The Trusted Professions - Chapter 6

Surely their discretion conflicts with their buyability? How could you be sure they couldn?t just be?bought out?

Uhm, it?s difficult to articulate?when it comes to their creations, dommes have a sort of?code?

A code?

Well, it?s not a formalized code that I?m aware of, it?s more of a?an understanding with a client that can?t be broken. How to put this?let?s say you pay a domme X amount of money to hang you upside down by your ankles, or whatever floats your boat, but you tell them that under no circumstances can they leave you hanging there all by yourself. Right?

Now let?s say I go to the same domme and say I?ll pay them five times that amount to ignore your request and leave you hanging by yourself. The code, or whatever it is, would prevent them from doing that, for any amount of money. They certainly wouldn?t get very far as professional dommes if they had that kind of attitude towards the game, so we knew that, since they?d be playing our game and our game was that they had to step aside when we asked, they?d do just that.

So you saw Max and asked after her in particular?

I guess I?d seen her before, but it was only when I started thinking about our requirements for the Colmes case that she caught my eye. Max had a?a quality. It?s hard to pin down. Like, an other-worldly aspect? Ethereal, almost. Like she wasn?t quite there. She was always sprawled out on something, leaning on something. I have no specific memories of her every actually getting up and moving from one point to another, she?d just seem to be sprawling in one place, and then all of a sudden you?d realize she was sprawling in some other place in the room, but you don?t really remember how she got there. If you were walking along with her, she?d just kind of glide along in this slouch.

What did she look like?

She kind of reminded me of Servalan.

I?m sorry?

Y?know, Servalan, from Blake?s Seven?

Blake?s?heaven?

Sigh. Okay, uhm, Annie Lennox?

From the Eurythmics?

Yeah, she was like a young, tiny, corseted Annie Lennox. Sort of. Not really. She was petite and had close cropped black hair and porcelain skin. She was as smart as a whip and you could tell she was just by looking at her- her eyes were always moving, assessing, weighing. Judging. She constantly looked like she was about to pounce, but never did. She wasn?t drop dead gorgeous, in fact she was kind of odd-looking, but she held herself in a way that made her seem very attractive.

I?d made initial contract with the mistress and got her name, and asked if she (Max) would be amenable to extra-curricular work. She was. Me and Jez were just sitting in our office discussing her, at least, I was telling Jez more or less what I just told you, when we just all of a sudden noticed that she was sitting in the room right in front of us. Freaked us right out! We rightly struggled to maintain our composure.

?So you guys want me for a job?? she said, sort of rolling her head back and from side to side, looking at the ceiling. She never really looked at anyone. She might pass her eyes over you, but she never looked at the person she was talking to, and if you were talking to her, she wouldn?t meet your gaze. It was very disconcerting, because sometimes you thought she was talking to you and in fact she was talking to someone completely different. Like herself, for instance.

We ruffled some papers in an attempt to look professional. We didn?t actually have any prior material from the mistress on Max, not even a headshot.

?That is to say,? she continued after our stunned silence failed to answer her first question, ?You have money and a task that needs completion. I need money and have the skills to compete your task. I think we can help each other out. Destiny, faith, and the great river, you might say.? She chuckled gently at her own private joke, examining the ceiling with a sort of lazy concentration.

?Ah, yes, Miss, ah, Ms???

?Max will do fine.?

?Do you have a surname? For the record??

?Let?s ah?.hey, one of your flouros is missing. They?re filled with plasma. It?s not a solid or a liquid or a gas. It?s what they all were before they became anything else.? Max dropped her head forward to look down. ?Let?s say my surname is?Stacks.?

?Max Stacks??

?Sure. Why not? No, wait! Max Tacks. Maxine Amanda Tacks.? She made a noise which for the life of me was the same noise that Ernie from Sesame Street made when laughing.

?Thanks for your time, Ms. Tacks, we?re sorry to have wasted it.? Jez stood up and took half a step towards the door. Max stayed seated.

