Dangerous (10 page)

“I’m going to take a shower,” was her curt pronouncement. “Afterward, the doll will comb my hair. Carefully."

“Yes, Ma’am,” I said to her retreating back, and waited while the movie played. And watched for ants.

§

Marilyn Monroe was sneaking into Jack Lemmon’s train berth when Val returned with her hair wrapped in a towel and wearing nothing but a black bathrobe. It was more open in front than it needed to be, the soft curve of her breasts glowing in the blue-gray television light, and I knew this was a deliberate choice on her part. She rarely exposed more of herself than was strictly necessary. Was she teasing, or establishing dominance? Hinting at more than a simple hair combing? The woman was an enigma. I decided to wait for a more overt gesture before deviating from her original plan.

After I helped her move a chair in front of the television, Val said, “The doll will comb out my hair now." She leaned forward slightly, eyes invading mine. "I would be very angry if my hair were pulled." Her words were sufficiently menacing to frighten me, and I nodded with lowered eyes. So far this evening I’d been spared any part of her abundant wrath; I had no wish to become its focus now. She continued:

"Doll opens the door to the whip room now, then fetches my comb." This indicated how close I was to danger. I had not yet felt the touch of a whip, nor did I wish to. I did as commanded, on quiet bare feet.

Comb in hand, I stood directly behind Val and started at the tips of her hair, moving down, beginning a little higher with each pass. Slowly I worked my way through her nearly luminous white hair.

At the first snag I froze and held my breath, waiting for her to go off like a bomb. I felt her tense, ready to strike. But I’d caught myself before pulling very hard, and was able to work the tangle out. When the comb could move freely again, Val relaxed.

Combing long hair is slow, careful work, especially if you fear a whipping. I hadn’t done this to anyone in years, but the act dredged up memories of childhood slumber parties where we did each others’ hair while watching horror flicks. Of course, this situation was charged with such a different energy it might as well have been an alien planet. But my arms and hands remembered their old rhythms and I fell into a gentle, zen-like state of mindfulness.

Eventually I was able run the comb the full length of her hair. With the points of its teeth I gently massaged her scalp, and Val let out a lizard hiss of exquisite pleasure. I knew her eyes were closed, lips parted. She sat very still, lost in the sensation, while I did this many more times than was really necessary.

“Enough,” she said at last. “Doll will braid my hair now,
with care
. It would be a shame to spoil such a wonderful performance."

“Yes, Ma’am,” I said, and proceeded to braid her hair, starting from just below the crown of her head, in back. I was careful not to pull too tight.

Once the braid was about twelve inches long, I bound the end with a hair band and let the remaining foot fall free. Then I tied the whole thing in a knot at the back of her head, pinned it, leaving the loose end as a pony tail.

When I was done, she had me fetch a hand mirror with which to inspect my handiwork.

“The last time Millie did this, I gave her five lashes.” She paused, and my heart pounded. “But the doll is much better at it than Millie.” Usually her use of the word
doll
was psychologically distancing. But this time it had a different feeling; a kind of tenderness, as if speaking of a cherished toy.

“Yes,” she said approvingly. Her half-smile, in the TV’s soft glow, was a huge relief. I received the mirror from her and put it away.

“Thank you, Ma’am,” I said. She stood, and we moved the chair back to its original place.

“Sit on the couch,” she told me, pointing. I obeyed. Cool leather on my skin, a soft scrunch as my weight settled there.

Val stood before me, rimmed in TV light like a ghost. She studied me a moment before parting her robe and draping it over the chair. She stood, arms at her sides, allowing me to study her.

This was my first full view of Val’s body, I realized with some surprise. It was more boyish than I imagined, taut but not overly muscular. Only her hips and breasts were distinctly feminine, creating an uneven androgyny. Standing thus, she wasn’t naked but simply unclothed, the way a Goddess needs no garments. Powerful, alive, unashamed…and yet, there was something else: Val’s soul wore her body like a vehicle, rather than filling it as water does a glass.

I stared, trying to reconcile this view with the other things I knew of Valeria Stregazzi. For some reason, I couldn’t.

There was a complicated mark on her left leg, running from above the iliac crest to just below mid-thigh. In the faint light I thought it was a tattoo, but it proved to be a vertical strip about three inches wide, filled with zigzag dagger shapes, tapered on the ends.

She came closer and bent for a kiss before moving me to a reclining position, on my right side. She lay down before me in a similar manner, and we fit together like spoons. “Doll may touch her Keeper,” Val said.

I was unsure how much freedom I had been given, so I started simply, with my left hand on her arm. I found a scar on her left shoulder as if from an ancient, long-healed cut.

When my hand roamed down to her hip, however, I was astonished. The pattern I’d seen wasn’t a tattoo but deliberate scarification. It was a raised lattice, resembling a tire tread pattern. My mind reeled at what she must have gone through, to get that and I gasped. “Ma’am…you…” I didn’t know how to ask, or even what to ask.

She didn’t speak immediately. “It is my design, done at my request. A kind of purification.” But she would say no more of it, and simply pulled my hand to her breast. For the first time, I was given leave to caress her freely, and her sudden hunger for my touch was intoxicating.

During the intimacies which flowed from that moment, I encountered other marks upon her body, including two thin parallel scars on her right mid-thigh and three long, faded marks in the middle of her back, thin as wire. She was a living map of some unknown, hostile territory, a land I would not have survived. Her refusal to speak of these marks only made them more compelling. I felt awe, fear, sadness, and a great compassion for this fierce creature.

As Marilyn Monroe sang “I Wanna Be Loved By You” in the Seminole-Ritz hotel, I discovered Val tasted a bit like raw potato. I shed a tear when she climaxed quietly, dying the Little Death beneath my tongue.

