Lucian Ch. 10

He didn't hear the glass door open, locked as he was in his memories, but he felt a small and familiar body slide against him -- firm, slippery curves, a tongue that licked the water off his nipples.

Honor hugged him tightly, humming an unknown little song, while massaging his aching body.

"It wasn't your fault, Luce," she murmured, her voice drowning in the falling water.

She got to her toes and pulled his face down to kiss it -- wet lips sliding up and down and left and right -- bodies in a tight embrace.

Their eyes locked; Lucian's red-rimmed.

"But she said she was ill, Honey," he said. "She told me she would die. And she did!"

Honor tightened the embrace, giving it a feel of desperation.

"Yes, she did," she agreed, never leaving his eyes. "And, like her whole selfish life, it was all her doing."

Lucian remembered the letter he received in New York, five months later. It was from a French doctor, informing him his mother had died in Paris. She was 43; her entire body ruined by cancer. It had started in her lungs, of course.

In the days leading up to her death, she hadn't been able to breath on her own. It had been really a matter of unplugging the machine.

"I should have been there with her," Lucian said, murmuring the words in the way people do after having repeated them too often -- toneless, automatically.

"She never bothered to be with you," Honor said, knowing it didn't matter.

"That doesn't matter," Lucian objected. "I should have held her hand."

The memory of his mother standing in front of him, begging, came back to him through the steam and spray of the shower.

"I am dying," she'd said, and there hadn't been theatre in the way she said it. She just stood, her shoulders bent, her eyes empty.

He'd stepped forward, taking her hands in his -- speechless. His mind was an icy battlefield with spectral enemies fighting over his lost emotions.

'She's a bitch', he thought, holding her hands, and: 'she's my mother'. 'She betrayed you', he knew, and: 'she's dying'.

"Luce? I'm back! Let's go!"

He remembered Honor standing in the entrance of the room, coming in from the street wearing her short fifties' cow-print coat over a shining black pencil skirt, dark tights and pretty ankle-boots.

Her eyes flashed from Lucian's teary eyes to the plastic woman, and she said:

"Oh, wow, sorry; you have a visitor."

"Who are you?" his mother asked, sounding bitchy -- all tragedy gone.

Lucian closed his eyes, knowing the tone -- the querulous attitude.

"Honor," he said, "please meet my mother. Mother, this is Honor, my personal assistant."

His mother gave the girl a slow once-over.

"Personal, eh?" she then said. "Is he also," she went on, waving her hand towards Honor's crotch, "you know... a sissy? I thought so. He looks real enough, though. Nice boob job, honey. Did you pay for that, Lucian?"

Honor froze, her mouth half-open, her wide eyes moving from his mother to him, like two huge gray question marks.

It was the moment Lucian learnt the truth about his mother. He learnt what she really thought about girls like Honor -- which of course was how she thought about him.

He remembered feeling her hands holding him down while Kurtz plunged a needle in his thigh. She'd dumped him at Norton's, signing for anything they decided to do to him -- and then she abandoned him.

Of course, he'd known it all the time: she didn't give a damn. Not about him, not about anyone.

"Please, leave, mother," he said. "I don't want to see you again, ever."

"But, but Lucian," she stammered, moving closer, her heel scratching on the floor. " I told you I am... You can't... can't..."

"Leave," he said, trembling. "Now."

"I'm your mother," she said.

"Yes," he sighed. "And that is why you leave NOW!"

He hated how his voice broke as he yelled at her, pushing her back and making her stumble.

"But Lucian..." she mumbled.

"Jean-Claude!" he yelled, trying to reach the assistant in the studio.

"All right," his mother said, clutching her pouch against her new tits. "I get it, you ungrateful freak. I hope someone catches you and rapes you in a dark alley, and CUTS that useless caricature of a cock off your body and feeds it to your FAGGOT mouth!"

Her words resounded in the empty rooms and could still be heard after she'd left. They resonated to the present day, under a shower on the other side of an ocean -- Honor's arms around him.

Arms that had been there too, when he sank to his knees, crying.

***

After the shower, they'd made love like they always did when Lucian was depressed by his memories.

Tender love it was, on the bed, after she dried his and her body -- kissing and fondling and sucking until the pale, shrieking ghosts returned to their secret place, where they waited for another time, another moment.

