Under the Vulcania Read online

  He recomposed himself. Having checked the results in the mirror and found them only just passable, he moved with feigned and carefully monitored good cheer into the central area of the salon, where Fiona and sixteen other women were waiting in their swivel chairs. A stranger walking in right now would have had no trouble assuming that they were waiting for their favourite – if alarmingly high-tech – hairdresser.

  Some were examining their make-up and/or wrinkles in the mirror. Others had their elbows propped up on the counter as they watched the promotional video on its built-in screens. A few who knew exactly what they wanted were already punching in their orders. All the women were dressed in the silk pyjamas that came with the price of entry.

  While Raul worked his way down the line, Fiona idly perused the catalogue they had given her, noting, as she flipped through its pages, how high one’s standards got when the prey looked so willing. What did she want today? And with whom?

  She eavesdropped on the two women sitting to her right.

  ‘Did you see the one in the rowing frame?’ said the stiffly coiffed blonde to the close-cropped redhead.

  ‘Yes, but it says here he can only take afternoon bookings.’

  ‘Maybe we can double up.’

  ‘Simultaneously, or in the same half hour?’

  ‘I suppose it depends on how much you want, plus how many preliminaries.’

  ‘Hmmm…’ said the other. She pursed her lips as if she were inspecting the ingredients of a box of detergent. Fiona tried not to smile, as she knew this woman to be one of her husband’s patients – while her friend, who had either not recognized Fiona or else did not wish to acknowledge her, given the circumstances, had, until several years ago, been the art teacher in Fiona’s son’s school.

  She had left, as Fiona recalled, to have a baby.

  What, then, was lacking in her life? Fiona was unable to listen in for further details because now she felt a pair of hands on her shoulders. Looking up into the mirror, she saw the Monsieur staring intensely down at her reflection. Seeing him so close, it seemed to her that she knew this disdainful, hawklike face from somewhere… except…

  He picked up a brush and passed it through her curls. ‘So. It has been a long time since we’ve seen you here.’ So that was all it was, she thought to herself. A déjà vu with an alibi.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It must have been, let’s think, fourteen, fifteen…’

  ‘Seventeen months,’ he said briskly. ‘I checked the records. It was, I should add, before my time.’

  Which meant that she knew him from somewhere else, not here.

  ‘What can we offer you today?’ he now asked.

  ‘I’m not quite sure,’ she said. ‘I thought I’d buy the usual necklace.’

  ‘The twelve-bauble necklaces are fifteen per cent off this morning, and if you checked the board or the video, you may have noticed that we are also offering a number of specials.’

  ‘To tell you the truth, Mr…’

  ‘Call me Raul.’

  Raul, she thought. Raul.

  ‘Raul, to tell you the truth, the special offers didn’t spin my wheels.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘No, please, don’t take it the wrong way. Actually, I was hoping you would be able to help me. My own ideas don’t seem to be good enough. Or rather, even if it is a good idea – as many of your offers here are – it somehow loses its attraction because I know exactly what is going to happen from the very start.’

  ‘You sound bored with life.’

  ‘Do I?’ said Fiona, somewhat taken aback by the intensity of his tone.

  ‘I’m sorry. That was unprofessional. What you are saying to me is that you would prefer to have your schedule arranged according to the discretion of the management.’

  ‘That’s sounds about right.’

  ‘Actually we have a name for it. La Piñata. We offer it as a regular service but only recommend it to clients we feel are sufficiently self-possessed. The form is for clients to pay at the end, and only to the degree that they are satisfied, but I’m warning you, it can be expensive.’

  ‘I’m not worried about money.’

  ‘Then I take it you married well, after all.’

  ‘Actually,’ she said, bristling slightly, and so failing to bear in mind that he was overstepping his role. ‘I did so happen to marry well, as you put it, although I would certainly have no trouble supporting myself on my own salary.’

  ‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to pry.’

