Hardison dies in Plan M

“Rough week?”

She looks like she’s ready to snap. This was a calculated risk on my part. I am, after all, the help. Still, Plan A hinges on her talking to me (Plans B through G involve various different other tactics. Plan H is the scorched earth policy. In that one I kill both of them and stage it as a ****/suicide. Plan Z involves global takeover).

I see the emotional roller coaster that rages in her eyes, and watch as she cycles between irritation, anger, and finally resignation. Heaving a huge sigh, she drops her gaze to the floor. “Yeah. Real rough week.”

“Hey, it’s your dime if you wanna talk about it.”

She shakes her head, possibly trying to reconcile the cathartic feeling of talking to me with her usual coldness. “I guess it’s really nothing. My sister just spent the week here. We… don’t get along.”

“Why don’t we get started and we’ll see if I can relieve some of that tension. I’ll listen if you have anything to talk about, and it’ll stay between you, me, and the walls. Masseur-client confidentiality.”

The joke there is calculated to both get her to crack her frosty demeanor and tug a little at the marionette strings I tied to her trust in the last session. It does both as her lips curl in a wry grin. “You know that’s not a thing, right?”

“Hey now, the bond between a masseur and his client is sacred.” This is said with mock solemnity. “I am the very soul of discretion, otherwise no one would ever trust me to give happy endings.”

This has the intended effect of both getting a full on laugh out of her and starting her brain whirling over the possibility of said happy ending, and after she finishes her laughter, she gazes at me with a slightly contemplative look as if considering the idea.

I get things set up as last time, including the ****, as she chatters away, the ice finally thawed. “My sister, Valerie… she’s kind of a fuck-up. Dropped out of school, shows up in the scandal sheets, god knows how many people Father has had to pay off to keep her out of jail… she spends a week here every month and we just… hang out. Well, she left today, but all week she’s been acting strange.” She takes a sip of her dosed water and stretches out on the table. “She kept going on about turning her life around, and how she wants to be more like me. That’s not Val. And it felt like she was… I don’t know… hitting on me? Which is decidedly weird. Oh God that feels good.” I’ve started working on her shoulders.

I make sympathetic noises in all the right places. She really is a bundle of knots. “You’re carrying a lot of tension. More than last time. Are you sleeping ok?” Of course I already know the answer to this. She’s been averaging about four hours a night.

“Mmmmm, your hands are magical. No, I’ve been sleeping like shit. She… I can’t believe I’m saying this… she masturbated all goddamn night every night she was here. Loudly.”

“Sounds like you needed to get that out of your system.”

“God, yes. It feels good to tell someone about the fucking insanity that is my sister.”

I know that it’s more than that. My earlier suggestions regarding truth have set some roots. “Everyone needs to vent every now and then, and a little catharsis on your part will make my job that much easier. Just relax and let me drive, Ms. Winters.”

“Jeff, you’re touching me almost naked and I just told you about my twin’s masturbatory habits. I think… mmmmm… I think you can call me Melanie.”

“Up to you. You’re the boss. It’s six of one, half a dozen of the other to me. Both sides come up heads if I flip the coin.”

“Ahhhh…” she sighs and the tension leaves her body almost immediately as I speak the trigger.

“Very good Melanie, just relax and let all your tension go, feel my hands on you just stripping your body’s tension and stress away, feel my words in your head stripping the stress from your mind, and just relax.”

“In this moment you are free. Free from the need to feel stress. Free from your need to maintain your stranglehold on yourself.” She sighs contentedly as my words penetrate through her already brittle defenses, so I thrust onward. “It feels so good to just let it all go and just listen, doesn’t it, Melanie?”

“Yes… oh!”

“And it still feels oh so good to tell me the truth, doesn’t it?”

“Oh my God, yes.”

Her God? Not quite yet.