Top to Bottom

by Delphine Dryden

  “Druse, you didn’t ask me to do it. I volunteered. And I also volunteer at that food bank, because they have a thing with the gym every Thanksgiving, so if somebody’s fucking with their donations, I want to help. Not everything’s about you.”

  “I never thought it was.” That was true. Never for one moment had she imagined things were about her, for at least the past two years or so. “If you want to come, I’d appreciate the help. For the food bank. And the club.”

  A pause. Then a chuckle. “Right. The Mansion of Mayhem. That’s going on the next round of business cards, right? Maybe we can use it for the classes.”

  Despite the disaster in front of her and the keen, throbbing, distinctly bad pain in her big toe, Dru smiled. “We can definitely add it to the agenda.”

  “Oh my God. You probably have an actual agenda, don’t you? See, that’s the thing, I was assuming you’d be doing the club like . . . like you used to be at clubs. But you’re not, you’re doing it like you used to do school. Everything all planned to within an inch of its life. Which makes sense, I guess, but I have to wrap my mind around it. Okay, getting in the car now. Hanging up.”

  “’Kay, love you,” Dru said automatically, then clapped her hand over her mouth in horror. To her relief, Amie had already hung up. Close call.

  Too close.

  Her stomach churned, half from unwanted emotion and half from the stench of cleaner all over her hands. For all she knew, the stuff might have ammonia or bleach or some sort of lye in it.

  “Shit.”

  A trip to the restroom and a long, long rinse—then a wash with hand soap, and another long rinse—eased her mind somewhat about the potential for caustic damage or lurking carcinogens. It did nothing to settle the larger issue of what the hell had happened with the donation box in the first place. Anxious, edgy, Dru jumped a foot when somebody knocked on the club door, even though she knew it was Amie.

  She let her in, saying “Hey” and waving dismally before pointing to the damage at the end of the hall.

  Amie surveyed the pile of scattered silver cans. “Fuck.”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s . . . fuck. Uh, it smells like the mall bathroom in here?”

  Dru rolled her eyes. “Please tell me you mean the way it smells like baby aspirin and alcohol, and not how it smells like somebody ate at the food court and came to regret it.”

  “The first thing,” Amie said soothingly. “Totally the first thing. Okay, so. Those cans are a complete loss.”

  “Um. Thanks? For coming over and helping?” Dru threw her hands up.

  “Total fucking write-off. But,” Amie continued, “we can fix that. We count the cans, go to the Evil-mart, buy that many cans of . . . whatever, and take it straight to the food bank.”

  It was a simple plan with an obvious flaw. “But then I’m out however many bucks, instead of the stuff being donated, and I’m also stuck with all this. Which I can’t donate without labels. I have no idea what—”

  “You take it home and eat it.” Amie strolled down the hall and picked up the nearest can, scuffing at a few loose labels with her toe, then shrugging. “Hose the orange-smelling junk off it first, then open a few cans a day, and voilà! Mystery food!”

  “Super appetizing.”

  “Man, there was a time I’d have killed for this much free mystery food. What’s happened to your spirit of adventure, Druse?”

  Probably it was lost to the decade or so since they’d last seen each other. Years during which Dru had always earned a decent living, and then had grown accustomed to the pure comfort of Padma’s lifestyle. Not to mention the year spent with Trip and his extravagances, though none of those had ever seemed quite real. There were a few amazing meals, some astounding bottles of wine, but for the most part it had been all about new and “better” ways to do kink. It was kind of like Amie’s special lignum vitae stick, though; it might last longer than other sticks, smell better, look cooler . . . but in the end, it was still a stick, and you used it like a stick. Quality had a saturation point, and Dru had long since discovered she didn’t need to live past that point or even at it most of the time.

  She did feel like she’d passed the stage of finding “mystery food” an exciting prospect. She gestured to the can Amie was holding, then to the pile. “Do you want some of it?”

  Amie pursed her lips as she placed the can back on the floor, wiped her hand off on her jeans, then started flipping her other hand around her ponytail. Her thinking move. “Only if we eat it together.”

  Danger. Somehow, danger. “I don’t know.”

