Erotic Amusements (13 page)

“Me? Yes. I thought I’d found my dream woman in Babs when she let me gag her and so on, but it turned out she was just humouring me. Threw it all right back in my face in the end. Told her lawyer I’d forced her into all my disgusting pervy ways. Lying cow. She came hard enough when we were at it. Thought she could take me for half of everything, but my lawyer did a great job. And she couldn’t stay in Goldsands after the divorce. My friends made sure of that.”

“You drove her out of the country?”

“She wanted Laura. I wasn’t having that. She wasn’t taking my girl.”

“I wonder what Laura would say if she knew half of what you get up to.”

“Don’t go there. I make sure my girl’s protected. She’s untouchable. I don’t care what happens to me, as long as she’s happy. To paraphrase the song, everything I do, I do it for her.”

Does that include your little performance here tonight?
But Michelle left the thought unsaid.

“That’s nice.” She yawned. “So I’ll save the artichokes for Mr. Cordwainer’s visits, then.”

“Visits? He isn’t coming here anymore, love.”

“What?” Michelle twisted in the chains, suddenly feeling horribly trapped. “What do you mean?” If she could have sat bolt upright, she would have done.

“Didn’t he say? He’s signed you over to me. You’re mine now, love. Totally mine. He’s got his eye on somebody else.”

“I…but…he didn’t say…”

Michelle felt panic bubbling up inside, constricting her throat, causing her to tug harder on the chains.

“I thought it was understood, love.” Trewin sounded surprised. “These last few days were the handover period, y’know. A chance for me to watch Cordwainer and learn from how he handles you. Before becoming your sole owner.”

“He didn’t…” Michelle thought she was choking, the words coming out in hoarse leaks of sound. “He didn’t say goodbye. He didn’t say…”

Trewin, alarmed, uncuffed her from the bed and held on to her wrists, willing her to calm down and start breathing properly.

“Hey, hey, it’s not so bad. I’m not so bad, am I?”

“He didn’t…say…goodbye…” The words shuddered out, accompanied now by tears.

“I thought he would have told you,” Trewin said helplessly. “He’s a right bastard when he wants to be. I’m sorry, love.”

“You…knew…”

“I thought you wanted it. Do you want me to…?”

“Go…please…go…now,” sobbed Michelle, and Trewin needed no second bidding. He raced into his clothes, dragged a comb through his hair and was on the phone to the cab company before three minutes had elapsed.

“Michelle,” he said, as if desperately needing to say something to her. “I hope we can still…”

“Just go.” she wept, and he went.

Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised
, she thought, wet face buried in the pillow, shoulders heaving with grief.
Perhaps I should have expected it.
She tried to think back, to remember those small gestures of affection or esteem that had duped her into thinking Charles Cordwainer had ever cared about her.

There had been meals for two by candlelight, but they had always taken place at her hotel or in his office. He had never taken her out, except to events in private houses where she was expected to display her skills of submission. He had often praised her obedience, especially after these gatherings, when she’d lain on a rug covered in semen, all orifices plumbed to their maximum extent. It sounded strange, but he had never hurt her. Only in the ways she wanted to be hurt. He had seemed to
know
her, and to understand her limits before she even defined them. There had to be something in that, didn’t there? Some level of spiritual kinship that went beyond the conventional hearts-and-flowers romantic gestures. They had been two, together, complicit against the world. She had thought it love, of a kind. She had been so wrong.

Bitterly she dried her tears and switched on her bedside lamp, hugging her knees to her chest and thinking.

He had tired of her, that was all. Her youthful bloom was fading and, although she practised yoga obsessively, she wasn’t as flexible as she used to be. He had his eye on someone else, did he? Some fresh-faced little innocent straight from school, no doubt, who would look the part and ask no questions and be overwhelmed and flattered at the attentions of this rich, influential older man. God, men were so fucking shallow, after all. All at once she knew who her replacement was. It had to be that little blonde in the change booth at the arcade, so new and fresh and young, hardly more than twenty.
Oh, I wish you well, girl
.
I wish you all the good things I had. And if you’re the one to make him human, then you deserve a medal.

