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to spend a week in Mexico City. Could he think of anything acceptable that might occupy his daughter during that time, she being a teenager a bit too prone to independence and exploration? Let her stay with me, Ballard had said. The guest room has its own bathroom and a TV. I’ll take her out to theaters at night, and to the Met and MoMA during the day, when I’m not doing my job. When I
am
doing my job, she can bat around the city by herself the way she does now. Extraordinary man you are, the client had said, and allow me to reinforce that by letting you know that about a month ago my daughter just amazed me one morning by telling me that she liked you. You have no idea how goddamned fucking unusual that is. That she talked to me at all is staggering, and that she actually announced that she liked one of my friends is stupefying. So yes, please, thank you, take Sandrine home with you, please do, escort her hither and yon.
    When the time came, he drove a compliant Sandrine to his house in Harrison, where he explained that although he would not have sex with her until she was at least eighteen, there were many other ways they could express themselves. And although it would be years before they could be naked together, for the present they would each be able to be naked before the other. Fifteen-year-old Sandrine, who had been expecting to use all her arts of bad temper, insult, duplicity, and evasiveness to escape ravishment by this actually pretty interesting old guy, responded to these conditions with avid interest. Ballard announced another prohibition no less serious, but even more personal.
    “I can’t cut myself anymore?” she asked. “Fuck you, Ballard; you loved it when I showed you my arm. Did my father put you up to this?” She began looking frantically for her bag, which Ballard’s valet had already removed to the guest room.
    “Not at all. Your father would try to kill me if he knew what I was going to do to you. And you to me, when it’s your turn.”
    “So if I can’t cut myself, what exactly happens instead?”
    “
I
cut you,” Ballard said. “And I do it a thousand times better than you ever did. I’ll cut you so well no one will ever be able to tell it happened, unless they’re right on top of you.”
    “You think I’ll be satisfied with some wimpy little cuts no one can even see? Fuck you all over again.”
    “Those cuts no one can see will be incredibly painful. And then I’ll take the pain away, so you can experience it all over again.”
    Sandrine found herself abruptly caught up by a rush of feelings that seemed to originate in a deep region located just below her rib cage. At least for the moment, this flood of unnamable emotions blotted out her endless grudges and frustrations, also the chronic bad temper they engendered.
    “And during this process, Sandrine, I will become deeply familiar, profoundly familiar with your body, so that when at last we are able to enjoy sex with each other, I will know how to give you the most amazing pleasure. I’ll know every inch of you; I’ll have your whole gorgeous map in my head. And you will do the same with me.”
    Sandrine had astonished herself by agreeing to this program on the spot, even to abstain from sex until she turned eighteen. Denial, too, was a pain she could learn to savor. At that point Ballard had taken her upstairs to the guest suite, and soon after down the hallway to what he called his “workroom.”
    “Oh, my God,” she said, taking it in, “I can’t believe it. This is real. And you, you’re real, too.”
    “During the next three years, whenever you start hating everything around you and feel as though you’d like to cut yourself again, remember that I’m here. Remember that this room exists. There’ll be many days and nights when we can be here together.”
    In this fashion had Sandrine endured the purgatorial remainder of her days at Dalton. And when she and Ballard at last made love, pleasure and pain had