Nice Girls Finish Last (9 page)

“I didn't know the guy,” said one of the men, unzipping himself. “But I'm not surprised. My office is right next door, and a couple of times I was working late, and I swear I heard him having sex in there.”

“We're getting together a committee of lessees,” said the other man. “We've got to have better security than this. Those television people have great security.”

They zipped back up. Only one of them washed his hands. Eeuw. They left.

I was about to get down off my perch and sneak out when another man came in. I heard him unzip. He whistled a bit, then said, “Yeah, yeah, that's it” to himself and whistled some more. When he left, he held the door for another man coming in, who said “Thanks.”

I heard heavy footsteps approaching on the tile. He tried my stall. The door shook and he went into the next stall. I saw his khakis and scuffed black shoes under the cubicle wall. This was too much. I had to get out of there before he dropped trou.

But he didn't drop trou. I heard a match, and smelled smoke as the man lit a cigarette. After taking a few quick puffs, he dropped the butt into the toilet. I heard two quick squirts of breath freshener, a flush.

I waited until he was safely gone and fled to the street.

When I got down to the crew car, Mike and Jim were arguing about who was going to drive to the shoot that morning.

Mike had just rotated back from five years overseas as cameraman for war correspondent Reb “Rambo” Ryan, among others. I wasn't sure how Special Reports had lucked out and got him, but I figured he was being punished for something, maybe those forty-seven different traffic warrants on four continents still outstanding against him and the company. Mike had the distinction of being the only person to get a speeding ticket in Sarajevo during the height of the fighting there.

Because of this, Jim was our designated driver.

“You don't mind if I drive, do you, Robin?” Mike asked. “I hate being a passenger.”

“Rules are rules,” I said.

“This is the whip lady we're interviewing, right?” Jim said, shifting into gear and heading into midtown traffic.

“Right,” I replied.

“Jeez. Wait until I tell my wife about this one. Have you ever whipped a guy, Robin?”

“Only in self-defense.”

“Have you ever been spanked?” Jim asked.

“Oh sure. And I've spanked. But I'm not into it. I have to know a guy really really well before I'll spank him,” I said. “What about you?”

Jim shook his head violently. “No way.”

We both looked at Mike.

“You wouldn't believe some of the things I've done,” he said.

“This guy was your gynecologist?” Jim asked.

“Almost,” I said. “Close enough that doing this story feels extra weird to me, know what I mean?”

Hanging out with Jim and Mike was the high point of my job. I felt like one of the guys because we talked pretty freely about stuff, and we all had different viewpoints and different opinions. Jim was very normal. He lived in Jersey, in a house, with his wife and kid. After eight years of doing sound for Special Reports, he still hadn't been jaded by the oddities we covered. Every story left him shaking his head in amazement. His was the conservative, family-values point of view.

Mike, on the other hand, was not normal. No normal person spends five years chasing wars, going from one hellhole to another. Mike was forty-three years old, came from Ireland originally, and had a nine-year-old daughter with his ex-wife, who was American. Mike's point of view was freewheeling and libertarian, sometimes outrageously so, but he got away with it because he had an Irish accent. When Mike was calm, he had only a trace of Ireland in his voice, but when he got excited, or had a bit to drink, or was talking about home, you could really hear it. “Dem Flynns, de whole fockin' family's bank robbers,” he said, when describing some neighbors from County Cork to Tamayo and me at Keggers. He rolled his r's and said words like
smuggler
as “smoogler.” Jim and I imitated him a lot.

Because of my adventure in the men's room on twenty-seven, we were late getting to Anya's. Don't be late, she had emphasized on the phone. She had meant it. When we got there, the haughty maid informed us that Madame was not yet ready, and we would be required to wait in Madame's minimalist living room.

“Please set up and be ready to roll when Madame comes in,” the maid said. “She'll be about ten more minutes.”

