Jake & Mimi (25 page)

It is called a Contour.

It is pink and shaped like a heart, and it is covered with tiny, jelly-like nodes. Mimi, leaning forward, the sweat shining
like dew on her forehead, looks at it without a trace of understanding. I move down the bed and sit at Elise’s hip. She feels
this, sensing my preparation, and as I look down at her, the Contour snug in my right hand, she braces, her tongue searching
her lips for a final, calming taste of mint, her every muscle tensed again. I put my left hand on her belly, then look at
Mimi.

I slide it inside of Elise’s black silk panties, and then inside of Elise.

She convulses.

Instinctively her legs spasm, trying to close, but the binds hold them beautifully still. Her head comes up off the covers,
her throat straining in terror. She was braced for pain but not there, anywhere but there, and her terror keeps her from trusting
her own sensations. She only knows that she is helpless and that something is inside her, and so she surges again and again,
crying out with each surge, setting the clamps in motion, and it is twenty seconds before she starts to quiet and twenty more
before the clamps are still and thirty more before she starts to believe,
dares
to believe, what her body is telling her — that this is reward, not punishment. Because inside her I’m turning the Contour
gently, allowing the beauty of its design to go to work, and as I turn it again, she lets out a gasping cry, and as I ease
it in a little deeper, sweet, stunning realization breaks over her, and she sighs the purest sigh I’ve ever heard.

In seconds I have her fitted.

I take my right hand out from inside her and rest it on her belly, and when she feels it there, next to my left, and still
feels, inside her, the dense, insistent presence, she nearly collapses. Minutes ago my fingers could work only one spot at
a time. Now the Contour works many, and though she can’t roll her hips but the tiniest amount or lift them more than two inches,
even these small motions widen its rippling reach, and her only challenge now is to keep the nipple clamps still as the pleasure
starts to build inside her.

Mimi holds one arm tight to her breast now, her eyes on my empty right hand. And she looks again into the open silver case.
And I reach back into it and take out the source of her fascination.

The black remote.

I lay it on the covers, hit the ON switch, and ease the power setting up to 1. And together we watch her.

She feels it right away, her lips parting in joy, but these first swells are so subtle, so delicate, that she thinks they
are natural, the response of her swollen folds to the probing touch of the Contour. She sighs and lays her head back slowly
onto the covers. I roll the power setting up to 2.

And I can almost see, through the blindfold, her dark eyes snap open.

She gasps and turns her head, as if to listen. She gasps again. Ten seconds pass, fifteen, and then her mouth opens in wonder,
because inside her the jolts are still coming, and they are stronger, yes, stronger than moments ago, and aren’t they… could
they be… yes — they come at
perfect intervals
. And so the truth sinks into her, and just as it does the last Spanish guitar notes fade from the stereo, leaving the room
to her cries.

Cries that make Mimi reach out and press her fingers into the tight blue cloth of the nightstand. That make me take my hands
from Elise’s belly and press on the knees of my corduroys. I watch her hips rise with each jolt she receives. Every three
seconds they rise, and just as she had no defense earlier against the pain, the burning wax and biting clamps, she has none
now against this pleasure, and so she cries out, and cries out, and cries out as the patient Contour, deep inside her, metes
out wave after wave.

I roll the power switch to 3. And then to 4.

“Oh!” she cries, jarred, the shocks intense now. She bites her lip to keep still, to keep silent, to keep from coming apart.
“God!” she cries out finally, tensing instantly in fear, bracing for the turn of the screw. But I leave the clamps alone.
I move up the bed, dip my shirt into my cold drink, and touch it to her forehead.

“Jake,” she gasps. I wipe her fevered brow. “Thank you.” I dab her damp, burning cheeks, letting her talk now. “Oh God, thank
you. Thank you. You can’t know.” She reaches for my fingers with her mouth, wanting to take me inside her, to share with me
a portion of the killing joy coursing through her, but seconds later she turns her face into the covers, overcome, my fingers
forgotten, the cooling cloth forgotten, everything forgotten but the relentless, saving bursts inside of her.

5.6.

“Oh Jesus.”

