Millennium Falls
Chapter One
By Robin Smith
Copyright © 2009
It was a long drive back from Portland, and Zi drove it in silence after the disaster of yet another blind date. The radio had proved too peppy; she’d switched it off to facilitate her sulk and now had nothing to listen to except the growl of the old van’s engine and the drumming of the October rain. She was tired, not so much from driving, but deep down in her soul where it really counted. It was late and it was dark and Zi had lost the last shred of hope.
Not that there’d been a whole lot of hope to begin with. That was her own fault and she knew it, but looking back over her life, she still couldn’t see where she could have changed things, even if she went back to the very beginning. She’d been a “little miracle”, born when her mother was creeping up on fifty and her father already retired from the service that had been his home for decades. Growing up with them on their remote scratch of farmland, she remembered only happy days, but even then, it hadn’t been a typical parent-child relationship and the transition to her teens had really been one of caretaker. Her mother passed away when Zi was still in high school and, as if he figured he’d held on long enough, her father’s health had begun its slow decline. They took care of each other and they were still happy, but college was out of the question. Friends? Her father’s war buddies and her mother’s old sewing circle were Zi’s friends; she had nothing in common with the young crowd that occasionally overlapped her space in school. Still, it was a good life, but cancer had finally ended it and now Zi was alone.
There was a little money. Not much after the bills were taken care of, but a little. She sold the house and moved to the nearest place big enough to be called a town, where she took an apartment with one of her father’s army-guy grandkids, and as nice as Rosalie was, Zi always knew she was only there as a favor to the memory of her Daddy. She got a job dipping fries and it was tough, but she got by. Sort of.
Then the recession that this country insisted it wasn’t in came knocking on her door. She lost her job and really, the only thing worse than having to beg for a job at Burger Barn, was begging and losing it anyway. With that and nothing else on her résumé, her prospects in this podunk town were slim. Rosalie, whose parents were alive and well and perfectly willing to fund her Grand Dream as a concert cellist from Bayberry, Oregon, had begun (nicely) hinting that the rent was going to be due whether or not Zi was working. There was a very good chance she was going to be living out of her car at the end of the month and thank God, really, that she’d sold the truck instead of the van.
After exhausting her limited mundane options, Zi had given in to more desperate measures: She’d gone to Alt.com, the last refuge for many an anonymous scoundrel, and tried to hire herself out as a live-in submissive. It seemed like such a sensible thing to try, at the time.
Why not? Zi’s childhood, golden haze notwithstanding, had left her with a deeply-rooted yearning for structure. Even her clumsy teenage fantasies had included some innocent form of discipline: She would get lost or end up dangling from a cliff somehow, then ‘he’ would save her, scold her, sometimes (o scary, wonderful times) spank her, and then they’d kiss...
Of course, in an area where everyone knew everyone, introducing real spankings during a clumsy teenage make-out session was entirely out of the question, but in a new place... well, all sorts of things became possible. Besides, the people on Alt.com had to know about being discreet, right?
...right?
Zi groaned and switched on the radio, catching the middle of a commercial about shoes. Some lady was going into double chocolate orgasms over a pair of pink leather pumps with faux diamonds over the straps. Come on in. Only sixty bucks. Nothing said sexy like a new pair of shoes. Zi switched it off again. Her only pair of shoes in the world were the clunky sneakers on her feet and they were three years old. She never really thought about shoes. What did she know about being sexy?
Her reflection in the rearview mirror, a dark twin tinged green by the light from the dashboard, caught her eye for a moment. She sighed unhappily at herself, then stared back out at the road. She should be pretty. Her folks had told her often enough that she was, but that was folks for you. Any fool with a television set knew the difference between what was pretty and what wasn’t. The only thing that bothered her was the nagging idea that she could be pretty if she just knew how, but the ancient voodoo secrets that mothers passed on to daughters were lost to her. She’d grown up doing tough things, dirty things; to her, ‘get prettied up’ meant that you took a shower and ran a brush through your hair two or three times. If you were going to town, you changed your shirt to one without chaff or bird-dirt on it. Pink leather pumps? Where were you supposed to wear those?
