Fallen, page 4
She wasn’t, she discovered, sitting with her aunt and uncle. Or, thank God, Dane. She’d been, rather, relegated to a sort of glorified children’s table. A couple of men were seated already. The both stood, seeing her, and greeted her politely before resuming their seats. Men? Boys? She wanted to think of people her age as boys, and girls, not men and women, but they weren’t. They were adults, just like her. Which was a frightening thought; she didn’t feel like an adult.
A few minutes later, Lisa joined her. “Isn’t this a nice coincidence? Or maybe,” she added, her tone turning conspiratorial, “I switched the apples.”
“You didn’t, did you?”
“No, but I would’ve.”
“Lisa, you’re the best.”
Her friend preened. “I know.”
A uniformed servitor appeared and poured glasses of wine. Ani sipped hers, without really tasting it. Instead, she found herself studying her surroundings. This, she knew from Dane, was the smaller of the mansion’s two ballrooms. The smaller. A space that would’ve, Ani was fairly certain, fit her own home with room to spare. It had been, like the rest of the mansion, decorated in an ancient style. The style of a long ago queen, who’d bankrupted her country to create beautiful ballrooms like these before her people had sent her to the chopping block.
Lisa touched Ani’s shoulder. “What are you thinking?”
“That it’s funny how, through upheaval after upheaval, architectural ideals endure.”
“And here I was, worried that you hadn’t had fun without me. Silly me.”
“My afternoon was awful.” Ani watched as the other guests continued to file in, and find their places.
“What happened?”
“Dane.”
“I knew you—wait.” Lisa’s enthusiasm died as a new idea occurred to her. “He didn’t….”
“No.” He’d been, exactly like he’d promised, a perfect gentleman.
“Then—”
But Lisa’s question was cut off by the arrival of someone else.
“Archer!” Ani leapt up and hugged the newcomer.
“Ani!” Archer was tall, although not quite as tall as Dane, with blond hair and blue eyes. They sparkled, as he took her in. “You look beautiful. But of course you do, you always do.”
“I do not.”
“And so modest. I approve.”
“I didn’t….” Ani suddenly felt strangely, unaccountably guilty for having spent most of the party with Dane. Even though she hated Dane and it wasn’t, certainly, like Archer had a claim on her time. She’d seen precious little of him, too, since he’d started his new job. “I didn’t realize you were here!”
“I wasn’t. I skipped the pointless parts and just showed up, a few minutes ago, for the free food.”
He then dropped into the chair on Ani’s left, which meant that she was now protected on both sides by her two best friends. Ani had met Archer in school, around the same time she’d met Lisa; Chatham was the sister school to the exclusive all male preparatory academy that was his alma mater. He’d made her laugh, with his witty observations about the world, and they’d quickly become inseparable. Several people, including Lisa and, of course, Ani’s aunt had wondered aloud when they were going to become a couple. Archer, after all, was very eligible. But they were just friends.
He lounged easily, as comfortable in a ballroom as he was on a soccer field or a polo pitch or indeed his own bedroom. Archer never went anywhere, Ani had long ago decided, that made him feel ill at ease. “Someone gave me this apple,” he said, holding it aloft and pretending to examine it. “It appears to be covered in nuts.”
Both Ani and Lisa were giggling.
“What am I supposed to do with it?”
“Eat it,” Ani said.
“Right now?” Archer made a face. “Seems a bit gauche.”
“No, you save it for later.”
“In case dinner’s so dreadful I can’t gag it down? Or what—as a consolation prize, for when I end up in the hospital with food poisoning? Sort of like how when I was six, and I had my tonsils out, and a nurse brought me ice cream?” He placed his apple carefully in the middle of his charger plate. Which looked, to Ani’s eye, to have been covered in real gold leaf.
He and Ani shared a small, private smile. And then he winked. “Have a bite?”
“You’re terrible.”
“You two.” Lisa upended her wine glass, drained the dregs, and then looked around for more.
“What two? There is no us two.”
Archer placed a hand over his heart. “You wound me.”
“Eat your apple,” Lisa advised. “Maybe it’ll be poisoned.”
“I hate being reminded of my failures as a suitor. But I’m not sure I want to die over them.”
Ani turned. “What?”
“I’ve proved so miserable at the task that, far from rejecting me, you haven’t even noticed me.” Archer’s light tone belied the seriousness of his confession. And now, of all times? He must’ve had an even more unpleasant afternoon than Ani. Maybe, she reasoned, he was just joking. He’d made comments like this before, although never so pointed, but without following up on them.
And he treated her…like a friend. Always like a friend. He’d never so much as put his arm around her, much less tried to kiss her. Which made moments like these extremely confusing. She should want to date Archer, probably. He was handsome and he was funny and, to quote her aunt, eminently suitable. He had prospects, according to her uncle. The mere suggestion that he might see her as more than a friend should’ve made her heart race. But it didn’t.
Something about Archer didn’t fire her blood. And her blood, and her heart, didn’t understand the concept of should. So she smiled, and sipped her wine, and was glad that at least she had a friend.
