As She’s Told

Anders woke in the dark, stirred, and opened one eye to check the clock.

Seven-twenty. He smiled into the darkness. All his planning and devising, and he would get, first of all, to watch her face.

He turned over and listened for Maia’s breathing. Still asleep. She’d slept like a dead thing all night. No squirming, no rattle of chain. He ran a hand along his property: the little heap of warm, somnolent flesh and felt, not her usual quiescence, but a profound, blissful, strings-cut immobility.

How gorgeous she had been. He had never seen her so overtaken, so thoroughly in the grip of an experience beyond her control. The previous evening came at him whole out of memory, and his usual morning erection swelled painfully. He was tempted, but two of his little receptacle’s orifices were locked shut. Later. Plenty of time.

Still dark. It would be midday on Svend’s Greek island. What kind of Christmas was he having? Was he dancing like Zorba around a cypress tree?

What did they cook for Christmas dinner there? Lamb, maybe.

Midday in Copenhagen, too. The house must be full of aunts and cousins, a constantly shifting stream of them. His mother loading plates, the steam from the pots making the glasses slip down her nose. His father genially setting out meatballs and herring. Janne clumping around the house long-legged in her clogs, inserting her own sly rhymes into the Christmas songs. Karl on the couch with an arm around Ria, observing everything from under sleepy eyelids. Did they miss him and Svend? Probably, though they wouldn’t say so. His grandmother would be missing him, certainly, though no power on earth would pry such an admission from her wintry lips. He could hear her stubborn voice arguing over cooking times, and insisting that Strindberg had more to say than Sørensen about the human condition.

Yesterday morning when he’d called he’d had to assure her that his business continued to be strictly above-board and his account books up to date. For a few minutes he amused himself imagining Maia cowering under his Mormor’s bleak eye.

The body next to him barely stirred beneath his stroking hand. ‘Time to wake up, girl.’ Slowly she surfaced, and as she did so, her belly found his, snuggled forward. ‘No, no,’ he said, ‘you’ve had that present already. Time for some new ones.’ The dark eyes sprang open, instantly in focus.

Anders got them downstairs in record time, turned on the lights, and watched Maia’s face as she took in the packages, small, hefty and huge.

Amazement, and then a little sadness. ‘I only have the one thing for you, master.’

‘Never mind.’ He smiled wryly. ‘This stuff’s not entirely for you. Think vanilla boyfriend providing sexy lingerie. Now, what order shall we do this in?’ He fetched coffee and rolls, and they settled in, him on the couch and her on the floor, leash dangling from her collar. She stared at the biggest objects, boxes big enough to house good-sized appliances.

‘Santa’s judgment on you, as it happens, is both naughty and nice.’

Maia rolled her eyes, but she had the apprehensive and excited look of a little girl who was next in line for the rollercoaster. ‘I don’t think you’ll find a lump of coal, but there may be a switch or two.’ She giggled. ‘But let’s start with the nice ones. Open that little one there, the green one.’

She opened various packages at his direction. First the books: one novel obscure and ancient, another modern and introspective, and a dictionary of environmental terminology that she fell on with a glad cry. Then two CDs of medieval dance music with ancient instruments. A sinuous pair of silver earrings, big enough to be visible through her hair. A pair of ice skates, and a promise to take her skating. And a beautiful new scarf which looked so fetching wound around her that he almost got sidetracked, and her gratitude for it all nearly got out of hand.

‘Hmm,’ he said, disengaging and peering under the tree. ‘That’s it for nice, I think.’

The big boxes still loomed amid the litter of paper and still-unopened packages; he watched Maia’s sidelong glances in their direction, sensed her smothered apprehension. ‘Master, could it be your turn?’

He’d almost forgotten her contribution, upright in a shadowy corner behind the tree. It was as tall as she was, and thick, roughly triangular in cross-section. She must have had a tough time carrying it home.

