The Trainer (28 page)

But still, he kept silent. He refused to
complain to Anderson, and even kept discussions with Vicente, whom
he now was allowed to call Vic, to neutral topics, like music and
movies and sports. He was totin’ that water and choppin’ that
wood—and sooner or later, the Trainer would whack him with some
sort of metaphorical stick, and the real training would begin.

In the privacy of his own room, he timed
himself doing small tasks, and began to anticipate Joan’s arrival.
He enjoyed having her as a valet—someone helping him dress always
made him feel positively decadent. But she rarely made the right
choices in clothes, and he felt bad for her when she was scolded
for it. It didn’t seem fair—he didn’t have any regular schedule of
what he wore. He just opened the closet door and picked out what
felt right that morning. How was she expected to know? Chris was
really easy—pick out any dress shirt, a tie that went with it, and
boom, instant outfit. He probably didn’t really care anyway.

It struck him as odd the first time he
realized that he had taken Joan’s choice in clothing, despite not
liking it. It didn’t exactly work, because Anderson pointed out
that the shirt and tie had never been paired before in her sight,
and quizzed him about whether or not he had ever expressed a desire
to wear then together. He hadn’t realized that she had paid so much
attention to how he dressed—yet she knew better than he did! Joan
ended up getting a talking to about how to judge Michael’s tastes
better. She even had to apologize to him!

But he had taken her choice because he was
afraid to correct her himself. No, not afraid—he actually didn’t
want to. It didn’t seem like a big deal to him to wear a more
conventional outfit, or a more conservative one, if that was what
she thought was best, even though he would have chosen differently.
He wanted to praise her, wanted to see her make that tiny nod she
did when he accepted something and she knew she had chosen
correctly. And, lately, he was actually trying to save her from
punishment. He had never done anything like that before.

As spring began, the house gained a new
client. Michael hadn’t even known that he was coming—he just
appeared at the door, suitcase in hand, a broad grin on his face.
Anderson greeted him with a big hug—apparently, he had been there
before.

“Michael, this is Lorens. He’s from
God-knows-how-to-pronounce it, in Denmark.”

“I am very honored to make your
acquaintance, sir,” Lorens said in excellent English. Michael shook
his hand, and marveled. Now, here was a classic slave. Lorens stood
about a hand taller than Michael, and had broad, straight shoulders
and a narrow waist. His hair was a bleached, almost white-blonde,
cut in a military crew that didn’t really suit him. His eyes were a
clear, light blue. He was a type, the Viking conqueror, the
muscular ski instructor. His big hands would gave a hell of a
massage, and those sweet little-boy eyes probably charmed more than
one society matron into behaving scandalously. He was the cover of
a romance novel come to life.

“I told him over the phone that he was in
luck,” Anderson said, patting the big man fondly. “I seem to have
an abundance of trainers and I’m down to only one client. A perfect
time to polish him up.”

“What is he here for?” Michael asked.

“Lorens has hit the jackpot. His lady is
ready to take him on for the rest of her life. He’s doing one final
session with me as a gift to her. You’re so sweet you give me
cavities, Lorens, but you’ve got it where it counts.” She punched
him on the bicep and twitched her head toward the back of the
house. “You know where to go, big boy. Come back when you’re
unpacked and properly dressed. We’ll do the interview as soon as
you’re ready.”

“At once, Trainer!”

Watching him stride down the hallway,
Michael whistled. “Jeez. Arnold, watch your back.”

“Yes, he is a big fellow, isn’t he? Always
was. The first owner to send him to me exhibited him—bodybuilding,
you know, the tours and the contests. He’s won several. I think he
was Mr. Scandinavia or something like that one year.”

“I believe it. He belongs to someone else
now? Why? Did he start losing?”

