Stranglehold Page 5

  Plymouth, New Hampshire,

  and Boston, Massachusetts

  June 1985 to September 1986

  He had a restaurant to run. She had a good-paying nurse's job at Mass General.

  They practically lived on the telephone.

  She grew to know him this way, mostly through sleepy late-night calls that would often last an hour or more, going over each other's day. Her work and his. Her family and friends and his. None of whom they knew in common.

  Gradually she told him about her life with Jim—or her lack of a life—and something, but not all, about her father. He was sympathetic. He told her about the trouble he'd gotten into as a kid. Truancy, stealing. It seemed to her that he still felt guilty about some of it and she wondered why he should hold this against himself for so long.

  He seemed concerned about her interests, financial as well as personal. She hadn't taken a penny from Jim so it was hard to get along now living in Boston on a RN's salary. He advised her on a few investments to increase her capital. They talked movies, books, television. He seemed shy about expressing critical opinions, as though afraid to offend, though when he did express them he was smart and kind of funny. He made her laugh.

  She thought it amazing and delightful to find that they had actually gone to the same school together and at roughly the same time, had probably passed one another at some point in the halls.

  Sometimes he'd fly down to Boston for the weekend. Though it was hard for him because the restaurant was busiest on weekends, that was her only time off. Occasionally she'd drive to Plymouth.

  In bed he was gentle, considerate, undemanding. She liked the feel of him, the smell of him.

  She noted that while he had many acquaintances made through the business he seemed to have few friends. None of them close. She attributed this to his work schedule and a basic reserve in him. She had dinner a few times with his mother and father. The father seemed to warm to her immediately in his quiet way but his mother never did, nor Lydia to her. She thought the woman was probably a tough old bird—she was handling a severe case of rheumatoid arthritis with nothing more than the occasional dose of Tylenol and Lydia could admire that—but Ruth struck her as coarse, not the least endearing.

  In July of 1986 they took a whole week off and flew to Jamaica to a resort where silly plastic shark's teeth substituted for money and the two of them lay basking in the sun drinking piña coladas and a lethal rum punch, dashing indoors to escape the drenching daily ten-minute rainstorms, dancing at night and eating the wonderful island food alfresco and making love, and at the end of that week, on a starless moonless night on the terrace of their hotel, he proposed to her.

  She did not accept immediately. There was no question of his leaving the restaurant in New Hampshire. And it was hard for her to consider leaving behind her friends and job in Boston for a man she knew mostly from telephone calls and weekends. Hard to consider marrying any man again even though she had come to be very fond of this one. Almost, but not quite, in love with him.

  She reminded herself that she had been in love with Jim.

  And that was a disaster.

  Love was not necessarily a requirement.

  She consented in September over drinks at The Caves. Quite a number of drinks. Enough so that in the future she'd wonder sometimes how much they'd actually had to do with it. By then she'd seen certain sides to him that had not been apparent before and which would certainly have prevented her from marrying Arthur Danse had she known of them. No matter how many margaritas she'd had that night.

  By then she knew all about the guns.

  She knew about the father and mother.

  She knew about the bouts of drinking.

  She also knew that the expected had happened, that she had come to care for him despite all this. Sometimes she thought you could fall in love with anyone if you lived with them long enough and got to know them. She saw the remorse in the aftermath of his drinking. She saw the deep, almost childlike dependency upon his parents—especially upon his mother. She saw that to him firearms meant a kind of status and power and wondered why he needed them.

  But for all this she doubted he was much different from any man.

  That was how she felt at first.

  It all changed when she had her baby. Their son Robert.

  Their only child.

  Seven

  Coming Out Party

  Plymouth, New Hampshire

  September 1987

  He watched her read in bed.

  The night was unseasonably mild so she had the bedroom windows open and the covers off the bed and she lay there on the sheets in the green silk chemise he'd bought her for her birthday. The chemise was scooped low in front and slim-strapped and plunging in back. Soft and smooth. His wife liked pretty things and he liked to give them to her. Her body had come back quickly after the baby. She hadn't worked at it. Some women had the genes, she said. They were lucky.

  She was lucky.

  Of course she was.

  Her nipples were swollen from the baby's sucking and they had changed in color from a pale to a very much darker brown but that and a certain softening of the flesh, a certain overall voluptuousness, were the only major changes in her. She was still that woman whom all the men would want and all the women would want to know.

  The softness only made her more attractive to him. He wanted to touch it, grasp it, almost all the time now.

  He'd showered long and thoroughly, the water as hot as he could take it.

  He was shaving for the second time that day and glancing at her over his shoulder in the clouded mirror.

  Inside the boxer shorts his prick was hard already.

  What he'd always taken elsewhere he was beginning to want more and more at home now.

  It was funny.

  Maybe he'd logged in too many miles on the car, traveled too many roads to too many places. On "business trips" to collect "supplies and equipment" for the restaurant or interviewing "potential business partners" who never quite came around to investing. Happily she didn't ask many questions.

  But maybe he was getting tired of that.

