Who: Wren and Clare What: Meeting Where: A park playground When: Now Warnings/Rating: None other than awkwardness
It was 11:30 when Wren exited the car outside the small park that served as an extended playground for the nearby preschool. She was dressed conservatively, as she always was when she left the hotel. Part of her business was maintaining her image, and she was very careful about it. Caesar’s Palace gave her a gorgeous suite to live and work out of and, in return, they received a cut of her business. For that cut to be sufficient for the hotel to consider her deserving of a suite, it need to be significant, which meant she had to ensure she had only the wealthiest clients. Wealthy clients liked buying expensive things, Wren knew, and it was a cycle that kept itself going without her needing to very much at all. Well, except for maintain her image.
A pink skirt, A-lined and flared to the knee, a demure white blouse and a butter yellow sweater overtop made Wren look like Easter in the desert heat of Nevada. She had glasses on, delicate gold-wire rimmed and without any prescription, and her pale blonde hair was pulled away from her face. She looked like she’d just left church, like she was going to pick up one of the young children in the park, like she was the kind of wife who had dinner on the table by six every evening. She didn’t look like a professional dominatrix that commanded 5,000 dollars for a one-hour session - without including her tips, which tended to be hefty.
Wren made her way to her usual bench, one under the shade of a tree and close enough to watch the children playing, and she pulled an apple out of the paper bag she carried with her. She was a common fixture in the park, and no one asked her why she was there. It was one of the perks of looking harmless; everyone believed she was. Only the people who bought her services knew better, and she was far enough away from the strip and her clients that she had blessed anonymity here. The children laughed, and the happy sound carried on the dry air, and she took a bite of her apple.
Clare had finished her morning’s work early, starting in on the next group of entries, but noon had come and the office manager had shooed her outside with her paper lunch bag. She hadn’t ventured out for lunch since beginning at the office, but apparently it was ‘too nice to stay inside’ and she needed to ‘see the sun again’. Uncertain of where to go, she walked along the path she usually took to go home, recalling that there was at least a park nearby. The paper crinkled and wrinkled in her hand as she walked, and it had lost most of its crisp shape by the time she reached the park. She followed the sound of happy children and finally came across the playground, surrounded by benches in the shade.
She saw the woman sitting on one, the empty bench near it, and figured it looked like as good a place as any. The woman was dressed nicely, unlike some people Clare had seen since moving to Las Vegas, and reminder her of someone she might see back home. The shade of the tree was appreciated when Clare sat down, and she took a minute to rest before pulling her sandwich out of the bag, one half of peanut butter and jelly emerging for her to start on. She kept her gaze mostly to herself, focusing on her lunch as she sat there. She had at least another half hour to waste before returning to the office.
Wren watched the woman approach, but she didn’t really expect her to sit down. Women had at first. Mothers had. They’d sat down and tried to strike up conversation, tried to ask which child was hers, where her husband worked, if she went to yoga. Wren had ignored them, largely, rather than answering their questions. It wasn’t out of shame or guilt; she’d left that behind years ago, along with her heart and everything else that mattered. No. She didn’t tell them the truth because she didn’t want them distrusting her and reporting her to the security that roamed the playground. She wanted to be harmless, and telling people the truth would mark her for a deviant, and not as anyone harmless at all.
The apple hung loosely from Wren’s hand, and the woman sat down with her crinkling bag and the peanut butter sandwich within. Wren ignored her at first, her attention firmly on the children on the swingsets, and it was only after a few long minutes that she glanced over at the woman beside her. Definitely a newcomer. “You don’t come here often,” she said, her unaccented voice more refined that it had been in her youth. It was part of the act, part of the etiquette training her mother had insisted on, part of who she was in so many ways. But here, here it was just another way to be harmless. Money made a woman trustworthy, and she’d left behind the little girl who said too much years before.
It took Clare a moment to realize that the voice was speaking to her, and she looked up in mild surprise at the woman on the other bench. “Oh!” The soft word came with a startled blink and then a small smile, sweet and sincere, if a little unsure. “No, it’s my first time.” Her own voice and demeanor still marked her as either not from Las Vegas at all, or from one of the more devoted religious groups in the area. Nothing about her screamed ‘religion’, but simply a quiet conservativeness that wasn’t often seen in people her age, and people often made their own assumptions from there. She crossed her legs at her ankles and lowered her sandwich in order to give the other woman her attention. It seemed like she should be the mother of one of the children in the park, and Clare glanced over, wondering which was hers. Giving the sight of the playing children another soft smile, she didn’t realize that despite her youthfully plain face, people could have easily assumed she was there with her own children as well. “It’s a nice day,” she said, turning back and trying to make polite conversation.
