Lady Slings the Booze

by Spider Robinson

  I grinned. “‘Get’ to it, you mean. Those double-entendres again.”

  He smiled back. Then suddenly one eyebrow raised. “That’s up to you, Mr. Taggart. Uh…the Gym Teacher’s office is right over there…and the other boys have all gone to class. And if I don’t pass Gym, my Dad is gonna kill me…”

  Now here’s a funny thing. I was not interested, okay? But I didn’t get mad either, and I’m not sure I can tell you why. Maybe it was that he didn’t make the offer as if he already knew the answer, if that makes any sense. I didn’t feel insulted by it, any more than you’d be insulted if somebody offered you a Coke when you prefer Pepsi.

  So there wasn’t any anger to try and keep off my face. I studied his…and saw that he was not going to judge me, one way or the other, whatever I decided. So I used the rest of the second or two I had before I had to make some kind of response to let myself actually imagine what such a thing might be like—

  —and I guess I must have blushed—for the first time in twenty years!—because he went right on smoothly, “…but the night is young, and you’ve got a lot to see. Maybe you’d rather continue the tour right now.”

  “If that’s okay,” I said.

  “Sure,” he said, and held the door for me. I took one last look around the place, thought briefly about what would have happened if a pretty girl had made me the same offer. Lady Sally was no fool. I went back out into the hall.

  As we went by a door its red light went out, and it opened. A client came out, smiling beatifically, and gave us a friendly nod. I carefully avoided staring, just nodded back and kept on my way. As I got about three steps past, he registered. Long brown hair like a hippie. Big full beard too. Broad shoulders and sensitive features. Work shirt, jeans and beat-up boots. A carpenter’s tool belt around his hips. And he was on a crutch…

  I turned around to take a second look at him. He was gone. I hadn’t heard the door open again…

  Naaaaaaah.

  I told myself not to get punchy, and turned around again and hurried after Tim.

  “NEITHER Dungeon is in use at the moment,” he said, “but I wouldn’t go into Mistress Cynthia’s without asking first. I’ll show you Master Henry’s. They’re pretty much identical.”

  The door we went through was just like the others. But the room inside was made of immense grey stone blocks, genuine ones—which meant expensive floor reinforcement. But that was the least of its unusual aspects. It wasn’t the kind of room you could take in at a glance.

  Oh, a glance told you it was a dungeon. It looked like any movie dungeon you ever saw, with chains dangling from the walls and ceiling here and there, and a scattering of the usual props, cages and racks and bondage crosses and suspension rigs and so on. But there were a lot of gadgets I just plain couldn’t figure out at first.

  One, for instance, was simply a vertical pole, with what looked like a model of a steamboat’s paddle wheel at its base. I recognized the object on the top of the pole, of course, but: “What would you want one that high off the ground for?”

  Tim kind of twinkled. “That’s the Stairway to Hell. Once Master Henry has someone perched up there, they kind of have to rest their weight on the wheel down below. Only the wheel turns…” He turned it with a foot to demonstrate. “So you sort of have to keep climbing, until Henry’s good and ready to let you down. Which, of course, is the minute you say whatever code word you and he have worked out. It’s an interesting sensation, for as long as you’re enjoying it…and it does wonders for the calves and thighs.”

  I was a little distracted. When he’d turned the wheel, something had glowed briefly on the floor nearby. I had never seen a light bulb quite that shape before. It drew power from the treadmill through a long slender cord—presenting the treader with an interesting dilemma. “For the female clients only, I assume?” I asked pointing.

  “No, it can be used for men too, with a couple of rubber bands. But don’t worry: an Olympic sprinter couldn’t get it hot enough to really burn. Quite. Nothing in this room can really hurt you, no matter how much it looks like it, not if an expert like Henry’s using it.”

  To each his own, I kept thinking to myself. I could think of a couple of people I’d like to see on the Stairway to Hell. But Tim made it sound like a roller coaster ride—“fun, while you’re enjoying it.” I glanced around the room to hide my confusion. “That looks kind of weird here. What’s that gizmo there under…Oh!”