“On dates,” Zi grumbled, and that was probably part of her problem with these last ten. She didn’t know how to dress the part. Rosalie had been absolutely beside herself, which was more emotion than she’d shown towards Zi for pretty much their entire co-existence. She’d been flinging her own clothes at Zi towards the end, since Zi refused to throw away her dwindling funds on new togs. ‘Blind date is just an expression!’ she’d kept howling. ‘You can’t count on him to really be blind! For God’s sake, take off your bra!’
Which, of course, Zi had not done. Because the last thing she wanted to do was to doll herself up and give these men the wrong impression.
Not that giving them the clunky sneaker-feet impression had gone any better for her.
The ad she’d placed at Alt.com said simply, “Inexperienced submissive ready to take the plunge. Seeking instruction and gentle (at first) discipline in a live-in situation. No sex.”
No sex. How hard was that to grasp? No sex. Two words, five letters, no confusion. No sex. Why did fifty men (and six women) immediately inundate her with authoritative, bloodcurdlingly sexual descriptions of her submissive duties, and why did they all include the word ‘break’? Zi didn’t think she needed to be broken. She wanted to be herself, just a self that included spankings and didn’t include sleeping in her van. Sure, the words “live-in” did carry their own implications and she wasn’t completely adverse to the idea of sex in that relationship (was, if the truth be told, a wee bit turned on by the idea), but was it so wrong to think that there should be a pretense of romance first?
But okay, she’d managed to weed out ten men who seemed to be able to read, and she’d set up ten (horrible) blind dates. Tonight’s was the last, but it was damn near a perfect copy of the first, the second, and every other one: After a series of painfully-shy emails and private chatrooms, she’d set up the meeting at a nice, neutral restaurant in his hometown (tonight’s had been in Portland, a three-hour drive for her and her gas-guzzling van). He seemed like a nice guy... normal-looking, sweet smile... he blushed when he asked if he could pay for dinner... and so she’d gone with him when he invited her back to his place to see where her room would be. And not three steps inside his door, his clothes were off and he was pointing at a sawhorse with straps, saying, “All holes will be accessible at all times and all holes belong to me.”
All holes. Holes. That was what she was for the price of a dinner at Denny’s. Three holes on a sawhorse. It was too depressing to even cry over.
So back she drove in silence, from the bright lights and the big city back to the nothing little town, with her nice “Told you so” roommate to deal with tonight and the creepy, quasi-psycho next-door neighbor guy sure to loom over her tomorrow, and nothing, nothing at all, to show for it except a bellyful of cheap seafood alfredo and disappointment. All she wanted was a nice guy who would give her a spanking once in a while... and free room and board until the burger joints started hiring again. That was all. Just a little discipline and a little respect, a little security and a little kid.
Little kid.
There was a little kid in the middle of the road!
Zi’s clunky sneaker slammed down on the brake. Zi’s gas-guzzling old van screamed as she calmly controlled the fish-tailing spin that kept trying to happen on the rain-slick road. Trapped in the beam of her headlights, the kid flinched back, raising one arm (less as a panicked shield than as protection against the light, she noticed that even then), as she managed a full and complete stop at the end of four black stripes of steaming rubber. Zi crashed forward against the steering wheel and back against the seat, letting out a single coarse cough instead of a scream. After a moment, the kid timidly lowered his hand and touched the hood of her van. That was how close it came.
Adrenaline kicked in, revving up her heart and popping sweat out in chills all over her body. There was a little kid in the middle of the road. She was reasonably certain she hadn’t wet herself, but everything below the beltline was fairly numb at the moment. There was a kid in the road, but she hadn’t hit him. He was looking at her. Zi’s teeth chattered a few times and then gently stopped again. The kid in the road was looking at her like he thought she was going to do something. Zi’s stomach flipped over one more time and finally lay quiet. She supposed someone really ought to do something.
