The Experiment (8 page)

“As I said, Amy often has trouble reaching climax,” the Doctor said softly from across the room. “It may take her some while.”

Zoe looked in his direction, hating him fiercely. To put people through this kind of thing for any reason was unconscionable. To make a mockery of need and human love and reduce it to this—a poor girl shivering in anguish before his eyes—was close to sadism. Whatever response he expected to get from Amy and her, it couldn’t be worth it, and in that instant Zoe realized that he was using them both, they were in this together.

She suddenly couldn’t stand it any longer. The tension in the room was too much and she got up and went to Amy, knelt down beside her chair and put one arm around the girl’s shoulders. Amy responded at once to Zoe’s touch, groaning deeply and letting her head fall back onto Zoe’s shoulder, but other than that, she hardly seemed to notice, so intent was she on her masturbation. Zoe stroked Amy’s long black hair and comforted her.

“Shhh, baby,” she cooed. “It’s okay. Can’t you make it?”

Ms. Liu gasped and stiffened and Zoe could feel the tension in her small body. “Oh I’m so close!” she whispered, a shudder in her voice. “So close!”

Zoe was horrified at the way Amy’s hands were now punishing herself, plunging the buzzing dildo into her pussy with her left hand while the right pushed and rubbed against her clitoris. She put her hand over Amy’s right and gently pushed her fingers away, and for the first time since college, she touched another woman’s sex, softly, tentatively.

Amy groaned deeply and used her free hand to pull Zoe to her. Zoe felt the girl’s whole body tremble with need.

“Please! Just touch me! I’m so close!” Amy breathed, and Zoe began to softly rub her clit, teasing her, barely making contact. Amy was so incredibly soft, her flesh so vulnerable, but Zoe’s touch was like fire to Amy’s needy body. She gasped and spread her legs wide.

“Yes! Oh! Oh!” She was beyond words, but Zoe knew just what she was feeling, trapped on that knife-edge between sensory overload and relief. She had been there often enough herself and she ached with understanding. She pressed Amy’s head back against her shoulder and held her like a child, and the feel of that warm and trembling body in her arms was just sweet and so much what she needed. It touched something deep inside her, just being close to another human being, and her fingers played over Amy’s vulva, arousing her, comforting her, making her tremble.

“Just let it happen,” she whispered into Amy’s ear. “Don’t try so hard. Just relax. I’ve got you. Just feel me touching you. Relax, baby. Relax.”

But Amy’s whole body was shaking with erotic tension. Zoe had never felt a woman so aroused and when Amy turned her blind face to her, Zoe couldn’t resist. Her heart overflowing, her own excitement at a fever pitch, she instinctively kissed the girl’s swollen lips and Amy kissed her back, hungrily, urgently. Zoe could tell the girl was falling into orgasm from the uncontrolled passion of her kiss, could tell Amy was losing it on her hand and she increased her pressure, pushing her, demanding that she yield.

“Oh God!” Amy cried, pulling her mouth away. “Oh God!”

Amy’s eyes were clenched shut, her mouth open and slack. Zoe tapped lightly on Amy’s swollen little clit and the Asian girl screamed harshly, then bucked as her orgasm surged through her body, sobbing and moaning as her body was racked by spasms of delicious release.

Zoe felt a totally unexpected, sympathetic orgasm ripple through her as she clung to the climaxing girl, and their gasps and their sobs mingled inseparably, just as their shared pleasures merged them into one. Amy’s mouth spread into a broad smile as she felt Zoe shaking in the throes of her own release. They were not just two women now. They were two lovers, their sex immaterial and Zoe clung to her and rode the deep plunge into pleasure with her until Amy’s body lost all strength and collapsed weakly into the chair, the vibrator falling buzzing to the floor.

Zoe slowly untangled herself, found the vibe and shut it off. She sat naked on the floor, her head against Amy’s thigh, panting and pushing her long dark hair back from her face.

She looked up, and under the desk light she saw the Doctor’s hands count out a stack of fifty-dollar bills. She knew that there would be ten of them there, just as he’d said.

She heard him stand up and he said, “Shall I have Delores bring some towels?”

Amy composed herself enough to shake her head.

“Ms. Alexander?” the Doctor asked.

Zoe shook her head as well. She looked into the darkness where he must be, wanting him to feel her hatred.

“Then I shall bid you good night, ladies. Amy, you’ll tidy up and lock up? Good. Then, until next time…”

Zoe saw the door open and the Doctor’s form silhouetted there against the red light, and for a moment he looked like the devil going back to hell. Then the door closed and he was gone.

