Small Town

nine

It wasn’t what she’d expected.

It was an apartment, first of all, on the fifteenth floor of a thirty-story postwar apartment building on Tenth Avenue and Fifty-seventh Street. She’d known as much, really, but had somehow pictured the place as a ground-floor hole-in-the-wall with a hand-lettered sign over the door, T*A*T*T*O*O P*A*R*L*O*R in curlicued, over-elaborate script, and a window full of tattoo art and needles and scary-looking equipment. Inside it would be cramped and claustrophobic, with nothing more comfortable to sit on than those three-legged stools they gave you in Ethiopian restaurants.

And Medea would be a sort of cross between a pirate and a gypsy, oily and squat and swarthy, with a head scarf and a gold tooth and a trace of a mustache, perched on a stool of her own and assessing her with a cataract-clouded eye, sizing her up, deciding whether to pierce her flesh as requested or drug her and sell her into white slavery.

And of course it was nothing like that. The building had a concierge, resplendent in maroon livery, who called upstairs before directing her to an elevator. Medea, waiting in the doorway of 15-H, was about Susan’s height, with a long oval Modigliani face and almond-shaped eyes. She was wearing a simple white sleeveless shift that stopped at her knees, and she had calves like a dancer’s and arms like a tennis player’s.

“You’re Susan,” she said.

“Susan Pomerance.”

“I’m Medea.” Her voice was low, and her speech at once unaccented and foreign-sounding. An exotic creature, Susan thought, and followed her into the apartment, which turned out to be a textbook example of minimalism — eggshell walls, pale beige wall-to-wall broadloom carpet, and, along the walls, a couple of built-in ledges covered with the same carpeting as the floor and equipped — ooh, a sumptuous touch — with beige throw pillows. Overhead there was some track lighting, and, on the wall to your left as you walked in, a single monochromatic unframed canvas three feet by four feet, just one big yellow-brown rectangle. It was not artless, it had texture and tone that indicated the artist had labored over it, but the whole business was so utterly different from what she’d expected that she burst out laughing.

“I’m sorry,” she said, and covered her mouth with her hand.

“It’s the color,” Medea said. “Primal, wouldn’t you say? I probably smeared mine on the wall myself, but I never could have made such a neat job of it.”

“My God, it’s baby-shit brown. I hadn’t even thought of that.”

“Then why did you laugh?”

“Because I was expecting a gypsy souk,” she said, “though I don’t guess you find many of them fifteen floors up. And because I’m scared stiff, I suppose. I’ve had my ears pierced, of course, but this is different.”

“Of course it is,” Medea said, and reached out to touch Susan’s earlobe. It took her a moment to recall which earrings she was wearing. Teardrops, lapis set in gold. They’d been a gift, from and to herself, on her last birthday.

Medea’s earrings were simple gold studs. More minimalism, Susan thought.

The almond-shaped eyes — their irises, she saw now, were a vivid green, which pretty much had to be contacts, but who could say for sure with this unique specimen? The eyes took her measure, sized her up. “Scared stiff,” she said, as if the phrase were one Susan had invented. “But excited as well, I would say.”

She felt a pulse in her earlobe where Medea had touched her. Was that even possible? Was there a blood vessel there that could have a pulse?

“A little,” she said.

“You want your nipple pierced.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“And what is it you fear? The pain?”

“Is it very painful?”

“You’ll feel it,” Medea said.

Her complexion was darkly golden, though some of that might be from the sun. She looked like a woman who spent a lot of time in the sun. But there was also the suggestion of a mix of races, to the point where race disappeared. Asian, African, European, swirled in a blender.

“I think,” Medea said, “that you’d be disappointed if there were no pain. But then what exactly is pain? I’ve heard it said it’s any sensation we make wrong. Do you like hot food?”

“Hot food?”

“Spicy, not thermally hot. Picante rather than caliente. Curry, chili, three peppers in a Szechuan restaurant, five stars in a Thai one.”

Was this a test? “The hotter the better.”

