by Patricio
(12/24/03)
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Chapter 3
Her spare keys disappear.
Once she realizes they're missing, she thinks she knows when it
happened. Probably. It was when the woman across the way was in a
panic about her child and in the rush the door got left open and...
It's the day after that, the Tuesday, when she gets home from work,
that she notices the keys aren't on their familiar hook and she
realizes all that.
There's a strange scent on the air too. She tracks it down to the
living room, underneath her green Oriental rug.
She gets down on her knees. Beneath the rug, set into a floorboard,
flush, is a metal ring that wasn't there before. The iron, or
whatever it is, is the thickness of her thumb. A perfect, ring-shaped
opening has been made in the wood. The ring is heavy when she lifts
it; clangs when she drops it back into its place.
There's nothing missing at all, as far as she can tell. She goes
through every room. No absence: just this strange presence.
It must be him. Mustn't it? The villain who calls her Violet?
Should she tell someone? Complain to someone?
She's been stopping herself wearing his gift but she doesn't know why.
His 'clitoris stimulator' with its remote control. After the first
flush of -- of? -- pleasure, she's decided there's something
unromantic and mechanical about it and...
And now she puts it on, and sends him these words, Tuesday night, and
signs them violet, and...
She hauls out the futon, the one guests sleep on, and lays it down in
the living room.
She ties her right ankle to the ring under the rug, and doesn't sleep well.
The next night, when she gets home from work, he hasn't responded to
her words. Well, not directly; but the changes to the rooms are worse.
Or better. Or...?
Above her bed, more than six foot by six foot, is a mirror, fixed to
the ceiling.
She takes off her clothes, and fastens her fragment of rope to her
left ankle, and watches the woman in the mirror make love to
herself. Englishman herself, she says out loud, in reproach
for not using the word, when she reaches for his gift again, to fasten
to herself, so that she can imagine her touch on the control is his
hand, controlling...
It's only the next morning, Thursday, when the fan doesn't work in the
bathroom, that she notices in there the scent of wood-shavings. Why
did she assume he would make only one modification at a time?
When she gets the chair from the hallway to stand on, the fan just
twists away in her hand. Behind, above it, there's another embedded
metal ring. You could suspend, or secure, something from the bathroom
ceiling, using that ring.
She wonders if she should do something about this.
Like, go to work late in order to...
No. No. Important meeting. But she writes to him surreptitiously
once that's over with. She checks his Web site, later, but there's no
change.
Thursday night the smell is in the kitchen. She knows, as soon as she
enters and drinks her routine orange juice straight from the carton,
she knows from the semi-darkness what's happened. In fact, in the
last couple of days, speculating about what he might do, she has
half-imagined it herself. She worries, for more than a moment, that
her very imagining it might have made it come to pass.
No, don't be silly, it's him. It must be. The line of spotlights
above the area where she chops, prepares, and cooks, is still there
but has been rendered defunct. Above and hidden underneath it is a
long metal bar, with three separate rings in it, one at either end,
one in the middle.
For a moment she sees, in her mind's eye, a naked woman suspended
there, upside down, something from her vagina attached all the way up
to...
She has to go to the bedroom, and englishman herself for the
pleasure of the woman in the mirror, more than once.
Oh, that he would come to her, and fasten her to his rings and hooks
and secret places, and...
And what? Isn't she more than happy with her dreams? Happy, and
safe? Happier than she would be with the risks of reality?
She sends him her dreams, wondering if he will answer.
