Tonight, when Josh finally responds to my message, he tells me the detectives just finished interviewing him.
‘Clarence steered them to me,’ he says. ‘I wish he hadn’t.’
He accepts my invitation to come upstairs. When he arrives I pour him a glass of Cabernet. He slumps down on my couch. I sit close beside him.
‘Those cops,’ he speaks bitterly, ‘they’re just going through the motions. I could see it in their faces. There’re gang killings in Oakland every week. To them Chantal’s just another case, probably one that’ll never get solved.’
‘Clarence says they found her license hidden somewhere in her motorcycle.’
‘Under a rubber mat at the bottom of her top box. If they hadn’t found it she’d still be a Jane Doe, another body found in the trunk of a stolen car. She loved that bike, a BMW F-800. Cost her a mint. Detectives told me it was totally wrecked.’ He pauses. ‘The young one, Ramos, said something really stupid – “A girl does that kind of work, stuff happens. It’s a risky business she was in.” I felt like slugging the guy.’
‘Good thing you didn’t.’ I gently touch his arm. ‘Did Chantal think she was in a risky business?’
‘Never said so. Told me she liked being a domme because that way she was always in control. Said she could never take a job in the corporate world. The detectives asked about her family. I told them she rarely mentioned them.’
I ask him if he showed them Queen of Swords.
‘Fuck no! After what Ramos said I figured they didn’t have a right to see it!’
‘Did she ever mention a client who scared her?’
‘They asked about that.’ Josh shakes his head. ‘The way she left so suddenly, sold off all her stuff then fled – I believe something must have scared her. Maybe it had something to do with a client. But like I told the detectives, I don’t know anything about the guys she saw or what she did with them.’
I talk through my feelings with Dr Maude.
‘At first I was just intrigued by Chantal. Even more so when I realized I’d met her. Now I feel haunted by her, like our lives are somehow connected.’ I look at her. ‘I was totally wowed by Josh’s Queen of Swords. Despite the power stance, I could feel her vulnerability. Then there’s the whole woman-with-the-whip thing. You saw my Weimar piece, how I slash at my boots with a crop. I was playing off the same archetype.’
Dr Maude studies me. ‘See, what bothers me, Tess, is why you decided to keep the cell and X-frame when the landlord offered to take them out?’
‘A pro domme’s abandoned apparatus – I was fascinated. I thought it would be cool to live around those things. I had no idea they’d belonged to my friend Marie.’
‘I think there’s more, something you haven’t come to grips with.’
‘Like what?’
‘Why don’t you think about it … then tell me.’
I ponder her question a while. ‘A dominatrix is an archetype, the cruel woman. And Josh painted her as the Queen of Swords archetype from the tarot deck. I work with archetypes. My Weimar singer. The sex-kitten character in my Black Mirrors piece. My rich society lady, Mrs Z. This femme-fatale character Rex keeps asking me to play. It’s all of a piece, isn’t it?’ I smile at Dr Maude. ‘I guess we’re going Jungian today.’
‘Even though I’m not a Jungian analyst, I’ve always liked his ideas about archetypes. But that isn’t what I was getting at. I’m pressing you on this because I believe you can account for feeling haunted by this woman. And I don’t think it’s just because of an improbable coincidence. It’s something within you, Tess. You create your performances out of material from your life. I think when you saw the apparatus Chantal left behind you decided to keep it because on some level you thought you could use it in a performance piece.’
‘I’m that exploitive?’
‘It’s not exploitive to use what comes your way. Anyway, I don’t make value judgments. It’s psychological truth we’re after here. I like the way you take material from your life then transform it. I think you may end up using Chantal in a piece once you sort out your feelings about her.’
After session I rush over to San Pablo Martial Arts and attack the heavy bag – kicks, punches, knee strikes.
On my way out of the locker room I run into Kurt Vogel, gym owner and head trainer, a former Muay Thai tournament champion whose natural charisma is heightened by his German accent, gleaming shaved head, and watery green eyes.
I ask if he heard about Marie.
He nods solemnly. ‘Read about it in the paper. Terrible thing. She was a warrior so whoever did that to her must have taken her by surprise. If he came at her straight she’d have put up a tremendous fight.’
I peer at him. Why, I wonder, must he frame everything in terms of combat?
He peers back, eyes unblinking. ‘I want you to train harder, Tess. Work on your fighting skills. From now on, whenever you come in report to me. I’ll set you up with a sparring partner and if no one’s available I’ll spar with you myself.’
Later, back in the loft, I think about my session with Dr Maude. She was correct about my process. I am a scavenger. I take bits and pieces, shards of my own and other people’s lives, combine them and reassemble them into stories I then declaim as monologues. It’s my way of coping, working through my fantasies and making sense of the world.
I rejected her notion that when I saw the cross and the cell in the loft I immediately thought about creating a performance piece. But now I admit to the possibility that on an unconscious level I was considering how those artifacts could be used.
I believe the reason I’m now feeling so haunted by Chantal is because, though she played the role of an archetype in her work, she was a real person whom I happened to meet who suddenly started to act strangely and then met a very bad and cruel end. There’s an unfinished story there, questions to be answered, a quest to be pursued, a mystery to be solved.
