ever been spanked?â Jim asked.
âOh sure. And Iâve spanked. But Iâm not into it. I have to know a guy really really well before Iâll spank him,â I said. âWhat about you?â
Jim shook his head violently. âNo way.â
We both looked at Mike.
âYou wouldnât believe some of the things Iâve done,â he said.
âThis guy was your gynecologist?â Jim asked.
âAlmost,â I said. âClose enough that doing this story feels extra weird to me, know what I mean?â
Hanging out with Jim and Mike was the high point of my job. I felt like one of the guys because we talked pretty freely about stuff, and we all had different viewpoints and different opinions. Jim was very normal. He lived in Jersey, in a house, with his wife and kid. After eight years of doing sound for Special Reports, he still hadnât been jaded by the oddities we covered. Every story left him shaking his head in amazement. His was the conservative, family-values point of view.
Mike, on the other hand, was not normal. No normal person spends five years chasing wars, going from one hellhole to another. Mike was forty-three years old, came from Ireland originally, and had a nine-year-old daughter with his ex-wife, who was American. Mikeâs point of view was freewheeling and libertarian, sometimes outrageously so, but he got away with it because he had an Irish accent. When Mike was calm, he had only a trace of Ireland in his voice, but when he got excited, or had a bit to drink, or was talking about home, you could really hear it. âDem Flynns, de whole fockinâ familyâs bank robbers,â he said, when describing some neighbors from County Cork to Tamayo and me at Keggers. He rolled his râs and said words like smuggler as âsmoogler.â Jim and I imitated him a lot.
Because of my adventure in the menâs room on twenty-seven, we were late getting to Anyaâs. Donât be late, she had emphasized on the phone. She had meant it. When we got there, the haughty maid informed us that Madame was not yet ready, and we would be required to wait in Madameâs minimalist living room.
âPlease set up and be ready to roll when Madame comes in,â the maid said. âSheâll be about ten more minutes.â
Madameâs living room was a cavern, really, with twenty-foot ceilings and huge floor-to-ceiling windows covered in gauzy white curtains sashed with red velvet. The whiteness of the room was relieved only by the red sashes and a wall of glass and teak cases displaying a lot of medieval iron torture implements.
âGuess sheâs going to make an entrance,â Mike said, strolling over to get a better look at the torture devices. âWow, look at this weaponry.â
âNice disembowler,â I said.
âWhen was the last time you had a good evisceration, girl? I mean, a really good one.â
(Mike was one of the few men who could get away with calling me a girlâalthough I often refer to myself that way âand that was because he said it with respect and with that great r-rolling lilt. Ask an Irish guy to say that word, girl , for you and youâll see what I mean.)
âYouâre sick.â
The maid appeared and said, âMadame is coming,â and we went back to position. I put in my earpiece, which wasnât necessary since we werenât going live. But Mike liked to be able to talk to me while we were shooting, and I went along with it because he had worked with correspondents much better than me and I had to trust his judgment.
When the maid was sure we were rolling, and only then, Mistress Anya came in, dressed like Kaiser Wilhelm and leading her âslaveâ Charles around on a leash. Charles, a white man, was dressed head-to-toe in black leather so that only his eyes, nose, and hands were visible. He was on all fours.
âSit, Charles,â Anya commanded, and he obediently sat