SAT DOWN AND SHE REMOVED THE LAB COAT TO GIVE ME a good look at her curves, the expensive underwear and smooth black shoes. The shoes and the glasses seemed like lingerie too.

“We’re about to conduct a simple but deeply important experiment,” she said. “Any lapse in your concentration will result in the administration of a shock. The problem is that your collar is set for maximum voltage. Even a man of your body mass will find the pain excruciating. Your hair will have a static, fried texture. Your eyeballs will throb. Your heart will jolt—and it’s said that subjects exposed to this high an electrical charge often bite off their tongues. At best, there will be a taste of burnt metal in your mouth, which will linger well after you’ve stopped seeing stars and caught your breath. The muscle spasms may persist longer.”

I couldn’t accept what I was hearing, even though she said it so matter-of-factly. I felt like a trap door had opened underneath me and I’d fallen right out of anything I understood.

“You’re going to read to me, Sunny, from a book I’m going to give you. You must read every word, clearly and meaningfully. As we express ourselves, so do we listen. This is the first thing you need to learn to step through the barriers that surround you—that have become you. If you mispronounce a word or stumble on a sentence, you’ll be given a shock. If I press this button, you’ll scream like the most delicate schoolgirl—and probably even cry. Then you’ll buck and shudder in that chair like a ridiculous marionette.”

I think I bucked and shuddered right then. She smiled sweetly and malignly all at once.

“The good news is that while you’re reading, Sophia is going to kneel between your legs and put her pretty mango wet mouth to work. If you remain still and appreciatively open to her, she will satisfy you more deeply and expertly than you’ve ever experienced. You’re free to enjoy this artful privilege as completely as you can, but you must remain attentive to your reading. It’s my pleasure in hearing your voice massage each word that you must be concerned about. The slightest slip of your tongue while Sophia graces you with hers—and you taste the fire. Understand?”

I stared stupidly back at her, unable to comprehend what I was hearing—hearing it as if from another place in time. Or mind.

“Now, there’s another element to this experiment,” she continued. “That little foil ring Sophia has attached? It’s also an electrical device. A sensitive, precise way of assessing the fullness of your arousal. Of measuring it. The device is connected to this switch relay over here.” She pointed to the mantel.

“As you read, water will fill the tank in which the cat has been placed. The greater your arousal, the slower the water will enter the tank. The other conclusion is obvious.”

“The cat could drown,” I said, feeling my stomach rumble. Nothing El Miedo had ever thrown me could compare to this scene that had taken hold of me.

Genevieve’s eyes brightened.

“Do you know about the case of Wagner and Brahms? Wagner accused Brahms of being a serial cat killer for the purposes of learning how to translate the death wails of cats into music for the violin. An historian has now officially cleared Brahms. A pity really. I think Wagner’s view of him was more interesting.”

“You’re going to kill a cat! That’s—”

“I’m not going to kill the cat, Sunny. You may. But don’t make it sound so dramatic. You’ve never been a big animal lover—going to back your childhood in the valley. Don’t you remember? You now have a chance to save a cat simply by responding like a virile male to a beautiful and much younger woman. Is that too hard? No, I see some things are certainly not hard enough. But you may yet rise to my occasion.

“However. Life is a precarious balance. Should you discover some masculine enthusiasm—giving you the benefit of our hope—as soon as you demonstrate sufficient stimulation to cut off the water to the cat’s tank, you’ll trigger random charges of electricity to the rat cages. There’s always a price for performance and pleasure, just as there is for failure and humiliation.”

“My God, you’re …”

“Shh, Sunny. It’s very difficult when you have this power at your fingertips not to use it. And lest you shrivel further, let me say that you won’t be alone in the hot seat. Sophia will also be wired. The charges for her are much smaller, but they will be all over. Her devices will be monitored by the clock on the mantel, which has a feedback connection to your sensor. The longer it takes her to encourage you, the more the pain will increase for her. So you see, she has great incentive to entice you to achievement.”

“What happens if I …?” But my voice didn’t sound like mine. It didn’t sound like El Miedo. It sounded like an echo bouncing off a wall I’d somehow walked right through.

“Another significant aspect of the expected male demonstration. If you should sow your oats before the clock hand reaches the blue area, then the waterflow will flood the cat’s tank. All of the rats will be electrocuted and Sophia will receive the maximum charge from all the pain points. You won’t receive an electrical shock—only the shock of seeing the consequences of your inadequacy. If, on the other hand, you respond properly, maintain an acceptable degree of firmness and reach a climax after the clock hand has entered the red area, then only the rats in the left cage will be terminated. The cat will survive, and Sophia will have endured but a variation on the usual discomfort women experience in trying to please unworthy men. You, of course, will then be free to go. Just as you’re free to go right now.”

