Down in the Zero

by Andrew Vachss

  I traced the penciled design with the Tombow, working carefully so I didn't puncture her skin with the sharp point. My hands are surgeon–steady, but I'm no artist. It took me a long time before I was satisfied.

  I held her there, one hand resting on her thigh, waiting for it to dry.

  "Okay," I said. "Get up."

  She struggled to her feet, red–faced, adjusting her panties, hauling the reluctant spandex into place.

  "You have a good mirror?" I asked her.

  "Yes. In the dressing room."

  "Show me."

  She stalked away from me, moving quickly. The dressing room had a full–length mirror, but the lighting was all overhead—I wasn't sure if it would work.

  "Take those pants off," I told her. She practically ripped them down, kicking off her shoes, dropping the pants sullenly at her feet. I walked her over to the mirror, holding her by the shoulders. Then I turned her around so her back was to it.

  "Pull down your underpants," I told her. "Take a look."

  She did, craning her neck to see over her shoulder. She touched the black dot on her rump wonderingly. "What is it? I can't see it good."

  "It's a tattoo, Fancy. Like you wanted. Only it's not permanent. This way, you get to see what it looks like. Feels like."

  "Oh, I want to see it," she squealed, pulling up her panties and running from the room.

  I followed her down the hall into her bedroom. She was standing in front of a makeup mirror on her bureau. The mirror was bordered by a string of tiny light bulbs, glowing a soft, rich yellow.

  "It reverses, see?" she said, flipping the mirror to its back side. The new mirror was magnified, distorting the image unless you were real close. She pulled the panties all the way down to her ankles, stood on one leg as she kicked them off. Then she turned around so her back was to the mirror, bent over and thrust her bottom at the magnifying glass, looking over her shoulder.

  "It's a little bomb!" she said.

  I took a look for myself. Not bad, I thought. A little round bomb, complete with fuse, sparks coming off the end like it was going to go off any minute.

  "You like it?" I asked her.

  "Oh, I love it. But shouldn't it be…bigger?"

  "No. Anyone getting near enough to see it, it should be something just between you and them, right?"

  "I guess so."

  "This way, it's like a beauty mark, unless you look real close."

  "It's great," she said, wiggling her bottom hard. "Does it mean something?"

  "Sure. It means you're an explosive girl. Tick…tick…tick…"

  "You want to…take a closer look?" she asked softly, walking over to the bed, bending over.

  "I love my tattoo," she said later, lying on her side, touching it with one finger.

  "You get to decide this way," I told her. "For now, it'll be a secret."

  "I have lots of secrets," she whispered. Sad, not teasing.

  "We all do."

  "Charm does too. Charm has more secrets than anyone."

  "You seem to know some of them."

  "You mean the video? That's not a secret. She doesn't care what she does."

  "It wasn't her idea?"

  "It was…a long time ago. When it started." Fancy shifted her hips, throwing one leg over mine, warm wetness against my upper thigh. "She got to watch. When we were kids. I never did."

  "Watch what?"

  "Spanking. My father would spank me. All the time. For anything. For nothing. He'd call me and Charm into his den. He had a special chair for it. A chair with no arms. He would tell Charm to stand still. Then he'd put me over his knee and spank me. Hard. He always made me tell him why I was getting it. If I didn't tell him, I'd get it harder. It hurt. And it was…embarrassing. With Charm watching me and all. If I cried, I'd just get it more. Then he'd tell me to pull up my pants and go to my room, think about what I did. When I went out, he'd close the door behind me."

  "He never spanked Charm in front of you?"

  "No. I guess he always waited until I was gone. I hated her for that—it wasn't fair."

  "How old were you?"

  "When it started? I don't know. I was real little. Maybe first grade? I'm not sure. But it didn't stop until I was a senior in high school."

  "How did you get him to stop?"

  "I didn't. That's when he committed suicide."

  "Did you ever tell anyone?"

