Callahan's Lady

by Spider Robinson

  “For your peace of mind I wanted to,” she murmured softly. “But I didn’t dare. However unlikely, suppose someone else stumbled across what Diana did? Suppose, for instance, that the KGB somehow did learn what forced Sergei’s hand? They’re very good, you know. Do you suppose they’d rest until they had a ring of their own? There has to be some one moral person alive who knows the secret, is capable of recognizing the signs in news reports that no one else thinks are meaningful, and see that it gets reported to the proper authorities—if, God forbid, that black day ever comes. And Sherry, I am not a young woman.”

  I felt more crushed by the weight than pleased by the compliment. But where else could I put it? And did I really want memories—even dreadful ones—removed from my own mind?

  “I understand,” I said finally.

  I turned the earring over in my hand, watching blue fire dance like wit. “A shame to destroy opal like this. Still, opal used to have a reputation in olden times for being an unlucky stone.”

  “Oh, don’t destroy it, darling. It has no aggressive use: one of the few true purely defensive weapons. There could come a day when we need it. And it would be well to have both. Braces and belt, like poor Diana.” She smiled, a bone weary smile. “For some reason I’m feeling paranoid.”

  And you know, I thought then that she was. But now, years later, I’m no longer quite so sure.

  How do you explain this glasnost business, for instance?

  BOOK FOUR

  DOLLARS TO

  DONUTS

  CHAPTER 8

  FUNNY MONEY,

  HONEY

  I’d been raped by three terribly sweet Japanese earlier that evening, and my next scheduled appointment wasn’t for hours, so I was in the Parlor nursing an iced tea and enjoying myself when the Professor arrived.

  I’m not a rape-simulation specialist, like Brandi or Tim; more of a utility infielder. But the role requires little work or acting skills. And Japanese men, their natural politeness intensified by the current political climate, are a pleasure to work with, before, during, and after. (Every artist in Lady Sally’s House knows a code word which will fetch instant help if things get out of hand—and sadly, most of us have had occasion to use it—but to my knowledge none of us has ever used it while with a Japanese.) They had, for instance, taken exquisite pains to leave no marks on me, a courtesy I appreciated since my shift was just beginning.

  So I was in a mellow mood as I sipped my drink and bantered with colleagues and customers in the Parlor. I had relieved my clients of two kinds of yen, with minimum exertion, and enjoyed myself in the process. When rape is not inevitable, but a matter of free choice—well paid and warmly appreciated—relax and enjoy it, I always say. (Any other time, cripple the bastard.)

  And Lady Sally’s Parlor is a mellow place to be in any case. It may just be the nicest place on Earth. It is unquestionably the nicest place in Brooklyn.

  If you teleported a stranger into that room and told him he was in a whorehouse parlor, he would not believe you. A large, open room, with area rugs and furniture groupings defining smaller conversational areas. Comfortable luxurious furnishings, warm colors, indirect lighting, local pools of greater brightness from table lamps. Half a dozen paintings on the walls, none abstract and only one of them even slightly erotic. (Upstairs Lady Sally maintains a large gallery packed with what I believe to be the finest private collection of pornographic art in the eastern United States, viewing hours by appointment; but the Parlor is not the place for such things.) A ventilation system designed to cope with a lot of smokers and a lot of non-smokers, aided by a cheerily crackling fireplace. Quiet, expert piano in the background, sensitive to the mood of the moment. And in the center of the room, visually dominating it (without in any sense overwhelming it) is Lady Sally’s trademark: the magnificent wrought-iron spiral staircase, elaborately filigreed and large enough to allow two couples to pass each other. It is an intrinsically beautiful object, its railings forming an immense DNA double-helix. It winds upward to the second floor, where we artists entertain our clients. Few indeed are the unhappy feet that have ever trod its trusty treads in either direction. Especially down.

