Safe Word: An Erotic S/M Novel (28 page)

"You can come," he whispered. "Do it quietly"

As a mouse. A very greedy, hungry little one. Letting
out each spasm as a deep, quiet sigh. I wasn't fooling the cab
driver, but he was reasonably circumspect. Probably because
Jonathan looked like a big tipper.

I leaned against his shoulder and closed my eyes, thinking of the park, the boy in the white pants, the green foliage
and yellow blossoms. I wondered if there weren't areas like
that in every city. Public venues that were invisible to those
with untutored vision. Zones where an alternate world of
ritual, exchange, and display coincided with the normal, everyday world-as though the stage lights had been turned
up and you could see what was behind the scrim, if your eyes
had been trained to see.

The cab stopped, and I gathered myself up, smoothing
down my skirt as Jonathan paid the driver, who threw me a
brief bright white toothy grin. I'd been surprised that I'd been
permitted that orgasm. But it made sense, I thought now.
Jonathan would spoil me on these holiday trips. There'd be
movies and pretty dresses, ice cream and orgasms-he'd be
like a guilty divorced father taking the kids to McDonalds on
his custody weekends. Only he wouldn't have to feel guilty.
He wouldn't do any permanent damage-not with Kate in
charge of my day-to-day routines. We stepped into the hotel
elevator.

"We're going to a party tonight," he said. "An acquaintance invited me, while the gentleman was using you. So
you can rest this afternoon-well, you can in an hour or so,
anyway. I have some errands I need to do. Oh, and I forgot to
tell you. This is our last day. I mean, I've got plane reservations. We go home tomorrow."

Had I truly meant to say that, you know, about its being our
last day? Well, in retrospect there was definitely something
valedictory about those last twenty-four hours together. But
at the time-no, I wasn't conscious of any double meanings.
She'd been a very good girl and I was pleased with her. I was
looking forward to taking her home. To seeing Kate go to work on her. And I was looking forward to bringing her to
the party that night, too.

I hadn't wanted to give her to the guy in the tea room.
I'd always enjoyed sharing her with friends, but I'd resisted
giving her to strangers-people I'd never seen before, whose
only bond with me was a set of shared codes and rituals.
But now, after the fact, I'd found it surprisingly sensible
and gratifying. What else, I thought, do you base civility
upon, besides shared codes and rituals, gifts and generous
exchanges? I was glad I'd taken her on today's outing.

She was on the floor at my feet now, her face pressed
into the carpet, her white dress up over her head and spread
out around her ass. I smoked two slow cigarettes, surrounding her with smoke rings. I undid my pants, and then I
knelt behind her, unfastening all the little buttons down her
back, starting with the high neck and moving downward,
tracing the bumps of her spine with my tongue. I reached
up under the dress and squeezed her breasts, pulling myself
back up, arching around her, until my cock was against her
ass. "Open yourself up," I said. "Use your hands to spread
yourself." I entered her, thinking of the guy in his unspeakable green jacket. I held her body close, pressing my belly
against her.

"Kneel up," I said afterward, when I'd sat back in the
armchair and she'd turned around to thank me. I took the
crushed, wrinkled dress off her, pulling it gently over her
head. And then I just looked at her for a while. I nodded,
giving her permission to fix the garter that had come unfastened while I'd been fucking her.

"Bring me the whip," I told her. I love the moment when
a slave lays an implement of discipline in your hand, with a soft, trained mouth. I love the trust in the gesture and the fear
in their eyes. The hurried self-scrutiny-what have I done?
what haven't I done? The remorse, if they know that a punishment is coming. Or-like Carrie that day, who knew she'd
behaved impeccably-the certainty that what was coming
would be gratuitous, whimsical. Pain that had no purpose
(no purpose!) but the master's pleasure. And finally, either
way, the struggle to accept-to welcome-the pain.

But I didn't beat her. I prodded her through her repertoire of presentations. I nudged her into position with the
whip; I used my fingers, my tongue, to trace the raised welts
on her skin. I closed my eyes, pretended I was blind, tried to
memorize her with my fingertips.

She'd be punished at the party tonight, I thought, after
they found the demerit token she was bound to collect when,
inevitably, someone would notice the spark of consciousness
in her eye. The tiny light that would flash as she registered
amusement or amazement, took note of some telling or outre
detail. No wonder she was an expert on party punishments.
And she was right, they do tend toward the funky. I'd enjoy
that.

"Tonight," I said, "at the party, I'll arrange for the token
master to give me all the tokens in your coinbox. After the ceremony, I mean. And I'll take them home with me, and when we
get back here you'll tell me the story that goes along with each
one. So remember all of them, everybody who uses you."

"Yes, Jonathan," she said it softly, but very clearly. "I'll
remember everything."

"Just see that you do," I said.

My voice was hoarse, anxious. I reached down for her,
holding her tightly while I kissed her. And then I got to my
feet.

"Well," I said, "you'd better rest. And I'd better not put
off my errands any longer."

So no, all in all I guess I wasn't really surprised, when I got
back to our room a few hours later, around dusk, and found
that she was gone, leaving this note:

Thanks for manufacturing a reason to leave me
alone while I finally do what I need to. I love you for
making it a little easier for me.

And I will remember everything. Always.

So long, Carrie

She'd taken her clothes and a few pieces of the more
soft-core paraphernalia. Whips that were more for show than
punishment, things like that. Items I'd bought at the sex shop
on Gaite, for guests. I was surprised. Wimpy stuff, I would have
imagined her sneering inwardly, babyish stuff, for amateurs.

