Phelan's eyes are black as space, and as cold. It's wrong for anyone to be this ruthless and this intuitive of others' feelings. It's a dangerous mix.
Shevon shivers as he picks up a lock of brassy gold hair off her shoulder, then drops it. "Tone it down. Looks too hard."
She starts to argue. She's seen the woman she's meant to play; screeching laugh, liquored breath, hair too bright, and way too flirtatious. She's hit on the one client Shevon has started thinking of as "hers" and she's made her husband's life hell. Her hair should look hard, like shavings of fool's gold.
Then she sees the deadeye stare of her pimp, the boss who holds so much of her life in his hands, and she goes back to the sink.
When she finishes, she doesn't look all that different from herself. Makeup changes the shape of her mouth, the tilt of her eyes, adds a false dimple at the corner of her mouth. Pale lemony ringlets curl softly around her face. She makes herself forget everything she's observed of Ellen Tigh. She is half herself, before the attacks, before she was a prostitute, and half her mother, a mix of gracious lady and brilliant engineer. A non-drinker. A faithful wife.
Just what the customer requested.
.
.
.
Saul makes his way down the cramped corridor. He's more embarrassed about his choice of fantasy that the fact he's even here at all. Ellen is catting around with someone new, and whatever treats she's buying off the black market isn't for him. If he showed up, flat-out asked for a frak, she'd say yes, even if the new chump was still in her bed. There was a time when that was good enough. If it wasn't for the dreams…
Ellen, less makeup, no ambrosia on her breath.
Ellen, driven by love of work instead of love for the next party, the next conquest. Instead of the next chance to hurt him.
Ellen, lying still and quiet in his arms, and this one always makes him wake up weeping, wiping tears away before he's the subject of her derision.
The young prostitute opens the door, and the deck shifts under his feet. She's so much like his fantasy Ellen it hurts. Her lips curl in a real smile, not a smirk. She looks honest and kind.
It was worth the rambling explanation in a dark corner with that crime boss Phelan, to get here.
Saul could've spent hours talking to this Ellen-lite—she may be a working girl now, but it's obvious she's done other things in her life, before—but her clock pings the quarter-hour and she gives him a look that reminds him what they're there for. He lets her undress him and for once, there's no mocking of his sags and wrinkles, there's no horny drunken ripping of tunic and pants. It's sweet and loving and it makes him wonder if an Ellen like this ever existed, or has always only lived in his head.
The sex isn't that great…his Ellen has memorized enough sex books so that when she's on her game, it's like frakking a dervish: turns and swirls and positionings straight off an Aphrodite's temple. Objectively, his wife is an incredible frak…he knows this.
He's heard this.
This version is too loving to be a thrill. She's a little shy and comforting and looks into his eyes like she's known him forever. Then they're naked on her narrow rack and for the first time in ages, Saul's making love to his wife (or a version of her). She's present in a way that his Ellen never is. His wife is sex on scaffolding in dim but public corners, daring, teasing. This Ellen is love under the covers on a rainy night after the kids are in bed.
His sleep after he comes is immediate, deep. He dreams of this Ellen, her eyes shut and a mysterious watery barrier between him and her.
This Ellen brushes his tears away as he wakes. Now that it's over he sees the differences, the artifices she's used to paint a pretty picture. He remembers reluctantly telling Phelan what he wants and his stomach roils.
The Ellen he wants never existed. It's stupid, his feelings for her.
Like being in love with a ghost.
He leaves a little extra on the table and doesn't look at her when he leaves. His steps are quick…he needs a godsdamn drink, he tells himself. And there's a bottle in his and Ellen's quarters with his name on it, urging him on.