As She's Told Page 6

Anders put cream in his coffee and stirred. "Wasn't it a little hard on you?"

  "A little," she agreed. "What are you asking?" She sipped some tea and gave him a long look over the rim. "Am I submissive because I got beat up at school?" She put the cup down. "No. No one picked on me particularly.

  I'm good at being inconspicuous. I wasn't exactly popular, but I wasn't abused. Not at home either. No secret trauma. And I've had submissive fantasies as long as I can remember." She gave a little snort, and shook her head. "'Fantasy;' what a word. It makes it sound lightweight and fanciful, tra la la. Not the – what can I call it? It felt huge, heavy, rich; a dark kind of weight. An intense secret life."

  She lowered her eyebrows at him, her face faintly challenging. "Are you 45

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  asking if I'm like this because I've got low self-esteem? Not that either. I may not be the most confident person in the world, but in my own way I'm all right."

  "Well said." His eyes were warm.

  "Hey, what about you?" she asked suddenly.

  "What about me what?"

  "You moved, too. To a different country, a different language even.

  That couldn't have been easy."

  "I guess." Anders leaned back in his seat and stretched out long legs beneath the table. "But I thought of it as an adventure; I know it's hokey, but it's true. My English wasn't bad, and using it in school was a bit like a game, a puzzle. Something like driving when you're only just learning how. Clutch, gas, turn the wheel…. Svend had a harder time; he wasn't so far along in English.”

  “So you fit in right away?"

  "More or less. Well, I was taller than everyone else. I didn't exactly blend in with the crowd. No hiding for me. We lived right downtown; Bellevue Park, you know it? Behind Kensington Market. My parents couldn't stand the suburbs, and the ethnicities were mostly Asian or southern European; a lot of short, dark kids. I was the guy at the back who looked like he was in the wrong class. A broomstick. Skinny as hell. That was my nickname for a while.”

  “Broomstick?"

  "Yeah, or Broom. See, my hair when it's short kind of sticks up…." He ran his fingers through his hair from below, and sure enough, for a few seconds it defied gravity, a haystack gone wild. "It's bit long for it at the moment." He brushed it back down.

  She reached over to smooth the remaining stragglers, and he kissed the inside of her wrist.

  "But I take it you didn't get left out or picked on," she said.

  "Why do you say that?"

  "Just a feeling."

  He looked at her curiously. "Well, you're right. Apart from some jokes.

  Though I suppose I could have been. I don't know. Mockery, or that macho challenge thing that boys do, they're easy enough to deal with. So when it came up I dealt with it. For myself or anyone else I thought was getting it 46

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  rough."

  She smiled broadly. "You protected the weak, did you? My superman?

  "You betcha." The waiter topped up his coffee, and Anders stirred in more cream, watching it swirl and vanish. "Tried to, anyway." She gave an enquiring look, but he left it at that.

  "So – my information management girl," he said, "you want to give freely, find people what they need, serve them with facts."

  "Yes." He rested his eyes on her, and her face shifted. "Okay. I know.

  It's the same – I want to do the same for you."

  "Give me what I need?"

  She nodded.

  "I think you will."

  They sat quietly, looking out. It was full dark now: streetlights, headlights and neon signs reflecting on wet asphalt. Cars and crowds. At last she spoke up, a little timidly.

  "And – and what about your fantasies? When did all this – take hold, for you?"

  He considered. "Hard to say. I don't remember a time when it wasn't there. At least the assumption that I ought to be in charge." He smiled. "I'm sure my siblings appreciated that very much. But of course there were all the ideas beneath the surface that I only talked about later, with a cousin of mine who's also into it. A fascination with unequal power relationships. Feudal droit de seigneur, patriarchal marriages, purdah, and of course every kind of slave-owning culture. I even wrote essays on the subject, anti- of course, while secretly imagining myself as a Viking slave raider.”

  “They did do a lot of that, didn't they."