“The person who insists on bland food,” Medea said, “experiences the identical sensation you do when she puts a chili pepper in her mouth. But, instead of savoring it, she finds it painful and unpleasant. She’s afraid it’s going to burn her mouth, or make her sick, or, I suppose, kill her. She makes it wrong.”

Contacts or not, the green eyes were extraordinary, their gaze compelling. They held Susan’s own eyes and kept her from glancing down at Medea’s breasts. She couldn’t help wondering if the woman’s nipples were pierced. Her ears were, of course, once each in their lobes, but she saw no nose ring, no other visible piercings.

No tattoos, either. None that showed, anyway.

Maybe she wasn’t into that. Maybe she was one who did, not one who got done. Were there tops and bottoms in the world of body piercing?

Who would pierce the piercer?

Two weeks ago her part-time assistant, Chloe, had shown up at the gallery with a loopier-than-usual expression on her face. She looked as though she knew a secret, and it was a good one.

Susan noticed right away, but had no time to waste wondering what had the girl looking like the cat that swallowed the canary. In a pinch, she could probably guess what Chloe might have swallowed, with the choices narrowed down to illegal substances and bodily fluids. Or the occasional hot fudge sundae; Chloe, while by no means fat, had clearly escaped the heartbreak of anorexia.

But she had a string of phone calls to make, and she had the photos of Emory Allgood’s work to go over, most of which were fine, but a few would have to be redone, and she made notes for the photographer, and Lois would complain, as usual, but would reshoot as requested, also as usual.

The sculptures were in storage; she’d booked an artist who owned a van and consequently doubled as a mover, and he’d rounded up a couple of auxiliary schleppers in paint-stained jeans, and somehow they’d found the house on Quincy Street just off Classon Avenue. She wasn’t sure about the neighborhood, whether they were in Fort Greene or Clinton Hill or Bed-Stuy, but the address turned out to be a fine old four-story limestone row house, a little rundown but a long way from falling apart, and the Barron family had a whole floor, and Emory Allgood, the eccentric uncle, had a large room at the rear, overlooking the garden.

It had been filled with his constructions, his sculptures, and they’d overflowed into the rest of the apartment. “I’m just glad to be getting these out of here,” Reginald’s mother had said, “except I suspect I’m gone to miss them, you know? You get used to seeing something, and then it be gone, and you miss it.”

Reginald had assured his mom that Uncle Emory would be making more, and indeed she’d barely met him, a wild-eyed, wild-haired little man, all skin and bones and knobby wrists and a bumpy forehead, who’d grinned and mumbled and then scooted past her, taking an empty laundry cart with him, and bumping down the stairs with it. Out looking for more materials, Reginald had assured her, and eager to get to work on more projects.

And all the work at the Quincy Street house was now tucked safely away in her storage locker a few blocks from the gallery, all but one piece that, finally, Mrs. Barron had decided she couldn’t bear to part with. Susan could see why the woman liked it. It was the most conventional and readily accessible piece of the lot, and for that reason it was the one she herself was most willing to leave behind.

Her uncle’s very first piece, Mae Barron had said, and Susan could believe it. The poor devil was just starting to go nuts then, or just beginning to figure out how to make something out of his craziness. He’d come a long ways since then.

She took care of business, and when she came up for air she saw that Chloe still had the same expression on her face. “All right,” she told the girl. “You’re dying to tell me something. What is it?”

“I got another one.”

“Another—?”

Chloe put thumb and forefinger together, as if gripping a needle, and thrust forward. “Another piercing,” she said.

How was anybody supposed to notice? The child already had both ears pierced to the hilt, not just the lobes but all up around the outside of the ear, with a little gold circlet for each hole. And, inevitably, there was a stud in her nose, a little gold bead, which she could only hope Chloe would live to regret. Because one fine day, barring an overdose of Ecstasy or a losing bout with some virulent new sexually transmitted disease, young Chloe would wake up and find herself a fifty-year-old woman with fallen arches and varicose veins and a fucking ring in her nose.

