Nine & a Half Weeks (4 page)

WHAT HE DID

*He fed me. He bought all food, cooked all meals, washed all dishes.

*He dressed me in the morning, undressed me at night, and took my laundry to the cleaner’s along with his. One evening, while taking off my shoes, he decided they needed resoling and took them to the shoemaker the next day.

*He read to me endlessly: newspapers, magazines, murder mysteries, Katherine Mansfield short stories, and my own files when I brought them home to catch up on work.

*Every three days he washed my hair. He dried it with my hand dryer and was clumsy at it only the first two times. One day he bought an outrageously expensive Kent of London hairbrush and beat me with it that evening. Its bruises persisted beyond all others. But every night he used it to brush my hair. Neither before nor since has my hair been brushed so thoroughly, for such long periods at a time, so lovingly. It shone.

*He bought tampons for me and inserted and extricated them. When I was dumbfounded the first time he said, “I eat you while you’re menstruating and we both like that. There’s no difference.”

*He ran my bath every night, experimenting with different gels, crystals, and oils, taking an adolescent girl’s delight in buying great varieties of bath products for me, while sticking steadfastly to a routine of showers, Ivory soap, and Prell Concentrate for himself. I never stopped to contemplate what his cleaning woman thought of the whip lying on the kitchen counter, of the handcuffs dangling from the dining room doorknob, of the snakes’ heap of narrow, silvery chains coiled in the corner of the bedroom. I did idly wonder what she thought of this sudden proliferation of jars and bottles, nine barely used shampoos crowding the medicine chest, eleven different bath salts lined up on the edge of the tub.

* Every night he took my makeup off. If I live to be a hundred, I won’t forget how it felt to sit in an armchair, my eyes closed, my head thrown back, while the gentle pressure of a cotton ball soaked in lotion moved across my forehead, over my cheeks, lingered at length on my eyelids….

WHAT I DID

*Nothing.

HE COMES HOME ANNOYED. One of his tennis partners has told him that Tender Vittles is junk, rotting cats as eating nothing but Rice Crispies and marshmallows would rot a human. “‘Glossy coats,’ he says to me, Andy the expert, not a cat to his name, all he knows comes from the woman he’s been breaking up with for five years now, and she once owned a Burmese. I can see how you’d tell if a black cat suddenly starts running around without a shine, but these? They get bigger, they get fatter, they’re less of a wreck, but their coats, for Christ’s sake, they just look like what they’ve always looked like. ‘Do your cats have glossy coats?’ he says to me. How the hell should I know?”

That night he empties three cans of Chicken of the Sea tuna into the cats’ bowls. Next morning, dressed for work, he prepares and sets out three combinations made of five beaten eggs: one third poured over a fresh heap of tuna, one by itself in a bowl, a third part stirred into milk in yet another bowl. At 6:30 P.M., walking straight into the kitchen, he unwraps a pound of chopped beef and crumbles it onto a dinner plate. He owns few dishes and has run out of bowls.

The cats have gone on a fast. Not one of them has so much as tried a mouthful of the new fare. None has deigned to sniff at the various dishes obstructing the kitchen floor, or not, at any rate, beyond the cursory attention even an empty cigarette pack commands from them. At 9 P.M. he goes back to the kitchen. I follow him. He points at the arrangement of three cat bowls, three salad bowls, and one white china plate with a worn gold rim around a border of pink and mauve sprigs of flowers— a castoff formerly belonging to the aunt who has given him the heavy damask tablecloth he keeps forever on his dining room table, the cloth that reminds me of some Salvation Army special. “You see?” he asks. “By now they’d have eaten this stuff if it were good for them. If only they can lay their hands on it, animals eat what their bodies need, they’re not like people, that’s what the fat guy at the market told me.” And tearing open one Liver-, one Seafood-, and one Chicken-flavored envelope of Tender Vittles—three cats purring in unison at the sound—he says under his breath, “That’s right, gang, the health food fad’s over.”

I AM STANDING, nearly on tiptoes, across the room from him, my arms raised above my head. My hands are tied to the hook on the wall on which his one large painting hangs during the day. My end of the room is dark, only the reading lamp over his shoulder is lit. He has told me to be quiet. The TV is on, but he is making notes on a legal pad, absorbed in his work, and doesn’t look up for what seem to me long periods of time. My arms begin to ache and then my entire body and finally I say, “Listen, I can’t stand it, really….”

