Callahan's Lady

by Spider Robinson

  “It might do the trick, Mary,” I said. “Thanks.”

  “Don’t be disappointed if it doesn’t work out, darling,” Lady Sally said. “All I’ve seen of this Colt chap was the usual preliminary interview when he became a member, and he did seem rather an urgent sort. Some men are simply not epicures by nature. As the poet tells us: once a king, always a king—but once a night is often sufficient. Still, it can’t hurt to try the experiment. Good luck.” And she emptied her mug and went off to bed, humming to herself.

  I fell asleep planning my good deed.

  But I didn’t get to do it the next night. He had not yet arrived by late evening, when a new client took on about three more drinks than was good for her, and I was deputized to go along in the cab and make sure she got up to her apartment all right. (All part of the service—as long as you don’t let it happen too often. In this case, the lady had reason.) I didn’t bother to phone for a cab, there are always a few trolling round outside the door, and sure enough, one pulled up just as I got the semiconscious client outside.

  Colt got out of it, nodded hello. I started to ask him would he mind waiting until I got back, I had a surprise for him—but he tipped his hat and was past me and in the House before I could get word out.

  I shrugged, promised myself that I was going to take the edge off that appetite the very next night, and got the client into the cab.

  “Hi, Sherry,” the driver said. “You’re looking great tonight.”

  “Thanks, Ben.” I’ve known Ben since my street days, before I came to Lady Sally’s House. “We’re going to Prospect Park South, okay? How’re you making it?”

  “Not as well as you are. Gee, I’m glad you got in with the Lady. I used to worry about you.” He pulled away from the curb.

  “You’re sweet. Yeah, I got lucky.”

  “Damn right. Hey. Tell me something?”

  My charge was snoring blissfully. “If I can.”

  “Well…uh…you know that guy I just dropped off?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, does he…I mean…what I’m gettin’ at—aw, hell, you know what I mean.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Well, look, does he actually do…anything?”

  I giggled. “I don’t think it would be violating Lady Sally’s rules to say that he…does pretty much what most clients do. Males, anyway. Why?”

  He shook his head in wonder. “The guy ain’t human.”

  Again I giggled. “Oh, I guarantee he’s human.”

  “No, you don’t understand: this mook is a legend! All the hacks in Brooklyn are startin’ to talk about him, he’s like a force o’ nature.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You know where I picked him up tonight? Madame Sasha’s.”

  “Huh!” Sasha’s is about as good a brothel as you’re going to find in Brooklyn, outside of Lady Sally’s House. I wouldn’t work there.

  “Wait, I ain’t started yet: Short Black took him there, not an hour ago, and where did Short pick him up? The Harem.” A distinct cut below Sasha’s dump. “And Laughing John took him to the Harem from Olga’s crib.”

  “Good God—” I wouldn’t steer an enemy to Olga’s.

  “Now, Aunt Betty drove him to Olga’s: would you like to know where he called Betty from? The lobby of The Hard Corps.”

  By now we were down to a massage parlor so sleazy that most junkies wouldn’t go there to cop. “Jesus Christ, he must have got his tax return or something! Flattering that he saved us for last, at least. Oh, this is great—I’ve got to hurry and get back, this is just the mood I’ve been wanting to catch him in—”

  “You still don’t get it,” Ben said. “There’s no hurry at all. This mood is not going to pass.”

  “Huh?”

  “He does this every night. He’s been doing this every night for goin’ on two weeks.”

  “Come on! Get serious.”

  “My right hand to God. And he don’t save you guys for last, either. He does go home, after your place…but he usually has a couple o’ outcall girls sent over. They stay an hour or two.”

  “And after that?”

  “As far as we can figure out, from three A.M. to a little after suppertime the guy is totally celibate.”

  There was a short silence.

  “Of course, he may spend the whole time jerking off, what the hell do I know?”

  I stared at the back of his head. “You’re not kidding.”

  “Look, I know about the Lady’s rules, but you and I go back a long way. Would you talk to the guy for me? If it’s like, a pill, I’d go as high as a grand or two for a weekend’s worth.”

