Dangerous (9 page)

Jennifer helped me to a sitting position at the edge of the bed, and I learned just how helpless I was with my legs bound thus. She left, and returned a moment later with a wheelchair.

Val came with her, and stood a few paces off to appraise Jennifer’s handiwork. “She’s lovely, Jen, thank you.”

Jennifer beamed.

They lifted me into the wheelchair, and rolled me out to a long deck overlooking the glittering, wind-tossed waves behind the house. I saw homes on either side, but they were quite a distance away, and no one was gawking.

Val called to Stephan, who came up the stairs, two at a time, from the short beach below the deck. He was barefoot, with his pants rolled up to his calves. The two of them gently carried me down the stairs to the short, sloped beach between two large stands of weathered rocks. There we met a pair of men dressed as fishermen, and another male assistant; their attempt to not stare was largely unsuccessful. I was lowered gently to the dry sand, after which Val and Jennifer removed their shoes.

That done, they picked me up and carried me to the water’s edge, where the sand was smooth and wet. Stephen and Jennifer carefully placed me on a net they’d spread out and arranged with damp seaweed and a couple of lifeless fish. They placed me on my side, artfully positioned a few strands of seaweed, and pulled the net over me. I hated to get that beautiful costume sandy and wet, but apparently it was part of the plan.

Freezing waves washed around me and I squealed, to Val’s delight.

Stephan squatted beside me to give his direction. “Now, dear, you’ve just been snatched out of the sea. You’ll never see home again. These two men look hungry. Or worse! Maybe they want a bit of fun before they eat you,” he said dramatically, for Val’s amusement.

At his direction, the fishermen gripped the net and dragged me up the beach while I struggled vainly. Stephen danced around us with his camera, clicking furiously. Jennifer and the other assistant used reflectors to help light the shots as needed.

When the fishermen were told to open the net, I’m sure I looked helpless and humiliated, because that’s exactly how I felt.

The last shots were the hardest. Val tied my ankles with several turns of rope, and used a winch to suspend me from the deck’s overhang, high enough that my dangling hands could not touch the sand. As I slowly spun, Stephan directed the two men to fondle me. During the shoot my left pelvic fin had been slightly ripped and it was at a awkward angle, but Val didn’t let Jennifer fix it. I’m sure the added entropy heightened my aura of despair; it was the sort of detail Val loved. The tug of the rope also pulled the top of the tail free, exposing some of my unpainted waist, but Stephan assured Val he could fix the problem digitally, later.

I didn’t hang there long, perhaps five minutes. The final shots were of the two men giving the camera a thumb-up as they flanked my limp, suspended body.

By the time I was lowered and the costume removed I was shivering, from the wind on my wet body, and the fact of my being miles from anywhere, stark naked, surrounded by strangers.

Jennifer handed me a fluffy towel to huddle within. I smelled of decaying seaweed. There was sand in my hair. And it broke my heart to see that lovely tail lying on the sand, a ruin after such hard use. I wondered how much Val had paid for it, and how long it had taken to create. Could it be salvaged somehow, or would it simply end up in the trash? Such a waste.

Val paid the two actors and they left, after saying very nice goodbyes to me.

§

It was a bit past noon when Val brought me back to the house to clean up. She used a cream to remove the scales and makeup Jennifer had applied, then watched me shower the sand and seaweed smell from my body. I stood still as she toweled me dry. Passively receiving her brisk, maternal attentions was curiously affecting. The energy of that quiet moment thrust me into a truly new mental space, almost like being a child again.

Are we done?
I wondered. But then Jennifer came in and laid out another costume and I realized there was another set of photos ahead of us. I did some math in my head: another hour to shoot this second set, and it’d be close to two o’clock. And if there was another set beyond that….

I started to worry about the schedule.

“Ma’am,” I said meekly.

“Yes,” Val asked. “What is it?”

“Um, I’m supposed to pick up my friend Trish at the airport today. She’s flying in from Phoenix at five. Will we be done in time?”

Val gave no outward sign other than a slight pause before answering, but I knew this did not sit well with her. “Doll assured me she would free today.”

