by Anne Rice
What did I recall after that?
The door swinging wide, the large luxuriously modern kitchen, the massive refrigerator doors, and the shining stainless steel sinks and the cook in her starched white linen, apron tied around her ample waist, turning to look at me from the wooden stool.
“Why, she’s darling.” A smile crinkling her round face.
And the shock of seeing the long polished hallway with its marble-topped tables and mirrors and the quiet parlors with the lace panels filtering the sun in a frame of heavy draperies. And I passing naked through this substantial realm, towards the master’s study where he sat at his desk, telephone to his ear, pencil in hand.
First glimpse of the master. No more than a split second, as head down, I was made to crawl into the very center of the dark blue Persian rug.
Clocks chiming in the house. Canary twittering somewhere, soft sound of wings against the bars of the cage.
“Oh, yes, yes, well I have another call. Let me get back to you”—crisp British accent. Aristocratic and full of expression. Click of the telephone. “Yes, she’s lovely, quite lovely. Kneel up, my darling. Yes, I like her. She’ll do admirably. Come here, young beauty.”
I moved around the desk as he directed me until I saw his shoes, the skirt of his dark satin red robe around a darker pant leg, a hand reaching out to touch my face, my breast. “Hmmm, quite nice.” Each word so distinct, yet rapidly spoken. “Nicer than I had dared to hope.”
“Yes, sir,” said the attendant. “And no nonsense.”
“Look at me, Lisa.” Snap of the fingers.
Gaunt face, sharpened to the bone, the black eyes almost unnaturally vibrant. Gray hair thick and combed back from the forehead and the temples. Handsome, yes. Extraordinary, actually. Like the timbre of the voice, the eyes were ageless, or more truly mischievous and almost young.
“Leave her with me now. I’ll send for you.” Easy air of command. “I don’t really have time for this,” considering . . . “but I will make time. You follow me, young lady.”
A door opening on an unusual room, narrow, harshly lighted by the sun through panels of leaded glass. A long polished table with leather handcuffs and anklets dangling on leather chains from the edges. The wall a rack of paddles, belts, cuffs, harnesses. Very like Jean Paul’s studio where he teaches “discipline” to those who answer his discreet advertisements in the most unlikely papers. I have been well educated for this.
But this is graduation, this is the first job interview, this is the career world.
I moved silently on hands and knees across the dark, rose-colored parquet onto another soft rectangle of red Persian carpet. Heart thudding. The sound of his shoes.
“On your feet, my dear, that’s it.” I felt the thin leather straps enclosing my head. Panic.
“Shhh, now, now. Are we so frightened?” His right hand came around, cupped my left breast as I felt the smooth satin robe against my back. “There, steady, hands clasped at the base of your spine. You want to look pretty for your master, don’t you?” Lips against my face. I melted at the tenderness. Anything for you, Master.
It seemed my sex was growing impossibly hot, full. I felt the thin straps encircling my forehead, my cheeks, narrow straps coming down the sides of my nose. My tongue darted to touch the opening for my mouth.
“Kitten tongue!” he whispered in my ear, pinching the underside of my bottom. Breath of cologne, and a low, toneless laughter. He had gathered all my hair up and was winding it into a coil with firmly placed hairpins. The helmet of straps was being clasped tight around my head, over the circle of hair with short tugging motions. I felt the corset go round my waist, slipped under my arms. I tried not to make a sound. I was trembling too violently.
“Shhh, now, my precious darling. You’re just a baby, a lovely little baby, aren’t you?” he said. He stood in front of me, hooking the corset tight at the bottom over the curve of my belly, then drawing it in impossibly with each new hook as he worked his way towards my breasts. The leather casing closed around me, pushing the breasts up and high with half cups that did not cover the nipples.
“Grand,” he said, suddenly kissing my lips through the thin strap mask. Unbearable the tension. The corset was fastened now completely. It seemed to hold me up as if I had no weight or stamina of my own.
