by Karen Moline
Olivia—Put everything on exactly in the order you find it. Slowly. Think of me as you get dressed.
Nick
How could she not?
I have not forged his writing this time, and the message is abrupt, useless, explaining nothing, deliberately so. Olivia sits down next to it, unnerved. I sit watching her, my senses jangling.
After a while she cannot bear the silence, so she gets up and flicks through a pile of CDs, one after the other, all Olivier’s recordings, she realizes with a jolt of panic, not the CDs she brought over because she thought Nick would like them, or that Nick chose, smirking like a schoolboy, to match her petulant moodiness. These are all Olivier’s, his slim fingers poised above the keyboard, his beloved face smiling at her from the photographs on the covers.
This is not the time to think of Olivier.
She sighs with relief when she finds a recording of Ella Fitzgerald in another pile. She brought it over, when was it, she can’t recall, only remembering Nick teasing her about something, a song lyric, that was it, and she brought this the next time, a delicious woman’s voice, cool and contemporary, singing of lost love, to laugh at over lunch. It barely soothes Olivia’s frazzled nerves as she runs a bath, soaking in the bubbles so long her fingers shrivel. She rubs cream, scented of vetiver, in her skin till it glistens, then sits, wrapped in a towel, her hair a wet snake down her back, and stares again at the box.
She is sitting exactly where Nick had hoped she would, on the edge of the bed, and she is perfectly in focus.
I cannot tear my eyes away.
She feels a twinge of dread, imagining what is inside, that awful anticipation mingled with a strange calm of wondering how Nick will try to force her out of her known, familiar self. She only knows that, because this is truly the last time, he will make her struggle, that he expects her to struggle, what he’d done to her in the airport was a mere warmup, his movements belying the practiced precision of a professional, and that he will relish this opportunity far more than any other because he has begged her to do it, and has been thwarted even by her consent.
And then she understands. She understands what the game is to him, that in the playing he means to have her and hurt her, that for him pain and fear are the purest expressions of his love, inextricably interwoven into a visible token of the qualms she has made so palpably alive.
She understands that whatever he’s planned for her will happen this once, and never again, he knows she is leaving, has left him already, and so they can both risk it, their selves, he daring to sell his soul, Faust embodied, she daring to surrender to his will, to his deliberate, dark impulses he knows she despises and yet cannot control.
She understands that nothing in her life will ever again equal this sensation now, damp and shivering on this bed, the ormolu clock ticking, Ella’s voice singing to her, blithely unaware that Olivia is sitting alone in the deepening shadows, so naked, so thrilled with her terror, so enslaved to a fleeting transient delight of the flesh.
She understands that she will never again face such an inescapable abyss of perversity and pain tangled so deeply with pleasure, and that she would, willingly, leap into the void if Nick asked her to today, holding firmly on to his hand, not knowing how long her body would float next to his, suspended, until it hit the ground.
THE SOFT layers of tissue paper in the box are a delicate mauve, the color of hyacinths.
There is a lovely small jeweled handbag on top in the shape of a miniature panther, encrusted with jet crystals and rhinestones, his eyes glowing green emeralds, lined in ultramarine velvet, a small pouch inside filled with makeup: porcelain foundation, black mascara and eyeliner, deep crimson lipstick. She applies it carefully, her face an ashen mask with darkly stained lips, then dabs on perfume from the tiny vial also found in the pouch, a strange, pungent scent, invigorating and bittersweet, she has never smelled before. She replaces it and the pouch in the bag, knowing he means her to carry it with her.
Next is a bra, long enough almost to be a bustier, of the finest shimmery black silk like velvet against her skin. Its only peculiarity is the straps of the narrowest strips of silk, detachable, she notices, bound in leather. It fits her perfectly. Olivia marvels at the fine stitches, fingering the meticulous workmanship, wondering whom Nick paid to make such a beautiful, odd thing, wondering how he took her measurements quite so precisely, not just the bustier but the panties in matching black silk, no more than whispers embroidered with black roses, and the silk garter belt, edged in the same narrow leather, with leather garters.
