbling, “Right. I—I didn't mean to scare you.”
“You didn't scare me.” That was the truth. “The fire did. You didn't.”
“Of course not.” He chuckled, regarding me from the corner of his eye. Pointing into his room with the tape, he said, “I could throw a punch at you, and you would just dodge it then give me one of your looks.”
He smiled, his mouth closed tightly. A look of pain supplanted the wry grin, and he lowered his gaze to my hands. Shaking his head and resuming the wrapping of my injuries, he whispered, “I just didn't want you to get hurt because of me, that's all. You're innocent of all this. Janee. Thank you.”
I could not fathom what he meant by “all this,” but I was too disconcerted by his nearness, his intrusion upon all my senses, to think of anything other than escape.
“No thanks are needed, sir,” I said, again trying and failing to withdraw my hands from his.
The corner of his mouth petrified to one side in a display of frustration. “You're not very good at being taken care of.”
“It's never been tried before, sir.”
He winced, but why? “Here's your chance to practice.”
I suffered Thorne's ministrations, for his care truly was painful to me. I had long developed armor against neglect and abuse, but never before had I been attacked by kindness. I'd never had to face the agony of strong hands tempering their power to touch and turn mine with care. I'd never been forced to breathe in the dizzying essence of a man who called on the name of his God at seeing me hurt. I'd never before had to allow someone to remove my perks ring from my wounded finger, cringing more than I did at the pain.
My respiration quickened. Parts of me that had been cold filled with broiling warmth. What was my body doing to me? I found myself remembering a Naomi proverb, this one from the sweatshop: a tense thread is a controlled thread. I tightened every muscle in my body, until I was shaking from both cold and overexertion, my teeth chattering at the strain. With relief I watched as he finished wrapping the gauze.
“You're cold,” he said.
“I—I'm f-f-fine, sir. If you're not calling Mrs. Fair—the housekeeper to clean up, I will stay and help.”
“No. You're in no shape. I'll take care of this. Go get some sleep. Promise you won't tell a soul what happened here?”
He asked with such energy, so plaintively. I nodded. “Even if I had anyone to tell, I wouldn't, because you ask it.”
Then, just when I knew I could bear no more, he reached one hand towards my face. A swatch of my drenched hair had been plastered across my temple, draping over my left eye and down my cheek. Thorne brushed it back, tucking the sodden lock behind my ear. When he touched me, when his skin brushed my brow, being hit in the face full-force with the radiance of two thousand suns could not have felt any differently.
I might have gasped. I might have pulled back at the shock. I can't remember. My memory was recording not action but sensation: my heart switching gears from gallop to rumble, the smarting rapture of a blush flooding my every surface capillary, the following backward rush of my blood to deeper parts of my body. And if he wouldn't stop looking so infernally deeply into my eyes, I was going to shatter like a pane of frozen glass thrown into a pool of fire.
“Jane,” he said in that honeyed gravel voice of his. “Janee, I—I want to tell you—tell you how much—”
He halted, and so did my heart. What was he going to say? Do? Make me feel? And why did have to say my name like that, “Janee?” I had to get away, or who knew what might happen—what I might do in response.
“Thank you, sir,” I said, tearing my eyes from his and fixing them on my bandaged hands. Pulling them close to my middle and pressing my back even further to the wall, I added, “I need to go.”
“You do?” he asked.
I chanced a glance at his face through lowered eyelashes, afraid to meet his eyes fully. I had to avert my gaze as quickly as I had cast it, because Thorne yet again assaulted my defenses with such a look of kindness.
“It's late,” I blurted, struggling to my feet, shamed at the tremor conducting itself from my body into my words.
“You're just going to go?” he asked with a staying hand on my forearm. “Just like that? I'm that offensive?”
He was trying to make me laugh, but I could not afford laughter's vulnerability.
“It's late,” I repeated. Blindly I turned from him. I walked, nearly ran, down the hall back to my room.
“Janee,” he called, “you'll need this.”
I stopped and looked back at him. In the smoke-dulled light, my perks ring twinkled in his upraised hands.
With my eyes fixed to the floor, I returned to him. Allowing my gaze to move only to my ring, I reached up into his grasp. I took the other side of my ring, but he would not let go. My fingers were no more than two millimeters from his. A lump thrilled into my throat. I tugged at my ring, once, twice. With a reluctance I could not understand, he released his grip.
“Good night, Janee,” he murmured on fire-roughened breath.
I would not look. “Good night, sir.”
As I turned again towards my room, I could not deny the feeling that I was being watched, and not just by the house cameras. I could not pretend I did not feel Thorne's eyes on me as I fumbled at my door's lock, regaining the room's sanctuary. And just as I could not disregard the effects of his gaze and touch on my body, mind and heart, I could not fathom either of our motivations—his unknowable and mine uncontrollable.
Somehow, I divested myself of both my employer's robe and my soaked pajamas, the former being surrendered only after much delay at the laundry chute's maw. I changed into fresh pajamas, clumsy because of the bandages and reluctant because the addition of fresh clothes might cover the hint of Thorne's scent still clinging to my skin. I was both relieved and disquieted when I carried his olfactory signature with me into bed. With each ensuing toss and turn, the scent assaulted me anew, entertaining the blank screen of my imagination with a looped replay of Thorne's attention to me, teasing my senses in excruciating detail.
I had no hope of sleep. The whirlwind of images abated only briefly when I heard the soft whirring of various bots on their way to Thorne's room for clean-up duty. Later I heard Chuck returning to his master from his venture out of doors.