  I frowned. “Can this thing go any faster?”

  “No.”

  It had been a foolish question; Ben never drove slower than was humanly possible. But Colt would be done and gone in another twenty minutes. Or less…

  “Look, Ben: do me this and I’ll talk to the guy for you, and tell you whatever he says I can, okay? Get on the horn, get the nearest hack to meet us and take me back to Sally’s—then you get this lady home for me, see her upstairs? She got some bad news today.”

  “For you, no problem. I owe you.” He made the call, connected with someone I didn’t know named Angel.

  “Thanks, Ben!”

  “Look…uh…if it ain’t a pill…I mean, if it ain’t like something he could share…would you ask him—” He hesitated, looking for the right words. What do you ask a legend? “Would you…well, would you just ask him what’s it’s like?” His voice was wistful.

  “I promise.”

  CHAPTER 5

  REVOLVER

  I spent the ride back to the House in Angel’s battered cab trying to rearrange my perceptions of Colt. And trying not to feel like a jerk. How could I have read the signs so wrong? What fantastic irony, that I had been in the presence of legend, and had thought he needed loosening up. Mary was going to howl when I told her…

  I was going to tell her, wasn’t I?

  I was not particularly worried that Colt might be bringing unwanted microbes into Lady Sally’s ecosystem, despite the fact that he had been spending time in some very unsavory places—for two reasons. First, even the sleaziest House is much more concerned with hygiene than the general public imagines, for reasons which ought to be perfectly obvious. Second, Lady Sally is even more fanatic about prophylaxis than most madams. This was before AIDS, but the lady had coined the term “safe sex,” years, maybe even decades, before the general public knew herpes or chlamydia existed: it was one of the cornerstones of her reputation. (As an aside, the safest commercial sex you’ll find outside of Lady Sally’s House is escort services: being semilegitimate, above-ground businesses, they’re concerned with things like lawsuits. It’s independent, street girls and boys you have to watch out for—though even they are statistically not much riskier than, say, the customers at singles bars.) Clients could either conform to simple House guidelines regarding inspection, cleaning and bagging of firearms, or leave a small blood sample on every single visit with the House physician, Doctor Kate—or take their business elsewhere. Colt had borne upon him—at least at the start of our first session—the little saline-soluble rubber stamp that said, in an imitation of Bogart’s handwriting in Casablanca, “OK Prick.” (Kate has one for female clients that reads “OK Trick”; and, of course, she gets blood samples from each of us artists—including herself—every working day.) We’ve rarely had a problem; never a serious one.

  No, it was not Colt’s physical health that worried me. Well, yes it was, in a sense: it seemed to me there was a distinct chance that he might kill himself if he kept up the pace he had set. But I was equally concerned with his mental health.

  Forget for the moment about the kind of compulsion it must take to make a man seek out half a dozen women a night, night after night. Forget about the psychic conflict it must take to power that kind of relentless engine. The more pressing psychological question was, what kind of a
moron would go to all those different places for so long?

  At Lady Sally’s House, he could have had six women a night, for the same flat-rate membership fee that Lady Sally had assigned him—by a formula known only to her—on his preliminary interview.

  I had never heard of Sally raising anyone’s dues, only lowering them in rare hardship cases (although not infrequently a client would voluntarily raise them, as his or her income improved). At worst, perhaps, she might have doubled Colt’s fee. Instead, he had opted for a system which required enormous exertion and time, increased his risk of infection, hemorrhaged money needlessly…and provided him with one or at most two quality experiences a night. Which he treated like fast food.

  Sad? This guy was tragic.

  If there is anything a woman will find more sexually attractive than a tragic figure, it is a man on the verge of becoming a legend. If what the tragic man is legendary for is his virility, and he seems to have money to burn…

  Did I have to tell anybody back at the House? Right away?

  Oh, hell, of course I did.

