Authors: Eden Myles
He said that last like it was very important. I nodded dutifully as we approached the huge front doors with their muttoned windows. A doorman stood to one side. He recognized Mr. Sterling immediately, and without saying a word, dutifully opening the door for us. He was dressed in a tuxedo, but I could tell he had a lot of muscle going on. Obviously, no one who didn’t pass muster got inside the Dollhouse.
The foyer was huge and echoing, full of rawbone wood wainscoting and Shaker furniture polished to a shine. A huge, wagon-wheel chandelier hung from the ceiling, full of flickering candlelight. I half expected to see Puritan women passing through the rooms in their bonnets and aprons, but when several people started forward to greet us, I realized they were society people like Mr. Sterling, all dressed in tuxedos as if they were visiting the opera or some kind of charity ball.
Mr. Sterling shook hands heartily with the first man to come upon us. He called the man Malcolm. I thought I recognized him as a major publisher, but I wasn’t sure. He was a small, stout man, almost perfectly bald, with a mustache. He didn’t introduce himself or speak directly to me. “Is this her, then, Ian? Your new girl?”
“She is my girl, yes.” His hand brushed along my arm, making that very clear.
Mr. Sterling and Malcolm talked about their upcoming golf date next week. Then Malcolm excused himself and drifted away to find them drinks. Perhaps Mr. Sterling thought I had taken offense to Malcolm’s reaction, or lack thereof, but the truth was, I was used to being ignored. When we were alone again, he took a moment to explain to me that a gentleman will never speak—or, indeed, even acknowledge—another man’s courtesan. It was a tradition at the Dollhouse, one meant to discourage gentlemen from lavishing attention on other men’s girls. It kept them all civilized, he said. “At times it can strain what we generally consider to be good etiquette,” he added. “But you must never feel that you are being ignored, because I assure you, dove, that you are
not
.”
A number of other gentlemen gravitated toward us. They shook Mr. Sterling’s hand, commenting on me but never speaking directly to me. I stood at his side, trying not to feel too much like a piece of furniture. I saw a number of people I thought I recognized from the society papers, publishers, real estate moguls, clothing designers, a scattering of politicians. I noticed the entrepreneurs like Mr. Sterling had a tendency to stick together in tight groups, while the politicians stayed apart, looking slightly lost. Mr. Sterling said in my ear, “In years past, the Dollhouse has been an exclusively upper working class society, but more recently the board has allowed a few pundits in, much to the chagrin of us all.”
He turned to his friend Malcolm, who’d fetched them both a tumbler of scotch. His eyes shifted over a collection of men. “Bloody hell, who let
Brian
in?” he whispered with scorching disdain.
Malcolm raised his eyebrows at that, glancing briefly at a man who stood near the wet bar, downing martinis like they were mineral water. He was in his early thirties, with sandy, salon-cut hair, a Gucci tuxedo, and a bored playboy expression. “Ah, Brian, our little Presidential hopeful and pretender to the throne. It’s rumored he
paid
his way in.”
“He’s alone?”
“Do you
see
any courtesans nearby?”
“He won’t last,” Mr. Sterling said with authority. “He won’t respect the Dollhouse. He’ll treat it like his own personal toilet. Like some common Union Square pickup bar.”
“That’s the best we can hope for, old boy.”
Brian was as well dressed as the rest of the gentlemen here, and I thought I recognized him from some local campaign from years ago, but there was something about him I instantly disliked. I knew he had to be at least thirty years old to have gotten in, but he had that look of a man who had never grown up, a randy sixteen-year-old in the body of a grown man, the type of guy who looked better suited to a sleazy peepshow down in Times Square than a gentleman’s club.
He was looking at me, but not like the other gentlemen here. I was Mr. Sterling’s girl, and they seemed to respect that. Brian was the only one raking his eyes all over me in a way that made me press my knees together and lean against Mr. Sterling’s arm. He must have sensed my unease because he placed his fingers in the small of my back and guided me into an adjacent room. “Perhaps you would like to meet the girls?” he asked to cover me.