  "Sure. Thralls. Trælle. Spoils of war, or the results of all that coastal raiding. Not that they were the only ones.”

  “I can just see you in a Viking boat. At the helm. Sword in hand."

  "Standing over the pretty captive. Who, incidentally, fell for me big time and quite liked her collar."

  "Consent even then?"

  "Oh, yes; always."

  "A left wing Viking slave raider."

  He laughed. "Twenty-first century version."

  They went for a long walk. The air was still damp but the clouds had 47

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  moved on; the moon was visible between the streetlights. They strolled north through Grange Park and along Dundas, still crowded with stalls, and thick with the odours of Chinese food, car exhaust and damp asphalt. The restaurant smells persisted until they were well into the residential part of Chinatown. Here the scent of damp earth rose unevenly through the downtown exhaust fumes; people's gardens waking up. Anders felt Maia's small, smooth hand like a child's in his own. "What about your cousin?" she asked him. Anders looked down at her. "What about him?”

  “Another Viking slave raider?"

  "No. Well, maybe a scene version. Clubs and scenes, midnight to six a.m., that's Karl.”

  “In Copenhagen?"

  "Uh-huh. And Amsterdam. He'll be in Chicago soon doing graduate work. There's more to Karl than clubs. But no doubt he'll be at it till all hours still."

  She reached up and touched the scar beneath his chin, though she couldn't see it in the dark.

  "Mm?"

  "While you're telling me things. What happened there?"

  He rubbed the smooth line where no beard grew. "That? I was – what, eleven? My brother and I found a shopping cart on a sidewalk. I thought I'd give him a ride, but there was a hill, and he was heavier than I thought…."

  "So…?"

  "So I staged a dramatic rescue." He laughed suddenly. "My superboy phase, I suppose. I yanked the thing back off its wheels just before it went into the road, banged both of us up in the process."

  "How did he come out of it?"

  "Split eyebrow. He likes it. He was very proud of the black eye, which I must admit was a beauty. My mother always complained that she was on a first-name basis with the emergency room staff. She was, too."

  Still heading north, they made their way through the university campus, past old stone and new brick, through a gothic arch or two. They turned into Philosopher's Walk, a twisting pedestrian byway through a narrow park that ran behind the museum, between Trinity College and the Faculty of Music, on up to Bloor. No one else was in sight; they seemed to have the path to themselves. Anders tucked Maia's arm under his. The faint exotic tea scent 48

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  of her flesh came to him; he suppressed an urge to devour her then and there.

  "I've made some more decisions about how this is going to go," he told her. "Choice but no choice." She tensed beneath his arm, and he tightened his hold. "First of all, understand that I'm going to do what I want with you, and I'm going to enjoy that very much. And you'll obey me." She heaved a trembling sigh and he squeezed her arm. "I think I read you well enough to avoid causing damage, physical or psychological damage, but I could be wrong, Maia. I won't count on that. So I'm going to give you some chances to tell me if I've missed anything important about what you're feeling, what you're going through. At the end of each day at first. Less and less often as time goes on. These will be escape points, too, if it turns out you're wrong about what you
can stand. Eventually the escape points will be very, very few and far between. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

  "I – " She swallowed. "I think so. You're – you're building in just enough freedom so if it goes wrong there's a way out. Sometimes. Otherwise I don't have choices, and I do what I'm told."

  "That's right." They walked on in silence for a minute, and then he went on. "I'm not going to consult you, but I am going to question you and observe your reactions. This may or may not influence what I do." Though her arm remained tucked under his, Anders had a sense that she was drawing away. He leaned down to get a better look in the dim light. "What is it, Maia?" She bit her lip. "Control again?"

  She nodded. He stopped and turned her toward him, examined the averted face in profile.

  "You're afraid I'll let you decide – let you shape what happens."

  "Mm."

  "Go on."

  She stared at the ground. "I just know that if there's something you don't want, and you do it for my sake – " Her body shrank away from him, and her face was a misery of humiliation. "I won't be able to bear it. Everything –

  everything will go wrong. We'll be back to games again."