Archer had started chatting to the two men who’d introduced themselves to Ani originally; one of them he recognized from work and the other from school. It was a small world they inhabited, even though New Victoria was populous. Ninety-five percent of the so-called unwashed masses, though, she’d never see. They had their sphere and she had hers. And even though she wasn’t quite welcome in this one, the fact that she orbited near it at all meant that she had no place anywhere else.
There was hatred between the classes. As much danger as she might be in from Dane, she was in more from the shopkeepers and textile mill workers and longshoremen who saw her as a symbol of their oppression and who’d rape her or worse as soon as look at her.
She didn’t want the world to be what it was, but she was trapped in it regardless.
There was a stir as Jasper arrived, late enough so that no one would be embarrassed by coming in after him. He was without a date for the evening, which must’ve thrilled Lisa. After greeting a few more favored guests, he assumed his place at the head table. Which wasn’t, Ani noted, that far from theirs. Jasper would eventually make the rounds and greet everyone, but for the time being he was sipping some sort of cocktail and surveying his domain.
His companions were people Ani didn’t recognize. They all appeared to know Jasper well, though. What her uncle wouldn’t give, Ani mused, to be among them.
She hadn’t been able to spot them, try as she might. Which she thought was strange. They must’ve been shunted to some corner. Well, the food would taste the same. And the wine, too. It, at least, was quite good, she mused, noticing for the first time that she had an empty glass.
And then Dane arrived.
Seeing him, she immediately felt underdressed. He’d changed, at some point. The charcoal gray wool suited his complexion, and the fit—of both jacket and trousers—was exceptionally flattering. Reaching his table, he divested himself of his jacket and draped it over the back of his chair before slipping in beside his uncle. So he’d worn it just—what? To walk a few hundred yards?
He didn’t have a tie, although Jasper did. The first few buttons of his shirt were open. He turned, and said something to his uncle, and they both laughed.
The first course was served.
Ani was presented with a slice of goat cheese and mushroom strudel.
Archer prodded his with a fork. “We’re the richest people in the world and we eat fungus.”
“Don’t remind me.”
“Right. Because you like the blasted things.”
“I do.” Ani cut a dainty bite from the corner and tried it. It was delicious. At least three kinds of mushrooms had been used, all of them rare and expensive. “Which puts me in the winner’s circle as you still have to be polite and gag yours down, regardless.” Turning, she favored Archer with a small, smug smile. “Unless, of course, you want me to eat yours also.”
“There is,” Archer replied, “absolutely no accounting for your taste. In any department.”
Her smile deepened.
She’d begun to feel uncomfortable, though, she couldn’t have said why. Until, as though compelled by some outside force, she looked up. And, without meaning to, directly into Dane’s eyes.
They bored into hers. She sipped her wine, trying to steady herself. She wanted to break away, but she couldn’t. How long had he been watching her? And how could everyone around him be immune to the anger, no, the sheer wrath that seemed to emanate from his every pore?
She was struck, as she had been earlier, by his features. His mouth, now compressed into a flat line, was full but not feminine. On another man it might’ve been; but on Dane, it only drew attention to how masculine he was. His hand rested on the base of his wine glass; he hadn’t touched its contents. His fingers were long, and thin, and strong. They weren’t soft, from a life of indolence, like her uncle’s. No, everything about Dane was hard.
But especially his eyes.
What could only have been a few seconds seemed to have stretched into years. And then the man across from her, Ani thought she remembered him introducing himself as George, asked her a direct question and broke the spell. Her gaze shifted to him. “I…what?”
She hadn’t heard a thing he’d said, and felt like an idiot.
Even more than usual.
“I asked, what are your opinions on the Purge?”
“I….”
“I’m always interested in a woman’s opinion,” George continued.
“Why,” Lisa challenged, “because women think differently than men?”
“Of course.” George seemed surprised at her reaction.
“They value different things,” added his companion. Fred, was that right?
“The women I know don’t,” Archer said.
Here was a group of men, arguing about how women thought. Ignoring the fact, quite typically in Ani’s experience, that they could simply ask a woman. Or two. But no! God forbid that a woman be consulted about the workings of her own mind; she might get the answer wrong.
“I think it’s barbaric,” she said. Quietly, but clearly.
“Well,” George began, in that tone that said you might be ignorant but I’m supremely patient, “so much violence must indeed be challenging to the more delicate of feminine sensibilities.” Translation: women couldn’t be expected to conquer anything more challenging than needlework, so naturally the broader political implications of a government-sanctioned murder spree were beyond them.
Tell that to Lisa, who’d participated in the Purge—more than once.
“But,” he continued, “since the institution of the Purge, employment has hovered around one percent.”
“Because everyone too lazy to survive,” Fred interjected, “has been killed off.”
“And the Purge contains societal violence.”
As New Victoria’s crime rate was quite high, Ani found this to be an interesting argument.
“Tell that to the thousands of people who are murdered each year, for such mundane transgressions as refusing to hand over their wallets.” This from Archer.