Then the two rubbed their bodies with sweet oil and lotion, deciding to return to the meeting: the one fight they'd come to Norton's for, wielding the weapons they knew how to handle best -- charm, grace and beauty.

Lucian put on the second outfit he'd selected before coming to Norton's -- every outfit a perfect choice for each occasion.

Aggression was the ticket for now; a black and studded leather jacket with Parker-sized shoulders, hanging open to show his white, naked chest and belly down to his low-riding leather pants. They felt tight around his ass and thighs, flaring out from his knees to almost cover his five-inch stiletto platform heels.

Honor styled his hair into a greased rock and roll quiff. Then she painted his face in stark contrasts, setting off his white skin with dark Amy Winehouse eyes.

Looking in the mirror he had to bend his knees a bit to fit in the frame. Good, he thought: tall and intimidating; not bad for a bullied shrimp of a loser sissy-boy.

Honor herself picked a mock-secretary uniform, allowing her tits to billow over the edge of a corset she wore under a short jacket. Her skirt was, well, a wide belt, really, and her heels even had an inch on Lucian's.

"Ready," she stated, picking up a professional-looking clipboard to press against her bosom. "Let's eat them."

Click-clacking down the wide marble corridor, the slanting rays of sunlight flashing on and off on their sashaying bodies, Lucian couldn't stop feeling like a cowboy hero on his way to high noon.

'The reckoning', he thought, and chuckled. He knew they'd all be there; he was ten minutes late to ensure that.

To his satisfaction, they'd kept the seating arrangement he'd imposed. It looked as if they'd never left at all, although there were two new faces ­-- no doubt Parker's lawyers arriving at last. Lucian nodded and welcomed them.

"Well," he then said, pausing to enjoy the effect of their entry. "Let's kill this baby."

It was an awful line, but he couldn't resist.

"Mister...ehm..." he went on after seating, smiling and nodding at his elder lawyer, "you so very accurately described the situation before we had this, well, intermission; now please let the ladies hear our proposition."

Despite his lack of attention, Lucian knew exactly what the man had said before. It had been the meanest, stinking turd of blackmail, wrapped in the smoothed little bag of perfumed silk and velvet.

There was never a direct threat or even a rude insinuation, but it was all there.

Let's call it a whole new application of the Norton's Smile.

There'd been references to names and quotes and more, very sensitive, names and facts, and allusions to audio-visual proof, without stating once what they were all about. But Parker knew, and Kurtz knew, and probably the others too.

There had been suggestions of secret audits, of shady book keeping practices with far-away bank accounts.

Half the lawyers' firm and half an accountants' firm had dug for months into every innocent-looking corner of Parker's little empire.

They'd found a lot, each of it an innocent-enough detail, but put together and in the right light it was alarming enough to make Gloria Parker looking even paler now than she usually did.

There wasn't enough for a lawsuit, but the publicity alone would touch so many vulnerable reputations of so many powerful people and corporations, that the threat alone would suffice quite nicely.

Parker had overreached herself.

Maybe once, years ago, she really had this ideal of saving fragile boys and giving them a future, how bizarre her means might have been. But, as so often, absolute power corrupted absolutely.

Alumni of Norton's Academy proved to be a gold mine, especially after she kept increasing her share in the fruits of their labor. And, under the flag of her idealism, it became easier and easier to skim Norton's growing revenues and sluice them away for her own, very unidealistic purposes.

She took bribes from companies that sought contracts with Norton's singers and musicians, dancers and actors -- actresses, rather. And after that she still took huge bites off their individual income.

It also became attractive to persuade sponsors that it was in their interest to increase their contributions. The trick pulled off with Lucian's father was hardly a one-off experiment -- as was the date with Martinez.

Gloria Parker became insatiable.

Lucian wondered if Dr. Kurtz and the others knew about this. Were they just abused idealists, or maybe blackmail victims too?

Or did they share in the bonanza?

He watched the doctor's crooked smile, and he remembered how she must have been the one that prepared him for Martinez. Did she design treatments for special 'creations', like Jean Bardot, the famous soprano alumni of Norton's?

And what about Mamselle with her subtle version of the same smile? Or Fontaine? He sure hadn't seen surprise on their faces when the lawyer summed up the findings.

And what about Coach?

