She sips Irish coffee and does the cream-lick tongue trick again. “Perhaps because you failed to ask them.”
She slides a foot out of a boot, raises it under the table and massages my crotch with her toes. I go stiff, zero to sixty, in about two seconds. She has an amazing knack for turning me on, seems to know what I want even before I do. It’s disconcerting in the extreme. My first inclination is to push her foot away, but I’m curious about what I might learn while she plays out her little charade. At least, that’s what I tell myself.
She says, “You like it that I look like her, don’t you, Inspector?”
“You mean like Bettie Page?”
She keeps massaging. Her toes do amazing things. “Yes,” I say, “I like it.”
“Me too,” she says. “It’s nice to be someone else. That’s the nature of my fetish, the negation of my personality. That’s why Ivan was so rough with me in the video. He treats me not as a person, but as a thing to be used. His fetish, naturally enough, is to be an aggressive but faceless user. Our sexual relationship isn’t uncommon. Perhaps you should try it. You’re manly. I like that. And I like to be watched. That’s why we make the videos. The other detective, Milo, likes to watch. Maybe I could suck your cock while Milo watches and jerks off. You can come in my mouth and Milo can blow on my face. I’ll videotape it and watch it with Ivan while we play our sex roles.”
My hard-on wilts. I remove her foot from my crotch. “Thanks,” I say, “but my wife wouldn’t approve.”
Her eyes sparkle. “What a stick-in-the-mud she must be. The point I’m trying to get across to you is that I like to be used, not to hurt others. You’re barking up the wrong tree.”
Maybe I am, or maybe I’m being manipulated. Her skills in that regard are extraordinary.
“Can I ask you about your relationship with Iisa? I gather you two were very close. And about how you came to have a sexual relationship with her husband. Given your friendship, it seems an unusual state of affairs. No pun intended.”
She turns off her overt sexuality, puts her foot back in her boot. Her voice becomes matter-of-fact. “Years ago, I met Iisa at a party. We did a lot of coke-we always did a lot of drugs together-and one night we noticed that we look a great deal alike. We started doing our hair and makeup the same, for fun. We even had sex once, just to see what it would be like to fuck yourself, but we weren’t that into it. We were high one night, and Iisa decided we should trick Ivan and get him to fuck me, to see if he would notice the difference. Iisa liked to watch, so she hid and videotaped it. That night, Ivan and I found we have symbiotic fetishes, and history, as they say, was made. Fucking Ivan bored Iisa. She decided to do him a favor, and let me do it for her. Iisa even convinced Ivan to hire me to work at Filippov Construction. I became, in a manner of speaking, part of the family.”
“I understand that you worked for Iisa’s father as a Bettie Page look-alike escort. Could you tell me about that?”
She stands and dons her coat. “Inspector, I’m tired and have shopping to do. Let’s save that story for another day.”
Much as in my dealings with Filippov, I have the feeling that Linda is sending me a message, but I still don’t know what it is. I decide not to press it and thank her for her time and candor. She thanks me for the drink. We go our separate ways.
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