Let's Go Play at the Adams'

These rather complicated considerations did not, of course, come to Barbara as any

neat, little mental essay. The component ideas were there, they had been 67

there forever, and they simply flashed into a vague plan. She went from insight to surprise

to possibility to conclusion in a very few seconds. Her only question to herself was, Can I?

"Is it too tight?" John said it again as if somehow he was now the one who had offended her.

Barbara made several experimental, anguished, twisting movements in her chair and

permitted herself the smallest sound of someone in pain. She felt rather , amateurish

about it, but it was a beginning. "Yes," she said, and said it very meekly.

John dropped the rope he had been fiddling with and sat up indecisively. Perhaps he was

even timid.

"Come feel for yourself. Please, John."

He got up and came over behind her. "What is it?

Your hands?"

She was able to use the vanity mirror to both bend down away from him physically-as if in

fear? pain?-and yet look up at him through her eyelashes (unfortunately not made-up).

"Mostly," she said. "Couldn't you loosen up just a little bit or untie one hand and let me

move it around and get some circulation? You're going to really hurt me badly if you keep

this up."

John could see that this was true, Only her one wrist had been free that morning and now it

was tacked up behind her again. Besides, keeping her sitting up had been his own idea.

"Hmnn-" He considered and savored a bit. "Think of something, please? I couldn't get

away if I wanted."

"OK," he said with magnanimity. Going to where he had been sitting, he brought back the

spare piece of rope and bound her upper body more securely to the chair back. Then,

however, he released her wrists, both of them, one by one.

"Oh! Oh-h-h-" The sound she made was sincere enough. There had been rope on her wrists

almost without relief for over thirty-six hours. As she disbelievingly allowed her hands to

fall by her sides, it was

68

like when she was a child and her hands were cold from playing in the snow and burned

when she came in the house. Blood seemed to rocket straight out to the ends of her fingers

and pulse there. She flexed gently and brought her hands up to her lap where she could

see them (rope around her body prevented her from doing more). They were red splotched

with little white freckles in the palms and blue veins on top, and there were deep indents in

the wrists where the cord had been.

If her complaint was real, however, the accompanying gestures were not. She closed her

eyes and bit her lower lip and furrowed her forehead. Unfortunately she was not an actress

and could not cry on demand. It was outcby enough (a term they used on the swim team),

but it wasn't going to kill her nor could she pretend that it would.

"Umnn-" She tried to stroke her sore bands, but one would not quite reach the other.

"What is it?"

"The blood's starting to run back. It burns." She moved her fingers like someone rubbing

sand or powder between them.

"Is it better, though?"

"Yes." She bit her lip again. Bravely this time. Impulsively, even daringly, John reached

down

and took one of her free hands in his and began massaging the inside of her wrist. -

"Ow!"

"Does it hurt?"

"No." In fact, it did. What her hands really needed was just to be let alone, but she did not

say it. "That's nice, but be gentler. Please?" She looked up at him briefly and then lowered

her eyes again. She made an effort to relax. That was going to be the nicest, softest, most

maidenly hand that any boy ever stroked, even if it killed her. It worked, and after a while,

he took her other hand and chafed some color back into it. Such a game could not go on

forever, however.

At length he stood back. "What about your legs?"

69

Sexy Barbara looked up at him demurely, and he colored a bit.

"Oh, I see. Only my ankles. The comer of the chair legs-" In the morning, Bobby had tied

her upper legs together above the knees and then tied each foot out to its own chair leg,

and the chair legs were uncompromisingly square and sharp (to her). This, John proceeded

to change, eyes discreetly upon his work which nonetheless seemed to go slowly. He untied

each ankle and then retied them-Ioosely-_together in front of her but not to the chair. She

could swing her legs up and down like a child in a swing if she wanted to, but she did not.

Afterward he slightly eased the rope about her bare knees.

During all of this, Barbara-both Barbaras-had the opportunity to examine her captor more

closely. He was, as she had noticed straight along, a manly boy but more manly than she

had taken the time to see before. He had strong, suntanned shoulders and arms, smooth

and babylike perhaps, but definitely developed. And he was a clean boy with none of the

acrid smells she associated with men on the make. He was like a big, strong pup.

No, stop that, Barbara said. The whole mental sequence, her entire imagined conversation