He looked surprised to find me that way when he came in, carrying a few packages. He looked pleased, delighted really.
"Well," he said, as I bent to kiss his shoes. And when I knelt back up, he stroked my head. Then he reached behind my neck to tighten the collar.
"Well," he said again, "let's go for a walk, shall we? We can have lunch, too."
He handed me the packages. "Put these on."
I was surprised by the pretty, high-necked white dress, though less so by the elegant, mid-calf high-heeled laceup boots. "It's such a summery day," he said, halfway apologetically.
"I'll bet there's forsythia blossoming in the Bois de Boulogne," he added. "Perhaps even jonquils."
It's not as nice a park, actually, as Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, but it's sort of the same idea. And people dress a whole lot better there. I was glad he'd bought me the dress. And the boots, too-they were lovely and much easier to walk in than the shoes I'd had on the night before. Still, the heels were quite high, so I had to walk carefully. I was very conscious of my sore ass and stiff muscles, about keeping my back very straight despite all that, and my eyes lowered, as well.
Just like that boy over there, I thought suddenly. Odd to see somebody else who'd so evidently been whipped recently, as I had. A lady in a pale pink suit and hat was sitting on a bench, while he stood beside her, his eyes lowered. He was slender, very blond, very delicious-looking in a vanilla-colored shirt and white slacks, boat shoes, and no socks.
Two other ladies came by then, one a bit older than the other. The older one spoke to the lady in pink, and smiled at the boy, and then all three women laughed. And the boy knelt, for just a moment, to kiss the older woman's hand, much as I'd knelt for the old saddle maker.
I blinked. Was I imagining it, or were there other masters and slaves strolling among the forsythia that the false spring had forced into bloom? I couldn't tell for sure, but there seemed to be odd energy freighting the scene. I looked around. Yes, definitely. I mean, it was clearly a public thoroughfare, with all sorts of people on it, but there was also a pattern subtly woven through the random population, if you had eyes to see. Not everybody was participating in it, but for people who knew the code, it was a kind of parade, a ritual of display. My eyes were lowered, so I could feel, more than see, the appraising glances directed at me. I could feel eyes tracing the outlines of my nipples, marking the shape of my ass and my black-stockinged thighs under the thin white linen dress. And noting approvingly, from the care and slight stiffness with which I was walking, that I'd received a good whipping the night before. Of course they couldn't see my collar-the high neck of the dress hid it. But they didn't need to. Well, anybody who'd need to see it wouldn't have understood any of the gazes and postures, calculating frowns, and complacent smiles that were being exchanged on those sunny paths that day.
Jonathan took my hand. Once again, I could tell he was pleased that I was performing so well. Strange-my whole year with Mr. Constant, I'd felt as clumsy and eager as I had the first day. But today I could tell that I really wasn't a beginner anymore. I knew that I could hold my own at Kate's.
"Are you hungry?" he asked.
"Yes, Jonathan."
He led me along the path to the edge of the park, to a tea room, set in a garden surrounded by a high, ornate fence of old, and slightly rusted, iron.
The room had high ceilings, gilded moldings, friezes of nymphs and cherubs. I sat very straight at our table, like a child being taken for a special birthday lunch, and ate the fancy little sandwiches, cucumber and smoked salmon and rabbit terrine. We drank champagne and Earl Grey tea, and Jonathan had ordered poires belle Helene for dessert.
A man in a green sport jacket came over to our table. He had a dark, weaselly face.
"Is it the American pony?" he asked Jonathan, stroking my head. "The one who surprised us all at the Hudson River Rainbow Races?"
I could see that Jonathan was startled to realize that I had a public, in a manner of speaking. And that he wasn't sure how he felt about that. Still, he smiled and nodded.
The man grimaced. "I lost seventy-five thousand francs on that race." He fondled my ear. "And I could not attend the party afterwards, unfortunately...." He paused, looking expectant and a little pushy.
"Uh, well, would you care to try her now?" Jonathan said. And at the murmur of thanks, he said, "Go with the gentleman, Carrie." Across the floor of the tea room, I could see our waiter turn on his heel, taking our dessert back to the kitchen.
