The Prairie Rose

Violet sat on her bed gripping her bear, Margaret, and facing the wall.   Nick was in the doorway, and she could hear him breathing.  He walked slowly towards the bed and sat down beside her, his weight pulling the mattress down.

“Why won’t you talk to me?” he said softly.  Violet shook her head a bit, and gripped her bear tighter.

“I was all alone.” she said after a long pause.  ”You left me all alone.”

Nick pulled her towards him and wrapped her in his arms.  ”I’m sorry.” he whispered in her ear.  ”It breaks my heart to leave you… you know that.”  Violet relaxed in the embrace but started crying softly, her tears wetting his shirt.

“Why can’t I come with you?”  she asked.  ”I’d be very quiet and I’d do anything you said.”

“Because the world out there is too terrible for someone as precious as you.” he said, kissing her forehead.

_______________

“Why can’t I come with you?” a small voice that sounded a lot like her own said.  Rosie felt the weight of the little girl in her arms.  Her blouse was wet from tears.

Rosie shook quietly, not knowing what to say.  She sat there just holding the child not knowing what to do.  She look down at Luz, and felt so helpless.

Rosie left the tent and turned to go into her bedroom.   “Well… that isn’t all that surprising.  The bastard must have had this planned from the beginning.  A clause that allows him to extend the contract…. if I’d only thought to ask if there was a written contract.  I’m such a fool.”  she thought to herself, chuckling.

She lay down on her bed and stared at the ceiling.  At least the music had stopped.  At least the compulsions were gone.  She remembered the satisfied grin on his face when he explained her fate, and started to grin herself.  The grin turned into laughter, and she laughed for five minutes straight, rolling around on the bed.  When she stopped, she closed her eyes and fell immediately into a deep sleep.

Rosie paced in the living room.  She’d been doing it for at least 40 minutes.  Adam had left an hour ago, which was good, she didn’t like it when he spent his time frowning her disapprovingly.

The music didn’t stop.  It kept playing over and over in her mind.  It grew louder and softer, faster and then slowed down, it kept changing so that she couldn’t just ignore it.

It made no sense.  The Funfair had opened.  She should have been free.  She should have been free….. that’s what the deal said.

She sat down in the middle of the floor, and grabbed her head with both hands, lacing the fingers into her hair.  What if the worst was true?  What if all of this… all of the nightmares, all of the compulsions, all of the music, was actually just from her own mind?  She had no real evidence that he’d been causing all of it.  What if she really was that crazy?

She noticed that she was squeezing her head hard enough that she was starting to have a tension headache.  She took her hands off her head, stood up and walked into the bedroom.  She turned on some music she’d gotten from a Les Invis dj, took off everything but her panties, and laid down in her bed, pulling the sheet over her.  She leaned over the edge of the bed and opened the drawer from the bed side table.  She took out a box of Sunny D packets (she’d need to get Dale to resupply her) and put one under her tongue.  As it started to dissolve, so did she.  The music couldn’t find her here, the high was too loud.

Rosie quickly dictated a message on her computer:

Janet -

No, I haven’t had a chance to watch African Queen yet.  But whatever you think is best.  I did try on the pants and the jacket, tell Anna Lucia that she can get started with the sewing.  And make sure you give her a raise… she’s amazing.

And yes, I know I promised to buy, and wear some of the clothing from that line you mentioned.  Send some to me at my new address and I promise I’ll get my picture taken by reporters in it.

You’ve been a godsend.  Did you think about my offer?  The boutique in the City of  Glass?  I know you hated the weather when you consulted on Devils in the Dust, but in the city it should be very nice.

Rosie

Rosie sighed and looked over the lists of candidates that Smiley had sent her.  They all seemed like reasonable choices.  There seemed to be so many choices to make these days.

She turned off the computer, went into the bathroom and soaked in the deep replica clawfoot tub she’d bought.  This time of quiet was going to be very, very short.

Rosie stared at the ring on her finger for a few moments before taking it off and putting it in her jewelery box.  Tears rolled down her face.  She wiped them and looked at herself in the mirror.  ”No Violet, you don’t get to cry about this.  You drove him away.  You were willing to do every last thing you could to make that man disappear, so you don’t get to cry now that he’s done it.  And stop pretending like you did it for him… for the Empire… for the goddamn human race.  You did it so that you got to control the news.  So that you knew when and how he was going to be disappointed.  You did it so that you got to be the one that broke his heart, not a stranger who finally told him the truth.”

