Eighty Days Blue (19 page)

I had arranged to meet Cherry after signing the papers with the agent, as she worked nearby. As a primary-school teacher, I discovered.

‘How does your private life go down with the school board?' I asked her over coffee at Lenny's on Second Avenue.

‘Oh, God, they don't know a thing. That's why I use my stage name for everything. Only my family and my work colleagues call me by my real name. I have two lives, basically. You get used to it. And you should probably do the same, if you're going to be in the public eye and continue with any kind of kink life.'

‘I don't think I could call myself anything else. It would feel dishonest.'

‘You're not all that honest, though, really, are you?'

‘What do you mean?' I was a little offended. Frankness
was
something that I had always prided myself on. I disliked people who I felt were hiding themselves. I thought it a sign of weakness, a lack of courage.

‘Your two men don't know about each other, do they?'

‘They're not my two men. I'm not seeing Simón.'

‘Doesn't look that way to me.'

‘Well, you don't see everything, do you?' I felt my blood boiling. It had been a stressful few days, days filled with criticism and hurt from Dominik, and I didn't need to hear the same from Cherry.

‘Look, what you do is your business, not mine, but I don't think the way you're operating is ethical. It's not non-monogamy; it's cheating.'

‘I haven't touched Simón!'

‘Haven't you?'

I didn't have much to say to that. I'd kissed him, but that was it.

‘What I have with Dominik, it's not like you and your two . . . boyfriends. Who don't seem ever to be around,' I added cattily.

‘I'm just sayin'. I can see why you'd want to keep Simón happy – it's obviously doing wonders for your career – but don't sacrifice Dominik for it. He's a good guy. You might regret it, that's all.'

‘Are you saying I'm using him? For my career?'

‘No, not at all. I'm sure that without a wealthy benefactor to buy you a fancy violin and a famous young conductor pushing you in the path of agents, you'd do just as well, eventually.'

I had told her how Dominik and I had met, and suddenly wished that I hadn't. She didn't understand.

I picked up my purse and threw a note down on the
table
, covering the cost of the drinks with a more than ample tip, though I felt a little mean as I walked away, aware that underneath it all, she had a point, and in any case it wasn't fair to rub my new-found fortune in her face. Too late now, though, I thought, slowing my storming pace to a walk as I realised that I was now in Central Park and had no idea which direction I'd come from or where I was headed, as I'd been so angry I hadn't paid any attention to my surroundings.

The park, rather than being the place of solitude and respite that I had hoped for, was full of screeching children. I had arrived near the Alice in Wonderland statue, close to 74th Street, so at least I now knew where I was.

Parents and nannies were out in full force with their offspring, who were climbing and cavorting over the giant mushroom that Alice sat on, its bronze surface smooth as marble, perhaps by design, but aided by myriad toddlers, who had been running their hands overtop for decades, hoping to find the magic button that would drop them down the rabbit hole.

I wanted to tell them to forget about fairy tales, stranger things happen in real life, but I doubted their guardians, stressed to the point of explosion, would approve. A little girl wearing a red jacket and matching red shoes with yellow laces was trying to remove the top hat from the Mad Hatter's head. She cried when her mother pulled her away.

I sat down on the grass and tried to imagine what my life would be like if I had chosen the road more travelled, if the little girl in the red jacket were mine, if I had a house with a yard and a Bassett hound to go home to and a regular job
that
didn't involve late nights in concert halls or now tour buses.

I could have it, if I wanted it. Probably not with Dominik, but with Simón, or any of a dozen other cookie-cutter men with whom I might think myself in love for a time, and might get bored with eventually, but whom I could introduce to my friends and family, and go on dates with, and have family holidays with, and perhaps grow old with, if we were lucky.

The thought filled me with dread.

Life with Dominik in the SoHo flat was probably further from normal than would suit most people, and choosing life as a touring musician would drive an even greater wedge between any possibility of my ever living an ordinary existence, but it was the life that I had chosen, and one that suited me.

