Carrie's Story: An Erotic S/M Novel (23 page)

The last corridor seemed to be offices, with some technical and educational information posted on a bulletin board. A very pretty woman in jeans and a sweatshirt that had ORACLE
printed on it looked at me curiously, as I clicked by in my high
heels. This, I thought, must be the place, and I headed for the
Argus midway down the hall, next to the open office door.

I waved my bracelet over it and wasn't at all surprised
when I heard Margot's voice from the office. I was both
thrilled and terrified. "Come in," she said brusquely, and
when I did she barely looked up from her screen. "I'll be just
a minute," she said in a distant, distracted voice. "Sit down."

Typical, I thought, I always go for the compulsive ones.
And scared as I was, I couldn't help feeling a little pissed
and neglected. I sat on a wooden chair and looked around
the monastic little office. A few different kinds of computers,
a printer, and some other machines I didn't recognize. Neat
piles of papers and printouts, scientific reprints, and many,
many technical manuals. Just a few other books -Foucault,
Fourier, the volume of the Sade collection that contained
Jzzdtizze and Philo.iophy in the Bedroom. In a little alcove off the
office, there was a beat-up leather couch with an afghan neatly
folded over the arm. There were no curtains on the window,
and I could see the soft black night, a few stars, the distant
lights of the city.

She breathed out a triumphant "Yesss," hit a key that
started an intricate geometric screen-saver program, and
turned to look at me over her shoulder, draping her arm over
the back of her chair. I forgot how frightened I was and how
pissed. She was wearing her leather pants, with a black silk
shirt and big silver hoop earrings. And she was grinning,
wickedly and delightedly, at me, at my absolute confusion,
discomfort, and wild mute desire for her.

"I do like the dress," she said. "That boyfriend of
yours has lovely taste. But," she continued, getting up and
coming over to me, you really don't need that bracelet." She
unbuckled it and kissed the inside of my wrist. The ripple
of sensation was considerably stronger than any of the electric shocks had been. But they must be throwing me out,
I thought. No collar, no bracelet...

She laughed.

"Don't worry," she said. "We're not throwing you out.
You don't need the bracelet because, after all, you're here
with me. And I can put you back on the floor, naked and on
your knees, in a minute if that's what you want. But standard
procedure around here is that you get a last supper, and we
treat you like a free agent for the last time, if you think you
can stand it. It's your last chance to change your mind. Hey,
cheer up. No tofu for dinner tonight."

A maid came to the door, pushing one of those room
service tables on wheels. There was a white tablecloth on it
and dinner on top of that, with big dome-like covers over the
plates. I stayed in my seat, and the maid pushed the table in
front of me. Margot pulled her desk chair across from me.

The table was set for two. The maid uncovered the plates.
It was true. No tofu. Instead, things I loved. Pate, to start
with. And then salmon. Braised leeks. Shiitake mushrooms.
Very, very good, crusty bread. It was the kind of dinner I'd
imagined Jonathan buying for his girlfriends. Margot opened
a bottle of wine.

"I'm not surprised you know what I like to eat," I said,
digging in. I was still quite confused, but the food was putting out its own clear signals. "But everybody can't be coming
here for dinner tonight."

"Everybody else is having special dinners in their rooms,"
she said, "but I'm so busy getting everything together for
tomorrow that I pulled you up here instead. Don't worry. We
have a big staff to take care of all you guys. I just overrode the
parameters and entered myself into this slot. Somebody had
to do it, anyhow."

I sipped my wine, feeling very shy, suddenly. It was as
though we were on some big date. She leaned over and kissed
me softly on the forehead, and I could see her breast through
the open collar of her silk shirt. She really was very beautiful, though you didn't see it all at once. You saw her energy,
her astonishing control, a flare of collarbone, the shadow of a
cheekbone. And always, I thought again, her blunt, powerful,
eloquent hands.

I felt a stab of feeling in my cunt, clashing rather confusedly with my absurd joy at the lovely food. My mouth
dropped open, but then I closed it and continued to chew.
I was so confused that I didn't know what to feel. She had
said they were treating me like a free agent. I guessed, in any
case, that that meant I could say anything I wanted to say and
not have to worry about them taking away my dessert. But
what did I want to say? "Do you come here often?" was about
the only thing that occurred to me.

