‘Being engaged suits you, sugar. You are positively glowing!’
Ingrid Weinmeyer folds me into her pastille-scented embrace as I step into her panelled hallway over on the East Side of the park. I close my eyes and let her hold me. Despite the kinkiness that lurks beneath her porcelain exterior, despite her penchant for enticing uninitiated young peaches into threesomes with her and her randy husband, this woman is the nearest thing I have to a mother figure. Or maybe an aunt. Otherwise, what I have agreed to do later would be way too incestuous.
‘Hey, honey, put her down. You don’t know where she’s been!’
Ernst Weinmeyer takes his turn to greet me, folding me into his burly arms. This embrace doesn’t feel quite so natural. I can’t shift the memory of his long, surprisingly slim erection nudging hopefully at my backside the first time I ventured into this house and nearly ended up as the tasty centre of a Weinmeyer sandwich. Nor can I forget that same erection, barely concealed beneath his white toga, nudging into my back at the ball in Venice, demanding to take me from behind in front of all his masked, euphoric guests.
Despite those memories, or perhaps because of them, I hug him back. I’ve shed a lot of inhibitions, been inveigled into several compromising situations, since the first time I was propositioned by this powerful couple. I smile demurely, twine my bare arms around Mr Weinmeyer’s neck and press myself coquettishly against him, the silky black lace of my dress rucking up slightly against the bulge inside his exquisitely cut dinner trousers.
Keeping my eyes on Gustav all the while.
Back in January I came here to take the couple’s portraits that are tonight being showcased in their house. This rich, influential couple enticed me down to their basement boudoir and tried to get me into bed with them. It later transpired that I was one of the few people who had refused their advances and lived to tell the tale, at least professionally. Not only that, but they have continued to harbour me under their wing, sung my praises to anyone who would listen and flown me over to Venice to film their annual masked ball.
But there’s something else I owe them in return for their custom, their generosity and their kindness, and we all know it. I owe them no less than my naked body to do with what they will.
‘You know exactly where she’s been, Ernst. With me. Day and night.’ Gustav steps into the hall after me, and taps his host on the shoulder. ‘But we’re all here to admire Serena’s professional work tonight. So while she goes and checks the exhibition, why don’t you deflower that rare Scotch you were telling me about? I’ve been thirsty ever since you mentioned it when we last bumped into each other.’
‘Ah, yes. At the Club Crème. What a night that was! My God. This girl was magnificent then, and she still looks good enough to eat. She may still have much to learn—’ Mr Weinmeyer kisses my hands before handing me over to his wife. His handsome, slightly thickened features glow with a mixture of pride and lust. ‘But she’s a hundred times more stunning than the first Mrs Levi, and of course these younger models have so much more torque!’
Gustav tries to hide the flare of anger in his eyes by pushing his black hair off his forehead. ‘Be careful what you say, Ernst!’
Ernst spreads his arms out and for the first time I recognise the primitive surrender in the gesture. The symbolic dropping of fists and weapons and the subconscious exposing of all vital organs in defeat. I daren’t catch Gustav’s eye. But I have to admire Mr Weinmeyer his deft diplomacy.
‘Relax, Levi. I only meant that Serena is the jewel in your crown. How do you ever let her out of your bed in the mornings?’
‘With immense difficulty, I’m sure!’ Mrs Weinmeyer sashays back into the circle and slaps at the men. ‘Unless he had someone even more delicious to play with! Comme moi!’
‘You are the toughest act to follow in the land.’ Gustav bows over her hand. ‘I’m always up for play, and variety, Madame Weinmeyer. But there will never be anyone more delicious or beautiful than my fiancée.’
‘You’re a betting man. How much would you be willing to put on that?’ Weinmeyer claps him on the back and starts to lead him to the back of the house. ‘On me producing one day a filly even more lovely?’
‘You can keep any new blood for your own nefarious devices.’ Gustav winks at me over his shoulder as they walk away, sending me a blatant horny message. ‘But I’d put every single penny I own on that being an impossibility.’
Fresh desire, never far from the surface, no matter how often I’m satisfied, clutches at me.
‘My God, Peaches. Your eyes!’ Mrs Weinmeyer stares at the two of us. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen a woman glow with passion like that. I am just green with envy!’
The manservant takes my Tamara Mellon leopard-print coat and my hostess hands me an elegant flute bubbling over with champagne.
‘Loving the dress, sugar. Florentina, yes?’ She raises her glass and then to my astonishment downs it in one. ‘We fully expect to be guests of honour at your wedding, by the way. When is it to be?’
Her cornflower-blue eyes water slightly as I start to giggle, and she makes me down my drink in one before her butler refills us.
‘Of course you’re invited. And I don’t know yet. Gustav says before the end of the year.’
‘You have a say, you know, sugar. Why don’t you surprise him?’
We chink our glasses together. ‘Now what a marvellous idea, Mrs Weinmeyer!’
She lifts her shoulders with pleasure then wraps her long thin fingers round my upper arm.
