House of Steel (12 page)

Her fingers flashed across the keyboard,
hitting each key with ease as she logged into her account. The
welcome screen popped up reading, “Welcome Back, D. Your show is in
three minutes. Your guest is waiting.” She noted the two thousand
dollars deposited into her account, but the money didn’t matter to
Delaney like it did for the rest of the girls in the online
stripping community. She wanted nothing else than to never
need
the money. The stockpile was for Ann.

Her studio mate, Kandy with a K with DD
cups, had recommended she try it. After all, it was what had gotten
her through graduate school without any loans. Delaney had even
caught a glimpse late one night before finals, walking in on Kandy
with a K’s session. “Easy and harmless,” she had said through a
smile. Delaney had used a makeshift mask from a bandana that
covered the lower portion of her mouth - Clint Eastwood western
style - for her first session. Awkward, sure, but not entirely bad.
It had exhilarated her, something her non-existent sexual life had
been clearly lacking. The next night, she had picked out a pink
mask from The Red Flamingo, the adult store just blocks from her
apartment. She had walked past the store every day for four years,
never entering. It had taken her a week and four sessions with
strangers to realize how ridiculous it was to strip for men she
would never meet. With her final dissertation nearing, she had
forgotten to take the picture of herself clad in the pink mask,
holding a paintbrush between her teeth, off her profile page. And
when House_of_Steel had messaged her, asking for a private show
with one condition - that she paint for him fully clothed and send
the paintings to a PO Box - she had conceded and kept the mask. Ann
Jones’s health was failing.

The man behind House_of_Steel had intrigued
her, drew her in. He convinced her to keep coming back, fully
clothed, with canvases ready, making her feel a deep sense that she
was needed. They had met weekly online for the past three months,
but in the last two weeks, he had requested two visits each week.
He had deposited over thirty thousand dollars into her account, and
she had dutifully mailed out each canvas to the PO Box listed in
New York. She opened the tube of paint and buried herself into the
silence of the room, her mind quieting before she clicked on the
“Enter room” button. The icon of House_of_Steel flashed on the
screen before his deep voice pierced the silence, his video
blocked. He had always refused to display his video.

“Hey, D.”

A woman in a black dress and a pink mask
appeared sitting on the edge of a bed, a brush poised in her
hand.

“A new backdrop. The teddy bear makes for an
interesting mix,” he said, his voice serious. She turned around to
see the teddy bear’s glassy eyes staring back at her. A crawl
trickled through her skin.

“What would you like tonight?” she asked as
she turned around, dismissing the toy. She knew the answer, but she
asked anyway, as she always had for the past few months. She needed
this.

“A barn.”

Her hand began to make long, sweeping
strokes along the canvas, building the panels of the wood that
created the walls of the structure. The sound of the bristles
against the duck cloth repeated. It was the only sound that filled
the silence for sixty minutes.

16

DAY 3: Saturday, December 20 –5:00 p.m.

The final winter light began to fade on the
horizon, disappearing beyond the river’s edge. V’s eyes traveled
down the river to the old factories and paper mills that lined the
shores on the opposite side. More than one hundred fifty years ago,
the town of Appleton had started as a milling town, booming with
activity from logging camps that sent the logs floating down the
Fox River to Appleton to make paper. Most of the mills were vacant
now, though; some had been renovated into apartments and
restaurants near Leighton University. This Appleton was different
than what she grew up in. Parker Enterprises was building the city
one brick at a time and one murder at a time. Her eyes shifted to
more than five blocks away where the steel beams of Parker Tower
stretched into the sky. The building was covered with the layers of
snow from yesterday’s onslaught of accumulation. Her employer’s
crews would be back on Monday - two days - to start clearing the
snow to continue the construction. It was silent, much like the
rest of campus - except for the man inside the house she was
watching.

