Bound in Blue (5 page)

She nodded, hardening her heart against him.
He was
leaving
.

“I’ll be here a few more days. I work
for—”

Her cuffed hands flew to his mouth. “Don’t.
The more I know about you, the more difficult you’ll be to
forget.”

The twinkle left his eyes, replaced by
resignation. He drew down her hands and worked at the clasp between
the cuffs. “Would you like to keep these? Or will they also make me
too difficult to forget?”

“You have to keep everything.”

He unbuckled the first cuff, setting it on
the bed. “That’s fine. I won’t mind remembering this. Remembering
you.” He unbuckled the other one and paused. “You’re a very
memorable person. A Mongolian woman who speaks English like a
proper British person.”

“Do I?”

“Almost. It’s very charming. I like your
contacts too.”

“My contacts?”

He pointed. “Yes, the blue contacts. For your
eyes.” He leaned closer at her expression of confusion. “Or are
those your real eyes?”

She gave a nervous laugh. “What else would
they be?”

“Some people wear contacts to change their
eye color. I thought... Well, I hadn’t seen anyone else here with
eyes that color.”

She lowered her lids, the way she always did
when people noticed her eyes. Sometimes people teased her about
them, a mean kind of teasing that said
you don’t really belong
here
. But she’d been born in Mongolia, to Mongolian parents.
People whispered that she wasn’t her father’s daughter, that her
blue eyes had come from someone else. She’d have to find out about
these contacts, so she could make her eyes gold, or brown.

She looked back up at him and shrugged. “My
mother used to say they were blue because I was born outside, and I
looked up at the sky, and so my eyes stayed blue. In Ulaanbaatar,
it’s dirty and polluted, but in the north and the west, the blue
sky stretches as far as you can see. Do you know they call Mongolia
‘the land of eternal blue sky’?”

“No, I didn’t know, but now I do.” He
squeezed her hands, then inspected her cuffless wrists. “I want to
give you some money.”

“No. Absolutely no. This wasn’t a
transaction.”

“Of course it wasn’t. Sara, I don’t want to
cheapen what we just experienced. Because we just experienced
something. Something you’re going to remember every bit as vividly
as me.”

Exactly. That’s why I have to get out of
here.
She didn’t know if it was the kindness in his voice, or
the wistfulness, or the beauty of his words, or his insistence on
intimacy even as she shied away from it. Whatever it was, it
brought tears to her eyes.

“Please,” she said. “I have to go.”

He hugged her again, tightening his knees
around her so she felt enveloped by him. By the time he drew away,
she’d mastered herself.

“If you want to give me money,” she said, “I
would appreciate cab fare, so I don’t have to walk home alone.”

“I’ll take you home.”

“No. Please. I’m sorry. I’m thankful for
tonight, but—”

“Let me help you.”

“I don’t need help.”

“Your job—”

“I’ll find another job. I have another job.
The club was for extra money. So…I’ll be okay. I don’t want you to
worry about me.”

“But you won’t take my money.”

“I don’t need it.”
I don’t need you.
She was trying to convince herself. And failing.

He stared at her a long time, though his
expression was cloaked. She preferred that. She didn’t want to know
his thoughts. It would be hard enough to let him go without knowing
the real man, the sober, concerned, slightly heartbroken man
looking at her right now.

“You’ll be my best memory of Mongolia,” he
said at last. “My eternal girl with the eternal eyes.” It was his
goodbye, a very poetic one. He released her and she went into the
bathroom, cleaned up as best she could, and dressed to go.

Jason walked with her down to the lobby of
the hotel and out into the smog and noise of nighttime Ulaanbaatar.
He stood out among her fellow Mongolians, with his unusual height
and his tousled, brown-golden hair. Even the way he hailed a cab
was gorgeous…the raise of his hand, the intent expression on his
face. He held the door as she climbed in, giving her money for the
driver. “You better bargain the fare,” he said. “He’ll cheat
me.”

I’m sorry
, she wanted to cry.
I’m
sorry this is a dirty, corrupt city that takes advantage of
foreigners. I’m sorry I’m leaving you alone. I’m sorry I have to
protect myself from you.