She was up on her knees, watching him. He hoped he’d like whatever it was, or she was going to be disappointed. What could she order from Home Depot that he couldn’t have found for himself? He laid the thing on the floor, slit the packing tape, and pushed past empty paper. ‘This isn’t the same shape as the box, is it?”

“Nope.’

‘Sneaky.’ The surface was wood, hard and a little rough. Anders swept the packaging out of the way, and lifted the thing clear. A long, rectangular, rather grimy slab of wood. Shaped to be the top of something. Walnut, with carving on three edges. He stared at it, then at her.

‘The mantelpiece.’

‘Yes.’

He looked the slab over from all sides. ‘It’s the right one!’

‘Yes!’ She beamed with delight.

He was stunned. ‘How did you – ?’

‘Just research. Persistence. I was getting worried toward the end there, but I found it.”

“Where?’

‘A kind of junkyard. Mostly sells auto parts. Keele and St. Clair, roughly.’

‘But – but I thought you were using that Home Depot gift certificate.’

‘That was for Val. She picked the thing up for me and paid for it. It didn’t cost much.’

‘You genius!’

She laughed. ‘Thank you.’

He studied her for a little, set the slab of wood down, and picked her up.

‘No. Thank you. You are amazing.’ He squeezed her, long and hard to the point of breathlessness. ‘You are clever and talented and thoughtful beyond belief. Lucky is the man who owns you.’ Anders kissed the brow behind which the clever brain lurked. ‘And incredibly sneaky, you sly and naughty wench. Imagine keeping a secret from me for so long; I must be slipping.’

She tucked her head into his neck. ‘Only to surprise you. Only to make you happy. I wouldn’t keep secrets otherwise, honestly, master.’

He squeezed her again, set her down, and took up the slab, expertly estimating the job. Was that old paint in the pores? It would need a good cleaning and maybe stripping. And the finish would need to match the rest of the piece…. ‘Come downstairs. I have to try it on the other part.’ There was no question that it fit; all the carving matched. They spent some time enjoying the complete object. ‘Just think,’ he said, ‘I’ll be able to use you as a footstool in front of a cosy fire.’

‘Mmm. Hey, I might have been able to use that lump of coal after all.’

He groaned. ‘Naughty, naughty,’ he said, and tugged her back up the stairs. ‘So much for your angelic status. Santa has ways of dealing with naughty creatures like you. Open that red one.’

It was an expensively stitched leather whip which fit nicely into Anders’

hand, and made pretty marks. Maia gulped and thanked him, and then at his direction reached into one of the baskets of chocolate hanging from the tree, extracting a small box wrapped in gold foil. Inside she found a pair of silver filigree nipple stretchers. He unlocked her nipple rings, squeezing an inch or so from the tip of each breast into the narrow cones, and then locking the rings through holes at the tips. She was immediately panting and ready to climb him, as if she hadn’t been sucked and fucked all the way to oblivion just the day before.

‘Down! Uh-uh. No more Valhalla heights for you, my little thrall.

Down you go. Next!’ Next was a full leather hood; he set this aside for the moment. Then he had her open one of the big boxes. She stared at the metal contraption within, without any sign of comprehension. So he put the thing together in order to demonstrate.

‘Just another way of making sure my cunning property stays where it’s put. In whatever position I put it in. A bit like a mannequin, really. Or maybe animal models. Taxidermy. But with a live hunhund.’

As he fitted joints together, he caught her eye and a corner of his mouth twitched. ‘Yeah, yeah. New toys again.’

She looked down, smiling, but she was breathing very fast.

‘Well, what else is Christmas for, if I can’t play with construction toys?

Gives a new meaning to the term ‘Erector Set.’ Which I always found suggestive, frankly.’

He had her stand on the heavy base, and locked her waist, chest, legs and arms to the metal posts that rose from it, using the rigid metal straps and cuffs attached. ‘No end to the positions I can put you in. Hours of fun. Now let’s see, shall I leave you in the stretchers?’ He decided to remove them, and squeezed a trembling breast.

‘All this hardware manipulates and reprograms your software, little one.

