“Huh?” Stone said, dully. His mind seemed fairly sharp-certainly, he could understand her-but there was something blocking the connection between his brain and his lips, something that slowed everything to a molasseslike flow.
“Don’t worry, my darling, it won’t last long,” she said, rising and approaching the bed. Her shoes ground the broken snifter into the floor with a loud noise. She placed a finger in the middle of Stone’s forehead and pushed gently.
Stone fell back onto the bed. It was where he had always wanted to be, here on this bed, staring at the beautifully crafted ceiling of his beautifully crafted cabin.
Dolce lifted his feet onto the bed, untied his robe, then rolled him over and stripped it off his body. She rolled him onto his back again and tucked two pillows under his head.
Stone lay there, naked, indolent to a degree he would not have dreamed possible. He had no wish to do anything except lie there and let this happen.
Dolce went back to her chair, picked up the handbag that had hung on her arm, opened it, took out a wad of something and returned to the bed. She sat down on the edge and shook the little bundle into long lengths. “You know,” she said, smoothing them out, “science has never solved the problem of what to do with old nylon stockings. There’s no recycling of them, and they seem too good to throw away. One little run, and they’re useless.” She smiled again. “Or are they?” She rolled Stone’s limp form through three hundred and sixty degrees, until he was centered on the bed, then she tied one end of a stocking to a wrist and the other end to a bedpost.
Stone watched her do it, unconcerned, and continued to watch as she tied his other hand and both feet to bedposts. He was spread-eagled, naked, on the bed, before a trickle of concern made its way from somewhere in his brain to his forehead, where it manifested itself in beads of sweat that popped out. Wait a minute, he thought, something is wrong here. He tugged at the bedposts, but the sturdy mahogany bed would not move, and neither could he.
“Well,” Dolce said, “I believe your tiny dose of Thorazine is beginning to wear off. A psychiatric dose would have lasted much longer. It took me several months to learn to control my dosage-without the knowledge of my nurses, of course-to the point where I could manage a clear thought sooner, rather than later.” She drew back a hand and slapped him smartly across the face. “There, feel that?”
“Yes,” he said, and his lips moved better than they had a few minutes before.
“Oh, good, because I want you to be wide awake and feeling everything that is going to happen now.”
“Dolce,” Stone said, “what are you doing?”
“I thought it would be good,” she said, “if you had some personal experience of a loss of control over what happens to you, and, particularly, if you experienced a sense of loss over, oh, I don’t know, maybe a body part or two?” She opened her handbag and removed an old-fashioned straight razor.
Stone tried harder to free himself from the stockings and the bedposts, but to no avail.
“You’re wasting your time, my dearest,” she said, daubing the sweat from his brow with a corner of the sheet. “Nylon stockings make excellent restraints; they’re extremely strong, stronger than you, in fact.” She opened the razor, and the blade caught the light.
“There’s a very nice little shop in town,” she said, “that sells men’s shaving products, and they had this very beautiful example of German steelmaking.” She pulled a hair from Stone’s head and let it fall on the blade. It separated into two pieces and fell to the floor.
“It has never been used,” she said, “and it will never be sharper than it is at this moment. Just as well, too, since I didn’t manage to steal a local anesthetic from my captors, only the drug. You’ll hardly feel a thing, just the warm trickle-or rather, gush-of blood as it flows across what I believe the poets call the loins.” She reached out and took hold of the tip of his penis. “Let’s get it excited,” she said. “It makes a better target.” She drew back the hand holding the razor and swung it in a slow arc toward its destination.
Then Stone was screaming, and someone was hammering on the door.
“Stone, open the door!” a woman’s voice called.
Stone was sitting straight up in bed, still dressed in his robe. He stumbled to the door and opened it.
“What’s wrong?” Callie asked, alarmed. “You’ve been screaming at the top of your lungs.”
Dino appeared behind Callie. “You all right, Stone?”
Stone went and sat on the edge of the bed, while Callie got a towel and wiped the sweat from his face and upper body.
“I had a dream,” he panted.
“More like a nightmare,” Callie said.
“Yes, more like a nightmare.”
44
The following morning, Stone made the call he had been dreading and could no longer postpone.
“Hello, Stone,” Eduardo Bianchi said.
“Good morning, Eduardo. I hope you’re well.”
“I have been better,” Eduardo said, then was silent.
It was up to Stone. “I understand that Dolce has… left your house.”
“I am afraid that is so,” Eduardo replied.
“Do you have any idea of where she might be?”
“Stone, my friend, I think she would like to be wherever you are.”
“I’m in Palm Beach, Florida, on business,” Stone said. “Dino is with me, and he feels that Dolce may be in Palm Beach; that she may have been following me.”
Eduardo heaved a sigh. “I will send people at once,” he said.
“Eduardo, I cannot guarantee you that she is here. It’s just a feeling.”
“I respect what you feel, Stone, and if there is any chance at all that she is in Palm Beach, then that is where I must look for her.”
“Eduardo, speaking as an attorney, I must ask if you have taken any legal steps toward guardianship?”
“No. This is a family problem, you understand, and I have no wish to bring the courts into it.”
“I understand your feelings, but simply sending people to find her and return her could present legal difficulties that might be more invasive of your family privacy than taking steps to have her declared incompetent.”
“She is not an incompetent person,” Eduardo said stiffly.
“I’m sorry, I meant incompetent in the legal sense, not otherwise. Unless you are willing to make a case to a court that she is not currently able to account for herself and her actions, then she is legally entitled to do and go as she pleases. Removing her to New York from another state could pose problems.”
“Stone, I understand this, and I am grateful for your advice, but you must understand that, in my family, we are accustomed to solving our problems without the help of, ah, public officials. If I can locate Dolce, I can achieve the reunification I desire.”
“Of course, Eduardo. I don’t doubt for a moment that you can.”
“You say that Dino is with you? I had not heard this.”
“Dino came down to help me with another matter, one not connected to Dolce.”
“I see. Well, it is good that he is there; you may well need his help. I need hardly tell you that Dolce may be a danger to herself and to you.”
“I hope you are wrong, but I understand,” Stone said. “If I should locate Dolce, what would you have me do?”
“Simply call me, and I will do the rest,” Eduardo said. “Please don’t try to deal with her yourself. From what her doctors have told me, she could be very dangerous.”
“Eduardo, if Dolce should be traveling under a name not her own, is there a name she might choose to use?”
Eduardo was silent while he thought. “Once, when she was sixteen, she ran away after a quarrel with me. At that time, she used the name Portia Buckingham. It was a ridiculous name for a schoolgirl to choose, I know, but it was a kind of fantasy identity she made up as a child. She might possibly use it again.”