Only Child

“You making any money?”

“Look at her,” Cyn said pridefully. “We’re making a ton.”

“Nothing illegal about it, either,” I complimented her. “If you can skate under the IRS, you’re golden.”

“We’re a small business,” she said, smiling. “We even have a pension plan. And health insurance.”

“Okay, but what does this have to do with...?”

“Burke, if you saw some of the ‘requests’ we get, you’d lose your lunch.”

“People have weird tastes.”

“Some of them want me to hurt her. I don’t mean make her cry, Burke. I mean —”

“Yeah, but...”

“But what? Do you understand what I’m really talking about?”

“Yeah. And I don’t think whoever asks for stuff like that got the idea from you spanking your girlfriend.”

“Come here!” Cyn said to Rejji. The dark-haired girl slid off the chair and crawled over to where we were sitting on the couch.

“Tell him,” Cyn ordered her.

Rejji put her head in Cyn’s lap. The blonde girl patted her. Gently, comforting.

“That’s how it started. Before we were on the Net. With Gresham. She wanted to do it to me herself,” Rejji said softly. “Hurt me for real. She...she terrified us. And when we wouldn’t go along, that’s when she—”

“I know,” I said. “And it’s all over now. But this thing...with Vonni, it doesn’t scan for me like S&M gone ballistic.”

“You know that woman, Lana something, the one up in the Northwest somewhere?” Cyn asked me, stroking Rejji’s hair.

“Never heard of her.”

“She was a branded slave in a power-exchange group. That’s supposed to be an all-consent thing, right? Exchange. Like me and Rejji do, our pact. You know how it ended up there? The ‘masters,’ they finally couldn’t get it up for consent. So they kidnapped and raped some college girls, visiting here from Japan. They figured Japanese girls, they’d be natural submissives. And this woman, she was right there with them. Helping out.”

“So they were morons as well as freaks. What’s your point?”

“It can spring back on itself,” Cyn said. “If you can’t control being in control, it can amp over. Master the master.”

“That’s not just for sex,” I said.

Rejji looked up from Cyn’s lap, turned her head toward me. “Power power power,” she said, barely whispering the words.

Sleep sneered at me. My mind was so hard on Vonni that I felt a stabbing pain behind my eyes. I tried to drift—sometimes that worked.

I wondered if I was really looking at the same kind of overlap Cyn had been talking about. Where the truth was.

Power power power.

I’d walked Candy on a leash. Listened to her wet-whisper how she’d do whatever I told her to; whatever it took. Candy took a lot. Mostly people’s lives. Candy would be whatever she thought you wanted her to be. She used the roles like a deranged Doberman I’d known once. He hated other dogs; I never knew why. His trademark was to pretend to be injured or crippled. So they’d come close.

Belle liked to be spanked. She also liked driving getaway cars, brawling, and revenge. She was about as submissive as a pit bull on angel dust. But she could take it, all right. The last thing she took was a hail of police bullets meant for me. I told her I loved her only that one time, just before she went over.

Fancy dished it out, in full costume. Her sister, Charm, took it. Fancy held the whip, but Charm held the handle. Tricks and games, but not fun ones—the roots were too twisted.

Strega would do anything for me. A lot of women say things like that. The way Strega meant it scared me as much as it drew me.

Gem would say, “Yes, master,” slyly, expecting a smack on the bottom as a response. But she’d been her own boss since she was a baby. She’d had to be—her childhood had been the Khmer Rouge, hunting and haunting.

Belle and Candy were dead and gone. If there’s anything to the Bible, they’d gone in opposite directions.

Fancy was just gone, leaving Charm just dead. I didn’t know where Strega was, but that wouldn’t stop her if she wanted to see me.

One way or another, women always left me. They didn’t all die. Sometimes, when whatever brought us together was done, so were we.

Gem didn’t end like that. I’d left her. In Portland. I told her I couldn’t send for her until I knew how it would be for me back home. And now I wondered if I would ever know.

Or if she’d still be there when I did.

Who’d want one of those “true submissives” that inadequates are always trolling for, anyway? “Every man wants to spank a domme,” Michelle had told me years ago, winking as if she knew something more than she was saying. And maybe there’s some truth in that. At least it would be special. Just for you. A person, not a role.

I like spike heels and seamed stockings. On some women. If their legs are too thin, the seams don’t look erotic; they look like huge varicose veins.

I like bratty, sometimes. Hate bitchy, all across the board.

I knew a girl, years ago. She’d spent years as a slave to some guy, wearing the collar, living the life. When he told her he was “moving on,” she Swiss-cheesed him with his own custom-made shotgun. Stupid bastard died because he’d never learned the first rule of survival when your girlfriend’s a borderline: abandonment is a capital offense.

If the only way you can make it work is with a woman who lets you tie her up, that’s one thing. But if the only women you can get are those who’d let anybody tie them up, then who’s the one in bondage?

No matter what any chump thought he was buying from their Internet business, Cyn and Rejji were true partners. And the bond between them didn’t come in leather.

I found the house easily enough; it looked like it had been the first one in the neighborhood to surrender.

The woman was expecting me. Short and stocky, dressed in an orange jumpsuit that looked like it was on loan from the county jail. She opened the huge white floor-standing freezer and took out a plastic bag that was sealed crooked at the top. Not a Ziploc, one of those do-it-yourself jobs they sell on infomercials.

The woman laid the bag on a fake-wood chopping block, and sliced open the top with a Ginsu knife. She poured the contents onto a sheet of imitation Saran Wrap, folded it over lightly, then tossed it in a grungy gray microwave. When the oven beeped, she opened the door, unfolded the wrap, and rolled some of whatever was in there into a cigarette. She lit the confection with a Zippo lighter sporting the Harley-Davidson logo. “Very collectible,” she assured me.

“My man? Rodney? Did you know he used to be with another woman? But when he lost his arm in that motorcycle accident, she up and left him.”

“Because he had to go on disability?” I played along.

“Nah. Because he couldn’t applaud with only one hand,” the woman said, cracking herself up.

“That’s a good one,” I told her. “And that’s the kind of material you did for Vision?”

“Yep! The way he explained it, we’d both get what we want. I’d get an audition tape I could send around to the clubs. And he’d get White Trash Wanda on tape before I get famous. You have any idea of what tapes of Roseanne before she made it would be worth?”

“A lot, no doubt about it,” I said, paying the freight. “So how do you get in touch with Vision?”