Blog #3 - Noir by Proxy

A scene from Black as Orange...
  I remember this part most of all. Because this was the day when everything that was supposed to be normal became everything that could never be normal again. All because I couldn’t sit back and be a good girl. I couldn’t let nature take its course. I couldn’t just let the bad things come. I had to make them worse. I had to fight. Because real life isn’t like a picture show. In real life, it’s hard luck for the good. Here comes the end. It’s curtains. No applause. Off to the bye and bye, no pie in the sky.
  “You’re shaking,” Olivia said.
  “Maybe it’s just cold in here,” I said.
  “Really? I hadn’t noticed.”
  Olivia and I were in the dining room. All the guests were outside because Dad was about to give his speech to the investors about the new track being built up near Los Angeles, the so-called city of angels. Most corporate honchos don’t do that kind of thing, giving presentations at home, but my dad wasn’t like the rest of them. He liked to be down to earth and personal and not stuffy with how do you do’s and you look well’s.
  He was good at what he did. Smart. He had a way about him. And everyone knew he knew trains better than anyone else.
  But he’s still just a man. And all men have a fault. I know that now. Olivia made that be more true than anything.
  But where was I? Oh, yes. The cold.
  Olivia was standing there looking at me and I was trying not to shiver. There she was, in her dress as black as a moonless night, showing off the work of God. So perfect.
  She was wearing that smile, too. That smile that is like an invitation after a knock. Always with that smile. So subtle and chaste. But with a touch of evil that only I could see. Everyone else fell for her, just like she wanted them to. But she hadn’t counted on me.
  “What are you doing in here, Joanna?” she asked me. It was then that I noticed something that gave me pause. She had one of her hands behind her back.
This is it. Do it now. Say it now. That was what I thought then. Because I knew then, as I know now, that death was coming no matter what.
“I’m here because I followed you in here.”
She didn’t look at me the way she should have, the way any normal person would. Instead, she moved a little closer to me, crossing at the far end of the dining room table, her hand still behind her back.
It was then that I heard the fire crack from the library across the hall. My heart skipped and I almost jumped. For a moment I thought that hidden hand held a gun. And one of its bullets was for me. But I knew how ridiculous that would be. She wouldn’t have shot me. Not then. Not before I lifted the veil on her.
  She kept moving toward me, gliding like she always did. Each footstep from her high heeled shoes hitting the marbled floor and filling the room with echoes like a drawn out drum, each percussion closer in time.
  The hidden hand.
  “Why would you follow me in here?” she asked, almost playfully.
  “You came in here,” I looked down at her hidden hand again. “What’s in your hand?”
“My hand?”
  “Yes.”
“Oh. You mean this.” She pulled out a small something. Not a gun. But still with its own fatal instinct.
  A cigarette.
“I hope you don’t tell on me. That I slipped away for a cigarette just before things get exciting. Not very proper, I admit.”
“My lips are sealed.” I took a step back to gather my nerve.  “At least on that.”        
  “Not very subtle, Joanna. Am I supposed to guess?”
  I couldn’t let her get the upper hand, not in our game. She’d already beaten the house after all, a royal flush straight to my father’s heart.
  “Do you need a match?”
“You’d be a dear.”
  I wanted her dead right then and there. Endearments laced with venom, not with love. From that angel of avarice.
From her mouth to my father’s ear.
I walked over to one of the cabinets and got a book of matches. When I got back, I gestured for her to sit down and she followed my lead without protest or hesitation. Just like a lady should.
  I sat down next to her. We were close, facing each other. I lit her cigarette and put the matches on the table. I’d never been that close to her before. I’d never been able to see how every sharp curve was perfectly mirrored in suggestiveness.
She was beautiful.
  Truly.
  And it was in the eyes. Green like emeralds. They asked you to dance with every flicker. Even those lips. Red stained, the smoking drifting out. She spoke without speaking.
  That’s something I never wanted to admit, wanting to be like her. Wanting that certain something.
I think of myself in that moment, in my dress, a soft yellow like the new day sun. Olivia next to me in hers, with silk dark as the midnight hour. We were the beginning and the end. And I think anyone who looked at us would have thought the same. But there was part of me that was closer to her than I ever thought possible. Night was falling on me. I know it now. But at that moment it was just a glimmer of a darkness yet to come.
“I’ve never seen you like this, Joanna.”
“How do you mean?”
“So...,” she said with another drag of her cigarette. “So scared. Or are you still going to blame it on the cold? Maybe I should ask Andrew to turn up the heat for you.”
She was right. I couldn’t blame it on the cold. But I wasn’t to be stopped.
  “You think you can do anything, don’t you?”
“Oh, my sweet daughter, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“My father fell in love with you, not me. I’m not going to let you do this to him.”
“Do what?”
  “Use him. You don’t love him. You’re after something. I don’t know what. But I’m going to find out.”
“Let’s just say, for a moment, that I was up to something. How would you go about finding out.”
“I would have you investigated.”
“Investigated? Sounds so unbecoming you. I never would have thought words like that could come out of a mouth so innocent.”
“It’s money. This new deal with the railroads down in Los Angeles. You made sure he went through with it. You pushed.”
  “He has his financial advisors. That’s not the business of a lady.”
  “Does the name John London ring a bell?”
“Doesn’t seem to.”
  “He’s a private investigator. I’ve read about him in the papers. I could have him look into you.”
  “You’d do such a thing?”
  “Yes. I would.”
She leaned in to me. She reached out and put her hand on my wrist, ever so gently. Her expression changed, like a new mask to cover the old one.
“I know you don’t trust me. Taking your father away from you the way I did. I wouldn’t trust me if I were you.”
  Those fingers on my wrist, making sparks up my spine. I was paralyzed, every part of me at the mercy of her touch. And that face, looking like a plea before the mercy of the court.
  And then as easily as she had slipped it on, the mask of appeal was gone. Instead, there was only the piercing daggers of those inviting eyes.
“I could take everything, couldn’t I? It wouldn’t take much. Because I know your father would do anything for me. Men are like that, you know, when they think they’re in love. Has a man ever felt like that about you?”
I was almost breathless. I knew I wasn’t supposed to answer but for some reason I tried.
“I don’t know. . . I think so.”
  “A girl pretending to be a woman.”
She came in closer. And closer. The hairs on my arm feeling the tips of her fingers sliding further up, each tingle like a heartbeat of its own.
  Then her lips were at my ear. She had me.
  “So you have no idea how it feels,” she began to whisper. “If ever a man did, there’s so much that can go wrong if you’re not careful. I wouldn’t want something bad to happen to you.”
  That smile that was supposed to be so innocent, it started to creep wider. I knew that kind of pleasure. It was the kind that reveled in someone else’s fear. She was enjoying this. I could feel her shadow, so deep, pressing down on me as if it had substance.  
  “But it would be so easy for you...”
  I was falling deeper. The light was fading. I could almost feel her cheek on mine. “So easy for me?” I whispered back. 
”To get hurt.”