Free Nine & a Half Weeks by Elizabeth McNeill

sitting up and hunching forward and waving an outstretched arm and pointed finger at me, in a booming voice: “Open the other bag, damn it, you wheedled and whined all evening, now look at you drag your feet!”
    “All right” I say, “yes, sirl” The bag contains a shoe box from Charles Jourdan, a store I’ve only looked at from outside, acknowledging wisely that even my Bloomingdale’s card is at times too much of a temptation. I lift the shiny beige lid. Swaddled in yet more tissue paper lies a pair of elegant, light gray suede pumps with heels so high I’m appalled. ” You walk in these,” I say, vehemently. “My God, I didn’t even know they made heels like that.” He ambles across the room and crouches beside me on the floor, grinning sheepishly.
    “Yeah, well, I see what you mean.” “See what I mean” I repeat. “How can you not, you’re sure these are supposed to be shoes?” “They’re shoes all right,” he says. “1 guess you don’t like them. Not at all? I mean, aside from the heels?” “Sure,” I say, holding one shoe in each hand, the suede soft as velvet. “What’s not to like, they’re sensational. Course, it’s hard to overlook such outlandish appendages, probably cost a fortune, too….” He shrugs, suddenly awkward.
    “Look,” he says, “they’re not really to wear, outside that is.” He gestures at the Bendel’s wrappings. “They’re just for us. Me, really. Both of us. I wish you… what I mean is… but if you really hate them…” All at once he is a decade my junior, a very young man asking me to have a drink with him, expecting to be refused. I have not seen him like this before. “Darling,” I say, overcome, in a rush, “they’re lovely, feel this leather, of course I’ll wear them….” “I’m glad,” he says, with a remaining trace of sheepishness. “I was hoping you would; there’s always a chance you might get to like them.” And buoyant again: “Put the stuff on.”
    So I do. As always until this evening—and tonight for the last time—I am wearing only a shirt, so it doesn’t take long, though getting the seams straight is much trickier than I would have guessed. The shoes fit perfectly. “I took your black ones with me,” he says. “And I insisted and they found a girl that size and she tried on nine pairs before I settled en these. Thank God you’re an average size.”
    The heels make me so much taller we’re nearly eye to eye. He hugs me lightly, runs his hands up my sides to my breasts, moves the palm of each hand, fingers extended, in small circles, a nipple at the center of each. His face is blank. The gray pupils on which mine are focused reflect two miniature faces. His hands move down my midriff to the garter belt. He traces its outlines around my body, then, one by one, follows each of the four straps down to where the stockings begin. It is almost dark. He switches on the floor lamp behind us, says, “Stay there,” walks back to the couch, and sits down. “Now,” he says, in a husky voice, “come over here. Take your time.”
    I walk slowly across the carpet. I take small steps, cautious, my body tilted into a foreign alignment. My arms hang awkwardly from their sockets. Something roars in my ears, amplifying each breath I take.
    “Turn around now,” he says when I’m a few steps away from the couch. I can barely hear him. “And lift up the shirt.” I turn and stand very straight, holding the shirttails tucked up at my sides with my elbows. “Are you disappointed?” I say, in what turns out to be a high-pitched, flat voice. “Are you kidding, you’re a sight,” he murmurs behind me, “you’re a sight, sweetheart.” My eyes close. I listen to the roar in my ears, every square inch of my skin aching to be touched. Trying to clear my ears, I shake my head, hair catches in my mouth; please, I think, please.
    “Get down on all fours,” he says. “And pull your shirt up. Pull it up, I want to see your ass.” I