by Patricio
(11/05/03)

Chapter 2

He doesn't reply. To her carefully chosen words. The bastard. She goes about the business of her life and he doesn't reply. Desire is an annoying distraction. His face, the way he bows his head, have imprinted themselves on her. Sometimes at work when she's in a meeting, for instance, thinking about the possible dates of the next meeting, or the right way to phrase the minutes of the present meeting, an image of herself comes into her mind, nude, bound by one ankle to a bed, beneath an English pirate with his face and demeanour, the bastard, and she...

She focuses. All day. Most of the day. On her work.

But finally, as she's driving up out of the city and around the bend where she first saw him, weeping, she looks for the curve of his blue car. It's not there. She drives on, trying to let her mind drift back to the important, other things in her life. At home, as the detritus of the days accumulate on the chair in her hallway -- Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday -- she returns to her cubicle and fires up her laptop.

No mail from him. Nothing. Each day she ties the rope to a new part of her -- wrist, thigh, neck -- but it doesn't bring luck, or response, except in her body.

The way she feels about the rope around her neck frightens her, and she changes it to a rope bandana round her forehead. I want to fulfil, not destroy myself, however dark my dreams. Yes I do.

It's only on Friday, in the midst of her working Friday, that she even thinks about the English_Villain's Web site again, and wonders if that's where he's replied. She cancels the night's movie with a friend. She drives home early. She hurries to her cubicle-cell.

Yes. It's changed.

She takes off her clothes, and ties the rope between her wrists, and returns to her laptop. There's a background image that makes her gasp: it's of the landscape at the bend, the bend where she first saw him, weeping: the icy lake, the savage mountains.

There are three words across the image, linking to other screens:

She clicks on 'One'. It's, yes, as she expects, he has reproduced her words, the words she's sent him, framed as an e-mail. She only glances over the words, but quickly sees, in the odd phrase and description -- indeed, in the very name he has her use for herself -- that he's subtly disguised the details, so that no one will know it's her. Will they?

No, no they won't.

She lets the mouse-pointer hover over 'Kleito-' but, guessing what that might lead to, she opts for the other, stranger 'Kleisto-':

violet

I'm not by vocation or employment a gardener but it's one of the roles I fancy in relation to you.

Many violets, it seems, are cleistogamous. They're closed to marriage. Or rather, among other flowers, the ones we call 'normal', a cleistogamous flower is unusual in that it self-pollinates, in the bud, while remaining closed to the world.

I like the notion that you, a woman somewhat closed to the world, will self-pollinate, relish your own form, enjoy your own nectar, under my careful arrangements for your nurture and development.

"I'm not a fucking child!: she says, going back to the bottle for another glass of wine, bastard, condescending bastard, a woman somewhat closed to the world hey? -- returning nevertheless, careful arrangements for nurture and development indeed! -- to the screen to investigate the other link, the 'Kleito':

violet

I'm perenially looking for another word for 'masturbation', which is ugly, isn't it? Here is a suggestion: the verb, 'to englishman'.

your englishman

Her wrists roped to each other, carefully arranged for her nurture and development, Violet englishmans herself.

She is Guinevere, kept naked by a savage Lancelot who, sickened yet corrupted by the violence of his warrior-life, forces her to englishman herself while he draws patterns on her flesh in bloody lines with the tip of his sword.

She is Queen Eleanor of Somewhere, dancing in private to the music of a sad English troubadour, her hands rampantly englishmanning herself inside her skirts.

She is Desiree, the mad wife of a Virginia planter, her hands forced to englishman her body by the whip of the depraved English banker who has taken over the debts of her wastrel husband.

She manages to laugh at herself, between engagements, reminding herself to eat and drink and so forth, trying to remember the old movies lurking behind all these images, sorting the Bette Davis roles from the Vivien Leighs and oh, what's that woman's name...?

Violet englishmans herself. Memories of other dreams enhance her dreams. Cleistogamous, she relishes her own form, enjoys her own nectar, and writes of her pleasure to a man she hardly knows.

How does he know the things he knows about her? Her rational self, returning to inhabit her body on Monday, makes her think about this. He must, under some other name, have been among the passing acquaintances -- known only by nickname, font color, sentence shape -- to whom she has confessed a little of her dreams over the Internet, yes. He may well have masqueraded under a woman's name, to be privy to some of the details of her desires.

