Chapter Fourteen
When Lockhart comes to the shop, I am Anna. When I’m in his house, I am slave. I drift gently back and forth on Lockhart’s whim, serving him on demand, pressing my face to his carpet, raising my ass for punishment, submitting to bondage and his Thursday friends. I don’t seem to think or feel the same anymore, and I don’t know why. My life breezes by like I’m always just a little drunk. Lockhart is always in the back of my head speaking to me.
In my shop we talk of Proust philosophies, Yeats bleakness, Picasso’s many periods and Beethoven’s dramatics. I order books for him, which he browses, making comments, engaging me as a real woman, a real adult in an adult world. The made-up one we live in his house seems then a vague dream. In my shop, he drinks my espresso, sitting
