by Logan Belle
“I have to tell you, Regina, I don’t claim to know all that much about men. I’ve never been married, and that’s not an accident. But one of the few things I learned in my day is that you can’t change a man. And you can’t fix one, either.”
“I’m sure you’re right about that,” Regina sniffed.
“Figure out what you want, what makes you happy. And then you can decide which man to let into your life.”
“So you never found a man you wanted to marry?” Regina asked.
“Oh, there were many men I wanted,” Margaret said with a sly smile. “And when I stopped wanting them, I was on to the next.”
“Margaret!” Regina said.
“What?” the old woman said. “I can put up with musty old books. But not musty love affairs.”
CHAPTER 35
Regina felt no urgency to finish working. She glanced up at the clock, saw that it was ten past six, and could barely summon the energy to move.
“Well, it’s great having you back, Finch. But I’m outta here,” Alex said, tossing one final book onto her desk.
“Have a good night,” Regina said.
“I definitely will,” he said with a broad grin.
“Oh? Hot date?”
“You could say that. What are you sticking around for? You helping with the run-through?”
“What run-through?”
“Sloan is staging the place for the gala. A sort of practice run. I thought maybe she’d roped you into helping.”
“Oh God—not yet. But thanks for the warning.” Regina threw her things into her bag. “I’ll walk out with you,” she said.
They walked down the stairs to the entrance foyer and felt a hint of the heat and humidity awaiting them outside.
People were still sitting on the steps, though fewer than at lunchtime peak. The sidewalk was crowded with people rushing toward Grand Central Station, and Regina dreaded the hot subway ride awaiting her.
“Later, Finch,” Alex said, walking south.
She was about to say good-bye, but the words caught in her throat when she spotted the black Mercedes parked across the street.
You can just turn left and head to the train station, she told herself. And that’s what she did. Unfortunately, Sebastian knew her well enough to know where she was headed. And with his long legs, he got there faster than she did, intercepting her at the northeast corner of Forty-second and Fifth.
“You’re not answering your phone,” he said, standing right in front of her, blocking her path.
She didn’t allow herself to look him in the eyes. If she did, she’d be lost.
“You mean this?” she asked, pulling the iPhone from her bag and handing it to him. It hadn’t been turned on in three days. He refused to take it.
“Can we please talk for a minute?” he asked.
She knew she should just keep walking, but instead she looked up at him; the sight of his dark velvet eyes and strong mouth did such things to her . . . she was rooted in place.
Clearly, he took her silence as a yes. “In the car?” he asked.
“I’m not getting in the car.”
He glanced around, clearly uncomfortable.
“It’s going to be tough to talk here.” As if to emphasize Sebastian’s point, a man in a suit banged into her with his briefcase.
“I’ll risk getting trampled by commuters,” she said.
“Speak for yourself,” he said with a small smile. Something pulled deep inside of her. She loved him, God help her.
She kept her face stony.
He looked around again and ran his hand through his hair. She followed his glance across the street, seeing that his driver had gone around the block and was now idling on Forty-second Street between Madison and Fifth. “Fine,” he said. “You win. We’ll do this here.”
He took her by the elbow and steered her close to the building. She leaned against a store window and looked up at him expectantly.
“My father left my mother for a twenty-year-old model—a girl who was three years older than me. I hated her at first, but eventually we had a truce, and then we became friends. She took me to shoots, and that’s when I became interested in photography. She was a good sport about letting me practice on her. But ultimately, she left my father—for a photographer, ironically. By then, the damage was done, and my mother, who never recovered from his affair and the divorce, killed herself.”
“Who was the model?” Regina asked, images from Sebastian’s photography exhibit at the gallery flooding her mind like an unwelcome tide. And she already knew the answer.
“Astrid Lindall.”
The words, confirming her worst insecurities about her relationship, felt like a bullet. His was a world beyond her, and his interest in her could not be anything more than a passing amusement.
“I appreciate the . . . uh . . . information. I do. I wish you’d brought up these things at a time when we could have sat around in bed for hours talking about stuff. Getting to know each other. But I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with it now.”
Cabs honked, people were still brushing past them, and the heat and humidity weighed on her like a cloak. But she didn’t want to move; she didn’t want him to leave; and she certainly didn’t want to get on the subway back to her apartment for another night of aching for him. Who was she kidding that staying out of the car was going to prevent her resolve and detachment from falling like dominoes?
“Keep the conversation going. Have dinner with me.”
She didn’t want dinner. She wanted to feel the sweet burn of rope around her wrists, the cold air of the room she’d never seen, the sharp pain across her thighs, the explosive relief of his cock between her legs.
Regina turned and walked toward the entrance of the station.
“Wait.” He grabbed her arm, and she let him stop her. “You don’t want to do this anymore, fine. I have to accept that. But don’t shut me out like I did something wrong. I never lied to you. I didn’t leave you. You’re just upset because you think I can’t give you what you want.”
“Can you?”
“I don’t know,” he said, looking even more sad admitting it than she had felt the past few days coming to the realization. “But I came here to talk to you because I want to try.”
