What a face he made then. “You tell me.”
In the end, he didn’t beat me at all, but he used me for sex that made my toes curl. Even so, the marks from Thursday were still visible on Monday when I showed up at Pietro’s studio. To me, they looked rather mild, considering the bruises and welts I normally had, but to Pietro, I guess they were something else altogether, and there was a horribly awkward moment as I tried to explain them to him.
“It’s totally consensual, Pietro. It really is.”
“Consensual? You do this consensually with who?”
“You know him,” I said, a little piqued. “You’re the one who gave him my name.” His eyebrows shot up. “Do not say such a thing. I promise you, I give no one your name who treats you this way.”
“The man who bought the first two paintings, Pietro. He told me you gave him my name when he asked.”
He frowned, caught, and his teeth ground together. I felt bad for him, and I quickly spoke again.
“I don’t mind. It’s okay. We’ve been together since October.”
“Since October? He does this to you since October? What of that very nice boy you were to marry? James or John...?”
“Joe. He left me.”
He began to draw me as I was, standing there looking at him with my hands in fists, embarrassed and defensive.
“How do you want me to stand?”
“I want you to stand just as you are.”
He drew for long moments in silence, and his strokes were angry and quick. Then he said,
“You like this, really, Lucy? To be beaten this way?”
“Yes I do.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know why. He makes me feel protected.”
He snorted, an ugly, derisive sound.
“If this makes you feel protected, there is something wrong with your brain.”
“Pietro, it’s really none of your business.”
“If I want to draw your body that you abuse, then it is.”
“Fine. Then don’t pay me. If you’re so unhappy with me, you can draw me for free.” He closed his notebook then with an angry snap.
“Put on your clothes and get out, please. I can’t paint you anymore, not like this.” I stared at him. “Pietro! Why? You can’t even see the marks in this pose!”
“No, I can’t see them, but when I look at you...” His voice trailed off, and his shoulders slumped. “I used to look at you and see amazing beauty. Now I look at you and see only a stupid and beaten girl. Please get out of my studio. Please leave now. Here, take this with you.” He tossed the drawing he’d done to the floor.
He turned his back on me and went to wash the charcoal off his hands, wash them off violently as if he washed his hands of me. My face was hot and I felt numb and cold all over. I put on my clothes quickly, not wanting to be naked anymore. I glanced down at the drawing, and it was me, cloaked in shame and sadness. I left it lying right where it was and walked, blind with tears, out the door.
In all the time I’d spent with Matthew, he had never, ever come close to making me feel shame like this. Coming from Pietro, it devastated me.
He might as well have settled himself over my shocked face and shoved his cock right down my throat.
Chapter Nine: Dinner
I walked home from Pietro’s studio bawling my eyes out. Blocks and blocks along city sidewalks, but no one stopped me to ask if I was all right, which was just as well, because I’m not sure how I could have explained to them. When I got home, I crawled into bed.
I pulled myself together for work the next afternoon. I didn’t tell Grégoire what had happened, though he worried about me when he saw my swollen eyes. Maybe he thought I’d finally broken things off with Matthew, which would have been a great relief to him. But no, I pulled myself together to see Matthew too, climbed into the back seat of his car that his new driver, Kevin, held open for me outside the stage door.
If Matthew noticed my red eyes and listless sadness, he made no comment, and if anything, used me harder than he usually did. I needed that pain though, desperately needed it, if only to feel something other than shame. I didn’t tell him either about Pietro, although seeing the paintings up in his room made my eyes blur again with tears.
It was December by then, a couple weeks before Christmas. Like most dance companies, we’d added extra holiday shows and rehearsals, and my body ached from the strain. I would be twenty nine in early January, and I could feel my ability to dance slowly ebbing away. My hips and knees screamed in protest when I leaped and kicked, and my ankles gave me constant needling pain.
So, during this time just before Christmas, I started to feel like my life was falling apart. My joints ached, my best friend judged me harshly for my choice to keep seeing Matthew, and an artist who once found me beautiful now found me stupid instead.
Only Matthew remained unchanged and consistent in his actions towards me. He treated me with the same affectionate scorn, the same rigid horniness as he always had. I fought as hard as ever against the impulse to love him in this time when I felt so needy and bereft, because if I lost him too, I thought that probably would have finished me off.
In the week leading up to Christmas, though, I was unable to see him. I had extra shows to dance and Matthew had obligations to keep. But on Christmas Eve morning, he called and asked if I could come to dinner with him that night, when the show was over, and I said yes, I could.
He told me to wear a little black dress and no panties, and he promised to meet me at the stage door at 10:45.
After the show that night, while everyone else gave each other warm Christmas wishes, shared plans and made arrangements to meet places, I showered and dressed to meet the tyrannical lover who ruled my world. I dried my wavy hair and drew it up into a loose chignon because I knew he loved to look at the back of my neck. I put on my smooth, pale porcelain-doll makeup, and applied the nutmeg lipstick carefully to my full lips. I put on black thigh high stockings with wide lace tops, and as he required, I wore no panties. I slipped into some patent leather mary jane pumps with high block heels, and I hoped desperately that I wouldn’t humiliate myself.
Dinner with Matthew. We had never actually gone out to dinner together, not once in two
and a half months. We ate at his house when we played, formal meals in his dining room and breakfasts in the kitchen. I’m sure he thought, like me, that dinner out would be too risky, would feel too much to the wistful romantic in me like a date. And he was right, I was really afraid that it would feel like a date to me, that I would fantasize, and he’d know it, and that he’d punish me for it. Maybe that was the whole point of this Christmas Eve exercise, to make me act stupid so he could torture and humiliate me. ’Tis the season, I thought wryly. But it was my eternal goal to do what he wanted, so if that’s what he wanted, that’s exactly what I would do.
I walked out the stage door and there he stood in the cold air, in a heavy wool coat that made him look ridiculously handsome. He smiled, hugged and kissed me, and I’m sure to any person passing by we seemed like any other couple, a boyfriend and girlfriend, even a husband and wife, from the tender and familiar way we embraced. He led me to his car and held open the door for me, and I climbed in the front seat instead of the back seat I used with the driver. He kissed me again with his hand up my dress, and thrust his fingers inside me, which I accepted with a moan.
He smiled at me and licked off his fingers, then slammed the door and got in on the other side. He hummed some familiar Christmas carol to himself under his breath. What was wrong with the both of us, I wondered, that on Christmas Eve we were not with family or friends? No, we were both of us with our perverse, sadomasochistic lover, and neither of us thought that it was strange or sad. I had no family left aside from Grégoire, and he had Georges to sit with in front of a holiday fire. And Matthew, I assume he had no family either, because he never mentioned them, and I never asked.
He drove me to a dark and expensive restaurant, the type of restaurant with no prices on the menu. He ordered wine and food for both of us in French and I resigned quietly that I would eat whatever arrived. Of course, it was delicious, whatever it was. Of course Matthew would know the most wonderful things to eat. We both ate slowly, and for a long time we didn’t talk, which was fine with me.