Vladimir screamed at three in the morning. At first the sound was bestial; as it kept going I began to discern some words, mostly profanity. I gathered myself and took out his cell phone. I saw Cynthia had written a text telling him she was off to bed and not to wake her when he came home. I texted the preplanned message back to her, then dropped the phone in the glass of water on my nightstand and hid it under my bed.
When I walked into the living area, I saw him twisting forcibly against his restraints, pressing his feet to the ground in an attempt to lift the chair, using his left arm to claw at the zip ties, and then his teeth. He had wet himself, poor thing, there was a puddle on the floor. When he saw me, he lunged at me with the free parts of his body. If he had been loosed, I did not doubt he would have torn at my throat.
“What the fuck is happening? Get me out of here right now—you fucking lunatic, what the fuck is this?”
He was frightening. The anger of a gentle man is the most frightening kind of anger. His face was twisted and white with rage. Every vein I could perceive on his weight lifter’s body was engorged and trembling against his skin. I could see the pulse in his neck beating as fast as a captured rabbit.
“Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay,” I said to him.
“Shh, shh, shh, shh, shhhhhh,” I said to him.
“Okay,” I said.
And for some reason, something ancient and maternal, my soothing sounds worked. He stilled his body and took a deep breath. He emitted a sound that was nearly a laugh, with a quick inhale of panic following, and then began to breathe in and out rapidly, approaching hyperventilation.
“Shhhhh, shhhhhh, shhhhhhh,” I said again.
“Breathe, sweetheart,” I said, my tone firm, like a strict nurse.
He put his head down and forced himself to inhale slowly.
“In for five,” I coached, “out for five, that’s it.”
I filled a glass of water for him and set it down on the left chair arm, hurrying away after I placed it in case he tried to grab me. But he kept his body quiet while he continued to breathe, and after a few cycles he took the glass of water and drank it.
“Thank you,” he said after he had finished it.
Sweet man? Cunning man? I couldn’t tell. He closed his eyes, sorting his thoughts, and then looked at me with some humor.
“So is this like that movie? That, um, you know that movie? That was a book? With the actress”—he corrected himself—“actor who’s so good? I can’t remember the name of the movie. She chains him to the bed and sledgehammers his legs?”
“Misery,” I said, “Kathy Bates.”
“Kathy Bates,” he said. “She’s so good.” A wave of drowsiness swept over him and his head bobbed. Determined to stay awake, he shook himself.
“Do you want to kill me?” he asked, looking at me like a nervous child.
I felt filled with care at his pleading look, at the fear that I imagined was passing in waves over his chest and bowels. As I said, I hadn’t fully thought through my plans after Vlad awoke, I hadn’t decided what I was going to tell him, or how or if I was going to keep him. Yet as I looked at him, chained in the dim light, I felt aroused with a libidinous ingenuity. I focused on his hard, flat abdomen, secured against the chair, and allowed a story to arise and flow, as if I were setting it down on a page. Whenever I used to read about writers who “opened themselves to the voices” I used to roll my eyes, believing them sentimental and overly precious. But in this moment, whether it was adrenaline or the survival instinct, I found my front brain receded and a story emerged that came not so much from me as through me.
I told him that we had gotten quite drunk together in the cabin, and had, to my extreme mortification, become very flirtatious, although I knew, I said, that this was only the result of his intense intoxication. At this Vlad politely protested. Drunk as skunks, we were, I said, and in our drunkenness, he mentioned that he had, and again I told him I confessed this to him despite my extreme humiliation, always wanted to try some BSDM, and I rolled my eyes as I said the initials as though the letters hurt me to utter. At which point Vlad interrupted me and corrected the order of the letters, BDSM, with an understanding smile. I shrugged, flushed, nodded, and closed my eyes. He was listening, and I felt I had guessed correctly—that Vlad, patriarch, breadwinner, unwilling yet self-cherishing provider to his family, who (I remembered from what Cynthia told me in my office) was sexually distanced from his wife, would hold some fantasies of domination. What happened next, I said, was a blur for me, in and out, patches of vision here and there, but together we agreed that I would restrain him, playfully, that we would try it out for a bit of fun. I had zip-tied his arm, but he had asked for more, and so in our stupor we had agreed to restrain his chest.
“I don’t remember any of this,” he said.
“You were drinking at an alarming pace,” I told him.
“And so what, did we—consummate, something?”
He looked down at his fly to check if it was open or closed.
“I don’t know,” I said, then looked at his expression and felt a rush of compassion. “I don’t think so.”
I told him that as mortified as I was to admit it, I must have blacked out as well. At some point in the night I remembered waking up on the floor in front of his chair and must have gotten myself changed and in bed without being fully conscious that he was still tied up. I was so sorry, I told him, this was by far the most absurd situation I had ever partaken in. I was not necessarily a dignified woman, I said, but I had never done anything like this. It must be all the stress—everything going on with the hearing. To my relief, he seemed to take it all in as truth.
“I didn’t think I had it in me,” he said.
