by Anne Rice
Put her in rooms as outrageously decorated as my own—among the Haitian paintings and the potted ferns, the barbaric stone sculpture—and you have something so lush and ripe that you can smell the incense where there is no incense, taste the smoke and salt of flesh on sight.
There is nothing quite like the moment of first discovering her there, no matter how many I have seen in the halls and the gardens, and seeing those heavy swaying breasts, and the moist triangle of pubic hair, as she waits for my command.
Diana was always like a dancer, sleek and languid, her snow-white hair falling straight over her graceful shoulders and back. Her face is the contradiction because it’s all pluck. Large, almost pouting lips and the roundest, most alert eyes I’ve ever seen. But it’s the French accent that really gets to me. I’ve tried to analyze it, the effect, tried to get used to it. But it’s one of her indefinable assets that simply will not quit.
I couldn’t pull her into my arms and kiss her. There wasn’t time to start all that. I could see the enormous stack of manila files before the white computer screen on my desk. All the data was in the computer but I still liked to hold the photographs and the hard copy in my hands. I always sent for the folders, no matter how primitive they looked.
“Open the windows, my dear,” I said.
“Yes, Lisa.”
The Bombay gin was waiting, glass already packed with ice, the limes just cut. Bombay gin is the only gin I can drink straight, and I never drink it with anything else.
Out of the corner of my eye I watched her move with that same feline speed and agility, her long hands reaching slowly as if they were in love even with the cord that pulled the heavy purple drapes.
For three years, she has lived within these walls, as the expression goes. Once a year for a six-week vacation, she vanishes. And I have to confess I have wondered where she goes, what she does, what she is like during that time. I’m told that Club members have offered her film contracts, marriage, luxurious private arrangements in exotic places. But that’s nothing too extraordinary for the slaves here. That’s one reason we make them sign up to stay for a while and pay them so much.
I saw her once, dressed and on her way out for her holiday, walking arm in arm with another slave to the waiting plane. Someone said that five of them had clubbed together to rent a castle in the Swiss Alps. And Diana was already dressed for snow in a white fur-trimmed coat and a white fur hat. She looked Russian, like a giant of a ballet dancer, dwarfing the other girl as she moved in big easy strides over the landing field, her chin up, her little French mouth puckered naturally as if always ready to be kissed.
But I don’t know that Diana. I know only the naked subservient slave who is here for me night and day. She is perfection if there is such a thing, and in the unbroken quiet of the night I’ve often told her so.
The sunlight poured in through the french windows, the great leafy limbs of the California pepper tree like a veil over the blue of the summer sky.
It was too clear, that sky. The faint sound of wind chimes came from the garden; a wisp of cloud gusting south suddenly disappeared.
And as she crouched near me, I reached down, slipping my fingers over her breasts—perfect breasts, not too large—and felt her silent yielding as she knelt, her bottom back on her heels as I liked her, her eyes moistening as she looked down.
“Pour,” I said, and started with the files. “You behave yourself while I was gone?”
“Yes, Lisa, I tried to please everyone, Lisa,” she said. I took the glass from her hand, waiting a few painful seconds for the gin to chill, and I drank a deep cold swallow, letting the immediate warmth spread through my chest.
She was poised like a cat, ready to spring and slip her arms around my neck. I should have been unable to resist it really, but I still hadn’t shaken the anxiety of the vacation. It was as if we were still circling up there.
I went ahead and made the little indescribable gesture that said all right to her. And she knelt up and pressed against me, the incarnation of softness, and I turned and kissed her large and puckering mouth. I could see the feeling penetrating her, coursing through her limbs, her nakedness offering up everything. Could she feel the stiffness in me? She tightened her eyebrows, her lips open, when I let her go.
“There’s no time now,” I whispered. It wasn’t necessary, really, to tell her that. She was as well trained as any slave I’d ever had. But there was that softness between us, and it excited her just as much as the remoteness that always brought the tears to her eyes.