I wondered, briefly, if she was going back to California. I
knew that her department at school would take her back in a
flash. And she had that friend, that gangly boy I'd sometimes
seen her with. She'd want to see him. I knew a little about
what she did when she wasn't with me, you see. I'd spy on
her from time to time, hanging around the Mission District,
lurking in dark corners behind underground newspapers
in grungy coffeehouses, to catch a glimpse of her in her real
life, in her silly slacker clothes. Okay, now you know-keep
it to yourself, okay? But I wouldn't do it again. Because it was too silly. And because, I thought, even if she did go backto Berkeley, or San Francisco-I'd never manage to see her,
never even run into her. When somebody's gone from your
life, they're gone, into a separate, even if proximate, sphere.

I lit a cigarette. Stopping was going to be unpleasant,
I thought, poking around the room some more, inventorying what else she'd taken. One of the corsets. And the little
whisk. I suddenly had a flash of some guy who might be getting his own gift subscription to On Our Backs. He'd be young,
I imagined, and I hoped he'd be crazy about her-wildly, and
wholeheartedly, the whole nine yards, caring for her with a
depth and a completeness that I'd never be able to match.
I shrugged, a little surprised I'd had that thought. And a little
touched and pleased with myself as well, if truth be told.

I figured I'd better call Kate and tell her the plan was off,
that I'd be coming home alone tomorrow. Because, as it turns
out, some things can't be arranged. So we'd just have to make
do with each other. It was a tough life. Well, we'd have each
other and Sylvie and Stephanie and Randy. And whoever else
she'd collect. Like Ariel. Hmm, Ariel. Maybe I could use Ariel
to help me stop smoking-as a deterrent, you know. Kate had
suggested it once.

I picked up the wrinkled white dress from the floor and
smoothed it out. Vale, Carrie. So long and farewell.

I had to write out my note three times. The first draft had
lots of run-on sentences and meandering paragraphs that
never got to the point-perhaps because I wasn't sure what the point exactly was. I wound up crossing out just about
everything. Keep it simple. Well, I guess I'm not as afraid of
simplicity as I once was.

And when I finished the second draft, I noticed that it
was actually tear-stained, and that I was crying my eyes out.
Partly, I was miserable about leaving him, of course, but
partly, I was absurdly and sentimentally moved by the brave,
chipper tone I'd pulled off in the letter. And partly, or perhaps
especially, I was finally letting myself cry in hurt and rage, the
tears I hadn't shed the night before commingling with a year's
angry tears about the love letter he'd written when he hadn't
really meant it, because he'd found it diverting (or therapeutic,
perhaps) to imagine he was in love with me.

For the third draft, I kept my face far away from the paper.
But I was still weeping, my eyes "portable and commodious
oceans," as some entirely ditzed seventeenth century religious
poet once wrote. Remembering the phrase made me smile a
little as I sniffled. And then of course I was disappointed in
myself: I had imagined that my grief would have been a little
purer than it was turning out to be.

But why should it be, I thought. Nothing about this
thing was purely one way or the other. I certainly wasn't
being purely brave. Brave would have meant leaving to make
it on my own, dazed and alone, and I'm not as brave as that.
Perhaps you imagined me trudging off into the sunset, sadder
but wiser for the experience-sighing and squaring my shoulders. Like the girl in A Certain Smile, the first grown-up book
I'd read all the way through in French. "I was a woman," the
book's final sentence goes, "who had loved a man." And that,
I'd thought at twelve and a half, must be how you felt when
you were really grown up.

But there were other ways to grow up, I thought now, and
other ways to play out the story. Because it seemed that you
could take one of those midlife-crisis-meets-youthful-confusion love affair stories (and Mr. Constant was right, this was
really an old story) and put a whole new spin on it. As Kate
had tried to do, dreaming up an arrangement so total, and so
challenging, that Jonathan would never have to leave, and
I wouldn't have the strength to. Maybe at this very minute,
they'd be leading me into Kate's parlor, and Jonathan would
be sitting in an armchair, smiling at Kate, a drink in his hand.
I'd kneel. I'd present to him. I'd barely be breathing, I'd be so
excited, wanting to show him how she'd been training me,
hoping that he'd be pleased, that he'd find me improved.

But none of that would ever happen. Because, and at the
last minute, too, I'd lucked into an escape clause-the clause
that contained my safe word. Well, there had been this other
story, you see, that had slipped in-almost parentheticallybetween my year with Mr. Constant and these five days with
Jonathan. And I hadn't told Jonathan this story. I almost had,
when he'd told me about the hacker. I might have, you know,
if he'd noticed that I had something to tell him. But he hadn't,
and I hadn't, and I was glad of that now

Not that it was a story I could easily imagine telling him.
It had a hero, for one thing-an unlikely one, who'd hacked
through tangled vines of information to win an unobstructed
view of the girl imprisoned in her tower. And who somehow-through the deliberateness and patience and innocence
of his gaze-had broken the spell that held her thrall.

And I don't even like fairy tales, or swords or spells or
sorcery, or any of that redundant archetypal stuff. But by that
last day in Paris, I'd admitted to myself that-like it or not it was mine, this ultimate, unfinished story. It had chosen me,
and I would have to have a hand in shaping it, giving it a little
more wit and originality. I knew that I didn't want to tell this
story to Jonathan. I wanted to keep it, to live it-well, to see
if I could make a life out of it, anyway. And that's how I knew
it was time to go.

-'d settled into the seat of the train from Paris to Avignon.
I was glad I was next to the window, because I thought I
might be too nervous to read. This is it, I thought. The first
day of the rest of my life.

I hoped Jonathan would like the clothes I'd bought in
Paris. I'd gone there directly from Greece, the day they'd
taken off my collar and cuffs and Mr. Constant had given me
the money-more than a hundred thousand dollars, including a credit card. He'd been nice that last day, removing his
glasses and trying to having a real conversation with me in
his office.