  "My mother. I told my mother. She tied me up. In a chair. She slapped me and slapped me, screaming. She told me I was a little slut. I didn't even know what it meant, then. She said if I ever told her filthy stories again, she'd burn me. She held a candle right up to my face. I was so scared I wet myself. She just left me there like that. For a long, long time. I never told her anything again."

  "Christ."

  "When I was about thirteen, Charm came into my room. When they were out for the evening. I was still sore. From what he did. She said she was sorry, asked me if I wanted her to rub some witch hazel on it, to take out the sting. I told her to get away from me—I hated her so.

  "Did you think she was—?"

  "She went away," Fancy continued like I hadn't said anything, "but she came back in a little while. She had her nightgown on. She laid down on my bed and pulled it up. She asked me, did I want to spank her? To make up for what happened?" She took a deep breath—it caught somewhere in her throat. "I did it. Harder and harder, but she never made a sound. When I was done, I was so tired I couldn't move my arm. My hand was sore from doing it. She turned over, said she was sorry. About what happened. I was crying by then, but she wasn't. She kissed me. I was all…excited, but I didn't know what it was. Charm knew. She…kissed me there too. Until I came.

  "And now she—"

  "She still does it. I still…hit her. And she makes me come. She was the one…with the vibrator. She put it inside me, held it there. She taught me to do it."

  "Why did she make the video with you?"

  "For my business. It was Charm who got me into it. Right after my father died. She knew people, she said. Men mostly. I could do what I liked, and they'd pay for it."

  "You didn't need the money…?"

  "No. We have lots of money. In a trust. Just the income, not the principal. But it's a lot. Enough for anything. I just…got into it. I always liked doing the men…Charm said we should do the video together because men like to see stuff like that. Two women. It's a real turn–on, she said. Besides, I had to have a thing."

  "A thing?"

  "Yes. Like, 'it's your thing,' see? Some people's thing is painting. Or riding horses, or whatever. Charm said, if you don't have a thing, you have no thing. Get it? No thing…nothing?"

  "So what's her thing?"

  "Charm is a scientist," Fancy said, a hint of pride in her voice. "Everything is building blocks to her. Like DNA. Little blocks. You take them apart, see how they work. That's her thing."

  She reached one hand toward my face. I stroked her right arm, feeling the hard biceps muscle.

  "Pretty powerful, isn't it?" she whispered.

  "Sure is. From all that tennis?"

  "From all that whipping," she said. Then she started to cry.

  "I shouldn't have done it," she said, much later, cuddled against me so close I could hardly hear her.

  "Done what?"

  "Hit Charm. She was just trying to make up for something that wasn't her fault. She couldn't do anything about my father. He was too powerful. Everybody knew him. Everybody respected him. I could understand why he loved Charm—she always kept his image. Made him proud. In school, she got the top grades. And she was beautiful, not like me."

  "You're a beautiful girl, Fancy"

  "Charm fixed that too. I…wasn't. I was chubby as a kid. Fat, even. Charm looked like a model—me, I looked like a butterball. But she told me that I could be in control. Started me exercising. And she watched everything I ate. But I was still…I don't know. Not ugly or anything, but…"

  "That was in your head, girl."<
br />
  "No it wasn't. It was in my mirror. Every night. In my mirror, I could see what I was. My nose was too big. And my chin was, like, pushed in. When I was nineteen, on my birthday. I remember it like it was yesterday. I wanted to get Charm something special. To show her how much I loved her. You can't buy anything for Charm—we all have money, it wouldn't mean anything. I got her a cat. A special, special cat. An odd–eyed white, it's called. He had one blue eye and one orange—he's so magnificent. When I gave him to Charm, she broke down and cried, she said he was so beautiful. She loved the idea that he was special—nobody knows exactly how you get one, they just show up in a litter. Most of the time they're born deaf, but Rascal wasn't. He's a stud, Rascal. Charm always breeds him."

  "Did she ever get any more?"

  "No. Not yet. And you know what she got me? For my birthday gift? Plastic surgery. They fixed my nose and my chin. They even pinned my ears back a little bit…so they wouldn't stick out. When the bandages came off, I was different."

  "You just looked different."

  "No, I was different, Burke. A different person.

