Nice Girls Finish Last by Sparkle Hayter Page A

ever been spanked?” Jim asked.
    â€œOh sure. And I’ve spanked. But I’m not into it. I have to know a guy really really well before I’ll spank him,” I said. “What about you?”
    Jim shook his head violently. “No way.”
    We both looked at Mike.
    â€œYou wouldn’t believe some of the things I’ve done,” he said.
    â€œThis guy was your gynecologist?” Jim asked.
    â€œAlmost,” I said. “Close enough that doing this story feels extra weird to me, know what I mean?”
    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 hadn’t 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. Mike’s 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. “Dem Flynns, de whole fockin’ family’s bank robbers,” he said, when describing some neighbors from County Cork to Tamayo and me at Keggers. He rolled his r’s and said words like smuggler as “smoogler.” Jim and I imitated him a lot.
    Because of my adventure in the men’s room on twenty-seven, we were late getting to Anya’s. Don’t 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 Madame’s minimalist living room.
    â€œPlease set up and be ready to roll when Madame comes in,” the maid said. “She’ll be about ten more minutes.”
    Madame’s 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.
    â€œGuess she’s going to make an entrance,” Mike said, strolling over to get a better look at the torture devices. “Wow, look at this weaponry.”
    â€œNice disembowler,” I said.
    â€œWhen was the last time you had a good evisceration, girl? I mean, a really good one.”
    (Mike was one of the few men who could get away with calling me a girl—although I often refer to myself that way —and 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 you’ll see what I mean.)
    â€œYou’re sick.”
    The maid appeared and said, “Madame is coming,” and we went back to position. I put in my earpiece, which wasn’t necessary since we weren’t 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 “slave” 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.
    â€œSit, Charles,” Anya commanded, and he obediently sat