‘Now I want to show you what we’ve done with your marvellous films and pictures before everyone arrives. Come and see how we’ve mounted your Venetian series. We’ve decided to make it a series of moving images, as if we’re all at the ball again, and that will lead us through the rooms until we reach the main drawing room and the pièces de résistance, those private photographs you took when the three of us were here in the winter.’
She starts to lead me into the first of the elegant salons, but I stop in my tracks. ‘This is completely different from when I was here before! The place was crammed with all your priceless furniture and paintings, Mrs Weinmeyer! Why have you cleared it?’
She takes a step in front of me and then, with a slight cluck of annoyance when she sees I’m not following, turns on her pin-sharp heel.
‘Well, we wanted to create the correct space to show the images. We didn’t want anything here that would distract from the exhibition! In fact, we asked Gustav’s advice on that.’
I bite my lip, harder than I meant to. ‘You could have asked my advice! This is my work, after all!’
‘You seem a bit on edge, sugar?’ She puts one hand on her hip, and the other holds her glass up to her lips as she waits. ‘But technically, you know, this is our work. I mean, we’ve paid for it. And the reason we asked Gustav’s advice rather than yours is because we wanted you to have a surprise.’
I raise my eyebrow knowingly. ‘So that’s where he’s been sneaking off to some evenings. Secret meetings with you!’
‘Oh no, cupcake. We just spoke on the phone a couple of times. Now. I hope you like what we’ve done here.’
She picks up a remote control and waves it elegantly in the air. A group of people in period costumes and masks seems to emerge from the wall by the door and starts to parade across it, followed by others, moving, dancing, laughing, the figures spreading up to the ceiling, down to the floor, across to the corner and on to the main wall, until the whole room is inhabited with projected life and colour and music.
And here it is, that extraordinary Venetian ball in that extraordinary city. On that extraordinary, almost fatal night. Thank God I can react to these images as an art installation now – my hard work – rather than viewing them solely as the prelude to Pierre’s tricks. My stomach might tighten a tad as I examine the sequence. I certainly won’t welcome the sight of a figure hovering in the shadows, dressed in green velvet. But at least Pierre’s mask has been ripped away by the conversations Gustav has forced us all to have.
Every so often the parade of dancing figures is halted by a still photograph, a couple caught spinning in a waltz, a violinist holding his instrument high under his chin, or a sinister hooded figure on the sidelines, sipping that lethal punch, and then the dance continues to accelerate, becoming, as it did that night, wilder and louder and more degenerate.
Somewhere in real life the doorbell rings, heralding the first guests, but Mrs Weinmeyer comes to me, takes my hand in her cool fingers and waltzes me through to the next room.
‘We thought it would be an entertaining way to entice everyone through the rooms towards the portraits. I know you would normally oversee the printing and production process, sugar, but we sent it to a graphics studio because we wanted to make this as hallucinogenic as it was on the night. Remember how surreal the ambience was? See how we’ve over-tinted everything, so that costumes and make-up and faces are even more brilliant! Remember the effects of that punch we were all drinking? We never admitted what special substances we spiked it with, but it was magic, wasn’t it? Made you see everything edged so clearly? We wanted to recreate that with this tinting expert Gustav knows. Hope you’re OK with it?’
‘It’s the perfect treatment of the film. I wish I had this kind of expertise!’ I breathe out at last, determined not to be precious about the way they’ve altered my work. I turn in circles to follow the progress of the film. ‘It’s fabulous!’
The story of the Weinmeyers’ masked ball progresses across the walls. A soundtrack of waltz and minuet accompanies the initial sedate greetings and curtseys at the beginning of the evening and gradually drowns out the brittle chatter.
The second room shows the stage of the ball where the women were being thrown into the revolving centre of ersatz Eightsome Reels to be touched and fingered until plucked from the fray by the winner to be ravished. Now the music whines and charges from mad polka to frenzied folk dancing, to accompany the change in tempo and mood of each frame.
As we reach the door to go into the third room, Mrs Weinmeyer’s grip on my arm tightens. ‘And now, la crème de la crème! I’m so thrilled to have the wonderful Serena Folkes exhibited here. I can’t wait for you to see how glorious the family album display looks! All Cecil Beaton and classy in here, all bordello and bawdy in the final room!’
‘You sound like a tour guide! All these French superlatives! What’s the hurry though?’ I laugh, tripping slightly on my vertiginous Louboutins as the Venetian revellers circle chaotically behind us. ‘The guests are only just starting to arrive.’
We’re about to enter the next room when the baroque colour and music around us fade and we are enveloped by a new, muted realm of shadowy blue and purple Gothic shades. A moody, sombre track winds through the air in here, impossible to pin down. More an idea than a tune. This totally alters the Venetian mood that was just capering over these walls.
The walls still seem to be alive. But different figures move sinuously across them now, and at first I can’t make out the detail.
And when I do, I wrench my hand out of Mrs Weinmeyer’s fingers.
Because as the purple light bleaches to reveal the exhibition, it’s plain that the well-dressed characters being silently fucked and whipped in the orgiastic film now creeping across the walls of this mansion on the Upper East Side, obliterating my Venetian images, come directly from the loop that used to be installed in Gustav’s old house in Baker Street, London.