“Yeah, right. I make one move and you zap me!”

“No,” she answered, shaking her head. “You’re here by choice, not chance. If you ask, I’ll remove the collar and you may leave. But you’ll never be able to come back for a private consultation.

“Oh, Sunny, don’t be resentful … your problem is that you feel so vulnerable now. Only you can’t admit to yourself that that’s exactly what you wanted. The idea that you were no less vulnerable two hours ago doesn’t occur to you. When you come to understand the kind of collar you were wearing then, you’ll be started on the true unbinding.”

I stared at the rodents, the cat, the girl, the wires, the clock. “What will happen if there’s a volcano but no eruption?”

She pursed her lips and replied, “When the clock hand reaches the black marker, you’re free to go. If you haven’t delivered your payload, but have maintained your angle of attack, the cat will survive. Sophia will suffer though. And all the lab specimens will be exposed to the charge you would’ve gotten. Life is a matter of balance, sacrifice and shared distress.”

“What are the time increments on the clock?” I asked, sweat breaking out on my forehead and back, making me stick to the chair.

“Time is a curved Riemannian four-dimensional space,” she answered. “Concentrate on the things that are familiar to you: what’s between your legs, the mixed fear and enjoyment of pain, and the sound of your own voice.”

She held the remote control out in front of her. My cell phone started ringing in my jacket on the floor. She laughed. “Would you like to answer that?”

“No,” I scowled.

“Then answer me,” she said softly and undid her bra with her other hand. She whipped me across the cheek with it, which stirred more of her scent through the air. “Are you going to read to me? Or is this farewell to the surprises and the possibilities?”

“I’ll … read.”

Genevieve leaned in close to me, her breasts brushing my skin. If I’d have been fast enough, I could’ve broken her lovely neck. Instead she prodded me with the antenna of the remote control. Raising it and circling each of my nipples. The metal felt cold against my flushed skin.

“Very good, Sunny,” she whispered in my ear—more a fragrance I could hear than a voice. “I’ll give you one concession. The first time you falter, one of the specimens here will take your punishment for you. Like this.”

She pressed one of the buttons on the remote. A lone hooded rat hopped and hit the roof of its cage, falling back down in a puff of smoke, its fur singed, legs raised.

I swallowed down a glob of phlegm. My throat was so tight my tongue felt like glue. She eased behind me and hit the button to open Sophia’s cage.

“Grovel!” Genevieve commanded, and the girl did exactly that, shimmying across the floor to the older woman’s feet like an animal—what kind I wouldn’t want to say. Then Sophia began attaching patches to her body, each one linked to a length of wire. Two went on her nipples. One between her legs. Others on her arms and abdomen. And a final one, Genevieve inserted between the cheeks, which even from where I sat smelled like musk and womanly perspiration. Then a face harness and choke collar was secured, and Sophia submissively slipped to the floor between my legs. Genevieve moved behind me and passed around my shoulder a book—a red hardbound textbook entitled Mammalian Sexual Behavior. She’d employed an unused fluoro pink studded condom as a bookmark, opening to a chapter titled “Sexual Exhaustion and Recovery in the Male Rat.” I felt my vocal chords atrophy.

“Read to me, Sunny,” she said. “Let your mind exist only for the words before your eyes. Give them your total devotion and your body will be free to behave like a body. This is your first chance to make love to me. Perplexed and even terrified as you are … release yourself.”

The clock began to throb more than tick. I heard the sound of water begin to enter the aquarium, the whine of the cat, the awful creaking of the wheel in the sewer rat’s cage. And I felt the warm, wet breath of Sophia … what I’d dreamed of so often in my loneliness in the last months. I sensed her appetite to please me in every cell of my body. I took one glance at the cat in the trickling tank and knew that if I looked again I’d regret it. I began to read …

“Twelve male rats were left with receptive females and allowed to copulate and ejaculate. Sexually active males were selected on the basis of their mating performance in three or four prim … preliminary tests with receptive females.”

A sharp brightness flared in one of the cages when I swallowed the word “preliminary.” There was an acrid smell, but I read on.

“Males were housed individually and were maintained in the experimental room in which the light-dark cycle was controlled by an electric clock. Drinking water and Purina chow were available ad libitum.”

I hesitated on the Latin words, just long enough to hear the clock again. Like another animal in the room. I felt Sophia wince and a sympathetic tremor of electricity ran through me. I was still soft and withdrawn. Slippery and gratified, but afraid. The collar around my neck seemed to tighten. I could feel the carotid pressure and the slow ache seeping through Sophia without a word spoken. The words were for me. The current hummed. The wheel of the sewer rat squeaked. The cat’s paws were growing used to the rising water. My voice droned on …

“The apparatus included special observation cages and a recording device. The rear half of the top was surmounted by a cylindrical release can in which a receptive female was placed.”