Josh calls, asks me if I’d like to join him for an evening stroll.
‘It’s first Friday of the month, Art Murmur night,’ he reminds me. ‘Tonight the streets of downtown Oakland come alive.’
We meet in the lobby, Josh wearing his watch cap, jeans and a faded blue and white OAKLANDISH T-shirt, I in black tank top and shorts. We move up Broadway with the crowds, angle off on Telegraph Avenue, then stop in at a funky bar for Stoli Greyhounds made with freshly squeezed grapefruit juice.
I like the scene here, a cross-section of Oakland, people of all ages talking, laughing, drinking in a long narrow room. The walls are festooned with weird inscriptions, shriveled stuffed reptiles and layers of unrelated bric-a-brac which give the place a suffocating quality I find appealing, perhaps because it’s the opposite of my own minimalist aesthetic.
‘I love these voodoo walls,’ I tell Josh. And when he signs he can’t hear me due to the music and noise, I shout it again into his ear.
‘Yeah, it’s like a three-dimensional piece of outsider art,’ he shouts back. ‘Whoever assembled this stuff had a bad case of horror vacui.’
Surprised by his use of the art-history term, I realize I know little about him. He presents himself as a rough-around-the-edges type. I think he’s a lot more sophisticated than he lets on.
Emerging again on Telegraph, he turns to me.
‘I saw the way you peered at me in there.’
‘Peered? Really?’
‘When I said horror vacui. You wondered where I picked that up.’
‘For all I know you have a PhD.’
He laughs. ‘Put in two years as a grad student at CalArts, then quit. Didn’t want to be an art teacher so didn’t see the point sticking around for the fucking MFA. At heart I’m an autodidact. Something interests me, I delve into it. Chantal was also like that. Told me she was at San Francisco State, double majoring in psychology and German. Then when her parents died she decided to take a leave. She went to Vienna where she met this old domme, apprenticed with her a couple years, then came back to the Bay Area and set up shop.’
We’re working our way toward the cluster of galleries above Twenty-First Street. The sidewalks are less crowded here, but the restaurants and cafés lining the avenue are filled with young people eating, drinking, yacking away. Due to Art Murmur, downtown Oakland, usually deserted and ominous after dark, is teeming with life.
Josh points out a grouping of large blue-gray birds resting on the limb of a tree. ‘Black-crowned night herons. They say the gulls chased them out of the port. They like lampposts, buildings, and people so they settled downtown. They roost in the yucca trees. I happen to like them, but a lot of folks don’t. They leave an inordinate amount of shit.’
‘Guano.’
He laughs. ‘Yeah, whatever—.’
Since we’re getting along so well, I decide to try and find out more about Chantal.
‘Those built-in bookcases in my loft – did she put them in?’
I feel him stiffen. ‘Funny you should ask,’ he says. ‘I built them for her. She had a helluva lot of books.’
‘Were they sold at the tag sale?’
‘I heard her fetish-book collection was. But she had plenty more, serious non-fiction. I believe she sold them in bulk to a local used bookstore.’
We work our way through a mob clustered outside a trio of galleries. The pub and gallery crawl is now at full throttle. Two rival street bands playing on opposite sides of the avenue create a weird cacophony. A rapper is holding forth in tortured rhymes from the flatbed of a pickup truck, and a tall anorectic stoned-out girl with long stringy blond hair stands in the entranceway of a boarded up shop plucking aimlessly at a double bass.
We enter a gallery. There’re so many people inside it’s difficult to see the art. Josh offers his hand, I take it, then let him lead me to the wall. I observe him as he scrutinizes the artwork. I can tell by his expression he doesn’t think much of it, but I’m impressed at the respect he shows each piece, pausing before it, devouring it with his eyes before moving on to the next.
‘See anything you like?’ I ask back out on the street.
‘Yeah. The triptych. Reasonably priced too. Not that I’d buy it. I’ve got tons of my own work and nowhere near enough wall space to hang it.’
He’s right about the triptych. It was the only decent piece in the exhibition. He has a good eye, I think.
We make our way through a dozen more galleries, viewing hundreds of paintings, sculptures, mixed-media pieces. In a garage on Twenty-Fifth we come upon an in-progress performance. A group of young people, dressed in black sweatshirts that identify them as members of THE FUCK-ALL COMMUNE, are seated at a round table feasting on asparagus spears while mock-seriously spouting anarchist slogans. It’s funny and ridiculous, but I’m more intrigued by the attention of the onlookers than the performance.
‘It’s crap like this gives what I do a bad name,’ I whisper to Josh.
Engrossed in the scene, he doesn’t react.
Are these his politics? I wonder.
Emerging again, turning toward Broadway, I ask if he took part in Occupy Oakland.
He shakes his head. ‘I like what they stood for. But their encampment was overrun by druggies and pickpockets. Since I live in the neighborhood I didn’t feel like fouling my nest.’ He turns to me, grins. ‘But, yeah, at heart I’m an anarchist.’
He seems to have an uncanny ability to read my mind.
We find a free sidewalk café table, sit down, order coffee.
‘Enjoying yourself?’ he asks.
‘It’s a fun scene.’
‘But the art mostly sucks, right?’
‘Oh, does it ever!’
