And I can almost see, through the blindfold, her dark eyes snap open.
She gasps and turns her head, as if to listen. She gasps again. Ten seconds pass, fifteen, and then her mouth opens in wonder, because inside her the jolts are still coming, and they are stronger, yes, stronger than moments ago, and aren’t they… could they be… yes — they come at perfect intervals. And so the truth sinks into her, and just as it does the last Spanish guitar notes fade from the stereo, leaving the room to her cries.
Cries that make Mimi reach out and press her fingers into the tight blue cloth of the nightstand. That make me take my hands from Elise’s belly and press on the knees of my corduroys. I watch her hips rise with each jolt she receives. Every three seconds they rise, and just as she had no defense earlier against the pain, the burning wax and biting clamps, she has none now against this pleasure, and so she cries out, and cries out, and cries out as the patient Contour, deep inside her, metes out wave after wave.
I roll the power switch to 3. And then to 4.
“Oh!” she cries, jarred, the shocks intense now. She bites her lip to keep still, to keep silent, to keep from coming apart. “God!” she cries out finally, tensing instantly in fear, bracing for the turn of the screw. But I leave the clamps alone. I move up the bed, dip my shirt into my cold drink, and touch it to her forehead.
“Jake,” she gasps. I wipe her fevered brow. “Thank you.” I dab her damp, burning cheeks, letting her talk now. “Oh God, thank you. Thank you. You can’t know.” She reaches for my fingers with her mouth, wanting to take me inside her, to share with me a portion of the killing joy coursing through her, but seconds later she turns her face into the covers, overcome, my fingers forgotten, the cooling cloth forgotten, everything forgotten but the relentless, saving bursts inside of her.
5.6.
“Oh Jesus.”
Mimi drops the torn black dress and rocks, both arms hugged to her chest. She rocks and watches Elise fight to stay whole, the jolts so strong now that she braces for each one as she used to brace for the pain, trying to absorb them in her hips, to channel them down into her legs, away from the clamps. It’s no use. Each burst rocks her whole body, jolting the clamps again and again. But she doesn’t cry out in pain or even wince. She is beyond the clamps now, and though they shake with each blast she receives, her cries remain cries of pure, stunned pleasure.
7.
We can hear it now, Mimi and I. Beneath her cries, we can hear it. Deep and rhythmic, like the beating of a heart. Dispensing, dispensing, dispensing. Merciless. And we can hear, too, the timeless, unmistakable edge seeping into her cries. She is closing in. Mimi twists her hands in her lap, agitated — not because Elise is minutes away but because Mimi knows there is one silver case left on the nightstand, and she knows its time has come. I start to reach for it, but she picks it up and turns it in her hands. The hard silver sparkles in the light of the candle. Elise’s cries come sharper, ever sharper. Mimi lifts the lid and looks down into the case, and I see the surprise in her eyes. She lifts out a thick metal chain, gold, sixteen inches long. She is struck by its weight, but she handles it like a necklace, even touches it to her flushed cheek. I hold my hand out, and it isn’t until she hands it over that she sees the small clips at each end of the chain, and as I take it and move back down to the center of the bed, she looks to Elise, to the tight clamps that pinch her nipples, and sees for the first time the tiny metal rings on the levered ends of each clamp. And fear rises in her beautiful eyes.
I touch the chain to Elise’s thigh. She starts once at its cold touch but not again, not even as I trail it up her leg, and over her panties and up her belly. She is deep inside herself now, gone to wherever women go in the last seconds. She doesn’t hear the soft click as I hook one end of the chain to the ring of one clamp, and then the other end to the ring of the other. I hold the chain in my hand, careful to preserve its slack. And then I break her golden reverie by hitting the OFF switch on the black remote, opening my hand and letting the chain slide from my palm down onto her belly.
She cries out in pain, her trance shattered. The chain lies coiled below her breasts, just enough slack in it to save her, but not enough to protect her from its brutal pull. She feels the sudden, fierce burn in her nipples as the clamps dip, and deeper down, in the breastbone, she feels heavy, wrenching pressure.