  “And I’ll go halfsies with you on the replacement food to donate.”

  Not all of Dru’s personal capital was tied up in the club. But a lot of it was. Enough to worry about. And after the meeting with Gavin, Dru couldn’t pass up Amie’s offer. “Fine. Deal.”

  Amie released her ponytail and grinned, bobbing her head in an automatic cheerleader affirmation. “Awesome! Let’s go shopping.”

  They eventually put the cans in Amie’s bathtub, because Amie had a removable shower head to make rinsing them off easier.

  “And my drain will be cleaner than it’s probably ever been,” she remarked as the scent of powdery-sharp orange rose from the can-filled tub. Two hundred fifteen had been the final count, all but twenty-nine of them unidentifiable.

  Dru sat by with beach towels, masking tape, and a permanent marker, to dry the rinsed cans and attempt to label them.

  “Tuna’s easy,” she noted, patting a short, shallow can dry and setting it aside. “Give me any more of those you have and I can label them all at once.”

  “Okay.” Amie plucked half a dozen or so from the top of the pile, prioritizing them in the rinse. “Unless, of course, they’re deviled ham or canned chicken or something. Potted meat product.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “It exists.”

  “I’m calling it all tuna. Because I prefer that to the alternative.”

  Amie chuckled. An evil chuckle. “Yeah, you mentioned that.”

  “Gross.”

  “Not as gross as penises.”

  Dru started tearing off short pieces of tape and sticking them to the edge of the vanity. “Penises can be lovely when one is in the mood for them, but I accept that they are not for everyone. Please respect our differences.”

  “That’s fair.” Amie glanced at Dru while she was fiddling with the tape. She looked younger today, somehow, than she had during their scene. More relaxed, even though the situation was so weird. Maybe she’d just needed something else to do, something that wasn’t about Escape. Or at least not about the usual business end of things.

  Amie still wasn’t sure why she’d rushed to Dru’s rescue. Dru would have been fine on her own. She would have figured something out. Probably the same thing, eventually. She hadn’t really needed Amie’s help.

  Or maybe she had, because she had taken it as if she needed it. As if the thing with the cans had been the last straw. Or maybe as if she’d been dealing with a lot of nearly last straws lately, and had started to view every new situation like it might be the one thing that finally did her in.

  Dru’s fragility made Amie anxious, nervous about getting involved. It felt like drama, like tension and raised voices. Like the potential for blame and guilt. All our hopes and if it hadn’t been for you and every phrase she’d ever heard her parents utter, to each other and to her. But.

  But. This was Dru. Who was a bad girl, of sorts, but who had never invited drama. In fact, Dru had always seemed to have some sort of . . . drama raincoat. A drama-proof coating. Teflon for bad emotions. Back in the day, Amie had been equal parts fascinated by that and jealous of it. Because she knew Dru’s story wasn’t that different from her own, even though Dru’s parents hadn’t kicked her out or cut her off for being “deviant.”

  Everything came at a cost, though. Amie’s parents had drummed that into her thoroughly before they’d shunned her. For every moment of pleasure, y
ou or a loved one would eventually pay a cost in shame, in guilt, in pain or hurt feelings or betrayal. No matter how much therapy she went through, no matter how kink-friendly the counselor, Amie could never quite shake that core belief.

  Sitting in Amie’s bathroom, writing out “Tuna?” on strips of tape, Dru looked content enough. But Amie had the sense that at some point over the last ten years or so, Dru had finally come up against a lump payment.

  In a way, it made her less fascinating, less magical. But at the same time, the idea made Amie want to hug her. Wrap her in the furry aftercare blanket. Make sure she was okay. Spend time with her.

  Which was weird. But maybe it would also mean getting to beat her some more, and even—possibly, though it wasn’t something Amie ever deliberately factored in—more orgasms. Something about Dru stirred her up in that way, just like it had from a few weeks into their relationship; that particular magic apparently lingered.

  “You know this was all part of my evil plan, right?” She passed another of the maybe-tuna cans to Dru.

  “Evil plan?”

  “To get you to have dinner with me.”

