The Leipzig Suit

I turned thirty-three on a Tuesday, and I spent the afternoon of my birthday lost in Leipzig on purpose. My tour group had gone off to look at some church, and I had looked at enough churches for one trip. Three years as a nanny in Berlin will do that to you. You start wanting things that belong to you.

So I ducked down a cobblestone side street where the buildings leaned toward each other like old men talking, and that was where I saw the shop. No big sign. Just a leather awning gone dark with rain over the years, and a window full of belts and bags and one strange suit hanging on a wooden form, all straps and silver clasps.

I am going to be honest about why I went in, because this is the part where the fetish part of the story starts and I would rather say it plain. I like leather. I like the smell of it and the weight of it, and I like being held down by something that does not hold opinions. I had known that about myself since I was twenty-six and a boyfriend in Berlin tied my wrists with a bathrobe belt and I thought about it for a month afterward. But I had never done anything serious about it. That was sort of the theme of my life, come to think of it.

I pushed the door and a bell over the jamb gave one flat ring.

The workshop was narrow and dim, one dusty window in front and a single work lamp on a long bench, and the air was thick with hide and wax and something like tea. Strips of leather hung from the ceiling beams on clips. Along one wall hung finished pieces, and one of them pulled my eyes right in. A corset, heavy black leather, boned and laced, the stitching so even it looked drawn on.

I reached out and ran two fingers down the front of it.

"Do not touch without asking, please!"

The voice came from the back, flat and sharp, and then a man came around the partition. Young, maybe mid-twenties, apron over a black shirt, hands stained dark at the fingertips. He had a jaw that was doing all the talking his face was not.

"Sorry," I said, and pulled my hand back. "It was just sitting there looking perfect."

"It is not finished." He came over and turned the corset on its hanger so the back faced out, and I saw the lining was still raw. "The edge paint needs two more coats. Now. Are you from Kaminski?"

I blinked. "Who?"

"Kaminski. Herr Kaminski's shop, on the Ring. He sends people sometimes. He sends people to look and then they go back and he copies what they describe." He said this like he was reading it off a list he kept in his chest.

"I don't know a Kaminski," I said. "I'm a tourist. It's my birthday and I got tired of churches."

He looked at me and I watched the suspicion drain out of him by degrees, replaced by something more embarrassed. "Ah. Well. Then welcome. Jonas." He wiped a hand on the apron and shook mine.

"Elise. I'm thirty-three today, which is why I mention the birthday, in case you wondered why a stranger is telling you these things."

"Happy birthday." And then, because he was young and could not help himself, he added, "Kaminski has been in business forty years. His clients think his work is the best in the city. It is not. It is just older."

"That sounds like a challenge," I said.

"It is a fact," he said, and then he paused, and something moved behind his eyes. "Unless you would like it to be a challenge."

Here is where I made a choice, and I made it fast, the way I make all my good ones. "Show me your tightest piece," I said. "The most restrictive thing you make. If it's as good as you think it is, I'll know."

He did not laugh. He went very still, the way craftsmen go still when someone finally says the thing they have been waiting to hear. Then he walked to the back wall, unlocked a cabinet I had taken for storage, and lifted out a suit that made my stomach drop in the good way.

It was a full-body harness, black leather, dense with straps. Silver clasps down the front like a row of small moons. Shoulder straps and chest straps and a corset panel built into the middle, and straps that would cross the legs and cinch them. It looked less like clothing and more like a decision.

"This is the piece I entered in the guild showing last spring," he said. "Kaminski called it theatrical. It is not theatrical. Every strap does a job. The chest panel takes the breathing down to a slow, shallow rhythm. The limb straps take the movement away almost entirely. A person can wear it for two hours. After two hours you come out of it feeling like you floated here from somewhere else." He laid it on the bench and looked at me. "It is not for everyone. It is intense. Some people put it on and panic in five minutes."

"Have you had someone in it?" I asked.

"Twice. Both times it worked the way I designed it to work. Both times I was too nervous to enjoy watching it work, if that makes sense."

"It makes perfect sense," I said, and my heart was not calm at all. "I want to try it. I want to be in it. Right now, if you have two hours."

"It is late in the day," he said. "Everyone has gone. There is only the lamp and us."

"Good," I said.

He studied me for a moment. "You understand you will not be able to move much. You will ask me before anything, and I will ask you before anything, and either of us can stop it at any point and that is final. If you say red, everything opens, no questions."

"Yes," I said. "That's exactly what I want. All of that."

He nodded once, businesslike, and turned down the lamp a touch, and told me where I could change. There was a curtain over a corner where they stored the forms. I stripped down to my bra and panties with my back to the room, and I will admit my hands shook a little doing it, thirty-three years old and undressing behind a curtain for a leather boy I had known for ten minutes. But I had done the math on my life and the math said yes.

When I came out he had the suit open on the bench like a butterfly pinned for study.

"Arms up first," he said. "I will do each strap and tell you what it does. You tell me if anything bites."

The leather was cool at first and then warm, faster than I expected