by CD Reiss
I heard his smile as he said, “You may.”
I pressed my whole hand along my wet cleft, feeling everything from the tingle around my pussy to the powerful ache at my clit, back and forth, slowly. My breathing got hard and short. I had to keep it down. If I could hear myself, someone else could as well. I closed my eyes and buckled. My hand left the mirror as my back arched, encompassing me in heat from my knees to my waist. I bit my lip to keep from crying out. My hips pumped as pleasure washed over me in impossibly long waves. The phone dropped to the carpet.
two
JONATHAN
I heard the phone hit the floor, and her groans fill the room. I looked out the window onto the parking lot otherwise known as the 710 freeway and imagined her touching herself. I imagined her expression, her smell as she writhed on the floor enough to drop the phone, all while wearing some elastic and satin configuration. A shiver went down my spine. I felt connected to her when I commanded and she obeyed. It was as close to touching her as I could get.
“Jonathan?” she whispered.
“How are you feeling?”
“I want to curl up next to you and go to sleep.”
“Have I told you how amazing you are? You please the hell out of me.”
She didn’t answer right away. My little goddess of Echo Park must have been smiling. “Wait until you see the underpants I just made a mess of. They’re gonna please you plenty.”
“Buy everything.”
The next pause wasn’t as pleasant. “I want to talk about this.”
“We can talk tomorrow. I’ll pick you up at five.”
“Are we going to lie in bed and watch the Dodgers lose game six?”
“You’re not supposed to ask a man where he’s taking you.” She grumbled. My goddess was a big baseball fan. She probably thought I hadn’t noticed or had forgotten.
After she’d left the previous morning, when I drifted off to sleep with her humming and stroking my hair, I leaned back in my office chair, looking out the window and thinking of her. Hours later, I called her and asked her on a date.
“A real date?” she’d asked. “Like dinner or a movie or something?”
“I know a nice place. We’ll have some wine. Good food. You know, like people do.” I’d looked out over the Hollywood Hills. I had to see her again. I had an ache for her that phone calls and texts wouldn’t satisfy. It started the minute she left and had grown to uncontrollable levels in the hours since.
“Well, that’s fine and all,” she’d said, “but just so you know, I don’t fuck on the first date.”
I’d been laughing when my assistant came in. I indicated she should sit and took the schedule she offered me. “I need you to get something to wear,” I said into the phone.
“Oh, not again.”
“Again and again. I’m in a meeting.” I looked over my schedule for the next day. “Can I text you?”
“You’re avoiding my refusal.”
“I won’t be late. So be ready. Dressed and ready.”
“Thanks for the clarification.”
“You’re welcome.”
I’d tossed the phone aside, glanced at my schedule, and glanced at Kristin. “I have a meeting with my ex-wife at six thirty?”
“You said to take any meeting she wanted.”
“I did. Cancel the meeting and cancel the standing order. She goes on the schedule like everyone else.” Kristin shook her foot and nodded, her body a barrel of emotional tells. She was so transparent, I had no idea how she’d gotten through Vassar without those bitches eating her alive. “Yes?”
“Are you making your lunch with Eddie tomorrow, or do you want to meet Gerald Deritts from Council 12? He called and had an opening on the mixed-use ordinance.”
“Cancel Eddie.”
“Sheila’s stuck on the 405. She’s added this to the agenda.” She’d handed me a folder.
“Ah, Jessica’s trust,” I’d murmured as I flipped through it. When we got engaged, I set up a trust for her that provided for everything she needed. Though she had taste and social standing, she couldn’t manage a dollar. When we divorced, I’d intended to revoke her benefits, but never had. I’d been such a pussy. I’d told myself she hadn’t taken a dime from me because I needed to believe it. The withdrawals didn’t hurt me, but she’d continued to take money from the trust, and I owned the building her studio was in and didn’t charge her rent. There were other incidentals I’d probably forgotten. “Tell Sheila I want to review all my financial entanglements with my ex-wife. Book that for next week.”
