Michael saw Chris approaching and backed away slightly. “Kim, this is my trainer, Mr. Chris Parker. Sir, this is Kim.”
“Hello, Kim,” Chris said with a slight bow. Kim blushed and threw herself down in a deeper one. “You’re Choi Jin Yong’s student, aren’t you?”
“Yes, sir,” she said. Michael held back a grin; this was the first time he had actually seen Kim with someone considered her superior, and it was kind of funny. But he didn’t want to embarrass her. “Peace be upon you, Sir.”
“And upon you. Did you both learn much at the seminar?” He turned to join the flow of people toward the outdoor pavilions where cool drinks were being served and two slaves knelt back to back playing a gentle, intricate melody on low, somber sounding flutes.
“It was amazing,” Michael said, consulting his notes. “I never even imagined some of the areas of specialty they had there. And there was this guy who had charts of how the specialty sales have been going for a hundred years!”
“That would be Japic van Beem. His research has been invaluable. You could do worse than study those charts of his—they’re very revealing. What did you find so surprising?”
“Where do I start? Medical professionals?”
“That’s a big specialty,” Chris nodded.
“But—who would have thought that people needed private doctors these days?”
“Imagine that you are a wealthy businessman, relocated to some new territory. Through honest appraisal or xenophobia, you have decided that local medical care is unacceptable for the safety and comfort of your family, or your staff. You can either add a company budget line for such an individual, or simply purchase a slave who will be at your service and perhaps of other use to you as well. Of course, there is Greta as well, you’ve met her.”
Michael nodded and turned to Kim to explain. “Greta is this general practice doctor who belongs to a psychiatrist. They pretty much examine half the slaves that come out of the New York area.”
“Most convenient,” Kim said.
“Slave doctors will also not balk at finding bruises, piercings, and examples of ill use on their customers,” said Chris. “But you are correct; a doctor is a very expensive piece of property, and fairly rare. Do you remember what Mr. van Beem said about the field right now?”
Michael nodded. “He said that the demand for nurses and physical therapists remains high. But he didn’t go into any detail.”
“So what does that one line tell you?” Chris addressed the question to the two junior trainers, and they glanced at each other in a moment of panic. Michael cleared his throat.
“That—it’s a steady market for them?” he hazarded.
“You can do better than that!”
Kim chewed her lip thoughtfully. “Remains,” she said softly. “Remains means—that this is a new trend? One that he thought might pass?”
“That’s better,” Chris nodded. “The market for nurses and other health care professionals has grown dramatically. I’m sure you can figure out why. You two have grown to adulthood taking safer sex for granted. But six, eight years ago, we were devastated by what was happening in our ranks. There isn’t one of us here who hasn’t lost friends, clients, customers—no one was unaffected.” He folded his arms and sighed heavily. “Like the sex radicals in the soft world, we were hit early and hard. It took years for the information to spread and more years for it to be adhered to. Now, every slave and trainer gets the usual battery of tests with every medical check-up, and owners register their own results and we have entire booklets of guidelines for what is permitted under which circumstances... and still, the most frequent contract violation is lack of safer sex considerations.” Chris shook his head.
“That’s terrible!” Michael said. “Who would want to put someone’s life in danger like that?”
“It’s a terrible truth, Michael. It’s often hard for us to face our terrible truths. Now, consider—why would a slave nurse be useful other than in health care?”
“On duty all day and night,” Kim answered quickly, counting on on her fingers. “Devoted to serving their master. What is the word—motivation—motivated—to serve.”
Chris turned to Michael with an eyebrow raised, and Michael wished he could kick Kim neatly in the shins. He thought quickly. “A slave nurse... would be confidential. If you wanted to keep things quiet.”
“Good!” Chris said encouragingly. “What else?”
“Well, if their contract had general duties in it as well, then you could...use them. For sex, or something.”
“Yes indeed,” Chris said, taking a seat under a tree. “Or something.”
Chapter Thirteen: The Nurse
by Karen Taylor
“Life doesn’t get better than this,” Lamont sighed as he pulled his cock out of the slave’s mouth. Pulling the condom off, he smiled down at the boy. “Aki-chan, you’re getting better and better. Now hop up, hand me that towel, and freshen my drink.”
