The Mammoth Book of International Erotica

KISMET by Michael Crawley

STUART MET HER in Toronto, which is ironic. He was from Vancouver, sometimes known as LaLaLand North. The rest of Canada knows that Vancouver is a haven for drop-outs, druggies and weirdos. Toronto, by contrast, is still often called “Toronto-the-Good”.

It was February, in a McDonald’s on Yonge Street, at three in the morning. They were both sitting at the counter. Stuart noticed her eyes first. They were big, the colour of hot chocolate, and sad beneath creamy lids. Her face was thin, feral. The hair that tumbled from beneath a plain navy beret was violently red. She cradled her styrofoam cup in both thin-fingered hands. When she bent her head to sip, enormous hoop earrings swung against her cheeks.

Despite the time and the place, Stuart didn’t think she was a professional. A pro wouldn’t have worn a thin shapeless turquoise topcoat. It concealed without protecting, which is the opposite to what a whore would choose. In any case, she was too old. She had to be about his own age, forty. Yonge Street whores range from prepubescent to old hands of twenty.

Stuart should have drunk up and left. There was a bed waiting at his hotel and it’d been a tiring night. Waiting hours for a mainframe to come up so you can keyboard your last seven entries is more fatiguing than pounding the keys all night.

He should have left, but he crooked a finger for another coffee instead. The woman looked so incredibly vulnerable. It’s hard to walk away from that. There are so many possibilities. A woman’s weakness can give a man the opportunity to be chivalrous. Or it can be exploited.

Stuart had been in Toronto for ten days, with no real human contact. He’d been sleeping through most of the mornings, watching TV in the afternoon, and starting work when the rest of the office left. His friends and family were all back in “Van”. He was hungry for some sort of emotional interaction.

A dozen gilt bangles jingled as the woman heaved a macramé bag onto the counter, fumbled out a cigarette to slot between lips that were far too red, and started fumbling again. She found a bookmatch with just one match left and struck it. It spluttered out.

That gave Stuart his chance to perform a tiny courtesy. He slid off his stool, walked the length of the counter, and flicked his lighter. She bent to the flame without looking at him and nodded her “thanks”.

Stuart went back to his stool, vaguely disappointed, vaguely resentful.

Her cup had to be empty. The kid behind the counter said something to her. She shook her head and lifted styrofoam to her lips, but Stuart was sure she was faking that there was coffee left. Her throat – her long slender throat – didn’t make any swallowing motions.

Nowhere to go? No money? Could she be a battered wife who’d finally walked out? That’d make her even more vulnerable, more in need of his chivalry, more… Stuart didn’t complete the thought. Everyone has a dark side. Most of us just don’t look into those shadows, right? Best not to know what lurks there.

She stubbed half her cigarette into a foil ashtray, faked another sip at her empty cup and groped for another smoke. Stuart decided to have a second stab at being nice.

She swivelled on her stool to meet him, took the cigarette from her mouth between two fingers, touched the back of his flame-bearing hand with her nail-tips, looked up at him, and asked, “Should I?”

“Should you?”

“Smoke another cigarette.”

The sensible answer would have been, “That’s up to you.”

Stuart told her, “Yes,” in a firm voice.

“If you say so, I will.”

She had a rusty contralto. Stuart moved his neck inside the collar of his topcoat. Her voice had been like velvet stroking his nape. The sharp points of her fingernails had left tingles in his skin.

“Would you like another coffee?”

“Should I?”

Stuart snapped his fingers and pointed to her cup instead of answering.

The kid looked at him. Stuart said, “Two”.

The woman said, “Virginia.”

Stuart said, “Stuart, with a ‘u’.”

They sipped coffee in awkward silence. When Stuart was done he cleared his throat. “It’s late.”

“Should I go home?”

“I would.” She had a home to go to? Was he glad for her, or disappointed?

“How should I get there?”

Stuart shrugged. “Is it far? Do you have a car? Do you need a cab?”

She spilled coins onto the counter. Her finger counted a dollar eighty-five.

“Do you need cab fare?”

“Should I?” again.

“I’m working at the TD Centre. Hawkins and Bradley – if you wanted to repay me sometime.” He pulled out his wallet, half-extracted a twenty, and paused. “A better idea. I’ll call a taxi and drop you off on the way to my hotel, okay?”

