Chapter 14: Notes and Letters

Alicia found Angique sitting at her favorite table under the balcony. She was half in darkness, half in the light of a yellow candle flame. She wore a tailored suit, her legs crossed sideways. Alicia hesitated. Did she dare talk to her? She looked around, seeing no one of the Clan present.

She tiptoed to the table and stood there for a moment in silence. The woman must have seen her, but she did not look up from her notebook. Alicia cleared her throat. The green eyes jumped suddenly into hers. It made her skip a heartbeat.

"Uhm," she said. "I got your note." Angique didn't smile. She did nothing. She stared.

"I, uhm," Alicia went on. "I wonder why you would find me cruel? I don't understand ... I never..."

"You really don't understand, do you?" Angique cut straight into her bumbling speech. "You are even more insensitive than I thought." Her mouth was a tight and bloodless line now.

"I am not! I am..." Alicia protested. Angique's look silenced her in mid-sentence.

"Let me see," the woman said, slowly, pushing the notebook aside. "Here we have this girl begging me to make her mine — I never approach her, she approaches me. What does she say? 'I dreamed I was this girl who lifted your foot to press it down on her head ... the girl sucking your toes like little cocks.'"

A silence fell. Alicia heard her heartbeat. She didn't know what to say. The woman went on.

"I remember a girl stripping for me in public, her panties dripping. What is it she says? 'I am curious to see if there is more, ' is what she says. And when she finds out how much more there is, what does she say? She calls me Mistress and states she wants to be my slave. She commits herself, I think. She shaves her cunt for me. She runs off twice but comes back for more, pledging her need. That is when she succeeds in making me crazy. She makes me admit that I love her."

The girl's eyes ran amok in their sockets. Her mouth worked, but there were no words.

"What went on in your mind, girl?" Angique asked. "If you are not insensitive, you must be cruel. You were cruel enough to tell your so-called friends what a perverted animal I am. You gave them what was supposed to be secret, so they could ridicule me with it. You handed them a stick to beat me. And what did you do when they did exactly that? Nothing! You hid behind their backs, not a word in my defense. I bet you had great fun. 'Look at the crazy woman being crucified. Giggle, giggle, serves her right, the dirty pervert!' I bet you felt save in their sweet vanilla haven, their tiny hypocritical, boring world."

To her amazement Alicia saw tears in the green eyes. She wanted to cover her ears against the accusations. They were so unjust. She wasn't like that, was she? She was a nice girl, wanting to please. Just a sweet girl, looking for fun — maybe stupid but never unfeeling, never cruel!

The woman's voice didn't stop. "You betrayed me, you cunt. You set me up and destroyed me. You knew I loved you but you did not care! You gloated over the wreck you caused!"

"No!" Alicia cried out. "Stop it! It isn't true!"

And she ran.

Angique's fists clenched and opened as she saw the girl run. She cursed under her breath and collected her things to leave. Fuck this damned place, she seethed, driving the stiletto heels of her shoes into the innocent floor.

Darkness stood around her. The howling loneliness fit her like a glove — nothing hurts like the pain of everyday horror. Alicia sat shivering in her robe, staring at the ghostlike window of her monitor.

She tried to work. But mostly she tried not to think. She tried not to think of where she'd ended up — this seemingly endless funnel of fucking; of being the ping-pong ball at a game no one could actually take seriously in their sane mind. Look at her: always on the run. Running from the ruins of a betrayed marriage into the emptiness of heart breaking loneliness. Running from that into the arms of a sweet girl. Running from her soft and bland loving to a rollercoaster of mindless, zipless fucking. Running from that into the horrifying attraction of pain and humiliation by a woman who makes her wake up with a scream — sweating, but flowing from arousal.

She tried to work and not to think. She failed miserably. Demons whispered, memories mocked her. And all the while her fingers worked in and out of her pussy, as mind-numbing video's poured their repetitive porn into her staring gaze.

"Honey?" a small and far-away voice called out. "Please come to bed, honey. It is so late already."

"Coming," she muttered. And she did.

Alicia did not return to the Club for almost a week. By then she had lost two clients and quarreled with Rita for three nights in a row. Lack of sleep turned her into a ghost. Her paleness shone through the natural tan of her skin like a greenish hue. It was by then that she got the e-mail. It arrived at the secret address she had opened for her Club contacts. The mail was signed with a simple a.

"Dear Alicia," it opened. Then it went on. "I feel so embarrassed. I was abroad for a few days and I am glad it kept me from writing to you sooner. I would have embarrassed myself (and you) even more than this letter will.

"I understand by now that what I saw in you was fundamentally wrong. It made me expect things that were never there. I thought you cared, but why would you? To you it was all just exotic fun. You are at the Club to surf the surface and escape the naggings of reality. You never planned on getting emotionally involved. How could I have been so inconsiderate not to understand?

"It was while I ran along the ocean's pier in San Sebastian, Spain, when it struck me. And suddenly it all became shamefully clear. I had to sit down and hold my heart to keep it from jumping out of my chest. All fell in place. I have accused you of things you really couldn't help yourself from doing. I am sorry for that.

"Remember our first adventure into submission — the one you begged me for? I scared you by going too far and you told me you were so very sad you really could not go on. I thought I had hurt you profoundly. But an hour later you clowned and partied in the Salon again, giggling with your vanilla friends.

"As early as that I should have understood you weren't in there to care for what I felt. It was all one big adventure. And of course you must have thought it was a game for me too. We were at the Club, remember? No harm, no foul.

"After enough time went by, though, you and I seemed to still feel an attraction. Gradually we started to talk again and we had some of the sweetest, most memorable moments I have ever had with a girl. You even shaved for me. It confirmed all I felt for you (and you for me), which of course was silly romantic nonsense. For how else should I understand what happened next, only a few days later?

"A friend told me you and this woman Gina had declared the evening before that the two of you were a couple; you had proven that to all present in the room by acting very much in love. Another wonderful charade, no doubt. The Club, you know? Wink-wink, nudge-nudge.

"Silly me was stunned — ashamed too. I had been stupid enough to rush into conclusions after our breathtaking reunion. And you had not found it at all necessary to let me know about your change of heart. Not a note, not a word.

"Now I understand. Sorry for being so slow. I should have known there was no change of heart, because from your point of view there was no heart involved, was there? It all meant nothing to you. I didn't matter, nor did anything we did together. Not a week before you'd whispered you loved me. Damn, after all these years of meeting with American girls I should have known: "I love you" translates to 'Howwaya t'day?'

"In the weeks that followed it was very hard for me to be in the Salon, watching you and your new fiancée doing the never ending love show — plus having to cope with all the good pals that swarmed around the two of you.