“Lovely,” he said, lifting my nipples, nestling them carefully over the leather, pulling at the nipples to make them longer, harder. How accustomed to it all he was, how skilled and quick.
“And now those lovely arms, what shall we do with those lovely arms?” Anything you desire, Master. I stretched my neck, shuddered, tried to show by undulation my submission. Every breath seemed to strike against the burning sheath of the corset. Hungry spasms between my legs.
He moved out of my blurred vision, returning almost immediately with a curious pair of long leather gloves. I saw at once they could be laced together. Turning me around he quickly pushed my fingers into the black kid, working it carefully over my hand and wrist, then same thing for the right hand until the gloves were smoothed well above the elbows. I felt the jerk of the lacings, my arms being sealed against each other, pulled back hard so that my breasts were thrust out all the more. My face was burning under the straps. The tears were rising. Would that please him or anger him? I was bound now, unable to help myself in any way, my breaths coming faster, and more unevenly. Bound.
“There, there,” he said again, that unfamiliar British intonation making the simplest syllable exotic.
I saw his long, gnarled hands—just a touch of black hair on the backs of the fingers—as he held out the high-heeled boots. It did not seem possible to walk in heels that high. He set them down, the long leather flank unzipped, and I stepped into them, feeling the leather drawn shut up to the knee immediately. Unbearably sweet the tight clasp of his hand as he smoothed the leather. It was almost like standing on my toes, except that my arch was bent so far back.
“Good, excellent. You know Jean Paul sent your size for these things and he is very exact. He never makes a mistake.” He took my face in his hands, kissed me again through the straps. The desire burnt to an ache inside me. I felt I might fall.
“But we have more divine adornments for my little plaything,” he said. He lifted my chin. I knew these adornments, the round black weights he clamped to my nipples, the pendulous earrings he hooked into my ears with their tiny prong that touched the inner core of the ear, sending the shivers through me. I could not remain absolutely quiet, or still.
“There, now you are properly outfitted,” he said. “My delightful little girl, and we will see just what you’re made of. Go before me and gracefully. Look sharp.”
Finger snap.
The high heels of the boots clicked loudly on the parquet until I reached the carpet again, my body thumping with hunger, my body thrusting with heat.
He was leading me to the pair of soft velvet sofas that faced each other on either side of the fire. And I felt the warmth of the blaze on my skin keenly. Sweet warmth.
“Now kneel, darling,” he said, “with legs apart.” I tried to obey, the boots so high and stiff that I was awkward. He sat on the sofa before me. “Thrust your hips towards me, darling,” he said. “That’s it, divine. Your master finds you very beautiful indeed.”
And as he went silent, I heard myself sobbing softly. The tears came in a flood. I was bound so tight by the gloves, the corset, the boots, I felt as if I were floating somewhere in a world where strength and gravity meant nothing. He bent over and kissed my breasts, pinching them and lapping with his tongue at the nipples, at the clamps of the weights. I felt my hips riding forward uncontrollably. I felt I would fall into his arms.
“Yes, precious darling,” he whispered in my ear. He kissed my mouth. Hot, firm fingers supporting my breasts above the corset. “Now stand,” he said lifting me. “Turn for me. That’s it. Heels together. Yes, such lovely tears.”
The room was a dim wonderland of shapes and light, the
glare of the fire behind its brass screen, paintings on the walls, the thin figure of the black-haired man who had also risen and was some distance away from me, his arms folded as he watched, his commands almost a whisper.
“Yes, around again, very good, heels together, always together, chin high.”
And finally I felt his arms around me. I couldn’t keep from crying, sobbing at the strength of his arms, the sight of his shoulders, the feel of his chest. He enclosed me, pulling me against the satin smoothness of the robe, my breasts aching, his lips again touching my mouth through the straps. I felt I would brim over. I couldn’t contain it.
What had I felt that first night when it was all over, and I lay beside him, my flesh still tingling from his flesh?