Zi turned the engine off, but left the running lights on. She hadn’t seen a car coming or going for more than an hour, but it was just her luck that one should happen along now and plow into her in the dark. She unbuckled her seat belt with shaking hands and got out.
The kid backed up, eying her warily but without fear. She showed the kid her empty hands. They were still trembling. She said, “Are you okay?”
The kid thought about it and nodded.
It was a boy. She thought it was a boy anyway. It was hard to tell with hairstyles today. He was wearing black slacks and shiny black shoes and a dark blue shirt buttoned down to the wrists and up to the neck. If he’d been wearing a tie, he’d have been at home in church. Or a funeral. He looked to be about eight years old, maybe a tall seven or a very small ten, sandy blonde, with a solemn face and dark, intense eyes. She saw all this in the space of a second, but kept staring at him anyway. It was hard to look away. The mere reality of the kid could not seem to be separated from the reality that she’d nearly hit him, that she surely would have if she’d been fiddling with the radio, or if she’d been yawning, or sneezing – or crying, which was far more likely.
In that instant, Zi could actually see herself in the flickering red/blue lights of a police car, sobbing hysterically as she tried to explain to some block-faced cop that she hadn’t seen him, couldn’t stop, that he’d just come out of nowhere. Her stomach see-sawed, but didn’t turn over. She supposed she was getting a grip on herself. Nowhere, that was the thing to focus on. Where had he come from?
Zi tore her gaze away from the kid to look around, but saw the same dark nothing she’d been driving through all night. This was backwoods Oregon, nothing but trees in every direction. She saw one or two lights in the distance, but that was all. It seemed very important to her somehow that she handle this right and part of handling it meant making sure the kid was not just removed from danger but put down again where he belonged.
“Where are your parents?” Zi asked, her heart still banging away at her ribs hard enough to shake her voice. “Are they hurt? Are you in trouble?”
“No.” The kid did some more hard thinking. At last, he said, “I live here.” His voice was like the rest of him – small, intense, and serious.
Zi stared at the dark and the nothing. “Where?”
“Close.” The boy shrugged. “Sort of close.”
She looked at him, troubled. He looked back at her, complacent. Hesitantly, she said, “Are you... running away?”
For the third time, the boy gave that obvious consideration. Then he sighed, dropping those eerie eyes. He nodded. “I’m sorry to have frightened you. I’ll go home now.”
Zi put out her hands, then drew back. “Kid, I can’t leave you alone out here. I just can’t. It’s cold. It’s past ten and... the next guy might not have my brakes. Now you should never, ever go for rides with strangers, but I need you to get in the van with me, okay? I need to take you home.”
The boy sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. It was a curiously adult gesture, one staggeringly out-of-place on his small body, but he did it without artifice.
“Please, kid,” Zi begged. “Strangers can be bad, but I swear I’m not. I swear. I just need to make sure you get home okay.” She hunted for something more to say, something convincing and safe. “I’ll give you my driver’s license,” she blurted, and immediately winced. Like he was a car salesman or something.
He looked at her through the hand still pinching at his nose. That look of adultness came over him again, aging him immensely. He looked at her like she was the child, and a particularly trying one at that. Then he dropped his arm and was a boy again, just a boy on a dark, rainy road. “All right,” he said. “You can take me home.”
He went over and climbed up into the van, shaking his head a little as he went.
“Sort of close” equaled another twenty minutes navigating the van up winding dirt roads just wide enough to admit her. The boy said nothing except, “Turn here,” or “Slow down, there’s a sharp curve ahead.” He kept his hands folded primly in his lap the whole time. He never quite lost that thin-lipped look of adult exasperation.
