Breakfast in Stilettos (15 page)

An icy wind blew up from the street, blasting me at the same time as the freeze ray from my friends and family hit me from behind. Held in near rigor mortis, I could nothing more than nod.

Frank smiled widely, leaned over and kissed my cheek. “Great. See you then.” And he turned, launching himself off the last two steps as he trotted to his car. From the corner of my eye, I saw Asshole Bob give me the thumbs up from his sentry post at the window where he kept guard over our parking spots.

This was one of those moments you have in dreams, where you are running but make no progress, or when the curtain is about to come up and you are supposed to sing, but you can’t remember the words, or you have been given the lead in a play, but never saw the script and it is opening night. I have these types of dreams from time to time and the theme is consistent. Something bad is about to happen and there is nothing, absolutely nothing, I can do to stop it.

Everyone watched Frank as he hopped into his Karmann Ghia and drove away. It was like a bank robber’s escape, only he had left his accomplice behind to face the bruised and beaten security cops. I finally had to turn around and face them.

Sal must have been feeling grateful for my having picked her up at the accident scene, because she was polite enough to walk inside without a word or look. Mom and Kenner weren’t going to let me off that easy.

Kenner started. “
O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain!
”

“
Hamlet
?”

He nodded.

I wanted to say something like, “Hey, I’m nearly thirty. I’m old enough to know what’s best for me.” Except that it wasn’t true. I could drag up all the problems Mom had with dating, but that would only throw fuel on the fire of her determination to keep me from repeating her mistakes. Nor could I say that Asshole Bob said I should go after what I wanted, no matter what others said. Not exactly
Obi-Wan Kenobi
. Nor could I honestly say, “It is only work,” since I was clearly entertaining the idea of at least kissing him again and we all knew where that would lead. So I did the only thing I could think of.

I shrugged.

In the world of self-defense, this is the “guilty as charged” gesture. Kenner shook his head. Mom mumbled a very audible “Not again.”

I wondered what Pixie would say, or Dr. Steiner. Chances are they would encourage me to follow my heart; then I wondered if I knew how to follow my heart. I’d always followed my head. What made sense. What was logical. Logic always overrode the passionate part of myself. What I wanted and what I
thought
I
should
want were very different things.

With that thought I stepped between Mom and Kenner and went back into the house. They started to follow me inside, but stopped. Perhaps they sensed that I wouldn’t be up for an intervention at the moment. Both, almost as a pair, said they’d see me later. Mom gave me the bishop’s hug. Kenner just gave me “the look,” which meant I would hear a bunch more about this when I was on company time.

I closed the door behind them. My trials were not yet over. Now I was alone with Sal.

I returned to the kitchen. When I saw Sal actually drying the dishes and putting them away, I knew I was in trouble.

She wiped the last bowl and put it on the shelf and then flung the dishtowel over her shoulder and turned to look at me. What I wanted to do was see what was in the envelope, but knew I should probably hear out my friend, even if I already had a pretty good idea of what she was going to say.

“You lied to me.” She didn’t look angry, but I could tell that I had been reduced in her mind to something small and microscopic.

I slumped into the nearest chair, “Yes. I did. I’m sorry.” And I was. I felt a bit insane, and my temporary insanity was affecting the people around me.

“And?” Apparently an apology wasn’t enough. I suppose “I’ll never do it again” was the expected response. But I couldn’t honestly say that.

“The truth is, my current Frankless state isn’t working. I’ve realized a couple of things over the last couple of days. ‘Couple’ being the operative word here. For some reason I can’t put Frank behind me. Something is still there and until I figure it out, I’m in this crazy space.”

Sal sat down across from me. “Do you love him?”

The question startled me. “Love? I don’t know. How can you be sure what that feels like?” Then I thought about it. “Maybe this
is
what love feels like.”

Sal laughed. “Repeatedly subjecting yourself to emotional pain could be some form of love. I don’t know. I’ve never felt the need to do that. But you wouldn’t be the first. So I suppose it could be love.”

“Asshole Bob says I need to stick up for what I want. Even if it makes everyone else unhappy.”

A look of consternation creased Sal’s brow. “You think we want you to do something that makes us happy? Regardless of how you feel? That’s stupid.” Sal went back to wiping the counter with angry strokes. “And, if I remember correctly, Frank has made you markedly unhappy. Over and over again. What makes you think that has changed?” She stopped and glared at me.

What had changed? It was a good question. The situation certainly hadn’t, but was I different? Or did I merely
want
to be different. “Maybe I want to change. Maybe I want to be the kind of person who can make a relationship with Frank work. Maybe I’m tired of the person who is unhappy with Frank.”

Sal looked a little less angry. She sat down at the table. “There were a whole lot of maybes in that little speech. Seems like a wishy-washy start to channeling Asshole Bob.”

“All I’m saying is that I’m trying to figure something out and I hope you can be patient with me, even if it looks like I’m paddling toward the deep end in a leaky boat. I just want to be sure. Sure that I’m making the right choice.”

