Dario was gone all day. Before he left, he told me to call him with my phone at two o’clock. I did it, and over the headset, he directed me to give myself an orgasm, which I did. He came home after dark, ate dinner, and after his phone buzzed, he disappeared into the depths of the house.
When everything’s in its place, I wonder where he is. Unable to find him in the usual places, I start for the bedroom, but notice the door under the stairs isn’t fully closed. I go to close it, but I check first. The monitor lights flicker.
Well, I figure he knows I’m a snoop, and maybe I’ll find him on one of the screens, doing whatever he does.
But Dario is right in the room, sitting in profile, eyes glued to a screen that lights his face. I’ve never sneaked up on him before, and I’m not sure how to tell him I’m here without him reacting with either fear or aggression.
Whatever’s on the screen, it’s taking up so much attention his guard is down. Barely breathing, I lean over to see what he’s looking at.
I see people moving, then recognize the greenhouse I came to loathe. The rest comes in a flash. A woman. Naked. A ball of fire in the corner. A cigarette lighter. Someone’s smoking. The woman is pulled down to her knees.
It’s not me.
I am not the naked woman on her knees in the greenhouse.
Maybe I gasp. Or maybe my body made the room’s temperature that much warmer.
Dario spins around to face me.
“Fuck!” He slides a cover over the monitor. “Sarah. What are you doing here?”
“What’s that? What’s happening?
“It happened already. You need to go.”
“Who is that woman?”
“Go upstairs and wait for me.”
“Show me.”
“No.”
He tries to hustle me out the door, but I push him off. He grabs for my arms, but I flail, kicking his legs, screaming, “Show me!”
“No! Sarah, No!”
I jut my arms forward and push him away. He falls back a step, and I reach for the screen. I’m too slow, or he’s too fast, but I’m not giving up just because he has my wrists. I have legs and I have feet. I have a head with a hard skull I can swing against his face.
“Ow! Jesus!” He lets go of me to cup his nose.
“Oh! I’m sorry.”
And I am sorry. But I need to know what happened. In the split second I have, I slide the cover away to expose the screen. The frame is filled with darkened shapes frozen into blobs. There are no buttons or switches to flip.
“How do I make it go?” I demand.
“How do I make you go?” He uncovers his face. It’s as beautiful as it ever was. “How do I make sure you don’t see the abomination that happened under my roof? You won’t get over it. It’ll fuck with your head. Is that what you want? To see something so fucked up, you never get your feet under you?”
“I’m not scared.”
“You’re not scared enough.”
“You sound like my grandmother with all her bogeyman stories. They never worked.”
He shakes his head then looks at the screen with a sadness that may make him look powerless right now, but it’s red meat for anger.
“There are bogeymen, Sarah.” With the keys and a final tap of the spacebar, he speeds up the video until black and white figures rush around the greenhouse under patches of digital static. “They raised you.”
He taps, and the video goes at normal speed. The static disappears. Two more men pace around. The one in front of the naked woman is Raymond. My cousin. And the men are Gino and… I think…
“Marco?”
The woman can’t be me because the man isn’t Dario. The woman punches Raymond’s thighs. He pulls her nest of hair, revealing a long braid that’s coming undone.
“So, it is Dafne.”
In the fight, they’re both pivoted to profile. She’s not pantomiming fellatio. There’s no tricky angle or playacting.
“That’s her,” Dario says. “In my house. With them.”
My cousin, who liked my Christmas cookies, shoves his dick in my teacher’s mouth like a piston, then stops deep. She’s choking and he’s coming.
“Dafne left the Colonia because she loved a man her father didn’t want her to marry,” Dario says. “She vowed another man would never touch her.”
Marco pulls Dafne up by the hair. His dick is already out. When Dafne won’t open her mouth, he slaps her. Somehow, that’s more horrifying than what Raymond just did to her.
Gino kneels behind her while Marco wedges her mouth open.
I tap the spacebar. The image freezes, but that’s an illusion I created to save myself.
“Did they kill her?” I can’t believe what I’m asking.
“She leaves the room alive.”
I want to cry, but I can’t. I’m dry as a bone.
“That’s my cousin.” I tap Raymond’s face. “He liked picture books with trucks.”
“Remember that kid. He’s gone.” Dario takes my face in his hands and looks at me so deeply, I’m sure he can see how badly I want to forget what I just saw. “Are you going to insist on seeing the rest?”
“I get the idea.”
“I’m sorry I showed you.” The light from that image shines blue on his face, shadowing the hollow places under his cheekbones. The video is poison. It’s a contamination.
“You had to. How else would I know what they are? What we are?”
