Some time after that he fell asleep, woke much later to find her curled far across the bed and himself still in the mask: sweat dried to an itch across his cheekbones, the differing itch of his overnight beard, fingers clumsy with fatigue against the strings.
Waking to true morning he found it crumpled on the floor, spoor and element of dream made to follow the sleeper all the way to the waking world.
“I’m sorry,” she said. She might have been crying, earlier, in the shower; she had kept the bathroom door closed; her eyes were clear but swollen, pink and sore around the lids. “I never meant to hit you.”
I’m sorry too. “Let’s forget it,” he said. “Okay?”
The next time they made love they did not use the mask: plain faces, closed eyes and although it was good — with her it was almost always good — still he missed it, the heat within that stasis, visible and not, here and not-here: but said nothing, did not mention it at all.
He wondered if she missed it, too.
Dinner: carryout Thai in little lumps, he had waited too long to leave the office, stuck twice in traffic in a heavy storm; so much rain, lately. The food on his plate gone slick and cold, eating alone, clicking through channels and outside another sound, her car in the driveway: half-rising to open the door, let her in and “Hi,” wet and breathless, hair stuck to her face, raincoat spatter and “Oh good,” she said, “you got dinner.” Side by side on the sofa and now that she was home he opened a bottle of wine, two bottles, still on the sofa and he started to undress her, blouse and bra, hooks and eyes and “Wait,” she said, voice lightly slurred and warm from the wine. “Just wait a minute,” and gone then as he stripped, lay back on the sofa, rain on the roof and all at once the white face, peering at him, mouth expressionless but beneath, he knew, a smile.
“Peekaboo,” she said and inside him the sudden surge, heat pure and rising like mercury, like the tempo of the storm and “Let me wear it,” he said, up on one elbow, rising to reach for the strings, “and then you can —”
“No,” from above him, pale and remote. “It’s not your turn.”
That stare: he could not see her eyes and inside him then a differing surge, something grey and chilly, like metal, like falling rain.
SECRET PLEASURES: between a video store and a deli, glass door opaque and inside the rachet and thump of industrial music, steel-toned racks to display the shiny harnesses, leather hoods and thigh-high boots and below the counter a glass case of jewelry, piercing jewelry like little iron bars, dumbbells, hooks and circles and “Can I help you?” from a tall thin boy in leather, boots and jacket, head to toe and “Masks,” he said. “I want to see the masks,” and after all it was very easy to say, no doubt the clerks had already seen it all, this boy with his thin cheeks and ragged hair leading him to the display carousel, to show him what there was to see: buckles and loops and ribbon ties, leather and rubber all faces he might wear, desires he might claim if only for a night and “That one,” he said, pointing with the tip of one finger. “Let me see that one.”
Red leather harsh as meat exposed, no plain oval but the true mask, face-shaped and stitchery like scars, strangely peaked at the eyebrows and “What’re these supposed to be?” he asked, touching the peaks. “Horns?”
“Those are darts,” the clerk said. “To make it fit tighter. See?” and positioned to his face, buckled on and the clerk stepped back so he might use the mirror: eyes kept closed for a moment, wanting tactile information, wanting the feel of the mask before any decision sight might make: this one much tighter than the other, stiffer, more formal; this mask would not fither at all — and he opened his eyes to the mirror, to see himself a stranger: sex become power, desires become demands, demands made as orders and when the clerk told him the price he shrugged a little, more than he meant to spend but what difference did that make?
His credit card on the counter, bright and toy-like, the clerk brushing hair from his eyes: “Do you want a box or anything? A gift box?”
“No,” he said. “Just put it in a bag.”
Raining, still, and nearly dark as he pulled into the driveway, heart in peculiar race and he called her name when he entered, made his voice normal, called her name again as he walked through the darkened house with the bag tight in his hand, room to room: nothing: she was nowhere so circle back to the living room, silent and dark, rain like voices to make a chorus, secret chorus in a language all its own as
“Here I am,” her voice, very quiet and then again, as if he had not heard: “Here I am.”
Past the sofa, in the corner where wall met wall and she was naked: and hooded, draped in a hood so shapeless and so black as to give no breath of the female, no hint of the human inside. If there were eye-slits, he did not see them; there must be holes for breathing, but in this light he could not be sure. Gaze without words but an alien shudder, as if some other creature, bullet-shaped, past fathoming, were rising from the fragile flesh of her body, the sloping shelf of shoulders made from bone.
The bag made a sound as it touched the floor; his fingers trembled on the straps, the heavy red buckles of the mask.
“I brought you something,” he said.
Silence: arms crossed, her breath in hitching motion, both of them waiting for him to strip and cross the room.