Damascus

CHAPTER 2 The delivery corridor down which I was crawling led to the back of the Grand Ballroom, a huge cavernous room that in its midmorning emptiness resembled a gymnasium dressed up for a carnival. Although Luke told me I could stand when the door shut behind us, I had only the fleetest impression of equipment, podiums, low room dividers, Japanese screens, ropes hanging from the walls in haphazard locations. There was no straight corridor through the mess and jumble. Rather, we twisted and turned to zigzag our way to the main entrance. Here and there workmen were puttering around. It reminded me of the floor of an auto show my father had taken my brother and me to once, at a big convention center downtown. As we neared what I later learned was the front, customer entrance to the ballroom, a man came in carrying a large box. Luke stopped him with a gesture, and the man put the box on the floor, opening it for Luke. At first I thought it was a box full of snakes, but in fact it was full of whips, made of dark, twisted leather. Luke picked one up with a nod toward the workman and snapped it, making me jump. "These are fine quality," the deliveryman said to him, a trifle obsequiously. "Hmm," Luke grunted. "All snap and no strength, these." "Oh, no, Mr. Hannigan," the delivery man protested. "Let me demonstrate for you." He picked up a whip and turned meaningfully towards me. I involuntarily stepped back, behind Luke, as if he would protect me. In fact, Luke raised his hand menacingly towards the delivery man. "Try it on her and you'll regret it," he said. "This one is undamaged goods." The man immediately dropped the whip, and it fell to the floor with a dull thud. "Sorry, I really am," he babbled. "I didn't know." Luke gave him his quarter smile. "No harm done," he said. "These whips are fine for our floor models. Excite the men, keep the girls fresh. That's why I ordered them." He picked up the whip from the floor, caressed it for a moment, tossed it back in the box, and strode out the door. I had to trot to catch up, humiliated at the look the delivery man gave me, and where. The foyer was like the concierge area of a hotel, with a long desk with room for at least five clerks behind it. There were cubbies for keys. Luke gave a nod to the lone man behind the desk, in his early twenties and with a hawk nose. He led me behind the desk and into an office there. Although it had no windows--there were none in the entire complex, although several skylights--the office was light and airy, and very masculine. I immediately knew it was Luke's office and Luke's alone. To the right as we entered was his desk, big and ponderous, with stacks of papers in neat piles and a computer with a shooting star screensaver. The desk had a model sandbox on it, about a foot square, with real sand, and miniature shovels, pails, and rakes. Someone had raked the sand into neat rows. The wall behind the desk was all bookshelf, although only about half the shelves had books on them. My eyes stung from crying so much that I could not see the titles of the books. To my left was a living room-like area, with a sofa and two arm chairs, both, I noticed, covered with cloth, not leather. It was the walls that surprised me the most. I had somehow expected whips, or at least swords, to be ceremoniously hung there. But instead, the walls were hung with lovely photographs- -a beam of light through a single leaf; a rock on a mountain that, with its crags and bushes, looked so like a human head it could have been carved; a hugh wave lusciously about to break. Luke watched me take in the room with his quarter smile and then gestured to one of the cloth-covered armchairs. I sat awkwardly, jumping when my hand brushed my own naked thigh. I did not know what to do with my arms. "Relax," he said in a voice that was soft and kind. My eyes filled with tears again, and stung with a sharp throbbing. I rubbed them with both hands. While I did this, Luke had sat on the footstool of my armchair. With a gentleness utterly belied by everything he had said and done to me until now, he took my hands from my face and held them in his until I looked at him, still crying. "You don't have to do this," he said. "Everything I said before still goes. We'll protect you and you won't have to pay us back, ever." At first I could not figure out what he was talking about. But then I remembered, he had made the same offer earlier, before I signed the contract. "And my father?" I said hoarsely. Luke's voice was deep and strong. "Your father doesn't deserve you. He doesn't deserve this. He's not worth it." I didn't say anything. I knew that, for me, there was no choice. Luke was still holding my hands. He watched me for a minute. "You know what I'm saying is true, don't you?" he asked. I nodded. "But you'll give up everything for him?" Suddenly it was important to me to explain things to him. I tried to keep my voice low and even. "When my mother died, I promised her I would take care of him, and my brothers," I said. Luke looked at me appraisingly. "She didn't mean this," he said. I had no reply. My mind was made up. Luke said, "You can change your mind now, but by tomorrow it will be too late to ever go back." "It was too late when I signed the contract," I said. I swear to god that Luke rolled his eyes at that, a gesture I already knew was completely uncharacteristic for him. "You can always break the contract," he said, "and we'll go after your father. But if you stay, tonight you'll be broken in, and nothing will ever undo that." "Then let's get it over with," I said. Luke gave a double take when I said this, and then a snort of laughter. And then he looked sad. "I hope you keep your spunk," he said softly, more to himself than to me. Nobody had ever accused me of having anything remotely related to spunk before. "Did you eat today?" Luke asked, with his soul piercing look again. I nodded. I had had the same breaksfast bar I ate every morning, usually the only thing I would eat until dinner. Lunch in the school cafeteria meant people knew if you had no friends. I preferred to hide in the library. I was so used to being hungry all day it felt like being full. Luke said, in the soft gentle voice that belied his words, "When you are spoken to you will answer out loud. You will address me as 'sir' or 'master'." When he said this I felt a "ping" in my clitoris, the same tingling feeling I had first known when I was a little girl watching some teenage boys force a girl their age to sit in a mud puddle while she struggled. After that, I sometimes felt it when I watched a cruel scene on tv, like a lynching in a western. But I had never connected the feeling with my own life. "Yes, Master," I said, and Luke raised one eyebrow slightly as if he had noticed the breathiness in my voice. TO BE CONTINUED