It is such a cliché, this outfit, she tells herself as she rolls up the smooth silk stockings, trying not to snag them on her fingernails, and she finds herself laughing unexpectedly in nervous reaction. It is all so typically over the top, so much like Nick, this drama, so fragile and so tough, like the strange perfume, and as undeniably erotic as it is ridiculous.
The shirt is a simple white Egyptian cotton button-down, the kind Olivier had starched by the dozen, crisply ironed, and folded into neat piles in a cardboard box by the Chinese laundry around the corner, except that it is sleeveless. The skirt is equally simple, lined black silk, flowing fluidly down to her calves, fastening with one large button at her hip.
Down at the bottom of the box is a thin black leather belt, coiled snakelike in its mauve tissue paper, its buckle glistening with the same black jet beads of the panther bag. The shoes are butter-soft and slender, with heels higher than any she has ever worn. They make her much taller, her calves painful slim knots, and she wishes she could kick them off, wishes she could run barefoot down the stairs and into the street, run barefoot across the frozen dull grass of the park, run down Queens Gate, around the corner, tripping over the slick cobblestones of the mews, her body shivering, her feet cut and bleeding, leading her home, into her studio, locking the door behind her as she slides down to her own floor, exhausted, panting for breath, home, alone, safe.
He won’t hurt you. I won’t let him.
Her body is shivering, here in the flat, she realizes as she looks at herself in the gilded mirror by the fireplace. A shiver of dread or a shiver of anticipation, she cannot tell the difference, dressed in the deliberate ritual of Nick’s instructions, and she sees herself as an apparition in black and white with pale staring eyes. Were the shoes not tilted so high and uncomfortably, were she not clad in such lavishly created underthings, were the sleeves not cut off from the plain white cotton shirt that did not quite disguise the outline of the strange black bra swelling her breasts beneath, the ruby cross she’d brought with her and slipped on hanging there between them, were her face not so dramatically stark, she could almost look like any professional woman getting ready for work.
She moves closer to the mirror, unsteady in her heels on the thick carpeting, still mesmerized by her appearance. My eyes do not leave her as I quickly adjust the focus.
It is a stranger’s gaze, she tells herself, it isn’t me, this provocative creature, this costumed alien dressing up in someone else’s clothes on the way to a ball where she and Nick will be the only dancers on a sprung floor, sweeping around the candlelit room, intoxicated with each other even as they spin faster and faster, out of control in a dizzying waltz, while I lurk behind the violins and the cellos, watching, mute.
She has never looked more alluring, more expectant, more vulnerable. More terrified.
She stretches out her fingers and touches the mirror. She is staring at her reflection, her soul full in her eyes, confused, brave, loving, staring straight at me, so close I can almost hear her breathing, just on the other side of the mirror. Gently, I place my fingers up next to the lens, careful not to jar it, or make a noise.
If the wall dissolved, we would be touching.
WHEN THE buzzer sounds she nearly jumps out of her skin.
When, finally, she turned away and went to sit on the bed, nervously expectant, careful n
ot to muss her outfit, I shut off the equipment and hurried out, cautiously silent in the hall lest I make a sound she’d not heard before in the flat, down to the Daimler Nick had waiting. I nodded to him and he slipped out of the driver’s seat, clad in his leather biker gear, pulled on a helmet, quickly mounted the Harley I’d already parked a few doors away, and turned the bike around to wait at the corner, out of Olivia’s sight line, till she came outside.
He wants to see her get into the car, just to be sure.
I press the buzzer, open the back door of the car, and get behind the wheel. I see Olivia in the driver’s side mirror, and when she slides in and pulls the door shut, I once again throw the locks and pull away.
It has started to rain, and the inside of the car is very dark. Olivia sits so still, rigid, near the door she thinks she can open, that a few moments pass before she notices a small box, identical to the one I gave her the day before, on the armrest in the middle of the seat. She holds it in her lap, afraid to open it.
