The Secret Journey (27 page)

And it's going to hit. Right now.

Now!

Good girl, such a good girl. You can relax
now, we're done. But I want you to go over this exercise until you
know your positions by heart. I want you to go over them every
night, before you go to bed. Strip, rest, attention, kneel,
present, open. Every night, honey, because you're mine. And at the
end, when you're naked, kneeling, presented, open, I want your
climax, offered up like your pussy is now, a ritual supplication of
your body and your mind. I want that, honey, because I want you to
be ready for me, whenever I want you, however I want you. I want
that because there's nothing I want more than you. Right now, and
always.

The
Writer

The train wheels pound steadily in the
darkness and cold rain streaks the windows, blurring city lights
into a semi-surrealistic landscape. The car is almost deserted.
Across from me an expensively dressed businessman pores over
no-doubt important files. A few seats down a young woman in a dress
skirt and a jacket that was probably warm enough this morning is
immersed in a book. My reflection stares back at me, half mirrored
over the cityscape, showing a man I somehow have trouble
recognizing. My journey is almost at an end, three planes, two
trains, and a continent ago. I have two more station stops and a
cab ride left. I’ve been traveling sixteen hours, grabbing sleep
where I can, eating overpriced and under-nourishing food, occupying
my time with books, with shallow conversation with people I’ll
never see again, with the idle contemplation of the world seen from
far, far above.

I had intended to put some work into my book,
but my laptop remains in my carry-on bag, untouched since takeoff.
In sixteen hours of enforced idleness I can produce ten thousand
words of undying prose, given only inspiration. Inspiration was
lacking for the trans-ocean flight, for the entire journey, has
been lacking for a year now. My production file remains as empty as
the house I’m returning to. The reason is simple. Emily is gone,
gone so completely it sometimes seems she was never there at
all.

It has never been easy, this past year, but
it’s not quite so hard when I’m away. Because of that I’ve made a
point of being away, I tell my publisher I’m promoting my previous
book, but in reality I’m avoiding the one I should be writing now.
This last trip has been six months living out of a suitcase, forty
cities, twenty-four thousand frequent flyer miles. I’ve signed
autographs and given lectures, gone to launch parties and reading
circles. I’ve shaken hands, been interviewed on every form of media
the modern world allows. The only thing I haven’t done is
forgotten, and the only problem is away never lasts, and the
hardest thing of all is coming home to an empty house.

Everyone loved my last book, everyone wants
to know when the next one is coming out. “Soon,” I tell them, which
I know is a lie. I’m supposed to be done by now, and my agent calls
me weekly for updates. My publisher has given up calling.

The train slows, glides into the next
station, they announce the stop. The businessman closes up his
briefcase and gets off. Outside snow is starting to blend into the
rain, heavy wet flakes sticking to the window to melt there, to
slide down and away and off the bottom edge of the window to vanish
into the darkness. I consider pulling out the laptop and at least
going through the motions of writing, but there’s no point. The
empty screen, the beckoning keyboard, these are an exquisite form
of self-torture that I'm simply too tired to indulge in right
now.

The doors close and the train slowly
accelerates, the wheels beating against the rails in a rising
rhythm. I watch as we start to outrace cars on the highway that
parallels the tracks and I think about their drivers, each isolated
in their own metal and glass cocoon, each immersed in their private
thoughts as they drive. All of us are sharing this slice of the
night in total anonymity, all of us are united only in our desire
to be elsewhere, quickly.

My problem is, I never get to elsewhere, and
that desire never goes away. I’ve been running from myself, running
from my memories, and I’m running out of places to run. An
industrial park slides past, tanks and hoppers and pipes at a
chemical plant, thousands of concrete highway barriers ranked with
military precision at a huge industrial building where, I presume,
they make highway barriers. I’m somehow surprised that there’s a
market for them large enough to support a plant this big, but the
evidence is in front of me. It’s a thought I’ve had before, I’ve
taken this train on this same route dozens, maybe hundreds of
times. I recognize the landmarks, I know that the level crossing
comes after the lumberyard, and then we’re into a mile or so of
semi-suburbia before the bridge over the ravine where the park is,
and yet if you asked me to describe any of it when I wasn't looking
at it, I'd be able to give only the vaguest description. The mind
is a funny thing.

