Fanchon's Book

Chapter 18

Fascinating in a repulsive way-but nonetheless fascinating, and I felt pretty qualm-sick whenever the spellbinding evil of that sordid bathroom scene recurred to me. More atrocious than the atrocity itself was the recollection of my own mesmerized state of mind: the emotional warp, the licentious abandon that had almost dumped me into the middle of the unholy mess, the fit of jealousy afterward, perverse, irrational, so blindly stupid-sulking and slinking away like an outcast-ugly, all of it, a stain on my mirror of memory.

On the brighter side, though, it was the last I saw of my intolerable rival; again, trust clever Kristi to make the necessary arrangements. Rosalba's quiet departure was dealt with as deftly and discreetly as the first-act details of her farewell performance. No fuss, no embarrassment; nor was her name even mentioned between us-as if she had become an exiled non-person in the rewritten history of a totalitarian regime.

Anyway, we were too engrossed in the enchantment of our revitalized romance to dwell upon past differences. With the house all to ourselves, we renewed the rapport of our hotel holiday, the wonderful time of togetherness; a second honeymoon, it was like, and we lived in a deliciously private totalitarian regime of our own. The little dictator was cruel and capricious and oh, how she loved me for loving her! Cruel-but with that impeccably dainty angelic tenderness of yore-a petulant cherub who knew when to bristle and when to bend and could enhance both the bristling and the bending with her bizarre flair for mischievous benevolence. And we made every precious minute count.

There were a few sober interludes, of course, as we discussed the serious business to come. Not that I had much to say about it-the terra incognita of subtle poisons and post-mortem procedures and the farsighted avoidance of police investigations-but Kristi spoke with surprising sophistication and I listened in awe and caught the contagion of her bravura; apparently the dark deed would be accomplished more adroitly than I had imagined. And far more slowly, what with long-drawn-out plans and rehearsals that might go on for months. There was just no hurry. The first step she outlined seemed a simple if somewhat tedious one: I had to be seen with Oliver in public often, regularly, with increasing frequency-and thus impress the populace as a loyal and loving wife to my distinguished and venerable husband. Aside from that, nothing, no change; the clandestine continuum could go on undisturbed. And so the grisly raison d' etre of our strategy conclaves-murder for money-took on a rather remote aspect.

So much for plots and intrigues; meanwhile the precious minutes became the accumulated hours of 24-carat-pure golden days. I considered working on my novel, but that was as far as it went-I merely considered it. Besides, I was getting close to the finish and hadn't yet come up with an idea for a plausible ending; nor could I recapture the creative urge when there were so many amusing delectations to distract me.

Amusing-hah!-the ingenious imp had more creativity in her little pinkie that I had in my entire plenum; oh, the whimsical concepts, the extravagant improvisations! She even went shopping and bought a maid's outfit for me, the sexy kind with the low-cut bodice and high-cut skirt (two sizes tight and I had to use a waist-cincher; perfectly scandalous!) and I couldn't figure out where she had gotten such a droll notion, but I was just infatuated old fool enough to put it on and wear it and love it and practically live in it; I curtsied to my exacting mistress and lit her cigarettes and served her breakfast in bed and brushed her hair and bathed and dried and powdered and perfumed her beautiful body and bowed to her demand for a daily manicure and pedicure-ah, what joy to kneel at Miss Kristi's feet and paint her toenails and then kiss them, one by one, in the hope that I might be permitted further liberties-and only after our sweet holiday-at-home suffered its eventual disruption (the return of Oliver, alas!) did I realize that throughout my tenure and observance of a maidservant's rank and customs and duties I hadn't once thought about the "acting game." Not once-even though I was actually playing it.

But the golden days were gone and I laid away my naughty costume and settled down to the grim business at hand. Although I couldn't call it grim, exactly; I dropped in on Oliver at the ministry and teased him into taking me to lunch and we both drank a little too much and fell into a festive mood. Like old times, he told me gaily, radiating sentimental charm-and so it was, really, just like old times, except that my husband was famous now and we got the plush-carpet treatment from the people in the restaurant. A bailiff is not without honor in his own bailiwick, I was pleased to note, and I felt pretty good just being there with him. I gazed at his kindly old face across the table and wondered how I could even think (if killing such a nice person, and yet I knew I would-because I had to-because she willed it; and wasn't I her slave?

Then-that extra aperitif, perhaps?-Oliver's sentiment went from mellow to maudlin, and before I could surmise the tragic trend of his maundering, he hemmed and hawed into the macabre theme of his possible assassination. While I sat in congealed stupefaction with a curdled smile on my face; assassination, what a shock!-did he suspect something? But no, his concern was genuine but only in a general way: these recurrent political crises were putting him in considerable danger, he informed me gravely, and with agitators from abroad fomenting revolution in every corner, he had judged it prudent to provide a small sub rosa reserve fund for the future. My future, not his-and he sincerely wished he could have done more to insure my financial security. But come what may, there was some money for me in a foreign bank, not much, certainly no great fortune, but sufficient to ease the immediate burden of my bereavement. So even if the worst happened and his death caused a collapse of the government, well…

But I hearkened no longer, I was too busy worrying about how Kristi would react to the news. The money involved wasn't enough to commit murder for. Hardly. Compared to the millions we had dreamed of, it amounted to little more than a widow's mite. Kaputt were our cloud-woven castles in the air.

