The Story of X: An Erotic Tale (11 page)

“Mom, I’m sorry you didn’t like Naples.”

“Oh, darling,” she says. “It’s not that I didn’t like it, it’s just that it’s so . . .
different
.”

“I’m sure you will like Amalfi more. It’s beautiful. And clean.”

Her hand reaches out and touches mine.

“I don’t care about Naples. Or Amalfi,” she says. “I care about
you
. My darling daughter, my only daughter. I am very proud of you.”

“Why?”

“Because,” she says, setting down her coffee cup. She stares deep into my eyes. “Because
you are bright and beautiful—and because you are doing what I should have done.”

I gaze across the table, wondering where this is going.

“You are living, Alexandra. You are alive. Seeing the world. I wish I had done that.”

“Mom? What do you mean?”

“X, I love your father and I adore my kids, all three of you, even Jonny most of the
time. But . . .”

I have never seen my mom like this—wrestling with some inner truth, something evidently
painful. She stares into the deflated foam of her mistimed cappuccino, then looks
at me again.

“You know, Alex,
I was never young. Not really
. And that’s very sad.”

“How—”

“I never realized I was young until it was too late. Please . . . don’t do what I
did.”

And that’s that. She stands; her train is waiting. I help her carry her bags to her
carriage and she leans out the train window to wave good-bye, and there are something
like tears in her eyes as the train takes off, and she mouths the words
I love you,
and I wave at her helplessly. Then I stand, watching the train until it rattles into
nothing and, when it is completely gone, I have an enormous urge to cry.

This deep, abiding sadness stays with me for a day. I feel like the wilted dusty palms
on Partenope.
I never realized I was young . . . Don’t do what I did
.

I want experience. I am young. This is it. I will never be twenty-one in Naples again.

Late the next afternoon, I pick up the phone. Then I put it down. Then I hide it under
a cushion. Then I retrieve it, and dial, and count the seconds, and wait.

“Sì?”

“
Buona sera
. Uh . . .”

“Yes?”

“Can I speak to Marc? Signor Roscarrick?”

“Who is it, please?”

“Alexandra. I mean X. Tell him it’s X.”

There is a pause. Marc comes on the line.

“Hello? X?”

Oh God, that voice. That accent. I want to kiss him through the phone. I want to cry
on his shoulder. Then kiss him some more.

“Alex?”

“Marc, I . . . God . . . I . . . I want . . . I just, I’m sorry . . . I . . . I wonder
. . . what are you doing?”

“You want to see me?”

This is it. I answer: “Yes.”

“Come to the Gambrinus.”

“Sorry?”

“Meet me there tonight, at seven. We need to talk first.”

Click.

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTEEN

T
HE
G
AMBRINUS.
O
F
course. This is where it started, this is where it will end—or continue. I sit nervously
at the table, trying not to look at my watch. I am ten minutes early. Maybe I should
have been mysteriously late? Maybe I should have dressed up? I am in simple jeans
and a simple top. I dithered over a minidress, but then I decided that looked too
needy
.

And maybe I am needy. I need him. And his kisses. Sipping my gin and tonic—hard liquor
for resolve—I stare across the square. Nervous. And waiting. And looking at my watch
again.

And here is Marc. At exactly seven
P.M
.

I glance pointedly at my watch as he joins me at my table. I need to ease the tension
with small talk.

“Are you always this punctual?”

“Blame my mother,” he says suavely, sitting down. “She drummed it into me. Punctuality
is the politeness of princes.”

“Or the virtue of the bored?”

He gazes my way, and he laughs; and our laughter is mutual. And then I remember that
we
get along
. In a very basic and simple way: we get along. And I need to hold on to this, if
I am going to do what I have resolved to do.

“So,” he says, and he is no longer laughing. “There can only be one reason you have
summoned me.”

“Yes.”

“You have agreed to be initiated.”

I swallow some gin and tonic.

“Yes.”

His gaze is intense. He reaches out and takes my hand in his. He looks down at my
white fingers, laced in his darker hand.

“You are absolutely sure, Alex?”

I hesitate, for a second. I am not absolutely sure. But I am sure
enough
.

“Yes, I am sure.”

“Then the next time I see you will be at The Palazzo Roscarrick.”

“What?”

He stands, abruptly, and drops a generous offering of euro notes on the table. “The
bride and groom must not meet before the wedding; do they have that tradition in California?”

“I don’t understand—”

“Come to the palazzo at midnight tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow? But, Marc, what do I do? What do I wear?”

He stoops and takes my hand, kisses it. Then he steps away, gestures good-bye, and
says, “Come as you are. Take a taxi. I will pay. Midnight tomorrow.
E ciao
.”

M
Y TAXI STOPS
right outside the somber russet walls of The Palazzo Roscarrick. In the darkness,
the streets of the Chiaia are different, subdued, echoing, and somehow . . .
expectant
. They are also menacingly deserted. I’m glad that Marc offered to pay for a taxi;
I wouldn’t have wanted to walk even this short distance alone.