  At first glance it was a kid’s swing set, with a single swing. I noticed the two holes in the seat—the big keyhole-shaped one in the middle and the small bolt-sized hole just behind it—at the same time that I identified the “gizmo” on the floor just beneath it as another light bulb (this one a conventional heat-lamp) on a pole, wired to a wall socket. A second after that I noticed the spring-clips high up on either chain of the swing…

  “That’s another of Henry’s endurance trips,” Tim explained. “Once you’re seated and slotted and the lamp’s heated up underneath, you pretty much have to keep swinging. Henry likes setups that do a lot of the work for him. And he does enjoy the challenge of a moving target.”

  There was something else odd about the room. I stopped looking at individual items of equipment and tried to figure out what it was. Finally it came to me: the place didn’t smell like a dungeon. I mean, I always expected one to smell kind of moldy and dank and sweaty and funky—and this smelled kind of more like a good hotel room. And there wasn’t a bloodstain to be seen anywhere. Not even a fake one. I cast a quick glance over a sort of tool rack on the wall. “Some of that stuff looks like it could really lay a hurtin’ on somebody.”

  “Improperly used, hell yeah,” Tim agreed. “Henry generally asks the clients beforehand exactly how long they want to remember the experience afterward, and I’ve never known him to be off by as much as an hour. Ask him to let you sit in sometime: he can teach you more about the human nervous system than anyone but Mistress Cynthia. Even Doctor Kate asks him stuff sometimes.”

  A voice came out of the ceiling. The same one as in the Teenager’s Bedroom, the invisible Mary. “Will you be much longer, Tim?”

  He questioned me with his eyes, and said, “No, we’re pretty much done here, Mary.”

  “Thanks, Tim. Henry and Brandi are on the way with a client.”

  “We’re out of here.”

  We left and continued on down that amazing hall. “You’ve seen enough of the Function Rooms to get the idea,” Tim said. “Now I’ll show you my Studio. It’s pretty typical.”

  “You have Studios, too?”

  “Well, the Function Rooms are fun…but that much theater can get a little, I don’t know, elaborate as a steady diet, don’t you think? I’d say half of the clients that use them are newcomers. Generally they try half a dozen, then stick with one or two for a few more nights, and then they get it out of their systems and spend most of their time in a regular Studio. Or in the Parlor, some of them.”

  That reminded me of something. “You never did get around to saying what all this costs the clients.”

  He looked embarrassed. “Do you know, I don’t know? It’s different for everybody, I know that much. But I couldn’t even guess at an average.”

  I stopped walking. “Different for everybody?”

  He stopped obligingly too. We were just passing the top of a spiral staircase. Party sounds drifted up from below. “The first time a client comes here, Lady Sally interviews him or her in her office. At the end of the interview she names a fee. Flat-rate, just like we’re on salary. You get billed at the end of the month, I understand. I don’t understand what she bases the rate on, but I do know it’s subject to renegotiation if your financial situation changes one way or the other.”

  “What if a client doesn’t tell Sally he got a raise?”

  “He prays she doesn’t find out, I guess. It doesn’t happen often. Anyway, all I can tell you for sure is that some of my clients are stockbrokers, and some are waitresses or garment workers.
”

  I found myself wondering what she charged PIs. I would have to ask, when all this was over. Maybe it would be smart to do a good job even if it didn’t get me on staff here…

  “That’s the Women-Only Lounge just downstairs, by the way,” Tim said. “You’ll see the Men’s Lounge later, and it’s the same basic layout with different decor. It’s over in the other wing.”

  I was slowly getting it through my head that this entire block-sized four-story building was all Lady Sally’s House. How could you possibly finance something like this, pay the wages she did, and take busboys for clients? Then I remembered who had sent me here. It didn’t take too many clients of that caliber to bring up an average.

  Then I forgot all about the economics of Lady Sally’s Place. Three people were coming up the hallway toward us, from the direction we were headed—and all of a sudden I realized one of them was holding a gun on the other two!