‘Hey, don’t look now,’ he says, ‘but Clarence is across the street. If he sees us he might come over. We wouldn’t want that, would we?’
‘Sometimes when I go out for a run I see him walking around the neighborhood, but outside the building he doesn’t seem to recognize me. He kinda slinks when he walks. And he rarely blinks.’
‘Yeah, I’ve noticed that too.’
‘When he talks to me he giggles a lot. Does he do that with you?’
‘Yeah and I’ve no idea why. Mornings he stands in the lobby behind the concierge’s podium greeting everybody with a big smile, then couple hours later I see him dumpster diving out in the alley. One time I went out early and caught him going through trash barrels. So I yell, “Hey, good morning, Clarence.” He looks up, gives me this shit-eating grin. “Yeah, hi, Josh.” It’s like there’s this happy-go-lucky side and this weird side that’s into other people’s garbage.’
‘He’s always nice to me.’
‘To me too. But “Who know what evil lurks in the hearts of men?”’
‘“The Shadow knows.” Right?’
‘Yeah, The Shadow,’ Josh says, seemingly delighted I recognize the line from the old radio show.
We laugh, then Josh turns serious. ‘I’m surprised you’re not attached.’
‘Does it show? I recently got detached. Feels good too.’ I meet his stare, then decide to change the subject in case he’s thinking of coming on to me. ‘Something I want to ask you about Chantal?’ I continue even as I feel him tighten up again at the mention of her name. ‘You said something like “none of her friends knew her real name either”.’
‘I probably said that, yeah.’
‘So that tells me you met some of her friends?’
He nods. I peer closely at him. He’s going cagey on me the way he did when I first encountered him in the elevator. Which is odd since a few minutes ago he offered information about Chantal’s college career and apprenticeship in Vienna. But rather than take his cageyness as a signal to drop my questions, I decide to see how far I can press before he cuts me off.
‘I’d like to meet her friends,’ I tell him.
‘And you’re asking me – what?’
‘Would you introduce me, or give me a name or two?’
‘And where might that lead?’
‘Wherever. Look, I see you’re reluctant. You’re protective of her. But you did show me Queen of Swords … and that spoke to me, Josh. It did. I’m intrigued by her, maybe because I met her and now I live and work where she lived and worked. Who was she, Marie or Chantal? I’d like to find out all I can, get a sense of what she was really like. Your portrait tells me a lot, but I know there’s more. So, yeah, I’d like to meet some of her friends and hear their impressions. If that annoys you please tell me and I’ll drop it.’
He studies me a while as if assessing my sincerity. ‘You could try Lynx,’ he says. ‘Another pro domme. They were partners for a while, then Chantal took the penthouse and set up on her own. Still they stayed friends. You want to find out about Chantal, Lynx would be a good place to start.’
‘So how do I find this Lynx?’
He smiles. ‘Shouldn’t be too hard, not for a smart girl like you.’
He pulls out his wallet, places a ten on the table, stands. ‘On Art Murmur nights the free shuttle runs till midnight. It’ll take you within a block of the Buckley.’
‘You’re not going to walk back with me?’
‘No offense, Tess, but I think I’ll walk alone for a while.’ He gives me a quick hug. ‘See you around.’
I watch him as he saunters back into the gallery district.
What’s with him? I wonder. First he tells me stuff about Chantal, then he stiffens and goes monosyllabic when I ask about her. I decide not to worry about it. He coughed up Lynx’s name, and perhaps inadvertently gave me another lead: that a local bookstore bought up Chantal’s library.
Shouldn’t be too hard to find out which one … least not for a ‘smart girl’ like me.
Early the next morning Jerry calls.
‘This murdered pro dominatrix I’m reading about – she the one used to live in your loft?’
‘Good morning, Jerry. Is this really why you called?’
‘Yeah, good morning, Tess. Sorry. Saw an item in the paper. Wondered if it was the same woman.’
‘It was.’ I pause. ‘I didn’t know we were speaking, actually.’
‘I don’t see why we shouldn’t be.’
‘When I left you said some hostile things. I’m still reeling from that.’
‘People often say things when they’re stressed, things they don’t necessarily mean.’
‘Thing is I think you did mean them, Jerry. So if there’s nothing else on your mind, I’d like to get back to work.’
‘Sure,’ he says. ‘Sorry to bother you.’ And then in an unfamiliarly feeble tone: ‘Be well, Tess. I mean that, I really do.’
I wait two days before searching out Lynx. Doesn’t take me long to find her. I start with a BDSM internet board that provides links to Bay Area pro domme websites. Chantal Desforges is on the list. When I click on her link I get a blank screen. A note in tiny letters informs me the site’s been taken down at its owner’s request.
Next I click on the link for Mistress Lynx, gaining entry by agreeing I’m over eighteen and not in law enforcement. An image comes up of a pretty light-skinned black girl wearing a seductive smile. There’s a caption: DON’T MISTAKE ME FOR NICE. I CAN BE VERY CRUEL!
The ABOUT section describes attendance at an exclusive Swiss boarding school. ‘I was even dominant back then,’ the commentary reads. ‘I enslaved my roommate and enjoyed disciplining a groom when I caught him mistreating my horse.’