  "Where did you get the plastic surgery done? In Europe?"

  "No," she said. Something in her voice, something I couldn't figure out. I left it there.

  "I thought you said you hated her, Fancy."

  "I do. I mean, I did. Before I understood. We're sisters. Twins. There's nothing closer than that. I'm not stupid—I know she's a manipulator. But if it wasn't for Charm, I'd be a basket case. She stopped me once…from killing him."

  "Your father?"

  "Yes. You could never understand how he made me feel. Like I was nothing. It wasn't just the spanking. Not even in front of Charm. He was always…teasing me, he called it. I was fat. I was stupid. I was lazy. I made him ashamed of me—that's what he always said. 'You never make me happy.' He said that all the time."

  "You were really going to kill him?"

  "I came back once. After he was finished with me. The door was closed. Charm was in there with him. I…wanted to hear her getting it too. I know it was wrong, but I just wanted to know…"

  "What happened?"

  "Nothing happened. I waited and waited. Finally, Charm came out. She snuck down the hall, to her room. I opened the door and I peeked in. He was asleep. On the leather couch he had in the den. Sleeping like he was dead. I wished he was dead.

  "I told Charm what I did, how I tried to spy on her. I always told her everything. She said it always happened the same way—after he was finished, after she left, he would go to sleep. We had some men working out back. Building an extension on the pool. They always left their tools outside. One of them, he liked me a little, I think. He was always talking to me. He had a hammer. A sledgehammer, with a short handle. I stole it. Kept it in my room. They never found it—I could hear them shouting out back, looking for it. I showed it to Charm. I told her, the next time it happened, I was going to go into his den and smash his skull until he was dead."

  "Wouldn't they figure…?"

  "That's what Charm said. That I'd get caught. I didn't care about being caught. You know what Charm told me? She said he had a fatal disease—she saw a doctor's report. In his desk. Cancer. He was going to die in a year or so, that's what she said. So, if we could wait, we'd have everything. And he'd be gone. Later, I figured out she must have been making it all up. When he…killed himself, the note he left, the one on the computer, it just said he was depressed. Sick of everything. The lawyer who read us the will, he said they had done an autopsy—there was nothing wrong with him.

  "Not with his body, anyway."

  "He wasn't sick—he was mean. Pure mean. If he was sick, he would have treated Charm the same way he did me. Now the only way I can feel like I'm somebody is when I'm role–playing."

  "With the whips?"

  "Yes, with the whips. Men pay me to do it. They wouldn't pay if they didn't want it. Want me. Money, that's the proof."

  I lit a cigarette, blew smoke at the ceiling. Every little street hooker I'd ever known had a name for their pimp. Daddy.

  "Charm was the one who taught me," Fancy said. "The power of a fetish. Do you know how strong that can be?"

  "Yeah," I said, thinking of another kind of fetish—the kind they use in voodoo.

  "You don't," she said fiercely. "It controls everything. Charm showed me. A man who needs to beat a woman to become aroused…that controls him. If you offered him a night with the most beautiful woman in the world…straight stuff, plain vanilla…he'd pass it up for the chance to whip any old ugly beast."

  "But when it's over…"

  "It's never over. It just comes and goes, see? That's the power. It's inside them, not me. I just learned how to see it. How to be it."

  "So what do you get? You don't need the money."

  "I get…wanted. I'm a star. In the scene, everybody knows me. I have slaves—they do whatever I tell them."

  "So why…?"

  "Why you? I listened to Charm. Better than even she thinks. The power of a fetish, like I told you. It had a power over me too. I wanted to…see the other side."

  "What do you mean?"

  "S&M, it's different from hanky–spanky. S&M, it's about pain. You take enough of it, the endorphins just start flying around inside you. It opens up the nerve endings, changes your temperature…everything. That's what they tell me."

  "Who?"

  "My…clients. It's more than just a turn–on, it sets you free. But hanky–spanky, that's a scene, you understand? What you feel, it's all inside you. Everything's important—the way you dress, the words you use…everything. It's not about pain. Not real pain. When it works, you get out…I don't mean you come, I mean you…get to what the real you is. The doms, they never really get it. I never got it—I just heard about it. They say it's a search for the truth. A line you step over. I wanted to see. To be free."

