The Bodice Ripper

by Byron Rempel

  “I guess.”

  “You all right? Still seeing your professor?”

  Anna wanted to say more. She wanted to ask questions into the night, which came sooner in England, and she wanted to talk like Julia and let things roll off her back and into the pond.

  “He likes my cooking.”

  “I bet.”

  “So I keep being bad?”

  “You’re doing the opposite of reality. Freedom. Joy. Those are your safe words.”

  “I don’t…”

  “Research, girl. Boldly go. But stay away from the cads in real time.”

  I, Angeles the nun, clung to the horse’s mane. It was coarse and long and blew in my face. It smelled like the FalconMoor too, the ointments and salves on his body. I was rocked to sleep by the movement of the Arabian’s powerful shoulders as the horse climbed hills and descended into valleys. The horse kept to the meagre trees, instinctually wary of the Christian arrows. When the horse found a pool of water he dipped his head. I slipped off and, on my hands and knees, drank from the pool too. Then I peeled off my clothes and leapt into the water. The horse watched me, then tried a few tentative hooves as well. We floated and drank and forgot we had nothing to eat. The Spanish sun sought us out. But I knew we had nowhere to go. I threw away some of my filthy clothes and my apron and rinsed others and fashioned myself a new habit. It would have been scandalous in the nunnery, or at the gates of a town, but here there was no one to comment. And like that, freer to move, unencumbered by so much cloth, I once more climbed onto the horse. I felt him this time, felt the movements of each leg, felt how he felt me. And like that, the horse went where I wanted. From the unforgiving sky came a scream. High above the mountains, a falcon circled, descending in tighter and tighter arcs.

  [

  Anna was on a rescue mission, is what she told herself. Her car parked under a cocoon of snow, she decided to hoof it (in Julia’s lingo). She imitated her nun too, off on adventures through the semi-arid plateaus. Assertive. Riding to her destiny. No dunes were available outside. But there was snow enough for a Russian tragedy.

  She was off to save Auntie Pearl. She still had never met the woman, but the reports coming from La Falaise Manor for Assisted Living were disconcerting. Pearl was not behaving as an eighty-six-year-old woman missing one leg and a breast should behave. For one thing, she was dancing. She had been spotted in the Manor’s gym on a treadmill. Staff found her before she figured out how to turn it on, but still. She explained she was training for the upcoming dance. Dotty told Anna that there was no such thing as a dance at La Falaise. She’d also tried more exit-seeking, including one memorable time when she was disguised as a man in a floppy-eared hat with yellow sunglasses.

  Anna told her mother not to worry, she’d go see Pearl and straighten things out. Dotty wondered if they should invite her to Easter next week, but Anna said she wasn’t sure if she was comfortable with that.

  The snow blew across the sidewalk in a thin mercury wind. Anna was not comfortable with many things, including the matching ski underwear she had on. She’d bought it after that last encounter with an ecosystem. The material was high-tech and made of a kryptonite and yeti hair blend, but it was so tight it rubbed on the multiple bandages on her arms and chaffed between her legs.

  Which reminded her of the other discomfort.

  She’d taken Julia’s advice, and started research on sado-masochism. It was fine while she looked at pictures about spanking and even hot wax, but with her typical academic fervor she couldn’t stop there, and when she got into the details about breast clamps and Saint Andrew’s cross and suspension slings she started to squirm. Which made her more uncomfortable.

  But she didn’t take long to see the whole BDSM thing was about something she hadn’t yet broached with Christophe. Whatever anyone got from it, or why they did it, it all revolved around consent. These people negotiated; they trusted each other. They did something called aftercare.

  That word lodged in her head, and now on the way to see Pearl it mixed squeamishly with any kind of special care her aunt might get. All that research was still saved on her phone. Very soon Anna lost her enthusiasm for her rescue mission, and she stopped cold on Avenue des Pins with a scrunched up look on her face.