“Thank you,” she said instead. “For making it
so real.”

“You’re welcome. Please take care of
yourself. My last orders,” he said, waving a finger at her. Then
her beautiful Master kissed her on the forehead, closed the cab
door, and stood watching from the road side as she disappeared from
his life.

It was only later, when she went to pay the
driver, that she realized Jason had pressed an entire month’s
salary worth of money into her hand.

Jason moved carefully through the
second-world circus tent, stepping over rough benches and dodging
unrecognizable puddles of matter on the floor. His Mongolian
translator pulled her scarf more tightly around her neck and gave
him an encouraging smile. He had no idea of her age. She might have
been thirty or sixty, with her smooth, broad cheekbones and
wide-set, smoky-rimmed eyes.

She was pretty, but nowhere near as pretty as
Sara.

She’d been gone one day. Not even one whole
day, but he still felt her loss like a hole inside him. He wished
he’d never gone to the BDSM Fun Club. If only he’d stayed at the
hotel and worked. If he hadn’t traipsed off to that damn club like
some sex tourist, he wouldn’t have met her and he wouldn’t have
gotten her fired.
And you wouldn’t have had a night with her
either. You wouldn’t have known her submission, or enjoyed that
longing in her gaze.
The way she’d touched him, the way she’d
responded to him…

Now he was suffering. Sex hangover. He’d
spent all morning and a good part of the afternoon fondling her
cuffs and masturbating to the scent of her on the cane. No matter
how many he rubbed out, he couldn’t stop craving her. He couldn’t
get her out of his mind. Had she gotten home safely the night
before? Would she find another job? A better one this time? He’d
given her all the money he could while she was too upset and
distracted to notice. Did she have regrets this morning? Was she
missing him too?

Jason was supposed to be focused on work,
focused on this act Lemaitre was so interested in. Before his
promotion Jason had been an acrobatics coach, but now he scouted
all kinds of acts in search of undiscovered talent. That was why he
was here, not to get torn up over a cocktail waitress he’d met at a
kink bar. She’d told him straight out,
one night
. Now he had
to get over her. Jason hoped this trapeze act was good enough to
warrant all the drama of this journey.

He and the translator finally settled on a
bench halfway up the stands. She left an appropriate amount of
space between them, causing Jason to suffer repeated bumps from the
brawny man on his other side. He sucked air through his mouth
rather than his nose. These folks obviously weren’t into showers.
With the cool temperatures outside, Jason wasn’t sure he blamed
them. Even in spring, Mongolia was chilly, sometimes snowy. The
stands were soon full to bursting with an exuberant Saturday night
crowd.

The show started late, without any intro or
fanfare. Jason knew within minutes that he’d been sent on a wild
goose chase. It might be Mongolia’s largest circus, but it had no
production values, no polish. It was only a series of acts
performed by people who looked every bit as rough as those in the
seats. Juggling, a little tightrope, but not very high off the
ground. There were muscle men lifting things like oil drums and
tires, and a smiling trio of contortionists who balanced bowls on
their heads. These acts were interspersed with comedic bits that
his translator tittered at but didn’t bother to translate.

This ragtag revue brought to mind circuses of
the past, before innovators like Michel Lemaitre arrived with
glossy lights and special effects and a million-dollar
infrastructure whose sole purpose was to create theatrical art. He
looked around at the smiling, clapping spectators. What would they
think of a Cirque du Monde show? They were so appreciative of this
low-level nonsense. A show like
Cirque Brillante
or
Cirque Vivide
would probably cause a riot.

The entire program lasted a little over an
hour. The crowd grew restless, and Jason worried that the trapeze
act he’d been sent to scout wasn’t even going to perform. Then a
great cheer went up, pounding and yelling. The children rose to
their feet and bounced up and down as a beat-up trapeze dropped
almost to the ground, then was ratcheted skyward in uneven tugs.
Jason looked up and saw men winching the ropes to the rigging. It
didn’t look safe, not by Cirque du Monde standards. Not by any
standards.

