Names I Call My Sister

by Mary Castillo

  But in the letter, the chair called me a “wholesome woman who as our representative in the City Council will serve as a wonderful example to the girls in this community.” I have to thank Ryan for this one because it was his idea to have Echo and Cindi accompany me to the meeting. The SSS are quite respected and connected, so an endorsement from them is very likely to generate support from other groups in the district.

  Next in the in box is a copy of the latest edition of the Bronx Weekly Journal. This time the attached note from Ryan says, “And now the bad news.” I flip to the page that he has flagged with a paper clip. The headline on the editorial page immediately catches my eye: ONE MORE TERM FOR CUEVAS.

  But when I read the editorial, I laugh. If I were Cuevas, I wouldn’t leap to quote the Bronx Weekly Journal in my campaign material. Of course, although I’m disappointed to not have won its endorsement, Ryan warned me to not expect it. He said that even though the paper tries to maintain a facade of journalistic objectivity, it always endorses the machine’s candidates. But this editorial amounts to a three-hundred-word backhanded compliment. In fact, I sit at my desk and start to brainstorm ways to spin the paper’s halfhearted support for Cuevas against him.

  A half hour later Ryan knocks on my door. I know it’s him because he always knocks then waits. When I don’t want to be interrupted, I tell everyone to hold my calls and lock the door. Otherwise, all my campaign workers knock then let themselves in, except Ryan. He knocks then waits for permission. I have to admit, I find it endearing and even a little sexy. Of course, I say nothing of the sort to him.

  Still, I can’t help myself. “C’mon in, Rye-yen.” He enters, and I wave my list of possible campaign slogans at him. “Hey, this endorsement isn’t as bad as it seems,” I say. “I mean, the Bronx Weekly Journal’s practically telling voters, ‘Look, in the face of uncertainty, go with the misery you know.’ Let’s challenge Cuevas to a debate.”

  Ryan approaches my desk and clears his throat. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Jennifer.”

  “Not a good idea? It’s a fuckin’ awesome idea!” For some bizarre reason, the brilliance of this strategy zips past this ordinarily smart guy, so I break it down for him. “If Cuevas refuses to debate me, the voters’ll wonder what he has to hide. If he agrees to it, I have a chance to use his record against him and present my platform. I can’t lose.”

  “We should leave now so we won’t be late for our next meeting,” Ryan says. “We can discuss this later.”

  “Hey, are you okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” he says as he grabs the papers I left him in the out box. “Let’s just go.”

  I don’t believe him, but I drop it.

  I have no idea what’s going on with Ryan. Ordinarily, he’s so organized, but today it’s been one fumble after the other. First, he forgets the speech I was supposed to give over lunch at the Soundview Collaborative for Intergenerational Initiatives. Then he brings the wrong MapQuest directions from the ballroom where the luncheon took place to the offices of the North Bronx Reporter. We were fifteen minutes late to meet with the editorial board. As if that’s not bad enough, Ryan gives me the wrong background material, so I enter the Reporter editorial meeting well-versed in the demographics and issues facing Parkchester and Morris Park when the Reporter covers the neighborhoods of Castle Hill and Zerega.

  As he drives me back to the campaign office, I say, “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t fire you.” He stammers, and I yell, “Just one, Ryan!”

  “Ms. Saez, I have no excuses for my incompetence as of late although I do have an explanation…if you’ll allow me, ma’am.”

  This campaign is getting to me. Most women my age would cringe to have an attractive man refer to her as ma’am. But I like it. It saves Ryan his job for now. “Well?”

  “I know I’ve been extremely preoccupied…”

  “That’s an understatement.”

  “…and I deeply apologize, but I’ve come across some information in my research that may have a major impact on your campaign.”

  It’s clearly bad news, but I maintain my composure. “What is it?”

  “I can’t tell you,” Ryan says. “I have to show you when we get back to the office.”

  Shit, this sounds really bad. “Does it have to do with Cuevas?” I already know it doesn’t.

  “No, it has nothing to do with Cuevas. I mean, it’s the kind of thing you wouldn’t want his campaign to find out.”