  ‘I have nothing to hide, although that’s hardly the point at the moment,’ she said. ‘After all, this is my day off. I take it you think I’m up to the challenges, financial and otherwise, of La Piñata.’

  ‘It’s your decision. I would never dream of trying to influence you,’ he said. Again, there was that edge to his voice. Why?

  ‘Let me escort you to the towel room,’ he said. ‘We have changed the layout slightly since your last visit. And oh yes, there’s the insurance waiver.’

  ‘I already signed one at the desk.’

  ‘Yes, but for this you need an extra one.’

  Why? she wanted to ask. For the first time since her arrival at the Vulcania, she felt a shiver of apprehension. ‘This is not to say that you are in any real danger,’ he assured her as he stopped in front of a computer terminal to order the required print-out. Could he read her mind, too? ‘You retain your veto power. All you need to do is pull one of our emergency cords. I assume you remember what they look like.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ she said.

  ‘And I’m sure I do not need to add that I am easily reached should La Piñata fail to please.’ Now he was sounding almost mocking. Or was he issuing an invitation? If so, an invitation to what? There was no way of reading his signals, so she chose to ignore them. She left him to tap his cryptic commands into his computer, picked up her towels from the towel-room attendant and headed down the warm, low-lit, perfumed stairs towards the Roman Baths.

  Chapter Five

  The Roman Baths were made up of eight small rooms and an observation deck, all looking out on to a colonnaded open-air marble pool. It was fed by the city’s famous hot springs: hence the steam rising from the surface and the unusual opaque blue-green tint to the water. The room into which Fiona had descended was an enlargement on the idea of a shower stall; the subtly positioned spigots in its marble ceiling, floor and walls were programmed to provide all new arrivals with a calming aquamassage. Clients could choose both the rhythm and the intensity of the water flow on the control panel at the back of the glass closet into which they were meant to put their towels and personal effects.

  What possessed Fiona to take her aquamassage without bothering to remove her silk pyjamas she did not know. It was one of those things that just happened and turned out to be a better idea than she could ever have imagined. She liked the way the warm, wet silk clung to her skin, the way it responded to the always changing pulsations of the water jets. The way it rounded her curves, wrapped around her nipples, and evaporated the angles that had grown so much harsher since her illness.

  For some reason – what? – a memory came back to her, a memory that couldn’t be more distant from her present surroundings. It was a memory from that summer so many years ago, when life was so very different, when she had worked for that co-operative, picking watermelons. Succumbing to thirst on that first day in the sun-baked field, she had broken one open, for the juice. Having sucked in its sweetness, she had found herself only thirstier… As she stood now amidst the water jets, she opened her mouth and let the hot spray tickle her tongue and hit against the back of her throat, the warm droplets moisten her lips. The sensation was just as sweet, just as tantalizing… she could not bear to break the mood, so when she retired to the adjacent steam room, she left the water running. She told herself she needed the sound…

  Her towel was a rich royal blue, but the steam was so thick that she could see it only intermittently. It was like lying
on a beach in the tropics and searching for patches of sky between billowing storm clouds. The heat embraced her in its usual forceful manner as she reclined on her elbows on the lowest of the marble platforms. The wet air caked her throat. Breathing required such concentration that she didn’t immediately notice the pair of hands resting on her shoulders.

  She arched her head back to see who had claimed her. She could see nothing but steam. As she hunted for a gap in the folds and creases of the steam, she felt the hands sliding downwards, now passing over her nipples, and now returning, back and forth, back and forth… she arched her head even further back as she strained for a glimpse of their owner, and as she did so, the hands took hold of her breasts and squeezed them, so hard and so suddenly that she could not help but cry out… but no sooner had the cry left her lips than she felt someone else’s lips, an upside-down pair of lips, touching her lips, and a tongue probing their shape, licking her teeth, and then flickering against her tongue and then withdrawing, to suck her lips away from her while the hands pumped her breasts, pinched her nipples and pushed their way downwards, fumbling at the buttons and pulling at the elastic of her silk pyjamas, reaching for her inner thighs, now pinching, now caressing them, now travelling up to her breasts again, and now back to her shoulders and then disappearing again into the hissing clouds of steam.