I can’t tear my eyes away, even though my heart is galloping. You’d think Manhattan would be far enough away from all that shit, but no. The power of film can reach you anywhere. Gustav and Margot Levi recorded these orgies in that house towards the end of their marriage. I knew the films were for sale to erotic art collectors, and I knew the Weinmeyers were putting in a bid for the collection at auction. But stupidly I assumed I would never have to look at them again.
However, the loop has been resurrected right here. The deceptively harmless carousing at a London house party, guests’ arms raised in bacchanalian delight, descends from decorum into debauchery as bodies prostrate themselves on sumptuous couches or rest in poses too awkward for real sleep. Then there’s the realisation as you watch that, just like the lupanare frescoes painted on the bordello walls in Pompeii, these solemn participants are being coaxed into group sex.
The first couple are half-clothed on a big bed, stylised like a classical Titian, complete with slave girls whispering in the corner. They are joined by another couple kissing messily and pulling at each other’s remaining garments. In the next frame a woman is on her back and a man is thrusting into her while other people gather round to watch, including the slave girls.
A familiar heat starts to trickle through my body. I’m vaguely aware of people gathering closer to watch, voices exclaiming, heels clicking rapidly towards me. I fold my arms around my body to stop anyone touching me. My eyes travel over the faces, the mouths, the hands, the naked bodies in the film. It all comes back to me. Not only the display itself, but all the sensations that consumed me the day I first saw it. Despite my resistance, despite not wanting to respond to anything that involved Gustav’s past, watching these people pleasuring themselves excited me. They reminded me of the nuns I’d spied on in Venice, drifting round their cells and flagellating themselves with the shocking slap of knotted leather on their downy skin.
The scenes progress into a no-holds-barred orgy, beautifully composed and patently not simulated. This is sex by numbers. The hands, fingers, mouths, are everywhere. One woman’s face is contorted with abandon as she’s groped and penetrated by two men. Other women are open, the men are erect, they’re all gymnastic in their positions, beautiful in their physiques. It’s art, but it’s unadulterated sex, too.
And the display is starting to work on me just as it did when I first saw it. Introducing that same coiling mixture of dread and arousal. The underlying menace in the film, because of its history and the person who masterminded it, is echoed by the chills running through my own limbs.
Mrs Weinmeyer is beside me now, plucking at my arm and twittering. I flick her fingers away.
‘What is this doing here? I saw this display once before, and once was enough. You know what associations this has for me, Mrs Weinmeyer, both personally and professionally!’ Despite the heat curling within me, my voice is reedy with rage. ‘Why have you – when you told me you were buying the Baker Street footage for your erotica collection I specifically said – I begged you never to display this pornographic crap anywhere near mine!’
I have no idea whether I’ve just managed to offend one of the most influential people in this city, but right now I’m past caring. The last sequence flickers on to the wall in front of me. It’s the most powerful of them all and the one I’ve been dreading. There’s the empty bed, the empty room. Except for a woman on all fours, on the floor.
‘This is an absolute travesty!’ Mrs Weinmeyer pulls me back to her. ‘Sugar, you have to believe me! This display is nothing to do with us. We had no idea—’
I shake my head and stare instead at poor Crystal. The permanent installation, Gustav called her, when I was so shocked to see her taking part. Her jet-black hair is pinned up in its usual severe knot. She’s wearing a high-necked white blouse and even a string of pearls round her neck. She grips the edges of the bed with long claw-like fingers, and lifts her bottom.
I need Gustav here. Now.
When I saw this film the first time, it turned me on. I’m getting wet now, despite my disgust and fury. What the hell is happening to me? When he saw how I responded to the punishment being meted out to his erstwhile guests, or rather Margot’s clients, Gustav described me as an exotic flower, ready to open. And we went home, and he whipped me, and everything bad came flooding out of me.
Crystal continues looking into the camera, her face white as a mask, her eyes black holes. This was shot more than six years ago, yet she looks exactly the same. Only her red mouth, with its strange little smile and snaky tongue, shows any kind of animation.
Another figure steps into the shot. Dressed entirely in black leather, including a cat mask. Dominatrix gear, black leather, studded collar. The figure is holding a thin black switch, like a riding crop, with a bunch of fine leather tassels dangling off it.
In real life the room is filling with scandalised yet fascinated guests. Mrs Weinmeyer leaves me, darts about trying to explain the montage to her guests, then comes back to me, speaking at me, but I can’t hear her. I’m too horrified to speak, or move.
On the film, Crystal spreads her arms and legs in a star shape. The black-clad creature plants its high-heeled boots on either side of Crystal. Her bottom and thighs glow in the dead lighting of the interior. Then the creature lifts its arm. All I – we – can hear is the whip, slicing the air as it comes down on Crystal’s buttocks. The stroke rings out like a cruel gunshot and Crystal’s flesh quivers under the blow.
Sweat springs along my spine, under my arms, under my hair, as I watch.
‘Don’t you move, Crystal, or you get double.’
The dominatrix’s voice hisses out of the film. She leans down and strokes Crystal’s butt cheek, where a livid red stripe has come up. She strokes as if she is preparing a rare steak, but then steps back and swipes the whip down a second time, squarely on the second cheek.