This kind,’ he squeezed again, and then tapped her head, ‘and the neural pathways, too. Don’t think of underestimating it.’ Nipple clamps, rigidly set, made her newly stretched breasts part of the sculpture he was forming.

She whimpered a little. ‘No, master. I wouldn’t. Believe me.’ A shadow of mischief crossed her face. ‘And how about wetware?”

“Oh, I’ll bet. But we’re getting too cute for the room. Hush up now.’

He fitted the hood and its blindfold over her head. One of his armature’s extensions rose up to her face and ended in a gag, which he fastened deep into her mouth. She was half bent; he loosened a couple of joints and lowered the chest and gag rods to take her down to a right angle. Unfastened her legs to spread them, then tightened the joints again. Adjusted the angle of her neck so that her blank face was visible. Her arms were bent out to the sides, as if she was about to take wing. ‘There. A work of art.’ Anders walked around her, examining her from all angles. ‘What a good position for a beating.’ He hadn’t fitted the earpieces into the hood; she could hear him, and she groaned.

The expensive whip was well worth it, he decided; it traced and caressed her ass with more finesse than anything else he had used on her.

When his slave was moderately marked he tried a few more positions, finally leaving her on display, on her knees with her back a little arched, her tits still stretched, while he got himself a proper breakfast. She could survive on buns, but he needed more.

As he ate his mind dwelt with delight on the mantelpiece. Why had it never occurred to him to ask her to find it? He’d asked her to find information a couple of times, on environmental standards and new materials; that kind of research had seemed more in her line. But clearly he had been underestimating her potential. Astonishing that she could manage all that from her desk. Yet he knew positively that she hadn’t gone out herself in search of it. And what was her recompense for all her determined, loving effort? Anders glanced at the immobile figure. There was an irony there to enjoy, and enjoy it he did.

‘Want to open more presents?’ The fixed object made an indeterminate noise of agreement, and he extracted her from the hood and the armature, played with her sore and swollen tits, and watched her squirm.

‘I think you’re hoping to come again. Aren’t you, hunhund.’

The big eyes searched his face, some spark of hope indeed lurking. ‘N-no, master –’ There was just the slightest upward lilt to the last word, a hint of an inquiry to which he didn’t bother to respond; he just fastened her hands back, unlocked her belt and listened to tiny, irrepressible, eager whining noises. Then he slotted the two plugs into the belt and locked her up again.

The eager whining downshifted to groans and broken sighs.

Anders opened the next package for her: a miniature sleigh he’d put together; just a low, red-painted wooden box on flat, padded runners, with a couple of shafts. He harnessed her, with sleigh bells and nipple bells and nose bell and all, got her down on her hands and knees, and fastened her to the shafts at the waist. Her heaviest bridle went on, with reins. Not much could be done indoors, but he cleared a path and picked out a long whip, then sat in the box and made her crawl, saying, ‘On, Vixen!’ She had to struggle to drag his weight, with a squeal and a wriggle when the whip urged her on; this was entrancing, but didn’t cover a lot of ground. He stood in the sleigh for a bit, with a better view, but this was precarious. It became a bit like the Iditarod, with one foot on the ground for balance.

Next he tried piling weights in the sleigh and walking beside the thing, oxcart fashion, with the reins in his hand and a much better angle to ply his long whip. Maia crawled for a while, and then he arranged her upright with her hands tied back, and continued his experiments, adding more and more weight. The small restricted shoulders struggled, the little body strained and trembled and strained again, and her cringing thighs and buttocks clenched and juddered. When his cock was ready to burst Anders drew her hard by the reins over to the couch, the sleigh still fastened behind, and then down to her knees. Her mouth with bit removed was hot and urgent. He didn’t even try to hold himself back. It took him a while to recover, and when he did, he was still holding the motionless head to him by the bridle.

Slowly he relaxed his fingers and sat her back on her heels, removed the bridle, released her wrists and the shafts from her waist, and gently wiped the saliva from around her mouth. The body he was handling was pliancy itself, moving as he moved it and no further, but Anders knew her frantic inner vibrations. He settled her between his knees and stroked her hair.

