“Does that hit the spot, Dick?” Sandra purred. It did. I drank off the rest of the oversize goblet’s contents in one quick gulp. Instantly, Hephzibah was at my side like temptation incarnate, replacing my drink with a fresh one filled to the brim. I went to work on that one as well.
“So tell us what kind of law you practice, Ricky,” Sandra said, a teasing gleam in her eye. I struggled to control my breathing. My gaze fell upon a marble bath stand, where loomed a black figure I took at first for a carved minimalist rendition of a raven. “I see you’re an art aficionado, Ricky,” Kokker said. “Your discerning eye wasted no time in finding its mark.”
“What is it?” I asked.
“A swizzle stick to stir the cauldron of man’s passions,” Kokker enthused, gesturing grandly. “I picked it up at a private auction in New York City. Its provenance amused me.”
“It’s Kirk’s pride and joy,” Sandra snorted. “A damn dick made out of stone. The dick he outbid every other pervert in the world to buy.”
“Feel free to make a closer inspection, if you’d care to,” Kokker offered.
“Maybe later,” I said. It was all I could get out without gasping for breath. Sandra’s palm flesh swirled away. I had to struggle to regulate my breathing to a civil cadence.
“Ricky, be a dear. Hop out of the tub and bring it over here for us all to admire,” Sandra suggested, the taunt in her voice meant only for me.
“Give me a minute,” I croaked, tensing my neck against the edge of the tub and leaning back. In a minute, it would be all over. Diane was still turned toward Kokker.
“I know exactly how you feel, Ricky,” he said, talking to me over Diane’s shoulder. “The womblike bliss of warm moving water captures you and holds you in its thrall, doesn’t it? I can’t conceive of a man who won’t return to the womb every chance he gets. Isn’t that so, Diane? We men fairly jump at that chance, don’t we?”
“I’ll go get it, if Ricky won’t,” Diane said, shooting me a contemptuous look. She rose up out of the water like Aphrodite, climbed the two coral-green steps, and walked delicately over the slick floor to where the statue stood on the pedestal like a house god. There were no towels anywhere; water spilled off her pale body. The exquisitely defined curves of her derriere moved in a transporting rhythm.
“You work out, don’t you, Di?” Sandra said. Diane looked back over one shoulder and nodded.
“I thought so,” Sandra said. “A Stairmaster ass like yours is one thing money can’t buy.”
“Ricky seems to be enjoying the hot tub more than any of us,” Kokker remarked. “Did you guys say something?” Diane asked.
“You owe it to yourself to take that thing in your hand, Di,” Sandra urged.
Diane gave Sandra a crooked smile, then reached for the dildo. “It’s heavy,” she marveled. Grasping it mid-shaft, she pantomimed dumbbell exercises, convulsing Sandra.
“Careful,” Kokker warned her. “It’s fashioned from a single perfect piece of obsidian, a semiprecious stone. Very valuable, even leaving aside its lurid history.”
“Better listen to him, Di,” Sandra said. “I’d never hear the end of it if anybody ever dropped and busted Kirk’s big black prick. He takes better care of it than he does of me.”
“That’s because it never talks back to me, my sweet.”
“Well, then, maybe you ought to take it to bed with you.”
“Interesting thought,” Kokker said, amused. “I think I’ll pass, though. The last person to take it to bed with him died a horrible death. Two gay hustlers wedged it down his throat when he proved less than generous.”
The backstage voices grew louder, as though clamoring with glee at Kokker’s last remark. The dildo had a menacing hooded head like an Egyptian cobra. Diane stroked it against her cheek, handling and toying with it like a child with a new plaything. Kokker said, “Aha!” drawing out the sound of his appreciation.
“Ricky won’t let me play with sex toys,” Diane said, cradling the sculpture near her face. Then suddenly her eyes rolled up into the back of her head. Her eyelids quivered half-closed. She stood shaking and whimpering. Her urine flowed down her legs and feet and splattered against the tiles.
Sandra leaped out of the tub and held Diane in her arms until she calmed enough to stop trembling. Only when Kokker reminded Sandra to protect the dildo did she take it from Diane’s white-knuckled grasp and slam it impatiently back onto its pedestal.
The voices stopped, and Diane seemed to regain her senses at once. “What happened? Where am I?” she said in a soporific monotone. Then she seemed to realize for the first time that she was naked. She struggled frantically to cover herself, folding her arms and crossing her knees one in front of the other.
“That’s okay, honey, you’re among friends here,” Sandra said. Without looking at the housekeeper, she added, “Hephzibah, be a dear. Go get a mop and bucket and swamp up all this pee pee for me, won’t you, sweetheart? Thanks.”
Kokker somehow turned the waterfall back on. The same infernal chorus of voices rose once more, scornful and contemptuous. Diane’s demeanor relaxed immediately. She coolly surveyed Sandra’s body embracing hers, both of them nude. Her upper lip twisted into a sardonic sneer.
“We’ve got to stop meeting like this, Sandy. I think Ricky and Kirk are getting suspicious.”
