The Basement (9 page)

Turner's hand grips my wrist, his nails biting into my flesh. Our eyes lock. “I don't want you smoking,” he says.

I twist my arm free, still holding the lighter. “I don't smoke,” I say.

I flick the lighter on and hold my left hand above the flames. I stare at Turner.

He smiles like he doesn't care. He looks at Marcinko. She looks worried. He looks back at me.

I can feel the heat but I block it out of my mind. I'm ice. “You can set yourself on fire, shit-forbrains,” he says. I keep my face impassive. I'm ice.

We stare at each other for a few seconds. I concentrate on not feeling the pain, I concentrate on the tacks in my shoes, anything but the singeing flesh.

“You mother-fucker,” he says.

Marcinko gets to her feet, her chair legs scraping along the floor. “Enough,” she says.

I keep on staring at Turner. His face is stone. I'm ice. The question is, which will crack first.

“Stop it, Marvin,” says Marcinko. “You're not proving anything.”

I ignore her and she rounds on Turner. “They're going to think we did it to him,” she says. “No one's going to believe he did it to himself.”

“Who gives a fuck?”

“Me,” she says. “I give a fuck. You're behaving like kids.” She puts her hands on the table and leans towards me. “Stop it.”

I force a smile. It hurts, but I can stand it. I'm ice. “He's got to ask me,” I say through gritted teeth.

Turner sneers at me. “Burn in hell.”

I raise an eyebrow. “Whatever.” I keep my hand in the flame. I can smell burned flesh, and it's not my imagination.

Marcinko slams her hand down on the table, then stands facing Turner, her hands on her hips.

“Okay, okay,” says Turner.

“Okay what?” I say. I need to hear him say it. I want Marcinko to know who's in control of the situation.

“Okay you can stop trying to set fire to yourself.”

I smile. Ice has won. Rock is broken. I flick the lighter off and toss it onto the table. My hand hurts like hell, but it was worth it. I stand up, grin at Marcinko, and walk out of the room.

* * *

You assemble the tripod and fix the video camera so that it's pointing towards the bed. She's standing there, head bowed, dying to look up to see what it is you're doing but knowing that if she does then she'll be punished. You check the viewfinder to make sure that she's in the centre and that you can see all of the bed behind her. You don't want to repeat the mistake you made the first time when you had two hours of footage of nothing but the end of the bed and the sound of a woman sobbing.

When you're satisfied that it's lined up just right, you stand by the side of the tripod.

“Sarah,” you say, “you can look up now.”

Her head jerks upwards as if she was a marionette in the hands of an inexperienced pupetteer, her eyes wide and fearful. She swallows and deep furrows appear in her brow.

“A home movie,” you explain. The furrows deepen. She doesn't understand. You explain, and tears well up in her eyes. You offer her hope. “I spoke to your husband,” you say softly. “I told him that you were okay, and that I'll be releasing you soon.” Her eagerness to believe the lie is so transparent that it makes you want to laugh in her face, but you keep your features steady. The face of authority.

“Can I speak?” she says quietly. She understands the rules now. She's a quick learner.

“You may,” you say, though you already know what she wants to ask.

“Can I talk to him?” she says, her voice trembling.

The one phone call. They always think they're entitled to one phone call, like this was a police cell or something. “Maybe,” you say. “If you continue to do as you're told. You are going to do as you're told, aren't you?”

She nods. Too eager. Too willing to please. She thinks she can outmanouevre me, that she's smarter than me and that all she has to do is to lull me into a false sense of confidence.

She isn't the first to think that, and she won't be the last. But they were all wrong, there isn't one if them that can outsmart me, so I smile and raise my eyebrows and nod approvingly.

She tilts her head at the camera. “Is this to send to my husband, to show him that I'm okay?”

You can tell from her voice that she knows it isn't, but she hopes to convince you that it'll be a good idea so that you won't carry on with what you have in mind. You wait a beat,

allowing her to clutch at the straw, allowing her to believe that she's managed to change your mind, then you shake your head. “No, Sarah. This is for me.” You reach over and switch the camcorder on. “Take off your clothes. Start with the ribbon.” She begins to cry, but she does as she's told.