Madame's living room was a cavern, really, with twenty-foot ceilings and huge floor-to-ceiling windows covered in gauzy white curtains sashed with red velvet. The whiteness of the room was relieved only by the red sashes and a wall of glass and teak cases displaying a lot of medieval iron torture implements.

“Guess she's going to make an entrance,” Mike said, strolling over to get a better look at the torture devices. “Wow, look at this weaponry.”

“Nice disembowler,” I said.

“When was the last time you had a good evisceration, girl? I mean, a really good one.”

(Mike was one of the few men who could get away with calling me a girl—although I often refer to myself that way —and that was because he said it with respect and with that great r-rolling lilt. Ask an Irish guy to say that word,
girl
, for you and you'll see what I mean.)

“You're sick.”

The maid appeared and said, “Madame is coming,” and we went back to position. I put in my earpiece, which wasn't necessary since we weren't going live. But Mike liked to be able to talk to me while we were shooting, and I went along with it because he had worked with correspondents much better than me and I had to trust his judgment.

When the maid was sure we were rolling, and only then, Mistress Anya came in, dressed like Kaiser Wilhelm and leading her “slave” Charles around on a leash. Charles, a white man, was dressed head-to-toe in black leather so that only his eyes, nose, and hands were visible. He was on all fours.

“Sit, Charles,” Anya commanded, and he obediently sat on the floor by the white leather sofa.

Anya then sat down, took off her spiked Prussian helmet, and smoothed down her short blond hair. With a different personality, she would have been quite sweet-faced. Her face was round and catlike, with big brown eyes and a heart-shaped mouth, but the cold, controlling aura she projected removed all gentleness from her.

“I'm ready now,” she said, imperiously.

I showed her the photograph and said, “Did you know this man, Dr. Herman Kanengiser?”

“No, I don't think so. I'm not sure. I don't recognize the name at all,” she said. “At least, not by that name. But understand that people who aren't yet completely comfortable with their sexual identity take new names when they enter our world. And many come incognito, in leather masks, for instance. ‘Put a mask on a man and he'll be honest.' That's Oscar Wilde. ‘Put a whip in a woman's hand, and she'll be honest.' That's me.

“I will say that a great many physicians, lawyers, judges, and other professionals, even policemen, are members, unofficially, of our society. We have quite a few clients from Wall Street in particular. If this doctor had a matchbook from Anya's, it means he probably visited the club.”

“He doesn't ring any bells?”

“No,” she said, without even glancing a second time at the photo.

“None at all?”

“No.”

“Just out of curiosity,” I said. “Where were you the night before last?”

“At the club, as I am most nights,” she said, with clear annoyance. “I understood from Mr. Spurdle that I was going to get a chance to talk about the society.”

Well, if Mr. Spurdle said it was so, who was I to quibble? I didn't know what else to ask her, so after that I just let her roll with her spiel about the Marquis de Sade Society and S&M—also known as B&D, for bondage and discipline.

I already knew rather more than I wanted to about S&M. You see, my most devoted fan, Elroy, is a masochist who fantasizes about me hurting him. In his last letter, he had listed the many things he was willing to do to win my heart. For example, and I quote, “I would shave my body with a dull razor and then sit in a vinegar bath just to win the privilege of licking the sweat from your feet.”

Creepy, yes. But what harm had he actually threatened to me, other than to give my feet a good licking, an idea more disgusting than dangerous?

“Love and sex and pain and punishment are all inextricably bound up together,” Mistress Anya was saying. “We're just more honest about it than most people, and more economical in the way we express it. Love needs rules, it needs a leader and a follower. Our love is about trust. The slave trusts me and gives me complete control, and I love him and punish him accordingly.”

“How long have you had Charles here?”

“A month and a bit,” she said. “So far, he's been a very good boy.”

If Charles had had a tail, it would have been wagging.

“Is there longevity in these sorts of relationships?”

“Of course. I was with my late husband for eight years, until he passed away. Before Charles, I had Werner for three years.”

“What happened with Werner?”

“I had to ask him to leave,” she said shortly.

