The first night he slept on his back

The box sat on the kitchen table, and he walked around it the way you walk around something that isn’t yours. He had brought it in on Thursday, set it down, washed his hands and sat across from me — waiting for what I would say. I finished my tea and pulled the box towards me.

Inside: three rings of different sizes, the cage itself, a plastic pin and two keys on a small ring. One key I took off at once and threaded onto the chain I had bought a week earlier. The other went into an envelope, the envelope into the box my watch came in, the box onto the top shelf. He watched me do it and asked nothing.

“Undress. Here, under the lamp.”

He took everything off and stood by the table, arms at his sides, barefoot on the tiles. I took the middle ring and tried it. It wouldn’t go. I took the larger one — it went on easily, and I slid a finger under it: between the ring and the skin there was room for a fingertip, no more. That is how it should be, according to every review I had read. Then the cage. At first it wouldn’t settle: he wasn’t entirely calm, and I had to wait with my palm on his stomach until his breathing evened out. About three minutes. Then it settled.

The pin slid into its slot with a click. I turned the key. The lock closed more quietly than I expected — a short, dry sound, like a letterbox.

“Walk to the door and back.”

He walked. The step wasn’t his — shorter, more careful, like a man in new shoes. I had him sit, then stand and bend over. No red line under the ring. I ran a finger along the edge where the steel met the skin, and he flinched at the cold of my finger, not the steel.

“Get dressed. Dinner in an hour.”

The first evening

He cooked dinner in the cage, and I could hear it through the wall: in the kitchen he moved more slowly, and twice he stopped at the stove and just stood. I didn’t go and look. At the table he sat up straight, ate little, and looked at the chain at my neck more often than at his plate. The key lay under my collarbone, warm from my skin. I didn’t touch it, and he knew where it was anyway.

After dinner he washed up while I sat with a notebook and wrote the first line: “Thursday. Large ring. No mark.” I had started the notebook so that in a month we would be talking about facts, not about what one of us thought they had felt.

“Go to bed first. I’ll come.”

Usually he waits for me. That evening I wanted him to lie down alone and find out how lying down felt now.

Two in the morning

He got up at two. I wasn’t asleep — I was listening. He tried lying on his stomach, the way he always does, and turned straight back over. Then on his side, then on his back again. Then he sat on the edge of the bed with his elbows on his knees. I could hear his breathing: he was trying to breathe quietly, which made it louder.

“What?”

“It presses. I didn’t think it would be this soon.”

“On your back. Hands on the blanket.”

He lay down. I didn’t get up and didn’t turn on the light. The key on its chain lay on my chest, and I put my palm over it — not for him, he couldn’t see in the dark. For me. I could get up, take the key and open it. No one would know but the two of us. I lay there and checked whether I wanted that. I didn’t. I wanted him to lie on his back and breathe, and I wanted us both to know in the morning that the first night was done.

Twenty minutes or so later his breathing evened out. I fell asleep after he did.

Coffee

In the morning he was in the kitchen before me. Coffee on the table, two cups, mine at my place. He stood by the window, dressed, and when I came in he turned and didn’t sit.

“Coffee’s ready. I didn’t know if I was allowed to sit down first.”

For sixteen years he had sat down at the table whenever he liked and never thought about it. One night in the cage, and he was asking about a chair. I noted that: steel between his legs, and the question was about a chair.

“Sit.”

He sat. He drank the coffee with both hands, the way you drink something hot outside in winter. I asked if he had slept. From three to seven, he said, on his back; woke once and didn’t get up.

“Show me.”

He stood and pushed his house trousers down right there at the table, without a word. I bent to look. Under the ring the skin was faintly pink on the side he had lain on in the night. Not red. I pressed with a finger and let go — the colour came back at once. I wrote in the notebook: “Friday. Pink on the left, no mark. Slept from three.” He stood with his trousers down and waited for me to finish writing.

“Get dressed. Tonight, the shower — together. I want to see how you wash.”

“Yes, Mistress.”

His voice was normal. His hands — I saw him pull his trousers up — were trembling, and he put them in his pockets.

What the first day taught me

I had thought the first month would be about him: how he would get used to it, how he would sleep, what he would say. The first twenty-four hours turned out to be about me. At night, lying with my palm on the key, I learned that I could open it — and didn’t. That did more for me than the lock did for him.

The second key stayed in the watch box. I didn’t think about it until the evening. In the evening, when he stood in the tub and I held the shower head and made sure the water got under the ring, he asked where the second key was. I said he knew where. He nodded and never asked again — not that day, not in the days after. It mattered to him that the key existed. It mattered to me that he never asked me to get it.

A month later I read the notebook through. Thirty lines, all short. There was a mark once, on day twelve, after he had gone running in the evening. I took the cage off for an hour; he stood beside me and waited for me to turn the key again. From that day he slept only on his back, and I never once heard him get up at two.

• Do the first fitting yourself, in good light, and check the gap under the ring with a finger.
• Put the second key where he can find it — but only if you say so.
• Don’t get up at night and don’t unlock. Let him lie on his back and wait for morning.
• Keep a notebook: date, which ring, the skin, the sleep. In a month you will talk from it.
• Check the skin every morning, in front of you and undressed. Pink is normal; a red line means an hour off.