her fun to handle, and the IQ was listed as remarkably high. Master's Degree in journalism, well travelled, television weather girl in Los Angeles, own talk show in San Francisco for a while, trained in a private club in Bel Air by a Parisian named Elena Gifner. I didn't know the trainer. But we had bought good merchandise from Gifner before. I flipped back to the picture. 'And were you worked much?' I asked. I had deliberately left permission Diana could be worked. She needed it. Maintenance wasn't enough. 'Yes, Lisa,' she said. I could hear the break in her voice. I lifted her hair back from her neck. She was hot all over. I knew the hair between her legs would be drenched. The brown-haired girl in the picture was definitely an American Beauty -- Playboy centrefold type, perfect weather girl all right. I could see her on the nightly news. Round-eyed, big-eyed, like Diana, but something mundane about her, even with the lovely bone structure. But then, there was the strong intelligence in the face, the touch of inquisitiveness. Wholesome American girl, with cheerleader breasts. Definitely have a look at this one.
I sipped the gin and hurried, cracking back the stiff covers one after another. Diana was kissing me. 'Be still.' I was staring at a photograph of a man. Blond-haired, six foot two by the chart. But I looked back to the photograph, unable for a moment to understand my reaction, its intensity, unless it was the expression on the man's face. They don't often smile in the pictures. They stare straight forward as though they were being photographed by the law. Sometimes all the vulnerability is revealed there, the fear. They're going into captivity, they don't know what's going to happen, maybe it's all a mistake. But he was smiling, or at least there was some amusement, some cleverness there. Thick blond hair, almost curly, falling a little down on the forehead, well shaped around the ears and the neck. And his eyes gray or blue maybe, behind the pale smoke tint of a large pair of glasses, the kind shaded only lightly at the top so that the glass is clear over the cheeks. And that smile. He wore a black turtleneck for the picture, arms folded instead of at his sides. An amazingly relaxed picture.
I flipped to the back of the file to see him naked. I sat back staring at the photograph, sipping the gin. 'Look at these,' I said. Diana raised her head and I showed her the two pictures. 'A beauty,' I whispered, tapping the picture of Slater. I motioned for more of the ice and the gin. 'Yes, Lisa,' she said, putting as much injured feeling into the words as permissible, and filling my glass as if the gesture had tremendous significance. I kissed her again. In the naked picture, he stood with arms at his sides but there was the same faint amusement, though he'd tried to conceal it a little. Maybe somebody had told him not to smile. And a startling sense of presence emanated from the picture. He wasn't shielded behind an attitude, a fantasy image of himself. Flawless body, a real California body, with fine gymnasium muscles and powerful calves. Not over-developed, and a real beach tan. Elliott Slater. Berkeley, California. Age twenty-nine. Trained in San Francisco by Martin Halifax. Well, that was interesting. My hometown. And Martin Halifax was only the best in the world, and a friend to me like no one else had ever been.
A little crazy maybe, but then aren't we all? I had worked in Martin Halifax's Victorian house in San Francisco when I was twenty. Only fifteen dimly lighted and elegantly furnished rooms and yet it seemed a universe, as vast and mysterious as The Club. It was Martin Halifax who had perfected the solarium for slaves, with the little treadmill and the exercycle that slaves were made to pedal as they were punished. Leave it to a Californian, even one as pale as Martin, to think of something healthy like that. But Martin Halifax and The House had existed when there was no Club, and in a way he was as responsible for The Club as I was, or the man who had financed it. It was Martin's choice not to come in with us. He could never leave San Francisco or The House. I flipped to the handwritten report by Martin. Martin loved to write. 'This slave is