Eighty Days Yellow Read online

  We both had a taste for Japanese food. Raw. Sometimes I judge people on their taste in food, and I seldom approve of those who profess to dislike raw fish or tartare-style dishes, or oysters. Culinary cowards, I felt.

  The sushi bar was a small place on Thompson Street where you seldom found more than a handful of customers, as most of their business was takeaway. Consequently, the underemployed sushi chef was generous with the size of his portions.

  ‘So how’s the classical world?’ Chris asked as we sipped our first sake of the night.

  ‘Keeping me on my toes, that’s for sure. The conductor we’re working with right now is a bit of a tyrant. Very demanding and temperamental.’

  ‘Haven’t I always told you that us rock ’n’ rollers are a much more civilised bunch than your classical old fogeys?’

  ‘You have, you have, Chris.’ Every time we spoke almost. The shared joke had long become something of a cliché, but I tried to raise a smile.

  ‘You look tired, Summer.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Is everything all right?’ he asked, with a look of concern.

  ‘Just tiredness. Busy with the music. Not sleeping too well,’ I confessed.

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘Should there be? Do I have black bags under my eyes?’

  Chris smiled. My old sparring partner, one I was unable to lie to.

  ‘You know what I mean. So . . . have you been up to . . . mischief? I know you, Summer.’

  I speared a slice of yellowtail tuna with my chopsticks.

  Chris knew most of what had happened in London, with Dominik. Well, maybe not all the specific details: a girl has her pride. He was certainly aware that coming to New York at such short notice had been a way of escaping.

  ‘Don’t tell me he’s followed you here? Surely not.’ He dipped his California roll into the wasabi-infused cup of soya sauce.

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘not him.’ Then, overcoming my reluctance to reveal my true feelings, ‘If only it was him.’

  ‘What do you mean, Summer?’

  ‘There is another man I’ve come across. Similar . . . but I think worse. It’s not easy to explain.’

  ‘What is about you that attracts the bastards, Summer? I never thought you were a sucker for punishment.’

  I remained silent.

  ‘Look, I know Darren was a bit of prick, but the guys you now appear to be strangely attracted to are a dangerous lot.’

  ‘They are,’ I confirmed.

  ‘So why do you do it?’ Once again he was on the way to losing his temper with me. Why did this happen every time we met up now?

  ‘You know I’m not into drugs. Well, the common ones. Maybe this is a bit like a drug. I get a kick out of it. As if I’m putting my hand into the flames and seeing how far I can go, juggling the line between pain and pleasure. But you know, it’s not all bad, Chris . . . though I know it must seem that way to you. Different strokes for different folks. Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.’

  ‘Hmm . . . I’m not sure it’s really for me. You’re crazy, girl.’

  ‘I sure am, Chris, but you know me, you have to take the good with the bad, no?’

  ‘But are you happy?’ he finally asked, as the Oriental waitress began to clear our plates and bowls, and set down the complimentary pineapple squares.

  Again I declined to answer, but I fear the look in my eyes betrayed me.

  We moved on to a nearby bar and shared a round of beers before we both parted on an uncertain note.

  ‘Keep in touch,’ Chris said. ‘You know the number. Whenever you feel like it. Or if there is a problem. We return to England at the end of next week, but I’ll always be there for you, Summer, believe it.’

  It was night-time. Greenwich Village was alive with electricity, and music flooded the narrow streets with melodies unknown and a touch of cacophony. The sounds of the big city.

  I needed to sleep badly.

  The Prokofiev performance at one of Manhattan’s more classy venues was a triumph. Everything had come together with perfection, justifying all the agony of the rehearsals and the frayed tempers on both sides of the rostrum. My own few solo measures in the second movement flowed like a dream come true, and I was even gifted by a wink of approval by Simón, the young maestro, as we all took our final bow.

  My mood deflated soon after when I found Victor waiting for me at the stage door.

  ‘What took you so long? The concert ended over an hour ago,’ he remarked.

