The Experiment (13 page)

The place was quiet and neat, just as she’d left it. Since the experiment had started, Zoe had come out of her depression and had started taking care of the place again, and once she’d agreed to having the cameras installed, she’d spent all day cleaning up, washing floors and walls, vacuuming her rugs, even buying throws to cover her run-down sofa. She wasn’t sure how she felt about being spied on, but she was sure she didn’t want to give a bad impression.

So far she had responded to the presence of the cameras by pretending they weren’t there. She knew where they were, of course—one in the corner of the living room looking down at the sofa, one in her bedroom looking down at the bed—but so far she had tried to ignore them and on the previous night they hadn’t had much to see, Zoe having a glass of wine while watching television and then going to sleep in her oversized T-shirt.

But now things had changed. Now the little black boxes were her one remaining link to the Doctor and she looked up at the living room camera warily as she hung up her coat, as if worried it might not be there. She walked into the living room nervously smoothing down her skirt and sat down self-consciously on the sofa, gathering her nerve.

“Are you there, Doctor?” she asked the empty room. “I hope you’re there. I hope you can hear me. I owe you an apology.”

She looked up at the unblinking lens and fought down the feeling of embarrassment and despair that perhaps he wasn’t there at all. Perhaps she was just talking to herself.

“I’m sorry, Doctor,” she said, looking up at the silent black box. “Really, I can’t tell you how sorry I am. I overreacted, I know that now. I was upset, and I misunderstood the whole situation. I should never have turned on that light.”

Her cat jumped up on the sofa next to her, thinking she was talking to him, and Zoe reached out to caress him. The cat had learned over long months that Zoe would pet him when she was upset and the fact that he saw her in need of comfort now alarmed her. Things weren’t that bad yet. She still had a chance.

She realized how silly she must look. For all she knew, the Doctor wasn’t even watching her on the other end. Or maybe he was. Maybe he and Amy were watching her and laughing. She didn’t care.

“I was wrong too when I said I knew what the experiment was about. Really, I was just guessing. I don’t know what you’re trying to do and I shouldn’t have guessed. Anyhow, that’s not important. What’s important is that I violated your trust and that I’m very sorry. I don’t want it to be over, Doctor. Please.”

There. She was begging. What else could she do?

Talking to the silent black box was like talking to the Doctor himself as he sat in the shadows, saying nothing, giving her no human feedback, waiting to see how far she’d go.

In one sense the experiment had been a demeaning and almost shameful experience. She’d taken money for acts of sex, and despite her rationales and protestations, she knew what that made her. And yet it had been more than that too. She’d discovered something within herself, something she though had been killed off long ago—the excitement of sex, the thrill of desire, the sheer animal joy of seeing the effect she had on men and women both.

Whatever else the Doctor had been doing to her, whatever else his purposes had been, he’d been giving her that as well, breathing life into her, fanning those fading embers into flame. He’d reached into her life and changed her, changed her world and turned her into someone who mattered again and now she was losing that.

“I want to come back,” she said, dropping her eyes, afraid to let him see her face. “Please give me another chance. I’ll do whatever you want, I don’t care. You can keep the money. Just let me come back.”

She looked up at the tiny black box, featureless, unmoving. She felt the sting of tears in her eyes and her lips readying to form the word “love”. She was on the verge of telling him how she really felt, and then she pulled back.

No. She couldn’t say that. She couldn’t tell him that. She might feel many things for him—curiosity and interest and a kind of daughterly affection—but she couldn’t bring herself to tell him she loved him. He’d think her insane for sure.

The cat jumped in her lap again, knowing she was upset, and the way he sought her affection caused her throat to swell with loneliness and despair. She picked him up and pushed her face against his fur, heard him purring with foolish feline satisfaction and rushed from the room. She sought out the bathroom, the point in her apartment farthest from the cameras. She closed the door, hugged the cat to her and allowed the tears to fall.

* * * * *

The morning brought no relief. If anything, her sense of despair and abandonment only increased. She phoned Amy from work, but her calls went unanswered. No one picked up the phone, no recorded voice told her to leave a message after the beep. When she got home she stared off at his apartment building from her window, looking over the flat roofs and weed-grown empty lots, but there was nothing to see. The thought that he might be seeing someone else up there—finding a new subject for his experiments—filled her with terrible anguish and she toyed with the idea of just going over there and trying to force her way in. She knew it would be useless, though. What she wanted from him couldn’t be taken. It had to be given.

And why should she need someone in her life again? She’d learned to live by herself. It had been her major accomplishment over the last year, but now she saw how fragile it all was. She needed someone in her life, as surely as she needed air to breathe. She wanted to be looked at the way she was looked at when she was with him. Even before she’d seen his face, she could feel the way he looked at her, the sexual tension in the air, the desire. She wanted him.

She sat down on her sofa and composed herself to make another silent appeal to the living room camera, but the idea that he might not be watching, that she might be baring her soul to the empty air with no one to see was just too depressing and she gave up.

She made herself some scrambled eggs and picked at them, then showered, and she was just going through her closet when she noticed some of the new outfits she’d purchased, things she’d intended to wear to the Doctor’s and now wouldn’t be able to.

The thought hit her then and she didn’t know why she hadn’t thought of it before.

She dressed quickly—black nylons and garter belt, no panties, no bra. Black pencil skirt, dark crepe blouse. She knew how he liked her to dress—neat, a bit subdued, but entirely feminine. His taste in art might be quite sophisticated, but she knew from his subtle hints that his taste in women’s clothes was stereotypically and endearingly male.