I squeeze my legs together as the dampness pricks up down there, too. I try to resist the urge to feel the fire of punishment on my own skin, to beg someone to liberate me. I don’t need that any more. But on the screen Crystal flicks her head as her bottom jerks involuntarily, and I understand every single response.
Again the frail flesh quivers under the blow, and again there is a tantalising glimpse of her sex as she bounces off the floor. The dominatrix kicks at the back of Crystal’s knees so that she rises higher, thrusting up her bottom, decorated now with three pink stripes. The whip strokes Crystal’s bottom almost tenderly. Yes, it would be tender as well as cruel. Sweet, as well as sour.
The whip swipes down once more. The blows have raised her flesh into weals. One hand has come up brazenly between Crystal’s legs and she is touching herself, moaning as she waits for her mistress to strike her, her face tilted heavenwards as she sways, one long white finger pushing in.
I can feel heat spreading through me, the thrust of the finger’s invasion, as the film fades. Then the loop begins again. The start of the party, the laughing faces, the sumptuous beds—
‘You have to believe me, sugar. I have no idea how this film got here. We bought it at the auction but we haven’t even collected it from the shipping company yet, let alone set it up to play in here, and we definitely have not superimposed it on your Venetian study.’
Mrs Weinmeyer’s face swims in front of me yet again. I realise my eyes are full of tears. Her lips are moving, her blue eyes wide with alarm.
‘I thought you were my friend, Mrs Weinmeyer.’ I let her keep hold of me now, mostly so I won’t shake too visibly. ‘You promised.’
‘And I meant it. This is a terrible mistake. Someone has swapped the reels and we need to stop this one immediately and find yours. Someone is in very deep shit. Let’s just try to look calm and dignified for our guests, yes, while we sort this out? Time for the main event. Let’s lead everyone through to the next room to see our family portraits.’ She tries to fix a pink smile on to her face, but it’s sinking down on one side as if she’s had some kind of seizure. ‘You’re the guest of honour, Serena. Everyone’s waiting.’
I still don’t move. Many eyes are on me, people who are eager to see my work. There’s a weight of good-natured expectation in the room. I can’t let them think this film is my creation.
‘Where is Gustav?’
Mrs Weinmeyer’s fingers flutter up to the pearl choker around her neck. ‘He’s with Ernst and the Robinsons, in the study. Best they stay there, for the moment.’
The volume of murmuring and footsteps increases in the room around us. I know I should show some manners and acknowledge these well-wishers and potential clients. But I can’t.
‘Please can you get him here? Now.’
She tries to look dismayed, but the Botox won’t let her. She gestures at one of the waitresses then tries to steer me through the next doorway. ‘And so. It’s time to shine the lights on your lovely sexy portraits.’
I take her spindly wrists in my fists and pull her close to me so that I can still focus on her and no one else. I’ve got to be careful here. Very, very careful.
‘I can’t just ignore this,’ I say very quietly. ‘You know how I feel about Baker Street. What they did there, what they filmed, has nothing to do with my vision. However sexy it is, however voyeuristic, I don’t want it connected in any way with what I have done for you. This is a total professional embarrassment. And on a personal level—’
‘Do please take another drink, ladies and gentlemen! I’ll be with you in a moment!’ Mrs Weinmeyer smiles round at her guests then wriggles away from me as the butler bustles in. She snatches a bulky remote control off the silver tray he has produced. ‘Sugar, no one will think any the worse of you. We’ll fill them with vintage champagne while we get your Venetian montage on again and move them through to the final room. I’ll get Ernst out here to restore order. After he’s finished throttling the technician.’
She punches clumsily at the buttons on the remote and aims it at the walls. At last the film freezes and we both close our eyes with relief.
‘Such an exquisite work of art, though, isn’t it, Ingrid? I’m so proud of it.’
Another voice cuts through the whispering around me.
‘I thought I was switching the thing off!’ Mrs Weinmeyer bashes the remote against her mouth. We both swivel round. ‘What’s going on?’
Just to the left of me Margot appears, projected on to the wall and superimposed over the film. Behind her, the freeze-frame captures the moment when the dominatrix’s black leather leg is kicking Crystal’s legs open.
Margot’s black eyes are more catlike than before. The upward tilt at the corners makes her look permanently satisfied, as does the wide red smile. I can only see her top half. She’s wearing a tight white sheath dress, but the deathly pallor I noticed at her apartment the other night is dusted expertly with blush for the benefit of the cameras.
‘How did she get in there? This is like one of those Big Brother propaganda films!’ Mrs Weinmeyer drops the remote and the batteries rattle out over the polished parquet. ‘What does she want?’
Margot’s black hair falls in a thick sideways sweep over the side of her face that was concealed before, but she looks plumper in the cheeks. Amazing what lies a camera can tell. I steadfastly refuse to touch up my images in post-production, but whoever did her make-up for this has made her look less cadaverous. Smug. Like the cat that’s got, or is about to get, the cream.
The other guests glance from screened Margot to real me. Like unruly children they ignore Mrs Weinmeyer’s surprisingly nimble efforts to wave everyone through to the final drawing room like a sheepdog.
