by K. Bromberg
“So,” I say, “where we going?”
“Away from a crowd of paparazzi.” He stops at a light and turns toward me. “How do you live like that? All these people around all the time?”
I shrug. “At first, I got upset when they misunderstood something or printed me kissing a Brent Ogilve when I was dating Gerald. That sucked. But then, Gerald was kind of a dick, so they did me a favor.”
I don’t want to talk about paparazzi. I want this guy. I put my hand on his thigh and slide it between his legs. He’s all muscle. He puts his hand on mine and moves it back to my lap.
“Are you gay?” I ask.
“No.”
“Look, if you don’t want to do it, that’s fine. Just drop me off.”
“Take it easy,” he says, squeezing my hand before he lets it go.
But I’m uncomfortable, unhappy. The car feels too small, and this man expands like a balloon, as if his psychic space crowds me. Suddenly, I don’t want to have sex at all. Not with him, not with anyone. I just want to feel like I have everything under control again.
I open the door enough for the hood light to go on. We’re not going fast, and I know he’ll slow down. But he doesn’t. He stretches over me and pulls the seat belt across my body. His peppermint smell is layered with sandalwood, and I want to fall inside it at the same time as I want out of this fucking car.
Snap. He clicks the belt. “You’re in the arts district. It’s late, and everyone’s drunk. There’s no need to take unnecessary risks.”
I’m pissed. Really pissed. Because he’s right.
I look at him as he drives a few blocks. I hate him, and I’m attracted to him, and in my rage, I want to fuck again. I feel the swell between my legs as I remember shit I’m trying to forget—that windshield kiss, and me in the passenger seat inches from a dead girl’s pussy, and it smells like sex.
I’m not thinking about that.
I am not thinking about that.
Fiona, do you want to stop? You’re crying.
I say something. Something about Pinkerton never failing when Amanda drove. And no, I don’t want to fucking stop. I want to remember Deacon with this level of clarity and beauty. Something about the way he smells and the texture of his jacket in the lamplight. Something about his hands. The way they’re completely still when he isn’t using them. I’d forgotten that.
I feel Elliot’s fingers on my wrist and hear the soft curtain of his voice.
All right. You’re mixing things up. Amanda Westin died after you met Deacon. You don’t have to think about the accident if you don’t want to. You’re in control.
Deacon turns right then right again onto a cobblestone loading dock. We’re in an unlit alley downtown. He turns on the dome light.
“So,” I say, “what do you want? You going to tie me up and kill me?”
He laughs, and my anger melts off me.
“I’m assuming that wasn’t your boyfriend.”
I shrug. “Just a Thursday night.”
I undo the seatbelt to see if he’ll let me. He makes no move to restrain me again. I turn around and kneel on the warm leather, the small of my back to the dashboard, to get a good look at this guy. Older. Late thirties, early forties maybe. Little beard happening. Strong chin. Dark hair. Eyes blue and lit from within.
I know he can see my tits through my shirt. I go braless pretty often because I’m small, somewhere between an A and a B. I call it A plus. My light pink nipples are standing on end from him looking at me.
“You like what you see?” I ask.
“Yes, quite a bit. Do you always walk around half naked?”
“Only when I chase gorgeous men out of bathrooms.”
“And why did you do that?”
“Impulse and instinct. It’s how I do everything.”
“You’re very beautiful,” he says.
“Thanks, hon. You don’t need to flatter me to get under my skirt.”
“I’m still trying to decide if it would be worthwhile.”
“Oh, I promise…” I reach out to touch him, but he grabs my wrist.
“Put them behind you, on the dash.”
Oh. A bossy one.
“You came into the bathroom,” I say. “Do you still have to pee?”
“I’m good.”
“Uh, huh. I don’t know what you’re into, but I’ve done that.”
“You let someone piss on you?”
“It was a give and take.”
“And how was it?”
I shrug without moving my hands off the leather dash. “Scratched it off my bucket list.”
He takes half a pause before he laughs so hard and deep I can see his chest moving. I can’t help but smile. Pleasing him does something for me.
“How old are you?” he asks.
“Old enough.”
He’s perturbed by that answer, and he snaps up my bag.
“Hey!”
“Hands on the dash,” he says while looking in my bag.
He flips past my packet of birth control pills and extracts my wallet. I’m nervous, like Sister Elizabeth is standing over me with a napkin and I have a wad of gum in my mouth.
“This your kink?” I say. “Looking in a girl’s bag?”
He flips my wallet open. “You seem quite willing to let me use your body, but you don’t want me to look in your bag. I don’t know if the boundary differences are cultural or generational, but the fact is, I want to keep myself out of jail if you don’t mind.” He rifles through the wad of hundreds to the stack of cards. The Amex Black has a quarter inch of white dust on the edge. He presses his thumb to my driver’s license and pushes it out. “Twenty-two.”
“My birthday’s Groundhog Day.”
He tucks my license back and puts the wallet back in my bag. “What else is on that bucket list of yours?” He tosses the bag aside.
I bite my bottom lip. “Getting nailed in an alley downtown.”
“A real one.”
