“Neither.”
“Somebody fixed me up pretty good. This Lady Sally actually got a doctor to make a house call?”
“Kate’s on staff. She said it was nice to do some real medicine again, sew something besides costumes for a change. You’ll meet her later.”
“Fine by me.” Everything was fine by me. I made a mental note to tell Travis about this Placebo stuff. Then I remembered that Travis had gone away somewhere and wouldn’t be back for a long time. Then I remembered that I didn’t like him anymore anyway, for some reason. Then I discovered that while I’d been pursuing this train of thought, I’d mislaid the room in which I’d left my body and its pain. It was around here someplace…
I went looking for it, and got distracted by other rooms, with funny things in them. Daddy was in some of them, and Mommy wasn’t in any of them. It was fun.
CHAPTER 2
THE HOUSE
When I’d got back to the room I’d started from, sunlight was streaming in the window. Lady Sally was there, in a feathered wrapper, with her hair in curlers and her face scrubbed of all traces of makeup. She still looked regal. Since Daddy was with her, I knew I was still dreaming. He was in bathrobe and slippers, chewing on his pipe. I waved, ignoring the tugging sensation at my side. “Hi, Daddy.” I was so glad he had remarried again. And to a duchess!
“Good morning,” he said.
His voice was all wrong. I tried to get up on one elbow to look closer, and my side shouted at me. I wasn’t dreaming after all. This hurt too much not to be real. I was awake now.
He was not my father, of course. Now that I looked, he didn’t even resemble him a great deal. What he looked like was the Hollywood stereotype of the Kindly Older Man, the avuncular figure who would need only five or ten years to become the Lovable Grandfather. I must have frowned at him.
“Good morning, Maureen,” Lady Sally said. “This is my very dear friend Phillip. He will not bite you, unless you specifically request it.” She still sounded just the least bit tipsy, in that cheery-glow phase.
He kept…not staring. Just looking at me pleasantly. Enjoying my company, in no hurry to get the conversation rolling. His grey eyes twinkled. If you had a bad acid trip in Grand Central Station you would thread your way through all the leering gibbering zombies until you found this man, and then you would be all right.
“Sorry,” I said. “I was dreaming; thought you were someone I knew. Hello, Phillip. Good morning, Lady Sally. Where’s the werebeagle?”
She looked politely puzzled. “I beg your pardon?”
“The one you went up that alley with. I saw him change.”
“Ah.” She took a closer look at me. “Charles is not here at present. He’s gone home. You…er…did not find his metamorphosis upsetting?”
“To be perfectly honest, I found it terrifying. But any friend of yours is a friend of mine.”
“Broad-minded of you, child. Good for you.”
I realized for the first time that her British accent was bogus, an affectation. She did it well, but if you listened long enough, you could tell. “Thank you for saving my life.”
“Think nothing of it, my dear girl. One cannot of course spend one’s life hunting pimps; the supply is inexhaustible; but if Fate offers me a chance to assault one without going out of my way, I can only be grateful.” We were going to drop the subject of Charles.
I sighed. “Well, I can’t say I’ll miss Travis, but he did have his uses.”
“A tiger in the kitchen will keep the cockroaches away,” Phillip said. His voice was soft and deep and furry.
Oh yeah? I wanted to say. I’ve got that tiger trained as docile as a pussy cat—
—but apparently that was not correct.
In truth, I was shocked at the extent of my misjudgment. It was more than the disappointment felt by an owner whose pet tiger has gone savage and had to be destroyed. Damn it, I had liked Big Travis. I had, in a way, cared about him. I had thought that beneath his necessary macho armor he cared about me. I was his special girl. The one he almost didn’t want to make whore for him. All the while, deep down, he had thought me such a trivial possession that it had been simpler to kill me than to bother disciplining me. The knowledge put a deeper, sharper hole in me than the knife had.
“I’m in a lot of pain,” I said. “I need another shot.”
“Shot?” Lady Sally said.
“That stuff Mary gave me, Placebo.”
