Nine & a Half Weeks (8 page)

When he stops I open my eyes. “But you beat me anyway,” I whisper, “even when I do what you…” “Yes,” he says. “Because you like hitting me,” I whisper. “Yes,” he says, “and watching you flinch, and holding you down and hearing you beg. I love the sounds when you can’t keep quiet, when you’re past holding back. I love seeing a bruise on you and knowing where it came from, welts on your ass.” I shiver. He reaches back and up and yanks down the old blanket he keeps folded under a cushion in the corner of the couch. He shakes it open and covers me with it and says, tucking the frayed satin binding under my chin, “And because you want it, too.” “I do,” I whisper. “Never then… never while…” “1 know,” he says, close to my ear, his hands deep in my hair, tight and soothing on my scalp.

NO ONE SAW my body except for him, a kid named Jimmy, and a woman whose name I wasn’t told. Sometimes in the bathtub or when I caught my reflection in the mirror, I would regard my bruises with the unfocused curiosity reserved for looking at snapshots of other people’s cousins. They had nothing to do with me. My body had nothing to do with me. It was a decoy, to be used whichever way he decided, toward the end of exciting us both.

WHILE UNDRESSING ME in preparation for my bath he says, “I’ve hired a masseur for tonight.” He drops my blouse onto the white tiles of the bathroom floor. I step out of my skirt and sit on the edge of the tub while he takes off my shoes, then stand up again while he slips down my underpants. He likes my underpants-white cotton, Woolworth’s. He likes this skirt, too; pulling it carefully up over my thighs this morning, he said, “That’s my favorite skirt on you, does your ass justice.” I watch him lean over the tub, push the plug; reach out to pick, after a moment’s hesitation, a brightly printed packet wedged between the bottles lined up on the inside ledge of the tub. He leans forward again to turn on the water, tests its temperature, adjusts the left knob, and sprinkles green powder carefully under the gushing faucets.

It suddenly occurs to me how out of place he looks: a man in a well-fitted business suit, his tie sitting properly between two starched collar points, as if he were about to address a conference table, or speak into a news camera, or listen to yet another story of marital discord in preparation for court. Doing none of the things for which he is dressed, but leaning over a steaming bathtub instead, one hand braced at the edge of the porcelain, the other fingering the rapidly rising foam.

He sniffs: “Not bad, is it? A little sweet maybe, not quite as drenched-in-herbs as they rave on the package, but nice, anyway.” I nod. He smiles at me so full of warmth, of bliss even, that something catches in my throat: all one could ever wish for is a small room filling with steam and the smell of lavender above an undercurrent of mint.

He leaves and comes back with the handcuffs. He fastens them around the wrists I stretch toward him and holds on to my elbow as I step into the water, which is on the verge of being too hot but will, I know, be perfect the moment I’m stretched out in it.

The tub is deep and three-quarters filled and I have to tilt my chin up to keep the bubbles out of my mouth. Only when he has turned off the water and glanced at me once more does he loosen his tie and take off his coat.

I hear him rummage in the kitchen, his footsteps sharp on the tiles, then muffled on the living room carpet…. SHARED THE SECRETS OF MY SOUL…Kris Kristofferson glides across slopes of foam. We have listened to WQXR only once since I have mentioned in passing, during the course of God-knows-which forgotten conversation, that the station now playing is my favorite. He had told me that an obscure Vivaldi was scheduled that he had never heard. “You don’t need to explain” I had wailed, “change the station, it’s your apartment!” He had grinned and winked at me and said, “I know,” and later decided that it hadn’t been first-rate Vivaldi but well worth listening to, nonetheless.

… EVERY NIGHT SHE KEPT ME FROM THE COLD … He comes back with a glass of Chablis, squats beside the tub, tilts the glass for me to drink from with his right hand … TRADE ALL MY TOMORROWS FOR A SINGLE YESTERDAY

… pushing bubbles off my chin with his left. The wine is ice-cold on my tongue… HOLDING BOBBY’S BODY NEXT TO MINE …

