“You’re obviously talking from experience.”
“Of getting crazy once in a while? Sure. I’m talking from intimate experience.”
“Care to give me an example?”
“You don’t want to know. Really you don’t. Some of the things I’ve done in this very room … ”
“Tell me.”
“I wouldn’t know where to begin.”
Her gaze flitted off around the room, as though she was looking for some cue for her memories. If it was an act, it was a very good one. In fact this whole performance was looking better and better.
Finally, she said: “We used to play poker here. Sometimes roulette.”
“Marco and I figured that out.”
“Sometimes,” she said, her gaze returning to him, “I was the prize.”
“You?”
“Me.”
“I don’t think I understand.”
“You understand perfectly well.”
“You’d give yourself to the winner?”
“See? You understood. I didn’t do it every night. I’m not that much of a slut.” She was smiling as she spoke, lapping up his disbelief. She began to walk towards him, slowly, matching her approach to the rhythm of her words. “But on the nights when you need to be crazy — ”
“What did you give them? A kiss!”
“Pah! A kiss! As if I’d be satisfied with so little. No! Down on the floor in front of the losers, that’s what I’d give them. Like dogs, if we felt like it.”
The way she stared at the ground as she spoke, it was clear she was remembering something very specific. The subtlest of motions went through her, as though her body was recalling the sensation of pressing back against a man; to take him, all of him, inside her.
“Supposing somebody won that you didn’t like?”
“There was no such man. Not here, in my house. They were all gods. Beautiful men, every single one. Some of them were crude at first. But I taught them.” She was watching Todd closely as she spoke, measuring his response. “You like hearing this?”
He nodded. It wasn’t quite the way he’d expected this conversation to go, but yes, he liked her confessions. He was glad his pants were baggy, now that she was so close to him, or she’d have seen for herself how much he liked them.
“So let me be sure I got this right. The winner would fuck you, right here on the ground — ”
“Not on the bare boards. There used to be carpets. Beautiful Persian carpets. And there were silk cushions, red ones, which I kept in a heap over there. I like to make love amongst cushions. It’s like being held in somebody’s hand, isn’t it?” She opened her cupped hand in front to demonstrate the comfort of it. “In God’s hand.”
She lifted the bed of her palm in front of his eyes, and then, without warning, she reached out and touched his face. He felt nothing through the bandages, but he had the illusion that her hand was like a balm upon his cheek, cooling his raw flesh.
“Does that hurt?”
“No.”
“Do you want me to go on telling you?”
“Yes, please.”
“You want to hear what I did … ”
” … on the cushions. Yes. But first, I want to know — ”
“Who?”
“No, not who. Why?”
“Why? Lord in Heaven, why would I fuck? Because I loved it! It gave me pleasure.” She leaned closer to him, still stroking his cheek. He could smell her throat on the breath she exhaled. The air, for all its invisibility, was somehow enriched by its transport into her and out again. He envied the men who’d taken similar liberties. In and out; in and out. Wonderful.
“I love to have a man’s weight bearing down on me,” she went on. “To be pinned, like a butterfly. Open. And then, when he thinks he’s got you completely under his thumb, roll him over and ride him.” She laughed. “I wish I could see the expression on your face.”
“It’s not pretty under there.” He paused, a chilling thought on his lips.
“The answer’s no,” she said.
“The answer to what?”
“Have I spied on you while your bandages were being changed? No I haven’t.”