Reading the Room (Not Unkindly)

The thing about Mildred, Norah had decided, was that she was impossible to read with any certainty, which meant she was perfect company for an afternoon when Norah wanted to think out loud without being answered.

It was mid-afternoon, and the rec room had that particular quality of light that arrived in the window between lunch and dinner — half gold, half indifferent — and Norah had commandeered the battered blue couch with an authority that suggested prior military engagements. She had a glass of iced tea, a bowl of those briny olives whose origin Mildred still refused to disclose, and the low-key headache that came standard whenever she had too much time to reflect on the last two months.

Mildred was doing whatever Mildred did when she wasn't actively waiting on someone. She had stationed herself just inside the doorway, her hands folded at her waist, her posture so correct it was almost accusatory. The afternoon light did not fall on her quite right. It had given up and was going around her instead.

“Sit down,” Norah said, without looking up from the tablet.

Mildred did not sit down. She moved three inches to the left, redistributing herself against the wall in a way that was technically not standing in the doorway anymore. Her heels made no sound on the stone, and had not made any sound when she arrived. This, Norah had learned, was as close as Mildred came to compromise.

“Suit yourself.” Norah set the tablet on the armrest, then tipped her head back against the cushion. She had been trying to decide for the last twenty minutes whether to open the only file Arabella had left on the tablet she had handed over to Norah, that morning. It was labeled, with characteristic economy: Round 2 — External Review (Marcie, Gina). It had been sitting there all day, and she had been sitting here, and neither of them had blinked yet.

“You know what Arabella left on the system this morning?” Norah asked.

Mildred said, “Yes.”

“Have you read it?”

A pause. Mildred's head turned a fraction, unhurriedly, the motion more deliberate than human. “I have ingested the relevant utterances,” she said.

Norah looked up. "You — ingested.”

“Swallowed, in the sense that truly matters.” A small, courteous pause. “It is how I keep the house. I learn what is inside each guest, and I nurse them as the void dictates.”

“Nurse them,” Norah said.

“Yes.” The word landed with a slight harmonic undertone, as if a second, lower voice had said it just after the first. “Some demand more nursing than others. You, less than most. You ripen well on your own.”

Creeped out but not wanting to admit it, Norah picked up the tablet and opened the file.

It started the way the first one had started, more or less — the opening volley between a Marcie who operated at the register of a nineteenth-century theatrical critic and a Gina who communicated predominantly through profanity and a clear sense of personal grievance with the universe. Having met Gina briefly at the party (it had taken days to try and wipe the taste of her lips off Norah’s mouth), Norah read Gina's voice in her own head, which was possibly unfair to Gina.

“And we are back to Harem Hotel. The Dandy Andy show to be precise.”

“You know,” Norah said, to nobody in particular, “I had really hoped that by Round Two, people out there would be calling it something other than the Andy show.”

From the wall, Mildred said, “The Master stands at the center of this story. The program is named for the hotel. The hotel is delicious.” A pause. “I find the title reasonable.”

Norah squinted at her. “Did you just make this about you?”

Mildred's smile arrived, the one that was about eleven percent too wide and contained teeth that did not entirely agree on number. “The hotel,” she said, pleasantly, “is mentioned in the title.”

“That's not—” Norah stopped. “You know what? That's technically true and also insane. Never mind.” She kept reading.

The middle section moved quickly through the transformations. Norah skimmed until her own name appeared. She knew the rhythm now — the two voices, Marcie's growing investment, Gina's precision surgical puncturing of same.

“Hm, it appears Emi and the incompetent one were not lying. Andy is indeed having sexual relations with Erin.”

Norah stopped. “The incompetent one,” she said. Mildred said nothing. “That’s me,” Norah said. “She’s calling me the incompetent one.”

“Yes,” said Mildred, placidly.

“I have a marketing degree, three industry certifications, and I once reorganized an entire regional distribution network in eleven days because my predecessor had the filing system of a concussed golden retriever.” She put the tablet down on her knee. “The incompetent one.”