If you asked me to describe Emily it would be
different. Every detail of her is burned into my heart. I can close
my eyes and feel the texture of her hair, and see the cluster of
freckles on her lower back. I know about the tiny, odd bump on the
back of her right ear. I can hear her voice, see her smile, taste
her kiss. Could she only have been my imagination, so real and so
detailed? There have been other women since Emily. None of them
have been as real as her. None have done anything more than
highlight the place in my life she no longer fills. It isn’t her
fault that she’s gone, it isn’t their fault they aren’t her. Could
I really have dreamed her, when my imagination can’t conjure a
single word?

The night slides by with a million strangers
out there in it. Surely, somewhere in that teeming multitude, there
must be another woman as brilliant, as beautiful, as alive as she
was. I sometimes wonder if it’s even possible to love, truly love,
more than once in your life. You can dream of love, but can you
love a dream? The mind is a funny thing.

The wheels pound, the miles pass, and then
we’re rolling into another station, the last stop, my stop, end of
the line. I collect my baggage and get up when the doors open. As I
stand up I notice the woman looking at me. She’s attractive,
mid-to-upper twenties, well dressed in conservative style. I give
her a polite smile and go out onto the platform, leaning against
the wind as the sleet whips into my face. I hurry into the warmth
of the station, get out my phone and call a cab as I walk.

“Excuse me?”

I look around. It’s her.

“Yes?”

“Can I ask your name?”

I tell her.

She smiles. “I thought I recognized you.” She
holds out the book she was reading and a pen. “Can I get you to
sign this?”

I take the book. It isn’t the one I’ve been
signing for the last six months, it’s another one, with another
name on the black and red cover. I look at her. “This isn’t
me.”

“No, but it’s your pseudonym.”

My eyebrows go up. “Not a lot of people know
that.”

“It’s an open secret.”

“Only if you care to do the research.”

She nods. “I saw your talk at the university,
last year.”

“Who should I sign it to?”

She tells me.

“
Is there anything in particular you’d
like me to write?”

“
Anything you want.” She
smiles.

I think of something clever, sign the book
and hand it back. “Did you like it?”

She hesitates. “It was… intense...”

Intense. Yes, it was intense. There’s a
reason I used a pseudonym, used a different agent and a different
publisher. This is the only thing I’ve managed to write since
Emily, and unlike what I’m supposed to be writing, the words in
this book came spilling out of me like blood from a mortal wound.
It doesn't fit in with anything else I've written. It doesn't fit
in with anything anyone else has written. I don’t want friends and
family knowing that I wrote it. Some things are so personal you can
only share them with strangers.

“
But did you like it?” I
ask.

She blushes, looks down, her voice dropping a
few decibels. “Yes. Yes, I liked it very much.”

"I'm glad." I allow myself a smile at her
embarrassment. I know as much about her as she knows about me now,
perhaps too much for strangers to know about each other when
they’re standing face to face. A cab pulls up in front of the
station. "This is me,” I say. “It was nice meeting you."

“Listen, are you… I mean… Where are you
going? Maybe we can share…?”

“I’m going to dinner,” I say it as I decide
it. I don't want to go back to my empty house, not yet. "Anywhere
downtown works for me."

"I live downtown."

The driver opens the trunk and we throw our
bags in. I hold the door open for her as she gets into the warm
darkness of the back of the cab. I give the driver my destination
and she gives him hers, and we talk about the miserable weather,
and then the political situation, and a few other trivialities.
We're well enough acquainted by the time the cab pulls up in front
of my restaurant that it seems natural for me to invite her in with
me, and natural for her to accept.