He settles back on the toilet and unbuttons his vest with one hand, takes three long gulps. “His name’s Jimmy. He sounded Irish on the phone. Did you ever hear of an Irish masseur?” “No,” I say and giggle… FREEDOM’S JUST ANOTHER WORD FOR … “I thought they were all Swedish.”… NOTHIN’ LEFT TO LOSE … “I did too,” he says, “or possibly French.”… NOTHIN’ AIN’T WORTH NOTHIN’ … “What is he coming here for?”… BUT IT’S FREE … “To do a tap dance on the kitchen counter, pretty stupid question there.”… FEELIN’ GOOD WAS EASY, LORD … “That massage you had that you told me about,”… FEELIN’ GOOD WAS GOOD ENOUGH FOR ME … “1 thought you’d like another one.” I think, yes, that’s it. I can’t ever just say something-anything-and consider it forgotten. He pays attention to what I say, it’s hard to get used to, you don’t often run across such a peculiar habit. There is nothing that merely amuses or interests him at the moment, he always draws consequences. If I’m looking at Newsweek and read a passage from a book review out loud, he will buy the book for me that week. In the middle of an hours-long rambling and partly drunk conversation on a Saturday night he describes picking blueberries behind his aunt’s house where he stayed for a summer at the age of nine, and I say, “Blueberries, don’t you love blueberries.” About midnight he says, “I’m going to get the paper.” Half an hour later there he is, carrying the Times all right under one arm, but in the other he has a brown paper bag and inside is a container of blueberries. He washes and hulls and drains them while I read the Arts and Leisure section. And he’s bought a pint of heavy cream and pours a greedy heap of berries into a large salad bowl and feeds them to me until I say, “If I have one more spoonful I’m going to be sick,” and he grins and eats the few leftover berries floating in cream. “Where on earth did you get these at this hour?” I finally think to ask. “Grew them,” he says solemnly, “on the corner of Sixth and Greenwich,” and slurps the remaining liquid loudly, holding the bowl with both hands.

The masseur arrives at five to eight. He looks about twenty. He is short and stocky, with a great deal of wavy blond hair and bulging biceps under a dark blue T-shirt and nylon jacket. He wears jeans and sneakers and carts one towel and a bottle of oil in an Icelandic flight bag. I take off my shirt as I’m told and lie on my stomach on the bed. “I’m going to watch,” he announces to the silent Jimmy. “I’d like to learn what you do, so I can do it when you’re not available.” “Always available,” grunts Jimmy and dive-bombs onto my shoulders. His hands, slick with oil, are much larger than one would expect from someone his height-huge and warm. My arms turn limp, I have to fight to keep my mouth from lolling open. His palms work their way up my rib cage, slowly, digging deeply, a steady advance. My shoulders again, another start at the waist. I am close to grunting whenever his hands bear down. “Let me try it,” his voice above me. The big hands lifted. My eyelids as heavy as if shut under water. These hands are cooler, touching me lightly by comparison. The masseur corrects him wordlessly, demonstrates, then the cool hands on me again with more weight this time. The big paws on my thighs, bypassing the towel across my buttocks. My calves next, then my feet. Teacher and pupil in turn grasping a foot with one hand, applying exquisite pressure with the other. I’m turned over. The process reverses up the front of my body. I am long past containing myself and groan blissfully under the bear arms that grind me into the sheets. He repeats each of the masseur’s moves, now much less tentatively, close in effect to what the monster hands do. My muscles are ablaze and suspended. It’s over. Someone covers me with a sheet and turns off the lights.

I hear the giddy, whooshing sound a nylon sleeve makes when an arm is pushed into it. The refrigerator door slams. Two beer cans pop. For a while there is mumbling, which lulls me further. I am almost asleep. “… Twenty-five extra.” The bedside lamp is lit again. I am told to lie across the width of the bed, face down. The sheet is thrown over my legs. I hear the squeak of the closet door, the explosive crack of a fresh sheet being shaken free of its laundry creases; cool cotton slides across my shoulders and back. A belt is being unbuckled. There is the grating of leather pulled sharply through cloth loops.

The skin on the back of my body is divided into distinct segments. The areas that have been massaged are subdued, smoothed to a trance under the sheets. The skin now exposed bristles with tension, a faint draft from the air conditioner sluicing each capillary.

“What is it, Jimmy?” There is a growl. “You got the wrong man.” More throat-clearing. “You don’t understand”; his voice is smooth. “I told you, you’re not going to hurt her, I promise you. You don’t see her struggling, do you? Is she yelling for the neighbors? It makes her hot, I’m telling you, that’s what she gets off on.” “So you hit her.” “Thirty, then.” The mattress gives under the weight of a body that settles to my right. I am struck a few times and bury my head in the crook of an elbow.

