Greenhouse Summer

by Norman Spinrad

  “. . . the Tao of the Chao is Lao . . . the Chao of the Tao is Lao . . . Lao is the Tao of the Chao . . .”

  “Will you please help me get him out of here to someplace quiet instead of just sitting there?” Monique shouted at Eric Esterhazy.

  Eric rose from his chair, went to her.

  “Well, I can see why you left this guy off your guest list, Ms. Calhoun,” he said suavely, as he grabbed hold of Davinda’s right arm. Monique grabbed the left, and together they managed to hoist John Sri Davinda to his feet.

  Whether he had achieved nirvana or just passed into a deeper state of intoxication, Davinda stopped chanting and hung there limply between them, barely conscious enough to keep his eyes open and his feet moving one after the other as they began to walk him out of the bar.

  Prince Charming, in the act thereof, managed to turn his head, and shrug at the Marenkos’ table, where the reaction varied between the usual shock and the usual lugubrious amusement such unseemly scenes elicited.

  “Sorry about this, ladies and gentleman,” he said, “the poor fellow doesn’t seem to be able to hold his vodka.”

  “Is not his vodka he cannot hold!” said Stella Marenko.

  “Is ours!” shouted Ivan.

  And they removed their victim from the scene under the cover of the usual nervously boorish laughter.

  The only empty boudoir had been the Kama Sutra room, and after Eric helped Monique Calhoun drag Davinda into it, he could hardly resist repairing to the computer room, dismissing the guard, and peeking, as it were, through the video keyhole.

  “Open sez me,” Eric said, activating Ignatz, and taking a perverse pleasure in choosing Mom from the personality menu, for in some way he figured she virtually deserved this.

  “Let’s see the Kama Sutra room, Mom.”

  “Your prurient interest is my command, kiddo.”

  This boudoir’s walls were covered with life-size pseudo-Hindu erotic stone statuary, as many positions of the Kama Sutra as could be squeezed into such a confined space; not enough to satisfy a completist, perhaps, but more than one might think. The ceiling simulated rosy twilight. The floor was a continuous nest of cushioning liberally scattered with large pillows, not authentic, maybe, but a lot more practical than doing it on a stone floor.

  The effect was that of being the centerpiece of an energetic and imaginative orgy frozen in stone and time. Monique had built up a kind of bedstead out of pillows in the midst of this erotic profusion and propped the supine Davinda up against it. Davinda’s eyes were open, but that was the only obvious evidence of consciousness. She kneeled before him in a posture that, given their surroundings, suggested imminent fellatio, but the look on her face as she studied Davinda hardly suggested arousal, and oddly enough, not so much well-justified disgust as a grim species of relief.

  “Sound,” said Eric.

  “. . . all right?” said Monique. “You’re not going to vomit?”

  Davinda stared straight ahead. He might conceivably have lost consciousness with his eyes open. He might even be dead.

  This thought had apparently occurred to Monique too.

  She leaned closer to Davinda, putting a palm on his chest to feel for his heartbeat, hesitantly attempting to bring her face close enough to his to visually observe his breath without being constrained to smell it.

  Eric couldn’t help himself. The temptation was just too great.

  The erotic ambiance of the boudoirs could be enhanced by music, either prearranged or piped in from the computer room.

  “Let’s give them that instrumental Hindu Hard version of ‘I Can’t Get No Satisfaction,’ but just at the subliminal edge . . .”

  “Low, Eric, really low.”

  “Takes one to know one, Mom.”

  The mike in the Kama Sutra room was not sensitive enough to relay such subtle music back to the computer room, nor did the Hindu Hard version of the ancient Rolling Stones classic raise the dead in any manner that Eric had imagined or intended.

  Davinda’s head began to sway back and forth a bit, a clear enough sign of life. He belched quite loudly, causing Monique to yank her head backward, and, considering all that he had consumed, causing Eric to be thankful that the surveillance gear was not equipped for smell.

  His lips began to move.

  “What?” said Monique, understandably reluctant to lean closer to hear what he was muttering.

