Directly outside of 88 Liberation Road the parking spaces were taken. A series of smart BMWs, Mercs and the likes filled the kerbside. They didn't look the sort of motors that locals owned this side of town. Madelaine checked her make up. It was perfect. It was always perfect, whenever she was hooking up with Albion. But I watched her dab some extra perfume on the pulse points, her soft throat, and her wrists. Her Cartier Francais watch slipped down her wrist. It was something that irritated me. Why didn't she fix the loose bracelet? Why was it chic to have it slide around that way?
'Stop staring Neil, watch the road. Watch out for rough types' she insisted, barely glancing at me.
Madelaine hated it when I stared. She hated it when I called her Maddy. Madelaine, or mistress she insisted. If Albion dropped by our place, then it was 'mistress'. At the very least though she was Madelaine, and I should remember that.
'Does he want me to come in...or am I meant to stay and guard the car?' I asked irritably.
She smiled. The thought of me guarding anything was laughable. If some thugs dropped by to key our car, then that was what would happen. I wasn't likely to argue with three or four black dudes and certainly not with a blade or two. I begged her to invite Albion over our way. I'd already put that nosey bitch of a neighbour in her place. It just seemed safer, healthier, for my wife's bull to fuck her at our house.
'You're to come in Neil. I told you before, we're meeting up with Jenny tonight.' My wife spoke sharply. It was a nuisance to keep reminding me things. My kid sister was now going with one of Albion's bros.
'Please don't. Please don't let him order me down between her legs too.' I said firmly. The thought filled me with horror. But this was part of it. This was part of the darker side of town. The nice stuff from neighbourhoods such as our own didn't prevail in shabby round down streets like this one. The very purpose of driving over to the rough side of town was to inculcate my wife into their whoring culture, and, of course, to humiliate men like me.
'You'll do as you're told. Don't be silly.... You know what happened last time you were impertinent' Madelaine reminded me.
Yes.... I remembered. There had been time in casualty. They explained after the interminable wait that my cheek bone was fractured. Still, the boot hadn't connected with my eye. That would have been so much worse...wouldn't it.
'You'll suck some cock as you always do. Jenny will see what you are. She will see what you became after being such a snot of an older brother. That much you have coming to you. Jen told me what an arse you were as a kid.' Madelaine checked her skirt. Leather, little more than a slouch belt, it made her look like a slut. No, she was a slut now. It confirmed her as a slut. Ride a designer car, wear a designer watch if you would, but what identified you in life, in your soul, was what you needed between your legs.
'Call her mistress. Don't look her in the face. Concentrate on her cunt, concentrate on cleaning her beautifully. You'll cope' Madelaine assured he.
There are many rites of passage in this life, and this was one of them. Albion and his friends determined rank. They decided which of the bitch women that submitted to them would rank as mistress for the likes of me. Because Albion liked Madelaine, because she fucked hard and greedily, because she broke my resistance so easily, then she was ranked. I was to address her as mistress. First off, that term would be used indoors. Eventually though, if Albion or one of his crew bred her, then I would be required to use the term everywhere and always. Now, my sister was being brought into the fold. His bro, Lucien, was poking her. She had the queen of spades tattoo done and had shown me. Taunting, laughing as she showed me the ink on her shoulder, Jenny had insisted that she wanted the public to see. 'I'm black owned Neil...but then, so are you. Aren't you?'
I hate the C word. But Madelaine uses it with relish. She does it to pierce me with shame. I never fucked her cunt. I only played court to what existed before that, a delicate and tenderly attended crevice that seemed more suited to tongue than my cock. 'Just lick me if you can't manage it' she would say when anxiety took the wind from my sails. The dynamics between us had changed.
'Get the car door' she said at last.
I stepped out into the street lamp night. It leant an orange hue to her silk blouse that had seemed white in the bedroom. The skirt, the leather, that was still black and soft. Glancing down the street, into the other cars, I saw no other sap husbands. They had all been called in, either to wait on shabby chairs in narrow corridors, or else to attend the events more intimately. How many cars, how many husbands, reduced to this? I started to...
'Come on, stop dawdling' interrupted my wife.
'Yes' I whispered.
'Yes mistress' she corrected sharply.