She went to the mirror and looked at her sore, naked bottom.
If only I’d known the last marks he gave me would be just that.
She pinched the welts, hating the fact that they came from Trewin and not Cordwainer. Now she had nothing of him, no reminders, apart from…She took off the collar and flung it into an obscure corner of the room. “I’m free,” she said aloud. “And you’re going to be sorry, Charles Cordwainer. So very sorry. I might just be an object to you, but I have a mind and a heart and things that are important to me. And I’m going to use them. Wait and see.”

Flipp never got letters, so she was quite astonished to receive one, addressed to “The Girl Behind the Change Counter,” care of Caesar’s Palace on the Pier. At least her own real name wasn’t on the small square envelope—that would have been enough to send her scooting back to her bedsit to pack her belongings posthaste. But it was odd nonetheless.

She opened it and studied the small, scrawly hand.

“Secret admirer?” Cordwainer, who had handed her the letter himself whilst sorting through the morning’s post, asked.

“Um, yeah. Something like that.”

“How romantic. I suppose he’s too shy to proposition you over the air hockey table, so he’s resorted to the old-fashioned love letter. A dying art, alas. Is it a poem?”

She shook her head, laughing nervously. “Nah. No poetry. It’s just silly.” She scrunched the paper up and threw it into the bin behind her.

“Ah, another heart breaks into a million pieces,” Cordwainer said with a sly smile. Flipp wondered why everybody was obsessed with the idea that he was after her. He had to be over forty. Still, he was pretty good-looking, if you liked that kind of thing. Suits and ties and stuff. It wasn’t for her, though.

“Between you and me,” he said, alarming her by bending close to the plastic screen of the booth, “I think you’re doing the right thing. I can’t imagine any of the oiks that frequent this place being worthy of you. You’re in a different league to them.”

“Oh. Thanks.” She smiled tightly and pretended to be counting out fifty-pence pieces.

“I’ll need you to work some overtime tonight,” he said, straightening up, suddenly brisk and businesslike again, rather to Flipp’s relief.

“Really? Tonight?” Flipp tried to keep the dismay out of her voice, but she had planned to go over to Rocky’s flat for…dinner. Well, sex. Sex and dinner.

“That’s what I said, isn’t it? Just a little stock take. Shouldn’t take long. I’ll stand you dinner afterwards. How’s that for a sweetener?”

Rubbish.
But Flipp didn’t say it. Dinner with Cordwainer just wasn’t going to compare with dinner with Rocky. But she kept the grudge out of her voice, offering an airy, “Thanks,” before watching him disappear upstairs to his office.

Rocky breezed in an hour later, stopping for his usual brief flirt at the change booth before going upstairs to wait on his paymaster.

“Rocky,” she whispered urgently, opening the booth door so they could hear each other over the relentless bleeping and electronic music. “What do you make of this?” She handed him the scrunched-up note, which he scanned gravely.

“Well, it’s what I’ve been saying all along, isn’t it? But I didn’t write it, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“Of course not. But who did?”

“I’ve no idea. I don’t recognise the handwriting. But whoever it is, they’re talking a lot of sense. Get another job, Flipp.”

“I’ve told you, it isn’t that easy.”

“Have you tried?”

She sighed. “Okay. I’ll have a look and see what’s going.”

“You do that. There must be a chambermaid or bar job going spare. Just make sure Cordwainer doesn’t own the place first. Then we can go public.” He looked around to make sure nobody was watching and kissed the tip of her ear.

“Is that what you want?” Flipp asked, suddenly flooded with hopeful joy. Rocky spoke as if they had a future. She hadn’t even thought about the future, in any form, until now. She had expected to carry on living in the moment forever.

“Of course it is. I want to show you off around town. Give the lads something to be jealous of. Make them see that the hottest property in Goldsands is all mine.”

He laid a hand lightly on her backside. She wanted to push him back against the change counter and ravish him then and there.

“Oh, I want to do things to you,” he murmured into her ear. “Very bad things. But I’d better wait till tonight.”

It nearly killed Flipp to step away from his masculine heat and leathery scent, but she managed it somehow.

“Can’t do tonight,” she said with an apologetic grimace. “Cordwainer’s asked me to do overtime.”

“He’s what?”

“It’s just a stock take, Rocky. Jesus. Calm down.”

“I can’t…Listen, I can’t talk now. When’s your lunch break?”

“Two.”

