“Will you accept the Step?” he asked, taking in another mouthful of water, letting some of it splash across his bare shoulders and chest.
I almost burst out laughing. “Do you know how old I am?”
“Do you know how hot you are?”
“Are you guys told to say those things?”
“Yes. We are …”
I felt my face drop. Do I look crestfallen? I’m too old to be crestfallen.
“… but we’re also instructed to say only things we mean.”
He dropped the hose and shut off the water, standing stock-still in front of me, his expression calm, cool, his beautiful arms relaxed at his sides, one hip cocked, his stomach muscles contracting.
I closed my eyes.
“All right.”
“All right what?” he asked.
“All right.” I shrugged, waving my hand. “I accept … the whatever. The Step.”
“You accept?”
“Sure, why not? What do I do now? Am I supposed to go upstairs and put on some lingerie? Or should we just do it back here?”
His mouth fell open. I could hear Julius in my head: Why do you have to be like this, Solange? Can’t you turn off the defensiveness? Can’t you just relax and be a woman?
“We could do it here if … you want …” he said, casting his eyes around the yard, thinking. “But I should take a shower first.”
“Okay. Yes. Fine. Good idea. I’ll show you where it is. Follow me,” I said, about as seductively as a librarian taking someone to a stack of books.
He stood behind me as I tried to unlock the back door, the keys shaking in my hand. Covering my trembling fingers with his, he turned my whole body so I was facing him and pressed my back firmly against the siding.
“Solange,” he said, looking at me sternly.
“Uh … ye-yes,” I stammered, swallowing hard. I looked over his shoulder at the backyard.
“If you want me to, and only if you want me to, I’m gonna do some things to you,” he whispered, boxing me in with his hands, his eyes taking in my body.
I could feel his breath on my clavicle, my back growing warm against the hot siding.
“At first these things I’m gonna do to you might feel … awkward. But then I think it’s gonna start to feel really … good.”
I nodded nervously.
“That’s what I’m here for, to make you feel good. That is all I’m here to do. That’s my job.”
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Dominic,” he said.
“Where are you from, Dominic?”
“Tyler, Texas. My parents are from Colombia.”
“I knew it!”
“Knew what?”
“Your accent … forget it.” I giggled. Nerves again. Solange, relax, just let him do his job. He’s been good at it so far. Don’t kill the moment with your brain.
He stopped my nervous laugh by pressing his lips to mine, waiting a second to part them with his tongue. He kissed with the depth and flourish of someone who knew what he was doing. He kissed older, like a more experienced man. He kissed well. He kissed like he wanted this. Really wanted this. This kiss was going a long way towards convincing me that this was the right thing for me to be doing right now.
His hands grasped my rib cage, a thumb boldly traveling over my nipple, which was hardening through the silk, his mouth moving from my mouth to my ear. He smelled like a man—musky, woodsy, soapy. When was the last time I smelled this smell, this glorious man-smell?
He pulled his lips away from mine and commanded me, quietly in my ear, “Gimme the keys.”
I dropped them in his hand and he leaned across me, unlocking the door. The house was bracing cold. I had left the air conditioning on again. He dropped the keys back into my hand.
“Brrr. I hate when I forget to shut off the air,” I said, rolling away from his body into the house, feeling dizzy. I walked over to the thermostat, moved the needle from 67 to 71 degrees.
“If it were up to me,” I said, “I would just get rid of the air con—”
When I turned around, Dominic was gone. The kitchen and dining area were empty. A few seconds later, I heard the hiss of water through pipes. He was upstairs filling the bathtub! Oh jeez. It dawned on me: this was happening exactly the way I had outlined it three weeks ago as I sat at this very kitchen table. After that weird and wonderful day at that mansion on Third Street, Matilda had told me to write them down, all of them, every sexual fantasy I’d ever entertained, all the things I’d like a man to do to and for me but was afraid to ask.
