Chapter One

A Piece of Cake

 

"You should try some of this cake, Linda. It's really, really good. You won't find better cheesecake anywhere in New York."

Linda sat across the table from her friend, Alice, eyeing her enviously, as she attacked her dessert with gusto.

"You're not worried about getting fat? I mean with your career and all." Alice, a voluptuous young woman with long flowing blond hair, had aspirations to be an actress.

"Nah. I exercise."

"I never saw you work out," Linda replied, skeptically.

Alice grinned mischievously. "I work out in bed. They say it's the best exercise. Did you know every time you fuck you consume five hundred calories?"

Linda, familiar with how her friend liked to brag about her sexual exploits, smiled wanly.

"How about you, Lin? Getting enough these days?"

"Yeah." She looked at her friend warily.

"Are you still on that diet?"

"I guess so."

"What do you mean, you guess? You either are or you aren't. Here, have a little piece just to taste it. A little bit can't hurt." Alice cut off a small piece on the corner, speared it with her fork and held it out to Linda.

"Please don't wave that in front of my face," Linda said irritably.

Alice giggled, and then popped the piece into her own mouth. Suddenly her face assumed a somewhat theatrical look of surprise. "I know what it is," she intoned portentously. Then her voice dropped into an artificially low register. "The Master has forbidden it."

Linda blushed. "What are you talking about?"

Alice laughed. "I'm talking about that boyfriend of yours. Didn't you tell me a few months ago that he wanted you to lose weight and suggested laying off desserts?"

"I'm sorry I ever mentioned it," Linda said glumly.

"Come on, try some. Prove you're your own woman."

"No!" Linda practically shouted this out, and then glanced nervously around the diner to see if any of the other customers had noticed. Now she turned to Alice, and smiling a sweet, sarcastic smile said, "I could if I wanted to, but I won't give you the satisfaction."

Alice chuckled. "Now that's the Linda I know. Feisty. I guess your boyfriend hasn't completely tamed you."

"His name's Manny." It annoyed her, Alice's reluctance to refer to him by name. "Why are you needling me?"

Alice now turned serious. "I don't like what's happened to you since you met him. You know I hardly see you anymore. I suggest we get together, I invite you to parties, and you're always welcome to bring him you know, but it's always 'Manny wants to do this' or 'Manny wants to do that.' It's like you're his slave. Hey girl, this is the Eighties. Ever hear of Women's Liberation?"

While her friend was speaking Linda was looking away and drumming her fingers on the table. But in response to her last presumably rhetorical question she turned and said, "How's that film going?"

Alice had recently obtained a small part in a low budget independent film. "Trying to change the subject? I finished the film weeks ago. I told you that."

"Are you still sleeping with the director?"

Alice giggled girlishly. "Are you trying to make a point?"

"Well, sleeping with a guy to get a job doesn't sound very liberated."

Alice looked up with a smug expression. "You've never met him. I bet you think he's some middle-aged guy, bald and potbellied. Actually he's thirty and gorgeous. But I would have slept with him to get the part even if he had been middle-aged and bald and potbellied. What's wrong with that? He uses me, I use him. That's my idea of equality. I'm no longer seeing him, to answer your question, but when I did, I didn't let him tell me what to do, except on the set, of course."

Linda stared at the table for a while, then looked up and said, "Look, Alice. I know you don't like Manny. You never have. We're never going to agree on this so why don't we just drop it?"

"Okay, I give in. Manny is wonderful. That is an established truth which is no longer subject to debate." By now Alice had finished her cake and she picked up the check, which the waitress had just left. "How much tip should we leave?"

A few minutes later they had left the diner. They walked silently until they reached a subway station. "You going back uptown?" Alice asked.

"Yeah, but I feel like walking a bit."

"Hey, you're not mad at me, are you?"

"No," Linda protested, a bit defensively.

"Look, I'm sorry I teased you. It's just that ... we've been friends a long time and lately, it seems like you've been shutting me out of your life."

"I'm sorry," Linda replied, her voice breaking. Suddenly she seemed on the verge of tears.

Alice appeared taken aback by Linda's sudden display of emotion, and responded with a warm smile. "Hey, it's okay. Look, I've got to run. Keep in touch, will ya?" She gave her friend a sudden impulsive hug, and then hurried down the stairs into the subterranean passage.

Linda trudged north along the avenue in a somber mood. She felt a growing estrangement from her friend, and it hurt her. Alice was her oldest and best friend; the two girls had grown up together, lived in the same neighborhood in that same dreary, decaying Midwestern factory town. Two years older than her, Alice had been the first to leave. Blessed with a beautiful face and a curvaceous figure, she had joined the high school drama club and after graduation, decided to head for New York and try her luck as an actress. A few years later Linda followed her. While Alice was motivated by ambition, Linda was simply running away, fleeing her squalid depressing home, her father's drinking and her mother's nagging, and their endless squabbling. When she was of age and had saved a little money she bought a bus ticket to New York. Alice let her stay with her until she could get settled, a stay that ended up being permanent when her roommate moved out. Knowing nobody else in New York and with hardly any money, she would never have dared to come if it hadn't been for Alice. And then she would never have met Manny. So it was partly to her friend that she owed her present happiness. It was true Alice didn't like Manny, although they had only met once. It was early in their relationship, when Linda and Alice were still living together in a two bedroom apartment in Soho. Linda had prevailed on Manny to come for a visit. The three chatted for a while, smoked a joint (Linda was a little surprised that Manny had accepted the offer, as he seemed rather "square") then went out to a club. After Manny left, Linda asked Alice what she thought of him.

