Leper Tango

by David MacKinnon

  Within minutes, I was behind the wheel of my silver Saab 9-3, downshifting the motor into third, and hitting the ramp onto the freeway and the beginning of our life together. The Saab handled well. As good a snow machine as you could expect in a luxury car.

  “I met two charming men on the plane,” she said. Unconsciously, I glanced at the odometer. At 120 km, I clicked on the cruise control. I felt a slight pain gnawing at my stomach.

  “I know.” “You know?”

  “I was watching you as you came through customs. From the upper mezzanine.”

  Her eyes seemed to flash briefly, then receded into something else. The gnawing pain returned. As if I had been drinking coffee for days. Or that there was something essential that I was ignoring at my own peril.

  “They wanted to know everything about me.” “What do you mean, everything?”

  “Why someone like me would come to a place like this.”

  “What did you respond to that?”

  “Oh, I told them it was purely business.”

  I had always more or less felt that I had two or three sectioned off quarters of the brain, each of which conducted operations from an autonomous état-major, competing with the other compartments to put their own spin on anything I experienced, much in the way of a sleazy but desperate politician, creating slush funds, conducting dirty tricks campaigns, rigging elections. But, processing none of the information through the usual, legitimate channels.

  In anticipation of her arrival, I had moved out of the hotel, and leased a five-level mezzanine loft which had been built on the remains of a Scottish Presbyterian church. The building was located on a dismal stretch of road lined with brick buildings in the midst of a lowend Portuguese-Jewish textiles district. The interior was all art-deco and Alvar Aalto. Sleek brass counters and overhead wineglass racks nailed to thick cedar beams.

  The woman who had let us the top floor was a tall, strapping Newfie, the spoiled daughter of a national media baron. From the day I leased the place, she made a point of dropping by to recount her current sexual antics and forays in very graphic detail. She was proud of everything. Proud of her tits. with good reason, and proud of her brassy voice, with less justification, and proud as hell of her feminist ideas which were oxymoronic and cliché to the extreme. But she was most proud of her Haitian fuck-boy whom she towed around with the aplomb of a slave ship bounty hunter.

  The Newfie travelled among a group of girlfriends, each of them with boyfriend in tow. They were inseparable. All of them rabid feminists, and none of them capable of even scrambling an egg or holding down a day job. They more or less tolerated me, but the distrust was never far beneath the surface.

  A fter we took possession, her f irst move was to decorate the flat top-to-bottom with mirrors. Specula, hand mirrors, vanit y mirrors, rear view mirrors. She liked the vanity mirror best. I am a tall man, and she was short, even propped up on her four inch stilettos. Taking her from behind allowed the two of us to stare into the oval as if posing for a Las Vegas photo-op, as our faces marked our path into full thrust and onwards into violent orgasm, and back to our usual state. Boredom. While we waited for the next exciting thing to happen, provided it had everything to do with us, and didn’t involve what the rest of the world called work.

  She wore a mauve body suit. We hadn’t left the room since arrival, except to visit the WC, or to retrieve drinks, which involved walking through the kitchen past the gaping, hostile stares of our new stable mates. Small talk or pedestrian courtesies were not an option either Sheba or I was inclined to exercise.

  She lay on her back. We had been acting out a number which she had laid out for me the previous day. It involved tying her up, gagging her and raping her. I had tied her up, and was fucking her from the top.

  “Stop.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I want you to hit me.”

  “Whatever. Where?”

  “In the face.”

  I pushed my left hand into her throat and kept her head rigid. I delivered a solid cuff across the left cheek, then backhanded her across the right. Her face folded into a grimace which I initially mistook for pain.

  “I said hit me, espèce d ’ imbécile! As hard as you can.”

  “Have it your own way.”

  I wound up this time, a good telephone booth swing.

