“Dominatrix? Like whip me, beat me, make me write bad checks?”
“Exactly like that,” she answered.
“Huh,” Michael said, processing the information. “It always surprises me what people are into. So he took a shine to you when you were whipping his ass. That’s easy enough to understand, I guess. And he pays you I suppose.”
“Of course.”
“I can’t blame you for that. A person’s got to make a living.”
X stood up and looked around, trying to find her shoes.
“That’s not why I do it.”
X found her right shoe but not the left one.
“For your career, then.”
“No.”
X kneeled onto the floor and looked under the bed but still couldn’t find it. Where the hell was it?
“A charity case,” he prodded.
X thought that she remembered leaving her shoe in the living room, and she left him there on the bed, not wanting to answer his questions, just wanting to find her shoe and leave. And when she entered the living room, she spotted it on the floor by the leather couch, her gait uneven as she walked over to get it. He had followed her into the room, the man completely nude. X slipped her foot into the sandal.
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“Try me,” he replied. “You’d be surprised what I can understand.”
“Look,” X said, “I’m trying to get away from him.”
Michael, unsure why the woman didn’t just end the arrangement she was in, asked her, “Why don’t you just tell him that you’re done?”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Why not?”
“It’s complicated. There are variables that are out of my control. I’m in over my head.”
“Did he threaten you?” he asked, the thought of it making him want to land a fist on Compton’s face.
“Not Compton directly, but there are men who would hurt me if I stop seeing him.”
Michael was silent a few moments, clearly concerned, and then he responded.
“Look, there’s a place in Santa Fe if you want to get away for awhile. I’m going there in a few weeks. My mother died a few months ago and I’m still taking care of wrapping everything up, and my dad’s motorcycle is still there and I want to bring it back to California. Why don’t you come with me and stay awhile, just to get out of here awhile and clear your head.”
X considered. Michael went over to her and pulled her close to him.
“I’ll think about it,” she said.
“Look at me,” he said, and she did. “I like you. A lot. Promise you’ll think about it?”
X smiled.
“I promise.”
3.
Simeon’s memories of his interlude with X had quickly become one of his favorite mental escapes. The images of the separate parts of her body, recollections enhanced and improved by the gossamer nature of memory, danced through his mind, occasionally joining and forming into the whole being of X. Simeon attempted to recall the unique features of the woman: the location of moles and the constellations they had formed; the gradations of color in her dark hair (strands which consisted of russet, tawny brown, auburn, chestnut, and mahogany); the peculiarities of the curves of X’s ass, breasts, abdomen, and legs; the angles, arches, contours, and concavities of her face. He reserved the end of his mental meanderings for the sweetest part, the way she had surrendered to his touch, succumbed to her desire, shivered in their linkage.
Before Paris, Simeon had never felt any jealousy for Compton’s interactions with X. There were other things Compton had which Simeon coveted—incredible wealth, fame, and unlimited access to pussy (the latter being made possible by the former). What more could a man want? But now. Now, when he thought of Compton being intimate with X, doing the same things to her and with her that he himself had done, he felt disgust. Rage, even. Given the choice, Simeon thought, X would choose him over Compton, the pathetic, misguided creature that he was. Sometimes money wasn’t enough. Just look at Compton; for him, the money was never enough.
Still, he had a job to do. He had been told to pressure X into dominating Compton’s business partner and he intended to fulfill his duties. Aside from that, there was a large bonus in it for him if he succeeded. He had every expectation that X would refuse, as she had already done, but he had been told to use whatever charm or coercion that was needed.
Charm. It wasn’t as dominant a trait for Simeon as it was for Compton. Simeon wouldn’t have been able to negotiate like Compton could, convincing others to buy, sell, or trade with an effectiveness usually reserved for clergy or politicians.
So when he went to her apartment early that morning and knocked, he was irritated when she did not open it. He was taking a chance that a man wouldn’t be answering the door, perhaps that bartender from that place downtown, but he had spent part of the night gearing himself up for this interaction and there was no turning back now. After knocking again, this time with a fervid intensity, Simeon placed his ear against the smooth grain of the door, trying to hear any movement inside. The number of her apartment, three, a brass number that had developed an uneven and faint patina, sat next to his face as if it were also trying to eavesdrop of the occurrences taking place on the other side of the door.
To his embarrassment, before Simeon could pull his face away, X had come up the steps and witnessed him there. She laughed at him and shook her head in disgust before inserting her key into the lock and opening the door. He followed her inside, noticing how X looked unkempt and disheveled, looked like she needed a shower. The delicate skin under her eyes was puffy and dark, a situation that X hoped that the coffee she was swigging from a paper cup would soon remedy.
X put her purse onto the counter and asked Simeon quite directly, “What do you want now?”
Simeon, disappointed by her reaction to him in their first interaction since they had returned from Paris, was momentarily unable to speak. He had hoped for a warmer reception, one which would include a romp in X’s bed or perhaps on the arm of her couch.
“Has Compton contacted you?” he asked.
“No,” she said.