For one of my fantasies, I wrote: I would like to come home and just for once have all those gnawing little tasks and chores taken care of, by someone sexy … who has also drawn a bath for me. I wrote that in the little folder they gave me. And even while I was filling it out, I had my doubts. I still thought: This is crazy, this is a joke. These things don’t happen. And they don’t happen to forty-one-year-old workaholic moms.
“Solange! Where do you keep your towels?”
My heart was pounding so hard I could hear it reverberate in my ears. I removed my watch and put it next to the fruit bowl. Then I unbuttoned the cuffs on my blouse and stepped out of my heels, leaving them side by side on the tiled floor. Then slowly, I headed for the stairs, moving towards the sound of the water, because apparently I was wrong. Apparently these things do happen. And they were happening now, to me.
Three stories were brewing at that S.E.C.R.E.T. charity event, which was where I first met Matilda Greene. But most journalists present only knew about two.
There was the Carruthers Johnstone story, of course. The recently reelected DA was in the corner issuing “no comment” about his new girlfriend and their even newer baby. And then there was the story of a small philanthropic organization that no one had ever heard of suddenly donating a staggering fifteen million dollars to various charities. We were told that S.E.C.R.E.T. stood for the Society for the Encouragement of Civic Responsibility and Equal Treatment, a legit charity registered with the city since the late ’60s, but I couldn’t find anything else about them. (It was only a while later that I’d come to know its off-the-books acronym.)
But the biggest story of the night actually staggered in a few minutes after my crew set up near the bar to interview Matilda. A very drunk Pierre Castille, one of the richest land developers in New Orleans, had crashed the party. He was generally extremely private, so to see him there at all was strange. To see him so incautious and disheveled was shocking, though I might have been the only journalist there who recognized him. Few pictures existed of him, and no video. He had never given a brief comment, let alone an interview about any of the goings-on of his company, which he had inherited from his equally elusive father. His was a name that would likely appear at the top of every journalist’s wish list, if you asked any of them whom they’d most like to profile. After all, he owned half the city and was scooping up cheap land along the river near the French Market. Plus, he was a bachelor, and to look at him was to wonder why. He had to be the sexiest beast I’d laid eyes on in a long time. And he wasn’t even my type. And now, there he was, weaving over to a small crowd in a dark corner near the kitchen.
A few minutes later, a drama erupted and it looked like a punch was thrown. Matilda emerged from the scuffle whispering something to a bouncer before joining me for our interview. By the time I had a chance to ask her what the tussle was all about, Security was escorting Castille out the door. As he passed us, his eyes narrowed at Matilda. He was about to say something nasty to her when he noticed me standing nearby. He smirked.
“Hey, Action News Nightly,” he said. “There’s a story here. It’s just not the one you came for.”
Then, before the bouncer shoved him out the door, he yelled over his shoulder, “Good-bye, whores!”
It was a vivid moment, but one that Matilda Greene did not care to expound upon when I asked her how it was that she knew Pierre Castille and why in the world he was talkin
g that way.
“Actually I don’t really know him,” she said, brushing imaginary lint off the straps of her evening gown.
“You just had the Bayou Billionaire forcibly removed from your party, he called you and your other guests whores, and you say you don’t know him?”
“A good hostess would have anyone that inebriated removed, billionaire or not,” she said. And with a wave of her hand she expertly changed the subject, launching into a smart interview about her charity’s goal to help women. Minutes later she ducked out of our conversation to comfort a teary brunette in a black satin dress who was also leaving the event in a hurry.
It was a perplexing, dramatic night.
Afterwards, Matilda and I exchanged cards. Even if nothing mysterious was going on with S.E.C.R.E.T., the fifteen million dollars, an agitated billionaire and an upset brunette, I filed that party away as a strange story to revisit. So when Matilda called me a couple of weeks later to ask me to lunch, I was thrilled, determined to poke around a little more.
