The Trainer (10 page)

“Nothing!”

“Now, whose fault is that?” She walked into
the room and Parker moved out of the way so she could take the
chair he had just vacated. She sat down without even a nod of
acknowledgment, and Mike ached with stronger curiosity about their
relationship. But he remained standing, and focused on her, trying
to find words to answer her question.

“Well—I came here to learn. I told you
that—”

“The question, Mike, the question! Who’s
fault it is that you think you’re not learning?”

“What do you mean I think I’m not learning?
What have I learned so far? How not to piss you off?”

“Apparently not,” she snapped.

Michael groaned and hit the back of his
chair with a tightly clenched fist.

“If you’re frustrated, that’s too bad, Mike.
No one does anything in this house until I know that they’re
ready—and you’ve done everything in your power to make me wonder
why you’re here. Chris is right—if you want to impress me, cursing
only behind my back won’t help. Whining about fairness and lost
opportunity won’t help.”

“But I’ve made myself available to you! I’m
up on time, I cleaned up my act, I even went shopping for you! What
else do I have to do? Sleep at the foot of your bed and kiss your
feet in the morning?”

“Let’s try something less drastic. Show me
your journal.”

He stared at her, that cold nausea
returning. “There’s nothing in it,” he said.

“Is that so?”

“Anderson—Trainer—what was I supposed to put
in it? ‘Today I went to a record store?’” He threw himself down
into his chair and ran a hand through his hair. “It’s supposed to
be a record of my training, isn’t it? So what could I say about the
last three days that wasn’t ‘I did nothing today?’”

“You read nothing? Your hours with my papers
and the books—they were nothing? You have a library in there—a
priceless library full of more than a hundred years of slave
records, the training methods of a hundred trainers, and you didn’t
even pull a single book off the shelf. Parker had to hand them to
you. And you observed nothing? The rhythm of the house, the way the
work is scheduled, the way the clients act and react—all this is
nothing? Your own frustration and questions about what is happening
to you—nothing?” Anderson smiled and shook her head. “You’ve got a
lot of nothin’ in your life, young man.”

Michael felt like exploding again, but
remained quiet. What was the point? She had her own little points
to make, and he was going to be wrong no matter what he said. He
tugged at the tie that felt like it was strangling him. “So, when
do you want me to leave?” he asked.

“When I’m finished with you,” Anderson
replied. “Now, why don’t you go upstairs and get some rest before
you start that journal? Chris and I have a little work to do
tonight, and you’re going to have a busy day tomorrow.”

Michael looked into her dark eyes for a hint
as to what the hell was going on, but saw nothing but faint
amusement. Chris’s eyes were also a little hooded by that aura of
patient irony—sly and piercing at the same time. He stood up and
walked toward the hallway, turning before he left to make that
shoulder incline gesture that Chris used before he left a room.
Anderson wasn’t looking—but Chris was. And he was obviously
amused.

Upstairs, Michael flipped his book open,
smoothed out the page, and began to write. His pen cut through the
first two pages and he cursed loudly when he ripped them out to
begin again.

* * * *

“You are the very personage of patience, O
Trainer,” Chris said when he returned from the kitchen. He
presented Anderson with a cup of coffee and placed the small plate
of Vicente’s ginger cookies on the table by her right hand.

“And you are one of the smoothest
bullshitters I know, Mr. Parker.” She laughed at her own profanity
and looked up at him with an almost vulpine expression. “Now, why
do you hate that boy so much?”

“I don’t hate him at all. I envy him. He’s
beautiful and has access to the life of his dreams. I wish I had
what he had. Yet, despite some rather interesting past failures,
you still pick him out—taking him before at least six other
candidates I could now name for you off the top of my head. And, he
hasn’t got the faintest idea why you’re not in love with him. His
arrogance is so monumental that it’s poetic.” Chris cleared his
throat as he stood before her, arms folded over his chest.

“My, my. We’ve been doing a little
homework.”

