Trust Me (Rough Love #3) (10 page)

I took her
from the stark stillness of my parents’
pied-a-terre
to the touristy squalor of the 18th Arrondissement. We skirted around the Moulin Rouge even though I thought Chere might enjoy it. Too many people, too campy, and honestly, Chere was a hundred times sexier than the topless burlesque dancers inside.

Instead we walked the gritty streets and browsed the North African marketplace. I was blond and white enough to raise some eyebrows, but Chere fit in with her bronze skin and old New Orleans features. When I was a teenager, I came here to get away from my parents’ glittering world. I learned to scowl and be tough, and posture, and throw attitude. I wanted so badly to belong here, where life seemed real, where money changed hands in small, sweaty, wrinkled bills, where my parents would never dare go.
Stay out of the Goutte d’Or
, my mother would scold, but I knew
Goutte d’Or
meant
Drop of Gold
, and even before I used the name for my first bridge, I thought that was the most beautiful name for anything ever. I felt like a man in the Goutte d’Or, even if the ageless women behind the stalls would smile at me like I was a boy.

They smiled at me now just as they had then, with curiosity and a quiet patience. We walked from the Maghreb areas into the Chinese district and then to a row of Indian shops with windows full of gold and silk.

“There’s so much to see,” said Chere, gripping my hand as we moved through the crowds. “My eyes…”

She wasn’t complaining. She was delighted. People crowded around us, working class men and women ready to celebrate the weekend. We ducked into a small, pungent cafe with a view of the Sacré Coeur, and shared a table with an elderly Indian couple who spoke over us in rat-a-tat Tamil. I looked around in sudden realization, watching time turn in on itself. I used to come to this cafe. I was sure of it. It was a different place then, with different decor and different food on the menu, but the view was the same.

Chere caught my gaze and put a hand over mine. “Don’t you like the food?”

“I like the food. I’m not that hungry.” I fed her banana and rice from my plate, and thought that I probably shouldn’t have fucked her on my parents’ living room floor. I suffered this sociopathic desire to possess her, to use her, to mark her as mine. The Indian woman at our table looked between us with a knowing smile.

“You’re not from here,” she said in French. “You and your lady.” She gestured toward Chere.

People were so bold in the 18th Arrondissement. “We’re not from here,” I admitted. “I’m showing her around. I used to stay nearby when I was young.”

Chere didn’t understand a word of our conversation, for all her French name and her Creole heritage. She gave the woman a crooked smile and the woman gazed back with a curve to her thin lips. She had dozens of rings on her fingers, stacked all the way to her knuckles in a jumble of silver and gold. Chere stared at them, entranced.

“She’d love to see your rings,” I told the woman, and she offered her hands for Chere’s perusal. While Chere bent over the bands and gemstones, I studied the woman’s bindi, the bright third eye within the wrinkles of her brow.

“You seek clarity,” she murmured under the raucous noise of the cafe.

“What?”

“
Clarté
,” she repeated in French. “You’re drawn to my bindi because you have many questions. You seek a balance of your higher and lower selves.”

“I’m perfectly in balance,” I lied. “I’m drawn to your bindi because I’ve visited India and Asia many times.”

“You travel so much?” She nodded. “Of course. You seek. You search. But all answers come here.”

She reached out, but she didn’t touch me. Instead she touched Chere’s brow, letting her fingertip linger atop some invisible bindi.
Higher and lower selves.
My low self was all over Chere all the time. We had no balance, as this complete stranger had so bluntly pointed out.

“Tell her that her rings are beautiful,” said Chere.

“Tell her I said
merci
,” the Indian woman replied with a smile. “You both have questions,
non
? Many questions. But at least you are together.”

I didn’t know whether to take that as a compliment or an insult. Her companion demanded her attention and they left soon after, allowing a group of teenagers to crowd closer to our table. Chere asked about my conversation with the woman. Instead, I told her about bindis and my travels to New Delhi and Mumbai.

We left the cafe shortly afterward and walked aimlessly toward the red light district, taking in life in all its raw and ugly glory. We slipped into a half-empty club and drank licorice-tasting cocktails as a pair of dark eyed women belly danced onstage. Their fingers jangled noisy hand cymbals, and golden tassels flew as they tossed their hips.

