Irma had tried to come up with a new line of work, since it was starting to look like this bodyguard business wasn’t going to work out. She couldn’t go back to ballet -- her old dance mistress had made it clear after Irma’s illness and transformation that someone who looked like Irma would not be welcome in the studio or on the stage. So dance was out, and that was the only thing Irma had ever loved. She was agile, fast, and strong -- but also socially awkward and chronically late, and even the kindest-hearted souls found her rather hard to look at. If she could think of a job she’d be good at that she could do locked away from the world, she’d do it. But so far nothing had come to mind.
After a few weeks of dreary unemployment, with Irma sitting around scratching at the itching, bony plates that grew along her muscles and stretched her skin taut, the agency sent her a message saying she had an interview with a new client. It would mean travel, and helping out with menial tasks in addition to her usual work as a bodyguard, but Irma wasn’t in any position to say no to work.
Since her parents had passed, she’d been bounced from one sibling’s house to another’s, overstaying her welcome just long enough that everyone stopped being polite to her, but not quite long enough for them to pack up her things and leave them for her on the front steps after changing the locks. She knew the right time to jump ship, and fortunately had enough siblings that by the time she needed to go back to one and ask for use of their spare room or couch yet again, it had been long enough since her last stay that their negative memories were softened by the guilt and shame that drove them all to help Irma more than they really wanted to. Poor Irma, disfigured and strange, the family’s burden to bear.
Irma was near to the end of her stay with Philemon -- she could tell because her brother’s children no longer swarmed around her to chatter about their day when they came home from their lessons, and his spouse no longer asked what her favorite dishes were so she could order them from the cook, and Philemon himself, who rarely showed his face outside of his study, had started asking pointed questions about how Irma’s job prospects were looking, and whether she was really trying as hard as she might to find gainful employment. She figured she had six days or less before things got truly unpleasant, and she couldn’t let it come to that.
So she hastily bathed, which tended to further irritate her too-tight skin but couldn’t be avoided, pulled on the custom-fit uniform one of her sisters had sewn for her, and set out to meet with her potential new client.
Irma had gotten the message from the agency just before the midday meal, and she had skipped her lunch while getting ready for the interview. When she was a few blocks from home, that missed meal began to nag at her. She considered stopping at a food cart on her way to the agency, but she avoided eating in public if at all possible. The way the illness had affected her face bones was both the most unsightly change and most inconvenient. The skin of her face pulled tight over new bony plates that gave her forehead, cheeks, and chin an angular, inhuman look. Her jaw no longer opened the way it had, and she had a hard time chewing because of it. Her stomach rumbled angrily as she walked by a stall selling hand pies, but she kept on walking. Trying to eat a steaming hot pie while walking down the street would be a ridiculous farce. People already stared at her more than she liked, and she’d rather not dribble lunch all over her clean clothes right before meeting a potential client. They’d just have to listen to her rumbling stomach instead.
The agency was about a 20-minute walk from Philemon’s house. She enjoyed staying with him most of all — the rest of her siblings lived in much less convenient parts of town. Getting kicked out of Philemon’s was going to be unpleasant, for a lot of reasons. After a short, brisk walk, Irma entered the unassuming brick building that held a stable on the ground floor, a printmaker’s shop on the second floor, and the employment agency on the third floor. Up the familiar stairs she went, and at the top landing she opened the agency’s front door without knocking.
The woman at the front desk was someone new, yet again. For an employment agency, they seemed to have a hard time keeping their own employees around. She looked up when Irma entered, started violently, and then struggled to compose herself. “Can I help you?” she asked.
“I’m Irma. I’m here to meet a new client.”
“Oh, yes, Irma! We’ve been expecting you,” the woman said, a wide, false smile on her face. “The new client isn’t here yet, but you’ll be meeting her in the Yellow Room. You know the way?”
Irma nodded and started toward the hallway that led to the agency’s various meeting rooms. The woman’s voice followed her: “I’ll bring in tea in just a moment, shall I?”
“Sounds good,” Irma said over her shoulder. Drinking was much easier than eating, and this way at least she’d have something in her stomach.
The Yellow Room was one of four themed rooms the agency kept for introducing new clients to their rather unique contractors. The agency offered contract employees in all sorts of unusual specialties. As things went, Irma’s bodyguard work was rather pedestrian. The door to the Yellow Room was open, and sunlight streamed from the open door into the hallway. Irma approached the door and tapped gently on it, peering inside.
Roxy was inside, sitting in one of four plush armchairs in the aggressively bright and cheerful room. “Irma!” Roxy beamed. “Come in! Our new client should be here any minute. Where is Clementine with the tea?” Roxy frowned for a moment, but then waved Irma in. “Come, come, have a seat!”
The room’s chairs were all overstuffed monstrosities in shades of yellow, shifting from light butter to dark brass. The carpet was plush and golden — Irma felt her soft shoes sinking into it and she stepped into the room. The afternoon sunlight intensified every gleaming surface in the room, from the polished curtain rods to the elegant gold-leaf tables near each chair. Irma wanted to shade her eyes, but she resisted the impulse.
“Hey, Roxy. So this clients a little different than our usual, huh?” Irma said as she seated herself in the seat next to Roxy’s. “Travel? Extra duties?”
Roxy nodded, her face serious. “I think you’re going to like this one, and I think she’s going to like you, too. But it is going to take a little … uh, flexibility on your part. I promise you, it’s going to be worthwhile!”
Irma knew she couldn’t exactly be picky when it came to clients. She needed the work, badly. And she needed this one to stick. But she didn’t want to say that to Roxy, in part because she didn’t want to discuss her private business with Roxy, and in part because Roxy probably already suspected as much. “We’ll see,” was all Irma said in reply.
Down the hallway, they both heard the agency’s front door open. Clementine, who Irma surmised must be the new woman at the front desk, let out an ear-splitting squeal — even all the way down the hall, Irma covered her ears and flinched. “What …?” Irma started to ask, but Roxy leapt to her feet, her face worried, and took off out of the room and down the hall.
Irma strained her ears to listen as Roxy started speaking, first to Clementine and then to the new visitor. “Clementine!” she hissed. “Go busy yourself with preparing the tea tray, and quit screeching at our clients. Then, in Roxy’s usual tone, oozing confidence and professionalism: “Ah, Ms. Darma! We are so delighted you could make it today. Come with me, and I’ll introduce you to Irma. I just know you two are going to hit it off.”
Ms. Darma — why did that name sound familiar? Irma sifted through her brain attempting to make a link. She knew she’d encountered the name Darma somewhere recently.
“Yes, right this way — the last door on the left,” Roxy said, and Irma could hear footsteps approaching. A woman, short and slight, with a mass of bright yellow hair almost dwarfing her small frame, stepped into the room, with Roxy on her heels. Roxy was saying something, but Irma wasn’t listening — she finally remembered where she’d heard the name Darma before. Her sister Isadora had dragged her out to the big amphitheater downtown a few months back, claiming she needed to get out into the world more. Irma suspected she’d done it to give Philemon and his family a break from Irma’s near-constant presence, so she went along without too much complaint. The performance that night hadn’t been at all what Irma expected. The performers weren’t actors, but rather musicians — Isadora said they toured from town to town playing songs of their own devising, rather than the usual folk songs and ballads one heard at public concerts. Irma must have been the only person in the audience who had never heard of them. The crowd had buzzed with excitement all through the performance, and they screamed their adoration between each song, much the way Clementine had just screamed in the front room. The band was called The Darma Birds. And the lead singer was ...
“Oh my stars,” Irma said before she could stop herself. “You’re Irene Darma.”
(This post is part of the 500 Words short story project.)
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