Resist (Songs of Submission #6)(36)

“Okay.” Jessica’s voice, soft and audible.

“That’s ‘okay, sir.’”

“Doesn’t that seem a little silly?”

“You want to do this or not?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Stand up.”

“I don’t want to hear this,” Jessica whispered to Myers.

He whispered shhh and patted her hand as my voice came through again.

“Stop trying to look saucy. This is a functional matter and not for your pleasure.”

The next part was hard to hear, but Margie turned it up.

“This is what it is, this is the kind of sex you’re agreeing to.”

I commanded her to put her hands behind her back and face forward, then I checked on her, asking if she was all right.

I watched her reaction across the table. Her face flushed, and her jaw set. I hadn’t seen her blush since the first time I’d kissed her. The red deepened for the next part, which Margie turned up.

“I’ll undo your jeans. I’ll pull them down to the middle of your thighs so it’s hard to walk. You’ll be uncomfortable, and that will please me. Then I’ll get behind you, and I’ll grab a handful of your hair at the back of your head and bend you over that table. I’ll take off my belt, loop it once, and slap it across those sweet white cheeks until you’re pink as a rose and your face is covered with tears. I’ll stop when I can stick two fingers in your cunt and feel how sopping wet you are. Then I’ll f**k you until you beg me to let you come, which I may or may not let you do. That going to work for you? Didn’t think so.”

“Do it.”

I noticed for the first time how shrill and desperate her voice was. At the time, it had sounded like a controlled whisper. On the recording, it sounded like a child’s whine.

“Jess, really.”

“Do it! Start with the hair. Or the pants. Whatever.”

“No.”

“Do it!”

“Stop, Jess.”

“Are you a f**king man? Or do you just beg and cry for what you can’t have? Is that how you get off?”

Then the crash.

Margie paused it. “We’ve heard the rest.”

“Where did you get that garbage?” Rinaldo asked.

“You Tube,” Margie said. “It had seven hundred views this morning. But let me refresh. Huh. Got about forty-two hundred now. Funny what people find entertaining, isn’t it?”

“A woman asking for it,” I muttered. Margie shot me a look, but I was spared the heel.

“She stole my phone.” Jessica’s eyes bore into me.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“The singer.”

“Go near her again, and I’ll kill you.”

Margie’s heel drew blood. I would have to buy her flats for our next meeting.

“Like you did Rachel,” Jessica said through her teeth. “Took sixteen years. But there’s no statute of limitation on murder, even manslaughter, Jon.”

Ryan Myers stood, closing his files. “We’re done here. Ms. Drazen, you and your client can consider our offer. Get back to me when you have an answer. The photographs still stand, as well as the possible pattern of abuse with his current girlfriend, which we’ll be sure to mention to the prosecutor.”

“Thanks for the warning.” Margie stood and shook his hand. Meeting over and, as usual, only the lawyers walked away unscathed.

Chapter 29.

MONICA

I wore bruise-hiding clothes for the meeting, but as I wrapped my scarf around my neck, I wondered if Jonathan would come back to me before or after they were gone. My eyes welled, but I choked it back. Self-control. A woman of grace. I had to be that. I could crash after the meeting.

The car was, in a word, themostfantasticthingever. Fuck Jonathan. I got to the meeting feeling as though I was the architect of a major planetary takeover. I would return the car as soon as I was done there, but until then, it was like a space pod in a science fiction movie. Up the elevator, I told myself the usual. My name is Monica. I stand six feet tall in heels. I am descended from one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. I sing like an angel and growl like a lion. I am music. I am a goddess. I choked on the last word because it was his, but I believed it. I didn’t think I ever had before.

I expected to be awed by the size of the lobby or the glass-enclosed conference room, but I wasn’t. The dark wood floors, the receptionists’ desk that put their heads six inches above the person they were talking to, the marble staircase to the executive offices, all of it would have given me an anxiety attack six months earlier. But on the day I actually had a meeting that would have sent my friends into fits of envy-laced congratulations, I felt not a bit of tension or worry. Everything was in its box. Every emotion, positive or negative, was put away.

I understood what Jonathan found so appealing about self-control. I was the master of my body, my feelings, my words. I was fully in the moment, keeping my shit together. I was unattached to the results of the meeting. I was only concerned with being in it.

I’d heard those sentiments before, but I only realized that I had internalized them as I waited to be brought to a meeting where I was but a single, struggling singer in a room full of people who could make my dreams reality. I had what they needed. I had the music.