Full dark,no stars

“Bob!” she cried, only it came out in two exasperated syllables (the way it did when he tracked in mud or left his sopping towels on the bathroom floor, as if they were in a fancy hotel with maid service), not Bob but BOH-ub! Because, really, she could read him like a book. He thought she ordered too much from the mail-order catalogues, had once gone so far as to declare she was addicted to them (which was ridiculous, it was Butterfingers she was addicted to). That little psychological analysis had earned him a two-day cold shoulder. But he knew how her mind worked, and that with things that weren’t absolutely vital, she was the original out-of-sight, out-of-mind girl. So he had gathered up her catalogues, the sneak, and stowed them out here. Probably the next stop would have been the recycling bin.

Danskin… Express… Computer Outlet… Macworld… Monkey Ward… Layla Grace…

The deeper she went, the more exasperated she became. You’d think they were tottering on the edge of bankruptcy because of her spendthrift ways, which was utter bullshit. She had forgotten all about Two and a Half Men; she was already selecting the piece of her mind she intended to give Bob when he called from Montpelier (he always called after he’d had his dinner and was back at the motel). But first, she intended to take all these catalogues right back into the goddarn house, which would take three or possibly four trips, because the stack was at least two feet high, and those slick catalogues were heavy. It was really no wonder she’d stumbled over the box.

Death by catalogues, she thought. Now that would be an ironic way to g The thought broke off as clean as a dry branch. She was thumbing as she was thinking, now a quarter of the way down in the stack, and beneath Gooseberry Patch (country d?cor), she came to something that wasn’t a catalogue. No, not a catalogue at all. It was a magazine called Bondage Bitches. She almost didn’t take it out, and probably wouldn’t have if she’d come across it in one of his drawers, or on that high shelf with the magic hair-replacement products. But finding it here, stashed in a pile of what had to be at least two hundred catalogues… her catalogues… there was something about that which went beyond the embarrassment a man might feel about a sexual kink.

The woman on the cover was bound to a chair and naked except for a black hood, but the hood only covered the top half of her face and you could see she was screaming. She was tied with heavy ropes that bit into her breasts and belly. There was fake blood on her chin, neck, and arms. Across the bottom of the page, in screaming yellow type, was this unpleasant come-on: BAD BITCH BRENDA ASKED FOR IT AND GETS IT ON PAGE 49!

Darcy had no intention of turning to page 49, or to any other page. She was already explaining to herself what this was: a male investigation. She knew about male investigations from a Cosmo article she’d read in the dentist’s office. A woman had written in to one of the magazine’s many advisors (this one the on-staff shrink who specialized in the often mysterious bearded sex) about finding a couple of gay magazines in her husband’s briefcase. Very explicit stuff, the letter-writer had said, and now she was worried that her husband might be in the closet. Although if he was, she continued, he was certainly hiding it well in the bedroom.

Not to worry, the advice-lady said. Men were adventurous by nature, and many of them liked to investigate sexual behavior that was either alternative-gay sex being number one in that regard, group sex a close second-or fetishistic: water sports, cross-dressing, public sex, latex. And, of course, bondage. She had added that some women were also fascinated by bondage, which had mystified Darcy, but she would have been the first to admit she didn’t know everything.

Male investigation, that was all this was. He had maybe seen the magazine on a newsstand somewhere (although when Darcy tried to imagine that particular cover on a newsstand, her mind balked), and had been curious. Or maybe he’d picked it out of a trash can at a convenience store. He had taken it home, looked through it out here in the garage, had been as appalled as she was (the blood on the cover model was obviously fake, but that scream looked all too real), and had stuck it in this gigantic stack of catalogues bound for the recycling bin so she wouldn’t come across it and give him a hard time. That was all it was, a one-off. If she looked through the rest of these catalogues, she’d find nothing else like it. Maybe a few Penthouse s and panty-mags-she knew most men liked silk and lace, and Bob was no exception in this regard-but nothing more in the Bondage Bitches genre.