  And because of that word, she decided right there to take control of her own destiny, and let other people take care of their destinies. She was ready to negotiate. To trust. To get herself some aftercare. Even if that meant she first had to negotiate a bare-bottomed spanking.

  [

  The sidewalk snowplow rattles by and leaves a slick surface. Anna’s boots are oiled suede lined with alpaca wool, sealed with the bleeding hearts of seal mothers. They are new with the underwear, but comfortable for her sensitive toes. Even her purse is lined with downy fluff. Or maybe it’s acrylic. Her phone is warm inside.

  She skates up the stairs to Christophe’s condo, then stops. Could she find all the research again? She should have printed it out, with argument, citations, a few stats. She had an idea for a chart too, but didn’t print it. The stats alone were impressive: fifty-three percent of male sadomasochists develop an interest in the sport before the age of fifteen. Seventy-eight percent of women SMs embrace it after fifteen. But now at his door even the stats aren’t relevant. They sound like they’re pulled from that popular bondage trilogy. She does not have a gift wrapped in Japanese paper with hemp rope and a suggestion of musk. She cannot lay down her heart on the threshold.

  A Nordic skier schusses down the far sidewalk. Anna turns back to the door and takes off one glove. She does not have appropriate underwear for this. It covers ninety percent of her body.

  The pricey lingerie isn’t the problem. She is ready to admit she may have control issues. She should have stayed at home. She tried. She opened The FalconMoor and saw no way to happily ever after. She doesn’t want so many stories in her life. She wants to cut down narrative threads like soldiers at the Battle of Poitiers: one king, one queen, one god.

  Her fingers freeze while she doesn’t knock. When she peers through the stained-glass windows around the door she notes they are Gothic Revival. A shadow moves inside, and she ducks behind the door. Breathe. You are a tree. From the roots, to the leaves, exhale to the universe. She knocks.

  A lock unbolts. A mop of black hair shakes, then underneath it a woman’s distrustful eyebrows. Anna tries to bring in buckets of subzero air but her trachea is coated with ice.

  [

  Christophe laughed for a long time, long after the cleaning lady had left, after Anna had tried to give her a generous tip and apologized for screaming at her. She’s suffered worse than that, the cleaning lady said. She was Polish. Her accent was thick, her hair black despite her age.

  “To see you dancing like that on my front porch,” Christophe said. “And for her. You must think me desperate.” He’d watched the confrontation from the sidewalk. He still sat in his ski clothes on the porch. They sat on a lime-green bench. Anna wanted to go home. “Would you stop checking your watch for a second?”

  “This is a heart-rate monitor.” The pants and jacket and hat were all tight-fitting and different from the gear she’d seen before and he had new awful sunglasses on his head too.

  “I’m glad I bumped into you,” she said.

  “You bumped into my cleaning lady.”

  “It’s an expression.”

  “Tell her that.”

  Anna sat down. She wished he would stop laughing and kiss her. He checked his monitor. Maybe she should have printed out that chart. She reached inside her purse and fondled her phone.

  “I need to clarify a few points. First we need trust if we’re going to go further. We should each reveal something about ourselves.”

  “Okay, I’ll reveal I thought a sans-abri was at my door.”

  “My point. You ignore me in public. First you kiss my collarbones and
tear my lingerie and now I don’t know if you’re psycho or kinko.” Anna realized she stood again, her back to the door. She’d said it. Not like she planned. Not with the research logic.

  “You can’t tell who anyone is in all that winter fluff. I thought I should call the police,” he said, still chuckling, “but I don’t know the number in Canada.”

  “Nine-one-one.”

  “Not one-one-two?”

  Anna sighed. “This isn’t how it’s done,” she said. “There are rules.”

  “I think if each continent has its numbers…”

  “You know what I mean.”

  He unzipped his collar. “You have a system.”

  “Because if there are no rules in place then games become abuse.”

  Christophe looked up at her. From this perspective, his eyes looked dark and hooded. Wrinkled. Old. She stood at the door, her purse a shield.

  “You invent words. ‘Kinko’ is not real.”

