I open my eyes. The white plaster of the windowsill is stained with sweat, and chipped where my fingers have dug into it. I relax them and close my eyes again. I stand still in the quiet apartment. For several minutes I stand, until the visions subside and the storm inside me passes. When I open my eyes again, my mind is clear. Clear of the images of thirty-seven years ago, and clear of all doubt. All weakness.
I cross the living room to the far wall and walk slowly along it, running my hand across the cassettes that fill the mounted oak case. Cassettes that rise from just short of the floor to eye level and stretch to the window. A full year of Miss Lessing’s evenings and mornings. These past few days I have listened obsessively. Pulled tapes at random and listened, as if somewhere among them I might find the moment when I lost her. Instead, I found treasures.
October 14. Miss Lessing in the kitchen, listening to the classical music station as she prepares dinner. “Minuet,” she says, and then a few minutes later: “Finale.” Teaching herself to recognize the separate movements in an orchestral piece. The next day I sent her the Kreisler that is now her favorite.
June 2. Miss Lessing in the living room, listening to National Public Radio. A commentator mentions that Michelangelo was seventy when he began work on St. Peter’s Cathedral. “Wow,” she says softly, and then I read her thoughts. The remark would put her in mind of the elderly. She would think of her father. I waited, and she walked to the kitchen and phoned him.
May 10. I take the cassette from its slot and turn it in my hands. I hold it to the light, as if I might see into it. May 10. The first time I heard her with her fiancé.
Her sounds were beautifully simple and quiet. The sounds of a woman who turns to sex for the deeper communion it offers. What thrilled me most in listening was to hear the… catch in her soft cries, the restraint. Even in love she withheld.
I replace the cassette in its slot and walk along the wall to the last row. I kneel down and take from near the floor the final cassette in my collection. April 16. I recorded it three nights ago, from my car. I take the tape out of its case, walk to the stereo, and slide it into the tape player. I hit PLAY and listen again to its final seconds.
“We could set rules.”
“No rules.”
“Limits.”
“No. Room twenty. The last one. The door won’t be locked.”
I walk to the window again and look down at the street below. A line of drivers in their parked cars wait for the six o’clock chimes that will make them legal. Across the street the gilded awnings sparkle in the fading light.
At thirteen I was sent to a military school in Virginia. One hundred and forty-seven boys in my class, and I was the weakest. When I had been there a month, my father wrote to say that he had put my mother in an institution. “It is what she needs,” he wrote. “Pray for her.”
From the speakers behind me, above the low hiss of the tape, come the sounds of the river. The rustle of the wind on the waves. Jake Teller must have walked away without waiting for her to answer. I close my eyes again.
It is their struggle that excites her. The stripping of their defenses, one by one.
I turn and look at the long wall of tapes. There are more than a thousand of them. Tomorrow I will box them all up and put them away, just as I did with the others. But the collection is not yet complete. I have one more cassette to make.
Four hours from now Miss Lessing is due at the Century Motel. An Øre lies beneath the bed in room twenty. Another beneath the front desk.
I walk to the stereo and turn it off. The apartment is quiet again.
Tonight I will give her one final chance to refuse him. Fate is character. Character, fate. Four hours from now Miss Lessing will choose hers.
And I will listen.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
I wear low heels, and a trace of Maige Noire.
The same pink dress and my cobalt sweater. It is five minutes to ten o’clock, and I sit on a wooden bench outside the ice room of the Century Motel. A few feet from the door of room twenty.
It is the last motel room, as he said. Past it is only the ice room, and then a chain-link fence at the end of the motel property. I look at the door, blue and bare. Almost the way I imagined it. Lying in bed last night, and tonight as I dressed, and in the taxi on the way over, I pictured the door and nothing else. As if I might walk to it and then turn and walk away.
The night air is cool and soothing. From this bench I can see across the parking lot into the window of the motel office. An old man sits at the front desk, reading by the light of a lamp. Every few minutes he turns the page.
I look down at my watch. 9:58. I close my eyes and rub my hands over the knees of my dress.
