Jake & Mimi

by Frank Baldwin

  He is timing the ice to the music.

  Her breaks, her saving breaks, come only in the digressions. As soon as the piece returns to its theme, in whatever subtle variation, Jake starts in on her again. I put my hands to my knees, to keep them from shaking and to keep them pressed together. He is taking everything from her. Every defense. The music is her only distraction, but by concentrating on it, she is driven back, always, to her torment, even the breaks unbearable now because she knows the piano will find its theme again, and she knows that when it does, the ice will resume its slow journey along her skin. And the deeper the piece progresses, the closer the ice will come to its final target, to where Nina knows it must go, needs it to go, and cannot imagine it.

  The piano holds to its theme longer than ever now. A minute, a minute thirty, the ice winding up her still thigh, finding a vein, tracing it, bringing out its blue. Drawing soft, stuttering cries from her parted lips. It climbs higher than ever, almost to the cotton, reaching it now as finally, mercifully, the piano trickles away into a digression and Jake lifts the cube from her skin.

  I feel it now. Beneath my dress.

  Spasms are starting to jolt her as Jake drops the sliver of ice into the glass, moves quickly to the head of the bed and takes her bound wrist in his hand. He presses his thumb to her pulse point, hard, harder, and Nina, with a gasp of pain, opens her fist and lets the silk she’s been clutching fall from her fingers. Jake presses her open hand to the covers as the piano hints at its theme, starts back toward it, then wanders off again. He moves quickly around the bed and presses on the pulse point of her right hand until Nina opens it, too. “N —” she cries, stopping herself, barely, and turning her cheek into the bed, toward me, her mouth open in shock as she realizes what is happening, realizes that Jake isn’t close to finished, that he is merely making the rules more severe. Her legs won’t be enough anymore, he is telling her. He wants her wrists still, too.

  I’ve never felt what I feel now. Not without being touched.

  Jake takes her chin in his hand. He isn’t, he can’t. Her last defense. She tries to press it into the covers, but he turns it up, toward him, holding it firmly a few seconds and then letting go. She doesn’t try to move it. The piano is circling now, finding its way back to the theme, on the verge of it. Jake takes another cube from the glass. Nina starts to brace, to close her fists, but she stops herself, opening them again just as the piano locks onto its theme.

  Jake leans over her and presses the cube, for the first time, to her breast.

  She cannot stay still, but she does. Absolutely still, in every muscle, her head up, her legs together like a diver, her wrists flat on the covers, fingers spread, the white silk ties lying slack beside them. Jake moves the ice up to her nipple, tracing it around the soft aureole, to the tip, and down again. Her lips whisper soundlessly, pleading, but she doesn’t move. He takes the ice, slowly, across to her other breast.

  I slide my hands down my dress, pushing it deeper between my legs.

  She is a vision. Completely, completely still. I watch her face, her delicate face, the sweat coming down it in rivulets now, soaking the black blindfold, rolling in drops down her flushed cheeks, shining on the tight, pulsing cords of her neck. Somehow I’m sure her eyes are open. They are open beneath the blindfold, and in them, and in the arch of her still body, and all through her is a look of pure… effort — no… pain — no… something past pain, even. That moment in a terrible run, after miles and miles, when you cannot go on but do and burst, suddenly, through pain into total clarity. Into transcendence.

  She is with him now.

  Nina is about to break, cannot bear the ice another second, but she is with him. And Jake sees this. His eyes are shining. He takes his left hand from her hip, lifts it to her face, and touches it to her cheek.

  Still the music holds to its theme. The soft piano holds to its simple theme, repeating it, repeating it, ruthlessly repeating it even as Jake moves the ice off her breast and down, to the only place left to go, down past her belly button to the cotton of her panties, and along the edge of them, tracing them as carefully as a master tailor marking a suit for a cut. Still she doesn’t move. Up to her hip he goes, down into her vee, up to her other hip, across, and, finally, onto the cotton itself. Nina gasps, from the very heart of her, gasps but stays motionless, stays beautifully, perfectly still as the ice reaches the center of her panties, where he stops it, a moan escaping her as he presses it hard to the cotton, holding it there while the piano, still playing, holds to the outer edge of its theme; holds, holds, holds, and now wanders off it, and she is saved.