Her eyes settled back onto her target,
Theron Olson. She had found his name on the university’s website,
his name and face plastered on the Leighton Football roster page.
She had recognized him immediately. It wasn’t his large build,
stocky shoulders or brown hair - ten of the pictures had fit that
profile - but the dimple on his right cheek that she had spotted
when he escaped out the back door of Delaney’s house was a dead
ringer. He had only one dimple, beneath his right eye. Once she
knew his name, it was easy to find his fraternity house. Leighton
students could only live off campus if they were in a fraternity or
sorority, or if they could provide a reasonable explanation for
their inability to live in the dorms. Almost all the football
players were in Beta Theta Pi. He lived with several of his
teammates in the two-story, colonial fraternity house along the
shores of the river that she stood outside of, tucked behind a
garbage can. She was better on foot.

Theron walked past the window again, back to
the kitchen. He was one of three roommates that were in the house,
most likely the only ones living there through the break. He was
shirtless, despite the freezing temperatures outside, his hard
muscles flexing with each of his movements. He was handsome – and
charming, she was sure – but it was wrong. Scandalous. Unethical.
However, it didn’t warrant what she assumed Holston Parker would
have Gunnar do. Her employer knew about Delaney’s indiscretion, but
V hadn’t discovered why Delaney Jones was so important to him. Not
yet anyway.

Out of the corner of her eye, V saw a
familiar black sedan creep down the road, passing by the fraternity
house. She squinted, distinguishing the outline of a tall frame
with white hair behind the wheel. Adrenaline rushed through her
body as she realized he was here already, watching Theron, waiting.
Gunnar was the only person, next to her employer, that she had an
unrelenting need to unleash her revenge upon. The hourglass had run
out of sand.

17

DAY 3: Saturday, December 20 – 5:00 p.m.

The white flakes swirled in a gust of wind
and landed delicately on the window in front of Delaney. She stood
on the other side in a deep blue, floor-length dress cradled by the
warmth of the register blowing near her feet and the faux fur wrap
Meghan had convinced both Delaney and her maid of honor to wear.
Delaney hadn’t wanted to be a bridesmaid for Meghan, not because
she didn’t care for Meghan, but because she had no will to be in
the church. She had initially declined when Meghan asked her, but
Ben had convinced her otherwise, as always. For her brothers,
Delaney would do anything even if that meant returning to the only
place she had vowed never to return to.

When Delaney had walked through the door of
St. Luke’s, she had expected an earth shattering revolt from her
body. She had anticipated smelling the singes of the hair. The
menthol of his breath. She had inhaled deep, letting her chest well
high beneath her blue dress, but she hadn’t smelled any of the
scents from that night. Instead, the odor was of stale heat blowing
from the registers along the walls of the church. She had expected
to feel the excruciating pain that he had inflicted upon her
radiate into her pelvis. It was nothing like that. She had felt a
sense of power that she was returning despite him. Gunnar’s words
rung in her ears. Richard Rowan had gotten what he deserved and she
had prevailed. He had taken her virginity, her innocence, but he
hadn’t destroyed her. Delaney had eyed the stairs that led to the
basement, but she had decided against it. Not today. Not when they
were celebrating Ben. She would come back.

Delaney wrapped the white fur tighter
against her bare arms, hugging the warmth against her body, as she
stared out the window at the cemetery of the church. Most of the
headstones were buried deep under the inches of snow that had
fallen the day before. Only the tall headstones, mainly large
crosses, protruded from the blanket of frost. A large cross near
the middle of the cemetery stood stark against the rest. The dark
black granite contrasted against the ivory snow with circling
footprints around it. Someone had brushed off the headstone this
morning. She squinted, reading the letters that ran from the top of
the cross to the bottom.

LIVE.

She refocused her eyes, blinking to
remoisten them from the heat below her.
LIVE
. The letters
were clear, but Catholics had always confused her. She hoped, for
the deceased below that headstone, that there was a Heaven, and she
hoped, for the sake of Richard Rowan, that there was a Hell. She
knew that he would be there, despite the fact that he had somehow
believed God would forgive his sins. It had only taken her a day
after the rape to look up the 1 John 1:9 verse he had tattooed on
his neck: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will
forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”
Richard Rowan had believed that after raping her, and many others
she assumed, that he would be redeemed. There was no forgiving the
act of requesting a young girl to paint Saint Agnes, the patron
saint of rape victims and chastity, before destroying her. The
cruel premeditation had been a dagger embedded and then twisted
deep into her heart.