“What?”
“Cheating,” he said.
I told him there were extenuating circumstances. He asked like what, and I said, after much prevaricating, that I had told him some news. I hesitated, but he pressed upon me until I revealed that I had recently discovered that Cynthia and John were having an affair. I said that had I not been drunk I would not have told him, and I blamed the cachaça and said that I was sorry and that he should have found out from his wife, not from me.
His face crumpled. “Are you sure? I know John was helping Cyn with her memoir—they were doing a two-person writing group.”
I responded quickly that I was absolutely sure, that I had caught them in flagrante delicto, practically, but a pocket of doubt opened up in my mind as I said it. Had they, in fact, been greeting in a friendly manner when I saw them? But no, I was sure I saw Cynthia grab him around the hip and pull him into her, I was sure I saw his hand run through her hair and the tilt of their heads toward each other. Besides, they couldn’t have a writing group—John hadn’t written for years.
Vlad was quiet again, then said, “I need to sleep.” He looked at the puddle at his feet and said, “I’m sorry about the mess.” I told him not to give it a second thought, that John had left some clothes here, that he could change and lie down in the guest room and after he rested we would get our bearings. He nodded like he had given up all agency, and then asked meekly if I wouldn’t mind undoing the restraints. I acted shocked, as though I had forgotten they were even attached to his body. I kneeled between his legs (avoiding the urine) and undid the combination lock, unwrapped him, and then got a pair of kitchen scissors and slid the blade under the zip tie. I struggled a bit as the plastic was hard to cut and I didn’t want to hurt him. I was thrillingly close to his body, and as I moved from the first zip tie to the second, he whispered, sadly it seemed, that I smelled good. I smiled and impulsively kissed him on the temple, like a mother, and then he took me with his left hand by the back of the neck, drew my face down to his, and kissed my mouth. I pulled away, surprised.
“I’m sorry,” he said, but I said nothing and cut through the final tie. I led him to the guest room, and handed him a pair of John’s pajama pants. Without waiting for me to leave, he started pulling off his sodden jeans and briefs. I looked away. When he finished changing I kicked the jeans out the doorway of the room and told him I would launder them. “They can’t go in the dryer,” he murmured, then took off his blazer, hung it over the back of a chair, and lay down on the bed. I stroked his face for a moment. He grabbed my wrist and pulled me toward him.
“Will you stay with me?” he asked. He was already dropping off, his pelvis shifting back and forth in an unconscious rhythm. I sat on the bed, gave his hand a squeeze, and told him that he would have a better sleep by himself. I drew the curtains in the room—it was nearly dawn, the dark was lifting.
I returned to my bedroom and arranged my pillows so that I was sitting up in bed. A sad and strange disappointment settled on my chest. I craved John and his cynicism and his massive form. I craved Sid and her body, still young, unfettered, and free enough to occasionally lay herself against me and gather succor from my warmth. I rose and looked in the mirror—scrunching my face so I could see every possible wrinkle. Vladimir’s breath had smelled awful, but then again, mine probably did as well. My face hadn’t melted from the bone when we kissed—I hadn’t felt much of anything, though that may have been simply because I was so surprised. I couldn’t tell from his weariness how much he believed me versus how much truth he intuited. Was the kiss, the invitation to lie down, a gesture of affection? Or was it a gesture of condescension, for the old, lame woman who didn’t follow through on her kidnapping plans? Was it true that John was spending nights at his office helping Cynthia with her memoir and not pressing his lips against patches of her private skin? John had never read any of my manuscripts. When we were younger and I would ask him to look at something I wrote he would say he didn’t want to interfere with my voice, that he didn’t want to unduly influence my style. But I always knew that he was conflicted about my writing. Though he was slightly more august, and his publication and teaching style (affairs included) lent him a Harold Bloom–like gravitas and stature, he and I had the same job, were the same level of professor throughout our career, once junior, then associate, then senior. He had achieved some power when he became chair, and he was good at the business machinations of the college, but I never wanted that kind of influence. Meanwhile I managed to publish two novels along with my academic work. He did quite a bit of rereading of his own juvenilia but could never force himself to spit out enough poetry to fill even a small chapbook. I knew that every time he read my work he would have been battling against wanting to truly help me and wanting me to fail, if only to justify his own flaccid failure. Still, he could have saved me, I thought. He was a merciless critic, and my books, particularly my second, could have benefited from his slashing pen. Cynthia was already the better writer. If her book was a wild success, or even just a literary one, would I be able to withstand my jealousy?
Like moving the volume dial on the radio, I tuned my thoughts down to a low buzz and concentrated on the sounds of birds that were gathering fortitude with the rising sun. They must have built a nest somewhere close. I closed my eyes and slept for about an hour. The house was quiet when I woke. I thought perhaps that Vladimir had left, run for the hills, hitchhiked or stolen my car, done whatever he could to get away from me, the psycho bitch. But when I went to check the guest room, he was there, still asleep, the covers thrown off, his shirt shed, his rippled torso gleaming.