His Little Black Book

by Thea Devine

“Uh-huh, and we know what happened to the four hundred.” Brooke yawned. “That’s one for me in the educated column. Any knowledge of the Boer War gets fifty points on the mistress intellect scale.”

  Monday morning they dressed for Midtown meandering, and grabbed a cab to the East Side.

  “Oh,” Delia breathed as they emerged on Fifth Avenue, a stone’s throw from Central Park and several blocks from Fifty-seventh Street, where mansions and prewar co-op apartments sold in the millions of dollars. The number they were seeking was in an exclusive turn-of-the-century building on the corner. “Oh…”

  Brooke looked at the card. The address was right. The name, Maîtrise, cryptic and mysterious both, still meant nothing to her.

  “Let’s walk,” Brooke said, turning toward Fifty-seventh Street. They fell in three abreast. “So what did we learn?”

  “The address is real,” MJ said.

  “And Tiffany’s and Harry Winston aren’t too far away,” Delia added.

  Brooke shook her head. “You’re impossible. But you know what, you could be right. Let’s go shopping.”

  Because there was nothing like browsing at Tiffany’s to put a girl’s priorities into perspective. A diet of diamonds and Dean & Deluca was not to be sloughed off so cavalierly.

  But MJ, after about an hour and half, started looking a little glazed. MJ was making comparisons between herself and the thin, elegant Fifth Avenue fillies who were ruminating on and rejecting engagement rings right and left as she, Brooke, and Delia scoped out the showcases.

  “I think it’s time to go home,” Brooke whispered, motioning to MJ.

  Delia nodded. “I’ll take her back to your place.” She took MJ by the arm, and MJ didn’t resist. Brooke thought she was looking rather zombielike right now, like some evil spirit had inhabited her thoughts.

  Brooke waited until they had crossed Fifty-seventh Street before she headed uptown.

  But she should be dressed to the teeth and wearing that new lingerie, rather than just a striped silk wrap top and a flowing moss-colored chiffon skirt.

  Monday was not a good day to start the process of becoming a mistress.

  Oh really? If not now, when?

  It couldn’t hurt to take another look at the building. It couldn’t hurt just to go inside. But she walked around the block twice, procrastinating.

  Okay. This is it. This is to save MJ. The sooner we’re involved in the mistress world, the sooner she’ll forget that son of a bitch.

  She took a deep breath and pushed open the ornate front door.

  It was like a castle inside the entryway, with a thick, plush Persian carpet, stone walls where an ornate wall-sized tapestry hung above an upholstered bench, an antique chandelier shed soft subtle light, and another ornate door was set opposite the entrance.

  Almost instantly a doorman appeared there.

  “May I help you?”

  She had the card with her. All for MJ. She extracted it from her bag and gave it to him.

  He barely gave the card a glance before he handed it back to her.

  “This way, please.”

  He opened the door and motioned her into a marble-floored reception room with a carved fireplace. There were club chairs comfortably situated around it, a similar Persian rug on the floor, and console tables along the walls on either side, with crystal vases full of fresh flowers and lovely gilded mirrors above them.

  The doorman’s station was cleverly tucked away to the right of the door. He picked up the intercom, murmured a word, and then said to Brooke, “Go to one. The elevator is to your left.”

  No backing down now.

  She was trembling as she walked slowly to the left. There were two elevators. One, paneled in rich walnut with brass fittings, was open as if it had been sent for her. Maybe it had been.

  She stepped in and pressed number one, and the door closed.

  This is for MJ. The elevator door slid silently open, on the next floor.

  She didn’t know what she expected, but it wasn’t this haute hushed elegance, this Architectural Digest layout of the perfect Manhattan living room done in earth tones and off-whites, sparkling crystal, accents of brass and burgundy.

  And the perfect hostess coming toward her, dressed perfectly in a youthful black Chanel suit with white satin cuffs, a matching top, and black and white shoes, holding out her hands as if Brooke were an honored guest.

  “Welcome to Maîtrise. Come, sit. Let’s talk.”