  Dru wiped the can dry and placed it neatly atop the others. She’d built a small pyramid. “Well. As friends, right?”

  Damn it. “Totally. And potential business acquaintances.” Which was still basically friends, and still left the possibility of benefits. “It’ll be mystery dinner.”

  Freeing a piece of tape from her labeled stash, Dru smoothed it onto the top can. “And if we’re lucky, I guess we’ll be having tuna. And not . . . potted meat product.”

  It was working. It was actually working, and Dru knew that should have eased the knots in her shoulders and the churning in her stomach, but until she got the high sign from Gavin about the evening’s net, she knew she wouldn’t be resting easy.

  But taking part in that night’s very well-attended demo lessons—a few dozen people for each of the two sessions, at twenty bucks a head—was at least a pleasant distraction from worrying about the break-even. Or about the lingering possibility that some asshole had sabotaged the food-drive box, instead of that being the accident she and Amie had decided it probably was.

  A pleasant, switchy distraction: the theme of the evening was “top to bottom.” Dru would start out topping Mara—Amie’s ex, now an Escape regular—in a demo of different flogger types. Then she’d take the bottom role and let Master Atom tie her up in a shibari “cage.”

  Best of all, Master Atom—Adam Flanagan—was the owner of the local adult toy and video store, Delights. He’d agreed to participate for free as long as he could talk up his store at the end. And Gavin, Dru’s new hero, had not only volunteered to emcee for the event, but had asked to lead a short Q&A after the sessions, to debrief and find out ways to improve for next time.

  Mara had asked for fifty bucks, straight up. Dru felt she would be worth it. Amie vouched for her, and said she marked like a dream. Dru was all too aware that she and Mara would make a nice visual together, since Mara basically looked like her in pixie form.

  Once they started, she felt like she was whipping her mini-me. But the crowd seemed to enjoy it. So did Mara. And mostly, Dru did too, although she did get the elk and bullhide floggers mixed up for a few seconds while explaining the different leathers. She caught it quickly, corrected herself, and moved on. Mara took everything like a champ, from the playful rabbit fur and light deer falls to the thuddy bullhide and downright punchy heavy rubber flogger.

  Still, by the time they wrapped it up and hit the ten-minute break between sessions, Dru was more than ready to hand over the reins to somebody, anybody else. As Mara’s partners Master Daniel and Dee collected her and helped her off the stage, Dru glanced over to the bar, where Amie lounged on a stool chatting with Drake, the backup bouncer. Amie had already been looking her way, and she met Dru’s eyes with a fingertip wave and a lift of her eyebrows. Amused and probably bored. She could have led the session as easily herself, but she had suggested the switch theme instead.

  “You ready to bare all? Or at least most?” Adam joined her on the dais in front of the pipework scaffold. All the benches and chairs in the place had been arranged in a semicircle, making a stage of that corner. But most of the “audience” had abandoned their seats for the break, so Dru and Adam had at least some semblance of privacy to set up.

  “Yeah.” Dru sat on the edge of the stage and unbuckled the red ankle-strap heels she’d been wearing during the flogging demo. “I’m about to have a carefully pre-arranged wardrobe malfunction.”

  “Right on.” Adam dropped his rope bag to one side of the low platform; it landed with a solid, heavy thud. He opened it and started pulling out bundles of purple rope, all carefully wrapped, with the ends woven in different colors to indicate varying lengths.

  Dru left her shoes in front of the stage and took off the slender red belt she’d worn over what she liked to call her “naughty secretary” dress—a curve-hugging short-sleeved black sweaterdress with a deep V-neck and a crisp white-and-black striped collar. The dress came off over her head in one easy motion, leaving her in a pink sports bra and matching yoga shorts. Scattered applause and a few whoops alerted her that the group was still paying at least some attention. Which was ridiculous, because at least a third of the people in the room had seen her naked multiple times, and they’d just spent about thirty minutes looking at Mara in a skimpy halter top and thong. But everything was relative; in a room of fully clothed people, the only two half-naked people got the wolf whistles.