The next room was a large hall of some kind of the type normally reserved for banquets. It was painted all white, with a black and white checked parquet floor. I saw a collection of beautiful women standing near the giant stone hearth, gossiping with drinks in hand. They were dressed exquisitely in long, flamboyant evening gowns or tiny, shimmering cocktail dresses similar to the one I wore. They sported professionally coiffured hair and nails and real diamonds glinting like a constellation of stars at their throats and wrists and ears. The term
society women
came to mind, making me hesitate. This was definitely not my crowd. I turned, but Mr. Sterling had rejoined the gentlemen in the other room. I was on my own. I took a deep breath to steady my nerves and looked back at them. I felt so awkward, like an intruder, like a little kid who had stayed up past bedtime to watch the grownups.
There was only one man among them, tall, youngish, mid-thirties, dressed in a very expensive Italian tuxedo and professionally tousled hair. He towered amidst the circle of beautiful women, defending his decision to buy a pair of pink deck shoes, if I was understanding the conversation correctly. One of the beautiful society women seemed unconvinced of the merit of pink deck shoes, which made me smile a little. Perhaps they weren’t as scary as I thought.
I took a few exploratory steps into the hall. The first room had had more traditional things on the walls—historical plagues, old fashioned firearms, and masculine pictures of English foxhunts. But this room was different. It seemed softer, somehow, more feminine. Stark, sepia-toned antique erotica was scattered across the walls, similar to the pictures in Mr. Sterling’s office. I looked up at all those pale, full-bodied women looking like forest nymphs from some forgotten mythology. There were girls on swings, and girls twined in veils, and naked girls with giant hunting dogs creeping mysteriously through deep woods. Mixed in were more modern pictures. I saw modern women with exquisite, wet and almost snakelike bodies, wearing big, fluffy fur coats or perched sassily in cane-backed chairs. Modern women sitting on Harleys with their backs to the onlooker, great tribal tattoos unfurling across their shoulders. All the photographs were in black and white. I couldn’t say they were pornographic. They were too much like high art.
I turned my attention to the curious sight of an exquisite, four-poster antique bed situated on a dais in the middle of the room. It was draped in white sheets and pillows, white veils hanging from the canopy. I took a step toward it. The sheets smelled like minty new linen.
The women bantering amongst themselves stopped and turned their collective attention on me. I felt a flash of panic. I half expected them to sniff like they smelled something bad in the room with them, but their expressions were uniformly bright. “It’s the new girl!” one of them squealed, and suddenly the gaggle of society women descended upon me, moving with impossible grace in their high heels, hemming me in on all sides and touching my shoulder and arms gently with just their painted and bejeweled fingertips.
“She’s so tall!” one said.
“But pretty!”
“I love her eyes. She has innocent eyes.”
“Well, dear, you know Ian has exquisite tastes in women.”
“He likes
natural
women.”
“That’s what makes him our Ian!”
I felt a blush creep up my neck as they introduced themselves to me, using only their first names. I met a Jennifer and a Lyndsey and a Hannah and a Barbara and a Norma Jean. I started having trouble following all the names after that. There must have been close to fifty women in all. “I’m Evelyn,” I said when they asked, choosing to use the name that Mr. Sterling preferred. I wasn’t feeling very much like
Evie Christopoulos
tonight.
The girls clucked around me, asking me where I got my hair done (nowhere) and where I’d gotten my “adorable little shoes” (I didn’t know, since Mr. Sterling had bought them, but I suspected Saks Fifth Avenue). I realized some of the women looked familiar to me. I glanced up at the shadowy black and white photographs on the wall and realized that some of them were in those pictures.