  I think I was recalling an old newsclip of Sammy Snead blasting the ball out of the 18th sandtrap at Augusta with his sand wedge. My open hand made a sharp ping as it collided with her face, and left the palm of my hand a scarlet red. The force of it knocked her to the other side of the bed. She righted herself, and lifted her hand up to her mouth. A trickle of blood spurt from the inside of her mouth. Her tongue licked it dry, but the moisture prevented the blood from clotting and it leaked out in a steady trickle.

  For a moment, we stared at each other wordlessly, listening to the heavy, thudding steps of the Newfie marching down the hallway towards our room.

  “Everything all right in there?”

  “T ’ inquiète pas.” Sheba had not turned her face away, and was still displaying a smile of lurid satisfaction. As if she had found something she had lost for a long time.

  “That’s better. Now, play it again, Sam. But, this time on the other side.”

  The next afternoon, things deteriorated. The Newfie, whose overtures not a week earlier when she met Sheba had been replete with lesbo-friendly we’re all sisters jargon, was pounding on the door so loudly it shook.

  “I want to talk to the two of you,” called the Newfie. “Go away,” responded Sheba from the other side of

  the door. “We are busy.” She looked at me and placed her index finger over her pursed lips, and pried open the lower lip as if she were shucking an oyster.

  “This cannot wait.”

  Even from the other side of the door, I could sense some apprehension in the Newfie’s fury. She had been accustomed to pushing people around, whether men or women, big or small, and her Amazon physique and 38 Triple C tits coupled with a rude, brassy voice and lack of manners had served her bullying ways well in her local society. But, even the Newfie’s thick skull could detect through the previous week ’s renovations, the newly installed mirrors and canapés, the boxes of perfume still arriving by courier, the lavender veils and catwalk fashions and general air of secrecy which had suddenly enveloped the place that, whatever Sheba was, she didn’t fall under any definition of the word sister.

  Sheba stood up and walked across our room to her vanity table. She glanced at me, shrugged, reached inside the top drawer. She pulled out a large wad of bank notes and slipped them inside the lavender, ruffled panties clinging to her cunt as if an alternating current were running through them. As she walked towards the door, I noticed she was making an effort to suppress a smile. She stopped short, and looked at me. Through the glistening eyes and moist lips, she was telegraphing one of her favourite messages, one which I would learn to decipher before long. Act II. Scene III. My next piece of prey. Then, she opened the door. The Newfie opened up festivities with an announcement.

  “I am missing five thousand dollars from my safety deposit box.”

  I had never seen the Newfie lose her footing before, but Sheba had clearly unnerved her, despite being half her size. Sheba stared at her wordlessly for several moments, considering something. Her mouth was slightly parted. She calmly scrutinized the Newfie, whose next phrase was emitted in a higher octave.

  “Where is my money?”

  The phrase spilled out in a vaudevillian chirp. Again, Sheba paused. She looked back at me, whatever she had been considering now confirmed, then back at the Newfie. Finally, she spoke.

  “Wait here.”

  She walked over to a coffee table, picked up her burgundy-toned pack of Dunhills, her back to the two of us, drew one from the pack and inserted it in her mouth, taking her time about it. A languorous ether permeated the atmosphere, anesthetizing the three of us. Sheba walked back to the door. She lit
her cigarette, allowing a small pyre to drift into the Newfie’s face. As I watched the drama unfold, it came to me that every breathed insinuation, sideward glance and mocking smile had been stage managed down to its finest detail, and that the performance had nothing to do with money, or with the Newfie. It was meant for me, and me alone.

  “You had better be able to back this up. Otherwise I will make you pay. I promise you.” I think that what shook up the Newfie more than anything was not Sheba’s icy threat, but the revelation that she had no self-knowledge whatsoever. She knew Sheba had stolen her money, and had no intention of returning it. Sheba’s casual stare was ample evidence of that. That bland admission first enraged the Newfie. Then, she came to a grinding halt, as if her inner hard drive had suddenly shut down. The shock and suddenness of her defeat filled her with an unfamiliar, nascent desire which confused her. When she looked at Sheba, she could see that Sheba had detected whatever this perversity inside of her was, even before she had suspected its existence. And somehow, Sheba’s seemingly random scenario had triggered it within her.