  Her hostess was a woman of a certain age and blondeness, with that ineffable chic that comes only from years of living at a certain level with lots of money to indulge yourself.

  She led the way to two chairs and an ottoman covered in toffee suede by a bay window, and motioned for Brooke to sit. A butler immediately appeared with a coffee service, which he put on the ottoman and then withdrew.

  Her hostess leaned forward. “I’m Vanessa.”

  Brooke’s voice stuck in her throat. “Brooke.”

  Now what?

  Vanessa looked at her expectantly, then held out her hand.

  The entrée! Brooke took the card from her Kate Spade tote and handed it to Vanessa, who scrutinized it as if there were a message written in invisible ink.

  But the only thing on that card was the address. And it was a little bent at one corner. Vanessa said, “Very well,” and tucked the card away.

  She poured two cups of coffee and handed one to Brooke. “Now tell me why you’re here.”

  So this was the test. A casual conversation with a worldly woman assessing and deciding if you were a candidate for the Mistress Club.

  Was there a right answer or a right type? Did she even want to try to get past this first dragon? She could say anything, and tell MJ and Delia that she’d tried.

  No. This is everything I wanted, exactly how I imagined it.

  Brooke sipped the coffee to give herself some breathing room. The goal was so close and so far away. And she was on a tightrope, trying to keep a balance between fear and hope that this would work out exactly the way she had always imagined.

  Vanessa waited. She wore diamond earrings, a beautiful diamond ring, gold bracelets, expert youthful makeup, and a trendy chignon.

  I could be Vanessa—minus the blonde hair—in ten years. What do I really, really want?

  This was the moment, right now, in her hands.

  “I’m here because I’m young, a little experienced, and I’m not jaded yet. I’m fairly new to the city, I’m beautiful, educated, intelligent, and I want to control my sex life.”

  Vanessa smiled. “Do you know what Maîtrise means?”

  “No.”

  “Control.”

  Brooke felt a thrill of recognition. How eerie was that, that this name would mirror her whole philosophy in dreaming up the Mistress Club?

  “Maîtrise is a very exclusive spa,” Vanessa continued, “where a very select group of hand-picked young and beautiful women take control of their bodies and their lives, and our discriminating male clientele comes to relax and rejuvenate themselves in that fountain of youth. So let’s get the basics out of the way, shall we? Where you’re from, where you went to school, where you work, when you came to New York, that kind of thing.”

  Brooke told her as succinctly as possible, awed that Vanessa took no notes. Vanessa asked polite but incisive questions that delved into Brooke’s experience, her wants, her needs, her secrets, her desires.

  “You are very beautiful. Stand up, let me see how you carry yourself.”

  Brooke stood, walked around the room, then sat down again.

  “Size six?”

  Brooke nodded.

  “I need two things from you today before we can go any further. One is references, and the second is your agreement to have a physical exam at our expense. You’re smart enough to understand why. I’ll give you the name of our doctor, who will report back to me alone. Are both of those conditions acceptable to you?”

  Brooke didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”

&
nbsp; “Excellent, then.” She produced a card. “Make your appointment this week, please. And I’ll take the names of your references now.”

  Brooke gave the name of her superior at the hotel and a friend in Chicago who had known her since she was a child.

  Vanessa stood, and Brooke took the signal and rose also.

  “I’m very pleased that you accepted the invitation to come to Maîtrise,” Vanessa said, holding out her hand. “I hope it proves beneficial to both of us. When you return next week at the same time, the doorman will admit you.”

  “Thank you,” Brooke murmured. They were at the elevator foyer by then. She felt a brief squeeze on her elbow, then Vanessa was gone.

  Delia was frantic, both because MJ was fighting her to call Dallan, and she had no idea where Brooke was.

  So when Brooke walked in the door, Delia was fuming.

  “You could have called.”

  “I wasn’t anywhere I could—”

  “MJ was in such a state today, I had to physically keep her from the phone. I took out the phone jacks and hid her cell. It was a little nuts. Was I ever like this, so out of control, my-life-is-over-if-he-doesn’t-love-me crazy?”