The “slave” Charles was looking up at me with that same needy look a dog has. It was so weird that he was acting like a dog. Mike must have been thinking the same thing because he whispered in my earpiece, “Is he allowed up on the furniture?”

This was a challenge. Whatever turns your crank, as they say. It's not that I have anything against kinky in theory, if you know what I mean, but when I'm confronted with it in real life I have a hard time keeping a straight face.

“Why did you ask him to leave?” I didn't really care, but I sensed this subject bothered her and I felt like yanking
her
chain a bit.

“He drank from the toilet,” Mike whispered in my ear.

“He violated my trust,” Anya said, then expertly changed the subject.

“When we're role-playing,” she went on. “Words like
no
and
stop
mean “yes” and “don't stop.” So we have control words for when one really does want to stop, words that cannot be confused. Every master and slave have their own words. Charles and I use
blender
for “no” and
artichoke
for “stop.” Another couple we know use
bassoon
and
Venice
.”

She picked up a sturdy, oversize table-tennis paddle.

“Now, Charles likes to be paddled, as opposed to whipped,” she said. “I must stress it is important that people
not try this at home
without proper instruction. At the society and at the club, we teach neophytes how to hit without leaving bruises or damaging internal organs.”

“How erotic. Hose me down,” Mike said in my ear.

“The best point for paddling is an area of the rump we know as the sweet spot. Shall I demonstrate?” she asked, and Charles got off his haunches and began unbuttoning the square leather flap that covered his butt.

“Oh please,
artichoke
!” Mike whispered.

“That's all right,” I said, quickly. “We're more interested in the philosophical aspects of your relationship.”

I couldn't get into this. I could barely handle the regular low-grade S&M all lovers enjoy/suffer. I just wanted to get the hell out of here before Fido started licking his own genitalia.

Mistress Anya stood, ordered Charles the slave to heel.

“Come to one of our meetings,” she said to us. “And do come by the club. I'll make some inquiries about this doctor.”

She led her crawling sycophant away.

Apparently, the interview was now over. I couldn't help but be awed, and somewhat frightened, by the control this woman had over everything in her life. It takes a tough bitch to promote sadomasochism, I guess.

“Jesus,” I said, back in the crew car. “That is one scary woman. Was it just me, or did you get the feeling she was hiding something? Like, she's skinning dalmatians for their pelts in the back bedroom or something.”

“I thought she was almost attractive,” Mike said. “But that slave gave me the cold quivers.”

“That's because he was so doglike,” I said. “And you hate dogs.”

This I learned one day when we returned from a shoot and had to fight our way through a phalanx of animal-rights activists with their gonch in a knot because an anchorman had eaten a live oyster during a morning cooking segment.

“Bloody animal fascists,” Mike said. No animal lover he; Mike had told me then that he'd run over twenty-seven stray dogs while he lived in Pakistan covering the Afghan war. By accident, he added, but I was skeptical. Twenty-seven dogs in two years is a lot, even in Pakistan.

Mike was good-looking in a pleasant, nonthreatening way: curly brown hair, freckles, twinkly eyes. He really knew how to make me laugh when I couldn't muster a laugh on my own, and, of course, he had that great accent. I'd just start to like him, as a
man
I mean, and then he would tell me about something like the twenty-seven dogs in Pakistan and it would turn me right off.

“Those control words … ,” I said.

“All couples have control words, or phrases,” Mike said. “One code word that means ‘stop whatever you're doing.'”

“Good point,” I agreed. “Burke used
London
on me if he thought I was acting crazy, and I used his real name on him. We had a lot of code words.”

“My wife and I don't do that,” Jim said. Jim either had the world's strongest, happiest marriage, or he was still in the denial phase.

The next person we interviewed, Kanengiser's first ex-wife, Hanna Qualls, was an expert on that phase. A petite and pretty management consultant, Qualls sat in her office and told us, “Herm had a problem being honest with women. Women loved him, and assumed a commitment on his part that he didn't intend. I can't blame him completely.”