  The Newfie was like a lot of other people we came across, in the sense that I have no idea what happened to her next. Maybe she went into social work.

  Later that day, we stopped in at the Air du Temps, a jazz bar in the old city. She was leafing through a real estate magazine, and I was having a coffee, mentally replaying the scene earlier that morning, where Sheba had somehow managed to convince the Newfie to write out a cheque for the furniture we had left behind in the other flat.

  “Listen to this, Franck. Luxurious loft, overlooking the old port in the oldest street of North America. Must lease immediately. It will make a good pied-à-terre. While we review our options.”

  “You’re the CEO, baby.”

  I rang up the number. The voice answered in French and switched over to English immediately.

  “What do you do? You are a lawyer? Fine. That’s just fine. I have a slot open later this afternoon.”

  We decided to kill some time walking around the old port. She had been asking me about my sexual fantasies. “Fantasies are for people with shitty sex lives. That’s never been a problem for me. Actually, come to think of it, Sheba, Franck Robinson is my fantasy.”

  “No, Franck. That’s not sufficient. It must be something that you have kept for yourself. Something dark, which fills you with shame. That, if the world knew of it, you would feel exposed and ruined.”

  “I don’t think I have that kind.”

  “That’s impossible, Franck. Everyone has one thing.”

  “You have to care about the world for that one thing.

  That’s not really a family trait. The Robinsons have never cared enough.”

  She stared darkly ahead.

  “I know you like beating me, Franck. There was a look in your eyes. As if you were discovering something for the first time.”

  She watched me for a while, still probing for something, or as she would call it, that one thing.

  “Franck, there are desires I have myself. They are so dark. So perverse ... it is hard to describe. It is as if they are controlling me, and I am only following. There are days, Franck, when I wish I had never been born.”

  “You were born for me. That’s enough.”

  “Let’s go to the port, Franck. I want you to show me where you took your walks. Before we were together.”

  The day’s theme colour was peach. Peach-tinted bra, panty hose and garter belt, topped off by nothing more than an olive-hued, knee-length trenchcoat, which left her legs and lingerie visible for anyone who was interested.

  “Let me take your arm.”

  Her eyes were glassy, translucent.

  “Je mouille.”

  We exited the car and crossed the road, which put us on a boardwalk running alongside the river through the Old Port along the remparts. It was still early afternoon. The boardwalk was busy. Further on, I noticed an older man approaching us, staring fiercely at Sheba. As we approached, I recognized Bourque, a criminal defence lawyer I had worked for defending drug traffickers and whores until he quit the practice of law to run for public office. As fellow moral relativists, we hooked up periodically for drinks and what-not. Bourque was a silverhaired fox with bushy eyebrows, and a fierce, lascivious look which left no doubt that he was a throwback to an era when politics attracted another sort of man. He managed to get elected, but was forced to resign within the year. His name, a common one in the Montreal area, had been discovered in a hooker`s black book. When confronted with it, he denied everything. No one believed him, particularly since the john in question was also a barrister, and a Montrealer. By the time his name was cleared, he had been booked on a drinking and driving charge and he was ruined.

  “Oh, hello Franck,” he said in that deep resonant voice, and despite all the talk in the papers, you couldn’t write off someone who had the mox y to pretend his prostate was still operational. Hervé was a bird-dog from the beginning, and was capable of just about any posture to keep his lecherous eyes feasting on a woman for a few minutes longer.

  “Haven’t seen you in the courts lately, Franck. Taken a leave of absence, have we? Don’t tell me you are doing solicitor’s work, Franck. Not a line of work for any counsel worthy of the name, Franck. Piece work, Franck. Assembly line. Might as well work in a coal mine, Franck. And, who might this be, Franck? Sheba? What an intriguing name. And what a thoroughly marvellous ... specimen, Franck.”