Weasel-face led me to a door at the back of the room. The waiter standing by it nodded, and we entered what looked like one of those male smoking clubs you see in movies-big leather armchairs studded with brass tacks, oriental rugs. But it was co-ed. I mean, the people in the armchairs, getting serviced in one way or another, were both men and women. And there was a punishment corner as well, flanked with umbrella stands full of whips and canes. A waiter was caning a red-haired girl who was weeping behind her tight gag. I wondered if her master or mistress had specified that they use a cane, rather than a whip or a strap or a flogger. Perhaps all the available implements were listed on a special punishment menu they would bring to your table. Or perhaps the cane was the specialty of the day.
Meanwhile, my guy led me to a chair and ottoman in a dim corner. I knelt to undo his pants, and then he lifted the skirt of my pretty white dress and slapped my ass sharply. I turned and bent over the ottoman, my face against the leather, my skirt spread over me like an umbrella blown open in a storm. He took his time then, surveying the stripes and bruises that Jonathan had put on me. "Mortel, " he murmured, before he plunged in. It was the only thing he said the whole time, dismissing me with a nod afterward when I knelt at his feet to thank him.
The red-haired girl, I noticed, was kneeling at a little makeup table now, bathing her swollen eyes and carefully lining up the paints and brushes she'd need for repairing her face. She did a good job, too, looking quite lovely when her waiter led her back to her table a few minutes after I'd returned to Jonathan. She and her master weren't sitting too far from us-close enough that I could see that the chair the waiter pulled out for her had no seat. There was just an empty circle where the seat would be, like a heavily padded toilet seat. I wished I had one like it.
Weasel-face came back to our table later, to thank Jonathan, and to commend him on what a killer disciplinarian he was. I kept my eyes down, nibbling at my dessert, the pears and ice cream, chocolate sauce and creme Chantilly that the waiter had promptly brought when I'd returned. They'd probably had to remake it, I thought, toss out the one that had been on its way when Weasel-face had asked for me. The creme had probably gotten all runny while he'd been buggering me. Probably that was why the prices on the menu were so astronomical-to underwrite the expense of all those double desserts and other little adjustments it must take to keep a place like this running smoothly. And the clientele probably preferred it that way, too-the high prices would keep the place from being listed in Frommer's or the Rough Guide.
"Yes," Jonathan said, later in the cab, "that's how it will be." He sounded dreamy and bemused, his eyes on some building and his fingers fiddling with the prickly little hairs on my cunt.
"It's an interesting feeling," he added, turning to me now. He moved a finger inside me, pulling me closer to him. "I'm not used to having to offer you when politeness demands it." He kissed my eyelids, my cheeks, he probed my mouth with his tongue, while his finger continued to tease my clit and his other hand traced the welts he'd put on me.
"You can come," he whispered. "Do it quietly"
As a mouse. A very greedy, hungry little one. Letting out each spasm as a deep, quiet sigh. I wasn't fooling the cab driver, but he was reasonably circumspect. Probably because Jonathan looked like a big tipper.
I leaned against his shoulder and closed my eyes, thinking of the park, the boy in the white pants, the green foliage and yellow blossoms. I wondered if there weren't areas like that in every city. Public venues that w
ere invisible to those with untutored vision. Zones where an alternate world of ritual, exchange, and display coincided with the normal, everyday world-as though the stage lights had been turned up and you could see what was behind the scrim, if your eyes had been trained to see.
The cab stopped, and I gathered myself up, smoothing down my skirt as Jonathan paid the driver, who threw me a brief bright white toothy grin. I'd been surprised that I'd been permitted that orgasm. But it made sense, I thought now. Jonathan would spoil me on these holiday trips. There'd be movies and pretty dresses, ice cream and orgasms-he'd be like a guilty divorced father taking the kids to McDonalds on his custody weekends. Only he wouldn't have to feel guilty. He wouldn't do any permanent damage-not with Kate in charge of my day-to-day routines. We stepped into the hotel elevator.
