Role Play (5 page)

“I don’t know what that was!” Sierra managed to pull away from
me.

The guys who had been watching were melting away
quickly, sensing a scene gone bad and wanting to distance themselves from it. I felt even more conspicuous. I had lost my mind for a minute. What a stupid game to play with someone I didn’t know!

I
offered Sierra the wig, and she took it, watching me warily. As if unsure of what I would do next.

“Are you okay?”
I asked. “I’ll get you a cab to take you home.”

She took a step away from
me, warding me off. “I’m fine.”

I
watched as she stepped into the room, searching the crowd quickly. With a shake of her head as if disappointed, she headed to the exit.

I
followed her. She was a little unsteady on her feet, and I had put her into that state. I couldn’t let her wander off into traffic alone.

Outside,
I expected her to hold up her hand to get a cab—they were everywhere around here. But she turned and went to the corner.

By the time
I reached the top of the stairs, she was at the corner waiting for the light to cross the street. She was swaying a bit, staring off at one spot as if dazed. She was a slight form, closed in on herself in the moist summer breeze, pungent with the smell of the street. Slowly she pulled a tissue from her purse and blew her nose, wiping the smeared makeup off her cheeks with it.

I
passed behind her and ran across the street in the middle of the block to get ahead of her. I figured she was trying to hail a cab going in the other direction.

But as
Sierra crossed over and reached the other side, she turned and came towards me. I stepped back into the shadows of the doorway as she walked almost all the way up to me.

I
thought she had seen me and was mad that I was following her, but she didn’t notice me. She went straight to a black car parked at the curb and opened the door.

“What took so long?” a deep voice
demanded. “Why didn’t you answer my texts?”

Sierra sank into the seat, clutching the red wig. “Just go. Take me home.”

“What happened?”

“N
othing happened. Now, go.” She turned to the window, her fisted hand over her mouth. I didn’t move, afraid she would notice me in the shadowed doorway of the shop.

The big blocky guy at the wheel kept complaining about
keeping him waiting as he pulled out of the parking spot. He wasn’t the kind of guy I expected to see Sierra with. He looked like an ordinary Queens schmo.

I
had felt bad there for a second, watching her blow her nose on the street corner, but apparently she was pulling one over on that dude in the car, too.

What was
Sierra’s story? I couldn’t figure her out. At first, when I saw her walking around the Chamber, I thought she was a wanna-be dominatrix hoping to make enough money to put herself through grad school. When she hit me with the ruler, she showed real promise—a genuine intensity and connection with me. But her dominance was mostly an illusion created by a sharp tongue, a wig and some makeup.

Really, she was a bedroom submissive looking for her sugar-daddy. She had judged
me unworthy the first second she heard my voice. How could she hear the Jersey I thought I had buried deep inside of me? I would never know. But she did, and she had instantly rejected me for it, until Monica had gossiped about my wealth.

Then Sierra
had been plenty ready to play nice.

So
that made her fair game.

W
hen I whispered those threats to her, now that had been the mind-blower. I still couldn’t believe what a feeling it gave me. Power in the face of powerlessness. Not just because I was riding that dark edge that could swallow me up so easily, but because of her reaction, the way she gave in to me in the end. The way she looked at me as if she knew I owned her in that moment.

So where did th
at dude in the car come in? Did he know that Sierra was inside the Chamber?

I
looked back at the Chamber. I could go back inside if I wanted to. Find another girl, have another scene, maybe take her home and fuck her.

The palms of
my hands burned. Sierra had hit me hard.

I
didn’t want to go back to the Chamber.

I
set off on foot down 9
th
Avenue. It would take forty-five minutes to walk home, but it would save me the fare for a subway ride. And nothing beat walking in the city.

...

As I entered my small loft apartment, I suddenly thought about Adrianne. She had put her stamp of style on my place: in the tiny kitchen, the exposed brick wall and the remodeled bathroom with the glass bricks that let in light. I could almost see her sitting at the tiny counter, her dark head thrown back in laughter.

I hadn’t thought about her in years.
On purpose.

I
had added my own touches to the place over the past decade, imprinting myself on it with the black leather couch and stark photographs on the walls. It was spare and modern, like an interior designer had put it together. It gave exactly the impression what I wanted.

Adrianne had left
me the loft when she walked out all those years ago. Left me and our rocket ship relationship for marriage to an investment banker. She had never taken me seriously because I was much younger than her, even though I dominated her in every way. Last I heard, she was living on the thirty-sixth floor of Beacon Court, a luxury glass tower on the Upper East Side. Her kid must be seven years old now.

I
had tried to erase her from my life completely, but that was impossible considering I was living in her old loft. Ghosts of girlfriends past. But she had already been living there for a decade before I moved in with her, and that kind of stabilized rent couldn’t be beat in Manhattan anymore. My neighbors were paying four times what I did.

I
dropped down on the couch, looking through the two large windows that filled the outer wall of the studio loft, over the tops of the surrounding low buildings. Midtown rose beyond the Village, with its skyscrapers filling the view to the north.

I
scrubbed a hand through my hair.
Why did I come home so early?

Before things could
get uncomfortably deep, my phone rang. I saw it was the night supervisor from work. I would have ignored it if I had stayed at the Chamber. But now… with nothing better to do.