She huddled in the far corner of the cab and looked out of the window, silent. So – he’d been wrong. It wasn’t a pick-up. At least he’d had a few words of conversation with an attractive woman. As lonely as he was, those moments were worth the extra cab-fare and the price of a coffee.

As she got out she looked back at him, lips almost parting, but she didn’t smile and she didn’t even say goodnight. Stuart decided not to think about her again. He’d been ready to sin, so the memory would be a guilty one, but he hadn’t followed through, so there’d be no secret pleasure to savour.

The night-line on his desk rang at six-forty the next evening.

“Should I go for a walk or is it too cold?”

Something icy flopped over inside Stuart’s chest. He collected himself and said, “Do you have another coat?”

“No.”

“It’s too cold out for that one. Stay home.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“What should I do at home?”

He almost snapped, “Read a book, watch tv, whatever!” but he said, “Think about tomorrow and get an early night.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Meet me for breakfast. Nine-thirty. Get a cab to the Sheraton. I’ll pick up the tab.”

“What should I wear?”

“Hold on.” Stuart laid the phone down. He needed to think. She was the most frustrating… But it was exciting too, wasn’t it? “Should I this, should I do that?” Did she have no mind of her own? And if she didn’t? What would that be like? A puppet woman, doing absolutely nothing without his permission, and perhaps doing anything that he suggested?

But that couldn’t be, could it? No one was that pliant – that blank. Then again, what if she was? How could he resist putting her to the test? What would he be missing if he just walked away? If he didn’t find out he’d never forgive himself.

He picked the phone up. “Something attractive.”

“Attractive.”

“Sexy.”

“Very well. What do you like?”

This wasn’t happening. It couldn’t be. The bubble would burst. He’d tell her to do something, and she’d refuse, just like any normal woman. Best to pop the illusion right then.

“Do you mean to tell me that if I told you to meet me stark naked under your coat, you would?”

“Is that what you’d like?”

“Of course not. Do you have a short skirt?”

“Yes.”

“A see-through blouse?”

“Yes.”

“That’ll do then.”

“Stockings, pantihose or bare legs?”

Stuart felt an erection starting to grow. “Stockings.”

“Heels?”

“High. The highest you have.”

“Nine-thirty. Thank you Stuart.”

He stared at his screen, blind to the glowing numbers. He couldn’t go through with this. She obviously had a problem, a mental problem. It’d be wrong, evil, to take advantage of her. He just wouldn’t show.

And then she’d be there, with a cab waiting for fare, and her with a dollar eighty-five in small change. He had to show. Anyway – she was likely playing a game with him, right? She would be the one who didn’t show. She’d be home, with a manfriend, laughing at the poor sap who was going to get up early to meet some fantasy woman for breakfast. That was fine. He’d show, and it’d be worth the small humiliation of being stood up to have a clean conscience and it all over with.

But she did show, her coat flapping, tottering on five-inch heels, thighs almost skinny beneath a tiny skirt. He had to endure the embarrassment of eating breakfast in a public place with a woman who was wearing a transparent blouse with nothing beneath it. Stuart supposed it was his own fault. He hadn’t told her to wear a bra, had he?

She ordered what he ordered and he sat there staring at her breasts while trying to look as if he wasn’t. They were worth looking at, much too full and heavy for her slender frame and with dark brown nipples the size of demi-tasse coffee cups.

She owed him, didn’t she? Two cab fares and a breakfast he’d sweated through? He’d collect, say goodbye, and forget her. Perhaps he’d pay her off with a hundred and put her in her place. She might not be a prostitute but she was certainly a slut, of sorts. She was there to be used, so he’d use her, just the once.

Stuart signed their bill and said, “Follow me.”

She was two paces behind him, except in the elevator, all the way to his suite. “Humble” demands humiliation. That’s what he’d give her. For once in his life he was going to screw a woman with absolutely no concern for her pleasure, unless she balked, of course. A part of him wanted her to balk, to refuse, to say, “No!”

He’d make her say, “No”.

“Hang your coat up and take your clothes off.”

She didn’t say, “No.”

