Friday Night 2
She glanced behind her, as she picked up the hose and noticed her shadow growing long on the patio bricks. The days seemed to go faster in the hills than down below in the flatlands. The water faucet stuck in her hand. She applied more pressure, twisting the knob harderm until one of the cold steel bits cut into her fingers. She squirted the cold water from the hose end onto her hand, wincing as it hit her fingers.
"Pain or pleasure," she asked herself, aiming the stream of water at the thirsty pots lined up around the old wooden deck.
The roses nodded their blowsy heads in the hot afternoon breeze, accepting the water gratefully. She sometimes thought she could hear them sighing with relief, when she filled their pots to the rim with cold water.
She began at the top rim of the deck, moving slowly and methodically through the lines of pots. The steep hillside lot held little space for flower beds or grass.
Her mind drifted away as the heat beat down on her long red hair. She wondered if she should have put on some sunscreen.
She studied the freckles on the arm holding the hose.
"Does he have freckles?" She couldn't remember.
"Is he going to be late, tonight? "
He hadn't been sure what time he could arrive, citing the unpredictability of the director's shooting schedule. Sometimes the director was satisfied with a couple takes, but other scenes he shot over and over, making the actors repeat their lines, until they were not sure if they remembered them correctly anymore.
"I'll try to be there by 9, Mistress" was the best he could do.
Repeating their lines over and over.
She'd looked at his skin, touched it, studied it over and over again.
But why couldn't she recall if he had freckles on his shoulders.
A fine dusting of freckles?
Yes, no?
She pondered.
He'd finally agreed to let her cut into that fine-grained pale skin. Last week.
Her scalpel slipped into the skin so smoothly that he didn't even realize until a split second after it began to follow the line of the design she'd drawn on him. She had instructed him to match her breath. slowly breathing in and out. On an exhale, she'd inserted the knife confidently, without hesitation.
She watched the blood ooze out of the line that followed the taped blade, brilliantly red against the whiteness of his skin. She'd stared at it for a second, leaning over to smell it, before dabbing with the sterile gauze pad. It was the smell of iron, of nails, yet not earthy, a freshness in it, like green grass.
She bent over to smell one of the roses. Musky, with a hint of vanilla.
Being careful to avoid the sharp prong of the faucet handle, she turned off the water, coiled the hose and went into the house to tidy her toy bag, in preparation for another Friday night at the dungeon.
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