  First she sat still, waiting. Then she looked over her shoulder. Nothing. She probed the steam with her arms and met with no resistance. She sat forward with half an idea to move on – only to find the hands emerge out of the steam in front of her and push her roughly back.

  Now both hands had grabbed the elastic of her silk pyjama bottoms. Now they were ripping them apart at the seams. Now a tongue was making circles around her clitoris, now it was thrusting into her cunt. Now, as it returned to her clitoris, she opened her legs and thrust her pelvis towards the invisible tongue, which by now had turned into a pair of lips, a pair of lips that sucked her so hard she lost the capacity to resist it… and now, as she found herself on the edge of surrender, when she would have said yes to anything, the tongue and the lips and the hands suddenly withdrew… she lay on the marble slab, gasping, and listening to the hissing steam as her heart pounded. One thousand, two thousand, three thousand, four… it had been a minute now at least, now two, and now three… was that all there was to be?

  She stood up and made to look for her towel, but suddenly the pair of hands had grabbed hold of her again, and had pushed her down on the marble slab, while a second pair of hands roughly separated her legs. She could see a dark shape mounting her, feel a thick penis thrusting into her, once, twice, three times… it kept pumping and she lost count. Now she felt two tongues working on her, one for each nipple, and each one following a different logic, and a different rhythm. She gave in to them both, and opened up to… what?

  In the control centre, Raul surveyed the act on his closed-circuit television. His eyes were cold, his expression stiff with disapproval. So this is what she likes, he said to himself, who could ever have imagined? Then he reminded himself, ruefully, that he had. So then why was he surprised – he, who knew better than anyone what ice maidens liked best… with a sigh, he typed out the instructions for the next event on her morning agenda.

  But even as he entered the command, the image overtook him, seeping out, as it were, from between the lines, the forbidding and paradoxical image of perfection she had been that first day so many, many years ago when she had walked – twenty minutes late but unapologetic – into his study.

  How could he begin to justify the anger he felt for her today if he thought about his own sorry and self-willed decline? Wearily, he turned away from the flickering computer and dialled the Central Locker Room on the internal videophone.

  Roland, the deputy-on-duty – or rather, a faint and soft-edged image of him – appeared on the screen. ‘Would you mind getting me Winston?’

  ‘Give me two seconds,’ Roland replied. He disappeared from the screen to be replaced by an indistinct sea of restless, half-naked bodies, all conversing in loud, jocular tones that were none the less impossible to decipher.

  When Winston came on the screen, Raul said, curtly, ‘I’d like to co-ordinate our readings. But first of all – since the steam obstructed my view somewhat – I’d like to confirm that you kept to the script and that yours was the only penetration.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Winston.

  ‘Give me your ETD,’ said Raul.

  ‘I put it at three or four minutes.’

  ‘You’re not far off. I logged you at two minutes, twenty-four seconds. I have your charts here, and handicapping those, I estimate that you won’t be ready for your next performance until 11:15.’

  ‘If you don’t mind my interrupting, sir…’

  ‘Go right ahead.’

  ‘Well, sir, I was sort of counting on doing five performances today.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, sir, because I’m going off on my internship come June, and I’m short on resettlement money.’

  ‘What course are you on? I’ve forgotten. Remind me.’

  ‘Electrical engineering.’

  ‘Yes, of course. And where’s the internship?’

  Winston named a large industrial centre in the north.

  ‘You do know that our chain has a subsidiary member up there for which I would be happy to write you a recommendation.’

