Full Dark, No Stars(104)
Death by catalogues, she thought. Now that would be an ironic way to g—
The thought broke off as clean as a dry branch. She was thumbing as she was thinking, now a quarter of the way down in the stack, and beneath Gooseberry Patch (country décor), she came to something that wasn’t a catalogue. No, not a catalogue at all. It was a magazine called Bondage Bitches. She almost didn’t take it out, and probably wouldn’t have if she’d come across it in one of his drawers, or on that high shelf with the magic hair-replacement products. But finding it here, stashed in a pile of what had to be at least two hundred catalogues… her catalogues… there was something about that which went beyond the embarrassment a man might feel about a sexual kink.
The woman on the cover was bound to a chair and na**d except for a black hood, but the hood only covered the top half of her face and you could see she was screaming. She was tied with heavy ropes that bit into her br**sts and belly. There was fake blood on her chin, neck, and arms. Across the bottom of the page, in screaming yellow type, was this unpleasant come-on: BAD BITCH BRENDA ASKED FOR IT AND GETS IT ON PAGE 49!
Darcy had no intention of turning to page 49, or to any other page. She was already explaining to herself what this was: a male investigation. She knew about male investigations from a Cosmo article she’d read in the dentist’s office. A woman had written in to one of the magazine’s many advisors (this one the on-staff shrink who specialized in the often mysterious bearded sex) about finding a couple of g*y magazines in her husband’s briefcase. Very explicit stuff, the letter-writer had said, and now she was worried that her husband might be in the closet. Although if he was, she continued, he was certainly hiding it well in the bedroom.
Not to worry, the advice-lady said. Men were adventurous by nature, and many of them liked to investigate sexual behavior that was either alternative—gay sex being number one in that regard, group sex a close second—or fetishistic: water sports, cross-dressing, public sex, latex. And, of course, bondage. She had added that some women were also fascinated by bondage, which had mystified Darcy, but she would have been the first to admit she didn’t know everything.
Male investigation, that was all this was. He had maybe seen the magazine on a newsstand somewhere (although when Darcy tried to imagine that particular cover on a newsstand, her mind balked), and had been curious. Or maybe he’d picked it out of a trash can at a convenience store. He had taken it home, looked through it out here in the garage, had been as appalled as she was (the blood on the cover model was obviously fake, but that scream looked all too real), and had stuck it in this gigantic stack of catalogues bound for the recycling bin so she wouldn’t come across it and give him a hard time. That was all it was, a one-off. If she looked through the rest of these catalogues, she’d find nothing else like it. Maybe a few Penthouse s and panty-mags—she knew most men liked silk and lace, and Bob was no exception in this regard—but nothing more in the Bondage Bitches genre.
She looked at the cover again, and noticed an odd thing: there was no price on it. No bar code, either. She checked the back cover, curious about what such a magazine might cost, and winced at the picture there: a na**d blonde strapped to what looked like a steel operating-room table. This one’s expression of terror looked about as real as a three-dollar bill, however, which was sort of comforting. And the portly man standing over her with what appeared to be a Ginsu knife just looked ridiculous in his armlets and leather underpants—more like an accountant than someone about to carve up the Bondage Bitch du jour.
Bob’s an accountant, her mind remarked.
A stupid thought launched from her brain’s all-too-large Stupid Zone. She pushed it away just as she pushed the remarkably unpleasant magazine back into the pile of catalogues after ascertaining that there was no price or bar code on the back, either. And as she shoved the cardboard box under the workbench—she had changed her mind about carting the catalogues back into the house—the answer to the no-price/no-bar-code mystery came to her. It was one of those magazines they sold in a plastic wrapper, with all the naughty bits covered. The price and the code had been on the wrapper, of course that was it, what else could it be? He had to’ve bought the goddarn thing somewhere, assuming he hadn’t fished it out of the trash.
Maybe he bought it over the Internet. There are probably sites that specialize in that sort of thing. Not to mention young women dressed up to look like twelve-year-olds.
“Never mind,” she said, and gave her head a single brisk nod. This was a done deal, a dead letter, a closed discussion. If she mentioned it on the phone when he called later tonight, or when he came home, he’d be embarrassed and defensive. He’d probably call her sexually naïve, which she supposed she was, and accuse her of overreacting, which she was determined not to do. What she was determined to do was roll widdit, baby. A marriage was like a house under constant construction, each year seeing the completion of new rooms. A first-year marriage was a cottage; one that had gone on for twenty-seven years was a huge and rambling mansion. There were bound to be crannies and storage spaces, most of them dusty and abandoned, some containing a few unpleasant relics you would just as soon you hadn’t found. But that was no biggie. You either threw those relics out or took them to Goodwill.
She liked this thought (which had a conclusive feel) so well that she said it out loud: “No biggie.” And to prove it, she gave the cardboard box a hard two-handed shove, sending it all the way to the rear wall.