The Decoy (13 page)

>>So sweet. Actually (hic) I'm a little drunk.

>>While I'm merely intoxicated by your presence.

>>I've had a date, Victor. Such a wonderful man.

>>ITRW?

>>Sorry?

>>I was asking if your date was In The Real World. Not a phrase I use much, actually, preferring to believe this digital domain of ours is at least as real as anything that happens out there in the flawed and imperfect Realm of the Physical... But I digress. Your date. You were going to give me the sordid details.

>>Was I? Well, yes, it was ITRW

>>As you probably gathered, I'm jealous already.

>>What of? I'm tucked up here with you now.

>>True. And I suppose you must be alone. Unless your date is rather more tolerant of VR socializing than any of mine have ever been. Since the night is still young, I take it that nothing happened?

>>Nothing.

>>Your correspondent breathes a big sigh of relief.

>>Victor?

>>Yes, angel?

>>You know the other day, you and Carrie were talking about netsex?

>>Yes?

>>How does that work, exactly?

>>Well -- exactly -- it's kind of hard to explain until you try it. It's not sex in the literal sense, of course, in that the physical sensations are entirely in your head. But many of us find that bodies are only a kind of narrative device, in any case. A means to an end.

>>Would you like to show me?

A pause, so long that for a while she thinks Victor must have disconnected.

>>I'd be honoured, Claire. The first thing we have to do is get ourselves a little privacy. On the left of your screen you'll see a button marked 'private chat'. Click on that, would you?

>>0K.

>>OK,
sir
,

Victor says, and she doesn't think he's entirely joking.

===OO=OOO=OO===

Sex without bodies, desire without substance, pleasure without form. In this strange new world, thoughts become sensations directly, without the intermediary of flesh.

This must be how it feels to make love to an angel, she finds herself thinking; or to a ghost. So long as you didn't try to compare it with anything that existed in the real world, it was… well, different.

>>How was that, hon?

She types back:

>>Good for me.

>>Good for me, too.

>>Now I'm going to be a sexist pig, roll over, and go to sleep.

>>Well, you know what they say. In cyberspace, no-one can hear you snore. I think I'll hang out for a while.

>>See you soon, Victor.

>>See you, Claire.

>>Zzzzzzzz...

But she still can't sleep.

The district in which the apartment is situated is semi-derelict, but the old warehouses and meat-processing plants are home to a variety of low-life nightclubs. There's one called, predictably enough, Meat, just around the corner.

At the club, there's a dealer waiting for customers by the washrooms. Half an hour later, Claire's just another cog in the wired-up beehive of the dance floor.

When she can't dance any more she goes uptown, to the Harley Bar. Brian doesn't look overjoyed to see her. Which is hardly surprising, since her hair is ratty with dried sweat, her eyes are the size of duck eggs and twice as bright, and she's burbling incoherently about saving the world from serial killers.

But, crucially, he doesn't have anyone else to spend the rest of the night with.

And even if he had, they wouldn't compare to her.

It's almost noon by the time she gets back to 14th Street. She's still coming down; her eyes are gritty and her mouth feels like it's full of the stuff flower arrangers use to keep their stems upright.

For a moment, she thinks she's in the wrong apartment.

The walls have been painted cream. The animal skulls and thrift-shop artefacts have vanished. Now there's cheap Swedish furniture, piles of books, bright Turkish kilims. A neat rack of classical CDs — Rachmaninov, Bach, Mozart —
instead of a mess of Green Day and Nine Inch Nails. MOMA prints in bleached wood frames instead of the tatty rock posters and Rothkos. And, as if by some wave of a wizard's wand, the snake has turned into a tortoiseshell cat, regarding her lazily from the armchair as if he's lived there for ever.

'He's called Augustus,' Connie says, coming in from the bedroom.

'Really?'

'What do you think, the cat needs a cover name? Of course he's called Augustus.'