“No,” she gasps.
I edge the chain back up, relieving her torment, and restore the waves inside her.
8.
Pleasure reclaims her within seconds. She’s felt nothing, ever, like this, the bursts so strong now that each one lifts her black panties away from her mound. Twenty seconds I give her, then cut her off again. And pull the chain down her belly. A little farther this time.
Her piercing cry drives Mimi out of her chair. She stands over the bed, helpless, smoothing her dress desperately, enduring Elise’s sobs of pain until I rescue her by edging the chain up, and then transport her with the touch of a button.
9.
Mimi sits down, shaking.
Thirty seconds of current. Five seconds of pain. Forty seconds of current. Five seconds of pain. Fifty seconds of current. Five seconds of pain.
She climbs and climbs on the current, the pleasure so concentrated now, so pure, without any way to dilute it. Shock after shock deep inside her, and yet the strong white ties hold her spread and bound, and perfectly still. And just as she starts to crest — betrayal. I stop the current. And moments later, agony as I tug the chain down a fraction farther than the time before, hold it for five searing seconds, until the veins stand out on her arms, and then inch it back up her oiled belly and hit the button again.
Mimi can’t watch the punishment. She shuts her eyes when I kill the current and doesn’t open them until she hears cries of pleasure again. And so she doesn’t see what I see — that the punishment has become part of her pleasure. A strong tug on the chain nearly breaks her in two, but she needs it. It takes the breath from her lungs, but she needs it. Because the punishment alone keeps her from finishing, and there is no moment more magical, more transporting, than the moment I release her from the throes of the chain and deliver her back to the Contour. I do it again now. A cathartic gasp comes from her, and her head lolls on the red covers as if she were drugged. And then the deep, sighing, euphoric tremble all through her as she surrenders anew to the rhythmic bolts of pleasure that take her in seconds from agony to the brink of deliverance.
I ease the power setting to its maximum. 10. Mimi turns in her chair, toward the head of the bed. She can’t watch the center of Elise anymore. Can’t watch the jolts she is taking there. So she watches her hands. Her bound, delicate hands, which betray her pleasure as clearly as her rising cries, her fingers diving into her palms with each burst, then fluttering open as the wave recedes. And diving in again. And fluttering open. And I see, on the knees of her dress, that Mimi’s fingers are doing the same.
A full minute of current, a minute twenty, a minute thirty, and then, instead of cutting it off and reaching for the heavy chain, I lean down and press hard on her soaked black panties, doubling the explosions inside her and bringing her, instantly, to the edge.
I lift my palm, and then press again. It’s too much for her. And almost for me. I feel her hit the edge hard and start along it. I lean in. “You’re free,” I whisper, and she surges, possessed, her cries coming from deep in her throat, from even deeper, from some private place no one will ever reach again. I press and release, press and release, press and release, and I see tears now, rolling down from under her blindfold as she slams her face from side to side. I’ve read her body all night and I read it now — she is one hard press away. I give it to her, and I hold it, and I brace for her finish. But she hangs on, fighting off the first set of spasms, and then the next. She won’t give in yet. She’s waited too long, endured too much. Somehow she coaxes a few more seconds from her burning center, precious seconds that let her catch one last, killing wave. She arches, an
d cries out, and rides and rides and rides.
And I hear from across the room a sound from twenty years ago.
I look to the window. Beneath it. A drawn out hiss, two knocks, another long hiss. The radiator. This was my room for five years, and every two hours for five years I heard that sound. I stare at the old gray radiator. Hiss. Knock, knock. Hiss. Mom used to say it was God checking up on me. She said that when I heard it I should whisper his name and knock twice on the bed frame to let him know I was safe. The sound comes again. And again.
Elise’s cries bring me back to her. I look hard at her bound, shining body, rocking in ecstasy, outside of herself in my old room. I pick up the black remote and switch off the Contour. I lean over her and give the screw on one clamp a full turn, and before her cry of pain can fade, I do the same with the other, watching the pink nipple disappear beneath the black plastic jaws. And then I tug on the chain, slowly, ignoring her desperate gasps of pain, taking it farther, farther, taking it as far down her belly as it will go. The clamps come with it, bent dangerously now, like fishing lines just before they snap.