How to sum up those three months that followed? The countless supper parties, and the violent intimacy with those nameless foreign guests, the endless treks with that saucy, mean little maid and her flailing paddle, the morning runs through the garden when it was spring, the master riding his favorite gelding beside me, the world outside as distant and unconvincing as a fairy tale.
And the unavoidable humiliation of punishment by the servants when I had somehow failed to please, to submit, to answer, to respond with expressed willingness.
Had there ever been panic? Perhaps on the first morning that I saw the bridle path and knew I would have to run, arms bound to my back. Or the first time I was flung over the cook’s knee, squirming and crying over the injustice of it. But I think not.
The panic came on a morning in late August when Jean Paul paced back and forth in the small whitewashed room off the kitchen where I slept and said over and over: “Think before you answer. Do you know what it means to have him wanting you again, for another half year? Don’t you understand what you are throwing away if you refuse this offer? Look at me, Lisa. Do you understand?”
He had leaned down and peered into my eyes.
“You know what it means, incarceration like this. Do you think it’s easy for me to find something for you like this! And you need it, you know you do. It’s your dream. Are you going to wake from it? I don’t know if I can find you another such position when you come to your senses. Such glorious imprisonment as this.”
Cut the poetry.
“I will go mad if I don’t leave. I do not want to stay. I told you from the very beginning I had to be at school when the fall semester started . . .”
“You can put off the enrollment. You can postpone a semester. Do you realize how many I have to take your place . . .”
“I have to get away for now, don’t you understand? This is not my life, not my entire life!”
Within the hour we were driving to San Francisco. And how strange it felt to wear clothes again, to sit upright, to stare through the distant windshield of the limousine.
What did the city look like after those months? What was it like to lie in the hotel room staring at the phone? Two weeks until the beginning of the semester. My body was arching and stiffening with its fever. Orgasm. Pain.
I was on a plane to Paris that very first night with the money I’d earned without ever calling home.
For days I roamed the cafés of the Left Bank in a daze. I was shocked and bruised by the din of the traffic, the press of the passersby as if I’d been released from a padded cell. My body was aching for the paddle, the strap, the cock, the enormous, smothering, tormenting wealth of attention! Orgasm. Pain.
Two miserable dates with a student at the Sorbonne, supper and argument with an old American friend, a dull evening of tepid lovemaking with an American businessman picked up boldly in the hotel lobby for no reason at all.
And the long flight home, the crowds on the campus, the glaze-eyed young men, eviscerated by drugs and ideas, who seemed not even to see the bronzed girls in their braless T-shirts, talk of pot, sex, revolution, women’s rights in the greatest social laboratory in the world.
Alone in the room at the Saint Francis Hotel, I’d made the inevitable call after hours of staring at the telephone.
“Yes,” Jean Paul had answered with immediate enthusiasm. “I have just the thing for you. He’s nothing as rich as our other friend, but has a beautifully furnished Victorian in Pacific Heights. He’ll be impressed with your experience. And he’s frightfully strict. How long is the Christmas vacation? When can you be ready to go?”
Was it an addiction? This is not my life! I am a student, a young woman. I have things I must do. . ..
There had been the man in Pacific Heights, yes, and then the couple, the young man and woman, both very skilled, who kept the room on Russian Hill only for their slaves. And another fortnight—”No more than that, Jean Paul!”—with the master again at that lovely Hillsborough estate, and his sitting beside me on the high four-poster, his hand hurting mine slightly as he talked:
“You know you are a fool to leave me. Jean Paul says I must not harass you, pressure you. But don’t you see what you’re throwing away? I’d let you go to school in the mornings if you wish. As long as you obeyed as always. I would give you whatever you needed, as long as you remained devoted as you’ve always been.”
I was sobbing, his voice going on and on.