“Try how?”
“I don’t know,” he repeated. “I thought you said talking was what you wanted.”
“It’s not that simple,” she said. “I’m also thinking that maybe I can’t give you what you want.”
“You do.”
“For now,” she said.
“Is this about the photography?”
She bit her lip, hating to admit it even to herself. “Can you tell me it doesn’t matter to you? That you can be with a woman who has no interest in being your muse?”
“But that’s where you’re wrong, Regina. You are my muse. I think of you every time I take a shot. I see you in every face—in every body—I photograph. The October issue of W should have your name on the cover. All I’m asking is that you let me see what happens when I put the woman who inspires me in front of the actual camera.”
She thought of the black-and-white images on the wall in his apartment—women in ropes, under the tail end of a whip, naked and immortalized in one moment of Sebastian’s objectification.
“I can’t,” she said.
“You’ve trusted me in every way. You’ve barely flinched. And you’re going to run away because you’re scared to let me photograph you?”
“It sounds bad when you put it that way.” Hard limit, she thought.
She turned and ran into the subway station.
•
Regina’s face was a puffy, tear-streaked mess by the time she pushed her key into her apartment door. Crying on the train had to be a new low. Or maybe a woman wasn’t a real N
ew Yorker until she’d had a complete meltdown on the subway during rush hour.
She walked into the apartment, consoling herself with the thought that the haven of her bedroom was just seconds away.
“Where’ve you been?” Carly asked, appearing in front of her like an exceptionally well-dressed apparition. She wore a yellow sundress that perfectly set off her faint golden tan, her honey-blond hair in a careless knot at the nape of her neck. Her lips were glossed, her cheeks were brushed with just enough NARS blush to give her a rosy glow. But none of these things was the reason Carly looked more beautiful than she’d ever seen her before. Regina realized that it wasn’t the tan, or the perfect makeup, or the dress: it was that for the first time since Regina had known her, Carly Ronak looked genuinely happy.
“Um, where I always am until six o’clock—work,” she said.
That’s when she realized they were not alone in the apartment.
A young man jumped up from the couch. He had sandy-brown hair and dimples. He wore a Dartmouth T-shirt and khaki pants, and he greeted Regina with a warm smile. He wasn’t handsome so much as he was cute.
“Hey, Regina—nice to finally meet you. I’m Rob Miller.”
“You’re . . . Rob?” Regina asked. This was the heartbreaker, the man who had reduced Carly to a sobbing wreck in her bedroom for days on end?
“We’ve been waiting for you,” Carly said, taking Rob’s hand.
Regina didn’t know how, in the course of one afternoon, Rob had somehow reappeared in Carly’s life and now stood in her living room looking at her as if he had been there all along, and she were the visitor. Had she been so wrapped up in her own Sebastian drama that she failed to notice Carly had—how had she put it?—closed the deal with Rob? “We’re meeting Rob’s friend Andy for drinks and want you to come with us.”
Oh Lord, a setup? Carly must have been blinded by her love haze, because she clearly did not notice that Regina was barely in any condition to brush her teeth and go to bed, let alone go out on a double date.
“Another time,” Regina said. “Nice to meet you,” she mumbled to Rob.
But Carly wasn’t letting her off the hook that easily. She followed her to her bedroom.
“Hey,” she said, closing the door behind her. “Why don’t you come out with us?”
Regina tossed her Chanel bag on the bed. She wished she had her Old Navy one back. She couldn’t stand seeing the gleaming black leather with the gold interlaced Cs. It was like carrying Sebastian around on her shoulder. Talk about baggage. “Why didn’t you tell me you were back together with Rob? Do we only discuss bad news, is that how this works?”
“I wanted to tell you, but you haven’t been the most receptive audience the past few days.”
Regina thought about her meals of cereal in her room behind a closed door, her nine o’clock bedtime so she could escape from her misery, only to wake up as late as possible the next morning and dash out the door to work. “I guess you’re right. I’m sorry. So what happened?”
Carly gestured toward the living room, where he was waiting. “This isn’t the best time to talk about it, so to make a long story short, we didn’t solve all of our issues. But we found a way to meet in the middle.”
Regina nodded. “Well, I’m happy for you. He seems like a nice guy.”
“Come out with us. Andy is nice, too. You can’t sit in this room crying about Sebastian Barnes for the rest of your life. You have to move on.”
Regina nodded. In her mind, she saw him looking at her on Forty-second Street, expectant and disappointed at the same time. It had been easier to think about moving on when she blamed him, when she saw herself as giving everything and him as the relationship villain who kept it one-dimensional. But she knew he had been trying, in a rare moment of clumsiness, to show her that he would try to give more. She was the one who realized she had given all that she could. And she was terrified it wasn’t enough. But this wasn’t the time to explain all of that to Carly. So she just said, “I’m not ready yet.”
Carly’s expression softened. “Okay, I understand. I’ve been there. But this is the last time I’m letting you off the hook. I’m telling Andy you want a rain check.”