I stand and walk to the window. And I sit down on the radiator.
Mimi is out of her chair again, stunned, standing over the gasping Elise, and now looking to me, her pleading eyes more beautiful than ever. She sits down again, to be closer to her, but she can only watch helplessly as Elise struggles to catch her breath through the pain. And I turn and look out the window.
I look up the street to the heavy trees that guard the entrance to the park. And down at the green mailbox on the sidewalk in front of the building. This was her view. All those days, as she watched me from this window. A hundred sidewalk football games. A thousand walks to school.
The radiator makes its noise again. And from Elise, sobs of agony as she tries to summon the breath to form words.
A cooling breeze comes through the window, as if from long ago. And I don’t see the street anymore, or the old green mailbox, or the trees that guard the magic entrance to Morningside Park. I see the deep bows of the Japanese doctors as the hearse pulled away from the hospital.
“Please,” Elise manages, her voice breaking. “Jake.”
The doctors all bowed as one, holding their bows until the hearse was out of sight, until we were driving through the crowded Tokyo streets to the crematorium.
Silence from Elise now. Not a sound in the room.
I signed for the ashes. At sixteen, I signed for the ashes and then stood in the lobby with two heavy ceramic urns, waiting for the taxi that would take us home.
Her cries start up again, but with a new tenor to them. Familiar. Rising. I turn and see Mimi on the bed, sitting where I was. She has rescued Elise from the clamps, and is just now laying the black remote back on the covers. She stands and looks at me, her cheeks streaked with tears, her sweater held to her neck, and she walks to the door and out of the room. I stare at the empty doorway. The radiator is quiet now, and Elise’s cries fill the room again. Deep cries, every three seconds. She isn’t fighting the waves anymore. She has surrendered to them, and they are leading her home.
I pull my belt hard through its loops and walk quickly to the bed. I pull my shirt over my head and toss it to the floor, kick off my shoes and step out of my corduroys. I take the scissors from the floor and I cut her panties away from her. I turn off the remote, steady her with one hand, and ease the Contour out of her. “No,” she whispers, but she feels my bare skin on her and knows what’s coming, and her head drops back to the covers in rapture, in sweet, exhausted anticipation. She trusts me still, despite everything, and as I line her up, she braces one final time, to receive me. I grab the candle from the nightstand and take a sliver of ice from my drink.
“Your dark prince,” I whisper, and I move the flame toward her thigh. Three inches away, two inches, and suddenly she feels it, and now, at an inch away, she really feels it, and I move it still closer and in one motion lift the candle and press the ice hard to her thigh, and she screams in imagined pain, convinced there is flame against her skin, and now as I surge into her, she screams again, and again, and I’m four, five, six thrusts into her before she realizes that it was ice, that she is free. I pound her, knowing that her screams found Mimi. In the hallway, maybe, her face in her hands, or at the front door, reaching for the knob. They found her and pierced her and finished everything between us. So I pound Elise harder, groping on the covers and finding the scissors and reaching behind me and cutting the tie to one ankle, and then the other. She can kick and thrust and come at me now, and does she ever, fucking like the freed tigress she is, like no girl ever has, all fury and desperate need. Quickly to the brink and then over it, spending herself against me once, twice, three times, and still I pound her. Harder, ever harder, feeling her beneath me, hot, tight, feeling her but not seeing her, and barely hearing her cries of “Jake” and “God” and “Yes,” even as I pound her harder, hooking her under one knee and pulling her up into me with each thrust. Barely hearing her but hearing very clearly, from out in the hallway, the click of the front door, and then another click as Mimi Lessing closes it behind her and walks crying down the long hallway of my childhood, down to the end and then right, to the elevator, where she stands alone in the quiet hallway while I gather it all inside me, in my old room, set myself, give Elise a second to say her prayers, and finish us both off.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
It took me forty-eight years to find the first one.