I had always been the type who preferred swimming upstream, even if it was harder that way.

My new-found optimism waned quickly over the next fortnight, as the two weeks before the beginning of the tour that Susan had quickly set up disappeared in a flash, as if life were so keen to throw me down this new path, it was moving at double speed to get me there faster.

Only a handful of musicians from the Gramercy Symphonia were able to join me on the tour and no one I knew well. I realised through the audition process how self-absorbed I had been since I had arrived in New York, as besides Marija and Baldo, I really hadn't formed a bond with anyone in the orchestra. I had spent most of my time talking to Simón. He and Susan cobbled together the other musicians from acquaintances, recommendations and the
range
of professionals that she had on her books. They were all accustomed to touring and used to working with new players at short notice.

We spent hours rehearsing together, this time taking advantage of Simón's offer to loan us his basement as a rehearsal space, it being a far more pleasant space to spend an afternoon than the shabby old building that we had been renting, which was nearer my old shared apartment, but dark, dingy and full of draughts that crept in somehow no matter how tightly the windows were shut, as if the walls were asthmatic.

Our first stop on the tour was a few nights in Calgary, followed by Toronto and Quebec City, before moving down the East Coast of America, where I would be closer to home and able to drop in on Dominik.

I'd barely seen him for the past ten days. He had been reclusive since I announced the tour, insisting that he was behind on his research and lecturing commitments and spending more and more time at the library. We hadn't had sex, not since the morning after my concert, and my efforts to point him in that direction had backfired severely.

One afternoon, when he had expected me to be out of the flat, rehearsing, I had come home early to surprise him after one of his occasional talks. He opened the door to find me in the kitchen, baking an apple pie and wearing a schoolgirl's outfit, which I had ordered online, complete with bobby socks, tartan miniskirt and suspenders, my long hair pinned into ponytails. I had meant it as a joke, though of course I had hoped that he'd find the idea arousing as well as amusing.

‘Sometimes I wonder whether you know me at all,'
he
had said, taking one scathing look at me before disappearing into our bedroom and slamming the door behind him.

I threw the pie away and turned on the kitchen area's extractor fan to get rid of the smell.

After that, I stopped trying and just let him sulk, although every night as I slid between the sheets next to him and he turned his back to me, I felt as though we had both been cryogenically frozen, separated by a wall of ice between us that didn't belong there.

I wanted to reach out a hand to touch him, to make it better with a warm embrace, but my arms were pinned to my sides as effectively as if they had been plastered there.

By contrast, Simón was eager to spend more and more time with me, and I wondered whether he engineered the availability of the other musicians so that they always had to rush to leave for another appointment the moment rehearsal finished, leaving the two of us alone together in his basement while I packed away my sheets of music and gathered my things. He wanted to know every detail of the tour, the music planned for each night. I had left all of the organisation to the wings of Fate and my agent, who had every last detail planned with the efficiency of a covert CIA operative, so I didn't even know the answers to most of Simón's questions about where I would be staying and for how long.

I had begun to tire of his attentions. His spicy cologne gave me a headache. The frizz in his hair tempted me to leave a bottle of my hair gel in his bathroom cabinet. Even his vast array of shoes lined up by the front door, which I had once found charming and elegant, now grated on my nerves.

After each rehearsal, I rushed home, hopeful that
Dominik
would have forgiven me, would be his old self again, at least for our last few days together, but the loft was empty, and the longer I spent in it alone, the lonelier I became.

When I couldn't put it off any longer, I started packing, taking as little as possible with me in an attempt to reassure Dominik that I wouldn't be away for long. I packed my performance costumes, the long black dress that he had bought for me for my first solo gig, a couple of shorter cocktail dresses for smaller, more intimate venues or those that might be too conservative to cope with a see-through dress.

On the night before my departure, Dominik was out, working.

