Free Deep Desires by Charlotte Stein Page A

apartment rushes against my face.
    Everything is so still, inside. So quiet. And I was right, too, to imagine his apartment would be different, because somehow it is. Things look more polished in here than they do in mine. The walls almost have a reflective surface; the fixtures and fittings are so smooth and modern. My lights are held up by these old crooked brass sorts of things; his look near futuristic.
    The kitchen’s the same, too. I hardly dare to go in it, but, once I’m sure he’s not here, I take a little step through the door. I take in the white and black checked flooring, which puts my own peeling linoleum to shame. The double-wide refrigerator, steel grey and shining, and the sink to match.
    In fact, everything matches. Everything is neat and ordered and perfect. The bank of computers he’s got against one wall hum in this low, comforting sort of way, as though to say they’ll always be there and always be working, because Ivan takes such good care of them. He takes care of the single plant he’s got, of the clothes that hang in his closet, just like I thought. And lastly, the thing my eyes want to settle on after everything else has been thoroughly examined:
    His bed.
    It shouldn’t look inviting, but it does. Those crisp cool sheets, pulled hotel-room taut. The neat fold-down he’s done, as though this really is the Hilton instead of his home. Even the pillows are somehow wrinkle free, plumped and smoothed to perfection.
    I don’t know whether to be unnerved, or oddly thrilled. I’ve never seen a man do this sort of thing for himself. I didn’t know a man was capable of living like this, unless he’d ordered and bullied and beat a woman until she did it for him.
    But not Ivan. He’s got his own demons driving him to this, and that thought takes away any pleasure I found in his care and precision. He doesn’t delight in this, I’m sure. He’s just waiting to stop, he’s wanting to stop, and maybe this is what I am to him.
    I’m messing things up.
    His choice of someone like me says it all, really – my big, crazy hair and my sloppy clothes and my eating of things with my fingers. The other day he asked me to describe my bed to him, and when I told him –
like a shipwreck, like a bomb’s hit it, like I’ve been fucked for five days in the sheets
– he sighed this contented sigh and asked me to tell him again.
    It hadn’t made much sense at the time, but I think it does now.
    The very thing Sid hated about me, Ivan craves. He wants disorder in his strictly ordered life, and I can give that to him. I can. But first I’ve got to sit on the edge of his bed with this blindfold on, and that’s a much taller order than I thought it would be.
    The material’s heavier than it had seemed in the box, once I’ve tied it around my head. I can’t even open my eyes behind it, and for a long panicked moment I consider loosening the knot I’ve made. If I get it just right, I could possibly see through the red lace, just a little. After all, I could see my palms through the material when I held it in my hands. It’s not dense and impenetrable.
    But somehow I don’t. I leave the blindfold as it is, and try my best to be patient. To be calm. He’ll come in and everything will be fine, because I trust him. I do.
    So why do I freeze when I hear him walk into the room? Hell, I freeze when I hear his door go, though after a moment I understand why. It’s not really because of him at all. It’s because of the sudden and sharp idea that comes to me while listening blindly for the turn of the doorknob, the sound of the door shutting, the heavy thud thud of someone’s shoes on the carpet.
    This could be anyone. Maybe it’s the intruder I made up in my head to explain why he is the way he is. Maybe it’s that big guy, and actually this scenario really is all Ivan – he hired that musclehead again, to give me the going over he can’t.
    Oh God. Oh God, that last one sounds much more plausible than I’d