Eighty Days Blue

by Vina Jackson

  The heat visibly rose to her cheeks as words tried to pass her lips but were unable to do so; a rushing herd of emotions clearly bubbled inside her. That was answer enough for Dominik.

  As the terminal strains of the music faded and Luba’s movements slowed in unison, her back straightening, her legs coming together again, her arse cheeks tightening and firming up, out of the corner of his eye, Dominik noticed the hostess in the mask and the flaming velvet dress making her way back towards the stage and approaching the dancer just as Luba finally came to a standstill and reverted to a living statue.

  The spotlight abruptly disappeared, plunging the small stage back into pitch darkness.

  None of the other spectators at the other tables was showing any sign of moving. The performance maybe wasn’t over.

  The sound system came alive again. ‘Show your appreciation for Luba,’ a female voice said, breaking the spell, and the scattered spectators began to applaud the performance, slowly at first, then louder when a small silhouette tiptoed back onto the stage.

  It was Luba. The dancer.

  She was now draped in a leopard-print robe, the shape of her body obscured, and so much smaller than she had appeared in the dazzling glow of the central spotlight.

  ‘She looks tiny now,’ Summer remarked.

  ‘How’s your dancing?’ Dominik asked her.

  ‘Not a patch on hers,’ Summer said.

  ‘I’d like to see you dance.’

  ‘I’m clumsy. I’ve no sense of rhythm, or grace.’

  ‘I’m sure you’d be great. You’re a musician. It’s in your blood, no?’

  ‘You’d be surprised.’

  Dominik took a sip from his drink. The sounds of Ravel’s trancelike ‘Boléro’ were being piped through the loud speakers as background music, muted, distant. He wondered whether there was to be another performer, or whether the enigmatic Luba would make a return appearance.

  He looked Summer in the eyes and knew. Yes. That was it.

  The familiar surge of power raced through his heart.

  ‘It was actually quite beautiful,’ Summer finally said. ‘Not what I expected. I was afraid it might turn out to be somewhat sordid. Not at all.’

  She picked up her champagne glass.

  The hostess walked by their table. ‘I hope you enjoyed the show?’ she asked.

  ‘Indeed,’ Dominik blurted out. He was at a loss for words.

  ‘We only employ out-of-town artists,’ she said. ‘Mostly Russians. They are so well bred. Lovely bone structure,’ she added. ‘Local girls don’t have the same finesse. Luba, for instance, looks so at ease with her nakedness.’

  ‘So is my companion here,’ Dominik remarked, nodding towards Summer. ‘Remarkably at ease.’ It just came out, as if the devil made him say the words, cementing his earlier thoughts about Summer dancing.

  ‘And quite beautiful too, I have no doubt,’ said the older woman in the red dress, examining Summer with renewed interest.

  He couldn’t resist it. ‘Do you agree to private hires?’

  ‘It could be arranged,’ the hostess said.

  ‘Tomorrow maybe? After the New Year celebrations?’

  Summer was shifting uncomfortably in her chair. Most of the other spectators were already drifting away.

  ‘We have a dinner booked for the turn of the year, but could be here at one o’clock, say?’ Dominik suggested.

  ‘That would work well,’ the woman said. ‘How much of an audience would you require?’ she asked Dominik.

  ‘Like tonight. Not too large. Intimate. Discreet, of course.’

  The hostess turned towards Summer. ‘And you are willing to play, madam? You realise the choice is yours?’

  Summer’s knuckles were gripping the edge of the table. She averted her eyes from Dominik’s. ‘Yes,’ she said, as firmly as she could.

  ‘Just a dance or . . . more?’ the older woman asked Dominik.

  ‘What would . . . “more” consist of?’ he queried.

  ‘You are a man of imagination. I would leave that to your appreciation,’ the woman said with a suggestive smile.

  Dominik considered. ‘I think just dancing,’ he finally said with a sideways glance at Summer’s pale features.

  Summer held her breath.

  ‘Our artists also perform privately,’ she said. ‘Might that be of interest?’