‘Let’s see. Housebroken. Broken to harness. And now broken to cart work,’

he mused. ‘It can be trained.’

She hid her deep flush against his thigh and he felt her breasts and belly press themselves forward against his leg, slowly, inexorably, as if pulled by a rope. Indulgently he let her rub herself against him: breasts, belly, side to side, up and down. The eyes unfocused; those tiny catches of breath slipping past a closed throat. Was that a slight urging of the metal curve over her pubic bone against his calf? He leaned down and caressed a welted buttock, and she whimpered and urged herself harder.

‘Ah,’ Anders murmured, licking her neck and shoulder. ‘Needy pudding. So sweet.’ Slowly he stilled her helpless squirming, pried her back from his leg and began to stroke her breasts. This didn’t reduce the arousal, naturally, but it did tend to soothe her. Her panting breath slowed; a few deep sighs shed tension on the exhale. At last he kissed the tousled head that leaned in the crook of his arm. She was shamefaced, but focusing and responding now. Good.

It was past time for lunch, but a few more presents remained for her to open. Up against the remaining large box were packages containing a red metal dog dish (plastic being out now, as Anders explained, and stainless steel in) and a pair of thumbless mitts. She laid these out on the coffee table.

‘All right, girl. Last one.’

He watched his slave crawl slowly to the big rectangular object, her face almost hidden by hanging hair. The thing was perhaps four feet long, under three feet high and three wide. Her hands hesitated and fumbled with the heavy paper and the light cardboard beneath. Unlike the object she had packed, this one was the shape of its container. At the first sight of bars she stopped dead.

There was silence; not a breath. The strips of paper in her hand didn’t even rustle. Several long seconds ticked by, with his slave quite motionless, as if she had crawled into a painting and been suspended there in oils.

‘Keep going.’

Slowly the hands came back to life. Maia uncovered the metal bars, the heavy wooden frame. Then she knelt back on the cardboard and stared into the cage.

Finally she looked up at him. Little coloured tree lights reflected in her eyes’ moist glaze, tiny stars orbiting in their twin galaxies.

‘It’s somewhere to keep you, my needy pudding,’ he said. ‘Somewhere to keep you very, very safe.’

***

The crate I played in as a child was a dark, enclosed lair; just space for a bit of food and copious amounts of fantasy. Once my sister and her friends did their vandal act on my world and I reconstructed it, there wasn’t much left of the little-girl playhouse with its miniature housewifery of stoves and dishes.

Although I had no clear sense at that stage of the implications of my fantasies, by instinct I kept them secret. There was nothing in that crate but a few scraps that could easily be mistaken for our usual random toy-strewn flotsam. Some curved blocks and the rubber bands that, round them, made them into shackles; that chain off an old lamp; a piece of ribbon. One plastic dish and cup left over from the crate’s previous incarnation. Over the open end of the crate I hung my ragged baby blanket, striped in faded pinks and blues, so thin and soft and worn as to be completely translucent, with little rents and holes that let some dim light into my cell from the basement’s high window. For hours I could be a prisoner, unable to emerge unless rescued.

Which I never was. When my mother called me for dinner, or when a visit to the bathroom became inevitable, I would slip my bonds while, so to speak, looking the other way, and on my return it was as if I had never left.

But as the years went on, my fantasy life became unable to sustain itself in the face of hard reality. Or maybe normal cognitive development took me out of the stage in which children’s games can be all-consuming. I remember we went on a vacation one summer, a long drive through the American southwest. And when I came back, impatient to be alone for a change, my first priority was to sneak down and visit my crate. The familiar enclosure took me in, forcing me to duck a little more below the low planks above my head. But the thrill was gone. The items inside, so passionately imbued with meaning, were suddenly flimsy and babyish and disappointing. Real prisoners couldn’t get out when their mother called them. Real prisoners were in cells that locked from the outside.

