Exit to Eden (7 page)

I flipped to the back of the file to see him naked. I sat back staring at the photograph, sipping the gin.

"Look at these," I said. Diana raised her head and I showed her the two pictures. "A beauty," I whispered, tapping the picture of Slater. I motioned for more of the ice and the gin.

"Yes, Lisa," she said, putting as much injured feeling into the words as permissible, and filling my glass as if the gesture had tremendous significance. I kissed her again.

In the naked picture, he stood with arms at his sides but there was the same faint amusement, though he'd tried to conceal it a little. Maybe somebody told him not to smile. And a startling sense of presence emanated from the picture. He wasn't shielded behind an attitude, a fantasy image of himself. Flawless body, a real California body, with fine gymnasium muscles and powerful calves. Not overdeveloped, and a real beach tan.

Elliott Slater. Berkeley, California. Age twenty-nine. Trained in San Francisco by Martin Halifax.

Well, that was interesting. My hometown. And Martin Halifax was only the best in the world, and a friend to me like no one else had ever been. A little crazy maybe, but then aren't we all?

I had worked in Martin Halifax's Victorian house in San Francisco when I was twenty. Only fifteen dimly lighted and elegantly furnished rooms and yet it seemed a universe, as vast and mysterious as The Club. It was Martin Halifax who had perfected the solarium for slaves, with the little treadmill and the exercycle that slaves were made to pedal as they were punished. Leave it to a Californian, even one as pale as Martin, to think of something healthy like that.

But Martin Halifax and The House had existed when there was no Club, and in a way he was as responsible for The Club as I was, or the man who had financed it. It was Martin's choice not to come in with us. He could never leave San Francisco or The House.

I flipped to the handwritten report by Martin. Martin loved to write.

"This slave is a man of unusual sophistication, financially independent, possibly wealthy, and in spite of a variety of interests, obsessed with becoming a slave."

A variety of interests. Ph.D. in English literature from the University of California at Berkeley. My old alma mater. For a Ph.D. he should get the Purple Heart. IQ not as high as Kitty Kantwell, but nevertheless extremely high. Occupation, freelance photographer covering rock, celebrities, frequent war assignments for Time-Life. Author of two books of photographs,
Beirut: Twenty-Four Hours
and
San Francisco Tenderloin Down and Out
. Owns a Castro District art gallery, a Berkeley bookstore. (Which bookstore? I knew all of them. Didn't say which one.) A fanatic for dangerous situations and dangerous one-man sports.

Now that was unusual, like the face.

I glanced at my watch. The slaves wouldn't be coming to the hall for another forty-five minutes and I already had my two, I was sure. Either Kitty Kantwell or Elliott Slater, and all I had to do was look at Elliott Slater to know that I'd go mad if I didn't have first pick.

But I did have first pick.

So why the anxiety on the upsurge? The sudden feeling that something terribly important might somehow be out of reach? Damn it, I was off the plane. Vacation was over. I was home.

I shoved the other files aside and began to read on Slater.

"Slave presented himself for training on August seventh of last year." (Nine months ago. Absolutely phenomenal that he was here. But then Martin knew what he was doing.) "Determined to submit to the most intensified programs we offer, while resisting any alliance with a master outside the house, though several were enthusiastically offered after almost every group activity in which the slave was used.

"Extremely resilient and strong. Requires hard punishment to make an impression, but surprisingly easily humiliated, almost to the point of panic, in a variety of circumstances… A subtle stubbornness surfaces in this slave that won't be discerned except—"

I stopped. This sort of thing I would find out my way and with exquisite pleasure. I flipped forward a few pages, knowing Martin's penchant for description.

"Slave incarcerated briefly at Marin County country estate, and obviously found the full week's program very strenuous yet requested almost immediate return. Sleeps extremely well after all sessions. Reads constantly during rest period at the end, a wide variety of classics, trash, and sometimes poetry. Addicted to mystery stories and James Bond thrillers, but then reads great Russian novels apparently word for word." (That was too juicy. Who would notice it, but Martin, the spy?) "Slave is a romantic. Yet shows no attachment
so far
to any master after any session, asks only for whatever I recommend in the future, saying that
he wants what he fears most
."

I glanced at the picture again. Squarish face, even features except for the mouth, which was a little full. And the smile could be construed as having just a touch of mockery in it, a little bit of a sneer. There ought to be some word for a sneer that isn't quite as crude as a sneer. He had a "nice" face, rather antithetical to the word sneer.

God, two weeks ago I might have passed him in Berkeley on the street, seen him at the bar at…

Take it easy, Lisa.

You've read a thousand files on slaves from San Francisco. And we don't have any life beyond this island, right? The information in this file, as you've told the new trainers over and over, is supposed to help you
here
.

I flipped to the digest of the training history.

"Surprised to find slave returned immediately after two-week session in the country during which he was worked almost relentlessly by series of out-of-town guests. Old Russo-Prussian countess in love with the slave (see later notes). Slave says if longer incarceration can't be arranged he will go elsewhere. Money no object. Slave mentioned several times that the younger masters terrified him, yet he makes no request to avoid them. Says it is particularly terrifying to be humiliated by someone weaker than himself."

I flipped to the end. "Sent with the highest recommendations
(ideal
for The Club!),
but must emphasize this slave is a novice. Watch
. Though I can vouch for his readiness and mental stability, I must add that his training has not gone on very long! And though he passed tests with women handlers here, these were very stressful situations for the slave, who obviously fears the women more than the men. Slave refuses to talk about the women, however, saying he will do whatever he can to be accepted by The Club. Repeat. Watch. Slave responded well to the women,
obviously profoundly excited by the women
, but this produced intense conflict in the slave."

