Full Dark, No Stars

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 décor), she came to

something that wasn’t a catalogue. No, not a catalogue at al . It was a magazine cal ed 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 bel y. There was fake blood on her chin, neck, and arms. Across the bottom of the page, in screaming yel ow 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 wel 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 al 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 appal ed as she was (the blood on

the cover model was obviously fake, but that scream looked al 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 al 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.

She looked at the cover again, and noticed an odd thing: there was no price on it. No bar code, either. She checked the back cover, curious about what such a magazine might cost, and winced at the

picture there: a naked blonde strapped to what looked like a steel operating-room table. This one’s expression of terror looked about as real as a three-dol ar bil , however, which was sort of comforting.

And the portly man standing over her with what appeared to be a Ginsu knife just looked ridiculous in his armlets and leather underpants—more like an accountant than someone about to carve up the

Bondage Bitch du jour.

Bob’s an accountant, her mind remarked.

A stupid thought launched from her brain’s al -too-large Stupid Zone. She pushed it away just as she pushed the remarkably unpleasant magazine back into the pile of catalogues after ascertaining

that there was no price or bar code on the back, either. And as she shoved the cardboard box under the workbench—she had changed her mind about carting the catalogues back into the house—the

answer to the no-price/no-bar-code mystery came to her. It was one of those magazines they sold in a plastic wrapper, with al the naughty bits covered. The price and the code had been on the wrapper,

of course that was it, what else could it be? He had to’ve bought the goddarn thing somewhere, assuming he hadn’t fished it out of the trash.

Maybe he bought it over the Internet. There are probably sites that specialize in that sort of thing. Not to mention young women dressed up to look like twelve-year-olds.