She slipped into a pair of wicked heels that buckled around her ankles, then walked into the living room, paused, and went into the kitchen. She walked from room to room, her heels rapping on the bare wooden floors. She wanted to attract his attention if he was watching, and she thought the best way to do that would be to present a moving target, so she walked, letting the feel of her clothes exert their subtle effect on her, arousing her. The cat eyed her curiously, making her smile.

When she simply couldn’t parade around any longer, Zoe came back to the living room, sat on the sofa and crossed her legs. There was no way to tell whether he was watching or not, but she had to believe that he was, and it wasn’t hard to do. It was almost as if she were back there in the experiment room, with him sitting hidden in shadows and Zoe felt the same illicit thrill as she unbuttoned her blouse and let it fall open, showing the inner slope of her breasts. She brought her hands up and caressed herself, staring at the camera, daring him to look.

But no, it wouldn’t do. The thought of him watching her was arousing in that familiar kind of way, but now it was the feel of her own hands on her body that affected her. Strangely, it was something she hadn’t paid much attention to before. Before it had
always been for him, touching herself to arouse him, but now, alone in her apartment, she seemed to notice for the first time the feel of her nails against the soft skin of her breasts, the smooth warmth of her skin under her fingers.

She looked aside as she concentrated on these new sensations, keeping her eyes on the floor so as not to interrupt her concentration. Her fingers found her nipples and she pinched them, rolling them softly until they peaked and grew tight and expectant. Zoe rewarded their eagerness by grasping them and pinching, sending a spear of pain knifing into her sex so delicious that she hissed with pleasure.

Truly, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d masturbated on her own, without the Doctor watching, and now she took a selfish joy in manipulating her own body. She didn’t know if he was watching or not, but ultimately it didn’t matter. She lifted her bottom off the sofa and worked the snug skirt up over her knees and thighs, higher, over the tops of her stockings, up around her waist. She bunched the skirt up and felt the cool leather of the sofa against her bare bottom. Her hands left her breasts and she caressed the soft and delicate flesh at the top of her thighs where the stockings ended.

He’d told her she had a special talent, a talent to arouse people, and now Zoe found that talent turned on herself. Her body, who she was, was a sensual machine, a body made for sex and sensation. Her nerves seemed to come alive under her own touch and she forced herself to part her knees, to expose herself to the camera.

She felt the illicit thrill, the shameful excitement that always gripped her in his presence. She was a whore for him, wanting his arousal more than she wanted her own self-respect. She lifted her feet to the sofa, planted her heels on the cushions and spread her thighs.

“Are you watching, Doctor?” she asked the camera. “Do you like what you see?”

One hand slipped down to her sex where she toyed in the little crown of hair, and she felt herself begin to swell and flower under her own touch. She felt lewd and deliciously obscene, sexual in a way that she always felt when performing under the Doctor’s direction, because she knew his eyes were on her body—his eyes and
everything else, for no matter what he might have said to her or the way he sent her away, Zoe knew he wanted her. He wanted her just as she wanted him, needed him, to end this fruitless teasing, this futile experiment.

It was sex. Whatever else it was about, the experiment’s focus was sex, the physical intimacy between two people, as close as they could get. He’d taken her and brought her to life, brought her to life and this state of intense need and then abandoned her—cut her off. But she knew he wasn’t done with her. She knew it just as she felt the rising excitement and need for him. She needed him with her, needed his hands on her, his flesh inside her, his weight on top of her.

“Oh! Fuck!” Zoe cried out as she slid one finger inside herself and felt her own wetness, her readiness for him and her acceptance. He had to feel it too. How could he not feel her need for him after all he’d put her through? This need she felt couldn’t be so one-sided. It simply couldn’t be, not with her feeling like this, and if ever desire could pass from one person to another, radiating like an invisible wave through the air, her need must communicate with him. She knew it.

“Look what I’m doing for you,” she whispered, her eyes set on the camera, one hand between her legs, the other kneaded the rich globe of her breast. “Look what I am for you. A whore, a slut, without pride or shame, Doctor. All for you. You made me like this. Now you have to finish it. You have to take me, Doctor. You have to.”

Her speech trailed off into a long groan of frustrated need as she closed her thighs on her hand, trapping her fingers inside. Her thumb slid against that nub of pleasure, forcing her hips to start moving with a hunger of their own, lifting her bottom entirely off the couch. Her other hand pulled and tormented her swollen nipple, imagining his hands on her, his mouth, his teeth.

“I’m going to come for you, Doctor. That’s what you want, isn’t it? You want your whore to come for you, don’t you? Oh God! That’s what you want, I know it, damn you!”

Her shame rose up and mixed with her overwhelming excitement but she no longer cared. Maybe he was watching, maybe her image was being beamed at that moment across the internet, she no longer cared. She would have her satisfaction. She would be his slut, anything he wanted her to be. She shoved her fingers into herself and pressed hard against her clitoris.

The ringing of the phone cut like a banshee shriek through the silence of the apartment. It was like a slap across her face.

“Hello?” She could smell her female arousal on the hand that held the phone. She worked to still the shaking in her hand and control her rapid breathing.

“Zoe?” It was him. She knew it. It was him.

“Yes?”

“It’s the Doctor. I… I need to see you.” His voice was strangely uncertain, something she’d never heard from him before. It sounded as though he’d been drinking. “I’ve been watching you. I… I’m sending a cab. Will you come? Just as you are?”

“Yes. Yes, I’ll come. I’ll be downstairs in a minute.” She felt the edge of hysteria trying to cut into her words so she dared not say more.

“Just as you are. I’ll be waiting. Please, hurry.”

* * * * *

He’d told her to come just as she was, but of course he couldn’t have meant with her blouse open and skirt up around her waist. She arranged her clothes and refreshed her makeup with a trembling hand, her nerves still on edge from her frustrated climax. By the time she got downstairs, the cab was already waiting.