Since he despised the animal within himself, she forced him to manifest it: stripped of anything but his own hide, on all fours, forbidden to utter anything other than a wordless howl. He could not be trusted to govern himself, beast that he was, so she fettered him. And because he believed the animal was inferior to the man, made to be used violently, she beat him the way a drunkard who has lost at cards will beat his own dog. He forgot her injunction against speech when it became clear how the “riding lesson” was to proceed, but she had no mercy. Like most men, he thought of women as cows or broodmares, so if he wanted to experience servitude and degradation, he would have to experience sexual violation as well as bondage and the lash. Bent over a chair, wrists lashed to ankles, he bellowed like a gored bull when the wooden handle of the whip took his male maidenhead.
In the end, he proved her judgment of his character was correct—he knelt, swore his allegiance to her, and tried to lick her, like a servile mutt who wants a table scrap. She took his money and kicked him out with a warning to avoid attempts to sully her in the future. He went away happy, his anger temporarily at bay, his soul a little lighter for the silver that he discarded in a bowl on the foyer table.
Soon Sylvia Rufina’s sitting room was occupied by a series of men who arrived full of lust and shame and left poorer but wiser about their own natures. But their pain was no balm for the wounds the Red Mistress, as she came to be called, carried in her psyche. Her self-styled slaves might prate about worship and call her a goddess, but the only thing they worshiped was their own pleasure. She knew, even as she crushed their balls, that they remained the real masters of the world.
Her consolations were private: the occasional meal of raw meat, and nightly slumber beneath a blanket of silver fur. For one whole year, she tolerated the overcrowding, bad smells, and disgusting scorched food of the city. Her fame spread, and gossip about her imperious beauty and cruelty brought her paying customers from as far away as other countries. The notion that one could buy a little freedom, pay for only a limited amount of wildness, bored and amused the Red Mistress. But she kept her thoughts to herself and kept her money in an ironbound chest. She lived like a monk, but the tools of her trade were not cheap, and she chafed to see how long it took for her hoard of wealth simply to cover the bottom of the box, then inch toward its lid.
When spring came, at first it simply made the city stink even worse than usual, as thawing snow deposited a season’s worth of offal upon the streets. There was a tree near Sylvia Rufina’s house, and she was painfully reminded of how beautiful and busy the forest would seem now, with sap rising and pushing new green leaves into the warming air. Her own blood seemed to have heated as well, and it grew more difficult to curb her temper with the pretense of submission that fed her treasure chest. An inhuman strength would come upon her without warning. More than one of her slaves left with the unwanted mark of her teeth upon their aging bodies and thought perhaps they should consider visiting a riding mistress who did not take her craft quite so seriously.
The full moon of April caught her unawares, standing naked by her bedroom window, and before she willed it she was herself again, four-footed and calm. After so many months of despicable hard work and monkish living, she was unable to deny herself the pleasure of keeping this form for just a little while. The wolf was fearless and went out the front door as if she owned it. Prowling packs of stray dogs were just one of the many hazards on this city’s nighttime streets. Few pedestrians would be bold enough to confront a canid of her size and apparent ferocity. When she heard the sound of a conflict, she went toward it, unfettered by a woman’s timidity, ruled by the wolf’s confident assumption that wherever there is battle, there may be victuals.
Down a street more racked by poverty than the one on which the Red Mistress plied her trade, outside a tenement, a man in a moth-eaten overcoat and a shabby top hat held a woman by the upper arms and shook her like a rattle. She was being handled so roughly that her hair had begun to come down from where it was pinned on top of her head, so her face and chest were surrounded by a blonde cloud. She wore a low-cut black dress that left her arms indecently bare, and it was slit up the back to display her calves and even a glimpse of her thighs. “Damn you!” the man screamed. “Where’s my money?”