‘Where’s my invitation, Ingrid?’
Gustav’s ex-wife takes a step nearer whatever or whoever is filming her so her face is in close-up. Mrs Weinmeyer’s eyes go circular with shock.
‘You didn’t invite me to this cosy little private view, just like you left me off the guest list to your Venetian ball. But I gatecrashed anyway.’
There’s a weird fizzing pause as if Margot is actually waiting for us to reply through Skype or a satellite. As if she can really see us and hear us.
‘You know what happens in fairy tales when people are left out? Revenge. I’m here to inform New York’s high society that Serena Folkes is an upstart. Her pieces are cheap snaps compared to the power unfolding in my film. Are the great and the good all gathered? Very good. So, hello, lords, ladies and gentlemen! You’re transfixed, aren’t you? The film you have just seen is not just a beautifully choreographed orgy. It’s a testament to my marriage. We were never apart, you know. He wouldn’t leave me alone. Always watching, touching, sketching. Gustav even features in this film. If you rewind you’ll find him in the scenes where the woman is being done like a doggy by two guys. He was too shy to show his face, bless him. But it wasn’t his face we were after!’
I press the diamond ring tightly into my finger until it hurts. Mrs Weinmeyer hurries towards the doorway with her arms out like a traffic policeman, but her guests are flowing around her as if she’s a leaf in a stream.
‘So here I am in your house anyway, Ingrid, enshrined with my husband.’ Margot smiles, biting the tip of her tongue. ‘I let Gustav keep that footage, against my better judgement. Anything to keep him happy. He must have enjoyed this constant reminder of our time together. But I still share the copyright. He needed my permission when it came to selling it at the auction.’
My permission. I sway slightly and reach behind me for something to lean on. There is nothing there. Just empty space.
‘You communicated – you and Gustav have spoken in the last few months?’
‘She’s not real, Serena! She’s a display. That’s all. We can switch her off.’ Mrs Weinmeyer picks up the remote and clumsily tries to stuff the batteries back into it. ‘And that’s not how we acquired the film. Will someone please go and get Ernst?’
There is nothing in this room to cover the image of Margot, which has gone still. Maybe it’s finished. I try to push through the guests back towards the hall to find Gustav, but Mrs Weinmeyer catches me and steers me backwards towards the drawing room door where the final part of the exhibition is still in darkness, waiting to be unveiled.
‘The butler is sorting this catastrophe. Margot Levi has ruined our expensive investment. But that doesn’t matter now. I think we’ve managed to freeze it. Come, Serena. Let’s distract everyone. Give them what they’ve come to see!’
My ankle tips slightly in the high shoes, but I start reluctantly to follow her.
‘You can erase films, burn letters, deface photographs. But I’m locked away in here.’ Margot starts again. She is tapping her black eyebrow. ‘You may be in his bed, but I live in his head. And you’ll never evict me.’
As she elongates the word ‘evict’, I look again at the tapping finger, manicured with flawless black nail varnish. The knuckles are gnarled and the veins are ropey under the papery skin. That clever theatrical foundation on her face has a translucent glow to it, intended to cover every wrinkle and blemish.
I break away from Mrs Weinmeyer and sure enough I can see that trying to break through the blanket of panstick on Margot’s skin there are uneven bumps and dips. Like the surface of the moon.
‘I’ll wipe that pretty smile off your face one day, Serena. Because I was paid handsomely for my permission, I can tell you. Everything Gustav asks of me he must pay for.’
Every lady who lunches and her wealthy walker is swirling round us now, laughing openly behind their champagne glasses, glancing round the walls, at me, at Margot. My urchin’s fingers are itching to do some damage. I so wish she was real. If I didn’t have to be on my best behaviour tonight I would lift her slight frame and hurl her through the window just like I used to hurl heavy rocks over the cliffs when I was a child, watching them splash and sink into the grey waves.
‘Come away.’ Mrs Weinmeyer finds her voice. ‘This is your moment, Serena. Everyone is gathered.’
I’ve snapped the stem of my delicate flute and Dom Perignon is fizzing over my fingers.
‘There are other ways of winning, Serena.’ Mrs Weinmeyer detaches herself from her guests and pinches my arm, hard, above the elbow to turn us away from the film. ‘Take a leaf from my bible. Never lose a shred of dignity, even when your worst enemy appears.’
‘So, how did I do?’ I hang my head, watching the champagne dripping to the floor.
‘Brilliantly. I’m proud of you, and I’m deeply sorry. You must understand Ernst and I had absolutely no idea – I’ll do whatever I can to make this right.’ Mrs Weinmeyer winds her arm round my waist and pulls me close. ‘But Margot Levi is back in town, sugar, whether we like it or not.’
Gustav rushes in at last, the men all gesticulating and questioning.
I beckon him over. This is my night. Not Margot’s.
But he senses it before he sees it. He’s tensing, like a hunter.
Or the hunted.
In some control room somewhere in the Weinmeyer mansion, someone has finally frozen the film. Margot’s face is huge on the wall. As we all stare, a black hole appears in the middle of her face, spreading outwards, wavery and black, obliterating her like a burn, and then there is blankness. The screen reverts to being a mushroom-painted wall.
