Exit to Eden (10 page)

I reached for the phone.

None of us like to disturb a master with a slave in his private studio, but this had to be settled right away.

The bell that rings is very soft, and it is always interesting how different slaves react to it. For some slaves and masters, the phone breaks the spell completely. With others, it heightens the sense of subservience. The master stops to answer the phone while the suffering slave waits for further examination, ordeal.

Lawrence's voice was the usual discreet whisper.

"Yes?"

"How's it going?" I said.

Slow, rich laugh.

"He's confessed to everything. It was all a lie. He was just panicked. But you should hear the story he made up. I'll give you the tapes." He turned his mouth away to give a command to the slave in the room with him. "The best part was about his being drugged," he said, "stripped naked, and shipped north on the Orient Express. The Orient Express! Now the big question is, do I send him below stairs for three days to thoroughly chastise him, or take him in hand?"

"Take him in hand. If he's that scared I think it's important you do that. Punish him for the lying, but you know, not hard labor. He'd be lost."

"My thinking exactly, but punished he will be."

"And do give me the tape. I want to hear that story." I put the receiver down.

A gorgeous scenario flared in my head, something as elaborate as an amusement park ride. That we should have a train on the grounds with a big old-fashioned steam engine and ornate old passenger cars—ship slaves to various parts of the grounds on it, have them auctioned to the members from the platform, have slaves available for little sessions in the sleepers on the train itself.

Not the Orient Express but the Eden Express. I liked that. Could see the gold scrollwork: the Eden Express. Yes, everything very Edwardian on the Eden Express. And maybe when we got bigger, covered the whole island, we'd really need the conveyance. We could lay miles of track…

And suddenly I saw the track going on forever, as if land and sea were no longer substantial, and the Eden Express just went steaming ahead, its cyclops eye boring steadily through the nighttime darkness, as it left this little Eden for parts unknown…

"My, but you're getting soft," Richard said suddenly.

It seemed sudden anyway to me. I had just seen myself in a white dress getting aboard the Eden Express.

"Last year you would have had that boy on hard labor for two weeks."

"Is that so?" I wore a white hat and I had a white handbag, dressed sort of like that girl the old man remembers in
Citizen Kane
, the girl he glimpsed years before on the ferry and never forgot. "A white dress she had on…" Is that what he says? Sweet madness to think someone could remember me like that. Somewhere in my luggage there was a new white dress, and a white straw hat with long white ribbons…

Now how will that go with your black leather watchband, your boots?

"I think you made the right decision, of course," Richard was saying.

I looked at him, tried to listen.

"Either way it will work," he went on. "That's the sublime thing. As long as there is firmness and direction, everything will work."

"The kid is scared," I said. He was talking about the kid, wasn't he?

"What time is it?" I asked.

"Fifteen minutes until they're in the hall. And don't tell me whom you have your eye on. Let me tell you."

"I don't want to hear it," I said, forcing a little smile.

Richard was always right. He could go through the files and match the slaves to the prospective trainers, knowing without fail who would pick whom. Of course the others had to compete for the slaves, haggle with one another. I was first.

"A certain blond-haired gentleman named Elliott Slater," he teased.

"How do you do it?" My face got warm. I must have been blushing. Ridiculous, when we'd been through these games a thousand times before.

"Elliott Slater's the tough one," he said. "The one that's really walking into it. And he's beautiful, besides."

"They're all beautiful," I said, not wanting to admit anything. "What about the L.A. girl, Kitty Kantwell?"

"Scott's in love with her already. I'm betting you choose Elliott Slater."

Scott was the Trainer of Trainers. He and Richard and I made up what the others called "the Holy Trinity" that really ran The Club.

"You mean you want me to for Scott's sake," I said. Scott was an artist of a trainer. And whomever he picked would be on show in the trainers' classroom as a working model half the time. Dazzling experience for a slave.

"Nonsense," Richard laughed. "Scott's just as much in love with Slater. But he's sort of given up, knowing you. And Slater comes from your mentor, Martin Halifax in San Francisco. Halifax sends us geniuses, philosophers, real madmen. How did Martin put it? 'Reads Russian novels word for word'?"

"Come on, Richard!" I said, trying to sound casual. "Martin's the romantic. What we get is the flesh and blood."

The conversation was making me uneasy. That desperate feeling again, like something terribly important was going to be missed. Headache for real. Never should have drunk that gin.

"Lisa loves Elliott!" he sang softly under his breath.

"Knock it off," I said crossly, surprising both of us. "I mean, you know, let's see how it goes. You guys are getting too clever for me."

"Come on, let's take our time getting down there," he said. "Get away from these phones before they ring."

"Good idea."

The slaves might be assembling already.

"I'm betting you choose Slater. If you don't I'm out a hundred bucks."

"No fair telling me, now is it?" I forced a smile.

Scott was waiting for us in the hall, his sleek black leather pants and vest fitting him exactly like skin.

He gave me the usual warm welcome home kiss, and slipped his arm around my waist. The trainers had given him the nickname of the Panther and he deserved it, just as Richard deserved the nickname of the Wolf. Physical affection was always easy with him, and we'd never been in bed together, which made for a nice tension, a nice bit of flirtation every time that we touched. You could learn things about sensuality from Scott just by watching him walk across a room.

I hugged him close for a second. He was all muscle, all heat.

"If it's about a certain slave named Elliott Slater," I said, "don't try to sweet-talk me. It's not fair."