  "Did you?"

  "Not enough. You don't play hard enough."

  "I'm not a trick, girl."

  "But you like it, right?"

  "I like you."

  "But you wouldn't let me…discipline you?"

  "No."

  "Why not? I know how it works. I studied it. Guilt, that's what it is. They feel guilty about something. I punish them. It works out. Balance. Haven't you ever done something you feel guilty about?"

  I got up from the bed. She said something—white noise. I didn't listen. Couldn't listen. I walked out of the house. Onto the deck in back. I looked down, but it wasn't high enough. I couldn't find the Zero.

  The next thing I remember was Fancy, wrapping me in a blanket, walking me back toward the bed. I was shaking so bad my legs didn't work right. She pushed me down on the bed, piled covers on top of me. I was so cold.

  When I came around, I was drenched in sweat. Fancy was sitting next to me, legs in the lotus position, watching, her gray eyes alive in the candlelight.

  "Burke…Burke, are you okay?"

  "Yeah."

  "You stood out there forever. With no clothes on. Like one of those statues in a museum. Just standing out there. What happened?"

  "I don't know," I lied. "I need to take a shower."

  "No you don't," she whispered, lifting the sodden covers, sliding in next to me. She wrapped her arms around me, hugged me close, pushing my head toward her breasts, nestling me against a chill she couldn't warm.

  "What am I?" Fancy asked later, still holding me. "Remember I asked before? If…playing that way, if that was yours? I don't know what's mine anymore. What am I, anyway?"

  "You're a plum," I told her. "A ripe plum."

  "What does that mean?"

  "A plum, little girl. A rich, dark plum. You squeeze it right, you get sweet juice. You tear it apart, all you get is the pit."

  "Tell me what to do," she said.

  I leaned over, kissed her. Hard. Her mouth blossomed under mine, yielding, finally opening to me.

  I left at first light. Fancy was still asleep. A lush deep sleep, a woman sleep. So
aking in her own sweet juices.

  I stood in the dawn, looking across at the big house standing like a fog–shrouded fighter plane, locked in by enemy radar.

  The light was on in the kitchen as I pulled up. I went over. The kid was working on some concoction in a blender, pouring in ingredients.

  "What's that?" I asked him.

  "I'm not exactly sure. Wendy gave me the stuff. It's supposed to…clean you out or something."

  "Clean you out from what?"

  "Drugs, booze…anything that's toxic."

  "So how come you…?"

  "From the tanking. I don't do it anymore. Wendy says, there's no point taking this stuff unless you really stopped. It flushes everything out, but you can't be doing it every day."

  "Sounds good to me."

  "You want some?"

  "For what?"

  "Uh…cigarettes?"

  "I think I'll pass."

  He flashed me a grin, one with some strength in it. "Guess what? We got a call. From Dr. Barrymore. He said you could see him…looking at his wristwatch, "today. He said he had a cancellation at eleven, and you could have the time he was gonna use."

  "You spoke to him?"

  "No, it was a message. On the machine."

  "Good." I looked over at the kid. He wasn't asking to come along.

  I dressed carefully, went downstairs. Then I pulled the pistol loose from its housing under the fender of the Lexus, stashed it back in the Plymouth.

  By a quarter of eleven, I was at the gate. The guard was casually dressed in a dark maroon blazer over steel gray slacks. He didn't look like a rent–a–cop, something ex–military about the way he strolled over to the driver's window.

  "Can I help you, sir?"

  "I have an appointment. With Dr. Barrymore."

  "Yes sir. Your name, please?"

  I told him. He walked back to the guard shack standing to the side of the gate. There was a window, but I couldn't see inside. One–way glass? He was back in a couple of minutes.

  "If you'll just go straight up the driveway and turn right at the stanchion, you'll see Dr. Barrymore's residence about a hundred yards away," he said, pointing. It was an old house, dark wood with shuttered windows.