Scruples Two (17 page)

Why not indeed? Susan Arvey echoed, inspecting herself carefully in the mirror on her dressing table. She had been just thirty-eight, an unusually pretty and young-looking thirty-eight, when she’d had her first facelift.

For years she’d been on the alert for the right moment, the absolutely first instant at which she would be able to notice the effects of gravity on her chin line. Every day she automatically pulled the skin of her jaw and cheeks back toward her ears and then let it relax into its normal configuration. The day on which it relaxed a certain amount too much, an amount that was far too little to be apparent to anyone but her, was the day on which Susan had made her appointment to have a consultation with the plastic surgeon in Palm Springs who was so much more discreet and so much more expensive than anyone in Beverly Hills.

The Good Doctor, as she thought of him, had told her that very few women were as smart as she was, clever enough to come to him as early as she had. Usually they waited until repair work was necessary to the naked eye. In the past, he said regretfully, even as little as ten years ago, doctors usually considered it wise to wait to do plastic surgery until they could make a difference in their patients’ looks. This meant that the work would be noticed, when the whole point was that it should never be noticed. Her facelift would be done at precisely the perfect amount of time
before
it was needed, he said, pleased at the prospect of perfect conditions. The Good Doctor assured her that he would do such a gentle, subtle job that not even the most sharp-eyed and suspicious of her friends would ever guess. In addition, the recuperation from the inevitable bruises and swelling would be exceptionally quick and easy. The Good Doctor had lived up to all his promises.

Susan Arvey told Curt that she was going to a health spa for a few weeks of diet and intensive exercise. When she returned from the desert, where she had stayed at the Doctor’s intensely private postoperative clinic, seeing no one but nurses and the Doctor himself, Curt observed that the spa had put the sparkle back in her eyes. Now, at forty-one, she looked exactly as she had at thirty-four. She assumed she always would, except for those inevitable, really rather attractive “character” lines that returned sooner or later as time passed and she used her facial muscles to smile or frown. The Good Doctor was only a few years older than she, and he had two brilliant young surgeons training under him, so if she kept up her tennis and her workouts and her massage, why should she ever look much older than thirty-four?

Susan Arvey inspected her naked body, as always with an unsparing, ferocious, suspicious eye for detail. She’d started out with a splendid, slender, full-breasted body, and thanks to her never-ending attention it remained as lithe, supple and well-toned as it had ever been. Thank God she’d never had children; that damage was irreparable. She never exposed her skin to the sun after her early tennis lesson, so the skin of her body was like a girl’s. She was a great deal stronger than she looked; for years her exercise had been directed at building her flexibility, and her flat abdominal muscles and long, shapely arm and leg muscles betrayed no bulk.

While she arranged her blond hair into its timeless chignon, as she applied her simple makeup, Susan chuckled at the prospect of still looking thirty-four at fifty-four. Obviously, by that time people would realize that she must have had some “work” done, simply because they would have known her for so long, but they wouldn’t be able to gossip about specifics, and actually pinpoint the day and the doctor, the way they relished doing about every other woman in town who suddenly looked “rested.”

Susan went to the kitchen of the five-room apartment, took out the chicken salad that room service had left in the fridge for her, and ate it quickly, without interest. She dressed in the quietest and most conservative of her expensive dresses and left the hotel, greeting the friendly doorman as she always did. As soon as she was out of his sight she hailed a cab and gave an address on Second Avenue. The taxi drew up at an unimpressive modern building with no doorman and a self-service elevator. There she went to the eleventh floor and unlocked the door to a small apartment she had owned for years, an apartment she had had furnished by Bloomingdale’s design department. The apartment had been bought by her trustees at her direction, and furnished and maintained in the same way. Her trustees had as little curiosity about the apartment as her husband had access to her trustees.

It had a pleasant enough living room, she thought, as she always did, comfortable and in good taste, a living room that any well-paid, single working woman might be able to afford. She turned on all the air conditioners, for the air was stale, and went quickly into the bedroom of the apartment. There her heart started to beat even more heavily than it had been beating from the time she had left the Sherry Netherland.

