The Woman at the Edge of Town

by Georgette Kaplan

  Sarah grabbed her hand again, rougher this time. Hard enough to hurt. “Look, I’m not gonna pretend it isn’t a turn-on that you have a dog collar with my name on it. But that’s not the cake, you know. It’s just the frosting. And you can’t eat a whole thing of frosting. Tried when I was twelve, sick for a week. I like you for you. So if you’re feeling like crap, I wanna feel like crap too, even if it’s not sexy. And now, I’m going to read your mind with my advanced intellect.” Sarah put the first two fingers of either hand on the sides of Nina’s head. “You are…feeling shitty because you have a million things to do today and you’re behind on all of them.”

  “I feel shitty because of what happened in the theater.”

  “What do you mean ‘what happened in the theater’? That was your idea—”

  “I know it was! And you weren’t comfortable with it and I sprung it on you and pushed you.”

  “It was spontaneous. I liked it. What’s the problem?”

  “I couldn’t stop myself. ‘I love you so much, I can’t bear to see you constrained.’ That’s what she used to tell me.”

  “Who?”

  Nina’s hands cinched together, orbiting each other like a pair of comets caught in each other’s gravity. “I was a couple years older than you are now. Going to a pretty respectable college. There was an adult-art exhibit there. At the time, it was quite enough to scandalize everyone. Curious, I went, almost not believing they would let me in. I was a little disappointed at first. They were just paintings. I couldn’t even see why anyone would have a problem. But some—they made you feel things, think things. About pain, about pleasure. One of them just…held on to me. It was beautiful. I actually bought it eventually. I keep it in the attic, and sometimes I look at it. When I’m alone.”

  Her hooded eyes closed.

  “It’s of this woman. She’s not naked, but her clothes are so tight that they’re almost a straitjacket. Her hands are behind her back—maybe they’re bound, or maybe she was just holding them that way. There’s a rope around her neck too. Not a leash or a noose. Silk. To keep her from breathing when she’s not supposed to. And there’s a blindfold over her eyes. All you can really see is her mouth. It’s open and…not quite smiling, but not quite screaming either.

  “She looks so beautiful, Sarah. I can’t explain it. Maybe the description said she was in pain, maybe the artist intended for her to be in pain, but I could just tell that it was good. She wanted it.”

  Sarah could picture it, like a quick glimpse of something TV-MA while you were flipping through channels. You hoped no one saw it, you pretended not to see anything, but really, you wanted to know. “How long did you look at it?”

  “Long enough for the artist to notice. She, uh, brought me a drink. My mouth had gotten dry and I hadn’t noticed, but somehow she had. I was in awe of her, how beautiful she was, how confident. She asked me how it made me feel. I said some bullshit about female oppression and power dynamics—she had to tease it out of me. The fact that it made me aroused.”

  Sarah swallowed. “Did she touch you then?”

  “No. Not for a long time. But she told me she had this…collection. And that I could see it, if I wanted. I…” Nina’s jaw twitched. The memory seemed powerful. She opened her eyes to look at Sarah, trying to share it, split it between them. “I knew it was wrong. No, not wrong… That’s what others might call it, but it wasn’t wrong. But I knew that a lot of people wouldn’t approve. I guess that’s why I agreed. And…she did touch me. Just her hand. She just took my hand in hers and squeezed and…” Nina shook her head, breaking eye contact. “It sounds like so little. But she could be overwhelming. I think I’m that way with you. I’m not trying to be. It’s just how we mix. Our chemical reaction. When she ran her thumb over the back of my hand, it felt like I’d been alone, without ever realizing it, and now I was finally part of something.”

  Sarah’s phone trilled. She reached into her pocket fast to silence it. Nina didn’t even appear to notice.

  “The next day I went to her house. I’d wanted to go there all night. I’d lain awake in bed, but I couldn’t move. I’d thought about it, but I would picture the stairs creaking, my roommate waking up, and it just— In the morning, it was like no big deal. I told myself I just couldn’t sleep. Insomnia or something. But I went to her house.”