Mildred's chin dipped a fraction. “You did not protest the word the first time it was set on you. I noticed. I notice what people let sit on them, and for how long.”

“I was being gracious,” Norah said.

“Mm,” said Mildred, in the tone of someone setting a half-finished plate aside to return to later.

“'Breaking Records, at 3.30%, will be available for purchase.' Breaking Records did in fact not break any records.”

“I appreciate Gina’s troglodytic humor,” Norah said. “Is 'troglodytic' a word?”

Mildred's head tilted. The angle held a beat longer than comfortable. “You are fond of the one who bites you. I have seen this before, in other guests. It is usually a sign of vitality crawling under the skin. Do you wish to mate with this flesh being, and spawn its offspring?”

Norah stared for a moment. “Uh, no. I just appreciate accuracy.” Norah waved a hand. “The joke is fine. The math she does next is not fine.”

“Norah indeed received the more transformations one, but according to my math, which is always right, that ultimately means only three additional transformations.”

“Her math is not always right,” Norah said. “I got four, so far. Four, via Hand-Me-Downs. And the game's not over." She glared at the tablet. “I can forgive crass humor, but failing math... My estimation of her has plummeted.”

Mildred said, “SHe has miscounted you. Flesh-beings often do. They weigh the parts they can see.”

“The principle stands.”

“It does,” said Mildred. “I have dissected you properly. There is a great deal of you. It would take quite some time to get through it all, for a small being like a ‘Gina’ or a ‘Marcie.’”

Norah looked at her. “I’m going to choose to hear that as a compliment.”

“You may,” said Mildred, equitably.

“YEEEEEES!!! HE DOESN'T FEEL EMBARASSED BY IT? THEN WHAT IS EVEN THE POIIIIINT!”

Norah read the passage about Andi — about Andy's genderbent form, and Marcie's evident feelings about it — twice, and then set the tablet in her lap and stared at the ceiling.

“Marcie,” she said, slowly, “has a complicated relationship with Andy.”

Mildred said, “She has eaten a great deal of him.”

Norah turned her head. “I'm sorry?”

“His story. She has taken in a great deal of his story, over many hours. There is very little of him left that she has not had in her mouth.” Mildred's expression remained perfectly pleasant. “I assumed that was what you meant.”

“Sure,” said Norah. “Sure. That's what I meant.”

She looked back at the tablet. From the corner of her eye, she was fairly certain that Mildred's shadow on the far wall was pointing in a slightly different direction than the light required. She made a point not to look directly at it. The review moved through the mid-round content at speed. Norah kept reading.

“More importantly. There is indeed a notable uptick in sex in this second round. Erin at the start then Emi is finally giving her arms a proper test drive. Marissa...”

“We also get more trauma. Because of course. But at least now they are actually fucking each other, too.”

“I'm choosing to take the second part as a compliment on our group dynamics,” Norah said.

Mildred said, “It was not offered as one. But poor minds taste better when you decide their flavor before you swallow them.”

“I know.”

“Eeeeh, that feels kinda really cheap.”

“My, Gina. And here I thought you would enjoy the fact that the token lesbian will not have to engage in sexual intercourse with the master.”

“I mean, yeah, but I don't want the lesbian to win just because she got a handicap. Plus Andy can turn into girl Andi now. Sam really doesn't have an excuse.”

“Sam,” Norah said, without looking up, “is not a token anything. She's the most competent person in this building." A pause. "Present company excluded, obviously.”

“Obviously,” Mildred agreed. The word had no discernible affect behind it. Norah scrolled on.

“So, Erin is now turned on just by Andy looking at her. I have to admit that is quite erotic.”

"All the sex stuff didn't do anything for you but this does, huh Marcie? Figures.”

“I do like that she is still dependent on Andy to reach a climax. The orgasm denial took a bit of a backseat but it's still quite cute. What about you, Gina?”

“I liked the groping session between Andi and Sam. Not that there was much of it.”

“The threesome with Erin and Claire was rather cute as well.”

Norah ate a third olive and did not comment. There were some passages where the correct response was to chew slowly and keep reading.