  Oh, God, it’s that bad. About me? What in the world could Ryan have found that can be used against me that Cuevas did not already have? He already takes every chance he gets to slam me as, and I quote, “the opportunist who abandoned the community only to return now to embark on a career in politics.”

  Ryan rushes to fill my silence. “Now, I don’t think the Cuevas campaign knows anything about this, and honestly, I don’t know how they might find out. It’s…” He searches for the right word. “It’s obscure information.”

  What the fuck…? “What do you mean, ‘obscure’?”

  “It’s not the kind of thing you uncover unless…” Ryan pulls off the Bruckner Expressway toward our exit. “I just have to show you.”

  If I weren’t so desperate to know, I’d kick him out of the driver’s seat at the next stop light. Instead I’ll wait until Ryan drops the bomb, and then I’ll fire him. Wait, how the hell can I fire him? Now that he has uncovered this damning information about me, I’m going to go fire him? Pendeja, he’ll run back to Cuevas with it, and my losing this election will be the best case scenario. Christ, I may be beholden to Ryan for the rest of my life. He could plunge into an affair with Echo, and I’d have to keep his borderline pedophiliac ass around to keep my own tail covered.

  These thoughts and worse preoccupy me, and we are soon back at the campaign office. The kids are still there, hard at work. Echo refills the paper tray in the copier. “Hey, Ms. Saez.” Then she lifts the lid, places a flyer on the glass, and hits the start button. She leans against the copier, jutting a voluptuous hip in our direction. “Hi, Rye-yen,” she says as the light of the scanner beams across her face.

  Ryan barely looks at her as he mumbles hello and leads me into my office. He locks the door behind us and rushes toward the computer. I pace behind Ryan’s seat as he boots the machine and waits to connect to the Internet. He opens a window on the browser menu, clicks on a bookmark, then pushes away from the computer.

  I take a deep breath, step forward and peer at the screen. The URL is www.whippednyc.com. A flash animation loads and then images flicker across the screen. I catch something that looks…I don’t know…like a gigantic ship’s steering wheel except there are things dangling from the spokes. Before I can figure out what the hell I’m looking at, the image fades into one of a room with a mirrored ceiling and walls of…is that rubber? That photo soon disappears, too, and then I see one of a woman with straight dark hair and cherry red lipstick. She wears a black latex minidress, a police officer’s cap, and thigh-high boots with heels that are at least six inches high. Not three. Six. At least. I had no idea they made heels that long.

  I spin around in the seat and yell, “Ryan, what the hell are you showing me?” But he refuses to look me in the face. Instead he pins his chin to his chest and motions for me to continue looking at the screen. I turn around in time to see the word Whipped, well, whip across the computer monitor with a crackling sound. Under the logo scroll the words Your Pain Is Our Pleasure. “This is one of those—those—those…S&M clubs.”

  Ryan finally raises his head. “Actually, it’s a dungeon. I mean, that’s what they call it. Whereas a club is more like…” I must be staring at him something fierce because he drops his voice and gaze.

  “What the hell does this have to do with me?”

  “Click on, uh, ‘Mistresses.’”

  I turn back to the monitor. The Whipped logo is still there because I have to click on a button verifying that I’m aware that the site I’m about to enter
may contain words and images that may offend me, but hey, if that’s exactly what I was gunnin’ for, I first must verify that I’m of the age of consent in my state to view adult material. I click on the button, and the photos from the flash introduction pop across the screen.

  Ryan says, “On top,” and when I follow his direction, I find the menu. I select Mistresses, and a gallery of thumbnail photos of scowling women sporting leather and latex pop up one by one along the perimeter of the screen. White, black, Asian, blondes, brunettes, redheads, wafer-thin and plus-size, they’re all different shapes and hues. The photo of the center square is five times the size of the thumbnails and is the last to load.

  And the woman in it looks just like me. Her hair is much longer, much straighter, much darker. Her lipstick is such a deep purple, it borders on black. But the resemblance is unmistakable.