We go in, are seated, and continue talking
about everything, about nothing. She is, perhaps, just one more
passing travel acquaintance, a person who'll fill a few hours of my
life and then vanish without trace. Still, she is pleasant and
intelligent company, witty and articulate, and there is, unspoken
between us, the inherent possibility that there might be more to
come. Dinner is ordered, arrived, is eaten, dessert follows, and
then coffee, and then she asks me a question.

"So is your book based on real life?" She
almost manages to be casual in asking.

I smile. "Real life is all I have to base it
on."

"I mean, have you done... any of those
things?"

I nod. "At some time or other." I watch her
face, watch her eyes as she tries to ask the next question. I save
her the struggle by turning her first question around. "Have
you?"

"No."

"Would you like to?"

She looks at me, our gazes lock. She bites
her lower lip and it seems to take forever before she answers. I
give her points for what I see in her face while I wait. There is
excitement, but also cool calculation. She wants what I can give
her, but she's also not going to rush into something based purely
on desire. She’s a smart girl, and that just makes her more
attractive. Eventually she nods. "Yes."

I beckon the waiter, give him my credit card
and get him to call a cab for us.

"Are we going to your place?" she asks at the
door while we wait for another cab.

"Yours is closer."

"But don't you need..."

"Everything I need is already in your
mind."

Her eyebrows go up at that, but she doesn't
say anything. The cab ride is short, it would have been a pleasant
walk in better weather. I put my hand on her knee and open her
legs, slide my hand up her thigh, under her skirt to find her
panties soaking wet. I smile to myself. It's going to be a good
night. I make idle conversation with the cab driver while I explore
her cunt and she squirms on the seat, biting her lip to avoid
gasping and moaning. We pull up in front of her building and I tell
the driver to wait.

"Are you going to be that fast?" she asks,
half teasing, half questioning.

"We'll see."

She's practically skipping with excitement as
she leads me in, leads me up a flight of stairs to a small but well
appointed two bedroom apartment. I kiss her at the threshold
gently, briefly, not nearly enough, and then let her show me her
space. It's nice, hardwood floors, slightly messier than I would
have expected, breakfast dishes still in the sink, books piled on
the coffee table and on bookshelves against one wall, an expensive
stereo system and racks and racks of compact discs. She's a book
lover and a music lover, and I take a moment to glance at the
titles in her collection.

The second room is her study, and her desk is
there with her computer, and as she's showing me I take her hands
and guide them down so her palms are flat on her desk. She stops
talking, and her eyes are big and wide. I undo my belt. It sounds
like a snake as I slide it out through the loops. She gasps,
looking back over her shoulder to see what I'm doing.

"It works like this," I say, pulling up her
skirt. "You're going to get twelve with the belt. You keep your
hands on the desk. If you take them off, we're done."

"Done?"

"Done. I'll go home, the cab is waiting. No
fault, no blame, no hard feelings."

She nods. "Okay." There's a tremble in her
voice.

"You're going to count them."

She nods again. "Yes."

"Yes, sir," I remind her, because she expects
to be reminded.

"Yes, sir."

Her underwear is basic black, no obstacle to
the belt. I raise it and pause to admire the curve of her luscious
buttocks, her trim waist. There have been other women since Emily,
but there hasn't been this. I haven't had the emotional strength.
Do I have it now?

I bring the belt down to snap across her ass.
She yelps, gasps and almost brings her hands off the desk in sheer
reflex. At the last moment she manages to keep her fingertips
down.

"One. Sir."

I slash the belt down again. "Two, sir." The
pain is clear in her voice, but her hands stay flat this time.

I swing it again, harder. "Three, sir." She's
anguished, and angry red lines are swelling on the curve of her
ass.

Again. "Four, sir." It becomes clear that
I'll be sending the cab away empty.

"Five, sir." With a sort of detached surprise
I can feel my erection swelling hard against my zipper.