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I understood the sentiment. He did not seem like the kind of person I wanted to disappoint. And that’s how it started. The pull. The sense that nothing else could ever be as potent. That everything else is secondary. Max didn’t just tell me, though; he showed me. To a casual observer, it might have seemed illicit, but it was actually beautiful. He was teaching me that sex wasn’t about one person being in charge. He was saying that he wanted to move past that. He was telling me I had the power to hurt him too; that love is about sharing power and control, passing it back and forth.
So, that’s why I’ve begun doing my makeup before visiting Dad. I’ve been making sure to choose my clothing a little more carefully. Each day I hope that Max will notice when he does his rounds, perhaps even pay me a discreet compliment. Only once, earlier this week, I got a cursory glance, and it didn’t make me happy. It felt like something punched me from the inside.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Dr. Max Hastings
AFTER
“You told your attorney that Laurel had a way of getting things out of you. What did you mean by that?” Dr. Jones inquires.
“Exactly what I said.”
“Would you consider yourself a weak man, Dr. Hastings?”
Laurel’s name on her lips stirs something in me. Something that quite frankly needs to be disturbed. “Define weak?”
“I want you to think back on your encounters with Mrs. Dunaway. I’d like you to tell me about a time when Laurel won.”
This isn’t hard to do. Laurel won often. Sometimes I let her.
“I’m hungry,” she remarked one afternoon after we’d fucked. Neither of us had been in a particular hurry that day. Although, beforehand she had been angry, full of rage, as she sometimes was. Sex seemed to allow her to shed that part of herself. “Are you hungry?”
I wasn’t feeling anything in particular. “The room service menu is there on the table.”
“There’s that diner around the corner. I think we should go.”
I studied her face. She looked like a beautiful animal, one worth capturing. “Whatever you want.”
We’d been to Tony’s once, twice tops. Briefly. Each time we’d arrived separately and only to grab a sandwich to go. Food hardly occurred to either of us when we were together. We were after sustenance of another kind. We were both hyper-aware that we were living in stolen moments. We were existing on borrowed time. That afternoon, however, it seemed Laurel was keen on bending the rules. She was asking for more, I realize now, in a way I hadn’t then.
“Are you still bleeding?” she’d asked, her eyes on my neck.
“It’s stopped.”
“What will you tell her, if she asks about it?”
“What?”
“Don’t be dense, Max—your wife. What will you say if she doesn’t believe the story about the shaving accident? God knows, I wouldn’t.”
I didn’t say anything. How could I explain Nina to Laurel in a way that she would understand? I couldn’t. More importantly, I couldn’t see why this concerned her so much. Right then, nothing seemed that important. Not even food.
“Did it ever occur to you she was drawing blood on purpose?” Dr. Jones asks, pressing me further.
“Why?”
Later, my attorney would bring it up again. “Do you have proof? Pictures? Anything? It could be advantageous to us to use these injuries in court…”
At the time, I couldn’t fathom such things. How could I? When I was completely caught up in experiencing them? That afternoon, I had been answering Laurel in jest, convinced that neither her questions nor the bite marks mattered.
It certainly wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. This was just…Laurel. It was what we did. One evening, in late April, after telling me that I had hands like a river, Laurel added that she wanted me to use them on her under the booth at Tony’s. She wanted everyone to see what I was capable of.
I smiled, but I wasn’t surprised. Laurel always said things like that. She was careless. Or rather she wanted to be.
That spring had produced glorious thunderstorms, and on several occasions she threw open the balcony doors and demanded that I fuck her as the wind blew the rain in. Another time, on a Sunday afternoon, a wedding was taking place down in the hotel garden. We made love to the sound of spoken vows and happy applause.
It was a game, one in which there would be winners and losers.
