What was different about them that allowed for a suspension of social mores? Wanting to be part of a couple regardless of how unfulfilling it may be, so many women I’ve worked with have chosen a life of compromises over the alternative. They deny, even in the privacy of their minds, their most creative fantasies, choosing instead to borrow from the sex scenes they read in softfocus fiction. They are afraid to search the twisting tunnels of their own ids to discover what would be arousing-be it talking out loud, role playing or pursuing pain.
And yet this group had overcome all inhibition to indulge in their cravings. To create a solution despite how unconventional it was. Was what they craved unusual? Yes. Was it dysfunctional? It might be for some of them and not for others. Judging them wouldn’t help me to understand how they could be in touch with the darkest and most private parts of their sexual selves. But I could wonder at it. Especially here, in my own home, watching them act out their fantasies for one another to see.
On the monitor, the naked man walked off the stage and toward the woman, whose back was still to the camera. The camera pushed past her pale gray gown, angled down and zoomed in for a close-up of her manicured fingers reaching out and testing the heft of Tim’s testicles. Then she wrapped her hand around his cock, holding it as if it was a leash, and led him out past the all-female audience.
The video cut to a darkened bedroom. Tim’s bare back filled the frame and the woman’s now-naked legs were visible on either side of his body. Her toenails were painted a deep blood red.
“Don’t go fast,” her disembodied voice demanded. “Take your time.” Her fingers clutched at his back, pressing into his flesh, leaving deep, moon-shaped marks.
Soft, ambient light gleamed off his back as he moved in a slow-motion dance.
“You understand this is not for your pleasure. I don’t want you to have any release. Not now. Not at all. Do you think that you can hold back?” Her words weren’t just instructions; she was excited hearing herself speak. “Can you stay hard for me? For as long as I need it?”
“Yes.” His voice was thick and low. Obedient. Without any trace of theatrics. He seemed sincerely respectful.
The only sound for the next few seconds was the stinging noise of his skin slapping against hers.
“Tell me how you can hold off. Doesn’t it feel good?” She whispered so softly I had to lean forward to hear. I could see the sweat on his shoulder blades now, and the way his buttocks flexed, relaxed, and then tensed again.
“It does. It feels too good. But I want to please you.”
“Why?”
“Because I want my reward.”
“The longer you can wait, the more you can give me without giving anything to yourself, the more I’ll reward you. Is that what you want?”
“Yes,” he answered. “Please.”
“Won’t it make you crazy when I start to buck under you? When I start to come? And you can’t?”
“Yes, it will.”
“But you’ll be able to hold off?”
“Yes.”
I sucked in my breath.
“How will you hold yourself back from coming, from spewing out, from shooting into me?” She was lost in her own sex play, speaking now not for him at all, but to heighten her own delight.
“Because it’s what you want me to do.”
As her breath came faster, she made small sounds of delight. His breaths were shallow. The muscles in his back were tensed and delineated. The effort was obviously painful.
Meanwhile, the camera held, motionless.
The man moved in rhythm to the woman’s moans and sighed softly. She shouted out, “No. No. Do you hear me?”
I held my breath.
“Yes,” he whispered. “I’m sorry.”
“Are you sure you can do this?” Her voice sounded urgent.
“Yes.”
A long, slow arc of sound escaped from her and, before it was over, the scene changed and we were back in the library. Tim was on the stage again. Still erect. With his head bowed.
“Now that Tim has passed his first test, let’s get the bidding started.”
I was in an erotic fog, but before I could understand why, I was overwhelmed by a wave of sadness. There was no one I could expend my energy on. No one I could even confess to about how watching a group of women assess a man and test his prowess had gripped me with a want completely unfamiliar to me.
No. That wasn’t why I was melancholy.
There was someone. Even though I’d been with him only once, I was certain-even in that very hazy moment-that Noah Jordain would have understood what I was experiencing. That if it were possible for me to tell him about the video and my reaction to it, he would give me his slow smile that looked the way his voice sounded, take his hand, put it on the side of my face, look right at me, and tell me that he’d play a game with me if that was what I wanted. Any game I wanted to try. That yes, he’d even be happy to stand in front of me naked and do my bidding.
Like a burst of unwanted morning light when you are craving more sleep and darkness, I saw Noah, not in my daydream, but standing in front of that wall of hideous pictures at the station house. All the feelings stirring and swirling through my body and brain were wiped out with one sudden realization.
The man I’d just been watching on the tape, who had stripped down, made himself hard, preformed on command, and then allowed himself to be auctioned off, was the second victim of the killer Noah was hunting.
Tim. Of course. Timothy. Timothy Wheaton. Healthy, bronzed and almost unrecognizable as the gray corpse in the photos at the police station.
With a shaking hand, I pressed the rewind button on the remote, listened to the whir of the tape spinning backward, hit Stop, and then Play. I’d overshot the section so fast-forwarded, all the while watching the sensual footage running by too quickly like bad slapstick.
Finally, I found the section I was searching for.
Tim, standing bare-chested in his jeans, posing for the hungry women.
Tim taking off his pants, and after that his underwear.
Tim showing off his erection, leaving the room with the unidentified woman.
I shut my eyes to recall, as clearly as I could, the photographs on Jordain’s wall. I pictured the face of the man in the shots the newspaper had not run. He was pale, naked and without any life in him, but he was absolutely the same man who was on the tape.
It had been terrifying that one man who had been connected to the Scarlet Society had been killed.
But two men?
That could not be a coincidence.
Two men had to be a pattern.
Twenty-Eight
It was still light when I left the apartment and headed downtown for the parents’ meeting at the rehearsal studio. As I walked from Madison to Lexington to get on the subway, I watched the sky deepen. The twilight was thick and colorless that night and the skyscrapers blended into the gray of the evening, their tips disappearing in the cloud cover and ensuing darkness. The autumnal gold and red leaves were like bursts of fire against the dusky evening.
On the ride, I obsessed over the video, but as I walked into the lobby I forced myself to let go of Dr. Snow’s problems and just be Dulcie’s mom.
Young stars and parents alike sat on metal chairs in the makeshift auditorium, sipping soda, bad coffee, or even worse wine, listening to the director talk about the upcoming out-of-town preview. He handed out schedules that included the name of the hotel the theater company had commandeered for the weekend, the directions, the times of the performances and other pertinent travel arrangements. Then he talked about the kind of stress the kids were all facing and what we could do to help our children as they approached this momentous performance.
Dulcie sat between my ex-husband and me and shifted in her seat, unable to find a position to hold for more than a minute or two. Her glance never left the director’s face, and several times I noticed she was chewing the inside of her cheek, something I hadn’t seen her do in years. Her nervousness was escalating.