Eighty Days Yellow (35 page)

‘Just arrived here.’ Then he came to his senses. ‘What was it you wanted?’

‘A bit difficult at such a distance,’ Lauralynn remarked. ‘I was going to say how much I’d enjoyed our little event. I was just wondering whether you might be interested in organising something else one coming day, but seeing you’re not even in the country, that might be a trifle complicated.’ Her tone dripped with mischief. ‘You’re right. Maybe we can speak another time, when I’m back in London.’ Dominik was being polite and had no intention of setting up such a scene again.

‘I understand,’ Lauralynn said. ‘Pity. It’s just that with Victor also in New York, I’m a bit short of gaming opportunities.’

‘You know Victor?’ Dominik queried.

‘Of course. He’s an old – how shall I put it? – friend,’ she said.

‘I thought he’d come across you and the other musicians who played that day through a card on the college’s noticeboard.’

‘No,’ Lauralynn revealed. ‘Victor actually briefed me about the likely unusual nature of the concert and selected the location. Didn’t you know?’

Dominik swore under his breath. A dark cloud began forming in his mind and his chest tightened.

Victor, that devious libertine of a man, and Summer, both in New York? It couldn’t be a coincidence, could it?

He strengthened his resolve.

‘Lauralynn? Would you know how I could get in touch with him while I’m in the city by any chance?’

‘No problem.’

‘Wonderful.’ He wrote down the address she gave him.

‘You mentioned Summer? Is your trip to New York related to her? Just curious,’ Lauralynn remarked.

‘It is,’ Dominik said, and hung up on her.

He put his jacket on and decided to walk in the nearby park to clear his mind and gather his thoughts before he attempted to reach Victor. Past the small children’s playground, then the dog enclosure, catching sight of the army of squirrels galloping through grass and trees. He found a bench and sat himself down.

Cynthia stood and helped me out of the bath, then wrapped me in a large towel. The water had gone cold. I hadn’t even noticed.

Victor took my hand and led me into yet another room. How big was this place, anyway? A makeshift tattoo parlour. I’d once considered getting a tattoo, before I left New Zealand. Something to remind me of home. I’d decided against it in the end, simply because I couldn’t come up with an image that I wanted to have emblazoned on my skin for ever. Perhaps this would solve that problem: I would get a tattoo, but leave it to someone else to choose the image for me.

I lay down upon the bench that Victor gestured to, still completely naked. He squeezed my hand, the only sign of tenderness that he had ever shown me.

I closed my eyes. I was right. It seemed that he wasn’t going to give me the option to choose a piercing after all.

My mind fell into a blissful nirvana almost without my bidding, preparing for the ache of the needle, which I expected to begin at any moment. The gentle sound of traffic flowing past outside faded to a soft hum. The people in the room, whom I am sure had gathered to watch, became inconsequential, barely even shadowy figures in the background. I thought of my violin, of the sweet journeys that took me on. Sex, and submitting to the power of others, gave me a sense of peace, of calm, but it wasn’t quite like the visions that unfolded as I played the Bailly.

I remembered playing for Dominik, Vivaldi, the first time, though I had been unaware of his presence, and the second time, on the heath. Both times he had witnessed my reverie, seemed to take pleasure in watching the effect that the music had on me.

Dominik. I had almost forgotten my text message. Was my phone buzzing away silently in the cabinet? Had he tried to reach me again?

A hand passed over my navel, then my shaved mound, hovered above me for a moment, perhaps surveying my landscape, choosing the best place to mark me. Would Victor apply the tattoo himself? I wondered.

‘Slave Elena,’ he said, in a deep, formal tone, ‘the moment of your marking has arrived.’

He took a breath and paused for a moment as if about to launch into a speech. Had he prepared vows, like at a wedding? How odd.

‘Now you must forsake your former life and promise to serve me, Victor, in all that I would ask of you, until I choose to release you from service. Do you agree to submit to me, slave, to make your will mine to hold for ever?’

I was on the brink of a precipice, at the edge of one of those moments when the course of your life turns on a knife’s edge, a fleeting choice made in no more time than it takes to draw a breath, but one that might alter your path for ever.

I replied, ‘No.’