I
answered it. Sure enough, a guy had called in sick.

I
changed out of my nice clothes and gathered my gear, heading downstairs. It wasn’t far to Houston St. where a cab picked me up and took me over the Williamsburg Bridge, onto the BQE. It took only twenty minutes to make the trip to La Guardia airport, half the time of my normal commute by subway and bus.

I
handed the night supervisor my cab receipt. They always paid for a car when they called a man in. “Busy?” I asked.

“
Typical Friday,” Kevins griped. “I’m putting you on the ramp. Those other guys don’t listen for shit.”

I
put my stuff in my locker and pulled out my earphones and mic. I figured as much. The guys on the night shift were a bunch of mooks. I could fling baggage with the best of them, but I’d rather handle the boarding ramp, guiding the planes in and out.

I
wasn’t the one who had started the rumor that I was a big airline executive. I had denied it in the beginning, but it must have made for a better story because it kept popping up in the sex clubs and fetish groups over the years. Maybe because I posted photos from the trips I took on my scene profile. Free travel was the reason why I took this job. So I could see the world. And when women saw my place and assumed I was rich, and then wanted to have sex with me because of it, that wasn’t my fault. Sometimes they wanted to have sex because they thought I was hot. Getting sun-baked on the tarmac, and pumping up my muscles lifting baggage helped with that. But most people assumed it came from a tanning bed and a trainer.

I
stepped outside to the roar of a jet engine. I knew if Sierra saw me now, she wouldn’t be interested in me. And that’s what made me so mad that I could mindfuck a beautiful stranger. I wasn’t any different now than I had been in the club, but I could tell from the appraising way she had looked me up and down when she first saw me, taken in by my expensive shoes and shirt, that she
changed her opinion about me.

Only that wasn’t really
me.

That wasn’t
this guy carrying the light sticks down to marshal another plane of people into place. A nobody, that people didn’t even see on their way to somewhere else.

It wasn’t
me.

Chapter 3

Sierra

I put my head in my hands as Dick was driving me home. My heart was beating too fast, and I had to focus to breathe in and out. My chest felt so tight, it might explode.

Being completely overwhelmed—
I hated it… but it was so invasive and intense that I couldn’t help stop feeling it. I hated myself for it. Victor intended to scare me, so why was I still thinking about him and the rush it gave me when he was pressing against me?

I
should hate him for doing that to me. I did hate him. But I also kept thinking about the way it felt when he pinned me against the brick wall with his whole body, and how turned on he obviously was as he whispered those terrible words to me. Then how gently he held me and told me he wouldn’t hurt me.

I
just wanted to turn off my mind and go home where it was safe.

“How did
Lola leave without me seeing her?” Dick demanded.

“
There must be a back door.” I rubbed my neck where Victor’s thumb had touched me. “You’re the cop. Don’t you know anything?”

He glanced at me again.
“What happened in there? You’re dead white.”

“It’s a meat market, a terrible place,”
I told him dully. “I think it’s dangerous.”

“What was Lola doing?” he demanded, his voice rising.

“Nothing. She was talking to a man and another couple. I saw them sitting at a table.”

Somewhat mollified, he glanced over at
me. “Then what’s wrong? What happened to you?”

I
couldn’t get into it with Dick. It was my own fault for being so stupid. I let Victor tie me up. I had taken the blind leap, for whatever reason, and I was lucky the guy wasn’t truly rotten to the core because much worse than a few mean words could have happened.

“It’s just a little shocking, is all, to see my sister
in a place like that.” I put my head back in my hands, hoping that would shut Dick up. I didn’t want to talk to him about it.

I
needed to talk to Lola. Desperately bad, I needed my sister.

...

I lay on my couch feeling drained, like I had run for miles. Around eleven I got a text from Dick asking if Lola had come home. I ignored it.

Eventually
I went to bed to toss and turn, thinking about what Victor had done to me and wishing I could stop. I felt anxiety, shame and even worse, like a fool.

So
I was not in the best mood when Lola finally showed up after breakfast, looking radiantly happy.

“Where have you been?”
I demanded, even though it was such a cliché.

“None of your business,” Lola
retorted with a laugh.

I
glared after her as Lola went into our bedroom. It was jammed with the two single beds and our dressers, and was dark because the window looked out on an airshaft.  I had always shared a room with Lola—at least we weren’t in the same bed anymore.

Lola
was the baby of our big family and by the time we both had arrived one right after the other, our mom was done with raising kids. When we were girls, we relied on our older half-brothers to take care of us while our mom worked as a cashier and our dad got up early to go to the bakery. Lola and I stuck together and scrapped together to get our fair share of peanut butter and cereal. We always relied on each other, even before the divorce.

I
waited impatiently for Lola to get out of the bathroom, the unpaid bills clutched in my hand. Lola was singing in the shower, like she didn’t have a care in the world.

When Lola finally emerged, she stood in the doorway drying her long dark hair with a towel.
I could have been looking in a mirror—people assumed we were twins all the time. Mutts, my oldest brother called us, but genetics had won out, taking the best of what our ordinary parents had to offer. Lola’s skin was creamy pale, like mine, contrasting with her vibrant dark eyes and hair. We both were curvy in the right places.