While the younger lawyer -- wearing his fashionable jacket again -- distributed a second report, Lucian's thoughts went back to the moment he knelt with Honor by the three plates outside his room, more than two years ago.

"I have a plan," he'd said, after asking her to join him.

Okay, that had been a bit of bluff, hadn't it? A lot, rather.

Let's say he had an idea about the first step -- and a notion to play it by ear after that. It was all about a photoshoot he was asked for, or rather: about the shooter.

His name was Allan Petric, and, according to his own words, he was on his way to become the new Helmut Newton. Well, that was ambitious, but he really was more than just a wannabe: he did get some of his work published in alternative fashion magazines like Spook and Auxiliary -- and he'd even almost got one picture in Vogue.

It was that picture which ignited the Plan -- a photograph of Lucian, taken a while ago.

It showed him naked, covering his crotch with a bunch of blood-red roses. It was a photo he'd hated when he saw it first, but, according to Petric (androgynous models being the rage), it had intrigued the Vogue editors, and they'd asked him to do a real fashion shoot with "that pale boy."

"He asked Parker last week to let me go to his New York studio," Lucian told Honor. "And she said 'no', the stupid cow."

Honor grinned at the sneer.

"So?" she said.

"Well, when he asked, I was in this dizzy spell where I thought I was a girl," Lucian went on. "But I cured myself and dumped Martinez, the fucking child-abuser, didn't I?"

They laughed.

"Let's get inside," Lucian said, rising to his feet. "Nobody needs to know."

So, they went into his room and sat on the bed.

"When I got back, Parker told me she wasn't pleased with what I did," he went on. "Well, I told her I wasn't really pleased with what she did."

Honor giggled. "Great," she said. Lucian chuckled back, laying an arm around her shoulder.

"Then she really said something interesting, you know?" he went on. "She told me Norton's lost a lot of money over my refusal to fuck the millionaire bastard -- and that I would have to pay for that."

Honor smiled; then she frowned.

"That... Petric," she said, "will he pay? Does he even have money?"

Lucian shrugged.

"He said he would pay a -- what did he call it? -- an advance, of a few thousand dollars that Vogue promised him. And he'd pay for everything else, like travel and stay."

Lucian knew the amount wouldn't impress Parker, not after losing a sponsor. But the name Vogue might prove to be, well, a carrot.

It did.

The shoot was a success, and Vogue asked for more. Then Elle did, and Paris fashion houses, and Chanel, and even a German car brand. Lucian had taken Honor with him and they never returned to Norton's.

Until today.

Watching the women's faces, Lucian started to pay attention to what the lawyers read from the report. It was about power and the transition of it from them to the consortium.

Lucian remembered every fight and tear and explosion of frustrations behind the formulation of the words now spoken.

He saw the faces again; the tragic faces of all those beautiful, graceful and utterly torn-up models and dancers and violinists and singers and actors and porn stars gathered around the huge conference table at the New York law agency.

There'd been twenty of them, and they only were the very tip of a submerged iceberg. They were the ones who'd been able to foot the money to finally put an end to the injustice done to them and all the others who'd been caught in the spider's web of Norton's Academy of Excellence.

It might have been understandable for them to lose all reason and cry words like 'sue them', 'lock them up!' and 'kill the bitches'. But no one did, because what had been done to them went much too deep for that. It had compromised them.

They'd been victims, hadn't they? But they'd also been allies.

It would have been too easy to call Norton's their doom; it also was their one and only chance in life. To some it might have been hell, but it was still sweetest heaven compared to what their life would have been without it. Kurtz may have disfigured their bodies and subdued their spirits; and Fontaine may have sissified their every word and move, but how else would they have seen the success and the wealth they accumulated, the lives they led and the fame they savored -- even after being robbed by Parker?

They were in a perfect bind, and they knew it. Their hidden rage was strangled by the utter lack of alternatives.

Three people found a way, though, and it happened at a fashion show in Los Angeles. One of them was Andrea Pecci, the most famous androgynous fashion model at the time; the second had been Nathalie Porter, an Oscar-nominated actress; and the third was this upcoming albino model, Lucian Gaines.

They met after the show, knowing about each other's background -- and were soon glued together by their common frustration.

Pecci graduated from Norton's four years ago. Porter left the Academy two years before that. And Lucian hadn't really left the school properly, had he?

