Returning to reading, and ruing my quitting of cigarettes, a truly foolish act, I made my way through the terse, enigmatic sentences, all of which seemed to be suggesting a dystopian situation. The writing was funny, but my attention lagged and drifted until I realized I was asleep with the book in my hand. I turned out the lights and lay in the darkness. At first it seemed like real sleep might elude me, but I eventually slid off. The air coming in from the open window was cool, the lake water lapping.
XVI.
Vladimir screamed at three in the morning. At first the sound was bestial; as it kept going I began to discern some words, mostly profanity. I gathered myself and took out his cell phone. I saw Cynthia had written a text telling him she was off to bed and not to wake her when he came home. I texted the preplanned message back to her, then dropped the phone in the glass of water on my nightstand and hid it under my bed.
When I walked into the living area, I saw him twisting forcibly against his restraints, pressing his feet to the ground in an attempt to lift the chair, using his left arm to claw at the zip ties, and then his teeth. He had wet himself, poor thing, there was a puddle on the floor. When he saw me, he lunged at me with the free parts of his body. If he had been loosed, I did not doubt he would have torn at my throat.
“What the fuck is happening? Get me out of here right now—you fucking lunatic, what the fuck is this?”
He was frightening. The anger of a gentle man is the most frightening kind of anger. His face was twisted and white with rage. Every vein I could perceive on his weight lifter’s body was engorged and trembling against his skin. I could see the pulse in his neck beating as fast as a captured rabbit.
“Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay,” I said to him.
“Shh, shh, shh, shh, shhhhhh,” I said to him.
“Okay,” I said.
And for some reason, something ancient and maternal, my soothing sounds worked. He stilled his body and took a deep breath. He emitted a sound that was nearly a laugh, with a quick inhale of panic following, and then began to breathe in and out rapidly, approaching hyperventilation.
“Shhhhh, shhhhhh, shhhhhhh,” I said again.
“Breathe, sweetheart,” I said, my tone firm, like a strict nurse.
He put his head down and forced himself to inhale slowly.
“In for five,” I coached, “out for five, that’s it.”
I filled a glass of water for him and set it down on the left chair arm, hurrying away after I placed it in case he tried to grab me. But he kept his body quiet while he continued to breathe, and after a few cycles he took the glass of water and drank it.
“Thank you,” he said after he had finished it.
Sweet man? Cunning man? I couldn’t tell. He closed his eyes, sorting his thoughts, and then looked at me with some humor.
“So is this like that movie? That, um, you know that movie? That was a book? With the actress”—he corrected himself—“actor who’s so good? I can’t remember the name of the movie. She chains him to the bed and sledgehammers his legs?”
“Misery,” I said, “Kathy Bates.”
“Kathy Bates,” he said. “She’s so good.” A wave of drowsiness swept over him and his head bobbed. Determined to stay awake, he shook himself.
“Do you want to kill me?” he asked, looking at me like a nervous child.
I felt filled with care at his pleading look, at the fear that I imagined was passing in waves over his chest and bowels. As I said, I hadn’t fully thought through my plans after Vlad awoke, I hadn’t decided what I was going to tell him, or how or if I was going to keep him. Yet as I looked at him, chained in the dim light, I felt aroused with a libidinous ingenuity. I focused on his hard, flat abdomen, secured against the chair, and allowed a story to arise and flow, as if I were setting it down on a page. Whenever I used to read about writers who “opened themselves to the voices” I used to roll my eyes, believing them sentimental and overly precious. But in this moment, whether it was adrenaline or the survival instinct, I found my front brain receded and a story emerged that came not so much from me as through me.
I told him that we had gotten quite drunk together in the cabin, and had, to my extreme mortification, become very flirtatious, although I knew, I said, that this was only the result of his intense intoxication. At this Vlad politely protested. Drunk as skunks, we were, I said, and in our drunkenness, he mentioned that he had, and again I told him I confessed this to him despite my extreme humiliation, always wanted to try some BSDM, and I rolled my eyes as I said the initials as though the letters hurt me to utter. At which point Vlad interrupted me and corrected the order of the letters, BDSM, with an understanding smile. I shrugged, flushed, nodded, and closed my eyes. He was listening, and I felt I had guessed correctly—that Vlad, patriarch, breadwinner, unwilling yet self-cherishing provider to his family, who （I remembered from what Cynthia told me in my office） was sexually distanced from his wife, would hold some fantasies of domination. What happened next, I said, was a blur for me, in and out, patches of vision here and there, but together we agreed that I would restrain him, playfully, that we would try it out for a bit of fun. I had zip-tied his arm, but he had asked for more, and so in our stupor we had agreed to restrain his chest.
“I don’t remember any of this,” he said.
“You were drinking at an alarming pace,” I told him.
“And so what, did we—consummate, something?”
He looked down at his fly to check if it was open or closed.
“I don’t know,” I said, then looked at his expression and felt a rush of compassion. “I don’t think so.”
I told him that as mortified as I was to admit it, I must have blacked out as well. At some point in the night I remembered waking up on the floor in front of his chair and must have gotten myself changed and in bed without being fully conscious that he was still tied up. I was so sorry, I told him, this was by far the most absurd situation I had ever partaken in. I was not necessarily a dignified woman, I said, but I had never done anything like this. It must be all the stress—everything going on with the hearing. To my relief, he seemed to take it all in as truth.
“I didn’t think I had it in me,” he said.
“What?”
“Cheating,” he said.
I told him there were extenuating circumstances. He asked like what, and I said, after much prevaricating, that I had told him some news. I hesitated, but he pressed upon me until I revealed that I had recently discovered that Cynthia and John were having an affair. I said that had I not been drunk I would not have told him, and I blamed the cacha?a and said that I was sorry and that he should have found out from his wife, not from me.
His face crumpled. “Are you sure? I know John was helping Cyn with her memoir—they were doing a two-person writing group.”
I responded quickly that I was absolutely sure, that I had caught them in flagrante delicto, practically, but a pocket of doubt opened up in my mind as I said it. Had they, in fact, been greeting in a friendly manner when I saw them? But no, I was sure I saw Cynthia grab him around the hip and pull him into her, I was sure I saw his hand run through her hair and the tilt of their heads toward each other. Besides, they couldn’t have a writing group—John hadn’t written for years.