“Meet me…oh, I don’t know…meet me on the pier steps—you know the ones? They go down the side of the pier. We should be safe from view down there.”

“Okay.” Flipp, worried, watched him swagger off to the stairs. She had never had much of a sense of danger, but suddenly all her alarms were going off at full blast.

“I brought us some chips.” Flipp stepped delicately down the seaweed-slippery iron stairs to the platform at their foot, where Rocky stood brooding at the sea over the railing.

“Thanks.”

She joined him for a moment, leaning against the Victorian iron, watching the sea froth and lap against the pier’s legs. Down here, it seemed that you entered a different realm from the high, happy, sunny fun of the pleasure pier. Metal struts and bars crossed and intersected in a nightmare of tangled ironmongery while the air was cold and the wooden slats of the pier above conferred darkness on the platform. The sea was loud and menacing, the thing that drowned sailors rather than the thing that you bathed and splashed in.

Flipp shivered. “Chip?” She offered the cardboard cone, breathing in its reassuring salt-and-vinegar tang, using it to insulate her against the fear. Rocky took one and munched on it contemplatively before taking her by the hand and wrapping her into his arms so that they both looked out from the same vantage point, his chin on the top of her head.

“I’ll tell you what’s going to happen if you stay at the arcade,” he said. “You’ll be the next in a long line.”

“Long line of what?”

“Cordwainer doesn’t ask for references. Have you ever wondered why?”

“Not really. Too busy thanking my lucky stars.”

“I think he’s thanking
his
lucky stars for the day you walked in. Pretty girl, no references, something to hide, something he can use as leverage.”

“You think he wants to…blackmail me?”

“I think he thinks you’re desperate. And you’ll do anything to hang on to your anonymous little job. Is he right?”

Flipp craned her neck up at Rocky. “No,” she said. “But I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t have this job.”

“Claim benefits?”

“Can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Oh, Rocky, just
tell
me, will you? Tell me what this grave danger is. I suppose you think he’s going to try and get me into bed. Is that it? I’ll say no, that’s all.”

“He’ll sack you.”

“Not if I play it right. I bet Cordwainer’s a man who likes the chase. If I hold out on him, I’ll just pique his interest.”

“Too risky.”

“But it buys me some time.”

“He’ll want more than your body, Flipp.”

“What, you mean he’s a secret preacher man and he wants to convert me?”

Rocky’s grip on her tightened and she almost spat out the chip she had popped into her mouth.

“Sweetheart, do me a favour and take me seriously. I’m not joking.” Rocky’s face was stern as the greying skies above.

“Well, come on. It’s all a bit melodramatic. He’s going to seduce me and then suck out my soul. This isn’t some flipping vampire movie.”

“I’ll tell you a story. It’s a true story. A couple of years ago, the girl who had your job was called Loulou. She was pretty and smart, like you, and she had no references, like you. Cordwainer found out pretty quickly that she had a past involving prison and drug rehab. It had been Loulou’s chance to start again with a clean slate, but when your boss heard about it, he wouldn’t let her forget it. He said he couldn’t employ a criminal in his arcade. He didn’t want any fingers in the till. But there was another job she could have—one with no access to cash.”

“Right,” Flipp breathed. “What was the job?”

“She could be a hostess. In his private club.”

“His private club?”

“It’s a fetish club. The hostess gets to dress in rubber and get whipped and fucked by all comers.”

Flipp’s jaw dropped. She had been expecting some tawdry tale of seduction and abandonment, but this took everything several steps further.

“You think he’ll…offer me the same deal?”

“I don’t know if he knows your secret—whatever it is—yet. But when he finds out…He’s just given his submissive to another man. He has a vacancy, Flipp.”

“Shit.”

“Exactly.”

Flipp crumpled the empty chip cone and stuffed it into her bag before clasping cold fingers around Rocky’s jacketed forearms.

“What happened to Loulou?”

“A rich banker type bought her off Cordwainer. Paid top dollar, apparently, because he had ‘trained’ her so well. I think he keeps her as a ponygirl now.”

“A whattygirl?”

“Ponygirl…Oh, never mind. It’s what it sounds like, pretty much. The main point I’m making is, if you want to keep on eating off plates instead of nosebags, you need to get away from Cordwainer.”

“I don’t see how I can. You haven’t got away from him, have you? And you obviously want to.”

