“Well, ultimately, didn’t somebody?”
“It wasn’t too bad,” she said. She was looking beyond him somehow. “They fished him out of the water fairly quickly. No decomposition. Really. When you think about it, there’s almost no good way. There ought to be. Like in
Soylent Green
.”
“You’re pretty calm about this.”
“I’m dead inside,” she announced matter-of-factly.
“I know that’s not true.”
“It was seven years ago. I’m used to it now. Yes. And also the implicit rejection, that I wasn’t enough for him to stay here on earth for. Even the most reasonable suicide hurts other people.”
“You’re crying again,” he noted.
“If you say so,” she said.
“I’m much stronger than he was.”
“You don’t know that. Neither do I. I’ve only seen you in the power position. Anybody can be strong that way.”
“Why didn’t you argue harder?”
“I couldn’t make that much of a case.”
“If he’d stuck around, he might have saved you from this. Although I don’t think so.”
“Oh, if he’d stuck around, he would have saved me.”
“I sure as shit wouldn’t let anybody hurt my woman.”
“Except you.”
“Of course. But seriously, he just abandoned you. If I ever did commit to someone, I’d never do that.”
“You don’t know what you’d do. Nobody does.”
“Now, you’re just on your own.”
“All alone, by the telephone.”
“So who was the last man you fucked?”
“Before you? You’ve wiped them all out of my memory.”
“That’s so sweet.” He tugged on the leash until she was gasping again. “Who?”
“The UPS man,” she managed to squeak out. “We kind of have an arrangement.”
“Who?”
“It’s been a while. I don’t know. Some guy I met on the train to New York.” She was shaking now, still weeping, breath ragged. “A few times, nothing serious. I told you, I’m dead inside.”
“You don’t feel dead to me,” he said, checking with his free hand, after taking his legs off of her and moving closer. Then he pushed her down onto her back, wrapped the leash around his other hand a couple of times so that it was just a few inches from her neck, and rolled on top of her. “Now I know some of the most important things about you, don’t I?”
“Some of them, I guess.” She tried to shrug, but he was holding the leash pretty taut.
“Makes you more mine.”
“I’ll never be yours,” she whispered.
“‘Don’t rush to judgment on something like that until all the facts are in.’” He replaced his finger with his penis and started gently moving in and out. “Think of all he’s missing out on, your husband.”
“He had plenty of that. And it was all voluntary.”
“So’s this, isn’t it?” he asked, pausing momentarily to kiss her mouth until she kissed him back.
“It’s exactly the same,” she managed to say wryly.
“Fuck me the way you’d fuck him,” he said.
“Missionary style, with the lights out?” she suggested.
“Tell me how much you love me and how we’ll always have each other,” he said. He placed her cuffed hands around his shoulders. “Hold me and tell me.”
She looked at him and shook her head sadly. He moved his face close to hers and licked at some of her tears.
“Close your eyes,” he said, surprisingly, “and pretend. This is your chance. I’m him. Make love to me one last time.” He paused. “That’s an order,” he said, but he loosened the chain a little.
She gritted her teeth, then ungritted them. She didn’t close her eyes. She looked up deeply into his. “I love you, baby,” she said, and there was no doubting her tone. “I always have, and I always will. You can never be inside me deep enough or long enough. You’re the only one ever for me.” She was holding him and squeezing her legs tightly around his ass as she said these things. Finally, she closed her eyes and pulled him even closer. “Never let me go, baby. Never let me go.”
He was thrusting in and out quickly now, spurred on by her words and the look on her face. And she was moaning and writhing, seemingly with passion, saying, “Baby, baby, baby,” digging her nails into his back. And as he fucked her harder and harder, she was thrusting back, breathing more and more roughly until she came, with giant contractions and an enormous, deep grunt of satisfaction. It was impossible for him to hold on any longer after that. He let himself drop on top of her, then rolled off of her and to her side. He reached over and removed the leash from her neck; the indentations the chain links had made on it would last for a while. Then he lay back down on his side and looked over at her.
“Wow,” she said. “That was great. So cathartic. Thanks.”
For a moment, there was an unqualified expression of surprise on his face.
Her expression changed completely then. She gave him a sidelong look of what it took him a moment to recognize was derision.
Then she looked back up at the ceiling, and she spoke.
“I’m so bored of this game,” she said, and there was no doubting her tone this time, either.
“What else have you got?” she asked.
She almost laughed out loud when she saw his face. He had really gotten off on pretending he was her husband, hearing her say the things a wife says to the man she loves, seeing her come as hard as she had.