She blinked. “I’m not sure I approve of her giving you that. Oh well, the damage is done. Let me summon your physician. Phillip?”
He rose, went to a phone on the dresser, punched a three-digit number and asked for Doctor Kate to be sent to Mary’s room. I gritted my teeth for a wait. Doctors never come promptly.
She arrived almost at once, carrying a black bag. Reading from the top, she wore a doctor’s reflector headband, square severe glasses, unbuttoned white doctor’s jacket, stethoscope, white lace garter belt, white cobweb stockings, and white high heels. Oh yes, and a wedding ring. She was a natural redhead.
Where the hell was I?
“Patty’s keeping his vital signs stable,” she said to Lady Sally, and to me, “Hello, dear, how are we feeling today? You’re looking much better. You had a close call, but you were lucky.” She reached the bedside, took my pulse. I could feel her pulse. High and strong and steady. “Are you in a lot of pain?”
Her question took precedence over her costume. “Yes. Lady Sally says I have to see you to get some more of that painkiller Mary gave me last night.”
“Placebo,” Lady Sally enunciated.
Doctor Kate looked thoughtful. It was weird to see that judicious doctor-look above a pair of large seminaked breasts. Disorienting. “Yes,” she decided, “I can let you have some more of that. Mary’s judgment is usually sound. Did she say what dosage?”
I thought hard. “Fifty milligrams. In some solution with a long name.”
She frowned. “That’s a lot. You’ll have to take it orally from now on. Here.” She took a jar of pills from her bag, gave me one.
Damn. It wouldn’t hit as fast, or as hard. Oh well, it would probably last longer. “Looks just like aspirin,” I said as she fetched cold water from a bathroom to my right.
“Trust me,” she said, returning. “It isn’t aspirin.”
I gulped it down, lay back to wait for it to work.
“It isn’t addicting or habituating either,” she said. “In case you were wondering.”
“I’d have gotten around to it,” I muttered wearily.
“I’ve got to change your dressing now,” she said. “I call your attention to the fascinating ceiling.”
I snuck a peek and it was pretty bad, but the medicine was beginning to come on and it helped. When it was over I found that Phillip had come to sit beside me and hold my hand. I half expected him to tell me a bedtime story.
“Phillip…,” I asked him quietly, while Doctor Kate was off washing her hands in the john. “Look, where the hell am I? I mean what kind of place is this?”
One corner of his mouth crinkled up. “I’m not sure that could be put into words. In fact, I’m not sure I’m wise enough to know.”
There was nothing wrong with Lady Sally’s hearing. “This is my House,” she said clearly, “and you are safe here. You may stay as long as you like, or until I take a notion to throw you the hell out, whichever comes first.”
A chilly sensation began just below where my ribs met. I think I kept my face straight, but my hands closed into fists under the sheet. I was a long time answering her.
Oh my God, I kept thinking, How could I have been so dumb?
“Thank you, Lady Sally,” I said finally. “That’s a very generous offer. I already owe you more than I could ever repay.”
“Nonsense, dear child,” she said. “On the day I leave a stranger to bleed to death in an alley, there’ll be a brisk trade in ice skates in Hell. As the old joke goes, it has been the equivalent of a formal introducti
on.”
Doctor Kate came back from the jake. “Will you excuse me, Maureen? Your Ladyship? I have a patient waiting.”
“Thank you, too, doctor,” I told her. “I peeked while you were fixing my bandage, and you did a good job.”
“Wait’ll you see the size of my bill,” she grinned, and was gone.
I thought: I’ll bet you think I think you’re kidding.
“I’ll bet you think she’s kidding,” Lady Sally said.
I smiled. “I’m grateful that you didn’t bring the cops into this. Like, report it or anything. Thank you.” I already knew why she hadn’t, but I was mildly curious to see what lie she’d use.
“I detest official formalities. Unofficial ones, though, are a different matter: you are welcome, girl. All puns intended.”
I made a small sick-patient sound. Phillip frowned in concern. “What’s the matter, Maureen?”
