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Suddenly, she turns an eerie calm, though I’m no less scared because her passion still remains. “Why then, tell me, were these tucked away in the basement?” she asks.
“Why are you looking through my things?” I spit out angrily. I’m recognizing the private documents. Letters from lovers. “Those are mine, not yours. Besides they’re old, they mean nothing to me now.”
“Old? Really?” she says sarcastically. She pulls one apart. “From Suzanne, in February. Three months ago, is that old?” She reads, “We have things to catch up on, Cassidy, I won’t let you forget Elizabeth. Who is Elizabeth?” she charges. “Who’s Suzanne? I thought you told me about all your former lovers.”
Elizabeth, the name makes my stomach do anxious flip flops, just as it did when I first read Suzanne’s letter.
“I’m screwing you nightly and you’re exchanging pleasant greetings with another woman. And this… Mark, in March. Was he your lover, too?”
“Once, but not now,” I explain.
“And you hide these from me?”
“They didn’t seem important.”
“Ah, but they’re important enough to hide from me as if you’re embarrassed by the feelings you still have.”
“I don’t have feelings for any of them. Least of all Elizabeth,” I blurt out. I know when I say her name, it’s a mistake.
“Elizabeth? Who is she?” Peach is intensely curious.
I could tell her a dozen safe things about Suzanne, but nothing about Elizabeth. “Just a woman, a very nasty horrible woman. And I won’t tell you anything about her because she means nothing to me now.”
“Suzanne seems to think that she means something.” I feel like she’s driving a knife in my gut.
“Suzanne’s crazy, maniacally crazy, and so’s Elizabeth.”
“Humph!” Peach moans nastily. “You say one thing, and do another. How many other things have you lied about?”
“You’re being unfair,” I yell at her. I try to match her rudeness with my own, but with Peach, I never have the verve she does with anger. Not my nature. But, oh yes, hers! She bowls me over with her vitriolic ability, with the depth of her anguish, her woe, her sarcasm and her cruelty.
“I’m going to blister your ass,” she says.
“What!”
“I’m going to take my leather belt and make you pay for your deception, make you hurt the way I hurt.”
“I can’t believe you’re saying this. I’m sorry, terribly sorry, but I’m not going to allow you to beat me with all that pent-up anger.”
“Oh, yes you will!” she asserts. I know she’s likely right; I’m doomed from the start, but I’m not about to give in easily. “Besides,” she says again calmly. “The guilt is written all over your face. It’s so damn obvious, Cassidy, you wear your shame woefully bad. You know you fucked up, and now you’re going to pay. All this talk about honesty between us, I’m holding you to it.”
I see how serious she is; she’s seriously hurt.
“I’m sorry,” I plead again.
“Of course, you’ll be sorry,” she says, “get my belt, the one I wear with my jeans, that should do.”
“You really plan to punish me like a kid?”
She peers at me with a determined grin.
I’m shuddering deeply, not just for fear of pain, but for fear of who she is right now, what this altercation means between us.
“You write about it, Cassidy, in flowing prose, in perfect detail, with all the pieces in place, as if you’d been through the scenario a hundred times. Domination, bondage, spanking, a hundred forms of brutality. Maybe that’s what used to get you off? With your other lovers, with Suzanne and Mark? And Elizabeth? Maybe I’m not giving you everything you really need?”
“My writing is fantasy,” I tell her, with my voice hushed, my heart pounding, and my breath short. I’m aware of every feeling that’s suddenly rushing through me. They are, above all, erotic. And I hate that. I’ve never come so close to dreams turning real. I don’t know how I’ll respond, and if I could get out of this now, I would, but I—great creator that I am—am hopelessly without inspiration. Seems Peach takes it away with her own.
“Well my love, today it’s the real thing. Today you taste your fantasies, or maybe it will be your nightmares, because you’re going to get this cosmic justice you preach about so well. The belt.” Her pointing finger orders me to the bedroom where I know it’s hanging in her jeans, where she left it.