  Jake lifts the ice off her, leans forward, and kisses her gently on the forehead.

  She drops her cheek to the covers again, her breathing coming in explosive bursts. She is afraid to move but she must, a little at least, and so she takes the silk up in her fingers again and makes quick, quiet fists. And then relaxes them, straining for any sound from him, any clue. Could he be finished? Could he possibly? She’s done all he asked. From the first she wanted only to surrender, but when he didn’t let her, she hadn’t broken. He put the ice to her breasts, to her panties, put it right there, and she hadn’t broken. And then he’d kissed her. Could that mean she’d made it? That he was through? She waits, pleading with every muscle as the piano, still in digression, starts to work back to the theme. Please. No more. She’s gone to her limit. Past it. The piano turns onto its theme again and settles along it. And Jake makes no move to reach for the glass. He looks down at her, watching as she strains to hear, as she dares to believe. And then he moves to the head of the bed and unties the silk tie from the post.

  Nina feels the slack in her wrist and collapses into herself, breathing silent prayers of thanks. Jake lets her bend her arm at last, lets her bring her wrist in toward her body, and then pulls it, hard, back to the post. She cries out, startled. Jake doubles the tie around the post, triples it, taking up all the slack, every inch, and now reties her wrist, reties it so tight that it is immobile, the back of it pressed hard against the bare wood, the tie itself almost cutting into her. She cries out again, turns her face to him, as if to ask why, but Jake moves quickly to the other side of the bed and ties her right wrist the same way, Nina crying out again as he pulls it to the post, spreading her arms out wider than before, so wide now that the muscles along each of them stand taut and glistening in the light.

  I want to tell him to stop, to reach out and take his arm and tell him he has to stop, but I let him walk right past me and cross back to the other side of the bed and sit down again. And I know that if he were to ask me, that if we had some silent code and he were to ask me, right now, I wouldn’t tell him to stop. Just as I can’t make myself look away from her, even though I’m rocking now, rocking slowly with my hands clasped between my thighs, my ankles tightly crossed. He sees me, but I can’t help it. It isn’t just heat beneath my dress now. It’s dampness. And so I rock slowly, and breathe quietly, and watch Jake Teller reach down beside the bed and come up with two more ties.

  They are white silk, like the others, and he ties each one in a strong double knot low on the remaining bedposts. Nina can’t hear him over the piano, the beautiful piano that I will never listen to again and that stays, faithfully now, on its theme as it begins its rise toward the finish.

  She is moaning now, softly, over and over, turning her face from side to side, pressing first one cheek into the covers, then the other, moving her legs from side to side, too, her ankles crossed so tightly that each has raised a mark on the other. Jake moves to the foot of the bed and takes them in his hands. She cries out and fights to keep them together. He has to press down on her right ankle and pull up on her left, and even then it takes him seconds. When they come apart she drops her head back into the covers, and as he starts to pull her left one toward the post, she moves her other leg with it, breathing in frantic, negotiating sighs. If he will just let her keep them together. Nothing else but that, at least. But her right leg
can go only so far, and when Jake takes her left ankle the rest of the way, to the post, it parts her knees for the first time, and then her thighs. She gasps as if bitten, and when she feels the silk close around her ankle and understands all that is in store, she comes apart.

  “No!” she cries. “No, n —”

  “I’ll leave,” Jake says sharply, closing his fist on her ankle and squeezing once, hard. Her head falls to the covers, rises, falls again. Jake takes her right ankle in his hands. She is trying to hold it close to her left, to keep her legs at least partway together, but Jake pulls it slowly the other way, parting her legs truly now, parting them farther, parting them so far that I want to cry out, parting them almost into a split, and then looping the loose end of the final tie around her ankle and tying it tight.

