Jake & Mimi

by Frank Baldwin

  “That’s it for me,” I said.

  “Already?”

  “I’m meeting friends uptown.”

  Her eyes stayed on mine, suggesting, as clearly as if she’d said it aloud, that the others would all have to leave soon and that if I could wait them out, this night might not have to end in a bar.

  “You’ll come by the firm when you get back?” I asked. Diane looked down, then back, the offer in her eyes dimming, then gone.

  “With pictures,” she said, holding out her slim white hand. I shook it and then said my good-byes to the others. On my way through the group I stopped at Mimi.

  “Tomorrow night?” I said.

  She nodded. “Eight o’clock in the conference room?”

  “Okay.”

  “I’ll bring the caffeine,” she said. “Have fun with your friends, Jake.”

  “I will.”

  I walked out into the street. Through the Twin Towers I could just see the red sun dipping into the water. The night, with all its promise, would be here in minutes. I walked up the block to the black limo that waited at the corner, the familiar star insignia of Orion Car Service on its side. Thanks to the long hours of tax season, I knew all ten of their drivers. At the wheel tonight sat Rudy, his big arm on the open window, the Post spread out in his lap.

  “Rudy.”

  “Jake.”

  “Diane Silio’s car?”

  He nodded. I opened the door, climbed in, and sat back in the leather seat. Through the open partition I met Rudy’s eyes in the rearview mirror.

  “You dog,” he said.

  “We’ll see.”

  And here I am. Night is on us now, and the financial district is quiet. The skyscrapers have spit out the last of their money-men and stand like sentries all down Wall Street. Through the floor of the limo I can feel the low rumble of the Broadway local. It rolls off, its fading clatter giving way to silence and now to the magic click, click, click of Diane Silio’s heels. “Bye,” she calls out behind her, and then the limo door opens and I see a gray skirt and, where it divides along its slit, a trim stockinged thigh, then a flash of blouse, and suddenly Diane’s brown eyes, as shocked as a victim’s but recovering in the same instant. She is half in the car, her wrist on the seat, her eyes on mine, on mine, on mine still.

  She slides inside.

  “Seven fifteen Clermont,” she says, looking straight ahead as she pulls the door closed. “At De Kalb.”

  No man who makes do with a steady, or even pays for sex, will ever know the charge of this moment. The electricity. We pull away from the curb, accelerating smoothly through a yellow light, then up the curving bridge ramp, then easing into the streaming lights that flow together, away from the perfect skyline of Manhattan and toward the broken waterfront of Brooklyn. I lean forward and slide the partition closed; we are alone, three feet of smooth black leather between us in the cool dark.

  “I live upstairs from my parents,” she says. “It’s private.”

  She looks out her window, at the dark, wide mouth of the bay and the emptiness beyond. Bridge light pours in, falling on her pure, unguarded neck, on the white of her stockinged knees, which are pressed tightly together. Pressed together to control the build that started in her two weeks ago, the build that rose to fever when she closed the door of the limo and that rises even now as we ride. She looks out her window, but I doubt it’s the water she sees. It is the sweet, hard moment of release. How does she picture it? A rough first kiss, and then the slam along the walls?

  If only she knew.

  We glide off the Brooklyn Bridge and soon are onto Flatbush and into the guts of Brooklyn. We ride past the dark avenues, all concrete and shadow — another country. At a stoplight, over the hum of the motor, we can just hear the muted call of a siren, all its urgency dissolved by the distance.

  “Give me your keys,” I say.

  She pauses, then takes them from her purse and gives them over. “Put your wrists together.” She looks at me, her eyes wet with tension, and presses her small wrists together, watching as I loosen my tie and pull it through my collar. I wrap the tie around them twice, secure it with a tight square knot, then take a Swiss Army knife from my pocket and cut off the extra fabric. Our faces are close now, almost touching. I can smell the sweet Kahlua on her breath and the rose again of her neck, and it takes all I have not to start in on her, not to kiss the full lips that part, already, in excitement. I place her hands gently in her lap, lay her jacket on top of them, and turn to the window.