  Nina bit her lip. For a few moments she just breathed, her eyes dashing away from Sarah’s. Looking around, like someone might’ve snuck in just to eavesdrop on them. Sarah looked down at Nina’s hands, flat on her thighs. The knuckles were white.

  “You couldn’t think of anything else?” Sarah asked, almost sullenly.

  Nina faced her again. She had a thousand-yard stare, an addict’s stare, excited and obscene and rueful, all at once. Regrets, but not over what had happened. Regret that it hadn’t happened sooner. Rueful that it hadn’t happened more.

  “Anyone else,” Nina said. “Her paintings were beautiful, but they weren’t really erotic unless you knew what to look for. And they spoke to me. I could see what was beneath them. She showed me her private collection.” Nina ran her hand over her face. A light glaze of sweat was building. She wiped it away with her sleeve. “She was so gentle. Not that she touched me, not then. But the way she talked to me. And looked at me. I was so used to being judged. The way I dress and the way I talk and act. No one ever really listened to me besides your father. I had to shout just for them to notice, but not with her. She listened.”

  Sarah breathed at the same time as Nina. “She understood you.”

  “She was me,” Nina insisted. “She was a part of me, or I was a part of her.” Nina almost stood, bouncing her heels on the floor. Nervous.

  “Finish the story,” Sarah said.

  Nina rested her weight back down. “Have you seen the painting I told you about?”

  “No. You know I haven’t.”

  “That kind of art is the sort of thing you can…almost smell on someone. It wasn’t uncouth; it was hers. Mine. Just beautiful people. Enjoying themselves. I understood that, you’d understand it, but so many people would just see the obscene things. The pain, the bruises, the exposure. But that was just a part of the pictures.”

  “Just part of life.”

  “Yes. Yes.” Nina banged her hand on her thigh. “She took me back upstairs and she showed me some of her photographs in her office. Thirty-five-millimeter stuff. She was a budding photographer too. That’s how she put it. Not amateur. Budding. And it wasn’t tits and ass; it was sunsets and nature. She made the world look like a fairy tale.”

  Sarah looked at Nina’s hand on her thigh. Tight. Feeling her own skin through the thin fabric. There was something tempting about it. Something curious. Had it touched the artist? Had it entered her? Had she kissed it, sucked on it, run it across the woman’s face?

  “When was your first kiss?”

  “Later. Always later. She made me wait for it—want it. That first day, the sun was setting. She asked me if I’d like to take some pictures in the good light. She let me use her camera. She had on this dress. Alexander McQueen, I think. Red, with this pattern on it. Your eyes follow it, but it never seems to end. She posed for me. Did little dances, made faces. There wasn’t anything naughty about it, but we could both feel something. The way I looked at her through the lens—you could see it when the photos developed. How I was in love with her.”

  Nina’s hand moved quickly, wiping a tear from under her eye like it’d been stinging her there. And for a moment, Sarah couldn’t imagine how it could hurt to be in love. Then she thought of how she’d been feeling lately. The agony of its sweetness.

  “I came back later, to see the photos. She’d had one framed, and she gave it to me. She looks like a goddess in it.” Her hand seemed to inch toward Sarah, although maybe that was just a trick of the light. “She asked if she could photograph me this time. I agreed. Some of the pictures were—a little embarrassing. I was flirting with her. I tugged on my shirt, flipped my hair, you k
now. She didn’t say anything about it, but I could tell she liked it. So I went back to her house again, and this time, she said she had a photo shoot in mind. We’d go to this spot she’d found and use her new camera. And she wanted to get me some special clothes. She took me to a boutique, and we tried things on. Things I still have.”

  “With your painting,” Sarah said. “And your picture of her.”

  “There’s one—the dress I wore that day. I feel like if I go for too long without feeling it on my skin, then…it’ll just disappear.”

  “Where’d you go? On your photo shoot?”

  “There was this lagoon. She actually got me to go in with my new dress on.” Nina smiled at the memory—not a tease, not a grin. An effervescent joy. Sarah tried to remember seeing that before. It seemed almost too private. “I had to lift it up and wade in up to my knees, but the pictures she took… It was how she saw me, and I could touch it, I could hold it in my hand.”

