“Fashion Accessory”
Argos
Elle Murphy sat comfortably in front of the vanity in her room in Chicago’s luxurious Palmer House Hotel. She was getting ready for a cocktail reception in less than an hour, but her face, as she delicately penciled in her eyebrows, was serene and her posture was relaxed. Her husband Louis was wandering around the loop, and she’d had all afternoon to relax, without Louis pawing her (as he often did, with agreeable effect, when they were in a nice hotel room).
They had arrived at lunchtime, given the car to the valet and the bags to a bellman, and hastened to Berghoff’s for vintage German food. Louis sometimes marveled that Elle, when she put her mind to it, could eat more than he did and never show any signs of it. He’d asked her once how she maintained her figure, and she responded that it involved three things: eating whatever she wanted, doing yoga every day, and not giving a damn about her weight. She had wolfed down a corned-beef sandwich (the Tri-County area had nothing so authentic), while Louis savored a plate of sausage. They wandered back to the hotel hand in hand, still early for check-in, but after some earnest whispered (indeed surprisingly intimate) conversation with Elle, the nice impressionable lad at the registration desk (who had started out pretending to be very stern) realized that actually he did have a nice room ready and of course they could have it.
After they quickly unpacked in the room, Louis seemed eager to head out, so Elle had sent him off to do what he wanted while she had a long, luxurious bath. Then she shaved her legs, washed and dried her hair, and laid out the outfit she would wear that night (a Gabriela Hearst wool mini with a high neck but an open back; it fitted her like a glove) and her tan suede Jimmy Choo ankle boots (just a touch of heel, but not so much that it looked like trying too hard).
It would not be accurate to say that Elle was exactly nervous about tonight’s event. One of her first discoveries during her study of hypnosis was that she could relax herself into trance and then let go of anxious feelings by picturing herself as a young girl on a hillside loosing carrier pigeons, which would flutter, circle, and then fly away home, leaving her calm for the moment, both because the anxiety was gone and because she had not tried to get rid of it (anxieties react badly to attempts to abolish them, but are delighted at being told to take a break.
But though not provoking anxiety, certain situations . . . caught Elle’s attention . . . more than others. Tonight was such an occasion. She and Louis were in Chicago because she was attending (and taking part in a panel in) the Midwest Therapy Association, a huge annual gathering of practitioners of all schools and backgrounds. (“Sturges for shrinks,” Louis had dubbed it.) The conference itself began the next morning; tonight was for schools or interest groups that wanted to hold their own events. And State University, where Elle had gotten her Ph.D., was holding a reunion event for its Ph.D. and M.S.W. graduates, which Louis and Elle would attend.
Also in attendance would be Suzette Vorelli, Elle’s classmate and . . . friend? Or maybe . . . frenemy? Among other things, Elle and Suzette had been the top students in their Ph.D. class, and by coincidence also the two femmes most generally regarded by their classmates as fatale. Not that they looked alike: Suzette had a Wednesday Addams look about her—long, jet-black hair, tall, slender frame, huge eyes—and if Elle were ever to feel envious of another woman’s looks (ss if! silly rabbit!) it might have been Suzette.
But they had gotten along fine and (because they were both so much more advanced than most of the other students) even sometimes helped each other study. Elle had moved to the Tri-County area after graduation while Suzette took herself to San Francisco. And in a few years, Suzette had parlayed her degree, her rich contralto voice, and her overall magnetic presence into a prominent radio call-in advice show, a successful self-help book, and occasional appearances on National Public Radio.
Not that Elle was jealous (as if! silly rabbit!). But every now and then it sat uncomfortably with her that her own media triumphs in the hypnokink world were disguised behind a pseudonym, and as far as her classmates knew she lived a quiet life in a quiet little river town helping unhappy people quit smoking or lose weight with hypnosis.
Of course, Elle had Louis. Last time she’d heard (or Googled), Suzette was still single. Perhaps she liked it that way. Elle was certainly indifferent to the possibility that
Suzette might envy Elle her handsome, successful, brilliant, witty, attentive, and oh-so-submissive hypno-husband; nonetheless, it seemed like fun to show Louis off tonight and allow him to dote on her while the other women in the group swooned.
So, in order to appear to best advantage, she had taken been quite thorough with her shower, her shaving, her hair dryer, her makeup, and now her eyebrow pencil, which she was wielding unhurriedly and with infinite care.
On schedule she heard a click at the door and Louis entered, carrying a shopping bag marked BOTTEGA VENETA. “Elle,” he said breathlessly, “wait till you see what I found—”
His wife stopped his with an upraised finger. “Louis,” she said, “You’ll need a quick shower, and then I laid out your clothes—the grey custom suit you got in Kansas City, and that nice cream shirt I bought you—”
“Sure, of course,” he broke in, eager as a kid back from the circus. “But I want to show you—”
“Louis Wentworth,” she said, “I said shower, suit, shirt, tie. Now. Obey.” She snapped her fingers.
Louis’s face smoothed out, and he turned to the bathroom. A close observer might have discerned something faintly different in his movements; they were a bit slower than usual, as if he were walking underwater. In fact, he did not so much walk as glide. Even when he emerged from a quick shower, his blank expression did not change as he smoothly donned the outfit in which his wife had decided she wanted to show him off.
A few minutes later, he walked back to Elle and stood blankly for a second, then shook himself slightly, as if waking from a nap. “How did I—” he looked down in puzzlement at himself in his elegant suit.
Elle was looking at him too, but less in puzzlement than in hunger. She hated to quote her frenemy Tamsin, but she was right about one thing: Louis really was the sweetest candy in the Whitman’s Sampler box.* At this moment Elle felt an urgent desire to push him down on the bed, render him helpless, and—well—swallow him whole.