‘No?’ Victor whispered, incredulously.

‘No,’ I answered him again. ‘I don’t choose to submit to you.’

I opened my eyes and sat up, suddenly conscious of my nakedness. I tried to summon all the authority that I was able to, in my undressed state. At least Dominik had given me plenty of practice at that.

Victor looked aghast, but small with it. How had I ever felt under the thumb of this man? He was just putting an act on, like they all were.

I pushed through the throng, their faces a mix of shock, embarrassment and concern, some murmuring to each other that this must be part of Victor’s display.

I took my dress from the cabinet, pulled it over my head, picked up my purse and phone, and headed for the door. It was unlocked.

Victor put his foot in the doorway as I swung it shut behind me. ‘You will regret this, Slave Elena.’

‘I don’t think I will. My name is Summer. And I am not your slave.’

‘You’ll never be anything but a slave, girl. It’s in your nature. You will surrender to it eventually. You can’t help it. And look at you – have you not seen yourself? You were wet from the moment you took your clothes off, dripping. Your mind might fight it, but your body will always betray you, slave.’

‘Do not contact me again. I will call the police if you do.’

‘And what will you tell them?’ he sneered. ‘Do you think they will believe a slut like you?’

I turned on my heels and stalked from the room, head held high, though his words still rang in my ears. All I wanted to do was go home. Go home and play my violin.

I walked up Gansevoort Street and hailed a cab, fiddling with my phone from the moment that I got inside so that the driver would not try to engage me in conversation or query my upset state. New York cab drivers are a funny bunch, some as silent as the night and others so friendly it’s hard to make them shut up. I dialled my voicemail and sank into the seat as Dominik’s voice washed over me.

He had missed me. He’d never said anything like that before. I had missed him too, dreadfully.

I stared out of the window at the hubbub of traffic, the sights of the city that had seemed so exciting to me when I first arrived, and now just seemed foreign, other, reminding me that I wasn’t at home, that I didn’t have a home any more.

Dusk was beginning to fall as we passed Washington Square Park, the trees casting dim shadows across the grass like long arms and hands, a choir of greenery. It wouldn’t be really dark for a while yet. There was still time to play.

I had promised Dominik that I wouldn’t take the Bailly out in public, busk with it, that it was too dangerous with an instrument so valuable, but I thought he’d understand, just this once.

The cab dropped me at the door to my apartment and I gave the driver a good tip to thank him for keeping quiet for the whole journey.

I ran up the stairs two at a time, dropping the black dress on the floor as soon as I got inside. I wasn’t sure I wanted to wear it ever again. Perhaps I’d get a new outfit for concerts, one that didn’t hold so many memories. I put on some ordinary clothes, so I wouldn’t draw any more attention to myself than was necessary, picked up the Bailly and headed for the park.

The Washington Square Arch was my chosen spot to play. It reminded me of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, and of places that I wanted to go, of the pictures that Dominik had shown me from his visit to Rome.

I stood by the main fountain, overlooking the arch, and placed the Bailly to my chin, gripped her neck firmly and drew my bow along the strings. As to the question of what to play, my body made that decision before my mind even had time to think.

I closed my eyes and concentrated on the first movement, the ‘Spring’
allegro
, of Vivaldi’s
Four Seasons
.

Time passed, the minutes of my performance going unnoticed until I drew the last section to a close, opened my eyes and realised that it was nearly dark.

Then I heard clapping. Not the raucous clap of an entire audience, just the firm, clear clap of one individual.

I turned, the Bailly held protectively to my side, in case a psychopath was about to launch himself on me and run away with my instrument.

It was Dominik. He had come for me.

Dominik opened his eyes.

It was the witching hour of the night, and just the light of the Washington Square Arch peered through the window of his hotel room. The air-conditioning’s peaceful hiss breezed through the bedroom like a kind, cool wind.

Next to him Summer slept. The quiet sounds of her breath rising and falling in unison with her heart, her shoulder uncovered, just a glimpse of the underside of her breast in the window of vision created by her folded arm, which she held between her chin and the pillow.

He held his own breath.