  ‘That’s very generous of you, sir, but…’

  ‘Don’t tell me. You were hoping to go straight. Don’t apologize, Winston. It can happen to the best of us. Well, in that case, all I’ll say is that I’ll put a note here stating that you wish for five performances per day shift. But I’ll still have to base my decisions today on the bottom line. Your ETD could do with some improving. Have you been keeping to the regimen?’

  ‘I eat oysters for breakfast, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘What I meant, of course, was a balanced diet, eight hours of sleep per night, a mile a day in the pool, and private intercourse kept to a minimum.’

  ‘I do my best, sir, but my girlfriend doesn’t know what I do for a living, and so there are times when I’m forced to keep up appearances.’

  ‘It’s never a good idea to lie,’ Raul said sharply. ‘Especially not to a woman you’re serious about. What will you do if you walk into a cubicle one day and find her waiting for you? It has happened, you know.’

  ‘Yes, sir, I know, but meaning no disrespect, sir, I’m not too concerned about that eventuality, because she just isn’t that kind of girl.’

  ‘Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you,’ Raul said curtly. He switched off the videophone, but it didn’t do him any good. He still hurt as much as if Winston had punched him in the stomach. Not that the boy had meant any harm. Not that the boy had any idea how arrogant he was in his innocence. As Raul moved back to his desk, he shrugged his shoulders and reminded himself that there was no insurance. Everyone gets fooled once – and then gets to spend the rest of his life acting… professional.

  For once, the prospect was comforting. He was happy to divert his attention to the dilemma of the client in number forty-five, who claimed now that she had specified apricot and not strawberry yoghurt for her body meal. And the client in number fifty-four, who was not happy with Alan, and wanted Brian before lunch or else… except that Brian, as usual, was fully booked. Meanwhile, there were the trainees waiting for him in the dummy room, and as he prepared to go over to speak to them, he wondered if the best solution wouldn’t be to try a few of them out on the floor that afternoon. Not only would this solve a few of the logistical problems created by the staff shortage, it could also provide them with a hands-on learning experience that could prove useful for class discussion – and himself with a much needed respite.

  But there was no escape from the object of his dissatisfaction. As he headed for the disgruntled clients in numbers forty-five and fifty-four, he almost collided with her, an apparition not in white now, but in green, as he wal
ked past the swinging doors leading from the Roman Baths.

  She looked refreshed, transported, and in a curious way, absent.

  She looked straight through him.

  Chapter Six

  Sprawled on a sofa in the Day Beau Centre, Roland watched this same scene from the protective distance afforded by its one-way mirror. Something was not right between this woman and his employer: he could tell from their body language, and few people could read body language as fluently as he. This – he felt, but would never have the audacity to say – was what made him such an invaluable Deputy Monsieur. The Vulcania would go under in a day without Raul’s taut and scrupulous management, but Roland was the one who tended to the human side of things – by which he meant building up morale amongst the beaux, anticipating emotional crises even before they happened, and counteracting the pressures of the job with the right combination of banter, heart-to-heart talks, and recreational diversions. Without these discreet services, the Vulcania would not be a place worth working.

  It was, in a strange way, the most rewarding ministry he had ever had. And again, this was a thought he kept to himself. He assumed that Personnel had chased down his references but there was no sense alarming his charges unnecessarily. It was enough to have been rehabilitated. He didn’t want to have to prove this to all comers every single working day. It was enough to know that here, for once, and possibly because of the treatment he had received in prison, he had a clear idea of his role. Which was not to say he had anything approaching a reliable formula.

  This morning, for example, there was Winston to get back on track. Whatever Raul had said to him on the videophone, it had sent him into a mood. They had all been watching this woman in green who had come so very close to colliding with Raul on her way to the juice bar. They had all seen her accept a menu from the most achingly beautiful specimen of manhood the Vulcania had to offer without even looking at the body attached to the hand. When two of the younger beaux began to fantasize about what they would like to do to her, Winston scowled in his dark and irresistible way and told them to cool it.