?Woah, hold on a minute there, chief.? I said as I grabbed Jez?s arm and pulled him back into his chair. I didn?t think he?d fully given her a chance.

?Ms, ah, Max.? I started, ?I assume you?ve been slightly briefed on what we?re looking for.?

?Sure.? She looked up at me for a moment, then looked down again, apparently at her belt buckle, which she was clipping and unclipping absent-mindedly. ?You want me to seduce some guy, you film it, tape it, whatever, I disappear. That about the short and curlies of it?? She spoke in a weird combination of posh accent but poor grammar.

?In a nutshell, yes.? I said, trying to will her to actually look up. ?Discretion would be absolutely essential.?

?Yeah, I get that a lot. No probs.?

?It?s possible that you?ll be dealing with an extremely high-profile individual.?

?Like I said, no probs. Look Cowboy, you might be believing that whoever you have in mind in in a social strata I have yet to encounter. Let me assure you that belief is misplaced. You might also be believing that there are certain people on this earth with sufficient status to make me act indiscreetly. Again let me assure you that belief is misplaced. In short: It?s my job to be discreet, among other things.?

Jez had drawn an inverted smiley-face on a corner of paper and slid it across the desk at me. I looked at him and he mouthed the word ?No?.

?The ah, only problem is?? I said, scanning for a way to put it delicately before abandoning hope and just blurting it out, ??is that we?re not?we?re not entirely??

Jez took over: ?We?re not entirely convinced you could seduce anyone, let alone the target we have in mind. Thank you and good day.?

Max seemed to remain silent for a few moments, but she was actually laughing silently to herself, slowly building volume until her laugh became quietly audible to us.

?Alright, which one?? She said.

?Which one what?? Jez said snappishly.

?Or I can do you both, I really don?t mind. Could cause problems for you later, though.?

?What are you ranting about, crazy lady?? Jez snarled.

?Let?s see,? she said, lolling her head from one side to another, like her neck couldn?t fully hold it upright. ?You?re Dalent,? she pointed at me, ?and you?re Jez.? she shifted her finger across to him, before returning it back to me, then back to Jez, then repeating the movement a few times while whistling quietly to herself. I got the feeling she was playing 'Eeney-meeny-miney-mo', while her eyes darted back and forth between us, just slightly ahead of her finger. Jez stared in disbelief. I was just kind of bemused, at this point. Her finger and eyes finally settled on me and then she just stared at me, straight at me, directly into my eyes. Her eyes, which seemed tiny and squinted just moments before, were suddenly the largest feature on her face, these enormous hazel eyes, staring straight into mine.

I don?t know how to explain this without sounding like, fuck, I don?t know, like some kid trying to write his first iambic pentameter. The first thing I remember is that my mouth went very, very dry. So dry I couldn't speak, or breathe. I almost gasped for water, but stayed stock still, because I couldn?t move a muscle. I was absolutely paralyzed, staring into those eyes. I didn?t even blink. I could feel my eyeballs begin to dry. Then, and this is the bizarrest thing that?s ever happened to me but I swear this is what happened (and not in a metaphor-for-an-internal-experience kind of way, but quite literally a visual phenom), the colour started to leech away from my vision. The room, the sky outside the window, the plant in the corner, the photos on the desk (well actually they were black & white prints so maybe not those), but the pens in front of me and my shirt arms and my skin and the light brown of the desk and the fucking everything I could see just started to recede, to wash out, everything I could see except her. She seemed to brighten, to intensify somehow, like reality was some TV she was standing in front of and she was the only thing that was actually there. Like the office and the chair she was sitting in and the world behind her was just being projected onto her, and if she moved it would all flow over her, like light over your hands when you?re playing with a torch. And the third thing that happened was that it came to me, very painfully, as if a fireball had exploded in my mind, that I never wanted her to stop looking at me like that.

?Well thanks for your time!? Jez exclaimed, getting up. ?We?ll be in touch if we require your services.? He ushered her out the door, looking at me oddly. Max broke off her gaze with me and smiled up at Jez, laughing slightly.