I had a suspicion about the face. Paged through the file until I found several small pictures. I was right. In the profile shots, when he wasn't addressing the camera, Elliott Slater looked hard, almost cold. Something really formidable in the preoccupied face. I flipped back to the smile again. Very lovable.

I closed the file without reading "Notes on Masters and Mistresses Who Favor the Slave." And God knows how much else Martin had written out. Martin should have been a novelist. Or maybe Martin should have been exactly what Martin was.

I sat there just looking at the manila cover. Then I opened it and looked at the photograph of Slater again.

I could feel Diana beside me. Feel her warmth and her need. I could feel something else in her, too, a little concern about the tension in me.

"I won't be back for supper," I said. "Now get the hairbrush and quickly, and I want some cool Chanel to splash on my face."

I jabbed the button on my desk as soon as she was on her way to the dresser.

She kept the Chanel cold for me in a little refrigerator in the dressing room and she brought it with a clean flannel cloth.

I patted my cheeks with it as she brushed my hair. No one brushes it quite as well as she does it. She knows how to do it.

The door opened before she was finished. Daniel, my favorite attendant, was there.

"Good to see you back, Lisa, we've missed you," he said. He glanced at Diana. "Richard says the slaves will be in the hall in forty-five minutes. And he needs you. Special matter now."

Worst luck.

"All right, Daniel." I gestured for Diana to stop with the brushing. I turned her, looked at her. She bowed her head, her white hair falling down around her. "I'm going to be very busy," I said. "I want Diana worked."

I could feel her mild shock. The hottest moments for us were always right after we'd been separated, and in the late afternoon there would be time, wouldn't there? And she knew that, of course.

"Count Solosky's here, Lisa. He's already asked for her, been told no."

"Yes, good old Count Solosky who wants to make an international star out of her, right?"

"That's the one," Daniel said.

"Make him a present of her. Bind her nicely with ribbon, something like that."

Diana threw me a stunned look, but she was pouting beautifully.

"If he doesn't have any immediate use for her, see that she's worked in the bar until very late."

"She hasn't displeased you, Lisa."

"Not at all. I'm just suffering from jet lag. We circled for two hours up there."

The phone was ringing.

"Lisa, we need you in the office." It was Richard.

"Just got in, Richard. Give me twenty minutes, and I'll be there." I put down the phone.

Diana and Daniel were gone. Blessed quiet.

I took another long cool drink of the gin as I opened the folder again.

"Elliott Slater. Berkeley, California… Trained in San Francisco by Martin Halifax."

Not just home, those places—Berkeley, San Francisco—where you go to suffer the particular penance called vacation. No. They were the landmarks of the long journey that had brought me to this very island, this very room.

In a half daze, it seemed I remembered things, or rather reinvoked them—the way it had all started. And in the beginning there had been no Martin Halifax for me.

******

I saw the first hotel room where I had ever made love, if that is what it is called, remembering that steamy and forbidden encounter, the smell of the leather, the lovely feeling of abandoning all control.

Was there any heat like that first heat? How strange it had been, those long hours beforehand of dreaming about it—a ruthless master, a cruel master, a drama of punishment and submission without real hurt—not daring to describe it to another living soul, and then meeting Barry, handsome as the boys in the romance comics, in of all places the University Library in Berkeley, just a few blocks from home for me, and having him ask so casually about the book I was reading, the dreary imaginings of masochists chronicled by their psychiatrists that proved… what? That others like me existed, people that wanted to be bound, disciplined, tormented in the name of love.

And then his whisper in my ear on that typical first date that it was what he wanted, that he knew how to do it and well. He worked weekends as a bellhop in a small but elegant San Francisco hotel, we could go there now.

"Only as far as you want to go," he had said, the blood thudding in my ears when the kisses had done so little.

I'd been so terrified as I climbed the marble steps—we couldn't use the elevators from the front lobby—criminals together as he unlocked the dark little suite. Yet it was precisely what I wanted, yes. Strange surroundings. And his firmness, his direction, his unerring sense of timing, and limits, and how to push them ever so gently.

It was the blaze at last consuming all the more swiftly because I hardly knew who he was.

I couldn't remember his face even now. Only that he was good-looking, that he was young, that he looked wholesome, like every other young man in Berkeley, that I knew the house, the street where he lived.

But then the thrill had been the near anonymity, that we were two animals, that we were mad, that we knew absolutely nothing really about each other. A quiet young high school girl too serious for sixteen, and a college boy scarcely two years older who read Baudelaire, made enigmatic statements about sensuality, smoked fancy pastel-colored Sherman cigarettes that you ordered direct from the company, wanted what I wanted, and had a place to do it, a plausible technique.

We would make dissonant but beautiful music. And the danger? Had that been thrilling? No, that had been an ugly undercurrent, dissipated only when the night was finished, when drained and silent I had followed him out of the hotel, slipping through the side door, relieved that nothing "horrible" had happened, that he wasn't insane. Danger was not a spice, only what I had to pay in those days.

In the womb of The Club there was never that price… that was its genius, its contribution, its raison d'etre. No one was ever hurt.

Had I seen him two times more before he suggested a meeting with his friend, David, and the afternoon session with the three of us together, when it lost its intimacy, when it seemed suddenly we were not all equal participants, when I became afraid? Sudden attack of inhibition. When he called with yet another friend, another proposal, I felt betrayed.

Long agonizing evenings after that wandering in downtown San Francisco searching faces that passed me, peering into the lobbies of the grand hotels, thinking, yes, somewhere, somewhere a man, an elegant and experienced man, a new beginning, someone infinitely more clever, commanding, more discreet.