I called my mother thirty minutes ago. Just before I left the apartment. I thought she would be in bed, reading, but she was in the garden. “What’s wrong?” were her first words. I was fine, I told her. I just needed to talk.
She saw my wedding dress today. She was downtown, passing by the shop, and couldn’t resist. It was ravishing. The final alterations were done, the beads — seven thousand of them — sewn on by hand. “You’ll cry when you see it,” she said.
I open my eyes. 10:03. I stand and walk to the door of room twenty. I try the handle, and it turns easily. I pause. I look back, past the parking lot and the office, out to the lights of Tenth Avenue. Up into the dark city sky.
One night, in a lifetime, without rules. Without limits.
I open the door, step inside, and lean back against it. And I stare, transfixed.
In front of me is everything I didn’t let myself imagine. The white silk ties on the posts. The black blindfold on the pillow. A cassette player on the nightstand. A lamp clipped to the headboard. The curtains by the lone window are drawn tight, and the heat is on high. I stand a full minute with my back to the hard door.
I walk slowly to the bed and sit down on the edge. Just as I did three weeks ago, at the Roosevelt Hotel. Was it only three weeks ago?
He takes everything from you, Mimi. Everything.
The two white silks at the head of the bed are tied low on the posts and lie across the red covers. They end in graceful, knotted loops that wait patiently for my wrists. The loops are impossibly far apart. At the foot of the bed, the other two ties hang straight down from the posts. He won’t use those until he’s ready. I reach out and touch the white silk, careful not to disturb the knot. It is so soft. I close my eyes, trembling. This room has been waiting for me my whole life. The soft ties, the blindfold, the heat. Waiting. I only had to come to them.
I slip off my shoes, walk to the chair by the window, and place them beneath it, with my purse. I hang my sweater over the straight back of the chair. I look to the door, then undo the buttons on my dress and slip out of it. I fold it carefully and lay it on the chair. I place my watch on top.
I’m down to bra and lace, grateful now for the heat. I walk to the bed again. I look down at the careful arrangements, at the desk lamp pointed down the center of the bed, the delicate knots in the looped ties. I sit down. I take the black blindfold from the pillow and slip it on, its smooth felt soft on my forehead. I pull it close to my eyes but leave it just above them. I lie down on my back on the covers.
I reach up with my right wrist and slip it through the loop of silk. I turn my body, reach up with my left hand, and pull on the loose end of the tie encircling my right wrist. I watch the knot constrict, watch the silk close around my wrist, feel its thrilling bite. I pull it tight, then turn onto my back again and press my legs together.
I lie still for a minute.
That first night, in the bar, I saw cruelty in his eyes. And the blood rose in my face.
I reach up with my free left hand and pull the blindfold over my eyes. Darkness. I slide it up again and stare at the ceiling, my heart racing. I breathe deeply, twice, three times, then pull it down over my eyes again, easing into the darkness this time, letting my other senses take over. I feel the coolness of the cov
ers beneath my legs, hear for the first time the sounds of the room, of the night. The deep, subliminal hum of the heater. A car engine, starting.
Soon it will be music instead. I dig my heels into the covers.
The room is so hot. I feel the first beads of sweat in the well of my neck. In the darkness and quiet, there is nothing to slow my imagination, so I see the sweat on the faces of the others. On the forehead of Nina Torring. The throat of Elise. I press my legs together again.
I reach with my left hand for the other silk tie. It is too high, too far. No, I can reach it. I touch the silk with the tips of my fingers. He will do the rest. He will guide my wrist through the loop and then pull it tight. I can see his hands, his concentration. I feel the first stirrings inside me.
Clear your mind, Mimi.
I think of the garden in Greenwich. The winding path of stones from the patio, the roses by the far wall. My mother, gardening at night in her old clothes. Earth on her knees. Tonight she released the ladybugs. She sprayed them with sugar water, to weight their wings. If you can keep them in the garden for twenty-four hours, they become territorial and will stay.
Footsteps.
Outside on the concrete walk. Coming quickly. Reaching the door. Passing it. I wet my lips and exhale. But now — rattling. The scrape of a bucket. The ice room. I cross my ankles and press my knees tight together. The footsteps start back. To the door… past it… fading… gone. I ease one ankle off the other and breathe out again.
