Authors: Anneke Jacob
As She's Told (2 page)
*SirTheo has left d/sTO
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As She’s Told – Anneke Jacob
*Mikesgirl has left d/sTO…
And so on, until only his own nick and shadow's and two others were left on the screen. A netsplit; the fabric of the network got tears in it sometimes. Probably not long before it was repaired and the group rejoined itself.
Anders had barely allowed himself to wish for a private chat – it was way too soon – troll city. But it seemed the netgods were with him. He typed fast before they changed their minds.
*halley2 has left d/sTO
*shadow has left d/sTO
*one4all has left d/sTO
Anders looked up from the keyboard, stared at the screen and uttered a string of Danish curses. "Joachim' was alone on the list. He waited, staring at the screen. He searched IRC for an hour for shadow. Gone. He went back 9
As She’s Told – Anneke Jacob
the next night, and the next. She wasn't there.
***
I was almost finished with my final year when it all began, living alone in a little apartment in a house in the west end of downtown. Two rooms on the second floor, hot and dry in winter and hotter in summer, a bit of a dump. But lucky to have a place of my own at all. I'd had it with chaotic shared houses, stumbling over someone's latest hookup roaming the halls, total strangers sharing my breakfast table. Having to hide my towel so no one else used it to mop the floor, or worse.
And I needed privacy. It was hard enough acting normal at school. Even harder to keep body and mind concealed in a house full of raucous extroverts. I spent half my life on the net; well, who didn't? But I was always on edge in case someone curious walked in.
The chats got me nowhere, and neither did ICQ, or mailing lists, either before or after I moved. Guys trolling, trying to talk me into cyber scenes.
One total stranger after another telling me he was my master and ordering me to suck his cyber cock. No thank you. I got mad, then I thought that my little bits of communication might be putting out the wrong signals, so I shut up. Mostly I lurked. There seemed to be no one like me, which would have been at least reassuring, or like my opposite, which was, let's face it, the holy grail. Bits I could relate to here and there, enough to get me excited, but never the whole package all in the same place. I hung on, put one foot in front of the other, directed my own performance, no matter how stupid and wrong it felt. Took what care I could of the body that continued, depressingly, my own. I felt attached to the world in only the most tentative ways – mostly polite surfaces, no anchors. Even on the net, where my most intense realities were, I hovered at the edges, always ready to run for the hills.
And then one night someone understood me. It felt like a bell ringing –
a good solid gong. He knew what I was talking about, and he didn't have the answers, but at least he had the same questions. We had maybe five minutes.
And then the net went down and he was gone. My program tried its multiple servers and still couldn't get back on. I sat there watching it fail over and over. At last I took it as a sign that I had better finish the paper that was due the next day, and then I had two days – and half of two nights – to finish work on my database. My least favourite part of the entire Information 10
As She’s Told – Anneke Jacob
Studies curriculum. I had never had such a hard time concentrating, and keeping my mouse off the mIRC button.
But maybe that's not all the truth. I could have had just a peek, especially on Friday night after I sent the thing in. But I did other things, like sleep. I'm not sure what I was scared of. That he wouldn't be there? That he would? Probably he wouldn't live up to that initial flash of insight. Of course he wouldn't. That would be asking too much of anyone's life, especially mine.
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As She’s Told – Anneke Jacob
Magnetic North
It was the beginning of Anders' busy time, and he worked hard during the next couple of days to keep his mind off that conversation. Still, he found himself abstracted at break times, and on a couple of occasions let his crew direct themselves, with mixed results. The temperature had dropped again; the sunshine was hard and bright, but shadow's words evoked in his mind the smell of warming soil, and darkness.
There was a munch that Saturday, chiefly for x-girl's birthday, to which a number of d/sTO regulars were invited. Anders tried not to kid himself; he'd never seen someone with the nick 'shadow' at any function, and discouraged as he had been, he'd still gone to enough of them to know who was who. "She might have changed her nick," a voice whispered. "She might be there." But though the chatroom was supposedly Toronto-based, people came through from all over. He hadn't had time to check her location. She could be from Australia. And if she was there, she could be fifty. She could be repulsive. She could be a man.
The restaurant was jammed and noisy, the group dispersed over several tables with everyone moving around to lean over and talk and go to the buffet. The fetish wear was subdued; a studded collar here, a PVC skirt there, nothing you couldn't see on Queen Street West any time.
Anders scanned the room for sources of information. A familiar voice came to him, raised over the babble. He tracked through the crowd to its source: Leda, in full narrative flight. Leda was a kind of Kevin Bacon hub in the local d/s world; any 'six degrees' fetish community sequence would have to include her. Multitudinous play parties aside, she'd befriended half of the men and nine-tenths of the women, including, at one time, Anders' ex. Leda was telling a story to her table at high volume, but when she caught sight of Anders she jumped to her feet.
"Ooh, Joachim!" She curtsied and craned her neck up at him. "How can I serve you?" The table roared. This was a running joke from the IRC chats, where she routinely served cyber refreshments to the room, with a servile running commentary. The clamour of voices and clattering plates made it hard to hear.
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As She’s Told – Anneke Jacob
Anders bent down to her ear. "Leda, do you know someone called shadow?"
"Who?"
"Shadow!"
She surveyed the crowd. "There," she pointed. "In that booth in the corner. The girl with the dark hair."
He stared in disbelief. "No. Are you sure? Shadow who was on IRC the other night?"