“At that rate you’ll be here forever.” His voice is very close to my head, there is the odor of beer and sweat. The mattress moves under me again as the body to my right shifts its weight. A hand is in my hair and my head is pulled up. I open my eyes. “Thirty-five.” The blows fall harder. He is crouching on the floor beside the bed. Our faces almost touch. The whites of his eyes are laced with red, his pupils are dilated. I can’t keep from wincing now and begin to squirm. “Forty,” he says, in a low voice. His forehead glistens. The body above me braces a knee in the middle of my back and under the next blow my mouth opens wide. I struggle silently, trying to pry his fist from my hair with one hand, pushing his face away from-me with the other, thrashing my legs. He forces my wrists together, holds them in a fierce lock, resumes his grip in my hair, yanks up my head. “Come on, you bastard, fifty,” he hisses and covers my mouth with his. The blow that follows makes me moan inside his mouth, under the next one I wrench free and cry out. “That’s enough, Jimmy,” he says, as if to a waiter who has served him too large a portion, or to a child who is having a minor tantrum at the end of a tiring day.

THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE PERIOD, the daytime rules of my life continued as before: I was independent, I supported myself (to the extent of my lunches, at any rate, and of keeping up an empty apartment, gas and phone bills at a minimum), came to my own decisions, made my choices. The nighttime rules decreed that I was helpless, dependent, totally taken care of. No decisions were expected of me, I had no responsibilities. I had no choice.

I loved it. I loved it, I loved it, I loved it, I loved it.

From the minute I closed his front door behind me, there was nothing more for me to do, I was there to be done to. Someone else had taken control of my life, down to the last detail. If control was out of my hands, I, in turn, was allowed to be out of control. For weeks on end I was flooded by an overwhelming sense of relief at being unburdened of adulthood. “Would you let me blindfold you?” had been the first and last question of any importance asked of me. From then on, nothing was ever again a matter of my assent or protest (though once or twice my qualms became part of the process: to make my addiction clear to me); of my weighing priorities or alternatives-practical, intellectual, moral; of considering consequences. There was only the voluptuous luxury of being a bystander to one’s own life; an absolute relinquishing of individuality; an abandoned reveling in the abdication of selfhood.

I WAKE up not feeling right. It isn’t any better after breakfast and by eleven o’clock it is worse. By lunchtime I feel thoroughly chilled. I order a cardboard container of chicken soup to eat at my desk, but the first spoonful is like rancid oil on my tongue and I cannot bring myself to take another one. By three in the afternoon I decide this isn’t a passing discomfort. I tell the receptionist I am ill and go home-to my apartment.

I barely manage to push the door shut behind me. A stagnant smell closes in on me. The apartment is stifling hot. Dust particles dance before locked windows, the mirror above the fireplace iridescent in the vicious glare. I crawl onto the bed, shivering uncontrollably but unable to get under the covers. I tug at the bedspread beneath me and finally grab hold of a loose end, which 1 pull over my shoulders. The sun shines directly onto my face, which feels as if about to burst into flames. As soon as I lift my head off the pillow in an effort to get up and draw the shades, I become too dizzy to keep my eyes open.

The telephone wakes me from a nightmare that has me consumed by hordes of outsized fire ants. I push off the bedspread and bring the receiver to my ear without opening my eyes. “What’s wrong?” he says. “I must be coming down with something,” I mutter, feeling as cold now as if sprawled on ice instead of no-iron cotton polyester. “I’ll be right over,” he says. The phone clicks, then hums. “Don’t,” I say and put the hand that holds the receiver onto my chest. I am really sick, I think, visualizing the word through the gyroscope inside my forehead. I’m never sick, I think, and in the middle of summer, that’s the most ridiculous, the most…

This time I am awakened by the doorbell. I do not move. It rings, in staccato bursts, again and again. Finally the noise seems worse than getting up. I make it to the door without once opening my eyes. While I keep saying, “I want to stay here,” he picks me up, kicks the door shut behind him, and carries me to the elevator. “I can’t stand people when I’m sick, I hate to have them around,” I mumble into his neck. “I have to be sick in my own bed,” I finally say, in as loud a voice as I can muster. “Not that sick,” he says, holding me propped upright in the elevator. I am too dizzy to answer. He half-carries, half-drags me to the waiting cab. There is a mess of arms and legs and another trip to another elevator and then I’m in the bed I know better than my own by now, undressed this time and one of his shirts on me.

Through a haze he says, “I’m going out to buy a thermometer.” Cold glass in my mouth after a while and then not and then his voice on the phone.