  This had to be nipped in the bud, quickly. He dug his fingers into her shoulders. "Maia," he said gently. "You haven't got this straight." She looked up. "This is not a reciprocal arrangement. It's not about giving you a kinky good time." He waited a beat or two to make sure she took this in. "If all goes well I'll own you. Body, mind, all of you. If you're going to be my 49

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  property I need to know what I've got, what you're good for." His voice dropped a confidential note lower. "Like buying a dog – is it the right kind for what I want? Does it have the right disposition? Can it be trained?"

  ***

  I stared up at him hardly able to breathe, hit with such a maelstrom of emotions that my body could hardly contain them all; he'd be scraping me off the lamp posts and the distant museum walls.

  Fear, outrage and humiliation. Rebellion. Recognition, joy, lust like sheet lightning. A thunderbolt flash of clarity and connection illuminating the landscape between us. Panic at the view of the precipice at my feet.

  My eyes never left his face. He observed me calmly, his expression serious, aware. At last one of his hands came off my shoulder, held my cheek for a moment, then slid into the hair at the nape of my neck and gently, inexorably, pulled my head back. "You understand now, Maia.”

  “Yes."

  "Good." His face lowered, and he kissed me; a seal, it seemed on our agreement, or whatever it was.

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  Chapter Five

  Reynardine

  In the days that followed, Mrs. Silva downstairs complimented me on my nice new boyfriend, so polite and attentive. She peeked up the stairs when he arrived to take me out, greeted him on his way down, evidently thinking that someone had to stand in for my absent mother. They discussed the new bathroom in the basement that Mr. Silva had just completed, and the health of her hydrangeas. Within days she was serving him coconut cake.

  But she would have been puzzled by his phone calls, which were calm, detailed interrogations rather than lovers' chats.

  "Have you finished the bibliography? How many hours did you work on that? What about the media search on water quality?" On several days, to my intense disappointment, he decided I was too busy to see him. The only way I got through my work on those evenings was the fear of not seeing him the next night. I began skipping lunch to have more time, until he found out and made a no-skipping-meals rule.

  Even when he'd said he wasn't coming I kept listening for his truck. As the neighbourhood was well studded with massive four-by-fours, I spent far too much time looking out the window, disappointed, as some muscly black macho symbol growled by with its empty truck bed. Hoping instead to see well-used burnt sienna beneath my window, brown in shadow but glowing like sunset when it caught the light. The truck was old but cared for, the finish softened and smoothed like a well-used pair of jeans. It got so whenever I saw that colour out on the street, my heart lifted like a balloon.

  It wasn't that my ambivalence was gone. There were still voices asking what the hell I thought I was doing. Some of them were even outside my head; Nikki called and scolded me frequently, nagging me to start discussing some limits before it was too late, a safeword at least. It was like hearing instructions on the flutter kick when white water has you in its grip. I did my best to keep my head above the surface, wired on adrenalin, eager anticipation, and constant fear.

  When Anders did come to the door I had to show him all my work, my heart in my throat. I hadn't had to account in such detail to anyone since grade school. It was particularly embarrassing because ever since grade 51

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  school, Procrastination had been my middle name. Last minute scrambling was how I operated; you could see it in my work. Sometimes I felt my main expertise was in the kinds of shortcuts and fudging that bad planning forces on you. I knew theoretically how to organize myself, but had never gotten around to putting that knowledge into practice. The interrogations continued at my desk, with me flushing painfully at every fault he exposed, and trying not to make excuses.

  At first, to my shame, I had moments of weak resentment. He was making me work a lot harder than I was used to. I caught myself thinking petulantly that I had made it through this far, and done okay, and if my work habits weren't exactly ideal, well, so what? Wallowing in guilt was my modus operandi, and didn't I work better under pressure? Then as his expectations and orders became more and more explicit, to my astonishment I began to be able to get things done without panic and without staying up half the night. The quality was a lot better, too. Before long I was having trouble imagining operating without his organizing hand to direct me.