It was more of what she’d been doing all along. Refusing to give in when he expected her to. Giving in when he didn’t. Enjoying what he did sexually (she couldn’t pretend to love the torture) when the reason he did it was so that she
wouldn’t
enjoy it. She’d tried to upend all his expectations. She figured that way she’d live longer. Long enough to figure a way out of this.
And he loved it every time she surprised him, every time he set a new task for her, some new humiliating assignment, and she came through with flying colors, turning the provocation around on itself, challenging him yet again.
But he wasn’t so crazy about her dismissing the whole game he had set up.
That was ok; she needed to ratchet things up. He was having too much fun.
“Are you fucking with me? I can’t always tell if you’re fucking with me or you’re actually being serious,” he said, sitting up and looking at her.
“How about both? Jesus H. Christ,” she announced. “I could do this in my sleep. You hurt me. You rape me. I can’t stop you. I have to do what you want.” She looked at him with her eyes open wide. “I can act offended. Or I can pretend I like it. But it’s all about you having the power. I get it. But really, where is this going?”
“I don’t know,” he said, clearly a little taken aback.
“But I’m going to get a drink. You’re having one, too,” he decided after a moment of thought. “Stay put.” Still cuffed, she had no choice about that.
He got up and went over to where the liquor was, then poured himself a small shot of whiskey and her a significantly larger one. He tucked the bottle under his elbow and came back to her.
“Drink that,” he said. She frowned, and he tilted his head at her, threateningly. “Fast.”
She sat up and tossed it back with a tiny gagging sound at the end. “Yechhh.”
He drank his.
“So all of this is just a game to you?” he asked, refilling her glass and gesturing for her to have another. She grimaced but drank it.
“It’s one to you, isn’t it?”
“Of course it is to me. That’s not the same thing. You are now, if I am to understand this correctly, attempting to persuade me that none of this means anything to you, you’re above it, beyond it, impervious.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You’re bored.”
“Well. Yes.”
“I can’t believe I haven’t kept you stimulated enough. I feel awful.”
“Ha. Ha. But maybe what stimulates you doesn’t stimulate me. And, even if I’m in pain,” she hastened to add. “I can still be bored.”
“Ah. You’ve already dealt with my next objection.”
He poured her another strong one. She drank it down.
“You should welcome this then,” he said. “Something different.”
“What exactly do you have in mind?”
“You’ll see.”
He pushed her back down on the rug, moved the bottle a little distance away, and lay back down next to her, grabbing another pillow for his head from a stack by the sofa. He waited in silence for a while.
“What do you expect will happen?” she asked, after several minutes more.
“I don’t expect anything with you,” he said.
“What do you antishipate? Uh-oh.”
“That kind of thing.”
“Maybe I’m just faking again.”
“Unless you’re an alien, you’re subject to the laws of biology,” he stated. “But just to make sure...” He filled her glass one more time and personally held it up to her mouth until she drank it. Then he pushed her back down and arranged himself next to her. He moved one of his legs on top of her and curled himself around her in his own version of the famous photograph of Yoko and John. He kissed the side of her head and down her neck.
“Ummmm,” she said. It wasn’t clear if it was a moan or a groan.
It was early afternoon, and the sun had been baking them for some time as they lay in its path through the living room windows.
“I wanted to say something,” she said suddenly.
“What’s that?”
“Do you ever look at the clouds?”
“Is that what you wanted to say?”
“They’re so puffy. Puffy white clouds. Really puffy today.”
He opened his mouth, then decided to wait. Then he leaned over and kissed her on the lips, and stopped.
She spoke. “You know I’m not thinking about anything deep anymore. I’m just focusing on doing what I’m doing. A kiss is just a kiss, that’s all it is. Nothing more. Just what I have to do. The same with everything. Just in case you were thinking, on some level, that there was even the slightest bit of enjoyment in it for me. That I found a strange sort of freedom in your vicious embrace. Your embrace. There is no freedom there. There is only what has to be done.”
“And that’s what you wanted to say?”
“Don’t you pay attention to clouds? Or would you just like to fuck them?”
He chuckled softly.
“Ok,” she said suddenly. “So Jesus is on the cross.”
“What?”
“He’s on the cross and his disciple Paul is some distance away. He’s been injured.”
“Ok.”
“And then he hears Jesus say: ‘Paul, Paul. Come here. Come here to me.’ And Paul walks some distance over to him but his legs are injured and soon he collapses onto the ground. And Jesus says: ‘Paul, Paul. Come here, come here to me.’ So Paul pulls himself up to his knees and crawls over closer to where Jesus is. Soon his knees are cut to ribbons, and he collapses again.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Paul is crawling,” she said again, more slowly, thoughtfully. “He’s crawling. But at least not away from anybody. Just
to
somebody. It’s worse to be crawling away.”