She studied the girl, who maintained her enigmatic-and-glad-of-it expression. What had been added? Another gold circlet? Who could tell, and how could that be such a source of impish delight? There was still just the one ring in her nose — and thank God and all the angels for that — and she couldn’t see any evidence of any further facial mutilation. Nothing in her eyebrows; she recalled one sweet young thing with multiple eyebrow piercings, each fitted with a little gold hoop, and you found yourself waiting for someone to add a little rod and hang curtains. No safety pin through the cheek and—

God, not a tongue stud? Those made her slightly sick to think about, and didn’t they thicken your speech, or get in the way when you ate?

“Not your tongue,” she said, and Chloe extended the organ in question, and no, it was whole and untouched, and, the way it stuck out, just the least bit provocative. The girl retracted it just before Susan would have had to tell her to do so.

“That’s a relief,” she said. “Okay, I give up. Whatever it is, I can’t see it.”

Chloe giggled, and yanked down the front of her scoop-necked blouse, and there were two plump and pert and very charming breasts, and one of them had a gold stud in the nipple.

She looked around in alarm, but the gallery’s only customer, an out-of-towner with schoolmarm glasses and a fanny pack, was on the far side of the room, trying to make sense out of one of Jeffcoate Walker’s monsters. By the time she looked at Chloe, the girl had tucked her treasures safely away.

She said, “When did you—”

“Friday, right after I left here.”

“How on earth—”

“I know,” Chloe said. “I didn’t think I could go through with it. I thought, oh, shit, this is going to hurt like a motherfucker. But it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.”

“But why?”

“Well, she puts ice on it first, and that numbs it a little, and—”

“No, that’s not what I mean. Why do it? Why have it done?”

The question seemed hard for the girl to grasp, as if she’d never learned to think in those terms. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve just been wanting to do it for ages. And I heard about this woman, that she’s really good, and like the person to go to if you’re serious about piercing.”

“You’re not concerned about infection?”

“I never had any problems before.”

“But the location...”

“You just turn it once a day, same as with an earring, and, you know, put alcohol on it. It’s easier, because you can see what you’re doing.”

She let it go at that, but later, when Chloe was getting ready to leave for the day, she told her she still couldn’t understand why she’d had the urge to get her nipple pierced in the first place. It wasn’t a fashion statement, after all, because in the ordinary course of things it would go unseen, except perhaps at a topless beach, and—

“It’s exciting, Susan. It’s like this secret thing. But you could do your navel and it’d be just as much of a secret, but it wouldn’t be the same thing.”

“Why?”

“Because your tit’s not the same as your navel, I guess. It’s tender and intimate, so that makes it scarier to do in the first place, and it’s not just a secret, it’s like a sex secret.”

“Okay.”

“Plus,” she said, “it’s just plain hot.”

“A turn-on for guys, you mean.”

“Probably, if only because of what it says. Hey, look at me, I’m hot. But it’s a turn-on just having it. Physically, I mean.”

“Physically? Knowing it’s there, I suppose, but—”

“No, physically, Susan. You know how it feels when someone plays with your nipple and it gets hard? Or you do it yourself? That’s how you feel all the time.”

She didn’t want to miss anything.

And there were things she’d missed just by being born when she was. When she was a kid, safe sex meant your parents wouldn’t find out what you did, or it meant being on the pill. But by the time she was old enough, out of high school and ready to check out the world, safe sex meant being careful what you did and whom you did it with, because there was suddenly this new disease and if you got it you died. Penicillin didn’t help, nothing helped, you just died.

When she was married, when it began to dawn on her and Gary that they both had urges that extended beyond their own double bed, they’d speculated about partying with other couples, about orgies, about clubs where you could just take off your clothes and have sex with strangers. There used to be clubs like that, there was Plato’s Retreat, for one, and it was supposed to be a hip thing to go there in the late seventies and early eighties, before AIDS, before safe sex. She’d heard stories about it, in high school, in college, and there were different movie stars who were supposed to show up now and then, and by the time she’d have been ready for it, the place was closed.