“I know, Ma’am, but it was a last minute thing, she just called last night.” I was still whispering. “I meant to tell you about it this morning but the time didn’t seem right.”

“The proper time to announce a change of plans was last night, when doll first learned of it. A good deal of money and effort has gone into this shoot. We’ll press on. You have only yourself to blame."

Jennifer sensed the tension, but kept working as Val seemed to put the matter from her mind, and I stewed with growing worry.

§

The second set of pictures involved my lying on the rocks at the north end of the property’s beach, wearing nothing but a pair of angel wings made with turkey feathers, according to Jennifer. They glowed magnificently in the sunlight, fully five feet from wingtip to wingtip. The wings were held in place by a plain-looking pair of backpack straps, but Stephan assured Val he’d paint them out digitally after the fact. (As well as the faint bruises that showed through the makeup, Stephen added.)

Before shooting began Val twisted the left wing into an obviously broken angle, and they applied bright red stage blood to the site of the damage. Her deliberate ruin of another beautiful costume, and my pressing time issues, put me in a growing funk. It was easy to give Stephan the anguished look of a downed angel. His assistants flooded me with extra sunlight from reflectors. By the end of that shoot my vision was dazzled, being filled with blobby purple afterimages.

We finished around a quarter-to-two, to break for a late lunch of gyros pitas and Greek salad. Stephan’s people ate on the deck. Val, however, brought me to the carpeted living room and made me kneel before her as she sat in a chair. I stayed very still, hands resting palms-down on my thighs, while she fed me as she would a pet. Each time a crumb or bit of yogurt sauce caught on my lip, she savored the image a moment before wiping my mouth with a napkin.

My constant exposure to the eyes of unfamiliar people, and her insistence upon utter passivity had left me profoundly disoriented. I was so far into her alternate world now that I gave up any notion of normality. It was a kind of brainwashing, but a velvet, seductive sort. And while I didn’t exactly like it, neither did I hate it.

But the thought of Trish being stranded at the airport burned like acid. With 2:20 showing on the wall clock, and more shooting yet ahead of us, I couldn’t bear it any longer.

“Ma’am, I can’t just leave Trish stranded at the airport.”

She pretended not to hear me, and offered a sip of ginger ale from a can. She knew I hated ginger ale.

Quietly, ever so meekly, I urged, “You can do anything you want to me, but this is different. I made a promise.”

She pushed her glasses up and focused on my eyes. After a moment she said, “What am I?”

“My Keeper, Ma’am.” My answer was automatic, and it sounded hollow.

“Then let’s have no more fussing.”

Of course this did nothing to placate me, and my face must have shown it.

“Is there a problem, doll?”

“No, Ma’am,” I moped.

By now the crew was done eating and I heard Stephan giving orders in another room as they prepared for the next shoot.

A new knot of worry twisted my gut and I bowed to her in desperation. “Please Ma’am, I’ll do anything. Just
please
take me home.” My vision blurred with sudden tears.

“A moment, doll,” she relented with a sigh. “Let me discuss our options with Stephan.” She rose and went into the other room. I heard their conversation faintly, but couldn’t make out the words. A few moments later she returned. I looked up and wiped my eyes.

But Val’s face was hard, and she grabbed my ear, twisting it savagely, forcing me to bend over. I cried out in surprise and pain. And then I saw she held a riding crop in her other hand, and it quickly painted lines of fire across my ass and the backs of my thighs. I screamed and tried to get away, but could only scramble in circles as I was still held tightly by the ear. After about twenty blows I sank to the ground, where she gave another four or five for good measure. Having lost all orientation, I simply tried to twist away from the crop.

She released my ear with a disgusted push. I sobbed, propped on my arms with legs folded beneath me, devastated. The house was stone-quiet after my outburst.

Val let me collect myself for a few moments. “What am I?”

“My Keeper,” I blubbered. This time I meant it.

She strode away and returned with a towel, then pulled me up and dried my eyes with sudden tenderness. “Now be a good doll.”

I nodded, beaten. I tried not to notice the many pairs of eyes watching from the doorway, transfixed by my complete submission to this pale, terrible woman.

