Nine & a Half Weeks (7 page)

When I have slurped the last drops of honey off his fingers I smack my lips. “Disgusting,” he says. “You look like you need another bath. There’s stuff on your neck, for Christ’s sake, even your eyebrows are sticky.”

He gets a dripping washcloth and scrubs at my face. “All right,” 1 say, pompously. “That’s it. May 1 please see what’s in the Bendel’s bag?” “You never even found the second bag,” he gloats. “I hid it inside the grocery bag, it bruised the tomatoes. Besides, I haven’t had my coffee yet, I’ll be liable to fall asleep without caffeine, it’s been a long day.”

It takes another fifteen minutes before we are ensconced in the living room. I am sitting on a pillow at the foot of the couch, handcuffed to the coffee table; waiting for him while he puts the coffee on, heats water for my tea, washes the dishes, carries the tray into the living room.

He makes a great show of being relaxed and content: lights a cigarette for me, swings his feet onto the table, stifles a yawn, reaches for the Post. I scream: “WHAT’S IN THE BENDEL’S BAG?”

He puts an index finger to his lower lip and knits his brow. “Shhhhh! Sh! How crass can you be? The rent’s high on purpose here, to keep screamers out. Old lady Chrysler’ll be at the door in a minute, did I tell you about her? Down the hall, in 15D. Needs to hear a new rape story every week and a couple of muggings, else she’s plagued by irregularity. She’s been short of juicy news nine days now….” “Making fun of elderly women’s bodily functions,” 1 say, “you can’t get much lower than that. Next I’ll kick the coffee table out from under you. That’ll wrench your spine and cause long-term lower backache.”

He sighs ostentatiously, swings his feet off the table, disappears, and is back again in three leaps, a parcel in each hand, arms stretched triumphant above his head. He throws the packages across the room, kneels beside me to undo the handcuffs. He rubs my wrists automatically: a reflex that has become ingrained with him and has nothing to do with the condition of my wrists, which, this time as most times, show not even a pink line where the metal has touched them. I have become adept at staying comfortable and unscathed within them.

“O.K.,” he says. “I’ll sit down and you’ll go over there and see what’s in it and put it on.” “Fifteen B living theater,” 1 mutter and he nods. “You bet. Command performance.”

I open the Bendel’s bag first. It contains, swathed in the throwaway luxury of six layers of tissue paper, a black lace garter belt and a pair of pale gray stockings. Seamed. Mirth rises irresistibly in my throat. I laugh out loud, laugh and laugh, hold the lace contraption stretched end to end high in the air—it looks vaguely skeletal and batlike. I put it on my head. 1 catch one dangling strap between my teeth, cross my eyes at the one that swings past my nose, a third tickles my ear. “Cornrows!” he bellows, “you’ve never looked so exotic….” He yelps, he roars, he hoots. We are caught up, across the large room between us, in the kind of fit one sometimes succumbs to as a child, without warning, during recess; or at a very specific, advanced, and brief stage of drunkenness: when it is impossible to explain the joke to a bystander; when it is impossible to explain the joke to oneself, not that one tries; when it is impossible to stop laughing, long after one’s sides ache.

“What on earth…” He rubs his face and punches the cushion beside him. By the time he answers I’ve calmed down. I have pulled the thing off my head and hold it in my lap. “Look at it this way,” he says, still smiling. “I’m catching up, pretty late, with an old fantasy of mine. Adolescent. Eleven, hell, that’s not even… anyway. I’ve done so much stewing over these things—as an eleven-year-old, at fifteen, at twenty-two, at thirty-two. A black garter belt, not in a magazine, not in the movies, but on a live woman. And stockings with seams! And not a soul I’ve ever slept with wore them, not a one, so help me God. What can 1 tell you… I had to take matters into my own hands.” He leers broadly and winks. “I finally want to see what it all looks like, in real life.”

I’ve never worn a garter belt, I tell him, though I’ve thought about buying one, off and on for years. Except, I tell him, I can’t remember ever imagining myself in black, that would have been… pink, maybe, or white; we’re both laughing again. He describes the dignified saleswoman who waited on him, a woman our mothers’ age: large-bosomed, impeccable, glistening-mouthed, coolly uninterested. She had spread a bewildering array before him and had pointed out salient features: adjustable straps; an elastic inset at the back of this one—better fit; special darts, here; small rosettes of contrasting fabric and color enhancing the snaps on yet another one; all, naturally, cold-water-washable. “You’ve chosen one of the two best-selling models, sir,” she had told him. He had wanted to ask her what the other one was but had decided against it when she had said, “Will there be anything else?” in what had seemed to him a near-venomous voice.