The second course was served: filet mignon, in some sort of reduction.
“No,” George countered, as he tried his steak, “what I mean is that before the institution of the Purge things were much worse. The Purge gives people an opportunity to get their aggressions out. To work through their angst. Which makes, naturally, for improved psychological stability.”
Ani disagreed. Strongly. “It’s turning us into a nation of monsters.”
“We already are a nation of monsters,” Archer replied. A bit too cheerfully. “Otherwise we wouldn’t have a need for something like this in the first place. We’d be content to spend our nights knitting.”
George and the others all nodded, as though Archer had scored some kind of point.
“And I suppose we can’t try to become a nation with no murders.” Ani couldn’t keep the acid out of her voice.
“That’s not,” George replied, a bit doubtfully, “realistic.”
Ani was absolutely sick to death of hearing that morality wasn’t realistic.
She tried the potatoes that had come with her filet mignon; she didn’t think she could keep anything else down. Her tablemates could all speak dismissively of violence; for them, it and its effects were purely theoretical. None of them had lost their parents. None of them lived in a house small enough where, on really bad Purges where the streets were overrun, they could hear total strangers screaming like banshees as they jumped up and down on the roof.
She put her fork down. “We should be helping the less fortunate. That’s what we used to do: give them healthcare, and homes, help them to find jobs. Not slaughter them, along with everyone else whose existence offends us.” Every year, there were stories of men finally killing their brothers in law, their in laws. Women, too. More than one had killed her mother in law.
“That kind of attitude is what led to the Collapse in the first place.”
Ani heard the capital. Fred was referring to the disintegration of nations that had arguably begun long before the Third World War but that had certainly been complete by its end. They’d all studied it in school. “What led to the Collapse,” she countered, “wasn’t generosity but greed.”
Lisa patted her hand. “I admire your idealism.”
At which point Ani felt utterly, utterly defeated.
The conversation continued on without her.
Fred, at one point, made a joke about pigs needing to be taught their place and everyone laughed.
“So you’re going out?” Archer asked.
“Of course! I’ve had a whole arsenal commissioned, just for this Purge.” Then, surprisingly, Fred addressed Ani again. “There’s no reason for you to be scared. Of me, or anyone else at this table. Or at this dinner, for that matter. You’re one of us.”
“If you’d shoot a total stranger just for the crime of existing,” Ani replied evenly, “then you’d certainly shoot someone you had an actual grudge against.” She didn’t even bother to make the argument that all people were equal; to Fred, they weren’t. He thought she should be comforted, instead of terrified, that he considered her valuable enough not to kill.
Distressingly, he smiled. “You have a point.”
Champagne flutes of sorbet arrived, for a palette cleanser.
Grapefruit.
“What are you thinking?” Archer was whispering directly into her ear.
“That I hate Dane’s friends, and I can’t understand why you’re friends with them, too.” He and Dane had always belonged to the same social circle, which was the one thing that had counted against Archer when he and Ani were first getting to know each other. There was no reason a decent person would want to hang around with people who tormented other people for fun.
“You’re too pure, Ani.”
Various worthies had started giving toasts.
Ani felt the tickle of Archer’s lips against her earlobe again. “Do you see that girl? Sitting at the head table?”
She nodded. No one could miss her. She was beautifully attired, and even with her face fixed in a temporarily serious expression she was obviously a cheerful person. Radiantly so. She sat with her arm slipped casually through that of the man who must be her husband. She was wearing a ring, a large one. Its sparkle was noticeable, even from two tables away.
“That’s Violet Howard-Hill. And that’s her husband, Louis. I work with him.”
Ani nodded again, wondering where this was going.
“He kidnapped her, some ten years ago, because she refused to so much as give him the time of day. And because he, I suppose, was determined.” Archer described this, not like it was the most horrifying thing that anyone had ever heard but like it was—almost charming.
“And she—married him?”
“Obviously.”
“Voluntarily?”
“One might suppose. Considering that she’s still here.”
“That’s disgusting.”
“One might also suppose that he taught her, somehow, to appreciate his charms.”
Ani shivered.
CHAPTER SIX
Upward Mobility
Ani was relieved beyond measure when dinner finally ended.
She’d had enough of toasts to themselves, the privileged class, to New Victoria and to the world in which the lived. Where they were, according to everyone present, kings. Kings who, by right, deserved everything. Were there queens in this world? Not really. Not in any meaningful sense. But, sickeningly, all of the women Ani could see were too busy gazing adoringly at their overlords to care.
“I am never,” she told Lisa, “going to another party again.”
“That’s going to hurt your social life.”
What social life? Ani didn’t want a social life. “You shouldn’t enjoy these things, either.”
“I’m not a feminist,” Lisa pointed out equably.
Ani was glad no one was listening to them; everyone else at the table had immediately left to begin schmoozing with each other, probably in the hopes of somehow achieving some sort of financial gain. Even Archer had wandered off. Then again, he had the misfortune to work with Fred.