I glimpsed her through the window of a Park Avenue florist late one spring afternoon. It was the simplest gesture that caught my notice — the way she wiped her hands on her apron. I stepped into the crowded shop, breathing in the fragrance of fresh-cut flowers. She was blond, petite, about twenty-two, and she worked behind the counter preparing the arrangements that an older man, clearly the owner, would call out to her. I watched her as I waited in line, enamored by the grace and quiet concentration with which she assembled each bouquet, gingerly selecting flowers from the refrigerated vases, trimming them, artfully mixing in soft ferns and baby’s breath, then tearing a sheet of heavy plastic from the cutter and wrapping her creation with care. Once finished, she would step shyly to the counter, her eyes rising to meet the customer’s as she held out the bouquet, then lowering demurely once again.
I ordered a dozen red roses from the owner. He nodded to her, and as I paid him, I watched her open the glass door and choose twelve of the finest from a vase inside. As she laid them on the arranging table, a quiet “oh!” escaped her. A thorn had cut her palm. I saw two drops of blood fall onto the green stems. She put her palm to her mouth and glanced quickly at the owner, whose back was to her, and then at me, smiling in a way that both asked my pardon and secured the secret between us. She pulled a leaf from a vase of flowers and pressed it deftly to her palm, holding it there with her thumb as she completed the arrangement, then glanced at the owner again as she stepped to the counter and extended to me the stunning bouquet. Her eyes, filled with innocent thanks, rose to mine and held them, and then she looked down at the counter once more.
I had found her. The woman who would close the wound.
Within a month I had gained access to her apartment and prepared it. And within a week she had betrayed me.
“Her latest,” she called them.
I listened through my speakers as she spoke on the phone to a friend of “her latest.” She described their actions together, sparing no detail. I turned off the stereo and stood for a few minutes in my quiet living room. I thought of everything I had risked. When I turned on the stereo again, she was saying that she missed a man she had met a month ago. Missed what it was that he could do to her.
“There’ll be others,” said her friend, and then they laughed. Schoolgirl laughs, grotesque.
Three nights later the young florist brought home a man she had met that evening at a rock music concert. That night he became her “latest.”
Her last.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Tout est prêt.”
Madame Brodeur’s words, two hours ago. We met at La Boheme, the coffee shop around the corner, and over espressos she took me line by line through ten single-spaced pages. A wedding and reception for 180 guests, and there isn’t a detail she hasn’t attended to. The order of the receiving line, the length of the gift table, the tip envelopes for the Boathouse valets. Two hundred other details, at least, and it wasn’t until she’d checked off the last one that we rose from the table.
“Tout est prêt, Mimi,” she said. “Everything is set.” She smiled and took my hand in hers. “All you have to do is come.”
I lift my wineglass off the coffee table, lean back into the pillows of my couch, and take a long sip.
It is nine o’clock on Tuesday night, and I am alone in my apartment. Alone on April 16 — V-Day, as we call it at the office. There’s still the corporate filing deadline a month from now, but the worst is over. I’ve survived another tax season.
I take a slow sip of chardonnay. It is wonderful, calming. Ferrari-Carano. I remember the sculpted roses that lined the walk from the vineyards to the tasting room. And inside, on the wall, the place cards from White House dinners. Most of all, I remember the gaps in the vintages. On harvest day the wine-maker tastes the grapes, and if he shakes his head, they don’t make chardonnay at all that year. I told this to Mr. Stein when I brought him a bottle, and he said that’s why we don’t have any wineries on our client list.
I pour a second glass, close my eyes, and listen to the music. Kreisler’s violin concertos, performed by the prodigy Joshua Bell. It came in the mail one day last year, a giveaway from a classical music station. This song is my favorite. “Caprice Viennois.” It makes me sad and happy at the same time, like the black-and-white photo of Kreisler himself on the CD liner notes, standing on the deck of a boat in 1935, his hat raised toward the shore as he leaves for America.
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