Mimi drops the torn black dress and rocks, both arms hugged to her chest. She rocks and watches Elise fight to stay whole,
the jolts so strong now that she braces for each one as she used to brace for the pain, trying to absorb them in her hips,
to channel them down into her legs, away from the clamps. It’s no use. Each burst rocks her whole body, jolting the clamps
again and again. But she doesn’t cry out in pain or even wince. She is beyond the clamps now, and though they shake with each
blast she receives, her cries remain cries of pure, stunned pleasure.

7.

We can hear it now, Mimi and I. Beneath her cries, we can hear it. Deep and rhythmic, like the beating of a heart. Dispensing,
dispensing, dispensing. Merciless. And we can hear, too, the timeless, unmistakable edge seeping into her cries. She is closing
in. Mimi twists her hands in her lap, agitated — not because Elise is minutes away but because Mimi knows there is one silver
case left on the nightstand, and she knows its time has come. I start to reach for it, but she picks it up and turns it in
her hands. The hard silver sparkles in the light of the candle. Elise’s cries come sharper, ever sharper. Mimi lifts the lid
and looks down into the case, and I see the surprise in her eyes. She lifts out a thick metal chain, gold, sixteen inches
long. She is struck by its weight, but she handles it like a necklace, even touches it to her flushed cheek. I hold my hand
out, and it isn’t until she hands it over that she sees the small clips at each end of the chain, and as I take it and move
back down to the center of the bed, she looks to Elise, to the tight clamps that pinch her nipples, and sees for the first
time the tiny metal rings on the levered ends of each clamp. And fear rises in her beautiful eyes.

I touch the chain to Elise’s thigh. She starts once at its cold touch but not again, not even as I trail it up her leg, and
over her panties and up her belly. She is deep inside herself now, gone to wherever women go in the last seconds. She doesn’t
hear the soft click as I hook one end of the chain to the ring of one clamp, and then the other end to the ring of the other.
I hold the chain in my hand, careful to preserve its slack. And then I break her golden reverie by hitting the
OFF
switch on the black remote, opening my hand and letting the chain slide from my palm down onto her belly.

She cries out in pain, her trance shattered. The chain lies coiled below her breasts, just enough slack in it to save her,
but not enough to protect her from its brutal pull. She feels the sudden, fierce burn in her nipples as the clamps dip, and
deeper down, in the breastbone, she feels heavy, wrenching pressure.

“No,” she gasps.

I edge the chain back up, relieving her torment, and restore the waves inside her.

8.

Pleasure reclaims her within seconds. She’s felt nothing, ever, like this, the bursts so strong now that each one lifts her
black panties away from her mound. Twenty seconds I give her, then cut her off again. And pull the chain down her belly. A
little farther this time.

Her piercing cry drives Mimi out of her chair. She stands over the bed, helpless, smoothing her dress desperately, enduring
Elise’s sobs of pain until I rescue her by edging the chain up, and then transport her with the touch of a button.

9.

Mimi sits down, shaking.

Thirty seconds of current. Five seconds of pain. Forty seconds of current. Five seconds of pain. Fifty seconds of current.
Five seconds of pain.

She climbs and climbs on the current, the pleasure so concentrated now, so pure, without any way to dilute it. Shock after
shock deep inside her, and yet the strong white ties hold her spread and bound, and perfectly still. And just as she starts
to crest — betrayal. I stop the current. And moments later, agony as I tug the chain down a fraction farther than the time
before, hold it for five searing seconds, until the veins stand out on her arms, and then inch it back up her oiled belly
and hit the button again.

Mimi can’t watch the punishment. She shuts her eyes when I kill the current and doesn’t open them until she hears cries of
pleasure again. And so she doesn’t see what I see — that the punishment has become part of her pleasure. A strong tug on the
chain nearly breaks her in two, but she needs it. It takes the breath from her lungs, but she needs it. Because the punishment
alone keeps her from finishing, and there is no moment more magical, more transporting, than the moment I release her from
the throes of the chain and deliver her back to the Contour. I do it again now. A cathartic gasp comes from her, and her head
lolls on the red covers as if she were drugged. And then the deep, sighing, euphoric tremble all through her as she surrenders
anew to the rhythmic bolts of pleasure that take her in seconds from agony to the brink of deliverance.