Mildred said, “The three of them fit together very neatly. Their flesh well suits one another. I do enjoy it when they pair off. It makes them easier to keep track of, and they slumber more soundly after the mating, which is better for everyone.”

Norah looked at her. “I need you to know that every word of that was unsettling.”

“Yes,” said Mildred, pleasantly. “I am told I have that effect.”

“Wow, what fucking asshole magic.”

“I wonder if they can somehow overload the spell and make Katherine pop out of the painting.”

“That's the dumbest shit I ever heard, Marcie.”

Norah paused on the Katherine passage. The painting had been in Andy's suite since the beginning, and she had made a point not to think too hard about what it meant—about [REDACTED].

“Hm, Arabella and her sister are growing a flower. I bet it is to get Katherine out of the painting.”

“I bet it's to gift it to Mildred.”

Norah glanced at Mildred. “Would you like a flower?”

Mildred was still for a moment. “That would be kind,” she said. “Though I should tell you, so you are not disappointed, that flowers do not last with me. I become fond of them, and then they are gone, and I am never quite sure where they went.” Her head tilted. “It is the same with most things I am given. I have been told this is not how it works for flesh-beings. I believe them. They seem very certain about where their things go.”

Norah looked at her. “Are you saying you'd eat the flower?”

“I am saying I would love it,” Mildred said gently, “and that those are not always different things, with me.”

Norah decided, firmly, not to follow that thread. She kept reading.

“Hm, they are really solving a lot of problems this round, either by talking it out or buying upgrades.”

“Aside from the fact that I dislike how many transformations get neutered by it, it feels a tad inorganic. The first round were the problems, here comes the answers. It is not the case for every problem of course but for a lot. Even the issue with Chloe is resolved quite easily.”

“She's not entirely wrong,” Norah said. “That was the easy round.” She ate another olive. “I'm not complaining.”

Mildred said, “You were not solving problems. You were setting down weights.” She paused. “I have catalogued each of yours. I have known their precise measure since before you arrived.” The pleasant expression did not move. “Guests always sleep more deeply after. Their breathing becomes very regular. It is my favorite part of the night — when the suite goes quiet and I can move through it without disturbing anyone.” A small pause. “You all take up so much less space, when you are finally still. So much softer to tend.”

Norah looked at her. For a moment the room had that quality again — slightly too large, slightly too cold, the afternoon light making a careful detour around the figure by the wall. Then it settled.

“Yeah,” Norah said. “Of course.”

“The veto's a poisoned chalice, isn't it? I mean, sure, I can save someone. But that means the next girl out knows I could have saved her, and didn't. And if I don't use it? Then the girl who gets eliminated knows I could have saved her, but didn't. Feels like no matter what I do, I end up screwing someone over.”

“Wow, what a dumbass.”

“Gina! I will not stand for you slandering my beloved.”

“Oh piss off, Marcie. There's the achievements system! So, obviously you want to use your veto now and give the girls more time to rack up achievements allowing them to prevent their own elimination later. Duh!”

“The flesh-being Gina is not entirely wrong, blind as she is,” Mildred said. “Though she was not in the room. I was. I am in every room. Always.”

“She's half right,” Norah said. “She's missing the part where—” She stopped. Looked at the tablet. Blinked. “Never mind.”

Mildred said, “You have understood it now. I watched you understand it. It was a lovely thing to see arrive on your face.” It was not a question. Norah set the tablet on her knee.

“I didn't,” she said. “Until recently.” Mildred said nothing. She was doing the waiting thing — the kind that didn't feel like patience so much as geological time. “He wasn't watching me,” Norah said, slowly. “After I told him not to intervene. He was watching Arabella.”

“Yes,” said Mildred.

“The veto was still in his hand.”

“Yes.”

A pause. Something settled, quietly, in Norah's chest. “Hm,” she said. Mildred said nothing. "Don't tell him I figured it out.”

“Figured out what,” said Mildred, and her voice carried, just barely, the ghost of something that occupied whatever Mildred-shaped territory lay between warmth and hunger.