“I need you,” he said. “I need to possess you, to possess you completely, to make you feel all that you can feel. Oh, if I had only less conscience and less delicacy I’d never let you leave here. It can be so exciting, don’t you see, passing back and forth through the veil. I would dress you up to take to the opera, sit with you in the box, forbidding you to speak, to move your hands, then bring you back, strip you, possess you. Each morning after you returned from school, I would make you run naked through the garden—” I would, I would, I would . . . “Ah, you know you want it, you want to belong to me, you do belong to me . . .”
Out alone on the highway that night, I had hitched a ride into San Francisco, the driver saying over and over, “College girls like you just shouldn’t get into cars with strange men.”
After that, the months of refusing others, no I cannot, I will not, not again. I will study, I will go to Europe. I will be what the world calls normal. I will fall in love, get married, have children. I will, I will . . . I am burning. I am in hell.
Jean Paul was angry, disgusted. “You are my finest pupil, my work of art.”
“You don’t understand. It was swallowing me. If I do it again, I won’t come back from it. Don’t you see? It was eating everything up. I was losing my mind.”
“It’s what you want!” Angry whisper. “You can’t deceive me. You were born for it, you are a slave, and all your life you will be incomplete without the master.”
“Don’t contact me again.”
Knock at the door? Knock at the dream door?
I sat up in the bed. Dim sounds of conversation from the garden beyond, guests moving along the paths. The darkness thinning slightly as I stared into it, the shapes of the trees becoming distinct against the glass.
Yes, a knock, so soft that it seemed an auditory hallucination. And the odd feeling in me that Elliott Slater was going to be out there. Impossible. They had him below stairs, probably shackled. And why in the world would I think that even if he could he would come to this room?
I hit the little buzzer on the table and the door opened. Slice of yellow light from the hall, and a figure, naked, perfect as they are all perfect, but it was much too small a figure to be Elliott Slater. It was Michael come back again, unable to see as he looked into the darkened room.
“Lisa?”
“What is it, Mike?” I couldn’t have been more dazed if I had been really sleeping, really dreaming. The past was its own drug, it seemed.
“They need you in the office, Lisa. They said that the phone must be off.”
Impossible. I never turn off the phone, and this is First Night. . .
Yet in the corner of my eye I saw the tiny pulsing light of the phone. The bell, what had happened to the bell? And I remembered that when I had come in I had deliberately turned it off m
yself.
“Richard says they have a girl down there with some fake papers,” Mike explained. “She isn’t old enough to go to her senior prom.”
“How the hell do they get in here?” I asked.
“Lisa, if I’d known about this place when I was seventeen, I would have parachuted in.” He was already standing by the open closet, ready to help me dress.
I sat there for a moment, hating it that they needed me. But it was better than this sleep that wasn’t sleep, these dreams that weren’t dreams.
“Michael, see if there’s some good red wine in the bar,” I said. “I can get dressed by myself.”
ELLIOTT
Chapter 9
Visitor in the Shadows
It was dark.
I was standing on the balls of my feet again, head hanging forward, my wrists tethered to a hook, as I had been on the yacht. Second night in a row. Pleasant dreams. There were other slaves near me, and every so often the door would open and an attendant would come down the row, swabbing oil onto our sore butts and legs. Lovely sensation. Less often an attendant passed to offer water from which we were only allowed to lap.
All afternoon and evening we’d cleaned the lavatories—not the private baths of the bungalows and suites—but the public rest rooms on all floors of The Club buildings, adjacent to the many lounges and the swimming pools; full-fledged slavery with the mops and scrub brushes, a lot of it done on hands and knees. The brawny male attendants who worked us, a cheerful crew of real rough-cut gems, had a field day with the tips of their boots and their inevitable leather straps.
You couldn’t cook up something this divinely degrading in a brothel—the sublime necessity of every humiliation and command. It was an eight-hour tease to the greatest climax you’d ever had, except they made sure the climax never came.
A thousand glimpses of salons, bars—the beautiful and the privileged passing us everywhere without a glance—added nicely to the gorgeous torture. And the attendants helped themselves to a little one-way fun and games when they had the chance, just to remind us what climaxes were all about.