Edge Play X

by Wilson, M. Jarrett

  Simeon asked her, “Did you see the paper? Compton shaved off his mustache.”

  “That made the papers?”

  “When you’re a billionaire who has had it for fifteen years, it does. Did you tell him to?”

  “No,” X said, “no.”

  “Did you say anything about it?”

  “I told him it disgusted me, that it looked like a caterpillar on his lip.”

  “I see. I need to know something,” Simeon said. “Were you intimate with Compton?”

  “Did I fuck him, you mean?” X didn’t want to let on that she was aware that he probably already knew the truth.

  He shook his head yes.

  “No, I didn’t fuck him. Not that he didn’t want to. What does it matter, anyway?”

  X picked up a different, wider brush and loaded it with another color.

  Simeon paused. “As I mentioned before, it may be necessary for you to be intimate with the subject.”

  “And Agent Simeon, I told you before that Dommes don’t always have sex with their subs. There are reasons for that. You give away some of your power when you fuck someone.”

  Simeon grabbed her hand with the brush still in it.

  “We don’t want him to lose interest, do we?” Simeon asked, his words as scouring as blowing sand.

  “Maybe you don’t,” X said.

  “I’m telling you this for your own good, X, you don’t want that to happen.”

  X tried to resume with her painting but Simeon pulled the brush out of her hand and threw it onto the old plank floor. It skidded across the surface, leaving traces of color on the floor, a beautiful streak in its own right, ochre and vermillion. Simeon reached out and gripped her face, forcing her to look at him.

  “What is it?” he asked. “You need more money? Because we can take care of that. He isn’t revolting. A girl like you shouldn’t have too much trouble with it.”

  X slapped him, a strike to which Simeon did not recoil. Instead, he pressed his fingertips deeper into the flesh of her cheeks, contorting her face.

  “Look at me,” he said, and she obeyed. “Don’t ever slap me again, do you understand? I’m not your bitch to slap around.”

  “There are men in the world who should have been slapped more in their lives and you are one of them.”

  He pressed his fingers deeper into her jaw.

  “I asked you if you understood.”

  X let out a whispered, “Yes.”

  Simeon stood up. X rubbed her jaw, wondering if he had left more bruises. She guessed that he had left at least a couple faint ones.

  “Tell me something, Agent Simeon. Do you really believe that Compton is a murderer, that he killed your agent?”

  Simeon, hearing her question, began to grow concerned that perhaps X would be scared off if he said yes. He paused and considered. He knew the truth.

  “He might have paid someone to do it. He might not have done it at all. Our agents are involved in a wide arena of work that puts them in danger on many different fronts. I would say it is more unlikely than likely. But he is a complex man. Don’t make assumptions based on what you see on the surface. Don’t underestimate him.”

  There was the sound of the gallery door opening below them, the noise of Anne coming back from lunch and getting ready for the afternoon foot traffic.

  “Look, I’m not going to fuck him, Agent Simeon. I can’t.”

  “Fine. But if you aren’t going to fuck him, at least torture him with desire. Keep him interested. The carrot in front of the stick.”

  The pussy in front of the dick, X thought and laughed to herself as the words entered her mind. Anne was starting to come up the steps, and when she saw Simeon, she gave him a warm smile and hello.

  Anne came over to examine her latest painting and then went to the recent ones that were leaning against the wall.

  She said, “You’ve been a busy girl. Look at these! Exquisite! Something has gotten into you,” she said, glancing over at Simeon, thinking that this was X’s new lover. “You’ve been working like mad.”

  “Yes,” X returned, “something.”

  “I’ve got to get going,” Simeon said. “Call me when you get back from L.A.”

  And with that, he was gone.

  Anne came over and chided X excitedly. “Who is that handsome fellow?”

  “Nobody,” X said, giving her a fake smile. “Nobody important.”

  And then, in the tyranny of the night, X considered the possibilities of what would happen to her when Compton eventually did lose interest, an occurrence X felt was as certain as the wind or sun or rain.

  6.

  X’s brother Daniel stood at his kitchen counter and sliced an onion. He had already diced two others and had deposited the pieces into a stainless steel bowl next to him. Each slice he made seemed to make his eyes burn a little more, and as he tried to rub away the tears with his forearm, he barely noticed the tattoos that covered his skin. It was hard to see through a watery blur. And that’s what those years of heroin had been, a watery blur.

  Cut. Cut. Cut.

  The tattoos were from a different time, they had been inked onto a different man. There were times, random and fleeting, when he wished he didn’t have them, wished that he had the unmarked skin of a man who hadn’t done prison time, a man who hadn’t done as many drugs as he had. The skin of a straight-laced man.

  Slice. Slice.

  When he was a child, Daniel’s mother had told him and his sister that it was a sin to have a tattoo. The body was a temple, God’s temple, she had said. It was a sin to desecrate the temple, to cover it with graffiti.

  Dice.

  But hell, nowadays almost everyone had a tat. Everyone was desecrating their temple. Now even the hipsters and intellectuals and Wall Street douchebags had been inked-up. Shit, even his little sister had a tat. He had seen it one day when she had crouched down to pick something off the floor, had spotted it there on her lower back, and he had thought that he understood what it signified.

