Paul smelled opium . . . real good opium. He was already contact high and passive-smoke high, and maybe high on something he’d ingested in the food or those damn drinks he’d been given a million years ago. But he really loved opium, and it was one hard drug to come by these days. It took him back to quiet times in the Cambodian jungle, those magical times when they were more-or-less safe, and they could sweetly indulge.
They weren’t outside, of course, not really. They were under a deep country “sky,” and this was the middle of Manhattan. Leo took his hand, led him around the edge of the garden.
“Hey, wait, I could do some pipe.”
“Um, if you stay in here, it’s a thousand dollars an hour.”
You could probably drop ten grand on this place in a single goddamn night. “Let’s see the rest of it.”
“This next room is rather unusual. But please remember, our credo is no limits and no restrictions.”
“Sounds like fun.” Paul followed her through another veil and into a completely mirrored foyer. There was a tunnel entrance. He hesitated. “Where does that go?”
“Just downstairs. And it only looks like a tunnel. There’s a stairway when you get past the veil.”
It was not easy to walk into what looked exactly like one of the Paris tunnels, but he followed her. He found himself in a stairway, dimly lit with recessed bulbs, its walls and ceiling black. The rubber treads on the steps gave it an institutional feel. He thought that it must be like this in certain prisons.
There was a thick iron door here. “What is this place?”
“We call it Foggy Bottom,” she said with a laugh. “It’s full of politicians.” She drew the door open.
The first thing he saw was a red butt. Leonore went in, giving it a spank as she passed. “Thank you,” a male voice said.
Paul followed her. “Should I? A guy?”
“He doesn’t care.”
Paul gave him a whack, and not a light one.
“Thank you, sir!”
Paul looked down, trying to see the face of the guy who was trussed up there.
“No, honey, we don’t pry. Not in here.”
But he had seen, and he knew the face. “Um, are these people all from Washington?”
“Washington, the Kremlin, Downing Street, the Vatican. You name it.”
Not all the whipees were men. There was a woman hanging naked from the ceiling, with what looked like heavy chains hooked to her nipples. “Ouch!” Paul said to Leonore, who kept walking. Another woman was encased in spectacular bondage, tied up like some kind of a ball, with what looked like a pair of underpants stuffed in her mouth.
“My God, who’s that?”
“A publishing executive on a guilt trip.”
There was a guy tied to a pole being whipped by two other guys with thick, black paddles.
“More publishers?”
“Two congressmen kissing a senator’s ass. They’ll be taking their turns on the post later.”
“You ever get a president in here?”
“What country?”
“U.S.”
“Which one?”
“Well, how about Bush?”
“Which one?”
Okay, that question was answered. “How much for this room?”
“Oh, you can do this room on my nickel. I’ll top you.”
“In your dreams, sweetie. Not my schtick.”
She shrugged. “You’d be surprised what it’s like, getting topped really well. Your ego is, like, imploded. This whole club is about blowing the ego away. Every room does it, but differently.”
“The Japanese garden?”
“The right kind of high, and you’ll feel very close to heaven there.”
“High is high.”
“No way. Our dealer is an MD who not only deals, he designs. He’s given all our customers physicals, he knows exactly what makes them tick. He’s doing blood tests, prescribing, adjusting, all during the course of the evening. They are being taken so high they’re gonna forget even their damn names.”
“And then the music blows you wide open.”
“You can get very close to God in here, mister. This place is sacred.”
Hell called sacred — that was something he never thought he’d hear. “Can we go somewhere else?” This was not the part of the club for him. He wanted to do some pipe, or at least get another drink. There wasn’t much second-hand smoke down here, and he was crashing.
This time they went up in an elevator so small that they were touching. He sprang up instantly. When the doors opened, he stayed like that, because this was a ballroom full of beautiful beds, and there were people openly making love on them.
A pair of singers, a lovely, tall girl and a young man who was even taller, stood together singing in voices so filled with gentleness that they might have been saints. He recognized “All Through the Night.”
“O’er thy spirit gently stealing,
Visions of delight revealing,
Breathes a pure and holy feeling . . .”
There was a solemnity to this place that seemed at odds with what appeared to be an orgy in progress. Paul was a smart man, and he was well able to see the careful thought that had been put into all this. This room, for example, was about disconnecting sex from sin. No more need to hide.
Once in a while, he’d hit a house in Vientiane or Phnom Penh with a bunch of guys, and it would develop into pretty much of an orgy. It was fun but it was ugly, and you felt dirty afterward. In this room the lack of shame brought with it a sense of purity. Thirty or forty human beings were enjoying one another in all kinds of intimate ways, doing everything you could imagine with each other. Their faces glowed with lust, they sweated. But it was all so joyous.
Maybe Leo was right, maybe there was something kind of sacred here.
Seeing all these bodies entwined, he was starting to look at Leo real hard.