  But while Lady Sally’s Parlor may physically resemble an exclusive men’s club, no men’s club ever had such a heterogeneous collection of members. I don’t mean just the obvious fact that the crowd is co-ed: I mean that the only things they all seem to have in common are good manners, good cheer, and a high degree of tolerance. (You would expect that all of a whorehouse’s customers would have horniness in common—but you’d be amazed how often people come to Sal’s, have a few drinks and a few laughs in the Parlor, and then go home.) I don’t know any other place where men and women of all ages, social classes, and degrees of pulchritude mingle with such ease and unselfconsciousness.

  From where I sat, for instance, I could see a stock broker in his seventies earnestly conversing with a twenty-five-year-old bus driver and a stunning redhead in her forties (a client, not an artist); and an eighteen-year-old second baseman simultaneously carrying on a chess game with Juicy Lucy (his own age and gorgeous) and a tickle fight with Ruth (sixty-one, then, a hundred and seventy pounds, and without question the one who was going to be leading him up the spiral staircase shortly); and in the opposite corner of the room, two Russian attachés in hilarious attempt to converse with an African diplomat and an Irish cop. (There’s a decidedly international flavor to Lady Sally’s Place, located as it is just across the river from the United Nations.) The Parlor’s population that night happened to approximate the ideal fifty-fifty male/female ratio, each of those groups comprising roughly two-thirds clients and one-third artists: a pleasant balance, assuring the artists of work and the clients of minimal waiting.

  I was not actively trolling for clients; I’d already banked good tips and had appointments later. But I was still on duty, and a girl can’t have too much money. So when a tan, handsome brunette in business dress sat down beside me on the wide low couch, I made room for her and smiled warmly. I didn’t recognize her, and I’m good with faces, so I said, “Hello, dear—welcome to Lady Sally’s House. My name is Sherry.”

  “Hello, Sherry,” she said in a soft husky contralto. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

  Clients need not give even a House name unless it suits them. “Likewise, love. Have you been a guest here before?”

  “No—and I can already see that’s been a mistake. My, that’s a lovely dress.”

  “Thanks,” I said, pleased; that dress took me weeks to make. Lady Sally insists that artists dress in the Parlor as though they’ve just come from a party at Gracie Mansion. Once in a while we have. “Can I get you something to drink? Coffee, perhaps, or something stronger?”

  “Why, thank you,” she said, setting down her purse and crossing her legs. “That’s very kind of you. A single malt over a single cube would be lovely.”

  “Wait here,” I said, and got up to head for the bar. Halfway there the penny dropped into the slot; I slowed in mid-step—then continued on my way without looking back. Discretion is something Lady Sally has drilled into us. I built the drink, telling Ginny to put it on my own tab, got another iced tea for myself and brought both back to the couch.

  “This one’s on me,” I said, handing the Scotch over and seating myself again.

  “That’s sweet of you,” the brunette said, and drank half of it in a single swallow. “My, that’s delicious. May I ask you something, dear?”

  I moved flirtatiously closer on the couch and lowered my voice sharply. “Professor, you can ask me anything…as long as you tell me what the hell you’re doing in drag. You aren’t changing your tastes, are you?”

  His control was good, but from up close I could tell I had frightened him. “Oh shit, Mo—” he whispered.

  “Don’t panic,” I murmured. “You did great! I don’t think anyone else is going to spot you. I wouldn’t have myself: it was that silly single-cube business that gave you away.”


  “Hell,” he whispered, still using a woman’s voice. “Are you sure?”

  “Professor, maybe a thousand men have come through that door in drag since I took this job…and you’re the first one that’s ever fooled me for one minute. And I know you better than the rest of the staff. So relax. What’s the masquerade about?”

  He looked somewhat reassured. “Uh…Mo, I need to see Lady Sally alone for a few minutes. In complete privacy.”

  “Privacy we’ve got plenty of, here. Follow me upstairs—then I’ll slip down the back way and send her up to you. Will that do?”

  “God bless you, Mo!”

  On the way to the staircase I glanced back—and had to admire him. The way he was waggling his hips as he walked made me want to do things to and with him for which he simply was not equipped. That’s talent.

