Jake & Mimi (23 page)

“You’re getting expensive,” she said.

I looked down the length of her, taking her in. Her tanned skin, set off against the black lace of her bra and panties and
against the scarlet blanket beneath her. Her full breasts, bigger than I’d thought, her smooth, toned belly and taut thighs.
She was no trick of fashion. I touched my hand to her knee. She smiled and closed her legs demurely, her black panties forming
a perfect, alluring vee. I reached into my back pants pocket and pulled out the blindfold.

Her lips parted in surprise.

“My color,” she said, but with the first speck of caution in her voice. She let me slip it over her eyes, though, and moments
later her caution dissolved when I took a bottle of body oil from her dresser, opened the cap, and released the exotic scent
of papaya into the room. She offered me her ankle, toes pointed, sighing luxuriously as I moved up her legs, kicking her small
heels in excitement as I worked her lower belly, dropping her head back in pleasure as I rubbed the warm lotion deep into
her shoulders and slowly up her tethered arms.

When I finished, I walked to the desk and unscrewed the black, four-foot flexed-arm desk lamp. I brought it to the bed, clipped
it to the metal frame at the foot, and then brought the arm down and toward her. I turned it on. I walked to the wall and
switched off the overhead light. The effect was magical. The room lay in darkness while Elise, a trussed angel, lay in strong,
hot light.

I turned and walked out of the room.

I walked through the quiet apartment to the kitchen. The refrigerator is where ours was, and the counter, too. On it stood
a vase with fresh-cut roses. Twelve of them. I checked the note on the card.
To the most beautiful girl in the city. One more chance? Scott
. Working quickly, I fixed myself an Absolut and tonic. Next to the limes in the crisper I found a cluster of mint leaves
and broke off a few. I looked down the narrow room to the kitchen table at the end. It is just where ours was, in the small
area by the window. I walked to it and sat down. Out the window I could see the side of the next building, the same three
windowsills I remember from twenty years ago. Past them, only the black night. I picked up the phone and dialed.

It rang once, twice, three times. We hadn’t spoken since I left her at the river railing three days ago. Left her in her blue
dress and white sweater, holding the black cell phone that I told her to throw into the river. It rang once more. And then
again.

“Mimi Lessing.”

I closed my eyes. I gave her the address and told her we were ready. I hung up the phone and stayed at the kitchen table for
a few moments, looking out the window. Then I stood and took a small dish towel, ran it under warm water, and wrung it out.
I took the towel, my drink, the mint leaves, and a rose from the vase and walked out of the kitchen and down the hall to the
front door. I unlocked the deadbolt, quietly, and opened the door a few inches. It held. I walked back down the hall to the
living room, to the stereo. In the CD collection I found one labeled
Spanish Strings
with a picture on its cover of two acoustic guitars crossed at the neck. I walked back to the bedroom doorway. She was a
sight, shimmering in the light of the lamp, her hands relaxed, one oiled leg moving sensually up the other.

“Jake?”

“Right here.”

I walked to the bed and put my hand on her knee.

“Don’t leave me again,” she whispered.

I put my finger to her lips, and she took it into her mouth. I touched the bottom of my glass to her forehead, and she gasped
with pleasure. Then I placed the glass, the wet towel, the mint, and the rose on the nightstand. I took the chair from her
desk and placed it a few feet from the bed. I moved the nightstand out from the wall, positioning it between the chair and
the bed, catercorner to both. She listened as I worked, concentrating, following my movements around the room.

“What are you doing?” she asked finally.

“No questions,” I said, and she smiled. I walked to the small CD player on her dresser. I took the CD from its case, loaded
it, and snapped the cover closed.

“Music,” she whispered dreamily.

“Soon,” I said.

I walked to the bed and sat down. I put my hand gently on her hip and looked down the shining length of her once more. She
was ravishing.

“It’s time, Elise,” I said.

She breathed deeply, pressed her golden legs tight together, and smiled.

“I’m ready,” she said.

And then I started my passes.

