Chapter 9

Why do we still think airports are places of glamour?

Why not call them the meat-packing factories they are, pushing long sausages of passengers’ flesh through portals and detector gates?

Tourists, businessmen, and all kinds of other travelers milled around the halls and corridors of Washington’s Dulles International Airport, spreading sweat and heat and noise and agitation.

But the tall and slender silver-haired creature at the center of this swirling circus didn’t seem to notice.

Aloof and serene, it split the crowd like a modern-day Moses – chin up, eyes high, one heeled foot sliding in front of the other.

Even the din seemed to quiet down where it went – as did the colors that swirled around, jumping off nylon jackets, red and yellow signs, pink suitcases and towering backpacks. Their shrillness leaked away, seemingly absorbed by the eye of a storm.

Everything about the pale creature looked elongated and vertical – as if contorted by a photographer’s lens. In the small circle it occupied, the creature seemed to magically recreate a long-lost era of quiet elegance.

For simplicity’s sake, let’s call it a she; the alternative would be so much more farfetched.

She was tall for a she, maybe over six feet on her heels. Her skin was way too soft and pale to even hint at maleness – too translucent maybe even for a woman.

The only pink in her face was on her lips. Her eyes were pale, sparkling sapphires, lighting up in a frame of smoky shadow. On top of her head floated a cloud of silver-white curls, pinned up to display the slender length of her neck – and make her look even taller.

All she seemed to wear today was a white, short trench coat, tied at her narrow waist and flaring out until it stopped at mid-thigh where bare legs took over, as pale as her face and plunging down forever – slender calves curving with each step of her towering heels.

Her hands were in her pockets and she walked as if the arrival hall was a catwalk – her eyes fixed on the EXIT sign.

No one would hesitate to call her a woman, and yet there was this little – something that the French call ‘je ne sais quoi’, I don’t know. Something you couldn’t put your finger on.

It was the small, exotic extra that took her face in less than two years to the cover of international magazines, and her body to every exclusive fashion show around the globe.

It was a lingering trace of ‘he’.

From behind his fortress of breathtaking beauty, Lucian Gaines absorbed the everyday insanity around him.

Or did he?

Did he notice the heads turning, the eyes lingering, searching, wondering? And did he care how behind those eyes brains processed his face, comparing it, deducing it until it would click into a slot of recognition – well-known images pouring in from magazines, posters, phone screens and tv-commercials?

Not really, he kept telling himself.

Everything those eyes saw was but a charade – a carefully constructed illusion. They knew him, they thought; or rather they knew her. But all they knew was what he showed them: his eyes, his hair, his skin, his legs, his Smile, his Glide.

All they saw was façade, wasn’t it?

He sighed as his feet found the next tile, and the next – the EXIT sign getting closer over the bobbing heads. His trained ears filtered the din, picking up the clicks of his heels and the slight squeak of the baggage-trolley that followed him.

Three big suitcases were on the cart, a bag and a beauty case, pushed by the small, sweaty man with the sad moustache; one of the many people he was supposed to ignore – servants, assistants, nobodies.

But Lucian knew the face of the man in every detail; the color of his eyes, the shape of his eyebrows, the faded blue of his shirt, the dark spots under his armpits.

He knew without looking; he’d learned to see without watching.

The man would despise him, he knew, thinking him a stuck-up bitch, a rich, spoilt brat – until Honor would hand him the fifty-dollar tip.

Lucian sighed, quickening his footsteps.

It was all about that, wasn’t it? Pre-judging, framing. He was a rich, arrogant bitch the moment the man saw him: he had too many and too big suitcases, he was too famous, too young. But still the man had scooted over in a hurry unless someone else might beat him to this morsel of business.

Money, it was all about money.

After Honor would hand him the tip, he’d still see Lucian as a rich bitch – just a bitch that tipped well.

Ah, Honor...

Sweet tiny beautician Honey Honor. How deep she’d blushed when Lucian asked her that day to leave with him as his assistant – two years ago. A soft-eyed blond little sweetheart she was, but one that turned into a roaring lioness whenever Lucian needed her to be – guarding his diary like a watchdog, scaring people into cooperation, opening doors, finding the best tables in the most famous restaurants.

And fucking like a pro.