  The Professor is the best con-man in the five boroughs. He’s created some of the most ingenious scams I ever heard of—and worked them so brilliantly that only among his colleagues is he a legend. I think he’s in his middle thirties, but I’ve seen him convincingly be both ten years younger and forty years older. I once worked for him briefly, working my way up from bait to player before deciding that my own temperament was happier giving the customers something back for their money. I particularly admired two things about him: his distaste for all forms of violence, and his inability to swindle anyone he did not dislike. “Widows and orphans have nothing to fear from me,” he used to say, “nor any honest decent citizen. It’s just that there are so few honest decent citizens.”

  I took him up to my studio, since going one flight higher to my apartment during working hours might have drawn attention to us. (I’ve heard of houses where the girls are expected to live in the same rooms where they work. Thank heaven Lady Sally has more class than that!) Robin, of course, had long since tidied up after the Japanese, changed the sheets and aired the place out. Robin works harder than anyone else in the House, not excepting Lady Sally herself, and seems to get more pleasure out of his work than most of the clients get from their play. (His only major disappointment in life is that his Mistress Cynthia won’t let him wear his maid’s costume during shifts: it makes some of the other clients uneasy.) I left the Professor there with a fresh Scotch from the studio bar, and slipped out the other door, the one which leads to the Discreet Wing.

  I guess I should explain a little of the basic physical layout of Lady Sally’s House.

  Most customers enter the building through the main door on the south side, are greeted at the reception area, and pass through into the Parlor. A smaller percentage choose either the west or east door, which lead to the female-only and male-only lounges I’ve mentioned before. All three staircases lead to the artists’ studios on the second floor, laid out in three wings like a wide letter U.

  But a few customers enter the north door, using a private key. There is a small antechamber inside, but it is unstaffed, and contains only an intercom and a supply of masks for those who wish them. Through this entrance come those clients who must have utter discretion: it’s the doorway I was carried through, bleeding profusely, on my first night in Lady Sally’s. No lounge or staircase here; an elevator leads upstairs, one-way glass in its door so that clients can be sure the hallway is clear before leaving the elevator. That hallway is sealed off from the other, more public corridors by locked doors at either end. All special-purpose studios (the Casting Couch, the Girls’ Locker Room, etc.) are in the center of the building, so that they can be entered from either the Public Wings or the Discreet Wing. So are a couple of standard-issue studios, including my own.

  So by leaving my studio through the door opposite the one I’d entered, I was able to take a second, staff-only elevator down to Lady Sally’s office without being seen by either clients or artists.

  Lady Sally answered my knock at once. “Pass right through, darling!” said the familiar husky voice.

  She was at her desk, going over accounts. I watched her work, wondering why no one ever seems to hate her. Short, dark, and slender, with permed red hair and a figure I envy, and warmth and style and charm and prodigious energy. Everyone forgives her for it, somehow. She comes across something like a female version of Lord Buckley in his between-raps persona, gloriously high, affecting an upper-class British accent so patently fraudulent that it cannot be taken as pretentious, and treating everyone she meets as though they were fellow members of the Royal Family whose names she cannot quite recall at the moment. I think she is the most unselfconscious person I ever knew. Is that because she never met anyone who did not like her—or is it the other way around? This quality above all others I most envy her.

  Her true age is one of the great mysteries. Most of the time she seems like a mother elf…but when it suits her I believe she could give a statue an erection. She hardly ever sees clients personally these days—but none of them ever gives up hope. She must have been something when she was younger. She’s something now.

  There are many things to like about Lady Sally’s House. But I think what I like best is what isn’t there: the kind of clients Sally will not accept. Sniggerers. Ugly drunks. Slobs. Sleazeballs. People of inadequate personal hygiene or deficient manners. Bigots. Those who confuse their personal tastes with morality. People who don’t respect us artists, and what we do. You know: shitheads.

  Any of the Lady’s artists may choose to turn down any client, with no questions asked—but Sally’s initial screening is so good that it seldom happens. In the oldest and most demanding of professions, she’s a joy to work for.