  Minutes later we pull up to 715 Clermont.

  Her place is a gated brownstone in a row of gated brownstones. I guide her up the walk, my hand on the small of her back. The crushed glass in the concrete sparkles like tinsel, and the night air smells of power. We take the steps quickly. On the landing, as I work the key in the lock, she looks back, at the block she grew up on, her eyes deepening, then catching fire as some tug of memory connects the girl who played on these very steps with the young woman who stands on them now, her hands bound, aching for the release that waits just on the other side of the trusted wooden door of her childhood.

  We step into the hallway. In front of us are the stairs that lead up to her apartment. She is stepping onto the first one when I see it.

  “Wait,” I say, taking her elbow, my other hand still on her back. I guide her not up the stairs but to the right, down the narrow hallway that ends, twenty feet down, at a door with a centered nameplate reading SILIO.

  “My parents,” she whispers, trying to stop.

  “It’s okay.”

  Three feet from their door I stop and back her against the wall. She waits, trembling, for a hard kiss, but I take her bound hands, raise them above her, and press them to the cool plaster. Then I lift her by her small wrists, easing the tie that binds them over the curved edge of a stout brass plant hook, then letting it slide down to the lower base of the hook so that her feet just touch the floor again.

  She is stretched taut, and she is ravishing.

  Some women owe their looks to fashion or lighting, but hers are true, and each hot curve responds to the strict test of the binds. Her breasts, straining at her cotton blouse now, are so full and close that I look away to steady myself. I look back, at the pretty blue veins in her lean arms, at her knees tight together. Through her parents’ door we can hear the low drone of the television. She wets her lips, desperate to believe I don’t have this in me but burning at the thought that I might.

  “We can’t,” she whispers.

  But we can. I lift her chin and taste, finally, the soft neck that has killed me since her first day. She gasps. “Upstairs,” she whispers. “We’ll do anything.”

  Against the wall is a small folding chair her parents must use to put on the boots they store beneath it. I unfold it quietly, just in front of her, and sit down. “Please,” she whispers, but I start in on her black pumps, each sensual pop of an ankle strap drawing a quick breath from her. I slip them off, and she is forced onto her toes, her tensed thighs in tight, perfect relief through her skirt. I run my hands up the back of her stockings, the cool silk warmed from beneath now, and stop just under her ass. I squeeze her trim thighs gently. Gently. And then hard.

  Only her binds keep her standing. She pulls at them, shuts her eyes tight, and crosses her ankles against the current coursing through her. “No,” she whispers, shaking her head, but as I make a second slow pass up her legs, her knees slip apart, an inch at first, then another, opening toward pleasure, toward the sweet torment she wants to give into, is giving into, until, through the door, the sudden spike of a laugh track brings her around again.

  “Don’t,” she whispers. “Please.”

  I roll her stockings down and off her, careful to trail my fingers on the inside of her thighs. She squeezes them tightly together, gaining a moment’s relief that melts away when I slide my knees between hers. “You can’t,” she gasps, fighting for her life now. I widen my knees, parting her legs a little more, and slide
my hands up her thighs until I can just feel the moist cotton of her panties on the back of my fingers. Beads of sweat dot her forehead now.

  At the first, tiny pressure on the private cotton, she turns her face into her shoulder. I press harder, and she bites the thin collar of her blouse to keep quiet; still harder, and she shakes her head violently, tearing off the top button and exposing, for the first time, her tight white bra and the gorgeous bounty it restrains.

  “Stop,” she manages to whisper. “They’ll hear.”

  I part her knees another inch. She is swelling against my fingers now, and as I work them, she drops her head to her chest, then arches it back. I press harder, just where she needs it, hold it for a five count, and then release. Tears come to her eyes. If only she could close her legs, or cry out just once. She bites her lip against the next round of pressure and — when it doesn’t come — bites harder against the lack of it. I make her wait fifteen seconds. Thirty. I press again.

