Playing by Melanie Abrams

Author:Melanie Abrams
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grove Atlantic
Published: 2008-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

When she heard the front door open, she jolted. She was still in the bathroom and had no idea how much time had gone by. She knew she had fallen into a hazy half sleep, but whether it was fifteen minutes or two hours, she couldn’t have guessed. She stood and the blood rushed quickly to her feet. From the bathroom window, she could see that it was dark, and she wondered if both Tyler and Maddy had fallen asleep.

Her head was pounding, and she walked tentatively into the hallway. Tyler’s door was still closed, but even the sight of it—his name plate with the trains, the watercolor pictures he had painted and she had tacked up—made her shaky. She heard Mary walk into the kitchen, and Josie wondered if it would be possible to sneak down the stairs and out the front door without Mary seeing her. She heard the refrigerator open, close, a glass clink. She took a few steps, but then Mary’s feet were on the stairs, and Josie could do nothing but stand there and wait, and it seemed like every step Mary took was slow and intentional, trudging closer and closer, until finally Mary appeared, and Josie readied herself to be broken, but instead, Mary breezed past her. “I’m too tired to deal with you tonight,” she said.

Josie didn’t move. She didn’t place one foot in front of the other and run. She didn’t turn around and shoot her confession into Mary’s chest. She just stood in the hallway, outside the room of a boy she had nearly beaten, and the injustice of what she had almost done overcame her like a sudden fever. She forced herself to imagine the stairs, and her feet on them, and then she made herself take one step, then two, and then she was walking—hall, stairs, hall—and then outside on her bike, and finally at Devesh’s door, knocking—scraping her knuckles raw against the door because she had forgotten her key—and when he answered, she must have looked changed because he grimaced, ever so slightly, and she knew she was once again transparent.

“I want you to beat me,” she said quickly and walked directly into the bedroom. His two large suitcases were laid on the floor, open and half packed for India, and she stepped around them and opened the chest where he kept his toys. He didn’t say anything, but she could feel his unease. She took everything out—the paddles and whips and ropes—and arranged them all neatly on the bed.

She pulled her shirt, bra, and jeans off and turned toward him. “Panties on or off?”

“I thought we had decided not to do this right now.”

She pushed her thumbs between the elastic of the waistband and her skin. “On or off?”

He didn’t say anything.

“Off then,” she said, and slid them down her legs. She picked up a coil of rope and two wrist cuffs and held them out for him.

“What exactly is going on?” he asked.

“I changed my mind. You can decide the implement.

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