And later we slept there, entangled within a comforter, until the steel gray of dawn colored the windows.

God, I loved this woman.

8     
brunch

THE FOLLOWING SUNDAY Val drove me to an expensive brunch in Santa Monica, a block from the beach. The restaurant was attached to one of the fancier hotels, and offered both poolside and interior seating. As it was a warm, clear February morning, Val chose an outside table.

There were to be no
Ma’am
s for me on this visit. When Val picked me up she greeted me as Koishi, not doll, indicating the different mode. At first it was hard to fight my training and not speak as a doll, but the champagne helped put me at ease. Still, I was wary. Any serious blunder would snap Val into Keeper mode, and that would be that. So I tried very hard to be good.

Had I known our destination beforehand, I’d have dressed better than jeans and t-shirt, but some of the other diners were dressed in kind, so I didn’t feel entirely out of place. Val looked sharp as always, in a gray sweater, white blouse, and charcoal-colored slacks. Her shoes were amazing, and I’d asked to admire them before we got in the car: glossy designer pumps with black toes fading to white covered heels, like little killer whales. They must have cost a fortune.

As we ate I dug my cell phone from my purse.

“I want to show you something,” I said.

“Oh?” Val smiled, and put down her Bloody Mary. The bright red drink was a stark contrast with her gray clothes and pale skin, making her seem especially vampiric.

My phone had a big touch-display you could watch movies on, but this time I wanted to show a still image. I brought it up and handed her the device.

“Yesterday I felt creative and threw this together.”

She pushed her glasses up on her nose and held the display close enough to see.

It had begun as an old reference photo I kept with others in a folder: a medium-shot of a dark-haired nude woman sitting with her back to the camera, facing away and to the left. The swell of her left hip could be seen at the bottom of the frame. She was looking back over her shoulder, eyes firmly locked onto the camera.

The key light came from behind the camera’s right, illuminating the woman’s back and side-lighting her face. A rim light traced front of her body, just bright enough to round out the smooth curves of flesh. A bit of bounce light from her left arm softly illuminated her ribcage and the side of her breast. She seemed to calmly regard the viewer from out of a warm murk.

I’d replaced the woman’s face with that of an outrageous sculpture based on a monster found in Hieronymus Bosch’s
Temptation of Saint Anthony
, another framed print in Val’s house. The original image had shown a frightening, armless creature with the hind legs of a calf, two winglike ears, and the face of a catfish. An improbable, knobby horn protruded from its forehead. From its open mouth hung a blade-like tongue, serpentine and lewd. I’d only kept the face, and blended it seamlessly onto the woman’s head.

But I’d retained the woman’s eye, to preserve her underlying humanity and direct visual lock with the viewer.

Behind this alarming creature I’d placed Bruegel’s
The Triumph of Death
, a wide panorama showing a skeleton army laying waste to a bucolic landscape. Bodies littered the ground. I had darkened the smoky background in order to make the creature appear as if she were caught in a stray beam of guttering sunlight. Finally I ran it through an image filter to give it an engraved appearance.

The final result was a series of unfolding impressions. First horror, upon seeing that monstrous face. Then, surprise at the sensual perfection of her body. Melancholy, as the death and decay of the background came into view. And finally compassion for the soul trapped in that doomed, yet strangely beautiful beast. I found the image haunting, poignant.

“How curious,” she commented finally. “What does it represent?”

“It’s a portrait of you,” I said, and waited as she studied it. “Not literally, of course. A metaphor.”

“I see you still have a keen eye for glowing garbage, Miss Paz,” she said, handing the phone back to me. “You’re a continuing delight.”

I savored her praise. “Thanks, Val.”

“Is the resolution high enough to be printed and framed?” she wanted to know. I nodded. “Then I have a commission for you. I’d like you to create four more images like this one, of any style you choose, but they must all represent various aspects of me. I need them to be ready for framing within three weeks, which I’ll take care of. I’ll pay you five thousand dollars for all five images, and you retain the rights. Will you do it?”

“Sure. Of course,” I said, suddenly inspired by the challenge. I put the phone back in my purse.

“Excellent. Now there are a couple of matters we should discuss.”

I waited for her to continue.

She said, “You’ve been mine for a month now. Your training’s gone very well. In four weeks, then, I’ll give a party where you can make your public debut as my doll. How do you feel about that?"

My stomach went into free fall.
Public debut? As her doll?
“Um, I don’t know, exactly. What does that involve?"

“What does any debut involve? Showing you off. It will be a black tie affair, of course. All you have to do is look pretty and behave yourself. Surely you can manage that."

I nodded as I picked at my Belgian waffle and got my head around the idea. I did know one thing: nothing was ever that simple with Val. I was just beginning to fret about the consequences of such a debut when Val said:

“And now I’m wondering how you’re coming along with your assignment, Koishi.”

Assignment. What assignment?
I searched my memory and came up empty. Val smiled. She’d expected this reaction, and let me twist in the wind before explaining.

“It was the very first task I assigned you, dear. I gave no firm deadline and you assured me you’d work on it. Have you forgotten already?”

“I’m sorry, M—” I almost said
Ma’am
. I desperately wanted to say it now, because I’d clearly screwed up. My earlier prideful glow withered and died. “I guess I did forget."

She sipped her drink, relishing this moment and the power it gave her. “It seems I expected too much of an empty-headed koi-fish.”

I could only bow my head, and await my doom.

Val leaned forward. “I asked you to choose a close friend to whom you would divulge our relationship, so I might meet them and discuss what we do together. Do you recall it now?”