"Probably. I don't know another one." People began demanding the punchline of the story, and the table reclaimed her.
The booth was across the room and people kept walking in between, blocking Anders' line of sight. He took a long look, and felt his heart bang high in his chest. The woman, when he could see her, looked young and slight. Her skin was pale olive, and her hair massed out in waves to her shoulders. She was wearing something russet and inconspicuous, and was sitting back in her seat across from a very young Goth pair who seemed to be absorbed in their own conversation. Her dark eyes were following the dialogue, but she wasn't talking. She looked still and solitary despite the company, and very small.
Anders made his way toward her, feeling heat radiating from his centre outward. The woman had dark-rimmed eyes, oval cheekbones under warm smooth skin, a bow-shaped mouth, all very still. He couldn't see much of her body behind the table, but though slender there was a hint of shape that drew him faster. The pair across the table turned toward her and appealed for her opinion on something, and she smiled and looked down, but didn't say anything. They went back to their dialogue; the appeal had been form only.
Anders reached her side and swiftly crouched down next to her.
"Shadow?"
She stared, startled, and her lips parted. Then she swallowed. "Yes?"
"I'm Joachim."
Her face lit up. "Joachim? From the other night? Really?"
"Yes, really," he smiled.
"That's – you – " She made a confused gesture that ended with a hand momentarily against her mouth. Then she slid over toward the wall to make room for him.
Anders sat down and they looked at each other. Again he was aware of 13
As She’s Told – Anneke Jacob
a thumping in his chest, and he could see the flush colouring her skin. Both of them were breathing faster than sitting down usually requires. At last when she wrenched her eyes away, he spoke.
"I looked for you…"
"I – I couldn't get back on that night, I'm sorry. And then…"
He took a deep breath. "My name is Anders."
"Maia."
"Why 'shadow'?"
"I lurk in corners." This made him laugh.
"Why Joachim?" She pronounced it almost right.
"Middle name. I didn't know you'd be here. I didn't even know if you were in Toronto." She smiled shyly, and his hand wanted to touch her. It was a conscious effort to hold it back.
"I've never come to anything before." She had a low, husky voice, and despite a strained undertone of nerves the voice was touching him, entering his pores somehow, reaching the back of the neck and gently running down his spine. "But Nikki – x-girl – has been very nice to me…" she smiled wryly "…and she's very determined." She looked past him rather fixedly, and he wondered if she had come with the same hope as himself.
Anders examined her face. With mild surprise he saw that the thick-fringed eyes weren't some trick of makeup; they were all hers. Her nose, long and straight, gave her a look that was decidedly non-Western; some ethnicity he couldn't place.
They talked about the chat room. They talked about his work and her school. They touched on politics, and with silent but profound relief found that their views were similar. (It's possible to be intimate with someone whose politics you hate, but it's not easy.) After that first long look she dipped into eye contact as if into too-hot water, before flushing up and retreating. When the dark brown eyes did focus on him, Anders had a sense of depths and possibilities that threatened to shut down his capacity for speech. Maia kept going silent in the middle of a phrase. But still they talked. They talked about the movies they liked and the bureaucracies they hated, the books they had read and the fiddle music he played in his spare time. He made her laugh with stories about a succession of strange characters he had employed doing renovations, like the one he'd found early one morning sleeping it off under a half-finished deck, directly below the 14
As She’s Told – Anneke Jacob
feet of the oblivious householder.
What they didn't talk about was their exchange earlier in the week.
Anders had the feeling she would fly in panic if he brought it up too soon.
He took care to sit back and not crowd her, very aware of his size in relation to hers, and the fact that he was blocking her exit. She was like a small bird on a branch, nervously flicking its wings. He watched her hands tremble whenever he took a deep breath, watched them still slowly when his next words were something safe. But their first exchange lurked behind every subject: an unspoken theme, a hidden texture. It coloured the air around them, lurid colours, no matter how decorously she sat, no matter how careful he was to keep his long limbs out of contact with hers. He watched the quick rise and fall of her breasts – not slight, as far as he could tell – felt the warmth in his groin, and talked about bluegrass clubs and the labyrinthine ways of the City Hall building permit department. The crowd was thinning around the food bars, and it occurred to them that they had forgotten to eat.
They got up and Anders took a better look. The girl was even smaller than he'd thought; barely above five feet. At the sight of her miniature beauty he felt a wave of impulses: protective, possessive, lustful. He had to turn away, hide his erection behind steam tables. They consumed their food without much interest, surprised that they could talk around the tension and enjoy it.
He led her around danger zones, asked questions about her papers that she said she wished someone had thought of before she'd handed them in, mentioned his own university years.
"Political science; I enjoyed it," Anders said. "The courses that fed into my shit-disturber side, anyway. But I did renovation work in the summers, and when I finished school there were all these jobs waiting. Sometimes we end up doing what we're meant to do. I was always meant to be a builder."
He described the real handyman's special of a house he'd just acquired for himself. He encouraged Maia through tales of the hectic house she had shared. There was still a small group around Leda and Nikki. When Anders realized he was hungrier than he had thought and went back for more, Leda motioned Maia over.
"You two are eating each other up." She grinned wickedly.
"Do you know him?"
"I do indeed, honey, and he is okay," Leda assured her, answering the unspoken question. "He and my friend Janice had a thing for six months last 15
As She’s Told – Anneke Jacob