As She's Told (8 page)

“Another Viking slave raider?"

"No. Well, maybe a scene version. Clubs and scenes, midnight to six a.m., that's Karl.”

“In Copenhagen?"

"Uh-huh. And Amsterdam. He'll be in Chicago soon doing graduate work. There's more to Karl than clubs. But no doubt he'll be at it till all hours still."

She reached up and touched the scar beneath his chin, though she couldn't see it in the dark.

"Mm?"

"While you're telling me things. What happened there?"

He rubbed the smooth line where no beard grew. "That? I was – what, eleven? My brother and I found a shopping cart on a sidewalk. I thought I'd give him a ride, but there was a hill, and he was heavier than I thought…."

"So…?"

"So I staged a dramatic rescue." He laughed suddenly. "My superboy phase, I suppose. I yanked the thing back off its wheels just before it went into the road, banged both of us up in the process."

"How did he come out of it?"

"Split eyebrow. He likes it. He was very proud of the black eye, which I must admit was a beauty. My mother always complained that she was on a first-name basis with the emergency room staff. She was, too."

Still heading north, they made their way through the university campus, past old stone and new brick, through a gothic arch or two. They turned into Philosopher's Walk, a twisting pedestrian byway through a narrow park that ran behind the museum, between Trinity College and the Faculty of Music, on up to Bloor. No one else was in sight; they seemed to have the path to themselves. Anders tucked Maia's arm under his. The faint exotic tea scent 48

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of her flesh came to him; he suppressed an urge to devour her then and there.

"I've made some more decisions about how this is going to go," he told her. "Choice but no choice." She tensed beneath his arm, and he tightened his hold. "First of all, understand that I'm going to do what I want with you, and I'm going to enjoy that very much. And you'll obey me." She heaved a trembling sigh and he squeezed her arm. "I think I read you well enough to avoid causing damage, physical or psychological damage, but I could be wrong, Maia. I won't count on that. So I'm going to give you some chances to tell me if I've missed anything important about what you're feeling, what you're going through. At the end of each day at first. Less and less often as time goes on. These will be escape points, too, if it turns out you're wrong about what you can stand. Eventually the escape points will be very, very few and far between. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

"I – " She swallowed. "I think so. You're – you're building in just enough freedom so if it goes wrong there's a way out. Sometimes. Otherwise I don't have choices, and I do what I'm told."

"That's right." They walked on in silence for a minute, and then he went on. "I'm not going to consult you, but I am going to question you and observe your reactions. This may or may not influence what I do." Though her arm remained tucked under his, Anders had a sense that she was drawing away. He leaned down to get a better look in the dim light. "What is it, Maia?" She bit her lip. "Control again?"

She nodded. He stopped and turned her toward him, examined the averted face in profile.

"You're afraid I'll let you decide – let you shape what happens."

"Mm."

"Go on."

She stared at the ground. "I just know that if there's something you don't want, and you do it for my sake – " Her body shrank away from him, and her face was a misery of humiliation. "I won't be able to bear it. Everything –

everything will go wrong. We'll be back to games again."

This had to be nipped in the bud, quickly. He dug his fingers into her shoulders. "Maia," he said gently. "You haven't got this straight." She looked up. "This is not a reciprocal arrangement. It's not about giving you a kinky good time." He waited a beat or two to make sure she took this in. "If all goes well I'll own you. Body, mind, all of you. If you're going to be my 49

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property I need to know what I've got, what you're good for." His voice dropped a confidential note lower. "Like buying a dog – is it the right kind for what I want? Does it have the right disposition? Can it be trained?"

***

I stared up at him hardly able to breathe, hit with such a maelstrom of emotions that my body could hardly contain them all; he'd be scraping me off the lamp posts and the distant museum walls.

Fear, outrage and humiliation. Rebellion. Recognition, joy, lust like sheet lightning. A thunderbolt flash of clarity and connection illuminating the landscape between us. Panic at the view of the precipice at my feet.