  I was not particularly in the market for a man. God knew my sexual needs were well taken care of, and at Lady Sally’s House you could always find someone to sleep with or hug or cry to or argue with or get your back scratched: we all took care of each other’s emotional needs pretty well. I was better off financially than many of my clients, with free rent and board, modest straight salary, and frequent tips—and most uncharacteristically for my profession, I got to keep every dime I earned, banking it for college. (I planned to be a Psych major. But I found later that I could get at what interested me better if I switched to History.) Aside from sexual, emotional, and financial needs, the only other reason you need a man around is to put out the garbage and keep the TV working right, and I had Robin the houseboy for that. There was no reason to get possessive with this sad little superman.

  Of course, just because I didn’t especially want to own him didn’t mean I couldn’t drive him around the block a few times before returning him to the motorpool. I would share this stunning secret with my sister artists…just as soon as I had deployed myself at the head of the line.

  “You’re back quick,” the receptionist said. “Say, what’s with this fella Colt?”

  For once a pun made me giggle. The significance of the House name he’d chosen had just struck me. Not the horse. The revolver. The six-shooter…

  “I’m not exactly sure yet—” No lie! “—why?”

  “Big Mary actually came down from the Snoop Room. In a housecoat with stockings and heels underneath. She said to tell you she’d be waiting for you with him in the Bower. She said not to hurry, she’d handle the preliminaries, and you’d know what that meant. She dragged him off like a lamb to the slaughter. He kept blinking. Should I have a stretcher waiting, or what?”

  I was giggling even harder now. Like a lamb to the slaughter! Mary was the little lamb. No good deed goes unpunished, indeed. “Yes, but there’s some question who’ll be on it.” I gave her my cab vouchers and went on in through the Parlor to the lockers. I eeled out of my clothes, pranced under the shower spray, and entered the Bower. You wait in the doorway, for your eyes to adjust to the soft light, and for people to get a good look at you. I didn’t bother.

  I saw almost at once that I was far from the head of the line.

  And Mary wasn’t on it anymore. She was asleep or unconscious over by the pool, head pillowed on her bunched up housecoat, a broad smile on her lips. She looked like something Rubens might have done for a wealthy private collector.

  Colt had the total attention of the room.

  Currently at bat was a client I knew socially, an accountant named Donna. An artist named Rose was hovering nearby, sort of assisting in a supervisory capacity; she was clearly on deck. Two other clients, a sweet old gay named Uncle Joanie and a diplomat named Svetlana, were trying to jockey for position without being crude about it. Donna’s husband Keith, a school teacher if I remembered right, was staring from the sidelines with an expression of awe and wonder. He was being absently worked on by Mei-Ling, but neither of them was putting a lot of attention on it. She usually avoids the ones that are built thick, but she looked like she was talking herself into it.

  “Gum, gum, gum, gum,” Donna kept saying loudly.

  I caught Mei-Ling’s eyes and mouthed, “Gum, gum?”

  “Well,” she whispered back, “she kept saying ‘No, no,’ but you know Bower rules. There was some question of whether she meant it or not, so Keith asked her to say something else and that’s what she came up with.”

  “Oh.”

  The most fascinating thing—I think any of us in the room would have agreed—was the expression on Colt’s face. Assuming that anyone else in the room was paying attention to his face.

  Once I was in a position to observe a man suffering from poison ivy of the penis. If you think that’s a funny affliction, may you get it someday. When he first realized and diagnosed his problem, he acquired a look of horror, then disbelief, and while he struggled with it, his face changed to profound dismay. Followed by dogged, hopeless determination not to scratch. A fascinating series of expressions, and perhaps one could be forgiven for finding them comic. I hope so, for I did. But soon he yielded to relentless compulsion and scratched once—and within moments, a new expression washed over his face. The one that made it stop being funny, the one that Colt wore now:

  The mindless, despairing animal awareness that, now that he had started, he was inexorably committed to keep doing this thing that brought him no relief until his heart exploded.

  Which looked like it might take months. If he hadn’t been in especially good shape a month ago he certainly was now, after weeks of training: wind good, color good, rhythm steady, eyes clear, an athlete in the peak of condition.