Kristen had pursed her lips. I could have asked her what was on her mind, but it wasn’t worth a conversation. Her crush was cute when I’d hired her, but it was getting less so. I’d said no, I didn’t want to sleep with her. Further conversation about that, or why I wouldn’t bend over backward to see Jessica anymore, would be unproductive.
After dismissing Kristin, I’d tried to get back to work, but my thoughts were consumed with Monica. In anticipation of our date the next day, I opened an account at Bordelle for her. When I texted her the info, she shot back…
—An account? For all the girls?—
—Just opened it. Go. For me.—
The next day, she called me from the dressing room to thank me, and I couldn’t help it. I had to have her, and I did. She got on her knees when I told her to. She slipped easily into play and out again, becoming her witty, intelligent self seamlessly. She wasn’t intimidated by me. She teased and challenged me. She kissed like she meant it, and from the very first night, she enjoyed fucking without reservation or shame.
Monica was, in a word, perfect.
three
MONICA
I was bag laden as I walked to the café. Jonathan had called Bordelle and told them to wrap up everything I’d put in the dressing room. So I went to Nordstrom’s and got my own goddamn dress. I hoped he liked it because it set me back two weeks’ tips, a lot of money for something that would end up draped over the chair on his porch. But I needed to feel right with myself. I accepted him as a dominant in bed, and that worked out very well for us. In the outside world, I was my own woman.
Except for the eight hundred dollars in lingerie.
I rushed to the entrance of Terra Café. Yvonne sat at a patio table with her fourteen-month-old, scooping ice cream out of a cup.
“Girl,” she said as we hugged, “where the hell have you been shopping? And what’s with the shoes?”
I tipped my foot to make the red sole visible. I wore the shoes I’d gotten at Barney’s more often than I should, but letting them sit at the bottom of my closet seemed a crime. Yvonne looked at me sidelong while she scooped ice cream. Her afro was teased to four times the size of her head, her eyes lined with gold, and her lips painted the exact chocolate color of her skin. She was simply gorgeous.
“You like them?” I asked.
“I know what they cost, so I know where you got them. So whether or not I like them depends.”
I sat down and ordered a green tea and a chocolaty cake thing. Aaron, in his striped shirt and overalls, sat with his mouth open. Vanilla ice cream dripped out of the corners of his mouth like he was a dairy vampire.
“I’m sorry about your friend,” she said. “Were you close?”
“She was like a sister to me.” I felt a little hitch in my throat, a sob pushing up from my gut. I swallowed it. I didn’t cry in public. In private, the past few days had been a rush of tears and beaten-back sorrow. “Anyway. It’s fine. I’m dealing with it. Still haven’t cleared out her room. But anyway… how’s school? It’s your last year, right?”
“Tryna get my thesis accepted. Thinking about doing gender instead of race. Something with women’s bodies and politics.”
“Sexual intersections.” My tea came.
“Oh, that’s good.” She scraped the bottom of the cup. “Now, I didn’t ask you to lunch to talk about UCLA.”
“The weather, then?”
“My boss? Your former
boss? The hot motherfucker? Six two? Medium build? Reddish brown up top… and down below?”
“Not in front of the baby.”
“I hear he’s a freak.” I spit my tea. “Well,” she continued, “word gets around. So…” She slithered in her chair. “What. The. Fuck?”
“Yvonne, really. Totally inappropriate.” I looked at her over my cup, wishing for a quick and painless death. I’d known she wanted to ask me about Jonathan, but I didn’t know she was aware of his proclivities.
“He’s really private about who he’s…” She stopped herself. “… who he’s spending time with. But we all saw your picture from the L.A. Mod show in the paper. And it was no secret at your friend’s wake.”
“I don’t know what you’d call us at this point,” I answered. Aaron made a long aaaaaahhh sound of pure delight. He kicked under the table and the silverware bounced. “He’s cute, this baby. You made him?”
“Me and that creep. Can’t deny he’s a good-looking creep.”
“Is he still stalking you?”