Hearing the soft slide of her ballet shoes on the tiles made Lucian imagine the calm grey eyes under thick blond bangs; the pouting lips – the shining top bulging with her generous tits, a present Lucian gave her, knowing it had been the girl’s dream since the day she’d joined the Academy.

Honor was a girl – definitely; she was girlier than most so-called real girls he knew.

One day she’d go all the way.

The EXIT doors sighed open when he reached them. Stepping out into a balmy, kerosene-tainted summer breeze he looked around – and frowned.

Behind a low railing was a slender girl in an open, baby-blue man’s shirt over a creamy silk top and short shorts, leaving her long legs bare until they were wrapped in satin ballet shoes.

The sign in her hand said Ms. Lucia Gaines.

Lucian walked up to her, smiling the Smile.

“Hello, Ellis,” he said.

He remembered the blond boy he’d shown around Norton’s Academy on his first day, together with that beautiful dark boy – what was his name again? Back then he’d been sure Norton’s would turn the shy country boy into a stunner and it did: erasing the chubbiness and letting him grow into this reedy beauty, smiling and moving graciously.

Yes, Lucian thought, the boy wasn’t in Kansas anymore.

“How are you,” he went on. “You look beautiful, sweetheart. You must be close to graduating Second Level by now.”

The girl blushed, red blotches rising from her chest. And she curtsied.

“Welcome, Ms. Gaines,” she murmured, her voice wavering. “Welcome back to Norton’s; we are all so proud to have you this year.”

“Shhh,” Lucian said, pressing a pink nailed finger to the girl’s soft lips. “Now show me that sign, honey.”

He took the piece of board and snapped with the fingers of his free hand over his shoulder, without watching. A pen slid into his hand.

Clucking his tongue, he scratched out the “Ms.” On the sign and added a fat “n” to his first name.

“My name is Lucian, darling. “Don’t forget,” he said and handed the sign back.

The girl blushed even deeper. Then she curtsied low and asked Lucian to follow her.

The white Mercedes hummed as the green countryside flew by.

Lucian sat back in the leather seat, his fingers twisting the flaxen curls of little Honor. Her head lay in his lap, glowing sweetly.

He’d opened the belt of his coat and wriggled out of it, now only wearing a gauzy white top over a very tight white leather pair of short-shorts. They were not an accidental choice of course, although his heels were quite different from the comfortable ballet slippers he used to wear at Norton’s.

In the mirror, he met Ellis’s curious eyes. They shied away when he pouted his lips and winked.

“Who would have thought, lil’ Honey,” he said as his fingers found the girl’s cheek, caressing it. “Me returning to Norton’s?”

The girl’s hand rose and covered his.

“You’ll blow them all away,” she said, softly squeezing his fingers.

Lucian looked outside, just staring blindly as the green blur sped by. His thoughts reluctantly returned to that one evening when he left Parker’s office to meet his date in a thin blue dress and a cloud of certainty.

An involuntary shiver ran down his spine as long subdued memories returned.

He again felt how his fingers squeezed the white clutch as he went down to the pebbled driveway where a car waited – not unlike the Mercedes he was sitting in now.

He remembered how his heart raced in its narrow cage.

“You look so ... young,” the man beside the car said. “They’ll think you’re my teen daughter.”

He wasn’t repulsive, if you don’t mind Latin car salesmen. He also wasn’t tall, but he was dark, and, well yes, handsome in an oily way. His dark hair was sleeked back. And, thank God, he didn’t have a thin moustache on his upper lip.

Chuckling at his own words, he opened the passenger door of the dark Mercedes. She slid in, trying to do it as elegantly as she’d been taught.

The leather felt cool through her thin dress.

He was a gentleman, Parker had said, a gentle man, and maybe he was. He’d smiled and opened the door for her, hadn’t he? He also dressed well. And he didn’t touch her ­– not in the car, nor in the restaurant he took her to.

But his eyes did – and so did his voice.

His gaze was all over her from the moment she gracefully sent her precarious heels down the school’s stone steps, walking to the waiting car as a breeze molded the dress against her body.

It felt as if his eyes didn’t stop at the surface: they seemed to slip under the flimsy fabric, fondling her skin.

Her face must have been ablaze.

The woman she was supposed to be now should take it all as a compliment, she knew: the eyes, the words, the voice.

But all she felt was rape.