Her ears actually popped a few times as she climbed the wooded hills. The kid had gotten quite a long way out. His parents had to be out of their minds with worry. Zi had not been a particularly trying child, but she remembered once, just once, taking herself into town when she was eleven to buy an ice cream with her chore-money. She hadn’t told her folks she was going because they were napping and she honestly thought she’d be home again before they woke up, and in any case, being people of sound reason, they’d know she was coming straight home, right? Only when little Zi had come strolling up the walk, Momma had come flying out the door with her arms out and tears simply pouring out of her, so overcome by fear that she’d actually seemed to be yodeling as she screamed for Daddy Burt to come quick, she was back, she was home, she was safe.
“The gate is just around the corner,” the boy said suddenly, breaking her out of this ugly little reverie, thankfully before she got to the part where she had to see her Daddy also crying. “I’ll have to get out to open it.”
Zi slowed even more, taking the blind curve at a crawl, and then stopped. She probably would have stopped anyway. The gate was that impressive.
Stone walls ten feet high and tipped with spikes stretched off in opposite directions from an iron gate whose stark bars had been softened in the center by a sculpted silhouette of black trees. Overhead, in gold letters over a black archway, were the words, Millennium Falls. Beyond the gate, beyond even the beautifully arranged shrubs and gardens, was a mansion. No, not even a mansion. An estate.
“You can go now,” the boy said. “I can let myself in.”
“Shouldn’t I go with you?” Zi asked. She wasn’t at all sure of the etiquette involved here, but seeing that gate made her very aware that there probably was one, and she reasoned that was the thing to do. “Don’t you think I should talk to your folks?”
“No,” said the boy, and he didn’t have to think about it that time.
“Well, I really think I’d ought to.”
“Of course you do,” the boy sighed. He got out to open the gate, leaving the passenger door open, presumably so she’d know he was coming back and not panic. She probably struck him as the panicky sort, especially compared to him. It was hard to think of him as a runaway, all things considered.
For the first time, it occurred to Zi that anyone who went about running away in such a calm and business-like manner might actually have something to run away from and she realized that returning him might actually go badly. She had no experience with unpleasantness, with shouting and hysterics... she didn’t think she could handle them well. She still felt very strongly that she had to do the right thing, but no longer knew what the right thing was. So when he got back in the car, Zi did not immediately pass through the open gate. Instead, she gripped the steering wheel tightly and said, “Are you going to be okay?”
“Yes.”
“If you need to go somewhere else, I can take you. I mean, if you’re scared to go home...”
The kid looked at her, first with surprise, then with a touched and touching sort of smile. It was the first he’d shown her, and it made him look, if possible, even older. “No,” he said. “I’ll be just fine.”
So she drove on up to the palatial stair and the wide double doors with the lamps burning on either side and parked. She got out and walked with the kid up onto... well, you probably didn’t call it a ‘porch’ when it was this fancy, but she didn’t know what else to call it... and knocked, first with her knuckles, then with the gargoyle-head knocker. Silence followed, while Zi and the kid waited. She shivered. He didn’t.
“It takes a moment,” the kid said, just as Zi was about to open her mouth.
They continued to wait.
Zi raised her hand hesitantly toward the gargoyle a second time, but just then, the door opened.
The man standing before her looked exactly like the sort of man who would live in a house like this. Exactly. He was a grown-up and somewhat darker version of the kid, with the same intense eyes, the same thin mouth, the same high cheekbones, only chiseled by age into something almost scarily handsome. He was also dressed in black slacks and shiny black shoes, but his shirt was white and the top-most button was undone. He was also wearing a vest, possibly the first silk vest Zi had ever seen, and had a thin, unknotted tie draped around his open collar.
The man looked at the kid, his eyebrows slightly – but only slightly – raised. Then he looked at Zi. He looked at the kid again, and both of them seemed to think about things very hard. Finally, the man said, “Do you know what time it is?”
He said it like a good actor in a bad play, gamely going through the motions without making any real effort at sincerity.
The boy said, “Yes,” very gravely.
They stood there.