  I don’t know whether to tease or slap Ryan. It takes a second for me to locate him. He’s skulked to the back of the room behind my desk. Since he’s not in slapping distance, I scoff and say, “I can’t believe you freaked me out over this. Yeah, she looks a lot like me, but you do realize that this isn’t me, don’t you?” How in the hell could Ryan think for a second that this mistress or whatever is me?

  He says, “Oh, I know it’s not you, but…”

  The edge in his voice makes me whirl back to the screen. And then I see it. Under the photo of my doppelganger with the Elvira hair, it reads, Mistress of the Month—Madame Michelina.

  My hands fly to my mouth, and I jump to my feet. I rush back and forth between the door and the window. “Ohmygodohmygodohmygod…” I chant into my hands. I scurry back to the computer, as if within those few seconds my nightmare would fade as quickly as it began. But, no, there was the Mistress of the Month Madame Michelina scowling back at me with the same bow-shaped lips and deep-set eyes that I see in the bathroom mirror every morning and night.

  Oh, my God. My sister is a dominatrix! A fetishist. A—ohmygodohmygodImgoingtokillthatbitchIsweartogod—sex worker!

  “H-H-How did you…?”

  “After I finished the opposition research on Cuevas, I started to see what I might find about you—”

  I yell, “I thought I told you not to waste your time and my money with that shit!”

  “Yes, I know, but—”

  “Aaaargh!” I kick the chair so hard, it sails across the floor and crashes into the door. “I don’t fuckin’ believe her!” Someone pounds on the door. “What?”

  “Y’all okay in there?” Cindi’s timid voice sinks into the door.

  “Take a break. All of you. Now!”

  “Okay!” I hear her flip-flops paddle across the carpet away from my office door. I whirl around to face Ryan, who is now standing behind the safety of my desk. I realize what a lunatic I must sound like. Jen, this is no way for a future member of the New York City Council to behave. Oh, hell, Cuevas has probably thrown aides out the window of his fuckin’ office. That thought only deepens my embarrassment, so I rein myself in. “Before I fire you,” I say wagging my finger at him, “you’re going to tell me what to do about this.”

  He looks at me as if I morphed into Carrie White’s mother right before his eyes. “Just get your sister to quit.”

  “Get Michelle to quit?” Now it’s my turn to glare at him. “Obviously, I had no idea that my sister was even capable of thinking about something like this, never mind doing it and promoting it on the goddamn Internet! What makes you think, Ryan, that she would even admit this to me?” All this time that she had me thinking she was making runs to Staples for office supplies or going to the midtown library to do research or otherwise doing something to help my campaign while I stayed here through all hours of the night, this Whipped was where she was?

  Then the solution hits me. I turn back to the computer and click on Contact Us on the menu. A page with the contact information and an inquiry form for the club or dungeon or whatever the fuck it’s called appears, and I print it. I snatch the printout, walk over to my desk and pick up the telephone receiver. Thrusting both the sheet and the receiver toward Ryan, I say, “Call them. Make an appointment. Ask for my sister.”

  “You can’t be serious!”

  I check the number on the printout and dial it myself. A woman with a raspy voice answers. “WNYC, this is Miss Veronique,” she says. “How may I help you today?”

  Murder Madame Michelina. I take a deep breath. Then the first few words race out of my mouth. “I’d like an appointment with…” I can’t bring myself to say it. “Your mistress of the month.”

  “Madame Michelina?”

  “Yes. Madame…Her.”

  “I apologize for having to ask this, but are you a woman?”

  I choke. It never occurs to me that this might be an issue. Are there women who go for this thing? I mean, if a woman gets her sexual kicks being strung along and ordered around, does she have to do anything more than be what she already is? A fuckin’ woman!

  Miss Veronique says, “I ask because Madame Michelina does not discipline women. She only disciplines men, so I would have to set you up with Countess Sappho or Mistress Cherry. Unless you’re interested in domme training for women who want to learn how to control their male submissives. Then I can make an appointment for you with—”

  I hang up the telephone. Ryan asks, “What happened?”

  “You have to make the appointment.” I dial the number again and shove the receiver toward Ryan. Even as terror seizes his face, I mouth Do it.

