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“Jonah?”
It was Leticia, but then I always knew it would be. I felt the sound of her voice pierce like a blade.
“Yes.”
“Jonah, it’s me, Leticia. Please don’t hang up!”
I stayed silently on the line. I could hear the ragged sound of her breathing loud and anguished in my ear.
“I wanted to apologize to you,” she said softly, and I could tell by the broken little crack in her voice that she had been weeping. “I’m sorry about what happened yesterday. I… I was very unprofessional. I want you to give me another chance to finish the interview we started. I want to finish writing your story.”
I stared vacantly into the fire, seeing nothing but flickering light for a very long time. And then the sound of her words cut through the numbed haze and my eyes came slowly back into focus. “I want that too,” I said.
* * *
It was still raining hard when Leticia arrived that evening.
She parked in front of the house. I watched the car pull up in a splash of brown muddy water and the headlights go dark. I saw the driver’s door swing open, and Leticia made a sudden rush for the front door. She came gasping and squealing into the foyer, and stood dripping water onto the tiles while she shrugged off her coat and combed her fingers through her hair.
She looked like a half-drowned kitten.
Leticia held out her hand to me like we were perfect strangers. “Thank you for seeing me again, Mr. Noble.”
I shook her hand stiffly. It was wet and cold. She shivered involuntarily and I led her up the winding staircase and into the study.
The room was warm – the fire still burned. I led Leticia over to the fireplace and she stood before the flames with her back to me for long moments as tiny tendrils of steam began to lift from her clothes.
She was wearing a simple white sweater and comfortable jeans. Her shoes were wet. She slipped her feet out of them and nudged them closer to the fire, then turned, barefoot and wet, and smiled at me bravely.
“You didn’t have to come tonight,” I said. “This could have waited.”
She shook her head. “No, it couldn’t. I needed to see you. I needed to apologize for what happened. It was my fault. I should have been more professional.”
I shook my head and sighed. “It wasn’t your fault, Leticia. We both know that. I made the mistake, and I regret it. My hope now is that we can forget what happened – set the whole incident aside – and continue on with the interview. Deal?”
She nodded. “Deal,” she agreed.
I went down the hallway to my bedroom and came back into the study holding one of my shirts. I handed it to Leticia.
“Take the sweater off and put this on.”
She accepted the shirt. She draped it over the back of the sofa and began to peel off her sodden top. I turned my back and heard the rustle of fabric.
I walked a slow circuit of the room, halting to elaborately study the brushstrokes of a painting, picking up a book from the side-table and replacing it on a shelf. Finally I paused and turned back to face the room.
Leticia had changed into the shirt. She had rolled up the sleeves almost to the point of her elbows, and buttoned it all the way up to the collar. It swamped her body, and still she looked good.
She stretched out the wet sweater before the fire to dry and then sat down on the edge of the sofa. It was dark in the room. I paced in the shadows, and Leticia’s eyes followed me, her face painted golden by the flickering firelight. She reached down to her bag to fetch her notebook.
“You told me that you had a live-in submissive for the last three years,” she began delicately, her voice brittle. “Could you tell me more?”
I nodded. “Her name was Caroline,” I said.
Silence.
“Can you tell me about her?”
“Caroline was a woman who initially applied for the job as my secretary.” I said. I heard my own words sounding stilted and forced. “I have a secretary who works from a downtown office, and one day a week she comes here to the house so I can dictate letters and attend to business. She brings the correspondence to me and we deal with it all on one day. That was the job Caroline had applied for.”
“So she was your secretary initially?”
“No,” I said. “She applied for the position. Frankly, she wasn’t suitable. There were better applicants.” There was a hollow distant tone to my voice.
Leticia wrote a brief note and then looked back up at me. Her legs were crossed. Absently, I noticed her toenails were painted bright red.
“So how did she become your submissive?” Leticia asked with patient politeness.
I shrugged. “A week later I saw her at a gathering.”
“A BDSM gathering?”
“No. Not officially. It was a party at a friend’s home. A lot of those friends were involved or interested in the lifestyle.”
“Do you attend BDSM functions, or visit BDSM clubs?”
“No,” I shook my head. “I like the lifestyle. It suits me, but I’ve never been part of the scene socially. BDSM clubs never made a lot of sense to me. I always saw it as like having too many roosters together in the same hen-house. Every man who considers himself a dom just tries to out alpha-male everyone else. It becomes a pissing competition.”
Leticia bowed her head over her notebook and jotted another note. Her hair was still wet, and it was curling down around her ears in random swirling tendrils.
“So have you always been private about your lifestyle?”
“Yes. Up until the moment I began this interview with you.”
Leticia flipped back a couple of pages into her notebook and then looked up thoughtfully through the tense strain. “So you saw Caroline at a party with a group of friends who were in the lifestyle.”
“Yes. I’ve already told you that.”
Leticia looked up sharply and I saw a flicker of anguish drift across her eyes. She took a breath and pressed on.
“So what happened between you and Caroline at the party?”
I started to pace, but somehow I just seemed to run out of steam. I stood, like I was suddenly broken, in the middle of the floor for a moment. I tried again. I got as far as the door, but I could feel my anger and frustration rising. I felt a burning lump in my throat – and then impulse took over.
I turned on Leticia and she must have sensed the tension in my body. “This isn’t working,” I clenched my jaw.
Leticia lowered her head, tucked the notebook into her bag and stood meekly. “You want me to go again, don’t you.”
I crossed the room in three strides. Leticia’s eyes became enormous with uncertainty. She stood, frozen, anxious as I hunted towards her.
I took her arm and she stood rigid. I leaned towards her. Her arms hung by her sides like those of a rag doll. I drew her closer to me and she was unresisting. “No,” I said. “I don’t want you to leave, dammit. I want you back. I want what we had back. I want to talk to you like I did before – not like this. Not like there is something between us.”
She stared at me, huge startled eyes in her young innocent face. She looked like she might suffocate. I felt her trembling.
“Let’s get this straight,” I said. “Let me explain what happened when I kissed you – and what happened afterwards.”
Leticia didn’t say anything. She nodded her head and waited.
I stepped away, paced the room, hands thrust deep into my pockets, my head bowed, like a shark circling prey.
For a long time the only sound was the echo of my footsteps as I assembled the words in my head.
I’m an impulsive man. I don’t think everything to death before I say or do something. That doesn’t mean I’m not thoughtful and deliberate – it just means that I always speak my mind. It’s how I get to sleep at night.
