The Mammoth Book of Short Erotic Novels (65 page)

By now, most of us prefer the food.

“Children!” Scratch was saying. We don’t
have
any candles, do we?” He was sounding mighty anxious.

None of us looked at him. We all stared down at our plates, like we were fascinated by the geometric pattern on the ceramic pottery, and concentrated on swallowing and chewing.

“Alexandra, dear?” he said,

My heart sinks when he calls my name. I have no idea why he drags me into these discussions. I could care less about what’s “hot”.

“Yes, sir?” I said, trying to sound interested, instead of scared. I’m scared of Scratch. I wish I weren’t. But I am.

“Alex, don’t you think we
need
some candles in this house? After all, we’re the fashion vanguard. Aren’t we?” He looked stricken. The thought of being less
than “cutting-edge” terrifies Scratch. At heart, he’s a wimp. That doesn’t change the power dynamics much.

“Please look at me, Alexandra. I’m tired of the back of your head. That’s better, honey. If candles are in a mainstream glossy like
Vogue
. . . what does that say to
you?”

“I dunno, sir. Not my area. I’m arts and letters. Remember, sir?” I tried to sneer at him, to show a grain of irreverence. I do that every now and then, as a mark of
self-respect. Usually, I’m as subservient as possible. We all are. That’s the job.

“Can’t it only mean one thing, Alex? Aren’t we a step
behind
the trend? Or, even . . . Oh, no! Have we
missed
the trend, my slavegirl? Are candles over, do you
think?”

I bit my lip. If I said “Yes”, he’d punish Gregory.

But if I said “No”, he’d punish me.

I tried to hedge. “
Candles
”, I said in a tone that I hoped was deeply contemplative, as if I were mulling over a Zen koan. “Candles.”

That’s the way we’ve all learned to talk to Scratch. We repeat whatever he says. He might walk into the studio and announce, “Platform shoes.” And we’ll all try to
seem surprised and look at one another, frowning and nodding like we’d never heard of platform shoes before. Each of us will say “
Platforms
”, with as much passion as we can
muster. After a minute or so, you just hear this chorus of “Platforms, platforms.” Or neck scarves, or slave bracelets, or tattoos, or whatever.

It works, sometimes.

Anyway, all he did this morning was to send Gregory out to Dolce and Gabbana’s new housewares shop on Via della Spiga to buy four dozen scented candles. Gregory was delighted. Scratch
hadn’t let him out of the basement for a month. He’s been down there since the Rust Incident.

The studio has a pungent odor at the moment, because Scratch recently bought a year’s supply of herbal oils. The house is filled with black ironwork lanterns, floor
pillows, pottery and tiles. Scratch redecorates the whole place twice a year.

This season, the key word is “Morocco”.

If you’re Scratch, Morocco means black ironwork lanterns, floor pillows, pottery, and – on the floors and walls – Moroccan tiles.

If you’re Scratch, Morocco means blue, yellow and rust. That’s the colour scheme. It’s Morocco. Morocco’s “in”.

The glass inside the lanterns casts splotches of coloured light onto the tiled floors.

That light is blue, yellow and red.

Red glass.
Red
. Not rust.

If you’re Scratch, that mistake is very bad.

If you’re Gregory, it’s a disaster.

“Rust,” Scratch told us at breakfast one day last month. It was our first Moroccan morning – right after the Moroccan redecoration project had been completed. We were eating
bread served on handmade Moroccan pottery. In a mood of celebration which turned out to be premature, we were sipping tea from handpainted Moroccan mugs.

Scratch turned to each of us and addressed us, mournfully, in turn. “
Rust
, Matthew,” he said. “Katrina, slavegirl,
rust
. Rust, Tomas, my dear young slaveboy.
Alex. Sweetslave. Rust?”

“Rust,” I answered, in my most consoling tone.

“Rust, rust,” we all began to murmur.

The only one who didn’t say anything was Gregory. He sat there, biting his lips and getting pale.

Gregory has a degree in architecture. Interior decoration is his area.

We tried saying “rust” for a while, but our voices got softer and softer. It wasn’t working, and we knew it.

Gregory got up from the table and went down into the basement. Scratch followed. The rest of us trembled and kept quiet.