The wolf did not like his grating, hysterical voice, and her appetite was piqued by the fat tips of the man’s fingers, which protruded from his ruined gloves, white as veal sausages. He smelled like gin and mothballs, like something that ought never to have lived. When he let go of one of the woman’s arms so he could take out a pocket handkerchief and mop his brow, the wolf came out of the shadows and greeted him with a barely audible warning and a peek at the teeth for which her kind was named. He was astonished and frightened. The same pocket that had held his handkerchief also contained a straight razor, but before he could fumble it out, the wolf landed in the center of his chest and planted him on his back in the mud. A yellow silk cravat, darned and stained, outlined his throat and was no obstacle.
The wolf disdained to devour him. He was more tender than the querulous granny, but dissolute living had contaminated his flesh. She did not want to digest his sickness. Licking her muzzle clean, she was surprised to see the disheveled woman waiting calmly downwind, her bosom and face marked by the pimp’s assault. “Thank you,” the woman said softly. She knew her savior was no domesticated pet that had slipped its leash. Her life had been very hard, but she would not have lived at all had she not been able to see what was actually in front of her and work with the truth.
Human speech made the wolf uneasy. She did not want to be reminded of her other form, her other life. She brushed past the woman, eager to sample the evening air and determine if this city held a park where she could ramble.
“Wild thing,” said the woman, “let me come with you,” and ardent footsteps pattered in the wake of the wolf’s silent tread. The wolf could have left her behind in a second but perversely chose not to do so. They came to the outskirts of a wealthy man’s estate. His mansion was in the center of a tract of land that was huge by the city’s standards and stocked with game birds and deer. A tall wrought-iron fence surrounded this land, and the golden one made herself useful, discovering a place where the rivets holding several spears of iron in place had rusted through. She bent three of them upward so the two of them could squeeze beneath the metal barrier. The scent of crushed vegetation and freshly disturbed earth made the wolf delirious with joy.
Through the park they chased one another, faster and faster, until the girl’s shoddy shoes were worn paper-thin and had to be discarded. The game of tag got rougher and rougher until the wolf forgot it was not tumbling about with one of its own and nipped the girl on her forearm. The triangular wound bled enough to be visible even by moonlight, scarlet and silver. Then there were two of a kind, one with fur tinged auburn, another with underfur of gold, and what would be more delicious than a hunt for a brace of hares? One hid while the other flushed out their quarry.
Knowing the potentially deadly sleep that would attack after feeding, Sylvia Rufina urged her new changeling to keep moving, back to the fence and under it. The two of them approached her house from the rear, entering through the garden. The golden one was loath to go back, did not want to take up human ways again. But Sylvia Rufina herded her relentlessly, forced her up the stairs and into the chamber where they both became mud-spattered women howling with laughter.
“You are a strange dream,” the child of the streets murmured as the Red Mistress drew her to the bed.
“No dream except a dream of freedom,” Sylvia Rufina replied, and pinned her prey to the sheets just as she had taken down the hapless male bawd. The wolf-strength was still vibrant within her, and she ravished the girl with her mouth and hand, her kisses flavored with the heart’s blood of the feast they had shared. Goldie was no stranger to the comfort of another woman’s caresses, but this was no melancholy gentle solace. This was the pain of hope and need. She struggled aga
inst this new knowledge, but the Red Mistress was relentless and showed her so much happiness and pleasure that she knew her life was ruined and changed forever.
The bruised girl could not remember how many times she had relied on the stupor that disarms a man who has emptied his loins. No matter how bitterly they complained about the price she demanded for her attentions, there was always ten times that amount or more in their purses. But instead of falling into a snoring deaf-and-blind state, she felt as awake as she had during the change, when a wolf’s keen senses had supplanted her poor, blunted human perceptions. The hunger to be tongued, bitten, kissed, and fucked by Sylvia Rufina had not been appeased; it drove her toward the small perfect breasts and well-muscled thighs of her assailant and initiator.