§

From that moment on, time became a dreamlike, viscous fluid. I stopped watching the clock because the Trish situation was beyond repair. I simply did as I was told with mute passivity.

If the photographer’s crew had been respectful of my vulnerability before, they now treated me with outright reverence. Or perhaps it was simply pity. Whatever the motivation, the atmosphere of the shoot following my punishment was hushed, church-like. Val did not ask Jennifer to hide my new stripes with makeup.

The theme of the shoot, I learned, was the four elements. Water and Air were the first two sets, obviously. The next was Earth, which involved my being tangled in rope-like vines in an elaborate subterranean set built in another room.

The final shoot was Fire, of course, with a wall of the previous cave set as background, now lit with infernally red lights. I was strapped with my belly against an imposing wooden cross, a pair of crossed timbers festooned with rings for restraints at regular intervals. For those pictures, a real brazier with a branding iron was brought in. The iron’s tip was red-hot, and my fear was utterly real when Val gripped my hair and held the brand a few inches from my face. By this time I was so utterly broken I found myself crying quietly at the drop of a hat. The hot iron terrified me, but I was fairly sure Val had no intention of actually using it on me.

That’s why, when she actually did press it to my squirming flank, I screamed in pain and fainted.

§

“Hello, doll,” Val said, smiling tenderly as she came into focus before my uncomprehending eyes. I was lying on a couch, naked under a blanket. There was no one else in the room, but I heard the sounds of people working, talking elsewhere.

Suddenly everything came into sharp relief, and I sat up with the force of it. The cross, the brand, my fainting. But she shushed me and sat on the couch, lowering my head to her lap. I felt for my thigh, needing to touch the wound that must surely have been left by the brand. She caught my hand and smiled.

“You’re unmarked,” she said.

She explained how she’d switched brands while I was distracted. The one that touched my flesh had been chilled in an ice bucket, causing my overwrought brain to interpret the sensation as burning. “You were magnificent. The pictures turned out splendidly.”

Relief flowed through me, and a vague indignation that put me in a bizarre state of mind. I loved and hated this woman. But mostly I felt enveloped by her, trapped, yet at the same time protected, even transformed.

Then I remembered the other matter. “Trish,” I croaked. The clock showed 5:30 pm.

“Safely in a cab, on her way to her mother’s.”

“But how…”

“I’m quite skilled at finding things out and making things happen, doll. You should know this by now. What am I?”

“My Keeper,” I said with real awe.

“Yes. Yes, I am. Now let’s go home.”

7     
tangled

IT WAS A Wednesday night, and everyone was on edge. Val had been sorely vexed when she found ants invading her kitchen pantry, and blew up on the maid for not dealing with the matter before she got home. “I
loathe
ants,” she hissed at me over dinner, by way of explanation. This didn’t surprise me, considering her obsessively fastidious nature. And with the unusually hot weather, the ants were in overdrive. The maid took her chastening stoically, but I knew even she was shaken by the force of her employer’s wrath. Maybe Val was venting some of her unimaginable pressure from work.

After dinner, Val made popcorn while she had me select a movie for us to watch. I stumbled upon
Some Like It Hot
in her large DVD collection and realized I’d never actually seen that film. I judged it a safe bet for softening her mood.

And so I found myself sitting naked on the rug beside her legs, puppy-like, letting the film anesthetize us both as we delicately munched on popcorn. I knew better than to grab a handful at a time, as I did at home alone. Val disapproved of such uncouth behavior.

The hi-def TV was the sole illumination for the room. There is something soothing about old black and white movies, a gentle unreality that immediately puts me in an altered state of consciousness, a floaty, nostalgic feeling. I envy the characters’ simple world, their exaggerated emotions, the tidy plot resolutions. For me, the muted sounds and simple editing of old movies is synonymous with staying up late and growing drowsy, drifting in and out of both realities—mine and theirs—as they blend together on the shore of unconsciousness.

But then Val spotted a couple of ants in the entertainment room, too, and blew up a second time before attacking them with bug spray. On the television, Spats Columbo’s men were gunning down Toothpick Charlie’s gang. I did my best to stay out of her way. Finally satisfied with her efforts, she stood defiantly and glowered at me.