When she turned around, he was swinging a pair of handcuffs. “You'll have to go out in these,” he said. So she turned around again, and he manacled her. He had the perfect cop knack of doing it, hitting the wrist with just the right speed and force to make the ratchet fly over and catch, snugging them up automatically till the cold steel rested against her skin, not needing to look when he set the end of the key in the tiny hole that would stop them from getting any tighter. Suddenly, she wanted to cry. They paused at the door. Mike and Joe were sprawled over one another. “I'll wake 'em up on my way back,” Don said. “Let them sleep.”
He put his shades back on and escorted her from the room. They retraced their route through the hotel to the street. Outside, it was daylight, and the brightness of it hurt her eyes. He led her to his bike, removed the cuffs, got on, and motioned her to join him.
“Hang on,” he said gruffly, and made a wide U-turn. She wrapped her arms tightly around his chest, then laid her head against his broad back. The leather was crinkled, dusty, but cool and comforting. It also felt a little dry. That no-good houseboy of his must be neglecting his leather.
He drove right up to her house, told her to hop off, then turned the bike off and put the kickstand down. Without dismounting, he caught her arm. “I got something for you,” he said. She waited, wide-eyed. Here, in front of the neighbors? He reached into his jacket and came back with her wallet, opened it, and dropped in a condom. She laughed and put it back in her pocket, then turned to go. But his hand caught her upper arm again. He dragged her back to the bike and took her chin, brought her mouth to his and kissed her. His tongue was large but quite supple, and his mustache was coarse against her upper lip. One of his hands pressed her hand into his crotch, and she squeezed him one last time.
“Now I know where you're at,” he said, “I may have to drop by for further questioning.”
“You bastard.”
“Watch your mouth, bitch. Go home and count your lucky stars.”
She ran for the door. She felt more like counting sheep. It was Saturday. Thank God, she could go back to bed.
On the kitchen table was a note: “Honey, I let myself in. Don called last night and said he and a couple of his friends were taking you to a surprise party for your birthday, so I'm not surprised to find you gone. I just climbed into your bed to wait for you. Come join me and tell me about it. I brought some homemade blintzes for breakfast. I love you slavishly. Fran.”
What a lucky dyke I am, she thought. First I get to star in the most scary porn movie in the world, now I come home and find that my best darling girl is waiting for me, so I won't have to jerk off before I catch up on my beauty sleep. Fran and I are going to have a little talk later on today, though. Don and I are real good buddies, but I don't think I told him quite
that
much about my sexual fantasies.
I wonder if I can get his birthdate out of his houseboy the next time Fran and I go over there for brunch. Bet I can if I corner him with a bottle of poppers and pinch his tits off. Why should I be the only one to get a surprise party?
Purgatory was fairly crowded that night. About sixty men and a score of women had assembled in the tiny club by one o'clock in the morning. Most of the women (other than one who was naked and being led around on a leash) were clad in the high fashion of the bizarreâ leather skirts, spike heels, PVC corsets, thigh-high boots, studded wristbands or belts, black latex evening gowns. A handful of scruffy lesbians, dressed like destitute bikers, kept to themselves around a low set of stairs along one wall, covered with carpet and meant to be sat upon. The men (other than a few slumming, well-built leathermen) were in casual, even sloppy street clothes. The mistresses stood by the bar, under track lights, impassive and unapproachable, each one giving out some ominous signalâperhaps toying with a whip around her waist or keeping time to the music with a riding crop in her gloved hand. No one but Teddy, the bartender, spoke to the few expensively attired tourist couples who walked around clinging to one another, wearing fixed, exaggerated smiles which were belied by the tight grip they kept on each other.
Solitary male submissives prowled around the dance floor and the two large bondage frames in the corner, up the stairs to the bathroom, down the stairs, toward the back and down the hall which opened into half a dozen tiny cubicles with plywood walls, back to the dance floor and up to the bar, to the well-lit women, and then stood humbly, wistfully, heads down, for long minutes until hope ran out and they moved off again to make another restless circuit of the premises. Occasionally a dominatrix would focus her gaze on a particular man and beckon him forward to kneel, get her a drink, light her cigarette, answer some insulting question, and kneel again.