  The technology, however, left Eric under no such esthetic constraints. “Turn up the microphone gain,” he told Ignatz.

  “. . . is the Tao of the Chao . . . Lao is the Tao of the Chao . . . the Tao of the Chao is Lao . . .”

  That mantric Third Force babblement again, and Eric needed neither a guru nor Ignatz to tell him that the magic word upon which it was centered was “Lao.”

  Perhaps it was merely the meaningless automatic playback of what might have been implanted in some island of recording cells in the climatologist’s besotted brain by the Marenkos. But just maybe it was that which they had sought to evoke bubbling up, via the booze and the dust and the subliminal music—the code word or acronym for whatever lay within that mysterious enclosure in the Grand Palais.

  For whatever surprise Davinda was going to spring on Sunday, assuming he survived tomorrow morning’s heroic hangover to do it.

  “. . . Lao is the Tao of the Chao . . . Lao is . . .”

  “You’re not making any sense, Dr. Davinda,” Monique said.

  “A brilliant deduction,” muttered Eric.

  “Elementary, my dear Watson,” said Ignatz.

  “What is the Tao? What is the Chao? What is Lao?”

  “Lao is the Tao of the Chao . . . the Chao of the Tao is Lao . . .”

  “Lao, Dr. Davinda, what is Lao?” Monique repeated, grabbing him by the shoulders and trying to shake some sense out of him.

  Interesting, thought Eric. Maybe very interesting. Monique was making a strenuous effort to find out what the word “Lao” hid.

  Ergo, she didn’t know. That in itself was already a useful piece of information. . . .

  “. . . the Tao of the Chao is Lao . . .”

  But it seemed clear to Eric that she was going to get nowhere this way. And despite her shaking, Davinda’s voice was getting weaker, his terminally bloodshot eyes lidding over.

  It was Eric’s considered professional opinion as someone who had observed and dealt with many people who had consumed far less dust and booze than the Californian climatologist that he was about to pass out for the night. Nothing was going to keep him awake much longer, let alone restore some sort of useful level of coherence.

  Nothing?

  Well . . .

  There was another way to heat things up in the boudoirs. The erotic atmosphere within could be augmented by a menu of pheremonically tailored vapors released into the ventilating system.

  From where Eric sat.

  This was getting nowhere. John Sri Davinda’s lips were still moving but nothing was coming out except a sickening green tornado of acetone-laden breath.

  As far as using the occasion to extract anything coherent from the Californian climatologist, Monique was ready to give up. But she was frozen in place. It would be imprudent to leave him alone in the thoroughly bugged bowels of La Reine de la Seine until he had become comatose for the night.

  Monique had experienced men, even straight men, entirely oblivious to her charms, and had been in the presence of men too blotted to move, let alone in an erotically purposeful manner. She had been in the presence of men who fell below the porcine level of sexual attractiveness. Upon a few occasions in the professional line of duty, she had found herself hopefully waiting for a drunk to pass out.

  But never before all at once.

  And certainly not in the center of a stone forest of copulating, cunnilingating, fellating, and analizing figures giving a whole new meaning to the concept of statutory rape.

  Whoever had designed this boudoir of assignation had done a masterful job. There she was, with
perhaps the sorriest specimen of carnal masculinity she had ever had the misfortune to be closeted with, out of his mind to begin with and stinkingly stoned, and . . . and the room was turning her on.

  It had to be the room. It certainly couldn’t be John Sri Davinda stirring this irrational warmth in her loins. It was said, mostly by men, that women were not generally aroused by pornography, but what this really meant, Monique was now itchily beginning to realize, was that most pornography, at least in the Occident, had always been produced with phallic arousal in mind.

  This work of the pornographer’s art however, and art it surely was, would seem to have been crafted as an equal-opportunity turn-on. Indeed, Monique was hard put to imagine a sexual opportunity not on offer in the full-circle sexual tableau that surrounded her, bathed in rosy light that seemed selected down to the last angstrom to illumine and inflame her sexual desire.

