Chapter 5

Valerie wasn’t sure how long her alarm had been going off. She’d gotten back to her apartment late Sunday afternoon- had lost most of the day- and was so drained and groggy that she collapsed into bed.

Her phone was on the charger where she’d left it Saturday night, before… everything that had just happened. She fumbled with it and turned off the alarm, old habits dragging her out of bed even though her mind felt like it was trudging through knee deep mud just to perform “getting ready for work”.

It was Monday morning, and her Sunday had been a surreal haze of confusing experiences, fragmented memories, and… a woman that she couldn’t stop thinking about. Sunday was a lost day and not her hoped-for chance to catch up on self-care, clean her apartment, maybe even relax a little. It couldn’t be helped; it was Monday, she still had a job, and still needed the paycheck.

Nothing about the last thirty hours felt real to her until the blinking “low fuel” light on her dashboard pulled her out of her haze, halfway down the highway to work; her fuel gauge was on empty, and she wasn’t sure how long it had been there. The drive to and from Dana’s home, wherever it was, had burned more fuel than she thought, and thrown off her sense of when she’d need to refill the tank. She had tried to note landmarks on her way back, but the dark and twisty forest roads descending from the hills were confusing, and it was hard enough for her to find her way to a major highway. She knew it was somewhere east of Berkeley, but not much more than that.

This morning, she’d been distracted from drive and her fuel gauge, constantly turning over the woman’s words in her mind- and the enormity of what she’d done. She was baffled at the sudden turn and the mysterious offer.. It was insane. And nobody would believe her. Aside from a bruise and a tiny scab on her thigh from where she’d been injected, there wasn’t a shred of evidence. She’s given herself similar bruises enough times doing her hormone injections that she couldn’t even be entirely sure that was real.

She could barely think about work today, but she could easily imagine the scorn and refusal she’d get from Bren if she tried to ask for a day off. What would she even say? I was kidnapped by a beautiful woman and offered a million dollars. Lunacy. She didn’t notice how her mind had inserted beautiful into that description without any conscious will on her part.

Her mind drifted to the woman’s dark eyes, her carefully manicured eyebrows. Her wavy, dark auburn hair, almost black except when it caught the light. She had a memory she couldn’t place of those eyebrows knitted with genuine concern, those eyes looking at her and softening.. She shook her head to clear it, as the gas pump beeped that the twenty dollars she could scant afford had been pumped into the tank.

She was already running late, and needing to stop for gas had not made that better; but running out of gas would have been even worse. The least she could do was not waste time, standing here and thinking about this mystery woman.

–

Bren was waiting at her desk when she walked in; less than a quarter hour late, but enough that he’d noticed. She thought he was trying to look angry, but he couldn’t hide his smug joy in having another black mark to put against her name. She didn’t try to argue, just muttered weakly about traffic and got to work.

The day passed by in a blur, and while everyone else was filtering out of the office, she tried to draft her daily update to Bren – one of her new performance requirements. She felt nauseous as she realized she couldn’t articulate a single thing she’d done that day for the update. The realization that she’d need to keep working at least another few hours just so she could have some impact to report felt smothering and oppressive.

Bren wouldn’t even read the update or acknowledge it, but he’d definitely notice if it wasn’t sent.

It was dark by the time she trudged out of the office, the last one out the door by far, and walked the three blocks to where she’d parked. The eighty-five dollar “residential over-time” ticket tucked under her windshield wiper wrenched a sob from her, and she couldn’t really pull herself together until she was sitting in the small garage attached to her apartment, engine ticking as it cooled. Her head ached from crying.

–

The next few days were better, if only by comparison. She hadn’t forgotten the events of the weekend (how could she?), but the drudgery of ten and twelve hour days at work were a numbing, dulling soporific, if not any sort of salve.

As she walked in the door late that Wednesday evening, she dismissed the “unknown number” ringing her phone with exhausted disregard. She was two steps toward the kitchen to scrounge something together for dinner when her phone rang again. A call in a few days, the woman had said. After everything, Valerie didn’t question how she’d gotten her number.

“H- hello?” her voice gave away her nervousness. Her heart was hammering in her chest, but it wasn’t fear, exactly, and the fact that she wasn’t angrier was almost enough to make up for the missing outrage.

“Hello, Valerie.” The voice on the other end was calm, breathy, a little husky even. It made Valerie’s pulse quicken even more, in a way farther still from anger.

“…Dana?” It took her a moment to wring the woman’s name from her patchy memory of the weekend, through the haze of the long hours she’d been working.

“Who else?” Valerie could hear the hint of a wry smile in the woman’s voice.

She was quiet for a few moments. Too many thoughts and too many questions collided in her head, trying to all get out at the same time. As soon as she had settled on one to start with, something else suddenly seemed more important, more urgent.

Ultimately, Dana spoke first.

“I have two promises for you. First, if you hang up now, you won’t hear from me again.”

Dana paused, but when the line was silent for a few long moments, she continued.

“The offer I’m making you isn’t.. good. It isn’t moral. You’re in a vulnerable position, and that’s not my fault, but it’s not your fault either. Coercion and a lifeline are opposite sides of a very thin coin.”

“Why did you-” Valerie started, but she didn’t know what even to call it. The woman on the other end of the phone waited, not interrupting, even while she searched for words. “Sunday.. why?”

“I thought I could do something, be someone…” The silken voice paused, a small fracture in the smooth and unassailable confidence. “But.. I couldn’t, with you. To you. I still want… what I want. But I won’t take it.”

She wasn’t sure why she didn’t hang up, didn’t call this woman on her offer to be gone. She was scared of what she wanted. Ashamed to confront the fact that she had fantasized about this woman as she lay in bed the previous few nights, about the softness she had seen in Dana’s eyes; about the hunger she had seen there, too. She should be burning the world around her with righteous fury, but it would be a lie to say she had not imagined scenarios like this in the past, ever since she was old enough to imagine such things.

Dana let the silence linger while Valerie processed and assembled a coherent thought.

“You said two promises?” the girl asked, eventually.

“I did.” Dana paused just for a moment, collecting her own words. “I promise not to lie to you. Ever. Anything I say will be the truth, as best I know it. I may not choose to tell you everything—” Valerie thought she heard a smile, and a small but thrilling sort of threat in that last— “but, anything I do tell you will be honest.”

Dana fell silent again, but she didn’t have to wait long for Valerie’s next question.

“What’s the offer?” her voice is barely louder than a whisper.