“Kneel in front of me.”

She didn’t say “No”.

Stuart mauled and kneaded her breasts. She stared at his belt buckle, expressionless. He pinched the rubbery tips of her nipples. He took them between his fingers and his thumbs and shook her breasts. She didn’t complain. She didn’t react. He tugged, pulling her breasts into obscene shapes. Her expression didn’t change. His thumbnails dug in. She took a sharp breath.

“Did that hurt?” he asked.

“Some.”

“Do you want me to stop?”

“Only if you want to.”

“Do you like it when I hurt your nipples?”

“Should I?”

Christ she was frustrating! “Open my fly.”

She pulled his zipper down and dropped her hand back to her side.

“Take it out! Take my cock out and suck it!”

Cool fingers groped inside his pants, found him and tugged him out. She held him delicately with a thumb and two fingers, like an aficionado with a fine cigar. Her mouth formed an “O”. She leaned closer and took the head of his cock between her lips. Her cheeks hollowed.

“Deeper!”

Her lips slithered down his stem. Stuart felt the head of his cock glide across the flat of her tongue to nudge at the back of her throat.

“You like it, don’t you?” he demanded.

She nodded.

“You’re a horny slut! A whore!”

She nodded again.

“I’m going to fuck your face! What do you think of that?”

She withdrew, slowly, smearing his stem with brilliant red lipstick. “If that’s what you want, Stuart.”

It was lust and it was anger, so mixed together that he didn’t know where one ended and the other began. He locked his fingers in her riotous hair and thrust deep into her waiting mouth. He’d take his pleasure of her mouth. He’d choke her with his cock. He’d make her gag. He’d…

She took his pounding, her tongue pushing up under his cock to press it hard against the roof of her mouth. She’d done it before, often. She was nothing but a…

He came.

She showed initiative for the first time, sucking hard and long, drawing his come out through the eye of his cock like an infinite length of knotted silk. She sucked and gulped and gulped and sucked until his guilty pleasure became a shameful ache.

“Enough!”

She gave one last hard draw before releasing him.

Stuart didn’t tuck himself in. Leaving his cock dangling from his fly would show her how little he thought of her. He dropped a fifty at her knees and told her, “There’s cab fare. I have to get a nap now. I work late hours.”

She dressed and left without a word.

When the phone on his desk rang at six-forty he knew who it was.

“Do you want to see me for breakfast?”

Did he? Of course he didn’t. This whole thing was sick, kinky. The sooner it was over the better.

Did he? Of course he did. Being married didn’t equal “all fantasies fulfilled”. His Janice was a reasonably sexy woman. They made love twice a week, most weeks, which wasn’t bad after twelve years of marriage. He respected his wife, and that was the problem. She was worthy of his respect, which meant there were things she wouldn’t do, and that he wouldn’t dare suggest she did. You don’t risk a marriage for the sake of a few extra thrills, do you?

That meant that there were sex acts he’d never tried, and had half resigned himself he never would. Now – now the opportunity had leapt into his lap, as it were. How could a man turn his back on that? Anyway, the chances were that those things weren’t that great, once you’d tried them. Get them out of his system, that was it. He was far enough from home that what he did wouldn’t be real, anyway. Work out those dark desires and then he’d be much more content with what he had at home. In a way, he’d be doing Janice a favour, not that she’d ever know, of course.

A voice cleared its throat on the line. She – Virginia – was waiting patiently for his answer.

“No – I won’t meet you in the lobby. Come straight up to my suite. I’ll order room service.”

“Nine-thirty?”

“Yes.”

“What should I wear?”

Damn the woman! How was he supposed to know what was in her closet? Still…

“Hose and heels again.”

“Yes Stuart.”

“Do you have a button-through dress?”

“Yes Stuart.”

Yes, yes, yes! Didn’t she know any other word? He’d push. There had to be some point that she’d say, “No”.

“No underwear.”

“Very well, Stuart.”

“Do you have some lubricant? Baby oil or something?”

“Yes Stuart.”

Hell! She didn’t even ask what for. Perhaps she knew. Perhaps that’s what she wanted.

“And some rope? Cord? Soft cord?”

“How long, Stuart?”

“Six feet should do.”