  “I mean, maybe I love you, but who chokes someone on the first date?”

  Christophe looked at his heart monitor. Something was wrong with it. He shook it. “These numbers are not correct. Digital is no good.”

  “It’s a paraphilia, not a mental disorder. I looked it up. Fifty-three percent of male…”

  “Love.”

  “Hmm?”

  “Love is a paraphilia. A fetish.” He stood up, unzipped his jacket, began to shed his layers. “Because love, love is self-gratification. You do not relate to me. You glorify yourself.”

  He didn’t smell like himself, like spilled Bordeaux, or cologne, or crêpes au Nutella beside the Seine. He smelled like heated polyester, wet GoreTex, ski wax. She could smell this perfectly, because he stood inches from her and tapped his finger on her breastbone.

  “Come inside,” he said. She did.

  “Really you have come to tell me you will join la Grande McGill committee. The Dean, the Chair, they’re not on your side. They’re lying to you if they say that. The only one on your side is me. Close the door.”

  The moment she closed it he threw her against the wall. He pushed her to her knees and held her hair. “Suck me,” he said. He struggled to pull down his tights with the other hand, and thrust himself in her face. “You see that. You see that I am hard for you. That means one thing.” He put it in her mouth. “That you are the only one for…”

  Anna pushed him away with a strength she didn’t know she had. She pushed him in the balls, and it sent him back and doubled over. She wiped her mouth and stood. Sounds like crying came out of him. She put her hand on his shoulder. He stood up and laughed.

  “You think that was SM, that was rough? That was lust. The same as love, in the end.”

  Anna searched for the doorknob behind her.

  “You want me to be rough with you.”

  Anna didn’t answer. Her hand was on the doorknob and Christophe’s hand was on hers.

  “It excites you.”

  His living room was beige of personality. Made for visiting professors to come, to go. She clutched at his finger on her breast. Bent it back. His expression didn’t change. He had no expression. She looked in his eyes again.

  “Don’t threaten me. Rage does not match your outfit.” Christophe stared at her. His head a quarter turn, his lips parted. After a while, after too long, he stepped back. He studied her red face, the wind not to blame.

  “Marry me,” he said. “I’m the only stable thing in your life. We’ll play with your rules.”

  Part III:

  Here Come the Sun King

  19. Bunny

  Easter weekend. Anna and Quince in light jackets, on the streets of the West Island. Anna’s arm extends, jerks in front of her. Otto the pug has discovered road kill: a fluffy white bunny, neatly eviscerated. The job done by someone who knew what they were doing, or at least a car that knew where it was going.

  “Does this mean the whole pagan festival thing is over?” Quince asks.

  Otto insists. He dives in and squirms with delight. The kill is his now, the great hunter. Until he flies through the air, yanked by his leash. Anna screams at him. She loses control of the leash and he tumbles into the other curb, returns to his prey. More screams, more demands that he return.

  “Gross,” Quince says. “Now he’s got guts in his ears.”

  Anna’s fingers are numb. She fumbles with the leash but doesn’t want to touch the dog and he doesn’t want to be touched. In her dress she kneels beside the disaster in the reddened snow. Her hands on her face dig into her forehead, knead below her eyebrows. She is numb all over, except where she can’t reach. All she wants is to lay down and sleep the sleep of the dead.

  “Are you…” Quince begins, then thinks better of it. Anna’s shoulders rise and sink. The sound of great breaths, obstructed by a late winter cold. Then the shoulders stutter. Quince looks around, scoops up Otto under one arm. “I got him,” he says. “Come on.”

  After a few long minutes she lifts her head. Anna finds some clean snow and washes her face till it bites. “Bunnies, for god’s sake,” she says. “What is wrong with this neighbourhood?”

  [

  “Since when are you an animal lover?” Dotty asks. “And what kind of cat does that to your arms?” Quince rolls his eyes. Their mother produces a list of past infractions and accidents Anna committed against the animal kingdom, wild and domestic, all the way back to the number of turtles flushed and up to a beagle on Prozac.