  She is too small for either ankle to quite reach to the post. The taut silk ties hold them dead still, six inches away. And I see for the first time, in the center of her, the soaked cotton. When her legs were together it was hidden, but now I can see the dark stain on her panties, and I see that it is spreading. It can only spread, because there is no give anywhere now, no way for her to stop, or even slow, the torrent he’s built up inside her. Nina Torring is spread-eagled, and she is helpless.

  Jake sits down on the bed again and reaches into the rocks glass for the final cube. She hears it clink against the glass and cries out. She tries to pull her wrists straight out from the posts but gasps from the pain. The ties are too tight, and if she pulls again they will mark her wrists deeply. She would have to explain. She cries out again, but softly now, futilely, her face no longer turning sharply into the covers but drifting from side to side, as if in a trance.

  He presses the ice to her forehead and starts it down.

  He knows he has to work quickly now. Down her flushed cheek he takes it, down her neck, between her breasts. She can’t escape from it in any way, can’t move, can’t resist, can only cry out, and so she does, short, sharp cries as he takes the ice down her belly. He can feel her giving way beneath it, can feel the last of her control leaving her muscles, feel her trembling giving way to spasms and her spasms coming quicker and quicker. He moves the ice down to her panties and along the thin edge of them one last time. And then he gathers himself. He braces himself against the bed with his left hand and slips his right, the hand with the ice, underneath the soaked white cotton of her panties.

  She cries out as if he’s shocked her with current.

  I stare at the cotton. I can see the shape of his hand beneath it, and I see that he is not just inside her panties but inside her, too, inside her and moving. He is rubbing the ice against her, searching hard with it. “Ah… Ah…” in broken cries now as she pounds her head into the covers. He rubs rhythmically, still searching, and now locking in, working one spot, up and down, up and down. Nina is gone, her cries trailing away into gasps and coming back louder, cries of agony and of much more. Of deliverance. He is giving her, at last, release. Punishing release, yes, punishing and cruel, but release, touching her where she must be touched, answering, finally, the need he built in her so slowly. Up and down, up and down he moves it, so hard that I can see his tensed knuckles through the cotton. And then he takes his hand from her panties. His empty hand. But still the spasms jolt her, harder than ever, and still she cries out, just as if he were —

  He left the ice inside her. And it is setting off charge after charge.

  Jake takes the scissors from the nightstand, slips them beneath the thin line of cotton on her hip, cuts once, again on the other side, and pulls her panties off her. I feel light-headed. She is trimmed very close, the way you read about in magazines. Cropped. A thin blond line, nothing else, and because it’s so thin, and she is… spread, and has been through everything, it is… she is… I look away.

  To be seen like that. Against your will. No one should ever. I’m dizzy now. Rocking, still, but with my head down. I look up just once more, not to where I’ve been looking, I can’t, but to her hands. Her small, delicate, bound hands. Her nails are so deep into her palms that one has drawn blood. I look down at the floor again, telling myself to rock, to rock slowly, rocking and listening to her cries and to the music, which is just ending, following its torturous theme one last time, holding its final note and then dying away, leaving the room to her cries.

  I feel a hand on my shoulder and almost jump from my chair. I look up to see Jake Teller kneeling in front of me. He lifts my chin and looks into my face, his eyes blue, so very blue, the deepest blue I’ve ever seen. He is mouthing something. The word Go.

  I stare at him. Again he mouths it: Go. And I stand, somehow I stand and back quietly to the door, my hands over my dress, afraid that he will see, afraid that I’ve stained myself, just as she did. I back out into the hallway and start down it, then lean against the wall. I feel my legs going, so I sit down on the hardwood floor, my back against the wall, my arms clasped over my knees.