“Yes Stuart.”

He hung up before his perversity made him tell her to bring a whip or something. If he had, would she have? He wouldn’t know, would he, unless…

Stuart touched his screen-saver off and concentrated on nice safe numbers.

Her dress was a faded blue floral print, mid-thigh long and straining across the swaying masses of her breasts. She might have had it since she’d been a teen and less developed. It reminded him that once she’d been young and innocent, so he had her take it off before they sat down to eat.

It was very different, eating alone with her, him in robe and pyjama pants, her in just heels, hose, bangles and earrings, which is more naked than total nudity. He could look at her breasts all he liked, with no pretence. They had a very slight sag. He was glad of that tiny imperfection. It made her more vulnerable.

They were freckled as well. Did that mean she was a true redhead? It was strange, he’d used her mouth – used it in a way that he’d never have dreamed of using Janice’s, but he still hadn’t seen her pubes, not really. She’d turned away as she’d laid her dress aside and then she’d slipped into her chair at the table. He’d been watching the sway of her breasts, so he’d missed even a glimpse at her mound, her mons veneris. Still, he would see it. He could see it right then, if he wished. All he’d have to do was tell her to stand, come closer, and let him inspect her. He’d be able to look close, and long, in broad daylight.

He’d never done that to Janice. He’d seen her sex, of course, as she dressed or undressed, or in the dim light from the bedside lamp, but he’d never actually inspected her, like meat.

That’s what Virginia was – meat. Pliant, pliable, warm human meat, to be prepared to his own recipe and consumed quickly or at leisure, whatever his mood might dictate.

“Play with your nipples,” he said, just as calmly as “more coffee please”.

She laid her knife and fork aside. “How would you like me to do it?”

“To please yourself. Show me how you’d do it if you were alone.”

“Yes Stuart.” She cupped her breasts on her palms and wobbled them, staring down at her own jiggling flesh as if he wasn’t there. Well, that’s what he’d told her to do, wasn’t it? Her fingers squeezed and kneaded, milking herself in towards her nipples. She leaned backwards, tilting her face towards the ceiling. The stroking became more urgent, coaxing blood into those dark staring centres. They engorged, grew larger and harder. Her hands smoothed higher. Fingers made rings about each puffy halo and compressed, pouting them. She released her right breast and strummed the fingers of her right hand across the tip of her left nipple. Was her mouth slackening with desire? It was hard to tell, with her head tipped so far back.

Her fingertips caressed up the sides of her nipple, soft as petals, stroking from base to tip and base to tip, again and again. Her nipple responded, and there was a pulse under her pale skin. Her nipples weren’t pointed cones, like Janice’s, but rigid flat-topped turrets, almost the same circumference from base to tip.

She took that blunt tip between thumb and finger and pinched it flat. A sigh escaped her mouth. The bitch was getting off on her own caresses! She hadn’t reacted to him, but she did to herself.

“Suck it!” he said.

“Yes Stuart.” Two hands squeezed and lifted. Her head bent forward and down. Her lips parted. A kitten-tongue lapped out, point tickling the flat peak.

“I said, ‘Suck!’”

“Sorry Stuart.” She drew her entire nipple into her mouth. Her cheeks worked. Her lips and teeth mumbled more flesh, drawing more soft white breast into her mouth, creasing its skin, drawing it into an elongated pear.

She might have made a little growling sound deep in her throat as her head shook, but he wasn’t sure.

“Bite on it! Chew on your own nipple!”

Her mouth worked and her face looked as if she felt some pain, but how could he be sure she was really obeying?

“Come here and show me!”

She was wobbly on her heels. Her fingers trailed the table. When she stood by him her left nipple was a few inches above his eyes so that he looked up at it. It was wet with her spit, and she had obeyed. There were teeth marks, deep and almost blue. Stuart touched. He rolled the cylinder of hot flesh between his fingers, working the teeth dents out.

She sucked air. Her eyes were glazed. All he’d done was touch her nipple.

He trailed a finger down her cleavage, across her midriff, past her navel.

She shivered.

Her pubic hair was ginger and frizzy, trimmed short and shaped to end exactly at the fine crease where the curves of her belly and her mound met.

