The Hellfire Club

'Everything we need in the world is right here.'

The boy picked up the bill and said, 'One minute, sir.' He went through the door from which the young woman had emerged.

Dart began humming 'I Found a Million-Dollar Baby.'

A few seconds later, the boy reappeared, smiled nervously at Dart, unlocked a cash drawer, and counted out change.

'Good business demands vigilance,' said Dart, shoving the bills and coins into a trouser pocket.

'Yeah. I should explain, we don't have a restaurant or room service, but we serve a complimentary continental breakfast from seven to ten in the Chicopee Lounge just down to your right, and Home Cooking - right outside in our lot - they give you good food there. And checkout is at twelve noon.'

'Point me toward the elevators,' Dart said. 'You behold a pair of weary travelers.'

'Past the lounge, on your left. Enjoy your stay.'

Nora jerked herself upright, and Dart took a step back from the desk, opening a path to the elevators. She plodded past him, trying not to hear the cajoling voices in her head. The bottles took on weight with every step. She barely noticed the small, open room outfitted with couches, chairs, and tables into which Dart slipped to extract a folded newspaper from a rack. He placed a hand in the small of her back and urged her toward the elevators, where he punched a button. 'Every little bird must find its branch.'

Upstairs in a hazy corridor, Dart fit one of the keys into the lock of room 326. 'Nora, look.' It took her a moment to notice the three round holes, puttied in and clumsily retouched with paint, in the brown door. 'Bullet holes,' Dart said.

Nora walked in. Every little bird must find its branch. You didn't have to leave America to see exotic places. As she moved past the bathroom and the sliding panel of a closet, she heard Dart close the door and slide a lock into place. A window leading onto a narrow white balcony overlooked the parking lot. She put her bags on the table. Dart brushed past her, clicked the lock on the window, and moved a metal rod to draw a filmy curtain. He shrugged off his jacket, hung it over the back of a chair, and took his knives from their bag. 'Lookee, lookee.' He was pointing at discolored blotches on the lampshade. 'Bloodstains. Our kind of place.'

Nora glanced at the queen-sized bed jutting out into the room.

Dart unpacked the purchases from the hardware store and arrayed them in a straight line on the table. He moved the coils of rope from first place to second, after the roll of duct tape, and made sure everything was straight, bottom ends lined up. 'Forgot scissors,' he said. 'We'll survive.' He laid the two larger knives at the end of the row, then fussed with the alignment. 'Shall we begin?'

She said nothing.

He picked up a vodka bottle, untwisted the cap, and swished vodka around in his mouth before swallowing, then recapped the bottle and set it gently on the table. 'Take your clothes off, Nora-pie.'

'I don't feel like doing that.'

'If you can't do it yourself, I'll have to cut them off.'

'Please,' she said. Don't do this.'

'Don't do what, Nora-pie?'

'Don't rape me.' Soundlessly she began to cry.

'Did I say something about rape? What I said was, take off your clothes.'

She hesitated, and through her tears saw him pick up the larger of the two knives, the one Matt Curlew would have called an Arkansas pig-sticker. He stepped toward her, and she began unbuttoning her shirt. A small, separate part of her mind marveled at the quantity of tears spurting from her eyes. She placed the blue shirt uncertainly on the chair and glanced at the blurry figure of Dick Dart. The blurry figure nodded. Nora undid her belt, unbuttoned her jeans, pulled down the zip, and stepped out of the brown loafers. Hatred and disgust penetrated the cloud wrapped around her emotions. She made a small, high-pitched noise of outrage, pushed down her jeans, and, one leg after the other, stepped out of them. She draped the jeans over the arm of the chair and waited.

'Not really into underwear, are you? Dear me, look at that bra. Your basic no-frills Maidenform Sweet Nothings, isn't it? A thirty-four B? You should try one of those new uplift bras, not just an underwire, but the new kind, do wonders for you, give you a nice contour on top. Well? Let's unhitch Nora's pretty mammaries, shall we?'

