Eighty Days Yellow (34 page)

And now Summer was there, of her own accord. Not even taken there by him as a reward or a distraction.

Dominik returned to his senses and heard Chris’s laboured breathing at the other end of the line.

‘Do you have a phone number for here there? Can you let me have it?’

Conquering his obvious reluctance, Chris read the number out and Dominik jotted it down on a corner of his reading notes.

An uncomfortable silence followed between the two men, and both felt a profound relief when the other finally hung up.

Dominik sat himself down in his black leather office chair, facing the computer screen on which he was working, and watched with remote fascination the blinking signal of the cursor, which he had abandoned halfway through a word when the phone had rung.

Finally, he took a deep breath and dialled the number he had obtained from Chris. Even though New York was miles and five hours away, the ringtone felt as if it was in the next room.

But it rang and rang and no one picked up.

Dominik consulted his watch to check on the time difference. It was still daylight there. Maybe she was working and unable to take calls right now. Might she have found work in music there? The Bailly would have helped.

He put the phone down. A wave of conflicted feelings washed over him.

He tried to concentrate on the job at hand, but the subtle shifts in the relationships between English and American writers living on the Parisian Rive Gauche during the years of existentialism failed to regain his full attention and he gave up and paced up and down his study.

Having allowed, he thought, enough minutes to elapse, he dialled Summer’s New York number again. It began to ring and the space between each successive sound seemed to get longer and longer, stretching to relative eternity. As he was about to put the phone down, a message clicked into action, a standard AT&T ‘customer unavailable’ loop.

Dominik left a message, enunciating calmly into the mouthpiece, controlling his inner panic. ‘Summer . . . it’s me . . . Dominik . . . Call me back. Please. No more games. I just want to hear you.’ Then, as a second thought, ‘If you can’t get through for one reason or another, just leave a message, text, anything. I miss you terribly.’

He reluctantly hung up the phone.

Still pacing up and down the room an hour later, he went online and checked the next flights to New York and the availability of seats. There were several from Heathrow early in the morning, all arriving in New York around midday local time. He impulsively booked himself on to the first flight out in business class.

Hopefully she would be in touch before he left, as he had no clue what he could do on arrival with no indication of her location.

A case of hope against hope.

I stood stock still and waited for Victor to make his next move.

Perhaps sensing my impatience to find out what he had planned next, Victor took his sweet time before producing the next item in his arsenal of tricks, a bell, not unlike the one that Dominik had provided for my evening of maiding, but larger. Its clear sound reverberated through the room like a death knell, a sound with an automatic echo. It had an empty quality to it that set my teeth on edge.

At the sound of the bell, a door opened from down the hall and a woman emerged. She was dressed, if you could call it that, in a completely see-through white gown, cut a little like a toga. Her hair was piled on top of her head in a loose bun, the escaping tendrils framing her face and giving her the appearance of a modern-day medusa.

She ignored me completely and inclined her head to Victor as she approached. She was very tall, probably over six feet, I guessed, and barefoot. He seemed to prefer his women that way. I guessed having us lower made him feel less concerned about being short.

‘Cynthia will be orchestrating your preparations tonight, slave. Kneel to her.’

I kneeled, my face pressed almost against the floor. As I did so, I noticed that a thin silver anklet was draped elegantly round Cynthia’s ankle, a little like a charm bracelet, but with only one charm, a tiny padlock. It was really quite pretty. If this was an option, instead of a piercing or a tattoo, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.

Then again, I didn’t think that Victor would allow me to have any say in the matter, and in the mood that he seemed to be in now, he would probably opt for the most humiliating and permanent mark that he could think of: a tattoo.

‘Victor,’ called the glamorous dark-haired woman reclining on the cushions on the floor.

‘Yes, Clarissa?’ he asked. He did not call his fellows ‘lady’, ‘mistress’ or ‘master’ unless speaking of them to a slave.

‘Where are all your service slaves tonight? I’ve been sitting here with an empty glass for an age. Can’t seem to get a champagne top-up for love nor money.’

I had seen her drain the dregs from her glass about three seconds earlier.