“He knows too much about me,” muttered Rocky. “Look, love. Whatever you don’t want him to know—you have to tell me. I need to know the worst. I can’t help you unless I have the full picture. And I want to help you more than anything. I want you out of this mess.”

“Wouldn’t that endanger you, though? If Cordwainer is as dodgy as all that…”

“Leave Cordwainer to me. I can handle him. I need the truth. Don’t worry about telling me. Whatever it is, I’m bound to have done worse.”

She turned around to face him, snug in his arms, but feeling as vulnerable as she had ever done.

“Okay,” she whispered, putting her hands on his shoulders and staring up into his face. It always gave her a rush, the sight of him, his eyes linked to hers, and despite her fear, that quick swooning thrill darted from tip to toe. “I’ll tell you tonight. After work.”

“You mean you’re still doing the overtime?” Rocky’s disapproval made her quake in her Converse, but she held his gaze without flinching.

“I don’t think he knows anything. Yet. I can fend him off, Rocky. Or at least just give him a little bit to go on. I need time to think. I can’t just cut and run.”

“Call in sick, for God’s sake.”

“He’ll smell a rat.”

“He
is
a rat.”

“I know how to handle rats, babe. Trust me. I’ll be all right.”

“I want to forbid you, Flipp.”

“Well, you can’t. You can’t tell me what to do. Not until tonight.” She winked, trying to be breezy, then her face crumpled. “Oh, don’t look like that. Give me a hug or a kiss or something.”

He blew out, ruffling her hair, and rolled his eyes, then surprised her by ducking down for a long, crushing kiss, transmitting warmth to their chilly bodies. Flipp wished he would go on kissing her forever, nowhere felt so much like home as his arms. But kisses have to end, and his did with a strong hand at the back of her neck, drawing her forehead against his.

“I’m not going to argue with you here,” he said in a low, serious voice. “But I don’t like what you’re going to do, and I want you to know that. I also want you to know that you’re to ring me the moment you get out of there. Take my spare phone—it’s the one I don’t use for Cordwainer’s business. And if it starts to look as if things are getting out of control, I want you to get into the loo and text me straightaway. Will you at least do that for me?”

“I promise.”

He kissed her forehead, grabbing a handful of the back of her hair before releasing her. “Go on, before I change my mind and drag you away on the bike.”

How he tempts me
, thought Flipp ruefully, darting back up the pier steps to the light and warmth of the summer. But that temptation would have to be postponed for now.

“This shouldn’t take long,” said Cordwainer, businesslike, clipboard in hand, standing in front of the 3D Motor Racing simulator. Behind his suited form, endless animated Formula One cars sped through chequered flags before crashing spectacularly. “I just need you to list each machine and write a brief comment about its state of repair. If you think it is in need of repair or replacement, underline the comment, please. I’ll be in my office—just come upstairs and knock when you’ve finished.”

There was nothing in his speech or manner to suggest that his intentions were sleazy, Flipp decided. This was simple, face-value overtime, nothing more.

“Understood,” said Flipp with a smile she strove to keep more professional than friendly. “Thanks.”

Cordwainer handed her the clipboard and disappeared upstairs, leaving Flipp entirely alone in the flashing, noisy, empty room. How sinister it seemed without the ranks of acne-cratered youth and the bombastic dads bent on hooking a cheap fluffy toy for their kids. Nobody had hooked the tragic-looking lime-green acrylic duck from its nest of plastic treasure eggs that day and it sat fixing her with a reproachful stare as she went about her business, checking that the mechanism was in working order.

“I know it’s a shit life, mate,” she said, making her pencilled note. “But perhaps somebody nice will take you home tomorrow. We can but hope.”

By the time she had completed her inventory, Flipp had to admit she was more than a little spooked. The jingling of coins, the booming voices, the revving engines all gave the impression of vivid activity, but it was all a trick of electronics. She could imagine everyone in the world dropping dead, yet this warped facsimile of life continuing, sirens blaring into the dead night. On reaching Cordwainer’s office door, she almost believed that the apocalypse had been and gone and left just her, alone with the robots.

So it was a relief, in a strange way, to hear his familiar autocratic tone on the other side. “Enter.”

“I’ve done it,” she said, staying well within easy scarpering distance of the door. She held out the clipboard.