Fifteen minutes ago I called Mark. From the bench outside the ice room. I knew he wouldn’t answer, because he screens his calls. I called to hear his voice on the machine. To see if maybe… I don’t know. As I listened to his voice, clear and strong, a taxi pulled into the parking lot. Its passengers stepped out, and the driver looked over at me. All I had to do was raise my hand. I closed the cell phone and put it back into my purse, and watched the taxi turn and pull out onto Tenth Avenue.
A soft click, a breath of wind, another soft click. The door.
I turn toward it and listen. Nothing. Wait. The rustle of clothing? No. But a sound. A sound that I’ve heard — the give of the door. The soft sigh I heard when I leaned back against it.
He is in the room.
Jake Teller is in the room, and he is standing where I stood. Watching me.
I cover my bra with my left arm. The room is still and silent. I can feel his presence, the way the others could. He is appraising me. Slowly, I take my arm away. I take it away, and I reach and find the silk loop again. I can just slip my wrist through it. I lay my head back on the pillow.
Thirty seconds pass. I will keep still. Thirty more seconds pass. I feel the bed give beneath him. He is beside me. He is leaning in close. I’m trembling now. He doesn’t touch me. Ten more seconds pass. Ten more. Please. Anywhere.
Click.
The lamp. I feel its brightness through the blindfold, its heat on my neck. I wet my lips. And now I feel it — butterfly wings against my left wrist. Not his fingers — the silk. Gossamer soft, closing slowly, and now tightening, tightening, tight now, tighter, and now pulling my wrist a few more inches toward the post.
I’m bound.
I feel the soft burn in my shoulders and across my breastbone. Bound. I pull gently against the ties. They give an inch, no more. I pull harder and gasp as the knots tighten into my wrists. I reach back with my fingers and take up a few inches of silk. I twist them and try to pull out. I can’t. Panic rises through me. I pull harder, harder, but the silk is too strong. It is like steel, and the harder I pull, the tighter it closes. I try to slip my wrists out from the loops, but they are too tight. I kick my heels on the covers.
“Please.”
Silence.
I won’t be like the others. My breathing is fast and loud in the quiet room. I calm it. My struggle will excite him. As theirs excited me. I bring my legs together and somehow, against everything inside me, I keep them still. The lamp is trained on my throat, and I can feel the sweat trickling down into it, gathering. I try to concentrate on the cool of the covers beneath me. If he would just touch me. If I could hear a sound from him. A whisper. My name.
Thirty seconds pass. A minute.
To imagine it was nothing. To listen, to watch — no. To lie here in the pitch dark, helpless, waiting for him to begin… is beyond everything. I close my legs tighter, but already I feel the wetness between them. He will see it, as he saw it in the others. I cross my ankles. The thought of silk, closing around each one, pulling them apart…
Click.
The lamp again. No. I can still feel its heat.
The tape player.
Music. The last preparation. Piano notes now, filling the quiet room. Patient. Haunting. “Convento Di Sant’Anna.” I drop my head back and pull against the ties again. This time I don’t feel the burn in my wrists, but in the center of me. “Convento Di Sant’Anna.” I see Nina Torring’s bedroom. His discipline, her cries, the ice. I bring my legs up and then slowly back down, but inside I feel the spreading wave.
I see the bed I lie on as if from above. The red covers, the white silk. I see myself as Jake Teller must see me. Spread and bound, the tendons standing out in my arms, in my throat. I see the lace that protects me and the scissors that will cut it loose.
I see all this, but I am still.
Still, though I know now that he will break me. I will plead, like the others, and cry out. Already I can feel the cries building. Cries Mark has never heard, could not imagine. In the deep dark of the blindfold I see it now — the church in the fading light. Empty.
I’m bound. God, it is so simple. So pure. Submission.
The piano plays softly, beautifully. For so long I’ve wanted this. Since I could dream. I hear the twist of a bottle cap. The strong scent of oil fills the room. He will touch me now. In seconds.
