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She quit waiting on me to tell her where I learned to hold a woman down without hurting her. She went looking.
My black canvas bag lies open on the bed in front of her. It lives on that shelf and rides with me to the Farrier in San Antonio a couple of nights a month. I can see the coil of soft rope in it, and the leather.
She's holding one of my cuffs, black leather with a buckle and a steel ring. She has it turned so the inside faces the lamp. She's running her thumb across the sheepskin lining.
She looks up at me. All the color has gone out of her face, and her voice comes out flat and quiet.
"How many women have worn this?"
11
DELILAH
I'm sitting on the edge of his bed with a leather cuff in my hand. It's lined with thick white sheepskin, stitched inside the leather so the buckle can't pinch.
Somebody picked that lining so a woman's wrist wouldn't rub raw while she wore it. It's the care in it that makes me want to throw up.
Knox stands in the bathroom doorway with a towel around his hips and water running off his shoulders.
His right knuckles are split from the heavy bag, still raw and wet from the shower. That hand grips the door frame, and he doesn't come any closer.
"How many women?" I ask him again.
"More than a few," he says. "Over a lot of years."
No excuse comes after it, and no apology. He stands there and lets me look at him.
I set the cuff on the quilt and pull his black canvas bag open wider. The coil of rope is soft cotton, nothing like the plastic zip ties that held my wrists for a year. The cuff's mate lies under the rope.
Beside them is a short steel bar with a leather strap buckled at each end. I stare at it until I understand it's made to hold a woman's ankles apart.
For a moment I see it on me, the leather buckled above the scars on my wrists and that bar holding my ankles open, with Knox's voice telling me to stay still. Heat rolls low through my belly, and the sick feeling comes right behind it. I hate that the heat got there first.
A zippered pocket runs along the inside of the bag. I open it and take out a laminated card the size of a driver's license.
THE FARRIER
SAN ANTONIO
MEMBER: K. HOLLISTER
Behind the card is a sheet of paper folded in thirds. I open it on my knee.
SCENE AGREEMENT
HARD LIMITS: ______________
SOFT LIMITS: ______________
SAFEWORD: ______________
SIGNED: ______________ WITNESSED: ______________
This one is blank. I doubt the others stayed that way.
"What's the Farrier?" I ask.
"A members' house in San Antonio." His voice stays flat and even. "Nobody walks in off the street. Somebody vouches for you, and they check you out before they let you in. Nobody touches anybody until there's paper."