We met at Tracey’s, a strangely masculine place for such a feminine woman. But they seemed to know her there, as though she were a regular at a sports bar. Matilda was prettier than I remembered, her red hair pulled back into a thick ponytail, the tension of that evening completely absent from her face. Seconds into our meeting, however, it was clear Matilda wasn’t there to talk about Pierre, her charity, or bawling brunettes. On the contrary, she was completely (and strangely) fixated on me, namely on a recent profile New Orleans Magazine had done on me after my port lands story broke and I was promoted to weekend anchor.
“Thank you so much for meeting me, Solange. Or should I say ‘The Formidable Solange Faraday’?”
Ugh. Matilda was referring to the magazine’s headline. The article itself was not really about my career. Instead, it was focused almost entirely on the fact that I was a single mom who hadn’t dated much in the eight years since my divorce.
“I cringe every time I see that magazine at the checkout lines.”
“I should think you’d be thrilled for the coverage,” she said.
“Normally you’d be right, but the article … it was a joke. Yes, I am divorced, but my parenting relationship with my ex-husband is good; he’s a great dad. We work hard at that. Calling me a ‘single mom’ is an insult to women everywhere who are actually raising kids alone, and to divorced dads who are doing their half of the work.”
And then I unleashed years of bottled-up indignation, the depths of which even I was unaware of until just then.
“They said it would focus on the hours, days, weeks and months my whole team spent on my port lands story, the one our network broke last year. We put some local politicians in jail over that graft scandal. But instead they portrayed me as some lonely, workaholic divorcée!”
I could almost see the ends of Matilda’s hair getting singed by my diatribe, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t admit to her or anyone else that almost a decade had gone by since I’d been in a serious relationship. There had been dates here and there. I’d had sex. But it was usually lousy, furtive and just not worth giving up the rare night I had to myself. I wasn’t really looking to get married again. I certainly wasn’t looking to introduce a new man into my son’s life. Besides, raising him was so deeply fulfilling it didn’t leave much room for anything or anyone else. And it was true, I loved my work. If anything I was married to that. But oh man, to feel a pair of warm feet in a cold bed every once in a while …
“How was the sex? With your ex-husband?” Matilda asked, blithely stirring her coffee.
To this day, I do not know why I was able to discuss my sex life with a complete stranger, but Matilda had a gift, a way of making it easy for me to tell her everything, even though she herself seemed to be a closed book.
“Julius and I were very compatible in that arena,” I said. “Then I gave birth to Gus, and everything … changed. I changed. He changed, or rather he didn’t. And sex kind of just fell away. At first it was because I had a baby to take care of. Then it was because he took care of the baby while I worked. A lot. Then I got ambitious, and really busy. And he … he didn’t. It took a toll on him.” My mouth wouldn’t stop moving! It felt like being hypnotized.
“Sounds like he had a crisis of confidence,” Matilda said.
“Yeah. That’s exactly right.”
I told her how Julius had been fine being a stay-at-home dad. At first. But one failed venture followed another and sex went the way of his self-esteem. Despite counseling, we drifted too far apart to ever really recover what we’d had.
“Was it a bad split?”
“Not really. I mean, my dad died and my mother had a stroke. So I moved back to my childhood home to take care of her. We took it as an opportunity to separate. But after she died, I never really left that house. Like I said, we co-parent well. He’s the best dad. And Gus has never seen us fight. Because we don’t. Anymore. But, yeah, it wasn’t acrimonious. It was just … really sad …”
I suddenly felt choked up. I hated to think about what our divorce had done to our sweet, sweet boy, whom my whole body missed when he was at his dad’s. On the one hand, our separating before he turned three was good. He didn’t remember us together, all tense and crabby. On the other hand, he had never really seen his mother in a loving, affectionate adult relationship either. But maybe I was reading too many of those post-divorce parenting books.
At that moment, desperate to change the subject, I noticed Matilda’s bracelet and reached out to touch it. The gold was warm, heavy; the charms had little inscriptions on them that I couldn’t make out without my reading glasses.
“This is a beautiful piece of jewelry. An heirloom?”
“You could say that.” She smiled.
“Where did you get it?”