It made her feel naked – her temperature rising to a claustrophobic level. His words seemed to leave a film of grease on her clean satin skin.

Whatever it was, it felt like an oily cloud – clotting her thoughts and slowing down her movements.

It felt wrong.

And it got worse after they sat down at the white-clad table in the posh restaurant, when he said:

“Trust me, baby. No need to be nervous. Let daddy order for you.”

Of course, the words were unfortunate, mildly put, but he certainly aggravated it by the way he said them – his smooth voice, his smile, his chuckling.

He picked a single white rose from a vase and handed it to her.

“White for you,” he said, “a virgin rose.”

He wasn’t old at all. Just old enough to be right about people thinking they were father and daughter. But actually saying that was stupid, wasn’t it – and very poorly informed.

Parker must have told him, surely? Then again: why would she have told a new suitor that his date slaughtered his predecessor’s cock?

Whatsoever, calling himself ‘daddy’ was the most efficient way to undo all the hard work done on Lucian. Sobering thoughts cleared up the mist in his skull, replacing it with a mild headache.

He had no idea when this reassuring mist had exactly entered his mind – you never do with a brainwash, do you? You don’t even know it’s there, making you see things as other people want you to see it, and in a nice laid-back way. Maybe.

He shook his head. Did he think ‘he’ right now?

Lucian rose from his chair, making it screech on the stone floor.

“Please take me back,” he whispered. “I’m sorry. I can’t do this.”

Standing there in just his flimsy dress and thong made him feel stark naked. His exposed body seemed to dangle from the glowing hook of his blazing head.

One of his pale, pink-nailed hands grasped at the surrounding air as the other reached for his throat. He gagged in panic. Would he faint – sink into darkness; fall to the floor?

Strong hands caught him.

He swallowed hard, trying to gather the floating cloud of particles his body had become. His eyes panned along faces and tables and chairs and things – gradually getting them back into focus.

“Please...” he heard; it must have been his own voice.

The man was gentle.

“Sit down,” he said. “It’ll pass, baby.”

“I ... I can’t. I really should... “ Lucian tried.

“Take a sip,” the man said, handing him a tall glass of water. “It’ll be all right.”

The cold liquid filled his mouth. He could feel it run down to his stomach like a tiny ice-river, making him shiver.

The Smile, he thought, I need to Smile – and he felt the muscles of his face ply into the proper mask he’d learned to hide behind.

Hiding, he thought – mask, training, make-belief.

“She’s ready,” he remembered Parker saying into the phone. She’d been wrong, hadn’t she?

The ‘she’ she’d mentioned was still just a dress and a mask – a painstakingly trained set of manners to be applied when needed.

Had he fooled the headmistress into believing he was ready?

If so, he’d fooled himself as well. When he rose from that chair in her office to meet the ‘gentle man’ he’d swear he was the girl Lucia, excited and giddy about meeting her male date.

No charade there.

But now.

Hidden inside his artful cloak of femininity Lucian watched the man at the other side of the table, talking with the waiter as if nothing had happened.

Between sentences his gaze turned to Lucian, smiling – and Lucian Smiled back.

Then the waiter took a bottle from a cooler, wrapping it in a napkin as he popped the cork. It was champagne, and he poured some into the glass flute in front of the man.

Making a show of it he took a sip and rolled the liquid around in his mouth, eyes closed.

“Aaah,” he then sighed, mentioning a French brandname and a year. “Merveilleux,” he added and he waved the waiter to Lucian.

The man poured champagne in his glass, filling it with hissing foam that subsided into a clear, bubbly liquid.

Lucian knew the taste of champagne. Even as a child he’d sipped it from his mother’s neglected glass – or the glasses of her visiting friends. It was sweet and exhilarating.

Intoxicating too.

“I ... I don’t drink,” Lucian said. “I’m not twenty-one yet, and we’re not allowed at Norton’s.”

The man laughed out loud, sitting back to get his own glass topped up.

“But this is not Norton’s, is it,” he said, picking up his glass and holding it out for a toast. “You’re a big girl now – let’s drink to your health.”

Lucian rose again, more careful now.

“Please take me back home,” he whispered, not realizing the word he used.

“Mine or yours,” the man said, grinning.

“Take me back to Norton’s; I can’t do this.”

“No. And sit down.”

