“I’m not sure I’m in the mood to hook up tonight,” B said.
Daniel clutched B’s elbow in mock alarm. “You? B? Once the terror of the seven club scenes? Too bad, but who cares? It’s fun even if you don’t fuck. Though that’s sort of like going to a casino, not gambling, and having a great time at the all-you-can-eat shrimp buffet. Still, there’s a hot tub, and if you like to watch—and I seem to recall you do—then there’s plenty to see. The guests are usually pretty hot, too, though you have to put up with the dykes and the hets. The guy who throws the parties, Finch, is a total bear, but he likes to mix things up at his parties.”
“I know Finch,” B said. “I used to go to his parties back in the day. But I don’t know….”
“Or you could sit here and drink fizzy water and turn guys down all night,” Daniel said. “It’s your call. You can even come back to my place first, get a shower, I’ll loan you something a little more fashionable than the street-people chic you’re wearing now.”
So B had come, and was spending the evening sitting in fizzy water and turning guys down. Women, too, for that matter. But everyone here was well mannered, and no one seemed more than a little put out by B’s polite refusals. B remembered orgies where everyone was drunk and high and nobody remembered who or what they’d been fucking all night once morning came, but alcohol and drugs were absolute no-nos at Finch’s parties. That made sense, at least when one considered the dungeon—there was stuff down there that no one should use while mentally impaired. B had never been heavily into S&M. A few props, a little leather, that stuff could spice things up, but he’d never gotten off on elaborate scenes and equipment. Still, he had to admire their unseen host’s completism—there was stuff down there B had never seen before outside of a magazine or video.
He slipped out of the water and sat on the edge of the tub for a bit, cooling off. Someone had told him that the people who ran the party periodically turned up the heat in the hot tub to drive people out, so that the same few people wouldn’t monopolize the tub all night. But B figured, since he wasn’t fucking anyone or eating the snacks, his twenty dollars had bought him a permanent place in the tub.
When he saw Marla Mason emerge onto the back deck, B sank down into the tub up to his chin. He did not want her to think he was following her—who knew how she’d react? Of course, he’d planned to be where she was going tomorrow, so he’d have to deal with it then, but he was here to relax, to forget about oracles and monsters and sorcerers for a while. His stomach began to churn, acid sloshing, and he wondered if he was getting an ulcer again.
Some guy with the standard-issue San Francisco hacker-boy look—short hair and chunky glasses—was following Marla like an overeager dog. He was naked except for a nasty-looking steel choke-collar, but the leash wasn’t in Marla’s hand—it was dangling down his back. He was talking—pleading almost—and Marla was ignoring him, clearly annoyed, stalking across the deck with the precision of an irritated cat. B couldn’t help but grin—Marla had found herself a willing submissive, and she wasn’t willing to do anything about it. She did emanate a certain dominant quality, though B wasn’t sure how that would translate to her bedroom preferences. She must be like catnip to the submissive het men here, though.
He thought about going to talk to her, to rescue her from the eager sub, but she probably wouldn’t be happy to see him. Maybe he didn’t have enough psychic ability for her to take seriously—what did he know about it, after all? Maybe he really was a midget among giants. But his dream had been clear: Marla Mason would die unless he did something to stop it, and if Marla Mason died, the whole city would be destroyed—worse than the exodus of busted dotcommers at the turn of this century, worse than gentrification, worse even than the 1906 earthquake and fire. B didn’t know the details, but it had something to do with frogs. Which sounded silly, but the visions didn’t lie, any more than the oracles and sibyls B so often found himself in contact with did.
Only the risk of a whole city getting more-or-less destroyed could bring B back across the bay, from the home of his current low-key equilibrium in Oakland, to this miserable place where he’d been so happy, once, back when he deserved such things.
Marla stood on the back deck for a long moment, then darted down the steps to the basement. Her self-appointed submissive followed.