The Collectors (13 page)

At seven o’clock I arrived with five DVDs and my overnight bag. Two Jane Austens, two American independents, and
Das Boot
, because it seemed like a safe bet. I brought the bag because I never knew if I’d be spending the night or not. One of the last times I was here I didn’t have a change of clothes, and Jeanne was very amused watching me leave the house in the morning holding together the shirt she’d torn from me the night before.

Mrs. Kirchberger answered the door and reached for my bag. I held on and she gave it another tug toward her. I didn’t want her to carry it because I was uncomfortable with the idea of servants doing things for me. But it was hard to argue with Mrs. Kirchberger. Ever since Jeanne told me Mrs. K. didn’t have a tongue, it took away my resistance to her. She yanked my bag from me and turned to lead me upstairs, and I swore I saw a tiny smile on her lips.

Jeanne was in her study, feet up on the coffee table and watching CNN, the remote in her hand. She wore gym shorts and a T-shirt, and I almost didn’t recognize her. She muted the TV and got up to greet me with a kiss. Mrs. K. stood by, my bag still in her hand.

“Mrs. K., will you drop the bag in my bedroom and then order the pizza?”

I watched her leave and turned back to Jeanne, who still had me in her arms. “How does she order pizza? Or do you have a complete downstairs staff I’ve never seen?”

“No, Mrs. K. is all alone. I sometimes think I should have someone else here to keep her company, but that’s thinking of her rather like a cat. She’ll tell me if she’s unhappy. She’s very straightforward.”

I imagined that was true. It seemed unlikely you’d be anything but when your modes of communication with your boss were scribbled notes and nods of the head.

“She has one of the TTY machines downstairs to make phone calls, and she’s online all the time.”

The secret life of Mrs. Kirchberger. It seemed there were layers to uncover in the people who lived here, even in the house itself. The dominatrix in her shorts and T-shirt, the house with its secret passageways, the silent housekeeper with the huge social network. Things were not as they seemed, including the world of domination and submission. At least this slice of it. What I had read about or fantasized about was a world of 24/7 compliance with the demanding will of a dominant. I hadn’t taken into consideration that twenty-four hours was a long time for anyone to be in strict domination mode. Even someone as energetic as Jeanne might need to put down the whip and pick up the remote control from time to time. She might want to use the flat of her hand to caress a cheek rather than administer a spanking. I’d seen glimpses of this part of Jeanne before, but somehow the gym shorts brought her down to earth in a way nothing else had done before. She looked like a woman to me. Simply that. And all of that. I wondered if I was falling in love with more than Jeanne the dominant.

My movies passed muster and we spent a pleasant evening watching
Das Boot
(I knew it). The footstool was used as a footstool.

“I’m glad you planned to spend the night,” Jeanne said when she clicked off the movie. “I’m exhausted, though. I don’t think we’ll do anything adventurous tonight.”

“Is that how you think of what we do together?”

“Each and every time. Don’t you?”

“Yes, absolutely. But I’m new. I didn’t know if it became more of a rote thing with time.”

Jeanne rearranged herself so her legs were across my lap. I began to massage her feet and I thought I heard her purring.

“If anything in my life begins to feel rote, I hope I still have it in me to change—either the thing or myself. Having sex with a woman who places her ultimate trust in me has never felt rote. It’s always an adventure.” She paused. “And with you it’s been something else. It’s felt different.”

She looked right at me. I had a hard time holding her gaze.

“Different good or different bad?” I asked, kind of like a five-year-old.

“Different good.” She sat up. “Come on. Let’s go to bed.”

We went upstairs to the third floor. Jeanne had a massive master suite up there, and I knew there were a couple other bedrooms as well. Anything could be in those, I thought. Another play room filled with equipment. A guest room, I supposed.

“Where does Mrs. Kirchberger sleep?”

“She has the whole attic. I put a bedroom and kitchen and bath up there. It’s kind of perfect for her.”

