I was worried that I’d start to annoy the woman if I continued to be so cheerful. Hell, I was starting to annoy myself. But she really didn’t seem interested in my mood. She gave me some water to lap and then told me to stand up. But I couldn’t. At least not all at once. My bruised muscles just didn’t want to. They kept trying to fold back up, like cheap lawn furniture. The woman looked on stolidly, and when I could finally stand straight, she silently led me out of the hut by the rope, after having picked up my bridle, harness, and tail.
She put them on me (I guessed I’d have to go barefoot), and then she strapped the harness to the plow, which was just standing out there in the middle of a half turned-up field. No stroking or crooning at me, that was for sure. And then she grabbed the reins and briskly began to lead me down the rows, occasionally swatting me with a thin stick she held in her other hand.
And that was that. I mean we just kept going. Back and forth as the sun rose in the sky and sweat started pouring off me. It was hot, hard, and boring. It was work. It didn’t have the little gut-wrenching thrills of exposure and humiliation I had come to expect—I hadn’t realized just how much I’d come to expect them. The woman hardly looked at me, and I had to admit that it was a hell of a lesson and a punishment, kind of a metahumiliation, being out there dirty, naked, exhausted, exposed, and virtually invisible. I remembered Jonathan, that first day in his study, asking me if I liked to be looked at. Had it really been so obvious?
From the field, I could see cars coming and going down to the stable area. Customers, of course, but it was also Sunday, and Cathy’d told me that “Sunday to Sunday” was the customary term for a boarder. So Sir Harold had really done Jonathan, that nice boy, quite a favor by taking me on in the middle of the week and driving all the way down and picking me up, too. I wondered, idly, about just what had gone on in the old days, while I watched a beautiful, expensive car drive up the road toward the gate. Briefly I caught Cathy’s rapt, triangular face at the window and Madame behind the wheel. And then they were gone and the woman was swatting me to hurry me up. So now I was naked and invisible and lonely as well.
The field I was plowing was, of course, bare, being turned over for new crops. But there was a field opposite where they were growing vegetables and some flowers, and there was also a greenhouse. You could walk down a path between the fields, and once a couple came that way to buy flowers from the greenhouse, the woman just leaving me to stand around while she helped them. The couple chattered happily as they walked away with their flowers, and it was so silent out there, except for an occasional car on the road and the slap of the woman’s stick on my calves, that I could hear them even after the path curved away and I couldn’t see them.
The voices faded eventually, and then I heard some new voices, new people coming my way. And realized that these voices were familiar. I heard Sir Harold’s rumble first, though I couldn’t quite make out his words. And then another, a woman’s voice that was unmistakably familiar and melodious, the words quite clear as the speakers approached.
“I’ll have to give her to the emir tonight. It’s his last night, and he’s been drooling over her photographs. He’ll love the job you’ve done on her. It’s just that she’s so unmarked… No, it’s not your fault, darling. You were the good girl I’ve taught you to be, and Sir Harold just couldn’t find enough reason to punish you. But we’ll beat you when we get home, just to put some lovely marks on you.”
And as they came into view, Sir Harold and Kate Clarke, with Stephanie between them, unbridled but harnessed to a little wicker cart, Stephanie said softly but joyously, “Yes, Kate.”
Filthy and sweaty as I was, they seemed like creatures from a different world—Kate in a short, crisp, pale yellow sundress and wide straw hat; Stephanie, her eyes never leaving Kate, looking like an adoring child with her hair in two ponytails over her dazzling naked shoulders and breasts; and Sir Harold decked out in a silly blue blazer. I looked down at my bare dirty feet and I wanted to disappear into the earth.
I should have known, I thought. A slave as beautiful and perfect as Stephanie. I remembered Jonathan saying that Kate’s standards were astronomical, and now I knew what that meant. I felt that up until this moment I’d simply been pretending to play a game I didn’t understand at all, one whose rules and parameters were written in a complicated and impersonal, perhaps mathematical, language. I realized why Stephanie hadn’t cared what went on here, except, of course, for learning to be a perfect pony. For Kate. All for Kate. I wondered if I’d ever be that kind of slave, worshipful, adoring, and totally without irony. I wondered if I wanted to.