Polite conversation wasn’t a part of Wren’s life these days. Really, polite conversation had only been part of her life for a blink, two years, between eighteen and nineteen. She hadn’t had any real practice then, when she was eighteen and people tumbled into her life like unexpected things. Now she knew how to pretend, even if it was only pretending. Pretending was her entire life these days, and she’d long since left behind the coltish girl who wore her heart on her sleeve. She looked away from the earnest, trusting face of the woman beside her, her attention returning to the children. “It is,” she agreed about the weather, which was much more harmless than her conversations tended to be these days. The woman reminded her of the Christian couple she’d known all those years ago, and she wondered if she attended the same church. “It’s a nice park,” she said, and she nodded toward the children laughing and smiling. “Which one’s yours?” she asked, because the woman looked old enough to be the mother of a preschooler. Wren took her as being a few years younger than she, herself, was, though the clarity in the other woman’s eyes marked them as years and years apart.
Clare smiled again toward the children at the other woman’s indication, but it took a moment for her question to really sink in. It was rewarded with a sudden blush high on her cheeks, and a decisive shake of her head. “No, no,” she insisted softly, “no, none of them. I’m not...” She shook her head again with an awkward laugh under her breath. Her, a mother? No, that was just silly, she was far too young for that. And not married. Not, she realized, that marriage had anything to do with children, not really. She wasn’t so naive to think that. She took another bite of her sandwich, gaze turned away as the blush faded again. “I just came here for lunch,” she continued, trying to salvage and redirect the conversation. “They told me to get out of the office for a while.” She went quiet for a long moment then before remembering that she should ask her own questions if she wanted to keep the conversation going. “Are you...?” The question was incompletely, but she glanced again at the children.
All the blushing and demurring almost made Wren smile. She didn’t think she’d ever been that young, ever been that much of a girl, and it was a bitter realization. “Not married then?” she asked, her gaze dropping to the girl’s hand in search of a wedding band. Wren knew the woman was too innocent to be married, but maybe she was engaged. Regardless, Wren could tell that the young woman at her side was the kind to associate marriage with children, and it was a sore subject for Wren, a wound that really didn’t need poking at. “You work nearby?” she asked of the edict that lunch be taken outdoors. The answer didn’t really interest her, but it was a way to buy time before answering the other question, the harder one. She looked back out at the playground, her blue-gray gaze carefully not settling on any child in particular. “No,” she said simply. It wasn’t, technically, a lie, even if it felt like one.
Clare offered another awkward smile at the question of marriage, and shook her head. “Oh no, I’m... single. Just single.” The phrase ‘confirmed bachelor’ sprang into her mind and made her frown. What a strange thing for her to think. The odd thought made her miss the woman’s glance down at her bare-fingered hand, and by the time her attention focused again, the woman was looking back out at the park. She didn’t even seem interested in the answer to her question, but Clare was hard-pressed to come up with another topic of conversation. “I do. About... five blocks away? It’s actually for this congressman, I just do office work.” Another glance at the woman showed her to still be gazing into the distance, so Clare continued to try to fill the silence.
“I actually haven’t worked there all that long. I used to live in Ohio, with my family, but my job there was ending and someone I knew said there was something out here I could get. I didn’t want to leave, but it’s not that easy to find a job, you know?” Clare hesitated, another look at the woman reminding her that she didn’t know if the woman had a job or not. She was very well-dressed, but maybe she was married or her parents helped her. Either way, she bit her lip for only a second before her words started again. “So now I’m here. Only a few months so far.” She drew to a halt, knowing that the next questions would be about how she liked the move, and she wasn’t sure how to describe that she was pretty sure she was scared of this city.
Wren thought about working for a congressman, considered what that must be like. It must be like her old job back in Seattle all those years ago, the only one that hadn’t involved her taking her clothes off or getting on her knees to clean floors. She knew plenty of politicians, and she wondered if she knew this woman’s congressman. The kind of men that found their way to Wren’s suite were rich and powerful, with enough to hide that they were willing to pay her exorbitant fee as long as she kept their secrets. Wren had enough secrets of her own that it never occurred to her to sell anyone else’s. As long as she had enough clients to keep the casino happy, she was fine. She needed to stay in Nevada, after all, and that was that.
“This is a far cry from Ohio,” Wren said knowingly. She’d driven through once, but she didn’t need any more knowledge than that to know this life, this place was very, very different. She lifted a perfectly sculpted brow when the young woman said finding a job was hard. That was something Wren could respect, at least. “This is a long way to come by yourself,” she said, not needing to see the young woman’s face to hear the fear in her voice. “Stay away from the men, don’t play the tables, and don’t expect the slots to give you back what you’ve lost to them,” she said, feeling enough camaraderie with the lost little girl to give her that advice. Whether or not the girl would actually heed the advice was something Wren didn’t know, and she didn’t care. Caring wasn’t something she did anymore, and that was not negotiable.
