II

Every day that passes is like a blade plunging that much farther into my body, that much closer to my heart.

I keep my cell phone with me all the time, avidly check the list of the calls that come in to my office, tremble every time a private number flashes up.

But it isn’t Him. It’s never Him.

In the meantime, I’ve resumed a strict diet based on appetite suppressants. The needle on my scales veering ever farther to the left is a great consolation.

Whenever I’m alone, in my car, on my horse, in church, I recall His skin, and try to remember the tone of His voice, His words, His hands on me.

I can’t get to sleep at night without imagining His fingers on my skin and His cock and His whispered orders. With every day that passes, the memory of His voice fades a little more.

Every morning, I get ready, hoping He’ll send for me today. I wear only skirts or dresses now, with stockings. I’ve hidden my high-heeled shoes behind a pile of files in a cabinet in my office.

But He doesn’t call me.

Every day my desire to see Him grows stronger, but so does the likelihood that He’s forgotten me. The pain of it is unbearable.

I have a terrible sense of waste, of something unfinished. So much to experience, so much to give, if only He knew. I need to see Him again, to show Him I can be worthy of him, to pay tribute to him, make Him proud of me, devote myself to His pleasure. He can do what He wants with me, with my body and my soul, I can rise to His demands, all I’m waiting for are His orders, all I need is one word from Him.

Why doesn’t He call?

He doesn’t even know me. He wouldn’t recognize my voice, maybe just my arched back, which is waiting for him, begging for Him to do what He will with me.

I’d like to be able to tell Him that I expect nothing of Him, that all I want is to be a steamy episode in His unavoidable routine.

The torture of waiting.

I can’t get over it. Waiting for Him to want me one day, I’ll be so good to Him, I’ll give Him a hard-on. He didn’t give me time, I couldn’t show Him, I didn’t know how. If only He knew what I’m capable of, how racked with desire I am, how submissive I’ll be, defying all the rules and conventions, giving myself to Him totally.

I can’t sleep now without thinking about Him, I can’t come without thinking about what He did to me. I think about it all the time. Although I lead a wonderful life, surrounded by a family and friends I can count on, and lucky to handle fascinating cases that bring me money and gratitude from my clients, I feel His absence, all I think about is starting again and this time going further, setting out across the desert, satisfying desires I didn’t know I had, opening the gates to cities of depravity I already know I can’t do without.

How did He know I’d come when He called?

Why has He abandoned me after giving me a taste of His smell and His tongue and His skin? I want to know His cock, support Him in His perversions, feast on bitter fruit, anticipate His desires, go further than He’s even dreamed of.

Time passes and the pain of the memory gets worse. I don’t even dare talk about it to Bérénice, my best friend and closest confidante. I feel alone, more alone than I’ve ever been. I watch my son playing, and avoid the glances my husband throws me.

I met my husband when I was very young, it was he who molded me, made me the woman I am. He’s so often put his arms around me and assured me of his support and convinced me he was the man, the only man for me. I’ve never cheated on him, never needed to lie to him.

And now, as if suddenly caught in an unexpected storm, I even forget my own name, all I do is wait and wait for a sign from someone else, a man who didn’t even fuck me, didn’t even possess me, I’m haunted by a fleeting pleasure, an unforgettable, unequaled pleasure, His breath on my skin, His words against my forehead. Sometimes I close my eyes and imagine I could go back in time and wipe it out and become an ideal wife and mother again. How can a few hours reverse the meaning of a whole lifetime? I know I’ll never again be the same as I was before, and that if I had to do it again, I would. I hug my husband, who’s back from the goddamn Far East, and whisper that I love him, that I’m his, and I wish I believed it, I wish I still believed it, I wish I could remove the knife I have inside me, the knife that is killing my innocence, but he doesn’t know that and I can’t tell him, can’t ask him to look after me, not this time, he wouldn’t understand, nobody would understand, I’m standing alone on the edge of a precipice waiting for the devil to push me into the abyss, wanting nothing but to start again, even if it means the destruction of all the things I hold dear.

I wish I could go to bed and sleep and get up and dress and go to work and not think about it, I wish I could laugh about the whole thing, store the episode away in a closet of memories like my first boyfriend’s letters. I wish I could forget the strange pleasure of pain and submission, the spasms, my hungry cunt crying out to be filled. I wish I could forget the desire to have that unknown, arrogant cock inside me. I wish I could stop imagining how my flesh would stroke it, massage it, moving up and down, contracting, gradually getting stronger, how my vagina would tame it and suck it, how my mucous membranes would taste it and sniff it and stroke it. I wish I could give up the idea of wrapping it deep inside me, as far as it’ll go, savoring every particle, every inch of that cock. But I can’t because I haven’t had that cock and it’s all I can think about.

I can’t close my eyes now without remembering the first time He looked at me, in court, the moment He turned to the public after swaying the jury, that woman crying, the heinous nature of the crime, His bloodshot gray eyes, the brilliance of His words, the strength of His body.

The way I lowered my eyes when I had to stand up and speak after Him, so shaken by the unassailable power of His speech I was at a loss for words.

The way He came up to me, after the verdict was announced and His client was acquitted, and said, “I’ll call you, I have something to tell you,” and I stammered an almost inaudible “Yes.” Did I already know? That was the first promise He didn’t keep. I didn’t know Him and already I was waiting to hear His voice.

Weeks later, His voice on my answering machine, the unexpected, inexplicable excitement I felt at the thought of seeing Him again. Why Him, and not any of the men I meet at dinners, or at the Palais de Justice, or at the race track, the men I seduce with a laugh, a clever piece of repartee, a bold display of horsemanship? I’ve always been lucky enough to choose, to call the shots, to leave when I want to, and now I’m stuck with the emptiness, the unbearable pain, of a man’s indifference.

I look at my husband and hug my son and don’t understand myself anymore, I feel bewitched, obsessed, desperate.

The phone rings and it isn’t Him. I don’t understand. “Don’t call me,” He said. “I’ll send for you.”

After Him, nothing and nobody is worth it. I know I’ll never again experience anything as intense with anyone else.

I don’t want a lover. He isn’t a lover.