I ease the power setting to its maximum. 10. Mimi turns in her chair, toward the head of the bed. She can’t watch the center
of Elise anymore. Can’t watch the jolts she is taking there. So she watches her hands. Her bound, delicate hands, which betray
her pleasure as clearly as her rising cries, her fingers diving into her palms with each burst, then fluttering open as the
wave recedes. And diving in again. And fluttering open. And I see, on the knees of her dress, that Mimi’s fingers are doing
the same.

A full minute of current, a minute twenty, a minute thirty, and then, instead of cutting it off and reaching for the heavy
chain, I lean down and press hard on her soaked black panties, doubling the explosions inside her and bringing her, instantly,
to the edge.

I lift my palm, and then press again. It’s too much for her. And almost for me. I feel her hit the edge hard and start along
it. I lean in. “You’re free,” I whisper, and she surges, possessed, her cries coming from deep in her throat, from even deeper,
from some private place no one will ever reach again. I press and release, press and release, press and release, and I see
tears now, rolling down from under her blindfold as she slams her face from side to side. I’ve read her body all night and
I read it now — she is one hard press away. I give it to her, and I hold it, and I brace for her finish. But she hangs on,
fighting off the first set of spasms, and then the next. She won’t give in yet. She’s waited too long, endured too much. Somehow
she coaxes a few more seconds from her burning center, precious seconds that let her catch one last, killing wave. She arches,
and cries out, and rides and rides and rides.

And I hear from across the room a sound from twenty years ago.

I look to the window. Beneath it. A drawn out hiss, two knocks, another long hiss. The radiator. This was my room for five
years, and every two hours for five years I heard that sound. I stare at the old gray radiator. Hiss. Knock, knock. Hiss.
Mom used to say it was God checking up on me. She said that when I heard it I should whisper his name and knock twice on the
bed frame to let him know I was safe. The sound comes again. And again.

Elise’s cries bring me back to her. I look hard at her bound, shining body, rocking in ecstasy, outside of herself in my old
room. I pick up the black remote and switch off the Contour. I lean over her and give the screw on one clamp a full turn,
and before her cry of pain can fade, I do the same with the other, watching the pink nipple disappear beneath the black plastic
jaws. And then I tug on the chain, slowly, ignoring her desperate gasps of pain, taking it farther, farther, taking it as
far down her belly as it will go. The clamps come with it, bent dangerously now, like fishing lines just before they snap.

I stand and walk to the window. And I sit down on the radiator.

Mimi is out of her chair again, stunned, standing over the gasping Elise, and now looking to me, her pleading eyes more beautiful
than ever. She sits down again, to be closer to her, but she can only watch helplessly as Elise struggles to catch her breath
through the pain. And I turn and look out the window.

I look up the street to the heavy trees that guard the entrance to the park. And down at the green mailbox on the sidewalk
in front of the building. This was her view. All those days, as she watched me from this window. A hundred sidewalk football
games. A thousand walks to school.

The radiator makes its noise again. And from Elise, sobs of agony as she tries to summon the breath to form words.

A cooling breeze comes through the window, as if from long ago. And I don’t see the street anymore, or the old green mailbox,
or the trees that guard the magic entrance to Morningside Park. I see the deep bows of the Japanese doctors as the hearse
pulled away from the hospital.

“Please,” Elise manages, her voice breaking. “Jake.”

The doctors all bowed as one, holding their bows until the hearse was out of sight, until we were driving through the crowded
Tokyo streets to the crematorium.

Silence from Elise now. Not a sound in the room.

I signed for the ashes. At sixteen, I signed for the ashes and then stood in the lobby with two heavy ceramic urns, waiting
for the taxi that would take us home.

Her cries start up again, but with a new tenor to them. Familiar. Rising. I turn and see Mimi on the bed, sitting where I
was. She has rescued Elise from the clamps, and is just now laying the black remote back on the covers. She stands and looks
at me, her cheeks streaked with tears, her sweater held to her neck, and she walks to the door and out of the room. I stare
at the empty doorway. The radiator is quiet now, and Elise’s cries fill the room again. Deep cries, every three seconds. She
isn’t fighting the waves anymore. She has surrendered to them, and they are leading her home.