“Huh, Katherine can orgasm if the master orgasms.”

“That is something I suppose.”

“More proof that she will never leave the painting.”

Norah read it twice and put it on the high shelf. Some information you just leave up there.

“Well, well, these girls can be erotic when they try.”

“Is it my imagination or are you particularly disgusting this review, Marcie?”

“It must be Andy. His suave charm makes me acting unwise.”

“She's getting worse,” Norah said.

“She is getting hungrier,” Mildred said. “I know the look. She has been circling him for many hours and she has not let herself bite down. It is starting to cost her. The ache in her womb from the emptiness that consumes her thoughts. I find I have some sympathy. Wanting a thing and refusing to eat it is a particular kind of ache.”

“And now it is the day of the challenge, but we are doing a round call first. Andy is visiting all his girls in turn for a final conversation.”

“Uuuugh.”

“Yes, I am not a big fan of these vignettes either. They feel...mandatory. A bit like going through the motions. Anything important here should have been handled by the date already.”

“Eh, we’ll see how you do when you’re in that situation,” Norah said. “Though I'll note mine wasn't perfunctory.”

Mildred said, “I was there for yours. I am always somewhere near, when the guests speak honestly. Those moments are very nourishing. I keep them.”

“I know you do,” Norah said.

A beat. “You were not blighted,” Mildred said. “You were clean all the way through. Even inside the marrow of your bones. It was lovely.”

“High praise,” Norah said, a little faintly, and kept reading.

“You know, when I started here, I thought I'd be out in a week. I figured you were just another smug tech bro with a savior complex.”

“Once again, Norah proves how awful she is. I for once like that Andy is a smug tech bro with a savior complex!”

Norah went very still. “Awful,” she said.

“That is the word she used,” Mildred confirmed.

“Awful. Because I told him the truth about himself. To his face. Which he appreciated.” She set the tablet down with some precision. “I have been called the incompetent one for two rounds. I have been accused of masterminding a sacrifice I performed on a three-second impulse. And now I am awful for having an accurate read on my own boyfriend.” She looked at the ceiling. “Does Marcie want me to lie to him?”

Mildred turned the question over with the slow care of someone deciding how to carve something. “She lies to herself. It is delicious. She has made herself a Master Andy,” she said. “She rendered him out of the viscera she liked and none of the viscera she didn't. Flesh beings have so many viscera. She keeps him very fresh. She would like everyone else's Master Andy to slide inside the one she keeps.”

Norah looked at her.

“The Master Andy she keeps cannot be told he is a smug tech bro, because he is not real, and unreal things spoil and rot. The Master Andy you keep can be told anything, because he is alive, and living things can take the truth and heal over it.” A pause. “I have put my hands on both kinds. I prefer the living kind. There is more to them. They last longer, and they are warmer to hold. They retain their heat much longer, after, too.”

“I'm also aware it's none of her business,” Norah said.

“Yes,” said Mildred. “That too.”

“Nothing! Oh, look! Before we get to the challenge we have to deal with fanmail chapters. Yes, chapters. Plural.”

“Ah,” Norah said. “The fanmail.”

Mildred said, “I delivered those.”

“I know. I was there.”

“There was dolphin blood in one of the packages,” Mildred said. A pause, the harmonic undertone briefly audible beneath the words. “I noticed it the moment it crossed the threshold. I notice blood. It was a thoughtful gift, I thought.”

“You found the dolphin blood thoughtful.” Norah said, in the tone of someone confirming a fact they would like to be wrong about.

“Dolphin blood has a number of uses a guest would not know,” Mildred said warmly. Her head turned toward Norah at a speed that was thirty percent too slow to be natural. “Most of them want it kept warm. Whoever sent it understood that. I do so appreciate a sender who understands the keeping of things.”

“I'm going to need you to stop there,” Norah said.

“Very well,” said Mildred, and stopped.

Norah skimmed the fanmail section, skipped the part where Gina appeared to have a medical event in response to the dolphin blood entry, and moved to the challenge. The challenge section arrived. Norah had developed a theory about reviews: they were most interesting when the reviewer had been surprised by something they didn't expect to feel, and spent the rest of the piece struggling to maintain a position they had already privately abandoned.