"We're going to a party tonight," he said. "An acquaintance invited me, while the gentleman was using you. So you can rest this afternoon-well, you can in an hour or so, anyway. I have some errands I need to do. Oh, and I forgot to tell you. This is our last day. I mean, I've got plane reservations. We go home tomorrow."
JONATHAN
Had I truly meant to say that, you know, about its being our last day? Well, in retrospect there was definitely something valedictory about those last twenty-four hours together. But at the time-no, I wasn't conscious of any double meanings. She'd been a very good girl and I was pleased with her. I was looking forward to taking her home. To seeing Kate go to work on her. And I was looking forward to bringing her to the party that night, too.
I hadn't wanted to give her to the guy in the tea room. I'd always enjoyed sharing her with friends, but I'd resisted giving her to strangers-people I'd never seen before, whose only bond with me was a set of shared codes and rituals. But now, after the fact, I'd found it surprisingly sensible and gratifying. What else, I thought, do you base civility upon, besides shared codes and rituals, gifts and generous exchanges? I was glad I'd taken her on today's outing.
She was on the floor at my feet now, her face pressed into the carpet, her white dress up over her head and spread out around her ass. I smoked two slow cigarettes, surrounding her with smoke rings. I undid my pants, and then I knelt behind her, unfastening all the little buttons down her back, starting with the high neck and moving downward, tracing the bumps of her spine with my tongue. I reached up under the dress and squeezed her breasts, pulling myself back up, arching around her, until my cock was against her ass. "Open yourself up," I said. "Use your hands to spread yourself." I entered her, thinking of the guy in his unspeakable green jacket. I held her body close, pressing my belly against her.
"Kneel up," I said afterward, when I'd sat back in the armchair and she'd turned around to thank me. I took the crushed, wrinkled dress off her, pulling it gently over her head. And then I just looked at her for a while. I nodded, giving her permission to fix the garter that had come unfastened while I'd been fucking her.
"Bring me the whip," I told her. I love the moment when a slave lays an implement of discipline in your hand, with a soft, trained mouth. I love the trust in the gesture and the fear in their eyes. The hurried self-scrutiny-what have I done? what haven't I done? The remorse, if they know that a punishment is coming. Or-like Carrie that day, who knew she'd behaved impeccably-the certainty that what was coming would be gratuitous, whimsical. Pain that had no purpose (no purpose!) but the master's pleasure. And finally, either way, the struggle to accept-to welcome-the pain.
But I didn't beat her. I prodded her through her repertoire of presentations. I nudged her into position with the whip; I used my fingers, my tongue, to trace the raised welts on her skin. I closed my eyes, pretended I was blind, tried to memorize her with my fingertips.
She'd be punished at the party tonight, I thought, after they found the demerit token she was bound to collect when, inevitably, someone would notice the spark of consciousness in her eye. The tiny light that would flash as she registered amusement or amazement, took note of some telling or outre detail. No wonder she was an expert on party punishments. And she was right, they do tend toward the funky. I'd enjoy that.
"Tonight," I said, "at the party, I'll arrange for the token master to give me all the tokens in your coinbox. After the ceremony, I mean. And I'll take them home with me, and when we get back here you'll tell me the story that goes along with each one. So remember all of them, everybody who uses you."
"Yes, Jonathan," she said it softly, but very clearly. "I'll remember everything."
"Just see that you do," I said.
My voice was hoarse, anxious. I reached down for her, holding her tightly while I kissed her. And then I got to my feet.
"Well," I said, "you'd better rest. And I'd better not put off my errands any longer."
So no, all in all I guess I wasn't really surprised, when I got back to our room a few hours later, around dusk, and found that she was gone, leaving this note:
Thanks for manufacturing a reason to leave me alone while I finally do what I need to. I love you for making it a little easier for me.
And I will remember everything. Always.
So long, Carrie
She'd taken her clothes and a few pieces of the more soft-core paraphernalia. Whips that were more for show than punishment, things like that. Items I'd bought at the sex shop on Gaite, for guests. I was surprised. Wimpy stuff, I would have imagined her sneering inwardly, babyish stuff, for amateurs.