Delaney turned around to see her mother
sitting in a wheelchair next to Meghan. When Michael Jones had
opened the chair in the vestibule of the church, Ann had sworn like
a pirate in the house of God. Michael’s hopes of a docile reaction
from his wife in a place of worship were dissolved as he shushed
her like a four-year-old misbehaving in church. She had conceded
finally with threats by Ben who had promised her that he would
refuse to marry Meghan if she would, in fact, refuse to sit in the
chair occasionally throughout the day. She sat waiting in the chair
before any of the guests could see her.

The black gown hung from her body, the extra
material flowing on all sides of her. Ann had purchased the dress
not more than three months ago. Earlier in the day, Meghan had
helped her pinch the sides of the dress underneath her arms
tighter, holding them together with a few pins. It had improved the
fit, but the dress still swallowed her in a sea of black satin.
Meghan had brought along a shawl for Ann, which - at least to some
extent - hid the fact that her frail body was drowning in the
dress. All of the fluids the nursing staff had pumped into her body
had bloated her face, which in Delaney’s opinion, was masking the
hollowness she had seen the day before. The brown wig hung from her
head in cascading waves of chocolate just as Delaney had remembered
of her mother twenty years ago as a child. At least, she had
something.

“Are you ready?” Meghan asked Ann as she
turned to face her soon-to-be mother-in-law. Meghan fingered the
lace of her fitted, vintage dress. Her short, blonde hair was
pulled loosely back and gathered at the nape of her neck with a
small flower. Her green eyes poked through the netting of her
1920’s style veil that covered only a small portion of her face.
She was stunning.

“Are
you
ready?” Ann asked Meghan as
she set her hand in Meghan’s, placing a small, blue sapphire ring
in it.

“Oh, Ann, I can’t take this,” she said,
tears welling in her eyes. Delaney stepped forward to look at the
ring her mother had worn around her neck for as long as she could
remember. The small, silver band was intricately twisted to encase
a singular, oval shaped sapphire protruding from the middle. It had
been Delaney’s grandmother’s ring that Ann had inherited on the day
she had married Michael. Too small to fit her fingers, but
unwilling to enlarge the ring, Ann had worn it around her neck
since that day. Delaney couldn’t recall a time that she
hadn’t
seen the ring dangling from her neck. Until now.

“You will take it,” Ann ordered, handing
Meghan a tissue and covering her hand over the ring. “Now brush
that tear away so you don’t ruin your makeup. I might stage you up
otherwise.”

Meghan’s face flushed as she looked at
Delaney who was now standing on the other side of Meghan. She
nodded her head and smiled. Delaney knew, just as her mother knew,
that she would never get married. She covered Meghan’s other hand
with her own.

“Are you ladies ready? The show is about
start,” Michael Jones said as he opened the door to the waiting
area where they sat.

“You better believe it,” Ann said as she
stood from the chair with the help of Delaney. “And yes, I will be
walking down the aisle.”

***

Delaney’s eyes landed on the nail driven
through the bloodied feet of the statue. She followed the legs up
to see the remaining body of Jesus nailed to the cross. The looming
statue stood prominent with a backlight, the shadow shone dark on
the wall behind it. Candles lit throughout the alter area flickered
and burned bright against the dimness of the church. She watched
them dance, admiring their beauty and freeness. She had been raised
a Roman Catholic, mostly by the influence of her father, attending
mass every week in the same church she stood in today until the age
of fourteen. Michael would bring the three Jones children while Ann
would only attend mass on occasion and only then to appease her
husband. Delaney had spent her childhood listening to the chants,
miming the directions, but her attention was always drawn to
examining the artifacts and intricate architecture of the building.
Even as a child, she was an artist with a curious eye. The church,
she felt, had so much to hide within its massive walls and stone
statues. Ann Jones had once told Delaney that she had given up on
God when she was twenty-eight. Delaney had given up when she was
fourteen.