“Go to your room,” the man said.
The boy turned to Zi. “Thank you,” he said, and shook her hand. It was an absurdly firm grip for his small, cool fingers. Then he went inside and out of sight.
The man looked at Zi, thinking. He frowned several times, then finally sighed. “What can I do for you?” he asked.
“Your son was in the middle of the road,” Zi said.
“Yes, I will speak to him.”
“I nearly hit him.”
“I’m very glad you didn’t.”
They both seemed to realize the weakness of that statement at the same time. He stepped aside and gestured, looking flustered in a vague, handsome way.
The inside of the house was just like the outside, only cluttered up with expensive-looking antiques. The man led her through several rooms before seating her in an overstuffed chair before a roaring fire in what would be called a living room in any other house. In this one, it was probably a lounge. There was half a glass of deep red wine on an end table beside her, next to an open leather-bound book. Looking at it was like looking at a painting in a museum, something by Renoir, perhaps. Still Life with Book. Renoir would probably put flowers in it, though. Or fruit. But there were no flowers or plants of any kind in this room. ‘Nothing living,’ Zi thought, and rubbed at her arms a little.
The man promptly went to the fireplace and stirred up the flames a bit. Then he took a seat across from her on a leather sofa and looked uncomfortable.
“Was that your son?” Zi asked, a little desperately. What do you say to a man whose runaway kid you’ve nearly run down?
“Yes,” he said. And after a moment, “Thomas.” Yet another moment, somewhat longer than the first, during which he seemed to realize that introductions were an unavoidable necessity. He gave into it without good grace. “My name is Moorecott. Archer Moorecott.”
“Zi Bartlett,” she replied automatically, and blushed. “Well, Elizabeth, but I guess I couldn’t say Elizabeth when I was little so... um... you know... Zi. I actually said Zibetts for a long time when I was really little, but then I went to school and realized it sounded like something a frog would say, so I shortened it.” Zi could feel her eyes widening as her brain listened to this appalling flood of total nonsense come out of her, but that was all she could apparently do about it. “Bartlett,” she blurted. “Like the pear.”
They took turns staring at the fire.
‘Zibetts,’ she thought.
“We don’t see many visitors. I’m afraid I’ve fallen out of the habit of receiving them,” said Mr. Moorecott suddenly. He stood up and went to the liquor cabinet, his hand hovering over a selection of unlabeled cut-crystal bottles. “May I offer you a drink, Miss Bartlett?”
“No, thanks. I’m driving.”
He continued to look expectant and a little bewildered, as if he didn’t understand the connection between driving and not drinking, but when she didn’t launch into another blathering diatribe, he sat back down. He gave the glass of wine at her elbow a longing look, then rallied himself to inquire, “A long drive, I must assume. And a pleasant one?”
“Apart from almost hitting a kid, yeah. And it rained a lot, actually. The leaves have pretty much all turned and fallen off the trees. They’re out there in these big, slimy heaps beside the road... all grungy with exhaust-grime... plus, the radio kept cutting out... you know, come to think of it, it was kind of an ugly drive.” Dear God, please make her shut up. “And, uh, I should be going in any case. I just wanted to make sure he got home okay, you know?”
“Yes, of course. It’s late.”
As if the hour and not the circumstance of being in the middle of the road were the issue of parental concern here.
“Yes, it is late,” Zi agreed, briefly losing her grip on sarcasm. “Awfully late to be running amok in the road on a school night.”
“Thomas does not attend at the present.” Mr. Moorecott frowned again, and sternly added, “But that certainly does not excuse his behavior.”
“He’s not in school?” Now it was her turn to frown. “He’s what, eight? Isn’t there a law?”
Mr. Moorecott’s brows swept up. “Is there?”
“I’m pretty sure there is.”