“Yeah. Oh, Norah kicks the bucket first, because she decided to give her ribbon up to Dawn.”

“Indeed she did. Perhaps I misjudged her.”

“What? Because Norah sacrificed herself?”

“Sacrifice? Gina please. This was a calculated move. Not only will this 'noble sacrifice' allow Norah to get back into the audience's good graces, it will also result in Dawn being in her debt. And all that at zero risk, because Andy will obviously use his veto. A masterstroke in Harem politics.”

Norah went still. She read it again. Then read it a third time. On the third pass, her expression had done something controlled and deliberate, the way a person clears a table before they start working. “Harem politics,” she said.

Mildred said nothing.

“I'll tell you what happened,” Norah said. “Dawn was there. Her ribbon was gone. She was about to be eliminated. And I thought: obviously. That's it. That's the whole calculation. Three seconds, start to finish.” She picked up her iced tea. “The audience was not in the maze. Marcie was not in the maze. The debt Dawn may or may not be in was not in the maze. Andy's veto was not in the maze.” She took a sip. “Just Dawn, about to lose, and me, thinking: obviously.”

Mildred said, “And still she would rather you had schemed than simply been kind. The scheming thing she can keep on a shelf, labeled. The kind one she cannot. The kind one might be anywhere. Lurking.”

“Because a calculated Norah she can file somewhere,” Norah said. “An 'obviously' Norah doesn't fit. People get uncomfortable when the simple explanation is the real one.” She set the glass down. “She already walked it back by the end, anyway. She knows.”

“Yes,” said Mildred. “They always know, near the end.”

“Well, good for her. Oh look. It's Minotaur-Mildred.”

"The uncanny valley of AI pictures really do work great for Mildred here.”

Mildred said, before Norah could speak, “I made a good Minotaur. I have been one before, in older houses, under older names. It is comfortable work. I know how to wait in the middle of a maze for the small warm things to come to me.”

Norah looked at her. “Do you know what you looked like? In the pictures?”

“I do,” Mildred said. “My face would not sit right on the photographs. It rarely does. The camera sees a little more of me than flesh beings do, and it does not have the manners to look away.”

Norah set the tablet down. “You knew you looked wrong.”

“I always look a little wrong,” Mildred said, kindly. Her smile made one of its minor adjustments, the teeth briefly suggesting there might be more rows than the situation required. “It is good that it shows. It means no one comes too close who should not. It keeps everyone safe. It keeps you safe.”

Norah held the eye contact for about four seconds, which was the limit, and then went back to the tablet.

“'Stop.' Norah's eyes flashed. 'Don't make this harder than it already is. If you respect me at all, you'll let me go with dignity.'“

“My, Norah is really laying it on quite thick, is she not? I understand that performance is important but...EXCUSE ME?”

“H-Huh?”

“ANDY WAS WILLING TO LET NORAH GET ELIMINATED?”

“Seems so.”

“B-But, that is lunacy! Have you fools forgotten about the achievement system? It goes without saying that you want to use the vetoes in the early rounds while you gather the achievements!”

“I mean yeah, that was what I was saying.”

“You have seen Katherine! You know what eliminations entail! And yet you let Norah walk into that? Are you out of your mind?”

“And there she is,” Norah said, “furious on my behalf, several chapters late.” She ate an olive. "Welcome, Marcie. We've been expecting you.”

“Heh, guess the honeymoon phase is over.”

“It most certainly is! I want a divorce!”

“You are not married to Andy.”

“And thanks for that! Phew. I dodged a bullet there. Cooper almost succeeded in bewitching me with his dazzling entrepreneur charm. But now I see the truth. He is nothing but a washed up has been. He probably hasn't even bribed a politician yet. And he is not even a Billionaire.”

Norah laughed — short, bright, real. “I like Marcie,” she said. “I fully change my position.”

“You disliked her thirty minutes ago,” Mildred observed.