Kate was coming over to me, having sent Sir Harold and Stephanie to the greenhouse to get flowers. The woman left me in the half-plowed row as she hurried to help them. I watched Kate walk carefully through the plowed field, her perfect sandals somehow managing to stay clean. But she wouldn’t touch me, would she, I thought. I mean, I was too dirty, too abject, for that. And I realized that I wanted, more than anything, for her to touch me, any way she would deign to.
She was smiling at me, almost triumphantly, even as she looked at me with her hard, appraising stare. And then she amazed me by coming very close and softly stroking my breast.
Very quietly, she said, “You are very much improved, Carrie. Even if you didn’t steal the little hose—and I don’t think you did—you needed this punishment. And this week. The world is a lot larger than Jonathan’s precious little study, isn’t it?”
I nodded, tears in my eyes, as waves of sensation rippled from my breast down to my knees. I didn’t so much understand her meaning as feel it, glimpsing a never-ending horizon of pain and challenge, as yet unimagined extremes of experience opening out for me, if I were brave enough to try to encounter them. If they were what I really, really wanted…
And that was all. Sir Harold and Stephanie came back, Stephanie’s wicker cart piled high with sweet peas and snapdragons, and Kate joined them on the path back to the stables. I just pulled for the rest of the day, numbly, barely noticing the little Mercedes leaving the ranch an hour or so later, mostly keeping my eyes on the hard, bright sky, on the hawks circling in the distance.
They brought me back to the stables that night, washed me down, and put me to sleep, and the next two days passed uneventfully. The pony routine was simple and challenging, and I was open and pliant whenever anyone came to the stables to use me. Sir Harold, I could see, was surprised at how well I was doing. He hadn’t expected me to be able to get beyond my intellect as well as I had. What he didn’t understand was that at that moment the weirdness of my situation had simply undone me. I would have been happy to forget my surroundings, knit my brow, and meditate on what in the world was happening to me, but it was all too much for me, so I just let it go, half believing that I’d never lived anywhere but in a stable.
Besides, I realized suddenly, as I saw Jonathan coming down the path with Sir Harold, it had been Jonathan who’d kept me so cerebral. He’d never entirely let me relax into the fantasy—he wasn’t a master I worshiped, the way Cathy clearly did Madame, or Stephanie Kate. He was a “master,” surrounded by ironic quotation marks. He was also Jonathan—neurotic, compulsive, a control freak firmly rooted in the obnoxious world of conference calls and deliverables. Somehow he’d managed it so that I never forgot that about him—we’d played a double game out on the edge the whole time. Or further out than the edge—this was the moment, I realized, when Wile E. Coyote looks down and realizes that he and the Road Runner are standing on thin air, five feet off the cliff, and fifty feet above the ground.
He was coming toward me and all I could think of was what I’d miss about him. Not, I thought, his tone of command or assurance—hell, I figured I’d find that wherever this adventure took me. What I’d miss were the little, funny, off-center things: a raised eyebrow or an ironic grimace, the hair on his belly, the bones in his wrist. And gestures, especially his defensive gestures when I’d caught him out as middle-aged or otherwise un
hip. I’ll miss, I thought, all the “gotcha’s”—undercover ways we’d teased each other beneath the stately minuet we’d been dancing all these months. And I knew, no matter what I’d thought we’d been doing, and no matter what roles we’d been playing, what a joint feat of the imagination it all had been. Even if I’d thought I was in free fall all that time, in another way we’d certainly been collaborators. A collaborator, I thought, remembering when he’d sent me for that first haircut. Oh my.
He and Sir Harold were standing in front of me now, Sir Harold asking him whether he’d want to take the long path or the short one, and whether he wanted to harness me to the cart himself. I was shocked, somehow. I hadn’t realized that he’d drive me. Well, of course, I answered myself, I mean, wouldn’t he want to see how you’ve done here? But he seemed a bit hesitant himself, finally agreeing to the short path, while he harnessed me up every bit as quickly and tightly as Don or Phil could have. And I ran through the woods as quickly and gracefully as I possibly could, and he used the whip sparingly, though he was good at cracking it, and at driving—he seemed to know the paths. In fact, we didn’t even use the whole path; he turned off at a shortcut and we were back within twenty minutes.