I would have gotten bored with this shit already, but I want to impress him. I want him to like me. “Ride dressage in the Olympics.”
“Dressage? I would have taken you for a dancer.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It wasn’t meant as an insult. You have a gymnast’s body, but the discipline that takes would keep you out of club bathrooms. So I went to dancer. Dressage wouldn’t have occurred to me, even if I knew you rode.”
“I was the only rider at Stanford with an Arabian. And I ride him Prix St. George.” My answer is defensive, not sexy. He’s implied that I’m an out-of-control little girl with a flat chest and muscular legs. Normally a man’s little insults are met with backhanded returns ending in ammunition for dirty hatefuck talk. But I want this man to respect me.
“Calm, forward, straight,” he says, putting his thumb to my cheek. “And submission to the bit.”
“You’ve ridden?”
“I spent a few years overseas with a certain crowd.”
I turn my head and take his thumb between my lips, letting it slip past my teeth and over my tongue. He smiles when I suck it on the way out.
“I’m going to be honest,” he says.
“Uh-huh.” I take his thumb again.
“I’m not looking for a sex partner.”
“Then what were you doing at Pompeii?” I take his middle and ring finger down my throat, all the way, and watch his face change. He may have just wanted to help a celebutante in distress, but his ideas of what to do with her are expanding by the second. I see it in his willing, wet fingers and the dilation of his pupils.
“Meeting the owner. We’re scheduling an event,” he says.
“What kind of event?”
“Something you might enjoy.”
And my brain, in its super-relaxed state, fell into his smiling blue eyes. At that event in the house on Maundy Street, I would be on my knees with an expert tongue in my asshole, a vibrating object in my cunt, and my mouth on a cock. So happy, content, sat
isfied, that when the orgasms came, I felt as if I’d transcended my own skin.
***
I woke with my back arched, out of breath, with Elliot pressed two fingers to the inside of my wrist.
“I’m sorry,” I said, panting.
“Don’t be.” He stared at his watch another second then put my hand down. “You’re taching at one-fourteen.”
“I wasn’t trying to make you uncomfortable.”
“You’re going to have to work harder than that to make me uncomfortable.” His smile was so relaxed, I believed him.
I wanted to work hard enough to make him uncomfortable, just to see what he looked like. “I’ll remember that.”
“Just lie back and relax.”
We didn’t say anything for a few minutes. I breathed slowly, trying to slow my racing heart.
“Was that your first encounter with Deacon?”
“Yes.”
“When did you see him again?”
“He invited me to that party through Paolo, the owner of the club. I wasn’t going to go, but Charlie heard it was at Maundy Street and went nuts. I figured I’d see Deacon again. Which I didn’t.”
“No?”
“He’s known for not showing to his own parties. But he found me, like, a week later at Lucien’s. Bought the whole table dinner from across the room then tried to slip out.”
“What did you do?”
I huffed a sarcastic little laugh. “Chased his ass. He was waiting for me in the parking lot, like he knew I’d come after him. And he wouldn’t let me touch him. Even back at his place. He said touching him was a privilege that was earned. I didn’t understand. I thought he was just being a dick.”
“Many dominants don’t like to be touched. At least not before there’s trust.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t know that. How do you know?”
“I’m treating you. I’ve stayed up late doing a lot of research.”
“‘Research,’ huh? With a box of tissues by the computer, I bet.”
He didn’t answer.
“Sorry,” I said.
“When did he let you touch him?”
“I don’t know. I keep thinking, if I stabbed him, he must have been tied down or something. But how? He’d been tied down in Congo, so he’s not turned on getting tied up. He’s anti-aroused. So maybe I ran up and jabbed him?” I shook my head slowly. “The last thing I remember is a jumble of shit.”
“What kind of shit?”
“Pills and sex. And some rope work. I think I was suspended for part of whatever it was. Which means Deacon was there, and I was the one tied up.”
“No one else ever tied you?” Elliot asked.
“I got tied up plenty, before we were exclusive, but the real rope work, the art, the shibari? That was all Deacon. He wouldn’t let anyone else do it. And that was from the beginning.”
“So in a way, you were exclusive from day one.”
“In a way.” I hadn’t thought of it that way, and I swelled with a childish pride. “Even Martin and Debbie weren’t allowed.”
“Who are they?”
“They live in number two. They’re his top trainees. Debbie’s great. She only ties men. She does beautiful things, and she’s really methodical, even for how young she is. Martin’s talented, but Deacon says he’ll never really get it.” I shrugged. “Even if I was so stoned I’d let them knot me, well, Debbie wouldn’t have disobeyed, and Martin was in New York. So I don’t know.”
Elliot shifted a pen on his desk as if it was a lever he needed to flip, then he shifted in his seat. Why was his every movement so interesting to me? Why did I watch him? It could have been because he had so much power over me, or it could have been because he expressed himself with his motions, as if a shade of what he was about to say existed in his body before it came alive verbally.
“I think we’re going to find out soon,” he said. “Mister Bruce has been found well enough to be interviewed. So if you have anything to tell me, the police, or your lawyer, you should do so.”