“Hai, Lamont-san,” Akira answered, unbending his body smoothly, handing a towel to his master. Picking up the glass next to Lamont, the young Japanese man walked to the house, leaving his master staring at the pool. He returned silently with a vodka tonic, and retired again to the house, to assist Pedro in preparing dinner.
Lamont remained at the pool, his black skin glistening from the sweat brought on from the harsh Southwest summer afternoon. Dropping the towel on his lounge, he dived back into the pool to cool off, before dressing for dinner. Two friends of Roberto’s from the LA area were expected within the hour. Lamont remembered Eric from a shoot a few years back when they were both working the same clothing line, about the time he met Roberto. The other guy’s name escaped him, but Lamont remembered how boring the talk of investments were when he and Roberto visited the couple the last time they were in LA. Their house staff, though, had not been boring.
“Are they...Marketplace people?” he had whispered to Roberto that night.
“Yes, but not everyone else at this party is,” Roberto murmured back, and Lamont took the hint. Roberto warned him never to reveal the existence of the Marketplace to the uninitiated. So instead, he tried to spot who else at the party might be in the Marketplace, periodically checking with Roberto for confirmation. It had amused him for a few hours, and later that evening Eric sent one of the young men from his house staff to their room for some personal attention.
I wonder if that boy is still there, Lamont thought idly as he pulled himself out of the pool and walked to the house. What was his name? Jim? Jesse? Not that it mattered, Lamont smiled to himself. The boy would answer to anything if ordered to.
Lamont was dressing when Roberto returned home. Despite his wealth, which included the family’s rich mining lands in Mexico, Roberto taught sociology at the local University, his specialty being Southwest indigenous peoples. Lamont was proud of his lover, proud to find Roberto’s name in the various scholarly journals that came to the house, even if Lamont didn’t bother to read them. He just loved smart men, and Roberto was definitely that. He even spoke several languages, employing a line of slaves over the years to keep him brushed up. Lamont remembered the icy blue eyes of the Russian slave whose body was the closest he had ever seen to a real “Tom’s man.” He had been in the house when Lamont first moved in with Roberto, and Lamont delighted in the man’s careful English, even as he was being flogged or fucked. Akira, the latest of Roberto’s language tutors, was delightful in other, quieter ways. Pedro, the elderly, pudgy cook with broad Indian features, on the other hand, apparently spoke no English. Lamont didn’t find the mestizo attractive in the least, and left him alone except to plan dinner menus for the various parties he and Roberto would throw.
“Why don’t you find a cook who’s also fuckable?” Lamont asked his lover once. Roberto merely smiled.
“Pedro has been with me for a long time. His value as a cook and chauffeur are more than enough for me. Besides,” Roberto added with a twinkle in his eye. “I don’t want you to use
up all your energy on the slaves. There is someone else living here too, remember.”
Yes, Lamont remembered every time Roberto returned home. Grey hair bleached by the Arizona sun, tan skin, and twinkling green eyes that betrayed his Spanish ancestry and set off his white teeth, Roberto was handsome in a slightly rugged way that tugged at Lamont’s urban-bred heart. Lamont met him at the bedroom door and kissed him.
“How was your day?” Lamont asked as Akira held out two shirts for his deliberation. Roberto grunted as Lamont decided upon the cantaloupe-colored button down to offset his dark skin. Akira immediately turned to Roberto to assist him with dressing, but the older man shrugged him off irritably. “Aki, leave us. Go see if Pedro needs help with anything, otherwise wait for our guests.”
“Hai, Roberto-sama.” With a small bow, Akira left the room. Lamont turned to Roberto in surprise.
“Roberto, what’s wrong? I’ve never heard you speak like that to—”
“I went to the doctor today,” said Roberto. Lamont froze as he buttoned his shirt, but kept his voice casual.
“And? What did Martha have to say?” He was met with silence. Roberto sat on the bed, putting his head in his hands.