Goldie did not rest until she had claimed a place for herself in the core of her lover’s being. It was the first time in her life that Sylvia Rufina had known anything but humiliation and disgust from another human being’s touch. Her capacity to take pleasure was shocking, and yet nothing in the world seemed more natural than seizing this cherub by her gold locks and demanding another kiss, on one mouth and then upon and within the other. They fell asleep on top of the covers, with nothing but a shared mantle of sweat to keep them warm. But that was sufficient.
Dawn brought a less forgiving mood. The Red Mistress was angry that someone had breached her solitude. She had not planned to share her secret with another living soul, and now she had not only revealed her alter ego but made herself a shape-shifting sister.
Goldie would not take money. She would not be sent away. And so the Red Mistress put her suitor to the severest of tests. Rather than imprisoning her with irons or cordage, Sylvia Rufina bade the blonde postulant to pick up her skirts, assume a vulnerable position bent well over, and keep it until she was ordered to rise. With birch, tawse, and cane, she meted out the harshest treatment possible, unwilling to believe the golden one’s fealty until it was written in welts upon her body. The severest blows were accepted without a murmur, with no response other than silent weeping. When her rage was vented, Sylvia Rufina made the girl kiss the scarlet proof of her ambition that lingered upon the cane. And the two of them wept together until they were empty of grief and could feel only the quiet reassurance of the other’s presence.
That night the refugee from the streets who had been put to sleep upon the floor crept into the bed and under the wolf hide that covered the Red Mistress, and made love to her so slowly and carefully that she did not fully awaken until her moment of ultimate pleasure. It was clear that they would never sleep apart again as long as either one of them should live.
They became mates, a pack of two, hunter and prey with one another, paired predators with the customers who were prepared to pay extra. With the comfort and challenge of one another’s company, the work was much less onerous. The Red Mistress’s income doubled, and by the time another year had gone by, she had enough money to proceed with her plan.
On a day in the autumn, a month or so before the fall of snow was certain, she locked up her house for the last time, leaving everything behind except the trunk of coins and gems, the maid, and warm clothing for their journey. They went off in a coach, a large silver fur thrown across their knees, and headed toward the mountains. No one in the city ever saw them again. On the way out of the city, they stopped to take a few things with them: a raven that had been chained to a post in front of an inn; a bear that was dancing, muzzled, for a gypsy fiddler; a caged pair of otters that were about to be sold to a furrier.
They had purchased wild and mountainous country, land no sane person would ever have a use for, too steep and rocky to farm, and so it was very cheap. There was plenty of money left to mark the boundaries of their territory, warning hunters away. There was a cabin, suitable for primitive living, and a stable that had already been stocked with a season’s worth of feed for the horses. Once safe upon their own precincts, they let the raven loose in the shade of an oak tree, freed the old bear from his cumbersome and painful muzzle in a patch of blackberries, and turned the otters out into the nearest minnow-purling stream.
And that night, amid the trees, with a benevolent round faced moon to keep their secrets, Sylvia Rufina took the form she had longed for during two impossible years of bondage to human society. The golden-haired girl she loved set her wild (and wise) self free as well. Then they were off to meet the ambassadors of their own kind.
They lived ever after more happily than you or me.
I’ve told you this story for a reason. If your woman has gone missing, and you go walking in dark places to try to find her, you may find Sylvia and Goldie instead. If they ask you a question, be sure to tell them the truth. And do not make the mistake of assuming that the wolf is more dangerous than the woman.
Business Casual
Lauren Sanders
There is time for work, and there is time for love. That leaves no other time.
—Coco Chanel
She was mine in the conference room on the thirty-sixth floor. Two leather chairs jammed the door, the lights were turned down low. Easing her onto the mahogany table, I ran my hands along the length of her fully clothed body before turning her head toward the windows, unveiling a theater of buildings by night, charcoal glass checkerboards with brightly lit squares. Between the cracks was the river, a sliver of bridge, the outer boroughs glimmering like an old-fashioned movie marquee. I wanted her to know how high up we were, to feel the risk in my hands, breathe the fear through my lips. I’d become obsessed with the spotlights on rippled black water, the crystalline buildings wrapping their legs around us. It was as much of a rush as our frenzy for quick, muted orgasms. She smelled like rosemary-mint conditioner from the corporate gym.