I turned on the computer video display, quickly tapping out Preliminary Report on the bed of white plastic keys. At once the silent string of glittering green letters began its march across the screen. Fifty new slaves. I was astonished at the number.
Thirty I knew about from the auction, but there were twenty independent sales. All two-year contracts! So our new rules and regulations were working. I hadn’t expected it so early, I’d thought surely we’d be stuck with some six-monthers or at least yearlies who would be released just when they had reached their prime. We need two years really to train a slave, and get our money’s worth out of him or her, but many just aren’t ready for that.
Now time for the hard copy.
Each file has a large picture of the slave on the inside cover. I went through them fast. I threw aside six, seven, ten immediately. Beauties all, and someone would love them and torment them. But not me.
But here was a gorgeous woman, with heaps of brown hair in big natural ringlets, American oval face.
I released myself slowly from Diana, guiding her down to put her arms around my waist. I could feel her delicious weight against me, her forehead nudging my belly, and with my right hand I stroked her hair. She was trembling. She was always jealous of the new slaves. And her breasts felt very hot. I could almost feel her heart beating.
“Did you miss me?” I asked.
“Desperately, Lisa,” she said.
Kitty Kantwell, I memorized the name of the slave in the file. She was tall by the chart, five foot six inches, that would make her fun to handle, and the IQ was listed as remarkably high. Master’s Degree in journalism, well traveled, television weather girl in Los Angeles, own talk show in San Francisco for a while, trained in a private club in Bel Air by a Parisian named Elena Gifner. I didn’t know the trainer. But we had bought good merchandise from Gifner before. I flipped back to the picture.
“And were you worked much?” I asked. I had deliberately left permission Diana could be worked. She needed it. Maintenance wasn’t enough.
“Yes, Lisa,” she said. I could hear the break in her voice. I lifted her hair back from her neck. She was hot all over. I knew the hair between her legs would be drenched.
The brown-haired girl in the picture was definitely an American Beauty–Playboy centerfold type, perfect weather girl all right. I could see her on the nightly news. Round-eyed, big-eyed, like Diana, but something mundane about her, even with the lovely bone structure. But then, there was the strong intelligence in the face, the touch of inquisitiveness. Wholesome American girl, with cheerleader breasts.
Definitely have a look at this one.
I sipped the gin and hurried, cracking back the stiff covers one after another. Diana was kissing me.
“Be still.”
I was staring at a photograph of a man.
Blond-haired, six foot two by the chart. But I looked back to the photograph, unable for a moment to understand my reaction, its intensity, unless it was the expression on the man’s face.
They don’t often smile in the pictures. They stare straight forward as though they were being photographed by the law. Sometimes all the vulnerability is revealed there, the fear. They’re going into captivity, they don’t know what’s going to happen, maybe it’s all a mistake. But he was smiling, or at least there was some amusement, some cleverness there.
Thick blond hair, almost curly, falling a little down on the forehead, well shaped around the ears and the
neck. And his eyes gray or blue maybe, behind the pale smoke tint of a large pair of glasses, the kind shaded only lightly at the top so that the glass is clear over the cheeks. And that smile. He wore a black turtleneck for the picture, arms folded instead of at his sides. An amazingly relaxed picture.
I flipped to the back of the file to see him naked. I sat back staring at the photograph, sipping the gin.
“Look at these,” I said. Diana raised her head and I showed her the two pictures. “A beauty,” I whispered, tapping the picture of Slater. I motioned for more of the ice and the gin.
“Yes, Lisa,” she said, putting as much injured feeling into the words as permissible, and filling my glass as if the gesture had tremendous significance. I kissed her again.
In the naked picture, he stood with arms at his sides but there was the same faint amusement, though he’d tried to conceal it a little. Maybe somebody told him not to smile. And a startling sense of presence emanated from the picture. He wasn’t shielded behind an attitude, a fantasy image of himself. Flawless body, a real California body, with fine gymnasium muscles and powerful calves. Not overdeveloped, and a real beach tan.