“I see.” He stood up and paced over to the fireplace. He leaned one arm on the mantel, bent the other behind his back, and posed there, managing to look the whole time like he honestly didn’t know he was posing. The firelight made his eyes glow red. “I’ve no idea where the nearest school is. I shall have to engage a driver, I suppose. What a blasted nuisance. Thank you for bringing this to my attention.”
“You’re welcome,” Zi said. She was beginning to feel light-headed, as if the weirdness in this house were a toxic gas she was breathing. The horrible date, the sawhorse, and Mr. Holes seemed like something that had happened in a book she’d read, years ago. “You don’t have to send him anywhere, I don’t think. You could always home-school him.”
“Oh? What would that involve, exactly?”
Like she was supposed to know! “I’m not sure. You’d have to file a plan with the state and probably do some standard tests.”
He considered this, drumming the fingers of one hand on the mantel while flexing the other into a fist off and on.
“Or you could hire someone to do it for you.”
“A tutor,” he said sourly. He was quiet for a while. Then he turned his head a little, just enough to look back at her. “What is it that you do, Miss Bartlett?”
“Me?” Could this get any stranger? “Nothing, at the moment. But you need to get a real teacher. I haven’t even been to college.”
“You have a personable way about you. And you’ve already developed a rapport with my son.”
She had? Somehow, just stopping short of running a kid over didn’t seem like the foundation of a great working relationship.
Mr. Moorecott left the fireplace and walked confidently to a writing desk – an honest to God writing desk – where he uncapped a genuine fountain pen and jotted a few lines over a sheet of thick paper. All he needed was a signet ring and some sealing wax. Come to think of it, he looked like he might be wearing a signet ring. “Please think about it,” he said, handing it to her.
For the consideration of Miss Elizabeth Bartlett, he’d written. Concerning the education of young Master Thomas Moorecott, at the behest of his father, M. Archer Moorecott. And a phone number and driving directions from the freeway.
Zi looked at him. “I’ll sleep on it,” she said.
He walked her out and waited until she was back behind the wheel of the van before retreating back into the mansion and shutting the door. Zi unfolded the paper again and stared at it some more. On any other day, this would go right into her internal Too Creepy file and never be brought up again, but there were realities to be faced. This was a job, after all, one dropped right into her lap. So instead of crumpling up the paper and tossing it into the back with last month’s empty cup containers and Big Mac boxes, Zi folded it up again and stuffed it back into her pocket. She wouldn’t do it, she decided. She wouldn’t do it, but she would think about it, and when she called him back tomorrow and told him no, it would be with a clear conscience.
Archer watched from the Morning Room’s window until the girl’s tail-lights were completely lost to sight, and then kept staring, deep in thought. He was aware when Thomas joined him a few minutes later, but while his son’s presence was not unwelcome, it did prod him into speech. “I could have handled that better,” he said.
“You never did know how to talk to women,” Thomas agreed.
“I could not think of a word to say. Not one. If she hadn’t brought up the subject of your schooling, I’d have been yattering away about the weather.” Now Archer paused and frowned. “I believe I offered her employment.”
“So I heard.”
“I couldn’t have made a worse impression if I’d tried,” Archer said. “And thank God, really, or she’d be turning up on our doorstep on the morrow with your schoolbooks tucked underneath her arm.”
“She still might.”
“You think so?” Archer looked sharply down at his son, brows knitting.
“Yes.”
“Blast.”
Silence.
“I can’t have her around, of course.”
“Of course.”
More silence.
“I felt like an ass,” Archer said.
Thomas chuckled and turned around. “You looked one.”
A moment later, Archer watched his son cross the lawn, heading back down the mountain, soon to be lost to darkness once more. “Blast,” he said again, but without much feeling. After a while, he too left the window, and returned to his comfortable fire, his freshly-warmed chair, and his book. He grumbled idly to himself on the subject of his own charmless way with words, and then put the girl from his mind and lost himself again in Milton.
When night darkens the streets, then wander forth the sons of Belial, flown with insolence and wine.
Ah, Milton. He always could turn a phrase.
To Be Continued...
