My phone died and he waited for a sign

My phone died in the lift, at three percent, somewhere between the fourth and fifth floor. I pressed the button, the screen blinked and went black. I dropped it into my bag and thought: he texted at six, the way he does every Thursday, and he has been sitting without an answer for two hours.

He opened the door before I rang. Apron over his shirt, sleeves rolled up, soup on the stove. I threw my bag on the chair, my shoes by the door, and he knelt to set them straight, toes to the wall. When he bent, the edge of the cage showed for a second under the shirt. Day twenty-six. I know the number without the notebook, but it is in the notebook too.

“Did you text?”

“At six. Like always.”

“Phone died.”

He nodded and ladled the soup. He sat only when I nodded back. Thursdays work like this: at six he may ask with one message — “Tonight?” — and I answer with one word. I usually answer. That day he had held a phone with no reply in his hand for two hours and heated the soup, and from the way he set the bowl down I could see he wasn’t waiting for words any more. He was waiting for the sign.

Soup

We have two signs. If I take the chain with the key off my neck and lay it on the table — yes, I’ll unlock him tonight. If I put my palm on the cage over his clothes and press — no. We made them two years ago, after a weekend at the cottage, when I said “wait till Saturday” for the first time and he asked “why”, and I realised I didn’t want to explain. I rarely explain since. To readers here — yes. To him — no.

I ate slowly. He sat across from me, hands on the table, and didn’t look at the chain. He looked at his bowl, at my hands, at the clock above the stove. His throat moved when I tucked the chain under my collar, and I pretended not to see.

“Tired?”

“Yes.”

It was true and I didn’t dress it up. I had worked eleven hours and wanted someone to take care of my feet.

Feet

After dinner I sat in the armchair, he brought a warm towel and got down on the floor. My feet ache by evening and he knows the order: the towel first, then thumbs from heel to arch, then each toe on its own. He has done this unasked for four years. I closed my eyes.

A few minutes in I felt him stop. He didn’t take his hands away — he just stopped moving them. I opened my eyes: he was looking at the chain.

I reached out and laid my palm on his lap, over the soft trousers, where the steel sat under the fabric. Pressed. He breathed out through his nose, short, and his hands on my foot shook and went steady again. Not a word. This is what “orgasm control” looks like once you stop reading about it and live in it: one palm, three seconds, and the evening goes on.

“Not tonight.”

“Yes, Mistress.”

I didn’t take my hand away at once. I held it there, feeling how tight it was under my palm, how hard he was trying not to move his hips. Then I let go and closed my eyes again, and he finished the second foot as carefully as the first. His fingers were hot.

Then I unbuttoned my jeans and pushed them down with my underwear, and he understood without an order: moved closer, and I put my legs over his shoulders. I didn’t need long. His tongue is patient, he knows where to stop and where not to, and I came in a few minutes, holding him by the hair, looking down at the top of his head and at his hands on the armrests, where I had told him to keep them. He didn’t touch himself. There is nothing to touch — but he didn’t try to press against the leg of the chair either, the way he did in the first year. I value that more than he knows.

“Thank you,” I said. “Go and wash your face.”

The floor

He came back from the bathroom with a wet face and stood in the doorway.

“May I wash the kitchen floor?”

The floor was clean. I knew what it was for: after a no he needs something to do with his hands, an hour or so, until his body settles. In the early days he used to walk round the flat moving things. Then he found on his own that the floor works better.

“Go on.”

I sat with a book and listened to him shift the chairs and wring out the cloth. He was humming under his breath — he always hums when he mops and doesn’t know it. The cage didn’t get in his way: he learned long ago how to bend so it wouldn’t. I was thinking that Saturday was two days off and that on Saturday I could say no as well. And that he didn’t know that and wouldn’t ask.

Here I have to say something I rarely say. That Thursday I refused not only because I had decided to. I refused also because I was tired and didn’t want to stay awake twenty minutes longer. I turned that over while he mopped, and I wasn’t sure it was fair to him. Then I decided it was: the decision is mine, and so are the reasons. He doesn’t need them, and a plain reason doesn’t make the no any weaker.

Before bed he kissed my hand, as always, and I felt his breath against the inside of my wrist — slow, so as not to give away how tight he was.

Morning

He was up first and had the coffee on. The morning after a no is always our quietest: he doesn’t ask anything extra, moves more softly, sets the cup dead centre on the napkin. I came up behind him while he was slicing bread and put my palm on the cage, like the night before. Pressed.

“Understood,” he said without turning round.

It wasn’t a new refusal. It was a reminder that yesterday’s still stood. We didn’t talk about Thursday that morning or after.

I charged the phone in the kitchen. It came on, and the first thing to arrive was his message from two minutes past six: “Tonight?”. I looked at it longer than I needed to. Then I typed “shopping list” and sent it — not to him, to myself, so I wouldn’t forget. He will see I was online and see no reply. He got his reply last night, from my hand.

On Saturday I took off the chain and laid it on the table. He was very quick, and afterwards it took him a long time to get his breath back, and I watched and counted: twenty-eight days. Wrote it in the notebook.

• Set up two signs — yes and no — and answer with them, not with words. Words drag a “why” behind them.
• Don’t name a date. If he knows the day, he counts the days. If he doesn’t, he watches you.
• Saying no to him is not saying no to yourself. Take yours the same evening, in front of him.
• After a no, give him an hour’s work: the floor, the dishes, your shoes. The body settles through the hands.
• “I’m tired” is reason enough. Don’t justify it to him, and don’t justify it to yourself.