"When do I have to say whether I'm changing my mind?"
I asked. "I mean, I don't intend to, but if I say that right away
do I have to take my clothes off immediately?"

"Basically," she said, "we get to have a nice dinner
together, and then I ask you the question. You say no, you
haven't changed your mind, and I make you say it in some
formal way that's too corny to repeat right now. Then I call the
maid and settle back to watch her take all the clothes off you and put you back into restraints and like that. It's supposed
to be your fmal big humiliation in this place, but frankly, I'm
not very impressed with it. It's left over from before I was
organizing things around here. In a while, I hope to replace it
with something a whole lot better. Okay? Do you think you
can relax now?"

"Yes," I said, "I think so. This is a major mindfuck. But
I guess I'm glad about it. This food is wonderful, and I'm
glad you're here. God, that sounds terrible, I'm sorry, I didn't
intend it to come out in that order, you know what I really
mean. Well, anyhow, if I were really a free agent, I'd ask you
howyou got here. I mean, you know how I got here."

She laughed. I loved her mouth. "I understand," she said.
"All that healthy bland food we've been giving you is one of
our undercover humiliations. And I got here," she continued,
"pretty much the same way you did. Originally, I mean. I was
sold at the auction and spent a year as a slave. But the truth
is I wasn't really that good at it. It was no disgrace, in fact it
was pretty hot, and I have good memories of it. But I knew
that I wasn't going to continue along those lines, and I had
no idea what I wanted to do next. About three weeks before
my term of service was due to end, my master called me into
a little office he had. I'd never been there. It was a messy little
room, filled with computers and assorted computer hardware,
machines with their casings off and their innards hanging out.
I'd never seen anything like it, and my eyes kept straying to
all the boards and cable. I was on my knees in front of him,
and all of a sudden he slapped me so hard he knocked me
over.

"'You're not paying attention, Margot,' he said. 'You're
going to get a very serious whipping tonight.'

"`Yes, sir,' I said unhappily. `Thank you for correcting me,
sir.'

"'But meanwhile,' he said, `I'm going to leave you alone
in here for the afternoon. There are hardware and software
manuals on the shelf. See how far you can get.'

"Well, it's a corny story," she said. "I'll cut it as short as
I can. Of course I was a natural at it, as he had suspected
I would be. He was a big computer tycoon, almost unbeknownst to me. All I had known for sure was that he was rich.
He gave me the whipping that night, but then he ended the
term of service early, handed me a couple of pair of jeans and
T-shirts, and hired me as a trainee."

"One more popular fantasy come true," I laughed. "But
you came back here. How did that happen?"

"Well, that part's more interesting," she answered. "That's
where your friend Kate Clarke comes in."

"My friend?" I was surprised, almost spilling my coffee.
The meal was ending spectacularly, with coffee, brandy, fruit,
cheeses, and creme brulee.

"Well, I guess not your friend," she agreed. "Your friend's
friend. And I guess you don't know that you've got a note
from her in your file."

There were even fancy cigarettes, Players. She lit one
for each of us. "It's not any kind of rave recommendation,
you know. But then, she's not given to raving. As I'd expect
her to, she describes you quite accurately. She says you
have immense potential and somewhat spotty training, and
that anybody taking you on should be willing to take on the
responsibilities that combination entails. Still, just having the
letter there calls attention to you."

How odd, I thought. Anybody reading that letter who
knew Jonathan and Kate-and there would definitely be
people who did -would know that the message was about more
than me. Why would Kate let all that hang out so publicly,
I wondered-the polar struggle between her professionalism
and his amateurism, the central fact, perhaps, of an odd, frustrating, enduring, lifelong relationship. Oh come on, Carrie, I
thought, if we're talking about public exposure here, we could
ask you a few questions yourself. But still, how strange that I
would know how to interpret that letter, when Margot, for all
her vast cool, did not. I turned back to what she was saying.