Simón called to wish me good luck, as I was flying out first thing in the morning. I let the phone ring to voicemail and didn't pick up his message.

In a last-ditch effort to make things up with Dominik, I laced myself into my black corset, as tight as I could without any assistance, and decorated myself with the night shade of lipstick that he preferred, in the same way that I had for our first night together in the loft, the way that he had painted me when I played for him and his secret audience, painting my nipples and then my labia a vivid shade of red.

I turned off all the lights in the apartment, other than one spotlight in the ceiling fixed directly over the wooden living-room floor.

Then I held my violin and my bow in position and waited.

And waited and waited.

The clock struck midnight and still he didn't come.

Had he been any other man, I would have expected him to arrive drunk, but Dominik didn't drink, meaning that wherever he was, he knew what time it was and that it was my last night in New York before the tour.

Was he with another woman? Unlikely, I thought. He would be alone, surrounded by his books probably, drowning out his anger with a flood of words.

I climbed into bed and closed my eyes, not bothering to unlace the corset or to wash off the lipstick.

He woke me before dawn, the time when only birds, garbage men and women, and teenagers on their way home from the night before are still up and roaming the city.

‘I was waiting for you,' I said sleepily.

‘I know.'

He took hold of the laces at the back of the corset and pulled me up onto my knees. His breathing was heavy, catching in his throat.

I felt the almost imperceptible current from his arm lifting into the air before his hand came down on my rump with a loud slap, first one side, then the other.

I jumped in shock, then lowered my chest down further onto the bed, pushing my arse into the air to give him better access, like a dog waiting to be mounted.

How I had missed this, the heaviness of his hands on my body, which washed all other thoughts out of my head, the chance to show him that there was nothing that I wouldn't do for him, the delicious expectation of the things that he might ask me to do for him and how much his requests turned me on. It was as if he was surrendering to his lust for me when he got into this sort of mood, allowing his passion to drive his actions despite whatever reservations his brain
might
hold. That ability that I had to drive him to submit to his desire gave me a heady rush of power, even when I was the one on my knees.

He stroked me gently, easing the sting, and then nudged my legs apart. ‘Spread your legs.'

He ran his finger between my lips, wiping the moisture up to my arsehole.

‘You missed me, I see.'

‘Yes, very much.'

‘Put your hands behind your back.'

I leaned further onto my haunches so that I could balance, with my arms behind my back and hands clasped together in prayer position. I regretted giving up my yoga classes of late, as I hadn't had time with all the rehearsals. My shoulders ached, but the aching just made me more aroused. I wanted Dominik to take me further than he had before, to wipe away all the discomfort of the last few days with his touch.

I heard the rope before I felt it, the swish of the length unravelling. It felt rough against my skin, the frayed edges brushing my wrists. He bound my arms tightly together, handcuff style.

‘Bring your knees closer to your chest.'

His voice was quiet, calm, firm, a tone that from previous experience, I knew was a prelude to much rougher treatment.

He wound the rope round my ankles, tying my legs to my wrists so that I was on all fours in front of him, face down in the covers and completely unable to move.

Then he raised his hand again, bought it down on my rear with another hard smack and then another, and another and another, until my eyes began to water and time folded in on
itself
. The stinging blended into another sensation altogether and my initial yelps of surprise and hurt became cries of pleasure.

For a moment, I felt as though I was a part of his body, that somehow through the act of his palm meeting my flesh we had become conjoined in a way that was sexual but more than sex could ever be, both of us journeying together into unknown parts of our psyches in an act that was as intimate mentally as it was physically.

Then I heard the unbuckling of his leather belt, and the soft swish as he pulled the length of leather through the tabs of his trousers, the very slight creak as he folded the two ends together and then the soft current as his makeshift paddle flew through the air and landed on one butt cheek and then the other. It felt remarkably similar to his hand, and soon I could not distinguish between the impact of his skin and the belt.