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Up until that point, I'd never before in my life spent such a conflicted night. I craved the morning like a drug: unable to think of anything but my next fix, all the while knowing in the shadows of my heart that it would only torture me more.
He'd touched me. He'd smiled at me, for the love of God, caressed my wayward hair from my face. He'd been about to tell me something before I'd cut him off in my terror, but what? And now that the PLED screens were casting daylight, I would have to venture into the halls where I might see his face, hear his voice, feel his presence. I would have to go about the mundane routine of collecting Kirti for breakfast...
...and begin the work for which my boss was paying me.
Thorne was my employer. I was completely dependent upon him for my livelihood. What would happen to my situation if he found out how I now felt about him?
What if he felt the same way about me?
That thought was too enthralling, sent too much of my blood on wayward paths. How could I go about my daily tasks knowing how he'd looked at me last night, how his back caught and commanded the smoky light, how his skin had felt against mine?
But I could not not think about these things. I had to move. I had to see him.
Awkward from the bandages on my hands, I washed and dressed for breakfast. I could not move quickly enough, but when I was ready, I hesitated at the door. A significant part of me wanted to curl up in fetal position and hide in my room until all of this went away. The other part of me, the part that felt awake for the very first time, fought back and drove me into the hall.
Before turning right to head for the breakfast room, I chanced a leftward glance at Thorne's doorway. I now could hear the circulation fans churning overtime, pulling the smoke from the chamber, and pushing it out to the desert above. I paused, listening for any sign that Thorne was in his room. I heard nothing but the continuing ventilation buzz. With both fear and yearning, I walked—with what care infatuation would allow and what speed self-respect would permit—over to the entry and craned for a look inside.
Thorne was not there. The charred bed had been removed, frame, covers, mattress and all. Only a whispered hint of smoldering met my nostrils, spiked with the faint odor of fresh paint. I squinted at the walls and guessed that they already had been covered over by whatever painting bot had been summoned by the house system. Strangely efficient for a system so faulty that it nearly killed its owner mere hours earlier. Pressing my lips together, I fumed at that thought all the way to the breakfast room. At the approach to each hall-twist, I prepared myself to bump into Thorne. These preparations were not tried.
While we ate—no, I must correct that. While Kirti and Deepali ate and I pecked fretfully at my plate, I began to formulate a very logical, reasonable, dispassionate conversational gambit for my next meeting with Thorne. I'd seen the faulty automations of Emhain Macha not only plunge me into locked darkness or glaring light but nearly burn a man in his bed. I had every right to demand, for everyone's safety, that Mr. Thorne have the system corrected, if not completely replaced. What on earth had possessed that man to laugh at this suggestion last night, anyway? Couldn't he see that this place could end up a death trap?
I worried that thought like a dog with a hambone. As I dumbly followed Kirti to the study to begin the day's first lesson, I reexamined my conversation with Thorne from the previous afternoon. He'd said something to indicate some tie between his mother, the Senator, his habit of poor judgment, and his regret of this place. But what kind of link could there be? Kirti dawdled over a line graph while I tried connecting the dots between what vague pieces of information Thorne had given me during our weeks of growing friendship.
What had I learned about him? I now knew that he was incorrigibly moody, and that when his moods tended towards monumental despair, he sought comfort in alcohol—and in the arms of women. I'd learned that he traveled as much as a fugitive might. I'd discovered that his short temper was chastened by an almost overwhelming sense of responsibility, even to the point of taking guardianship of a child not his.
I'd learned that he had a great sense of humor, that he loved to make me laugh, and that I could stare him into squirming when I wanted to unbalance his arrogant pride. I knew that his eyes blazed when he was angry, especially with himself. I had learned that seeing him without a shirt on made me feel hot all over. I had discovered that the slightest touch from him could shoot the light of a thousand stars right to my—
“Jane?” Kirti asked, looking up at me with surprise. “Why are you shaking? Your cheeks look sunburn.”
“Sunburned!” I heard myself snap back.
Kirti was startled, and so was I. I dropped my head, shamefaced. Searching for words that would allay her concerns, I muttered something apologetic about my perhaps not eating enough at breakfast and encouraged her to continue her work.
The day passed with no Thorne in sight. Ordinarily I would have assumed that he was conducting business in his personal terminal. However, whenever I had an excuse that day to walk near his room, I saw that the door was open and his terminal empty. When at last Kirti was in bed and I had not been summoned to the semi-habitual audience in the study, I returned to my room and sat on the edge of my bed, as edgy as a tigress after a failed hunt. Finally I decided to risk the asking.
“Mrs. Fairfacs, please?”
The housekeeper appeared. “Yes, dear. How may I help you?”
“Mrs. Fairfacs, can you tell me where Mr. Thorne is, please?”
“Mr. Thorne has gone to Argentina on business, dear, first thing this morning.”
The sinking feeling was palpable. My knees became liquid. “Argentina,” I whispered in a mouth gone dry.
“Yes, dear.”
“Did Mr. Thorne leave right after the fire, or did he wait a while?”
Benign confusion coalesced on her features. “Fire, dear? I was not aware of any fire.”
Then how had the bots known to clean up the mess? The heartache I'd just been dealt now became coated with ever-deepening confusion.
“Miss Jane? Are you quite all right, dear? You are becoming paler by the microsecond.”
I shook my head again. “Never mind, Mrs. Fairfacs.”
I was about to dismiss her with a “that will be all,” but the housekeeper recommenced her speech before I had a chance to gather myself any further. “Mr. Thorne has responded to an invitation to work with La Blanca on an upcoming project.”