  “Some nights, but the details are dim. And who wants to remember all that, anyway? I’m really sorry, Delia. That must have been awful, to see MJ go over the edge again like that.” She paused, then said in a rush, “Delia, listen. I went there.”

  “Oh, my God. To the Mistress Club?”

  “Yes. It was a conversation and two conditions, and that was all until next week.”

  “Oh, my God. Shall I wake MJ? She’s got to hear this.”

  “Have you guys had lunch? Want a pizza?”

  “Sure. But—you went there?”

  “Yep, I went there.”

  “Holy shit. That took…”

  “Balls. I know. I was scared to death, too. But I was thinking about MJ, and I did it.”

  Delia looked up from her cell. “You should’ve called me! I’ll go wake MJ.”

  But MJ was already in that fuzzy-awake state. “Hey,” Delia said. “Pizza’s coming, and Brooke’s back. She went there!”

  “What?” MJ yawned. “What!”

  “She went to Maîtrise. Come on; let’s go hear the details.”

  After they’d settled in, Brooke told them what had happened: the apartment building, Vanessa’s appearance, and a blow-by-blow of their conversation.

  “Wow,” Delia breathed.

  “I did it for you,” Brooke told MJ. “I did it so we can all have some options. And so you can shed the notion that there’s only one love and one kind of life, and you somehow trashed it. That son of a bitch trashed it by treating you like shit, and now we’re going to meet men who will treat us like treasures.”

  MJ’s face clouded. “Maybe.”

  “Well, I’m committed to seeing their doctor, and you know he’s going to poke and pry everywhere. That’s sacrifice.”

  “It really was that simple?” MJ asked.

  “I think it must get harder from this point on; they have to be pretty stringent about who they accept. The doctor will undoubtedly be testing me for drugs, alcohol, estrogen levels—God, anything you can think of. And I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s some kind of confidentiality agreement to sign, and some form of remuneration if things don’t work out.”

  “I’d love a monetary bandage,” MJ said wistfully.

  “Then I guess we’ll see what happens. In the meantime, tomorrow we all have to go to work—though maybe MJ should take some time off. I’m worried about Baines’s reaction when he finally realizes that MJ is no longer at his beck and call.”

  Brooke found out two days later when she went to MJ’s apartment to pick up mail and clothes, and the doorbell rang violently.

  Oh, shit. The voice mail was blinking madly, and she instantly knew why. Baines had most certainly been calling and now, frustrated by no return call, he had shown up.

  She tucked MJ’s clothes and mail into her tote, hoping that MJ hadn’t given him a key and he would just go away, or that the neighbors would call the police. But she could also sit there all night while he stubbornly waited for MJ to show. He was that kind of guy.

  Not good. She had her doctor’s appointment in two hours at a fancy address on Park Avenue, but not if this idiot kept ringing the bell and banging on the door downstairs.

  Time to put an end to that.

  She saw him watching through the windowed door as she came downstairs. Damn. He could push his way through that door in two seconds if she opened it. MJ never should have rented a walk-up; it was too damned dangerous.

  “Hey!” he shouted through the door. He was a tall, elegant man, but there was something mean and calculating in his expression. “You—where’s MJ?”

  This was not going to work. Brooke resolutely walked up to the first-floor landing and knocked on the first door, hoping someone would answer quickly, and that it was a guy and he would be furious about the aggressive pounding on the door downstairs.

  “Yah—?” It was a sleepy bald man, rubbing his eyes as if she had just woken him.

  “There’s this really angry guy downstairs, looking for your neighbor, MJ Branden. I have no idea who he is, and I didn’t want to let him in. Do you think you could just…back me up…so I can get out of the building?”

  The guy looked her up and down. “I don’t know you.”

  “I’m a friend of MJ’s. She’ll be away for a while; I was just picking up her mail and some clothes.”

  The banging grew louder.

  “Yeah, I hear him now. Okay. I have a baseball bat.”