She tugged her arm back.
“I’m sorry to hear you hated that article, Solange,” she said, completely ignoring my question. She could teach a master class on evasion. “But in a way, that focus is what got me to call you.”
So there was a purpose to this lunch.
“Fact is, I came here to talk to you about that article and about your sex life. Or lack of it. And how I might be able to … help.”
Her utter directness made my face heat up. Oh dear. Now I understood. I wiped my mouth with my napkin and placed my hand on hers, clearing my throat.
“I should tell you, Matilda, I am deeply flattered, but, the thing is … I’m straight. Though if I were a lesbian—”
“No-no-no. Oh my god. That’s not what I meant!” she said, smiling. “Forgive me, I’m not usually this blunt, but my approach changes for each woman and I have a feeling being direct with you is the best way forward. I’m talking about having sex with men. And not relationships per se. Just … relations.”
“Oh.”
She scooted forward in her chair, suddenly taking on the demeanor of someone offering up a great deal, the kind you cannot turn down.
“These relations I speak of are purely sexual,” she added. “Fun, free, safe, anonymous encounters. Ones you’re entirely in control of. Ones you define. They don’t define you. Sexual scenarios you come up with, executed exactly the way you want them to be executed. How does that sound to you?”
“You mean … you’re talking about sexual fantasies. About making them … real?” I glanced around the loud, boisterous bar filled mostly with loud, boisterous men completely wrapped up in the game or their own conversations. This was the perfect place to have this kind of conversation.
“Yes. Now, you’re a journalist, Solange. So what I’m about to tell you next has to remain off the record. Permanently. It’s highly confidential. So confidential that if I were asked to go on the record, I would have to deny this conversation ever happened.”
I looked around the restaurant. My interest was beyond piqued; my whole body was on Holy shit alert, making me feel dizzy with anticipation. But I did my best to retain a cool facade.
“Okay. Agreed.�
�
That’s when she laid it all out: what her philanthropic group, S.E.C.R.E.T., really stood for, its history and her role as one of its founders and chief guides. S.E.C.R.E.T. didn’t stand for the Society for the Encouragement of Civic Responsibility and Equal Treatment after all. It was an acronym that stood for Safe, Erotic, Compelling, Romantic, Ecstatic and Transformative: conditions for sexual fantasies her group arranged and executed for women. Women they selected. Women like me. Women in need of some help in that arena.
I was incredulous.
And shocked.
And completely riveted.
“Let me get this straight. You helm an organization that grants women sexual fantasies? Why are you telling me all this? As you said, I’m a journalist.”
“I know. But I trust you. And … well, we would like you to be our next candidate. And quite possibly our last, for a while anyway.”
“Candidate? Why me?”
“Well, in recent years we’ve selected women who were sexually numb, and others who were deeply broken. This time, for our last candidate, we want someone who just stopped making sex a priority. Someone with more life experience. Also, why not you? You’re beautiful, accomplished, and busy. As you mentioned in that article, dating is not something you ‘waste a lot of time on.’ You no longer bother, as you stated. What I’m proposing is that you let us do something for you that you’d never do for yourself. It’s what we’re best at.”
I was speechless for a few moments, then asked, “What do you mean ‘last candidate’?”
She seemed to drift away for a moment before shaking off what looked like sad thoughts.
“Well, S.E.C.R.E.T. has run its course, I’m afraid. It’s been a lovely run, but after our next candidate, we’re closing up shop, whether we want to or not,” she said, changing the subject again and motioning for the bill. “If you decide this is something you want to do, call me. I’ll bring you in to meet the Committee.”
“The Committee?”
“Yes. Other women like you, who’ve been changed for the better for doing this. Some are prominent members of New Orleans society—doctors, lawyers, performers and the like. Names you’d recognize. Others are waitresses, hairstylists, teachers. The men we recruit to fulfill fantasies are chefs, construction workers, entrepreneurs, business leaders. Still others are among the most famous men in the world.”
SECRET Revealed Page 2