Sal jerked her head in the direction of the roses. “I hope those aren’t doing all the talking.”

“Of course not.” Which was another lie, because roses always say something
.

Sal nodded slowly, as though finally coming to a difficult decision. “If you think Frank will make you happy, I’m there. Don’t expect me to add him to my speed dial or anything. I still loathe the guy, but I’ll give you and him whatever space you need to make sure.” She gave me a meaningful look and then looked at her watch. “Well, I should get ready for the meeting.”

“Oh, that’s right. You are speaking tonight.”

We spent a few minutes on her, how she thought the speech would go and how prepared she was. Even considering the accident, she was ready. I wished her luck and she left to shower and get dressed. That left the Bermuda Triangle—roses, envelope, and me—alone at last.

As soon as she had left the room, I grabbed the envelope, taking a closer look at the handwriting on the front. It was addressed to me with the subject on the bottom, all printed in an elegant cursive hand. The writing was so unlike my own, a haphazard combination of print and cursive that invariably inspired the question, “Are you a doctor?”

I flicked open the flap and pulled out the fold-over invitation. At first I thought it was a thank you note, but the front had small gold embossed letters that read, “You’re Invited.”

As a columnist, I received my share of invitations. Lots of people want press coverage and are more than willing to give you a free entree. I don’t have the opportunity to write about many—they just aren’t strange or unusual enough. However, it was a perk of the job that I usually had someplace interesting to go. And one of the great pleasures was opening the invitation itself, like inhaling the scent of freshly baked cookies. Enjoyable, even if you don’t take a bite.

I flicked open the invite. The inside was written in the same elegant cursive.

You are cordially invited to

The Salon
After-Party

Starting at Midnight

At the studio of Mistress Maven.

Bring a
favorite
bottle to share.

I flipped it over to see if there was anything else, but it listed no date, no names, no postscript. Only an address at the bottom. Not even a phone number if one got lost. I guess if you couldn’t find it, you didn’t deserve to come.

I refolded the invite and inserted it carefully back into the envelope, wondering if I had the courage to go, imagining myself standing in the studio of a Mistress. Now if
anything
deserve
d to be classified as S
trange and
U
nusual, this was it.

I took the envelope into my bedroom and slipped it into my purse. I suddenly felt a little queasy. In just a few hours I would be standing in line at
T
he Slutterati Salon
, waiting with the other slutterati to witness an evening of artistic erotica. And afterwards ….

I lay down on the bed, tossing the stilettos over to the side, feeling as though they were invading my space, infecting me with their raw scarletness. I tried to ignore them for a while, but they kept assaulting my consciousness
—
this type of shoe you couldn’t ignore. The wearer would obsess about them with every step, always conscious of the need to live up to the advertisement. The bystander would watch them, wondering the same thing. I kicked off my practical shoes and socks and slipped on the stilettos, waiting for the Cinderella magic to take effect.

A few minutes went by and nothing happened, just the periodic banging around of Sal getting ready in the next room. It was then I realized that this transformation might take a while. As long as it happened before nine and didn’t wear off at the stroke of midnight, I knew I’d be fine.

I looked at the nightstand. There sat the assertiveness book, and next to it, the other one I had grabbed on instinct—
Bottoming for Beginners
. I had a hard time sitting and reading a book cover to cover anymore. I was a skimmer. Partly because of my job. I was looking for things that stood out. Frank said I had the “Hey Martha” column. Anyone who read my column should immediately turn around and say, “Hey Martha, did you know ....” If that happened, I’d succeeded.

In this book, as I turned the pages, I saw the topics I expected—sections on bondage, submission, pain, pretending, humiliation and the like. But the
chapter on bottoming and spirituality caught my eye.

Americans didn’t typically connect spirituality with sex. In fact, typically the opposite. Good little church-going girls don’t have sex until married and even then, believe there are boundaries one shouldn’t cross. But here was an entire chapter outlining the history of rituals within various spiritual communities, eastern and western, and how sex was used to bring one closer to god in whatever way you might perceive him, her or it.

I thought about my own upbringing. My mom wasn’t religious, but I’d started going to church by myself when I was five. Mom supported me in whatever I wanted to explore. So she’d drop me off and pick me up. I’d sit in the back seat of the car when we were driving, see a sun break shining down through the clouds and think it was God. I had this overwhelming desire to
know
why we were here and what we were supposed to do. I thought I’d learn that in church.

Maybe the answers were there, but I just wasn’t asking the right questions. Or maybe I hadn’t explored a wide enough variety of religions
. Granted
,
I’d been baptized into so many of them I figured my name would show up on the list of whatever pearly gate bouncer the good lord employed.

But here was a whole chapter on people who believed that sex was the way to god. Not just sex but BDSM sex.

Wouldn’t it be funny if
the
religious experience I’d been searching for all my life included a delicious series of heavenly orgasms set to a rousing “Hallelujah Chorus” and ending in a benedictory “Ah Men!”