Amy immediately dissolved into tears, heavy sobs that made her whole body shake.

Zoe turned to her. “Amy. What is it? What’s wrong?”

The girl turned her face to the side. “I’m sorry. I’m so ashamed.”

“Don’t be silly. Why should you be ashamed?”

Amy only shook her head, keeping her face down to hide the tears.

“Don’t worry about it,” Zoe said. “It doesn’t mean anything, it was my fault. I just couldn’t stand seeing you like that.”

Amy closed her eyes and tears rolled down her cheeks. “I’ve never…”

“Don’t let it worry you, Amy, really. It’s no big deal. Women do that all the time. It’s him I worry about.”

“The Doctor?”

“Yes. How long have you been involved in his fun and games?”

Amy sat up. “I’ve helped him before. But this is the first time I…I got so carried away. I’m not like this. I mean, with another girl.”

Zoe took her panties from the pile of clothes and slipped them on.

“Come on, Amy. Get dressed and let’s get out of here. I want to talk to you.”

* * * * *

They sat toward the back of a nondescript coffee shop down the block from the Doctor’s apartment, drinking coffee and talking like two conspirators.

Out of her business attire and away from the Doctor’s penthouse, Amy turned out to be a lively and very lonely girl and once she stopped worrying about what they had done in the experiment room, Zoe liked her very much. She was surprised, though, at Amy’s naïveté, which she first took to be an attempt to avoid her questions. But as they talked, it became obvious that Amy was just very innocent and not very curious about the Doctor, as well as fiercely loyal. She would answer Zoe’s questions as best she could, but on some things she was sworn to secrecy. She was quite protective of his identity, for example, and refused to give Zoe his name.

She’d been working for him for about four months, ever since she got out of college, through some tenuous family friend connection. The Doctor paid her a salary, paid for an apartment of her own in his building—a not inconsiderable expense—and was even paying her way through law school. All Amy had to do was help him with some correspondence and minor secretarial work—and with the experiment. She had no idea what the work was ultimately about, but she knew it was real. She’d seen binders full of data and spreadsheets on his computer as he worked on them. She’d never tried to read them—it was clearly not her business—but she knew they existed. The experiment was real. It was not a scam.

With innocence and open candor she destroyed Zoe’s theories one by one. No, he was not deformed or scarred or hideously ugly. He was a perfectly normal human male of perhaps fifty—quite handsome really, distinguished, even dashing. He had what she took to be a normal social life for someone in his position, though he didn’t seem to have any special female friends. As far as she knew he wasn’t gay. The suggestion made her blush.

As to how many other participants were in the study, Amy guessed about a dozen. She had known several to leave, though she was never told the reason, and had seen three new ones recruited, Zoe being the third. Amy scheduled the sessions at the
Doctor’s request, greeted the participants and handed out the initial payments. What went on in the interview room after her initial interview, she couldn’t say.

Amy had participated in three experiment sessions besides the one tonight. In the first, about two months ago, the Doctor had her undress completely, just as Zoe had done in her first session. In the second session she had masturbated in front of the Doctor, though she thought there might have been someone else in the room that she couldn’t see. And in the third she had taken off her clothes while a young man sat watching her and masturbating some distance away, similar to what Zoe had done last time.

Strangely, tonight was the only session in which the Doctor sat in shadow, so obviously he was trying to conceal his identity from Zoe. Since Amy saw him often, there was no point in hiding from her.

She received no money for these performances. She assumed they were part of her job, though the Doctor had never made that plain. In any case, that’s how Amy understood them and she had no intention of complaining. She was extremely grateful to the Doctor and she wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize their relationship.

“And now there’s something I have to ask you,” Amy said when Zoe had run out of questions. “He wanted me to ask you, I mean. I’m asking for him, for the experiment.”

Zoe sat up straight, as if in class. “Go ahead.”

“He wants to pay your rent, the rent on your apartment. But in return you have to do something for him. I know it sounds strange…”

“What? Tell me.”

“You have to put cameras in your apartment. Little tiny ones, just for him. For the experiment.”

“What? That’s insane!”

“He’ll pay your entire rent if you’ll put cameras in your living room and bedroom. Like web cams. He’ll have them installed and no one will know. No one will see the
pictures but him. He needs to observe you outside the experiment room. He wants to devote more work to you.”

“Devote more work to me? Amy, that’s crazy! Don’t you think it’s crazy?”