Sandra looked nervously from Kokker to Diane and back again. “You sure you’re okay, Di Di? We all figured you were freaking out just now.”
“Let’s get back in the water,” Diane said. “Girl girl, boy boy this time.”
“We’ll get back into the water, all right,” Sandra said warily, “but you’re not ready for girl girl, boy boy, Di. Not yet, anyway.”
Both women sat on the beveled edge of the tub dangling their feet in the water before sliding down onto the submerged marble bench, one on either side of me. Before long Hephzibah was bringing green salads, shrimp cocktails, and more drinks—followed by the main course, coquilles St. Jacques. The four of us ate sitting in the hot tub. I had no appetite—another legacy of the Crankenstein. Sandra greedily gobbled up every morsel of shrimp and scallop I offered her. She insisted that I finger-feed her like a dog at the table. Her soft tongue made suggestive overtures whenever Diane’s back was turned. Hephzibah, for her part, kept my glass filled. By dinner’s end I was loaded.
“God, look at me. I’m getting all pruny,” Sandra said at last, after the dishes had been cleared. “What do you think of this, Di? My fingertips are wrinklier than an old man’s scrotum. Maybe it’s time we got out of this damn tub.” She laughed loopily.
“Good idea,” Diane agreed. But when she took one step she collapsed against the marble, crying out in pain louder than during her birth travail with any of our children.
“Honey, your back?” I asked, rushing to hold her.
“Not to worry,” Kokker said. With all the professional mien a naked man could muster, he stood behind Diane and said, “May I?” The question seemed to be directed as much to me as to her. I gave place, and Kokker began laying his hands on Diane’s lower back.
“Paravertebral muscle spasms,” he muttered. “L-three through L-six, I should imagine. Have you lifted anything heavy recently?”
“Just some furniture,” Diane gasped, doubled over at a ninety-degree angle as Kokker stood behind her.
“Bet you wish you had that to do over again, huh?” She winced for an answer. It was a rhetorical question. “Is there a chance you might be pregnant?”
Diane made an exasperated face. I knew Kokker was concerned about X-rays. “No chance,” I answered for her.
“Ah, there’s the ringing voice of authority,” he said. “‘No chance.’ I think we’ll need a robe. Hephzibah?”
The four of us lifted Diane from the tub, dried her head to toe with thick bath towels, and slipped a robe on her. We sat her in the wheelchair the housekeeper had brought. Kokker himself wheeled her away. I moved to follow them, but Sandra caught my wrist.
&nb
sp; “No husbands allowed,” she said. “He’ll take at least an hour with her, give or take.” Seeing my concern, she patted my hand and added, “He really is a pretty good chiropractor, you know. Come on. Let’s get dressed. I want to pick your lawyer brain.”
Why did I suspect that what Sandra had in mind beat waiting-room magazine reading all to hell?
Chapter Ten
Mizzourah Hoodoo
“I had a nightmare. It was called my childhood,” Sandra said. We had moved at her suggestion to the rathskellar. Sandra’s idea of our getting dressed had been two crimson silk robes identical to the one Diane had worn when Kokker wheeled her away. The Kokkers had enough on hand to supply an orgy. The feel of the silk against my skin was a new and erotic experience for me—more intense than being naked.
“Then I met Kirk Kokker. Do you mind if I take this damn thing off?” She pointed to her head. I shrugged, perplexed.
“Must be the steam from the hot tub. It’s itching like crazy.” She dug her fingers in under her hairline above her forehead and peeled back. The blond wig came off, revealing her to be completely bald. The whole thing had been held on with some strips of hypoallergenic tape around the perimeter. “Bald head, bald pussy,” she said. “How do you like the real me?”
The effect was truly arresting. With her high-fashion makeup perfectly done, she looked like a store mannequin between gigs at Frederick’s of Hollywood.
“If I ask you something, will you be honest with me?” Sitting next to me by the fire, she leaned toward me, grasped my right hand to the wrist with both of hers and eased it into her lap. I could feel her carnival gypsy’s grip simultaneously testing my galvanic skin response and taking my pulse. She peered into my eyes for any telltale dilation or constriction feedback, at the same time counting my respiration rate. I knew I couldn’t lie to her. Her face was inches from mine and her eyes, reflecting the flames, took in everything. “Have you ever had sex with Janis Mezzanotte?”
“What do you mean?” The question caught me totally off-guard.
“I mean, have you ever done anything with her? Anything you couldn’t let your wife or me find out about? Tell me the truth, Dick. I’ll know right away if you lie to me.”
It may sound crazy, but in that moment something about her inspired my confidence. Maybe I just needed to confess. Or brag. “Yes, I have.”
“Relax, Ricky. I’m not going to tell on you. You and Di are friends of mine now. Bathing buddies. Seen each other naked, and all that.” Sandra made no move to loosen her grip on me. “So let me warn you about something. Stay away from Janis Mezzanotte.”
“But how do you—”
“Ricky. You’re playing with something you don’t know anything about. Like a kid playing with a loaded gun. Stay away from the bitch—for your own good. Whenever you’re burning for something on the side, all you have to do is ask us.”