  Desire for whom?

  Desire for what?

  It didn’t seem to matter.

  Monique had never experienced anything quite like this pure sexual hunger. It was delicious, terrifying, frustrating. What did she want?

  She wanted the rosy naked stone figures surrounding her to come to life, she wanted to become one of them, to join their eternal orgy, to be penetrated in every orifice, to . . . to . . .

  I’ve got to get out of here! Monique realized when she found her hand inside her panties. I’ve got to get off or get out of here!

  Or both.

  Davinda’s eyes, though heavily lidded, were still marginally open, and his lips were still moving.

  Fucking a man into unconsciousness might be the female equivalent of the male sexual power fantasy, but in this case it would be easy.

  If he came in this state, Monique reasoned, or managed to convince herself that she reasoned, he would surely pass out.

  It shouldn’t take long. There wouldn’t have to be anything personal about it. Scratching this lovely and terrible itch would secure her escape. Just get him ready and straddle him.

  As she pulled off her underwear and crawled purposefully toward Davinda’s crotch, the vision came to her of Eric Esterhazy watching her right now, which, given that this chamber was bugged, might be closer to fact than to fantasy.

  But in her current state, this proved to be a sexual aid. There was nothing whatever sexually appealing about John Sri Davinda, but Eric was a man for whom she had a strong animal attraction, and the thought that he was going to be watching just about drove her wild.

  Wild enough at least to open Davinda’s pants and extract his pathetically limp prick and impatiently begin to rub it.

  She might as well have been massaging an over-boiled carrot.

  Closing her eyes, she slid this mushy tuber into her mouth, and found herself imagining that it was Eric Esterhazy’s princely member.

  But while this fantasy enabled Monique to endure, even to enjoy, her prolonged and determined ministrations, it accomplished nothing at all by way of imbuing the object in fleshly question with the sexual puissance thereof.

  And when the fantasy that kept her fruitlessly going was shattered rudely, in every sense of the word, by the advent of loud and deep snoring, and her eyes popped open to reveal that the unsavory reality on the other end of the fantasy handle had fallen dead asleep during her heroic attempt, her frustration was exceeded only by her insulted outrage, as she spit this doubly unsavory morsel out.

  “I’m coming, I’m coming!” Eric Esterhazy replied to the frantic hammering on the computer room door.

  Well, not yet!

  Eric made a great effort to straighten his face as he went to open it, though his phallic alter ego was quite uprightly linear already, thank you very much. He had never before achieved a mighty erection in the process of laughing uncontrollably, but there was a first time for everything.

  And there might just be strategic as well as sexual advantage in it too.

  He paused.

  “We have an empty boudoir available?” he asked Ignatz as Monique, and it had to be her, continued to hammer on the door.

  “Only the dungeon, kiddo.”

  “Karma . . .” Eric muttered, then, louder: “Turn on the happy gas. Love potion sixty-nine.”

  “It’s people like you who make this emulation disgusting,” said Ignatz.

  Eric frowned. Ignatz’s Mom personality program needed some tweaking. The real thing would be enjoying this.

  The real thing would probably have also enjoyed the sight that greeted Eric when he opened the door, if not with quite the same masculine enthusiasm.

  Monique Calhoun’s clothes were in disarray, and of course, though it didn’t show, Eric knew that she now wore no underwear. Her hair was tangled. Her fair face was flushed red—with lust, with frustration, and, to judge from the set of her brows and the curl of her lips, with anger at she-was-not-quite-sure-what-and-had-better-not-find out.

  “You were watching, weren’t you, Eric Esterhazy?” she snarled.

  “A gentleman never tells,” Eric said smarmily.

  “A gentleman doesn’t peek through keyholes!”

  Monique Calhoun’s hands balled into fists. She was still panting. “Do you know what I’d like to do right now!”

  Eric grinned at her. “Chain me to a dungeon wall and take it all out on my helpless body?” he suggested.

  Monique gaped at him.