His fingers twirled a tuft and tugged. “Who did you trim this for?”

“For you, Stuart.”

The ridge of her clitoris was thick. Was it always like that, or was it because of him? He stroked the wrinkled skin and thought he felt a stirring beneath his finger.

The lips of her sex were swollen and slightly pendulous, protruding through the ginger fuzz. He poked. The lip yielded, soft, limp. His prod had pushed it back, indenting it. He watched as the flaccid flesh slowly recovered its shape.

This was fun! Her pussy wasn’t a part of a living woman. It was a toy. Stuart eased the hood of her clitoris back, exposing a tender arrowhead. When he released her sheath it crept forward again, but not quite so far. Just a hint of the raw pink still showed.

When he shucked it again and blew across it, Virginia’s belly tensed, winking her navel. When he slid a finger inside her, just far enough to get a grip on her sex’s lip, and pinched, she shuddered. Pleasure? Pain? Did it matter?

Stuart folded three fingers together and thrust them up into her, where she was slick corrugated heat, all delicate membranes and very internal.

She groaned and swayed – towards him.

He pulled his fingers out. They were sticky. When he parted them strands of translucent stuff stretched between them. It smelled like canned pineapples, with a vaguely metallic tang.

Stuart held his tacky fingers up to her face. “Suck them clean!”

She made a meal of it, gobbling up her own juices, slithering her tongue between his fingers and licking at their webs.

Stuart said, “Masturbate,” and added, “as if you were alone,” before she could ask for detailed instructions.

She spread her too-slim thighs, making shadowy hollows behind her tendons. Two fingers of one hand took her clitoral shaft in a scissors-grip. Two of her other hand hooked up inside her pussy. The fingers held still as her hips moved, slowly at first, then faster and faster. The head of her clitoris flashed in and out of view. She got wetter. Soft slurping noises became sharp wet splashing sounds.

Stuart looked up at her face. It was blank, eyes hidden behind heavy lids, but she was biting her lower lip.

She froze. Stuart thought for a moment that she had reached her climax, but then her fingers were jerking on her clit and she plucked the two fingers from her wet insides, flattened that hand and slapped it up at her engorged lips, short sharp fast slaps, wet slaps, wet enough to splash tiny drops of her oozings onto his face.

The sinews inside her thighs quivered.

Stuart grabbed both of her wrists. They fought him for a second then relaxed, but her belly was vibrating with urgency.

“I didn’t say you could come,” he said.

“Sorry, Stuart.”

“Go to the stool and bend over it.”

He lashed her ankles to two legs of the stool, low down, and her wrists to the other two legs, just below the padded seat, leaving her enough slack to flatten her palms on the green velvet. With her body leaning like that, at forty-five degrees, her breasts hung. There were tiny silvery creases radiating from where they were rooted, beneath her armpits, another delicious imperfection.

Dangling like that, her breasts seemed almost detached from her body, separate entities. Stuart prodded one. It swung, slapped the other, and sent trembling ripples through it.

“Sway,” he said.

She did. He watched, directly and in the dressing table’s mirror. He stood behind her and reached around her body, taking a breast in each hand. His fingers milked at her. He stared into the mirror, watching disembodied hands manipulate Plasticine breasts, pluck pretend nipples.

His erection grew, tenting the silk of his pyjama pants out between the flaps of his robe. The wet spot on the silk nudged between the cheeks of her bum.

“You brought baby oil?”

“In my bag.”

He parted her buttocks and dripped oil onto the base of her spine. It trickled. It ran the valley to the little brown crater and soaked into it for a dozen drops before overflowing and dribbling to coat the backwards pout of her sex. Stuart’s finger traced the glistening, pausing at her anus, rimming before probing.

She inhaled sharply, but the ring of muscle was totally relaxed.

“I’m going to bugger you,” he said.

“Yes, Stuart.”

“Have you been sodomized before?”

She paused before saying, “Would you like me to have been?”

“I want the truth, damn you, not what you think I want to hear!”

“Then – yes, Stuart.”

“Did you like it?”

She didn’t answer. He slapped her bottom. “Did you like it?”

“I think I’ll like it when you do it, Stuart, if that’s what you want.”