  Or maybe it was the baby. His baby. The thing he'd put inside her that had grown there and now claimed her attention utterly. The fact of that which excited him. The challenge to take her back.

  Or maybe it was the softness of the flesh.

  Whatever. It was time to show her.

  Just a little.

  He'd been patient. Amazingly so.

  And she was ready. She wouldn't deny him.

  The baby, Robert, made her happy. At least that was what she told him. And he couldn't see any reason to disbelieve her. Though it was hard to understand. It seemed to him that Robert was all demands. He cried. He wanted feeding or fresh diapers or to be held. What he wanted, he got.

  He could understand that much at least.

  But the point was that she was happy with the baby and consequently happy, he felt, with him. With life in general. Which meant it was time he showed her.

  Just a little.

  He splashed water on his face and toweled off and checked his upper torso in the mirror. Small pouches at his hips but not too bad, the rest of him still tight and young and strong.

  He walked to the bed and stood over her.

  "What's the book?"

  "Novel." She showed him the cover. He pretended to be interested in the book. Something called Hero Jesse by Laurence Millman. He hated novels.

  "It's about this retarded boy," she said, "or maybe he's insane, I don't really know yet, but he romanticizes the Vietnam War because his brother's over there and ..."

  "Any good?"

  "Yes. Very."

  He sat down next to her on the bed and rested his hand on her hip. He smiled.

  "Okay. How good?"

  She smiled back. She was flirting with him. She knew what he was after.

  Or thought she did.

  "I told you. Very good."

  She went b
ack to the book. And now she too was just pretending.

  He moved his hand down over her hip beyond the silk to the soft-hard flesh of her thigh. He squeezed gently. She looked up at him still smiling and glanced across the room to the baby sleeping soundlessly in his crib and then she marked and closed the book.

  "Okay, what?" she whispered.

  "What?"

  "Yes, what?"

  "This."

  His hand moved over and around her thigh and up to her ass and he cupped her cheek and pulled her toward him and kissed her, smelling her light perfume and his own fresh cologne. She put down the book and wrapped her arms around his neck so that he could feel her nipples hard already through the sheer jade silk. He slid the straps down over her shoulders and began to touch her, brushing the nipples side to side, up and down. She closed her eyes and moaned—and he thought of what he wanted to do.

  He lay her down again across the cool white cotton sheets and pulled off the chemise and tossed it aside beside her and then spread her legs wide and moved his mouth down over her belly and down until his tongue was inside her, tasting how clean she always was there and smelling the cleanness too and then circling and crossing over the nub of her clitoris while his hands roved up over her thighs and belly to her breasts, his fingers mirroring on her erect swollen nipples the movements of his tongue.

  He heard her moan and gasp and looked up over her pale body beginning to sheen with sweat while his tongue and fingers continued working on her, saw her toss her head again and again, back and forth, saw her clench her fists, her arms stretched wide.

  "Come inside me," she whispered.

  He shook his head. No.

  He sucked and licked her and rolled the nipples, stroked lightly at their flat wide tips.

  He felt her hips begin to buck and the body start to shudder and then she was bucking furiously, it was hard to stay with her when she got like this but he did until the fury of it was suddenly over and he knew that his fingers on her and his tongue were like slivers of glass which were punishing her, like fingernails on the blackboard of her body screeching throughout her nervous system, and he rolled away wiping at his slick chin. Relishing what was next.

  "You now," she said.

  Yes.

  He entered her all at once and she gasped again. There was a sweet pain to this for her now, he knew. Each stroke would ignite pain and pleasure both.

  He pulled out of her.

  Her eyes flashed open. Almost a shock.

  "Turn over," he said.

  She looked at him, puzzled, but did as he asked.

  He pulled her up to her hands and knees. He knew she was thinking that they had used this position only rarely because she didn't enjoy the angle of him inside her nearly as much as she did from the front. But the pleasure was his now. She wouldn't deny him.

  "Press outward," he said.

  "What?"

  "You know. Like you're taking a shit. Press outward." It was dawning on her.

  They had done this only once and she'd hated it. "Arthur ...?"

  She was worried now, looking at him over her shoulder. "Just now. Just this once."

  "I don't ..."

  "Come on."

  "Do you have to?"

  Her reluctance, her tone of voice made him even harder, bigger.

  "Yes. But I'm dry now. Move up a little."

  She lifted her buttocks and he entered her vagina, stroked, stroked again, pulled out and shifted her down.

  He went up her ass slowly, gradually opening her. She groaned. It hurt. She wasn't saying anything but he could tell. He reached around in front of her to the softness of her swaying breasts and squeezed them and pressed them back into her chest and squeezed at the nipples which were still so sensitive that he knew that would hurt her too and still she said nothing, only gasped and groaned again saying ah, ah, ah, as he moved faster, feeling like he was fucking some warm, soft, loyal thing he owned who'd do anything he asked and more.

  He came and rammed it into her deep and held it there a moment, then collapsed on top of her onto the bed. And still she only lay there breathing hard beneath him.