"Whatever Lisa wants, Lisa gets," he answered with another lingering kiss. "But maybe not as soon as you think."

"What do you mean?"

"Your boy's a live one, honey. He just broke into a little vaudeville routine at the pavilion that brought down the house "

"He did what?"

"A perfect send-up of the whole exhibition." Scott laughed. "They pulled him right out of the ranks."

"Richard," I said turning to him immediately.

"Don't expect me to be as lenient as you were just now, my dear," Richard said. "I'm not the one who's getting soft."

My heart started to trip when I realized the show on the pavilion was ending. And the others were being rounded up and marched off like naked school kids two by two.

One of the handlers finally came for me, ordering me to walk forward with my eyes down.

We got plenty of jeers and comments from the tables, the words Proud Slave flickering like neon in my brain.

A couple of times, in fact, the handler ordered me to stop and stand still for inspection. And somehow I managed to do it, keeping my eyes down, ignoring the talk that went on around me, the muted voices sometimes in English, sometimes in French.

The good guys were now out of sight.

But soon enough we came to a low-roofed building, half hidden by banana trees and foliage, and entered a carpeted corridor that led to a large well-lighted hall.

The slaves were already assembled when we entered, and some kind of indoctrination had begun.

I felt my face redden, as rather conspicuously we headed along the side of the group, all the way to the front.

A tall narrow-faced young man with reddish hair was talking and he broke off when he saw us to ask, "What's this?"

This was worse than the pavilion. I tensed all over, and tried to look really contrite.

"Proud Slave, sir," the handler answered with amazing rancor. "It took three handlers to force him onto the stage in the garden

"Oooh, yes," the tall red-haired man cut him off.

The words seemed to boom through the hall. All the meek were surely staring. Again, I tried to analyze the sense of shame I felt but it was no good.

"Pride so soon, Mr. Slater?" said the red-haired man. I was stung to hear him say my name. And he hadn't even looked at that tiny delicate gold bracelet with the nameplate. This was great. I didn't dare to look up but I could still see he was not only tall, but kind of sinewy in a graceful way, and real sea-tanned like he'd done his time on the yacht.

I could also see glass walls on either side of us, and men and women behind them. And a number of people assembled behind the red-haired man.

Everybody was watching this little debacle. And I knew this weird crowd had to be the trainers, the real heavies of The Club, because they were wearing a lot of black.

Black leather boots, skirts, pants, with their white blouses or shirts. They had black straps hanging from hooks on their belts. Martin had said only the top brass in paradise wore the black leather. And I was hardly immune to the effect.

The man started pacing, as if looking me over, and even his posture, the way he shifted his weight, exuded command.

With a dull, ugly shock, I glimpsed a row of four obviously anxious slaves to the far right of him, all turned to face the assembly, some wet faced, others just red. They had the grease pen writing on their chests or bellies. They'd all been very well worked over by the strap. My gang, the bad guys, I thought dismally. Not good at all.

This was the old-fashioned schoolroom I'd never been in, where the frock-coated schoolteacher dragged you to the fore to be whipped in front of the class.

"I've heard about your little performance in the garden, Mr. Slater," said the red-haired trainer, "your little beauty pageant walk down the plank."

They pick these guys for their voices, I was thinking. He
is
the frock-coated schoolteacher right out of the Dickens novel. Excuse me, please, I think I would like to read
Robinson Crusoe
now instead…

"You'd receive the Initiative Award of the new season if we had one to give."

I gave a little shake of my head to show I thought it was awful what I'd done. It was awful.

"But we don't want initiative here, Elliott," he said, drawing closer so that his height got almost as menacing as his voice. Men this tall should be immediately anesthetized and have four inches excised from both legs. "You are a slave. And it seems you have a little difficulty keeping that in mind." Nice pause for effect. "We are here to help you with your difficulty, to eradicate it, so to speak, along with your pride."

I didn't need to try to look miserable. He was flaying every inch of my naked skin. The stillness of the damned place was nerve shattering. I had the sense again, the way I'd had it on the yacht, that there was no reality anymore beyond this. I'd always been this bad little boy, in need of the worst correction, and now the real world had shaped itself around that simple fact.

To make matters worse, one of the female trainers was zeroing in. Okay, you knew it would happen sooner or later. So hold tight. But the word defenseless was taking on new dimensions in my head. I could see her shadow, smell her perfume.

Fragrances and sex, a kind of a tinderbox for reactions.

I saw her boots, small and beautifully molded to her ankles. I could hear my own breathing, my own heart. (Steady, Elliott. No more panic.) She was tall, though nothing as tall as the red-haired honcho towering over me, and she was delicate like the perfume, and she had a veil of long, dark brown hair.

The trainer took hold of my arm suddenly and turned me around. Now I didn't have to see them, but being exposed from the back made my heart freeze.

I looked at the floor, hearing a subtle clicking sound, which I knew was the unlinking of the strap that hung from the trainer's belt. Here it comes, class.

Nice, hard smacks on the thighs and the calves. The trick was not to flinch or make a sound. And then I was jerked around and pushed down on my knees in front of the man, and I had to put my hands out not to fall on my face.

This time it was the back of my neck that got whipped and I hadn't expected that. He smacked it so hard I had to bite down on a groan. I could smell the leather of his boots and his pants, and suddenly, I kissed his boots, kind of amazed I was doing it without being told. My mind went blank.

"Ah, that's much better," said the trainer. "Now, you're showing promise, even a little style."