“Have fun,” Regina said, exhaling with relief when Carly left her alone, closing the door behind her.
She moved her handbag to the floor and lay down on the bed, curling onto her side. Across the room, she saw the Bettie Page book on her dresser. She didn’t want it in her room anymore, but she didn’t know what to do with it. She didn’t have the heart to put it out with the trash. Maybe she could sell it to the Strand tomorrow?
Regina sat up. She’d move it to the living room, would mix it in with Carly’s pile of fashion magazines, where she wouldn’t have to look at it.
She listened at her bedroom door. It was quiet in the apartment. She waited an extra few minutes, and when she was sure Carly and Rob had gone, she grabbed the book and walked into the living room.
On second thought, maybe she would take it to the Strand tonight. It was only seven. What else did she have to do?
She sat down on the couch, deciding she would flip through the book one last time. It was beautiful—and she was nothing if not a sucker for beautiful books.
Regina flipped to the middle, to the chapter of fetish and bondage photos taken by Irving Klaw. She remembered what Sebastian had said that first night at his apartment: that Bettie had something none of the girls in his own photographs had—“mirth.” Regina looked closely at the page she had turned to. There was Bettie wearing a leopard-print bikini, her legs and arms in shackles, a rope tied in her mouth. But sure enough, her eyes were laughing. She looks like she’s having fun, he’d said. And Regina had to admit, that was true. But Regina couldn’t help but think of how it felt actually to be in that position—the vulnerability, the very real sexuality to which it was a prelude. She didn’t know how Bettie Page had done it. Maybe in her real sex life she had not been submissive, and this enabled her to play the part in front of the camera. Her “mirth,” her playfulness, came across because that’s all it was for her: play. She was not showing the camera something so real that she gave away a piece of herself.
She turned the pages to the next chapter: Bettie in white boots, brandishing a riding crop. Bettie dressed in a black corset and elbow-length black gloves, crouching menacingly over a lingerie-clad woman who was on her back, bound and gagged. Bettie in garters, stockings, and black knee-high platform boots laced up the front, glaring at the camera as if she would eat the photographer for lunch. Bettie cracking a whip.
Regina looked up from the book. She felt a surge of adrenaline.
We didn’t solve all our issues, Carly had said. But we found a way to meet in the middle.
And suddenly, Regina knew what she had to do.
CHAPTER 36
“This is quite a shopping list,” Carly said, glancing at the large pink Post-it note Regina had been scribbling on for days.
It was Saturday morning. Regina couldn’t help but think that one week ago she had been shopping with Sebastian for the Bondage Ball—a day that had started out with such promise and ended with her questioning everything.
She hoped that this shopping trip would lead her to the answer.
Regina followed Carly east, toward Christopher Street.
“That’s why I need you. I figured I could spend hours on Yelp trusting strangers, or I could enlist my in-house fashion guru.”
“I’m a designer, not a personal shopper,” Carly grumbled, but Regina knew she was happy to embark on the day’s project. “I’m hoping we can find everything in two places. And you really have a corset and garters already?”
“Yes,” Regina said, blushing. The corset was stuffed in the back of her closet. She had not looked at it since the night Greta had laced her into it—the night Sebastian had given her the butt plug.
&nbs
p; The first store was called My Cross to Bare, and the window was filled with willowy, white plastic mannequins outfitted in corsets, leather caps, and platform boots, with handcuffs dangling from their wrists.
Carly rang a small white doorbell, and they were buzzed into the store.
Regina noticed a few saleswomen milling about, but no one seemed in any hurry to help them. They probably figured that customers who came to the store knew what they wanted and how to get it.
Carly pulled her hair back into a quick messy ponytail, glanced at the list, and put her hands on her hips, as if preparing for battle. Then she walked around the store picking out the designated items: long leather gloves in black plus one in white; a black velvet corset with large, visible hooks in the back; a flogger with a braided black leather handle and red-and-black leather fronds; a long, dramatic, but impractical-looking whip; and an eighteen-inch riding crop.
She handed the pile to Regina. “That was easy,” she said. “Now can you tell me what this is all about?”
“This is my version of meeting in the middle, for Sebastian,” she said.
“I don’t get it,” Carly said.
“I know . . . it’s hard to explain. I’m just starting to get it myself.”
An Asian saleswoman appeared. “Do you need a dressing room?”
“No thanks. We’ll take everything,” Carly said, smiling at Regina.
•
As Sebastian opened the door to his apartment, Regina realized that for once, she was the one doing the surprising.
He smiled and took the two canvas duffel bags from her hands.
“A week of not talking to me, and now you’re moving in?” he joked, clearly delighted to see her.
Unlike the other day on the street, Regina immediately looked into his eyes and knew in an instant that she was doing the right thing. If it worked.
“Well, the not-talking thing isn’t exactly helping. I thought it was time to try a different tactic.” She smiled, but inside she was shaking. What if he said no? What if he told her it was a stupid idea? What if he just couldn’t work that way?