Skyscraper

Chapter 1

Chapter 1Standing near the window at dawn, in a strand of lilac light, he undressed. He sniffed his clothing before dropping each soiled and ratty garment—long-threaded sweat stains on a torn-up tank top—down to his murky socks. His hair was a thick and greasy mess of shimmery black that soared with some femininity, though I would never tell him that. He was a grubby thing I could only admire with my eyes; he had tied my hands and feet.

He finished his striptease, lit a cigarette, and turned to look out the immense square of a picture window. The view was pure Westside—twenty-seventh floor, ostentatious silver jutting, and wild circular peaks, things that never reflected the same light twice. Buildings that mingled and rose jauntily in the crowded city space of Manhattan.

He blended into its beauty. He had two ragged scars on his buttocks, a cut on one calf and, on his upper back, a faded tattoo of a monarch butterfly.

The early morning sun was skating around the room, clouds blowing fast outside and scattering a madness of light then shadow on the structures, which made me melancholy. I had studied architecture at Princeton and, during that time, light and color in movement made me crazy with yearning, triggering a manic desire to get all that from my head into some form of design.

Stubbing and dropping his smoke in a glass tumbler, since ashtrays were extinct in New York, he raised both arms in an arc high over his head, fingers outstretched and twining. I admired his height. He held the pose and arched his back, moaning a little, aloft, the sun illuminating. In that movement, those butterfly wings fluttered, took flight, and his body became the blueprint for a skyscraper, a Tower of Babel, grander than anything erected in my mind’s eye. He had, in essence, become part of the skyline in the window and gone granite.

“Don’t move,” I said.

But Tad never listened to me. He might hear but he never listened. “What did you say?”

“Please.” My voice was a whine, which made him laugh.

He turned, arching his muscled ass backward a bit. I trembled with anticipation. The rope cut into my wrists. He moved toward me until he stood at the end of the bed speaking in a growl.

“Roll onto your stomach.”

The rope cut further into my wrists as I flipped over. Blood spotted the sheets. Tad hovered over me, kneeling on my ass, doing things to get himself off, making a big fuss, moaning and groaning all the while knowing I was insane with desire wanting to turn over and see him, touch him if he untied me.

I made no sound, gripped by the fear that if I did he would leave. After he finished, he told me I was taking him out to dinner the next night.

He untied my wrists but not my feet, and told me not to move until I heard the door shut. If I did not wait a full five minutes before getting up, I would never see Tad again. I watched the clock, and did not move for ten.