In the main hall, the chairs were still in place, but the men were gone, along with the white gauze girls. A couple stage lights lit the space.
Her bag was still on the counter. She sighed with relief. As she headed for it, Erik and one of the men who’d been with Mia on stage emerged from the dark. An attendant rose from behind the counter to hand them their coats.
“Oh!” Syria stepped back. “I just came for my bag.”
The attendant lifted it, but it had listed sideways, and a sheaf of Syria’s business cards fell from an outer pocket. She picked up the bag and tried to scoop up the cards, but several dropped to the floor.
“Allow me.” Erik bent to retrieve the errant cards, examining one. “Syria McMillan. You’re a photographer?” He flipped over the image. “Boudoir?”
Oh boy. “I am.” Syria wasn’t sure if she should ask for the cards back, or offer him one. They would know who she was. This new life she’d been leading, which felt like a private secret with her and Tyson and Mia, now seemed to be leaking out. Her stomach quivered, imagining what might happen if she became known for this, if everyone who called her for photos thought she’d have sex with them.
But Erik handed her the stack back. “Nice work. And nice meeting you.” He bowed to her, and she awkwardly bowed back. He was Filipino, not Japanese, but it was a nice tradition. She wished more people bowed.
The other man also bowed and the two of them passed her to exit down a different corridor. The real one, Syria surmised, not one for the help.
At least she had not had sex for money with anyone but Mia. Somehow this made her feel better. She waved to the attendant and scurried back to the dressing room to catch up with her friend and escape.
3: Doubt
Syria sat on the bed the next day with her coils of rope, trying to tie her own legs with a more elaborate knot than the double column. She wasn’t flexible enough, or something. The loops wouldn’t lie flat. She needed something to practice on.
A Santa doll her father had mailed to her from India when she was eight, his first and last time to recognize she was his daughter, sat on the bedside table. She picked the doll up and laid it in front her, quickly making a coin knot on his chest. That was always easy.
She undid the tie and began a chest bind. When Syria brought the rope down to his groin, the purple cord cutting into the white fur, she flung the doll across the bed. This was her father’s only gift, and she was doing bondage with it!
She tried to picture this man, who had loved her mother only a few days, and lied about his marriage and other children. Maybe she shouldn’t be sentimental. She didn’t even know him, and yet, something inside her insisted she find him.
Syria lay back on the pillows, staring at the ceiling. If her father knew what she’d been doing at that exhibition, what would he think? Would she be the sort of daughter he’d want to have?
The tears flowed out then, hot and unexpected. Syria wasn’t one for crying, hardly ever, but now they came, fast and unstoppable.
She’d chosen boudoir photography as a profession because she was good at it. Anthony, who’d taught her, told her she had an eye for lighting women. She’d felt until now that she’d made the perfect choice.
But even if she did contact her father, how could she show him her work? Her mother had simply nodded at the sample Syria had shown her, neutral about the whole thing. Of course, she’d only revealed the glamorous head shots, but still.
“What am I doing?” she shouted at the ceiling. Would she still be Photoshopping flabby arms and nipple slips when she was fifty? Seventy?
The sights and sounds of the exhibition came back to her, distorted like a dying carnival ride, skin slapping, men grunting, women kneeling before cock after cock.
Syria rolled on her stomach and tugged at an envelope on the side table, spilling the photographs across the bed. Her mother, glowing and happy, tight against her father. He’d lied! Why did she want him in her life at all? He let her go to save his own skin after getting caught, the eight-year-old secret busted wide open.
The pictures slid toward her into the valley of the bed created by her elbows. Her father looked at her earnestly, his dark eyes a match for hers. Did he have many affairs? Was her mother a one-time thing or a regular habit? She tried to picture him in the chairs before the stage, a girl on his lap, watching a sex show, watching her. Hell, she didn’t know who he was. Who’s to say he might not show up at something like that?
God, this was fucked up.
She had normal friends, people she hung out with before meeting Tyson and Mia, people she’d photographed and liked. She should call them up, do normal things, like go to movies and eat pizza and sit around coffee shops.