I’ve never done anything creative before. I think of myself as a facilitator, not an artist. It surprises me how enjoyable it is to map out conflict and resolution within a fictional frame, where the stakes are low and Zoe and I are gods of that world, able to orchestrate events exactly as we want them.
We work well together, Zoe and me.
She’s laying in my lap one Sunday afternoon, on the green couch, which I’ve returned to the stables so Anna can have her ballet space clear again. I’m playing with Zoe’s hair, gently combing through the long, black, silky strands with my fingers. She has her notebook propped up on her knees so she can add to it while we talk.
“Should the ending be tragic?” she says. “Or happy?”
“Happy, of course.”
“But the whole point all along has been that seeing the future doesn’t allow you to alter it. It’s a paradox—what you’re seeing isn’t actually the future, if you can change it.”
“I know. But nobody likes tragic endings.”
“Romeo and Juliet would beg to differ,” Zoe teases me. “Or Titanic.”
“The end of Titanic is Jack and Rose reunited.”
“In death.”
“It’s emotional catharsis all the same. You have to give the audience what they want.”
“So . . . you think that once our protagonist realizes the nature of her visions, that should give her power over the outcomes. She learns how to manipulate the system. Like in The Matrix.”
“Maybe,” I say. “I guess my point is that I don’t believe in no-win scenarios.”
“There’s always an out?” Zoe says, looking up at me.
“Yes.” I nod. “You just have to be clever enough to find it.”
Zoe sits up, the dark curtains of her hair falling around her shoulders, soft and shining from my grooming.
She looks at me with those beautiful eyes, pale green with thick black lashes all around. Whenever she looks at me like this, straight on, our faces only inches apart, I’m struck by how lovely she is. Impossibly lovely. A kind of beauty that only increases the closer you examine it.
“What’s our out?” she asks me.
“I’m working on it,” I say.
“I know you are. I want you to tell me. I want to help you, like you’ve helped me with the script. I want to work on it together.”
I consider this, not unwilling but surprised.
I’ve never involved another person in my plans. Even with Ozzy, it’s only technical details we decide together. The framework is always me alone.
Call me superstitious but I hesitate to say my plan out loud. It’s still forming, not fully developed. Exposing it to the air might kill it.
But I trust Zoe, and I value her intelligence. I want to hear what she has to say.
So I tell her. I tell her every idea, every possibility I’ve considered. I tell her the challenges, the weaknesses, the practical issues I haven’t yet overcome. It takes me well over an hour to explain what I have so far. Zoe listens carefully, never interrupting.
When I’m finished, she’s quiet a long time, thinking.
Then she says, “You need one more family.”
“I know.”
“Someone who can take product east, but they have to have an American presence too. Someone with cash to spare, in American dollars.”
I nod slowly.
“What about the Malina?”
She’s talking about the Odessa Mob. The most ancient and widespread branch of the Ukrainian mafia.
I let out a long exhale. “I considered them. They’re perfectly positioned. And I’ve heard they have cash. A lot of cash. But their reputation . . .”
“I know,” Zoe says. “It isn’t good.”
“They’re rapacious. Insular. Treacherous.”
“They’d be arms’ length away. And if they turn on someone down the line . . . it won’t be us.”
“We’d have to get the Princes and your father to agree.”
Zoe looks at me, smiling slightly. “We need someone highly persuasive . . . do you know anyone like that?”
I grin. “I might.”
Zoe’s face grows somber again.
“Miles . . .” she says. “This is going to take all your money.”
I told her about my seed money. She knows how I intended to use it. And she’s right—whether this plan works or not, it will wipe me out. I won’t have a bean left over. Not enough to rent an apartment in L.A., let alone build an empire.
“I don’t care,” I tell her. “I’ll make more.”
Zoe shakes her head slowly. “I can’t let you do that. You worked so hard, all those years. It’s your dream . . .”
“No offense, baby girl,” I say, “but it’s not up to you. I’m doing this, with or without your help. I don’t know if it’s gonna work, but I’m sure as fuck gonna try. And if this deal’s no good, I’ll think of another. I told you, this is a jailbreak. Rocco is Warden Norton and you’re Andy Dufresne—we’re gonna Shawshank this motherfucker!”
Zoe is laughing, she can’t resist when I paint a vision of our future together.
I’m likewise riding on cloud nine.
The feeling of working this through with someone else is intoxicating, as if I’ve expanded my brain to double its size. It’s so easy talking to Zoe. She understands everything, and sees things that I don’t.
“I love you,” I say, without thinking, without planning.
Zoe’s eyes go wide. For the first time I see a clear resemblance to her sister Cat. She looks startled and frightened.
“You do?” she says.
I have to laugh. “Why are you surprised? Hasn’t it been obvious for a while?”
“When did you start loving me?”
I think back. “In the infirmary. When you told me not to pity you.”
She shakes her head at me, a slow smile stealing over her soft, full lips.
“I love you too, Miles,” she says.
“Since when?”
Now she’s smiling all the way, her eyes gleaming.
“Since I saw you naked,” she says.
I laugh, seizing her and kissing her hard.
“Is that the only reason?”
“Yes. I’m horribly shallow.”
“You know what, I’m fine with that. I’ve always wanted to be objectified.”
I pull my sweater over my head, baring my chest.
“Feast your eyes.”
Zoe does look at me, her amusement turning to lust in an instant. Her eyes rove over my body, and she runs her fingertips down my chest, raising goosebumps on my arms.
She kisses me right over my heart, her soft, warm mouth sending shivers across my skin. Then she runs her tongue softly along the lines of my left pec, and my cock goes rock hard in my pants. I want her tongue in other places. I want my tongue on her even worse.
She’s wearing trousers again today, with suspenders over her pullover, and lace-up oxfords on her feet. I love when she looks tomboyish. The juxtaposition between the boyish clothes and the ultra-feminine body underneath is wildly erotic. I pull down her suspenders, then take off her top, and put the suspenders back up on her shoulders again so the wide elastic just barely covers her nipples, pressing down on her breasts, making them look rounder than ever.