The tall, lone young man appeared at my side. He was blond and well built in his slim black formalwear. He smiled down at me crookedly. “Hello there, new girl. I’m Devon.” He pronounced it De
von
. He took my hand and brushed his lips across my knuckles. I was momentarily confused. I’d been told that gentlemen couldn’t touch or speak to any of the other courtesans. “So what do
you
think about the color pink? Overrated? Overused? Has Paris Hilton ruined it forever for the rest of us?”
I didn’t know what to say, so I just offered him a smile and tried to look informed.
“Oh no, cat’s got her tongue!” Devon declared.
“Better than
Brian
getting her tongue,” one of the other girls squealed.
“So true!”
The group giggled amongst themselves like an old fashioned kaffee klatch. I didn’t feel so awkward now. I was united with them in our common dislike of Brian. I turned to Devon. “Are you a gentleman?”
Devon leered. “Not lately.”
His answer set off another wave of giggles among the girls. “I don’t think Devon has
ever
been a gentleman!” a girl said, clutching his long arm.
“Says you, the slutmeiser!” Devon stated, looking down upon her fondly. The girl smiled, not insulted. Devon seemed the focal point of their attention once more, which relieved me greatly. He dragged her along to the wet bar where a number of sparkling waters were set up, and started refreshing everyone’s drink. I didn’t know what to do, but the girls were following Devon, so I followed them.
I smiled nervously and looked over the bar, noting that there was nothing alcoholic to choose from. It would have been nice to have a glass of wine just then to calm my jumpy nerves. I started asking about that, but Devon explained about the no alcohol rule for courtesans in the Dollhouse. He handed me a sparkling water in a Waterford crystal goblet and added, “The gents don’t want the ladies’ inhibitions impaired during gatherings, not that anyone
here
has inhibitions, mind. I’m looking at you, Claire.” He glanced over at the women he’d called a slutmeister, and Claire looked appropriately sheepish while some private joke passed me by and everyone laughed.
Devon filled in. “At last week’s gathering, Claire stumbled into the wrong playroom and started sucking off the wrong gentleman. Like
that
was an accident…”
“It was!” Claire insisted, clasping her hands together like a reprimanded schoolgirl. “It was a really dark room!”
“Uh-huh.”
She puckered her lips out at Devon. “Like you should talk, Lord of the Lewinsky…”
Devon laughed. “I may be a slut, but at least I know who I’m blowing, doll. Next thing you know, you’ll be doing
Brian
in a dark room.”
“Oh God…gag me with a spoon!”
Claire cried,
rolling her eyes ceilingward. “They say he’s got the clap.”
“I’ll
clap
when he’s expelled from the Dollhouse,” one of the other girls said, shuddering with horror.
The ice was broken and I started feeling more at ease. After the girls started breaking up and reforming into smaller cliques, Devon put his hand on my arm. I guess he didn’t want me feeling alone. “Don’t worry about them. I’ll protect you from the big, evil harpies of doom.”
“They don’t seem that bad.”
“They aren’t,” he assured me with a huge grin. “The dolls can be a little raunchy at times, but they’re sweethearts, all of them. I love them to bits.”
I liked Devon already. There was something comfortable and familiar about him, something that reminded me of my big brother, my best friend all through my awkward high school years. He put his hand on my arm and walked me around the room so we could look at the photographs together. “We’re like a family. A great, big, dysfunctional family.”
“
Are
you a gentleman?” I asked again, meaning it in terms of the Society.
He finally looked serious, but only for a moment. “No, I’m a courtesan like you dolls.” He sounded very comfortable about that, though he held up a finger. “Though the term is actually
courtier
in my case.” He drew the word out, making it sound very French and elegant.
“Do you all know each other? I mean…outside the Dollhouse?”
“We meet a couple times a week for lunch.” He smiled at that. “You’re welcomed to join us, of course. We like to catch up on gossip and talk about the gents behind their backs.” He grinned like that was a delightfully wicked thing to do. “And after your coming-out tonight, I’m sure
everyone
will want to get to know you.”
That last bit worried me a little. “It doesn’t bother you, being a courtier?” I drew out the word as well.