and himself. He threw the bloody money on the floor with the dog and lit a joint.
Heading north on Highway 1, we picked up a suntanned girl hitchhiker with tangled blonde hair like the morning after. She was happy to be picked up by a limousine but after we’d started up again she saw the puppy and the blood money and got nervous. He teased her for being squeamish, and asked me to recite some poems. After she heard them, she asked to get out. We pulled over and left her by the roadside. We accelerated our intake of drugs.
We drove another hour up the perfect California coastline, then turned off on a dirt road that led to a little trailer with a small group of people standing around and sitting in lawn chairs drinking beer. We got out of the car and he told me they were his relatives. There was a sweet comfortable woman in her fifties who he said was his aunt. I was in my bathrobe with no shoes on. She was nice to me anyway.
The men had just been abalone diving. They were telling extravagant stories with their hands. I was astounded that my friend would ask anyone to meet relatives in my condition, but they took it well. They joked that they thought someone had died when they saw the limo in the driveway.
We stayed too long and he renewed his drunkenness with beer and hot sun well into the afternoon. When we finally left, we stood up in the open sunroof and made bird noises, calling to the crows.
We resumed our passionate fucking as we returned to the city. The tinted windows amplified the darkness, smudging the edges of things. It was late when we arrived and he wanted to eat, so we went to Japantown where they didn’t care that I had no shoes. I ate sushi for the first time, and being so high it seemed to slither down my throat.
A week later I got a card from him: the ace of spades folded in a dollar bill covered with dried blood. I framed it and hung it on the wall.
A CASTLE IN MILTON KEYNES by Sonia Florens
HE HAD PURSUED me relentlessly. I gave up and surrendered. Out of guilt, out of lust, and sheer lassitude.
I had betrayed him a few years before and I felt I had no other choice now but to insist he punish me as he saw fit. Repentance must come, I reckoned. To purge the evil of my cold heart. To wash the past away in one quick swoop.
“The first hint of your infidelity,” he had explained to me, “was when you came to me smelling of cigarette smoke, of dead ash. You put your lips against mine and the damn tobacco was all over your breath. I was breathing in another man as I kissed you.”
I lowered my eyes, fluttered my lashes.
He knew.
We parted ways.
There were other men. Minor, unfulfilling adventures. But none could erase his spell over me, the look of sheer danger in his eyes that kept me feeling ever wet on the inside.
I suppose that in the time we spent apart, he also came to know other women. The female form is his major weakness. But I can forgive that. Because all the while he kept shadowing me, writing, threatening, phoning. Loving me in that crazy way of his.
So, one morning in March, a few days before that damn Trade Fair I just couldn’t face attending once again – year after year of pointless negotiations with Eastern European entrepreneurs who just had no clue and had no subtlety whatsoever trying to get their paws into my underwear and thought taking meaningless options and inviting me for drinks at their hotel bar was the epitome of sophistication and seduction – I walked over to his building early. Half an hour or so before I knew he usually arrived. Stood by the door and waited. Wondering all the time whether I was doing the right thing.
He arrived. Didn’t even blink when he saw me there (later, though, he confessed that his heart just dropped twenty fathoms when he realized it actually was me).
“I’m back,” I said.
“You haven’t changed,” he said quietly.
“Yes, I’m the same,” I answered.
His hand stayed in his coat pocket, fingering his keys.
“Back for good?” he asked.
“Forever and again,” I promised.
“Good.”
We went inside and he fucked me unceremoniously on his office floor. We didn’t talk. Just did it. It was good. As it always had been. Time and time again, he got hard. And harder. Ploughed me. The phone rang on and off throughout and we blissfully ignored it. Every time, he plunged deeper into me, extending my legs over his shoulders to ensure further penetration and I knew only too well that with each successive thrust he was trying to hurt me, but I bit my tongue and let him take his revenge. I was the guilty party. The betrayer. His fingers in my rear stretched me, tore me, impaled me, but it was all right. It was fine. He had to get over his anger. And the pain he was causing also excited me like I never thought it could.
Later, I told him:
“I have done you wrong, I know.”
“Yes, oh yes, you have, my love,” he said, pensively. “Two bloody years of longing, of constant ache inside, of sleepless nights that went on and on with no end in sight. Christ, you did make me suffer. But, you see, there was also hope against hope. That one day I would get you back… That somehow the impossible would happen. I never really gave up totally, even when things were at their darkest.”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Truly, I am,” I babbled.
“You hurt me so,” he said, now with tears in his eyes.
“So punish me,” I told him.
“No. Now is surely the time to bury the past, forget the whole damn mess, start things anew.”
“I insist, you must punish me,” I heard myself saying. “I deserve it all. Do to me what you will, my dark-haired lover. Anything.”
He looked at me strangely. Smiled gently.
“Are you sure?” he questioned me.
“Absolutely,” I answered.
“Fine,” he said.
So my lover took me to the castle in Milton Keynes. One hour or so up the M1, travelling with no rush in the middle lane. I couldn’t see anything. He had carefully placed a black silk scarf around my head, fastened it tight, covering my eyes. He said it was Milton Keynes. I believed him. We’d spent the right amount of time driving up the motorway. But I suppose it could as well have been Blackheath, Finchley, Hendon or even Scarborough for all I knew or cared. It didn’t matter. Castles all smell the same, I reckon.
As I stepped out of the car, I sort of thought this was all very silly, was I really ready to star in the Milton Keynes version of “The Story of O”? Why had he allowed me to retain my underwear? In the book, that hadn’t been the case. Was the feel of the leather car seat caressing my bare buttocks an experience I had ever fantasized about? Would it initially have been cold against my flesh, then gradually warmer; would the fabric stick to my skin, would I sweat, squirm? And now I wouldn’t even experience that.
I wore my grey tailored power suit, the one with the stripes, made of quality wool. A white opaque cotton blouse completed the demure display, black sheer nylon stockings, my best, and matching bra, knickers and suspender belt set, black also. But right then those particular details were my secret. My lover didn’t know; he hadn’t watched me dress. I knew how he loved it when I wore stockings the old-fashioned way. Made my long legs look even longer, he would always say.
So the castle door opened. Well-oiled, it didn’t even creak in the slightest. Just a normal English spring day, a light breeze fluttering around my ankles and neck, not even a gothic day.
He guided me in, one hand on my waist, our steps echoing around the hall.