‘Oh dear,’ he replied. ‘I will identify the culprit and give them a thrashing later.’

‘Good,’ said Clarissa. ‘I hope you will allow me to watch. In the meantime, might I have a drop to soothe my aching throat? And would you ask your new girl to bring it for me? I do like the look of her.’ Clarissa eyed my naked, kneeling figure and smirked.

The moustachioed man lying alongside her perked up and cast a glance over me also.

‘Actually,’ he said, in a slow drawl, ‘I could use a top-up too. Do you have any harder stuff perchance? The ladies seem to love this champagne, but I prefer something . . . a little stronger.’ He stared at me as he said these last words, and I hunkered down further into my crouch.

Victor’s tastes, physically at least, had so far been fairly ordinary – nothing I couldn’t handle, or even enjoy if I pretended that it wasn’t Victor in the driving seat – but I knew perfectly well that he might have doms of a more violent persuasion in attendance, or perhaps sadists, who might be into things that weren’t my cup of tea, that might really hurt, or leave me with injuries. I had so far been fortunate that all of the marks Victor and his friends had left had been relatively mild, scrapes and bruises that I could cover with long sleeves or explain away. I might not always be so lucky.

‘Certainly,’ said Victor, maintaining his composure outwardly, though I sensed that his guests’ request for my service had interrupted his plans and left him irritated. He pulled me to my feet. ‘Pour Mistress Clarissa a glass of champagne, and find some whisky for Master Edward.’

They always chose such ridiculous pseudonyms. Victor had an excuse, I supposed, for something more classical; he was of Ukrainian descent after all.

He rifled in his pocket for the key to the drinks cabinet and handed it to me.

‘If you touch anything besides the whisky,’ he whispered softly into my ear, ‘then you will not be given the option to choose where I place your marking.’

I poured the champagne first and took it to Clarissa.

‘Forgive me, mistress, master,’ I said, ‘for not bringing the two drinks together, but mistress looks thirsty, and I did not wish to risk the champagne warming.’

‘Oh, she is good,’ Clarissa said Victor. ‘When will she be available for use?’

‘This evening,’ he replied abruptly.

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I thought you were going to mark her tomorrow, with the others?’

‘I had planned to,’ he replied, ‘but this one is special.’ He stopped and looked at his watch. ‘Two hours from now. Six. That gives us enough time. Keep an eye on her for a moment, would you, Clarissa? I need to make the arrangements.’

Victor pulled his phone out of his pocket and disappeared down the hallway.

‘Excuse me,’ I said. ‘I will return with the whisky.’

As I expected, Clarissa paid me no attention as I reached into the drinks cabinet and slyly flicked my phone on again. I checked the ‘missed calls’ list. Dominik had called twice and left a message. There was no possibility that I could listen to it, and neither could I type out a lengthy reply: Victor might be back in the room at any moment. I tapped out a brief text: ‘Got ur message. I’m in NYC. Call me again. S.’

I just had to hope that he would keep trying.

I put my phone back into the cabinet and shut the door carefully, but didn’t lock it.

Victor returned to the room, and I handed him back the key.

‘Good girl,’ he said. ‘You will make an excellent servant, Slave Elena.’

‘I look forward to it, master.’

‘Your time will come very soon. Now you will bathe.’

He snapped his fingers and Cynthia appeared again by his side and held out her hand to me. I followed her down the hall, into a bedroom, where a large, ornate bathtub sat, filled with steaming water. It looked as though it ought to be scented, but wasn’t. No soap or bath products lined the rim. I guess he wanted me just how I was, only cleaner.

I sank into the hot water, and Cynthia sat in a corner of the room in silence. My guard? Did I even need a guard? Was I a prisoner?

I didn’t think so, no. I’d come here of my own accord. Victor had my clothes and my phone, but there was nothing stopping me walking straight out of the door and calling the police. I could scream my head off and neighbours would probably come to investigate. None of the other ‘slaves’ in attendance was physically restrained; they were all here of their own accord, playing roles in a sexual theatre piece, all indulging their not-so-private fantasies as much as the mistresses and masters were indulging theirs.

