Being Eloise (An Erotic Romance Collection, Books 1-3) (15 page)

The boots gave me trouble on the gravel and even on the pavers outside the house, my ankles doing okay, but the uncertainty amplified as it travelled up into my thighs. I could look like any woman in a robe, and it was this that I thought when I knocked on the French doors to the sunroom. There was no answer. The door was locked. I knocked again. Had I been married, still, I’d have used my ring finger to rasp against the glass, but divorce had muted me there. I saw a shadow and then the man and then his voice as the door opened.

“Eloise,” Drake said.

He wore a business suit, a newspaper tucked under one arm. His reading glasses dangled at the end of his fingers.

“Mr. Drake,” I said, suddenly faced with the prospect that perhaps this had been a put-on. A joke on me by Olivia.
Of course she wouldn’t have someone like me do
that
to her husband.
“Um. Just, just wanted to see if Olivia got over all right.”

“Fine, fine,” Drake said. “She called this morning.”

“Good,” I said.

There’s a technique in cartooning where a character’s sudden invisibility is denoted by a cluster of short lines radiating out from where they’d been, one pane back. I wanted those lines above me. Poof.

“Nice boots,” Drake said.

I looked down at the one obvious flaw in my robe-concealment idea.

“Won’t you come inside?” he said.

I would be lying if I said I really wanted to flee. I would be lying if I said I wanted to go inside. I was the negative and the positive. The
x
and the
y
and all the points on the curve. I was the curve. And for Drake, I was the answer.

He stood there looking at me. “I’ll wait upstairs,” he said, matter-of-factly, and left the door open, and it was just that, the open door, the invitation of the sunroom’s furniture and ferns, which broke me out of the stasis of inaction.

And then I was inside. There was a table with unmarked cut-glass liquor bottles on a silver tray, the kind you only see in movies or in older people’s homes, and that tray was my first destination. I poured myself some kind of bland vermouth and then another and then another and I remember thinking, even then, that inebriation was probably not a good idea, and luckily for me it was by the third quick tumbler of the stuff that I realized I was drinking warm iced tea, excuse the oxymoron. When your tastebuds fail you, you know you’ve lost a good deal of control of your faculties.

I took the whip out from the pocket of my robe and let the robe fall to the floor. As I hoped, I was given confidence in this new skin. The discarded robe wasn’t exactly a carapace, nor was I exactly the butterfly, but I was definitely not myself any longer. This house wasn’t mine, this outfit wasn’t mine, nor the short whip in my hand. Who I was was something inside me, the collection of thoughts, and it was mostly tucked away behind black leather. The stairs beckoned and I answered, cursing my clumsy feet. Drake surprised me, rushing past me on up the stairs, his arms laden with accordion file holders.

“So sorry,” he said, continuing up without pause, and I felt a chill go through me, not only because of the unimportance of it being me playing Olivia’s role, but also because he hadn’t stopped to take me in, to see this new Eloise, the girl with the high-heel heart-crushing boots. There was still time to turn around; their was no statute of limitations on cold feet and apologies. But I was mid-way up now, three-quarters. And then I was just outside the door of the upstairs bedroom, its door pushed almost closed by Drake who was already inside.

My hand shook as I reached for the door knob, not because of anything I expected to happen to me—after all, I was the one with the whip in my hand—but because of the things I would do if I entered through that…

Of course I went in. I’ll stop the tease. No one leaves right when the film begins, right when the dishes are placed on the table (”careful, this may be hot”), right when the experience begins.

Drake’s fingers flew through the accordion files. He wasn’t wearing a mailroom boy’s clothes today. There was no name tag. He still wore his suit from the office. Somehow I hadn’t made room for the idea that he and Olivia’s play was broader in scope than the scenario I’d witnessed. I’d done a semester of theater in college, but there was your run-of-the-mill improv, and then there was
this
.

“Mr. Drake?” I said, fishing for a name from him. Who was he today? Who was I?

“Shut the door,” he said, “No one can hear.”

And with those words it started. This play.

“Who?” I asked. “Who can’t hear?”

“The board. Who else but the board? Dana’s left and I don’t know what she’s done with the draft.”

“Dana?”

“My secretary,” Drake said, still digging through the files. “I have to go in there and explain to the board last quarter’s losses and without the report I might as well hang myself.”

