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Iangle my head, admiring a painting of a woman with her hands out looking down below. It looks like she’s asking for help, but what is crazy about the painting is that there is nothing else. She’s completely naked with a look of anguish. It kind of reminds me of myself at this very moment in a room full of people wearing modern designer outfits. Women wearing futuristic designs made of fabric that could feed the poor for a month. The scent of different perfumes suffocates me for every second I'm standing here among the cold and unfeeling. I want nothing more than to not end up being one of them. Since I walked in with my father, I can feel their eyes burning my skin, trying to undress me with their eyes. My father introduces me to high society like a prized horse, hoping to pass me around like a fine cigar.
Like the man currently watching me across the room, his gaze never once leaving the tops of my breast as he raises his glass in a mock toast. My chest begins to tighten, and suddenly, I need air. I tear my eyes away from the man relieved that I'm near an exit.
The French door clicks softly as I lean against it and close my eyes. Exhausted. I felt like I was hyperventilating, and I was only inside for about twenty minutes at most.
A normal father would be offended or maybe outraged by a man looking at his only daughter suggestively. A normal father would expect other men around him to respect his sixteen-year-old daughter, but those were different times, and now, that sort of thing was expected when you're unmarried. Because your father knows it’s customary for you to marry and produce an heir for another member of high society when you turn eighteen.
I push off the door and walk toward the immaculate garden of topiary shrubs. The oversized animals loom above me, glaring down in disapproval. I'm not meant to be out here, in the dark, unchaperoned. I'd be safer inside, surrounded by black suits and lingering touches. But I might scream if I have to spend another second in that room.
"Do you always sneak away?"
Pausing, I turn around and must look like an idiot walking in a circle to find the source of the voice. I turn to the left, noticing a screen with faux plants meant to offer privacy from the other side of the makeshift garden.
I didn't notice another exit when I was inside. I step to the side to get a better look at the man standing behind the screen, but all I can make out is that he is tall, and based on the timbre of his voice, he isn't old.
"Do you always follow people you don't know?" I ask sarcastically, annoyed I can't see the man's face.
I can hear the smile in his voice when he says, "No. I'm not a follower, but I like to take a good look at things that interest me."
My heart pounds inside my chest, but if he came from the room I just escaped from, he's one of them. Part of the 1 percent of the assholes in this world who help build this place. Faux plants not needing sun; water too precious in a world trying to rebuild from a war caused by man because they valued technology instead of humanity.
"I'm sure you took a good look when I was inside, just like everyone else."
Other beautiful women are inside the room. All you had to do was ask another rich asshole willing to share his wife or available whore. What makes me so special?
I've seen some of those women leave my father's side of the house. It’s all the same if you're a woman on this island; you are young, beautiful, and passed between men like fine wine.
"I'm not sure what you mean. I only heard about one good thing inside that room, and it was you. I also noticed you like fine art. It's rare to see a beautiful woman in a room full of powerful people only be interested in an evocative painting."
I snort. "Is that what you tell all the women you’re interested in screwing when you go to these things? Business first, and then you try to find the first willing woman by following a young woman alone in the garden."
"You are quick to assume, Miss Sinclair. I thought maybe you were different."
He knows my last name, but I'm not surprised. Everyone in that room knows who I am and that my father brought me here to show me off. I know I'm being a bitch, but it’s hard to trust anyone.
I can hear him walk on the stone steps behind the screen, and I wait in anticipation to see what his face looks like when he comes around, but he pauses and turns to head back inside.
Wanting to have the last word since I'm pissed off that he didn't let me see what he looked like and was quick to dismiss me, I blurt, "Judgment is for the blind. Are you going to tell me your name or properly introduce yourself?"
"There's no need, Miss Sinclair. Like you said, there is nothing out here that I can't find inside."
I hastened my stride in my pointed sock-styled boots, attempting to reach him before he disappeared with a retort on the tip of my tongue, but I was too late. He was quick, and all that stared back at me was a dark wood French door with a tinted window.
When I went back inside, I spent the next two hours trying to find the voice that belonged to the infuriating man outside, but all I heard were different voices and eyes giving me suggestive looks. It was like he didn't exist, and I imagined the whole conversation.
"Your father is in his study, Miss Sinclair. He would like to speak to you. He says it's urgent."
I glance up at Gretel, my father's assistant, standing at the threshold to my yoga room from my pose, noticing that she looks like a freak upside down with her upturned nose and raised eyebrows. From this angle, she looks like she’s smiling.
"What does he want?" I ask, raising my voice over Nostalgia's “Plastic Heart” playing from the speakers.
"I don't know. He wouldn't say." She’s annoyed, probably because I don't lower the music."It's obvious…it's important, or he wouldn't need you otherwise."
I straighten, watching her face change to the pathetic one she always sports as I right myself. Gretel doesn't like me very much, but the feeling is mutual.
I pin her with a stare, letting her know the message was received and that she could fuck off somewhere doing the next thing my father instructed her to do besides belittling me and pointing out my father couldn’t care less about me.
I wait a few seconds until she leaves to bend down to retrieve my phone and cut off the music, wondering what my father wants.
