Ms. Chloe Winters:

I am writing to you as a councilwoman and society historian, but particularly as one private owner to another. There is a woman domestic in your possession, named Meredith, of whom I was once owner and caretaker. Through my daughter, Adela (I think you are acquainted), I understand that she has recently dictated to you a personal memoir, covering her experience as your slave since the Event, seven years ago, and that you are presently seeking to publish this memoir.

I am greatly interested in reading her story, and it would be my pleasure, as society historian, as councilwoman, and as a private citizen, to edit and publish her memoir in book form. You might have noticed that, in the past five years, such stories have enjoyed a certain vogue among our readers of non-fiction novels. I have hopes, and I am anxious that Meredith’s story will enjoy the readership and the recognition it assuredly deserves. 

Please consider my offer, and write back at a convenient time. If you change your mind or if you prefer that her papers not be published, they will not be published. Happily, I’ll oblige. I only ask that you allow me to read them. 

Enclosed you will also find an advance of five hundred for the receipt of M.’s memoirs. 

Yours,

H.


Dear Holly:

Thank you for your kind letter & request, which it will be my great honor to satisfy.  If you are pleased with the book, not only will I permit its publication but I will encourage you to publish it. (Also, Meredith showed rare enthusiasm when I told her about your letter & interest in her story. I almost feel jealous.)

Please find enclosed her manuscript. I look forward to your reply.

Cordially,

C. Winters

I'd like to say, “Here's where I begin, and here alone,” and then begin at the beginning. But where does a story start? Where does memory begin? There are a hundred equal, different places. 

I can start with Martin. As Adela drove north, no one could say where to, I held him in my hand and looked down on his tousled little head. And as I looked at him I also wondered, seriously and with a strange heaviness weighing on me in the pit of my stomach, if I could ever be to him what Holly was to me. Could I ever be his mistress or his owner? Could I wear him in my shoes for days on end, torment him according to my whims, or break his bones, or eat him whole? Could I make Martin my very own slave?

The answer was no. I couldn’t. I knew who I was, and more to the point I knew whose I was. I was Holly’s. It was a very new and frightening personal insight, and while I wanted to fight against it, I didn’t know how. Even though to Holly I sometimes felt like I was no better than a little toy, at best an insole for her foot, I still felt betrayed by her when she sold me. Why did you do it? I wanted to ask. What did I do wrong? At certain times, these feelings confused me: it seemed I was acting and thinking irrationally. I was a human being, and I shouldn’t be anyone’s slave or plaything.

But then there was something deep inside me, deeper than reason, that wanted her back, that wanted to be with her, even if it meant that I could only be her obedient slave, her personal foot slave, now and forever. Was I going crazy? Was I in love with her? It was both. I was crazily in love with a woman who only wanted me to be her slave. It hurt me to think that, maybe, she didn’t think very much of me. Just knowing that hurt like hell. And that hurt never faded away completely, even after I’d met Chloe.

While thinking these thoughts, I absent-mindedly squeezed Martin inside my fist, and only woke up again as I felt him struggling and trying, vainly, to punch my thumb. A tiny thrill shot up my spine, and I let him struggle for a few seconds more before releasing the pressure and apologizing. (Where did that sudden thrill come from? I thought.) Would Holly have kept Martin with her if it hadn’t been for Adela? No, that was a crazy thought. Could I be jealous of him? On my moist palm, like a little puppet, he tried to stand up, and tripped and fell over onto his ass. It was a little slapstick comedy routine.

“Why don’t you put me over there,” Martin suggested, pointing to the wide armrest between the driver and passenger seat.

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing,” he said. “I’m tired. And I just had a whiff of something.”

“Is it me?”

“You? Is what you?”

“Did you have a whiff of me?”

“No,” he said. “Or maybe. It’s not important.”

“No, it doesn’t matter,” I agreed. I was wearing a women’s business suit that Adela had found in the car, and lifted the neck of the suit up to my nose. It was definitely me.

“What do I smell like?" I asked him, innocently. I wanted to hear him say her name. But he paused, uncertain.