Lucian kept standing, and he stared mutely at the man who ran a blunt fingertip around the rim of his glass, smiling.

“Please?” Lucian’s voice was almost a sigh.

The man slowly shook his grinning head left and right. Then he opened his mouth into a tight O that he filled with the dashing tip of his tongue.

It was unspeakably lewd.

Lucian let his hands sink down to the hem of his short dress, taking it in his fingers and slowly pulling it up.

His eyes never left the man’s.

“I’ll undress,” he said, his voice trembling. “I’ll strip right here and show all these people who I really am, so they’ll know who you really are.”

The hem of the dress rose to his belly now, exposing the sky-blue thong and a lot of white, bare skin. Pushing his hips forward, he hoped his tiny cock would stand out against the tight, translucent satin.

He noticed a hush around him.

Right before his face disappeared behind the pulled-up dress the man moved. A chair fell and feet shuffled. Hands pulled the dress down, causing the delicate fabric to tear.

“Stop this, crazy faggot!” the man hissed, wrapping an arm around Lucian and pushing him down in the chair.

The torn dress sagged open, exposing pale flesh. Lucian gathered the fabric and rose again, but the man grabbed his upper arms and pushed him down.

“You sit!” he hissed, his breath smelling of garlic. His grip hurt.

“You hurt me,” Lucian said, and the man let go.

His arms smarted. He saw purple-and-blue lines on his white skin where fingers had strangled the flesh. Gathering his torn dress, he pressed back into his chair, away from the man and too scared to look up.

“Is everything all right, sir?” a deep voice asked.

He looked up and saw the concerned face of the waiter. Behind him stood a huge ink-black silhouette. Security, he thought, a bouncer.

Lucian let go of his ruined dress and said:

“I feel sick. We just decided to leave.”

He raised a limp wrist towards his date and smiled weakly as the man took hold of it – his face dark with anger. Feeling the other hand grab his waist, he was hurried to the distant exit of the restaurant.

Faces passed by – male and female, gowns and smokings; wide eyes, open mouths. His stiletto heels scratched the floor.

Then he felt the fresh outside air. He heard the man call for the valet and his car. Shivering, Lucian hugged his upper arms, standing alone now.

A waiter came running, holding his clutch and shawl. Cursing, Lucian’s date pushed a few banknotes in his hand.

The car arrived and he was pushed onto the back seat.

“Fucking faggot! Damn fucking faggot,” the man mumbled.

The tires screamed as he tore away.

Staring into the passing landscape, back in the humming car and fondling Honor’s soft round buttock, Lucian frowned as he remembered.

The ride had been anything but comfortable; he’d been pushed left and right on the back seat as the man took curves, braking suddenly or pushing the gas pedal like a madman.

At last he stopped with shrieking brakes in the middle of, well, nowhere – there was darkness all around.

“Get out,” he growled.

“But we’re not there yet,” Lucian objected, peering into the night. “Where are we?”

“Out, you fucking queer!” the man repeated, reaching through the front chairs to push open the back door.

Cold air rushed in, penetrating Lucian’s flimsy rags.

“Please take me to the school,” he asked, his teeth chattering.

“Get out and walk,” the man went on. “You cost me enough as it is.”

Lucian slid across the leather seat, probing the outside world with a stretching right foot.

“But I can’t walk in these shoes,” he objected. “What’s out there? Grass, mud? My heels...”

The man pushed him out, making him stumble and fall on the moist shoulder of the road. Lucian heard the door shut and the car scream away.

The tires threw mud on him.

Rising, he saw where he was in the headlights of passing cars. He stumbled down the soft ramp to the county-road below. With every step his stiletto heels were sucked in by the mud.

It took him half an hour to reach the entrance of the Academy. When he arrived, he was thoroughly cold and wet from the evening damp that rose from the fields.

His finger trembled as he pressed the button.

“Good evening and welcome, who’s there?” a familiar voice said.

Hearing the voice of a friend made him break down and cry as he held his shuddering, ice-cold body in a hug. The shreds of his useless dress moved in the wind. One of his heels was broken.

“It’s me, Taylor,” Lucian stammered through clenched teeth and shivering lips. “Please let me in.”

The room was warm, and so was the blanket wrapped around him. The mug of hot tea glowed in the palms of his hands. Lucian blew on it, watching tiny ripples run away on the surface.