“Yes—interest. Lorens is a slave—he’s never
wanted to be anything but in service. The demands of his tours, the
endless competitions, the celebrity status—they just weren’t what
he wanted. He was sent to me mostly at his request for more
traditional slave training—his original owner actually wanted very
little from him in terms of service.” She shook her head, seemingly
amazed at the foolishness of such a man. “When his contract ran
out, he didn’t choose to renew. Came to the United States to try
the market here, and found that he couldn’t be guaranteed a buyer
who wouldn’t do the exact same thing with him. That was when he
came back to me.”

She smiled and shook her head again, this
time in amusement. “My, that was a challenge. Here was a man made
to be shown off—and all he wanted was the quiet security of
personal service.”

“But you’re never in control when you get on
the block,” Michael said. “He could get any training he likes, but
it’s up to the buyers to choose him. I mean, Geoff used to try to
match buyers and slaves, but it doesn’t always work out that
way.”

“No, it doesn’t, although I occasionally do
that sort of specialty work myself. For special clients. So, I kept
him for, oh, eight months, I think.”

“Jesus Christ!”

“Yep. Made him the best darn personal
servant a body could ask for. And then, I had him registered
through a small sales house, and listed him as a domestic. His
first sale netted him so little, he had to sign on for two more
years just to pay me back.”

“I thought you took a percentage.”

“No. I generally charge fees. I know what
I’m worth, and I don’t leave it up to the market to determine my
value. I also take a percentage on resales. The number of sales or
years depends on the time someone spends with me. It all works out
in the end.”

“Oh.” Michael wondered how much the Trainer
made—it couldn’t be much, if she lived with only one servant in
this relatively common house in Brooklyn. She’s cheating herself,
he thought. If she got a good percentage on every slave she
trained, she’d be filthy rich by now. But then, to have to serve
for four years to pay your trainer back? How much was that worth?
He blinked and looked at her as she continued.

“When he left that contract, he decided to
go back on the block and try again. Apparently, three times is the
charm. He was purchased by a woman who lives in Seattle and writes
novels. She wanted someone to take care of her, give her back rubs
and make her soup. Originally, she thought she was going to buy a
woman—instead, she bought Lorens. He had the skills, he had the
temperament—and he types.”

Michael laughed. “How long ago was
that?”

“Six years. They had a two-year contract,
and then a four-year one. This year, on his anniversary, he told me
that they wanted to make the arrangement permanent. That’s—pretty
rare.” Anderson nodded again, looking pleased with herself.

“You’d think that after six years, he
wouldn’t need any more training.”

“He probably doesn’t.” That was Chris, who
was standing in the doorway. He must have seen Lorens in the back.
Michael wasn’t sure how long he’d been there, listening. “I’m sure
she has him trained to everything she needs. But this gives him a
way to make the separation between the Marketplace and the rest of
his life. He’ll be in formal training one more time, making sure
that he needs nothing else, and he’ll have this time to reflect on
the commitment he’s about to make. When he gets back to her, he
will be her slave in truth—committed by honor and integrity to
serve her until her death—or until she sends him away.”

“Oh, everyone could use a little bit of
training, no matter where they are in their abilities,” Anderson
said.

Chris smiled and bowed. “As you say,
Trainer.”

She laughed. “Okay, let’s start changing
things around here. Chris, you’re assigned to Mr. Scandinavia, but
you’re still overseeing Joan. Mike, you start drilling Joan
tomorrow, using Chris’s schedule—and his methods. Am I understood,
gentlemen?”

They chorused, “Yes, Trainer!” and she
grinned.

“Now, that’s what I like to hear.
Dismissed!” She turned on her heel and went into her office,
closing the door behind her. Michael looked at Chris with that
sinking feeling settling into his stomach. It was justified. The
look in Chris’s eyes clearly said, “Your ass is mine.”

The woman had to be a sadist, Michael
decided. A genuine, extremely pathological,
I-want-to-make-people-cry sadist. Sending him away would have been
kinder than turning him officially over to Mr. Perfection. And to
have them work together on the woman who was supposed to be
Michael’s project?