Please let me last. Let him do anything, but let me last and last.
He touches me. The backs of his fingers on my face. Stroking me gently, gently. I am slipping into ether. Weightless. Free. And now he is touching the blindfold. Lifting it. I blink in the blinding light of the lamp. What’s wrong? Why is —
I can’t breathe.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
I couldn’t do it.
I sat on the bed at the Century Motel, the white silk ties laid out in front of me on the red covers. It was seven o’clock, and the last light of dusk came through the window and fell across them. I reached for the solid wooden post at the head of the bed, and ran my hand down along it. Then I gathered up the ties, folded them, put them in my shirt pocket, stood, and walked out of the room. Ten feet away, outside the door to the ice room, was a wooden bench. I sat down on it and stared across the parking lot. I took my cell phone from my pocket, then put it away again. Better that she come and find the door locked, the room canceled. Better that she come and leave betrayed. I looked again at the door to room twenty, then walked across the parking lot to the motel office, where I told the old man at the desk that I had to cancel my reservation.
“We still got to charge you,” he said, his eyes sour and challenging.
I didn’t argue. I stepped out the door and stood on the sidewalk of Tenth Avenue. A breeze came up from the west, from the water. Between the buildings I could see the sun sinking into the Hudson. I started to walk.
South to Forty-second Street I headed, then east. Out of the gray, gritty clamor of Hell’s Kitchen, through the neon corridor of Times Square, past the majestic white library at Fifth Avenue. I kept walking, past the quiet office towers of midtown, through the Friday night chaos outside Grand Central. I walked to Third Avenue, the sidewalk crowds thinning, and then on to Second.
I walked the width of the island, until I was finally cut off by the gates of the United Nations. I turned south and walked down to Thirty-fourth Street, then cut up across the car ramp, wound down past the heliport, stepped through the open fence, and stood, alone, at the beginning of the river walkway. It was full night by then. I crossed t
o the river railing.
There was still time to go back. To reclaim the room, prepare the bed, and wait. I looked across the water at the lights of Roosevelt Island. I reached into my shirt pocket, took out the white silk ties, and threw them over the railing. Three fell folded into the water, but the last one unfurled and was lifted by the wind, out and away, toward the far shore. As if changing its mind, it fluttered back toward me. Then it swirled a last time and dropped into the black water.
I stood at the railing, watching the slow progress of the ties, white lines wreathed in black water, as they drifted toward the sea. I looked at my watch. 8:20. I’d have to hurry.
I walked back to First Avenue, moving faster now. Down to Twentieth Street, then west to Third Avenue. To the green common and across it, to the path through the garden, and then to the door of the Columbarium.
Where I stand now, at a quarter to nine. I have fifteen minutes.
I step into the deserted lobby and walk across the marble floor to the stairs. Soft classical music plays, seemingly from out of the air. I climb to the second floor and then to the third. Grandpa’s niche is on this floor, but I keep climbing, up to the fourth-floor landing, where I step out into the circular walkway. I start around. The rooms on this floor are all named for trees. The Cypress Room. The Sequoia Room. Here it is. The Cedar Room. I pause in the entrance, then step inside.
I am all alone, but it is thirty seconds before I can look at the niches that surround me. I move along the west wall. Names, dates, keepsakes. Gladys Stoppard, 1920–1982. A small watercolor. Jerome Henderson, 1941–1990. A cross. Ryan Glasson, 1972–1989. A varsity letter. I keep moving. William Jennings, 1931–1996. A service badge, leaning against the urn.
I come to the end of the west wall, and now start along the north one. I walk ten feet and then stop. Their wedding photo looks back at me. And behind it, the two urns. Two gray, Oriental urns. The urns I held in my lap ten years ago, on the flight from Tokyo to New York.
It’s been ten years since I’ve seen them. The day of their inurnment, I waited in the lobby until Grandpa came to tell me that the director was through. I wanted to be alone with them, I said. He nodded, but I walked to the top floor, the fifth, and looked out the window at the city for five minutes, then walked back down to the lobby. Every year, on the anniversary of the accident, I’ve done the same thing.
Jake & Mimi Page 22