“Excuse me, Mrs. Fairfacs. Who is 'La Blanca,' please?”
“La Blanca is the performing name for Blanca Inez Theresa Corazon Hoffstaedter, South America's leading body-scan model. She recently announced a desire to break into live word performance, and Mr. Thorne was asked to advise her staff.”
Upon first hearing, I was too busy trying to figure out why Mrs. Fairfacs was giving me so much superfluous information that my mind barely registered all the “she”s and “her”s contained therein.
“Body scan model,” I repeated. A lump of shock lodged itself in my throat, perfectly complementing the boulder now forming in my stomach. “Can a person make a living that way?”
“When that person is as celebrated for her appearance as La Blanca, yes, dear, she can,” Mrs. Fairfacs said cheerfully.
The mica-brittle hopes I'd been cherishing all morning—perhaps even before—cracked. My heart felt as cold and empty as the canyon west of Emhain Macha early on a January morning.
“Miss Jane? Are you quite all right, dear? You are becoming paler—”
“I'm fine, Mrs. Fairfacs. Thank you. That will be all.”
She left me. I held the same frozen position for long enough that the stars on my room's PLED screen had moved a handful of centimeters. My eyes were dry from not blinking.
I was tired, but my self-discipline would bear no emotional sloth. I slid from my bed and perksed into my terminal.
“Jane E, you have no text messages.”
I did not even mutter feigned surprise. “Search for La Blanca—Hoffstaedter—Argentina—pictures, please.”
The walls of my terminal filled with links. Under my breath, I began reading aloud the title of the first. “Fraulein Chi-Chi and the Magical Vibrating—
“Ew.” I muttered, wrinkling my nose. All the rest of the titles showing also would have made a prostitute blush.
“Amend the search, please,” I called, still wincing. “Search results for pictures of La Blanca's face only, please.”
The amount of links was reduced significantly. I double-blinked at the first on the list. Half of the wall filled with a flawlessly rendered image of a woman who was unquestionably breathtaking. Per my query, the picture showed little besides her face—thank God. Mellow olive skin as smooth and precise as the plane of a brilliant-cut diamond. Hair darker than midnight in the desert, arranged in duplicate shining ringlets piled and draped to emphasize the ruthlessly perfect angle of her cheekbones. Eyes the eerie, icy turquoise of backlit glaciers. Full lips drawn in a haughty, knowing smile. If the rest of La Blanca was as ideal as her face, no wonder she was so adored by the visual industry.
No wonder Thorne had run from me to be with her.
I blinked fiercely. How could I hope to compete with La Blanca? The answer, I knew, was that I could not. Again I spoke. “Take a snapshot of my face, please.”
A flash of light illumined the terminal, momentarily blanching the picture of La Blanca.
“Place the snapshot of my face next to the picture of La Blanca, please.”
The terminal obliged.
There could be no difference more striking. My disheveled, mouse-in-a-mud-puddle hair drooping down to my shapeless hips. The bland, buggy eyes for which Mr. Thorne often had teased me. My skin sallow, my mouth and chin too small, my wispy eyebrows.
How could I have thought even for a second that Mr. Thorne might have felt about me even remotely the same way as I felt about him? The boulder in my stomach dissolved into a sour lump of self-disgust. Many years before, Clint VanDeer had called me a “smacked ass.” At the time, I'd thought it was pretty stupid-sounding, even for an insult. It made so much more sense now.
Smacked ass. I kept this thought to myself, however, in fear that the terminal could record my response and possibly relay it back to Mr. Thorne, destroying what little dignity now remaining to me.
My picture stared back, heartbreak etched into the downturned mouth. I had to put a stop to this. I had to squash the unrealistic desires now clamoring within my breast. Fostering an infatuation with my employer would be about as good for my emotional health as a nice, solid terra-cotta brick to the skull would be for my physical well being. How could I allow these feelings to persist when they threatened not only my pride but my very livelihood? If he found out what an idiot I was, I would be out of a job.
No, that caged beast within me protested. Thorne was too good a man to cast a helpless dependent out upon the mercy of the world. Worse, however, he would take pity on me just as he had on Kirti. He would discover my foolishness and still let me keep working for him, and his patronizing kindness would be so degrading.
Quash this infatuation I must. Quash it I would.
I told the terminal to save the two pictures in one file. If ever the craving for Mr. Thorne's proximity descended upon me, I would make it an opportunity to school myself. I would return to my terminal, open this file, and make a study of the contrasts between the lovely La Blanca and my pathetic self. This exercise would be the carbon nanotubes reinforcing the steel of my resolve never, ever to let Mr. Thorne suspect that I cared for him with such depth, such fervor.
I stayed in the terminal a few minutes more, forcing myself to keep cataloguing La Blanca's beauty and all my ugliness. I finally left, convinced to all but the most ridiculous sliver of my mind that Mr. Thorne could never love someone like me. I crawled into bed and hid under the covers, all the while trying to rip my feelings from my soul like trying to pull a weed by its roots.
I found I had to make this discipline a daily practice. However, within the space of two weeks, I was able to hear Mr. Thorne's name without batting an eyelash, to listen to Mrs. Fairfacs's reports on his whereabouts with only the slightest increase in pulse rate. My outward comportment seemed to me as regular as a freshly mowed lawn; never mind all the dandelion heads snapped off by the mower's blades. Nevertheless, I had convinced myself that when next I saw Mr. Thorne, I would be capable of behaving towards him with nothing but the utmost professional courtesy.