  ‘We had a little celebration,’ I said. ‘It went surprisingly well. Not at all what we’d expected,’ I pointed out.

  Victor frowned.

  He gestured for me to walk with him as we took Third Avenue, heading north. Maybe because I was wearing heels, Victor suddenly appeared to be smaller in height than I’d previously thought.

  ‘Where are we going?’ I asked him. I was still feeling a little giddy, a combination of the celebratory glasses of vermouth and the natural high the semi-perfect performance had triggered in me.

  ‘Don’t you worry,’ Victor said brusquely.

  What had he in mind? I was still wearing my black velvet performance dress and normal day-to-day underwear. Not even stockings, just tights, or hose, as they called it here. And a thin cardigan top I’d picked up the day before at Anna Taylor Loft. Dominik’s corset, which Victor often insisted I wear for our scenes, was safely tucked away in a drawer by my bed.

  Maybe it would just be a social occasion.

  Knowing Victor, though, I doubted it.

  ‘You have lipstick in your handbag?’ Victor asked as we continued moving up Third.

  ‘Yes.’ I always did. Girls will be girls.

  Then the fleeting memory of a more recent episode involving lipstick flashed through my mind. And I knew. It must have been Victor who had been my secret audience that evening in Dominik’s loft, who had seen me adorned like the Whore of Babylon, as Dominik had described me.

  The venue was a large chain hotel in the Gramercy Park area. Its top floor reached to the sky, with neon lights blazing above its canopy and a forest of small, square doll’s house windows piercing the night. It looked to me like a daunting fortress. A fortress, or a dungeon? Oh dear, what a one-track mind I was developing.

  The night porter doffed his hat at us as we made our way into the lobby and advanced towards the bank of elevators. We took the one on the left, which rose all the way to the penthouse. This was not accessible to the general public and required a key, which Victor pulled out of his pocket and slipped into the lock by the penthouse-floor button.

  We rode up in strained silence.

  The elevator doors opened directly onto a large, empty foyer with nothing more than a sizeable leather bench, where earlier arrivals had draped their coats and bags. I slipped off my knitted top and, reluctantly, set down my violin case. We stepped out of the foyer into an immense room bordered with bay windows through which you could see half of Manhattan and its dazzling horizon of night lights. Guests were milling around, glasses in hand. In a far corner of the circular room was a small elevated area, like a stage, and to its left a set of doors connecting, no doubt, with the rest of the suite.

  I was about to step over to the small bar where a variety of bottles, glasses and ice decanters stood, but Victor warned me off.

  ‘You mustn’t drink tonight, Summer. I want you at your best,’ he said.

  I was about to protest – since when did he think I was some sort of lush? – but just then a stranger in a dinner suit that made him look more like a waiter than a man of the world approached us and heartily shook Victor’s hand.

  The guy brazenly looked me up and down, and, royally ignoring my presence, turned to Victor and commented, ‘Very nice, my dear Victor. Very nice indeed. A particularly striking slave.’

  My first instinct was to kick him in the shins, but I held back. Is this how Victor had presented me?

  I was not and would never be a slave. I was me, Summer Zahova, a
nd I was an individual with a mind of my own, a submissive, not a slave. I had no issue with the concept. I knew that other men and women desired to give themselves away completely like that, but it just wasn’t me.

  Victor smiled at the other man, evidently self-satisfied. The bastard. He patted my rear with awful condescension. ‘Isn’t she? Isn’t she just?’

  Both ignored me as if I wasn’t there any longer, just a part of the furniture.

  ‘She will fetch a good price,’ one of them said, but my head was already on fire and I was unable to make out who had said this.

  I felt Victor’s hand grip my wrist. The mist cleared in my mind and I faced him.

  ‘You will do as you are told, Summer. Do you understand? I know that inside you are conflicted about all of this, and I quite understand. However, I also know that you are at war with your own nature, and a moment will arise when you come to terms with it. The craving you have to be exposed, to be publically whored, it’s part of you. It’s the real you. It brings you to life, allows you to experience sensations you have never experienced before. The resistance you feel is just old-fashioned social mores, education. You were born to serve. And that’s when you are at your most beautiful. All I want is to bring out that beauty, see you flower, see you assume your condition.’

