Callahan's Lady

by Spider Robinson

  I remembered the sound of Big Travis hitting cement, and swung harder than my side wanted me to.

  “Wake up, Maureen dear,” she said. “You came all over queer for a moment.”

  I tried to sit up in bed, but my side hurt too much. I lay back and glared at her. “Listen to me,” I said weakly. “You can kill me, but you can’t break me. Big Travis couldn’t make me work if I didn’t want to, and you can’t either!” I was bluffing, of course. Right then Robin the male maid could have broken me. “I’m an independent, you got that, Your Ladyship? and if you can’t deal with that, then you might as well finish me right now.” I tried to look tough as nails, and looked to see if I had pushed it too far.

  A smile and a frown were wrestling on her face. The frown won.

  “You think that you have been shanghaied into my House,” she stated. “That I’ve appointed myself your new owner. Now I begin to understand that goat dance we just did by the door.”

  “Did you think I was too dumb to figure it out?” I snapped.

  Her face became expressionless. “Maureen, there’s probably no point in my telling you this—you won’t believe me, and soon enough you’ll find out for yourself. But I’ll say it just the same. You are free to stay here for a week or two while you recuperate…or you may get up and leave now if you feel up to it. I do not recall offering you a position as one of my artists. And I do not plan to.”

  I said nothing.

  “Please do not interpret this as criticism. I’m sure you are talented and skilled. But this is not an ordinary House, and you do not meet my standards. I’ll send Kate up, in case our little gavotte has undone her good work.” And she left before I could say a word.

  I could not decide whether to be relieved, or suspicious…or insulted.

  I settled on suspicious. She was trying reverse psychology—and it was not going to work.

  I refused my next dose of painkiller, told Kate I wouldn’t be needing it anymore. Just after noon the next day a delegation consisting of Phillip and Robin (in mufti, this time) came to tell me I was well enough to get up and walk around a little, and to offer me a Grand Tour. A robe and some very comfortable slippers were found for me, and we set off at a pace suitable for a convalescent. I concentrated on mapping the place in my head. Out my door, turn right, a short stretch of hallway leads to a corridor. Look right: an elevator. Look left: a doorway marked “Exit”! Look away…

  “We’re in the Discreet Wing,” Phillip said, steering us toward the elevator. “It’s just barely connected to the rest of the House, and not at all on this floor. There are doors to the Women’s and Men’s Lounges, but except for emergencies they stay locked during working hours.”

  “Separate lounges for men and women? And a ‘Discreet Wing’?”

  The elevator door slid shut and we rose gently. “Well, actually there are three Lounges. You see, some people who come to a bordello feel easier in their minds if they know that the only people of the opposite sex they’re going to see are employees. So there are segregated Lounges. But sooner or later most people figure out that the best party is in the Parlor. The Parlor is co-educational—in several senses. And the Discreet Wing is for those few of either gender who must have absolute discretion and privacy. Public officials, celebrities, evangelists, and so forth. If you come on anyone wearing a mask in this section, pay no attention. And if you see anyone you recognize, try to hide it.”

  This place must be huge. And I’d never heard of a house that catered to as many women as men—I’d never heard of one that catered to women at all. Lady Sally was no ordinary madam.

  The elevator door slid open and we exited into another hallway, wide and well carpeted. The paintings I saw on the wall were realistic and quite explicitly erotic. Also quite beautiful. “Function rooms straight ahead,” Phillip said, “women’s wing to the right, men’s to the left. Any of the three will lead to the coed wing.”

  “Let’s see the function rooms,” I said.

  Through a doorway, down a corridor. Doors on either side, impressively far apart. Big rooms, lavish operation. Some of the doors had small red lights glowing. Phillip opened one which did not. “I don’t know if you’ll remember,” he said, “but this is where Kate fixed you up.”