No one saw me leave, she is saying to herself, this is completely crazy, what am I doing, no one in the world knows where I am and where I’m going, except Nick. Except M, if it is indeed he who is driving, I can’t tell, the partition is up.
He won’t hurt you. I won’t let him.
She opens this box to find a weightless object nestled in the same delicate mauve tissue, and unwraps it to find a simple oblong of black silk, many layers sewn together to make it opaque, edged with the narrowest strips of black leather. At first she thinks it is a scarf, until she sees Nick’s embossed cream card pinned to its bottom.
Twice around your eyes, it says.
A nameless core of dread has begun to throb deep inside her, and her only means of containing it is to press her legs together, tensing her in place, tingling, she cannot stop the tingling, one hand on her knees, the other on the wide armrest as the car twists smoothly through unfamiliar streets. What is he going to do to me that he hasn’t already done? she is wondering, trying not to panic. I don’t want to not see. What can he do that he doesn’t want me to see? The silk is so soft, a harmless piece of fabric, growing damp with sweat in her fingers for so long that I am getting even more nervous myself.
He is asking her to blind herself, she realizes, an irrevocable gesture of acquiescence more significant to him than any other, to offer herself as a willing accomplice, a faceless slave, deprived of her eyes, her true self.
She has seen through him with those eyes, and this is his vengeance.
After an interminable moment she finally bends forward so her hair falls down over her head, and winds the silk twice around her eyes, finishing with a large knot in the back.
Her chest is heaving when she sits up, and I drive faster to the rendezvous. He is waiting, on the bike, at the far, deserted end of a large parking lot, and when he sees the car he stands up, ready, poised, pulling off the helmet only at the last second in case anyone should recognize him.
He has planned this ending to their weekend together quite meticulously, I realized with a pang of anger, long before she consented to it, comforted by his somber journeys on the Harley on the weekends when sleep eluded him, timing it, every stage of it, imagining the turns of the car, how many traffic lights stop its progress, how many minutes tick by before it arrives.
Olivia feels the car turn, slow, and stop.
Her door opens, and she turns her head toward the noise. The other door opens. She is confused, but it is only me, following instructions, opening the door and shutting it again.
There is an arm around her neck. She hasn’t the time to call out before a strip of tape covers her mouth. She can’t help panicking, desperate, but the weight of the man who moves so quickly is crushing her, his legs pinioning hers so she can’t move, she can’t see, this can’t be Nick, he smells of acrid cigar smoke and leather, she has forgotten Nick came to her once as a biker, she cannot think, or remember, she can barely breathe, he smells far more frightening, a sickening animal perfume of lust and anger. In a flash he handcuffs her wrists together, lifting up the armrest to attach them to the long, strong chain he securely fastened there the day before, then shoves her down on her back, unbuckles her belt and whips it free, pulls off her shoes, unfastens her skirt and pulls it down and off, unhooks the stockings from her garters and zips them off her legs, rips off her panties, rips off her garter belt, swiftly ties the leather belt around her ankles, yanks her rudely upright and rips the shoulder seams of her shirt so it falls neatly in two pieces, the front still buttoned, then unhooks the thin leather straps and the back fastening of her bra, leaving her sitting as she’d been, panting, unable to scream, or move, suffocating in sheer terror, completely nude, stripped of everything but the ruby cross dangling between her breasts and the blindfold wrapped twice around her eyes.
It has taken less than a minute.
She feels him watching, although she cannot see the smug panther’s smile of satisfaction curving his lips, before he finally moves away. She hears the door open and shut, and the car starts moving again.
The acknowledgment of her terror is unendurable.
I’d squeezed my eyes shut, my hands clamped so tight on the steering wheel my arms were shaking, even though I couldn’t really see anything, Nick’s back blocking her from sight. He wouldn’t divulge any details of what he’d planned, only that I should drive exactly where he told me to, highlighting my route in the A to Z street guide, and not dream of trying anything that might screw up his warped intentions.
