Cold Paradise

43

Late that night, after a big dinner and more wine than he had intended to drink, Stone fell into bed, exhausted. He had barely fallen asleep, when he was wakened by a knock on the door-at first, softly, then loudly. Annoyed, he got out of bed, put on a robe and went to the door.

“Good evening,” Dolce said. She stood there with two brandy snifters in one hand and a pistol in the other. “May I come in?” she asked, unnecessarily.

Stone looked at the gun and backed into the room. “Of course,” he said.

Dolce kicked the door shut and offered him a snifter. “I brought you a drink,” she said.

“Thanks, but I’ve already had too much to drink this evening,” he replied.

“I said, I brought you a drink,” she said, through clenched teeth.

Stone took the glass.

“Sit on the bed,” she said, “where I can see you.”

Stone sat on the bed.

Dolce lifted her glass. “To many more happy moments like this,” she said.

Stone sipped at his brandy. It had an uncharacteristically bitter taste.

“Drink it!” she said, tossing down her own drink.

Stone tossed down his own. “To what do I owe this pleasure?” he asked.

Dolce smiled, revealing her startlingly white teeth against her olive skin. “A pleasure, is it? I had somehow gotten the impression that seeing your wife was no longer such a pleasure. How long has it been?”

“Too long,” Stone said. He felt dreadful; the brandy on top of everything else he had had to drink at dinner was too much. He moved to set down his glass on the bedside table, and to his astonishment, he missed the table entirely. The glass dropped to the floor, missing the rug, shattering into tiny pieces. “I’m drunk,” he said.

“Not exactly,” Dolce replied. “You’re just feeling the first effects of the Thorazine.”

“What’s Thorazine?” Stone asked, and he had to try hard to pronounce the words.

“It’s a little something that an enlightened medical profession has devised to help those of us who are-how shall I put this?-psychiatrically challenged easier to manage. Do you know that one of Papa’s doctors actually said those words to me? Psychiatrically challenged! You have no idea what those of us who do not meet society’s standards of behavior have to endure at the hands of those who wish to make our company more acceptable.” She smiled. “But you’re about to find out.”

“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.”