“Roberto?” Lamont sat on the bed next to his lover. He placed a hand on Roberto’s thigh, and Roberto covered it with one of his own.
“I’ve got it, Lamont,” he answered, looking solemnly into his lover’s eyes. “I’m positive.”
Suddenly, life wasn’t so good anymore.
* * * *
In the mid-1980s, AIDS was a daily fact of life for Lamont. Before meeting Roberto, he had tested positive, but remained asymptomatic. It was almost miraculous—so many of his friends seemed to die within weeks of their diagnosis. Not that anyone other than Roberto knew, of course. In his business, if word got out, jobs disappeared. He just took care of himself, ate right, and worked out regularly, and avoided fundraisers unless the real celebrities were going to be there. Lamont barely remembered having sex without barriers—certainly every slave contract had safe sex guidelines written in, so latex was still part of his life, whether he was fucking Roberto or getting sucked by Aki-chan. Somehow, though, it had never occurred to Lamont that his lover might get ill. Roberto always seemed oblivious to all of those human things that Lamont felt daily—irritation, depression, anger, pain. Lamont wasn’t prepared to think of his lover as being just another human.
It took several weeks for the shock to fade. Lamont would panic any time Roberto coughed or sneezed, he ran Pedro ragged in the kitchen coming up with hot beverages or strange concoctions involving grasses or root vegetables, and snapped at Akira if the slave was slow to respond to Lamont’s constant demands for blankets (in September? Roberto would say incredulously, but Lamont nodded grimly.) Finally, Roberto stopped Lamont just as he was about to berate Akira for not anticipating the need to purchase an additional hot water bottle.
“Lamont, you’re going way out of proportion on this,” Roberto said firmly. “I am not sick, I don’t intend to be sick, and all you’re doing is making me irritated, and making the slaves too jumpy to perform properly. I demand you stop it.” He wrapped his strong arms around his lover. “Lamont, you’re driving all of us nuts—I’ll end up in the hospital because of my nerves if you keep this up.” But the attempt at a joke failed miserably as Roberto’s words caused Lamont to burst into tears.
“Roberto, Roberto,” he said helplessly. “I don’t want you to die. Please don’t die.”
Roberto caressed his lover tenderly. “I’ll do my best,” he promised, kissing Lamont’s tear-streaked face.
And so for a while, the house returned to normal, Roberto teaching three classes a week, Lamont taking a short job in Albuquerque. And then, in November, Roberto got sick. Really sick. It began as a cough that refused to go away. Then the nausea. When, after the third day of vomiting up food, Roberto’s fever soared above 102, Lamont refused to listen to Roberto’s denials and called the doctor.
“He’s burning up, and he hasn’t kept anything down for ages,” Lamont cried hysterically into the phone. “Martha, he’s going to die!”
“He’s not going to die, Lamont, now stop it,” said the voice on the other side of the phone line. “Meet me at the hospital.”
Pedro drove the car around as Lamont and Akira supported Roberto’s weight down the stairs. “Lamont-san, you will call?” Akira pleaded in his limited English. Lamont promised he would as soon as he had any news. Were those tears he saw on the young slave’s face? But there was no time to wonder. Pedro sped the car into town as Lamont held his feverish lover in the back seat. “What will I do?” he whispered to himself.
The diagnosis was pneumocystis pneumonia, treatable with a regimen of pentamanine and a combination of other drugs. As Martha had predicted, Roberto did recover, although it took several weeks and he now tired more easily. Lamont demanded that that his lover cut his class schedule down to one a week, and was forced to compromise with one class and a senior independent study. Lamont taught Roberto yoga exercises, and the older man would stretch and watch his lover’s dark body pump weights or climb the stair exerciser. Sometimes Lamont would drop next to Roberto on the floor, breathing heavily, and tease his lover’s body into arousal, caressing Roberto’s heavy uncut cock, sucking on Roberto’s coffee colored nipples. Sometimes Roberto would find that Lamont’s strong masculine scent aroused him enough that he would be the one to initiate a few hours of gentle sex, and they would retire to the bedroom. When that happened, Pedro would prepare a quiet but celebratory meal, and Akira would prepare the master bath with special soaps and heat the towels, his timing impeccable, exiting through the hall just as the door handle from the inner door began to turn. For a few days after, the slaves would glow in the reflected light of their masters’ joy.