He wasn’t going to get the truth out of her. There was no truth in her. It didn’t matter. She was going to have something else in her, something more powerful than truth – his cock deep in her rectum. A universal truth?

Stuart parted his fly and let his cock lance out. He slopped oil into his palm. It splashed in his haste, saturating the front of his pyjama pants. It didn’t matter what the hotel’s laundry service would think. Nothing mattered except the constricted tunnel of flesh that was waiting for his cock.

Two fingers wriggled into her anus, preparing the way, ignoring whatever she felt, pleasure or pain. The head of his cock was screaming at him, “In! In!”

Thumbs prying her open, sliding insecurely on a sheen of oil. Nuzzle up tight, an impossible invasion. The entrance was so small, and he was so bursting big, bigger than he’d ever been. Push. Push. An elastic giving sensation. Push again. A rubber collar, spreading. A – a – a…

A plop. My God, he was in! The head of his cock was past the ring. Muscles closed around his cock’s neck, but he was in and there was nothing that was going to stop him going the rest of the way. The eye of his cock was staring up a long dark tight passage, assessing the cruel glee it was about to feel.

Stuart took Virginia by the bones of her hips, fingers hooked into delicate hollows, and he pulled…

There was a long divine dragging slithery sensation, and he’d done it! Even if he stopped right then, he’d done it. He’d buggered a woman!

But he didn’t stop. His cock took insane control, making him thrust and pull back and thrust and pull back and thrust and thrust… and he came. He came a glorious come, pumping thick and hot, shuddering and groaning aloud.

Stuart left her there, tied to the stool, and went for a shower. She was in the same position when he returned. It was as if he hadn’t done it, except for the snail-trail down the inside of her thigh and the glistening of her still-parted sphincter.

He untied her and retied her, hands behind her back. He had her give him a blow-job like that, with no help from him. It should have taken an age, but she was good at what she did. Her mouth started soft and loose and slow and noisy, gobbling and wobbling on him. Once he was urgent-stiff again, she clamped firmly and accelerated, nodding fast, faster, fastest. His cock’s head rippled across the roof of her mouth, and he came again.

It wasn’t even noon yet.

There was compassion and affection in him. That was bad. He had to absolve himself, a little.

“Get dressed. I’m going to buy you a coat.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I want to. I don’t like the way you look in that one. I want you to look sexy – for me.”

The shopping concourse below the Sheraton links with another, and another. You can wander for miles beneath Toronto. In February, you’re grateful.

He bought her a short black plastic coat, lined with fake fur, and a pair of boots to match. She didn’t choose them. What he liked, she liked. It wasn’t until they passed a jeweller’s that she showed any interest in anything.

Stuart asked her, “What are you looking at?”

“Those earrings. They’re lovely.”

“They look like the ones you’re wearing, but smaller.”

“Yes.”

“You really like them?”

“Yes.”

“Then they’re yours.”

She didn’t even tell him he didn’t have to.

He told her he’d take her home in a cab again, but she said she had something to do downtown. She asked him, “Tomorrow?”

He nodded and turned on his heel before sanity made him change his mind.

She arrived in his suite wearing her glossy new coat.

“I have a surprise for you.”

“You have?”

She posed, one leg turned in front of the other, a shoulder drooping, and opened her coat. Her being naked under it didn’t surprise him at all. He’d half expected that. What shocked him was the earrings he’d bought her. She was wearing them – one through each freshly pierced nipple.

Stuart felt a twinge of nausea that was instantly washed away in a flood of lust. He took her on her back, on the scratchy carpet, thrusting into her frantic as a teen, arched up from his waist, his eyes feasting on the mutilations that she’d endured for his sake.

“How on earth did you get that done?” he asked, once he was calm and drained.

“There’s a place in a side street, between King and Queen. They do piercing and tattooing. Should I get a tattoo?”

He thought of her mound, shaved bald and reading, “Stuart’s”.

“No,” he said. “Let’s go buy you a dress.”

When her nipples had healed enough that he dared touch them he used those rings a lot. He steered her by them, and used them to tug on, and once held fistfuls of ice on them, to claw the chill inside her flesh. Stuart took her in every position he could dream up, tied and free, orally, anally, between her breasts and vaginally.

