Lawyer, Lawyer Pt. 02

"A gun." I nodded sagely.

His eyebrows shot up.

"A gun?" he asked with a laugh. "Hell, no, you can have a gun. Here, have mine."

He opened his suitcase and tossed me a gun and several clips.

"Have you ever fired a gun before?" he asked.

"Not that didn't shoot water," I answered.

"Well, we don't have time for a lesson," he said. "Right there is the safety. Make sure it's off, like this. Aim low. It's got a pretty good kickback. No, what I'm talking about is this."

He reached into his suitcase and brought out a jumble of a brown woolen fabric.

"A new blanket?" I guessed.

"A monk's robe," Karen said.

"When I left home on my way to Hardwood, I figured that I eventually might have to break into the monastery to find out where Julie was," he said. "But if Carrie doesn't come out, you're gonna have to go in and get her."

"How do I do that?" I was incredulous. "Knock on the door and ask for her?"

"Monks have a tradition of hospitality," Julie finally spoke up. "If you knock on the door and explain you need a place to refresh yourself, they pretty much have to let you in."

"But I don't know anything about being a monk!" I protested.

"You just have to remember it's a very ascetic life," Andy said absent-mindedly as he dug through his suitcase for something else.

"Acidic?" I asked. This wasn't sounding good at all.

Andy stopped his burrowing and looked up, not at me but at Karen, as if she were the one who operated my controls.

"What?" I protested.

"Ascetic," Julie said quietly. "It means self-denying. That's why they wear woolen robes and eat very simple meals."

"Here," Andy had found what he was looking for and tossed it to me.

"'The Lonely Planet Guide to Monastic Vacations?'" I read the title. "Seriously? So how'd ours do?"

"Sorry," he said with a grin. "Only one star. Normally, I'd have FBI briefing papers for you, but we don't do a lot of monastery work. Now, if you want to infiltrate the mob, I've got all kinds of stuff about that."

"I don't want him infiltrating anything," Karen interrupted. "There's no way he's qualified to play spy inside a monastery of terrorists that cut off girls' nipples."

"What's your alternative?" Andy asked her calmly.

She didn't have one. It was obvious she didn't like Andy's plan, but she couldn't think of any other way to keep the Opus Christe monks and their FBI friends from starting on Julie's trail.

"So who's going to be protecting me?" Julie finally asked, fixing her glare on Andy.

"I'm afraid you'll have to be with me," Andy nodded. "You and I and Sandy will try to lose ourselves somewhere that there are a lot of these devices, like Las Vegas."

"So you guys will be in Vegas while I'm stuck here in Iowa?" I joked. Nobody else laughed.

"We'd better go now," Andy said. "Just in case they do start checking when they get back to the monastery."

"Fuck this," Sandy stood up, mustering all the anger an eighteen-year-old could.

"What's wrong?" Karen asked.

"I'm not going anywhere with her," she pointed at Julie.

"Why not?" Karen asked.

"It's hard enough getting him to focus on fucking when she's not around," she spat with a glance at Andy. "If she's in the next room, he's never gonna stop thinking about her."

We all stared at Sandy, nobody harder than Julie.

"So what do you want to do?" Karen asked.

"I don't know," Sandy started to cry. "It's so much easier when you're just a doll. This real-life shit is really, really hard."

"Come on, honey," Karen stood up. "Let's go back to our room. Julie, come on and let me give you some clothes to take with."

I was left with Andy as he began to pack.

"You're really not looking forward to this, are you?" I asked. "A week with Julie Pinsky."

"I don't think it's gonna be a dream come true, no," he gave me a small smile.

Half an hour later, there was a knock on the door. It was Julie and Karen. Neither one of them was smiling.

"Ready?" Julie asked sullenly.

"Yeah," Andy answered.

"I'm going, too," Karen said.

"With them?" I was astonished. "You're going to Vegas and I have to go to Iowa by myself?"

"No, not with them," she said. "But I'm not gonna sit in a motel room while you play hero and try to break into a monastery with a gun. Sandy's decided she wants to be a doll again, so I'm taking her back to Hardwood and putting her back in the attic. The kids are already gonna be late for school. So I'll be at home, waiting for you to call."

She was starting to tear up, so I took her in my arms. She finally pushed me away.

"Please don't make it any harder on me," she said, her voice betraying as much weakness and concern as I'd ever heard. Twenty minutes later, after a final briefing from Andy, I was sitting all by myself on his motel bed.