This might have been the end of the prison game. But my secret obsessions, far from being dissipated, suddenly acquired a more focused and concentrated flavour, and it dawned on me that these feelings of mine went way beyond games. Did these insistent fantasies mean I wanted real imprisonment, real helplessness? I felt the familiar contraction in my belly, and then the fear.

We’d been learning about the Civil War and slavery in school, and I knew that slavery was evil and brutal and wrong. Not only had I learned it, I believed it. My parents knew Central American refugees, torture victims, people damaged and destroyed for life. How could I imagine wanting to be such a victim? How could I even play silly games about it? Was I insane?

Was I sick?

I didn’t know, but fantasy had to be okay; it was all I had. In fantasy I could be powerless and still not come to harm. And no one needed to know what went on in my head. We moved again a year later, and my crate was used for packing china. The first garbage day at our new house I saw it thrown, empty, into the maw of the truck and slowly crunched. The horror-movie thrill and the sudden, unexpected wrench of loss kept my eyes on the crate until it was digested and gone.

And now in some weird sense it had resurrected itself, perfected itself, become redeemed from the ignominy of being nothing but a plaything. Same proportions. Same size in relation to my grown-up body. Smoother and harder, finished and full of light and air. The realization by an architect of a child’s crude crayon sketch.

My master lifted the cage off the cardboard and arranged it by the wall, out of the way. Then with one long finger he directed me inside. The act of crawling in felt both new and utterly familiar. I turned to watch his hand close the door, and heard a heavy, solid clunk. The door I had crawled through was locked behind me. My heart pounded. No slipping out. I watched his long back bend and straighten as he folded cardboard and paper.

Suddenly the room was pretty much back to normal. Almost.

The surface I was sitting on was naugahyde with a bit of cushioning.

More comfortable than a wooden crate. There was a feeding slot in the door.

I couldn’t quite sit up straight, nor could I stretch out, but I’d be able to eat all right.

Anders came back with the shiny new dog dish in his hand, set the bowl on the bars above me and squatted down. I looked up at that face, jaws haloed with a glistening unshaven prickle, the mouth with its finely cut lips calm and considering, acute eyes observing me, stripping me bare, going through whatever checklist he used to gauge the state of his property.

Apparently satisfied, he went off and returned with the mitts. ‘Give me that paw, hunhund.’

My right hand was through the bars without a thought. Then a fugitive, foolish notion flashed. Could I have refused? Used the cage as some kind of refuge?

In my dreams. The bars were no barrier to his long arm. He had the key, and the punishment for such waywardness would be unthinkably awful.

Safety? This had nothing to do with safety for me; it had to do with tucking me away in a safe deposit box: security for my owner. So why did I feel so safe?

The mitts were the usual black leather, just narrow hand-shaped bags that locked onto my cuffs. Padded a little on the palm side. Thick and only marginally flexible. Paws. Clawless, clumsy, non-opposable animal paws.

‘There. Now your hands can be on the floor when you eat.’ He tied my hair back and slid the dog dish through the slot. Leftover goose in bite-size pieces, bits of potato and cabbage. I turned onto my knees and put my face into my food. This was certainly more comfortable than having my hands tied back. The mitts blended in with the black naugahyde of the floor, giving me an odd peripheral impression of my arms ending at the wrist. I could see Anders with a plate on his lap, turning on the TV. Cary Grant was talking to Sylvester. Soon he was skating with the bishop’s wife.

I heard rather than saw the rest of the movie. Nothing unusual about that. I often shared the room with the TV, nose pressed into a corner, or head locked under the edge of the couch while my ass served as footstool.

Sometimes I could even take in the story line, though action sequences left some gaps in my notion of the plot. Or I’d surface from subspace and catch snatches of news and Anders’ cynical growls at the newscasters and talking heads, before the restraints or the teasing pulled me back down again. This time I managed to follow the story, mostly because I’d seen the movie before. I sat, I lay on my side, I crouched on knees and elbows. Whenever my master got up and down, brought back this or that, my eyes followed him. He ignored me. I might have been furniture. No, I was enclosed in furniture, like a fish in an aquarium. My master showed every symptom of being alone in the room.

