Zelda's kitty purrs
The Turkish cigarette smoulders between Zelda's fingers, its paper darkening to ash in uneven increments.
She watches the ember creep toward her knuckles without blinking, the orange glow reflecting in her kohl-rimmed eyes.
The Crimson Room's amber lamplight catches the copper strands of her bob, still dishevelled from earlier pleasures, as she shifts against the silk pillows. Her chemise dress remains pushed to her waist; pale thighs bare against the bedclothes.
"You want to know everything," Zelda says, and her voice carries that particular quality of someone who has already decided how much truth to parcel out.
She brings the cigarette to her lips, inhales, speaks through the exhale. "Then I'll start at the warehouse. Where he came to discuss 'logistics.'"
Kitty's dark eyes don't waver. She holds her own cigarette case loosely in one hand, the engraved silver catching candlelight. The pearls at her hip shift as she settles more deeply into the arrangement of limbs and silk.
"It was three weeks ago," Zelda continues. "Tuesday. The river stank of dead fish and early thaw. My father's foreman had gone home with flu, so I was alone in the office above the cold storage floor, going through manifests. The kind of evening that makes you wish for company, any company, just to break the monotony of ice delivery schedules."
She pauses to tap ash into a crystal dish on the nightstand. Her hand doesn't shake, but the gesture is deliberate, buying time.
"The door opens without a knock. I look up ready to dress down whichever dockworker has forgotten his manners, and there he is. Tony Blue. Standing in my doorway like he owns the frame, the building, the river outside. Charcoal suit immaculate despite the warehouse grit. Those eyes—"
She laughs, a sharp, unhappy sound. "You all know those eyes. Ice in August. He says, 'Miss Armitage, your father suggested I speak with you about expanding our mutual interests.' Just like that. Mutual interests. As if we had any."
Vivian shifts on the bed, her beaded dress rustling. She pulls her velvet choker higher on her throat, a nervous habit, but says nothing.
"I should have thrown him out," Zelda says. "I knew better. I've known men like him my entire life—my father's associates, the ones who smell opportunity like sharks smell blood. But he moved as if he belonged. Closed the door behind him. Crossed the room to where I sat at my father's desk, and I didn't stop him. I didn't stand. I let him come to me."
The cigarette has burned down to her fingers. Zelda stubs it out, reaches for her silver holder on the nightstand, and fits a fresh cigarette into its grip.
She lights it with the gold table lighter from her clutch, the flame illuminating her face in brief, dramatic contrast.
"He didn't talk business. Not then. He talked about the warehouse—the way the cold storage units hum at night, how the ice blocks catch lamplight like quartz. He noticed things. He asked if I ever walked the floors alone, if the solitude ever felt like power or just loneliness."
She draws smoke, holds it, releases.
"I told him power. I was lying."
Kitty's expression doesn't change, but her thumb traces the edge of her cigarette case once, twice.
"He came around the desk. I could have stood then. Kept distance between us. Instead, I stayed seated, and he leaned against the desk's edge, towering over me in a way that should have felt threatening and somehow didn't. Or maybe it did, and I liked it. He reached down—"
Zelda's voice catches, recovers.
"He reached down and touched my chin. Tilted my face up to look at him. And he said, 'You're not what I expected, Red. Your father talks about you like you're decoration. You're not decoration.'"
Tallulah makes a small sound, not quite a laugh. She has retrieved her own cigarette holder, holds it unlit against her lower lip.
"I knew what he was doing," Zelda says. "I'm not stupid. Flattery is the oldest tool in the box. But he said it like he was surprised. Like he'd discovered something. And then he kissed me."
The word hangs in the room's thick air. Somewhere beyond the velvet curtains, Roscoe's saxophone seeps again through the walls—a slow, mournful progression of notes.
"He was—" Zelda stops.
Starts again.
"You've all kissed him. You know. But this was different somehow. The first time, I mean. Before I knew. He took his time. Didn't rush. His mouth tasted of the peppermint he must have been sucking in the car, and beneath that, tobacco, and beneath that, something dangerous that might have been strength held in check. His tongue didn't demand entrance. It requested. Teased at the seam of my lips until I opened for him, and then—"
She gestures vaguely with the cigarette holder, searching for words that won't come cheap.
"He used his tongue like he was learning me. Mapping me. Not the sloppy invasion you get from boys who think enthusiasm substitutes for skill. He traced the roof of my mouth, the sensitive spot behind my teeth, retreated to let me chase, then captured my tongue and sucked—"
Zelda breaks off, takes a hard pull from the cigarette.
"I felt it between my legs. Immediately. Like he'd run a direct wire from my mouth to my pussy. I was wet before he touched me anywhere else."