Long, slow passes with the backs of my fingers, starting at her feet and ending at the tight line of silk that bound each
wrist. She was in heaven, sighing more deeply the higher I rose, her every nerve alive to my touch. She parted her legs for
me, gasping as I trailed up the inside of her thigh, again as I curved around her panties to her tight belly, and again as
I reached the base of her bra, lingered, and drifted around it. When I finished the first pass, I started again. Again she
lay in rapture, luxuriating in my slow climb, the lightness of my touch inflaming her. As I eased around her panties again,
she turned her hips, hoping to guide my fingers into her swell, but I skirted it and pressed her back down with my free hand.
Up to her bra my fingers climbed, lingering longer than before, my nails just grazing the black silk on their way by.

By the end of the third pass, her black panties were damp and she had gathered in her fingers the two inches of white silk
that I’d left between wrist and post. By the end of the fourth pass, the ache was in her, deep in the swollen places that
I wouldn’t touch. And now, three slow passes later, she says, “Please, Jake,” and turns her face, hard, into the deep red
covers.

And I move back down to the bottom of the bed and start on her feet again.

“You can’t,” she whispers as I rise past her calves, pressing a little harder, watching the long, graceful muscles of her
thighs tense like a sprinter’s. I’m a few inches from her panties when I feel it — a change in the air of the room. I stop,
turn, and see Mimi Lessing in the doorway.

She holds on to the doorsill with one hand. In the other, I see it — the outline of the black felt pouch. Mimi stands in darkness,
but I can see the white of her stockings. She has taken off her shoes. I can see that her hair is down, and I can see, too,
despite the darkness, the shock in her beautiful eyes. I hold them with my own and raise my hand to her, warning her to wait.

And then I turn back to Elise.

One last time I trail my fingers past the soaked black silk of her panties. “You…,” she whispers, biting her lip now. One
last time I climb to her bra and now past it, up near her shoulder, pressing down on the strap just hard enough that she feels
the pressure on her nipples four inches below. I run my fingers up to her throat, up her right arm, and then slowly up her
left, past the binds this time, stroking her fist until she opens it with a soft moan, then caressing her tiny palm, and finishing,
finally, with the tips of her fingers. I stand and walk to the dresser.

I push the button on the CD player, and seconds later gentle guitar notes seep into the air, so low at first that Elise isn’t
sure she hears them. Yes, now she does. Music. She curls her fingers, then relaxes them, and settles deeper into the bed.
Her wait is over, she thinks. At last. I look to Mimi, still standing in the doorway, one hand holding on to the sill. I motion
to the chair, and she walks carefully to it over the hardwood floor. She sits down, smoothing her dress nervously. I pass
behind her, my hands inches from her shoulders, her pure neck. I sit down again on the bed. Elise feels it give and wets her
lips, expectant. I reach down, lift the heavy scissors from the floor and touch them to her belly.

“Yes,” she gasps, certain of their destination. I move the cool blades up her stomach, passing them over the front of the
bra and up to the straps on her shoulders. I cut through one, then the other. The straps fall away, revealing the creamy slope
of her breasts, the body of the bra still covering the rest. I ease the scissors between her breasts, close them around the
clasp of her bra, and lift the bra away, making sure the dangling strap brushes her nipples before I drop it to the floor.
Her breasts are round and beautiful, a shade whiter than her belly, the nipples pink and crisp.

“Jake,” she says. “Touch me.”

I reach down next to the bed and come up with another white silk tie.

I touch it gently to her neck. “God,” she whispers, thinking the silk is the bra I’ve just cut off her. I trail it between
her breasts, down her belly, down the inside of her thigh.

“Just wait,” she whispers, digging her heels into the covers.

Past her calf I take it, slowly, and then loop it suddenly around her ankle. She gasps and tries to bring her leg up, but
I hold it firmly to the bed, knot the silk tight, and then take it hard to the far edge, pulling her body down toward me,
snapping the silk she clutches in her fingers right out of them. Quickly I knot the new tie to the metal bar of the bed frame.
She turns her left knee in toward her right leg, trying to keep them close, but I knot the final tie around her left ankle,
straighten her leg, and take it hard the other way, parting her legs sharply. She gasps in shock, and then again as I yank
her farther down the bed and tie the final silk tie tightly to the cold metal bar.