Chere watched like she was drinking it in and didn’t want to miss a drop. I did nothing to distract her, only held her hand as the alcohol seeped into my veins and the flashing clang of the cymbals resonated through my brain.
I love you
, I thought.
I love being here with you. I love watching you take it all in.

I’ve been here before, but it feels less wistful when you’re with me.

“Gold is beautiful. I should use more gold,” she said. “It’s so vital. Silver is cool and elegant, but gold is…”

She lost words and started gesturing to the gold painted walls and ceilings, and the gold-edged veils swishing from the dancers’ hips. I could see the lights from the stage reflected in her eyes like miniature stars.

“What do you like better?” she asked me. “Gold or silver?”

I shrugged. “I like them both. I like them in combination. They change one another when they’re together.”

I understood about gold. Some of my buildings had gold trim or burnished bronze fittings, but all my bridges were silver or light metal. Silver was for streamlined strength. Gold was for crazy, gaudy shit.

“I wonder if I could do that,” she said, turning back to the stage. “Belly dance like those women?”

“I’m sure you could. Maybe I’ll order you to do it for my pleasure,” I said, sliding a hand up her thigh. “I’ve seen your hips move like that when I fuck you. I’ve seen them jerk like that when you’re under duress.”

I gave her a look, and she shivered and pressed closer to me. I took her chin hard and kissed her, tasting licorice and sweetness. I wanted to make her hips move. I wanted to make her gasp and struggle for air. I wanted to give her something to remember this by.

When the belly dancers finished their set of frenetic shimmying, and our small cordial glasses were drained, I pulled her up and out into the street. It was getting late now, and I hurried, making pathways for her amidst the burgeoning tourist crowds. I found a shop we’d passed earlier, its windows full of gold necklaces and chain link chokers, earrings and baubles. It was cheap stuff, metal shit. While she tried on some bracelets, I spoke in French to the man behind the counter.

“Do you have gold?” I asked. This was the Goutte d’Or, after all. “I need a gold and crimson ring.”

He studied me and gave a nod. All these vendors had merchandise they didn’t put out where anyone could see it. He produced a gaudy, ruby-encrusted ring from behind the counter, but I shook my head.

“No. Delicate. For her.”

I nodded over my shoulder to Chere, who was trying on beaded chokers and peering at herself in a mirror.

“Ah,” he said. “
Attendez.
Wait, if you please.” He spoke to his partner and disappeared behind a beaded curtain into the back.

“Look,” said Chere, returning to my side. She wore a sleek, ebony bead choker that came closer to her aesthetic than anything else in the shop. “It’s like a collar,” she whispered. “Isn’t it?”

I shook my head. “It’s not strong enough. It’d break into pieces the first time I squeezed your neck.”

I thought of the summer we’d met, of our date at the Empire Hotel. I’d basically raped her that evening, and snapped a pearl necklace off her neck. Broke it, destroyed it. Pearls had flown everywhere. I wondered if she was thinking about that too.

She left me to try on a few more chokers, but none of them was half as lovely as her solid, honest, plain, brown collar. They were jewelry. Her collar was the real deal, a symbol of submission that bound her to me.
You’re mine. I own you.

“
Monsieur?
” The man returned from the back, holding a small gold circle pinched between his fingers. “How about this? Delicate. Crimson and gold.”

He put it in my palm, and I felt lingering warmth, like he’d just taken it off a mandrel. It wasn’t what I’d imagined in my mind’s eye—it was better, more
vital
, as Chere had said. I’d pictured a small red ruby in a gold band. This ring had striated garnets, two of them in a line that was both jagged and pleasing to the eye. The band was thin and lightly hammered. Delicate, but vital. We haggled briefly over price, and then Chere drifted back to me.

“Give me your hand,” I said.

She blinked and let me slide the gold and garnet ring onto her finger. I realized too late that it was her left hand, the hand for engagement rings and wedding rings. It was merely the hand closest to me. “It’s a collar for your finger,” I said, so she wouldn’t misunderstand. “And a memory of tonight.”