Getting out of the car, I look down at myself. Assessingly.

For the last three hours I have been bathing, dressing, and preparing: ruthlessly
plucking my eyebrows, glossing my lips just so, drying my hair with great care, and
shaving diligently
everywhere
. I am also wearing my best perfume, pretty much my only really good perfume. Marc
told me not to worry about my clothes, but I still felt a definite need to feel my
best underneath my jeans and top. These careful preparations were also, in part, a
way of calming myself before the initiation.

But the ruse hasn’t really worked. My mind is alive with anxiety. What’s going to
happen? Will it happen now? Is this the first of the Mysteries, tonight? Is that why
I was ordered here at midnight? But would the Mysteries really be enacted in Marc’s
very own home? He implied there were special venues, across Italy, Britain, France—that
certainly didn’t sound very domestic.

“
Grazie, grazie mille
.” Fumbling for the euros in my purse, I pay the cab driver, who glances first at
the money, then at me, and then at the great door of The Palazzo Roscarrick.

Is that a smile of pity or knowingness on his middle-aged face?

The taxi speeds away, scattering a few littered pizza boxes as it disappears around
the corner.

The door looms before me. Swallowing away my anxieties as best I can, I hoist and
drop the big iron door knocker. The noise clangs and echoes, perturbingly loud and
ancient. Everything, in this light, seems older. Antique and historic, and hostile
in its strangeness.

The door opens. A face peers out. It is one of Marc’s manservants: the same man who
opened the door to me the very first time I came here.

“Buona sera.”

The familiarity of the face is welcome, but the man barely acknowledges that he recognizes
me. Instead, he hands me a fifty-euro note for the cab—which is way too much. I protest,
but he will not take change. He is unsmiling, and backs away, inviting me in. His
demeanor is stiff and formal.

What is going on?

I step over the low wooden threshold into the hallway with its glinting suit of Oriental
armor—Samurai? Chinese? Ahead of me, the splashing fountain looks forlorn and silvery
in the moonlight. The whole house still smells, quite divinely, of lilies and roses
and southern, tropical blooms.

“This way,” says the manservant.

We begin another walk through the long, quiet hallways. Everything is so unerringly
hushed, and I am flooded with an almighty urge to flee. I hate this silence; it is
the silence of a forest where a predator lurks.

Stop it, X
.

“Where are we going?”

My question is pointless; I don’t really expect an answer. I’m asking just for the
sake of breaking the quietness. And indeed the servant does not reply. He walks on.

But then I am alerted by a different noise, and I pause, looking into the scented
gloom. Yes. I think I can hear giggles in the distance. Behind a few doors, there
are girlish giggles—then nothing.

Is someone watching me from above? The passages and corridors are so dim: lit elegantly
yet rather faintly by candles set in beautiful antique chandeliers of gilded wood
and crystal.

The historian in me is impressed: the lighting is entirely correct for the period
of the palazzo’s construction—seventeenth to eighteenth century. Someone with good
taste has therefore restored—or fabulously maintained—these light fittings, probably
at serious expense.

I have no doubt it is Marc. A man who wears suits that elegant would know how to fix
a house with equal flair.

But if the historian in me is approving of Marc’s taste, the lone woman is agitated.
To hell with the chandeliers; I want neon. I want blazing strip lighting dissolving
every shadow. Frightening away the darkness so no one can giggle, unnervingly, in
a black and blinded corner.

Finally, the monotone manservant speaks. “This is it.”

We’ve reached a fairly insignificant doorway, painted gray. The servant creaks the
ivory door handle and gestures me inside.

“Oh God,” I say, quite involuntarily.

The room within is as beautiful as its entrance is humdrum. Lit by soft candles in
cages of glass and cast-iron, its walls are decorated entirely in Pompeian style,
with frescoes of long-tailed birds and sweet prancing antelope surrounding the kohl-eyed
faces of young Roman women, nude or dancing, erotic and demure—with rich scarlet borders
of trellised vines and grapes.

“Take off your clothes and wear this,” the manservant says. He hands me a soft and
folded silk dress, so light in my hands it is barely there.

“But—”

“All your clothes. When you are ready, please exit through that door.”

He points to a second door, cut into the Pompeian red decor; it is cleverly made to
look like a Roman door, a fake door that is a real door—an elegant trompe l’oeil.

“And remember this,” the man adds, ponderously. “If ever you want anything to stop,
you must say
Morpheus
.”

“Sorry?”

“If ever you are . . . uncomfortable, you must say, out loud, the word
Morpheus
. If you cannot speak, then clap your hands three times.”

And that is it. The manservant closes the first door, leaving me quite alone. I can
hear the faint strains of music somewhere. And it is beautiful music: soothing choral
voices, centuries old, but vivid and tranquil and alive, some kind of Mass.

It is perfectly timed. How could anything bad happen in a world with music like this?

Just take off your clothes, X
. That’s all. I just have to
take off my clothes
.