“Mr. Drake, I’m sure we’ll find it,” I said, then caught myself. Even in play I was falling back on my natural inclination to be helpful. To be good. “You’re fucked, Mr. Drake,” I said, putting a one-hundred-and-eighty degree spin to my phrase. “If you don’t find it, I’m going out there and telling them what you did. All of them.”

“What I did?” Drake said, frozen now, his fingers coming off the files one by one, the accordion filer folding in on itself until it collapsed unsupported on the bed. “I wasn’t the only one,” Drake said. “Don’t pin it all on me now.”

I thought a moment. “Embezzlement is crime,” I said. “A federal crime.” I felt I could be misrepresenting the basic tenants of the law, but who was I to know?

“You don’t think I know that?” Drake said. “You don’t think I’ve been up night after…”

“Shut up,” I said, and swung the whip against the door, hard, for the feel of the motion. The door obediently closed. Plus I wasn’t going to be able to go through with this if he was going to be jabbering the whole time. So far I rather liked this whole spiel. Everything was working out nicely, except, of course for the glaring omission of why there was a dominatrix in his “office.” E.g. me.

“I’m going to tell them that you’ve been paying me with company money for months,” I said. “Thousands. Tens of thousands. Fixing the books. All to satisfy your…your degeneracy.”

“Please,” Drake said. “I’ll do anything.”

“I know where Theresa hid the speech,” I said, confidently.

“Dana,” Drake said, correcting me.

“Didn’t I tell you to shut up!” A strange little desire to hit him with the whip went through me, but it wouldn’t do to whip his business jacket. “You will do as I say or I’m going out there and opening my mouth,” I said.

We stood there facing each other for a long awkward minute, and I felt that I was somehow forgetting my line, words which we’d never rehearsed but that lay somewhere there on my tongue. Drake’s eyes fell to the bed, then me, then the bed again and I knew then how to continue.

“There’s a lockbox under the…”
was it a bed? Were we in his office?
Did the things my eyes see wear the same forms here, in fantasy? “…under the couch,” I said, compromising.

Drake drew out the suitcase and lifted it onto the mattress. I removed Olivia’s necklace from around my neck but discovered an identical key already in the lock. Olivia, or maybe even Drake, had been looking out for me. They had surmised that I might forget. I wanted to hold out the key to him to show I knew the rules to this game, too. It stung just a little. What a crazy thing to bother me, but it did.

I slapped Drake lightly with the whip. “Never leave a key in a lock,” I said. “Anyone could get in there.”

“Yes, yes,” he said, apologetically.

Drake opened the suitcase and removed a single duffel bag within, then opened the bag. A year’s worth of guesses would never have come up with what was inside. Cash. Twenties in tight bundles. At least fifty bundles total. I wanted to reach and count one just so I could start the math—the greed gene jumping to the head of the line, but I quickly stopped after the first few bills of the first pack I grabbed. Only the top bill was genuine, the rest blank paper. Like a movie, again. I pretended to have not noticed.

“Cayman Islands,” I said, slapping Drake on the arm with the flat of my hand. “Switzerland.
That’s
where you park your money. Never cash. Not in your office. That’s embezzlement 101.”

Atop the pile of faux-Jacksons lay a bundle of straps, just like the ones Terrance had brought over back when he wanted to be restrained.
These
I could work with, I thought with relief. I hadn’t yet come up with a plan for the cash.

“Get undressed,” I ordered.

“Undr…”

Maybe I was skipping ahead too far here, but I didn’t like his second-guessing. I directed the whip right into his groin. Maybe even a little too hard. He doubled over defensively and I found myself touching his shoulder, compassion in my fingers, my instincts refusing to play the game for a moment.

“Yes Mistress Eloise,” he said, and that took my hand away. I didn’t like the sound of that
mistress
. I
loved
it.

Off came his jacket, then the tie, then his shoes—I made him leave the socks on: men’s toes not being my first pick on the buffet of male attributes. Then the belt of his pants, then the pants, then his shirt, until he wore only his underwear, tent-poled already. I wondered if he needed one of his pills, or if he’d already taken one. Had he had that much faith in me that he’d popped one driving home, risking an hours-long erection in solitary? But then, of course, I was getting way ahead of myself. I was not his wife. We were not about to have sex. This was about stress and pain and his release. Again, not about me, I remember thinking. I’ll admit: I wanted a more starring role.