“Now look in the other box,” he says, gleefully, and pushes the low table away from the couch. He is sitting with his legs apart, bare feet planted on the carpet, toes pointing outward; an elbow on each knee, his chin in the palm of his hands, his two ring fingers rubbing the skin at the outer corners of his eyes. His hair, dry now from the shower he took before dinner, lies soft above his forehead. A fine white cotton shirt, heavily frayed at the collar, unbuttoned, sleeves rolled up, chest hair curly and lower down less curly, disappearing into old and baggy tennis shorts. “You don’t know what you look like, right now,” I say. “A Crusoe, happy on his island, who’ll never wear a suit again, I’m so in love with you.”

He narrows his eyes and catches his lower lip with an upper canine, trying to mask a grin— shy and pleased and so utterly dear to me that my vision blurs. He leans into the couch, head bent far back onto the cushions; his arched throat gleams across the room. He pushes both hands through his hair and says to the ceiling— evenly, deliberately—“This has got to go on like this. All we have to do is just make it go on like this.” And sitting up and hunching forward and waving an outstretched arm and pointed finger at me, in a booming voice: “Open the other bag, damn it, you wheedled and whined all evening, now look at you drag your feet!”

“All right” I say, “yes, sirl” The bag contains a shoe box from Charles Jourdan, a store I’ve only looked at from outside, acknowledging wisely that even my Bloomingdale’s card is at times too much of a temptation. I lift the shiny beige lid. Swaddled in yet more tissue paper lies a pair of elegant, light gray suede pumps with heels so high I’m appalled. ” You walk in these,” I say, vehemently. “My God, I didn’t even know they made heels like that.” He ambles across the room and crouches beside me on the floor, grinning sheepishly.

“Yeah, well, I see what you mean.” “See what I mean” I repeat. “How can you not, you’re sure these are supposed to be shoes?” “They’re shoes all right,” he says. “1 guess you don’t like them. Not at all? I mean, aside from the heels?” “Sure,” I say, holding one shoe in each hand, the suede soft as velvet. “What’s not to like, they’re sensational. Course, it’s hard to overlook such outlandish appendages, probably cost a fortune, too….” He shrugs, suddenly awkward.

“Look,” he says, “they’re not really to wear, outside that is.” He gestures at the Bendel’s wrappings. “They’re just for us. Me, really. Both of us. I wish you… what I mean is… but if you really hate them…” All at once he is a decade my junior, a very young man asking me to have a drink with him, expecting to be refused. I have not seen him like this before. “Darling,” I say, overcome, in a rush, “they’re lovely, feel this leather, of course I’ll wear them….” “I’m glad,” he says, with a remaining trace of sheepishness. “I was hoping you would; there’s always a chance you might get to like them.” And buoyant again: “Put the stuff on.”

So I do. As always until this evening—and tonight for the last time—I am wearing only a shirt, so it doesn’t take long, though getting the seams straight is much trickier than I would have guessed. The shoes fit perfectly. “I took your black ones with me,” he says. “And I insisted and they found a girl that size and she tried on nine pairs before I settled en these. Thank God you’re an average size.”

The heels make me so much taller we’re nearly eye to eye. He hugs me lightly, runs his hands up my sides to my breasts, moves the palm of each hand, fingers extended, in small circles, a nipple at the center of each. His face is blank. The gray pupils on which mine are focused reflect two miniature faces. His hands move down my midriff to the garter belt. He traces its outlines around my body, then, one by one, follows each of the four straps down to where the stockings begin. It is almost dark. He switches on the floor lamp behind us, says, “Stay there,” walks back to the couch, and sits down. “Now,” he says, in a husky voice, “come over here. Take your time.”

I walk slowly across the carpet. I take small steps, cautious, my body tilted into a foreign alignment. My arms hang awkwardly from their sockets. Something roars in my ears, amplifying each breath I take.

“Turn around now,” he says when I’m a few steps away from the couch. I can barely hear him. “And lift up the shirt.” I turn and stand very straight, holding the shirttails tucked up at my sides with my elbows. “Are you disappointed?” I say, in what turns out to be a high-pitched, flat voice. “Are you kidding, you’re a sight,” he murmurs behind me, “you’re a sight, sweetheart.” My eyes close. I listen to the roar in my ears, every square inch of my skin aching to be touched. Trying to clear my ears, I shake my head, hair catches in my mouth; please, I think, please.

