He thought instead of the girl who’d come. He’d hurt her, he knew. Left long horizontal welts striping her thighs, oblong bruises mapping her ass, mild rope burns braceleting her wrists. She’d be back for more — soon, he hoped. He’d never seen anything like her for sheer ability. She could take the pain, but she wasn’t a masochist. Not a masochist but a true submissive, who took the pain because it was given to her. Her welts would subside. Her bruises would fade to an ugly yellow and then altogether. She would hide the marks on her arms with long-sleeved shirts despite the warmth and humidity. And then she’d be back to let him do whatever he wanted, to hand over her fate to him because she didn’t want the responsibility — or had no idea what to do with it.
What he wanted wasn’t what the girl thought he was looking for when she recognized his desire to be punished. He did want to be punished, but only to the extent that he deserved it, just to even the deck. She couldn’t give him that — he’d have to find it elsewhere or create it for himself or, best of all, trick Johanna into doing it — but this new girl could give him the other thing he wanted. She thought he needed to explore empathy, compassion, and he’d read this theory before. Maybe that was true of those doughy morons with leather costumes and soft hearts, playing dungeon while hoping to fall in love. That wasn’t him.
What he’d enjoyed about the afternoon with the girl was nothing more complicated than control. Having it. Using it. Knowing he could take more of it if and when he wanted to. Find her lines and cross them, the girl whose name he’d forgotten because he’d identified it as fake the moment she’d said it. Next time, the next time, she’d tell him her real name and he would use it against her. And if she thought she wanted to be free from making decisions, then next time he would show her that she didn’t understand things at all by making her choose between unpleasant alternatives.
Johanna had agreed to meet him at the park, though the zoo was still closed and flashed no sign of reopening. Since moving to the city, Johanna had visited the zoo every few weeks, sometimes meeting him afterward outside the zoo, across from Ochsner Island. Once — no, twice — he’d met her in the zoo. That second time, she had talked wistfully about the animals living outside their element, removed from the lives that would have been theirs in a better world.
“As if there’s such a thing as a better world,” Clay had sneered before softening and saying, “That’s why zoos are depressing. How can you stand coming here all the time?”
“To witness, I suppose.” Then she shrugged, shook her hair from her face. “No, that should be the reason, but that is not quite it. What I do is pay my respects. I don’t feel sorry for these animals; I admire them. They sit straight, they eat, they make do with this small life they are allowed. Maybe they wait for the next one, or maybe they are too animal dumb to know any difference. But I think they sense it. The breeze blows, and they smell something else, know the world is larger.” She paused, and Clay imagined her trying to pick up a scent in the air. She continued, just a little louder: “Who knows what their life would have been like in the wild? Maybe they would be dead from some suffering disease or be murdered by poachers or probably would not be born at all.”
Whether she believed this or was just trying it out or was simply trying to be her version of nice, Clay didn’t know. As always, he left feeling blunted.
After that conversation they met only after her trips to the zoo, on the bank of the little canal around Ochsner Island, gazing on the small oval of land that served as a rookery for herons, egrets, and birds whose names Clay had been taught in childhood but hadn’t tried to remember. It worked better for both of them to observe only free animals while they talked around the subjects they talked around.
Clay could see her now from a distance as he walked across the park, still unspotted. She was sitting directly on the grass, under a tree, legs stretched straight in front of her, her gaze on the Isle of Birds. He slowed, stopped, seeing her unnoticed, lingering for the moment in which her knowledge of his gaze didn’t influence what she did. No impact of the observer on the experiment.
What happened every time he saw her happened now: a tightening of the chest, blood to the groin, the specific small throb of the carotid, a vague sickness. Perhaps this is enough punishment, he thought before moving toward her again, to experience these unwanted sensations every time. The only missing element was restitution.
Though she didn’t turn her head, he knew from the slightly changed angle of the clean line of her hair that she sensed his approach. She was telling herself that it was he, no longer a threat, not a reason to startle but still a reason to steel. He thought he could see her shoulder blades pull back, more than slightly, into a spot between them. The line of her hair returned to a perfect horizontal, and in the sunlight her hair seemed one shimmering pale blond. As he drew closer he saw its thousand subtle shades.
“How bad is the damage?” he asked as he sat down next to her, though she’d already reported the condition of her place to him over the phone.
“Still waiting to see if the floors buckle, but I have no right to complain.”
She asked him no question in return, and they watched the birds for several minutes. He’d never known anyone worse at small talk than Johanna, which of course only contributed to his complicated, unrequited attraction. To his surprise, she broke their silence.
“I had a dream about this place a couple of nights ago, that one day all the birds just flew away and stayed away for a whole year. The newspaper was full of theories about construction noise and pollution and changed weather patterns, but nobody really knew why they flew away. The birds were just gone — all the species — and Bird Island was empty. No one knew if they would come back or not.”
Clay glanced sideways at her. Whenever he looked at her he felt like he was stealing something, and the shame of that now stopped him from analyzing her dream, from revealing to her the obviousness of it.
“I had a strange dream recently, too,” he said. “I dreamed that a child was found in a cave. Apparently it had been raised by wolves, but for some reason the wolves had left it in the cave alone. I woke up that day and started a new book about people who find the child and bring it back to the world of humans. I plan to call it Raised by Wolves.”
“Boy or girl?” Johanna asked.
Clay shrugged.
Her gaze stayed on the isle. “You do not think it matters, or you haven’t decided?”
“I guess it’s a boy, but the book isn’t really about the child. It’s about the society that finds the child.”
Johanna nodded, but she seemed uninterested. “Is the work going well?”
He told her that it was but that he needed to reclaim his stamina. “Not a problem you seem to ever have.”
“I think the key is never to lose your stamina in the first place.”
This would have been unfair of her if she knew how much he really accomplished, but she didn’t know about his other projects — how hard he worked when he added it all up. He knew he would hate the tone in his voice when he said it, but he said it anyway: “How nice for you.” Clay forced himself to notice the birds. He pointed toward a white bird that was smaller and more elegant than the great egrets, which always looked to him, when standing and tucked, like curmudgeonly old men incapable of flight. “What kind of egret is that?”