'This is much better,' Claire says, looking around approvingly. 'But why the rush?'

Instead of answering, Connie presses a button on the answer machine.

Vogler's voice.

'Claire, it's Christian. I just wanted to tell you how good it was to meet last night.' A pause, and then a laugh, slightly embarrassed. 'Could we perhaps see each other again? No pressure, but if you're free… Give me a call when you get a minute.'

'Do I call him back?'

'Sure. But first you play hard to get.'

Claire goes to an armchair, pulls off her shoes and puts her feet up on the table. 'I thought that was how men turned into psychopaths in the first place,' she mutters.

'Come on, Claire, get up. We have work to do.'

From: 'Claire Rodenburg' (ClaireR@colormail. com)
To: 'Christian Vogler' (CV@nyscu)

Christian,

I wanted to meet you last night because I thought you were an intelligent person who wouldn't try to change or judge me. I was wrong. Dismissing the things that turn me on as merely some kind of warped reaction to my grief belittles me and the huge leap of faith I made when I shared the secret of my sexuality with you. In a way I almost feel raped by what happened last night. You'll say that's ironic, given the stuff I like, but there it is. I suppose I should have realized sooner, from your e-mails, that your heart wasn't really in it. But for some reason I didn't.

Damn you, Christian. You started to get under my skin and inside my head, and that's a place I don't let many people go
-- for reasons that have just been reconfirmed.

I don't want to diminish how good it was. It was great. But I don't think it'll be like that again. Better to say goodbye now, don't you think?

Claire

From: 'Christian Vogler' (CV@nyscu)

To: 'Claire Rodenburg' ([email protected])

My dearest Claire,

What a very extraordinary person you are.

Before you consign me to oblivion, will you at least give me one more chance? I'll be in a bar called Wilson's tonight from eight o'clock onwards. It's on Forty-Third, about a block across from Broadway.

If you come, you come. If not, another memory.

===OO=OOO=OO===

The bar is dark and big and almost empty; it's a long sliver of a room which extends back into the block. The walls have been stripped back to the brick, and the only light comes from the candles in jars on each table.

She gets there at exactly eight twenty-five. She sees him sitting at a table towards the rear, reading, his book angled towards one of the candles.

There isn't enough light for the Minicam to get pictures, the technicians who scouted the place had reported. Instead, Claire has a microphone concealed in her bag, transmitting sound direct to the van outside.

When he looks up and sees her approaching, a warm smile spreads slowly over his thin, ascetic face.

===OO=OOO=OO===

'Your last e-mail touched on something that is particularly important to me,' he begins, 'and that is the question of trust.'

For a moment she thinks,
He knows
.

Then he continues, 'Do you think you can trust me, Claire?'

'The jury's still out on that.'

'I'm not interested in juries. Only in the judge.' He looks at her. 'I have always believed that knowledge doesn't care who has it. But that those who have it must use it.'

'What on earth does that mean?'

'Put your hand over the candle,' he says softly.

She looks down. The candle is inside a glass jar about four inches high, with an opening at the top like a lantern.

'Trust me,' he says.

She puts her hand over the opening and he places his own hand on top of hers, not forcing her, but letting the weight of his hand press hers onto the hot glass.

'Now,' he says. 'Whatever happens, you must not take your hand away until I say you can. Agreed?'

'It'll burn me.' The disc of heat under her palm is already unbearably hot and she winces.

'If you trust me,' he says, 'it will be all right, I promise.'

Together they look at the flame. It looks like a long fingernail, a talon jabbing up at her hand. The pain turns from something that prickles into something that makes her want to throw her head back and howl, a circle of needles burrowing deep into her skin. Her nerve endings are screaming, telling her to pull her hand away. Her eyes water. Her skin is liquefying, bubbling like crackling on a roast.

Then suddenly, the flame gutters. A moment later it begins to shrink. Then it goes out. The pain abates.

'You can take it away now.'

