Edge Play X (18 page)

“You aren’t
expendable to me,” he said. “I know that you aren’t going to believe me, but I
never would have gotten involved in this if I thought that you would be killed
when it’s all said and done.”

X popped
the gag back in his mouth.

“I’m
touched,” X said. “Really.” X took the clothespins off his ears and let them
hit the floor with a clang.

“Just out
of curiosity, did they tell you to go ahead and have sex with me?”
 

He started
making noise again so X pulled out his ball-gag, leaving it to dangle by his
chin.

“Amnesty,”
he said, and X backhanded him across the face.

“I’ll give
you amnesty when you give it to me!” X screamed. “I’m done playing games with
you! Did they tell you to have sex with me? Did they say, ‘Go ahead and fuck
her Simeon, we’ll have better control of her if you fuck her?’”

He shook
his head yes and cast his eyes to the floor, unable to look X in the eye.
 

X bent over
and whispered in his ear, “I’m sorry that I have to hurt you. Are you sorry
that you have to hurt me?”

Simeon
nodded his head yes again.

“I’m not a
cruel person by nature.”

X unsnapped
the and tossed it over to the side of the room.

“You must
think I’m stupid,” she said.

“I don’t,”
he replied.

“I guess
the question is,” X said, “do you want to fuck me? Because I don’t want you to
fuck me because you have to, because your boss told you to do it. That’s not a
very nice thing to do to a person.”

“I want to
fuck you more than you could imagine,” he said, “but I know it will never
happen.”

“I put a
cigarette out on you and you still want to fuck me? Amazing. Agent Simeon,
isn’t fucking me against the rules?”

“Sometimes
the rule is to disobey the rules.”

X laughed.
“I’m going to break the rules. I’m going to do it right now.”

X fumbled
in her bag until she found what she was looking for. The woman pulled out a
metal cylinder with an ‘X’ at the end, a letterpress ‘X’ that she had found a
few years before at an antiques shop but had never used. Simeon watched as she
went to the kitchen. The woman found a pair of metal tongs and a long lighter,
the kind that is used to light candles and barbeques, and she took them out of
the drawer and with her into the living room.

As she held
the bottom of the metal shaft with the tongs, X clicked on the lighter and held
the flame over the ‘X’ until it began to turn fiery red.

“Please
don’t do what I think you are going to do,” he begged.

“Why not?”

“We aren’t
supposed to have any identifying marks.”

As the
flame heated the metal ‘X’ she said, “Look, just tell them that you were
walking around naked and fell on a red hot X.”

“Please
don’t,” he beseeched her. “Amnesty.”

Once the letter
was red hot, X placed it on his abdomen above his left hipbone where his gun
usually sat, the woman reeling from the acetylene rush of her act, branding him
on his torso with her mark, the length of his body kept still because of the
cock cage.

The pain
shot through him, omni-directional and savage. Simeon grimaced with the pain,
shutting his eyes together and gritting his teeth until X pulled the implement
away from his body. Gingerly, X went into the kitchen where she tossed the hot
letter into the sink. It sizzled as it touched a few droplets of water,
vaporizing them.

X went back
to his chair and released his hands before unclipping the cage from the ring
between his thighs. His hands now free, Simeon inspected the wound that she had
inflicted. He placed his fingertips on the area surrounding the purple-red
letter, the mark where his skin had been burned away, an act which had
simultaneously created and cauterized the wound.

“That’s for
pistol-whipping me,” she said. “Now get dressed and go,” X told him before
entering her bedroom and closing the door behind her.
 

He could
have hurt the woman, Simeon knew, overpowered her, kicked in her bedroom door
and beaten her into a pulp. Of course, his superior wouldn’t be happy if he
injured X, not if he didn’t have the permission to do so. But that wasn’t why
he relented.

As Simeon
had watched her leave him, his vision of her had transformed. It was not that
he viewed her now as less beautiful because of her cruelty, but on the
contrary, she had gained esteem in his eyes. He saw himself then through her
eyes—as no longer her equal, or her competition (for she had won this
round)—but as her inferior, for when he had struck her with his gun, the deed
for which she now had exacted revenge, the pain of his act had eventually
dissipated. No, X had left her mark on him and it would remain forever after
the pain was gone, stay after the skin had healed and scarred over, replaced by
new tissue, different and inferior. The red mark would fade to white but never
disappear.

He dressed
then, his clothes inflicting pain with every movement, and X listened as the
door to her apartment opened and closed. Then Simeon was gone.

Act
III

1.

When the
day came for X to accompany
Compton
to
Paris
, the Bentley came to
pick her up late in the evening. X exited her building to meet the car, taking
with her just a carry-on bag and a regular suitcase which the driver put into
the trunk for her, the man surprised that she was not taking more along.
 

“Is that
all, Miss?” he asked, to which X nodded yes.

Dusk had
arrived and the full moon in the sky cast the clouds a haunted and forlorn
gray. The enormous moon sat close to the horizon in the darkening sky, making
the trails left from the jets just abstract etchings, barely apparent but still
reflecting the moonlight.

The driver,
quiet as always, took X to a private airport at the edge of town, driving onto
the tarmac after being let through the gate by the security guard. Outside of
the plane, Steinberg was waiting.