“Us?”
“The thing about Kirk and me, we’re in the Lifestyle, see? That means that either of us can swing separately, but only if the other partner knows about it and gives the go-ahead. Don’t worry, though—Kirk likes you. We already gave each other permission tonight, it being a holiday and all.”
“Holiday?” Why did everybody I ran into today seem to be on a different calendar?
“Saint Agnes’ Eve. It’s a big holiday for us Satanists. We’ve got people coming over to the house later, as a matter of fact.” She became suddenly shy, like asking for a date on Sadie Hawkins day. “We—that is, Kirk and I—were hoping maybe you and Diane might join in, as first-timers.” It was only then that I realized her diamond earrings were not upraised swords at all but rather upside-down crosses.
Before I could tell her no thanks, she had changed the subject.
“Anyway, there’s another reason I brought you down here. As you must have figured out by now, my husband and I are free-thinkers.”
“Okay.”
“I’m freely thinking of leaving my husband. Does that thought interest you, Ricky?”
“Should it?”
“I was just wondering if there might be some reason, something you and he discussed, why he might want to get me out of the house, that’s all. Did my loving husband ever bring you down here to talk over a divorce?”
I swallowed. “You know I couldn’t discuss anything like that with you, Sandra, even if it were true.”
“Good answer, Ricky. The swallow, I mean. Kirk says he likes to hear me swallow. Sick bastard.”
She broke her hypnotic gaze on me to pan the rathskellar. “I must have swallowed an ocean of cum in this room,” she said. “How about it, Ricky?”
“Sandra,” I said, “I don’t represent your husband for the purpose of a divorce. Does that answer your question?”
“A very carefully worded answer, Ricky. And very intentionally misleading, isn’t it? Meaning you may not have been formally hired to represent him yet, but the two of you still went ahead and discussed it.”
“I haven’t said whether he and I discussed anything.”
She toyed with her CS medallion and ignored my remark. “This house holds some very valuable secrets,” she said. “Some very powerful and dangerous things, things that might make desperate people act desperately, know what I mean?”
“You’re talking in riddles, Sandra.”
“Janis talked in riddles tonight, too, didn’t she?”
“Who says I talked to her at all?”
“Janis wants something from this house, doesn’t she? She’s always wanted it. She still wants it, bad enough to send you up here like a messenger boy to get it for her.” My eyes must have opened up wide, because she added, “Diane’s not the only one who’s psychic around here, Ricky. But you know what? I know where he keeps it. I know where he keeps everything. Everything that gives him his power over others. You play your cards right and start coming clean with me, maybe I’ll let you have what you want. Kirk’s not the one with the power around here. He just thinks he is. Without his possessions, he’s nothing. That’s why he wants to separate me from his possessions. His other possessions.”
“You’ve lost me, Sandra.”
“All right. I’ll make it simple for you. Tell me what Janis asked you to find for her, and maybe I’ll just go ahead and give it to you.”
“She only said I’d know it when I saw it.”
Sandra looked at me strangely, as though she’d just learned a secret. “Where’s your mother buried?” she asked. I heard the weird voices again. They rose in an excited whisper like the slithering of snakeskin.
“Salem,” I said.
“She pretty hard on you growing up?”
“I came through it all right.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I can see that.”
“What’s all this got to do with—”
“Quit asking so many questions,” she teased. She lounged back on the sectional, locking her elbows under her knees. Then she pulled her knees up nearly to her shoulders, interlaced her fingers behind her head, and spread her thighs, tying herself into a human pretzel. Her shaven genitals made me think of raw dressed poultry. She said, “Well?” I had already resolved to set up an open Crankenstein account with Artie.
“Now, isn’t this better than anything you got from Janis tonight?” she challenged mere minutes later. “That Crankenstein really kicks ass, doesn’t it?” She clamped down with some kind of love muscle squeeze play that they don’t teach you in ballet school. “Don’t look so surprised. Artie works for us.” Sandra grinned at me. Clad only in the CS pendant, she could have been an inflatable vinyl sex toy.
“We know every move you make, Ricky,” Sandra said. “And we won’t let up until you and Di join us. Here, I want to show you something cool.”
Sandra seemed to change while I was still fucking her, to will herself into a trance state. Her eyes rolled back in their sockets. I could see the red veins in the whites of her eyes rising like two claw hands of a demon climbing out of the pit. The voices grew louder and more dis
tinct—a Greek chorus of the damned set loose on Saint Agnes’ Eve. They seemed to anticipate Sandra’s words before she said them, as though an echo was prompting her. Her voice taut and hoarse, she began a slow litany, encouraged by the voices:
Horned One, show no mercy,
Old One, take my soul;
Horned One, show no mercy,
Old One, fill my hole.
At the end of every croaked line, she would empty her lungs, expelling her breath like a death rattle. Her eyes rolled back into balance like two magic eight-balls. She looked at me, amused. “What’s the matter, Dick? Afraid of a little Mizzourah hoodoo? C’mon, repeat after me:
Horned One, show no mercy,
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