“Cops had to come last week. He put a camera at my bedroom window to watch me sleeping. Isn’t that sweet? Oh, and he got my bank account information ‘to put Aaron’s child support right in there’ to save me the trouble of going to the bank. I said, man, I hope narcissistic personality disorder isn’t genetic.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“I called you so you could help me with a little escapism, and so far you’re a big fail.”
I knew she’d ask, and I had prepared boundaries, but she immediately broke them down by revealing the freak rumor. The thing was, I wanted to tell her. I had no one to talk to. Darren didn’t want to hear it. Gabby was dead. Debbie and Jonathan were friends. I knew some of my girlfriends better than Yvonne, but none of them had asked about the handsome man at my side at Gabby’s wake. They’d raised eyebrows and introduced themselves. I got phone calls, roundabout questions, and invites to parties and gatherings. I refused everyone but Yvonne, probably because she was very up front about demanding information.
“We’re having sex,” I said. “Tomorrow night, we have a date, which we haven’t done yet.”
She put a board book in front of Aaron and leaned toward me, folding her long, skinny arms. “You’re having sex? Who are you, grandma? Come on. I hear he’s into whips and chains.”
I pressed my lips between my teeth. I would have to deal with the rumors at some point. “I’ve never seen him hold or use a whip or a chain. Nor have I observed either one of those things in his house or his bedroom. However…” I let my voice trail off and sipped my tea, leading Yvonne along. “I won’t deny there may be some truth to those rumors.”
“Girl,” she said with no little excitement.
I shrugged, wanting to play it off, but Yvonne had come to dish. She wasn’t leaving with generalizations and vague admissions. “How is it?” she asked.
“It’s incredible.”
“Tell me.” Her whisper was hoarse with anticipation.
“I can’t,” I whispered back. “It’s not cinematic. It’s not exciting unless you’re in it. He speaks to me. He tells me what I want before I know it and before I can deny myself. I’m free with him, but not in the way you think.” I turned my teacup around in the saucer.
I stopped. I could have said more. I could have told her he dominated me, and I submitted by letting go of everything I expected of myself. I ceded all control, all emotion, all physical boundaries, and in doing so, I found sexual honesty. I felt closer to him than I felt to anyone else because he saw parts of me I didn’t. The quivering, weak, fearful parts that I denied existed, he brought out and caressed. Thinking about his demands made me want him again. I crossed my legs, convinced Yvonne wouldn’t understand.
Her expression told me I was right. Her face was still, disentangled from the drama surrounding my adventures with a rich man. She wasn’t exactly concerned as much as apprehensive. “So where’s it going? Serious? Steady thing? Just sex?”
“I don’t know.”
“How do you feel about it?”
She was definitely not getting an honest answer to that. “Taking it slow. I like being around him. I’m trying to not get too attached, but I don’t know if staying detached is working.”
Aaron fussed, and Yvonne pulled him out of his chair. He rested his head on her shoulder. “You buy yourself the shoes and underpants?” she asked.
“Of course not. The shoes alone…” I pursed my lips. I didn’t like where she was going, and I didn’t have the heart to slap her the way I’d slapped Darren.
“I’m gonna ask you something because I like you. You can get your panties in a twist if you want, but you shouldn’t.”
“I may not answer.”
“He abusing you?”
“No!” I cried. “God, Yvonne, what part of what I said makes you think abuse?”
My reaction was offense, not for myself, but for Jonathan. She didn’t know him. She didn’t know us together.
But I couldn’t hold her to my level of loyalty. The twisting web of rage in my chest surprised me, though. Was the rage caused by her implication that Jonathan was an abuser? Or because I’d just found out he had a reputation?
Yvonne, who couldn’t see my neurons pulsing like machine gun fire, continued, “Kink is often a disguise for abuse and exploitation. I know it’s not that way yet. But if you get uncomfortable, will you call me?”
“No.” Not only was I not calling her, I wasn’t calling anyone. What Jonathan and I did, and how we did it, was private. Having even one person know was making me very uncomfortable.