Andy's plan was remarkably well thought out. I rented a new car, a Chevy -- anything but a Ford, he'd said. Ford had been purchased once again by Volvo, and no self-respecting Catholic monk would be caught dead in a car built by Lutherans. I removed all of the stickers that identified it as a rental, and affixed license plates that Andy had brought with him. Again, he'd done his homework. All Catholic Church cars, he claimed, were registered in Virginia, because it offered the cheapest personalized license plates, and had a special "Friend of the Pope" plate that was only thirty dollars extra. My "Friend of the Pope" plate read "92702DF," 92702 being a zip code in Orange County, California, and Orange County having the same initials as Opus Christe. Almost as bright as the guys at the FCC, I thought to myself as I screwed it on. The "DF" actually meant nothing.

I arrived in Iowa City early that afternoon, and spent the waning hours of daylight, dressed once again in my parka, cruising up and down outside the park for signs that the young Julie Pinsky had resumed her jogging. No such luck that day, or the day after, either. It was time for Brother Jason to make his appearance.

I pulled up outside of the monastery in the middle of the following afternoon, the fourth day of the New Year, and nervously banged on the big wooden entrance door. I nearly fell over when it was answered by the same oily-looking putz who'd been out on the road with me in North Dakota. He was dressed in a woolen robe identical to the one that I was wearing, and, very fortunately, did not recognize me as he extended his hand.

"Brother Peter. Thank goodness you're here. We didn't expect you until next week."

Well, hell, I thought. Why bother with my cover story when they already have a good one available?

"I got away a little early," I explained as I shook his hand.

"Well, I'm very glad," he said in those same unctuous South American tones that I'd come to despise. "Brother Donald was injured in, uh, an equipment malfunction and the other brothers have been hard pressed to cover for him."

"Thank you, Brother Tomás," I said. "It's good to be able to be of service, of course."

He smiled at me as he closed the big wooden door behind me.

"You haven't been here before, have you?" he asked.

This was getting better and better.

"No, I haven't."

"Good, let me show you around." He clapped an incredibly strong arm around my shoulder. "Then you can take the remainder of the day for rest and meditation, and begin your work tomorrow."

"Excellent," I agreed.

The tour lasted about half an hour. He showed me the kitchen, where two monks were toiling over large ovens that baked bread. He showed me the chapel. He showed me the gym. The gym? Whoa, missed that in the guide book. He showed me a door just down the main hall from the entrance. That door, he told me with a wink, I'd learn about tomorrow. And then he took me to a tailor's office, where I found myself being measured by a cheerful monk with graying hair. I didn't dare ask what I was being measured for. Brother Peter probably already knew that. Maybe my robe didn't fit quite right.

Finally, I was escorted to my room. And talk about boring! There was no television, no radio; hell, they hadn't even left a Gideon Bible in the dresser drawer. I took advantage of the time to hide the gun and cell phone that Andy had given me because I didn't entirely trust these monks not to search my stuff while I was out of the room. Fortunately, I'd anticipated the lack of creature comforts -- which translated to a lack of hiding places -- and brought a small roll of duct tape. The gun and the phone were soon attached to the inside top of the toilet tank.

At about five (I'd left my watch and wedding ring in the car), a young monk, a Brother Bartholomew, came to fetch me for dinner. As I entered the dining room, another monk introduced himself as Brother Michael and asked me to sit with him. He directed me to one of three long wooden tables with bench seating. Brother Tomás entered a few minutes later and took a chair at the head of our table, and the two kitchen monks began to put steaming bowls of soup in front of each monk. When we had all been served, and had each been given two pieces of black bread, Brother Tomás deferred to yet another monk, who mumbled what was no doubt grace in Latin. When he was finished, I eagerly reached for my bread.

"Go easy on the soup," Brother Michael whispered.

"It's actually been a while since I've eaten, Brother," I said. That's mostly because I was too nervous about this whole monk thing to keep down any breakfast or lunch.

"No doubt," he said. "Trust me, God will provide."

As I watched the monks at the other tables gobble down their food, I tried to imitate my tablemates, who appeared to be toying with the idea of eating but weren't actually making significant inroads into their portions of soup.