The bedroom was not average, not ordinary, not easily affordable, and quite certainly not even in good taste. It was shut off from any connection to the outside world by lavish and thickly hung draperies that completely covered the walls and windows in feminine tones of light and dusky pinks, with an occasional touch of deep red. The room contained several cunningly placed screens and mirrors and a large bed with an elaborate wrought-iron headboard and footboard, piled high with pillows and made up with silk sheets, a bedroom that was entirely hedonistic and complicated, a bedroom that kept secrets.

Susan Arvey crossed it hastily, going straight to the large dressing room, where she took off all her dull clothes. She made a careful choice of one of the dozen floor-length robes that hung there, picking one that shimmered in violet tones. Each of the robes had a wide sash at the waist, a deep neckline and a full skirt. They were made of precious but light fabrics, airy enough to be almost transparent, but used so lavishly that their folds concealed any clear look at her body. Susan opened a cabinet in the dressing room and inspected five long red and brunette wigs on stands, finally choosing one that was an exceptionally long tangle of black curls. She undid her chignon, pinning her hair on top of her head, and fastening the wig securely. Suddenly Susan Arvey looked not thirty-four, but twenty-four, for the sweep of hair took away a full decade. Her makeup needed no attention; its very simplicity added to her look of youth.

For the second time that evening she stood in front of a well-lit full-length mirror and took inventory. Try to critique as she would, there was only a girl standing there, an exceptionally good-looking girl with a marvelously appealing body, of which the worst you could say was that her breasts were perhaps too large, her nipples too prominent, for every taste. No one she had ever known in the world would recognize her; the dark wig made an amazing difference in her looks, falling forward in curly bangs and shadowing her cheekbones. She took her bare breasts in her hands and pushed them forward so that the neckline of the robe framed them in their lush, white nakedness. She arranged several of the curls of the wig so that they fell over her breasts, and parted the robe at the waist so that her blond pubic hair was visible. She stood, swaying slightly, admiring her erotic image for long minutes, feeling a warmth rising in her body, a puissant liquid feeling shot through with flashes of desire. Finally, almost reluctantly, she rearranged her robe and went into the bedroom, moving around deftly, making sure that the right dim lamps were lit and that the pillows on the bed were properly arranged.

The doorbell rang almost as soon as she was finished with her preparations. Trembling slightly, she went to answer it. Part of the excitement of these evenings was that she never booked the same man twice. It ensured that he would never become too curious or possessive about her, and it preserved the charm of her surprise. All the men who worked for the agency were gifted, the very drunk actress who had first told her about it had confided.

“They don’t send ugly men, but their looks are not the point, see, the point is that they can get it up and keep it up, they can perform, see, if you know what I mean, and believe you me, we’re talking about a very very special talent, worth its weight in gold. They’re all young or they couldn’t do it, they can’t fake it like the girls, that’s why they charge such a fortune. They’re squeaky clean and they’re not ever going to turn mean and they cost like bloody hell, but let’s face it, sometimes it’s worth it, know what I mean?”

Susan had pretended not to know what she meant, but she’d kept the agency’s card that the actress had pressed on her. The actress, who’d blacked out on what she’d told Susan Arvey, never had to worry about losing Susan’s friendship, for Susan couldn’t be certain how much the woman had retained of a conversation they never had again.

She opened the door, keeping it on the chain. Several times she hadn’t cared for the look of the man the agency sent, and she had asked him to leave, phoning immediately for a replacement. Tonight she was pleased. As she let the man in, she sized him up. He had a perceptibly awkward look on his pleasant, scrubbed, open face. He obviously was new at this, Susan thought, appraising his height, which was barely more than her own, his healthy tan, his short, light brown, curly hair, his broad shoulders, his noticeable sturdiness. He wore the preppy clothes they all wore, his oxford shirt open at the neck, his sports jacket hanging over his arm. They never dressed more formally; the agency was not an escort service.

As she closed the front door behind her and locked it, she said, “You are here to do only what I tell you to do. I don’t permit questions, you may not ask me anything at all, you must stay silent under all circumstances. You must please me, you must obey me implicitly.” Although she spoke in a low, level voice, no one listening to her would doubt her entire seriousness.