My eyes never left his face. He observed me calmly, his expression serious, aware. At last one of his hands came off my shoulder, held my cheek for a moment, then slid into the hair at the nape of my neck and gently, inexorably, pulled my head back. "You understand now, Maia.”

“Yes."

"Good." His face lowered, and he kissed me; a seal, it seemed on our agreement, or whatever it was.

50

As She’s Told – Anneke Jacob

In the days that followed, Mrs. Silva downstairs complimented me on my nice new boyfriend, so polite and attentive. She peeked up the stairs when he arrived to take me out, greeted him on his way down, evidently thinking that someone had to stand in for my absent mother. They discussed the new bathroom in the basement that Mr. Silva had just completed, and the health of her hydrangeas. Within days she was serving him coconut cake.

But she would have been puzzled by his phone calls, which were calm, detailed interrogations rather than lovers' chats.

"Have you finished the bibliography? How many hours did you work on that? What about the media search on water quality?" On several days, to my intense disappointment, he decided I was too busy to see him. The only way I got through my work on those evenings was the fear of not seeing him the next night. I began skipping lunch to have more time, until he found out and made a no-skipping-meals rule.

Even when he'd said he wasn't coming I kept listening for his truck. As the neighbourhood was well studded with massive four-by-fours, I spent far too much time looking out the window, disappointed, as some muscly black macho symbol growled by with its empty truck bed. Hoping instead to see well-used burnt sienna beneath my window, brown in shadow but glowing like sunset when it caught the light. The truck was old but cared for, the finish softened and smoothed like a well-used pair of jeans. It got so whenever I saw that colour out on the street, my heart lifted like a balloon.

It wasn't that my ambivalence was gone. There were still voices asking what the hell I thought I was doing. Some of them were even outside my head; Nikki called and scolded me frequently, nagging me to start discussing some limits before it was too late, a safeword at least. It was like hearing instructions on the flutter kick when white water has you in its grip. I did my best to keep my head above the surface, wired on adrenalin, eager anticipation, and constant fear.

When Anders did come to the door I had to show him all my work, my heart in my throat. I hadn't had to account in such detail to anyone since grade school. It was particularly embarrassing because ever since grade 51

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school, Procrastination had been my middle name. Last minute scrambling was how I operated; you could see it in my work. Sometimes I felt my main expertise was in the kinds of shortcuts and fudging that bad planning forces on you. I knew theoretically how to organize myself, but had never gotten around to putting that knowledge into practice. The interrogations continued at my desk, with me flushing painfully at every fault he exposed, and trying not to make excuses.

At first, to my shame, I had moments of weak resentment. He was making me work a lot harder than I was used to. I caught myself thinking petulantly that I had made it through this far, and done okay, and if my work habits weren't exactly ideal, well, so what? Wallowing in guilt was my modus operandi, and didn't I work better under pressure? Then as his expectations and orders became more and more explicit, to my astonishment I began to be able to get things done without panic and without staying up half the night. The quality was a lot better, too. Before long I was having trouble imagining operating without his organizing hand to direct me.

Feeble, unspoken resistance seeped away, leaving in its wake a surprised kind of gratitude, over an undercurrent of fear. On the surface, Anders was kind and very patient. He always told me when I did well. But there was a tone in his voice when I fell short: a firm, slightly Danish inflected reprimand with a hint of gravel in it, that made me shiver.

The power relationship wasn't the only thing lurking beneath the surface. "Soft porn," Anders glinted as he touched the new little waist cincher he had laced up tight around me, just tight enough to make me pant.

His big hand was around my leg, the new garter belt stretched against my thigh. He had casually forbidden pants and tights. I gathered that this wasn't an important enough rule to be laid down with any emphasis, although there was no doubt in my mind that he expected me to obey him. In his truck, or in the unlit spaces between the streetlights next to the bulk of dark vans, he slid his hand beneath my dress and made me moan. Then he put his fingers in my mouth and made me suck them like lollipops.