Finally, the monks at the other tables finished, and they began drifting away in groups of twos or threes. When they were all gone, Brother Tomás nodded to our table and we all rose and followed him through a door at the end of the dining area. The room on the other side was richly appointed, with leather chairs, Renaissance paintings, and a beautifully carved mahogany dining table. Around the table were eleven seats, and at each place setting was a magnificent spread of silver, a crystal water goblet, two wine glasses, and a china plate topped with what looked like a twelve-ounce porterhouse steak that had been seared to perfection.

Brother Tomás was waiting for me at the door.

"Welcome, Brother Peter," he said with a hearty laugh. "Here's your first script. You'll be on tomorrow, right after morning prayer, so you may want to take it a little easy on the wine tonight. Later, of course, you'll rotate into other spots during the day to make it a little easier. For now, though, come in! Enjoy!"

I glanced down at the sheaf of paper he'd given me as I walked to the seat they'd left open. The title page simply said, "Male: Senator Ralph Porter (Brother Peter). Female: Hillary Clinton (Changeling). MF, reluc, BD, wife, humil."

Well, fuck. I'd gone undercover as a frickin' Catholic porn star.

CHAPTER SIX

The dinner only lasted until eight o'clock, because God forbid we should miss evening prayer. But in those two hours, we ate our steak, drank some exquisite wine (a '76 Chambertin, I think), and smoked cigars. Then Tomás pulled his seat over next to mine, bringing with him a bottle of eighty-year-old scotch. He poured us both glasses.

"All right, boys, roll the tape," he yelled back over his shoulder.

"These are highlights of the day's performances," he told me sotto voce. "Our techs, Brothers Cary and Samuel, always splice together a highlight reel at the end of each day. Maybe five minutes of each show. This first one is Brother Dominic over there." He nodded at a tall monk sitting by himself with a big glass of wine. "He always likes to overindulge a little when he has the late show the next day. He, as you'll see, specializes in requests that require, shall we say, unusually large equipment."

I watched as a man began berating someone -- his wife? -- for her poor housekeeping.

"Most of our orders involve celebrities," Tomás continued. "This one's a special request for a guy's wife."

We watched as Dominic, who was obviously "Gerald Warren" of the Gillian video, began forcing his cock down the protesting wife's throat, and then threw her on the bed for a doggstyle fucking.

"Now this is Brother Francis," he pointed at a monk sitting up front as a new clip began. "He doesn't really like the non-cons stuff."

"I'm sorry, the what?" I asked.

"Non-consensual," Tomás said, taking the cigar out of his mouth to take another sip of scotch. "The rapes, the bondage, the humiliation. Sometimes we can't avoid it. But when we can, Brother Francis has first call."

"I know her," I said as we watched his highlights. "Ann something."

"Ann Coulter," he said. "I have no idea what she's doing now, probably selling Mary Kay cosmetics or something. I think she might have been the one who tried to pull Katie Couric's blouse off to prove she had the word "Liberal" tattooed on her breast, but maybe that was someone else. Anyway, she was a popular conservative back in the '90s and the '00s. Most of our clients, of course, grew up then. So the majority of the requests we get are from celebrities from that era. Here, the guy just wanted a chance to seduce her. Nothing non-con about it. Of course, she'll have to tell him he's the greatest lover she ever had, of course."

Tomás had a good chuckle over that one.

"It's a very delicious irony, you know," he continued, "that most of our clients are incredibly conservative. That just goes with being rich enough to become our clients, I suppose. And that's why we charge ten thousand dollars a video. If they only knew where their money was going . . . Ah, now, this is Brother Nathan. You met him at dinner, I believe, yes?"

"Er, yes," I answered. He'd been sitting across the table from me.

Brother Nathan had apparently done the Britney Spears video. In this one, he was abusing NBC Evening News anchorwoman Natalie Morales, who had apparently angered a certain "Randy Reevis" by not giving enough attention to the 100th anniversary of the inauguration of Warren Harding last March. I guess I could see how you could get pissed off at that. Although maybe not enough to do that to her. Yeessh!

"Well, you probably need your rest," Tomás said to me after the videos had ended. "I know your director, Brother Michael, is eager to get back to work. And of course, our revenues have been off twenty-five percent for the last three weeks, ever since Brother Donald left us."

"Yes," I put down the glass I'd been sipping at and the cigar I'd been pretending to smoke. "You said he had an accident? With the equipment?"

Brother Tomás smiled.

"Don't worry," he said. "We've taken steps to ensure that it doesn't happen again."

"So is he still here?" I asked. "Or did he get transferred somewhere else?"