She led the way across the living room into the bedroom, noting that the boy’s bewilderment was only intensified by his finding her so unexpectedly young and beautiful. Once they had reached the insinuating deep pink cave of the bedroom, Susan took his jacket and threw it on a chair. “Take off all your clothes,” she commanded, and sat down in an armchair near the door, watching him while he obeyed her, almost stumbling as he shook his feet out of his trousers and flung them on the carpet. “Now stand with your back to the door, and look straight ahead, don’t look at me,” she dictated. Ignoring his surprised face, she thoughtfully studied the young man’s tanned, naked body. The hair of his chest and thighs was fairly abundant and the same light brown as the hair on his head. He was powerfully built, all of his muscles were unusually well developed, and his penis, dangling heavily between his legs, was considerably shorter than average but twice as thick.

As she sat impassively, betraying nothing but a steady, calm interest, Susan could feel her rising excitement at the sight of this wholly desirable boy. It was necessary that he be a stranger, necessary that he be prohibited from expressing his own personality, necessary that he be immobile, totally subject to her scrutiny, unable to act unless she allowed it. His very youth and evident inexperience made her feel a flare of inventive mischief. She gave him an order she had never given before.

“I want you to turn around and face the door, stand flat up against it and keep your feet together,” Susan directed him when she had looked her fill. His back was strong, his buttocks shapely, firm and round, the only part of his body besides his penis that wasn’t completely tan. She got up and stood behind him, not letting her robe touch him, and ran a finger lightly down his backbone to the base of his spine, pleased by the strong reflexive shiver he couldn’t control. Without touching him anywhere else she began to finger his buttocks, teasing them with casual, caressing, roving fingertips. As her hands played with him she dictated her injunctions. “Stand absolutely still,” she enjoined him, “don’t move an inch away from the door. You think you know what I want, but you haven’t any idea. You think you can give it to me, but I’m going to take it from you. Take it, do you understand?” She put both of her hands over the solid curves of his bottom, rotating them so that they created a warmly intimate friction.

“Don’t!” she ruled cruelly as she felt him starting to press back against her. “Don’t you dare! Hold still, part your feet, but stay pressed flat against the door.” When he had complied, she worked her hand slowly, so slowly that he couldn’t restrain a moan, into the warm place between his thighs and made herself master of his balls. For minutes, while he stood shuddering with the effort not to move, she grasped them, weighing them in her fingers, pleased with their ponderous heaviness, exploring the thickness of the coarse hair at the root of his hugely swollen, short penis that was crushed against the door.

“Touch it,”
he groaned.

Susan smiled briefly, but when she spoke he heard only anger. “I told you not to ask. You have no rights. Now I’ll never touch it,
never
, you’ve just guaranteed your punishment, you’ve disobeyed me.” She licked all her fingers and returned to his balls, moistening them and squeezing them with the most luxuriously subtle pressure, listening to his heightened breathing as she toyed ever more amusingly with him, relishing the increasing difficulty he was having in preventing himself from making any noise. “Don’t you have any self-control?” she asked in contempt. “Turn around and face me. Oh, really, you should be ashamed of yourself. Look at you, you’re no better than an animal. You’ve disregarded every word I said. Go over to the bed, lie down on your back, and get ready for your punishment. I warned you once … that should have been enough.”

He moved stiffly toward the bed and lay down, keeping himself rigorously still, his arms at his sides, although he was panting for breath. Susan bent over him, opening her robe and freeing her hanging breasts. He bit his lips at the sight of them, but prevented himself from moving. When she saw that he was managing to obey her, she parted her robe until it was open all the way to her waist, allowing him to see what lay between her legs, swaying her hips from side to side until her provocation suddenly made him lift himself a few inches off the bed. Susan looked at his flushed face in disdain and spoke to him in a low, scornful voice. “I was going to give you one last chance,” she said, closing her robe, “but now you’ve thrown it away. I was going to do … oh, such good, good things to you … but … no … it’s over … you’ll never get another opportunity … do you have the slightest idea what you missed by your disobedience? Now! Put your arms over your head, spread your legs again, and lie still.”