Castles?-nay, dungeons! Reserved for me. That most dreadful of dungeons once occupied by Rosalba-mine now? No, my rival's reality hadn't yet evaporated; I had bartered her dismissal for a promise I couldn't keep. No murder, no money-and I had a debt to discharge. What could I do but take Rosalba's place in the horrid dungeon? Take her place (literally!) and tilt my head back and" open my mouth and-ugh!-but what else did I have to offer?

It preyed on my mind as I headed homeward after lunch. Doomward. And yet I was already attuned to the inevitability of it-as if I had known all along that such a degradation would some day be my destiny. Kristi owned me. Didn't I have to be whatever she wanted me to be? Yes, even a murderess, if things had worked out that way, and was this any more monstrous?

Then again I may have been magnifying my misfortune somewhat or so it appeared, at least, after she heard my verbatim recital of Oliver's jarring disclosure. The news upset her, of course, but she remained less than rabid; no tantrum, no trauma, nor did she take me to task over the Rosalba-trade. Just the same, though, I sensed the terrible tension and was aware that somebody (guess who!) was going to pay for the bursting of her hope-bubble-and I had few doubts about how and where the propitiation would be made. I just didn't know when. And without even a threat-by-innuendo to guide me, I could do nothing but cross my fingers and wait.

So I waited. But I didn't need any squall-warnings to tell me that a cyclone was brewing, and I clung desperately to my attitude of premeditated acquiescence; after all, it was just another case of taking the bitter with the better, and if I kept myself expecting it-composed, prepared, actually primed for it-then maybe I wouldn't mind so much when the storm broke. Perhaps I might actually find it inoffensive. Or even quaintly intoxicating: the spirit of Rosalba, as it were. Hah! Some joke. The spirit of Rosalba. Gallows humor-a bit of dry wit gone soggy. Ho-hum, into each life a little rain must fall.

Only it didn't. Nary a drop. The impending storm just went right on impending and my unpredictable angel went into a sulk. A solitary sulk, dismal, endless, the kind that hurt, hurt deep down inside (how could she act so distant toward me?) until I couldn't bear it any more and in a wail of wistful impatience I asked if there wasn't some way I might cheer her up.

"Thank you, Fanchon. But it's my own problem."

"You're sure I can't help, darling? Oh, it's such torture when you're brooding all the time, it makes me feel so estranged from you. And guilty, too, I guess, even though it couldn't have been my fault. Are you blaming me because my stupid husband really turned out to be the poor-but-honest type of politician?"

"No. I hate him, but you're not to blame."

"Then why are you angry with me?"

"I'm not angry."

"Indifferent, then, and that's just as bad. Darling, you've got me so confused; won't you even talk about it? If you're annoyed with me then there has to be a reason, isn't that so? Please, sweetheart, I know you're disappointed about the money, but why are you taking it out on me? Is it, uh… oh, I just don't understand-could it be because of Rosalba?"

"Huh? Rosalba?" A smirk, momentarily quizzical; then her lips recovered their permanent pout. "Whatever gave you that idea?"

"I'll bet you miss her. And I made you get rid of her."

"Fanchon, don't tell me you're still jealous."

"Well, I do worry about it once in a while. Some times I just know you'd like me better if I were more like her. And maybe I could be, you know, if I thought… uh… "

"Hmm? Could be what?"

"More like Rosalba. The same thing."

"Stop talking in riddles, Fanchon. What same thing?

"Oh… you know. Your-your toilet slave."

The green eyes surveyed me dully and yet I was sure I had seen a flash, a sudden sheen, a hint of the vivid emeralds they used to be. As if my laborious bid to play Rosalba's role had tapped a hidden lode. But only the listless torpor prevailed in her vague murmur. "Umm, well, perhaps. We'll see."

"Darling? You-you're not interested?"

"I didn't say that."

"Then what's the matter? Must I beg?"

"No. Just be willing."

"Willing? Oh, but I am, I am. That's what I'm telling you."

"Are you, Fanchon?" And again, cryptically, in a tone of mild exasperation undoubtedly calculated to exasperate, "We'll see… " End of colloquy; just like that, with loose threads dangling all over the place and nobody around to reweave them into the tapestry. Nobody but yours truly. And rightly so, since I now recognized that the denouement of the unfinished drama had to be of my own delineation. Little Miss Sulkylips was leaving it strictly up to me.