On good days, she escaped to the gym at twilight, just as I was beginning my day, and practically met me at the door when I came in at eleven. Other times, when I casually passed her cubicle she was buried in the corner, headphones crushing her wavy brown hair and eyes strained on her computer screen, adrift in a haze of high-stakes numerical analysis. I knew not to approach her then. She became irascible when anyone broke her spell, and there were still too many people around. We had to be discreet.
She was an investment banker at a large financial institution. I was a painter with a night job in the word-processing department there. In a manner of speaking, I worked for her.
For someone so young she had so many words. Hundreds of sentence fragments attached to bar graphs and pie charts, and she had strong opinions about how they should appear on the page. She was a perfectionist, she said, but open to suggestions. She listened when we told her what was not possible and she trusted our deadlines. Sometimes she lingered after dropping off a job, joining a conversation about a movie, play, or the political drama of the week. Nobody talks out there, she said, meaning the other bankers, her colleagues. It was important for her to separate herself. To prove she didn’t belong out there.
Over time, I learned that she hated investment banking. She’d resigned herself to the training program to please her parents, immigrants who’d shoveled the bulk of their hardearned salaries into the Ivy League playground she’d recently left behind. She knew how they gloated whenever they told anyone where she worked. I said I understood. My parents lived in the same rural town I’d escaped almost two decades earlier, and had always hated telling people there that I was an artist. Even the painting class I taught seemed intangible to them. But when I started working at the investment bank they suddenly had a name people recognized. Something to talk about. They never mentioned that I was a glorified typist.
She laughed at this the way she always laughed at my jokes. She engaged me in conversations about art—not in the aggressive manner of my students, particularly the little dykes with big baggy pants who followed me to the subway, demanding to know about the art world, who’d been included and excluded, what was the dominant style, how could they possibly work themselves in. No, she wanted to talk about the paintings she’d
seen in museums, whether her interpretations had been correct. When I told her there was no right or wrong and offered to give her an art tour of our building, which incidentally had the most expensive collection of twentieth-century paintings and prints I’d seen outside of a museum, she said cool. Then she asked me if I had always known that I was an artist. Although I hadn’t picked up a brush in months and was even considering dumping my studio, I said yes. This was very cool, too.
I liked her enthusiasm. Her words. The flicker in her eyes when she said cool, electric-green chewing gum jutting in and out of her mouth like a serpent’s tongue. How eager she was to gobble up the world. I started looking forward to her emails and thought about her on my days off. In short, as the months passed and she marked her first year on the calendar, I developed a bit of a crush on the kid—nothing serious, really—the kind of amorous affection that occasionally crept into a relationship with one of my students and that I’d learned to keep at bay.
Until one night her presentation made the “hot jobs” board, and I spent half my shift with my forefinger buffing the mouse to create a graphic of an archer with his bow pointed at a reindeer to imagize—company term—a hostile raid she and a few other bankers were shoveling through the pipeline. I tried telling her there probably weren’t too many hunters equipped with bow and arrow in subarctic climates, where the reindeer roam, and besides it was a cruel image. She smiled and I thought, what a beautiful mouth she has, curvaceous purple lips that seem almost heart-shaped, and commanding white teeth. What was it about cruelty that in the right face could become so alluring?
Before I began fantasizing her cultured sadism, she confessed a similar conversation she’d had with the partner who was spearheading the takeover, her boss. Apparently, she’d told him the image was a mixed metaphor. Repeating this, she shifted her weight to her left leg so her hip jutted sideways. She rested her hand upon it, giggling a bit as she revealed the balance of their conversation: naïvely, she’d informed her boss that a bow and arrow would hardly slay a reindeer, and she was treated to the following pabulum: “A hunter never questions his weapons.” Her boss walked off, and that was the word.
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