  “That might be useful.”

  She waited while he got the bat, and he followed her down the steps, where his appearance silenced Baines.

  “Step away from that door,” Brooke called out, “or we’ll call the police.”

  He stepped back, far back, and Brooke was grateful that a little crowd had gathered, and someone had flipped a cell and was talking into it.

  She turned to the neighbor. “Thanks. I think it’s okay now.”

  She eased out of the door, making certain she locked it securely behind her.

  Baines looked around him at the curious crowd, then came forward and grasped her arm.

  “Excuse me!” she said and pulled away.

  The crowd moved in.

  “Where’s MJ?”

  “I don’t know who you’re talking about. I’m just subletting here.”

  “Yeah, like I believe that. Who are you?”

  “Mona Lattimore,” she snapped, naming a recent guest at the hotel. “Who the hell are you?”

  “None of your business,” he growled and wheeled away. “You just tell MJ that I’ll find her, wherever she’s hiding or whoever she’s sleeping with.”

  Hot fear coursed through Brooke’s body. With a man like that, you didn’t take his threats lightly.

  MJ couldn’t ever go back there, she decided, as she wriggled onto the exam table an hour after the encounter. MJ probably should quit her job, too—damn it. Jobs like that were hard to find.

  She needed a plan. MJ needed protection.

  “Hmmm,” the doctor muttered as he inserted a speculum. “We must check everything.”

  “Fine.”

  “Nice, nice. Sit up—”

  He’d measured everything, including how deeply she could be penetrated.

  Lord, the things they wanted to know…

  But maybe some men needed that kind of accommodation. The thought of a shaft that hard and long made her shudder with longing.

  It’s been too long…

  He examined everything: her vagina, her breasts, her nipples, her hair, her mouth, her hands and feet, her anal area. She felt like a piece of raw meat. And she was never going to get the feel of the doctor’s invasive hands out of her memory.

  “You have to stay here from now on,” she told MJ that night, after describing what had happened at her apartment.

 
“But,” Delia asked, “if Bill could so easily track me down, couldn’t Dallan find us, as well?”

  “No one in my work life knows about you guys, and I assume that’s true of you, too, Delia. So I think we’re safe here.”

  “Good,” Delia said resolutely. “Men like Dallan and Frank don’t like to lose.”

  “Ummm…can I have a say?” MJ asked warily.

  “No!” they answered simultaneously.

  “Look,” Brooke said, “my idea is to get us hooked up with the Mistress Club as fast as possible—and then everything will be possible.”

  MJ sighed. “And you’ve got a plan, I bet.”

  “Actually, I don’t. Yet.”

  “Good, because I don’t want the Mistress Club. I want Dallan.” She stared defiantly at them.

  “You really don’t,” Delia said gently. “You want someone kind and strong, who will appreciate you the way you deserve to be appreciated. Do not give yourself over to him again.”

  “I have to,” MJ whispered.

  “No, you don’t.”

  “But he’s the only one—”

  “He’s not.”

  “—who understands…”

  Delia moved a little closer. “Understands what?”

  There was a long pause. “Me.”

  Delia sighed. “That was what I thought. That Frank was the only one who knew all about me.”

  MJ’s eyes were damp. “Exactly.”

  “But you guys showed me that his only interest was himself.”

  “Yes…” MJ whispered.

  “And he didn’t care about me.”

  MJ started to cry.

  “Only, he knew things…Well, there are lots of men who treat secrets with reverence and respect, rather than something you should be ashamed of. Whatever the secrets are,” Delia added kindly. She let a few beats of silence go by so MJ could absorb what she was saying.

  “What’s your secret?” MJ asked tearily.

  “I’m a plain old vanilla, missionary-position farm girl,” Delia said. “Pretty dull for some guys, Frank included. He always wanted me to do things I didn’t want to do. So now I know some things I didn’t used to, but that’s not me in bed. And he made me feel like shit, on top of it. I much prefer the idea of a lover showering me with attention and gifts, and making me feel like a queen.