“You’re just dying to tell me that I can’t hide my upbringing, aren’t you?”
“Is this what you call a proper meal?”
He continued to eat. From time to time he would lick the tomato sauce from his lips and, without raising his head, look up at me across the table. Then, when he had finished, he leaned over and swapped his empty plate for mine, which I had hardly touched, and began eating that, too. I was incensed.
“You only asked me here to eat, didn’t you?”
“Uh-huh.”
As he slurped down the last string of spaghetti, he stood up. Then he grabbed my arm and pushed me down on the bed.
“Just to eat… ”
He kissed me roughly and I tried to turn my face away, but he forced his tongue between my lips.
“I never knew you could be like this.” I was seething.
“You should—you were the one who showed me what I could do. If you hadn’t dumped me like that I’d probably still be happily running around after you, wiping your ass, even now.”
“So you want revenge?”
“Now let’s get this straight.” His face took on a cruel expression as he continued. “Your dumping me was just the beginning. I really don’t care about that anymore. In a way, I should be thankful. I used to play the piano because I wanted to, just because I enjoyed it. The surprising thing for me was that other people wanted to hear me play, too. And now people admire me. They treat me like a god.”
“Don’t talk shit. You’re just trying to get me back for what I did to you. You’ve been planning this for the past two years, haven’t you? I bet you’ve thought of nothing else since then. Tell me I’m wrong! You can’t, can you?”
“Baby…” His brow knitted and he smiled. “People say I’m a genius….”
I was lost for words. And my last shreds of hope disappeared, too. It was clear to me now that nothing he had done had been for me.
“Then why do you want me?”
Leroy didn’t answer. He just tore my clothes off and went at my skin the same way he had the spaghetti. T h e n without asking, he pinned down my arms and forced himself on me. My legs were free but might as well have been bound by cord—I couldn’t move.
I opened my eyes and stared at him and he stopped his violent thrusting.
“I love your hands,” I said.
For a moment he looked terribly sad.
“I knew…” I tried to go on, but the words stuck in my throat and I swallowed hard. “I knew what amazing talent you had in your fingers and… ”
Leroy frowned.
“…and it frightened me.”
“Look, just shut up, okay?”
But I had said all I needed to say and now I could rest and give myself up to him. He started thrusting again.
Once I’d had a slave called Leroy. By ruling him, I knew I existed and I wanted to rule forever. But my slave broke the rules and he had been punished for that.
I moaned, and Leroy slapped me hard across my face. My lip split and blood poured out. He hated me now. But I knew he loved me, too.
He continued thrusting, trying to humiliate and defeat me, and I let him do what he wanted. I’d pretended not to recognize his genius and now I was being punished. He could do as he pleased with me. He’d earned the right.
I could tell he was feeling the same way now that he had two years earlier when he had fucked me by the piano. As soon as people had begun to recognize his talent, he had started a new life as that pianist. I wondered what else I could possibly do for him. Perhaps the only thing I was capable of was crying to make him feel superior.
I nearly lost consciousness a number of times, and Leroy was obviously very satisfied with his work. When he had finished I couldn’t speak. My hair was plastered to my forehead with sweat and he brushed it away with his fingers so he could look into my eyes.
“Now I’m going to be living for the touch of your hands,” I confessed.
“But they don’t belong to you.”
I started to weep quietly, and Leroy stroked my hair.
“You’re just too late.”
“But I’ve changed. You’ve changed me.”
“No, you mean my hatred for you has made you change.”
That was how Leroy laid out his feelings for me.
After that Leroy often summoned me over to see him. It wasn’t k that he wanted to hold me—he didn’t pretend that he did. I knew he would probably abuse me, but I always dropped everything and rushed to our usual hotel room, sometimes even forgetting to put on my lipstick.
Each time, the pattern was the same. I was always hungry for him and that hunger was never satisfied. The way he screwed me was humiliating. He hurt me and threw me out of his room without giving me the time to lick my wounds. He made me feel like I was nothing, but I couldn’t stop myself from going, no matter how miserable I knew it would make me.
Once, on my way back to the apartment, I got a cup of coffee from a vendor, hoping to soothe my jangled nerves. A fly landed on my hand and I brushed it away, but it kept coming back to annoy me. The vendor was crowded but for some reason the fly was only interested in me, vindictive, as if it knew all the things I had done. I felt as if it were black-mailing me or something, and that was just how I felt about Leroy.
Leroy swore at me as he fucked me. He only used those words with me. He pulled my hair and dragged me around the room, sinking his teeth into my skin, leaving bruises and bite marks all over my body I begged him to stop, but he just laughed scornfully, and when I couldn’t take any more, I’d make a run for the door.
But he was too quick for me. I’d have my hand on the knob, but he’d push me down to the floor and use his agile fingers to make me cry out in ecstasy. In my hazy half-consciousness I could see the shoes of the people walking down the hallway through a gap under the door. Once in a while, people would step on my hair as they walked by. Leroy noticed but didn’t care, and just kept on screwing me.
I was losing weight. I couldn’t get any food down. D.C. tried his best to take care of me, but he couldn’t cheer me up the way he used to.
I became weaker as my feelings for Leroy began to consume me. I knew that even if he decided to piss in my mouth, I would have been happy to swallow every last drop. I was frantic, knowing I had to do something to get myself out of this. But once Leroy’s body and mine were entwined, twisted and coiled like a rope, I gave up struggling to get free and started floating instead. Afterward I would pick my panties up off the floor and put them back on again with a resigned sigh, wondering why I had even bothered putting them on in the first place.
I always wore black underwear when I went to see Leroy because I felt like I was in mourning. Or like a criminal trying to bury myself alive. I couldn’t understand why I had to degrade myself like this. I just wanted his fingers to play sweet music on my body like they did on the piano keyboard; his eyes, his bad language, and his all-knowing tongue joining in as the backup band. When they did, the melody took over my senses and destroyed my reason like a drug. His fingers were made of fire, the flames licking and burning my heart until all that was left was ash. There was no longer any order to my life. I’d lost all my possessions and I’d become his prisoner. His ten fingers surrounded me like the bars of a cage and robbed me of the will to escape. I could see his fingers and they were well within my grasp, but I knew they would never be mine.
Even though I did exactly as Leroy commanded, I began to wonder how I could get his fingers all to myself again. But I also had the feeling that if I managed to do it, his fingers would disappear altogether in their grief. As long as his fingers had any life, they would hold me in their powerful grip, forcing me to face my uselessness. It was to that extent that Leroy’s fingers controlled me. I felt like a bear waiting to catch a salmon in a river in the snowfields; I could tell if it was his hand or not just by biting it. The salmon’s bright, red eggs lay hidden between Leroy’s fingers, but however much I begged, he would never let me have them.