“It’s all part of my research, which you’ve
been encouraging me to continue, I might point out.”

Anderson acknowledged that with a nod and
dunked a cookie into her cup. “These are good,” she said, eyes
bright in the firelight. “You should have some.”

“Thank you, no. Are you sure you still want
me here? He sees me as interference, a rival for your attention.
And in this case, with all respect, I do not believe it will be
helpful.”

“Why not?”

“He is not a striver. When faced with
competition, he fights only so much, and then gives up in
frustration. He probably swears he will try harder every time you
rebuke him, but then he dwells on his insecurities and lays blame
instead of honestly working toward understanding.” Chris delivered
this assessment coldly, his arms coming down to join behind his
back. Anderson watched him with pleasure.

“Perhaps he has not been given enough of an
opportunity for honest competition,” she suggested.

“Then by all means, give him one. Deva
Graham, from Bloom in Chicago, is an excellently trained novice.
She’s done a year as an apprentice, and although Bloom is a bit
over-generous in some of his assessments for my tastes, he’s a good
judge of character. She’s exactly the same age as Michael, with
about the same amount of time in the system. She’d be an
appropriate co-trainee for him, proper competition. But for him to
imagine—to even imagine!—that he’s competing with me? It is indeed
not fair, although not for the reasons he might suspect.”

“Then he should learn when he’s not in
competition,” Anderson said with a slight shrug. “Or, how to choose
his contests. Both are good lessons. If it’s that unbearable for
you, then you are free to come and go whenever you want.” She
brushed some crumbs off her lap. “I know you’ll continue to work on
your project. But—I could actually use more of your help. I’m going
to change tactics with him, so I’ll need you to work Joan for a
while.”

Chris smirked. “Oh, that will please the
golden boy.”

“We are a bit sensitive about him, aren’t
we? Is it love already?”

He looked offended at her teasing. “There’s
not a brain in his pretty little head. I’d like to think I set my
standards a little higher.”

“Hm. You’ve played a broad field. Speaking
of which, Rachel called again today. You know I think it’s rude not
to return phone calls.”

They stared at each other in silence, and
Chris’s shoulders slumped a little. “Yes, of course,” he said
finally. “I’ll see to it as soon as possible.”

“That’s m’boy. Now let’s make sure Tara is
ready to use her x-ray vision for more than coffee fetching.”

The priceless library was more than
priceless; it was downright intimidating.

Michael started at one end and examined
every shelf. He had been impressed by the sheer number of books and
binders there to begin with, never having been a big reader
himself. But once he actually looked at what these collections
actually were, he was hit by two truths.

He had been foolish to not pop in here and
look the collection over, let alone ask Anderson (or even Parker)
if they could recommend something to start with. Hell, Parker had
given him two of Anderson’s own collected works, and he’d barely
cracked them. He thought that maybe he would be given actual
reading assignments, page this to page that, something
clear-cut.

But the second truth was he didn’t want to
read any of it.

Okay, maybe that was an exaggeration. Of
course he wanted to know what was in these books, from the
handwritten pages carefully preserved in archive boxes to the bound
books on subjects relating to slave training but in more mundane
fields, like business management and housekeeping and military
history and philosophy.

But it was so much! Too much. And, he felt
stupid now, trying to figure out how to ask for help. Would it have
been that hard to say something like, “These books will be first on
your reading list—we’ll discuss them on Friday,” or something like
that? Some indication that this was the right thing to do? How was
he supposed to have known that she wasn’t one of those people who
get upset when you touch their books or something?

I could have asked Parker, he thought.

I’d rather eat worms, was his immediate
rejoinder. I’ll be fucked before I go to him for help, the arrogant
bastard. It had been a shock to find that Parker had his own
binders on the shelves here, too. Would he be expected to read
them? Do reports on them?

It was enough to make a man queasy.

