“There’s no one quite like you,” he said with a wistful sigh, caressing my instep, half a dozen vanilla-scented candles twinkling behind him on a grotesquely oversize entertainment center, the soft R & B strains of Kem floating from a boom box. I had just told my foot slave I’m leaving Chicago and moving to Las Vegas at the end of the month. This would be our last rendezvous, after seven years of semiregular meetings.
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The apartment was small and messy, with stacks of books and VHS tapes monopolizing the floor space. On top of one book pile was Bill Murray’s memoir Cinderella Story: My Life in Golf. Danny hit the play button on his boom box, and the strains of the Blade Runner sound track filled the room. Then he removed my sandals.
I gritted my teeth as his fingers ran like spiders over my soles while he held my ankles in place with his other hand. All the while I prayed he wouldn’t reach behind him, whip out a machete, and lop my digits off. He licked each foot and then pressed both feet together to form a makeshift vagina and slobbered inside the hole.
For years I was in his life once a week, every week–sometimes twice. When the security guard started looking me up and down and tsking under her breath, I started bringing books and newspapers with me. I told her I was helping Danny with his reading. “But don’t act like you know,” I told her. “He’d be really embarrassed.” She nodded and put her finger over her lips.
He liked to curl up at her feet.