  I started to go for my own heater, and remembered I was not heeled. He had me cold.

  I was considerably more embarrassed than I had been back in the Locker Room when Tim had made his gentle pass—and mad at myself. This, I told myself, is what happens when you start letting things surprise you. The first thing you know, some guy draws down on you and you don’t even see it coming. Yeah, Sally was going to be real happy with my work. Inside of fifteen minutes I managed to find the guy…and get taken by him. I felt adrenalin flowing…

  Could I depend on Tim for assistance? On balance, I didn’t think so. The guy with the piece looked like a real hardcase, shaved head and shoulders like a gorilla. The couple he was herding, an old guy and his young wife, looked terrified; they were both useless or worse, I planted my feet and got a good grip on the sap and tried to identify the caliber of the gun—

  —and that was what really paralyzed me.

  “Hi, Tim,” the guy said as they all went past us.

  “Henry,” Tim said, nodding, “I see you brought dinner home.”

  “Rare,” Henry agreed, and ushered his two prisoners into the Dungeon ahead of him. The old guy went in first—and as the girl followed, she turned her head and gave me a wink! The door closed behind them.

  “That was Brandi,” Tim said, “You’ll like her. She’s great.”

  I took a deep breath. “People shouldn’t oughta point guns,” I said very quietly.

  Tim was instantly apologetic. “I’m sorry, Ken, I should have realized: you’re new. Anyone else here would know it was a water pistol.”

  “Pretty damned realistic one.” I was angry, that special kind you get when you know your anger isn’t reasonable.

  “Henry keeps it full of perfume. Bad perfume. People try hard not to get shot.”

  I let it go. “So Brandi is an artist too?”

  “Yeah, a submissive like me. That poor client is going to have to sit there helplessly and watch while Henry does terrible things to his ‘wife’…and I guarantee he’ll be astonished by how much she likes it.”

  “And one client can tie up—I mean, occupy two artists at once? With no time limit?”

  “If that’s what he or she wants. Art takes whatever it takes. I don’t know: I suppose if someone consistently wanted large numbers for unreasonable periods, the Lady might raise their rate. I’m not really sure.”

  Now I was baffled by economics again. Screw it: Lady Sally’s finances were none of my concern. “Let’s see that Studio.”

  “Well, we’re actually out of the Function area now: all the rest of these are Studios. But mine is around the bend. This way.”

  We turned a corner at the end of the hall, and midway along that corridor passed another spiral staircase, much bigger than the last one, and with much more riotous party sounds drifting up from below. I smelled booze faintly, and tobacco even more faintly, and not much else. There was a live piano down there, somebody playing Hoagy Carmichael. “That’s the Parlor,” Tim said. “We’ll be going down there soon. Don’t worry, you can’t miss anything: it’s always fun there.”

  Just around the next bend to the left, into the wing paralleling the one I’d just seen, Tim stopped and opened a door. Inside was a studio apartment with bath.

  I looked around, surprised yet again. It looked like just what I said, a studio apartment—a pretty nice one. Beer fridge. Stereo. Small TV on a mahogany dresser. (None of the three seemed to have a power cord. Sally must go through a lot of batteries.) An armchair and a closet. There was even a window, with nice curtains. The only unusual item visible was the large mirror on the ceiling over the bed—and it had a cloth tapestry covering it, with a cord dangling down near the head of the bed that let you pull away the tapestry if you wanted.

  I opened the top drawer of the dresser experimentally, and now it was an artist’s Studio. Very impressive selection. Same brand of condoms I use. The fur glove looked interesting. I closed the drawer and flicked on the TV. They always cop your attention, but this one tried harder than most. I shut it off again. “That closed circuit from somewhere else in the House?” I asked idly. I saw no cables of any kind.

  Tim looked shocked. “Jesus, no! Anybody that likes to be watched can always go down to the Bower—I’ll show you later. Anyone else here has their privacy respected, at all times.”

  “Is that right, Mary?” I asked.

  “You’re goddam right,” she said from the center of the room.