  He eyed her from head to toe. “You should have told me about this charming young lady. Yes, yes, I can see now. Novus Actus Interveniens. Quite understandable, Franck.”

  It took a good five minutes to move old Bourque along, and his furry eyebrows turned back our way twice, even after taking his leave.

  “Let’s sit down,” she said weakly.

  She held tightly to my arm as we walked towards a place on a bench overlooking the port area.

  “I am so hot, Franck.”

  “It’s a hot day.”

  “No, Franck. It was that man. There was something about him. Franck. Hold me, Franck. I want to watch the water for awhile.”

  We looked out past the terminal at the river, and an island containing remnants of an old world fair.

  “It is the reason we are together, Franck.”

  “The water.”

  “You see it too, Franck, don’t you. It is the water. It is the reason we are together.”

  The loft lived up to the advance billing. A luxury 3000 square foot loft, balconies on ever y side, and a solarium overlooking the port on the St. Lawrence. The owner was an Egyptian. We learned later he was skipping town on a tax evasion charge. His wife was Brazilian. She had big, siliconed tits and perfectly tanned legs, which emerged from her tight thousand dollar dresses and made her look like a star member of a Rio cabaret revue. Judging by her clothes and the furniture in the place, and the date of the Egyptian’s plane tickets, the tax authority’s chances of recovery were not high.

  I signed the lease, and handed over twelve post-dated cheques. By the time the Egyptian and I had finished our third beer, the day was coming to a close, and the moving men were being directed by Sheba back and forth in front of us with a king-size brass-rail bed. She eventually settled on dead centre of the loft. The rear wall was systematically lined with antique mirrors, brass lamps and other paraphernalia I had purchased cut-rate from the Egyptian. Within the day, we had gone from hell to heaven again.

  The Brazilian woman’s name was Zeta. She and Sheba spoke in different accents, but it was the same language. They were both experts in setting up or taking down camp very quickly, and wherever they were they knew they were born to lead the march towards the next great consumer frontier. The Eg yptian, now that his cheques were safe in his pocket, was waxing philosophy. “I knew the fates would intervene. I could not leave this place with just anyone. I have my reputation and my businesses here, of course. Maybe, someday, I will even come back and live here in Canada. But, you know, the taxes are far
too high. This, you people must learn to change. Until you do this, you can never become a truly great nation.”

  Later, I realized that he had left no forwarding number, so I had no way of helping the police and the revenue service when they arrived the next day looking for him.

  The loft became our own little temple of sex and pain. The light coming through the windows of the solarium and the balconies were illusory, as there was only one exit to the loft, a thick door with a double deadbolt on it. The bed, a brass four-poster, quickly became the centrepiece of our existence. Right after the noon meal, I fell into the habit of strapping her arms to the top posts, fucking her from behind as her legs wriggled back and forth like two eels, then leaving her chained to the four-poster while I checked things out at the office. Upon my return, she would be crazy as a rabid dog, and only three or four hours of sex would get her as near to normal as someone like her could get. Then, after protracted discussions, she would insist I repeat the process on the following day. All that to say, in her own way, she enjoyed it.

  It was a cold winter morning, but the loft was tropical. She was stretched out beneath the sunroof, wearing a mud-coloured bodysuit. Her eyes were half-closed, the evil temporarily assuaged, yielding to the languid pleasures of our day-to-day life, such as it was. I still had money, and while I continued to use it up, things remained at a manageable level. She hadn’t moved for awhile, outside of casually leafing through a local cultural newspaper, which filled the front pages with rants against sexual abuse and the back pages with S & M personals.

  I was standing at the bar counter which divided the kitchen area from the rest of the loft. A notebook, what appeared to be a journal, was open. A series of handwritten entries in log form:

  Carnet. . . . . .

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