We all wait, dreading Margot’s reappearance, but when the butler makes an OK signal to Mr and Mrs Weinmeyer, I let go of my hostess, steady myself and pull Gustav through to the final drawing room. Before the Weinmeyer portraits are finally illuminated, I rest my head briefly on his shoulder, smile sweetly up at him for the benefit of the crowd and press my mouth against his ear.
‘Since I’ve known you, Gustav. Since we’ve been in New York. Have you ever spoken to Margot about the Baker Street sale?’
The still simmering hatred in Gustav’s eyes, even as he pulls me close, holds a dire warning for us all.
Don’t ever be the cause of that look. Because the daggers in his eyes will kill you.
‘That woman took everything, including my brother, and kept on taking. I bought her out of all the properties in the divorce settlement except the one here in New York. I took Baker Street and the house in Lugano, and in return I expected her to take care of Pierre. Look how that turned out. So no. From the day she walked out until the night you and I went to that downtown apartment, I have not exchanged a single word with her. All sales are dealt with entirely by the agents.’
I allow myself to relax a little. Gustav’s eyes are calm again. I have to trust him.
I am called forward by Mrs Weinmeyer to flick the switch and illuminate the series of erotic photographs I took of her and her husband in the New Year. Talk about being thrown in the deep end. It was my second commission in New York and I was instructed to capture our hostess ensconced in their basement bordello of bliss, ecstatically riding our host.
As one by one the portraits are illuminated, there is a mingled sigh of shock and appreciation from the audience. Everyone shifts forward to examine their writhing, naked hosts a little more closely.
Mr and Mrs Weinmeyer stand close in their Siamese-cat pose, and as one they nod at me.
I nod back, and an understanding passes between us. They have to make amends. They must use their considerable influence to make this debacle, and Margot Levi, go away.
And they can start by taking me down to their basement and entertaining me until I lose the ability to think. I made them a promise, months ago, but they will be doing me a favour tonight, not the other way around.
Giving them my body for the night may be the only way to drum Margot Levi out of my head.
‘She’s nearly ready for you, Ingrid!’
Ingrid finishes fluffing up her hair in the mirror and stands up. She looks softer and younger with her pale yellow hair falling round her face There’s just a touch of lipstick to bring colour to her face. She is wearing a powder-blue short negligee and her slim white body is totally naked, and totally waxed, beneath.
She tiptoes across the thick carpet. She takes my arms and stretches them across the bed so that my stomach is pressed down, my head supported by the mound of pillows. Then she clips my wrists into the fluffy handcuffs attached to the hook in the wall.
‘Perfect. Keep her bound. Oh, look, Ingrid. Such a lovely bottom. That’s what they call their asses in the UK, you know. Bottoms.’ The strong male hands run over me. I am totally naked and, now that they’ve tied me down, I’m totally helpless.
I close my eyes. It’s so late. The guests didn’t want to leave, there were so many comments and questions, and then the Weinmeyers and Gustav had to talk me down. Now I’m so tired. I’m tired of being charming and sociable on the outside, and being eaten up by anger and worry on the inside. The fighting spirit that kicked in at the Sapphix Bar has taken root and, like Jack’s beanstalk, the tentacles have grown that little bit more this evening.
I love Gustav with all my being, but I hate him, too, because his association with Margot has infected me now.
My legs are pushed further apart as the big hands stroke my thighs, moving higher.
‘Tell us how you want us to say sorry, Serena?’
I don’t want to talk. Mrs Weinmeyer is kneeling next to me and when I turn my head my eyes are on a level with her crotch.
‘Empty my mind. Whip me. Hurt me.’
Fingers knead my butt cheeks, fingers spread wide as if to measure me, pinching and squeezing the plump white flesh. I squirm slightly, but that just raises my bottom higher in the air.
Mrs Weinmeyer laughs and bends down, still holding my wrists. She pushes her face close to mine.
‘When can I start? She’s so cute. And so tasty. God, we’ve waited nearly six months for this!’
‘Any time you like.’
A hard slap smacks down on me.
I wriggle and twist but I’m pushed down again, my face buried in the pillows. Soon my head will be empty. The more transgressive they want to be the better. We’ve done this before. Gustav has seen me naked and manhandled by other people. We had a deal not long after we arrived in New York, triggered by these very Weinmeyers in fact. When I showed him the footage I’d taken of them in their bed, and admitted that they’d asked me to join them in a threesome, he was both appalled and aroused.
And so was I. That’s when we agreed that I could explore certain scenarios, with particular emphasis on girlie encounters, so long as Gustav was there to keep an eye and enjoy proceedings himself from the sidelines.
But this is different. I’m not the naïve flower I was then. I’ve proved myself as a photographer, as a voyeur, as a lover. I’m Gustav Levi’s fiancée. But in getting to this point I’ve been tripped up, trapped and tricked. In the last six months, faces from his past have scattered obstacles in our path and threatened us both. We’ve been tested to the max. And tonight I’m very angry.
Margot Levi is far too close for comfort now. Christ, she was visually plastered over this very house an hour ago. We can’t get rid of her. Now, as she would put it, she’s in our heads.