Just like that, Elise is spread-eagled.

She pulls hard against the new restraints, the muscles in her calves and thighs tensing, straining, beautiful. The silk doesn’t
give. She wets her lips twice, three times, panic starting to rise in her. She surges again. The white silk ties dip and tremble,
like power lines in the wind, but they hold firm. She collapses, her breathing quick, shallow. She tries to pull out with
her wrists now, but there is no more slack, and her efforts only tighten the knots. She gasps in pain. I move my hand to her
thigh. Again she surges, and again the ties hold. I close my eyes and let her struggle, her thigh pulsing against my palm
as she fights, then collapses, fights, then collapses, fights, then collapses yet again.

For thirty seconds she struggles, desperate, and then she starts to quiet. I open my eyes. Her ribs still rise and fall, but
her breathing slows, steadies. She lifts her face from the covers. “Okay,” she whispers to herself, almost inaudibly, the
taut cords in her neck softening, her fingers, balled into fists a second ago, starting to uncurl. She seems to take in the
room again, to breathe in the scented oil, feel the warmth of the lamp on her skin, hear, anew, the soothing music. “Okay,”
she whispers again, testing the binds but lightly now, not fighting against them but gauging them, measuring them, and, yes,
relaxing into them, as if the silk were caressing, not binding, her delicate wrists and ankles. I lean in and watch her closely.

She is surrendering.

Surrendering not just to the ties but to the idea of them. Surrendering because the true burn isn’t in her wrists or in her
ankles, but in the places that I won’t touch. “Okay,” she says again, and I close my fists and rest them for a moment on the
knees of my corduroys, because it hits me that she isn’t talking to herself but to me, and I know that she understands, for
the first time, the promise in those strict, unrelenting white ties. It is the promise of release. Sweet, long, hard release,
like none she’s ever imagined, and she knows now that fighting will only delay it, will only stoke the fires I’ve built deep
inside her. And so she whispers, “Okay,” one more time, a soft plea, and takes a last deep breath and lets it out slowly.
I put my hand back on her warm thigh, feel it flutter, flutter, and then go still. Her wrists, her ankles, her hips — everything
is still. Still, and quiet, and completely submissive, and it’s my turn to steady myself against the tide inside me. I look
down at the dark floor, and then again at her taut, shining body.

Tonight’s true journey can begin.

Mimi Lessing sits only a few feet away, but in the darkness she is a silhouette. I can see, though, the black felt pouch in
her lap. I lean toward her and hold out my hand. She hesitates, then lifts the pouch with both hands and holds it out to me,
like an offering. I take it from her and rest it on the bed, squarely in the light of the lamp.

I look closely at the golden thread that holds the pouch closed. I can see at the base of it the tiny, distinctive knot that
I tied this morning in my apartment. She hasn’t looked inside. I untie the knot, then slip my fingers into the soft mouth
of the pouch and force it open. I reach in and pull out a red candle. It is thick and squat, its edges sharp, and I place
it on the blue cloth that is stretched tight over the top of the nightstand. Place it quietly enough that Elise doesn’t hear
it over the gentle, soothing guitar. I take a lighter from my pocket and strike the flint. Elise turns toward the sound and
wets her lips. I light the candle.

The flame is equidistant between Mimi and me, and in its light I see that she wears the same pink dress she wore last Friday.
The same deep blue sweater. I called her at home and she went to her closet and dressed the same way as last week. In the
candlelight I can see, too, her beautiful, balanced face. Her soft eyes, which rise to meet mine. I see fear in them, but
beneath the fear I see excitement, the same excitement I know she sees in mine.

I take a breath, let it out, and reach into the black pouch again.

I pull out a small silver case the size of a ring box and place it on the nightstand. Mimi looks down at it, then back at
me. I reach into the pouch and take out another silver case, a little larger than the first, and place it on the nightstand,
too. And then I take out a third one, larger still, as wide and long as a compact disc but much thicker. I place it beside
the first two and drop the empty pouch to the floor. Mimi stares, mesmerized, at the neat row of silver cases, at their sleek
tops, which shimmer in the candlelight.