Nobody was around, as he undid all the straps, taking off the harness and bridle, kissing me briefly, rubbing me down carefully and silently. I wasn’t supposed to say anything, of course, but I had the idea that he didn’t know what to say, either. I mean, what was there to say except something like, Here we so beautifully are, mission accomplished, over and out.
Sir Harold was hurrying down the path now, panting and surprised we were back so soon, concerned that something was wrong. Jonathan turned gracious and polite, waxing enthusiastic, if briefly so, about the wonders that had been worked upon me, acting boyishly charming about how perfect everything had been, including lunch, but you know, Sir Harold, we’ve got a long trip back to San Francisco, and I want to get her home… Sir Harold all but winked.
Only he didn’t take me home, at least not right away. He pulled into a Motel 6 maybe twenty minutes from the ranch and checked us in. He took a collar out of his pocket and put it on me. And then he fucked and buggered me until I was sore. Later, leaning on his elbow and examining my marks and bruises, he only said, “You actually have a bit of a suntan. I wouldn’t have thought it possible.”
He left for a little while and came back with Big Macs, fries, and big chocolate shakes, which, after the Science Diet, tasted like the best thing I’d ever eaten. We watched motel pay TV while we silently ate in bed. And then he told me to tell him about the week, and once again I made it into a long sexy story for him to jerk himself off to, which he did. And the last thing he said, before he turned off the light, was, “I’ll miss your stories.” I wondered, as I lay awake, listening to his even breathing, whether anyone would ever want to hear one again.
CHAPTER V
Entr’acte
Our last few days in San Francisco continued silent, stark, ritualistic. I don’t know what would have happened if I hadn’t gone to the pony farm, but I had gone to the pony farm, and the consequences were clear. I was out in the world now, Kate’s big world. I felt I was just on loan to Jonathan in his study, and I guess so did he. What was happening between us was abstract, dreamlike. He’d do a few hours of work in the morning and then summon me, and I’d present my body to him, to use, to beat, to look at. I’d thank him afterward. I always paid attention to him, always knew what he wanted. He didn’t seem moved toward any more inventiveness, and I was amazed that I had ever found his rules difficult to follow. He amused himself in the afternoons by taking me shopping, buying me pretty, expensive clothes for the trip, never asking my opinion about an item, dealing with the surprised and uncomfortable saleswomen all by himself while I didn’t say anything except “Yes, Jonathan.”
So the time passed and we finally took a night flight to a chilly northern European city, which I never really got a chance to see. The journey continued dreamlike, cyberspacial if you will, real time and geography squeezed into a sequence of bland, corporate interiors. We flew first class, which I’d never done before. I wanted to pig out on the champagne and quite good food, but Jonathan wouldn’t let me, saying it would add to my jet lag. Rather, he made me take a Dalmane and drink a lot of water; I slept most of the way on his shoulder. A big black car with tinted windows met us at the airport and drove us straight to our hotel. We slept some more, shaking off the jet lag, and the next morning the car took us to the trials.
You didn’t just get into the auction automatically. First you had to run the gauntlet of a board of examiners. My board was three men and a woman, a varied group who had seen just about everything. They had the same kind of brisk, no-nonsense attitude Kate Clarke had had and no sense of humor. Undressing in front of them, handing items of clothing to the maid who would give them to Jonathan to hold, I barely could keep from trembling, from fumbling with hooks and buttons.