Mrs Weinmeyer kisses my mouth.
‘Keep still. I’ll be your mistress, if that’s what you want.’
There’s a sharp kick between my knees and my legs collapse apart. The hands go on smoothing the tender skin on my butt as if flattening a bed sheet. I can feel goosebumps coming up on my skin as he strokes, and shivers twitching deep inside. I want tonight to be beaten out of me.
‘You feel so good, Serena. Positively addictive. I wonder if that man of yours will let us do this again before he walks you up the aisle?’
There’s no response from anyone else in the room. My silence is taken as consent and the person behind me slaps my butt. I’m silent. It doesn’t hurt enough, yet.
As I shake from the hard slaps, Mrs Weinmeyer starts kissing me, taking my hot face in her hands and pushing her tongue into my mouth. I resist at first, or at least I don’t respond, but when her tongue tickles the tender lining of my lips, I shiver and suck tentatively, making her kiss me all the harder.
‘I need to be thrashed,’ I mumble through her kisses. ‘But I want this to be the last time. When we’re married I don’t want to punish or be punished. I want to be normal. I just want to love.’
‘Beautifully put, cara. And I doubt I will ever have cause to punish you.’ Gustav chuckles from close behind me. ‘So we’d better make this a session to remember, especially as our friends have waited so patiently!’
My eyelids flutter as I gasp for air. When I open them again, Mrs Weinmeyer has pulled her mouth away. She has positioned herself a few inches from my face. She is pale and hairless, waxed so completely that her parts are blue-white, almost see-through. I’ve been touched, and I’ve touched, but I’ve never looked so intimately at another woman before. I jerk against the handcuffs and they bite into my wrist. The sharp pain flashes more intensely through me.
‘I bet your Gustav doesn’t normally waste time spanking you, eh? I bet he normally just gets on and fucks you!’
‘I told him to hurt me!’ I manage to growl. ‘He should be doing what he’s told!’
Out of the corner of my eye I see Gustav’s arm, the shirt sleeve rolled up, lift in the air, palm flat. I open my mouth to scream, but my voice is just a puff of hot breath. His hand comes down really hard this time, the sting instant and sharp. I judder and squeal as it burns.
‘Poor Ernst is going to be livid he missed this!’ Mrs Weinmeyer’s voice has descended into quite a heavy Austrian accent. Attractive, but moody. ‘He wanted to be in control tonight, and it’s all gone wrong. Not just because of that contamination of our Venetian series, but entre nous he feels just a little humiliated by those last private pictures in the exhibition. They’re stunning, and classy, but what do they show? Me, tying him up, blindfolding him. All our associates have seen that. He wanted to be the master tonight. He wanted to take command.’
The vision that sails before me just then, of Mr Weinmeyer standing on the prow of a ship wearing a tropical naval uniform that’s a tad too tight, momentarily erases the other pictures in my head. I snuffle into the pillow and earn myself another smack.
‘But poor Ernst has had to summon everyone into his office upstairs and castigate whoever allowed Margot to get at our precious film. Maybe we should bring them all down here for a good whipping, eh, Serena? You should be the one slapping everyone, not lying there like a little virgin victim. On the other hand, you’re all mine tonight. I like you like this!’ Mrs Weinmeyer adopts the persona required of her and pushes herself into my face. I breathe in her aroma of sex and some kind of rose-petal wash. ‘So now, sugar pie, you’re going to lick me. Can she lick me, Gustav?’
There’s a pause. Gustav’s hands spread over my bottom and squeeze it.
‘She’ll do whatever you ask her to do tonight, Ingrid. That’s what releases her, and gives me my girl back. Just wait until I’ve punished her some more. I’ve got my own pleasure to come, don’t forget.’
I tug against the handcuffs. I need to see Gustav’s face. And I need to breathe.
There’s another harsh slap on my butt. ‘We’re waiting!’
Gustav’s voice is gruff. More like the voice he uses when he’s conducting business. We are performing together. We’re in public. Not surprising he sounds different. Slightly forced. Slightly formal. But sexy.
I force myself to breathe more deeply. Focus on what is happening. Use it to obliterate Margot’s spooky appearance earlier this evening. That nasty word she used to describe me. Cheap.
‘Spank me again!’ I yell, tipping my ass in the air. And it comes, stinging then spreading into a warm glow.
Mrs Weinmeyer spreads her legs.
‘Smack the little bitch, Levi!’
This time the slap is much harder. The sting spreads over the already tender spot and radiates deeper, and though I try to ignore the pain, the very act of struggling against it is kicking me into another zone at last, away from everything real.
Gustav grunts with satisfaction. He’s the commander tonight. I wriggle harder as he does it again, harder. My body rubs against the bed. A vicious flare of excitement sears through me.
‘I hope you feel good about yourself, sugar, because you’re behaving like a little whore in front of your boyfriend.’
Gustav starts smacking the other butt cheek. The hot, vicious slap, then the angry heat spreading through me, feels fantastic. He’s only using his hand. I know they don’t do whips down here in the Weinmeyer bordello.