The girl shrugged. “I don’t know. I have them and they don’t bother me. In some ways, it’s good to know he’s watching, don’t you think? It’s good to know someone cares.”

* * * * *

They parted outside the restaurant, an uncertain moment made awkward by the intimacy they’d shared during the experiment and by Zoe’s shock and confusion about the cameras, certainly the strangest twist yet. The experiment was spilling out of the darkened room and into the world where she lived her life and Zoe didn’t know what to make of it.

She decided to walk home. Walking helped her think and it was only a mile or so from the coffee shop to her own neighborhood. The autumn night was cool and crisp, the streets well-lit and there were people around.

Could she even do it? Could she live her life knowing she was being observed? And if she took money for it, what did that make her? What did he hope to see? Once again she had to wonder at the legitimacy of the experiment. Once again she had to wonder why she was still involved.

She thought of Amy, how she’d held her and kissed her, the way she’d trembled so helplessly, like a child. She remembered how her heart had gone out to her when Amy was in such need, and how Zoe had known instinctively that what Amy had needed was the feel of a person holding her. She remembered too the feeling of Amy’s lips, the sweet hunger of that kiss and her own sympathetic orgasm when Amy had climaxed. It had been the first shared sexual experience Zoe had had since her breakup.

Amy had been such an imposing person when Zoe had first met her. How different she’d been in the throes of sexual need, how vulnerable. Had Zoe herself trembled like that when Jack had brought her to orgasm? Had she looked so terribly needy?

What an amazing thing sex was to do such things to a human being, she thought. What a terrible and wonderful thing.

* * * * *

There was a message waiting for her on her machine when she walked into her apartment, an event so rare these days that Zoe looked at the flashing light suspiciously for a moment, then put her things away and fed the cat before she hit the play button.

It was Ben Abernathy, a fringe member of Jack’s circle. He was in the neighborhood and wondered whether he could stop by and say hi. He left his cell number. The call was only an hour old.

Ben had been something of a joke with Jack’s crowd, strictly C-list, never quite accepted, never quite cool enough, teased for his infamous “look”—an affectation he used, a special way he tilted his head to make his hair fall over his eyes in what he thought was a seductive, bad-boy pout. In truth, Zoe had always found him awkward and buffoonish though harmless enough, the kind of man who believed the articles he read in men’s magazine would bring him sexual success.

Zoe had taken pity on him back then and he’d misinterpreted that as interest. Now that Jack was out of the picture, Ben called regularly, trying to set something up. She knew he wanted to sleep with her, if only so he could say he’d bedded Jack’s ex and she’d even thought about it, but she never would have invited him up if she hadn’t been so suddenly desperate for company after this latest session at the Doctor’s. Her body and mind were buzzing and if nothing else, she needed to talk to someone, anyone, just to restore her sense of reality.

She called him back and told him sure, it would be great to see him. She showered and put on clean jeans and a blue turtleneck and was just putting in her earrings when he rang the bell.

He’d brought wine and they drank it sitting in the living room with the stereo on. It quickly became apparent that Ben thought he could use his knowledge of what Jack was up to as a lure to get what he wanted, but the more he talked, the more she discovered that she really didn’t care anymore. The realization left her with a strange hollow, almost panicked feeling, as if her flame had gone out. The things Ben talked about seemed to have happened to someone else in a place far away and she just didn’t care. The wound she’d been nursing all these months was gone. There was no more hurt, just a dead spot inside into which Ben’s words fell without a splash.

She tried to turn the conversation around, tried to find some way to tell him about the Doctor and the strange things she was involved in now, but she realized that there was simply no way to broach the subject. Ben himself was set only to broadcast. He didn’t receive. He missed all her cues, all her tentative openings. He was talking to the girl she’d been all those months ago almost as if he were working from a script. He refused to see what she was now.

With nothing to discuss, there was only one reason for Ben to be there and Zoe saw now that it would never work. It had been a mistake to have invited him over. He had nothing she wanted, not even sex, and the hints he dropped about Jack’s new girlfriend made her vaguely ill.

“Ben, I hate to do this, but I suddenly don’t feel well. Would you mind very much…?”

He looked irritated. “What’s wrong, Zoe? You sick? Anything old doctor Ben can help you with?” He was coming back from the kitchen and he stopped and gave her the “look”. He was hopeless.

“No, it’s this bug I’ve been fighting off. I thought I was over it, but I guess not. I’m terribly sorry.”