  It looked and smelled like a doctor’s consulting room…except that the stirrups on an examination table do not customarily include ankle restraints. It was sparkling clean and seemed well-equipped. I opened a closet. It contained some of those open-backed gowns for patients, some surgeon’s gowns and masks, and assorted medical apparatus. Plus a collection of “marital aids”…

  The next function room we inspected was a Teenager’s Bedroom. Football pennants and pictures of pop stars and horses on the walls, white comforter with embroidered kittens on the bed, cheap desk stacked with school books, letter-sweater draped over the chair, dresser-top piled a foot deep with makeup and perfume and stuffed animals. The closet bulged with clothes; a cheerleader’s outfit hung from a hook on the door.

  “There’s a boy’s version across the hall,” Phillip said.

  Next in line was an Executive’s Office, suitable for a captain of industry, authentic in every detail. Phillip, grinning, activated the intercom and said, in a fake Dutch accent, “Missus-a Whiggins, hold-a alla my calls, yew got-a dat?”

  I recognized Mary, even though she was using a flat, nasal joke voice. “Yes, Mr. Tudball.”

  I noted that there was a great deal of room in the well under the desk; that everything on the desk could be swept off onto the floor hastily without breaking or damaging the carpet; that the carpet was extremely soft and washable; and that the couch across the room was designed as a multipurpose utensil.

  “Your function rooms are very…functional,” I said. Privately I was astonished at their quality. My mental estimate of the sheer financial scope of this operation rose sharply with every passing minute. I was no longer surprised that women patronized this brothel. There was nothing remotely sleazy about it. I had fallen into something truly extraordinary. This had to be where the very very rich came.

  The prospect of working here began, for the first time, to seem a little less like a fate worse than death.

  Suppose you only got to keep…say, ten percent of what you made. That could still amount to a tidy sum. And the kind of people you’d meet…

  But what did the very very rich want?

  Straight hooking was such a simple, trivial skill: any fool could learn to do it. Hell, it had taken Big Travis about a day and a half to teach me the ropes, back when I got started. Whenever I’d heard or read of those five-hundred-dollar-a-night girls, I always used to wonder what could possibly make it worth that much. I didn’t know, and my guesses unnerved me.

  “You’re looking very pale, Miss Maureen, I’m sorry but you are, are you sure you’re up to this?” Robin asked solicitously. I had not been able to get him to call me “Maureen,” but I drew the line at “Mistress Maureen.”

  “I’m fine, Robin. Let’s go on.”

  As we approached the next room, the discreet ruby light beside its door went off. I hesitated, curious to see one of the fabulously wealthy johns that frequented this place. This wasn’t the Discreet Wing; it should be all right. I wished I had fixed my face before starting this tour. At least my hair was brushed.

  The door opened, and a short slender man emerged. He had a face like a hundred-year-old monkey which had been shaved the previous week. He wore a cabbie’s cap, a disreputable denim jacket, black corduroys, and the kind of high-heeled pointy-toed boots which in New York are called P.F.C.’s. Big Travis wore the same kind.

  He paused in the doorway, through which I could see that this room was a Victorian Boudoir. “Hi dere,” he said to us. Then he turned and called back to the room’s occupant, “So long Rachel—yer de greatest!”

  “So are you, Eddie,” a soft voice replied. “How you got your nickname I’ll never know. Say hello to the gang for me.”

  He grinned, a
n astonishing sight. “Sure ting.” He closed the door, nodded pleasantly to me, said, “Miss. Gents,” and walked off down the hall.

  “Uh…,” I said to Phillip.

  “Is there anything wrong?” he asked.

  “I guess I don’t understand the…uh…the fee structure around here.”

  “Neither do we. Fortunately it’s not our concern.”

  “Huh?”

  “That’s Lady Sally’s worry. All we have to do is concentrate on our performance. An artist really needs a manager, don’t you think?”

  Performance? Artist? “Phillip…do you work here? I mean, work here?”

  He smiled. “I have that honor.”

  He was certainly the most mature and pleasant male hooker I had ever met. “And you don’t collect the money yourself? How do you know Sally’s honest on the split?”

  He smiled again. “Even assuming I didn’t know her, the issue doesn’t arise. We’re all on straight salary. Plus tips…which, to anticipate your next question, we keep.”