Jason took a deep breath as the trapezists, a
man and a woman, took the stage. The man was compactly built,
typically Mongolian, with a broad, attractive face. His partner
stood with her back to the audience, her dark hair styled in a
tight ponytail. She had a gymnast’s body, lithe and muscular,
beautifully proportioned. Her red leotard was plain in design, but
it brightened up the dreary circus tent.

“These performers are well known, very
popular,” the translator said over the din of the crowd. “The
woman’s parents also did trapeze, but they died in an
accident.”

He grimaced, watching them raise and lower
the off-kilter bar. “A trapeze accident?”

“A car accident.”

Jason glanced down at the note in his hand.
The performer’s names were miles long, indecipherable. At last the
apparatus was ready to go, and the man leaped up and caught a rope
affixed to the bar. He used it to haul himself up, and then hung by
his knees, extending his arms for his partner. The woman climbed
the rope next and he grabbed her by her arms. A warbling soundtrack
whirred to life over static-y loudspeakers. At the resounding
approval of the audience, the woman looked over her shoulder and
smiled.

Jason froze. He knew that smile. He realized
now that he knew that body too, that perfect, proportionate body.
He looked back down at the note. The man was
Baatarsaikhan
,
the woman,
Sarantsatsral
.

I suppose you could call me...Sara.

Just like that, his heart was in his throat.
He looked up into the rigging, hoping the trapeze was truly secure.
There was no cushion or safety net underneath, no space-age crash
mat like they used at the Cirque. He’d been worried before, but now
it was his Sara performing. His Sara?

One night
, he reminded himself.
You
spent one night with her. She’s not yours.

Even so, he didn’t want to watch her plummet
to her death. He hunched over, biting his nails as the act
unfolded. The duo was fast and reckless, doing releases that made
his mouth drop open. She did somersaults, flips, and even
handstands on the narrow bar. Then she did them on her partner’s
shoulders while the bar shimmied under them, and he wanted to
scream at her,
stop that. Get down! It’s not safe.
It wasn’t
even really a trapeze act. It was aerial acrobatics, with a little
suicidal crazysauce mixed in.

So many goddamn releases, so many skills in
the air...
Sara, what are you doing to me?
But her partner
always caught her, always propelled her into the next move. His
strength was amazing, her acrobatics were amazing, but the timing
was the awe-inspiring thing. So many opportunities to drop her, but
the man caught her every time in smooth, perfect coordination. The
translator clasped her hands to her chest and took sharp breaths at
each risky stunt. She was enjoying this. Jason was on the verge of
a meltdown.

Then the man let go of one of her hands. The
audience cried out and Jason tensed, but it became apparent it was
part of the act, as Sara rolled into a ball and twisted around in a
circle, supported only by one hand. The man’s fingers were
miraculous, and she moved like water, fluid and sinuous. A flex of
arms and legs and she was airborne again, then caught and swung,
each muscle in perfect alignment.

The act concluded with a lightning-fast
barrage of risky catch-and-release maneuvers, shock and awe as the
music rose to a fever pitch. If Jason had her back in his hotel
room, he would have caned her to shreds for what she put him
through, but she didn’t make one mistake. Finally, Sara shimmied
back down the rope and her partner followed, and they took a bow
for the cheering audience. The translator turned to Jason, her eyes
alight in wonder, and she didn’t even understand the important
things, like how strong the man was, whatever his name was, or the
precision of Sara’s performance. They had so much potential, so
much to offer Cirque du Monde.

He couldn’t wait to get her there. She’d have
no more worries about a second job, or about money. What would Sara
think of the sprawling Paris headquarters, with its luxurious
practice studios and cutting-edge training equipment? What would
she think of the costumes, the makeup, the flashy sets? He had to
get both of them there right away, her and her partner. They didn’t
belong in this marginal circus, in their plain red leotards,
climbing a rope to their trapeze in a rickety tent.

But after last night, how could Jason
approach her, professionally, as a talent scout?

After ten solid minutes of applause the
program ended and the audience filed out, chattering happily. Jason
looked over at his translator. “I need to talk to them. Can you
introduce me?”