“Sure, you will. Look, I know how a nice guy can turn into an asshole on the turn of a dime, so all I’m saying is…” Her expression changed, as if what she wanted to say fell dead on her lips. She smiled instead. “I’m totally jealous. If he’s not abusing you, I might have faith in men again. That’s all.”
I exhaled a long, lung-emptying breath, as if I’d been holding it. I’d been unfair and insensitive. Yvonne’s history included a brother who fondled her and a boyfriend who locked her and their son in the house when he went to work. Of course she was attuned to possible abuse when I came along with bags of expensive clothing and a man who tied me up and spanked me for our pleasure. I pushed my cake toward her. “Eat, please. I have to stay skinny if I want to look good in this shit.”
four
JONATHAN
Long Beach was the absolute last place I wanted to be. The sky was the color of a handful of quarters. Without the sun to warm the air, the wind off the ocean hit cold and hard.
I had to be quick. I had a meeting with the deputy mayor in Century City in two hours, and then I had a date. A real date, where I’d wear a suit and behave myself.
At the Port of Long Beach, the Faulkner Coalmine was set to be cataloged, packed up, and sent to a warehouse in Europe, never to be seen again. I’d bought it the night of the Eclipse show. Eclipse shows only ran a week, so the minute the show closed down, my dealer, Hank, had a team in to collect it. Wainwright was surprised, but the check cleared nicely. He showed up at the closing to chat up my dealer, trying to sell more work. Fucking hustler. Obvious how he got her into bed.
Lil pulled up to the warehouse. Hank strode out to meet me. He was six feet tall, early sixties, bald, and wearing a four-thousand-dollar suit. He could tell shit from chocolate, negotiate a deal, take up space at an auction, and determine true worth from hype. More importantly, he understood my taste, which was why he’d been so surprised I wanted that piece.
“Jaydee.” He held out his hand. He had on a few big rings and a clunky watch, and his voice was thick with New York. He looked more like a truck driver than an art dealer, and that’s why I liked him. He snuck up on people with his knowledge and erudition, and by the time artists and agents realized they weren’t dealing with a rube, I had what I wanted.
“Hank.” We walked through the warehouse. My companies used the space as a logistics hold for co
nstruction materials and imported food. The offices for the people routing it all over the world were inside the warehouse, too.
Hank waved his arm dismissively. “What the fuck did you buy this piece of shit for? You want something to spend your money on, I got a girl with a studio in Compton. Tears in your eyes. Tears.”
“You called me. And not to question my taste, I presume.”
“I question your taste every day.”
“Really? Never would have guessed.”
Hank stopped outside a conference room door. “It’s good work, no question. But I don’t know how much of it you saw before you went overpaying while I wasn’t looking.”
“Almost none.”
“Fan-freaking-tastic. Can we not do that any more?”
“I have my reasons.”
“Fine,” Hank said, obviously annoyed. “Everything’s here. All the documentation, the sketches, inspiration, all the history and work that went into the installation. That’s what you bought, sight unseen.”
“Can we go in now?”
Hank remained in front of the door. “Look, artists are crazy. I never met one who wasn’t a little scrambled. Maybe they all got bit by a shithouse rat when they were babies. This? That I got behind this door? I’m thinking of calling the LAPD just so they can have a record of it. But I need your okay first.”
“You’ve really intrigued the hell out of me, Hank.”
He opened the door. The room was outfitted with a long table and black office chairs for impromptu meetings with the logistics staff, importers, and customs officials. Every surface was covered with sketches and tiny, three-dimensional mockups. Some cutouts, some collages, some mounted, all numbered to match the catalog.
“I left the good shit on the table, under that black matte,” Hank said.
I moved the black cardboard. It was about the size of a placemat, but it hid something bigger than its actual size.
The top sketch was a black quill pen spaghetti scrawl, and only by looking at it carefully could I discern a woman with her throat cut and a blood-spitting dick coming out. The woman had dark hair. I knew who it was.