  “Cool your jets, folks,” Adam called, still fussing over his ropes. “You have another five minutes to enjoy your complimentary coffee and water before we get started.”

  But one spectator wasn’t content to hang by the bar that long. Amie sauntered along next to the edge of the dais. If Dru hadn’t known better, she’d have said Amie was trying to check her out, but make it look like she was simply out for a casual turn around the room. Like she’d just happened to stroll by in time to ogle Dru up close.

  Or maybe Dru didn’t know better and that was exactly what Amie was doing: getting closer, getting an eyeful, and maybe even subtly trying to stake a claim. Because Amie had visited Escape several times over the past few weeks, but had only done two brief, nonsexual scenes despite the many subs who offered themselves up. Mostly she hung out and occasionally talked to Dru, and made vague noises about volunteering to DM sometime. And they’d had two more Mystery Dinners over the course of those two weeks—planning meetings, naturally. Setting up the scheduling and registration site, discussing potential events, contacting possible presenters and vendors. And at the latest one, dinner had somehow drifted into drinking wine and watching funny animal videos on Dru’s laptop for two hours. And there also had been a certain amount of texting back and forth for no particular reason. And Dru wasn’t stupid. She could see the early warning signs of “relationship” all over the situation.

  Amie nodded at the floggers, which hung in a tidy row from one of the pipes, dangling from oversized carabiners. “Nice collection.”

  “Thanks. They aren’t all mine. The big mop is Simon’s, and the horsehair and that cat with the silver balls are the club’s.”

  “Mmm. Nice technique too, by the way.”

  Dru grinned. “Why thank you. Any time you’d like a reminder of what it feels like—”

  “Nooooooo thank you. Hey, Master A. I’m liking the purple.”

  Adam glanced from his rope array to Dru’s midriff. “Yeah, I thought it would show up pretty well with her skin. I guess against the pink too, even if it’s gonna look sorta Barbie’s Kinky Dream House.”

  “Cool. And the handouts were okay?”

  “Yeah, perfect. Thanks.”

  Dru’s ears pricked. “Handouts?” What did they cost?

  Amie shrugged it off. “Just copies, really. Adam did some great drawings of the thing he’s about to do to you, with these circles and enlargements and stuff, so I scanned it and did a front-and
-back page with that and the contact info for the club and Delights. Adam printed it out at the store. Also, don’t look over there, but did you know you have a few spies from Onyx in the group tonight?”

  “Spies?” Dru was glad Amie had told her not to look; it was her first instinct. People were heading back to the seats, and she lowered her voice. “As long as they paid the entrance fee, do we care?”

  “I only do because one of them works with me, and he also DMs at Onyx sometimes. He’s tight with the owners. Big bald guy, red T-shirt. Ready to have a threesome with us any time, by the way.”

  Dru and Adam replied, “Ew,” in unison, and Amie put a hand over her mouth, eyes sparkling.

  Then Dru’s brows drew together as she risked a quick glance at the man Amie had described. “The guy from the front desk at your gym. You know what, I’ve seen him here before. At least once. I recognized him but couldn’t place him. I don’t think he’s a member, but even if another member brought him as a guest, we’d still have paperwork on file for him.”

  “Oh.” Amie’s face fell. “I thought I was doing intrigue or something. I guess I automatically assumed he was up to no good.”

  Adam held up a handful of rope. “Aren’t we all? Speaking of which . . . Dru, are you ready to get tied up?”

  From her perch back at the barstool, Amie had a good view of both the stage and the audience. Chris was sitting with some guy she vaguely recognized from either the gym or Onyx or both. They looked innocent enough, into the rope demo like everybody else, not obviously plotting. Something about it made her uneasy, though.

  She wasn’t sure which was more troublesome, her concern over Chris or her simmering envy of what Master Atom was currently doing to Dru. Amie’s first reaction had been that it was clearly time she learned some rope tricks, since it was so obvious Dru adored being tied up. But then she’d remembered that she’d fucked it up—or Dru had fucked it up. Or they’d somehow created fucked-up-ness between them, and now all they did was schedule workshops and play canned-food roulette and send goofy texts to each other. Like they really were just . . . friends.