“Nothing. This painkiller is making me sleepy.” I yawned.
“That’s common,” he agreed. “Get some rest; you need it. I have an appointment coming up, but I’ll look in on you later.” He and Lady Sally got up and left.
As soon as the door clicked shut behind them, I closed my eyes tight and groaned.
Now it all made sense. All of it. Oh, I should have guessed! Aw, Jesus.
Lucky Maureen. Saved from death and a fate worse than death by a kindly old auntie, a wealthy Good Samaritan who leads werebeagles around on leashes and just happens to be a trained streetfighter. I’d always said if I ever met one real Samaritan in my life, one person who gave without taking, I’d kiss my own ass—and for a minute there, I’d almost been ready to bend over. I’d almost forgotten what the Professor used to tell me, over and over: Always look for the other guy’s angle. If it seems too good to be true, it is. What a chump…
She’d said it with a capital H.
“This is my House,” she’d said.
A goddam madam!
Of course she’d stopped Big Travis from wasting me. Simple conservation. Waste not, want not. Some people can’t stand to see a good horse mistreated.
I was in a goddam whorehouse, and from the looks of Doctor Kate and Robin, a very kinky whorehouse, and unless I played my cards just right, I was never going to get out of it.
There are basically three kinds of prostitute: street hooker, call girl, and house whore. Each kind is convinced that the other two are the lowest of the low. I was a little more sophisticated: I had started as an independent call girl, then shifted tracks after a few unpleasant incidents persuaded me that it was good to have a protector. But I still had nothing but contempt for house girls.
For one thing, I knew who ran the whorehouses in New York. Better to work the streets! I knew a girl named Marcie who’d been in a House in L.A., once, and she said it combined the worst features of a girls’ reform school and a gang rape. You had to work sixteen hours a day and take on any john who wanted you, and do a lot of the perverted kinky stuff. She showed me the scars. You weren’t allowed to ask them to use a condom because you were so expensive, yet you got less of the money you made than many street hookers did. Marcie had managed to escape and come East—she’d even managed to kick the drugs they’d hooked her on—but she always used to say that one day they would find her. One day I stopped seeing her around.
My side was giving me hell, but I embraced the pain. I was going to have to get used to it. I was not going to let them give me any more of that Placebo shit.
Phillip did come by to check on me later, but I pretended to be asleep so I wouldn’t have to talk to him. Then awhile after that, Doctor Kate came back. Her I did want to talk to.
“Look, Doctor Kate—”
“Just ‘Kate,’ dear. We’re going to be friends, I hope.”
“Kate, I’m not exactly a blushing virgin—”
“I’ve treated very few debutantes for stab wounds.”
“—I’ve figured out that this place isn’t a Bible Society, okay? So tell me, what’s it like? How’s Sally to work for?”
“This is the best place I’ve ever worked,” she said happily. “Including some fancy-schmancy hospitals, back when medicine was my main career. And Lady Sally is a total dear.”
Uh huh. I wondered whether she was brainwashed, or a tool of management, or just too scared to tell the truth. I decided it didn’t much matter which: for my purposes she was useless. I’d already figured out that all the rooms would be bugged—but I’d been hoping for a wink or a grimace or some other sign.
“Really,” she was saying, “this is a House of healthy repute—no sleaze, fleas or social disease. You have no idea how lucky you are.”
“I’m learning. Are we in the city?”
“Brooklyn,” she said. “Not far from where you were injured.”
“Huh,” I said. “Funny. Somehow it doesn’t feel like Brooklyn.”
That made her smile. “No, it doesn’t, much.”
I wanted to ask for a more precise location, but did not dare. I took another tack. “Kate? I don’t mean to be a bother, but…would you bring that phone on the dresser over here by the bedside? And tell me what number to dial to reach you? I yelled for help a little while ago, and nobody heard me.”
She frowned slightly. “Oh, you must have dreamed it, Maureen. These rooms are very well soundproofed, it’s true. But Mary monitors every room in the House during working hours, and even a squeak for help would have brought her on the run.”