  He just wasn’t having any fun. There was nothing behind those clear eyes, nothing human, only the glowing embers of the primeval fire that powered those remorseless hips. The sound effects were like that scene in Rocky where Stallone is breaking ribs on sides of beef; they rang like pistol shots in the echo of the Bower.

  Donna appeared to have been climaxing steadily for some time, but as it became clear that he was climaxing himself, she tucked her head and clutched like a drowner and joined him with a long high deafening final “G—U—M!” There was mild applause. Nearly at once he pulled away, raised up on his knees—flag still flying—and reached for Rose.

  “Next,” he said dully.

  “Jesus,” Mei-Ling breathed.

  Donna was apparently comatose, like Mary, but I noticed that unlike Mary she was not smiling in her sleep. And Rose, although she did not move away, was clearly going through with this not so much because she was attracted anymore, as because she knew she was in the presence of history.

  So many men seem to have the idea that what women secretly want most of all (no matter what we say or even believe ourselves) is a powerful and remorseless engine of flesh impersonally hammering away at us without pause for hours at a time. They become upset with themselves if they cannot deliver this silly commodity. I don’t mean that, on the one occasion in my life when it actually happened to me, it was an unpleasant experience, exactly. (Until I tried to get up and walk the next day.) It’s just that maybe once in a lifetime is plenty. And I’ve never seen that guy since, don’t much care if I do.

  I mean, you could buy a machine to do that. They exist. And women don’t buy them. Neither do gay men.

  Still, it was an impressive spectacle to witness. Mary had clearly enjoyed herself.

  “Maybe I should—” Keith murmured hesitantly.

  “Donna looks comfortable,” Mei-Ling pointed out.

  “Yes, she does,” he agreed, and stayed where he was.

  Rose had, with a professional’s pride, positioned herself a little more effectively for the audience. She made a small sound of disbelief as the hammer struck for the first time, then settled down to the challenge. The dance resumed
—

  I reached a decision.

  I touched Mei-Ling’s shoulder. “Go get the Lady,” I whispered. “Tell her I need her.”

  She looked stubborn. “Why don’t you get her?” she whispered back.

  “Because there’s a client in pain here, and he’s my responsibility, damn it! It’s a long story, Mei, will you do it for me?”

  She stared at me. “He’s in pain?”

  “Look at his face.”

  She leaned slightly so that she could. “But they always look like they’re in pain.”

  “Trust me, okay? I know about this guy.”

  Mei-Ling’s a decent sort. “Okay, Sherry.”

  “Thanks, munchkin,” I took over Keith from her without missing a beat; he failed to notice. “Tell the Lady to hurry.”

  “Okay…but it doesn’t look to me like there’s any hurry.”

  “And Mei—don’t tell anybody out there about this, okay?”

  Now she looked offended. “When have I ever discussed the Bower outside the Bower? Or gossiped to a client about a client?”

  “I know, I know…but don’t even hint, okay?”

  But Lady Sally came in the entrance before Mei-Ling had straightened up.

  (Mary was, for once, not upstairs in the Snoop Room monitoring the House for trouble, and though she had doubtless arranged a relief before abandoning her post, the Bower was the only part of Lady Sally’s House that was not bugged. You tell me how the Lady knew she was needed.)

  I handed Keith back to Mei-Ling and went to her; by the time I reached her she had taken in the situation. “You seem to have created a monster, dear girl.”

  “Not me, Milady! I just got here. I was just sending Mei-Ling for you.”

  “Two down, four to go, eh? Keith will have to carry Donna home. Not the first time, but there’s usually a dozen men involved. Gad, I haven’t seen that expression on Mary’s face since…well, perhaps she’ll tell you about it sometime. The man must be a phenomenon.” Just then Rose hit Eb above high C.

  “You don’t know the half of it.” I hastily explained what I had learned from Ben. “Mary brought him up here while I was away, to prime him for me, and…well, you see what happened.”