Vivian's breath has gone shallow. She adjusts her position on the bed, silk whispering against silk.
"I don't remember standing. I don't remember him lifting me onto the desk, but suddenly I was there, papers scattering, the wood cold through my dress. He kept kissing me. Never stopped. His hands found my garters, my stockings, and I didn't stop him. I helped. Hitching my skirt up around my hips like some dockside—" She laughs again, harsh.
"Like someone who wanted to be fucked on her father's desk by a stranger. Which I did. God help me, I did."
Kitty finally lights her own cigarette, the flame from her lighter steady as a held note.
"He pulled back to look at me. Spread out on that desk with my skirt rucked up and my underwear—white silk, I remember, absurdly virginal—already showing a dark spot where I'd soaked through. He didn't smirk. That would have been easier. He looked at me like I was precious. Like I was worth the trouble he was taking. Then he sank to his knees."
Tallulah's hazel eyes widen. She sets her unlit cigarette aside.
"On the warehouse floor. Dust and ice melt, and God knows what else. He didn't care. He hooked his fingers in my underwear and pulled—slow, so slow—and I lifted my hips to help him. I was naked from the waist down on my father's desk, legs falling open without shame, and he looked at me like I was the only thing in the world. Then he put his mouth on me."
Zelda's voice has dropped to something almost intimate, despite the audience. The confession has become its own kind of seduction, or perhaps its own kind of purging.
"His tongue. Christ, his tongue. He didn't tease. He didn't build gradually. He went straight for my clit and sucked, hard, and I nearly screamed. The warehouse was empty, mostly, but there could have been workers, could have been anyone, and I didn't care. He licked me like he was swirling top-shelf cognac. Like he'd been waiting his whole life to taste me. Long strokes from bottom to top, then circling, then dipping inside—"
She shudders, visibly, the memory still physical.
"He fucked me with his tongue while his thumb worked my clit, thrummed my button, drummed my bead; and I came in maybe two minutes. Maybe less. Shaking apart on that desk, my heels digging into his shoulders, pulling his hair without meaning to."
The Crimson Room's candles flicker in a draft no one can locate. The scent of Turkish tobacco mingles with the jasmine and spent sex that still permeates the silk sheets.
"Tony didn't give me time to recover. While I was still trembling, he stood, unbuckling his belt with one hand, the other still stroking my thigh, my hip, anywhere he could maintain contact. He pulled me to the edge of the desk—my ass hanging off, unsupported—and pushed my knees wide. Spread-eagled. Completely open. I should have felt exposed, vulnerable. I felt powerful. He looked at me like I was the goddess of sex."
Zelda's cigarette has burned down again. She doesn't replace it.
"He entered me with delicious segmented strokes, and I was so wet from his mouth and my own need that his stiff thickness slid into my warm encasing slick."
She stubs her butt.
"He didn't pause. He fucked me hard, the desk edge jamming under my ass with every thrust, and I wrapped my legs around his waist to pull him deeper. He was—"
She searches for precision. "He was big. Curved slightly upward. Hit a spot inside me that made the painting on the wall turn impressionist. And he talked. Kept talking the whole time."
"What did he say?" Vivian asks, the first words she's spoken, her voice husky.
"Sauve prick. He said I was tight. Said I felt like velvet, like heat, like coming home. Said he'd wanted me since he saw me across a room at the Drake, that he'd jerked off thinking about this, about me spread open and taking his cock. Filthy things. Things that should have made me feel cheap and instead made me feel—"
Zelda's composure cracks, just slightly.
"Worshipped. He said he could feel me clenching around him, that I was going to come again, that he wouldn't stop until I did. He fucked me, relentless, until I came screaming his name. Actually, screaming it. In my father's warehouse. Where anyone could have heard."
The silence that follows is heavy, textured. Tallulah retrieves her cigarette, lights it with a hand that trembles slightly.
"He finished inside me," Zelda continues.
"No question of pulling out. No hesitation. I felt it, the pulse of him, the heat flooding me, and I came again from that alone, the sensation of being marked, claimed. He eased over me, breathing hard, his face buried in my neck, and I stroked his hair like we were lovers. Like this meant something. Like he hadn't just used my body and I'd let him."
She stubbed the cigarette she had previously stubbed.
"We lay there for maybe ten minutes. The warehouse cold seeping in, our sweat cooling on our skin. He kissed my throat, my shoulder, gentle now, almost tender. I believed it. I believed all of it. When he finally withdrew, I felt empty in a way that had nothing to do with his absence and everything to do with my own stupidity."
Zelda reaches for her clutch, retrieves the gold lighter, and turns it over in her fingers without lighting anything.