I wondered, briefly, if she was going back to California. I knew that her department at school would take her back in a flash. And she had that friend, that gangly boy I'd sometimes seen her with. She'd want to see him. I knew a little about what she did when she wasn't with me, you see. I'd spy on her from time to time, hanging around the Mission District, lurking in dark corners behind underground newspapers in grungy coffeehouses, to catch a glimpse of her in her real life, in her silly slacker clothes. Okay, now you know-keep it to yourself, okay? But I wouldn't do it again. Because it was too silly. And because, I thought, even if she did go backto Berkeley, or San Francisco-I'd never manage to see her, never even run into her. When somebody's gone from your life, they're gone, into a separate, even if proximate, sphere.
I lit a cigarette. Stopping was going to be unpleasant, I thought, poking around the room some more, inventorying what else she'd taken. One of the corsets. And the little whisk. I suddenly had a flash of some guy who might be getting his own gift subscription to On Our Backs. He'd be young, I imagined, and I hoped he'd be crazy about her-wildly, and wholeheartedly, the whole nine yards, caring for her with a depth and a completeness that I'd never be able to match. I shrugged, a little surprised I'd had that thought. And a little touched and pleased with myself as well, if truth be told.
I figured I'd better call Kate and tell her the plan was off, that I'd be coming home alone tomorrow. Because, as it turns out, some things can't be arranged. So we'd just have to make do with each other. It was a tough life. Well, we'd have each other and Sylvie and Stephanie and Randy. And whoever else she'd collect. Like Ariel. Hmm, Ariel. Maybe I could use Ariel to help me stop smoking-as a deterrent, you know. Kate had suggested it once.
I picked up the wrinkled white dress from the floor and smoothed it out. Vale, Carrie. So long and farewell.
CARRIE
I had to write out my note three times. The first draft had lots of run-on sentences and meandering paragraphs that never got to the point-perhaps because I wasn't sure what the point exactly was. I wound up crossing out just about everything. Keep it simple. Well, I guess I'm not as afraid of simplicity as I once was.
And when I finished the second draft, I noticed that it was actually tear-stained, and that I was crying my eyes out. Partly, I was miserable about leaving him, of course, but partly, I was absurdly and sentimentally moved by the brave, chipper tone I'd pulled off in the letter. And partly, or perhaps especially, I was finally letting myself cry in hurt and rage, the tears I hadn't shed the night before commingling with a year's angry tears about the l
ove letter he'd written when he hadn't really meant it, because he'd found it diverting (or therapeutic, perhaps) to imagine he was in love with me.
For the third draft, I kept my face far away from the paper. But I was still weeping, my eyes "portable and commodious oceans," as some entirely ditzed seventeenth century religious poet once wrote. Remembering the phrase made me smile a little as I sniffled. And then of course I was disappointed in myself: I had imagined that my grief would have been a little purer than it was turning out to be.
But why should it be, I thought. Nothing about this thing was purely one way or the other. I certainly wasn't being purely brave. Brave would have meant leaving to make it on my own, dazed and alone, and I'm not as brave as that. Perhaps you imagined me trudging off into the sunset, sadder but wiser for the experience-sighing and squaring my shoulders. Like the girl in A Certain Smile, the first grown-up book I'd read all the way through in French. "I was a woman," the book's final sentence goes, "who had loved a man." And that, I'd thought at twelve and a half, must be how you felt when you were really grown up.
But there were other ways to grow up, I thought now, and other ways to play out the story. Because it seemed that you could take one of those midlife-crisis-meets-youthful-confusion love affair stories (and Mr. Constant was right, this was really an old story) and put a whole new spin on it. As Kate had tried to do, dreaming up an arrangement so total, and so challenging, that Jonathan would never have to leave, and I wouldn't have the strength to. Maybe at this very minute, they'd be leading me into Kate's parlor, and Jonathan would be sitting in an armchair, smiling at Kate, a drink in his hand. I'd kneel. I'd present to him. I'd barely be breathing, I'd be so excited, wanting to show him how she'd been training me, hoping that he'd be pleased, that he'd find me improved.
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