"Mr. Blascoe — " she protested. But his eyes told her that she must accept the gown, no matter what.
"James," she whispered, and took the box.
That evening, he was waiting outside her apartment, with a black silk shoe bag. Inside were the softest pair of pointed suede ankle boots, handmade by Rayne. They were meticulously hand-stitched and dyed to the color of crushed loganberries to match exactly the color of the Fortuny gown.
"Take them, wear them," he insisted. "Wear them always. Remember how much I love you."
She was awoken the next morning by the phone ringing. Tugging her fingers through her tangled curls, she found the receiver and picked it up.
"Margot? Sorry to call you so early. This is Walter Rutter."
"Walter! Hi, good morning! What can I do for you?"
"Margot, I wanted to catch you before you left for the office. You see, the point is I'm in some difficulty here. I have to make some savings in the agency's overall budget, and that regrettably means shedding some staff."
"I see. Do you know how many?"
"Not exactly, Margot. But the problem is that it has to be last in, first out. This is nothing to do with the fact that you're a woman — and nothing to do with your abilities, which have been tremendous in the past, and have earned us a great deal of acclaim. But… as things stand, I'm afraid that I'm going to have to disemploy you, as of now."
Margot sat up straight. "You mean I'm fired?"
"Nothing like that, Margot. Not fired. But not continued with, staffwise."
Margot couldn't think of anything to say. She let the phone drop onto the comforter. She felt as if someone had suddenly lashed her with a birch, stinging her face, cutting her hands, slicing her self-assurance into ribbons.
She was still sitting upright in bed twenty minutes later, when the doorbell rang.
Mechanically, she wrapped herself in her short silk robe and went to answer the door. It was James Blascoe, with a long gift-wrapped box and the smile of a man whose will can never be denied.
"I've brought you something," he announced.
Without waiting to be asked, he walked into the living room and laid the box on the table. He tugged free the gift ribbon himself and eased off the lid. Inside, wrapped in dark brown tissue paper, was a huge greenish scepter, almost four feet long, embossed with thick gold bands and complicated knobs and bumps. James lifted it up, and Margot saw that the scepter's head had been cast in the helmeted shape of a man's erect glans, except that it was nearly twice human size.
She stared at it, her cheeks flushed, strangely excited by its decorative blatancy.
"Do you know what this is?" asked James. "The phallus used by Queen Nefertiti of Egypt to give herself erotic pleasure. It's over three thousand years old. It has been passed down from one century to another, from one royal court to the next. It has slid its way up between the thighs of more celebrated women than anybody could count."
He grasped the glans in his hand, rubbing his thumb against it as if it were his own. "It is said to give more pleasure than anything you could imagine, man or beast. Now it's yours, to keep, and to use."
He brought it across the room and laid it in the palms of her hands. "Tonight, at midnight, dress in the jewelry and clothes that I have given you, perfume yourself with my perfume, and then think of me, and give yourself the pleasure that only you deserve."
Margot still couldn't speak. James kissed her forehead with a cool, dry, almost abstracted kiss, and then he left the apartment and closed the door behind him.
At eleven o'clock that night, like a woman in a dream, Margot ran herself a deep perfumed bath. She washed herself slowly and sensually, rubbing the soap over her full white breasts over and over again, until the nipples rose between her fingers.
At last she rose naked from the bath and dried herself in a deep warm Descamps towel. Her apartment was filled with mirrors: She could watch herself walk from room to room.
She brushed out her curls and made up her face, starkly, very white. Then she dropped the velvety Fortuny dress over her shoulders, and it touched her bare body like a series of soft, hurried kisses. She pinned the jinn-flower brooch to her shoulder, fastened the diamond-festoon necklace around her neck, and slipped on the handmade ankle boots. Last of all she sprayed herself with Isabey perfume.
It was almost midnight. She went to the table and lifted the huge copper-and-gold phallus out of the tissue paper. It was very heavy, and it gleamed dully in the lamplight. It is said to give more pleasure than anything you could imagine, man or beast.
She knelt in the middle of the floor and lifted up her gown. Holding the phallus with both hands, she parted her thighs and presented its massive green glans to the dark, silky fur of her vulva.
At first she didn't believe that she would be able to insert it, and she clenched her teeth. But then, little by little, the huge cold head buried itself inside her, and she managed to force it farther and farther up, until she was able to kneel upright, with the base of the phallus flat against the floor.
The sensation of having such a huge rod of chilled, uncompromising metal up inside her made her wince and quake with erotic anticipation. Her hands smoothed and massaged the swollen lips of her vulva and then caressed the slippery meeting place between metal and flesh.
Think of me, James had asked her, and as she pressed her whole weight down onto the phallus, she tried to visualize his face. As flesh parted, as membranes tore, she tried to remember what he looked like. But she couldn't. She couldn't even think of his eyes.
He had been right, though. The pleasure was beyond all belief. She gasped and shook in the most devastating of climaxes, and then the blood suddenly welled in her throat and poured out over her lips.
Ray had been trying to call her all day, and when she didn't answer, he went around to her apartment and persuaded the concierge Leland to let him in.
The living room was dark, with the blinds still closed. In the center of the room, surrounded by mirrors, Margot lay with her eyes still open and her mouth caked with dried blood.
Around her neck she wore a piece of twisted wire, decorated with Pepsi caps and unrolled condoms. She was wrapped in a frayed pink candlewick bathrobe and worn-down Keds. The bathrobe was stained dark with blood, and out from between her thighs protruded a long section of scaffolding pole.
Shaking with shock, Ray knelt down next to her and closed her eyelids with a gentle touch of finger and thumb. He had realized for some days now that she was going off the rails. Pressure of success, that's what Walter Rutter had called it. But he had never imagined for one moment that she would kill herself, not like this. How could any woman kill herself like this?
The room stank of sardine oil — the same smell that had been following Margot around for the past few days.
Ray stood up at last and looked around. The concierge was standing in the doorway, pale, paralyzed with uncertainty, and Ray said, "You'd better call an ambulance — and the cops."
Outside in the spring-sunny street, a man stood watching as the ambulance arrived. He was unshaven and wore a soiled gray suit. His eyes were red from lack of sleep and alcohol. He waited to see the blanket-covered body taken away, and then, as the sirens whooped, he started walking southward, sniffing from time to time and ceaselessly searching through his pockets as if he expected to find a cigarette butt that he had previously overlooked or even a couple of quarters.
It was always the same after he had snuffed out another of the world's brighter lights. A dull headache, trembling legs. But that was the nature of his work. Balancing the world, exercising social justice. For every bag lady who died in a trash-filled doorway, one of life's brighter flowers had to be plucked. Justice — that was all it was. Somebody had to do it. Somebody had to keep the balance.