Again, this was nothing new; I was frequently ignored, all or parts of me. Watching, bound, as he moved freely was part of the everyday fabric of my life. But I’d never been set aside quite like this. Set aside, put away. I thought about that closet in the trailer; now I had a view; one with solid bars in the foreground. I thought about the space under the desk, except this space was made of metal and was locked. I grazed the bars with arms and legs, pressed them with my feet, turned around once or twice as if making a nest, and began to wish rather hard for some attention.

But slave care, it seemed, was a job that came after going out to shovel snow and before the next movie. There was a blast of cold, snow-scented air and daylight in the front hall, the clang of the shovel, and then silence. I could just see the TV’s flicker playing on the couch, but the sound was off.

One drip in the kitchen sink. The whump of the furnace going on down in the basement. Then after a while a whoosh, more cold air, and boots kicking off snow against the doorframe.

Anders padded over and eyed the TV screen, and then came over to the cage, bringing that clean outdoor smell with him. He removed the bowl, and with chilly hands buckled a bridle tightly round my head. The bit gag thoroughly occupied my mouth, and the web of straps brought the bridge of my nose and my jaw to a fixed distance from each other; no wiggle room.

No pleading for attention, either.

The next movie was It’s a Wonderful Life, and with commercials it must have been at least two and a half hours long. I listened, and I watched when Anders got up to pee, and I thought. There was plenty of time to revisit my shameful display, my pointless and pathetic leg-humping. I thought of his hands having difficulty pulling me back, and felt my face go hot again beneath the bridle. Was I that creature? Yes, it seemed so. He could have stopped me with a word, but I knew he loved it, loved reducing me to nothing but a frantic, primitive, urge, all higher brain regions turned to jelly.

Only memory storage remaining, for the sake of later humiliating retrieval.

On my back, feet up on the bars, I lay and stared at the Christmas tree lights, blinking on, off, on. He’d shoved the little sleigh behind the tree, out of the way, the shafts down against the wall. Not shafts for a human slave, with hands with which to pull, but shafts to be attached to a draft animal’s harness. I could feel their drag, heavier and heavier; my thighs would feel it tomorrow. Between my thighs I felt it now. I turned to my side and sucked back escaping saliva, wiped up a drop or two from the black surface with my forearm. Jimmy Stewart’s friends were serenading the newlyweds in the rain.

I watched the black and white TV shadows play over my master’s face. He had his feet up on the coffee table, not on me. I wanted to be under those legs and feel their warmth and weight. But I also wanted to be where he had put me. Where I seemed to fit, like a mollusc in a shell. Gently I ran an undifferentiated lump of a paw across the bars, one side, then the other.

Eyed the bars above me, the small cage door through which I’d come. My bounds.

I was let out at some point on a leash so that I could crawl into the bathroom and use the litter box. But I was back in the cage before Jimmy Stewart could miss yet another chance to get out of Bedford Falls.

I don’t know if Jimmy Stewart ever got out – that’s one of the least satisfactory things about the movie, in my opinion – but I did eventually get out myself. I got to crawl around blindfolded on a leash, sniffing for hidden cookies and chocolates. The whip let me know when I was ‘cold,’ but I got to eat what I found. Unable to see, I was distanced from any self-conscious worry about how I appeared, and foraged away, deep into animal mode.

Then I was blinking in the sudden light, and having my face wiped. My master glanced at his watch.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘You’d better call home.’

I stared, squeezed my eyes shut and shook my head, not a refusal but a confused attempt to reorient myself. Call home? Of course. We’d discussed it days ago. I attempted my first words in several hours, and a croak came out. I cleared my throat and tried again. ‘Master … it’s… I… ‘ Helplessly I shook my head again. ‘Uh – ‘

He smiled and stroked my shoulder. ‘Here, I’ll help. Think about work yesterday. That student who called at the last minute. How you helped her.

Remember?’