  “Mary has to keep an ear on the place,” Tim said a little defensively. “What if a crazy got past all the screens, or a client had a heart attack? The rooms are all soundproof, they have to be. And yes, there are tape backups in case she gets distracted for a minute. But they’re erased every week, and no one hears them except her and sometimes Lady Sally. And we try not to talk about it in front of clients if we can avoid it. The only way people can really relax here, Ken, is if they have confidence that nothing they say will leave the room.”

  “Well, that makes sense.”

  “I mean it. Clients are not used here against their will. If you like to work in places where they have hidden cameras, you’re in the wrong place.”

  I realized he was really angry. “Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything. I’m glad to hear it, okay?”

  He relaxed. “Okay.”

  “No offense, Mary?”

  “No offense,” she agreed.

  “So this is where you live, Tim?” I said, looking around again.

  Again he looked shocked. “God, no! This is where I work, most of the time. My apartment is upstairs on the third floor with everybody else’s. You’ve worked places where you had to sleep in the same room you worked in?”

  “Well, I’ve heard of them,” I temporized. “And this room doesn’t look too hard to take.”

  “The one upstairs isn’t a lot different,” he agreed. “But it’s home. This is more like the office.” He smiled. “You’re right, though, it’s a pretty nice office. Want to see home?”

  I guess it’s silly that being invited to see a prostitute’s home should feel somehow more intimate than being invited in to see his Studio. Well, it does, that’s all. “Maybe a little later. I’m kind of curious to check out that Parlor.”

  “A much better deal,” Tim agreed. “I’m a rotten housekeeper.”

  I glanced around. “Doesn’t look like it to me.”

  “Oh, Robin keeps all the Studios tidy. Have you met him?”

  “Uh, yeah.”

  “Well, let’s go downstairs.”

  “In just a second,” I said, and then waited.

  So did he.

  I lit a smoke, pocketed the lighter, and decided to get it off my chest. I was curious…and when would I ever get another chance to ask somebody? “Uh, Tim—”

  “Just lucky, I guess.”

  “—huh?”

  “Weren’t you going to ask how a nice boy like me ended up in a place like this?”

  “Well…close. Uh…look, I got no problem with gay—or bi, or whatever. I can kind of understand gay, I guess. I just don�
��t understand the submissive thing.” He didn’t look offended…but he didn’t take me off the hook, either. “Well, I mean, you’re the first guy I knew to talk to that…uh…took that kind of work. I guess I was wondering if maybe you could, you know, explain it to me. Not what happens, I understand that part…I mean, how you could let some guy do stuff like that to you. If you don’t mind my asking.”

  Look, I’ve got an image to think about, and part of me did feel silly, being apologetic to a masochist. But I found myself wanting to like the guy. That meant I either had to understand his kink, or make believe he didn’t have it. A detective shouldn’t ought to do that last one. So I asked careful.

  And I guess I did it right, because he didn’t get pissed off. He just gave it some thought, like if I’d asked him how come they put mailboxes in front of the post office, and then took a shot. “I guess,” he said, “what I like best is the sense of being in control.”

  “Huh?”

  “Calling the shots. Running things.” He misunderstood my expression. “I know, pretty immature, huh? The Lady says not to worry, I’ll outgrow it when I’m ready. She says it’s not bad as power complexes go. I just love being the one who runs the fuck.”

  Paradoxes I was prepared to accept from this place, but outright contradictions seemed a little excessive.

  This time he figured out my face. “Oh. You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you? Don’t feel bad: it surprises everybody the first time. It is sort of counterintuitive. You see, Ken, no one in any sexual relationship has as much control as the bottom in a dominance and submission scene. The tops are there to concentrate on producing intense but very specific sensations in you; their own are their own business. You’re the complete center of attention, most of the time you’re passive, you don’t have to make any decisions, and all you really have to do is receive surprise gifts, from a rigidly and specifically limited menu of choices. The one thing you can be certain of is that if you say the First Word—or make the First Grunt, if you happen to be gagged—whatever is happening to you will ease off a notch…and if you say the Second Word, it will stop instantly.”