Gary had wanted to see her with another woman, and somehow he found another couple similarly inclined, and she and the other wife spent an awkward half hour doing things, both of them for the first time, and she might have enjoyed it if it hadn’t been abundantly clear that the other woman was just there to keep her husband happy.

The men didn’t notice the difference, or didn’t care, and when she and Donna had run out of new things to pretend to enjoy, Gary, fiercely tumescent, was on her at once, even as the other man — she couldn’t remember his name — mounted his own wife. Gary would have been happier taking a shot at Donna, that was obvious, but that had not been part of the original game plan, and she was just as glad, finding Donna’s husband singularly unappealing.

They’d met them through a personal ad Gary had answered (or perhaps he’d placed the ad himself, she was never sure) and of course they never saw them again. He was funny afterward, annoyed with her for not having gotten into the spirit of the thing, then concerned that she had been having such a good time with the other woman. Deep down inside, was she really a lesbian?

He was anxious, too, that someone in his office would find out, and what kind of behavior was that for an assistant district attorney, an officer of the court and member of the bar? She didn’t see how that could happen; at his insistence they’d used false names, and of course at one point she’d called him Gary, which no one appeared to notice, anyway, but still he’d reproached her for it on the way home. Didn’t she have any sense? Couldn’t she even keep names straight?

Then two weeks later he wanted to meet another couple, he had their letter and photo, and he sulked and pouted when she said she wasn’t interested.

The incident hadn’t ended their marriage, it was going to end anyway, but the underlying issue was not the least of the forces pushing them apart. He’d long since remarried, and she heard they were happy, and tried not to wonder what their sex life was like.

Since then she’d slept with men she was attracted to. And she had gone to bed a couple of times with a woman, a canvasser for the local Democratic organization. They’d gone to the same college but hadn’t really known each other then, and the lovemaking was good but the woman was too neurotic, and a couple of times was plenty.

When she was living with Marc, he’d taken her once to an S&M club he knew about at Greenwich and Gansevoort, in the old meatpacking district just below Fourteenth Street, and they’d worn leather to fit in and drunk fruit juice at the bar. Nobody was actually screwing, the activity was all role-playing, bondage and discipline, domination and submission. Some of it looked interesting, but in a curiously intellectual way. She felt disconnected from it, and, worse, was very conscious of being an intruder. Her spiked wrist bands and leather pants didn’t change the fact that she was just a voyeuse.

“They don’t mind,” Marc had assured her. “They’re exhibitionists, for God’s sake. If they didn’t want an audience they’d stay home.”

She could understand that. She had a streak of exhibitionism herself, and much the best thing about her half hour with Donna had been knowing she was being watched. But she really didn’t want to stand around like a tourist while a fat man with a too-long goatee had his buttocks whipped by a wraithlike woman in what looked like a black wet suit with cutouts. Nor, God help her, did she want to change places with either of them.

“I just thought it was something you should see,” he told her later, and she said she was glad she’d gone, but wouldn’t want to go again. No, he said, neither would he, but he had the feeling she’d make a dandy dominatrix.

What made him say that, she’d wanted to know. Was he interested in that sort of thing? Did he long to play slave and mistress, did he want her to tie him up, to do any of what they’d seen at the club?

“Not my scene,” he’d said, “but I have to say I can picture you in the role. Maybe it’s just that you’d look great in the costumes.”

Was it something she wanted to do? She hadn’t thought so, but knew there was something she needed to explore, some limits she had to test.

Once the museum in Lausanne had changed her life, she’d been too busy to find the envelope, let alone push it. The gallery took all her energy, and didn’t leave her the time to have a relationship in which to grow restless. There were a few men she saw, two of whom were ideal for her purposes. They were both married, they both lived out of town (one in Connecticut, one in a suburb of Detroit), and she’d met them at the gallery, where they’d bought pieces of art from her.