  What Victor said was profoundly disturbing, but there were kernels of truth I recognised. In moments of excess my body betrayed me. The drug of submission beckoned and it was as if the real Summer appeared, wanton, brazen, unashamed, a side of me that I enjoyed but feared, scared that it would one day lead me too far, that the pull of danger would be stronger than my need for safety. The animalistic side of me sought out this sexual oblivion, while the rational half questioned my motives. They often say that most men are guided by their cocks; in my case I was guided by the hunger in my cunt, but paradoxically that hunger also resided in my mind. It’s not that I needed a man, or particular men, to own me, use me; it was this yearning for something else, for the zone of nirvana that I reached in those moments of senseless sex and even degradation or humiliation, and which made me feel more alive than at any other time. Perhaps I should have taken up rock-climbing.

  I was aware of my contradictions, accepted them, but acceptance didn’t make finding the right path any easier.

  As my mind unfogged, there was a hush in the room, unspoken words indicating that the time had come.

  Victor on one side and the tuxedoed stranger on the other, I was led to the small elevated stage at the other end of the room, where I was swiftly stripped naked. I remember thinking how inelegant I must look while they rolled down my unappealing tights, but it all happened so fast, too fast for me to protest.

  The stranger, who was the master of ceremonies for this curious evening, waved his arms with a flourish and announced, ‘This is Slave Summer, the property of Master Victor. I’m sure you will agree she is a splendid specimen. Pale skin –’ he pointed at me – ‘and a most exquisitely rounded ass.’ He indicated for me to turn and display my rear to the onlookers. Deep breaths were drawn. I already had new admirers.

  A tap on my shoulder indicated I should turn round again to face the small crowd. They were mostly men, I realised, but there were also women in fancy evening wear dotted here and there. All appeared normal; there were clearly no other slaves serving tonight.

  The circus master’s hand passed across my left breast and raised it a little, showing it off, displaying its shape. ‘Petite, but in her own way voluptuous,’ he indicated, his fingers moving further down and demonstrating how my thin waistline accentuated the curves of my breasts and arse.

  ‘A wonderfully old-fashioned – or should I say classical? – body.’

  I gulped.

  He saved my blushes by not moving on to my once again impeccably shaved pussy and describing it to the audience. They could see it anyway, and complimentary words would have made no difference in the present circumstances.

  ‘A wonderful specimen, and our compliments to Master Victor, who once again provides us with a perfect and highly individual body. I am informed that she has not yet been properly broken, which should add to the appeal.’

  Broken? Fuck, what was he on about?

  Behind me, a hand darted between my legs and forced me to part them. It was Victor’s. I could recognise his touch.

  I was now on display and could feel the gaze of at least two dozen eyes running across my skin, exploring me, assessing me, enjoying the spectacle of my total vulnerability.

  Oh, Dominik, what did you give birth to?

  I realised, though, it had been there already, before him, and he had sensed it and brought it to life, brought me to life.

  The jumble of thoughts swirled around inside my head.

  In a daze, I followed the ‘auction’ as if I were merely a spectator.

  Images raced through my mind, of bad films seen an eternity ago, of events in exploitative BDSM novels that had once tickled my fancy, picturing myself in some Arabian or African marketplace, sand swirling all around, while the burly, dark-skinned slave masters advertised my wares, fingers testing my tautness, others roughly holding me open for the eyes of the crowd to demonstrate the nacreous shade of pinkness of my insides and the contrast with my pale skin. Maybe in those wakening dreams I was wearing a veil, maybe I wasn’t, but in every loop that flew across the horizon of my imagination, I was nuder than nude, so terribly exposed, my intimacy on display for all to see. Or I was dragged from a bamboo cage on the bridge of a pirate ship, the consequence of kidnapping on the high seas and soon about to be acquired by some Oriental prince for his amusement and a place in his crowded harem. Was this what becoming a slave was all about?

