Chapter Twenty-Two #2
He doesn't answer right away. He lets it stand in the kitchen between us, and he looks at me the whole time, and there's nothing on his face that's surprised, because he's never surprised, but there's something that settles, something that arrives in him quiet and pleased, the look of a man watching a thing land right on the mark he set for it a long time ago.
"You've been carrying that a while," he says.
"Since last night."
"I could tell there was something." His mouth goes a little soft. "You've never been able to hide one from me. Last night you had one you were sitting on. I let you sit on it." He reaches out and moves a piece of hair off my forehead. "I wanted you to be the one who brought it to me."
"I'm bringing it."
"I know you are." He turns and leans back against the counter and takes me in, all of me, the camisole and the sealed fullness he put in me this morning and the small locked front and my face waiting on his answer. "Say the rest of it. The part under the part."
I don't have to hunt for it. It's right there.
"I don't want it to be a thing that can be undone," I say.
"Everything else about me already can't be.
The name can't. The way I am for you can't. There's no key that puts any of it back.
The cage is the last thing with a key. I want it to not have one.
I want the last click to be the last one there ever is. "
Something moves through him then, low and satisfied, and he lets me see the edge of it, the pleasure of it, and it lands on me as approval and I take it in like sun.
"That's the right thing to want," he says.
"And you're right that it's the last one.
There's a version of the cage that doesn't come off.
No key. No lock to pick. It goes on once and it's done, and it's smaller than this one, and it's meant to be pretty, meant to be looked at, made to be the last thing your front ever wears.
" He says it warm and even, describing a fact, like he'd tell me the weather turned or the pasta water was ready.
"I'll have it made. It takes a little while to have made right.
And then I'll put it on you, and that'll be that. "
"When," I say, and I hear how much I want it in the one word.
"Soon." He lets the word sit. "Not today.
A thing like that you do once, so you do it right, and you don't rush the last one.
" His hand comes to the side of my neck, warm, resting.
"But it's coming. It's already decided. You decided it and I decided it and now it's just a thing waiting to be made.
You can hold that. You're good at holding a thing till I'm ready to give it to you. "
The whole of me leans toward it. Soon. Made right. The last one. It's the plug this morning all over again, made enormous. A thing he's going to give me that I'll keep with no till on it.
"Okay," I say. "Soon."
"There is one thing I can give you now, though," he says.
He pushes off the counter and goes down the hall to his room and I hear a drawer, the low one, and he comes back with something in his hand, and he's not holding it like a surprise, not holding it out for me to gasp at.
He's holding it the way you hold a thing you've had a while and always meant for a certain use.
It's a collar. Plain and black, a band of soft leather maybe an inch wide, a small steel buckle, a flat little steel ring at the front no bigger than a wedding band. No bow. No charm. Nothing decorative on it at all. Just a plain kept thing, made to sit at the base of a throat.
"This isn't the cage," he says. "The cage is coming, and that one's forever.
This is the thing you get to wear in the meantime, so the meantime's got a mark on it too.
So you don't have to walk around waiting with nothing on to show for it.
" He turns it once in his hands. "It means the same thing the cage is going to mean.
It means kept. It means you already belong here and you already know it and now there's a thing on you that says so, so you can stop having to decide it fresh every morning.
You don't have to think about whether you're mine.
You just look down, or you feel it there, and it's already answered. "
"Yeah," I say. My throat's tight around the word. Not with fear. With the size of being handed a place to stand.
"Come here, then."
I come. He doesn't make a ceremony of it.
He steps in close and reaches around the back of my neck with both hands, and I feel the leather come around my throat, soft and cool, and settle in at the base where the neck meets the shoulders.
He draws the free end through the buckle and his fingers find the hole without looking down, first try, no hunting for it, the leather already sized to exactly the throat it's going around, the way your hand finds the last stair in the dark because it's counted them before.
He seats the pin. The band closes snug, not tight, a steady even pressure all the way around, present the way the cage is present, the way the plug is present, a thing on me I'll feel every time I turn my head.
The warmth comes into his face a beat after his hands are already done.
His hands buckled it easy and quick and sure, and then he looks at the result and his eyes go soft over it, pleased, and the softness lands a half-step behind the work the way it sometimes does with him.
I feel the small gap in the timing and I don't read into it.
It's just how he is. I've stopped trying to line up the warmth and the hands. They come in whatever order they come.
"There," he says. His thumb runs along the top edge of the band once, checking the fit, tucking a fold of the camisole strap out from under it. "Look at you. That's better. That's how you should've always looked."
I put two fingers up and touch it. The leather, the little cool ring at the front. It sits exactly where a thing like that should sit. I turn my head and feel it move with me and stay.
"I'm not supposed to take this off either," I say. Not a question. I want to hear it be true.
"No. You leave it on. Cleaning it, that's mine to do, same as the cage.
Otherwise it stays." He tips my chin up with one finger and looks at me wearing it.
"You wear that till the last cage is ready.
And when it's ready, you'll have both. The band and the one that never comes off.
And then there won't be a single thing on you that isn't kept. "
* * *
He goes back to his drawings and I go back to the afternoon, and I move through the rest of it wearing the band with his finish still sealed in me and the cage still small and locked against the front of me, and the whole apartment feels rearranged by three ounces of leather.
I keep finding it. Reaching for a glass, the band moves against my throat.
Bending to load the machine, the little ring taps once, cool, at the notch of my collarbone.
Every time it happens the same warm thing rolls through, the kept thing, deeper now than this morning because now there's a mark on the outside to match the seal on the inside.
I catch my reflection in the dark glass of the microwave, a small pale figure in thin straps with a plain black band at the throat, and the figure looks finished in a way she didn't yesterday.
Not done. Finished the way a house is finished before the last coat goes on. Standing. Waiting on one last thing.
Because there is one last thing, and I know exactly where it is.
The collar stays. The name stays. The fullness he put in me stays till he says.
But the cage against the front of me, right now, this afternoon, is still the one with the pin and the key.
It still clicks. Somewhere in his pocket, or on the ring in the low drawer, there's a small piece of metal that opens it, and as long as that piece of metal exists the cage is a thing that could, in theory, come off me, and I don't want the theory. I've never wanted anything less.
But it's different now than it was last night.
Last night the wanting had no shape and nowhere to go and I carried it behind my teeth because saying it would make it real before I was ready.
Today it's said, and answered, and the difference between last night and now is the whole world.
Last night the cage was a door I'd noticed was a door.
Today it's a door with a date on it. Not a wish anymore.
An order placed. A thing being made, right now, somewhere, to my size, so that it can go on me once and never come off, and all that's left between me and forever is the little stretch of time it takes to make a thing right.
I touch the band at my throat and I feel the answer sitting in it.
Soon. He said soon. He doesn't say things he doesn't mean and he doesn't rush the last one, and both of those are true at once and both of them are him, and I hold them like he told me I'm good at holding a thing till he's ready to give it.
The cage clicks. For a little while longer, it still clicks.
And I stand in the kitchen in the late gray light, kept and full and collared, and wait for the last click of my life to be made and brought home and pressed shut, and I have never in my life wanted a door closed on me so badly, or been so sure the hand that closes it is already reaching for the latch.