When the first one had hit on her, the Detroit guy, she’d been concerned about the propriety of sleeping with a client, but she decided she was being overly scrupulous. She wasn’t a shrink going to bed with a patient, or a studio boss nailing a starlet, or a matrimonial lawyer (like hers, for example, the shitheel) consoling an incipient divorcee. He’d fallen in love with Aleesha MacReady’s take on Susannah and the Elders, and she’d sold it to him with the mixture of elation and despair that came from getting a good price for a work she herself loved and would never see again. What was there about the transaction to prevent them from having dinner together? And, afterward, why shouldn’t she go back to his hotel room (the Pierre, a high floor, a view of the park, very nice) and fuck his brains out?

Her life worked, and the gallery was getting a good reputation, and even making a little money. Lately, though, she was feeling a vague restlessness. She couldn’t define it, didn’t know what it was, and found herself talking about it at lunch with an old school friend.

“Tick tock,” Audrey had said. “You need to have a baby.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Your biological clock, Suze. You’re what, thirty-six?”

“Close enough.”

“What does that mean, thirty-seven? And don’t tell me about your lack of maternal impulses. Doesn’t matter. Tick fucking tock, and you’ve got the urge whether you know it or not.”

“Forget it,” she’d said. “I don’t want a baby. For God’s sake, I’d rather have fibroids.”

And it was true, the last thing she wanted was a baby, she didn’t even trust herself with house plants, but the clock was ticking all the same, and it wasn’t her fertility that was running out, it was her life. She didn’t really expect to die soon (though people died whether they expected to or not, they got on planes that crashed or worked in buildings that planes crashed into). But the same friend who’d advised her that her clock was ticking had brought news of a classmate who’d died of breast cancer, and another struck down by one of the more virulent forms of multiple sclerosis. She was young, she was in the fucking prime of life, but that was no guarantee of anything, was it? Because there were no guarantees, and there never had been, but it took you a while before you realized it.

How long before she wouldn’t want to have sex? How long before nobody much wanted to have it with her? She looked great, people looked at her on the street, and not just construction workers, who looked at everybody, but men in suits, men with briefcases.

If there was anything she wanted to do, now was the time to do it. If there was anything she was curious about, now was the time to satisfy her curiosity. That was what had moved her to crawl under the table at L’Aiglon d’Or and surprise Maury Winters with a blow job he’d be a long time forgetting. She’d always wanted to do something like that, she’d always wondered what it would be like, so what was she waiting for?

And if someone saw her, so what? So fucking what? The management wouldn’t ask her to leave. They were a French restaurant, and hadn’t a president of France died that way, carried off by a stroke or a heart attack, leaving some terrified little cupcake (or an éclair, s’il vous plaît) trapped in the well beneath his desk?

So why shouldn’t she get her nipple pierced? How painful could it be? If she didn’t like the result, she’d take the ring out and let it heal up. And if it really made you feel excited all the time...

She said, “How come you don’t have any piercings?” And, when Medea put a finger to an earlobe, “Besides that. I mean, everybody has pierced ears.”

“The others don’t show.”

“Your nipples?”

“Would you like to see?”

There was the slightest smile on Medea’s full lips, and Susan sensed that the woman was playing with her. She could resist, or she could let herself be played with. And what on earth would resistance gain her?

She nodded.

Medea reached behind her neck, unfastened a clasp, and let the white shift fall to the floor. She stepped out of it, and she was the same golden brown color all over, and Susan was sure that some of the color came from the sun, because she could smell the sun on Medea’s skin.

The woman’s figure was exquisite, slim at the waist, just full enough in the hips to be feminine. Her breasts were as firm as a girl’s and of a size to fit the hand, and both nipples were pierced, and sported gold studs identical to the ones in her ears.

She felt lightheaded, felt a tingling in the palms of her hands and the soles of her feet. She had never been so moved by the physical beauty of another human being. She was responding to Medea as to a work of art. She felt foolish staring at her like this, but sensed the woman was willing to be stared at. And this was confirmed when Medea raised her arms over her head and pirouetted slowly around, like a slave girl displaying herself in an Eastern market.

The woman had no body hair at all, not on her legs, not under her arms, not at her crotch. There was the faintest trace of sun-bleached golden down on her arms, but that was all.