Ben shook his head sadly. “You know, Zoe, I’m worried about you. No one sees you anymore, you don’t return any calls… Don’t you get lonely? Isn’t there something old Benny can do?”

The look again and Zoe had to turn away to hide her distaste. What had she been thinking to invite this nobody up to her place? How could she tell him about this new life that had opened up for her, about the Doctor and Amy and the things she’d done, things she didn’t even understand herself.

Ben sat down on the sofa and patted the place next to him. “Now come on, Zoe. You invited me over for a reason. Now why don’t you get comfortable and tell me about it?”

The look again. The memory of Jack’s crowd—the easy sex, the laughter and drugs, the way the girls were passed around like hash pipes. She wasn’t that way anymore. She had strength now, a strength she felt but didn’t yet understand. Her work with the Doctor had done something to her and she realized she didn’t have to sit here and suffer anymore.

The strength emerged now. It emerged like it had when she’d first masturbated for the Doctor, or when she had used her body to make the man in the devil mask come. It emerged the way it had as she’d watched Amy trying to orgasm, taken her in her arms and led her to climax. It emerged as it had emerged then, as a feeling of her desirability, her own sexual power. What had the Doctor said? She had a talent.

She had the strange certainty now that she was stronger than Ben. She was possibly stronger than Jack. The things the Doctor had made her do had somehow given her strength, and she felt it well up in her now, a sense of her own sexual power.

She walked over to the sofa and stood in front of him and saw the gratifying look of surprise on his face. “You want to sleep with me, don’t you, Ben? Well, it’s not going to happen. I’m sorry I invited you up here, but you’ve got nothing I want.”

The look again. “I wouldn’t be so sure. Why don’t you try me, Zoe?”

She looked at him for a long moment, waiting until he squirmed. She took hold of her sweater and pulled it up over her head and dropped it in his lap. She was wearing one of her new bras, a nice one and she knew she looked great in it. She ran her thumbs up under the straps and let them snap into place.

“I’ve got news for you,” she said. “And for Jack. And for the rest of the gang. I’ve got some new friends now. They don’t screw around like you guys do. These people play for real. You think you’re up for that?”

She walked into the middle of the room, in front of the television set. She remembered the man in the devil mask, what she’d done with him, the size of his cock. She remembered the Doctor’s hands under the cone of light. She kept her eyes on Ben and unbuttoned her jeans, took hold of the zipper and pulled it down.

“Jesus, Zoe! What’s with you? You were never like this.”

Her body was a weapon. She could feel the energy in it. Ben was already hard and awkwardly trying to hide it and Zoe walked across the room so he could get a look at her, a body he could never hope to master.

“Come on,” she said. “I’ll tell you what. You strip for me. Get me hot, and if you do a good job, I’ll strip for you. What do you say?”

“Strip?” He tried to laugh. “Are you crazy?”

“No. I want you to get me hot. I don’t just roll over for anyone, Benny. You want some of this, you’ve got to prove you’re worthy.”

He laughed again, a quick, incredulous bark, then pulled a throw pillow into his lap. “You’re nuts, Zoe! You’ve gone ‘round the bend!”

She came over and pulled the pillow away from him. His erection showed clearly through his pants, tenting the fabric. It was just as she thought. She was a weapon, a force of nature. She couldn’t believe she’d never known it before.

She threw a leg over his and straddled him, kneeling on the sofa. She took his hair in her hands and lowered her mouth to his.

He was the Doctor, the man in the mask and Amy’s loneliness all rolled into one. Zoe devoured his mouth, biting his lips and licking them even as she knew he was none of these things, then she kissed him again out of hatred and revenge.

“Jesus, Zoe! Let’s go in the bedroom, huh?”

“No,” she said. “Right here.”

“Whatever you say, Zoe. You’re the boss.”

You’re goddamned right, she thought.

She got off him, half disgusted with herself now. He was so easy, so transparent. She swiped her sweater up from the couch and put it on. She was done with him.

“Afraid not, Benny. Show’s over. Time to go home.”

He looked at her incredulously. “Why, you bitch…”

Zoe poked her head through the sweater, her jaw set. “You’re a nice enough guy, Ben, but you’re not for me and I’m not the same lost little girl I used to be. I grew up. You wouldn’t even want me now. I’m done being a victim.”

“Bitch! You invited me up here, lead me on and then throw me out?”

Something snapped in Zoe then. The power flooded her.

“You want to get off? Just for old time’s sake? Something to remember me by. Okay. Wait here.”

