Constant, Brewer told me over lunch, had really been very decent. He'd known how badly trained you were when he'd bought you-that was why he'd gotten you for less than a hundred K, and he didn't mind that. He liked a bargain and he was depending on his trainer to get you into shape anyhow. So in a sense my sappy letter was just confirmation of what he'd already surmised. "But," his letter to Brewer had concluded, "while I don't mind playing outside the rules once in a while, most of your members would probably not be so forgiving. So I advise you to censure Mr. Keller, and-for the future health of the association-to make every effort to keep your procedures clean and rigorous from now on."
"We'd simply boot you out," Brewer said at lunch, "if you weren't a member of such long standing. And then there's your friendship with Ms. Clarke."
Kate. Oh, shit, Jon, I thought.
"Does she know?" I asked.
He scowled, not dignifying that with an answer. He hadn't spoken to her about it, the scowl implied. He'd find that entirely indecent, embarrassing. But of course she knew. Whom was I kidding?
"You'll come to the office, tomorrow at ten," he said. "I'll draw up some papers and you'll sign them. You'll pay a fine, too. And you'll be disciplined."
I raised my eyebrows. I wasn't used to being bossed around by a man who was, after all, a functionary I paid to keep my affairs in order. And he couldn't mean what it sounded like he meant, could he?
He nodded, his leathery face set in grim lines. "Be there, boy," he said. "And," he looked disapprovingly at the collarless dress shirt I was wearing, under my jacket, "wear a tie."
"Yes, sir," I said.
Well, I hoped it was a conservative enough tie for him-blue and olive diagonal stripes. Navy blue blazer, gray slacks. I couldn't believe I was dressing this carefully-and shaving this closely. I felt raw.
I got to his office about two minutes late. I'd intended to be early but I'd been held up for twenty minutes while they'd rerouted downtown traffic around a PCB spill. Brewer wasn't very impressed with the excuse, either, when the receptionist led me into his office. "My sciatica's bothering me," he said. "I would have stayed home today, but we've got to get you squared away, you know.
"Thanks, Marilyn," he said now, to the receptionist. "Look, Mr. Keller and I will be busy in conference room H for an hour. You can leave messages on that phone, but don't disturb us otherwise."
She nodded, throwing me a last, wounded look-I hadn't had the energy to flirt with her that morning. I guessed that I usually did-she's always been really nice and helpful to me-but I'd never really thought about it before. And then Brewer led me down the hall.
I'd never been in that conference room before. Odd. It didn't have any of the bland, corporate art they had all over the rest of the place. Nothing on the walls at all. And just a small window facing a blank wall. It was small, for a conference room. And there was only one chair at the oval table, though there was a leather couch against a wall.
I'd thought we'd both sit on the couch, and I headed toward it.
"Hey," he said then, "where do you think you're going, boy?"
I swallowed, turned slowly to face him. He was sitting in the chair at the oval conference table, a manila folder of papers in front of him. He opened a drawer under the table then, and took out a rattan cane, which he put on top of the folder.
"You do want to keep your membership in the association?" he asked.
"Yes, sir," I said.
"Drop your trousers," he said. "Shorts, too. Thats right, just let them bunch up around your ankles. And walk over here."
God, I hate that. Hobbling across the room with my pants around my ankles, and then standing there in my gold-buttoned blazer and striped tie, my erection beginning to poke its way through the opening in my shirt. Even as I stared fearfully at the cane. Well, especially as I stared at it.
"Nice tie," he said, and I thanked him. "You can take off the jacket, if you like," he added.
"Okay," he said then, "Twenty strokes, and you'll count them for me, won't you, boy?"
"Yes, sir," I said.
"You can scream all you want. The room is soundproofed," he added. "We don't want to frighten the secretaries. Or upset Marilyn. You seem to have upset her enough this morning already."
I apologized, and he nodded. He winced, his posture stiffening-and I realized that his lower back really was pretty painful. And I felt a sudden rush of guilt. Jeez, he was old, he was in pain, and he was taking the trouble to punish me, all to keep me in the fold. This was going to be different from other beatings I'd had from time to time, usually from Kate, or somebody equally delicious. Those had been sport. This was going to be, uh, difficult....-
He nodded to me to climb up on the table. "That's it, head down, ass up, spread those knees. And you'd better use your hands to protect your balls, hadn't you, boy?"