"Let's just say he's no longer with us," Tomás crushed his cigar in an ashtray.

Something about the way he said it sent a chill up the back of my spine. It had been about three weeks since somebody uploaded the unencrypted video that the FBI had intercepted. I wondered if that was the malfunction that had led to Brother Donald's accident.

"Any questions?" he asked. "Very well. I will see you tomorrow. Someone will meet you after our morning vigils to escort you to the studio. Sleep well, Brother Peter."

Senator Ralph Porter, a Republican who'd represented my own state of Delaware since 2013, apparently had not gotten along very well with President Hillary Clinton, who was just then beginning her second term in office. Apparently the tailor had been measuring me for costumes, and my first was a gorgeous navy blue suit with a red power tie and a white button down shirt. Changing into that suit was the first thing I did once I passed "the door," which apparently involved knowing some combination of numbers to unlock. Well, the second thing, really. The first thing I did was pass inspection. Brother Tomás was waiting for me when I emerged, although he assured me that he was only there to help me get through my first day. He introduced me one more time again to Brother Michael in the control booth and then asked me to strip so he could assure himself that I'd been properly represented. Fortunately, I seemed to be of a similar size to the real Brother Peter. I wouldn't want to have met Brother Donald's fate because my cock was too small. At least women only made fun of you for that.

Finally, after I was properly costumed, I came face to face with Carrie, albeit Carrie channeling Hillary. I could see her eyes light up as she recognized me, and I stepped forward to squeeze her cheeks painfully together.

"So this is the President, huh?" I asked, giving her a quick look up and down. "Pretty miserable excuse for a fuck, isn't she?"

I pushed her away, watching her eyes dim. She still knew that I was her master, but she was smart enough not to insist on it while we were here.

"This is obviously not President Clinton," Tomás said.

No fooling, I thought.

"This is Hillary Clinton from 1994," he continued, "when she was actually attractive, and had a much softer hairstyle. We looked at pictures of her a little later, when she was a senator, and she was just too old and frankly too heavy by then. Once she got to be president . . . anyway, this version, when she was first lady and her only stress was riding herd on her husband's cock, is much more fuckable, don't you think? But we've dressed her up in the kind of thing she tended to wear as President, so I think she'll be perfect for our friend the Senator."

He walked me down to a room that looked like it could easily have come straight out of the White House.

"This stage is Stage A," he explained. "As you see, it's set up for your performance. Stage B is next door, through there; while you're performing, Brothers Cary and Samuel will be setting up the next scene, for Brother Nathan. Well, if you don't have any questions, I'll leave you in the capable hands of Brother Michael. Oh, one other thing. I should have told you last night. Your wine contained a semen extender, whose purpose is to dilute your semen, simply to make more of it available for the video. It is absolutely harmless, and I think you'll enjoy seeing what happens when you finally start spraying. Just don't be surprised, or you'll ruin the take. Good luck, Peter."

"Thank you, Brother Tomás," I waved.

My hands-on education in pornography started out with Brother Michael fitting me with what he called a "pov camera," shorthand for P-O-V, or point of view, camera. It attached to my head, as I'd expected, and it was fairly uncomfortable. But I already knew that it did its job. Looking at the monitor off stage, I could see it monitoring what I was looking at.

"A few rules, Brother," he said as he made the final adjustments. "Try not to use your peripheral vision. The camera won't track that. If you want to look at something to your right or left, turn your head. Second, you probably noticed that the script doesn't spell out much of the sex, right?"

I had noticed that. The script I'd been given let me know that I would be Senator Porter, and that President Clinton would be trying to get my vote on some crucial piece of legislation. Crucial to her, at any rate; Senator Porter apparently couldn't care less whether there were detailed nutrition labels on bags of candy. Once we got past the initial dialogue, though, it was up to me and my director.

"Yeah, so I just do what I want?" I asked.

"In character," he said. "If you're going to do missionary, though, keep it really short. The P-O-V camera doesn't get good perspective on that because you're too close. Our clients tend to like doggystyle and cowgirl -- with the girl riding you while you're lying down -- and blowjobs of course. The senator wants to see Hillary's face covered in spunk, so when you're ready for the money shot, back off and we'll set that up. Now put this earpiece in your ear, so you can hear me. If I see anything, I'll stop you or steer you in a different direction. Hillary's been given her own instructions, so mostly she'll just be playing off of you. Any questions?"