“He’s in Brazil,” Simeon informed her. “He won’t be back until next week. He’ll want to see you again.”
“I thought perhaps he’d grow tired of me,” X mused.
“I don’t think so, especially now.”
“Why now?”
“Now that you’ve fucked him.”
Fuck. Such a dirty word. Like cunt, it was made with vowels that kept the tongue low in the mouth with spitting, jagged sounds.
There was a tone of jealousy in his response. X started sorting through some mail on the counter in an attempt to ignore him.
She hoped that maybe now that she had been intimate with Compton that he would lose interest in her, put another notch in his belt and be done, though she knew that was unlikely. For other men that might have worked, perhaps, but not Compton. Not yet. He wanted something more than just a lay.
“Look,” Simeon said, “Compton’s business partner, Eliot Ventura, is going to be in California in a month. He’s been funneling Compton’s money to sheiks in the Middle East. We need you to dominate him. It will only be a couple times, just to get some photos of him like you did of Compton, something that could embarrass him.”
X, upon hearing his request, fought against her initial urge to decline. But knowing that soon enough she would be in Santa Fe, she responded that as long as there was more money in it for her, another $75,000 say (money that could be delivered as soon as possible, thank you very much), she would give that Ventura the experience of his life.
Simeon, surprised by her acquiescence, told her that of course they will get the money for her. She could expect payment from Ventura as well, $5000 an hour, the same rate as Compton.
Thinking that her agreement was an opening to further acceptances, Simeon took a few steps toward X who was now finished sorting through her mail but was stil
l sipping from her coffee. He leaned into her, trying to kiss her, but X turned her head away. And when Simeon tried again, the woman took a few clumsy steps away from him. This time X told him that what had happened between them was a mistake and that she had no intention of it happening again.
Looking dejected and disappointed, Simeon asked, “A mistake?”
“I was drugged. I wasn’t thinking clearly.”
Clarity. It wasn’t a word generally associated with lust.
“You liked it,” he said, and she didn’t deny that she had.
“It’s never going to happen again with us,” she said, her words bludgeoning him with their finality.
And then a realization came to him, an understanding that her messy hair and rumpled clothes were not because X had not groomed herself well that morning. She had not rolled out of bed and just returned from getting coffee. X had just been in the arms of another man.
He wanted to call her a slut, whore, strumpet, and ‘ho, a harlot, hussy, and tramp. Maybe she had fucked that bartender again or maybe it had been somebody else. He wanted to argue with her decisions but he knew that it was futile. Simeon tried to keep his mouth shut when he knew the words would work against him and generally, he succeeded. Insulting her would only lessen his chances of another interlude.
X didn’t feel a need to explain to Simeon why she made the decisions she did. He wouldn’t understand, probably wouldn’t care. And anyway, X would never have been able to explain that she had made love to the bartender again, in part, simply because she had wanted the last man she had been intimate with to be someone other than Simeon. X had wanted to erase the remnants of Simeon’s (and Compton’s) tarriance in whatever way she could, and if she had to have another man step on their footprints to blot them out, so be it.
“Compton is going want to see you again,” Simeon said. “Was he a mistake, too?”
“Probably,” she said, not wanting to give him any hints to her escape plans.
“So I’m a mistake, and Compton, he’s probably a mistake? If I were a billionaire, would I just probably be a mistake?”
Simeon thought about the bonus he would be earning in getting X to dominate that Ventura pervert, and decided that he was going to buy himself a new car, a fast one.
“I don’t plan on fucking him again, Simeon.”
“Then just beat him. God knows that he deserves it. And the $75,000, I’ll bring your money next week.”
And then he was gone.
X found her laptop, put it on the counter, and after starting it up, she queried “Eliot Ventura” online. A few clicks took her to an article in an architectural magazine which featured photos of the man’s French chateau, one in which X recognized the floors, the staircase, the basement and the entryway where she and Compton had been greeted by a man wearing a full-face white mask, a man with whom Compton had shared a cigar and Scotch while she and Simeon had hidden away, fornicating in the limousine.
4.
This time when Terry Compton had told Steinberg to set up another meeting in his dungeon with X, his loyal assistant had reported back that the woman had refused to meet with him there, saying that if Compton wanted to see her, the man would have to come to her apartment. She’d have it no other way.
He thought about her ultimatum before finally accepting. He was aware that X lived in an apartment and he wondered what it was like. More importantly, he was curious as to what X planned on doing to him there that couldn’t be accomplished in his expensive, well-equipped dungeon.
So when the day came for him to see X again, Compton knocked on her door, not sure what to expect. It had been a long time since he had knocked on a woman’s door; usually, they knocked on his. He appreciated the sense of the unexpected that her request had created; he floated in the flux of the unknown.
X opened the door, not dressed in leather, latex, or pvc, but instead, comfortably attired in a short black nightgown, the smooth satin covering eliciting a positive reaction in Terry Compton, causing him to hope that he, like the fabric, might also spill over the soft contours of X’s body.