And-sciatica or not-he did make me scream. Cry, too, which was much more distressing.
He gave me a few minutes to recover, kneeling by the side of the table, my pants still down around my ankles.
"And now that we've finished with the injury part," he said, "let's move on to the insults, what do you say?"
It was an insulting, degrading letter of apology, detailing the ways I really didn't deserve my membership in the association, and my gratitude that the association, in its mysterious wisdom, was allowing me to stay. I agreed to everything. I signed it, still on my knees.
"You're a nice fellow," he said then. "I've always thought so. I've always liked your uncle too. Well, these things happen sometimes. It'll be all right. But we can't have you acting disrespectfully toward the association anymore, can we?"
"No, sir," I said. "Thank you, sir," I said. "I'll never do it again, sir," I said. "Sorry about your sciatica, sir," I said.
"Oh, you'll be much, much sorrier," he said, "when you get the bill in the mail."
He got to his feet slowly, using both hands to lift himself from his chair. "Pull up your trousers," he said. "And be charming to Marilyn on your way out, won't you? I've got a difficult day ahead of me."
CARRIE
He looked at me curiously and a little nervously, wondering how I'd absorb the images of him being caned, humiliated. Interesting, I thought. And not really so surprising as all that. Because when you think about it, pornography is as often told from the point of view of the victims as history is told from the point of view of the victors. So it made sense to me that the story would have occurred to him. And anyway, it told me something important about his world, his universe.
Well, it reminded me of another story. A whole other kind of story-about a woman who had insisted to a physicist that the earth rested on the back of a giant turtle. And the turtle, the physicist asked, where did the turtle stand? Well, that was easy. On the back of another turtle, of course. And so on and so forth, the woman concluded-turtles, all the way down. Well, Jonathan's cosmos wasn't so different. You'd just have to look in the right direction, which was upward, toward authority. Power and discipline, all the way up.
I shuddered a little and put my arms around him. He kissed my forehead. "Now go to sleep," he said, reaching to turn off the light.
The Third Day
CARRIE
kay, I thought, opening my eyes to cloudy morning sunshine. Okay, I'm ready. I reached over to Jonathan's side of the bed. I wanted to touch him a little before the day really began. But he wasn't there; he was already up and out of bed, wearing a light blue cotton bathrobe and sitting at the table in the corner with a cigarette and a cup of coffee and a basket of croissants.
"It's getting late," he said.
"Well, I still need breakfast," I said, pulling myself out of bed. And good morning to you too, Jonathan, I thought, while I quickly washed and peed.
I walked behind his chair, leaning over him, my hands creeping into the front of his bathrobe, down over his chest, the muscles in his belly. I kissed his neck, his ears, the top of his head. He smelled nice-soap and coffee, toothpaste and butt
er and strong French cigarettes. I wanted to fool around a little. But he pulled my hands out, kissed the palms, and put them down by my sides. "Have some coffee," he said.
I shrugged, and put on the T-shirt I'd dropped on the floor the night before. I sat down at the table, munching a croissant, trying to gauge his mood. He looked eager, abstracted, out of patience.
"It looks like it might be a nice day outside," I offered. He mumbled noncommittally, waiting for me to finish the croissant. I fiddled with it, making a million crumbs, scattering them everywhere and then gracelessly picking them up and licking them off my fingers, until I got sick of this nervous, messy routine, guaranteed to make him cringe. I finished my second cup of coffee and wiped my hands.
"Okay," I said, looking at him evenly.
His eyes were opaque, inward-looking, and his voice was soft. "Tell me about becoming a racing pony"
More stories? Not exactly what I'd expected. But okay, I thought, whatever. He nodded toward the bed. I walked over and sat down, drawing my knees up in front of me, propping myself against the pillows.
"Well," I began, "Annie had kept tabs on my progress in the stables and garage and all those other places, and had been reasonably satisfied. So, at the end of the week, they moved me into this white, cave-like room that was carved into the cliff. And a routine gradually unfolded...."