She walked into the bathroom and got a jar of hand cream and a box of tissues. She came back, put the tissues on the table and opened the hand cream. “Open your pants,” she said.

Ben smiled. “All right! How about you take off your sweater again and I rub some on your tits?”

Zoe glowered at him. “You don’t touch me, understand? You so much as lay a finger on me and I’m done. You can take your hard-on outside and beat off in your car. I’m doing this because I made a mistake, that’s all. Because I should never have invited you over. This is your sympathy sex, Ben, because I feel bad for you.”

That didn’t seem to bother him. He opened his belt and fly and pushed his pants down around his knees. “Hey, whatever,” he said.

It was an eerie thrill. It was like the man in the devil mask, only now she was in control. Ben put his hands behind his head and leaned back and Zoe set to work, gripping his hard shaft and running her greasy fist up and down, making him jump and groan. She played him like a violin, feeling a delicious sense of control unlike anything she’d ever felt before. It was a sense of control, of using herself in order to use someone else. And all the while he sat there, his fingers digging into the sofa, his breath ragged in his throat, his hips jerking puppetlike in response to her ministrations.

She gripped him hard and slowly pumped his big cock, imitating the devil-man, and when she had him almost to the point of tears, she started pumping him fast, squeezing hard. She studied his face, his helplessness. She thought of Jack, how afraid she’d been of him and his masculine potency. She thought of the Doctor’s hands folded under his cone of light as he made her do things—all the sex, all the desire and need, as if the world were filled with it, as if it was the only thing that existed.

“Ahh! God! Oh Fuck! Oh! Oh!”

Ben’s hips jerked off the sofa, once, twice, and Zoe felt his cock throb like an animal squirming in a trap as a big bolt of white semen erupted from the tip, arced into the air and splattered back down onto his stomach, followed by another, and another again, until the cum was streaming from his shriveling prick, sliding over her knuckles and into his matted pubic hair.

* * * * *

She sat in her heartbreak window, smoking a joint and drinking a glass of wine. Her cat sat with her, his paws tucked demurely against his chest with a calm known only to the neutered. She gazed across the rooftops at the Doctor’s building and wondered if he were up, perhaps talking to Amy, perhaps talking about her.

She would take him up on his offer of free rent. She knew just where she’d put the cameras, so that the next time she had someone like Ben over, he’d be able to see everything.

He intended to devote more time to her, did he? That was fine with her, because she was certain now that he was doing something to her. All the things he had her do in the experiment room were done for a purpose. He was teaching her about her own sexual power. He was healing her. She didn’t know why or what she’d done to deserve this, but she had no doubt as to what the effect of the work had been on her so far. She felt invigorated, sexual, desirable and—most of all—powerful.

She wet her fingertips and pinched out the end of the joint, then threw the roach into the little dope tin and covered it. She lifted her hand, the hand she’d used on Ben, the same one she’d used on Amy, and she looked at it—pretty fingers, nice nails for a waitress, nothing unusual about it at all.

Yes, she’d let him put his cameras up. She’d let herself be watched. In fact, she liked the idea. And in a week she’d go see him and have sex with a man according to their new understanding. She was quite sure she knew who it would be and she could hardly wait.

Chapter Four

When Zoe told the Doctor she wanted him to fix her up with a man, she was fairly certain he’d choose himself and though she’d never admit it, she had absolutely no objection. In the weeks since the experiment had begun, her feelings for him had swung between adoration and hatred, but her depth of involvement had only increased. He’d become almost a mythic figure to her, controlling her emotions, determining her sensations, reaching in and actually altering the course of her life, and it was no wonder that she dreamed of him, even though she’d never seen his face.

She wasn’t surprised then when it took him less time to set things up than he’d said. Three days later, on a Thursday, Amy called Zoe and asked her if she could be at the Doctor’s the next day at eleven in the morning. When Zoe asked why, Amy said she didn’t know. The Doctor had just told her to call Zoe and arrange an eleven o’clock appointment because he had “made the arrangements as per her request”.

“He made me write it down and told me to say just that,” Amy said. “
Arrangements as per your request
.”

“You know what this is about, don’t you?” Zoe asked her. Then, realizing Amy probably didn’t know, she added, “I told him I wanted a man. I told him I wanted to get laid.”

“Oh?” Amy said. She hadn’t known and, strangely, she didn’t seem especially interested. “Well, I suppose that’s what he was talking about then.” She laughed and said, “I’ll see you tomorrow then. Good luck!”