Page 11 of The Auction

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The next morning,Daniel woke up sore all over. Not from the sex, though he was certain Irina would be a little sore today. Not from old age—he was in the best shape of his life after spending a year climbing mountains. No, he was sore because he’d slept on the couch.

Nice couch, as couches go. Everything was nice in the apartment. On the twenty-sixth floor of the most exclusive high rise in Lenox Hill, the apartment was the finest money could buy: three elegant bedrooms, ten-foot ceilings, hand-crafted molding, built-in cabinets and bookcases, marble countertops, the works. Eleanor might also call his place swanky.

Swanky as it was, Daniel didn’t feel at home here anymore. Too big. Too much. Too empty. The air was stale and smelled of disinfectant, the housekeeper having overdone it in preparation for his arrival. It smelled more like a hospital than a home.

Hence the couch.It might not make a good bed, but no one would say it didn’t come with a great view.

Daniel rolled over and stared out the floor-to-ceiling window.

The sun was rising high over the East River, and the city was starting to steam.

Hot town, summer in the city…Maggie would always sing that on sizzling July days like this one was going to be. He hated that song, and she loved it. Now he’d kill to hear her sing it again.

It felt like another life, a past life, when he and Maggie had lived here together as Master and slave, and also as husband and wife. They’d spent most of their married life here. Maggie worked in Manhattan until she got sick and they moved out to the Big House, as she called their country house in rural New Hampshire. She wanted to die hearing birds singing, she’d said, not sirens. And she had. Four years ago and this was his first time back in New York. It was too big without her. Even the beds were too big without her.

Daniel closed his eyes, turned over, trying to make himself comfortable enough on the couch to go back to sleep.

No luck. Daniel’s phone beeped. What the hell? He’d been back in the city one day, had gotten his new phone yesterday afternoon. How did anyone have the number? He grabbed his cell off the coffee table. Kingsley. Did Daniel want to know how he got the number?

Signore Vitale will see you in an hour. Don’t be late.

Daniel didn’t reply, although he knew he would go. He’d hardly call Kingsley a friend these days, but they had history. Good history. It was Maggie who’d introduced him to Kingsley and his circle of deviants. The world above knew her as a high-powered attorney. The Underground knew her as one of their pre-eminent submissives. Daniel had had no dominant training at all when they started sleeping together. He’d just known what worked for him…and Maggie on her knees in front of him worked. All the rest of the tricks of the trade, Kingsley had taught him. Kingsley had been a part of their life during their happiest years together. And when she got sick, he was still there, unlike so many people who backed away, as if cancer were contagious.

The day the doctors had told them the verdict—“Two months at home, maybe six months if you stay in the hospital...”—had been the worst day of his life. Even worse than the day she died. He’d never forget those beautiful, tired, gray eyes of Maggie’s turning to him and saying, “I’d trade a lifetime in a hospital bed for one night with you in our bed.” It had killed him to let her give up the fight. But he’d honored her choice and only let himself cry when she wouldn’t see.

So two months it was, then. He’d promised her he’d give her the best two months of her life. Anything she wanted—they could go anywhere, do anything…any wild fantasy she could come up with, he’d make it happen. One night after he’d made love to her—carefully so he wouldn’t hurt her, she’d whispered a request in his ear.

“Would you let me call Kingsley?”

For his wife, a month, maybe two, from death, he would have called in the entire US Naval Fleet to service her if that’s what she wanted.

“No,” he’d told Maggie. “But I’ll call him for you.”

Daniel called Kingsley. And Kingsley did what he always did—he came. Daniel had worried Kingsley would shrink from Maggie when he saw her. Cancer had ravaged his beautiful wife. Turned her into a waif of ninety-five pounds with hair only just beginning to grow back after one month without chemotherapy. Kingsley hadn’t even blinked. He’d been his usual charming, seductive self. And that night at the Big House in their bedroom, Kingsley had done a few things to Maggie that impressed even Daniel.

Kingsley treated Maggie like the most erotic, alluring woman on the face of the earth. Because of that kindness, that night when Kingsley gave Maggie a vacation from her cancer, Daniel would do almost anything for him.

Including, apparently, being in this goddamn auction of his. And going to his goddamn tailor. And staying in the goddamn city for two more weeks, this city that felt both crowded and empty.

Groaning, Daniel swiped at his face and dragged himself off the couch. He dressed—jeans, of course, and a t-shirt, mostly clean, and headed out. First stop, his old barbershop. An hour later, he looked much more like himself. Maggie used to say he looked like a spy in a bad disguise, like a secret assassin doing a poor job of pretending to be a tourist. Especially with his dark blond hair in a sleek crew cut, dark suit and aviator sunglasses. He’d kiss her when she said things like that, then say,The name’s Bondage. James Bondage.

She’d laugh every time, even though it wasn’t that funny. God, he missed being married.

But he felt better, seeing his old self in the mirror again. Next stop—Kingsley’s tailor. Kingsley wasn’t somebody who could just pick up an Armani suit at an upscale shop in Manhattan and have it fitted. No, Kingsley had to do things his own way—in this case, that meant having an ancient Italian in a three-story walk-up in Greenwich Village hand-sew his custom-made suits.

Signore Vitale greeted Daniel with a few more cheek kisses than was entirely necessary. But Daniel didn’t protest. Octogenarian Signore Vitale was adorable, a little elf of a man. Daniel waited in the center of the room in front of a three-way mirror. Somewhere Signore Vitale had a real shop with racks of clothes. But only his most special clients received an invite to his workroom.

“I get my assistant. She has better eyes for the measuring. I’ll leave you in her hands.” Signore Vitale disappeared behind a curtain, and a woman came out a few minutes later. She wore a 1940s era gray wool suit with flesh-colored stockings and her red hair in a neat knot at the nape of her neck. Daniel barely recognized her at first, as she wore prim reading glasses perched on the end of her nose. Then she spoke.

“Oh…it’s you,” Anya said, crossing her arms.

“What do you know,” Daniel said. “Celine Dion has a day job.”

4

“Celine Dion has several jobs,” Anya said. “I have five brothers and sisters back home in Montreal to help support.”

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