She sighed and knelt by the bed.  She propped her elbows on it, and folded her hands in prayer.

“Dear Lord, please deliver me from all this.  Please make the things I need to do clear, and make me a path back to something that feels right.  Guide me, because I’m floundering.  Guide me, because my steps keep taking me deeper into the dark wood.  Every sunbeam of light seems to be tainted by gray and black streams of something slick and oily.  Hell, even my own kin would rather trade me for a reflection of myself, then to help me find my way back to you.  Lord, please find a way to me.  I need your guidance.  Amen.”

She lit some candles and put them around the tub which was already filled with suds.  The flickering lights glinted off the bubbles as she turned on the stereo to some jazz and sank into the tub.  She lifted her glass of champagne and watched it glimmer in the candle light.  ”I’ll miss you, Andrew Thorne, you old son of a bitch.”

Rosie picked up the book, the cover held together by tape, and looked at the faded picture on the front.  The girl was wearing a light sundress and looking out over a prairie, her back to the viewer.  She had on a somewhat tattered straw hat.

Rosie remembered when she’d asked her mother about the books she read.  She wanted to know why her mother read what her father called “salacious filth.”

“Honey, these books, they are like dreams.  In these books you know there’s gonna be a happy endin’.  You know that the girl and the boy will end up together, and that the wicked will be punished.   At the end of the book, no one’s hungry or ill.  Sometimes I just need to disappear into a dream like that.”

She opened the cover of her mother’s favorite book and began to read, “Rosalie Jacobs picked up the basket from her bureau and went out into the prairie to pick some wildflowers for the supper table.”

“Sometimes I need to disappear too, Mama.” she said into the empty room.

As the bike sped up she felt the vibrations building between her thighs.  She loved the speed, she loved the wind, she loved the feel of the road.

She drove the bike up the winding roads of Santa Monica.  She remembered always loving riding the bike, when her brother would take her along, when she could borrow one, and finally when she had her own.  This was speed, this was motion, this was freedom.

As she hugged the curves of the road she felt all the stress and frustration of the months peel away.  She was left raw but exhilerated.

The drug cocktail injectables that they had given her rattled around in a large box, she handed it to the driver.  The doctor had said they were vitamins and immunization boosters.  So far they had no sign that she was carrying anything infection that they knew of, but they weren’t sure.

He’d clucked at the state of her hair and skin.  At the weight she’d lost…. well he seemed pretty pleased about that.   He mentioned again the idea that she just get her rich boyfriend to buy her a new body (apparently he’d been reading the tabloids).  She shook her head and asked him what the other options were, since she really didn’t want to look ancient before her time.  He asked her which spa she was going to, and she responded with the name.  “They have some treatments there that may be able to reverse the recent damage.  If that doesn’t do it, we have some new UFP technology that they say can literally regrow skin.”  She explained to him that she’d be out of town for an indeterminant amount of time, and would check back in when she got back.

“Bugging out until the election is over eh?”  he winked at her, “Smart girl, that kind of instinct will keep you alive.”  Anger flared in her eyes but she quelled it and smiled “We’ll see, right now its just a vacation.  I’m planning a wedding for some friends, and there’s lots to do.  Hopefully I’ll make it back in time for the big event.”

Rosie leaned back against the seat and let her mind drift as the car drove to the spa she had her reservation at.  How do you erase nine months of misery…. and did she want to erase nine months of  growing and changing friendships, of distance from the duties that faced her here, and in the JET… no, she really didn’t, but she wouldn’t mind erasing the new wrinkles she had, and revitalizing her hair.  As the car pulled up to the low one-story building, Rosie sighed and got out of the car as the driver held the door.  It was time to relax.

She had just finished toweling off when she lay back on her bed.  “800 thread count biosilk blood red sheets” she said to herself as she gratefully stretched out.  Her bags from the trip were still packed and lying in the closet.  She sipped from a bottle of iced tea she had just gotten from the fridge.  The cold moisture on the outside felt like heaven.  She pushed the button on her bedroom remote control, and the lights turned off, the fan above her head slowed to a barely audible speed.  She drew the top-sheet and a light blanket over herself, and fell promptly asleep.