“Lean over the bed,” I said, and he was slow to move. “Now, you little fucker!” I shouted and pushed him. This mime had found her voice.

I grabbed a bundle of twenties and shoved it in his face. “Bite down on your money,” I said, and he did. I tied his wrists together and then ran the remaining line to the nearest bedpost, the one which he could not have known I’d been carnal with. Had I known back then what I’d be doing in the room with Drake months later, I’m sure I’d have flown far. Little steps take you everywhere—to the highest saint, to the lowest sinner.

Drake had nice legs for a man so far into middle age. I whipped the back of his thighs until I finally heard him groan. There, I knew, lay his lower limit. Anything less probably wasn’t doing it for him. I worked the other leg before doing a few across his boxers. I worked across his back with short hard slaps, testing them even on myself a few times and realizing that the sound was harsher than the bite. I’d need to step this up. It was easy to see what I needed to do next. I grabbed onto both sides of his underwear and pulled down, disappointed in some ways to find that his erection had shrunk by half. Clearly I wasn’t doing the job. And then I heard voices.

“Someone’s here,” I said, the control and calm of my actions of the last few minutes evaporating.

“That’s them,” Drake said, spitting free his sandwich of bills.

“Who?”

“The board.”

For time’s longest moment the entirety of our charade fell away. I’d stepped into something far more complicated than the acting out of Drake’s strange fetish. And, as though in a nightmare, I was ill-dressed for exposure.

But then I heard the sound of a vacuum cleaner downstairs. It was the Drake’s cleaning crew. Never before had the whine of a Hoover brought me such relief.

“But it’s not Friday,” I said. I paced between the door and Drake’s bare ass (waxed!—Maria?).

“Dana,” Drake said. “She had the board meet early this week. I told you. She has it in for me.”

“Really?” I said, half-lost in this fantasy. “Shut up,” I said, recovering. I had to sharpen up. Drake or Olivia had brought in the maids early, perhaps to stress Drake even more, maybe to keep me in the upstairs bedroom all afternoon. I definitely
felt
trapped. I locked the door and paced. I undid the binds on Drake’s wrists and ordered him onto the bed on his back. The erection was back, if your inquiring mind wants to know. I tied him to the four bedposts by his wrists and ankles.

Drake’s was the first gray pubic hair I’d ever seen. His penis wasn’t as large as my ex’s, but it was thick. It didn’t arouse me. The penis is for me, as I’ve mentioned, such a strange appendage—but it did serve as a barometer of
my
performance. It began to droop to one side.
Squat
is perhaps a better verb.

“I’m going to bring the board in,” I said.

Wow.
Drake went instantly hard again. How strange, I thought: the eerie electrical and chemical rush that could turn my thoughts to words and the words to sounds that vibrated air’s atoms, penetrated Drake’s ear, and led to understanding in Drake’s head. All so quickly that his penis went hard at practically light-speed. And Drake and I were just the end chains of this process without any idea how it all linked together. I mean, maybe if Drake and I were both doctors playing out this game we’d have a better understanding, but it felt something like magic to me, as corny as that sounds.

“The whole board’s gonna see what a bad boy you are,” I said. I could see Drake’s heart rate in the faint twitching of his penis. It was fighting gravity and gravity was losing. I put my hand on his chest. I should slow things down, I thought. Don’t want to give him a heart attack. I ran the whip over and around his penis, slowly, and he bit his lip and his eyes went back a little. I was in the good again.
Bad
, in other words, in my new topsy-turvy world.

“I’m going to give them all a turn with the whip,” I said, unlocking the door.

I opened it and stepped out into the hallway. I could hear the vacuum cleaner downstairs moving to and fro. I could hear a radio—a commercial, or what sounded like a commercial—in Spanish. I could hear laughing. There were two, maybe three women down there. They wouldn’t make it upstairs for a little while from the sound of it. I saw myself in a mirror and noticed the voice recorder I’d forgotten to turn on. I fumbled around the little switches for the record button, then took it back with me into the room, putting it on the table. Recording. I locked the door behind me again.