No, she didn't want me to beg. Just be willing. Simple enough in substance but surely ambiguous in intent, and I could interpret her instruction only in the light of previous controversy. To me it implied something far more formidable than a mere display of docility in the playing of a difficult role. I had to learn to enjoy it, somehow, to desire it, crave it-and yes, in a sexual context, to lust for it with a fiery thirst that could be quenched at but one fountain. (But of course; hadn't I always thought of her as the. source of my rejuvenation? my own providential Fountain of Youth?) There was no other way to placate the determined little debauchee. Sensuality was the sole approach to the kind of willingness she demanded. The final stitch in the pattern of my conquest: if I could accept this ultimate humiliation joyfully then the design would at last be complete-and the weird and wonderful tapestry of our love would remain eternally inviolate.

Joyfully? So be it! With a bang, not a whimper. Eagerly-that was how to go about it-ardently, voluptuously, even if I had to hit myself over the head with a hundred intellectual arguments to gain one such emotional-erotic response. Arguments like the fact that I owed it to her in payment of debt, the grinding exigency of it-trapped, helpless-didn't I feel a "no way out" tingle of excitement? Arguments like the sublime beauty of her body; I could shut my eyes and behold the naked splendor in detail, the intimate fluff-on-flesh, fascinating! and hadn't I once seen that soft cynosure as a gold-fringed chalice? Ah yes, a chalice, exquisitely wrought, a sacramental chalice by Cellini, and wouldn't I swoon in aesthetic ecstasy just sipping from such a treasure? Arguments, arguments, but I had already convinced myself and now it was only a matter of temporizing watchfully and selecting the perfect moment to show my willful one just how willing I could be.

It came sooner than I anticipated. That very night, late, after I had fetched her a tall drink and hovered close by on the off-chance that she might relent and let me kiss her pretty feet while she relaxed on the chaise and read the newspaper. Sullen as ever, the heartless little rascal ignored me even though she must have noticed that I was practically devouring her nude loveliness with my near-famished languishing looks. But she sat up and stretched after a while and then swung her legs to the floor and padded toward the bathroom-and I knew my opportunity had arisen. Propitiation time. It was now or never.

"Darling, wait."

"Huh?"

"Not yet. Let me get ready for you."

"Ready? Hey, where are you-"

But I was already rushing past her and sinking to the floor and arching backward over my self-prescribed crucible and doing it, getting ready! and the abrupt vitreous chill bit into the nape of my neck and crystallized all the facets of my Fanchon-bitch sensuality and I opened my mouth wide and almost cried out in exultation when I felt the hoped-for stir of lust in my loins and realized that I had truly become what my beloved goddess wanted me to be (shades of Danae!) and wouldn't she be delighted to find her slave so hot and sexy and anxious to serve? Her toilet slave-ready. Ready to be used. Asking only to bask in the warm golden sun-shower of her love. Would she get exhilarated and giggle and chatter and make all those wild noises? Touch me with those frolicsome fingers? Oh, I could hardly keep from"Well now… and what have we here, hmm?" Mutely, mouth agape, I squinted up at her and held my pose like some rigid, inert body-a fixture of flesh-letting the stretched stillness of my jaws plead my cause with graphic eloquence.

But she knew only too well what she had here. And what she had to do in it-for her own easement, if not for mine. She even seemed quite casual about it, giving me a perfunctory nod and swinging around and spreading her legs and getting herself organized above my face as if she deemed it no more than natural to have a pair of lips parted and prepared for her pleasure. Or for her convenience, rather, that was the impression I got.

Until it began-and for an instant of gasping enravishment my awareness encompassed only the trickle of her love into the gulf of my gratitude. Just a trickle. So little love? Scarcely enough for a grateful swallow; how could I prove my willingness? But I must have succeeded regardless: she leaned back and peered down at me and I heard her voice, jubilant, ecstatic, sounding the same cry of exultation that I had suppressed a few minutes ago.

"Oooh yes, Fanchon, you love it, you love it!"

And I did, I did, I did love it and I told her so in a frothing wheeze of urgency and then-not for herself but for met-the divine chalice tilted into position again and I took the cascade of its blessing greedily; ah, how she loved me, loved me, and with her fingers too now-oh, that tiny tantalizing fingertip-but I wanted more, more, I wanted the crazy gleeful noises, the exhortation and the acclaim, the sweet squeals of praise, and I panted for breath and fought off the choking sensation and did my best to make her appreciate what a good slave I was so that maybe on a cold winter night she might"Fanchon, listen, let's do it anyway. To hell with the money. Let's kill him. Just for the thrill of it!"

And then the noises started, shrill and strident, giggling, cackling, menacing, terrifying-and yet thrilling, so thrilling! and my conquered soul-and-body exploded in orgasm and I gulped and gurgled and gulped again and wondered if I too was going mad…