Follows Cyberwear: Speak; this part brings to full fruition the inspiration from this comic
A few weeks ago, Flora took Star out to a party.
Star thinks Flora had some kind of argument with her spouse, which was really the start of it. Flora’s cruelties seem, far more than usual, not simple inclination but underlaid by a submerged iceberg bulk of anger, and Star is just a weak little ship, dutifully going down and crying about it.
The party wasn’t Flora’s thing; an ambiguous smear of post- or in-lieu-of clubbing, drinks and worked-up energy. Loud, stupid, unrefined; colleagues of Flora’s, junior enough for their idea of fun to be shots of whatever’s cheap and high-proof, and then bad decisions. Star kinda wanted it to be her idea of fun, but she feels horribly like she’s just cusped too old for this shit, and like Flora’s tastes have rubbed off, enough for her to be slightly too much of a snob about it all; and she’s a stranger to all these people, with barely any social life of her own any more. Just Flora’s live-in slut.
And, of course, she was very obviously along to be showcased as Flora’s live-in slut, not a person Flora had brought along as company. Platform boots, booty shorts, the puppy snout and collar, tape X-ed over her nipples; Flora’s coat around her shoulders on the way in from the car. That could be mistaken for a concession, if it didn’t afford the theatricality of Flora taking it back to hang up when they got inside, a garment simply moved from one hanging peg to another.
Star has no idea which bright young thing wanted to impress Flora — or wanted Flora — enough to invite her. Star just knelt at Flora’s feet to be gawped or leered at by the real people, and acutely feel that she was there specifically to feel lesser than real people, because she’s a good puppy.
“Excuse me, Harriet,” Flora had said, in her benevolent girlboss voice. Another older woman, dubiously invited; this one, unlike Flora, not holding depraved little court over spellbound juniors who didn’t know whether they wanted to be her or be the puppy. Or simply be sycophants, allowed to stand between the two and maybe be mean to the puppy as a proxy. No, Harriet looked ill-at-ease and out of place, like she was faintly terrified to be there and too paranoid that it would be rude to leave, beholden to the imagined opinions of smaller, younger, stupid people.
Flora smiled up at Harriet from her chair, between peers, and extended a languid hand, stainless steel dog-chain links draped across the palm.
“Would you like to fuck my dog?” she said with the most matter-of-fact, smiling diffidence, offering something of less consequence than oh, you like this sweater? Oh, it would look cute on you, why don’t you try it on—
Of so little consequence that it could be turned down without the possibility of offence.
Harriet, of course, was just another target. Even as Star squirmed under being valuelessly passed around for shits and giggles, Flora’s office-domain peer looked like a prey animal in high-beam headlights. Caught in a Catch-22 where she has to either say yes or no and either answer carries a sentence of self-inflicted mortification. Star craned her neck, hurting in sympathy in the pit of her stomach, wishing she could reassure her somehow. It’s fine, Flora’s just being a dickhead. It’s fine, you can just laugh it off. It’s fine, you can if you want—
Involuntarily, she was unwise enough to start to say something; the woman’s eyes snapped to hers.
Woof! Star’s collar said, in a dissociatively empty tone that Flora had been particularly pleased to elicit, and something fragile and inchoate and nervous passed across Harriet’s face; and, eyes still on Star’s, even as Star’s widened in surprise, she’d reached out and taken the leash with as much evidently steeled bravery as if she’d done it knowing the metal would brand her.
It was — well, it wasn’t what Star was used to.
Okay, the thing is — it’s not that Harriet didn’t know what she was doing, but she laid Star down on a borrowed who-the-hell’s-party-is-this-anyway bed and even looked at Star as though doing so might be injurious and she was preemptively writing her own callout post. Her hands were shaky from maybe a drink too many, but really just nerves, and Star had to try to reassure her through it without being able to speak.
Harriet took it painstakingly slow and careful and attentively caring, and Star came on her fingers like a machine for coming apart: loud and wet and astonished and repeatedly, until she couldn’t go any more; and then Star had laid there with her head on Harriet’s shoulder, poleaxed, having her hair stroked and Harriet murmuring, “There, there,” a little wildly, until Flora had come to find her because it was time to go.
Flora was pissed as hell, of course, that her little psychosexual diorama had gone off-piste. She was perfectly nice — genially congratulatory — to Harriet’s face. Harriet’s own shellshocked astonishment at herself was an instrument beyond, in the moment, Flora’s range to play her own tune on. Worth more to preserve face, stew about it for later, than to throw a tantrum that Harriet had taken what was offered.
(Back home, Star took Flora’s meanest strap in her ass, on her back obediently clutching her knees to her chest so Flora could get the most satisfactory view of her sobbing. Flora, tooth-clenched, was implacable.)
There’s really no reason for Star to be in Flora’s home office — no justifiable reason, if Flora finds out, and Flora is still being a pissy little tyrant anyway. Star very carefully flicks through a chunky leather-bound contacts book.
It’s not, she thinks, because Flora appreciates the old-fashioned physicality or ceremony, has any appreciation of the thing in itself. No, she thinks Flora just plays the kind of office politics where one day she might find all her logins summarily revoked, and if that happens, she’ll have all the skeletons in closets, all the useful people, everything she needs squirreled away where no database operation can wipe them.
There’s only one Harriet in the book. Star can’t even know for sure it’s the right one.
“Hi,” she says, having deliberately timed it for maximum possibility that a diligent executive will have to let it go to voicemail. A diligent executive will check her voicemail, later. “Hi, this is — I was wondering if you’d like to get coffee. We met at a party—”
