Page 3 of Her Dragons

Hesitantly, she asked, “Where do you live?”

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Alex and I were staying at my Uncle Robert’s apartment in one of the upscale parts of town.It was on the top floor of a high-rise, right on the ocean, with a private terrace looking out on the building’s private beach, which had a postcard view of the Pacific.Uncle Robert was away traveling.Alex and I were recently out of school and trying to figure out our lives, and my uncle had generously given us the job of apartment-sitting for him while he was away.That worked out great for my friend and me — and I hoped the woman, who told us her full name was Lily Turner, would find it worked out just as well for her.

When we walked in the door and entered the living room, Lily’s face lit up a little bit for the first time when she looked across the living room, luxuriously furnished in stained wood and leather, with the spacious terrace beyond big glass doors at one end, and saw what stood kitty-corner to the fireplace.She mentioned back in the park that she loved music.When she laid eyes on Uncle Robert’s big black grand piano with its black hard-wood stool, Lily looked as if she were greeting an old friend.

“It’s beautiful,” she said, with the first hint of a smile we’d seen on her face since we met.

“Do you play?” I asked.

“I play jazz,” Lily replied, eyeing the piano as if she wanted to make love to it.“That was what I wanted to do fora career, what I was trying to make a living at…before…”Her tiny beginning of a smile melted.She didn’t have to finish that sentence.

“Let’s go in the kitchen,” I said.“I’ll get us some coffee and we can talk some more.”

The three of us sat at the counter island in the sparkling kitchen with mugs of coffee.Lily seemed to relax just a little bit more, though I could sense her lingering fear still hanging over her like a shroud.I hated knowing that anyone could do that to her.

“My career wasn’t going anywhere,” she said sadly, staring down into her mug.“I was playing anywhere I could get a gig — weddings, hotels, bars, nightclubs.But it was hard to get paid.People kept expecting me to work for tips and ‘exposure’.Creative people always get that, people wanting to pay us in ‘exposure’ instead of money, like someone else will discover us or come along and give us work that actually pays.That’s the only thing I’ve always hated about being a musician.People will pay their doctor, their lawyer, their plumber.But, somehow, they don’t want to pay a musician, like what we do isn’t really ‘work’.It’s disrespectful.I hate that.I took work where I could get it.But the work started to dry up.I started to have to take other jobs — temporary office work, that kind of thing.But that didn’t pay enough, either.As you can guess, I was getting desperate.”

Alex and I traded a sympathetic look at her story, and let her go on.

“One night I was feeling at the end of my rope.I’d been playing at this hotel at night and cleaning rooms there by day.The manager decided to replace me with this band.The band already had a piano player and didn’t need me.I was left with just the room cleaning.It was my last night playing, and at the end of my last set, I thanked the audience and toldthem I wouldn’t be playing there anymore and walked off crying.And there was this man who’d been watching me.I’d seen him there other nights, sometimes with other guys.That night, he was there alone.And as I was leaving the hotel that night, he came up to me and told me he liked my playing and he’d like to get to know me better.It turned out he had money, like your uncle,” she said, glancing at me.“He was an executive for a Big Pharmaceutical company.He lived in a penthouse.He was interested in me and wanted to help me.I felt like I was drowning, and someone had thrown me a life preserver.And he was handsome and confident, and… things happened.Next thing I knew, I was living with him in his penthouse and not worried about money anymore.Then, he started to give me some other things to worry about.”

My stomach started to knot at this point, and I saw Alex listening with a hard frown, both of us knowing where this was going.

Lily shook her head, and her face reflected such pain, as if she’d start crying again.She continued not looking at us.She didn’t want to meet our eyes, not wanting us to see the pain there — and the mix of other feelings that I’d heard abused women feel.I remembered hearing stories about battered wives and beaten girlfriends feeling ashamed, as if something were wrong with them, as if they could have done something about it.It’s a feeling they didn’t earn and didn’t deserve to live with, and I suspected it was lurking inside Lily.

Her voice almost cracking again, Lily said, “He had such a temper, I found that out soon enough.It shocked me, the way the smallest things could set him off: something that I said, something that I did or didn’t do, something that happened at work that he brought home.There were times I tried to comfort him, smooth things over, and it only made him angry.And there were times when…,” her voice caught.I wanted to reach overto her, touch her and remind her she was safe, but I was afraid she’d pull away.Fear had made her seem so fragile.Forcing herself to go on, she said, “There were times…so many times…when I was the target of his anger.He’d scream at me and go into his other shape, and…”She covered her face with one hand.“The backs of his claws…his tail…it hurt so bad.He’d leave me bruised and bleeding and crying, and then suddenly he’d become tender and gentle again, and he’d apologize, and cry with me and hold me and promise me things would get better.But it never got better, and I knew he’d never change.”

Desperate to do something, I handed her a napkin.She cried and blew her nose into it, and crumpled it in her fist.“That’s how it was with him.And I stayed with him for two years, if you can believe that.For two years I actually believed he’d get better, that he’d change.But he never did.And I finally couldn’t take it anymore.I finally had to get away from Mark.”

That name made a light go off in my head and in Alex’s.Alex was the first to say it.

“Mark?”

“Yes, Mark Reinhardt, the man who was supposed to make everything better for me.Mark Reinhardt.I wish I’d stayed cleaning rooms at that damn hotel…”

Alex furrowed his brow with disbelief.“Your boyfriend is a Drake named Mark Reinhardt?”

Lily actually looked up curiously at him, his incredulity making her forget her fear and shame.“Yes, Mark Reinhardt.He’s a Vice President at Harbor Pharmaceuticals…”

My friend stopped her mid-sentence.“Mark Reinhardt lives in a penthouse now?”

I chimed in with, “Mark Reinhardt is a Vice President with a drug company?”

Now she looked anxiously back and forth between us.“You know him?”

“Knew him,” said Alex, shaking his head.“When I was a kid in a gang.He was one of the guys in the…”

And now Lily cut him off.“Alex Reinhardt was in a gang?”

“Yeah,” Alex said.“My old gang, when I was a teenager.The Firewings.The baddest, toughest gang on Flint Street.”He chuckled ironically.“Hell, the only gang on Flint Street.We’d wear our colors and our symbol and fly around looking tough, acting like we owned the place, marking our territory against the Blackhorns over on Anchor Street, getting into scrapes with them.That gang was about all we had to our name.”

That was true enough.Alex and I were from very different backgrounds, though I’d done my best to try to be more like him.My best friend, unlike me, was from the rough part of town.No one in his family would ordinarily get anywhere near a place like where we were right now.

Mystified, Lily said, “He went from that to being a corporate executive?He never told me.”

With a slight snort, Alex cracked, “He probably never told you about getting his scaly ass thrown in prison, either.”

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