There are two things, though, that he couldn't have discovered that way: her route home from work, and the fact that she had rope attached to the rear bumper of her car.

Well (she concludes by Tuesday, no new changes to the Web site, no mails from him) she once almost arranged to meet some other women, and in doing so she probably gave away some information about her location.

Or, indeed, she's taken to attaching jokey, off-focus or otherwise distorted photographs to the names she's used, so somebody might, just might have been able to link such an image to her picture in the company's annual report, or some such. Conceivably.

But why? Why does he want her? Why, the only time she's seen him, did she see such longing in his eyes for her?

And why did she reciprocate so strongly?

And how in hell, anyway (by Thursday, aching for communication from him) could anyone have known about the rope on the bumper, that snapped two week's before when she tried to tow Bernie Burns's ageing pick-up? Somebody at the office? Bernie himself, who thought his gayness was safely in the closet and who was she to tell anyone different? The idea's preposterous. But how, then?

There are no answers to these questions. She forgets even to send them. On Thursday evening in her mailbox she finds a strange message. Someone you know has sent you an intimate gift. If you'd like to know the identity of the sender, click here. If you'd like to know the nature of the gift, click here. If you'd like to be surprised, click here.

The identity of the sender is 'Patrick Linney', of 12 Violet Terrace, Violettown, VI0 LET, United Kingdom.

She decides to be surprised by the nature of the gift.

There's something else to come to terms with first, though. On Friday night, eagerly, if without the wild anticipation of the previous week -- perhaps because of the mystery of the gift to arrive through the mail -- she settles into her cubicle-cell, starts up her laptop, and goes to his Web site.

He's erased everything that went before, and placed only two items there. One is a simple picture of violets, captioned beneath, 'viola corunta sorbet'. She smiles, liking the vulgar hint in the middle word, and the cool taste of the final one.

The second item, the sentence on the left, is stark: Imagine cruelties for me.

She can't. Not tonight. She tries to conjure up the pirate, or the movie derivatives, but none of them appeals to her. She feels strangely unsexy, unwanted. She goes to bed early, in a nightdress she hardly ever wears, and reads a sober book about politics until she falls asleep.

The second gift arrives in plain brown packaging on Saturday morning. A violet jelly strap-on clitoral stimulator that's thin enough to wear under clothing and comes with a remote control for anytime access will certainly make her...Flutterfly!

She laughs. It's a blessed release, the Flutterfly, the laughter. She straps it on herself, then puts on a simple dress -- yes, of purple -- that she treated herself to earlier in the week. She walks out in the rain, sheltering under an umbrella, playing with the remote control. She laughs when the thing slightly dislodges itself.

She gets home and strips to all but the violet stimulator and, oh, all right then, imagines cruelties for him. She crawls naked through her rooms, imagining herself on a lead, being both cosseted and whipped as a choice pet by an English millionaire. She makes herself, still naked, dangle by her arms from the door between the bedroom and the hallway, whipped again, her back criss-crossed by the Englishman's pizzle, clinging there until her shoulders ache and her fingers begin to go numb. She crouches inside a cupboard, as if caged, begging to be allowed out, staying in there so long that her muscles seize and cramp and she has to writhe on the floor and laugh at herself to make it all right.

In the night she binds herself to her bed by her right ankle and her English tyrant keeps waking her with pleasure even though she begs for sleep.

Oh, and the next day, Sunday, the ordinary demands of her life intervene and she has to make herself take off the gift and go out and be witty and charming and only briefly does she permit herself to see a woman, to her own surprise, a woman called Violet on all fours, being used as a table by a card-playing Englishman absorbed in endless Patience, who keeps slapping and caressing her...

She writes to him. In the night, nude, in her cubicle-cell, the gift attached to her. She wants to use the word 'I' to him but wonders if that's wrong. She wants him to be just outside these walls, with the remote in his hand, controlling her pleasure. She wants his touch, if only at one remove. I...

She wants, above all, for the game to continue. She hungers for the story: what happens next, to Violet? Show me. Show me.

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