Maybe that was the cue I’d been hoping for: an open admission that the rooms were bugged here.
“But we are between shifts, now, and Mary’s off duty. Besides, you might have people on the outside you want to contact, let them know you’re okay. Here you go—”
She brought me the phone!
“What was the matter anyway?” she asked, setting it down on the bedside table. “Are you all right now?”
“Oh yeah,” I said absently, dizzy with hope. “Just a twinge.”
“That’s good,” she said. She jotted some three-digit numbers down on a pad. “If I’m not at this first number, I’ll usually be at the second…and this third number is Main Reception downstairs. Oh, and dial six if you want an outside line, then the area code if it’s outside the 212 area. Got it?”
I studied her face carefully. It was open, sincere, friendly. Could there be a hidden camera somewhere? “Got it. Thanks, Kate.”
“My pleasure, Maureen. Can I do anything else for you?”
I wondered how often she said those words here. “No, I’m fine.”
“I’ll run along, then.” She grinned suddenly. “Got to wipe down O.R. for the next shift. If you get bored, there’s a few magazines in the drawer beside you.”
She left, and I held a brief but intense debate with myself.
Was it or wasn’t it safe to call for help? Maybe it was smarter to play dumb. This might be a test. Even if Mary really was off duty, there could be a tape rolling. Then again, if I could get off a quick enough S.O.S., maybe help would arrive before they got around to playing back the tape…
Which led me right up against the brick wall. Who was there to call? The cops? My mother?
Most other working girls either bored the stockings off me, or gave me the willies. I had maybe four sort-of friends among the sisterhood, and none I would trust to take a splinter out of my butt. But who did I know in town besides hookers? I could not recall a single john giving out his phone number—nor one I would call on even if I could. Big Travis’s number was permanently out of service. The cops would take their orders from the same people Lady Sally did. And I would not have called my mother if I were being roasted and tortured in Hell.
I thought of someone I could call. It galled me to have to ask him for help. There was no question that he could help me, and I had absolutely no other choice: those were the two most galling things. But this chance, if it was one, might never come again; I was dialing his private number even as I cursed.
I had worked with him once. An
d been his lover, in a friendly sort of way. And I’d been a fool to quit him for whoring.
“I wasn’t anywhere near there nine months ago,” he answered on the third ring.
“Professor—” I began, and shut up. I was furious with myself for the relief I felt at the sound of his voice.
“What’s wrong, Maureen?” he asked at once.
I began to cry softly. “Prof, it’s a clem. I’m in big trouble—you gotta get me out of here!”
“I will. Tell me about it.”
“It’s all so crazy! This guy turned into a dog, and my old man cut me, and then I got shanghaied into a House. I don’t know whether they’re listening now or not, how long I can talk—please, Professor, come get me the hell out of here!”
“Where are you? Address and specific location inside, if you can.”
“I don’t know, exactly! In Brooklyn somewhere, a place run by an old auntie named Lady Sally, but I don’t even know what floor I’m on—”
He burst out laughing.
I held the phone away as if it had bitten me. It chirped with distant laughter.
“What the hell is so goddam funny?” I shouted into it finally.
“I’m sorry, Mo,” he said, still chuckling. “I’m not laughing at you; I’m laughing at the universe. Far be it from me to spoil a joke as good as this. Just listen to me, and believe this: God has sent you what you deserve.” He hung up.
I stared at the phone. I was shattered. And totally confused. And almost angry enough to scream. To be forced to yell “Hey, Rube”—to him of all people!—and then to have him laugh at my tears of fright and hang up on me…
I was going to get out of this place if I had to chew my way out. And then hunt him down and neuter him.
Getting out of bed didn’t kill me. The carpet was soft, and I only fell twice. I couldn’t find my bloody clothes, but the closet was full of all sorts of outfits and one of them fit well enough. Four or five pounds of costume jewelry twisted up in a stocking made a serviceable blackjack. When Lady Sally came in fifteen minutes later I was behind the door, ready.
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