I wondered if Adele had slept up here in the master suite and whether sex with her felt “different good” to Jeanne. I didn’t want to ruin Jeanne’s mellow mood by bringing up Adele, whether to ask Jeanne exactly why she’d had Adele move out of the garden apartment or to tell her I thought Adele had broken into my place while we were in Paris. Maybe I’d bring it up later.

We showered and crawled into bed naked. Jeanne pulled out a catalog for an upcoming New York auction she was attending and we went through it together until we both felt drowsy. When we turned out our lights and then turned to each other, Jeanne pulled me close and tucked her arm under me, her chin on the top of my head. It was very nice and cuddly, but I hoped this was just temporary.

It was.

When I woke in the morning it was to find Jeanne cuffing my hands together in front. She didn’t say a word and put her finger to my lips to command my silence. Then she raised my legs up and over my head and cuffed my ankles to the posts at the head of the bed. I was thankful for my yoga classes, for I was bent nearly double. I was also exposed in the most vulnerable way. I raised my head and looked between my legs to see Jeanne climbing back on the bed, on her knees, wearing a harness and rubbing lube on a dildo. She began to push her way into me—no foreplay, no words to try to incite me, just her body pushing into me and her hungry eyes staring down at me. I gasped at the entry. I was already wet, having an instant reaction to every move Jeanne made on me. She pushed in further. I gasped again. She went all the way in and stayed there. Her eyes were not only hungry, but they had a brightness, as if she were taking what she wanted and was delighted at what she got. She rubbed herself against the base of the dildo, the motion causing the base on the other side to rub my clit as well. She pulled back and did the same. Then again, and again. The thrusting then became less, the rubbing more, she held her mouth in a tight line and her legs trembled as she started to come. She tried to maintain eye contact with me, but as her orgasm swept through her, her head jerked away and she cried out. She collapsed on me, her weight heavy on my spread legs. I hadn’t come, surprisingly, but didn’t care. I was thrilled with the wake-up call and to be back in service.

At breakfast Jeanne said she’d be out of town for a few days but would contact me at some point about where we’d next meet. She excused herself while I was still eating and left, kissing me on the cheek on her way out of the dining room. I saw Mrs. Kirchberger shaking her head as she left the room with some empty plates. Was she clucking her tongue, so to speak? What did she mean? Was Jeanne on her way to see someone else? The flash of jealousy terrified me. Remember Adele, I thought. You don’t want to be like her.

*

The next call from Jeanne didn’t arrive for a full week. I was starting to get concerned she was having second thoughts about me. In the most hopeful scenario making the rounds in my head, Jeanne was freaking out at how much in love with me she was and decided to cool things down for a while, unsure whether she was ready for a serious relationship. Maybe she was nervous I was someone who might become her Primary. I wasn’t sure yet what a Primary was, but I knew I wanted to be Jeanne’s Primary. The name alone told me it was the number one spot, and that sounded pretty good to me. This best-case scenario concluded with Jeanne realizing she’d be mad to let me go, moving me immediately into her home, and proposing to me. I didn’t know whether a dominant proposed in the traditional sense of the word. I couldn’t picture Jeanne going down on one knee. It would be more likely I would be on my knees when she announced I was to become her Primary. The details didn’t worry me.

The other scenario racing around like a pinball in my brain was the one I was convinced was the real deal. Jeanne had come to the conclusion I didn’t have the right stuff, that I might be okay for playing around with, but I’m not relationship material. Therefore, calls from her would be far less frequent and our time together far less intimate. This was a bit like closing the barn door after the horse has escaped. I couldn’t stuff my feelings for her back into their initial form, that of a novice simply grateful for any attention from a dominant. I had feelings for her that went way beyond gratitude. If she were dumping me, my heart would be broken. I knew this, even though my heart had never been broken before.

As it turned out, the situation was exactly as Jeanne had said. She was out of town on business for four days and busy with other things back at home. Apparently, she was not the type who called just to chat, which if I thought it through made sense. She was my dominant, not my gal pal. She didn’t want to know if I bought the shoes I’d seen in the store the day before. She didn’t care to hear how my day had gone. And it didn’t even occur to her to let me know what she was up to. She didn’t call just to “check in.”