Under SPECIALTIES Lynx provides a lengthy list that includes every form of BDSM behavior I’ve heard of … and several I haven’t. At the end she adds: ‘Plus anything else your twisted little mind can think up!’
There’s also a statement in bold capitals:
DOMINATION IS NOT PROSTITUTION.
REQUESTS FOR SEXUAL FAVORS WILL
RESULT IN INSTANT DISMISSAL!
The GALLERY section shows Lynx in various dominant poses and a CONTACT page gives precise instructions for arranging an appointment. Applicants are required to fill out a detailed questionnaire with information regarding their fetishes, experience, and a reference from at least one other dominatrix.
The final paragraph is explicit:
‘PLEASE BE ADVISED: it is a PRIVILEGE to session with MISTRESS LYNX. If I find your response of interest, I will email my phone number so that we may discuss your needs and schedule your session. If you don’t hear back from me after a reasonable time, you may assume I have no interest.’
I click on the questionnaire, fill in my full name, address, and phone number, then skip to the section marked ‘Anything else I should know?’ I write:
‘Hi! I have your name from Josh Garske. As should be clear I’m not contacting you regarding a session, and please be assured I’m not a journalist nor do I work in law enforcement. I’m a performance artist (please check out my website: www.tessperformances.net) interested in learning all I can about your late friend Chantal, whom I knew slightly under the name Marie. I now occupy her old loft in the Buckley. I’m sure this is a sensitive time for you, and I hope this message doesn’t come as an intrusion. Please let me know if you’re willing to meet for coffee or a drink? Sincerely, Tess Berenson.’
Pressing SEND, I figure there’s probably a one in three chance she’ll respond.
I take the BART to San Francisco to meet with Rex. He’s invited me to his place to go over my part in his new Vertigo. When I enter and see the pole he’s erected in the center of his living room, I figure he wants me to demonstrate my pole-dancing skills.
Fine! I think. He needs a charge, I’ll give it to him.
But then when I start to strip, he surprises me.
‘What the hell are you doing?’
‘You want to see me work the pole, right?’
‘No need. I saw you work it in Black Mirrors.’
‘So what’s it doing here?’
‘I use it for exercise.’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah, really.’ He looks embarrassed. ‘Show me your moves later if you want. But first let’s go over your role.’
We sit down. His apartment, no kind of hovel, is roomy and flooded with sunlight. The living-room walls are covered with theater posters, the shelves filled with stage-set models interspersed with books on acting and theater history.
‘You want to come off as this very classy escort,’ he explains, ‘say in the fifteen hundred a night range. Mike, our client, will recognize you from a photograph and your red dress. He’ll come over, you’ll signal him to sit, then you two will have the kind of conversation you’d typically have on a blind date, during which you’ll feign serious interest in his background and achievements. You’ll both be playing out a classic getting-to-know-you scene. Play it like a call girl pretending to be fascinated by a john when they both know she’s really interested in getting his money, getting him off, and getting away.’
‘So I act classy in Act I. How ’bout Act II?’
‘Less so. At the party you’ll look cheaper and a lot more stressed out. You’ll recognize Mike, but shake your head to warn him off. Then you’ll slip away. Later he’ll catch a glimpse of you in the orgy room. You’ll be in your underwear, your makeup’ll be messed, and he’ll see you get an injection administered by one of the goons, presumably heroin.’
‘Act III?’
‘You’re hitting bottom, totally drugged. The classy escort he met at the Clift now behaves like a cheap hooker. From the pole you’ll come on to him, beckoning him by making cock-sucking motions with your mouth. By overdoing it you’ll be telling him you’re putting on an act. He’ll see track marks on your arms and be repulsed, but he won’t be able to take his eyes off you because something about you continues to fascinate him. Then you’ll collapse like you’ve OD’d and the thugs who abducted you will drag your limp body off stage.’
‘So … a tragedy. I can do all that.’
‘Of course you can! Acts II and III will be fun for you. But the bar scene’s crucial. You need to be really seductive there … as only a very pricey top-of-the-line escort can. The illusion depends on getting the hook in his mouth. Otherwise he won’t care about your downfall.’
‘Suppose I play it like a spoiled-rotten rich girl fallen on hard times? Like in that old Bob Dylan song – “You’ve gone to the finest school all right, Miss Lonely …”’
Rex nods. ‘Yeah, that’s it!’
‘Suggestion. This’ll mean hiring another actor, but I think it’ll enhance the story. A tough-looking gangster type, fat, ugly, and powerful. And, to keep it noirish, with an unlit cigar clenched between his teeth. The thugs work for him. He owns me. He pimps me out. He likes to degrade me. He’s waiting in the back of a limo outside the Clift. The client’ll catch a glimpse of him as the thugs shove me into his car. At the strip joint he’ll be standing there getting off seeing me humiliate myself. The client’ll notice him because he’ll have seen him two times before, so he’ll figure it’s a master/slave relationship. The client’ll be disgusted by my performance on the pole, but he’ll be fascinated too because for all his decency there’s also a side of him that likes seeing me degraded.’
‘Love it! And I know just the actor. We’ll call this character Fat Man. As always, Tess, you know how to take an idea for a sketch, add a level, and deepen it.’