  It is their struggle that sends me. Always. Their sweet agony as I take them to — and then through — their sexual limits. Diane Silio is reaching hers now. Women manage their pleasure with their legs or release it with their cries, but my knees keep hers apart, and even a single cry now will betray her. Cool Diane, who has handled all comers. The smooth Manhattan suits, eager for a one-off with a Brooklyn beauty. The block toughs, all hands and persistence. Handled them at close quarters, on couches, in cars. Controlled them with her soft eyes, with the small permissions they could grant or take away. Tonight those permissions aren’t hers to give. Tonight her battle is against her own body, and right now she is helpless to stem the pleasure rushing through it.

  Diane Silio is reaching the edge, and as she reaches it, her soft face pressed to the wall, her breasts rising with each quick breath, I hit the stretch that I live for. The golden moments when the world falls away, when it is her and me and nothing else.

  I find, through the wet cotton, the spot that will collapse her and I work the edges of it, giving and withholding, giving and withholding. A soft moan escapes her. Another. She is coming apart.

  And through her parents’ door comes a cough, and then the creaks and moans of an old easy chair surrendering its burden. Her eyes open and find mine, imploring, desperate. You wouldn’t do this, they say. You couldn’t. She tries again to close her thighs, and again I don’t allow it. Footsteps now, coming down the long hallway. Close. Closer. Her old man, off to the fridge for a beer. Not ten feet from us now. If he looks through the peephole, he will see her. His jewel. Trussed. Trembling. Perfect.

  I part her legs a final inch, her feet slipping off the floor, gaining it again, slipping off, her thighs tight against my knees, all her weight concentrated now on our one true point of contact — the shred of cotton that keeps my fingers from her softest spot. I find her eyes — pained, beautiful. Ten thousand times they must have melted her father’s heart, and never again if she can’t keep quiet during the seconds to come.

  I press, hard, on the very heart of her.

  Her body spasms but somehow she keeps silent, twisting what little she can away from the door, her head sent back now, her white throat taut, thrilling. I lean in. A tiny gasp escapes her but she fights back, pulling with her wrists against the unrelenting hook, her fingers clasped as if in prayer. Harder she pulls, still harder, desperate for any sensation, even pain, that will slow the explosion building in her. Her father’s steps reach the door, pass it, then continue down the hall, finally fading just as Diane Silio lets out the soft moan she needs to keep sane.

  Her cheeks are deep red now, her shining bangs damp on her forehead. One more hard touch and I will lose her, so I ease off, my fingers calm against the soaked cotton as I watch her tremble along the brink, whispering to herself, searching inside for strength, for some trick of breathing that will get her through the next round, which will begin, she knows, as soon as her father’s steps start up again.

  Through the door, faintly, comes the deep, metallic thud of the refrigerator door. It must be a relic — the one she knew as a child. She shuts her eyes tight again. Escaping through the years, perhaps. Seeing herself at five, her feet set, pulling hard on the big handle with her tiny hands as she dreams of the cold milk inside. I flick my fingers. A spasm rocks her. “No,” she whispers, opening her eyes, brought back to the moment as if out of a dream. Back to the binds, the pressure, the edge. “I won’t,” she whispers, shaking her head from side to side, but two more quick spasms rock her, then a third. My fingers are still now but her gasps come faster, louder, and her thighs go slack against my knees. I’m losing her. We hear the fridge close, the soft clink of a bottle on a countertop. Another spasm shakes her, another, and with the next one comes a moan, too loud, and then from the kitchen — silence.

  I don’t move. Two seconds pass, three, the only sound the sigh of the metal hook as Diane Silio strains with all she has against it, her head back like a saint. A single sound from her now and we’re lost.

  She bucks again.

  I reach with one hand for her mouth, to quell the cry that will give us away, but just as I do I feel — first in her legs and then all through her — tension. She is rallying, struggling back from the edge, finding, at the last second, true will. And through the door now comes the gush of tap water. She’s made it. A final spasm rocks her but she stills it, her breathing steadying, her thighs pressing hard against my knees again. And then her eyes open, open and find mine, and the look in them sends a charge clear through me.