He gives me a quizzical look and goes into the bedroom, comes back with two handkerchiefs, and says in a polite, conversational tone of voice, “I want you to shut the fuck up.” He stuffs most of one handkerchief into my mouth and ties the second one tightly across it. I taste the bland flavor of sizing.

Sixty Minutes begins. I try to listen, stare at the back of the set, attempting to visualize each commercial in order to distract myself from the waves of pain rolling over me. I tell myself that surely my body must soon go numb but my body does nothing of the sort, it just hurts. Then it hurts even more and, by the time Sixty Minutes is over, muffled sounds come through the handkerchief, which is lodged way back in my throat and holds my tongue down flat. He gets up and walks over toward me and turns on the floor lamp next to his desk, adjusting the shade so the light shines into my eyes. For the first time since I’ve known him I begin to cry. He looks at me inquisitively, leaves the room, and comes back holding the bottle of bath oil he has bought me on the way home from work. He begins to rub oil into my neck and armpits. Everything in my brain is blocked out by the convulsive spasms in my muscles. He massages my breasts and I’m fighting for air through my nose, which is flooded with tears. Now there is oil on my stomach, a slow, insistent, rhythmic, circular motion. I’m suddenly in terror, convinced I’m choking, I am really going to choke, in another minute I’ll be dead, when he spreads my legs, which stretches me even more. 1 scream. It is a muted sound, like a child’s pretend foghorn, totally ineffectual from behind all that cloth. For the first time tonight he looks interested, fascinated even. His eyes are three inches from mine and something is moving very lightly up and down alongside my clitoris. His fingers are slippery with oil, drenched in oil, and in mid-scream my body shifts gear to the sounds—not so dissimilar— that it makes when I’m about to come and then I come.

He unties me, fucks me standing up, puts me to bed, bathes my face with a washcloth dipped in cold water from a white Tupperware bowl. He rubs my wrists for a long time. Just before I fall asleep he says, “You’ll have to wear long sleeves tomorrow, sweetheart, what a nuisance, it’s going to be a hot day.”

OUR EVENINGS RARELY VARIED. He ran my bath, undressed me, handcuffed my wrists. I soaked in the tub while he changed his clothes and started dinner. When I was ready to get out I called him. He pulled me up, slowly soaped my body, rinsed and dried me off. Unclasped the handcuffs, put one of his shirts on me—white or pink or pale blue broadcloth, shirts made to be worn with a suit, the sleeves covering my fingertips, a fresh shirt every night, crisp from the Chinese laundry—put the handcuffs back on. I watched him prepare dinner. He was an excellent though limited cook, going through the four or five dishes he did well, then fixing omelettes or a steak for a couple of nights, then starting all over again. He always drank wine while washing the salad greens and would give me a sip from his glass whenever he took one himself. He talked about what had happened at his office, I told him about what had happened at mine. The cats took turns rubbing against my bare legs.

When dinner was ready he put one very large serving on one plate. We went to the dining room—barely enough space to walk comfortably around the table and three chairs on a worn, deep red oriental carpet—by far the most colorful of his three rooms; where the rug left off, the bright and intricately patterned fabric made up of backs of books took over, flowing from floor to ceiling on two walls, leaving space only for a window and door on the other two. He kept the table covered with that treasured damask tablecloth. I sat at his feet, tied to the table leg. He took a mouthful of fettucine, then fed one to me; stabbed at a forkful of Boston lettuce, guided the next one to my mouth, wiped the salad oil off my lips and his in turn. A sip of wine, then the lowered glass for me to drink from. Sometimes he tilted it too sharply so that the wine spilled over my lips and slid down the sides of my face onto my neck and chest. He would kneel before me and suck the wine off my nipples.

Often, during dinner, he pushed my head between his thighs. We developed a game: he tried to see how long he could continue to eat calmly; I, how soon 1 could make him drop his fork and moan. When I once told him that 1 was becoming particularly fond of the taste of him followed by vegetable curry, he laughed and laughed and said, “Jesus, I’m going to make enough tomorrow to last us all week.”

When we were finished he would go to the kitchen to wash the dishes and make coffee— abominable coffee, it never varied—which he carried into the living room on a tray: one pot of coffee, one cup, one saucer, one brandy glass. (After we’d known each other for a month, confirmed coffee addict though I am, I finally switched to tea.) Then he read to me, or we both read our separate books. My looking up was the signal for him to turn my page. Or we watched TV, or we worked. Above all we talked, literally for hours. I had never talked this much with anyone. He learned my life history, in minute detail; I became equally familiar with his. I would have recognized his college friends on sight, known from his boss’s position in his chair what mood he was in. I adored his jokes and his very manner of telling them, in a slow, bored voice, a fiercely deadpan expression. His favorites were stories about my grandfather, my favorites were his tales about his three years in India….