“But why?” Taylor asked.

They sat together in the small gatehouse, their bodies only feet apart.

Lucian watched the boy’s slender, manicured fingers elegantly holding a china cup. He noticed the long dark lashes shutting and opening in a languorous slow motion – exposing and hiding calm gray irises. And he saw how the boy’s bob had grown out into a mass of golden waves. It framed an immaculate face and soft lips that right now curled into a smile.

Not a boy anymore, he thought. Not by a long shot.

“Why?” Lucian echoed the question. “You mean: why did I refuse and run?”

Taylor hesitated. Then he nodded. His voice was a whisper.

“I saw you leave, Lucy,” he said, making Lucian wince at the name. “You wore that lovely dress as you went down to the driveway where he held the door to his car. I was so jealous. And you looked so sweet and ... ready.”

Ready, Lucian thought. How does one look ready?

“He was a pig,” he said, looking up from the mug. “I ... well, I suddenly felt ... disgusted.”

Taylor’s eyes opened wide.

“But ... but he looked so ... well, so...” he stuttered.

“Like a gentleman,” Lucian filled in. “That was what Parker called him.”

He took a sip from the hot tea. Then he put the mug down.

“I’m exhausted,” he said. “I need to sleep.”

Taylor rose, his long, beautiful legs unfolding.

“You shouldn’t sleep alone,” he said, reaching out to help Lucian up.

“I’m fine,” Lucian said, allowing the boy to hold him as they went out to the main building.

He stumbled on his damaged heels, but the arm around his waist and the body he leant into spun a shell of warm safety around them both.

When they arrived at his room, Taylor reached down for Lucian’s mouth and planted a lingering kiss on his lips, soft but insistent, slippery with gloss, tasting sweet ... feeling wonderful.

“I have to be at the gate,” he breathed. “But please know that we are all with you, Luce – all of us.”

When he was alone, Lucian plucked the remains of the once pretty dress off his shivering skin and took a long hot shower. The water cascaded over him as he let his hands wander, touching the blue bruises on his upper arm.

They hurt when he pressed them.

Shaking his head, he brought a finger to his chest, circling his nipples, finding his belly and cupping his tight and lonesome penis.

“Why?” Taylor had asked.

Why indeed?

He shut the shower, dried his body and rubbed it with lotion. Then he slid between the soft sheets of his bed.

He must have been sleeping for a bit – or at least drifting in and out – when he felt a warm body crouching against his back, followed by another sweet, naked body against his knees and arms.

Still an hour to go, Lucian guessed, back in the white Mercedes. The car joined a thinning stream of traffic on yet another interstate highway.

A nervous flutter touched his stomach as he imagined how his arrival would be at Norton’s Academy.

“Please tell me, Ellis,” he asked, making the Barbie-girl at the wheel take her eyes off the road, looking at him via the mirror. “How’s old Parker?”

“She’s fine,” the girl said, smiling, and using the well-trained, breezy Norton-voice. “She told me to take you to her right away.”

The pale, puffy face of Ms. Parker freed itself from the green blur of the passing landscape. It smiled. Of course, it smiled, but there was a tension beneath the tired flesh that made the corners of her mouth tremble – just like it did that morning after his disastrous date.

Knuckles had rapped on his bedroom door while he still floated in that boundless tropical sea we swim in before waking. A young voice informed him he should see the ‘old cow’ – at once.

He’d been alone in the bed; the warm bodies were gone. Had they even been there? They might as well have been dreamlike phantoms.

As the sleepy bubble burst, colder memories rushed in.

Lucian sighed, throwing off the blanket. The ugly purple bruises on his arms had turned even darker. They still hurt under his fingers.

“Fucking bastard,” he mumbled, pulling up a pair of pink shorts and finding a white top. Then he donned a long shirt and a pair of flip-flops.

Passing the mirror, he had to stop, grab a brush and tame his riot of curls. Wetting a finger-tip he straightened his eyebrows. He pouted his lips, fluttering his lashes.

“What are you fucking doing?” he breathed. “It’s only the cow.”

He turned towards the door, but his hand had already grabbed a pink lipstick. Returning to the mirror, he painted his pale lips.

The principal had left her desk and was walking around it when he entered her office. She wore one of her usual panzer-suits, but her face was flushed and her lips trembled.