Elliott Slater. Berkeley, California. Age twenty-nine. Trained in San Francisco by Martin Halifax.
Well, that was interesting. My hometown. And Martin Halifax was only the best in the world, and a friend to me like no one else had ever been. A little crazy maybe, but then aren’t we all?
I had worked in Martin Halifax’s Victorian house in San Francisco when I was twenty. Only fifteen dimly lighted and elegantly furnished rooms and yet it seemed a universe, as vast and mysterious as The Club. It was Martin Halifax who had perfected the solarium for slaves, with the little treadmill and the exercycle that slaves were made to pedal as they were punished. Leave it to a Californian, even one as pale as Martin, to think of something healthy like that.
But Martin Halifax and The House had existed when there was no Club, and in a way he was as responsible for The Club as I was, or the man who had financed it. It was Martin’s choice not to come in with us. He could never leave San Francisco or The House.
I flipped to the handwritten report by Martin. Martin loved to write.
“This slave is a man of unusual sophistication, financially independent, possibly wealthy, and in spite of a variety of interests, obsessed with becoming a slave.”
A variety of interests. Ph.D. in English literature from the University of California at Berkeley. My old alma mater. For a Ph.D. he should get the Purple Heart. IQ not as high as Kitty Kantwell, but nevertheless extremely high. Occupation, free-lance photographer covering rock, celebrities, frequent war assignments for Time-Life. Author of two books of photographs, Beirut: Twenty-four Hours and San Francisco Tenderloin Down and Out. Owns a Castro District art gallery, a Berkeley bookstore. (Which bookstore? I knew all of them. Didn’t say which one.) A fanatic for dangerous situations and dangerous one-man sports.
Now that was unusual, like the face.
I glanced at my watch. The slaves wouldn’t be coming to the hall for another forty-five minutes and I already had my two, I was sure. Either Kitty Kantwell or Elliott Slater, and all I had to do was look at Elliott Slater to know that I’d go mad if I didn’t have first pick.
But I did have first pick.
So why the anxiety on the upsurge? The sudden feeling that something terribly important might somehow be out of reach? Damn it, I was off the plane. Vacation was over. I was home.
I shoved the other files aside and began to read on Slater.
“Slave presented himself for training on August seventh of last year.” (Nine months ago. Absolutely phenomenal that he was here. But then Martin knew what he was doing.) “Determined to submit to the most intensified programs we offer, while resisting any alliance with a master outside the house, though several were enthusiastically offered after almost every group activity in which the slave was used.
“Extremely resilient and strong. Requires hard punishment to make an impression, but surprisingly easily humiliated, almost to the point of panic, in a variety of circumstances. . .. A subtle stubbornness surfaces in this slave that won’t be discerned except—”
I stopped. This sort of thing I would find out my way and with exquisite pleasure. I flipped forward a few pages, knowing Martin’s penchant for description.
“Slave incarcerated briefly at Marin County country estate, and obviously found the full week’s program very strenuous yet requested almost immediate return. Sleeps extremely well after all sessions. Reads constantly during rest period at the end, a wide variety of classics, trash, and sometimes poetry. Addicted to mystery stories and James Bond thrillers, but then reads great Russian novels apparently word for word.” (That was too juicy. Who would notice it, but Martin, the spy?) “Slave is a romantic. Yet shows no attachment so far to any master after any session, asks only for whatever I recommend in the future, saying that he wants what he fears most.”
I glanced at the picture again. Squarish face, even features except for the mouth, which was a little full. And the smile could be construed as having just a touch of mockery in it, a little bit of a sneer. There ought to be some word for a sneer that isn’t quite as crude as a sneer. He had a “nice” face, rather antithetical to the word “sneer.”
God, two weeks ago I might have passed him in Berkeley on the street, seen him at the bar at . . .
Take it easy, Lisa.