“I’d recommend studs,” Medea said, touching her own for illustration. “Certainly at first, and for general wear. They don’t show until you want them to. And you can always switch to hoops for special occasions. Do you like the way they look?”

“Very much.”

“There’s more, if you’re interested.”

“More?”

“More piercings.”

But she’d seen the woman, front and back, top to bottom. How could there be more piercings?

A tongue stud? But wouldn’t she have noticed it? And wouldn’t she have simply stuck out her tongue?

No, it wasn’t a tongue stud. Of course not.

“Are you interested?”

She nodded.

“You have to say so. You have to ask to see it.”

“Please,” she said.

“Please what?”

“Please show me.”

Medea backed up, sat down on the carpeted ledge, a pillow beneath her bottom. She opened her legs to reveal gold hoops half an inch in diameter affixed to her labia. The sight was not a surprise, by this point Susan had guessed what she’d see and where she’d see it, but there was something so intimate about the display that emotion flowed over her like a wave. She thought she might cry, or cry out.

“Rings,” Medea said, “because studs would sort of get lost here. And so you can do this.”

And she took a ring between each thumb and forefinger and opened herself up.

Susan stood there. Her heart was pounding, tolling like a bell in her chest.

“Go ahead,” Medea told her.

She sank to her knees.

There was another room where the piercing was done, and it looked like a surgery, with white walls and a white tile floor. There was a padded table one could lie on, a high-backed chair one could sit on. There was a shelf of books, and a copy of Gray’s Anatomy open on top of a small metal cabinet.

She had undressed in the other room, even as Medea had donned the white shift again. She might have left her slacks on, but she took everything off, blouse and bra, slacks and panties.

She waited for Medea to indicate whether she was to sit in the chair or get up on the table, but the woman made no sign. The far wall, Susan noticed, was curtained, and something made her ask what was behind the curtain.

“Sometimes it’s difficult to keep oneself still,” Medea said. “Fear, pain, excitement — one moves, and it’s better not to move.”

“I can keep still.”

“Sometimes it’s a relief not to have to try to keep still, Susan. To be able to let go.”

Medea drew the curtain. Behind it, in front of a windowless wall, stood a black metal frame in the shape of an X. There were black leather wrist and ankle cuffs attached to the four arms of the device. For a moment Susan experienced what she thought was déjà vu, until she realized that she actually had seen a similar apparatus at the club on Gansevoort Street.

Wordlessly, she stood with her back up against the cold metal and allowed Medea to fasten the cuffs. She hesitated for only a moment when Medea showed her a black leather hood, then gave a quick nod. The hood covered her entire head but was cut out in front so that she could breathe through her nose. Her mouth was covered, so she couldn’t cry out, nor could she see a thing through the black leather. And, when Medea secured the hood to the upper arms of the cross, her head was immobilized.

She realized suddenly that she hadn’t told Medea which nipple she wanted pierced, nor had Medea asked. And she knew that she was not going to be allowed to choose, that it would be Medea’s choice, and something deep within her, something that had been wound tight, suddenly relaxed. It was her fear, she decided. She hadn’t known she was afraid, hadn’t permitted herself to feel it, and now the fear was gone.

There was a timeless moment, and then Medea was touching the tips of both of her breasts at once. Her touch was feather light, but hardly necessary to prepare her for the ordeal. Both nipples were already firm and fully extended.

The touching continued, and finally stopped, and then she felt Medea’s mouth on one breast, and then on the other.

Making her choice, she thought. She gets to choose. You get to not choose.

She chose the right breast, and a moment later Susan felt what she at first took for fire, and then knew was ice. Odd how you could mistake the one sensation for its opposite, cold for hot. Odd how the ice, numbing her nipple, sent currents of energy coursing through the rest of her body.

Something brushed her nose. She breathed in the scent of oranges. Then she felt something pressed against the tip of her right breast, and then she felt the sensation she had planned to steel herself against. But she’d forgotten to do so, somehow, and now Medea had thrust a needle through her nipple, and she opened herself up entirely to the sensation, and God, it was too much, but no, no, it was not too much.

