Tender Things

NADIA

It was my eighteenth birthday the first time I fucked a stranger. The night Mother died. He was a security guard at the Von Harben’s New Years party. I had arrived late, stepping out the chauffeured limo with heels crunching on gravel.

“Ah, Miss you must be Nadia? I’ve been- um- told to expect your arrival,” he had swallowed here. Eyes dipping, Adams apple bobbing, “-Miss Cristace”

I always liked it when they called me Miss.

I had smiled, straightened brown hair falling to one side, dark eyelashes fluttering slightly, tops of kitten heels toe to toe with shiny, black shoes. “Oh, have I missed much?”

He had swallowed again. He looked to be about mid-fourties and had his eyes still cast downwards, flushing a deep red at the tops of his ears, and down his neck. I thought it was cute. I wondered if he thought he could look up my dress from the reflection on his shoe? “N-n-no Miss-”

The stutter made my heart beat faster. I leaned in closer, I knew the top of my dress was dipping low, he knew a stray glance would get him in trouble. But they never can help themselves can they?

He had fucked me outside the staff quarters, bent me over a bush and rolled my glittery silk dress up to my hips, pulling my lace underwear down to pool at my ankles. His hands had gripped me on my waist as he told me what a brat I was, how I needed educating, and grunted into my ear. By that point he had dropped the pretense he didn’t know my age. Instead he pulled on my hair, arched my chest deeper into prickling green leaves.

He came inside the condom, threw the plastic on the leaves, and winked. I wiped away the damp on my thighs. The inner lining of the dress stuck to skin as I walked, leaving him behind me. Flies undone, fiddling with his earpiece, arms relaxed at his side. I had got a drink. And stood at the back of the room watching women twirl folded over their partner’s arms. I had stayed like that, eyes on the gold clock at the wall of the room, watching the hand tick, tick round. ’Till they lined up at the top of the clock. I was eighteen, the year was ’97, and the bubbles tickled my throat at the silent toast.

It was only later that I found out the clock was three minutes too slow.

DEAD WOMEN

THEY ALWAYS PREFER DEAD WOMEN.

It was the inscription in the inside page of the leather notebook.

I flipped the page.

Dead Women. Dead Women. They always prefer women dead.

The pen had been pressed deep, the writing an engraving. Her fingers must’ve hurt around the pen, must’ve left red indents in pale skin.

It was one of the many books heaped around me. Clean covers, pages filled with inky scrawls, the spirals of an obsessed mind. It was boring. Boring to flick through the pages. Boring to see the thought repeated. Again. Again.

Dead Women. Dead Women. Die Woman.

A mosaic of the words, a tribute to herself.

It made sense that Mother had killed herself. It was predictable. A spoiled ending.

Lake of Stones Woman. Head in the oven Woman. Bleeding out in the bath Woman. Rope around Neck Woman.

Dead Women.

Perhaps I shouldn’t’ve found it comical how she had left herself out. Pills emptied in mouth Woman. Daughter left in a house Woman.

What a joke.

It was the boredom that made my thoughts wander. The mundane hypocrisy. The wretched remains of life. Thoughts repeated, over and over that had me think of that moment three months ago.

It might’ve been the boredom or it maybe the linger of perfume on pages. The perfume that had filled the corridor as I had walked back into the hall, those three months ago, shifting in my wet dress. That cloying sickly perfume and pale skin, the thin fingers wrapped around a yellow bottle, that rattled as she walked. Those fingers on my shoulder, that rattle stilling. Whites of her eyes, rounded and wide, chapped lips, skin stretching, breaking- It might’ve been the memory of her glare, her yellowed teeth, opened mouth-

“Nadia. Where have you been?”

It might’ve been the perfume that masked the smell of death.

“What were you just doing? If you leave me I’ll have nothing. Nadia-”

It might’ve been the bony fingers that pressed in too hard on exposed shoulders.

“If you leave me. I’ll be nothing.”

It might’ve been the perfume. Or the threat on every page.

“You don’t want to kill your Mother do you? You don’t want to be the reason I die?”

Dead Women.

It might’ve been all the dead women.

But it was probably boredom. I was sick of all the dead.