  Eric looked deep into her eyes as he wiped the smile off his face, leaned closer into the steamy heat of her body-space. “You don’t have to be ashamed,” he said softly. “I’d enjoy being your sex slave. I’d be glad to put myself entirely in your power.”

  Monique stared at him in wonder. In lust. In outrage.

  “You’re . . . you’re serious!” she exclaimed.

  Eric nodded. “A true gentleman,” he said, “never tells, might peek through the occasional keyhole, but would never ever dream of leaving a damsel in sexual distress so desperately hot and bothered.”

  “Of all the—”

  Eric stepped forward, threw his arms around her, pressed their bodies together, and kissed her ever so softly and genteelly on the lips.

  There was a momentary pro forma resistance, and then all pretense was gone, and she kissed him savagely and hungrily back, nipping him a bit harder than playfully on the upper lip to widen his mouth to accept her tongue as she wriggled her body against him.

  This was all happening like a dream, but no dream Monique had ever dreamed she would ever have.

  A stone-walled dungeon cell? A straw-covered floor? Manacles and chains?

  Eric Esterhazy doing a slow striptease before her?

  Then lying down in the straw with a throbbing erection, spreading his arms and legs and . . .

  “Go ahead,” he whispered throatily, “chain me to the dungeon walls! Make me your slave! Torture me with pleasure!”

  And she manacling him in this spread-eagled position and standing over him fully dressed and just watching for a long contemplative moment before deciding to undress herself.

  And thoroughly enjoying it . . . ?

  Eric Esterhazy was no devotee of sadomasochism or bondage, but unlike Monique, he was willingly and knowingly giving himself over to the pheremonal vapors, meaning that he knew that this could be a first time for anything and he could relax and enjoy it.

  Moreover, despite the illusion of being chained to the wall of Torquemada’s torture chamber, it was all perfectly safe, since Ignatz monitored everything that went on in the boudoirs and would intervene if things got out of hand other than pleasantly.

  Not that Eric believed that they would. His main difficulty was going to be keeping at least enough of his wits about him to make strategic use of his “helplessness.”

  For, Monique having revealed that she knew no more about what lay behind the code word “Lao” than the Marenkos did, it had occurred to him that his knowledge of this ignorance could be used to extract information from her.

  And in a most delightful manner.
/>   Monique was in no coquettish mood, nor, while she was avidly hungry for his body, was she in any mood to unselfishly provide pleasure to Prince Peeping Tom. In fact, perversely enough, the heat of the volcano between her legs was actually turned up a notch by the realization that she was about to quench it by impaling herself on the only aspect of Eric Esterhazy that she wasn’t pissed off at.

  Torture me with pleasure, was it?

  With pleasure, Eric!

  And, she realized through the bright red fog as she slid down upon him with an enormous sigh of impending relief, maybe learn something useful in the process too, which, after all, was what you were supposed to do in the castle dungeon, now wasn’t it. . . .

  Monique, like most women, had from time to time been displeased by men who by ineptitude or sheer piggish selfishness, or admittedly perhaps because of the differential design of the apparatus, came too quickly, leaving her hot and bothered.

  Now was her chance to return this disfavor.

  For now she had been so hot and bothered for so long and at such a level of intensity that a half a dozen long deep strokes were enough to bring her to a fine orgasm.

  A lesser man than Eric might have released himself at that moment, but Prince Eric, prideful master cocksman that he was, had of course paced himself for a marathon, not a sprint, and so was left panting in frustration when, having scratched her own itch, she sat there astride him in the rosy afterglow not moving a muscle.

  “Well . . . ?” he finally demanded, wriggling beneath her in frustration as much as his spread-eagled bondage would allow, which was hardly enough to let him take charge of matters.

  “Well, you made three wishes, Aladdin,” Monique told him. “Chain you to the dungeon walls, make you my slave, and torture you with pleasure.” She grinned down at him. “And you’ve had your first two. . . .”

  She rotated her hips a teeny little bit, just enough to tease him, somewhat amazed to find that her animal lust did not yet seem quite sated.

  “And now it’s time for the third,” she said.