  Summer’s heart was now beating wildly, the initial fear subsiding and a new strain of nervousness invading her system.

  ‘I think I would just like to see my companion dance,’ Dominik concluded. ‘On this stage,’ he nodded.

  ‘Good,’ the woman said. ‘Might we discuss particulars, then?’

  She indicated to Dominik that they should walk a few steps away, out of Summer’s hearing, to agree the finances.

  The negotiation was a short one and Summer noticed Dominik handing over one of his credit cards and the hostess passing it through a small handheld terminal.

  Once the transaction had been settled, the hostess in the red velvet dress walked with them down the stairs.

  ‘We will supply Madam’s outfit for the occasion,’ she said. ‘I’m confident we can present her with a varied choice of garments that will fit her most exquisitely. We shall have a full hour to spare until we present her to our public, so there will be an opportunity to adjust a stitch here or there if necessary.’

  ‘Sounds perfect,’ Dominik said.

  She opened the door to let them out into the darkened stretch of Bourbon Street. It felt much colder now.

  ‘Oh, sir?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Any musical preference?’

  Dominik caught the look in Summer’s eye, a brightness that bore witness to anticipation and fear, as if she were begging him to say the right thing.

  ‘Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.’

  ‘A good choice,’ the hostess proclaimed. ‘I look forward to tomorrow.’

  At midnight, after the ball finished its ascent, the fireworks were set off from the barges at the centre of the Mississippi and Dominik and Summer watched from the shelter of Tujague’s balcony as the crowds below roared drunkenly.

  On the stroke of the hour, he took her in his arms and kissed her. Such a simple act, but it went straight to her heart.

  If only things could be so simple, if only this was enough, Dominik thought.

  For now, they had an assignment.

  5

  Dancing in the Dark

  I wanted to dance naked, but the mistress of the show would have none of it.

  She was an imposing woman, still dressed in her red gown and beaked mask. The mask gave me the shivers. She looked like a plague doctor for the wealthy, plucked from the pages of history books, but I followed her anyway, into a dressing-room backstage, where all of the costumes were arranged.

  The room was cavernous and painted a rich, dark red, womblike. High-ceilinged and expansive with evening gowns lining every wall in an array of coloured chiffons; there were silk and beaded robes with matching shoes, towering stilettos and elegant ballet pumps alongside dancers’ props, feathered fans and even a large, gilded bird cage suspended from the ceiling. Inside the bird cage sat a woman dressed in white, like a dove, surveying the proceedings below with a curious stare.

  I stared back at her.

  ‘Pay no attention – she’s rehearsing for tomorrow night’s show,’ said the masked woman impatiently. She cast out her hand, indicating the enormous choice of outfits available to me. ‘You must wear something.’

  ‘I prefer to dance naked.’

  I wanted to enter the stage on my own terms, not uncovering myself to satisfy a voyeuristic audience, particularly as I found it so difficult to slip out of a dress and kick it away gracefully. No, if I was going to have to dance naked, I wanted to begin naked, as if I was not removing anything for the sake of those who watched. Even Dominik.

  We stood facing each other in a silent stand-off. I held what I thought to be her gaze, though it was di
fficult to tell in what direction she was looking beneath her mask.

  ‘You will wear these,’ she said eventually, ignoring my smile of satisfaction at having won the argument, and presented me with a wooden box lined with black velvet and filled with a variety of adornments: two clip-on nipple rings, matching attachments that fitted onto each of my outer labia and a small butt plug. Each carried a rust-red jewel, almost the same colour as my hair. She held one of the nipple rings up to the light and waved it back and forth, demonstrating the way that the stone glittered and shone.

  I baulked at the butt plug, but she insisted. ‘Your benefactor would prefer it.’ Did that mean that Dominik had instructed her to suggest it to me, or was this her idea?

  She fitted each of the decorations to my body, including inserting the plug with a touch more force than was strictly necessary, perhaps a punishment for my insolence in refusing to wear one of her costumes.

