“Next week I promise you’ll know all.” As Ronnie left for her usual two o’clock meeting, she added, “I’ll arrange to have the whole afternoon free. We’ll talk.”
The address that Ronnie had given Carla led her to a small, three-story brownstone on East 54th. Carla climbed the four steps to the entrance and rang the bell. Ronnie opened the door dressed in a soft gray wool long-sleeved jumpsuit, her dark blond hair loose around her shoulders. A pair of large, free-form silver earrings and a silver herringbone choker were her only jewelry. Carla was glad that she had chosen to forgo her usual jeans and had worn a dark green wool suit with a beige raw silk blouse.
The two women bussed cheeks, and Carla followed Ronnie through a small vestibule and into a beautifully furnished living room.
“Some fantastic place,” Carla said as she looked around. Everything was done in black, white, and shades of gray. The sofa was overstuffed, covered in black leather banded with leather straps secured with heavy metal buckles. It was accented with throw pillows in black-and-white stripes and plaids. The two comfortable-looking soft chairs were white jacquard fabric with identical black-and-white pillows. A fluffy white rug covered the center of the floor; Carla could see the original highly polished inlaid wood where the rug ended. The walls were covered with a soft silver-gray silk and the windows were draped in a slightly darker gray damask. End tables of black lacquer held white-based, modern lamps that filled the room with light.
Vases and pots of flowers placed on tables and pedestals around the room provided the only color. Roses, chrysanthemums, and geraniums added their hues to blooming cactuses and unusual blossoms that Carla didn’t recognize. Several hanging baskets of living blooms hung from hooks in both the walls and ceiling. One wall was all windows with a decorative but highly functional iron grill outside. The opposite wall contained a long, white, glass-fronted wall unit filled with books of every kind, from popular novels to poetry to volumes on natural sciences and history. The other walls held black-and-white Ansel Adams prints and other, smaller black-and-white photographs by artists Carla didn’t know. At one end of the room sat an antique maple desk.
Carla whistled. “Holy cow.” Through her real estate wanderings, she had learned enough to appreciate the class and expense of the decorating.
“Just a little hideaway,” Ronnie said, laughing.
“Little? Either you inherited a small fortune, your writing is doing extremely well, or Jack indulges you and your ‘little hideaway.’”
“Or ‘D’ none of the above.” Ronnie handed Carla a champagne flute and filled it from an already opened bottle of Dom Pérignon. She clinked her glass against her friend’s and, with an enigmatic smile, said, “To ‘none of the above.’”
They drank. “Okay,” Carla said, “give.”
“I think we know each other well enough for me to show you my photographs. Sit down.” She motioned toward the sofa and Carla picked up a photo album covered in black satin and sat down next to her friend. When she opened the album Carla saw a picture unlike anything she had expected. A statuesque brunette posed, wearing a black leather and chain bathing suit-like outfit. The links draped over her naked breasts, the supple leather caressed her hips and belly. On her hands she wore soft, elbow-length, black leather gloves and her legs were covered with thigh-high patent leather boots with five-inch heels.
The woman’s wavy, auburn hair hung softly across her chest with one curl surrounding an erect dark brown nipple. In one hand she had a short, black leather riding crop. Her makeup was heavy, with bright red lipstick and exaggerated eyeshadow and liner. “I don’t get it,” said Carla.
“Turn the page.”
The picture on the following page was of a woman with pale white-blond braids that hung down in front of her dress. She was turned slightly sideways, looking shy and vulnerable and dressed in a puffed-sleeve pink dress, an adult version of the dress a five-year-old girl might wear, with a fluffy full skirt over several petticoats and a wide sash tied into a large bow which peeked out from behind. Her white ankle socks were neatly cuffed and her black patent leather Mary-Janes gleamed. Her face, artfully made up with soft rouge and pale pink lipstick, looked youthful and familiar. As Carla examined the face more carefully, she gasped. “That’s you.” She flipped the page backward. “So’s this.”
“Turn the page.”
The pictures that followed were all of Ronnie in various costumes: a harem girl with a transparent veil covering the lower half of her face, a prim gray-haired woman in a white high-necked blouse and sensible shoes, a voluptuous female pirate wearing short shorts that showed the half-moons of her ass peeking beneath and a blouse unbuttoned to the waist, and a woman in a black satin teddy standing over a man whose arms and legs were secured to the frame of a brass bed with lengths of heavy-link chain and padlocks.
“Phew. Ronnie, I’m amazed here. Okay, fill me in.”
“I call the album Black Satin and it’s really a menu. Selected people get to pick their…shall we say entrée and I supply the dessert.”
“You’re trying to tell me that you’re a hooker.”
“I’m a very selective, high-priced prostitute.”
Carla was flabbergasted. She had expected something unusual. After all Ronnie had never been mainstream. But this? What could she say?
Ronnie spoke, her voice a bit tentative. “No condemnation? No ‘how could you?’”
“I’m too much in shock to say much of anything. But, of course, your life is your own.”
Ronnie smiled. “And it’s wonderful. I enjoy every bit of my secret existence.”
“What about Jack?”
Ronnie smiled. “I think he knows what’s going on. He travels and I know that he entertains himself while he’s away, and so do I.”
“What about AIDS?”
“I thought about that a lot when all this began. Many of my friends—that’s what I call them, my friends—don’t want actual intercourse. They want oral sex, toys, and/or mutual masturbation. And those who do want to have intercourse must wear condoms.”
“What about oral sex? Isn’t that risky?”
“Not as risky as unprotected intercourse, but yes, it is. I thought about it a lot at the beginning, and I decided it was a risk I was willing to take.”
“How in the world did you get involved in this?”
Ronnie leaned back and put her feet on the coffee table. “How, indeed.”
Chapter
2
“I guess it all started just over three years ago,” Ronnie explained. “You have to understand that Jack and I have always had an open relationship. I guess you’d say we were swingers. We both enjoy sex a lot and find that outside activities actually enhance what we have.”
“You mean…with other people?”
Ronnie chuckled. “Yes, both of us were. And it didn’t bother me at all. I loved the idea that someone else was making Jack happy, particularly since he was—and still is—away so much. And back then he’d come home with new ideas, toys, sexy lingerie.” When she saw Carla’s expression, Ronnie added, “Put your eyebrows down, Carla. You remember I was always the experimenter.”
“I remember some of your experiments. Like Oreos and peanut butter. Go on.”
“Well, the only strict requirement that Jack and I had, and still have, is that no one has intercourse without a condom. Period.”
“Don’t you get jealous?”
“I can say truthfully that I’m not jealous. I can’t speak for what goes on in Jack’s mind, but for me, not a bit. Anyway, because