Elise Blackwell - The Lower Quarter

When she finally rolled down the sheet, her hands froze for several seconds. His back was crisscrossed by dozens of white-pink lines, as though his pigmentation had been removed by whip or martinet or blade or whatever weapon had been used to do this to him. Some of the lines were fine and shallow, as if etched. Others seemed cut right through his skin. She’d once read, because it was the kind of story she couldn’t stop herself from clicking on, that torture makes a person unnaturally sensitive to pain his whole life, including through constant anticipation.

She was unsure if she could continue, if she should, but eventually she moved into the experience, finding pleasure in giving pleasure where there had once been extreme pain. His response was ordinary in her experience: relaxation. In moments her thumbs lingered in the small rivers, reaching in for the past, but she made sure to do her job, finding the knots — unrelated to the old scars but rather the product of recent hunching over computers that she found in all clients — pressing into them, making him breathe against the pain, relax around it, until the kinks submitted and then were gone.

When it was time to cover his back and move to his feet and legs, she did so reluctantly and by reminding herself that here, for this brief time, she was not an artist or a bartender or a provider of adult niche services or a submissive. She was a bodyworker, a therapist, someone whose job was to make things better.

Thirty minutes later her client lay on his back, legs and arms done, and Marion finished by manipulating his neck, taking away the final traces of too many hours on a computer. She reached down under him, her last touch of his scars, and worked her way up. Hot towel over the face, light touch down the arms, squeeze of the covered foot.

“We’re all done. Feel free to relax for a few minutes before I go,” she said softly, hoping he would rise and give her a cash gratuity instead of running it through the hotel spa — something her nonmassage clients seemed to understand was the best way to do business.

As though she had willed it, he did sit up. He asked her to hand him his wallet, pulling from it a hundred-dollar bill, which was generous in the extreme and usually meant that he was about to ask her to “finish the massage.” She weighed the pros and cons of giving him a hand job and decided she didn’t want to. She wanted to be an artist who was a massage therapist on the side. Only that. But if the money was contingent on the extra service, then she needed the money. She wondered how long he would take.

But he just thanked her and gave her the hundred. “A most excellent massage. I’m going to ask for you by name next time I’m in town.”

“Marion,” she said and thanked him. “I know I shouldn’t, but can I ask how you got those scars?”

“An aficionado of scars? But you asked me a question and not for my opinion of your question. My scars were legally sanctioned, or at least delivered by the state.”

“But here you are in the Ritz-Carlton.”

He laughed, deep and throaty, as though genuinely amused. “You see, in my country they will torture you even if you are very rich. In fact, the more money you have, the greater risk you might pose. Of course, if you are as rich as my father is, then they can’t hold your son forever.” He smiled at her, but his eyes looked sad and tired. “They can just make him feel as though it would be, as though it was.”

She looked at him, and it seemed in that moment that they shared something authentic, though almost immediately she realized that they didn’t know each other at all and perhaps had nothing in common. Choosing moderate pain and having severe pain inflicted against your will are not the same thing at all, and she felt slightly sick about herself for linking them momentarily. She vowed to return to the unexamined life, starting immediately.

“Marion,” she repeated, feeling certain that she would never see him again but that, years later, she would remember him, this man who now told her his name was Samuel.

Clay

He’d scheduled one more assignation with Marion before his father was due to return. His father never indicated how long he was staying, which could be anywhere from a couple of nights to several weeks. Clay knew he might not see the girl again anytime soon.

Hooking up with Marion about twice a week, which was what they had worked up to, seemed to fit well for both of them. He did not want to see her more often than that, but after a few days since he’d last seen her he would find that he almost missed her — and that he was ready to do more of what they did together. Between visits he would work, mostly, but still he thought too much about Johanna. Designing scenarios and scripts for Marion gave his mind another destination. He and Marion were compatible; he and Johanna were not. Yet he was in love with Johanna — it was as simple as that — so after a few hours with the girl he found her increasingly unpalatable and wanted her to leave. Two or three days later, though, he would smile when she came to mind, and he would plan their next encounter. Then he would call her if she didn’t call him first.

Sometimes she would still be marked from her last visit, and he would hesitate. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” she always said, often insisted. She never used the safe word, even when he felt he’d gone too far. He admired her for that, he really did, even if it was the product of nothing more impressive than stubbornness, or pride that manifested as stubbornness. Eventually she would have to use the word he’d given her, her key to unlock the door Johanna had been unable to unlock — the way out of pain. He planned to make sure that Marion would eventually give in. It would disappoint him when it happened, in both of them, but he was who he was and couldn’t help it. When she said the word — screamed it or whispered it — he would, of course, stop. It would be their last encounter, not because he would necessarily end it there but simply because they would be done with each other then and would have to realize that sooner or later.

Marion arrived wet, having ridden her bicycle in the rain. He could have picked her up or paid for a taxi to fetch her, but he liked the idea that she worked for it, that she suffered even on the way and would have to make her way home on quivering legs.

He was feeling affectionate, though, and drew for her a hot bath with expensive bubbles and opened a bottle of one of his father’s purchased-at-auction burgundies. His father boasted about his frugality — and about not being a snob — because he bid for burgundies rather than wines from Bordeaux. But Clay had a close idea of just how much of his mother’s fortune was sunk into the wine cellar. It was an amount that would set someone like Marion up for life.

Marion emerged from the bath dewy and naked, holding a glass of the ruby-colored wine. Her body was a reduction of a perfect one — right in its proportions but of unsatisfactory substance because she was so short. She stood waiting for him to pounce in some way, if only with instructions, and he could see she worried about spilling the wine.

“Sit down and enjoy it,” he told her, and sat in one of the room’s two wing chairs. She sat in the other, pulling her knees to her chest.

“No,” he told her. “Put your legs down and cross them. Sit up straight. Pretend you’re at a cocktail party, only naked. Then relax.”

She did as he said, except that she did not relax. He could see it in the tension between her small ankles, in the unnaturally even way she lifted her glass to her mouth, in her darting glances. Really he didn’t know anything about her outside their shared interest except what he’d gathered from her speech, which was that she came from a lower-middle-class background, probably in the region but definitely not the city. Partially educated — probably more than her parents but not by a lot. He sensed that she was isolated, though whether by circumstance or choice he wasn’t sure. If he had to guess, he would pick circumstance. There was an abandoned quality to her, but perhaps she was just picking up the smell of the city she inhabited.