I remembered what Victor had said, that this was my proper place, where I was my most beautiful. His words had hurt, but I couldn’t deny there was some truth to them. His behaviour sickened me but aroused me at the same time. That way he had of pushing my mind into the space where nothing mattered, where I was physically restrained but mentally free.

The door opened. Victor. He had changed into a formal suit, a tuxedo. For a moment, he reminded me of Danny DeVito playing the Penguin in
Batman Returns
. I stifled a laugh.

‘Slave Elena,’ he said, ‘your time has come.’

Dominik’s flight landed at JFK International under clear skies. Because of the time difference, it was only just past midday in New York. The queues at immigration and passport control were awful and slow. Maybe because it was the wrong time of the week, he wasn’t sure, but the couple of handfuls of international flights from Europe had all arrived within minutes of each other and disgorged their human cargo into a veritable bottleneck inside the terminal. Ninety per cent of the arriving passengers were foreign nationals and had to make do with only three uniformed immigration officers, who seemed totally indifferent to the general air of impatience.

Dominik only had walk-on baggage with him, but it made no difference as the luggage carousels were beyond border controls anyway.

Asked whether he was visiting for business or pleasure, he hesitated briefly before opting for the latter.

This caused the official to ask, ‘What sort of business are you in?’

Should have pretexted a holiday, he reckoned.

‘I’m a university professor,’ Dominik finally said. ‘I’m here to give some conferences at Columbia,’ he lied.

He was let through.

Finally settled in the back seat of a yellow cab some time later, he watched as the car joined the stream of vehicles racing onto the Van Wyck Expressway in the direction of Jamaica and Queens. The driver at the front, behind a flimsy security grille, wore a turban. His ID badge and photo had almost faded away to invisibility. His name was Mohammad Iqbal, it seemed. Or maybe that was his cousin or whoever he shared his licence with.

The cab’s air-conditioning wasn’t working, so both driver and passenger had to rely on the open windows. The change in temperature since leaving London at an early hour was significant and Dominik was already sweating uncomfortably. He slipped off his grey linen jacket.

Past Jamaica Hospital, the slow traffic began to clear and the cab raced forward towards the city. The driver made a turn onto the road that led to the Midtown Tunnel.

All of a sudden, Dominik remembered he had switched off his mobile phone while in the immigration queue, as demanded. He turned it on and watched it power up, more in hope than in expectation.

There was a text.

Summer.

‘Got ur message. I’m in NYC. Call me again. S.’

Damn! He already knew she was in New York. This was no help at all.

He rang her number and once again ended up with the messaging service.

Damn again. With no further clues, it would be like looking for a needle in a haystack.

He was about to send her a text when the car dived into the Midtown Tunnel. He had made a booking at a hotel on Washington Square, which is where he had asked his driver to drop him off. Once out of the tunnel, he decided to wait until he was in his room before attempting to reach Summer again.

Even though check-in time was not until 3 p.m., he was allowed to check in early as a room was available. He badly needed to shower and change clothes.

From his window the balmy sight of the Washington Square Arch blinked at him in the sun. The sound of musicians playing jazz by the central fountain reached his ears.

A while later, still wet under the fluffy white bathrobe, he tried Summer’s number once more, but again was unable to reach her. What was this all about? he wondered. Why get in touch with him and then instantly become incommunicado?

He was picking a clean short-sleeved shirt from his overnight bag when his phone finally rang.

He hurried to the desk and picked it up.

‘Summer?’

‘No, it’s not Summer. It’s Lauralynn.’

‘Lauralynn?’ Dominik at first didn’t recall who she was and was about to hang up on her, for fear of missing Summer’s expected call.

‘Yes, Lauralynn. Remember? I played in that . . . special string quartet. Blonde. Cello. Ring a bell?’

Dominik now remembered her. What did she want from him? He was growing impatient. ‘Yes, I do.’

‘Good,’ Lauralynn said. ‘I’d hate to be the sort of gal men don’t remember,’ she laughed gently.

‘I’m in New York,’ he informed her.

‘Is that so?’