Stopping very close to him, her hand rose, but she checked it.

“Sit down,” she hissed. Lucian sat down, crossing his legs.

“What happened?” she asked, still standing.

Lucian raised his arms to show his bruises.

“He also tore my dress,” he added.

“That is not what he said,” Parker answered.

Lucian shrugged.

“He said you were aloof and rude and fitful,” the woman went on. “Not at all nice. You made a fool of him in the restaurant, threatening to take off your dress and blackmail him with that...

“Why on earth did you do that?”

Lucian shrugged again.

“He was a pig.”

Parker stared at him, her mouth working like a fish on dry land.

“A ... pig,” she repeated. “I ... I’m afraid you’ll have to elaborate on that.”

Lucian knew her irony was meant to patronize. He just shrugged again, making the silver cloud of his brushed hair dance on his shoulders.

Ms. Parker sat down on a chair next to him, rearranging her traits into what she maybe supposed to be her concerned face.

She took one of his hands in hers; they felt like warm dough.

“Mr. Martinez is a wealthy man who has been extremely good to us,” Parker said, using what he called her motherly voice. It never suited her. “He is generous and defends us in circles that could harm us. Keeping him, well ... pleased is very important. I thought you understood. I thought you were ready.”

She sat straight and let go of his hand.

So, the man was called Martinez; he never cared to introduce himself, Lucian realized; or asked for his name.

“What happened, Lucia?” Parker asked.

He felt nauseous as the air closed in.

“I couldn’t do it,” he said, his voice sounding distant.

“Do what, honey?” the woman asked.

He looked up, meeting the owlish eyes in their dark frames.

“You know what I mean,” he said.

Now she shrugged, making her stuffed shoulders rise.

“Do I?” she asked. “I thought I sent a sweet, beautiful girl on a date with a wealthy gentleman, who took her to a very exclusive restaurant, where she would not just impress his peers as eye-blinding arm candy, but also entertain him with intelligent conversation, being just a wonderful, well-bred companion...”

“He fucked me with his eyes even before we arrived,” Lucian said.

The silence lasted at least ten seconds.

“With his ... eyes?” Parker then asked.

“He was very rude,” Lucian went on, his voice almost a whisper now. “He said I’d be his daughter – he’d be my ... daddy.”

Parker closed her eyes, frowning. Another silence fell.

“I told him I couldn’t do it,” Lucian explained. “I asked him to take me back here. He refused in an awful, humiliating way. That’s when I threatened to show the restaurant my true gender.”

Parker stared down at her perfect manicure.

“He tore up my dress,” Lucian went on. “And he bruised my arms, pushing me back into my seat. That’s when the waiter and the bouncer told us to leave.”

His voice was monotonous as he went on:

“The man was very angry. Everybody in the restaurant looked as he pulled me to the exit while I tried to keep my torn dress closed.”

Lucian shrugged.

“He dumped me at the junction, half an hour’s walk from here, in the middle of the night, barely dressed and on my stiletto heels.”

Looking up to find Parker’s eyes, he concluded:

“He was not a gentleman, Ms. Parker.”

The principal rose from her chair, never looking at the boy.

“You disappoint us all, Lucia,” she said as she walked over to her desk. “Then again, maybe it was our fault as well. Maybe you weren’t ready after all.”

“Can I leave now?” he asked.

Parker nodded, but when he reached the door, she called him back.

“There is the matter of the money, of course,” she said. “Mr. Martinez has retracted his generous donation because of your, well ... let’s call it attitude. I’m afraid it has to be replaced and I’m sure we will find a way, don’t you think so too, Lucia?”

Lucian just stood and stared.

“Ah, and well,” Parker went on. “Before having your breakfast, please see Dr. Kurtz, will you?”

The doctor’s practice was the one room at Norton’s that Lucian hated most – Parker’s office being a close second.

There were so many reasons for that aversion – the cold neon light, the blue latex gloves shining with Vaseline, the shameless violation of every part and entrance of his body – and mind.

And the gratuitous lying, of course.

Staring out of the comfortable Mercedes on his way back to Norton’s, Lucian wondered why Kurtz had always assumed she could do whatever she deemed necessary to him. Was it the alleged suicide of her son that made her feel the ends were more important than the means? Or was she just, well, a mad scientist, like Joseph Mengele experimenting on children that could not escape her?