Gregory screamed all morning long. I couldn’t get a word written. There was no place to hide. He could be heard on every floor. By eleven o’clock, we were all in tears. Even the
models and the hairdressers, who don’t usually give a shit about anyone. We had to put on our headphones and turn the volume on our CD Walkmans up to ten.

At noon, the screaming stopped. Scratch came upstairs and strolled into the studio. His face was flushed. He threw himself down on the yellow leather couch and began to inspect his claws, which
are painted blue. He put one in his mouth and chewed on it, sighing contentedly.

We took our CD Walkmans off and got to work.

Gregory cried for hours afterwards. We each took turns sneaking down the back stairs to see him. He had a black eye and his chest and back were covered with blood. A piece of his left nipple was
missing. Scratch had torn out his nipple ring. Aside from that, he looked all right. It wasn’t half as bad as the time Gregory stuck his nose into the fashion end of things and advised
Scratch to shave off his goatee.

I untied Gregory’s hands and tried to put some disinfectant on his tit, but he wouldn’t let me.

“Don’t worry,” he reassured me, “I’ll be okay.”

I handed him a tissue and he blew his nose.

“I wish I hadn’t let him down like that”, he said. “His approval means a lot to me, Alex. I respect him.”

I left him to himself, since I had half a chapter to finish before sunset – and I was still recovering from the night before, when I hadn’t met my deadline. We all gave up on Gregory
a long time ago. Getting punished can be confusing, but Gregory actually likes
Scratch
. That’s what’s so pathetic.

Then again, Gregory’s under more pressure than some of us. Architecture and design are more important to Scratch than anything in print. I never get more than bruises and bloody welts.
Tomas, the Brazilian painter who lives on the ground floor, gets whipped regularly, too. Katrina, the dancer from Vienna, claims she gets a sharpened stick up her ass, but we doubt the veracity of
that. Even Scratch has limits.

Matthew, an American sculptor who lives on the top floor, in the penthouse, has had his arms and face cut up with razor blades half a dozen times. Apparently, he was letting people do that to
him before he got here. Out of all of us, I’d say Matthew gets along best with Scratch. Not counting the fashion people, obviously. They don’t live with us. They’re only at the
studio during the day, from ten to six.

No one knows what Scratch does to
them
. Whatever it is, it doesn’t happen on the premises. The models and the makeup artists, the production assistants and the stylists have all got
their own apartments. When it comes to fashion, Scratch makes housecalls.

I was an easy mark for Scratch. Since adolescence, I’ve had a weakness for melodrama and bad men: guys who everyone knows will be unfaithful, the ones who radiate danger,
talk you into selling heroin, or ask you to sleep with their best friends so they can watch.

I got interested in Scratch’s grainy old black-and-white photographs long before I ever knew him personally, around the time I moved to New York City from Pittsburgh after college. I loved
the crooked camera angles. I loved the sweatstains and the smeared mascara. I loved the hint of perversion and decay. In the old days, Scratch wasn’t selling anything. Aside from that, his
work’s unchanged. What he’s best known for now are the magazine ads which, as he puts it, “push the buttons, just so far”. Like the series he did for Ferragosto shoes, with
the cop, the nun, and a pair of slingback sandals. He won an award for that one.

About Scratch himself, I’d only heard rumours. I’d been told that he was wanted by the FBI for pandering, and that he had Mafia connections. What intrigued me, though, were the
reports that he gave money to the arts. Stories floated around about artists and writers who’d had chance encounters with Scratch. They’d described their projects to him. He’d
given them money, based on the “concept”, in advance.

I met Scratch in SoHo the night after my thirtieth birthday. I was in a crowded bar on Prince Street. I saw him from across the room and didn’t recognize him. The newspapers keep running a
retouched photo of him, so I didn’t know exactly what he looked like. Even though he was wearing dark glasses, and he was wrinkled and balding, some part of me must have understood that it
was him. An excited shiver ran through me when I looked in his direction. I walked across the room and stood a few paces away from him, at the bar. He was flanked by a tall, sun-tanned couple,
dressed identically in velvet, They were too gorgeous to be considered human.

When I heard the gorgeous woman call the older guy “Scratch”, I knew what I had to do. I was ready for it. I took three long strides – as slinkily as possible – in the
direction of the Devil.

I undid a couple of my shirt buttons.

No results. He kept on talking to the Gorgeous Creatures.