"Well, he's very handsome. He's even charming, in his own peculiar way. But I don't like him."

"Why not?"

After a brief silence Alice answered, "He seems rather conceited."

"No!"

"He's rather fond of the sound of his own voice. He's very confident in his own opinions."

"What's wrong with that?"

"He also seems a bit old for you." Manny was thirty-seven, fifteen years older that Linda.

"You've slept with older men."

"Yeah, but I don't get serious about them."

"You're never serious about anyone."

Alice laughed complacently. "True. It's best not to be."

That ended the subject but the next day Linda again began talking about Manny, trying to induce Alice to express a more favorable opinion. Her friend listened quietly for a while and then said, "He looks like the jealous type."

"What do you mean?"

"He's possessive. He treats you like a possession."

Alice viewed herself as a student of human nature, something she considered part of her training as an actress, and Linda was accustomed to hearing these somewhat oracular pronouncements. This one puzzled Linda, because while Manny could be bossy in private, there seemed nothing unusual in his conduct the previous evening.

"What do you mean? I don't know where you get that."

"It's just something I sense. The way he looks at you, touches you."

That ended the conversation. Linda thought Alice was just being weird. But later it came to seem prophetic. Then today at lunch, she had even come out and suggested that Manny treated her as his slave. Yes, Alice was intuitive; she saw things other people didn't. Now she dimly perceived the truth as through a veil. Still, she would have been genuinely shocked if she knew the full truth-the truth that her childhood friend, Linda Gerich really was Manfred Owen's slave, that he owned her body and soul. It was not, of course, the literal truth, as slavery was not a legal institution in the United States in the late twentieth century, although she sometimes thought that if there were a legal way to sign away her freedom she would gladly do it. And what were legal technicalities anyway to the sacred bonds that united them?

How had they got started on this subject? It had all started with a piece of cake, and her friend's innocent desire to share it with her. One morning three months ago, having showered, Linda examined herself in the mirror. Suddenly she thought she looked fat. Standing on a bathroom scale, she discovered she had gained five pounds since the last time she'd weighed herself. That was several months ago; she had never been preoccupied with her weight before. That evening she told Manny. He did not seem overly concerned, and even appeared to be amused at her volunteering the information. But observing her seriousness, he pondered for a while, then said it was because she was too fond of desserts, so from that time forward he forbade them, and enjoined her to weigh herself every morning. On a couple of occasions when they ate dinner out he relaxed the prohibition, but when away from him it was absolute.

But how would he know if she violated the prohibition? It would have been easy enough to deceive him. It would have been, as the saying goes, a piece of cake. The answer is that she would tell him. Yes, it was true that she could have avoided the quarrel with her friend by the simply expedient of accepting the tiny piece she had proffered. Alice was right, it was harmless, but Manny had laid down his rule and there no exceptions in the fine print. Moreover, it was part of her obligation as a slave not only to obey his rules, but to be honest with him about any violations. There was a code to this kind of relationship, and if you weren't going to follow the code what was the point of entering into it?

Not only that, she didn't even think she was capable of lying to him. From time to time he would question her as to whether she was obeying his rules; he would make her look him in the eyes-those hard, dazzling blue eyes-and she was convinced that if she did lie, her face would betray her.

Manny had forbidden her to disclose the nature of their relationship to anyone. He didn't explain why. He rarely explained his decisions to her; as her Master he wasn't obliged to. Perhaps he viewed it as simple prudence, or maybe he thought she wouldn't be able to handle emotionally the consequences. But she had hoped he might someday relax the prohibition with respect to her best friend, the friend to whom she had once confided everything, all her experiences, her hopes and her dreams. Now she wondered whether she would tell Alice even if she could, whether she was even capable of understanding. True, Alice was liberally minded and sexually adventurous; she had surely heard of sadomasochism. But while she might understand the appeal of recreational spankings, or of, say, being tied spread-eagled to the bed posts while being fucked-she could imagine Alice trying that-she wouldn't understand or approve of a lifestyle so all-encompassing, a surrender of independence so total.

A mere piece of cake; eating that little piece would have been sufficient to avert a quarrel with her best friend. But rules are rules. She liked having rules to follow; she enjoyed the sensation-it was the romance of her life-of being under Manny's control, every minute of every day, even when he was far away. That's why if surrendering to a momentary weakness she had disobeyed him, she would have confessed later, in order that she would be punished for it. It wasn't that she liked being punished, it was unpleasant, but it was necessary for maintaining the reality of that control, which required that any act of disobedience, however small, be followed by inevitable punishment.

Yes, that's what it was that Alice would never be able to understand, the pleasure she experienced in being controlled, in having to follow rules and being liable for punishment. It was the thrill of being owned-of having a Master.