A young man, perhaps more confident because he was better looking than the older, slack-bellied submissives, accosted a dark-haired, dignified mistress and asked if he might give her a foot massage. She acquiesced, and they adjourned to the carpeted stairs, where he sat on the floor, lovingly removed one of her high heels, and kissed it. He cradled her stockinged foot in his lap and polished the sole with his thumbs. The leather dykes had made room for them, and one leaned over to offer the dominatrix a joint. She shook her head, but held it down for the submissive man to take a toke. He smiled and said, “Thank you, Mistress,” and wondered why the act he was performing gave him so much pleasure. Would she, he wondered, let him remove her stockings and actually kiss her feet, lick them? She took the joint away from him and passed it up the stairs, then rested the foot that was still shod upon his crotch. “Do you like my shoes?” she asked. He nearly fainted as the spike pressed between his balls, and the sole threatened to flatten the shaft of his hardening penis. This was a very lucky night.
Back at the bar, someone noticed this spontaneous interaction and felt jealousy gnaw at his heart. He was one of a gaggle of submissives dancing attendance upon a very lovely, very young professional who styled herself The Goddess Domina. For a moment, he stopped competing for her attention and watched the mistress seated on the stairs grind her heel into the boy's crotch while he leaned back, yielding to her, suffering written all over his face. She was older and plainer than Domina, but she was calm and self-assured, handling her young man with such understanding, easily claiming him for her service. Domina, on the other hand, was already drunk, a criminal waste of the small fortune in cocaine she had snorted before coming to Purgatory. Her jealous submissive knew exactly how much coke there had been because that was the price of being brought to this club with her. Why did he always have to pay? He told himself that Domina was the best-looking woman in the club. The other submissives must surely be jealous of him because he belonged to such a gorgeous bitch-goddess. Why, then, did he want to keep watching the foot-slave and his newly found mistress instead of keeping track of Domina's tiresome antics and pretending it was a privilege to light her cigarettes?
His Goddess was uncoiling a short bullwhip, only four feet long, and ordering one of her submissives to crawl away from her. She tried to hit him as he scuttled away and wound up tangling the end of her whip in the taps behind the bar. Before anything could get broken, Teddy plucked it from her hands. “Domina,” he said sharply, “you know we don't allow bullwhips in here. The club just isn't large enough.” The rebuke was administered in a way intended to save her face. After all, he had not told her what he really thought, which was that she was an incompetent alcoholic who ought not to be allowed to hit anyone with so much as a feather duster. She gave him an evil look anyway, the ungrateful, spoiled twit. Let her sulk, Teddy told himself.
“Let's go the Mine Shaft,” one of the leathermen urged his partner, slapping his gloves against one palm. He was wearing a shiny, custom-made leather jacket and chaps that were so new, they creaked. His cover was an American attempt to imitate the Muir motorcycle cap. It was decorated with cheap chain and a badly cast American eagle. He wore his keys on the left, and they jangled as he rocked from one boot to the other.
“Mmm, we will,” said the other man absently. His head (as was fitting) was bare, and he kept his hair short, to make the small bald spot look like a tonsure. He wore his keys on the right, where they had, over time, left an impression, an indent in the chaps that cushioned them, kept them quiet. His leathers were not as fancy or as shiny as his companion's. The completely broken-in latigo hugged his burly body. “Who just came in?” he said, lifting his head to stare toward the door. “Oh, this is a treat, Howard.”
Howard couldn't see what the fuss was about. “Huh?” he said. It was just a skinny little boy, wearing
brown
leather, no less, with a Muir, which of course was black. The tight pants were tucked into knee-high boots, the sleeves on the leather shirt were rolled up in concession to the summer night, and the peaked cap was ornamented with a silver skull and crossbones on the front. The leather was the color of dried blood. The boy had short, black hair and an olive complexion. A cat-o'-nine-tails and two flails were threaded through the large key ring on his left hip. There was a dagger stuck in his belt behind his right hip, and another, smaller one, tucked in his right boot. “I didn't know you were into chicken, Gil.”