I heard the cat shaking the water from its fur. Sophia growled with a surge of electric anguish. I read on, trying to do to the dead scientific words what she was trying to do to me.

“Three observation cages were fastened to a rack in such a position that they could be watched simultaneously by an observer …”

Something happened then. All of the details of the room began to dissolve. The collars and the electrical current. The creatures and the cages. It was as if a door had opened to a secret world that had always been there, close by, only I’d never known about it.

“At the observer’s side were three counterweights controlling the trap floors …”

I felt the rush of blood and the cat’s tank stopped filling with water. Each word I encountered from that point seemed engraved. The sentences began to radiate before my eyes and I read them like holy inscriptions revealed in a vision. I couldn’t hear the water, the clock or the electrical flashes anymore—only Sophia’s encouraging breathing. I was on the verge of exploding—not like that hooded rat—when another buzzer sounded. Deafening. Final.

“Congratulations, Sunny,” Genevieve said—and the reality of the room, if reality it was, came flooding back. The clock hand was stopped in the depth of the black area.

“Your curiosity hasn’t killed the cat. In fact, an exotic pussy is free to live another day. Unfortunately, you weren’t quite able to let yourself go. Your tumescence is proof of your capability, but your partner in this experiment was longing for your fulfillment.”

The spell broken, the cages and animals returned. “So … what happens …?”

“You’ll be released, as soon as the consequences have been made clear to you.”

There was a crackling of current. The bare bulb overhead dimmed for a second. Instantly the cages full of the surviving rats lit up—the creatures leaping and jerking. Those that didn’t burst open outright simply collapsed in tufts of smoke. My whole body was rigid in the chair, too startled to move. Where my mind was I couldn’t say.

“Now, Sunny. You’re going to see Sophia dance. She knelt down and pleasured you. Now she’s going to wriggle on the floor like a maggot. Have you ever seen someone have a grand mal seizure? Oh, of course you have. Your sister for instance.”

“P-please …” I stammered, rage and disgust racing through me like a current.

“Very good!” Genevieve praised. “That’s a word you haven’t used nearly enough in life. But it won’t do now. Didn’t your sister’s death result from a seizure? She fell and broke her neck didn’t she? While you and your friends looked on.”

“You don’t—understand!” I cried. “You weren’t there!”

“You were feeling naked and ashamed, and yet perversely excited, as you are now—knowing you could do something to help her but not knowing what. It was not a sexual failure you faced then—or now. It was a failure of love. Of care. Prepare Sophia.”

My head spun. How had she known anything about my sister Serena—and what had happened that afternoon? She couldn’t have known.

“Give me the juice,” I yelled. “That’s what you want. Fry me!”

My cell phone rang again from my coat pocket on the floor. The contrast to the scene in the room was ludicrous. I let it ring through to the voicemail. Then I stood up and wrenched off the foil ring. I was going to peel off the neck collar too and then beat some sense and decency—

But to my horror, even more than my exasperation, Genevieve bent down to the grilled cage that held the dump rat. She opened the door and summoned the vermin into her hands, nestling the filthy thing to nurse at her bosom like a much loved pet.

“I’m proud of you, Sunny,” she said, stroking the mottled fur. “You’ve proven yourself in more ways than one—my affection for you grows. You’ve left some of your mammalian performance anxiety behind and can now advance. Get dressed and take your prize home.”

I wanted to hit something—like her. But that line threw me. “You mean …?”

She cackled. “I meant the cat.”

My face went red and I started wrestling my clothes on. Sophia waited on her knees at Genevieve’s command. When I had my underwear and pants on, I yanked the shock collar from my neck as I should’ve done right at the start, and flung it on the chair that still bore my sweat marks. Then I stuffed my arms in my shirt and snatched the rest up in my hands.

“Save the cat, Sunny,” Genevieve said. “Notice that I didn’t say take the cat?”

My eyes considered the electrocuted lab rats and I crossed to the tank to release the sopping Persian. “I never want to see you again,” I said.

“Really?” she laughed and pressed a button on the remote control. The shock collar leapt out of the chair and hit the clock. “Some collars are more easily removed than others. I’ll expect you at 4 PM on the dot on Friday. That’s the time your mother used to expect you home from school. Be prompt. And bring me another present—but nothing like a box of chocolates. It must be something personal, from your past. As befits our budding intimacy.”

I lurched out the door with the wet cat and my shoes. I was almost to the stone stairs when I heard Sophia yowl like a banshee. Just as my cell phone rang again.