But she probably outclassed him like everybody else in this place . . . except for the morons in the dungeon. They were pols, and that was sorta his world. But he could not relate to getting whipped. He got punished plenty without any assistance. The knife wound was still healing good, for example, but he sure as hell knew it was there if he tried to raise the arm too high.
Leo was terrific looking — clean as a whistle and sexy as hell. He could get into her in a second, way into her. His equipment had been considered pretty sensational by some. Maybe she’d like a little taste.
He decided to give it a try. “Look, I’d like — ” She rested her eyes on him, which instantly shut him up. “Let’s go downstairs,” he said, his voice husky with embarrassment. He couldn’t proposition her in here, for Chrissakes. He was no damn angel; he needed his privacy.
She strolled out into the foyer. He wasn’t quite sure where she was coming from, and he didn’t want to insult anybody. But he had to get it on somehow. He was human. He couldn’t just be left to Sally Five himself in his hotel room, not after all he’d seen and felt here tonight. He wanted to be loved, too. But since that didn’t seem likely to happen to him, maybe she’d just give him a break, here.
“I think you’re really — I mean, I could sure as hell give you a nice time. If you need a tip — if that’s the drill — ”
“I want to show you a very special space now,” she said. She took his hand.
How anything could possibly top what he had seen so far, he could not imagine. This wasn’t just a place of pleasure. It was a whole new approach to pleasure, as something that did not need to be hidden and wasn’t a sin. Even the ones in the dungeon were learning that lesson, in their own peculiar way.
The people who could come here were immensely privileged. All of his life, he had thought that the social barriers by which we live were a tragedy. Miriam Blaylock, whom he viewed now as something of a young genius, was challenging those barriers here, and he was beginning to decide that she was succeeding.
They went down a back stairway, steel stairs in a fluorescent-lit
well. There were doors with Exit signs all over the place and a hose station on every landing. He’d also noticed that the place was sprinklered and smoke-alarmed. “I’ve never seen so much safety equipment.”
“We’re very careful. You don’t want the least feeling of danger.”
“I’ve never felt so safe in my life.”
She squeezed his hand.
“Look,” he said, “I’m sorry if I embarrassed you. Or insulted. I just — I find you, you know, really, really attractive.”
“I’m flattered.”
They came to the bottom of the stairs, where there was a door with a breakaway bar that looked as if it must lead into an alley. A horrible thought crossed his mind. “I’m not getting the boot, here, I hope?”
She opened the door. There was a tiny chamber entirely made of mirrors. When he went in, there were Pauls staring at him from every direction, all of them disappearing into an infinity of repetitions. It was a sort of visual echo. “Hey, this is — ”
“Have a fabulous time.” She slammed the door, and he found himself alone in the small space. He turned around immediately, but saw only more mirrors and could not find the door.
Above all things, he hated confinement. But this was a place of pleasure. He was getting the ride of a lifetime for a poor bastard like him. He was not going to ruin it by freaking out.
So he wouldn’t freak out, but the guy looking back at him out of all these mirrors, he looked like he would. Look at the eyes, look at all that pain. Then he thought he saw another face. He saw — Jesus God, he’d been a fool to come here! It was one of them, watching him through the damn mirror. He went for the gun that wasn’t there, then lashed out. His fist smashed into the mirror. The room shook, he felt a blast of pain up his hurt arm . . . but the mirror did not crack.
There was a voice then, very soft, “Turn right and walk toward me.”
He turned right. There was nobody to walk toward but his own reflection.
“Come on.”
He took a step, feeling ahead — and felt air. This mirror was another one of the veils.
Was he walking into whatever had swallowed Ellen Wunderling? Some kind of damn superexclusive vampire lair? Oh, hell, if he was, he’d at least take a few with him.
He stepped into the most palatial bedroom he had ever seen. On the bed sat Miriam. She was playing the flute, and doing it with exquisite skill. He gaped at her, at the tall bed she was in, at the phenomenal tapestries on the walls.
There was a window, and outside he could see smiling green fields with people working in them, men with brown tunics and caps. A horseman rode along a path, a man dressed in the fabulous clothes of the distant past.
She stopped playing long enough to say, “It’s a TV screen.”
But it was very well done. The image was so clear that it looked more like a window than a window.
There was a chair across from the bed, big, carved, almost a throne. He sat in it. He watched Miriam Blaylock play, watched and listened. This was one talented lady. What the Veils was about was limitless wealth and the power of human genius. If you had the cash, the Veils could rebuild your soul.
Or if you were a damn dogface on a lucky streak, like yours truly.
Miriam was wearing a white nightgown cinched just under her breasts with a pink ribbon. He thought, I have never been in such a wonderful place with such a wonderful person before, and I think I’m about to get laid.
Christ almighty. Now, he had to prepare himself. When she was finished with that sweet prelude, she was going to raise her eyes, and he was going to see once again her angelic and spectacularly sexy face. He was already as hard as iron. The issue was, how did he do it, if indeed he was to be afforded that privilege, without wadding her on stroke two?
The music came to an end. She put down the flute.