  I blinked. “Do you mind if I ask…”

  “Not at all.” He named a figure. “That’s after withholding. And room and board and medical care are thrown in.”

  I managed to unpop my eyes. “You can’t be serious.” As a colonel in the Army, my father had made less than half as much. “She must whack the johns for a fortune.”

  “Each time somebody new comes here, Lady Sally sees him or her in private first. She looks them over, talks with them a little, and then quotes them two prices: one for by-the-evening, and the other for full-time membership. Logic tells me that she must peg the prices to what the individual can afford—you saw the fellow who just left; he’s an old regular. But we don’t ask, and clients don’t talk about it among themselves. All I know is, you don’t have to be rich to come here—but if you are, no one will hold it against you.”

  “How many johns do you have to see a day? Or is it ‘janes’?” My subtle way of learning his sexual orientation. And his professional prowess—

  No dice. “There’s no quota. It varies.”

  “Huh? You’re telling me Lady Sally’s whores have no quota?”

  “We don’t call ourselves whores. And we don’t call them ‘johns’ or ‘janes.’ They’re clients, and we’re artists.”

  “Mere semantics.”

  He frowned. “Maureen, every time I hear someone put the word ‘mere’ in front of the word ‘semantics,’ I bite my tongue hard and remind myself that I too am greatly ignorant. If you were Jewish would you call yourself a ‘kike’?”

  “Black people call each other ‘nigger,’” I argued.

  “Not the ones in this House,” he said firmly. “Lady Sally does not permit any kind of contempt here. Not even self-contempt. Maybe especially not self-contempt. Art with contempt in it is always sour. To answer your question, no, there’s no quota system. There’ve been days I didn’t see a single client. And days when I took my pants off at noon and didn’t put them back on until closing. Art happens when it happens.”

  “No time limit or anything? You could take a whole shift with one…uh, client?”

  “Art takes as long as it takes. But that doesn’t happen often.”

  “You can pick and choose your clients?”

  “Of course. And vice versa. As a rule, I’ll gamble an hour on anyone Lady Sally has admitted to the Parlor, and I’ve had very few bad experiences. I have some regulars, of course. We all do.”

  I said nothing.

  He grinned. “There just is no polite way to ask what you want to ask, and it’s killing you. So I’ll take you off the hook. I see both men and women. My clientele happens to break down to about eighty percent female, lately, and that suits me okay. But bisexuality isn’t required. Lady Sally tolerates monosexuals; she just doesn’t understand them.”

  I was probably as confused and disoriented as I’d been in that alley a few nights ago. And I was blushing! “Let’s resume the tour.”

  He agreed at once. We left the function room area, passed through a swinging door and down a hallway lined with doorways.

  “These are the personal studios,” Phillip said. “One per artist. Here, I’ll show you my own—”

  It looked like a small studio apartment with bath. Thick carpet. Burgundy walls. King-size bed, neatly made up and very comfortable-looking; many pillows. Stereo and a small TV. Beer fridge in the corner. Large closet. Armchair. Hassock. Mahogany dresser with huge mirror which could be pivoted strategically. The only thing that surprised me a little was the bookcase. It was full of books. Real books: I saw old friends. STUART LITTLE. THE PRINCESS BRIDE. It looked like a very pleasant room in which to make love. I spotted the bug, but most people wouldn’t have.

  “Funny,” Phillip was saying. “New clients usually want to come here the first time…but they ask a lot of casual questions about the various function rooms. Then the second through seventh visits, they either try half a dozen different rooms, or one of them half a dozen times. And from then on, they’ll want a plain studio session nine times out of ten. Oh, everybody’s different—but you’d be surprised how often it works out that way. You can’t eat spicy food all the time.”

  “So this is where you live.”

  “No, no! This is where I work, most of the time. My studio. My apartment is up on the third floor with everybody else’s.”

  Jesus Christ. “Along with a twenty-four-hour kitchen, no doubt.”

  “No, that’s in the basement. Clients are permitted there during working hours as long as they behave themselves. Generally that means letting us win the food fights. Are you feeling strong enough to continue?”