And as always I’m a sucker for his flattery. ‘So – want to see me pole-dance?’
‘Sure, if you want.’
I nod, strip to my underwear, then do a few turns. The pole’s the portable kind, spring-loaded, but firm enough for me to work it.
‘I’ve forgotten some of the routines – allegra, batman, flying ballerina. Want me to study up?’
He shakes his head. ‘What I want you to do is make love to it. Treat it like a gigantic dick. Try much too hard to act sexy – so hard you come off as sloppy. Act like pole-dancing’s not your thing. Fat Man’s making you do it.’
I try a routine, stumble, pull myself up, make myself dizzy swinging through four or five fast loops, finally collapse into a heap.
Rex is pleased. ‘You’re nailing it, babe! Put your clothes back on and let’s get something to eat. I want to hear about Recital, where you want to go with it, and how I can help you take it there.’
Back home in Oakland I find a voicemail message from Lynx. She thanks me for writing and says she’d definitely like to meet. I call her back. We agree to meet up tomorrow morning. I suggest Downtown Café, but Lynx has another idea.
‘There’s this fetish shoe store, Madame deRouge, on Harrison and 18th. I’ve got shopping to do so let’s meet there. Then if we both decide to continue the conversation, there’s a coffee place around the corner.’
I understand: she wants to check me out.
‘Sure. Meet you at eleven at deRouge,’ I tell her.
I spend the early part of the morning working on Recital in front of my camera, rehearsing then stopping to critique the video. I try to keep Dr Maude’s advice in mind – don’t over-satirize, grant Mrs Z a full measure of humanity. My object is to evoke pity and terror – pity for the woman’s pathetic sense of entitlement, and terror on account of her blatant moral corruption. As Rex told me yesterday at lunch, ‘Satire’s fun and easy to do, but, as a great showman once put it, satire closes on Saturday night.’
I spot Lynx right away. She’s the only one in the store. She looks just like her website photo, but without the lascivious smirk. I catch her glancing at me as we browse the merchandise. She picks up a shoe with an exaggerated stiletto heel.
‘What’d you think?’ she asks.
‘Nice piece of sculpture, but I couldn’t walk in it.’
She smiles, then leads me over to a glass case near the cash register filled with fetishistic black-leather head-encasement helmets and hoods.
‘What’d you think of these?’ she asks.
The cashier, a busty freckled redhead, gazes at me amused.
I get it. I’m being tested. If I blink, blush, blanch, or act uneasy, I’ll fail and Lynx’ll blow me off. So to make sure I pass I run my tongue subtly across my upper lip.
‘I like them,’ I tell her. ‘Something to wear to church. Or maybe the Easter Parade.’
Lynx and the redhead guffaw.
‘Let’s go get coffee,’ Lynx says.
She leads me to a café two doors down. We settle in at a sidewalk table. After we order she studies me as she quizzes me about my interest in Chantal.
‘You wrote that you knew her slightly?’
I tell her about meeting her at kickboxing class.
Lynx nods. ‘She had a barter deal there. Twelve BDSM sessions with the sensei in exchange for Muay Thai training.’
Well, there’s a revelation! I never would have imagined Kurt being submissive.
‘You wrote she used the name Marie?’ I nod. ‘That was her middle name. She used it sometimes in her, you know, vanilla life … such as it was.’
Lynx turns serious. She admits she’s extremely upset about what happened to her friend and is still trying to work it out in her head.
‘I’m not the only one,’ she tells me. ‘The whole East Bay domme community’s in pain over this. Everyone liked Chantal. She didn’t have any enemies in the business I know about. Now everyone’s scared there’s a woman-hating killer on the loose. No one wants to take on anyone new.’ She sips her coffee. ‘There was a San Jose domme killed last year. Shot twice. And, the weird part – whoever did it went to a lot of trouble. After he killed her he dug out the bullets. That’s the story going around. What’d you think?’
I tell her that suggests the killer was worried the bullet markings could be traced.
‘Like maybe a cop?’ she asks.
‘Are there cop clients?’
‘We don’t ask people what they do. Cops session just like everybody else. If you’re wondering why I wanted to check you out it’s ’cause I wanted to make sure you weren’t a cop.’
I tell her I understand even though I don’t. Seems to me that other women in the business, feeling threatened, would bend over backwards to help the police.
But Lynx is on to other things. She tells me the last time she saw Chantal was at her tag sale.
‘Practically all the East Bay dommes came,’ she says. ‘Her decision to sell off her stuff – that seemed weird to me, coming so sudden, but most of the girls figured it for another case of domme-burnout. Happens in our business. People quit cold turkey, sell off their stuff, and move on. Some go back to school, others get a straight job, others might marry a client, settle down, and start popping out kids. But I knew Chantal well enough to see this wasn’t just burnout, that she was seriously disturbed. When I asked what was going on, she whispered, “Something’s gone horribly wrong here.” When I asked what she signaled she didn’t want to talk about it. She was usually open with me so I figured whatever it was was cutting her pretty deep. Anyway, it helps me to talk about her. She was a terrific kid. I’m going to miss her a lot.’
I’m pleased at her willingness to talk. I also find myself liking her.
‘Josh told me you two used to work together.’