The deal was that they gave you some three to five days of trials—you wouldn’t know they were done until they told you. They were sitting behind a large, inlaid table in this absolutely incredible apartment in an eighteenth-century building. After the spacey, abstract-seeming twenty-four hours that had just passed, it was like leaving black-and-white Kansas for Technicolor Oz. French antique furniture, mirrors, paintings, parquet floor, where, naturellement, I would spend most of my time, while Jonathan sat on one of the silk-upholstered chairs, watching and smoking. I felt like a puppy again (Toto, I guess), all my earlier fantasies about being the way coolest thing they’d ever seen seeming like a million years ago. It was like the pony farm, I told myself—just pay attention, pay attention so hard that you will lose yourself in all the sensations. And I relaxed into it, realizing that I could hold back the tears only so long, concentrating on their marvelously controlled voices and careful cruelty. They found me crude and somewhat trivial, I thought, and I found myself rather adoring them.
Day one had begun with the very chic fortyish woman holding me tightly by the nipple and telling me, “We will all want to use you during these trials, but first, we will want to know how obedient you are, how much self-discipline you have. You are accustomed to being in restraints?”
“Yes, Madame Roget,” I said.
They all laughed a little at this, and she told me that they didn’t believe in that sort of thing for these trials. “We would not mar the woodwork of this pretty room with any of those little hooks and eyes, I think you call them. You will do everything we command, and you will be beaten, and bear it beautifully, without any collars or cuffs, without being tied or held in any way.”
I gulped. “Yes, Madame Roget,” I agreed, though I was terrified at the thought of not being tied down while being beaten. Too bad we couldn’t rig up something using all the hardware hanging off the jacket of her Chanel suit.
Quel jour. I had no idea if I could really do it, and I wasn’t perfect by any means. Twice, that I can remember, and maybe more times than that, my hands flew up to my breasts to protect them. This was at least one of the “technical” things Jonathan hadn’t thought of. He, of course, loved to think of crafty ways to embed hooks and eyes all over his house and so, stupidly, hadn’t realized that the rest of the world might not. I think what got me through it was that I was so pissed at him for not considering that this might happen, and so determined to best the situation in spite of him. Thanks a lot, coach, I remember thinking, seeing him out of the corner of my eye, over there on his delicate little chair. I thought of that creep who brought those terrified little four-foot-eight-inch American gymnasts to the Olympics, to be entirely outclassed by the Russians and Romanians.
That day ended very abruptly, or at least I thought so. I was on my knees in the center of the room, having just thanked the board, one by one, and very sweetly and clearly, though in a bit of a choked voice, for a brisk beating they’d just administered to my breasts and thighs. (Oh, and in French—we switched to French for the afternoon
s.) And, no, they didn’t hold up any cards with little numbers on them to rate my performance. They hardly acknowledged me at all, in fact, but Madame Roget turned to Jonathan and curtly said, “Bring her around tomorrow at ten, and we’ll continue.”
“Thank you, Madame,” Jonathan replied, getting to his feet and hurrying to help me up. “I will. Thank you all.” He spoke like the well-brought-up little boy he must have been once. And I realized that part of the entertainment, for him, and maybe for me as well, was that he was on trial too.
When we got back to the hotel room, he grabbed me, and, very uncharacteristically, pushed me onto the bed practically into a backward somersault, pulled up my skirt, and started fucking me. My shoes went flying, and I felt a garter unsnap painfully against my thigh. Against my cunt, my belly, my legs, I felt his pants zipper and a million buttons and buckles digging into me. It was silly, clumsy, uncomfortable, but I understood. It was what I needed, too. The long, horny, ritualistic day of trials, subtleties, pain, performing, and politesse had gotten to both of us, and what we both wanted was mindless, exhausting, low-tech vanilla fucking. In and out. Bang bang bang. Friction. I closed my eyes and came a lot, moving however I pleased and making lots of noise and trying to forget that there were such things as rules or form or sensibility.
Still, you don’t forget a year of slave training just like that, so a long while after, when I had recovered enough, I crawled to the foot of the bed and knelt there at attention (although I was unsure what to do about the skirt that was still up around my waist and the stockings down around my ankles). Jonathan looked at me for a while. Then he frowned, sighed, and finally said, “Oh hell, Carrie, I don’t think I can maintain any rules tonight, not after watching those pros do it all day. Let’s just take showers and zone out. Are you hungry? Want to do room service?”
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