Down in the Zero

'Whip marks, like that. Wouldn't their wives want to know what— '

'I know what I'm doing,' she said defensively. 'There's no reason for that to ever happen in a private scene, unless they want it to. In the videos, that's different…the audience wants to see the marks. That's why girls with light skin make the best submissives.

'You been…doing it a long time?'

'Since the beginning,' she said, eyes glazing at some memory.

'If you only go one way, how come you…?'

'I wanted to try it. See if it works. I…I'll tell you about it, someday.'

'You don't have to— '

'I know. I never met a man like you before.'

I finished my cigarette. 'You want some dessert?' I asked her.

She nodded happily. I signaled the waiter. He rolled a four–tiered cart over. Fancy took three different pastries, gobbled them up, rolling her eyes, licking her lips. 'I love sweets,' she hummed. 'They're perfect— specially 'cause I can't have them too often.'

I took out my notebook, showed her the list. 'I got an idea,' I told her. 'Let's not hit the next one blind, all right? How about if you call, try and make an appointment?'

'What should I say?'

'Just introduce yourself, express your sympathy for their loss. Tell them a few families got together to hire me— to look into the suicides. Make it a kind of community concern thing.'

'I can do that.'

'So do it, girl.'

'Is that an order?' she smiled.

'You want me to say 'or else'?'

'No,' she said, grinning. 'I'd be too hot to find out what the 'or else' was.'

'Now, Fancy.'

'Yes boss,' she said, getting up and walking off, switching her hips hard enough to blow out the candles on the other tables.

She was back in a few minutes. 'I tried the Robinelles first. Got the mother. She said to come on over, right now.'

'Good girl.'

I paid the check. The waiter looked down his nose at cash, but perked right up when he saw what piece of it was his.

'Give me directions,' I said as we rolled out of the restaurant parking lot.

'I don't give you directions,' she told me, a heavy pout on her newly made–up lips.

I reached over, slapped her round thigh hard. 'Tell me how to get there,' I said.

She took me through town, out toward the water. 'It's about another two, three miles down this road,' she finally said.

I didn't reply, watching the scenery, trying to orient myself. Out here, you use landmarks, not street signs.

'I'm going to have a bruise,' she said softly, touching a lacquered fingernail to the front of her thigh. 'Look.'

I flicked my eyes down and over. She was right.

The house was right on the waterfront, an architectural wet dream, skylights placed at odd angles on a steeply sloped roof of red Mediterranean tile, a tower of three stories cut right into the middle of a ranch–style design.

When the woman let us in, I could see the tower was a cathedral ceiling, like a hotel atrium without the fake waterfall.

The Robinelle woman was a blowsy blonde maybe fifteen pounds over the limit, a good deal of that spilling out the front of a sharply slashed V–neck blouse. She was wearing some kind of industrial–strength push–up bra, compressing her breasts into cartoon cleavage. Her blouse was red, the stretch pants a shiny black. A wide patent leather belt cinched in her waist, and the black spike heels exaggerated the jiggle as she walked toward the back of the house, telling us to follow.

She seated herself in a grotesquely curved white plastic chair that forced her back to arch, waving us toward a matching pair of green canvas director's chairs, spaced a few feet apart.

'I thought you'd be coming alone,' she said to me by way of greeting. 'Was it you that called me?' she asked Fancy.

'Yes.'

'I don't feel comfortable talking in front of…neighbors. You are a neighbor, aren't you?'

'Yes. We live in the Crescent.'