Gil sighed. “That's Kerry,” he explained. “Have you ever seen her work?”
Her? This became even less exciting. Why had they left all the hot men at the Spike to come to this weird hangout?
“We should stick around, Howard.”
Now it was Howard's turn to sigh. There was usually no arguing with Gil when he used that tone of voice. “Get me another beer, boy,” he ordered sharply.
“Yes, sir,” Gil said courteously, and went at his own pace to obey.
Iduna overheard this interaction (her hearing was very sharp) and chuckled. She was in her usual place at one end of the bar, where she could play dice with Teddy. For most of the night, she stood, but Teddy kept a stool there in case she wanted to sit down. None of the regulars sat there, even if she was not in that night. Teddy would warn away tourists who made the mistake of trying to occupy her spot if he thought they had potential to become members of the scene. If he wanted to get rid of them, he let nature take its course. Helping people to see themselves as others saw them was Iduna's greatest gift.
Tonight, she was wearing a long, black dress with spaghetti straps. It was very low-cut, but a short jacket with long sleeves was worn over the dress, and concealed everything except a white diamond of cleavage. A brilliant red stone carved in the shape of a skull glittered between her breasts. Beneath the jacket, the waist of the dress was reinforced with whalebone stays, giving her a wasp waist and a very straight back. It also shaped her ample ass and made it swell out invitingly, but her imperious manner made it quite clear that you would lose your hand if you touched her. She had long, blonde hair, and she was drinking a glass of red wine.
None of the submissive men approached this lady, but they kept track of her out of the corner of their eyes. So did the leather dykes and the dominatrices. This was easy to do, because her complexion was so pale it was luminous. In the dark, she almost seemed to glow. Anyone who had gotten close enough would have seen that there was something odd about her skin. It seemed to lack pores or wrinkles. The few people who did get that close to her were usually too busy with their own troubles to notice her peculiarities. But they did notice that it was difficult to tell how old she was. No one would have mistaken her for a youngster, but she was not middle-aged, either. It was as if her biological clock was not set to the human year.
“Teddy,” Domina said breathily, “here's my riding crop.”
“What?” For one glad moment, he thought she was asking to be thrashed with it. Then she deigned to explain.
“Keep it behind the bar,” she snapped, and tried to stalk away.
“Domina!”
She came back, piqued. Teddy held out her crop. “I don't have room back here for this,” he said brusquely, and began to lift glasses and swab underneath them.
Iduna smiled. Her cane, with its red-and-black leather handle, was neatly racked above Teddy's bottles, along with a handful of implements that belonged to other mistresses he had honored. Teddy would have been glad to provide a similar service for Kerry, but she never let any of her whips out of her hands.
Then Iduna realized that the show Gil had promised Howard was about to happen. Kerry had ordered a bottle of beer and stood with her back to the rest of the room, one foot up on the bar rail. She drank with intense concentration, like a thirsty animal. It looked as if she were oblivious to everything except the beer gurgling down her throat. But when a largish, clumsy-looking man lumbered toward her, she turned around and snarled at him before he could touch her. The noise was uncanny. There were no words, but you would have to be crazy not to understand that it meant, “Keep awayâor pay the price.” No wonder he jumped away from her. But Domina snickered at him, and Iduna thought, oh dear, now he'll have to get angry and prove something.
“The name's Bill,” he said heartily, shoving his hand at Kerry. She looked at it as if it were leprous. There was a long silence. She regarded him from behind her mirrored shades. No telling what she thought. Iduna looked lovingly at that full mouth and the two tiny puckers in it over the prominent canine teeth. She was sure no one else could have spotted these minute irregularities, or known why there were two places where Kerry's lips could not quite meet.
Finally, the leatherwoman spoke. “Can I help you?” she said softly, speaking each word slowly and precisely. It was not a question. Ooh, Iduna squealed to herself, massacre alert, massacre alert!