“I disliked the hypothesis. The person is fine.” Norah scrolled. "She's catastrophizing because she's invested and doesn't want to be. That's just — that's human, honestly.”

Mildred's head tilted, the motion holding a beat past the point of comfort. “As a fellow human flesh being, do you see yourself in her.”

It was not quite a question. Norah opened her mouth, then closed it. She looked at Mildred with narrowed eyes. “Sometimes,” she said, “I can't tell if you ask the obvious questions on purpose.”

Something shifted in Mildred's face — not a smile exactly, but something unsettling that approximated one. “I ask the questions that are nutritious,” she said.

“That's not the word.”

“It is the word I wanted.”

“It's not—” Norah stopped. Looked at the tablet. “The answer is yes,” she said, and scrolled on.

“Sure, best girl. Mildred.”

“That perhaps should not surprise me. I would have liked to give Norah the honor of being my best girl, but that sacrifice stunt was apparently genuine, so Katherine remains unmatched. Her resilience is praiseworthy.”

“Worst girl is kinda hard to pick. Claire got on my nerve the most with that stunt she pulled on the challenge, so her.”

“I have an easier pick, Andi.”

“Talk about holding a grudge.”

Norah read it twice. She was aware of Mildred somewhere to her left, utterly still in the way that very large, very old things are still — not the stillness of waiting, but the stillness of having already been here longer than the building they were both standing in.

“Right,” Norah said. “So. You get best girl.” She paused. “I get almost-best girl, which was taken away from me because my sacrifice was apparently genuine, which — and I want to note this clearly — is the most insane reason to lose a title I have ever encountered. Claire gets worst girl from Gina. And Marcie gives worst girl to Andi because she's holding a grudge.”

She looked at the ceiling. “And I'm the awful one,” she said.

The temperature dropped approximately one degree. Not from a draft. “It is a kind of lust, the title she gave me,” Mildred said, in the tone of someone describing a meal she had only read about. “‘Best girl.’ I understand the shape of it, but I do not think I qualify. I am not best. Though this flesh is spawn-producing.”

“Gina gave it to you,” Norah said. “How do you feel about that?”

A pause. The air between them held the specific quality of pressure before something surfaces from a very long way down. “She reached toward me, a little, without meaning to,” Mildred said. “Most things flinch back. She did not.” She stopped. Something moved behind her eyes that was not an emotion Norah had a name for. “I am keeping that piece of her warm,” she said, finally. “I keep all the warm things. It is the only way I know to love them.”

I keep all the warm things. Norah turned that one over and decided, on reflection, that she would have preferred almost any other phrasing. Poor Marcie.

“You know,” Norah said, “you got best girl, and I got robbed of best girl because I turned out to be sincere, and Claire got worst girl for the challenge ‘stunt,’ that is, Claire’s attempt to save everyone, which, for the record, adds to the pile of evidence that Gina is a terrible person. Especially after all that talk about how horrible eliminations are.” She looked at the tablet. “But Andi. Marcie, honey. You couldn’t score an Andi if you tried.”

Mildred said, “Marcie does not keep that distinction in her pantry. Her soft core cannot understand. It is why she is always hungry and never full.”

“Her loss.” Norah held out the bowl of olives.

Mildred looked at the bowl. She looked at Norah. She crossed the three feet, took a single olive, and returned to her place by the wall. Her heels still made no sound. She held the olive between two fingers for a moment, studying it with an attention that suggested she was reading something in it. Then she put it in her pocket. Her expression did not change. But the room came back up one degree, quietly, without announcement.

Norah set the tablet on the coffee table. She sat with it for a moment.

“Is that sufficient?” Mildred asked.

Norah saved the document, set the tablet on the coffee table, and reached for the last olive. “It'll do,” she said. “I could feel my brain shriveling while reading their thought salads.”

“Yes,” said Mildred. “They taste better when their brains are not clogged.”

“Same time next round?”

A pause. The light in the room shifted for no visible reason and shifted back. “I will make myself available,” said Mildred. Which was not the same thing as yes, but was the closest Mildred could get to it.