  Cut. Cut. Cut.

  Still, there were times when he wished he could go back to the unmarked man he had been, return to the pure body he once had back before he had dumped all the junk into it. If his mother was right and the body really was a temple, he had treated his like a garbage can. It was a miracle that he hadn’t been buried like a bag of trash in the landfill.

  But one thing that Daniel understood is that a person can never go back. A person can only go forward. There was another thing that his mother used to say—a pickle can’t turn back into a cucumber.

  Slice. Slice.

  At least all the images on his arms could forever remind him of where he had been. Remind him that a person has to live in the moment. Remind him that a pickle can’t turn back into a cucumber.

  The agony of kicking heroin was his first real lesson in living in the moment. It had been a lesson in pain, a lesson he couldn’t escape from. It was as if all the pleasure he had gotten in his drug use had rebounded into his own personal torture. It had been like birthing a demon. But the experience had taught him how to live in the moment. The pain had taught him that he was alive.

  After that, he had learned to concentrate on the small things, on the little tasks that before he had not been mindful of. When he had finally kicked, he had forced himself to find Zen in the smallest actions. The Zen of chopping onions.

  Dice.

  He finished slicing his onion and put its pieces into the bowl. He washed his hands and turned around to face his sister who had come down for the holiday. She was sitting at the kitchen table and talking to his girlfriend, Sabrina. His sister was laughing and smiling but Daniel noted that in other moments she looked like there was something on her mind. She was carrying some sort of burden.

  Daniel walked over to where Sabrina sat and gave her a kiss on the cheek.

  “The kitchen is all yours, baby. Work your magic.” And then, to his sister, “Let’s go outside for a minute so I can have a smoke.”


  X followed him out and together they stood on the little concrete patio while Daniel lit up. He was surprised when X asked him to bum one.

  “Are you sure?” he asked.

  “Yes. I’ve fallen off the wagon.”

  Daniel handed her one and then took a long drag from his cigarette. He was a fast smoker and was half-way down the cig after just a few inhalations.

  “I could quit heroin but I can’t quit these God-damn things,” he said, “but Sabrina puts up with it as long as I smoke outside.”

  The pair watched her through the window as she mixed together the stuffing at the counter.

  “She doesn’t smoke, or drink?” X asked.

  “She’s clean living. No cigarettes, no caffeine, no alcohol, no drugs. She’s been sober for eight years.”

  X said, “Does she do anything?”

  “Well, she fucks.” He threw his head back and laughed and X couldn’t help but chuckle at his crassness.

  The street was quieter than usual because of the holiday, but cars still zipped by, interrupting their conversation.

  “It’s an OK neighborhood,” X said.

  “You don’t have to say that. We don’t even go out after dark.” Daniel looked through the window again at Sabrina. “We want to get out of L.A., maybe go up toward northern California, but I have to wait until my parole is finished.”

  X nodded in agreement, telling him that it would be a good idea to get out of the area, start somewhere fresh.

  They both finished their cigarettes and put the butts into a coffee can that was halfway filled with sand.

  “And how much longer is your parole?”

  Daniel looked over at the houses across the street. He knew it was a crappy neighborhood but reminded himself that even a shit-hole rental in a gang-ridden city beat the pants off of prison.

  “About three more months. Eighty-seven more days, to be exact.”

  X could sense the shame in his voice. She didn’t even need to ask if he was still sober, she could see that he was clean. When he was a junkie, he rarely smiled. He had even walked differently back then, like he had been carrying a heavy weight on his back everywhere he went. His eyes had carried storm clouds and flecks of crematory ash.

  “And after that there is no more checking-in, then there’s no more drug testing? And you can move?”

  “No, then I guess I’m really a free man. If a man is really ever free…But enough about me. Tell me what you have been up to. You been seeing anyone?”

  “Not really,” she said, not especially wanting to talk about it.

  Sabrina came out onto the stoop.

  “I’ve got to head down to the store and get another loaf of bread for the stuffing,” she said before kissing Daniel goodbye and starting up her car.

  It made X happy that her brother was with Sabrina. Finally, he was living clean and was relatively happy. Deep down X thought that was all a person could really hope for, relative happiness.

  As soon as Sabrina was gone, X told Daniel to come inside with her. She got her purse and removed a manila envelope which she handed to her brother.

  “Open it. There’s ten-thousand dollars in there,” X told him.

  Daniel opened the envelope, pulling the stack of cash out halfway before abruptly shoving it back in and sealing it.

  “Jesus. You shouldn’t carry around that much cash. Especially around here. How did you get this?” he asked.

  “My paintings have been selling,” she lied.

  “I’m glad to hear it,” he said, “but you should keep this for yourself. We’re getting by, we’re doing alright.”

  “I’m doing well for myself, Danny. I just thought I’d share the wealth. I want you to use it to get those home inspection courses you were talking about. Use it to move up north if you want.”

  He leaned over and gave her a hug.

  “I’m glad your career is doing well. You deserve it,” he said.

  Deserve. X wasn’t sure what she deserved anymore.

  “You just have to promise me something,” X said. “Promise me that you’ll stay away from the drugs.”