* * * *
That spring, Akira’s contract was up for renewal, and Roberto invited the slave’s trainer to the house for the weekend. Lamont was in Houston for the week on a shoot, but had already talked extensively to Roberto about his delight in Aki. “Oh, and see if you can get to know that guy Parker better,” Lamont said on the phone. “He was pretty weird. I’m not sure what it is.”
It had been two years since Roberto had last seen Chris Parker, but the memory remained strong of the short, stocky trainer. They met at the Tokyo auction, where three slaves Chris had trained were on the block: a petite blond woman with elaborate tattoos, an exotically attractive Eurasian gentleman, and Akira. Their conversation that evening was strictly business, and very limited; Chris’s boss was there hovering over everything, and he was one tough customer. Chris practically kow-towed every time the guy passed by, moving stiffly at times. It was unnerving.
But the next night Roberto and Lamont ran into Chris at a gay bar near the auction house, and bought him a drink. When Lamont found that his beautiful looks and easy smile did not penetrate Chris’s shield of politeness, he wandered off for easier prey. It had seemed kind of kinky and powerful, the idea that he could seduce a trainer of slaves, but there was no need to waste his time. There were plenty of lithe Japanese men who were delighted to find a handsome black American in their midst, and the short, stumpy little Marketplace professional seemed to have a chip on his shoulder along with a rather recent scar on his cheek. Roberto, however, stayed to talk. Chris was more than he seemed, and Roberto appreciated that, and gave the trainer the respect he would give another owner—or a good slave. They talked extensively about training; it seemed that Parker was on some sort of exchange program, not in Japan for long, and he expected to be going home to New York fairly soon. When Robert gently asked about the scar, Chris told him that he was recovering from a minor accident and politely brushed off further interest. But he did show a genuine interest in Roberto’s family, which had employed three families of slaves in Central Mexico in a line which extended back through the Revolution to the first Spanish settlers in the New World. Roberto was only too pleased to be able to share this heritage with s
omeone who obviously appreciated it for its romantic value. He remembered the gleam in Chris’s eyes when he told him about the love and respect his family had for the fewer members of each generation of servitors who returned to their tradition proudly.
When the trainer called, Robert picked up the phone himself. “I hope you have a single malt scotch at hand, Mr. Parker,” he said. Akira was bringing him a drink as he sat in his comfortable chair by the window, feeling the warmth of the afternoon sun on his shoulders.
“You have a good memory, Señor Vazquez,” answered Chris. “I do indeed, and all the relevant papers as well.”
“You are not an easy man to forget,” answered Roberto, who dismissed Akira with a wave of his hand, then lifted his drink slightly to the absent trainer. “I wish you could have taken me up on my invitation to visit us here; you would have enjoyed the weekend, I assure you.”
“I thank you, sir, for your kind invitation. But business presses me these days,” Chris said. “Perhaps some other time.”
They spoke lightly about insignificant topics—the weather, the economy. And when they had both sipped from their drinks more than twice, Chris got down to business. “I have already spoken to Akira, of course. He is quite happy with you, and is willing to renew his contract. He did, however, mention that your health has been in question.”
Roberto nodded absently. “Yes,” he said. “I have AIDS. My doctor has been very positive, but I am sick, and I expect to die soon. I’m not being dramatic, merely accepting. I have lived a good life, and I hope to die with dignity. You understand?”
“I understand,” Chris responded, compassion in his voice.
“My biggest concerns, frankly, are for Pedro and Lamont,” he said. “Akira is young and will be of use to Lamont over the next two years. But Pedro has been with me for, well, for all of my life, and most of his. I’m not certain how to address his contract in my will. And Lamont, well...” his voice trailed off. Chris allowed the silence to remain until Roberto collected himself. “I don’t know how to help Lamont. He is very courageous, but he does not know it. And he’s very angry about my getting sick. Not that I blame him, but you can’t beat this virus out of my body.” He chuckled.
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