  As we left I noticed that the door would not lock in either direction. He led me back out into the hall, and through a series of carpeted, softly lit corridors. He did not chat—even Robin was silent—and I was grateful. I was distracted by my own thoughts.

  What the hell did she mean, I didn’t meet her goddam standards?

  We came to the upper terminus of a spiral staircase so grand and beautiful that it jolted me out of my self-absorption. It was iron and might have been the lifework of a whole family of artisans. I could not guess its age.

  I realized that I had been hearing music for the last while without noticing: this was the source. Solo piano downstairs. Excellent piano. Honky-tonk, barrelhouse piano, exactly the sort I’d always imagined they must play in whorehouses. You know how you listen to Tatum or Peterson and think, this guy can play any damn thing he can imagine, and he’s got a better imagination than me? That good. Listeners were laughing and clapping along. That had to be the Parlor down there—and the afternoon shift was in progress.

  “Terrific,” Phillip said. “Somebody talked Eddie into sticking around for a while. Let’s go.”

  “Phillip!”

  “Yes?”

  “There is a damn party going on down there. And I am in a bathrobe and slippers with no makeup.”

  He looked thoughtful. “Oh. There is a dress code in the Parlor. But it only applies to employees. I’m sure no one will mind.”

  I’ll never understand men. “It’s not their feelings I’m worried about!”

  Robin understood at least. “You look lovely, Miss Maureen,” he said, so earnestly I almost smiled. “And you haven’t really seen Lady Sally’s House until you’ve seen the Parlor. Why, some of the clients spend all their time there, never come upstairs at all. Just a few minutes?”

  You could not descend that splendid staircase without feeling that you were making a grand entrance into the Imperial Ballroom. Doing so in a bathrobe and mules made me feel unutterably silly. Halfway down I relaxed. As advertised, no one was looking at me—and what I was looking at was more interesting than my own embarrassment.

  Have you ever seen, in the movies maybe, one of those very elegant and exclusive men’s clubs in London, where the rich and powerful hang out? They have them in New York, too, but it couldn’t be the same. Picture one of those, three hundred years o
ld, richly furnished and decorated with exquisite taste. Islands of furniture groupings afloat in lots of open carpet. Chandeliers equal to the staircase in magnificence. Two bars.

  Now I understood how I fell short of Lady Sally’s standards. It wasn’t any of the things I’d been thinking. I didn’t have enough class.

  Then I took a closer look at the couple of dozen people in that splendid Parlor, and was confused again. The membership committee of the exclusive men’s club had apparently been infiltrated by proletarian radicals. Or perhaps just galloping eccentrics.

  Roughly half the people were women, of course, and they were dressed more conservatively than I had expected. No lingerie, no negligees. Some dressed elegant, some casual. Most of them looked like they were going to a reception at an upscale art gallery.

  But there was a girl in genuine hippie drag, long dress and gypsy scarf and all, and a redhead in Navy uniform, and what appeared to be an authentic bag lady. And a nun—

  And the men were a much more mixed group.

  Oh, there were banker types and diplomat types and lawyer types. I recognized the Police Commissioner from his pictures. But there was also a guy in a bus driver’s uniform, some Japanese in Bermuda shorts and flowered shirts, two honest to God native Indians with braided hair and patched jeans, a big balding redhead who looked like a bartender, three coal-black Africans in robes, and a lighter-skinned black man who sat legless on a small wheeled platform. And there was a priest sitting with the nun.

  The only other place I’d ever seen this broad a spectrum of people together was the lobby of a modern dance concert the Professor took me to once.

  It didn’t seem to make sense. Most of this crowd just could not afford the kind of rates that must be necessary to maintain an operation this lavish. Maybe the evening trade was more upscale.

  Everybody gave me a glance and a nod; nobody gave me more. Their attention was on the piano playing of the partly shaved monkey I had seen upstairs. I couldn’t blame them; he was really good. Eddie, that was the name. Weird to hear barrelhouse coming from a concert grand…