Things went quickly after that first meeting, their agenda's and itineraries being putty in the hands of Honor. And the rest, as they like to say, was history. A history leading straight to the mouth of a graying lawyer saying to Gloria Parker:

"Do you have any first questions, Ma'am? We still have some time to answer them, I suppose."

One of Parker's lawyers leaned over, advising the principal not to answer until they'd talked, but she ignored him.

"You say I'll keep my position?" she asked, "and my colleagues as well?"

She turned from the lawyer to Lucian.

"Why?" she said, her eyes wide, her eyebrows raised.

Lucian smiled and shrugged his overstuffed shoulders, while spreading his hands, palms up.

"Well," he said. "That's an easy one, the 'why', because we have no choice. Where would we go, the poor, bullied little faggots, the busted little crossdressers? What life would we have in our closets, deadly afraid to show who we really are? How would we find the courage to develop our sissy talents and make money? How would we ever make money, apart from sucking cocks? What can we do but grow fake tits and get ourselves fucked on the internet or in cheap porn movies?"

He kept his eyes on Parker, before letting them travel to Kurtz and the others.

Returning to the principal, he went on.

"You run a great place, honey," he said, softening his voice and placing a hand on her forearm. "You, and Kurtz and the other... ladies. But you need someone to keep you from... straying, don't you?"

He chuckled.

"I know you did it all to save our sorry little souls, Gloria," he went on. "But I guess you yourself must be the sorriest little victim of all, seeing how you scurried away six million over the last five years..."

He grinned at the blushing woman.

"So, I know you applaud our help to keep you on the straight and narrow -- finally a real board of directors for you, instead of this bunch of horny sponsors you make convene how often? Ah, yes, once a year, during the reunion -- tomorrow, isn't it?"

He turned to Honor and they giggled.

"They really did a great job of controlling you, didn't they?" he asked, concentrating on Parker again. "Which agenda points come to mind? Ah yes: how to more easily find the little asshole of the Barb that sits on your lap? How to ensure more of those little faggots to suck your cock?"

My God, Lucian thought, the cow does know how to blush.

"I... I," she stammered. "We never..."

"Anyway," he interrupted. "We'll help you not having to worry anymore where the money for your idealistic project has to come from -- or where it is supposed to go. Your board will convene for the last time. Your last fucking reunion will stop tomorrow, right in the middle of the copious dinner, and right before the fun would start."

He rose.

"Anyway, thank you, ladies," he said. "And you, gentlemen of the law, I leave you to hammer out the final contract. Please excuse us, my sweet secretary and I must leave. We really, really need to meet some nice people."

***

The weather was balmy as ever; the sun fading. Like every year before, the singers sang, the musicians played, and the fashion show was beautiful. The damask cloth on the round tables contrasted brilliantly with the fresh green of the lawn, even in the gathering dusk.

The first garden lights appeared.

Barbs and Boobs that accompanied the tuxedoed sponsors, wore colorful gowns and well-trained smiles, whispering ego-boosting little words into their partner's ear -- giggling as their tight asses were fondled.

Lucian waited in a wing of the stage, keeping out of the audience's view.

He'd loved watching the pageant of blushing girls passing him by to show off their lovely creations -- knowing how excited and nervous they must be.

He himself wore high summer's linen.

It was a suit, kind of, with an open, slinky jacket and low-riding, tapering 7/8 pants that left his ankles free to expose 6-inch platform heels.

He wore nothing under the jacket but a silk tie, loosely knotted. His hair was severely slicked back to show long, dangling earrings to go with the bunch of bracelets that jingled on his left wrist.

His make-up was pale; even his eyes seemed naked.

The total effect was a perversion of 'business suit meets catwalk'-- a mixture of high fashion and streetwise bluff.

After the pageant of would be models had bathed in their well-earned applause, the stage turned empty and gloomy under its high awning. The audience at their tables murmured; he could even hear the clanging of glasses and silverware -- and the girls' giggling of course, interrupted by an occasional squeal.

This was where Parker would step forward and do her predictable annual speech.

Not this year.

This year, a pulsing beat sprang from the humming silence, increasing in volume until it boomed like an omnipresent heartbeat. And from it rose the raw voice of Nina Simone, spitting out the words of her famous song: "Got my arms, got my hands, got my fingers, got my legs..."