“Holly,” he finally answered. I breathed out in a long, low, half-contented sigh. “You smell like Holly, to be honest.” Another shiver of pleasure went up my spine. I loved hearing her name. I was besotted. How stupid and embarrassing it would have been, at that time, to admit my love to anyone, or for anyone to know, especially Holly. She would have hated me, as she did that one night at her house, during dinner.

“Well, there you go.” I gently set Martin down where he wanted.

Adela looked down at Martin, sitting between us on his little island of armrest.  She rested her elbow just beside him, and playfully tried to edge him out of his space.

“Martin, you’re shivering!” she said. He wasn’t shivering.

“You must be cold.” He didn’t look cold, either.

“Well, if you want,” Adela cooed in her quietly suggestive way, left hand on the wheel, “you can come and sit with me.” The little man nodded his head dubiously; and Adela picked him up and brought him over to her lap.

Then she took a long black fountain pen from her pocket. Hooking the pen-clasp down the side of the scrap of her old jeans she'd given him for clothes, she snapped open the hem of her skirt, and angled him down, slowly, like bait for deep-ocean fishing.  

“Now let go,” she ordered. Evidently he was able to free himself and drop down, because I heard a slight tear, and then the pen came back up without him. She snapped back her waistband, sealing him in. The deep had swallowed him up. Adela wriggled and writhed a little in her seat, making herself comfortable. 

When she turned to look at me, I realized that I had been staring. I blushed.

“Wow. He was cold,” she said, smiling. “How about you? Isn’t it a little chilly in here?”

I shook my head forcefully. Not chilly at all. In fact, I was feeling pretty hot at the moment.

We drove on in relative silence across the border and into the next city, and stopped only three times for food and gasoline at the abandoned service centers. We couldn’t use the bathrooms inside, because the lights were still off in the countryside, and along the highways. Finally we arrived at our destination, and Adela rented a hotel room for the night, where we stayed until noon the next morning. At that point, we drove out through the quiet, half-abandoned city, and eventually met a woman willing to rent out a room to us for the next month.  

Adela spent most of her time training Martin, and my contribution was generally along the lines of cleaning, laundering, and food preparation. While I did serve Adela on some occasions, she wasn’t my mistress, and I was eager to leave, to go away—as much as she and Martin and I had the same mind on most things, and each of us helped the other out when help was needed, I felt sad and alone, the proverbial third wheel, a barely tolerated guest in the house of a married couple.

So when Jennifer Green knocked on the door, after a week, I immediately agreed to leave, and I decided to accept Ms. Winters as my new mistress. I was tired of being a fugitive: this was Adela’s plan, and Martin’s, and not mine. And to be completely honest, I was tired of being unloved. My life as a slave wasn’t very bad, and at times it was even close to bliss. In certain ways, at least Holly was beautiful and intelligent. The day I gave in and chose to be her slave, at least, unhoped-for possibilities opened up to me, unknown happiness. Of course it hurt that all that was over now. But maybe Chloe would be different than Holly.

I sat beside Jennifer in the car, and she talked to me for a long time about my duties, about Chloe’s character, her personality, her appearance, and her house. I listened intently until we crossed the border again. Once we had crossed, Jennifer stopped the car, shrank me, and gave me a tiny cracker. It was freezing, and she handed me a change of clothes—a dress, a pair of shoes, and even a little wide-brimmed hat—which I put on. Jennifer explained: “Her old slave-girl sometimes wore this outfit. You’ll remind Chloe of her.” 

“Her old slave?” I was curious. “What happened to her?”

“The story is upsetting,” she said. “I’d rather not tell it.”

“She’s dead, then?”

“Oh, no. She’s alive.”

“Well, if she’s alive, then what do you mean?”

“You’ll see.”

Jennifer Green didn’t talk to me much the rest of the way, but she treated me very decently. At two inches tall, I leaned my back against the huge, plushy chair of the passenger seat in this upscale car, wearing the dress of a living woman, and thinking about my future. I tried to gaze into it, but I stopped after a while because I couldn't see very far.