And I told him about mornings in the ring with Annie. I'd stand there in the corral, entirely naked, even barefoot. And she'd touch me here and there. Lightly, just enough to make me want more. I'd follow her fingers, I'd arch and bow my body, thinking of nothing except the signals she was send ing me through the nerves in my skin. I'd pose, I'd leap, I'd whirl and caper for her, trying to communicate how much I wanted her to touch me again-oh, Madam, please, just a little more-miming my desire with every bend and opening of my body And she might touch me a little more, if she felt like it. But it was just as likely that she'd apply the riding crop. It was a silent business-the idea was to teach my body a sequence of sensations and responses-I felt as though she were tracing a pattern on my senses.
It was only later, when I performed at dressage competitions, that I learned that there were names to the figures I'd learned. I'd repeat them softly to myself: the pirouette, a turn on the haunches in four or five strides at a collected canter; the piaffe, a trot in place; the passage, a very collected, cadenced, high-stepping trot; the levade, the courvet, and the astonishingly difficult capriole, in which the pony jumps straight upward, with its forelegs drawn in, kicking back with its hind legs horizontal, and lands again in the same spot from which it took off.
And there were the simpler presentations, the ones I'd done so poorly on my first day. "Ass!" Annie might cry out, or "Cunt!"-and here again my body would remember all the ways she'd touched me and all the swipes of the riding crop. I'd feel all wet and hot and flushed, but I'd present my ass, calmly, humbly, elegantly, as though that were my mission in life. I'd present my ass, or my cunt, or my mouth. Or I'd kneel up with my back arched, holding my breasts lightly in my hands, at a precise angle, so that she could put stripes across them with a small whip she used only for that purpose. I'd present to Annie, and to Mr. Constant, those mornings he'd come down to watch. And I used what I'd learned that week that I'd been passed around among his employees, too. Because now I knew how it felt to be available to everybody and I knew that was what these postures were really about.
You took me to see presentation competitions, Jonathan, the year I spent with you. I remember how you loved watching them, preferring them to equestrian events, and insisting that I watch carefully It felt odd, though, the first time I won a ribbon to bring home to Mr. Constant's trophy room, to realize that I was way better than those girls I'd seen performing back in California. It didn't seem right, somehow, but 1 knew it was true: I was good at this.
Annie would put me and Tony through our paces every morning and early afternoon. And when she'd finished with us, I was happy to eat the tasteless, healthy food in the trough we knelt at, and to collapse for a nap on the straw. We'd clean the stables then, or the outhouse next door, or the brass fittings on the pony cart-we'd have to use our tongues to clean out the little spaces between the spokes of the wheels. And then we'd get an hour or two of free time, on one of the house's terraced patios. The chains leading from our collars wouldn't allow us to touch each other, but we could speak softly from time to time. Tony was a dancer and did graceful and difficult stretching and contracting exercises. I was amazed that he'd want to move at all after the morning's exertions, but he said he needed these exercises for himself, as much as I seemed to need those endless stacks of papers I was always bringing out to the patio.
These were the downloaded books from Project Gutenberg and other e-text sites-reams of paper, printed out on one of Mr. Constant's printers, at my demand, and to Stefan's unfailing annoyance. He'd get even more annoyed because sometimes when I would look up from the textto watch Tony, or just to think, or to dream-a stray breeze would scatter blizzards of paper out over the sea, and I'd have to ask him to download chapters 2 and 3 of Pudd'nhead Wilson again, please, or Act IV of The Tempest. I hated reading unbound, downloaded pages, so I ransacked Mr. Constant's library-pulling out a few readable books from among the Grisham and Clancy, the math and economics books, and the books with words like Excellence and Virtual and Third Wave in their titles just so that I could read something with a cover and a spine.
They were nice, our rest periods, though they'd be cut short those days when the market was extra-volatile. Annie would get a call from Mr. Constant to bring us to the workroom, which was a haze of sweat and adrenaline. And Mr. Constant would take one of us, usually Tony, and hand the other one over to his assistants. And I'd follow the tugs at my collar, crawling under desks and opening my mouth for the eager cocks shoved down it, the quick gushes of cum accompanied by shouts of "Buy," "Sell!" "Did you get it?" and "Aw-right! Gimme five!"