He was well enough to be interviewed. He was getting better. I swallowed hard and took a deep breath. “Thank God.”
“You’re not afraid of what he’s going to say?”
“No.”
“He may implicate you.”
“I’m not worried about it.”
“What are you worried about?” he asked.
“How long have you been working here?”
“That’s not relevant right now. Not as relevant as you changing the subject.”
“My point is, no matter what he says, we have lawyers. Our lawyers have lawyers. If Hitler needed to walk, Hitler would walk. What I’m worried about isn’t the law. Deacon is my law. He’s the only one I have to obey. I’m worried about what I did. How it affected him. Us.”
“You have a very strange sense of entitlement.”
“I’m told it’s affluenza.”
He smiled ruefully. “Session over. See you tomorrow.”
twelve.
I could have eaten in my room, but I wasn’t good at alone time, and I’d already had a bit too much of it. So when Jack sat next to me, I was relieved by the human contact. At the same time, I didn’t know what to do with it.
“Last day is tomorrow,” he said, breaking his artisanal bread and dunking it in his sweet whipped butter. “What’s your guess?”
“I think they’re going to let me out.”
“You’ll get picked up before you’re out the door.”
I shrugged. “They’ll set bail. I’ll go home, and then we’ll see.”
Split pea soup with hand-cut bits of ham. Grilled vegetables. Marinated tri-tip. All the meals had been like that, and by “like that,” I meant the very worst of what I’d ever had in my life, unless I was deliberately slumming or in a neighborhood south of the 10.
I pushed my tray away. “This food sucks.”
I wanted something, but it wasn’t on my tray. The roil of anxiety built in my chest. I had no relief for it, at least not in the pills they were feeding me. Not in the therapy or hypnosis. I had ways to manage myself, and they had all been taken away.
“They’re going to expect me to be sober when I get out, aren’t they?” I asked.
“Probably. But whatever. Just get someone else to drive, and they’ll never know the difference. No one gives a shit what you do as long as you’re not hurting some middle-class honor student. Then you’re up shit creek.”
The way he rubbed his bread around his bowl, as if he was just flipping off some commentary, should have told me he didn’t mean it personally. He wasn’t trying to jab at me. He wasn’t trying to twist my sore places. But he did, and I decided it was careless and cruel.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I said.
He barely stopped eating. “Means we can get away with self-destruction until we hurt someone who doesn’t have anything. Then it’s off with our heads.” He drew his finger across his throat. “Seriously, I’m in here because I sold an ounce of sky gum to a teacher. The news was all about how much my dad made versus how much she made. And I’m like, seriously? I sold four grams to Rolf Wente, and I got crickets.” He stopped chewing. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“People cared about Amanda.”
“No. You cared. The rest of them were slowing down to see the blood on the road.”
There had been plenty of it. Rich blood. Blue blood if you counted Charlie’s cut head. Amanda’s flowed with the webbed lines of windshield cracks as I sat in the passenger seat in a half daze. I thought she looked like a cartoon character sticking her head through a wall, and she’d just pull it out and make a goofy face. I put my hand on her ass and patted it, whispering, “Tight and sweet, baby. Tight and sweet. You’re going to be okay.”
“You’re not going to cry,” Jack said, incredulous. “You’re not allowed to have problems, sweet tits. Sorry.”
I didn’t know what was going on with Jack. Something must have been happening in
his world, because he was ornery and defensive, but I didn’t care. The thought that no one had cared about Amanda dying, even though it had been in all the papers and her parents turned people away from the funeral, pulled at my heart. He was right. No one cared about her.
And how did you make people care? Amanda Westin died in a drunk-driving accident, and the driver walked away because his dad was a duke in some tiny European backwater, and the news vans came, and the flowers were imported from India, but how could I make them care? Tell them who she was? That she made me laugh when I was sad? That she loved her dogs? That she gave me the last of her flake when I needed it? Or that she stood by me the million times I bailed on her to get laid?
“She was a good person,” I said. “One of the best.”
“Sure.” He shrugged.
That little knot of anxiety grew into something bigger, something without boundaries. It was larger than me. Wider than the expanse of my chest, with an energy all its own.
It was that force inside me, but not me, that flung my tray. Flinging it felt good, because it made a little room inside me, a tiny corner without anxiety. I flung Jack’s tray. I swept my hand over the table and knocked over the condiments, and then I got up on the table. When I flung myself off it, the motherfuckers were already there to catch me. Bernie, good old Bernie, looked intent on not letting me fall, and Frances already had a needle.
thirteen.
I woke up strapped to the bed. Elliot sat by me, marking something on a chart.
“Oh, God,” I said, trying to put my hand over my eyes and failing.
Elliot got up and turned off the overhead, flicking on the soft table lamp over my photo of Snowcone. “Do you have any muscle pain or weakness?”
“What drugs did you give me? I can’t feel anything.”
“Do you promise not to get violent?”
“Fuck. You’re never going to let me out now. I’m stuck here. Why did I do that?” My face crunched up. I was going to cry right there in front of Elliot, every tear another nail in the coffin of my sanity. When he freed my right hand, I put it over my face.