Nora closed her eyes and reached up to unhook the bra, which was, as Dart had said, a Maidenform Sweet Nothings, size 34 B. She let the straps slip backward over her shoulders, exposing her breasts, pulled it away from her body, and dropped it onto the chair.

'Don't really hang up our clothes at home, do we? You've got, ummm, you've got an overstuffed chair with layers of T-shirts and blouses draped over the back and jeans folded on the seat. No, I take it back. For you I see a nice long couch, hardly visible under all those clothes. What you do is grub around in these clothes, wear them a few times, and then dump them into the hamper and start all over again.'

This was, in fact, exactly what Nora did, except that she did it less consistently than Dart had suggested.

'Oh my, look at that. Hanes Her Way undies - purple, what's more, to go with your tired white Maidenform. Nora, you shouldn't buy your dainties at the drugstore. At the very least, your bra and undies should match. With your body, you'd look good in Gitano. They make pretty matching bras and underpants, and they're cheap. You want to spend more money, try Bamboo or Betty Wear. Myself, I'm crazy about Betty Wear, it's nice stuff Listen, do yourself a favor and stop throwing out those Victoria's Secret catalogs. I know you think they're cheesy, but if you'd just look at them at least as thoroughly as Davey undoubtedly does, you'd see that they're very useful. Above all, you owe it to yourself to look at Vogue now and then. Great magazine, I never miss an issue. I bet you've never even bought one.'

'I bought one once.'

'When? In 1975?'

'Around then,' she said, her arms folded over her chest and her hands on her shoulders.

'Written all over you, especially those Hanes Her Way spanky-pants. Should take better care of yourself. Take the dumb things off.'

She pushed down the waistband on her underpants, shoved them to her knees, and stepped out.

'Nora's got a great big bush! God, Nora, you've got this clump, get out the Weedwacker!'

She had gradually been convincing herself that no man who spoke in this way to a woman would rape her - a rapist would never advise the purchase of Betty Wear, much less be able to identify a Maidenform Sweet Nothings bra and Hanes Her Way underpants - but his next words undermined her shaky hope that Dart wished to do no more than inspect her body.

'Sit on the bed,' he said.

She walked to the end of the bed as if over broken glass and sat down with her hands on her shoulders and her legs clamped together. A sudden mental flash of Barbara Widdoes's plump knees and fat calves above her heavy shoes brought with it the surprising thought that Barbara Widdoes was probably a lesbian.

'Have to restrain you for a while,' Dart said, and picked up one of the coils of rope to slice off two sections, each about four feet long. These he carried toward Nora, along with the knife and the roll of duct tape. 'Might be a little uncomfortable, but it won't actually hurt.' He knelt in front of her, looked up into her eyes, winked, and wound one of the sections of rope around her ankles. 'You have a nice body,' he said. 'Maybe just the teeniest bit stringy, and your skin could use a moisturize.' The rope bit into her skin, and she said, 'Ouch.'

'Doesn't pinch, isn't tight enough,' Dart said, tying the ends of the rope into an elaborate knot. He put his hands on her knees and looked directly at her breasts. 'Small, and they kind of sag, but still pretty, if you want my opinion.' He reached for the tape, unpeeled a strip three feet long, tore it off the roll, and wound it over the rope around Nora's ankles. Then he stood up, touched her chin with the tips of his fingers, and tilted her face toward his. 'You're the kind of person who thinks she's above makeup, apart from a little lipstick now and then, but you're wrong. You ought to try Cover Girl Clean Make-up, or maybe Maybelline Shine Free. That's all you need, a little blush. Plus one of those nice new mascaras, like Cover girl Long 'N Lush. And you really do need a good scent. You have a teeny-tiny little bottle of Chanel No. 5 on your dresser, right, and you put on a dab or two when Davey takes you out somewhere fancy. Right?'

She nodded.