  “She kept taking pictures of you.”

  “Yes.” Nina moved with blinding speed, moving her hand from her thigh to Sarah’s wrist. It felt right, the pressure she was putting on it. It felt real. “You don’t know the way people looked at me. Different. Strange. When she photographed me, I looked beautiful.”

  “You are beautiful.”

  “Not like this. This was…” Nina’s eyes were misty as she reached down into a desk drawer, brought out an envelope, and pressed it into Sarah’s hand.

  Sarah opened the envelope. It wasn’t sealed, and she could imagine Nina paging through it again and again. She took the pictures out, a thick stack of them. The first few were just of Nina in an old-fashioned waitress outfit, demure despite the way it fit her buxom body. Maybe it was the way she was shy, a little awkward, unused to being photographed. Sarah moved the photos from the front of the stack to the back as she went, the little sound filling up the space. Louder than either of them breathing.

  Nina got used to the camera quick. She struck poses, girlish things, doing a little rock-star hand gesture, grabbing herself, playing her leg like a guitar. Sarah could imagine someone behind the camera, smiling beatifically at the antics, laughingly urging her along.

  Then some photos in black-and-white. More professional than the casual shots from earlier, some monkeying around with the format. Nina wore a man’s suit now, tailored to fit her femininity. She was more serious, though it alternated with shots of her cracking up, gesturing at the woman behind the camera. C’mon? Lighten up? Play with me? Let me have the camera? Who knew? In one photo, she jokingly choked herself with her own necktie. In the next, the tie led off the photo’s borders, held by the photographer. She was so young.

  Sarah looked up. Nina was staring at her. Dining on every little face she made, every furrow in her brow, every squint and every wide eye. As if she was waiting for something.

  Sarah flipped to the next photo, still looking at Nina as if asking a question, then her eyes dropped back down. It was the lagoon. The dress was amazing, shades of red and black, sleek and flattering, with leather forming a kind of jacket to top off its tight curves. The kind of thing Nina would still wear now.

  In the first picture, even Nina herself seemed to be marveling at how well it suited her. Her face was set in an impressed grin. But in the next few, a change had come over her. Some coaching from her lover—something she’d said or done. Now Nina looked godlike. Unapproachable. Impervious. Ethereal. Wading into the water, she was a mermaid visiting home.

  There was one picture done on a timer, or taken by someone else, from a fair distance away. Nina and a woman, sitting in the hatchback of a Kia. She was drying off Nina’s bare feet with a towel, playing with her toes, a set of knee-highs next to them. Nina was laughing. The woman was grinning. They looked like two people talking without words.

  She was beautiful. They both were.

  After that, the photographs moved inside. A house. At first, the natural light of the windows. Nina in jeans and a tank-top, her bra visible, her trousers riding low. It wasn’t very revealing but felt more explicit than before. Intimate. Sarah instinctively looked up to see if anyone had seen her looking at this and caught Nina still watching her. Tongue traveling her lips.

  That just forced her attention back to the photographs. Now they were away from the windows, or at night, or in rooms with no windows. The look was different, some calculated lighting done by the artist. It threw sharp shadows across Nina’s body, camouflaging her. She wore the shadows, and lingerie. Camisoles. Babydolls. Corsets. Kimonos. A dozen other things Sarah didn’t know the name of. There was an insane variety of bras and panties, and they all suited Nina to a tee. She had a “body made for sin,” as Eileen would say.

  Then Nina was wearing nothing at all. The camera was close to her. Consuming her. It caught her face. Her hands. Her legs. Her breasts, covered by her arm. Her sex, hidden by her fingers. Her ass, gloriously unhidden.

  Her lips, parted.

  “She did it herself first,” Nina said. Sarah would’ve thought that would shock her, but it seemed perfectly all right. Like the photos were speaking to her out loud. “I was uncomfortable, so she took her clothes off. I still remember… She was wearing a red bra and red panties. They were so damn sexy. I thought about her wearing those all the time, under all those stylish suits. That’s what made me do it. Realizing that I was naked all the time too. With her, I mean.”