But working together wasn’t quite the idea,
was it? No, it was training Michael in the Chris Parker school of
perfection, where trainers who didn’t know how to demonstrate
things were a little less thought of than, say, your garden variety
slug. Where the trainer had to be the very essence of control,
touching harshly only to teach or correct, tenderly and briefly to
praise. A trainer does not take advantage of their position of
authority, oh, no. At least a junior trainer doesn’t. Which was
what Michael was.

It was pretty annoying having to actually
take notes on that stuff. But Michael never knew when Anderson was
going to swoop down and ask for the journal, so he wrote and wrote,
dutifully recording whatever Chris told him during the day. He
consoled himself with the fact that he was finally in some kind of
formal training. He also decided that his time with Chris was a
test of sorts—Anderson was most likely making sure that he was
committed to the job. He’d probably pretty well established that
he’d keep doing the little household tasks and helping with the
role playing exercises as long as she wanted him to—this was
probably step two.

It was hitting him with a big motherfucking
stick.

And despite his basic disagreements with
Chris on some methods, it was fun to get back into proper training.
It was similar to Geoff’s style only on the surface—Joan was far
more experienced than most of the slaves who ended up with Geoff.
She was already a competent slave—now, they were making her into an
exemplary one.

It was also good to be able to get back into
the interview portion of training. Michael had never realized how
truly vital those regular interviews were until he had participated
in Tara’s training without ever being allowed to attend her
interviews with Anderson. Watching and listening to Chris and Joan,
he now realized how bad his own interviews were, and how shallow.
From time to time, he felt a deep sense of chagrin. Why had he
spent so much time fucking and playing and so little time actually
asking questions and listening to the answers?

Even Geoff interviewed every day—he called
it part of the communication process. Michael called it excess.
Anderson recommended alternate day interviews for two weeks, and
then once a week thereafter for the remainder of the training,
wrapping up in daily brush up and review sessions the week before a
slave left. And of course, at any time there might be a quick
question-and-answer period, or a closer examination of something
triggered by the flash of resentment or resignation in a slave’s
eyes, or a second of hesitation or a word said in the wrong
inflection.

For the first interview with Joan, Michael
remembered his first week and his disastrous first session with
her, but Chris merely invited him to sit and take notes if he
wanted to. Michael did, and relaxed as the process began.

Interviews were always different—you could
ask a prearranged series of questions, administer an IQ test, or
simply sit back and chat about topics of interest. The idea was to
use the time to get to know everything possible about the client,
not only their history of experiences, but their thoughts and
feelings, likes and dislikes, their deepest fears and grandest
hopes and fantasies. Knowing all these things allowed a trainer to
not only design the proper program for a client, but to decide what
could be used as a marketing angle. Or, in a case like Joan’s, what
could be reported to the owner as a potential resource or
weakness.

Chris’s first displayed style was direct and
military. He would ask a question and want it answered right away,
phrased properly, and with the proper inflection and emphasis. It
was a little unnerving. But Joan took it well—she was poised, most
of the time, and displayed very little fear when Chris raised his
voice or slammed the desk for emphasis. Michael found out why.

“My trainer in Japan was a very... loud
individual,” she explained. “He used to shout at me quite a
bit—every day, as a matter of fact. He would lean over me, and
scream at the top of his lungs, and expect me to scream my answer
back until we were both quite red in the face. Any time I would
flinch, he would hit me. Soon, I learned not to flinch. Soon after
that, I learned how not to feel like I should be flinching, which
was much more difficult.”

“Good instinct,” Chris commented. “It’s one
thing to steel yourself against discomfort or fear. It’s another
thing entirely to create a place where you just don’t feel
them.”

“How do you do that?” Michael asked, writing
furiously. “Create a place? You mean, like in self-hypnosis?”

“Very good, Mike.” Chris nodded
encouragingly and Michael concentrated on writing. Every time Chris
did that, his tone of voice would carry such an air of
condescension it was infuriating!

“One of the most important things a client
learns when confronted by aggression is how to remain calm when it
is called for, and how to maintain personal discipline in
protocol,” Chris explained. “It will not do to snap back at the
mistress or whine at your housekeeper.”