A few weeks had passed since they had returned from Paris, time in which he had thought of X daily, sometimes hourly, the memories of his encounters with her entering his mind in unexpected, torrential recollections (and at other times quite expectedly, the images being called up to push him over the masturbatory edge). His memories had mixed with fantasy, their hybrid growing wildly, overrunning him and supplanting his train of thought as he sat in business meetings, showered, rode in the car or ate dinner. The images of her had even inserted themselves into his dreams.
And now that he was in her glorious presence again, just a few cubic meters of space between them, Compton took pleasure not just at the sight of her, but also at the idea that their lungs shared the same molecules of air, that their feet rested on the same floor. The moments between when they had said goodbye and the present moment of finally seeing her again had been filled with desire, subdued at times and berserkly raging at others. As he looked at her, so lovely in the simple black sheath, he knew that he would do whatever she wanted, whatever she requested, regardless of how vile, demeaning, or repulsive her request.
So when X told him to strip, Compton did so, quickly removing his clothing, folding each garment as it was taken off and stacking everything in a neat pile next to the couch. When X handed him a French maid outfit and told him to put it on, he pulled the ruffles over his head and over his hips, the lace tickling his bare ass on the way down. Even the fishnet stockings he donned, rolling them clumsily over his knobby, stubbly legs (the hair not yet grown back entirely on his limbs). And when X tossed him a huge pair of black pumps, saying that the shoes were the largest that she was able to find at the store, he slipped them on, his toes pinching together uncomfortably in the cheap leather. Mixed with his embarrassment at wearing the costume was pleasure and titillation from being emasculated.
“Here is a list of what needs cleaned,” X said, handing him a sheet of paper, the tasks written out in her long, beautiful script. “I’m going to watch a movie while you do it. Try not to bother me.”
X went behind Compton and put something into the microwave. In less than a minute, the smell of popcorn began wafting through her apartment. Random pops gave way to a burst of sound, and when it was finished, X poured the contents into a large bowl, taking it with her to the couch without offering any to Compton.
He found a pair of pink latex gloves and pulled these over his hands. They felt snug and clammy around his fingers.
The first task on the list was the dishes. Because the kitchen opened into the living room, Compton was able to watch X as he loaded the dishwasher and then began to hand wash a skillet. She stretched out her long legs and tossed popcorn into her mouth.
“Bring me a beer,” she commanded.
In the refrigerator, he found the bottles and managed to find an opener in a drawer. But when he took her the bottle, X chastised him.
“Put it in a glass.”
He did what she said, taking her the drink after he had poured the amber liquid into a pint glass. X received it without a hint of thanks.
Compton began wiping off the counters, spraying and polishing the stone. The granite was a similar color to what was in his own huge kitchen, yet in all the time he had resided at his primary residence, never once had he wiped them down, washed a dish he had dirtied, or cooked himself a full meal. He had a chef, a French man, an older gentleman and Compton always had trouble remembering his name. Jacques? Jean? Something like that. And the cleaning, he paid people to do it. How many maids did he have? He couldn’t remember. Why should he care?
The bathroom was next on the list. He carried the cleaning caddy into the room, and after some searching, found a bottle which seemed appropriate to the task. He sprayed the fluid into the shower and then into the separate tub, spraying around the assortment of hair care products and toiletries therein. A few minutes passed (ones spent examining the ple
thora of makeup that X kept in an open basket on the back of her commode), then he used a sponge to wipe off whatever chemical concoction he had used.
Compton examined the bottle, relatively sure that he owned a reasonably large amount of stock in that company. Since the beginning of his career, Compton had put money into necessities—toilet paper, soap, cleaning supplies, fuel, corn, wheat, dairy. There were other commodities that were considered sinful pleasures to some but necessities to others—tobacco, liquor, adult entertainment. Compton had invested money in them all, and then in their logical extension, contraceptives.
The toilet. He tried to remember the last time he had cleaned one. Fifteen years ago, he guessed. Dirty job. He found another cleanser and sprinkled it into the water before swishing it around with the brush and then flushing the blue water down.
Next, he circumnavigated the outside of the commode, lifting off X’s makeup basket to clean underneath it, spraying and wiping the handle, the tank, the lid, the seat, the hinges, and finally, the porcelain underneath the seat. It was relatively clean, just some dust and hair (of the long and short variety), the rim speckled with a few dots of urine.
He made his way through a good portion of the paper towels, all the while his mind fixed on the idea that this was where the lovely X came to pee and take a dump. He was intrigued by the idea of beautiful women shitting. Once he had paid a rather large amount to watch a particularly stunning woman defecate on the floor. Momentarily, he considered offering X a great deal of money to witness her doing the same thing, but then he reconsidered. To his disappointment, he had been told that the woman wasn’t into that kind of thing. But still, he knew, offer a person a large enough amount of money and you would be surprised what they were capable of.
Behind him, Compton heard X enter the room. Cradled in her arm was the bowl of popcorn.
“Have you finished with the toilet?”
“Yes, Domina.”
“Let me take a look.”
X examined the toilet then, lifting up the lid and seat, inspecting the hinges and handle.
“Do you believe it’s clean? Disinfected?” X asked.
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