She turns her hand over and looks at it. There's a red disc, like a suction mark, stretching from her little finger to her thumb. No blisters. She puts it to her mouth and sucks it.

'The flame is deprived of oxygen, so it goes out before it burns you,' he says.

'How did you know it wouldn't burn me first?'

'I tried it myself, while I was waiting for you.' He holds up his hand, palm towards her. On it, barely discernible, is a circular mark. 'You have to decide if you trust me, Claire. That's all.'

She touches her hand, still hot, against his cheek. 'I didn't take it away, did I?'

'Come with me,' he says. 'There's something else I want to show you.'

===OO=OOO=OO===

A few blocks east they arrive at an anonymous doorway with a red rope outside. There are a couple of bouncers and a female greeter. The greeter looks at Claire condescendingly, as if she's failed the dress code. Which, since Claire is wearing Bessie's best Prada jacket, is faintly irritating.

Only when they get inside does she understand that, in here, Prada doesn't count for much. In fact, anything made of fabric doesn't count for much in here. In here, the materials favoured by the clientele are leather, PVC and clingfilm. Oh, and skin. They like skin a lot.

Claire's never been to a bondage club before. Her first thought, irrationally, is,
How the hell do they get a taxi home?

A man walks past her wearing leather trousers and nothing else. In his hand he holds a chain. The chain leads to a small steel ring, embedded in the nipple of a breathtakingly beautiful naked young woman. The word 'SLAVE' has been written on her forehead.

Claire looks around and sees riding chaps, leather harnesses and strange gags that involve some sort of ball contraption inside the mouth. Another man is wearing only a hood that completely covers his face, with just a tube to breathe through.

'Over here,' Christian says in her ear. 'We're in luck. There's an entertainment.'

A crowd has gathered at one end of the room. As he leads Claire to the front, she sees a rough wooden frame, across which a naked girl has been tied. The two men standing alongside her are holding riding whips. The girl's buttocks and back are criss-crossed with weals, like a game of noughts and crosses. The first man brings his riding crop down. Even over the din of the sound system Claire can hear the crack of leather on skin, see the flesh give and ripple as it strikes. The girl whimpers. The crowd cheers and shouts encouragement. As the first man pulls his arm back, the second man, from the other side, slams his whip down. Another mark joins the others on the girl's backside.

Claire watches, appalled and fascinated. The girl on the frame lifts her head and seems to mumble something to one of the men. He turns to the wall behind him and hangs the riding crop on a hook. Only now does Claire notice that the whole wall is covered with implements: coils of ropes and leather restraints, elaborate whips and Chaplinesque canes, handcuffs and belts. The man takes down a large round paddle. The woman shifts her legs slightly in her restraints. Claire sees the glint of a piercing, deep between her thighs. The man with the paddle starts to beat her with it, faster than before. Her hips begin to quiver. She lifts her head and howls. Only then does the man stop. He goes to her head and makes her kiss the paddle.

When they untie her she remains lying across the frame, exhausted. A small group of the onlookers, excited by the performance, start an impromptu cluster of their own. Some people watch. The rest drift away.

'There's a bar upstairs,' Christian says. 'Or would you rather we went somewhere quieter?'

===OO=OOO=OO===

'So,' he says. 'Was that what you expected?'

They're walking up Broadway now. Despite the warm night, Claire's shivering.

They had anticipated that something like this might happen, of course.

'Oh, I've tried all that stuff,' she says, as nonchalantly as she can. 'Been there, done that, got the T-shirt. It just doesn't do it for me.'

'No, I didn't think it would,' he murmurs.

'It's all so… silly, isn't it? So contrived. Besides, in situations like that it's the bottom who's really in control. There are always safe words. Colours, usually: red for "stop everything", yellow for "stop that particular punishment", green for "give me more of that". I bet that was how that girl told her tops to switch to the paddle at the end, which hurts less.'