Clare had no idea the thoughts that were passing through the woman’s mind as they sat there, and likely would’ve been both confused and embarrassed by them if she had. The woman’s words rang true though. At least before her advice. She nodded as she studied her sandwich, a wave of homesickness striking her as she sighed softly. The woman’s next words shook her out of it, though, as Clare looked up and blushed again hotly. “I’m not... none of those. But. ...thank you?” She didn’t know what else to say to this woman. The more they spoke, the less comfortable she felt. She reached up to tuck her hair behind her ear, a nervous gesture.
Observant as she was, Wren knew what she was making someone uncomfortable, and she tucked the core of her apple into the brown paper bag that was tucked under her thigh (to keep it from flying away). “You’re welcome,” she said, though she knew the young woman didn’t consider anything she’d said particularly helpful. She looked at the children once more, her gaze lingering as she watched in silence for a few seconds. “They look happy, don’t they?” she asked, and it was something she tried to convince herself of every day when she came to this park and sat on this bench.
“The... the kids?” Clare looked over at where the children were running, climbing on the playground structures, laughing and screaming the way children do when there’s nothing wrong in their world. She wasn’t even that attached to children - figured she’d have them at some point, but only after she was married, and that wasn’t happening any time soon - but she smiled at one little boy that had just made it to the top of the slide, holding his arms up in victory before practically throwing himself down the incline. “They do.” Her own voice was soft and warm, the confusion and discomfort starting to ease from it. She laughed quietly. “I would be too, I think. If I was like them...”
Wren looked away from the slide and the boy, and she regarded the young woman more carefully. She envisioned a future where this young woman married, had children, adopted a pet and never realized her husband was cheating. She was too kind for a happy ending, Wren knew, because happy endings were only for people who were machinating or confident enough to grab them in their grip and never let go. This young woman, she wasn’t that. She wanted to give her name, in case the young woman ever needed anything, but there was no name she was willing to give that wouldn’t get her thrown out of this park if it was handed on to a nanny or mother. Her real name, she didn’t use that anymore, and she hadn’t in years. No one really knew Wren Maheu anymore, and she liked it that way. “They’ll grow up one day,” she said of the children, and it was a sad truth. “This is only a heartbeat in their lives.”
That was certainly a sad way of looking at it, and Clare glanced over at the woman again. She didn’t have good luck reading most people, and this woman was even more difficult than most. She fought for what to say, and finally spoke softly. “...They’ll always have the memories. At least.” It came out sounding sad, and Clare sighed. This was the first person she’d talked to other than her co-workers since arriving in Las Vegas, and she was pretty sure it was one of the longest conversations she’d had. She only wished that it had gone better.
“Memories aren’t enough to fix someone who’s broken,” Wren said, remembering a boy, one with wonderful memories, who splintered to pieces before her very eyes. She stood, and she was less everyday when she was on her feet, somehow less mother and wife, too much sexual confidence in the way she carried her weight on her feet. “They don’t have that kind of power, memories,” she continued. “They can hurt if things go badly, the things you once had.” She tried for a smile, but she failed, and in the end she pulled one of her cards out of the clutch that hung from her wrist. It was plain white, no name, no company, nothing but a local, unlisted number on a card that was of exceptionally expensive stock. “If you get into trouble.” Somehow, she thought this one might. She didn’t need to get her hands dirty, she reminded herself. There was very little money couldn’t fix these days.
The woman’s next words made Clare want to run away, go back to the office and back to her known life. She had no idea how someone could look at life that way, so dark and with no hope at all. She took the card though, glancing at it once before holding it close to her body. She had no intention of ever using it, but she didn’t want to refuse it and appear rude. “...thank you.” Her response was quiet, uncertain, and Clare wished for her life to make sense again. Even as she wished, her thumb ran over the card, the velvety texture of it.
Wren watched that thumb brush against the velvet stock of the card, and she gave the young woman a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. The young woman didn’t belong in Las Vegas. She was more like the children on the playground than like Wren, herself, and Wren was reminded of why she didn’t make friends any longer. Leaving them hurt, and being different than them hurt even more. This young woman would recoil at the thought of using a riding crop on naked skin to making a living, and Wren didn’t exactly blame her, though the profession suited her - perhaps better than it should. “Enjoy your afternoon,” she said, an incline of her head accompanying the elegant farewell.
Clare raised her hand in an awkward wave at the woman’s goodbye. She thought that perhaps she might look for a different place to eat if she was made to leave the office again at lunchtime. Maybe somewhere that she wouldn’t have to talk to anyone. She sighed and regarded her sandwich again, somehow no longer hungry. She tucked it back in her paper bag and headed back to the office early.