  “You don’t have to worry about that,” he answered. “That part of my life is over. But I better put this somewhere safe,” he said, leaving her and going into his bedroom.

  As she heard him rumbling around in his room, a thought kept replaying in her mind. 87 days, it said, 87 more days.

  7.

  X left the city three days later, her brother taking her to the airport to fly back to the peninsula. Below her, the city was a circuit board of lines and colors. She was glad to leave it behind.

  Home was comforting, the safety of it, the predictability of its routines. She wanted to find a true refuge but could find only distractions—cooking, shopping, socializing, painting, cleaning. Life was normal, except that it wasn’t anymore. She wondered if sex could unburden her mind but she could not manage the initiative to find a partner.

  Winter had come, bringing with it rain and making each day shorter than the last. Christmas decorations multiplied by the hour. X knew that she would hear from Simeon again and one day he telephoned her to tell her that this was the weekend she would be seeing Compton again. He gave her a few reminders. Get the photos. Plant the bug. Make sure he doesn’t lose interest.

  X had spent part of her time researching Terry Compton. She was able to find a few articles about him in the financial and society sections of newspapers and a few profiles that had appeared in men’s magazines. Most of them were about his financial dealings or art purchases.

  One of them, however, in an international economic magazine, had a few sentences about how Compton and his advisors were reevaluating some of his charity contributions in light of a government report that showed that he was one of the largest American donors to certain Middle Eastern charities which the US had marked as having possible links to radical groups. When asked about this by the interviewer, that man had responded that the goal of his contributions was to bring change to the area by stimulating Western-style economic growth. He finished by stating that he had no interest in religious wars; he was an atheist.

  It certainly seemed that the man had some economic interests in the region. He was on Boards and Steering Committees of international oil conglomerates. He was a partial owner of a hotel in Dubai and his partners were sheiks from Saudi Arabia. But X had no idea if he was really funding the movement of arms or not. She thought that perhaps Simeon had told her that because he didn’t want to admit that it was really Compton’s charity contributions that they were concerned about. Or maybe they just wanted to gather information on his Saudi Arabian business partners.

  Simeon thought that having sex with Compton would hold his interest, but the agent had it all wrong, X knew. Not fucking Compton would only make him want her more. The essence of desire was not having what you wanted, something Simeon didn’t seem to understand. Give a man everything and he’ll still want more; the desire, the propelling force never subsides. And one thing that X felt certain about was that a man who could have any material thing in the world had only one true want—to feel desire for something, to know that something or someone was out of reach. A man like that didn’t have trouble finding a woman who wanted him; a man like that had trouble finding a woman who didn’t want him. A man like that wanted a challenge.

  X had spent time studying the list of Compton’s fetishes that Simeon had given her. Many of the activities X had engaged in, but a few select others she had never tried, ones deemed unacceptable because they pushed the boundaries of safe sane consensual, the general rule of bdsm. This practice of edge play had never interested her but lately she had thought deeply of the psychological motivations behind them. The activities of the people who ventured into edge play all involved an element of risk. There were practitioners who played with guns, simulated rape, drew blood, or choked their partner until consciousness was lost. She knew that Compton wanted his Domme to draw blood, wanted her to restrict his
breath. It had all been on the list.

  She wondered if maybe the man had a death wish. Maybe everyone had a death wish. But what better way to remind a person that they were alive than to glance death, to feel the surge of adrenaline, to see one’s own blood and feel the raw panic of it?

  Some of the men she had been with had enjoyed delayed gratification. Others had liked humiliation. Every man was a little different and that is what kept her in the game. She was like a man in this way and she accepted it.

  It was a puzzle to figure out what a man really wanted sexually. An unsolvable formula, though she had gotten close to the answer. It was simple enough to identify what got a man’s response and from there it was all methods and techniques and more experimentation.

  The best X had been able to come up with was that men wanted to feel desire and women wanted to be desired. But of course that was too easy a reduction. It didn’t apply everywhere. Too many unknown variables with people in the S&M scene.

  X had known men similar to Compton before, successful men with demanding careers who wanted to escape the stresses of their lives. They were looking to be transported, to achieve an alternate, sacred state. Much of it had been about catharsis for them, about breaking free from their egos. And that’s where the Domme came in. She assumed the role of the higher power. She became the object of adoration for men who demanded respect.

  Even so, X understood that fetishes were a hard thing to figure out. The shrinks hadn’t even succeeded. Things that some people considered normal, others considered unhealthy. What was fetish on the surface was all psychology underneath. Another thing Simeon didn’t understand was that a true Domme wasn’t a whore, but a psychologist. She found out what a man really wanted and then pushed him farther than he thought he could go. That was where the training came in. A man wants to be humiliated? Insult him. Easy enough. Want him to really feel humiliation? Make him clean your toilet with his tongue and then tell him how pathetic he is for doing such a thing.

  The uncertainty around Compton was the scope of his capacity for violence. She knew that he mixed sex and death. That was clear enough because the man had a thing for edge play. But if he had really murdered his last Domme, Compton had gone over the edge. If he had done that, there was no redemption for him and he would probably do it again.