“Get down on all fours,” he says. “And pull your shirt up. Pull it up, I want to see your ass.” I look at the tightly woven carpet, a rich gray, now only a few inches from my face. “Crawl around,” he says, his voice very low. “Crawl over to the door. Crawl around.” I move my right arm forward, my right knee, my left arm. I think: is it elephants that do this differently? My left knee. I am suspended in a silence that is broken by someone’s muffled conversation in the corridor outside the apartment. A door slams. The cellist on the floor below begins to practice and I concentrate on his characteristic initial outburst with interest. I have always assumed that musicians warm up slowly, like joggers. This one starts out with great verve and volume and gradually winds down over the course of his three-hour run. He is bald and surly, I’ve seen him in the elevator. “I can’t,” I say.

It seems as if the sound of my voice has made my body crumple. For a second my face is flat against the carpet, which appears flawlessly smooth when seen from a standing height but is less soft to the skin than one might expect. I sit up. The height of these heels prevents me from sitting in the position I suddenly long for: my knees drawn up to my chin, my arms around me.

“Tell me,” he says, neutrally. “1 feel stupid,” I say. “It makes me feel foolish.” The one lamp at the other end of the room is not bright enough for me to be able to see the expression on his face. He folds his arms behind his head and leans back against the couch cushions. 1 get up, teeter, say, “This rug itches”—under my breath, but as if imparting valuable information—and sit down in the nearest chair. 1 cross my arms over the shirtfronts I have wrapped around me. One of the sleeves has come down and I tug the cuff over my fingers and curl my hand, inside the fabric, into a fist.

“It’s not as if we haven’t been through all this,” he says, not looking at me. “I hate packing. I hate unpacking even worse. It took me a week to unpack that suitcase of yours, the last time around.” The cello below erupts as if flayed by a madman.

“What I don’t get is why you can’t keep the idea of being hit in your mind, why it always actually has to be done to you. Before you say to me, no, I don’t want to do that—why you don’t picture me taking off my belt, in your head. Why you don’t remember from one night to the next what it feels like when it comes down on you. We have to fucking negotiate each and every time and in the end you do what I tell you, anyway.”

“No,” I say, inaudibly first. “No,” I say, “please…” He leans toward me now, pushing hair off his forehead. “It makes me feel like a dog,” I say, “crawling…. I’m scared you’ll make fun of me.”

“You should feel stupid,” he says. “What a crock of shit. If 1 ever make fun of you I’ll let you know.” I shake my head, mute. Scowling and scrutinizing me closely, he walks toward and past me. I am sitting rigidly at the edge of the chair, my knees pressed together, my forearms tight against my stomach muscles. His hands are on my shoulders. I am pulled back until my shoulder blades touch the upholstery. Then his hand in my hair, massaging my scalp, closing into a fist, drawing slowly back until my face lies horizontal, the top of my head against his cock. He rubs the lower half of my face with the heel of his hand. My mouth soon opens. When I am moaning steadily he leaves the room and comes back with the riding crop. He lays it on the coffee table.

“Look at it,” he says. “Look at me. In three minutes I can get you so you’ll be in bed for a week.” But I barely hear him. The inadequate, the minuscule, the fiber optics passage I have in my throat instead of a trachea allows me only quicksilver sips of air. My open mouth feels bruised.

“Crawl,” he says. I’m on hands and knees again. I press my face hard into my right shoulder and feel how the trembling in my chin, instead of being steadied, transmits through bone after bone until my arms shake and my legs, down to my toes. I hear the tip of the leather-covered handle scrape against the tabletop. A white-hot pain leaps across the back of my thighs. Tears spring to my eyes, sudden as magic. Released as if from a dangerous stupor, I crawl from the chair to the bedroom door, limber and easily to the lamp in the far corner; a loudly purring cat weaves figure eights around my arms. Both stockings tear at the knees and I can feel a run creep jerkily up each thigh. When I’ve almost reached the couch again he overtakes me, pushes me down, turns me on my back.

It’s the one time with him and the first time at all that I come at the same time as my lover. He licks my face then. Each spot is first warm and—when his tongue moves on—abruptly cold, sweat and saliva evaporating in the conditioned air.