  If the woman in the cage had watched our exchange, she said nothing, but I was acutely aware of her looking down from above.

  The rings ached a little, particularly the nipple clamps, but it was that amount of pain that was just on the right side of pleasure.

  I followed the woman through another corridor, which led to a velvet curtain, the opening that would take me to the stage. I held my breath, hoping that if I stood still for long enough, perhaps the whole thing would be forgotten or Dominik would change his mind. I still hadn’t planned what I would do once the music started.

  The stage mistress laid her hand on my back and pushed me through the curtain.

  At first, there was nothing but darkness.

  Then a spotlight burst out of nowhere, one bright bolt illuminating my body like the fierce beam from an artificial sun.

  The glare was blinding.

  I searched for Dominik at our table on the right, but I could see nothing other than the stage light reflecting back into my eyes.

  Then the music began.

  I lifted my arms immediately, out of instinct, as if to hold a bow and violin.

  Then I stood still. I am a musician, not a dancer. Nevertheless, I was rooted to the spot, trapped within the confines of Dominik’s instruction, as though he had attached to me the invisible threads of a puppet master. As I thought of him, the threads began to move. First one arm and then the other. I began to sway, to dance, quicker to the rhythm of ‘Spring’, slower to the beat of ‘Autumn’.

  It was over before I had begun to lose my breath, and the stage was once more returned to darkness. A cool hand grasped mine and led me away into the dressing room.

  ‘You were very good,’ said the still-beaked stage mistress.

  I was sorry to see the jewellery go and resolved to buy myself some nipple clamps at the next opportunity. They would be easier to wear under my clothes than a corset, and certainly much less work to put on in the morning.

  Dominik’s face was slightly flushed when I returned to our table. His greeny brown eyes were glowing as bright as the stage light.

  I thought that he might take me in the back of the car on the way to the hotel, under the scrutiny of the driver in the rear-view mirror, but Dominik was a strangely private individual, despite his desire to display me publically. He preferred to have me on his own terms, and that didn’t include humping in the back seat of a taxi crawling slowly through the crowd of revellers still bringing in the New Year through the Vieux Carré.

  Dominik stared out of the window on his side, drinking up the last of New Orleans, craning his neck to see the final bursts of fireworks erupting outside, fountains of colour lighting up the sky. I took the opportunity to flick through the text messages on my phone, the usual New Year greetings from faraway friends to whom I hadn’t spoken for months. One of my best friends in New Zealand was born on New Year’s Eve, and for the better part of a decade, before I moved overseas, I had spent every 31 December with her, usually indoors at house parties, drunk on cheap fizzy plonk purchased underage, then in later years moving on to more expensive liqueurs and cocktails of every persuasion once we left school and began working. I had forgotten to send her a birthday message this year, for the first time since we met, and was filled with guilt. I had been avoiding all of my friends from home, worried that they would find me changed, and might not like or approve of the new Summer.

  Simón had sent me a message. ‘Happy New Year! I hope 2013 brings you everything you ever wanted.’

  If only I knew what I wanted.

  Dominik leaned over and rested his hand gently on my knee. I flicked my phone off and returned it to my purse. I would reply in the morning.

  ‘You were perfect,’ he said, when we got in the door. ‘My own bejewelled whore. How did it feel?’

  ‘Strange. As if you and I were the only people in the room, but I couldn’t see you. I couldn’t see anyone through the light.’

  He reached his arm round me, snaked his hand under my dress and ran his finger down the cleft in my arse.

  ‘I couldn’t help but notice that anal plug. That was additional to my instructions. Your choice, or the woman’s?’

  ‘It was hers.’

  ‘Did you enjoy it?’

  ‘Yes. I was worried that it might fall out, but there was no chance of that.’

  ‘Perhaps I will get you one and make you wear it to your rehearsals.’

  ‘I might have trouble concentrating.’

  ‘You would manage, I have no doubt of that. It would make you think of me while I’m away, wouldn’t it?’