  He pulled out and went to the bathroom. He stood in front of the sink.

  There was blood and shit on his penis.

  Streaks of red.

  Safe sex, he thought.

  Sex with your wife. Who had had your kid.

  It wasn't bad. Not bad at all.

  He washed her off him.

  He thought, hell, it's a beginning.

  Eight

  The Family of Arthur Danse

  October 1987–December 1993

  There were problems but she had determined to make it work, to go the whole distance. There was a child to raise.

  And Robert clearly loved his father. No question.

  From the age of three on he was always looking for his daddy. When's daddy coming home? Can we go with daddy? In the spring of '89 Arthur contracted with his chef and a bottling firm in Concord to launch a line of the more unusual sauces and salad dressings from The Caves to be sold at retail tourist shops throughout the White Mountains ski resorts and along Lake Winnipesaukee—even places as far afield as Stowe, Vermont—so he began traveling a lot. Sometimes for a week at a time they wouldn't see him.

  When they did Robert was thrilled.

  There were always presents for one thing. Plastic superheroes from the cartoon shows, dinosaurs, comic books, storybooks, and board games, and as he got older, games for Nintendo and Sega Genesis.

  Arthur was a very attentive father.

  They went out to movies, out for pizza—sometimes just the two of them, father and son—worked on his homework together, played baseball, and even though she hated it, football. He tried to be around for as many school and after-school activities as possible. She appreciated that. He took Robert fishing and taught him how to ride a bike.

  The actual hard business of raising a little boy was left largely to her, naturally. Setting the rules and making sure the rules were kept. She often felt uncomfortably like the bad guy. But she guessed that just went with the territory. And compared to a lot of other kids Robert was an easy child.

  Robert wasn't the problem.

  The problem was Arthur.

  Over time he seemed to withdraw. They talked less and talked about less. He seemed moody, distant. Except in the bedroom.

  But that was a problem too.

  More and more he wanted sex anally.

  She hated the feeling. Hated it. Like having to go and not being able to go and having everything pushed up inside. It was easier for her to accommodate him now than it had been at first but that didn't make the act any less distasteful. It got so that she almost dreaded sex with him. Not knowing if he'd be wanting that again tonight.

  Tension and sex were a bad mix.

  She'd pretty much stopped having orgasms.

  He didn't seem to mind. That hurt her too.

  Once she'd simply refused him.

  It was the kind of day where everything that could go wrong did go wrong, where the toilet broke down and getting a plumber in was hell and waiting for him to arrive had completely skewed her afternoon to the extent that she had to ask Cindy, whose daughter Gail was in Robert's class, to go pick him up after school and drop him off, and then Robert had one of his infrequent but black fits of pique because his Game Boy didn't work and they had no spare batteries around, like it was the end of the civilized world, and she practically shoved him out the door, ordering him to go out and play. Then she almost burned the lasagna. Rushing it.

  So that night Arthur wanted to butt-fuck. Jesus.

  "No," she said.

  "Why not?"

  She was exhausted. "No, Arthur. Please. Not tonight."

  "Why?"

  "Because I don't want to."

  "I want to."

  "Arthur, another time, okay?"

  It wasn't okay. He slammed out of the room, awakening five-year-old Robert, and then she had to explain to hi
m why daddy was sleeping in the guest room that night.

  Something about a cold and germs.

  Arthur'd sulked and glowered for over a week. He would say almost nothing to her and what little he did say was usually nasty. He ignored Robert as thoroughly as possible. The boy could see that something was wrong. He gave his father an unusually wide berth. Almost as though Robert was suspicious of him now. Yet she could tell that the boy was hurt and felt rejected. Her heart ached for him. And it disturbed her that Arthur would take their problems out on their son, as though Robert were just another hostage to him.

  It was like living with a small cruel boy who had the power to make both hers and Robert's life miserable at whim. And was perfectly willing to do so.

  Eventually he went off on business for a few days and when he came back the incident seemed forgotten.

  But she never refused him again.

  It wasn't worth it.

  She had Robert's piece of mind to think of too.

  She didn't even refuse him the night he came home from Concord with his little black bag of toys.

  He was grinning as he dumped them beside her on the bed.

  "It's fantasy," he said. "It's about fantasy and trust, y'know? Something different. It'll be fun."

  Fun for who? she thought.

  But it was different, all right.

  Four black leather handcuffs with silver rings attached, two for the wrists and two heavier, thicker ones, for the ankles.

  Four lengths of slender silver chain.

  Eight two-sided spring-clips for attaching the chains together.

  And a small black braided leather whip.

  "You're kidding," she said.

  "Don't worry. I'm not going to hurt you."

  "Oh no? Then what's the whip for?"

  He laughed. "Say ... stimulation."

  She pointed to the handcuffs. She could smell them. The new rich leather. The metallic smell of silver.

  "You want me to put those on."

  "Uh-huh. And this."

  He reached into his pocket and withdrew a black silk scarf. A blindfold.