  Ryan finally takes the phone. “Huh-ello? I’d like to make an appointment with Mistress…” I flap the printout in his face, and he squints at the print underneath my sister’s picture. “I mean, Madame Michelina? Uh, yes, I guess so. The name’s Ryan. Yes, that’s the last name, and the first name is, uh, G-G-Giovanni!…Yes, my name’s Giovanni Ryan. My mother’s, uh, Italian, and my father’s Irish…Oh, you are, too. What a coincidence.” I swat him on the arm, and Ryan jumps. “That’sfineI’llbetherethankyougood-bye.” He finally hangs up the telephone.

  “Well?”

  “Madame Michelina had an opening tonight due to a cancellation, so Miss Veronique scheduled me for six-thirty P.M.”

  “Stop calling her that.”

  “Are you going to fire me now?” Ryan asks.

  “No,” I say. “Not until we go down there and I confront my lying, twisted, devious sister.”

  And Michelle thinks I’m a freak!

  Chapter 13

  My trainer Josie and I walk into the “family” room after our last session. As she heads to her locker, I flop onto the love seat and start to unlace my boots. Lounging in the sofa across from me is Leticia aka Lady Lash. She still wears her Baruch College T-shirt and relaxed fit jeans and flips through an InStyle magazine. Leticia attends college during the day and works the eight-to-twelve shift at Whipped. Now that school is out, she still comes a bit early to unwind from her day job at the Gap and socialize with the other girls. Now I do, too, whenever I have the time, because everyone is so different yet very nice in her unique way.

  Leticia glances over her magazine, and now that she realizes that Josie and I have entered the room, she sits up and tosses the magazine aside. “Oh, you have to tell me,” she says excitedly. “How was Jaime LoBianco?”

  Jaime LoBianco is the star quarterback for the New York Jets and the most prominent client in Josie’s stable of submissives. I bring my hands to my chest and say, “Girl, TV does not do that man justice. He’s so gorgeous.”

  “And a real doll, too,” adds Josie. “Excellent tipper. ’Chelly, will you help me undo my corset, please?”

  “Sure, just give me a sec.” I pull off my second boot, stand up and walk over to Josie. She raises her arms slightly so I can loosen her latex corset. “And you know how some professional ball players seem big and muscular, but the truth is they’re just fat? Not Jaime. He is cut!”

  Leticia bounces in her seat like a little girl. “Did you get an autograph?” Josie and I burst out l
aughing at that question. “What’s so funny, you bitches?”

  “Tell her what I made you do to him,” Josie says. She finally peels off her corset, folds it and places it in her locker.

  “Never mind an autograph,” I say as I join Leticia on the sofa. “I made him write ‘My name is Jaime LoBianco, and I belong to Madame Michelina’ on the blackboard one hundred times.”

  “Ooh, I’m scared of you,” Leticia says, throwing her hand up so I can give her a high-five. “So he’s into the mean teacher/bad student scenario, huh?”

  “Actually, he likes to change it up every so often,” Josie says, “and I like that about him more than anything else. Even the great tips,” she adds as she pulls on a tank top with a silk screen of her three-year-old daughter’s face on it. She reaches for a tub of makeup remover and smears the cream all over her tawny skin. “One time he wants to do the schoolteacher thing. The next time we’ll do the Amazon thing. So long as he gets that paddle, Jaime’s good. And me, I need the variety, too.” Josie turns to look at us with a face full of white cream. “I don’t know about y’all, but when I play the same role all the time, I get bored and fall off my game. I lose control of my subs, they start to rebel, and the next thing you know they’re at the Castle of Desire.”

  We all bristle at the name of our nearest rival dungeon, which is only down the street. There are actually quite a few dungeons in this neighborhood, but we all manage to have enough business to share and thrive. But those COD dommes are ruthless, punishing their submissives if they patronize any other dungeons. “I hated working there,” says Leticia. “Instead of doing the enslaving, I felt enslaved. By the other women, no less, they were so damned competitive. I’m glad we got Jaime LoBianco.”

  “And, Josie, thank you so much for letting me participate in the scene this time,” I say. “I learned so much.”