The Girl in the Flammable Skirt Read Free

bedroom and comes out with a pair of orange-handled scissors. He walks slowly even though he knows I’m watching him. Back on the couch, he doesn’t sit any closer to me but just takes the hem and slices up, up past my hip, waist, side of my breast, under my arm, down thesleeve, up around, to the shoulder, snip at the neck. I feel like he took a letter opener and gently opened me up; he did such a neat job of it. Leaning back on his side of the couch, he replaces the scissors and surveys his work. I smile at him. The next move should be his.
    “I don’t think I’m going to touch you,” he says.
    I’m there, waiting, body cooled by the breeze coming in off the street through the window behind us.
    “What?” I know he can see my breast; it’s right there; I can sense it out of the bottom of my eye.
    “Nope.” He stands up and looks around.
    “What, are you going to tie me up or something?” I slide out my other arm so that my upper body is exposed, just my legs and waist still swathed in maroon satin. His couch is kelly green and it’s an interesting contrast. I spend a minute appreciating this.
    “Tie you up?” He goes to the refrigerator and pours himself a glass of water. “No. I don’t do that shit.” He doesn’t seem to even notice that I’m half out of the dress.
    “Hello,” I say, “what is going on here? You just opened up my dress.”
    “Yeah,” he says, “thanks.”
    “But we have six hours,” I tell him, “you said we have six hours.”
    “Well,” he says, sipping the water, the counter between us, “what would you like to do?”
    I’m up off the couch which means the dress is on the floor and I’m naked in high heels. Which is maybe how I’vewanted to be all day, those straps crisscrossing up my ankles like painted snakes. I take the water out of his hand and hop up on the kitchen counter and pull him to me with my feet. Then I kiss him, smoke taste still on his lips which are cold from the water. He keeps his mouth closed and I press my body to his. “Six hours,” I say, “is a long time.”
    “Lady,” he says, “I don’t think it’s going to happen here. I wanted to cut your dress. I don’t really want to fuck you, that’s just not what I’m looking for today. Sorry if that was misleading.”
    He has his water back in his hand. I take it from him and have a sip. It’s just water.
    “Yeah, well,” I tell him, “it was. I do think cutting up someone’s dress is misleading.”
    Stepping back, he exits my feet without difficulty, and looks straight at me, into me, like he did in the subway, the way that I love. He leans against the refrigerator and a magnet drops to the floor.
    “You want to be tied up?” he says then. “I’ll tie you up.”
    If I need to scream, out of the millions of people on Market Street, one of them will hear me. Someone would hear me and do something. I can scream really, really loud.
    He leads me to his bedroom which is very plain, nothing on the walls, an unmade bed. He has one chair at a desk and he puts me in it and goes to his closet and removes two belts. He starts to weave one of the belts through the slats at the back of the chair and around my hands.
    “Bedroom or living room?” he asks, his voice sort of flat.
    “Living room, please,” I say.
    Lifting me up in the chair, he brings me into the other room. My arms are already bound so he begins on my legs with swift, efficient hands. The window is still open, and I’m thinking about where I should aim my scream just in case.
    It seems like he can’t tie both legs effectively without another belt so he reaches down and whips the one out of his jeans, which then sink a little lower on his hips. I can see the broken angle of his pelvis. His nipples are still soft. I lean down, feeling like a deer in a trap, and dare to kiss one of them, bite it a little, those sweet soft fearful nipples.
    “Hey,” he says, “I’m doing something here.”
    I lean forward to try to kiss him