You’ve read a thousand files on slaves from San Francisco. And we don’t have any life beyond this island, right? The information in this file, as you’ve told the new trainers over and over, is supposed to help you here.
I flipped to the digest of the training history.
“Surprised to find slave returned immediately after two-week session in the country during which he was worked almost relentlessly by series of out-of-town guests. Old Russo-Prussian countess in love with the slave (see later notes). Slave says if longer incarceration can’t be arranged he will go elsewhere. Money no object. Slave mentioned several times that the younger masters terrified him, yet he makes no request to avoid them. Says it is particularly terrifying to be humiliated by someone weaker than himself.”
I flipped to the end. “Sent with the highest recommendations (ideal for The Club!), but must emphasize this slave is a novice. Watch. Though I can vouch for his readiness and mental stability, I must add that his training has not gone on very long! And though he passed tests with women handlers here, these were very stressful situations for the slave, who obviously fears the women more than the men. Slave refuses to talk about the women, however, saying he will do whatever he can to be accepted by The Club. Repeat. Watch. Slave responded well to the women, obviously profoundly excited by the women, but this produced intense conflict in the slave.”
I had a suspicion about the face. Paged through the file until I found several small pictures. I was right. In the profile shots, when he wasn’t addressing the camera, Elliott Slater looked hard, almost cold. Something really formidable in the preoccupied face. I flipped back to the smile again. Very lovable.
I closed the file without reading “Notes on Masters and Mistresses Who Favor the Slave.” And God knows how much else Martin had written out. Martin should have been a novelist. Or maybe Martin should have been exactly what Martin was.
I sat there just looking at the manila cover. Then I opened it and looked at the photograph of Slater again.
I could feel Diana beside me. Feel her warmth and her need. I could feel something else in her, too, a little concern about the tension in me.
“I won’t be back for supper,” I said. “Now get the hairbrush and quickly, and I want some cool Chanel to splash on my face.”
I jabbed the button on my desk as soon as she was on her way to the dresser.
She kept the Chanel cold for me in a little refrigerator in the dressing room and she brought it with a clean flannel cloth.
I patted my cheeks with it as she brushed my hair. No one brushes
it quite as well as she does it. She knows how to do it.
The door opened before she was finished. Daniel, my favorite attendant, was there.
“Good to see you back, Lisa, we’ve missed you,” he said. He glanced at Diana. “Richard says the slaves will be in the hall in forty-five minutes. And he needs you. Special matter now.”
Worst luck.
“All right, Daniel.” I gestured for Diana to stop with the brushing. I turned her, looked at her. She bowed her head, her white hair falling down around her. “I’m going to be very busy,” I said. “I want Diana worked.”
I could feel her mild shock. The hottest moments for us were always right after we’d been separated, and in the late afternoon there would be time, wouldn’t there? And she knew that, of course.
“Count Solosky’s here, Lisa. He’s already asked for her, been told no.”
“Yes, good old Count Solosky who wants to make an international star out of her, right?”
“That’s the one,” Daniel said.
“Make him a present of her. Bind her nicely with ribbon, something like that.”
Diana threw me a stunned look, but she was pouting beautifully.
“If he doesn’t have any immediate use for her, see that she’s worked in the bar until very late.”
“She hasn’t displeased you, Lisa.”
“Not at all. I’m just suffering from jet lag. We circled for two hours up there.”
The phone was ringing.
“Lisa, we need you in the office.” It was Richard.
“Just got in, Richard. Give me twenty minutes, and I’ll be there.” I put down the phone.
Diana and Daniel were gone. Blessed quiet.
I took another long cool drink of the gin as I opened the folder again.
“Elliott Slater. Berkeley, California . . . Trained in San Francisco by Martin Halifax.”
Not just home, those places—Berkeley, San Francisco—where you go to suffer the particular penance called vacation. No. They were the landmarks of the long journey that had brought me to this very island, this very room.