Pictorial

Chapter Four of “The Red-Haired Woman”

One year later…

I see the buff-colored package the special courier hands me as I sign for it, clamping my fingers on the pen to keep my hand from shaking. Another quarterly delivery. I close my door and lock it. Flippantly toss the package onto the table in the kitchen, only to scramble as it nearly slides off and falls.

Sitting, I loosen my tie, then pick up the plainly-wrapped parcel before reaching into my pocket for the stiletto clipped there. I carefully slice through the sealed and taped closure at one end, then tilt and slide the heavy-paged, glossy periodical from the inner plastic sleeve.

I sit and stare at the cover for a few moments, noting again the outlined font of the title, Immodéré. I slip my fingers in-between the pages, feeling them peel apart unerringly at the section containing her. The Red-Haired Woman.

She is never named.

It’s the first time I’ve seen her from the back, in this new pictorial, resplendent in the underground journal of sexuality one can access only by word-of-mouth — and a ten-thousand-dollar deposit by wired funds to an offshore account. But, that hair, that color. The photography shows its high caliber in the way it caresses her long, flame-colored braid, hanging down along the supple, creamy dimple of her spine.

It has to be her. Her. How she has haunted my dreams, the way she can look so lithe, and languid, stretched as she is in the next glossy frame — bound over whatever diabolical apparatus her captors for the night wish to secure her to — in this case an oak spirits barrel, set in a sturdy cradle.

Her ankles are secured to the legs by silken scarves, in such a way that her come-fuck-me, crimson, open-toed heels can still find purchase against a rough-hewn floor. Another photograph lingers closely upon polished toenails peeking from the patent leather. Such an innocent depravity.

She drapes herself over the barrel as if she herself had willed it, her surprisingly elegant hands — with nails that mirror her toes — secured by her wrists so she can grasp the cradle’s legs and elevate herself if she should so choose.

She does so in the next frame, a pose that’s not posed, a stance no lowly photographer…

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