The Favoured, The Fair and Ms. Vérité Claire

13 In The Dark (Part 2)

"How you holding up?" he asked. "It's only day two and I'm already thinking about breaking my leg on purpose."

"It's not so bad. Some of it's been kind of nice."

"I know I'm expected to speak well of my host, but Hal's such a bastard, it's taking everything I've got. You should have seen his stupid face when your name came up."

"Sorry," Julia apologized, not really needing further details.

"Well, Don mentioned that Brick had said he was on the fence about bringing me on board, but once he saw you he figured that I was a man who knew something about something. So thanks for that."

"I'll put secret weapon on my resume."

"Not so secret. Would you look at the guys in this room?" Julia refused. "Don't you get sick of it?"

"I'm usually pretty good at making myself invisible. Watch." Julia started her meditative breathing when Orson interrupted.

"This is what you do," he said, and reached to hold her hand across the table to erase any doubt in the bar that she was taken. Her heart skipped.

"So how wild does a spa day get?"

Julia couldn't care less and just blurted out the thing concerning her most. "Do you really believe in open relationships?"

"It's not like it matters," he said. It was a most unsatisfying answer. Before Julia could push further he said, "When I worked at FNW they used to bring in barbers and masseuses as a sort of perk. One day this little guy is finishing my shave and he says, 'If I may, sir, your nose hairs are getting unruly.' Go ahead and trim them, I said, and he says, 'I can do you one better than that.' Before I knew it, he took a Q-tip, dipped it in warm wax, shoved it up my nostril, swirled it around and yanked it out. Ripped every last damned nose hair out by the roots. I've never felt that kind of pain before. I almost threw him across the room when he went for the other one. And the sneezing. I didn't stop sneezing for three weeks."

"Your poor, defenceless sinuses," Julia tutted. "An ex of mine used to wax his knuckles. He was a card shark and it was supposed to help him with his sleight of hand though I don't remember how."

"A cheat?" Orson asked surprised.

"At first I thought he was just counting cards. I don't consider it cheating to have an intellectual advantage over the house, but he was cheat and a thief and that included my wax, my shampoo, my moisturizer, my food, my money, et cetera. He used to use up my eye-make up remover too come to think of it. To get rid of some kind of finger glue or something."

"Don't you carry something in your purse for that?" Orson asked, thinking about the day they'd met.

"I do now," Julia said, happy he remembered. "Anyway, I got pretty sick of him letting himself into my apartment and helping himself to all my stuff so one day I took a little pot of lip balm I knew he liked, expensive of course, but in the name of justice I gutted it and filled it with benzocaine. You know, that numbing gel they sell for toothaches and cankers? I filled it, he used it and later on I got this phone call from him yelling and drooling and slurping at me for ruining his night." Julia smiled nostalgically and shrugged. "I was only an accessory to him. In every sense of the word."

"I'll bet that's the worst thing you've ever done."

"Yes. Well, if you don't count disappearing on him at the US border. We were supposed to be switching trains on the way to Buffalo to visit his mother. He was always throwing jealous fits and I'd warned him before. One more outburst, I said, and I'm gone. He blew up on the train and that was it. I trailed behind him till he'd lost me and then just went home."