With shaking hands she reaches up and unties the blue silk ribbon which was holding her hair back from her face. Her blonde hair falls forward, a stray strand swinging across her left cheek like a scar, held in place by the dampness of her tears. She looks around, not sure what to do with the strip of silk. “The floor,” you say. “Drop everything on the floor.”

She lets the ribbon slip from her fingers and it trickles like water onto the tiles. Her eyes look to you for guidance. She doesn't want to take the initiative, she wants to be told what to do every step of the way, so that she can tell herself that it was all done under duress. Just obeying orders. You don't mind, at this stage you're more interested in the end result. Later,

much later, she'll know what she must do to gain your approval. This is part of the training,

part of her education, so you reward her with a smile and tell her to take off her shirt. She starts unbuttoning her top button but you stop her and tell her to the cuffs first. She frowns a little, then unbuttons her right cuff, then the left. “That's good,” you say as she goes back to the top button.

She does them slowly, trying to take as much time as possible, postponing the moment when the shirt comes off. She doesn't realise that it's the anticipation that you find so stimulating, that makes the blood pound in your ears and the sweat run down your back.

God, if it was just the sex you could have had it all over in an hour, put a gun under her pretty little chin and made her do what you want there and then. By prolonging the inevitable, she makes it so much more enjoyable.

She folds the shirt and puts it on the bed. “No,” you say. “The floor.” You'll want the bed later and it'll spoil the moment if you have to start moving clothes off the bed. She picks up the shirt and bends down to put it on top of the ribbon. As she moves her breasts swing forward allowing you to look down her cleavage. Her eyes glance up to see if you're looking,

then quickly avert as she sees that you are. The moment is exquisite, as if you'd caught her unawares, like the first time you saw her in the driveway of her home, playing with her children. You can feel your bladder tighten and you shiver with an anticipation so powerful that you gasp.

She straightens up. She's stopped crying, and there's an arrogant look in her eyes. You know what's going through her mind. She knows the effect her body has on men, and she hopes it'll have the same effect on you. She's undressed in front of men before, and she knows that when she gets them into bed she's always the victor. She thinks she'll be able to do the same with you, that by doing what you want she'll win her release the same way that she got everything else she wanted in life. She looks deep into your eyes and her hands reach for the bra strap. She wants to see how you react, knowing that your glance will drop to her breasts as she releases them from the lacy confines. Part of you wants to dash her hopes there and then, to tell her that there's only one way she's getting out of the basement. You suppress the urge.

“The skirt first,” you say. She has to know who's in control, who's calling the shots. She unfastens the skirt and allows it to fall around her legs and onto the floor. She steps out of it but you motion with your hand for her to move back so that she stays in the centre of the viewfinder. Her heels catch in the dress and she loses her balance for a moment, putting a hand down on the bed to steady herself. “Take it easy,” you say. “You're doing just fine.”

The look of arrogance has gone, you're back in control.

She licks her lips nervously as you look her body up and down. The heels and black stockings make her legs look impossibly long and lean, her stomach is hard and flat and her breasts are firm and shapely.

Again her wide eyes seek guidance. Your mouth feels dry and you swallow. You can hear your own breathing and you quieten it. “Your panties,” you say.

Her hands move slowly to her hips and she slips her thumbs under the white material. For a moment she stands stock still as if you might change your mind, but then she leans forward and slips them down to her knees. The cotton hisses against the silk of the stockings. The tuft of dark blonde hair between her legs is a magnet and you allow your eyes to be drawn to it.

The flesh there looks so soft and succulent that you want to bite it, to rip and tear it with your teeth, and you have to stop yourself from stepping forward and throwing her onto the bed.

She lifts her left leg and slips the cotton over her shoe and then replaces the foot on the ground. When she stands up straight she lets go of the panties and they fall down around her ankle. She wiggles her right leg and lifts her foot so that the panties drop to the floor, then stands straight with her hands together, overlapping at her crotch. “Keep your hands at your sides,” you say, and reluctantly she allows her hands to slide apart, like old friends reluctant to let go. She clenches her hands into fists, then unclenches them and places her palms flat against her hips. The skin of her thighs and stomach gleams under the light, its whiteness emphasised by the black of the stockings.