Stefan would usually disdain to touch me those days, which was all right with me. But the girl working there, too, the slender, dark, doe-eyed one whom I'd seen the first day, never grabbed my leash either. Or Tony's, for that matter.
At dusk, Annie would take us to prepare for our evenings in Mr. Constant's rooms. We'd be given early dinners in the kitchen, with shallow bowls of resiny wine to lap. And then Annie would bring us to a tiled, steamy little Turkish bath kind of place, where we'd bathe each other, give each other massages. We'd knead each other's muscles until they were warm, pliant, relaxed, our skins burnished with the light, fragrant oil we'd rubbed each other with. I don't know what the smell was, but it reminded me of mown grass. Tony would sit cross-legged, and I'd kneel behind him and brush his hair, stroke it back away from his cheeks, his forehead. Sometimes I'd catch it in a heavy gold clip at the back of his head. And then we'd change places and he'd trim my hair with tiny sharp scissors, and sometimes, if Annie loosened the buckles on my collar, he'd do the back of my neck, with clippers. Those clippers made me shiver-the first time he'd used them, I started to moan and tremble, to come, actually. And Annie beat me for that. Well, actually, she beat us both, silently and ferociously, with the little rubber truncheon that she'd carry during these sessions, because it didn't leave marks.
We outlined each other's eyes with kohl, and darkened each other's lips and nipples, dipping our fingertips into pots of ocher brown rouge. We hung heavy gold rings from each other's ears, put bangles around our ankles. We shared our smells and textures-even, it seemed, our slowed pulse rates and measured breathing. The only other sound was the plashing of a little fountain in the center of the room, which was there, I supposed, to cool the air-keep it from suffocating us. There were no mirrors. If I wanted to see my face while Tony painted it, I had to peer into his eyes-the green eyes of a sleepwalker or an opium junkie, the pupils huge and black, distended in the dim light.
And we'd know that we were finished, that we were ready for Mr. Constant, when we heard the soft, dull sound of the trunch
eon in Annie's hand-she'd slap her palm with it, twice, a small, tense, watchful figure in black: lonely, sublimated, subaltern authority. Sometimes I'd fantasize rebellion: Tony and I joining forces to strip her, bathe her, rub her with oil, and then take greedy turns eating at her cunt with our darkly painted mouths-an orgy of primitive, sibling communism. I pitied her, those evenings, that she couldn't have us that way. Or any way. She was jumpy, impatient to get it over with, to snap slender red leather leashes to the rings in our collars, and jerk us along behind her, on our hands and knees, down the corridors to Mr. Constant's sparsely furnished and brilliantly carpeted rooms. (And she'd take it out on us the next day, of course, in the corral, in the open air and blazing sunlight, where she was free to do anything she wanted with us.)
She'd lead us to Mr. Constant's rooms and leave us there, to wait for him if he wasn't there, or to receive his brief nod, if he was. And he'd look us over calmly, and choose one of us, and the other would help. Would kneel there in the flickering light of oil lamps, and help him finish the adornment process, silently handing him the clips and clamps, the straps and buckles and chains, out of his leather casket.
I learned what implements to hand him and in what order, for him to apply to Tony's body, stretched patiently over this or that frame or wheel, or suspended from ropes. I watched Mr. Constant's blunt hands opening little spring mechanisms, twisting tiny screws down on firm, shining bronzed flesh, perhaps bending an arm backward, at some cruel angle, and buckling it into place, until silent tears begin to course down Tony's smoothly painted face-the makeup seemed to be waterproof, tearproof, sweatproof. I learned to recognize Mr. Constant's nod, that we were done, and to fetch a selection of small whips for him to choose from (he liked to take the occasional swipe at us while he fucked us-to keep us present, I think, alert to his rhythms). And then I'd grease Tony's asshole, and back away on my knees, watching quietly. And the next night, perhaps Tony'd do the same for me. I pretended to myself that I hated helping Mr. Constant hurt Tony, but I knew that I was fascinated, that I watched with my mouth hanging helplessly open, my breath coming shallowly I'd wait eagerly for my turn, fearfully and enviously wishing to be the object of barbarous adornment.
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