I watched her study the ring. I felt self-conscious because I wanted her to like it. I loved it. It seemed perfect to me, but she was a jewelry designer and maybe she wouldn’t feel the same. Maybe I should have just written her another poem. Words were ephemeral, mere air. Rings were…

Fuck. Did she like it?

“It’s too loose,” she said, looking up at last. Her eyes were shining. “If it’s a collar, it needs to be snug.”

And I realized her eyes were shining because she was about to cry, and it suddenly seemed like this ring was my heart laid bare in front of her, and
did she like it?

She smiled at me through those gathering tears, and then I knew she loved it as much as I did. The jeweler looked at the ring on her hand, gauged the diameter with a practiced eye, then took it in the back and returned with a perfectly sized band, as if he’d measured her finger. Nice and snug.

“It’s so beautiful,” she said, staring down at it.

“You can wear it on either hand. Whatever you like. But I want you to wear it all the time, even when you can’t wear…”

The shopkeeper was standing there, and very likely understood English. I touched her neck and she knew what I meant. I paid for the ring, and the restless angst that had risen in me at my parents’ house was calmed again. She was mine, all the time. Her collar was back at the hotel, and now she had this ring she wouldn’t be allowed to take off.

It was clarity. The ring was gold and bindis, and my high self and my low self, and all the deep, emotional things in between.

Commitment

A
s soon as
we returned from Paris, Price got busy. I tried not to take it personally. He’d missed a lot during his week away, so if he had to work late, and was gruff and distracted when he returned home, I had to accept it like I accepted all the other bad things he did to me.

But I also thought,
you gave me a ring.

What does this ring mean?

I chose to believe it meant some kind of commitment, even if our relationship was an infuriating dance of advance and retreat. I hadn’t imagined the look in his eyes when he slid it on my finger. I hadn’t imagined the new closeness that developed in Paris, even if he was in full retreat by the time we returned. He could insist on rules. He could hide behind protocols and training, but I knew that the other man was there, the Price who was full of love and tenderness and poetry. Those thoughts sustained me through every stringent session in the dungeon that week.

Outside the dungeon, away from my Master’s unforgiving bondage and forms of torture, life went on. Vinod emailed that he would be visiting New York, and invited me to design some pieces for upcoming fashion lines. He sent me megabytes of photographs and sketches, and his excitement was contagious. I began to work exclusively on men’s accessories, solid, classic tie bars, rings, cuff links, and I found it a welcome change from the whimsy of women’s pieces. Men’s fashion was so much more straightforward, and I spent as much time in my studio as Price would allow.

As for my dear friend Andrew, it was nearly two weeks before I could make plans to see him. He wasn’t amused. He glared at me as I walked across the Big Apple Diner, making sure I comprehended his displeasure before he swept me into a hug.

“It’s been too long, girl,” he said, pressing his blond curls to my cheek.

“I know.”

He drew back and looked at me hard. “No, I mean, it’s really been too long. I know I come after your work now, and your fucked-up life with that sociopath you call Master—”

“Shut up, please. I have a million things to tell you.” I shoved him down into the booth and sat across from him, picking up my menu. As I scanned the familiar offerings, I wiggled my ring finger at him. “Notice anything new?”

He grabbed my hand and yanked it toward him, gazing down at the strikingly delicate, gold and garnet ring. “Wow, babes. It’s pretty. He gave it to you?”

“In Paris,” I said, nodding. “After a crazy day. He took me to his parents’ house—”

“You met his parents?” Andrew’s eyes went wide. “Are they sociopaths too?”

“They weren’t there, and he’s not a sociopath. He took me all over Paris, to all these out of the way streets and shops and this little cafe overlooking the Sacré Coeur. You would have loved it. There was so much to see, so much to paint. So much inspiration.”

The waitress came and took our order, and then I gave Andrew a quick and dirty recap of the trip, from my ill-advised viewing of
Heart-Lust
, to my meeting with Vinod Sushil, to our trip to the Goutte d’Or.

“So…but…” Andrew looked flustered and grabbed my hand again. “What does this
signify
?”

“It’s a collar for my finger. I’m supposed to wear it all the time.”

“Or you get punished?” He rolled his eyes.