  Anna caresses her Band-Aids. Sure she’s lost a few things on the way. Beginning with her father. All the fated pets. Boyfriends. Teaching assistants. And in the last weeks, all life support: her turret, her retreat, the carpenter who promised to make it whole. The support of the Dean and Chair, if Christophe is to be believed. Tenure, maybe even her job next year. All she has left is Christophe and his tousled hair, on the edge of a cliff fighting a stiff wind. He has thrown his phone into the sea. There is no answer.

  She rummages through her purse for Advil and finds better: the ancient pillbox Dotty gave her with bits of Clonazepam. There is only a quarter left, a tease. She doesn’t want to ask Dotty for more. She wipes at the blood on her pantyhose. Who could foresee an Easter Bunny assassin?

  Quince and Dotty don’t let her go, not yet. They get her out of the bedroom where she’s been dialing Christophe’s numbers on speakerphone over and over, listening to the ring like tinnitus. She knows it is wrong to do this at her mom’s. Regression is futile. But he’s turned off all his devices. A catastrophe. No one is unreachable anymore. In a proper movie the bunny would have foreshadowed this. Christophe has met with an Act of God. A minor one that involves kitchen knives or hot water, the kind that makes you temporarily, for a weekend, unable to glide fingers over a phone screen. Blood and screams in the condo that nobody can hear or understand, given the foreign accent, given the choice of exotic blasphemies, and no one knows he is a visiting professor and has been lying in a coma for three days while the life force ebbs from the ends of those digits and the only thing that he envisions in his final moments is Anna, always Anna, who waits for him at the altar with her answer, why did he ever want to be alone, where is Paris, where was

  “Anna.”

  The lack of sleep kills her memory and alertness, she knows, eventually hallucinations and psychosis will set in, she’s researched it. Not unlike the feeling she gets when she walks through Dotty’s front door. This is not the state you want to be in when contemplating marriage. You want stability. You want a man with connections to the French presidents, with a summer house in Provence and a kindly caretaker named Gustave. Is that all she wants?

  “Anna?” Dotty stares at her daughter’s face. She is only six inches away. Everything else is dark.

  “Give me a minute. I’ve almost got this worked out.”

  “It’s midnight dear. You should go to bed.” Quince left ho
urs ago. She would stay a little longer. Until Wednesday, say. The time to decide one thing. Anything.

  [

  Something wanted in. Alone in her bed she heard scratches at the door. Or out. It wanted out. Out of its rabbit hole dark, humid and rank. Suffocating in there. Did rabbits have claws? But Anna knew she would die if she couldn’t sleep, that the future of the civilized world depended on the next few hours, minutes, seconds—she burrowed into pillow feathers. Her dream stretched into gauze and threatened to disintegrate. She wanted back in. Into love.

  We nuns lay under the same night sky, but now my heart was as far from their commandments as my feet were from those cold stone walls. Because beside me under that Light lay the FalconMoor, who had tracked and recaptured me. But now he was mine. He avowed what no one before had dared. No priest. No commoner. And like the waves along the shores of the Great Civilizing Sea, his whispered heresies swelled my belly with desire.

  Above us the mourning dove cooed and the Moor’s eyes overflowed like the discovery of a newborn spring. Those eyes languid and dark gazed upon my eyes, now discreet in their cloaks. His falcon too gazed upon them, unwise to the complications that grew between the Moor and me, how we could never hope to reciprocate each other’s affections. The falcon cried out for our pain. The Moor joined. And his wails led to a song of longing and desire, and with his falcon tambourine he beat out a rhythm like that of his wounded heart. He sang of one soul broken in two, half of it deep in the heart of me, Angeles the nun, and the other filling the form of the desperate FalconMoor.

  It was the first romance and the only one in the world, and soon it would grow to spread like a benevolent plague through Al-Andalus and over the mountains and into all of Europe, but all those troubadours and knights of wooden spears would never equal his passion-love, whose certain cure lay in the next world…