I nodded.

‘What did you help her with?’

‘Uh…um…hydrogen…engine …’

‘Data. Good. What did you get me for Christmas?’

‘The – the mantelpiece.’

‘Yes, you wonderful girl. What books did I buy you?’

Gathering speed, I named them.

‘What’s your mother going to say to you?’

‘Um…eat organic.’

‘What’s your dad going to want?’

‘Oh, you know… for me to apply to – to one of his contacts for – for some high-powered job.’

I’d been boosted back up the evolutionary ladder. My master settled me on the floor by the desk, one mitt off so I could hold the phone, and chained me to the filing cabinet. At least my parents weren’t expecting a webcam visit over a computer link. Anders dialed for me, and then left me to myself.

It went okay. I managed to keep my chain quiet, listened to stories of my nephew’s brilliance, and handled not-so-subtle interrogations.

‘I get a lot of exercise, mom. Yoga and aerobics. And we’re going to go skating.”

“Skating through all that snow and ice? Surely that’s not safe.’

‘Not rollerblading, mom; ice skating. Some Winnipegger you are.

You’ve been in California too long.’

‘Oh my god! You’re right!’ For a time we explored the insidious influence of the west coast on northern souls, her own in particular. Then she was back at me. ‘I hope you’re staying out of the grocery chains, Maia. I know there are very good organic markets there, plenty of options for vegetarians. Something called the Big Carrot on Danfield, no, Danforth…?’

Anders, in the kitchen, was carefully slicing something that looked to me like it had recently been on the hoof.

‘Sorry, Mom; nice try. But he usually buys organic meat. Anders? My mother wants to know if you buy organic meat.’

He took the phone and discussed naturally-raised beef and free-range poultry with her, one rough jeaned leg pressing between my breasts. He and my mom had an affable long-distance acquaintance over such topics. Then he handed the phone back to me and the leg was gone. I swallowed and took a long breath. Normal voice, normal voice. ‘How’s Daddy?’

‘Impossible. I can’t get him out of his chair even for a walk. Heaven knows what his arteries look like. And he’s smoking those cigars again.

Dan? Dan! Come talk to your daughter.’ A pause. ‘No, I won’t bring you the phone, it’s too noisy in there. You can walk this far.”

“Hi, Daddy.’

‘Hi, honey. How’s work? Great. Listen, there’s someone I’d like you to talk to. He’s from a very good firm….’

Dinner, a kind of smorgasbord, was very late. I knelt beside my master with my hands fastened behind me, ankles locked together, nipples stretched once again in pretty filigree, with dangling bells. A bit of herring dangled above my nose. ‘Come on, puppy.’ It was the signal to beg. I stretched and arched and extended my tongue and was rewarded.

But after that he picked up a book and read while he ate. I nudged his leg with my head to remind him of my presence. He teased me, holding the food too high and flicking my painfully extended nipples. I had to whine and whimper and pant to be fed at all. Then he wouldn’t deliver until I managed to ring my nipple bells for him.

That night, bloated with so much rich cuisine, I floated just on the surface of sleep. Steam swirled around me; that and the clang of metal doors seemed to reflect the state of my digestion.

A whistle shrilled. ‘All aboard!’ Time to get on and go.

No! Panic surged. Where was Anders?

Frantic, I turned my head to search, and discovered him right beside me.

His leg was against my side. There was the reassuring pull of the leash at my collar, the platform hard against my hands and knees. He had me safe.

Relieved, I settled down and observed the maelstrom of moving feet rushing for the train. High heels clacked, pant legs swished, last minute luggage was rolled and hefted. A long pair of legs dressed in suit pants dodged through the crowd. They stopped two feet from my face, shiny wing tips pointing my way. I looked up the line of trousers to the double-breasted suit jacket, further up to the high face crowned by a fedora, interposed between me and the sky. A whistle blew; wheels began their slow revolutions. Jimmy Stewart leaned down to ruffle my hair. Then he turned and stepped onto the moving car. I wagged my tail and watched him go.