It was only fire and ice. It was only pain.

The black metal X was a St. Andrew’s cross, Medea told her. Her wrists and ankles were still fastened to it but the hood was off and she could look down and see the gold stud that had been thrust through her right nipple, with a little gold bead showing on either side.

Medea was asking her how she felt.

It took her a moment to realize she could speak now. “Good,” she said. “What was the orange for?”

“To receive the needle. Otherwise I might stick myself.”

“Oh.”

“I’ll cut it in quarters. We’ll eat it.”

She shook her head. “First do the other one.”

“Today?”

“Please.”

“Of course. Do you want the hood?”

Did she? She didn’t need it, but it streamlined the process, taking away the options of sight and speech.

Before her mouth was covered, she said, “No ice this time.”

Medea’s bedroom was another surprise. It was Victorian, the bed a four-poster, the mattress soft, the sheets cool cotton. Susan lay on her side, enjoying the postlovemaking languor, feeling the sweat cooling on her skin, the soreness at the tips of her breasts.

She was thinking of Medea’s hairless loins, and without preamble she said, “Isn’t it a nuisance, having to have it waxed?”

“I do it myself.”

“Really?”

“And it could be a nuisance, but I don’t like body hair.”

“I was so excited when I finally started to get some.”

“I was excited when I got my first period,” Medea said. “It ceased to be exciting some time ago.”

“The most excitement,” Susan remembered, “was one time when I didn’t. If I’d had her, how old would she be?”

“It was a girl?”

“They never told me. I just always think of it as female, I don’t know why.” She rolled onto her back, looked up at the ceiling. “I’ve mostly been with men. How about you?”

“Some of each. I’m mostly by myself. When I do the waxing, I make a ritual of it. Music and candlelight, scented oils. I’ll spend hours. So it’s not such a nuisance.”

“You did your own piercings, didn’t you?”

“Not the ears. They were done ages ago. But everything else, yes.”

They fell silent, and then Susan was surprised to find herself telling Medea about the incident at L’Aiglon d’Or. “I just wanted to do it,” she said, “and I did.”

“You’re very bold.”

“Am I?” She thought about it. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m just a whore.”

“You could be both.”

She laughed.

“But you’re not a whore,” Medea said.

“I have to ask you this. Were you with Chloe?”

“Chloe?”

“My assistant, I mentioned her before. The blonde with the crew cut and the nose ring.”

Medea laughed. “They’re all blondes,” she said, “and they all have nose rings. But I remember her, and no, all I did was pierce her and send her home. That’s all I ever do. This never happens.”

“Never?”

“Two, three times in as many years. Some repeat clients like to be immobilized and hooded, and of course it’s sexual for them, but not for me. I wanted you. I don’t know why. It won’t happen again.”

“If I wanted more piercings...”

“Where?”

“Like yours.”

“Wait at least three months, dear. Give yourself time to integrate the piercing you just had.”

“And if I decide I want a waxing?”

“I can give you the name of someone who’s very good.”

“I see.”

Medea leaned over her, kissed her lightly on the lips, rose from the bed.

“Alcohol on a cotton ball several times a day,” Medea told her. “Rotate the posts ninety degrees once a day. You can take aspirin for the pain.”

She’d have stuffed her bra in her purse, but Medea suggested she wear it to prevent her sore nipples from rubbing against her blouse as she walked. When she’d finished dressing she realized she hadn’t paid for the piercing. She reached for her purse, asked how much she owed.

“Oh, please,” Medea said. “There’s no charge.”

“But that’s not right. I took up a couple of hours of your time.”

“I enjoyed the experience.”

“And the gold studs, at the very least let me pay for the studs.”

“They’re a gift. You may feel like a whore if you like. But there’s no need.” And, when she hesitated, “We won’t do this again. We’re not going to become lovers. But I’ll think of you when I masturbate.”

Medea held the door for her, ushered her through it. She rode the elevator to the lobby, walked out onto Fifty-seventh Street.

And I’ll think of you, she thought, next time I blow a lawyer in a restaurant.

Her nipples tingled.