But she resisted. His splendid appearance was aimed at an audience outside this room, and mussed and tousled was not the effect she was aiming at. Anyway there would be time to feast upon Louis later. “You look smashing, darling,” she said. “Thank you for getting dressed like a good boy. Here.” She rose, walked over to him, and brushed his cheek ever so lightly with her lips. He closed his eyes in bliss, while she surveyed the cheek. The lipstick marks were faint (no man would notice, but they would be visible to any covetous lady studying Louis in search of prey). That was as it should be. “Anyway,” she went on, “you said you have something to show me?”
“I do?” he said dreamily. “Oh, wait, I mean I do, you’re not going to believe this—I walked around the Miracle Mile and I saw the nicest store. I’d never heard of it—it’s called Bottega Veneta, apparently they have stores all over the country but anyway I was just idly looking at a coat but—jeez—it cost $2,000 and so I started looking at smaller items and—anyway—I saw this and it just seemed so right for you I had to buy it.” He reached into the shopping bag and pulled out a small cardboard box bearing the name of the store.
“Louis, you dear, dear boy, imagine my surprise!” Elle said. From the tone of her voice, an objective observer might have doubted that she was quite as surprised as she was pretending to be; and such an observer might have noted a good deal of eagerness in the way she opened the box and parted the tissue paper that hid its contents.
“Louis! You are wonderful! I don’t have anything like it!” His gift was a small clutch purse with a shoulder strap, just right for taking to a sophisticated evening event. By a bizarre coincidence, the small leather bag was a shade of almond that went superbly with her tawny hair, her tan suede boots, and the black of her dress, completing the ensemble of a sophisticated, successful, sexy professional escorted to an event by her divine and doting husband. “My stars, I hope it wasn’t too expensive,” she said, fluttering her eyes at him coquettishly. “How much was it?”
“It was—” Louis stopped in puzzlement, with an expression like that of a man who has come out without putting on his belt. “It was—it—damn, to be honest, Elle, I don’t remember.”
“Oh, well, then, I am sure it wasn’t more than you could afford.” By yet another bizarre coincidence, Elle happened to know the price of the item in question, including Illinois sales tax, to the penny, and, in her capacity as manager of the family’s finances, had by a third bizarre coincidence just the day before made sure there was enough money in Louis’s account to cover that precise amount. The ritual of Louis earning generous royalties from his young-adult novels, giving them all to her, and then accepting back exactly how much she decided he needed and not one penny more was an important part of their marriage—almost a form of foreplay, because both of them found it almost unbearably sexy. “Louis,” she said. “Come here. I want you to admire this clutch with me.”
“It’s really pretty,” he said. “I don’t know much about purses, but—”
“Hush, dear,” she said. “Did you really look at it?”
“Well, I guess I did. I mean, it was clear to me at first glance that it was right for you so that was that.”
“Look now, then, Louis.” She opened up the clutch to reveal the almond-colored silk lining. She ran one red-tipped finger back and forth across the cloth. “Look into the purse, Louis, deeply—let yourself see what is in there—let yourself fall into it.”
The previous blank look had returned to Louis’s face. He was transfixed by the interior of the purse. “Go into it now, Louis, let yourself go.” She touched his forehead gently with a finger. “That’s it, good boy, and as you drift you realize that you are floating into my purse, and you are becoming my purse, Louis, you are my purse, you live to serve me, I can strap you across my shoulder and carry you anywhere with me, you are happy to follow, you are eager to hold things for me, you are my property. Nod your head.”
Without looking away from the purse, Louis nodded.
She handed him the purse. “Keep looking,” she said. “It feels so wonderful to be such a valued possession, you love being my fashion accessory, it’s what you’ve always wanted. Now in a minute or two I will snap, and when I snap you will wake up, remembering nothing about our conversation but knowing that you are not just my husband, you are my purse, you are strapped around my shoulder, you are my fashion accessory, and you will follow and serve me all evening, you will bring me a drink even before I ask for it, you will stand behind me and wait for me to speak to you—and if anyone, male or female, tries to flirt with you, you are going to feel the overwhelming urge to tell them how we met, how I hypnotized you easily and completely because I am such a skilled and successful hypnotherapist, how I am the love of your life, how you love to take care of me. You will keep that up until they eventually go away. Nod.”
He did.
“Good boy. Now keep your eyes inside the purse.”
She left him standing there spellbound while she slipped on the exquisite wool dress, which she set off with a narrow black leather belt studded with antique silver-dime conchos. She regarded herself in the mirror from several angles, and then nodded sober approval. She was certainly more than a match for (say) some random radio personality, and with Louis following her like a puppy dog she knew she would be the envy of many of the women at the party. (Particularly, interestingly enough, the married ones.)
And later, when they were alone, she would help herself to her exquisite bonbon. She had a sudden image of Louis, spread-eagled naked on the bed, bound hand and foot by ropes that though imaginary would be very very real to him—helpless, at her disposal, for her to taunt and tease and torment and finally—devour. . . .
Focus, Elle, she told herself. There are miles to go before he sleeps.
She took the purse from Louis, dropped the lipstick and compact into it, and closed it.
Snap! Went the latch, and Louis shook himself awake. “Sorry, dear,” he said. “You were saying?”
“I was saying, Louis, that it’s time to go down for the reception.”
Dreamily he followed his wife down the corridor, hardly aware of where he was, barely remembering where he had been, not giving a moment’s thought to where he was going. He was with Elle. That was what mattered. He felt as if he were . . . hanging from her shoulder. What an odd idea, he thought. Though—well—not a bad one. He suddenly thought, “I am Elle’s fashion accessory.” The idea delighted him as he hastened along in Elle’s wake.
* * *