Punish Me with Kisses by William Bayer Page B

been a crummy Sunday for me, and she's enjoying herself, and I'm feeling like a bitch, so, just to spread the misery around a little more I march into her room and kick it down. KICK KICK KICK , until every little brick is knocked across the floor. Child starts to wail. Daddy-O has finally had enough. He's going to punish me. I CAN'T believe it. He's never raised a hand to me before. But suddenly there I am being swatted right in front of Child. She's not crying anymore. IAM, I'm yelling Holy Murder. The humiliation is worse than the pain. When it's over I run to my room and slam the door.
    That evening I refuse to come down to dinner. Finally Daddy-O comes to me. He walks in, sits down next to me on the bed, tells me he loves me, pats my tear-stained cheek. We talk. He asks me if I'm sorry. "Sure," I say, "I'm sorry all right. I'm sorry I got spanked."
    "Yes," he says, "I understand that. But I had to punish you. Let's forgive each other now."
    "Next time," I suggest, "why don't you punish me with kisses?" We laugh, embrace, then he kisses me good night.
    JESUS! My ass has been a pillow for fucked-out heads, something to pat and stroke and lay one's head upon. (To the last one who asked if he could spank me I said "Try it, buster, and I'll play badminton with your balls!") Jamie tells me my ass is one of my finest assets. He says he wants to photograph it close-up with a special lens that will reveal its texture. He'll make the curve into an horizon, catch the down in cross-light and make it glow "It'll be like something in outer space," he says, "some new galaxy which everyone would want to explore. Then they'll read the title and double take. I'll simply call it 'Suzie's Ass'—
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    H er father called.
    "Hi, kiddo."
    "Daddy?"
    "Course, dummy. Who else calls you 'kiddo'?" She imagined him, jacket off, trim figure encased in well-cut vest, pacing around his office with a squash racket slashing at the air, turning every so often toward the speaker phone on his desk. "Ready to take me on?"
    "Play squash?"
    "What else, kiddo? Want to play?"
    "Sure."
    "OK. Noon tomorrow. Then we shower and come back here for chow."
    Their game was fierce. Her father looked good—fit and hard, agile and athletic—as he batted the ball against the wall. It was hard to believe he hadn't spent his youth playing racket sports; that, in fact, he had been the son of working-class parents and had spent his summers on construction gangs. Still he played with the verve of an Ivy League athlete, and he gave Penny no quarter—he played to win, and he shut her out.
    His hair was still slick from his shower as they walked together through the lobby of the Racquet Club. His silver sideburns caught the sun and glowed as they stepped into the Cadillac limousine waiting by the curb. She could sense the aura of his power as chief executive of a multinational corporation from the obsequiousness of the doorman and the deference of the chauffeur. He's like a king , she thought as they drove to Chapman International, a glass and steel skyscraper at Park Avenue and Forty-Eighth. A uniformed lobby attendant ushered them into a special elevator so they could ride to the executive floor nonstop. His reception suite gleamed with glove-soft black leather, pewter fixtures, tables of darkened glass. Electronic office machines clicked and hummed as he led her to his office, which was dominated by an oval conference table and an abstract sculpture of gleaming steel.
    He left her there for a few minutes while he attended to some business in an adjoining room. While he was gone she inspected the photographs and framed memorabilia arrayed on the wall. They told the story well, she thought, beginning with a picture of her grandfather, Howard Chapman, standing in front of his old Stamford, Connecticut, plant, home of the original Chapman Plow. Her father stood beside him—he must have been twenty-two or twenty-three at the time—an eager-looking boyish young