We never went out, saw friends only at noon. A few times he begged off invitations by phone, rolling his eyes at me while gravely explaining how swamped he was with work, while I giggled. Throughout most evenings I was tied to the couch or the coffee table, within touching distance of him.

IT’S WEDNESDAY, we’ve known each other three weeks, and we’re meeting for lunch. It is the one lunch we’ll eat together on a working day, though our offices are only a $ 1.05 cab ride apart. It is a midtown restaurant: as noisy as the streets outside, fluorescent lights, a scowling crowd waiting at the door to be seated. We sit across from each other in the glare, he orders roast beef sandwiches and wine.

I’ve had a minor triumph in the morning, a project I’ve been pushing for months has come through. I go on about it happily: “It’s not such a big deal in itself but it’s exciting to me because all along it looked as if…” He puts his thumb diagonally across my lips. His fingers cup my left cheek. “I want to hear all about it. There’ll be lots of time tonight. Leave your mouth open.”

He takes his hand from my face and dips his thumb into my glass of wine; the liquid, a deep red in the glass, turns pink and transparent on his skin. He wets my lips with it. His thumb moves slowly, my mouth is slack under his touch. Then across my upper teeth, from left to right, back along the lower teeth from right to left. Finally his thumb comes to rest on my tongue. I think, without alarm, idly: we’re in broad daylight….

A slight pressure on my tongue prompts me to begin to suck his thumb. It tastes salty under the wine. When I stop he pushes gently and I resume and only when my stomach melts do I close my eyes.

He is smiling when he retrieves his thumb. He holds his palm above my plate and says, “Dry me off.” I wrap his hand in my napkin as if stilling blood. Instead of the untouched sandwich before me I see myself, tied to the bed, tied to the dining room table, tied to the legs of the bathroom sink, flushed amid the steam while he takes a shower; I listen to the water roar, sweat beads itching on my upper lip, my eyes closed, my mouth open; tied and stripped, tied and reduced to a single frenzy: craving more.

“Don’t forget,” he says. “Sometimes during the day I want you to remember how it is with you…” and then, “Drink your coffee.” I sip the lukewarm fluid decorously, as if by permission. He stirs me out of the restaurant. Two hours later I give up and call him. The spell has remained unbroken. I have stared at my calendar, I have stared out of my window at the grid of windows across the street. I have not taken my calls. His secretary warns me crisply that he has an appointment in five minutes, then there’s his voice. “You can’t do this to me,” 1 whisper into the phone. There is a short silence. “I’m cooking shrimp tonight,” he says slowly, “think about that.”

THE LUNCH WAS a turning point. It made clear—to both of us—that my life was split, neatly, in two: day and night; with him/without him. And that it was a mistake and possibly dangerous to mix the two. Day by day, week by week, the two segments of my life edged into an increasingly complete balance. The clearer, the more focused, the more “fantastic” our evenings became, the more did my working life slip into fantasy.

It was a pleasant enough fantasy. I did well within it, better, in fact, than I had while my office, my clients, my work, had been serious matter, hard-core reality. As is only right in one’s fantasy, I was at ease, relaxed, calm. I won a new account one day, charmed a colleague into peace after months of altercations the next. I worked tirelessly, suspended. Minor annoyances over which I would have fretted in the past—a phone call not returned, a longer than reasonable wait for a client’s decision, a coffee stain on my sleeve half an hour into my day—no longer mattered.

The reality of my days was replaced by surface equanimity and a blandness to the core. My lunches bland, going past me unnoticed, mingling bland and friendly talk with bland and friendly people—friends, clients, colleagues, all the same. I moved through the subways, noting the fortuitous combination of light and dark blues on the ceiling posts. Above ground, cabs a pleasant yellow, once I counted nine taxis in a row down Park Avenue. A dream city without debris seen by someone drugged, or by a severely nearsighted woman bravely and foolishly at large without glasses. Crowds that automatically and amiably part to let me through. Every day a different movie, none burdened by a plot, or only toying with a plot so languid as to reveal no connections, no power to engage me beyond its agreeable surface; always only hours away from reality, taking time-out from what counted, what really went on in my life; a breathing spell from the exhilarating and inexorable plot unfolding at night.