I have to drive. I can’t stop this, I don’t know how. I have to keep my eyes glued forward, through the windshield, on the road, while Olivia is a helpless captive, pinioned in the backseat of a Daimler, creeping through London.
She has been helpless before, but always in the haven of the flat, their safe house, hidden from the world, not like this, moving through nothingness, uprooted and suspended, blind and disoriented, through a dark void into the unknown, unearthly and terrible, far from anyone or anything she’s ever experienced, her self debased, nothing more than an object waiting to be taken.
That is the horror of it.
And I let him do it.
I drive only a short distance, stopping and turning, once around the parking lot, actually, long enough to confuse her further, as if she could possibly be more confused, and let Nick strip off his leather gear, which he will hand to me through my window.
The car stops, turns around. The back door opens and shuts, she feels him there, she cannot see that he is silently taking off his cashmere sweats but she smells the animal lust rolling off him in nauseating waves, and instinctively tries to pull away, unable to scream, trembling uncontrollably, dreading what must be coming, but there is nowhere to go.
This isn’t Nick, this can’t be Nick.
“Are you afraid?” a voice says, low and whispered into her ear as the man moves nearer. “Afraid of me? Afraid of what I am going to do to you?”
She has heard this voice before, somewhere, she cannot think in her panic.
“Afraid you might like it? Like it too much?” The voice so sweet, tender pleading, a cruel whisper in her ear, mocking her helplessness.
Nick said those words to her, once, a lifetime ago, a peony fat in his fingers, begging her, desperate, in the flat.
He is still desperate, whoever this is, it can’t be Nick, this ghastly low voice, Nick has paid some other beast to paralyze her like this, it can’t be Nick, he couldn’t, I won’t believe it, oh please, let me go let me go—
He won’t hurt you, I won’t let him. A faint echo of M’s solemn pronouncement, a sudden glimpse in her mind’s eye of M’s stern scarred face comes to her clearly, cutting for the briefest instant through the jumbled fragments of thoughts racing frantic, spinning in her head, her blood frozen.
“Are you afraid?” The voice insistent, imploring. He hasn’t yet touched her, his voice a p
uff of wind in her hair. “Nod your head if you are.”
She nods, even more scared not to.
“Truly afraid?”
She nods again.
His hands are in her hair, fistfuls of it, pulling her head closer to him, she can almost hear his heart, skipping wildly.
“I want you to be afraid,” he says, his voice still a whisper, hoarse, rasping. “I wanted you to live through one moment of undiluted, inexpressible terror.” His hands clamped in her hair, lowering her head onto his lap. She can feel his eyes on her, and her panic cowering beneath them in abject dread, dark and bottomless, she can feel him, gigantic, she knows this is exactly what he wants her to feel, terrorized for what seems like an eternity of cruel suspense, exulting in his mastery, how hard he is, how strong, how despicably determined to take her, scornful and inexorable.
She is nothing.
“I want you to be afraid,” the hideous voice is still saying, “I want you to know how it feels, because that’s how Nick feels, all the time, without you.”
If Nick hadn’t taken so much pleasure in this unforgivable brutality, I might almost have pitied him.
“Afraid,” he says. He is trembling almost as much as she is, tense, quavering, not in fear, trembling with the anticipation of the long awaited gratification of the most genuine expression of his desire, the sublime descent into evil, the need to physically overpower so strong in him, so warped, that it drowns all rationale, obviating all he’d never dared reveal to Olivia, knowing she would rebuff it, and him, disgusted.
He no longer cares, he has nothing to lose. He will risk it, risk all for a few minutes of supremely venal indulgence, unmerciful, ruthlessly inhaling the essence of Olivia. She is nothing but a body imprisoned beneath him, cuffed and bound, obedient to the brutality of whatever he will demand from her.