When he applauded softly, she laughed. “I was just fooling around.”
“You fooled around with the Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun better than anybody I’ve ever heard. Better than Galway.”
“I adore James.”
“You know him?”
“We’ve played together.”
“Okay.”
Silence fell. He didn’t know what to do next, what to say. He was way out of his class; that was the truth of it. He looked up at the ceiling, which was painted with a night sky, dark blue with gold-leaf stars and a moon that looked more like it had a snake in it than a man. The constellations were strangely off, too.
“That’s an antique ceiling. Do you like it?”
“Oh, yeah. How old is it?”
She got off the bed and came over and sat on the arm of the chair. “It’s from Atlantis.”
“Okay,” he said again, and instantly felt like a total jerk. What was he, a stroke victim, here? Couldn’t he come up with something a little funny at least, in response to a funny remark from her?
“Okay what?”
“Sorry, I’m just — well — I gotta be honest. I’m just totally overwhelmed, here. Your club — I mean, Jesus. I admit to feeling just a little outclassed.”
She leaned down and grasped him through the silk pants. There was no underwear involved in this outfit, so it was a pretty intimate contact. The pleasure was intense.
“You need to cool down a little,” she said.
“I need to cool down,” he repeated.
She got up and went over to a big chest. It was made of dark wood, carved with writhing snakes. She opened it and he was amazed to see her bring out an opium rig with two of the most magnificent ivory pipes he’d ever seen. “You said you’d like a pipe. I think it’ll help a lot.” She stopped, though, then cocked her head, as if considering something that was a little new to her. “We’re not against drugs, are we, Mr. CIA man?”
“Nah, the Company’s a big importer. Anyway, I been doin’ shit since ’Nam. I’m in an extreme business. You can’t handle it without extreme relaxation. You gotta compensate.”
She gave him a pipe, started to prepare it for him.
“There’s that antique lighter again. Lady, you gotta ditch that thing; you’re gonna burn up.”
She glanced at him in a way that kind of shook him up. Was it a cold glance? Or hate? Jesus, if —
But then she smiled, and it was just so sweet that he could not believe that she was anything except very charmed by him.
He took a long pull and in a second was rewarded with good vapor. It seeped through him like blood in a sponge. It was very good vapor.
She lit her own pipe, then went to the bed and lay back, cradling it. He did the same, lying face-to-face with her. As he smoked, he felt his erection calming down. That was good. The opium would make the evening last.
She kissed him on the neck, just a peck, then giggled. He kissed her back, right on the mouth, hard and long.
After that she didn’t giggle again.
SEVENTEEN
Blood Child
Miriam was careful with his kiss. She was not sure how much Keeper anatomy he knew, and until she was, she would take no chances touching his tongue with her own. Afterward, he gazed at her with what she thought were the saddest eyes she had ever seen.
Now, they were smoking together. She was handling the pipes.
He was still devouring her with his eyes, and there was in the back of her mind the thought that he might have some level of recognition.
She gave him a smile calculated to seem shy, a little surprised. He sighed, smoked, closed his eyes.
She removed the pipes after a few more minutes. She wanted him calm, but not in a stupor. Two pipes of this opium would put a human being in one, no matter how strong he was.
“Nobody’s interested in opium anymore,” he said, lounging back on the bed. “I mean, I picked up on it in the jungles of Cambodia. Primitive place.”
“My opium is grown on a Crown estate in Myanmar, processed in a facility built for the CIA in 1952. Some say it’s the very best pipe on earth. Did you know Maurice McClellan? He
was in charge of that operation for CIA.”
“I knew Maurice.”
Then he was suddenly watching her with eyes as hard and cold as black diamonds. She was surprised — stunned, in fact — to realize that she’d just now made a mistake. If she were really in her early twenties, Maurice would have died when she was just a child.
“He was a friend of my father’s,” she said, rolling over on her back and putting her hands behind her head to telegraph how complete was her ease. “He introduced him to Prince Philip.”
“Yeah, that’d be Maurice. He traveled in pretty rarefied circles.”
“You know what we should do?” she said.
“What?”
“We should get you more comfortable.”
“This is a boss suit. I like the way it feels.”
“It’s club wear. When somebody comes in — ”
“Dressed like a bum, like me.”
“You were confusing my guests. They thought you were some kind of a cop.”
“Do you get cops around here?”
“Sure. The precinct’s just around the corner.”
“I noticed.”
“It’s not a problem.” Not when fifty thousand dollars a week was being sent over there and half the powerful people in the city were making sure that this particular block just plain was not patrolled.
She slid her hands under his shirt. He blinked his eyes. He got so hard so fast that there was a hissing sound as his organ slid against the silk of his trousers. As she unbuttoned the shirt, she wondered how much blood he could lose without dying. He was very strong. He’d probably last and last.
Once he was well trussed up, her plan was to remove all her makeup, to let him know that he had been captured by a Keeper. Then she would prick a tiny hole in his neck and use him as a teaching tool, letting Leo take him by small sips.