When he told her that the next day would be his last in Toronto for a while, she didn’t cry. She simply told him that she really needed to borrow five hundred dollars.

That was a relief. Five hundred was cheap, and it would constitute a “pay-off. It transformed their relationship from “emotional” to “commercial”. He counted out ten fifties and waited for her to tell him she couldn’t make it for the next day, but she didn’t. She just confirmed, “Nine-thirty?”

She arrived with the vee of her coat showing a thick woollen sweater. It was the first substantial garment that he hadn’t bought her that he’d seen her wearing.

When she took off her coat the sweater was very short – covering half her midriff, and she was naked from it to her boots. She posed again, but not like a model. She put her fists on her bare hips, spread her thighs and thrust her pubes at him.

“Does this look nice? This is what I needed the money for.”

His bile rose again. She’d had another piercing – the lips of her sex. A row of tiny golden rings glittered at him, four to each side. There was a thin gold chain threaded through them, sealing her. A tiny gold padlock dangled between her thighs.

“Here’s the key. There’s just one. It’s yours.”

Stuart had to force himself to come in her mouth.

That night he had no work. He walked the frigid streets, head down into ice-particles that travelled horizontally, until he found her home. There was no answer. He took note of her address, returned to his hotel, made a tiny parcel of the silver key and three one-hundred dollar bills, and mailed it.

It was two months before they called him back to Toronto. The parcel was waiting at the Sheraton’s reception, “Return to sender. Addressee moved. No forwarding address.”

There was no message waiting at the office. The phone didn’t ring at six-forty.

The next morning he scoured the streets between King and Queen, looking for a “place that did piercing, and tattooing”.

He found one just after noon, with dusty windows and curly cardboard displays of digital watches.

“I’m looking for a woman, a customer of yours.”

The gnome with tobacco stains on his moustache said, “Yes?”

“Her name is Virginia. I don’t know her last name. You did some – work.”

“Tattoos or piercing?”

“Piercing.”

“Ears, nose, nips, navel or pussy-lips?”

“Er – nipples, and er – lips.”

“Skinny woman? Big boobs? Red hair?”

“That’s her. Do you have an address? She moved you see, and…”

“Against policy, I don’t have it, anyway.”

Stuart pulled out a fifty.

“I really don’t got it, but I tell you what – she’s coming in for some more work, today, three o’clock. You want to come back?”

“Could I wait?”

“Sure. Come in back. There’s magazines, and I’ll get you some coffee.”

The magazines were all “trade”. The little man brought bitter coffee in a mug with a Canadian Pacific Railways logo. Customers came and were ushered by an enormous fat man into tiny curtained booths. Sometimes needles buzzed, sometimes there was the sharp smell of alcohol and the occasional, “ouch”.

There was more coffee at one and two. It was hot in that room. That – and the antiseptic – and the thought of what was going on in the booths, made Stuart start to feel nauseous. It was a struggle to check his watch. At three the little man came back again and took a seat opposite Stuart.

“She’s late,” Stuart said, mumbling on a thick tongue. “You ain’t been so nice to Miss Virginia, ‘ave you?”

“Huh?”

“Miss Virginia. She made a commitment to you. You dumped her.”

Stuart tried to stand but his knees were jelly. “What do you – you mean?”

“You should get back with her. She’d like that.”

“I – I brought the key.”

“That’s nice. Tell her yourself then.”

“Wha? She’s…?”

The fat man jerked the curtains to a booth open. Virginia was there, standing naked… No, sagging naked. She was hanging from… Stuart’s gorge rose. Virginia had been pierced again, a lot. There were rings through the flesh at the backs of her wrists, and behind her neck, and her ankles and… and they were all on cords – cords that hung down from a framework high against the ceiling.

The fat man pulled on a dangling cord. Virginia’s head lifted. She smiled at Stuart. “Hello Stuart. You’ve come back to me?”

The fat man grunted, “Yes, he’s come back to you, Virginia.”

Stuart toppled off his chair. The gnome produced a pair of tailor’s shears and started to cut up the legs of Stuart’s pants. The fat man jingled a palmful of golden rings. His other hand held a pair of peculiarly shaped pliers.