Conversation

Eventually the waiter brings us the bill, and you whip out a credit card which he takes up to the cashier.

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" "It will be all right. I don't plan on coming back here again."

You leave a huge tip, and after your card is returned, you sign the bill and send me off to use the ladies room before we get on the road again. I stay in there long enough for my face to stop being red, and a woman comes in and tells me that there is someone waiting who wants to know if I am all right.

I leave then, half expecting you to be waiting outside the door. But you're near the entrance, looking my way, and as I approach you remind me that I have some punishment coming, and that keeping you waiting only adds to the punishment to come.

You put your arm around me as we go through the door, and you take my hand and twist my arm behind my back as we walk through the parking lot. Not enough that it hurts, just enough that I know you could make it hurt with very little effort.

I'm beginning to worry about that punishment to come, and to regret having left my shoe where the waiter had to retrieve it for me.