  Dominik swooped down and lifted me into his arms, carried me to the bedroom and then unceremoniously dumped me on the bed, face down. The bedroom smelled intensely of sex, though the cleaner had come during the day and changed the sheets. Our perpetual lovemaking had flavoured the air, leaving it sticky and sweet, like the humid energy of a hot day just before rain falls.

  He pulled the bottom half of my dress up to my waist and stood between my legs, pushed my thighs apart, then dropped to his knees, separated my arse cheeks with his hands and ran his tongue along my crack and around my perineum. His breath was hot, his tongue unyielding. I wriggled, a minor protest at this intimate exploration, but he placed his hand on my lower back and held me down firmly, continuing his licking.

  His finger followed, and then another, stretching my arsehole further than the small butt plug that the stage mistress had inserted. Tonight, he was cruel and silent, his soundlessness the result of intense concentration. My face was buried in the blankets, but I could imagine that Dominik was looking down on me from above, probing my pleasure points with what seemed to be curious detachment. He didn’t use any lube, besides the wetness of his tongue, which had now moved lower and lapped at my pussy, sending waves of pleasure through my body. As my breathing grew deeper and less even, he withdrew his fingers, gripped my hips and pulled me back against him, burying his cock inside me and collapsing onto my back with a moan without waiting for me to climax.

  This was the Dominik I liked best, hard, rough, thoughtfulness overtaken by lust.

  We celebrated our last night in New Orleans together with more oysters. I had eaten enough oysters to last me at least until the next time I saw him, but I didn’t think that any amount of sex that we could fit in between our last dinner and our check-out would fill the gap of his upcoming absence.

  He’d fucked me raw, and me him, but that didn’t stop Dominik from entering me one last time before we left. He put his palm on the hotel-room door just as I opened it and slammed it closed again, then held my wrists over my head with one hand, pulled my knickers down with the other and filled me again from behind.

  My pussy throbbed for the duration of the flight, a vivid physical reminder of Dominik, disrupting my flirting with the good-looking man in the seat next to me.

  We had parted at the airport, as he was on another flight back to London, via Chicago, taking advantage of an extra night in New Orleans rather than returning with me to New York and travelling home from there.


  Then we would wait to hear the result of his fellowship application.

  The thought of having Dominik permanently in New York filled me half with pleasure, half with worry. I had grown so used to my independence and enjoyed having all the time in the world to rehearse, to meet new people, to spend my days doing whatever I liked, beholden to no one.

  Marija pounced on me the moment I got in the door, eager to hear every detail of our few days together. She was very blunt, though considering that she made no effort whatsoever to keep a lid on the sounds of her nightly lovemaking with Baldo, I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised.

  ‘So the sex, is he good?’

  ‘Marija!’ protested Baldo from the couch, where he was stretched out lazily, wearing just a tight pair of briefs, his feet resting on the arm of the sofa. He was so hairy, he could have been mistaken for a blanket, which explained why he was so scantily clad in New York in January.

  ‘He’s very good.’

  ‘Does he have a big one?’ She held her hand against her crotch and mimed what appeared to be the trunk of an elephant.

  I held my hands two feet apart in response.

  Baldo jumped up from the couch in a huff and stalked into their bedroom, slamming the door behind him as he left.

  He opened it again and called out to Marija, ‘Come in here and join me when you’ve stopped gossiping like a pair of old parrots.’

  She winked at me and sashayed across the living room to join him.

  The headboard was banging ten minutes later.

  I disappeared into my own room and fell into bed the moment that I set down my case. Sleep came as soon as I closed my eyes, as if the cloak of exhaustion that I had been carrying had finally found the opportunity to wrap itself round me, now that I was alone.

  In my dreams, I saw myself dancing, hanging suspended from the ceiling in a golden cage. Dominik watched from below, only it wasn’t the Dominik, I knew; it was another man wearing a beaked mask.

  I woke feeling as though I hadn’t slept at all.

  Rehearsals began again in a few hours. With the schedule that Simón had set out for us, I would have little chance of a break for the foreseeable future.