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CHAPTER 2
SELA
I go down and see a limousine waiting for me, the driver opens the door for me and I sweep my dress in next to me, and there he is, Oren, wearing a tuxedo for maybe the first time ever.
“Are you going to tell me what all this is about?” I ask him. I just spent the last 8 hours at a spa getting plucked and waxed and washed, and fitting into this ridiculously expensive dress. Normally that would be a wonderful treat for a girl to get from her boyfriend, but when the boyfriend is Oren, also your business partner, and the tab is being paid by your joint account of which you've been the only contributor to for the last year, you know its not a romantic evening you're in for.
“Do I smell alcohol?” I ask, I could definitely smell the hint of whiskey, underneath Listerine and cologne and mint gum. “You don't drink remember? That's the deal we had.”
“Of course not,” he answered but his eyes went to the floor. “I was in a bar, a meeting with someone. He drank, but it was club soda for me.”
Bullshit. You don't absorb alcohol through the air and the asshole defensiveness and dumb lies were proof of drinking. The last four months sober, he was a new person. Less of an overconfident asshole and more sweet and figuring out who he was again without the alcohol. Sometimes I missed the overconfidence, but not all that went with it.
“Do you trust me?” Oren asks me.
“Of course I do.” I answer, but I know when he asks that it's usually a bad sign. He asked it before we went to Iraq, and Afghanistan and Jamaica. The first two were jobs covering war zones, the last was a vacation that made me miss the war zones. The tourist resorts have 10 foot walls for a reason, not to keep the tourists in, but to keep the rest of the island out.
“Take off your panties.”
“Why?”
“No questions. I'm commanding you.”
“Commanding me? Who do you think you are?”
“Your boss, for one, and your fiancee.”
“So who's asking?”
“Both. You said you trusted me, this is one time I'll need all of it, but there's a great payoff too.”
Lately, he had a knack for big projects and big payoffs. I did the small jobs, sold my photographs to pay the bills, and he worked on big projects that never came to anything. “What is it this time?”
“Dorian Grant dinner party.”
“Of Grant Holdings? The Times, the Post, whatever else.”
“The same.”
“How did you get invited? He hates you.”
“He hates my name and by line at the bottom of a newspaper article. As a person, I'm nothing to him. But, I have a friend who he does actually hate, but had to invite, this friend invited me. I know, it sounds bad all the way around, but this could be big.”
“How and why does this involve me going commando?”
“This is no ordinary dinner party. Grant has peculiar fetishes and interests and is a part of this club, and this is a private club party.”
“What's my role?”
“I'm not sure. Sort of sex slave I think?”
I let the words settle in the air. Sex Slave? While I've had worse jobs, than being sex slave to a beautiful Billionaire, this didn't smell right. “Why would I agree to this?”
“Look, its probably just one of those things, people with money have new fads all the time, sex clubs are hot right now, I'm sure it's just a goof. Come to the party, they dress you up, parade you around like a slave, someone bids on you and wins -that will be me, of course,- and we go off and act like slaves. But really we'll be there for the story.”
“I see why I'm there, but how are you getting in this room with billionaire's? And how are you going to outbid them? I know what you make.”
“You're my price of admission. And my friend is vouching for me as a foreign billionaire, and paying all costs for you.”
“It sounds foolproof.”
“It is.”
“So was Jamaica.”
“This'll be different.”
It was hard to trust Oren. He had been sober for 4 months, finally, but why I hadn't left him 5 months ago is beyond me. We had been through a lot together, and he had seen a lot more than me, but to crawl inside a bottle like he did was too much. Every day I thought of a reason to just go, just leave. But every day he was sober was a reason for me not to go, he wouldn't last long without me, I knew.
I met him when he came to my college, to talk about being a war journalist. He was honest, the only person at school that was actually honest, he said, “The money sucks, the family and white picket fence probably won't happen, but what will happen is adventure.”
I emailed him and finished up school over the next 6 months, and when I was done, I got on a plane, and we've been together ever since.
He drank of course, it was a part of the job. He told wonderful stories, and the sadness, mixed in with the happiness and aliveness of his face were what made me fall in love.
We went through the same trauma over there, and I got it worse than he did, but it was him who crawled into a bottle, not me. For him, the drinking took over and he started to hit me when he was really drunk. The hitting and the words he said that could never be taken back or forgiven were enough for me to leave. There was no future for us, but I owed him enough to stay until he got his life back together. Then I was done.
It was a brownstone building in the middle of a bad, but deserted neighborhood. I walked up the steps and let Oren talk to the guard. “Guest of Mr Rossi.”
“Not Dante?” I ask.
He looked at me, with that mean look he got when he was drinking, like he was about to hit me, but it broke into a smile, “The same, and you are not allowed to talk until I allow you.”
I should have left right there, Dante Rossi was rich, very rich. He used to pay our salaries when we free lanced. But he owned newspapers and weapons companies, so the war was good for him. We sold his newspapers and his guns for him. I hated him.
I followed Oren in and immediately I was separated and escorted into a bedroom. “Oren!” I yelled, but he smiled and waved, and the door closed between us.
Two beautiful young women escorted me into a bedroom, the carpet is black, the walls red.
“Please, there's been some sort of mistake, “ I tell them. They smile and say nothing. I don't know how long I am in there for. It could be 10 minutes or an hour, its silent. After a time, a woman comes in the room in a long Purple robe, at that point., I'm just about crying. I want to scream and gouge my fingernails into Oren's face. She comes in with tape measure and measures my neck and wrist, like an animal. It's hard to stay composed when you’re being treated like a piece of meat. It was supposed to be a nice night, a dinner party. But maybe this was why I was powdered and plucked all day. Another woman comes in with manacles and a collar, and puts them on, I try to fight her off and get a slap on the face for it. I take it. I go away inside myself.
The leather and silver of the bands glinted in the light, they were snug, but surprisingly not painful. They clasped my hands behind me and put a blindfold over my eyes and led me to another room, where I could make out several voices, and the sound of drinks being poured, maybe, it was hard to tell. I'm sure I heard Oren, talking low. And a voice that may have been Dante, and a third too I didn't recognize.
I was lead in to the center of the room, disrobed, and the air was warm, it must have been a small room, I felt no breeze, and did not feel cold either in my nakedness. I was terrified, but stood there, listened to them talking.
“Do you whip her?” One voice asked.
“No.” Oren answered.
“Not even here?” I knew he was pointing at the scars on my stomach. I tried to cover them, but the manacles held my hands away. Even blindfolded and naked, I was self-conscious of those scars. They were ugly and hideous and I tried to cover them and not look at them, even alone in the shower.
“No, that was something else.” Oren answered.
“Ah, yes. Well, her skin is almost perfect. Those scars do not ruin her.” A hand reached to touch the scars on my stomach, in the darkness, in my closed eyes, I saw the cruelest face in the world again for a second, as the hand touched me, I screamed.
I started crying. “Please Oren. Stop this. Now.”
Oren slapped me.
“You should have whipped her.” The voice near me spoke again, and took his hand away.
“Do you take her ass?”
“No, not usually.” Oren answered again.
“We'll need to stretch it that's for sure.” Another voice said, maybe Dante's and laughed.
I stood there as they talked about me like a piece of meat, less than an animal. I tried to go away inside myself, but faces kept appearing in my mind, in the darkness. “Please. Stop this.” I cried, in a weak voice that didn't sound like me at all.
“You need to learn the rules right? The rules.”
“You didn't explain all this?” another voice asked, a floating voice outside of the room, or else I was hallucinating.
“That's what we're doing right now.”