In the flickering candlelight I remove my T-shirt, my Converse sneakers, my white
socks, and then I unbutton my jeans. I deliberately dressed down as instructed. My
only indulgence was underwear: I chose nice panties. Why? Maybe I just knew that most
of my clothes were going to be swiftly removed, so it didn’t matter.

But now I am naked.

The simple silk dress weighs, in my hands, maybe three ounces. Like something weighed
on the moon. I admire its exquisite stitching for a moment, then I slip it over me,
and it descends with an aristocratic sigh to my knees. It is sublimely silken, probably
the softest thing I have ever worn, and maybe the most expensive.

In the flickering and adoring light of the candles I can see that the dress is a flame-orange
hue, verging on red. But it is also see-through. The cleanly waxed delta of my pubic
hair is clearly visible.

I can’t do it. I just
can’t
. Giving in to my shyness, I slip my lacy black panties back on and then I close my
eyes and count to seven.

Be calm, X, be calm.

My mouth is dusty dry; my hands are damp with nerves. My white feet are bare on the
polished parquet floor. I open the second, “fake” door in the red-painted wall.

And step through.

Beyond, the light is so broken and scintillating, and glittering and strange, I do
not quite understand; it takes me several seconds. Then I realize:
the room is made of porcelain
.

During my research into Neapolitan history, I have read about rooms like this—porcelain
rooms—built by the richest of the nobility at the very height of the city’s power
and affluence. Deliriously impractical, almost impossible to keep clean, yet intoxicatingly
lovely. The white porcelain of the walls and ceiling is decorated with wild narcissi
and curveting blue sea serpents, all fashioned from more porcelain. And the chamber
is illuminated by silver and wooden candelabras, which are being held aloft by four
servants, who are very much alive.

I do a double take. In each of the four corners is a handsome young man, in uniform—presumably
the livery of the Roscarrick family. The servants are staring fixedly ahead, certainly
not at me, and they are holding candelabras, which afford the only light.

And in the center of the room is a large, simple wooden chair, with its back to me.
The chair looks medieval, like a throne for a Dark Age king. The choral music drifts
across the room from some unseen speaker: holy, spectral, sensuous.

“Come here, X.”

It is Marc’s voice. He is sitting in the chair.

I am glad I wore my panties. I am otherwise naked under this see-through dress: barefoot
and nude and bashful, like the women in the frescoes at the Villa of Mysteries. My
nipples are tingling in the fresh air of the porcelain room. I am aroused already.
I wish I wasn’t. But I am.

I step around the chair and look at Marc, who is deep in shadow. I can barely see
his face, only his noble profile.

“Don’t look at me.”

“But what do you want me to do?”

“Bend over, X.”

“What?”

“Bend over my knee. The first of the Mysteries is simple submission, in public. I
am going to spank you in front of my servants.”

I want to laugh; yet the ambience is entirely serious. And a little objectionable.
He’s going to
spank
me? In front of his servants?

No.

“You can leave. Or you can submit.”

“Marc—”

“And you must call me
Celenza
. During the Mysteries, you may only call me Celenza.”

“Marc—”

“It means
Excellency
. But in Italian the
c
is pronounced as in cello. So you call me Celenza, or sir—or you can leave. With
all that this entails.”

My entire upbringing is telling me to go. My feminist soul is instructing me to leave.
And yet—and yet—something in me wants him to spank me. Is this me? Is this the effect
of the music and the candlelight, and the fabulous room of porcelain? Or maybe I just
want
him,
so I will agree to anything?

My mind is swimming. I feel a need to let someone else decide. I feel a need to submit,
just to get it over with.

“Celenza,” I say, and I cannot believe I am saying it, “spank me.”

My whole body is tensed. I walk close, and lay myself over his lap, facedown. My bare
feet are in the air, I have one hand pressed to the floor to steady myself. I can
sense the servants looking. I don’t care so much. This is seriously arousing, and
simultaneously disturbing. I am outraged, and yet I am wet
between
.

He gently lifts up my new silk dress and says, “Tut tut, X.”

“Celenza?”

“Panties?”

“I just . . . I didn’t—”

He doesn’t wait for an explanation. He is starting to peel down my best Victoria’s
Secret panties. With the dark lacy frill. My hand reaches instinctively to stop him—these
men are looking at me; surely, they mustn’t see me—but then I feel Marc’s firm hand
on my wrist.

“You have to let me, X.”

I want him to stop. I want him to carry on. I want
him.

Closing my eyes in shame, yet tingling with arousal—why?—I drop my hand.

“Celenza.”

He has my permission. Slowly and carefully he pulls down the panties, peeling them
down my calves, over my bare ankles, then he drops them into some kind of basket—I
can’t quite see because I am sprawled. I can feel the cold air on my bottom. This
is it. He is going to spank me. In front of these men I have never met. His servants.
The intensity of my confusion is baroque. But inside me is desire. Go on and do it.
Do it.