"Well, my ex-master got to know Kate. I had been the
first slave he'd owned, and he felt chagrined that he'd tried
so hard to chose somebody for his body and had wound up
picking a programmer. He's a hiring genius-I mean, he's
known for that-but he didn't want to be doing it all the
damn time. So after my period of service was up he didn't
go to any more auctions. He started going to Kate's place in
Napa, and he took me a few times. I don't suppose you've
ever been there?"

"I've only heard about it."

"Well, I'm sure you'll get to go sometime, in some, uh,
capacity. It's, it's... delicious. That's the only word I can think
of for it. Chez Panisse for sex. I'm glad I got taken there,
because I couldn't possibly have afforded what it costs. But
what a terrific present. I was at loose ends sexually. I knew
what I liked, but I didn't have the time or the energy to get it.
That's what's so wonderful about Kate. If you know exactly
what you want, she can make it happen for you. You get to
know her, too-or she gets to know you, in any case. And one day she and I were both griping about the old-fashioned retro
or militaristic trappings that S/M insists on adopting.

can see,' she was saying, `that period decor is attractive. I have no problem with that. But it can't be the only
backdrop for the assertion of power. After all, power gets
asserted every day in this world.'

"Well, I started to talk about computers and control
and she became fascinated, and one thing led to another, and
here I am. Kate got me this job. She knows everybody in this
little universe. And it works well for me. I like to create environments that delineate power. You recognized that, didn't
you?"

"Yes, I did," I said, "but I'm surprised, now that I think
about it. I mean, shouldn't you be doing stuff like VR? Or uh,
you know, what do they call it, teledildonics?"

"Oh, please," she said, "helmets and suits with wires in
the crotch? Why, is that what turns you on? Of course it isn't.
What gets to me-andyou-is power, coercive power. Force,
directed. I make you do something, go somewhere, be as I
wish. You, your flesh, your prazza. And what I especially like,
what has always fascinated me, is making you work at it. I
love the fact that you get around here on your own, that you
deliver yourself to me, that it is always a stretch, an effort of
will and intelligence, to become an object.

"And it's not just one on one, you and me. It's you and
all those other slaves, and it's staff and buyers. It's a world, it
moves. Power is exercised, but power relations are enacted.
I model the form, you reproduce it, in your actions and in
your desires. I mean, that's why computers are sexy, isn't
it, because they're such sophisticated modeling tools-they inscribe the invisible, inexorable paths of power and energy
flow) ust as surely as Paul's beating marked your lovely ass."

"I understand," I said. "I think I probably even agree
with you. But maybe it's a little more one on one around here
than you think. Because I immediately recognized you, your
hands and your intellect, as the creator of this system. When
that ape Karl was screwing me up the ass, what made it bearable was my thinking, my repeating to myself, `It's Margot,
Margot, who's created this pain and humiliation for me."'

She was silent for a moment. "Oh dear, that's not what I
had intended. At least, I don't think so. And it's certainly not
what they're paying me for. But I did enjoy hearing you say
it. You felt him up your ass and you thought about me?"

I nodded and then stared off into space. We were both
gripping our ends of the table, as though it were some kind of
Ouija board that would tell us an answer we needed to know.
She regained her cool first.

"Well, this job is good, anyhow, and sexually it works
out about as well as anything would, given that I often work
twenty-hour days. Still..." she looked at me for a long moment.
"I do have fantasies."

"For example," I said.

"Oh, well, for example, if I had an extra hundred thou or
so, maybe I'd buy you tomorrow," she began.

I started to breath more shallowly.

"I'd takeyou home," she said, "and I'd beatyou every day
for weeks, a little more every day. I'd beat you and then I'd
fuckyou and thenyou'd make me come with your mouth. And
you'd wait for it. You'd be all alone on your knees, chained to
the bedpost, waiting for the sound of my footsteps.

"I'd use a long, braided whip, and I'd hang it on the bedroom wall. Sometimes you'd just stare at it for an hour or so,
trembling. And sometimes you'd lose yourself and your sense
of time and place in reveries about me.