Heather Lewis: Notice

I pulled on the jeans and shirt I’d worn yesterday and then got out of there. I took the main stairs and then went through the living room, out to the pool. I sat in the chair that was becoming home and tried to find reasons for what I was feeling.

I hated how clear-headed I was, how sober. I would’ve made for a drink except it would’ve meant going inside – something I’d decided I wouldn’t do until she asked for me.

I wanted to leave her completely alone. I knew I’d indulged myself, and not her, by lingering. By making her kick me out while pretending she’d need me or want me.

I understood what had happened between us. Or to her. I knew it, though I couldn’t explain it, or maybe just wouldn’t, not even to myself. I knew it from her side, hated how helpless and feeble I’d become. I could only imagine she felt contempt for me because that’s what I felt for myself.

It took me this long to notice how cold I was, and then longer to see there was nothing anywhere out here that’d help. I hugged myself, rubbed my hands over my shoulders until I could imagine this warmed me. I got lost really, just in how my own hands soothed me. Soon I closed my eyes and soon after I let go of myself and tried to ignore it when I began shaking again.

She finally did come outside and sit with me. She wore a big sweater that looked like the kind someone knits for you. She noticed my shivering and held out her arms and so I clambered into her chair with her, let her wrap us up together and I think then I slept or did something close to it. I don’t know what she did or how long this lasted.

That night worked differently. Because of us really, her and me. We’d gone from the chair by the pool to her bed. I hadn’t been in there since that one night. We’d moved inside because we were cold and cramped. We’d gone upstairs to be comfortable, gone to her room because it was closest. This was the kind of day we were having. Nothing registered except wanting comfort.

We lay on the bed. On top of it, with our clothes on, her in that sweater still. We pulled a quilt over us because it seemed we couldn’t get warm enough and then we drifted some more. Drifted somewhere else, or maybe back to the same place, I don’t know.

It seemed he never came home. That’s how it seemed at first. Then she noticed cufflinks right there on the table beside us. And I saw the suit coat draped on a chair and a tie neatly folded over it. Then I guess we drifted off again because we never did see him, just saw his things.

This started something ticking in me. Started me wondering and I could tell she was wondering too but it was too soon to say anything. I think we were afraid of ourselves. Afraid of what we’d accomplished by accident. What we’d managed out of fatigue and soreness.

For this reason we worked the next day differently. We kept away from each other. She took the car off somewhere. Completely alone for the first time in days I’d stopped counting, I weighed leaving altogether. I could’ve left in the sense I was able to. No one would stop me. But that was because no one needed to.

I pretended to consider it – as if to prove to myself I could. That staying was a choice I was making for money. Money I had yet to see. In truth, leaving had become inconceivable. And, worse, I couldn’t tell for sure which one of them held me.

When she came home, late in the afternoon, both of us dressed for him. Me in another version of the same thing, her in another negligee.

I was ready before she was so I stood in the doorway of her bedroom and watched her. Then we went downstairs to wait. Sat on the couch in the living room – me smoking and drinking, her just drinking.

He was late. We both noticed and it made us jumpy and hopeful. We were giddy, nearly, by the time we heard his car on the gravel, and then his key, and the door, his briefcase on the marble.

He fixed himself a drink and sat across from us. “What have the two of you been up to?” he asked. These might have been the first words I’d heard out loud all day. I searched my brain trying to remember whether Ingrid had said anything today, or even yesterday. Whether I had.

“We’ve been idle,” she said, and her voice scared me like I was losing her and me both to her words.

“Is that true?” he said to me.

“I suppose so.”

I said this not quite sure I was speaking, not sure what he wanted to hear.

“That’s good then,” he said. “You’re rested.”

I tried to figure what this meant. Whether we’d made some kind of mistake. I’d forgotten for a minute that what we said didn’t matter.

He said, “Here, Ingrid. Fix me another.”

She went and took his glass, crossed the room to the bar. He got up himself and sat beside me. He said, “I have something special, something just for you.” He put his arm around my shoulders. With his other hand he dropped a pill into my mouth. And then he began stroking my throat like you would an animal. I tipped my head back into the crook of his arm. Heard him whisper to me that I’d like it.

At first, I felt nothing at all, but soon I’d slumped against him. I could barely see Ingrid coming back with his drink, then felt her sit down on the other side of me. I closed my eyes, though this seemed foolish. His hand had gone from my throat to my chest. He opened buttons, began undressing me. I felt her hands in this, too, until I had nothing on.

In my mind I kept struggling, not against them but to figure out what he’d given me. I couldn’t imagine what had knocked me so far and done it so fast.

He carried me upstairs but Ingrid didn’t come with us. I hadn’t heard him tell her to stay. It seemed she just knew to.

When he put me down on their bed I reached for the bedspread. I wanted to cover myself with it. I felt cold and less groggy because of this. He smacked me hard enough that I lay still, then he took off his belt, doubled it over and hit me a few times. Across the face mostly, and my breasts, but with the drug it felt like an afterthought.

He looped it around my neck and cinched it through the buckle, tied my hands together with the end. Pretty soon after that I woke up for real. The goddamn drug wasn’t there anymore and I had him on my chest and taking his dick out. He rubbed it against my cheek until it was hard. Then he slid down me.

“You’re going to like this,” he said. Said it like he knew everything about me better than I did. His hands were between my legs opening me up and then putting his dick in. He fucked me slow at first like to make sure where I was, to make sure I was feeling things.

I paid attention to my arms. With my hands tied that way I could only move them so much before I choked myself. I had to keep them over my head but bent in a way that started to ache very quickly.

He could see how hard I had to work at this – was all over his face. That slight smile I’d come to expect. He had his arms on either side of me. They took his weight so he could hold himself over me. I wanted anything but him watching me so close; felt this pull to close my eyes but as soon as I did he took hold of my arms. Pushed them until I was strangling myself. Or he was.

This meant I couldn’t scream but then I don’t think I tried to. I think maybe I cried, though I’m not sure of it. I know what he did lasted a long time. That he fucked me a long time before he pulled out. That he was still hard when he went back to sitting on my chest and telling me to open my mouth. Smacking me when I didn’t, but not very hard because he didn’t need to.

I didn’t do so well at sucking him. His belt still choked me and his dick did too – made him impossible to swallow. He seemed to like that, though. That seemed to be the point because he let himself come until I was choking all over myself.