  Feeble, unspoken resistance seeped away, leaving in its wake a surprised kind of gratitude, over an undercurrent of fear. On the surface, Anders was kind and very patient. He always told me when I did well. But there was a tone in his voice when I fell short: a firm, slightly Danish inflected reprimand with a hint of gravel in it, that made me shiver.

  The power relationship wasn't the only thing lurking beneath the surface. "Soft porn," Anders glinted as he touched the new little waist cincher he had laced up tight around me, just tight enough to make me pant.

  His big hand was around my leg, the new garter belt stretched against my thigh. He had casually forbidden pants and tights. I gathered that this wasn't an important enough rule to be laid down with any emphasis, although there was no doubt in my mind that he expected me to obey him. In his truck, or in the unlit spaces between the streetlights next to the bulk of dark vans, he slid his hand beneath my dress and made me moan. Then he put his fingers in my mouth and made me suck them like lollipops.

  The night we went to the folk club he wouldn't let me wear panties either. I shivered as the night air touched me, felt my pubic hair ruffle in an updraft, and climbed, painfully self-conscious, into his truck. My thighs opened to his nudging fingers and I whimpered, head back against the seat, feeling the pressure of the cincher around my ribs as I tried to breath. At 52

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  each red light the fingers were back. My eyes stared at the red in the darkness, glowing red dominating my visual field as he took over below.

  He parked the truck and I sucked his fingers avidly, then followed him and his violin case into a warm, crowded room with a little stage and people tuning up. There were some curious looks directed my way; I shrank, wishing not to be noticed; it was the last thing I could handle, feeling naked as I did, my cunt swimming. Anders sat down by the stage with me and the first set started. Jigs, reels, hands and feet pounding. Someone sang a ballad, someone else a sly Irish ditty. Anders explained the different styles and I made links to the older music I knew, but after a while I got lost, and just let the bri
ght music take me. Then he got up to play.

  He dominated the little stage, his big shoulders relaxed, the fiddle looking small in those big hands. Straight pale hair gleamed under the lights.

  Well-worn jeans on narrow hips, long thighs that I wanted between my own…. His bow moved and I raised my eyes to watch. I hadn't heard him play before, had no idea what he could do. Those long fingers moved with authority, subtlety, sweetness. The fiddle seemed not so much an object in his hands as an extension of his body. Vibrations stretched, reached out for me, found my frequency, tightened and loosened my strings. The song started slow, his firm hands on the instrument confiding something. He met my eye for a moment. Then he moved into a faster jig, and then a wild reel that had the room jumping.

  I didn't dare dance. By the time we left I was jumpy and revved up, wanting to be grabbed and touched all over. I hummed the last song and swung a little at the end of his hand, and he looked down at me in amusement, keeping a tight grip on my wrist. His case settled in the back, he unlocked the passenger door for me. In its shadow he scooped me up, one hand deep in my crotch, and lifted me onto the seat. I gasped, and his tongue was in my open mouth, his fingers hard inside me. Then he swung my knees around and shut the door. I sat there gasping like a fish thrown on shore, waiting for him to get in the other side and finish what he'd started. But he just put the truck in gear and started off. He glanced over at me sitting there with my mouth hanging open, smiled, stopped the truck and fastened my seatbelt, tight.

  As he drove he hummed in a deep, dark baritone that filled the night inside the truck. It wasn't a song from that evening; the tune rang much older 53

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  bells. Something traditional that I hadn't heard since my mother had played us her old folk albums, back when we were kids. What was it called? Anders was singing the words now.

  And her cherry cheeks and her ruby lips,

  They lost their former dye,

  And she fell on her knees before him,

  All on the mountain high.

  He glinted at me briefly, then went on,

  He had not kissed her but the once or twice, When she come to again, And most eagerly she asked him, Pray tell to me your name.