Slave Brothel Dispatch - Preparations

"Ah."

Marcy widened her eyes at Tam and raised her eyebrows to say 'Say something!'

"Um..."

With a voice that did not match her eyes, Marcy said "And we all know that Phoebe won't do anything of the kind...right Tam?"

"Yeah right. You'll be fine. He's...probably not even going to assfuck anybody." Tambara said trying to sound casual and comforting. Phoebe looked up at her, eyes red, with a quizzical look.

"Why would a journalist assfuck us?" she asked with a stuffy nose.

"Well I mean....you're right. That would be a little odd. Would he consider that unprofessional, I wonder?" Tam trailed off

"Very unprofessional. That's definitely not going to happen." Marcy said in a reassuring tone.

"Of course, if he's from the outside he probably wants to try everything, maybe Amber was right. Maybe he is prolific! Is anal a big thing in America? Maybe he wants to try it here?" Tears began to stream down Phoebe's face again. Marcy shot a fierce look at Tam.

"Thank you for the cultural analysis Tambara. We'll be along in a bit!" she said through gritted teeth and waved Tambara away. Tambara realized that she had made a bad situation worse and walked out of the showers to get dressed and meet Vanessa. As she was exiting, she ran into Norm, who was just walking in. He was a somewhat short, slightly overweight black man in his 60s. As usual he had a modest towel around his waist, shuffling in his shower flip flops with his tiny toiletries bag containing, among other things, his special shampoo and body wash that nobody else was allowed to use.

"Is somebody crying?" He asked in his usual disinterested tone. Norm removed the towel and waited for his water to turn just the right temperature.

"Yeah um...Phoebe is...having....um...emotions." Tambara said, still unsure of what just happened.

"Ah."

At this point Tam was uncertain if the conversation was over or not. She eventually decided it was. "I gotta go."

"Bye Tam."

"Bye Norm."

"Tambara." Norm said.

"What?"

"Clipboard."

"Shit. Got it. Thank you." Tambara said, retrieving it from the ledge and letting the water drip from one of the corners.

"This place would fall apart without me." Norm said calmly as he washed his hair.

He was probably right. Tam certainly didn't feel like she was doing the best job of holding it together today. She hurried out the door and up the stairs to her room.