  The bidding began at $500. A woman began the process. I wasn’t sure that I could serve a woman. I had fancied Lauralynn, true, but from what I had seen so far, I preferred the male brand of domination.

  Soon a gaggle of male voices joined the fray and the bids came in at a rapid pace. Each time someone raised the odds, my eyes darted across the audience to try and distinguish the face of whoever was putting a value on me, but the action was too fast, and it soon became a jungle of voices and unfamiliar features.

  Finally, the struggle between the two most regular bidders dragged to an end, when all the other voices dropped out. The winner actually appeared to be Arabic in appearance, at any rate Oriental. He wore an old-fashioned if elegantly tailored tweed suit and glasses. He was balding, swarthy, and the curl of his lips betrayed a world of cruelty.

  My new owner?

  Why would Victor wish to pass me on? Surely not for the money. I had reached just over $2,500. A flattering enough amount, but surely not what a woman was actually worth these days.

  Victor handed the lucky winner a dog collar with a leash attached, which he then fastened round my neck. ‘She is yours for the next hour,’ I heard him say.

  So this was only a temporary, one-off transaction. I would be going back with Victor after all. Another side to the game we were playing as we explored our darkness.

  The man who had bid highest for me, ignoring the leash now dangling by my side, took my hand in his, his prize, and led me to the door. It opened onto a large bedroom. He pushed me onto the bed, closed the door behind him and began undressing.

  He fucked me.

  He used me.

  And when he was done, without a word, he left the room, left me open, numbed by the relentless hammering he had just completed, ignoring me totally.

  I caught my breath.

  Abandoned like a rag doll in a toy house.

  From the other side of the door, I could hear the muted sounds of the private party, the clinking of glasses, the drone of low-flying conversations. Could they be talking about me, discussing my performance, how I rated?

  Was that it? Would another stranger walk into the room and take the relay baton in the fuck-the-new-slave sweepstakes?

  But nothing happened.

  I felt a wave of relief mixed with an ine
xplicable sense of disappointment. Another stage in my exploration of perversity had been completed. I was still here, still unfulfilled, relatively unruffled, all things considered. How far would I go before it was enough?

  Victor came through the door. He didn’t compliment me or make any comment on what had happened.

  ‘Stand up,’ he said, and I meekly obeyed. I couldn’t be bothered to argue with him.

  He was holding the lipstick tube he had retrieved from my bag. He came towards me, brandishing it like some inoffensive weapon.

  ‘Keep straight,’ he ordered, as he approached, and I felt his warm breath on my naked skin.

  He began writing on me.

  I tried to look down, but he tut-tutted as if it were none of my business.

  The lipstick danced across my front; then he swivelled me round with a movement of his other hand and continued tracing whatever hieroglyphics he was creating across the curve of my bum.

  Job completed, Victor took a step back to admire his handiwork, took out a small digital camera from his jacket pocket and snapped away to his heart’s delight. The result seemed to please him.

  He pointed me to the door, indicating I should rejoin the milling crowd on the other side. I felt weak, drained by the battering I had just taken, in no mood to argue any longer.

  As I walked into the main circular room with its endless glass frontage overlooking the lights of Manhattan, I saw heads turn towards me, smiling, appreciative, lecherous. I didn’t know what to do. Walk further? To where? Stand still?

  Victor’s hand on my shoulder stopped me in my stride.

  Finally, once everyone present had a full view of me and my inscriptions, he said, ‘You may dress. It’s over for tonight.’

  In something of a daze, I slipped back into the jettisoned black velvet dress and, of all things, almost forgot my violin case!

  Outside, he hailed a yellow cab, bundled me into it and gave the driver my address. He didn’t join me, just called out, ‘I’ll be in touch. Be ready.’

  The first thing I did on reaching my place was undress and look at myself in the full-length bathroom mirror. Fortunately, none of my Croatian flatmates were around.