Free The Dollhouse Society Volume I: Evelyn (Includes Indecent Proposal, Dreams in Black & White, Playing House, Freeze Frame, plus a bonus story!) by Eden Myles

life! Every two weeks, on payday, I gave my mom thirty percent of my paycheck to help cover her rent in the city, but this week I was stumped as to how to give her that much money without her thinking I had knocked over a small bank. So, yeah, I could go to Paris if I wanted to. But who wanted to go to Paris alone?
    “Did you miss me while I was gone?” Clarissa asked, grinning and leaning across the partition that separated our cubicles. She was enjoying the fact that she’d just spent two whole weeks in the city of lights while the rest of us wage slaves worked the pool at Sterling Cosmetics.
    “It wasn’t the same without you,” I said. And then I saw her staring at me very closely.
    She squinted. “You look different, Evie. Did you change your hair or something?”
    I almost blushed. Clarissa can be very astute at times.
    For the past two weeks, while she’d been in Paris, I’d been with Mr. Sterling. After work every day, he sent his driver round to pick me up at my apartment. Usually we had dinner at a nice, elegant, tucked-away place, but once he took me to the symphony, and another time, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. I’d been there before, of course, but it was nice seeing the exhibits while he held my hand. After dinner, we usually returned to his penthouse suite on Central Park West and he made love to me on his enormous, king-sized, four-poster bed full of white satin sheets. Sometimes he was gentle. At other times, I came away delightfully sore. Sometimes, afterward, I read to him from whatever was on my personal reading list, and sometimes I just sat among his rumpled sheets and listened to him explain some issue he was having with the corporation. I didn’t know how to help him with the issues, I didn’t even know how a corporation really ran, but I still listened, and I learned that that was really all he wanted. He wanted me to listen. He wanted me to be there.
    His apartment was as huge and luxurious and wintry white and naked of furnishing as you can imagine. What few accents he had were hard and natural. He liked stones and crystals and seashells, and he clustered them together in all different places. He had a housekeeper, but no family or friends. Not even a pet. It was a very cold apartment.
    On Friday, when I’d gotten the unexpected bonus in my pay, he’d also presented me with a gold card in his name. He said it had no credit limits. He told me I could buy anything I wanted. I didn’t, though. I felt funny about spending someone else’s money. I really wasn’t a “rags to riches” kind of girl. I had gotten my nails done just yesterday (on my own dime) after Mr. Sterling told me how much it hurt him to see me biting my nails off all the time.
    I waggled my fingers, showing off my French manicure to Clarissa. “You like?”
    “Wow.” She took my hands and looked them over like she didn’t recognize them. “Since when do you get your nails done at the salon, Evie? I thought you said that was a waste of money?”
    “Yes, I know.” Ever since I’d become the professional courtesan to one of the most powerful men in the city, I’d changed. I had to be pretty now—or as pretty as I could be, anyway. It was my job. It was what Mr. Sterling expected. But, of course, I couldn’t tell Clarissa that. She’d immediately tell me that I was being taken advantage of, that Mr. Sterling was using me, had bought me like some common prostitute. Maybe he was buying me, using me, and maybe it was wrong for me to let him do so, but the attention he showed me was nice. It made me feel not invisible . It made me feel pretty when I’d never felt pretty in my whole life.
    I was a big girl. I knew it wouldn’t last. I knew he’d get tired of me. I knew it wasn’t love. But I wanted to enjoy it for as long as I could.
    I looked again at the pictures of Clarissa and her boyfriend kissing for the camera. Was I wrong to want that?
    ***
    On the way home from work, I stopped at a little vintage