Page 83 of Total Exposure

And it makes me sad that lies… can be so soothing.

Makes me feel guilty too. Because it’s way too easy to soothe people. You just say what they want to hear and they believe you.

Trust you.

It works on men too. I know. I’ve been that man.

But I was the glue, I remind myself. That part wasn’t a lie.

And I’m the glue now too. I’m the only thing holding Evangeline Rolaine together at this point.

It occurs to me that this is a very serious role and I’m neglecting my duties. Neglecting her in favor of a past mistake. Forgetting why I’m really here. Not here, according to Jordan or her doctor. But here according to me.

I don’t want to hurt her. I just… don’t think I can help it.

“Write your poem,” I say into the intercom. “And then go upstairs and put on the blindfold.”

She looks up at the camera I had to rig up after her last tantrum, her expression one of total and utter confusion. Kinda like mine if I could see it.

“What?” she asks in a soft voice. But there’s a hint of disbelief in her question. Like it’s exactly what she wanted to hear next, but she can’t believe she heard it.

“Do it.” I whisper now. Let most of my words be muffled by the static and crackling of the intercom.

She takes a deep breath, squares her shoulders like she needs the courage, and begins to write.

That’s when her phone, sitting on the desk in front of my computer monitors since she left it on that hallway table the second day she was here, beeps an incoming alert.

I pick it up, unable to read the message, but I think it’s a voicemail. There are two icons with enough uncracked screen to press them, and neither are for the phone. But I press one until it starts to wiggle and rearrange the icons until the phone is in the right spot. Then I press it and play the message.

I listen to it three times, then call the number he left, plotting a new twist to the story we’re telling.

Evangeline sits there agonizing over her words for hours. Hours.

So long, the arrangements I start making get made.

So long I run out of memories of Augustine to dwell on.

So long I get hungry and make a peanut butter sandwich and snap still images of her and then retouch them like I would back in school when I cared about how the fucking pictures turned out.

So long, I’m just about to scream that nobody gives two fucks about her stupid poem and to just get her ass upstairs so I can come up and fuck her.

But then she says, “OK,” and stands up, walks to the kitchen, and leaves the book on the counter. She turns, but her hand remains on the cover. Which is just your run-of-the-mill notebook cover. No picture or anything. Just plain black.

And then she turns back. Like she might want to rip those words out of that book and stuff them down the garbage disposal so I never get to see what she wrote.

I’m just about to say something when she draws in a deep breath, turns, and walks away.

I don’t bother following her steps up the stairs on camera. Or along the hallway to the second set of stairs. Or up to the bedroom. I don’t even watch her take off her clothes, even though I never told her to do that, and slip the tie around her eyes like an obedient child.

I’m too busy thinking about the words in that book. Words she wrote but didn’t want to write.

I just look up a few minutes later and there she is.

Lying on the bed naked. Her fingers between her legs. Her mouth slightly open as she rubs her clit. Her perfect breasts rising and falling with the fast beating of her heart.

She waits for me.

I make her wait.