What she did say when she called was she was having some people over on Friday whom she’d like me to meet and to be at her place at seven.

“And don’t be concerned, “ she said. “They’re not French.”

“Ha ha,” I said, glad to hear her teasing me. “I’ll be there with bells on.”

“No, don’t wear bells.”

“I was kidding.”

She was silent for a moment. “On second thought, wear bells. On your ankle.”

She hung up.

There had been no message from Adele, no follow-up of any kind to the trashing of my apartment. The silence made me think it may not have been her after all, and I’d put it out of my mind by the time the party at Jeanne’s arrived.

I greeted Mrs. Kirchberger at the door as if she were a long-lost friend and I got the same response as I always got, which was none at all. She took my coat, for the air was cold now. It was Halloween, and I could see tiny costumed children being herded by their parents up and down the street. I wonder what their reaction was when Mrs. Kirchberger answered the door. Maybe the little ones screamed.

“Trick or treat,” I said to her. She stared back and took my coat, looking down at my feet when she heard the tinkle of the tiny bells at my ankle. A trip to the fabric store and an evening with needle and thread had produced something I hoped would be acceptable—an ankle wrap with bells dangling from it. The sound made me feel like a cat. I hadn’t bothered with a costume myself, thinking I wouldn’t be wearing clothes for long anyway.

Once in the study upstairs I saw I wasn’t the first to arrive. Jeanne was in her usual place on the sofa, nearest the fireplace, and with her were four other women. The dominants stood as I walked in the room and the submissives stayed seated, turning their faces toward me. Jeanne kissed me as she always did, on the cheek, and introduced me.

There was Pat, who smiled warmly and leaned over to also kiss my cheek. I felt a kinship with her, though we barely knew each other. The other dom was a woman named Kevin. It was her given name, she quickly offered, lest I think what, I don’t know. Kevin was shorter than me and much more mannish than Pat or Jeanne. She wore a white shirt and skinny black tie and low-slung blue jeans. Her hair was buzz cut, and she had the broad physique of a wrestler, just starting to grow soft. She was older and had a very confident bearing, but in a different way than Pat’s relaxed demeanor. Kevin had a slightly dangerous feel about her.

On the sofa were Denise and Heather, and there was no question they were femmes. I considered myself femme-ish, but they were the real thing—expert makeup, high heels, perfect accessories, complicated dresses. They both had long brown hair. At first, I had a hard time telling them apart, but Denise was a little younger, perhaps my age, and smiled easily. Heather was in her thirties and just barely acknowledged our introduction.

We sat, with Jeanne patting the seat next to her and Heather shifting over to sit on a chair, with Kevin perched on its arm. Jeanne poured me a glass of wine.

“Laura, I wanted you to meet my friends, not only because they are dear to me and an important part of my life, but also because we all belong to a society we’d be very interested in you joining.”

 “We spoke a bit about it with you before,” Pat said, “but I’m sure it seems very mysterious.”

“Very much so,” I said. “The only thing I know is there is some sort of organization, and part of the structure includes making a submissive a primary to a dominant. Everything else is a complete mystery to me.”

Kevin, Heather, and Denise stared at me as if I’d just fallen into the room through the ceiling.

“What?” I asked.

“How did you hear about primaries?” Heather said.

I shrugged. “Adele told me about it.”

They stared harder, but mingled it with looks at each other. Heather seemed particularly taken aback.

 “It’s not something that’s supposed to be shared with anyone until such time as a person is taken into the Society,” Jeanne said. “None of the details of our structure are. But it’s done. Let’s move on. What we do as a group is nothing more than operate as a support to one another, to function as arbitrator when there are disputes among members, to coordinate our quarterly functions, and administer certain rules that have proven to make operating in our world less confusing and more fulfilling for everyone—dominant and submissive alike. Because you are someone with whom I want to spend more time, it is time now for you to be introduced to the Society and become a member.”