‘We shared space for a year. Saw our clients separately. Occasionally we’d do a double. Not often. Our styles were too different.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘I’m more a physical type. I specialize in corporal punishment.’ She grins. ‘The masochists love me. I wield a mean whip.’
‘And Chantal?’
‘She liked working the psychological side – what she called “therapeutic dominance”. She knew how to punish a slave. She wouldn’t hesitate to slap one across the face. But she wouldn’t take on masochists, only submissives. She thought of herself as a healer and her work as a form of therapy. Chantal wasn’t into inflicting pain. She used to say her greatest pleasure was to burrow way deep into someone’s head and take up residence there. Or as she liked to put it, “pull a demon out of a guy’s closet and give it a kiss”. Basically she got off on mind-fucks.’
Hearing this, I can’t decide which form of BDSM strikes me as more caustic: Lynx’s sadism applied to the flesh or Chantal’s psychological dominance inflicted upon the brain.
‘Still,’ I say, ‘she had the cell and the St. Andrew’s Cross.’
‘Sure, she had that … and a lot more. But, see, a major part of a mind-fuck is to create a mood. My place, the one we used to share, is in a cellar. It looks like a dungeon. Chantal wanted something elegant with lots of light. Soon as she saw that loft she knew it was perfect.’
As did I!
‘The building manager told me she called it The Eagle’s Nest.’
‘That’s how she thought of it – high up, aloof, a place where, if you went there, you were likely to get clawed.’
‘Weird name to use, don’t you think?’
‘Because of the Hitler connection?’ She smiles. ‘Tess loved stuff like that. Anyway, to answer your question, she had hundreds of tools, most just for show. That’s what she sold off – whips, canes, bondage devices, hoods, manacles, and her collection of fetish wear. For her those things were props, rarely used, which was why all her stuff was in great condition.’ Lynx crinkles her eyes. ‘I bought her Australian single-tail, the one she called Blackspur. She knew how to crack it, but I doubt she ever used it on a client. It’s a gorgeous instrument. It’s going to be fun breaking it in.’
I wince.
‘Hey, am I making you uncomfortable?’
‘It’s OK,’ I tell her. ‘My monologues are about making people uncomfortable. The other night my old acting coach came up to the loft. He saw the cell and cross, and when I told him a domme used to live there, he pointed out that you guys are performers too.’
Lynx giggles. ‘It’s all about the performance. I’ll raise welts on a guy’s butt, but even when we’re engaged like that we both know we’re play-acting. Chantal was fascinated by the combination of real and artificial. Also by the fact that it’s a transaction, that we’re fee-for-service providers.’
I ask her if she knows Chantal’s real name.
‘Chantal Marie Marceau. I know that sounds made-up. Most of our work names are. Believe me, my parents didn’t name me Lynx! Her background was French Canadian. Both her parents were teachers. When they died in a car accident, she quit college and went to Vienna. That’s where she met this high-end domme, Gräfin Eva. Eva took a liking to her and invited her to be her assistant. That’s how Chantal learned the trade … the old-fashioned way by apprenticeship. She spoke often of this woman. Gräfin means countess in German. She was in her fifties, and, according to Chantal, greatly influenced by Freud. She liked to do mock-psychoanalytic sessions with her clients, ordering them to lie naked on a couch, then reveal their secret fantasies. If Eva felt they were withholding or fabricating, she’d punish them for lying, then, at end of session, hold them close and comfort them. It was Eva who got Chantal into thinking of herself as a healer. She came out here once to visit so I got a chance to meet her. Amazing woman! She radiated dominance. She also had this mantra: “We use pain to defeat pain.” Chantal loved that! It became her mantra too.’
I’m impressed by Lynx. She’s smart and articulate. I can understand why she and Chantal were friends.
‘Did Chantal have siblings?’
‘There’s a brother, a ski instructor in Vermont. I’m sure he’s been informed. You said Josh talked to the cops. He probably told them how to contact him.’
‘I’m not sure about that. Josh says he didn’t know much about her.’
Lynx shakes her head. ‘He knows plenty. Don’t believe a thing he says. He’s a forger. He forges paintings then sells them to dumb-ass collectors.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘That’s what Chantal told me.’ She pauses. ‘I don’t mean to trash your friend.’
‘He’s not really my friend. I barely know him.’
‘Well … like I was saying, Chantal had this brother, but they weren’t close. Still I hope somebody got in touch with him. Considering the way she was found the least she deserves is a decent burial.’
I decide to steer the conversation back to performance. Like Chantal I’m fascinated by the combination of real and artificial in my own work.
‘I’m preparing a new piece,’ I tell her. ‘It involves convincing my audience I’m sixty-seven years old, filthy rich, elegant on the surface but full of resentment and repressed rage beneath.’
Lynx snorts. ‘Sounds like a hoot!’
‘I was rehearsing this morning, then running back the video to check whether my monologue was convincing.’
‘Good method! We do that too, video recording. We don’t talk about it because our clients are ultra-concerned about confidentiality. But Chantal and I always recorded our sessions in case someone claimed something wasn’t consensual, and also, like you, to make sure we were bringing off our scenes. We’d check out each other’s videos then make suggestions.’
I’d love to see a video of Chantal in action, but hesitate to ask Lynx for fear she’ll be turned off.