?God, what a freak-job.? Jez said after he?d ushered her out of the building and the door to our office had closed behind him. ?Are you alright bro? You look a little pale.?

I managed to make my way to the water cooler and threw two little plastic cups of cold water into my throat. I felt drunk.

?I think she?s the one.? I said, not entirely sure which of a hundred different ways I meant it.

?For the job? I thought you said she was meant to be smart. That one acted like she couldn?t string a coherent sentence together. Jesus. Do you think she was high??

?I think?ah, I think?phew, she?s definitely got something going for her. I thought she seemed smart.?

Jez looked at me strangely. ?All right, we?ll stick her on the short-list, but I really don?t see how that crazy could make a living as a ho. You?d have to pay me to hit that action.?

I felt a sudden urge of inexplicable anger towards Jez which made me feel confused and disoriented. ?Well fortunately we won?t be paying her to sleep with you, asswad. Stick her on the list.?

It was late so Jez headed home while I cleared away the last of our notes on continuing cases. We hadn?t actually dedicated ourselves full-time to Mrs. Colmes? case, even though it was certainly our top priority. I locked up the office and headed outside. Spring had started up properly now, so it was a warm night. Warm for London in spring, I mean, so I still had on a long coat with my hands thrust deep into its pockets.

I love Canary Wharf at night. Everything gleams. The light from the towers of steel dances on the water only to be reflected back into the endless glass facades that draped over every building. It?s quiet and, I dunno, smooth, somehow. It?s calming, especially when contrasted with the loud bustle of the same space during the daytime.

London can get you down sometimes, but one of the things I like the most about it is how sometimes it feels like you?re stepping through time. One minute you?re in Vauxhall where all the homes were rebuilt in the sixties after being flattened in the war, and everything is endless council homes, one after the other. Then you cross a bridge and you?re in the 1600?s, surrounded by impossibly huge gothic chapels that took decades to build, sacrificed dozens of mens lives to raise, all for the greater glory of a God that couldn't possibly care. You walk around a corner and suddenly you?re deep in the industrial revolution, everything covered in soot and built on stark, imposing lines. It?s like?stepping through history. And Canary Wharf is the?idea of the future. Like those bubblegum futures you?d see on the Jetsons or Gattaca. Everything curved and polished. Sterile. Unreal. Like stepping through someone?s imagination. I love it.

So I?m heading towards the tube station when I hear:

?Hey there, Cowboy. Where you headed??

And there she is, sitting on a parapet of a bridge going over the harbour, dangling her legs over the edge. She?s tiny, by the way. Like five foot two or something.

?Max!? I said, trying to contain my surprise. ?Hey, wow, what are you doing here??

She tilted her head at me like a bird might, quizzically.

?Don?t you know?? She asked.

?No,? I stammered, ?I mean, we?ll definitely be in touch about the job, but we need to see some more people first.?

?Not about that, silly!? She laughed. ?The other thing.?

?What other thing??

?Oh and here I thought you were smart. C?mere.?

I walked over to the parapet and stood in front of her. Even though she was far shorter than me, and sitting, the parapet put her about a head taller than I. She looked around and kicked her pale legs against the concrete a few times.

?Figured it out, yet?? She said, grinning. Her arms were pressed down on the concrete slab, as if she was about to lift up and suspend herself on her hands, swinging back and forth on them. She had a cigarette behind her ear.

?No.? I said, desperately wanting to kiss her but also genuinely confused. ?What is it??

She kicked herself off the parapet and landed on the pavement with a ?Humph.? She took the cigarette from behind her ear and suddenly seemed to have a lighter in her hand. As soon as the cigarette was lit, the lighter disappeared from her hands as though it had never been there at all.

?Don?t worry about it too much, Cowboy. You will.?

She glided off into the night leaving a trail of smoke in her wake, while I stood fixed before the parapet, looking after her over the bridge. I stood there for a good while longer, staring into nothingness. For how long, I do not recall.