  I hear the whoosh of his belt through the loops, and then the clink of the buckle, loud in the quiet apartment, and I realize why he sent me away. I hear the sound of the bed giving beneath his weight, and then a catch to her cries, a final, desperate catch as she summons the last of her will. He is touching her now, lining her up. I hear a single sound from him, a single, hard sound from Jake Teller and then, from Nina, everything.

  Words at last: “God” and “God” and “God,” rising and rising. “Oh God, Oh God, Oh God” now, and beyond her words another sound, a steady, fast clicking, over and over. The sound of the headboard, of the posts, as they strike the wall. Again and again they strike it, and then her words dissolve into cries, drawn-out cries, louder and louder. I hug my knees tighter to me, bury my face in them. If I could just hear Jake Teller, hear anything from him. But no. He is silent. I hear only her cries, filling the apartment, and the clicking of the posts against the wall, so fast, so impossibly fast. And then, slowing. Slowing and deepening. I can’t take it. They are slowing because Jake Teller is slowing, slowing himself so that he can drive into her harder, deeper. She is so small, so very small. I struggle to my feet, the sound of the posts growing louder. Deep thuds now, and further apart. Three, four seconds apart, and with each thud, sharp cries from Nina Torring, piercing cries, wordless, soaring, as if something has torn loose inside her.

  I rush into the living room and to the door. I slip into my shoes. Still her cries come, and then she is… there is no other word for it, she is screaming. I leave the apartment and close the door behind me. And still I hear her. I hear her through the door, hear her even as I cross the foyer, hear her until I step out into the night and close the big mahogany street door behind me. I rush to the black gate, fumble with the catch, step onto the sidewalk, and hurry away, almost running and now, yes, running in my dress to the corner of Houston, where I stop, breathing hard, and lean against a newspaper machine. I need to touch something solid, to feel the cold metal of this machine with my hands. A drop of water falls onto my wrist, and I realize it is mine, that I am crying. I wipe at the tears with my sweater and I stand, holding on to the machine, until my breathing slows and I start to come back again, back from the apartment into the night around me, from the cries of Nina Torring to the rustle of the trees on Sullivan Street and the noise of the traffic on Houston.

  A full minute it takes me, and then I look around. Behind me is a corner store. I walk slowly into it, startled by the bell over the door. Even the ordinary store sounds inside — the ching of the register, the voices from the television — sound strange, alien. I walk to the back, slide open the door to the standing refrigerator, take a cold plastic bottle of water from the shelf and press it to my forehead. I see my reflection in the glass, see that my hair is damp on my face, see the burning red of my cheeks. As red as hers. I put the bottle to them, then to the back of my neck. I open it and drink two, three long sips, almost half the bottle, and then I walk with it to the counter. I can’t look into the face of the man behind it. It is as if he might see, i
n my eyes, where I’ve been, what I’ve done.

  “Are you okay?” he asks. The white of his shirt is dazzling against his dark skin.

  “Yes,” I say, paying him and walking out the door into the street. I look up at the sky, the New York City sky with its strange light, the glow we have instead of stars. I wish I could see just one right now. In the yard in Greenwich I could always see stars. As a girl, when I couldn’t sleep, Dad would take me out there, hold my hand, point up into the sky, and tell me which constellation would be guarding me that night. One of the Dippers. Orion’s Belt.

  I look up Houston Street and see a taxi a block away, coming fast, its bright indicator light dipping and swerving. I lift my hand; it rattles to a stop, and I climb inside.

  “Where to, miss?”

  “Take me home, please. Eighty-third and York.”

  I sit back against the leather. I put the bottle on the seat beside me and sit with my hands in my dress. When I get home, I’ll wash it in the sink. I look out the window, at the city streaming by. In the bathroom sink, in warm water with a little soap. It will dry by morning. I roll down the window and move closer to it. The air is cold, biting, more winter than spring, but I close my eyes and turn my face full into it, into the pure, cleansing wind.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Watch this,” Pardo says, standing and cupping his hands to his mouth as the players come off the floor for a timeout. “Hey! Hey you, Coach! Hey you, you bastard! Room three thirteen, right?”