The driver
opened the door for X and she exited the car, surveying the plane that she
would ride first to
New York
and then to
Paris
. From her purse, X got
out a cigarette and lit it as the driver took her bags and gave them to the
flight attendant.

Steinberg
came over to X, professional as always. The last time he had seen X, she had
been following
Compton
on a leash to his art
gallery where she had made the billionaire polish Steinberg’s shoes. But at
this moment, Steinberg did not communicate any judgment about X or her
treatment of Compton, his boss. Steinberg seemed happy and excited, acted as if
he didn’t remember their last interaction at all. X admired his composure.

“Have you
ever flown in a private plane?” he asked.

“No,” X
answered. “I don’t like to fly.”

Two
uniformed pilots were approaching the plane and X watched as they boarded.

“We
certainly hope you will enjoy the new experience.”

Nearby, the
plane was powering up, making the air vibrate with the noise. It made the
atmosphere congeal around X, bending reality somehow. She tossed the cigarette
onto the asphalt and crushed it under her shoe.

“What kind
of plane is that?”

“It is a
Cessna Citation Ten.” There was a flicker of excitement in his eye as he said
this. “Come with me, I’ll show you.”

As he led X
up the steps and into the plane, Steinberg informed her that
Compton
would be taking part
in business meetings through the night via the satellite communications system.
The yen was diving and the euro was following suit, Steinberg said, and
Compton
would be having
conversations with his advisors to discuss how the markets might react.

As they
entered the plane, a pretty flight attendant welcomed them aboard.
Compton
, sitting near the
front at a square table, conversed with the two other men who were with him.
One of them, a young Indian man, was pointing to a graph on a screen and
tracing his finger along its jagged lines.
Compton
looked up at Steinberg
and X briefly before shifting his attention back to his advisor and the
display.

The
interior of the plane was just high enough for X to walk in while standing, but
Steinberg had to bend down a little bit as she followed him. He led her to a
white leather seat and informed her that there was a screen set into the back
of the seat in front of it where she would be able to watch television or a
movie if she liked. X sat down, and Steinberg crouched next to her.

“We’re
going to be flying first to
New York
to refuel, and then
we’ll continue to
Paris
,” he said. “I will be
assisting Mr. Compton most of the night, but if you need anything, just let the
flight attendant know.”

The plane
started moving and he said. “I better get buckled in,” and then he was gone.

A few
minutes later, the plane took off, gliding off the ground smoothly and
effortlessly into the brooding clouds.

The flight
attendant came to X almost immediately once they had achieved cruising altitude
and asked if there was anything she could get for her.

“A glass of
wine,” X answered. “White.”

The woman
returned with a glass of wine and X sipped it as she looked out the window and
down to the grids of light beneath them. The lines of lights below them looked
mechanical, unreal, but X still tried to guess which towns they were flying
over.

X felt
alone in the plane,
Compton
up front having his
business meeting and all of them separated from the earth as if man had been
doing such a thing since the beginning of time.
 
X didn’t know who she was anymore and somehow her separation from the
earth magnified the feeling. Something had changed in
her,
some critical piece of how she lived her life and how she viewed herself had
shifted. Eventually, it would overtake her entirely, she feared, blotting out
any remnants of her old self.

Then X
asked the attendant for a blanket and pillow, reclined her chair, and drifted
off to sleep.

2
.

The pale
morning light woke her. When she came back into consciousness, it took X a
moment to remember that she was not in her own bed but was instead on
Compton
’s airplane. In a few
moments, the disorientation subsided.

When the
flight attendant saw that X was awake, she told her that they would be landing
soon and that she should buckle herself in.

X put her
seat upright and snapped the gold-plated buckle around her hips. The buckle
matched the controls on the arms of the seat and the trim details on the ledges
that ran beneath the windows.

X looked
out her window as they began to descend through the clouds. As the plane hit
some turbulence, X tried to imagine that she was not in an airplane but instead
in a car on a dirt road.
 
That thought
always could comfort her. A few moments later they landed cleanly on the runway
of a large airport. Outside, other planes were getting ready to take off or
land as their aircraft rolled slowly into the area where they would refuel.

When they
had stopped completely, X got up and went to the lavatory, noticing that the
sink and faucet had the same gold plating as the buckle and controls. The
vanity had what looked to be a marble countertop and the cabinet was the same
high gloss burled wood that was in the rest of the plane. On the drawers of the
vanity, the grains were perfectly aligned, a detail which X noticed. She opened
a drawer to see that it contained some shaving supplies, medicines, and
toiletries, all unopened.

When she
exited the bathroom, X saw that the seat in front of hers had been spun around
so that it faced her own chair and that a small table had been pulled out from
the wall.
 
The smell of coffee filled the
air. A new, different flight attendant was helping the original one in the
galley kitchen.

X returned
to her seat and saw
Compton
coming down the slim
aisle. He sat down in the seat facing hers.

The fresh
attendant, perky and bright, came over and asked what they would like for
breakfast. They could choose from eggs with toast, cereal, pancakes or a
croissant. X choose the eggs and
Compton
requested the
croissant.
  

“May I
start you out with some fresh fruit and coffee or tea?” she asked.