‘Smack me again!’ I yelp, rubbing myself harder against the bed. ‘I’m so dirty, and naughty! Slap me again!’
‘This will teach you.’ Ingrid is beneath me now and she takes me by the hair and pushes my face into her body. She is very wet. ‘Lick me, sugar!’
‘Such a lovely white butt, all sore from my hand.’ Gustav mutters. Their voices are like soft chants weaving around me. ‘I’m going to fuck it.’
He runs his finger up my butt crack and pokes at the neat, tight hole. I tense instinctively, but Mrs Weinmeyer takes that as her cue to push my mouth into her so that I’m smothered in soft petals of female flesh.
Each time Gustav slaps me, Mrs Weinmeyer thrusts herself into my face. Weakly, and to get some breath, I stick my tongue out and take a tentative lick. The taste is foreign, yet familiar. Sweet, yet salty. Inviting, yet so, so dirty. I savour it for a moment and smile to myself. Something else added to my list of never-befores.
Now Gustav’s fingers are opening me up. I hear his zipper go.
‘Oh, my God. Am I finally going to see the great Levi schlong?’ Mrs Weinmeyer is very quiet in the muffled velvet room, half-moaning. ‘Oh, my God! Look at it! It really is as stupendous as me and my girlfriends have all fervently imagined!’
‘We’re lucky girls tonight then, Mrs Weinmeyer,’ I murmur as I dreamily start to lap at her. ‘Normally my fiancé watches, but now we get the best of both worlds because he’s here, and he’s taking part!’
Gustav chuckles again and mutters something obscene to her in German, presumably concerning the size of his bratwurst, and the bed dips as he lowers his trousers. Then he’s pushing hard where his fingers have opened me up.
Mrs Weinmeyer stops rocking my head for a moment but tightens her grip on my hair. ‘Just before you do her, Gustav honey! You did set up the camera to film?’
There’s a kind of flurry of activity around me. I can hear Gustav unclipping the small camera case I carry everywhere with me. I’m still muffled by Mrs Weinmeyer’s crotch and everything sounds as if we are under water. She and I go into a kind of trance, rocking together as Gustav goes to set up the camera to film this latest entry in my diary of debauchery.
‘Now we can both taste her together. Christmas and the Tooth Fairy have come all at once, darling. Make it up the ass, Gustav,’ purrs Mrs Weinmeyer as she settles my head between her legs again. ‘Go where it’s really tight. That way she’ll be all the more forceful with me.’
And here he is. My man. His hands take my hips and boy, he’s hard, so hard. What’s going on in his head? Is Margot there all the time, like she said? Is that why he’s been even more masterful with me?
Or is he hard from watching me, his girl, fulfilling a promise she made to these kind, impatient people, and seeing her bare butt, her lips and tongue working on another woman?
Please God, let it be thoughts of me, not her, that are turning him on tonight.
Gustav is stiff as a rod. I tip my ass towards him. My human dildo. We did this once in the lift at the gallery in London. That was another first. Up the ass. And in a lift.
As I push towards him, Mrs Weinmeyer pulls me towards her. I like feeling used like this. There are no thoughts jostling in my head any more. I’m just a piece of meat, built for pleasure.
Gustav pushes harder and I close instinctively against him, but he eases me open and pushes me again, up the bed and into Mrs Weinmeyer. He thrusts harder at the tight ring and I’m opening, and he is in. My body is packed tight, burning and full, utterly helpless. I’m pinned like a butterfly.
He starts to rock, his balls knocking against me. Mrs Weinmeyer, who I guess has been staring awestruck at the great Gustav Levi kneeling on her bed, naked from the waist down as he takes his fiancée, lets out a moan as if I’ve done something unexpected.
‘You are in so much trouble making me do this!’ he growls in my ear.
The burning up my backside makes me light-headed with euphoria. I lick my mistress harder, savouring the taste of her, savouring how this must look. Savouring another new lesson. As I lap faster and she starts to lose control, I locate the nub of her clit with my tongue and try nibbling and sucking at it, and that hits the spot because she yelps and squeals and then she starts to groan and swear. The harder I lick and bite, and the hotter and wetter she is, the hotter and wetter I am. The pleasure pulsates somewhere inside, I can’t tell which part of me, and it’s growing, and coming closer.
Mrs Weinmeyer pulls at my hair. The pain sends sick desire shooting through me. I suck at her, and from the spasms I know I’m doing it right. She rubs herself faster over my nose and mouth, tilting her hips wildly to get my tongue deep inside her, and as soon as I push it up her she comes, groaning and writhing against my face
Gustav isn’t ready. He wants to go on and on, his fingers deep inside the other part of me to keep me impaled, and as soon as Mrs Weinmeyer comes and falls away from me, whimpering and shaking with dying pleasure, Gustav claims me properly, pushing my face back into the pillows so that my bottom is offered higher for him to swell inside, to pump harder and deeper.
I gasp for air as he shudders inside me at last and I come, waves of sensation breaking over me, holding him tight inside as I collapse beneath his weight, my breath creaking in my chest.
My arse sore and battered.
My head empty of everything except my debt paid to the Weinmeyers, performed to perfection with my future husband.