"I needed a cigarette. He knew where my father's private stock was kept—Cuban, the good stuff my father reserves for associates. He offered to get them. I let him. I stayed on that desk, partially naked and used and stupidly happy, listening to his footsteps descend the stairs to the storage floor below."
The lighter catches light from the candles, reflects it in fractured patterns across the velvet canopy.
"I heard voices. His, and another—Morrison, my father's night foreman, who should have been gone but must have come back for something. I couldn't make out words at first. I was too far, too sated, too foolish. But I heard my name. 'Armitage's daughter.' That came through clear. And then Tony's laugh. Not the warm one he'd given me. Something colder. Harder."
Kitty's hand has stilled on her cigarette case. Her dark eyes are fixed on Zelda with absolute attention.
"I got up. Found my underwear, my stockings, dressed with shaking hands. I moved to the stairs. Quiet. I've learned to be quiet in that warehouse, to move without being heard. I crouched at the top of the steps, looking down through the iron grating."
Zelda's voice has flattened, stripped of its earlier heat. She speaks now like she's reciting lost stock from inventory.
"Tony had his suit jacket back on, every hair in place. He looked like he'd never touched me, never been inside me, never called me beautiful while he came. He was smoking one of my father's Cubans, gesturing with it as he talked to Morrison.
"The daughter's the weak link," he said. "Cornelius thinks she's decoration, but she's been studying the books. She knows enough to be dangerous, not enough to be careful. I've got her now. She'll tell me everything about the cold storage routes, the customs contacts, the payoffs. Another week, maybe two, and I'll know enough to take the whole operation. Accardo Ice and Storage. Has a ring to it, don't you think?'"
The lighter slips from Zelda's fingers, lands silently on the silk sheets. She doesn't retrieve it.
"Morrison laughed. Asked if I was any good. Tony smiled—that smile, the one that made me spread my legs—and said, "Worth the effort. She melts like butter. You should see her face when she cums. Like she's never been fucked properly before."
"Then he mentioned you, Tallulah. Said you were next on his list. The Glessner girl, he called you. Said you'd be easier, more desperate for attention."
Tallulah's cigarette dips halfway to her lips. Her hazel eyes go distant, fixed on some middle space where the past is assembling itself.
"I didn't wait to hear more," Zelda says. "I went back to the office, gathered what I needed, and left through the side entrance. I didn't cry until I was in my car. I didn't stop crying for an hour. And I didn't tell anyone. Not my father, not—"
She gestures at the women around her. "Not you. Not until tonight. Because I was conned. Because I wanted him, even knowing what he was. Because some part of me still wanted to believe the lie, even after hearing the truth."
The saxophone beyond the walls has shifted to something faster, more desperate. The notes seem to press against the velvet, seeking entrance.
"I melted in his arms," Zelda says, finally.
"Willingly. Eagerly. I gave him everything he wanted, everything he needed to destroy my family, and I did it because he kissed as if he meant it. Because he made me feel, for two hours in that warehouse, like I was more than my father's daughter, more than a ledger entry, more than—" She stops. Exhales. "I melted. That's what I need you to understand. That's what I need you to forgive, or at least to understand. The betrayal wasn't just his. It was mine, against myself. But, fuck the sod, he knows how to use his tongue."
Kitty reaches out. Her hand finds Zelda's, covers it, squeezes once. The gesture contains no words, offers no comfort that would be false.
Simply presence.
Witness.
Tallulah stubs out her cigarette with precise, deliberate pressure.
The silver holder clicks against the crystal dish. She looks up, hazel eyes meeting Zelda's, then moving to include Vivian, Kitty, the room itself in her address.
"Girls," she says, and her voice carries that particular Chicago drawl she deploys when she wants to appear careless, "I swooned hard too."
She reaches for the decanter on the nightstand, pours rye into a tumbler with steady hands.
Drinks.
Sets it down.
"The rake came to my charity gala," she continues, her gaze distant, focused on some point beyond the gilded mirrors. "The Hospital benefit at the Drake. March, it was. I was bored out of my mind, surrounded by society matrons who wanted to discuss my marriage prospects and my father's health. He appeared at the champagne fountain like he'd been conjured. Charcoal suit, those eyes, that smile that made you feel like you'd been waiting your whole life for him to bestow it on you."
She laughs, a sound with no humour in it.
"He talked about philanthropy. Can you imagine? Tony Blue, discussing the moral obligation of the wealthy to ease suffering. He made me believe he cared. Made me believe I cared, underneath all my cynicism. And then—"
The candle flames shiver.
The Crimson Room holds its breath, waiting.
Tallulah's hand rises, touches her own throat, drops away. "I got lost in his finger work."