  And a privilege. She is even more fussy about artists than she is about clients, and I don’t mean technical skills. Lady Sally is running a permanent party, and she only wants her friends there. I’ve always been proud to be one of them.

  Just seeing her now made me grin, as always. The twinkle in her merry hazel eyes is about the only thing in her House that is contagious. “Got a minute, Your Ladyship?”

  “For you, dear girl, always! Take a pew. That was a nice bit of work earlier tonight. You know I don’t employ racists, but some of the girls are just a bit reluctant to work with Japanese these days.”

  “As long as you watch them at the bar, they’re fine. I wish all my clients were as clean and polite as Two-San and his friends.” The only dismaying thing about the leader of tonight’s Japanese contingent had been his insistence on using the House name “Two-San Arizona.” Oh, well, there’s no such thing as a perfect rapist, I suppose.

  “And as modestly hung. What in the name of Adam’s off ox is the Professor doing with those astonishing tits?”

  Up on the third floor Big Mary sits in the Snoop Room each night, watching the status board, monitoring the individual studio bugs for sounds of trouble, armed with a panic button and intercom she can use to summon Priscilla the bouncer (and any clients who feel helpful) from downstairs. But as far as I can tell, Lady Sally just reads Mary’s mind. She always knows what’s going on everywhere in her House.

  I shrugged. “Something must have gone very sour for him. He’s scared stiff. He wants to talk with you in private. They are impressive, aren’t they? And he wears them so well.”

  She nodded. “Beggar could earn me a fortune…if he were willing to work for a living. Always did enjoy making pros out of cons.”

  I refused to wince. “Shall I try to work up something about a film critic making prose from Cannes?” She’d started it.

  She did too. “Dear God, no. As the actress said to the bishop.” She closed her account book, stood up and checked her face and dress in the mirror behind her desk. “Well-well-well, let’s go see the silly little shit. Must be some way we can extract him from the chowder. Question is, of course, how badly do we get our fingers burnt?”

  “Knowing the Professor, use tongs.”

  She paused as we reached the door. “Maureen, dear?”

  “Yes, Lady?”

  “You still care about him, don’t you?”

  “From you, that’
s a pretty dumb question. He was my first lover. I’ve regretted leaving him since the door closed behind me. I still love him, yes, Lady. Tits and all. I just can’t live with him.”

  “That’s the way I feel about most men, darling.”

  He had found the collection of erotica I keep in one of the drawers beneath the bed; we found him leafing through the Juliette engravings with an expression of bafflement. Well, some of them baffle me too. He was still in masquerade, but had unbent to the extent of removing the high heels. I noted that he was holding his cigarette the way a woman holds one. The Professor could be a sensation on Broadway—if he didn’t insist on writing his own lines and could stand the company of actors.

  “This is unbelievable,” he greeted us absently, in his female voice.

  “No, it isn’t,” I said.

  “No, but I mean this one just isn’t physically poss—forgive me!” He sprang from the bed, stood tall in his stockinged feet and bowed deeply from the waist. Somehow it didn’t look silly. He spoke at male pitch now. “Your Ladyship, it is as always an enormous pleasure to greet you. Please pardon my churlishness; I was distracted. Thank you for indulging me with this most discreet meeting.” The Professor always comes all over British in Lady Sally’s presence, and does it much better than she does. He could steal women from Cary Grant.

  “Rubbish,” she said, tickled to death. “You silly old horsethief, what have you gotten yourself into this time?” She sat in my armchair and I perched on the hassock.

  He sat back down on the bed and recovered his drink. “A steaming tureen of minestrone, I fear. The cry goes round Brooklyn: ‘The Professor has the wind up.’ My only consolation—and an inadequate one—is the fact that I despise my insurance agent.”

  “Minestrone? You have come into conflict with the Families?”

  “Nothing that simple. Family business can often be negotiated. I’m in much deeper soup than that. Nonetheless, the said soup scores high in tomato, pasta and garlic content. Do you know a man who rejoices in the sobriquet of Tony Donuts?” He gulped the last half of his drink.