  Gone is any trace of fear, of panic. In their place, acceptance, and something more — fight. Diane Silio signed on when she offered her wrists in the limo, and now, at her breaking point, she wants not mercy but more. She is with me now, a full partner in this magic ride, and her beautiful eyes dare me to take her the rest of the way, even as we hear, through the door, her father’s footsteps start up again.

  I stand quickly and take my hand from between her legs. She closes them, at long last, buckling with relief even as my fingers find the clasp of her skirt, unhook it, and send it to the floor. She steps out of it, her eyes holding mine, daring me still. I take a side of blouse, from the bottom, in each hand and pull away.

  Her smooth belly, taut from the gym, is so close it hurts, and her effort against the binds has lifted the top of her crimson nipples free of her tight bra, which opens in the front. I unhook it. Her full breasts are soft, her nipples hard, her father’s steps just seconds from the door now. I reach in my pocket for the blade.

  She shudders at the cold touch of the metal as I slip it between cloth and hip, flick once, then again, and send her final protection to the floor. Quickly I cut off her bra, too. She wears only her ruined blouse now, which hides nothing, and she’s no longer alone on the edge. I loosen my belt, ready myself, and take the back of her glistening thighs in my hands, my grip slipping, then tightening, as I lift her free of the floor.

  Everything in me wants inside her, but I hold her still a last second, taking her all in. The deep berry of her nails, pressing into the backs of her hands now, her sweet, exhausted muscles stretched taut. And her beautiful eyes, which hold mine as I lift her thighs higher, as I part them a final time, and close as she braces for the coming shock, gathering herself as a diver, glimpsing the pearl of a lifetime, gathers for the final plunge.

  I let her father’s footsteps pull even with the door, set myself hard, pull down on her thighs and drive up and into her.

  Only my shoulder saves us. She bites hard into it, surviving, barely, the nova inside her as all her weight meets all my force at the one magic spot that now joins us. I pull her tight to me with my left arm and brace against the wall with my right. There’s no question of movement, of rhythm or pace. I can only keep still and hold on as Diane Silio tears free of the pressure I’ve built in her since the limo. The first deep spasms come before she can even wrap her legs around me, rocking her as she bites into my shoulder; rocking her as her father’s steps pass by the door, as they
fade down the hall; rocking her still as the distant creak of his easy chair grants her, at last, freedom.

  Freedom to breathe again, to release my aching shoulder and to release into it gasping whispers of “Yes!” and “There!” and “Yes!” again. Freedom to move, to arch against me, each tiny shift in position unleashing a fresh torrent of pleasure. Freedom, at last, to give in to that pleasure, abandon herself to it, surge hard against the source of it. And freedom to take me, quickly, to where she’s been for too long. To the true edge. She takes me with her smell, sweet rose and Kahlua and sweat, a smell that becomes taste now as I bury my face in her neck and breasts. She takes me with her sounds, slipping now from words to soft, repeating cries. She takes me, most of all, with those deep spasms, spasms that will not end, that jolt her, a minute into the fuck, as hard as at the start. Three seconds apart they come, two, one, and then one long, cleansing cascade.

  All my training is no match for this. Without ever moving, I’m to the breaking point, too, and then past it, my resolve done in by the purity, the fury of her surrender, by the sight, at the last, of the tight red silk on her wrists. I’m just able to set my feet and give a last, lifting thrust, her mouth finding my shoulder again as I pin her to the wall, letting the last shocks burst inside her, shake her, then ripple away, and as they do, I accept her collapsing body as it leans into mine and is finally, beautifully still. I hold her until I can trust my arms again and then raise her gently, letting her lift her bound wrists clear of the hook, and then I set her, more gently still, on the folding chair, kneeling in front of her, kissing her closed eyes as I brush the damp hair from her face, watching those eyes as I reach behind me and free her ankles from my back, seeing them open, finally, as I pull her ruined blouse close around her. Open to my face, to the still hallway around us, and to the realization, just breaking in them now, that the fuck of her life is over.