  Sarah went to the next photo, the last photo. It was a self-portrait. The artist in a bodice, a choker, gloves, boots. All black, all leather. Her back to the camera. She held a riding crop. The kind you’d use to control an animal.

  “That’s when you kissed her,” Sarah said softly. She would’ve.

  “No.” Gently, Nina pulled the pictures out of Sarah’s slack hands. She put them back in the envelope. “It wasn’t until graduation that I really…” Nina’s hands tightened on the envelope, a note of possessiveness. The paper crinkled as she tucked it away. “She photographed me when I was on stage. It seemed so innocent; everyone was taking pictures. But when I had her eyes on me, I couldn’t breathe. I could barely speak, barely accept my diploma. Sweat ran down my body. I felt it over my breasts. Between my legs. Everyone else went out partying, but I saw her car at the curve. She looked at me. She just—” Nina held up her hand. It was shaking, but she still managed to crook her finger. “So I went with her.”

  “Did you know what was going to happen?” Sarah asked, not sure how she knew. But she did.

  “Part of me.” Nina half smiled. “I felt…wonderfully alone with her. Alone together. All my friends had booze and dancing, but I had her. I was special. We went back to her place. She popped a bottle of champagne, showed me how to drink it. How first you smell, then you toast, then you drink. Slowly. Not like cheap beer. Then she took me to a room with this amazing mirror—it looked like something Marie Antoinette would own. I looked at that, and I think I saw myself as she saw me. I’d never really looked at myself that way before. As a woman.”

  “What’d she say to you?” Sarah had to know. Had to.

  Nina closed her eyes, remembering. She wouldn’t share it. It was too private. Hers and hers alone.

  “I watched in the mirror,” she finally said. “Like it was happening to someone else. I had to keep telling myself it was happening to me. That it was really happening, and that it was happening to me. She took my clothes off. I had all this time to stop her, but I just kept wanting it more and more. As she took my shirt off. My skirt. My bra. Then she kissed me.”

  “What was it like?”

  “I can’t describe something like that. It was…perfect. I took my panties off for her. Then she held me from behind, with an arm around my throat as if she couldn’t bear to let me go. But her other hand… Sarah, her other hand… I saw it in the mirror.”

  “Was she gentle?” Sarah asked. People were always gentle in the books.

  Nina smiled, her teeth showing. “No. She was rough with me. She knew I wouldn’t break. I had br
uises the next day. Sore spots to make me remember. I had to stop dressing like such a slut so no one would realize. But I wasn’t a slut anymore, or a party girl, or whatever you want to call it. I was hers. And nothing we ever did could be bad or dirty. Afterward, I felt like I’d lost my virginity all over again. But it wasn’t a disappointment this time; it was how it was supposed to feel. This time my world really had changed. Like I want it to change for you. We all deal with our issues in our own way. My parents died, I shut down, and then I found Emmaline. For a while, it felt as if she was building me back up. And I still think of how good it was, in the beginning, but…I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. You never have to do anything you don’t want to do. Ever.”

  Sarah caressed Nina’s face as if she could sift through the flickers of emotion Nina was displaying and get to what she really felt. “Can you tell me what’s going on, please? Every time you let me in, it’s like you push me away again.”

  “I can’t talk about it. I just can’t. But it’s not you.”

  Barnaby rose up to rest his head on her thigh, and Nina enthusiastically rubbed behind his ears. Sarah joined in, running her hand down the dog’s broad back.

  “Maybe we should take a break from the kinky stuff for a while, if it’s bothering you so much. Just some nice, normal kissing and cuddling and heavy petting…”

  Nina frowned at her. “I could do with a little more than that.”

  “Okay, we’ll go to third base—well, I guess that’s lesbian fourth base. We’ll, you know, we’ll take things slow. Like you wanted to.”

  “I don’t know what I want.” Nina sighed, slipping back into her darkness. “I see you and I want you and you enjoy it…”

  “But?” Sarah prodded.

  “I want to know you’re okay. And I can never know that. Not really.” Nina reached up to tap Sarah’s forehead. “Not in here.”

  “You could always trust me,” Sarah suggested.

  “You’re not the one I don’t trust.”