“Stand with your legs slightly apart,” you say. It's important to keep giving her commands so that the initiative stays with you. She shuffles on her heels and widens her stance, giving you a clearer view of her crotch. She has surprisingly little hair there, and it's a darker blonde than that on her head. You wonder if she shaves for her man, if he likes the feel of her, naked and smooth. The idea appeals to you, and you make a mental note to buy shaving cream and a disposable razor. Later, when she's nearer to the end of her training,

you'll get her to shave for you.

“Now you can undo the bra,” you say.

She brushes the stray lock of hair from her face with the back of her right hand, then shakes it back behind her ears. You look to your left to reassure yourself that the camcorder is recording correctly, and when you look back at her she has unfastened the strap of her bra and is shrugging it off her shoulders. Her breasts move downwards as she pulls the lace away from them, then swing free as she drops the bra onto the floor.

She puts her hands back at her sides and straightens her spine, bringing her shoulders back to show her breasts to her best advantage, and you can see the arrogance returning to her eyes. She knows the power her body has, and how to use it. You have to move quickly to demonstrate that her power won't work on you. “Turn around,” you say. She obeys. You study the discs of her backbone, the swell of her buttocks and the long, long legs. She looks over her shoulder but you stop her and tell her to keep looking at the wall. She has wide shoulders and a narrow waist, a true hour-glass figure. “Lean forward and put you hands on the bed,” you say. As she follows your instructions the movement tightens the muscles in her backside and thighs making her legs look even leaner. “That's good,” you say. “That's perfect.”

You walk around the tripod and stand just behind her so that her backside is only inches away from you.

“Please,” she says. “Please don't hurt me.”

You reach out a hand and caress the inside of her thighs with your fingertips. She whimpers, like a frightened child. “Oh Sarah, I'm not going to hurt you,” you say, as you run your fingers up to the soft dark blonde hair. Not yet anyway. “Open your legs,” you say. She obeys. “Wider.”

* * *

I'm having trouble with Checking Out. I can't get the pace right, there's this dull spot in the middle where nothing happens. The characters are great, the Bruce Willis blackjack dealer is sharp and funny, his ex-wife has some really strong lines, but it's just not coming together and the more I force it, the harder it gets.

I decide to take a break from it and to think about something else. I start pacing around the apartment, and within an hour or so I've come up with a belter of an idea. I actually think of the title first, The Big Loser. It's about Tom and Shirley, a happily-married couple with two children and a nice suburban home. The only black spot in their all-American life is that Shirley is hugely overweight. Tom and the children are forever nagging her to lose weight, but she's happy as she is.

Eventually they persuade her to join Weightwatchers, and within months she's the country's champion slimmer. Shapely, beautiful and with a new-found confidence, she appears on chat shows and is featured in newspapers and magazines. Her charm and intelligence lead her to a new career, and she has less time to spend with Tom and the children. Before long, they realise that they're losing her. In a bid to win her back, Tom confines her to the basement and force feeds her until she is back to her old weight and her old self and they live happily ever after.

It's a sort of black comedy, a satire on American suburban life, and with the right director I think it could be a winner. It's got a dark feel to it, a menacing edge, like The Bestseller. That reminds me, I haven't heard from Brian DePalma, or any of the other execs I sent the Bestseller synopsis too. Marcinko and Turner were asking about the letter I sent to DePalma, but I never asked whether he'd sent it to them or if it had been intercepted by the doorman. They didn't mention the manuscript, so maybe he's reading it. I wonder if I should send him my idea for The Big Loser, or if it would be better to let him think about the Bestseller first. I decide to wait, but I'll send the new idea out to a few select producers in LA.

I sit down at the typewriter but before I can even feed in a sheet of paper, the doorbell rings. I put my head in my hands. “No, not again,” I moan because I know it's them, back to give me grief.