The night we went to the folk club he wouldn't let me wear panties either. I shivered as the night air touched me, felt my pubic hair ruffle in an updraft, and climbed, painfully self-conscious, into his truck. My thighs opened to his nudging fingers and I whimpered, head back against the seat, feeling the pressure of the cincher around my ribs as I tried to breath. At 52

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each red light the fingers were back. My eyes stared at the red in the darkness, glowing red dominating my visual field as he took over below.

He parked the truck and I sucked his fingers avidly, then followed him and his violin case into a warm, crowded room with a little stage and people tuning up. There were some curious looks directed my way; I shrank, wishing not to be noticed; it was the last thing I could handle, feeling naked as I did, my cunt swimming. Anders sat down by the stage with me and the first set started. Jigs, reels, hands and feet pounding. Someone sang a ballad, someone else a sly Irish ditty. Anders explained the different styles and I made links to the older music I knew, but after a while I got lost, and just let the bright music take me. Then he got up to play.

He dominated the little stage, his big shoulders relaxed, the fiddle looking small in those big hands. Straight pale hair gleamed under the lights.

Well-worn jeans on narrow hips, long thighs that I wanted between my own…. His bow moved and I raised my eyes to watch. I hadn't heard him play before, had no idea what he could do. Those long fingers moved with authority, subtlety, sweetness. The fiddle seemed not so much an object in his hands as an extension of his body. Vibrations stretched, reached out for me, found my frequency, tightened and loosened my strings. The song started slow, his firm hands on the instrument confiding something. He met my eye for a moment. Then he moved into a faster jig, and then a wild reel that had the room jumping.

I didn't dare dance. By the time we left I was jumpy and revved up, wanting to be grabbed and touched all over. I hummed the last song and swung a little at the end of his hand, and he looked down at me in amusement, keeping a tight grip on my wrist. His case settled in the back, he unlocked the passenger door for me. In its shadow he scooped me up, one hand deep in my crotch, and lifted me onto the seat. I gasped, and his tongue was in my open mouth, his fingers hard inside me. Then he swung my knees around and shut the door. I sat there gasping like a fish thrown on shore, waiting for him to get in the other side and finish what he'd started. But he just put the truck in gear and started off. He glanced over at me sitting there with my mouth hanging open, smiled, stopped the truck and fastened my seatbelt, tight.

As he drove he hummed in a deep, dark baritone that filled the night inside the truck. It wasn't a song from that evening; the tune rang much older 53

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bells. Something traditional that I hadn't heard since my mother had played us her old folk albums, back when we were kids. What was it called? Anders was singing the words now.

And her cherry cheeks and her ruby lips,

They lost their former dye,

And she fell on her knees before him,

All on the mountain high.

He glinted at me briefly, then went on,

He had not kissed her but the once or twice, When she come to again, And most eagerly she asked him, Pray tell to me your name.

There was some traffic now, and the song was down to a wordless hum again as he negotiated it. Scraps of the other verses were coming back to me, though the title still eluded me. Something about how the girl, aloof at first, had been felled by the irresistible sexual magic of this rake, and ended up following wherever he led. I could relate.

We were crossing a bridge. I caught a glimpse of dark water and a line of bright headlights below us, and realized we were crossing the Don Valley, heading east instead of west. Not to my place, then. Where was he taking me? Still downtown, rows of Asian shops, then houses. My knowledge of the city was all centre core and downtown west; this side of town was terra incognita. Anders was silent now. His face looked remote, alternately lit and in shadow. I wanted him to speak and reassure me. A lurking paranoia crept in, lurid visions of kidnappings, headlines gloating over unidentified remains. Could I trust him?

I watched the hands that had held the fiddle hold the wheel with the same deft authority. I thought of the care he was taking with me, and relaxed. He was singing again.

And if by chance you look for me,

Perhaps you'll not me find,