He remembered the feel of her lips around him as she had taken him for the first time into her mouth, her velvet caress and the delicate way her tongue had curled round the stem of his penis, almost playfully toying with it, tasting it, exploring his texture, inch by minute inch, grazing over the skin and its valley of veins and minuscule promontories.

He had not asked, nor ordered her to do it. It had just happened naturally, like the right thing to do at that moment, as they had both lowered their defences, exposed themselves fully to each other, banishing the past, the mistakes, the roads taken in error and now regretted.

The echoes of the lust he felt for Summer still rushed across his whole being, and Dominik mourned for all the days that he had wasted. Before her, after her. Those days he could never recapture.

He watched her sleep.

Sighed.

In happiness and in sorrow.

Outside the window, joyous voices passed by, trekking back from the bars on Bleecker and MacDougal on their way uptown, and for a brief instant, Dominik felt truly happy that he had found Summer again.

The moments they had shared tonight had been normal, not part of any game.

He fell asleep, lullabied by her presence at his side, the warmth radiating from her naked body next to him as she spooned herself against him like a balm.

He awoke again with dawn still a fillet of light on the Manhattan horizon. Now Summer was awake too, her eyes fixed on him, her gaze curious and affectionate.

‘Good morning,’ she said.

‘Good morning, Summer.’

And then silence again, as if they had all too quickly run out of things to say to each other.

‘You’ll find out I’m also a man of silences,’ Dominik said, apologising for his being lost for words.

‘I can live with that,’ Summer replied. ‘Words aren’t that important. Wildly overrated, I believe.’

Dominik smiled.

Maybe this would work out after all, go beyond the bed and the sex and the darkness he well knew they both harboured deep inside their souls. Maybe.

She extended her hand towards him, rose slightly, one breast cheekily emerging from the covers. Her fingers settled on his chin.

‘Your beard is hard. You need a shave,’ she remarked, stroking him.

‘Yes,’ Dominik confirmed. ‘It’s been at least two days,’ he added.

‘I’m not partial to all marks,’ Summer grinned.

‘Marks won’t always be necessary,’ Dominik pointed out.

‘No, that’s OK,’ she said. ‘I’m sure we’ll find a balance.’

Dominik smiled, touched her uncovered breast with all the delicacy he could muster. ‘Does that mean we can still be—’

‘Friends,’ Summer interrupted him. ‘Maybe not.’

‘More than friends,’ he added.

‘I think so,’ she said.

‘It won’t be easy.’

‘I know.’

Dominik delicately pulled the covers away from her body, exposing her all the way to her pale thighs.

‘I see you’re still shaved,’ he remarked.

‘Yes,’ Summer said. ‘It felt too messy and awkward growing back, and I came to like it that way.’ She didn’t tell Dominik that Victor had ordered her to remain smooth, although it was true that she had learned to enjoy the vulnerability the smoothness of her condition evoked in her heart and mind, and the sheer sensuality of being able to feel herself so naked down there when she touched herself.

‘And if I asked, would you agree to either leave it that way or grow your hair back again?’ Dominik asked. ‘At my whim, or maybe command?’

‘I’ll have to think about it,’ Summer said.

‘And if I ordered you to play the violin for me, would you again?’

Her eyes were shining in the faint morning light.

‘I would,’ she replied. ‘Anytime, anyplace, with clothes or without, any tune, any melody . . .’ She smiled.

‘A gift from you to me?’

‘A submission. In my own style,’ Summer said.

Dominik’s hand moved to her pussy, lingered over her lips, parted them open and slipped a finger inside her with slow deliberation.

Summer moaned softly.

She’d always enjoyed making love in the morning, straight from the drowsy embraces of sleep.

He withdrew his finger, shifted his whole body, slid down the bed and brought his lips to her. Summer gently threaded her fingers through the tousled curls of his hair to hold him in place and control her pleasure.

I opened the door to my apartment, set my violin case gently down on the floor and headed over to my wardrobe. I’d popped back home to pick up a change of clothes. Dominik had just one more night in New York, and he had asked me out for dinner, and a Broadway musical, to celebrate.

It would be an odd celebration. Bittersweet. Our last night together until some unknown point in the future, with the time in between to be spent in the embrace of separate continents.