I propped one high-heeled boot on the rung of a bar stool.

Still, nothing.

I hiked my skirt up and ran my hand along my thigh.

Scratch glanced in my direction.

Suggestively, I ran the tip of my tongue across my upper lip.

Bingo.

A moment later, he moved to the empty bar stool right beside me, making that Darth Vader wheezing sound I’d read about. He huddled over his beer, hunching his shoulders with his head down,
so that I couldn’t see his face. He searched his pockets, took out a velvet ski cap, and put it on, pulling it down low over his forehead.

He was acting like he didn’t want to be recognized. It’s the same game Scratch always plays.

“Excuse me, sir,” I said, coming up behind him. “May I ask you something?”

He pushed his sunglasses down on his nose.

“Yes, dear?” he said. “Ask.”

I looked straight into those eyes, the long-lashed eyes that resemble a cow’s – dark brown, without a pupil or an iris. I’d read descriptions of them in
People
magazine.

I leaned forward and whispered in his hairy pointed ear. “Are you Scratch, the fashion photographer?”

“Why do you ask that, darling?” he whispered back, so that I felt his breath on my neck. “If I were, what difference would it make?”

“Well, sir, you’d get a decent blow job out of it, for one thing.”

He smiled, wanly. “In that case, my dear, old Scratch would be inclined to answer yes.”

I grabbed him by the arm and led him to the men’s room. A guy was pissing in there. He nodded “hi” at us. We nodded back while we walked into a stall. I sat down on the lid of
the toilet. Scratch undid his pants and pulled out a flaccid dick. I licked its shaft twice, slowly.

Limp.

I gave his head a tongue kiss.

Nothing.

I slurped his whole worm down my throat.

Bingo. An erection.

I proceeded to treat Scratch to a lengthy session of deep-throating. I nearly gagged twice, but both times I kept it to myself, recovered quickly, and bounced right back in there. By the time
Scratch started to whimper, tears were running down my face and my chin was full of drool. I slugged back a tablespoonful of cum.

For the record, Scratch’s cock is a hammerhead, bulbous at the end, and I’d say about five inches when erect.

“Haven’t I seen you on TV?” Scratch asked me, when I stood up. He was zipping up his fly. “You’re an actress, aren’t you?”

I rolled my eyes at this old line. Scratch didn’t notice, luckily. “No, sir, I’m not an
actress
.”

“What a shame. You could be one, you know. You belong among the world’s young beauties.”

What he meant was, he liked the way I sucked his cock.

“Thank you, sir. You’re exaggerating.”

“No, dear. Beauty has nothing to do with what you look like. It’s all lighting and cosmetics.”

“
Oh
.” Full of flattery, Scratch is. What a guy.

“Are you a dancer, then? A video artist? Let me guess.”

“I’m an emerging writer, sir.”

“An unknown author,” he sighed. “How pitiful. Most unfortunate. Not much money in that these days.”

“You said it, sir”, I agreed. I unlatched the stall door and walked over to the sink. Scratch stood beside me, while I washed my hands and face. At the urinals across the room, two
guys pretended to ignore us.

“Unless, of course, you have a marketable concept.” He held the door open for me. “Do you, child? What’s your name?”

“Alexandra Bellamy. Call me Alex if you want, sir.”

“Do you have a marketable concept, young Alex who sucks off strangers in the men’s room?”

“You bet I have a concept. And, sir, I’m anxious to sell it.”

“I thought you might be. Shall we go someplace quiet to discuss it?”

“Sure thing, sir. Thanks.”

“It’s my pleasure.” Scratch came to a stop in the middle of the hallway and extended his hand, formally. I shook it, checking to see if his fingers were covered with fur, like
I’d read, but he was wearing velvet gloves.

(“Velvet! Sad news, young friends. It’s history. I’m thinking nylon. Aren’t you, my little sweetslaves?”)

He looked down at his heavy silver wristwatch. “My club should be open for another hour or two. Shall we?”

We made our way past the tables. I felt totally at ease. It was as if I’d just jumped out of an airplane and discovered I could fly.

I wasn’t scared of Scratch. Not yet.

As we approached the exit, I turned towards the bar and saw the tall couple in dark sunglasses watching us, a crestfallen expression on their perfect faces.

“Go to hell, Gorgeous Creatures,” I thought. Scratch would rather fuck
me
.