Why did so many Marketplace big shots seem
to delight in making it so hard on trainees? he asked himself,
pulling a binder labeled First Interview Techniques from the shelf
and tucking it under one arm. Anderson’s collection had things in
other languages in it—none of which he could read. But she also
collected works from other trainers, and Michael found a few names
he recognized and groaned out loud. They were other high level
trainers, from all over the world, famous in the slave training
circles. He’d even met one or two.

Geoff knew them all, of course. He went to
their gatherings all the time, came back with stories of hobnobbing
with all the movers and shakers, what was in, what was out. And
he’d taken Michael with him once, and Michael had been thrilled at
the opportunity to learn from the world’s greatest trainers.

But it had been another waste of time—a
bunch of snobs who didn’t like Americans, or didn’t like Geoff in
particular, and just loved to lord it over novices, making it
impossible for a guy to just get a simple answer.

No wonder Geoff was so popular! He didn’t go
out of his way to make it difficult for someone to learn! He laid
it out on the table for you, told you what he planned to teach,
went through it step by step, and when he was done, he told you
what you had just learned. And he encouraged—hell, he required
questions!

But some of these people—man, it was like
they were guarding the secrets of the universe or something. Or,
they just wanted you to jump through hoops and sit up and beg until
they felt like throwing you a crumb.

Michael had been in training for over a year
when Geoff brought him into his office and invited him to come
along for one of these all-trainer weekends. It was an honor—he
always took his best students, the ones ready for exposure in the
highly politicized world of the Marketplace Trainers and
Handlers.

And it was expensive. Not terribly so—the
Marketplace always partially subsidized such gatherings, making
accommodations more affordable and airfares lower, and some
trainers were simply sent there by their countries or local regions
to represent everyone back home. But instead of taking just one
student or slave attendant, Geoff traveled with an entourage
whenever possible. Two students, or perhaps three, and lots of
slaves so no one felt left without a playmate. His travel was
subsidized by his owner circle—especially the ones who fancied
themselves trainers as well.

For this particular trip, Geoff had chosen
Mike and a fellow trainee named Crystal, and an owner/trainee named
Bradley Cofflin. Brad was okay, as far as Michael was
concerned—eager for new things, his mantra upon entering Geoff’s
house was always “what’s hot?”—as though his own fantasies weren’t
enough. He wasn’t a serious, fulltime trainer, or even a real
student trainer. But he came to classes and workshops from time to
time, and liked socializing with the trainers. He also kept four or
five slaves at a time, never for longer than a one-year contract,
and he agreed to bring three of them with him.

The conference was in England, at an
honest-to-God manor house, rolling hills, formal gardens and all.
It was relatively small—Geoff explained that the trainers present
were all of one “line,” a training link that could be traced back
like a family genealogy. The chief trainer of this line was a man
named Howard Ward, who trained the woman whom Geoff was trained by.
Even though she was no longer an active trainer, Geoff was
nonetheless of this line. It seemed all very old fashioned, and
kind of impressive. Geoff was careful to note that being of a
trainer-line meant nothing as far as techniques were concerned.
“Every generation invents its own realities,” he would say. “We
honor the past by all means. But that doesn’t mean we have to live
in it.”

The manor house, Rothmere, did have many
guest rooms, but Geoff had arranged for the rental of a vacation
cottage in a village a few miles away, for privacy, space, and a
sense of atmosphere. “When you visit a new country,” he’d said to
Mike on the flight over, “It’s best to get a feel for it away from
the main reason you’re there. This way, we have our own space to
come home to, with our own people attending us. You’ll be glad for
the break from high protocol, I think.”

And it was nice—the low, three-bedroom
cottage was charming and comfortable, and with Geoff in one room,
Brad in another, and Mike and Crystal taking the room with the twin
beds, there was more than enough space. The three slaves (two girls
and a boy) would sleep where their masters put them, of course, and
Geoff had been thoughtful enough to request extra pillows and
blankets so they could be comfortable on the floor if desired.