Gerald's Game(6)

Gerald actually laughed. "What am I talking about? For a minute there, you had me believing it. That's what I'm talking about." He dropped a hand onto her right thigh. When he spoke again, his voice was brisk and weirdly businesslike. "Now-do you want to spread them for me, or do I have to do it? Is that part of the game, too?"

"Let me up!"

"Yes... eventually." His other hand shot out. This time it was her right breast he pinched, and this time the pinch was so hard it fired off nerves in little white sparkles all the way down her side to her hip. "For now, spread those lovely legs, me proud beauty!"

She took a closer look at him and saw a terrible thing: he knew. He knew she wasn't kidding about not wanting to go on with it.

He knew, but he had chosen not to know he knew. Could a person do that?

You bet, the no-bullshit voice said. If you're a hotshot shyster inthe biggest corporate law-firm north of Boston and south of Montreal, Iguess you can know whatever you want to know and not know whateveryou don't want to. I think you're in big trouble here, honey. The kind oftrouble that ends marriages. Better grit your teeth and squint your eyes,because I think one bitch of a vaccination shot is on the way.

That grin. That ugly, mean-spirited grin.

Pretending ignorance. And doing it so hard that later on he would be able to pass a lie-detector test on the subject. I thought it was part of the game, he would say, all hurt and wide-eyed. I really did. And if she persisted, driving at him with her anger, he would eventually fall back to the oldest defense of them all... and then slip into it, like a lizard into a crack in a rock: You likedit. You know you did. Why don't you admit it?

Pretending into ignorance. Knowing but planning to go ahead anyway. He'd handcuffed her to the bedposts, had done it with her own cooperation, and now, oh shit, let's not gild the lily, now he meant to rape her, actually rape her while the door banged and the dog barked and the chainsaw snarled and the loon yodeled out there on the lake. He really meant to do it. Yessir, boys, hyuck, hyuck, hyuck, you ain't really had pu**y until you've had pu**y that's jumping around underneath you like a hen on a hot griddle. And if she did go to Maddy's when his exercise in humiliation was over, he would continue to insist that rape had been the furthest thing from his mind.

He placed his pink hands against her thighs and began spreading her legs. She did not resist much; for a moment, at least, she was too horrified and amazed by what was going on here to resist much.

And that's exactly the right attitude, the more familiar voice inside her spoke up. Just lie there quietly and let him shoot his squirt. Afterall, what's the big deal? He's done it at least a thousand times beforeand you never once turned green. In case you forgot, it's been quite a fewyears since you were a blushing virgin.

And what would happen if she didn't listen and obey the counsel of that voice? What was the alternative?

As if in answer, a horrid picture rose in her mind. It was herself she saw, testifying in divorce court. She didn't know if there still were such things as divorce courts in Maine, but that in no way dimmed the vividness of the vision. She saw herself dressed in her conservative pink Donna Karan suit, with her peach silk blouse beneath it. Her knees and ankles were primly together. Her small clutch bag, the white one, was in her lap. She saw herself telling a judge who looked like the late Harry Reasoner that yes, it was true she had accompanied Gerald to the summer house of her own free will, yes, she had allowed him to tether her to the bedposts with two sets of Kreig handcuffs, also of her own free will, and yes, as a matter of fact they had played such games before, although never at the place on the lake.

Yes, judge. Yes.

Yes, yes, yes.

As Gerald continued to spread her legs, Jessie heard herself telling the judge who looked like Harry Reasoner about how they had started with silk scarves, and how she had allowed the game to go on, progressing from scarves to ropes to handcuffs, even though she had quickly tired of the whole thing. Had become disgusted by it. So disgusted, in fact, that she had allowed Gerald to drive her the sixty-three miles from Portland to Kashwakamak Lake on a weekday in October; so revolted she had once again allowed him to chain her up like a dog; so bored with the whole thing that she had been wearing nothing but a pair of nylon panties so wispy you could have read The New York Times classified section through them. The judge would believe it all and sympathize with her most deeply. Of course he would. Who wouldn't? She could see herself sitting there on the witness stand and saying, "So there I was, handcuffed to the bedpost and wearing nothing but some underwear from Victoria's Secret and a smile, but I changed my mind at the last minute, and Gerald knew it, and that makes it rape."

Yes sit, that would do her, all right. Bet your boots.

She came out of this appalling fantasy to find Gerald yanking at her panties. He was kneeling between her legs, his face so studious that you might have been tempted to believe it was the Bar Exam he was planning to take instead of his unwilling wife. There was a runner of white spittle coursing down his chin from the center of his plump lower lip.

Let him do it, Jessie. Let him shoot his squirt. It's that stuff in hisballs that's making him crazy, and you know it. It makes them all crazy. When he gets rid of it, you'll be able to talk to him again. You'llbe able to deal with him. So don't make a fuss-just lie there and waituntil he's got it out of his system.

Good advice, and she supposed she would have followed it if not for the new presence inside her. This unnamed newcomer clearly thought that Jessie's usual source of advice-the voice she had over the years come to think of as Goodwife Burlingame was a wimp of the highest order. Jessie still might have let things run their course, but two things happened simultaneously. The first was her realization that, although her wrists were cuffed to the bedposts, her feet and legs were free. At the same moment she realized this, the runner of drool fell off Gerald's chin. It dangled for a moment, elongating, and then fell on her midriff, just above the navel. Something about this sensation was familiar, and she was swept by a horribly intense sensation of deja vu. The room seemed to darken around her, as if the windows and the skylight had been replaced with panes of smoked glass.