“Shush. You are not like them.”
But we choose not to be, and choices are weak. They can be unmade and remade. Sequestered behind walls of poor reasoning, I can reject what they did, but I’m one choice away from being one of them.
“This won’t ever be over, will it?” I ask.
When we’ve been silent too long, he says, “I have humiliated my enemies. They wanted me to think they’ve moved on. But that’s over. They don’t take their licks and forget. They’re relentless. They’ll hunt us down. They’ll keep me alive and make me watch them hurt you before they kill me. And if I die before they catch me, they’ll hunt my family. They’ll kill my friends. They’ll burn down everything I ever touched and destroy everyone I care about. Starting with you.”
Dafne. Dafne. Dafne.
No. I won’t think about what I just saw. It hurts too much. I want the hope back. The menu of possibilities.
“I know you wanted peace,” he says. “Now, do you understand why that’s not possible?”
“I’m not afraid of them,” I say.
“You should be.”
“I can’t be your prisoner forever.”
He holds me and makes promises in my ear. “Not forever.”
In this little room behind locked doors, it seems impossible that anything bad could happen to us. I feel safe here with him. Even knowing this feeling is a reckless luxury, I can’t help but own it.
The images from the greenhouse smash into the barriers I erect to protect this coin of peace. They crack. I cringe, holding back those thoughts. I can’t let them through.
“Dario,” I say breathlessly, picking up my head from his shoulder, “you were right. I feel scrambled. Everything is wrong. I need to feel something is right.”
“How can I make it all right for you?”
“Do what you do.” I pull up my skirt and lower my underpants. “Remind me it isn’t like that with you.” I sit on the counter and spread my knees. “Please. Make me feel it.”
Lifting my knees, I beg for it by showing him the source of my need. The intensity of his gaze is as physical as a touch. With a hand on each knee, he spreads me wider, drawing his hands down, inside my thighs, then he spreads my lips apart.
“You’re wet.”
“Thinking about you. Please take me. Help me block it out.”
I’m convinced he’ll do what I ask, but he pulls over the chair. Is he serious? Does he want to have a conversation? I close my legs and start to get up, but he pulls them apart and pushes me back, then sits.
“Relax.” He runs his lips inside my thigh. “Try to relax. Think about how good it feels when I fuck you.” He spreads my lips again and kisses where I’m wet. “Relax and let me take care of you.”
There are no threats of punishment. No rough penetration. No pain at the margins of pleasure. Just the soft strokes of his tongue and the caress of his lips. His mouth savors the taste of my pleasure.
Without pain, it’s almost overwhelming—and yet, I can’t come.
“Faster, please,” I gasp.
“You’re too beautiful like this.” He sucks me quickly. I buck. “You’re too hot to finish. With your legs open for me, begging for it, my dirty little girl.” He sucks my clit tenderly, and when I’m sure he’s going to let me come, he stops to kiss the perimeters of my pleasure. “My dirty, beautiful wife wants to come.”
“Please.”
“But you’re so pretty when you beg.” Another suck, then a series of tongue flicks that forever halve the distance between me and my orgasm.
“Please, Dario. I’ll give you everything.”
“You already have. You just don’t know it.”
“I do! I do know it!” Is he listening? Or just licking me into madness? “My body is yours. My mind.”
My heart?
“Only think about me. You think about nothing I don’t allow in your head. Do you understand?”
Without waiting for an answer, he takes such a hard suck on my clit that I gasp from the bottom of my lungs.
“Yes!” I cry.
I expect him to revert to form. Hurt me with his teeth. Use his fingers to bruise and grab. I expect roughness and pain, but his portions of pleasure are so indulgent, so controlled, so sadistic that tears fall from my eyes. I can’t beg. I can’t speak. All I can do is weep from the whispers of attention from his mouth as he draws me along, going more slowly as I get closer.
“You want me to make you come?” He’s watching me over the length of my body.
“With you.” I pull his head away. “With you, please.”
In moments, he’s inside me, meeting the last of my needs by filling me with him and connecting our bodies.
“Look at me.” He holds my face to his. “Keep your eyes open and look at me.”
He’s the only thing in my vision. He’s everything. Dario is up, down, every point on the compass. Sobbing with every breath, I lose sense of space.
I am grief, and joy, and desire.
I’ve wept for all of it before and I will again.
“Dario,” I say the only word in my vocabulary, and it’s the only one that matters.
That acceptance is the last thought I have before Dario leads me home, and I’m lost in rapture with him.
When I find myself, the world is a clearer place.
There will be no peace. There will be war, and blood, and uncertainty.
But there will be love.