‘In acting class we call that critiquing,’ I tell her.
Lynx nods. ‘Our clients would kill us if they ever found out.’
At the word ‘kill’ we stare at one another, then Lynx brings her hand up to her mouth.
‘Jesus! Sorry! I didn’t mean that the way it came out.’
‘Makes me wonder, though …’
‘Yeah. What if someone did find out? Still, like I said, we only did it for professional reasons. We weren’t into the so-called “consensual blackmail” scene, a fetish of guys who want to be forced into obedience under threat of being exposed to their loved ones and employers. We prided ourselves on treating our clients with honesty and respect. We always trashed the videos after we ran them.’
‘Did Chantal record sessions up in the loft?’ I ask casually.
‘She recorded everything. She was fanatical about it.’
‘Where was the camera?’
‘She had two actually, hidden in the moldings high up, one in the corner where the cell grill meets the wall, the other in the corner opposite. You’d never notice them. When you get back take a look. You’ll see where they were.’ Lynx smiles. ‘Hey, for all I know they’re still there!’
I find this revelation unnerving. Why would the cameras still be there? Wouldn’t Chantal have taken them down before she left?
Lynx, noticing I’m upset, continues to explain the reasoning behind making videos. ‘There’s also a security concern. Say a guy comes to you for a session, then freaks out. You do your best to calm him, ease him out, but it’s safer for you if someone’s monitoring the session in real time. If your monitor, usually a male friend, sees things aren’t going well, he can come in and help. Now if you’re with a regular, you’ll probably turn the camera off. But with a new client, someone you don’t know, you want somebody nearby to watch and make sure everything’s OK. The old way was to leave the room, make a quick call to your friend who was maybe waiting downstairs in his car, then say a code word like “green light” so he knows you feel safe. But a live feed from a camera’s better, assuming there’s someone you trust monitoring at the other end.’
‘So who was watching Chantal’s feed?’ Even as I ask the question, I have a queasy feeling I know the answer.
‘Josh. She told me he loved watching her sessions, got off on it. According to Chantal, watching was his thing. Great trait in a bodyguard. And there he was just three floors down, ready to run upstairs if she needed him. Wish I had someone like that in my building.’
Jesus!
Walking back to the Buckley, I wonder whether to confront Josh about why he hasn’t been straight with me. Lynx told me not to believe anything he says. Now, I think, I won’t.
Back in the loft I check the corners. The cameras are still there, well concealed. I wouldn’t have spotted them if Lynx hadn’t told me where to look. Not knowing whether they’re hard-wired, I’m reluctant to yank them out. Instead I snip off the tiny microphones and cover the lenses with black tape.
I’m spooked. Could they still be live? Could Josh have been spying on me all these weeks? Suddenly I’m feeling paranoid. Even though I’ve deactivated them, I wonder whether there might be other hidden cameras and microphones Lynx didn’t know about.
Josh lied to me about not knowing anything about Chantal’s clients or the scenes she played out with them. So why did he steer me to Lynx? He had to know there was a good chance she’d tell me about his role as Chantal’s security guy. Could his tip to contact her be part of some devious game he’s been playing … such as wanting me to discover he’s been watching me?
Whatever his motive, it’s now clear he can’t be trusted. But rather than confront him, I decide to play it cool, let him wonder what I think, whether in fact I like being watched. Which, I admit to myself, on a certain level I do. But not surreptitiously, not without my consent. A good issue, I decide, to raise with Dr Maude: whether there’s a side of me that actually likes the idea that a voyeur has been secretly spying on me from the day I moved in.
I go out for a run to think things through, why Josh lied, and something else Lynx mentioned – that a dominatrix can be a healer who uses corporal pain to defeat the inner psychic pain of her clients.
I also ask myself again why I care so much about a deceased woman I barely knew. Dr Maude suggested I want to understand Chantal in order to portray her character in a performance piece, that this is the subconscious reason I chose to keep her SM gear when I leased the loft. But I feel something else is going on, something deeper, a strange but real feeling of kinship with Chantal, a feeling that our lives are not just tangentially connected, but are closely and perhaps even mystically linked.
I’m musing about this, not paying much attention where I’m heading, when suddenly I realize I just ran by a used bookstore on the block behind. Stopping to catch my breath, I consider whether to backtrack and check it out. It would be too weird if it turns out to be the store where Chantal sold her books. But then, I tell myself, perhaps not so weird. It’s fairly close to the Buckley and therefore the most likely place to which Chantal would turn to sell her library to raise cash for her escape.
My T-shirt’s soaked. I feel the sun beating down, feel it strongly on my forehead. It’s the brilliant hot sun of a sparkling spring afternoon in Oakland, so brilliant it makes the storefront windows and building walls seem to shimmer in the heated air. I look up at the sky. The sun blinds me. I close my eyes and allow the heat to play upon my face. Then I make up my mind, pivot, and stride back to the bookstore.
A bell tinkles when I enter. It’s cool inside. There’s a special smell too, a library stacks smell, the aroma of dusty old books. At a desk near the door an elderly man with a trimmed white beard is working at a computer. I catch an aroma of whisky as I pass. Ah, a lover of books and fine Scotch. I smile at him, but he doesn’t bother to look up.
A little further in, a woman in her sixties, white hair compacted into a bun, sits at another desk cataloging books. When I pass near, she looks me up and down taking in my running garb. Then smiling she displays a questing expression.
‘Just browsing,’ I tell her.
She nods and turns back to her work.
I make my way down a long center aisle lined with bookshelves. In typical used bookstore fashion, the books are organized into sections: ART, MYSTERIES, LITERARY FICTION, GAY STUDIES, RUSSIA, BASEBALL, WORLD WAR II. There are five main aisles. Near the rear it’s necessary to step around shopping bags and boxes filled with books as yet unshelved. Some of the back aisles are nearly blocked. The deeper I penetrate the more chaos I find, including books stacked into precariously balanced piles, some reaching up to the ceiling. There’re corridors back here so narrow I can barely squeeze through. These lead in turn to a rabbit warren of backrooms (JUVENILES, FOREIGN LANGUAGES, TRAVEL, EROTICA), some so stuffed it’s impossible to do anything except stand in the doorways and gaze inside, imagining what treasures lie hidden beneath the literary rubble.
I make my way back to the front of the shop. White Bun looks up at me with the same questing expression.
‘I don’t know if this is the right store,’ I tell her. ‘A friend recently sold her books, and I’m wondering if she sold them here.’
‘Can you describe your friend?’ White Bun’s words come out in a whisper.
‘She was very beautiful. She had very pale skin and long dark hair. She lived in the Buckley Building.’
‘I know the one,’ White Beard breaks in. ‘We bought her library.’ He studies me. ‘You say she was beautiful. Something happen to her?’
I think a moment how best to put it. ‘She recently passed away,’ I tell him.
Silence, then White Beard speaks again. ‘Sorry to hear that. She was a very nice young lady. Didn’t haggle. Invited me up to her loft. I looked over her library, offered her a price, and she accepted it. I paid her and sent two of my boys to pack her books and haul them here.’
‘Still have them?’
He laughs. ‘Oh, sure! Haven’t unpacked them. Probably won’t get to them ’til sometime next year.’
‘Could I look at them?’
‘You interested in buying?’
‘I might be. I took over her loft. I remember she had some very interesting books,’ I lie. ‘I thought if I could see them, I might want to buy some back.’
White Beard and White Bun exchange a look.
Another crazy – is that what they’re thinking?
‘It’s not possible to pull those books out of boxes and spread them out for you. But if you’re serious my wife will show you the boxes, and you can take a peek inside. If you see some you want, we can price them for you. But only if you’re serious.’
‘I’m very serious,’ I assure him.
White Beard nods at White Bun. ‘Why don’t you show the young woman where we put those Buckley Building books.’ He looks sternly at me. ‘Don’t mess them up. They were boxed the way your friend had them organized. Mess them up and I’ll never get them properly shelved.’
‘I’ll be very careful,’ I promise.
White Bun leads me back into the dark recesses of the store, then up a narrow staircase I hadn’t noticed, which leads in turn to a long narrow room, the length of the shop below. At the far end dust-coated windows overlook the street.
She leads me to a pair of stacks five boxes tall, all marked DESFORGES. ‘You can open the top one and take a look. That should give you a general idea.’
I nod, open the top box. The first book I see is a biography of Sigmund Freud. I pull it out, open it, notice that passages are highlighted and that there’re marginal notations.
‘About half of them are marked up like that. Which is why we couldn’t pay much for them,’ White Bun explains. ‘Our customers don’t expect used books to be pristine, but they prefer to do their own highlighting. Your friend’s books were well studied.’
I pick up a book from the top box of the second stack, William Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. It too is heavily notated. Beneath it I find a biography of Lou Andreas-Salomé, the source of the quote on the archway in my loft. I notice a letter sticking out between pages in the middle.
‘Yeah, there’s mail inside some of them. It’s like she used her library as a filing cabinet. We’ve bought other libraries like that.’ She giggles. ‘Once one of our clients found a hundred-dollar bill folded up inside a Bible. He’d paid for the book so he got to keep it.’
I turn to her. ‘The letters come with the books?’
‘Sure. Why not?’
‘How will you price them?’
‘My husband does the pricing. You seriously interested?’
‘If it’s not too expensive I’d like to buy the whole collection,’ I tell her.
‘Let’s go downstairs and talk to him.’
The negotiation goes quickly. I know from what White Beard said that he doesn’t like to haggle. I ask what he paid for Chantal’s library. Pretending to look it up, he tells me he paid six hundred dollars. I figure he probably paid three, but decide to let it go. Pointing out that I barely glanced at the books, I offer him seven hundred if he’ll have the boxes hauled back up to Chantal’s old loft.
The old man gives me a quizzical look. ‘Off her shelves and down the stairs, then back up the stairs and back onto her shelves. Interesting,’ he says. He ponders my offer. ‘OK, you can have the lot for seven-fifty including delivery. If you tip my boys they’ll shelve them for you too.’
I meet his eyes. He’s smiling. I turn to look at White Bun. She brings her hand up to her face to conceal her grin.
I grin back at them. As my father used to say: the best deals are the ones where each side believes he’s gotten the better of the other.