Tch Tch Tch TchTch Tch Tch Tch …

Amy stood quietly a few feet behind Isla, who had several different cameras wrapped around her neck. Both stood watching the model, striking pose after pose under the glaring lights. A curvaceous redhead in a skimpy bikini, she flashed hips and thighs and breasts in front of a cheap beachfront background.

Tal Farlo held a camera to his face, shooting off a series of pictures. His tall, slender frame was bent forward, bald head the color of dark chocolate. He spoke in a smooth Dominican accent and was jabbering at the model, who seemed to understand him, but Amy was almost completely at a loss.

“Nuh matta how haad mi try, mi cyaah get ova har, it comin’ like she obeah mi!”

Tch Tch Tch TchTch Tch Tch Tch …

When the model broke for a costume change, Amy and Isla stepped away from the set to a corner of the studio. “Thanks for coming down,” Isla said.

“Glad to get off the compound. Visiting you is one of the only things they’ll let me do. I’m half-surprised they didn’t have me tailed.”

“You never know.” Amy laughed, but it went cold fast and she glanced around, feeling suddenly conspicuous and vulnerable. “Anyway, the reason I called you down, you wanna go for a walk?”

“Is that it? Just … a walk?” Amy laughed.

Isla looked around and leaned in just a bit, voice low and conspiratorial. “Let’s take a little walk.”

A few minutes later they were stepping out of the Lane Photographic Studio in Hollywood, cars belching exhaust into the air, the sidewalks lined with the names of dead celebrities.

Finally, Amy asked, “So what’s with all the cloak and dagger?”

Isla waved her off. “It’s not such a big thing, but I didn’t wanna talk about it up there, it’s kind of a sensitive thing.”

“What is it? My God, Isla, are you all right? You’re not … sick, or anything?”

“No no, it’s nothing like that, Amy, it’s … it’s about you.”

After a tense and nervous silence, she asked, “And … what about me?”

“Okay, well, first of all, I want you to keep an open mind.”

“Keep an — ? Isla, you’re starting to scare me a little bit.”

“Promise?” She shot Amy a serious look.

“Well, um, yes, I promise, now what is it?”

Isla looked around and started digging through her purse. “Well, I was talking to a friend of Tal’s, calls himself The Jaguar —

“The Jaguar? What is he, a superhero?”

The shared a little chuckle. Isla went on, “As you can imagine, he’s a really wild guy, totally into the party scene, underground stuff, real European-style shit.”

Amy thought about it, but she didn’t like the conclusions she was already coming to. “Yeah? And … ?”

“And he mentioned this … this agency … you promised to keep an open mind, right?”

“Isla!”

“Okay, well, it’s kind of like a … like an escort service, I guess, but they specialize in role play.”

“Role play? I don’t get it, you mean a guy shows up and pretends to be James Bond?”

“Um, no, not James Bond, exactly.” Reading Amy’s growing impatience, Isla said, “They specialize in kidnapping role play, abduction scenarios, things like that.”

Amy had to stop walking, her stunned mind confusing her brain, legs shutting down.

Isla stopped and turned. “I know, it’s kind of … out there, I get that.”

Amy nodded and kept walking. “Oh, you get that, do you?”

“Yeah, but honestly, Amy, I think it’s just what you need.”

“Me? And why’s that?”

Isla huffed, rolling her eyes. “God, Amy, a million reasons. First of all, what you need, Amy is to get laid, seriously, seriously laid!”

Amy threw out a huff of surprised laughter, but it faded quickly. “Isla, really — ”

“It’s true! Think about it, Amy: What was the best sex you ever had?”

Amy didn't like to think about it, but she knew there was no getting around the question. “You mean … the precise time, or the person — ?”

“Either or, dummy!”

Amy sighed, her memory illustrating a sheltered and uninspired romantic life through her late teens and into her early twenties. “Michael, I guess. He wasn’t bad.”

“Wasn't bad? That’s the best sex you’ve ever had, he wasn’t bad? I think you can do better than that.”

“Well, yeah, I’m sure I can, but … you think I need to get kidnapped? It’s a little extreme, isn’t it?”

“But that’s exactly the point! Don’t tell me you've never thought about it, with all the TV shows and movies. Have you looked at the internet? There’s a lot worse that than out there. And this isn’t even sex, the Jag said. I guess you can do that if you want, but it can also be just, y’know … ”

“No, I don’t know.”

“He says it’s whatever you want it to be. I guess some people get whipped or tied up, and I’ll bet a lot of ‘em go for the sex too, but … he said, one person he knew just wanted to be tied to a chair and yelled at for six hours, then shoved into a closet to jerk himself off.”

“Jerk himself off?” Amy squinted in confusion.

Isla nodded. “Hey, people are complicated, what can you say? And I really think this could be good for you. You want a little adventure outside the mansion, right? Well, once the mouse is away, I say, ‘Let her play!’”

“Isla — ”

Isla cut her off, “This could put you right, Amy, put everything else into perspective. A little vacation from reality, with a good hard fuck at the end of it? That's a no-brainer. And talk about independence from your family, you know they’d never go for it. Of course, just rebelling is no reason to do anything.”

“No,” Amy said, trying to quell her little smile, “of course not.” And though she wasn’t that close to admitting it, Amy couldn’t deny a kind of unspoken attraction to the bondage subculture, little as she knew about it. She only knew she was supposed to deny her interest and curiosity, or she’d come off like some weirdo deviant.

“The Jaguar said it’s perfectly safe, that everybody’s screened and clean, condoms and everything, it all checks out. Costs a fortune, I guess, but what do you care about that?”

Isla’s logic was hard to surmount, and the mountain of it was getting taller all the time, nearly blotting out the sunlight of her doubt. “So, whatever I say happens,” Amy clarified, “and only what I say, and it’s totally safe?”

“That’s what you’re paying for.”

“How much?”

“Just ten grand or so, is what T-Jag said.”

T-Jag?

Amy looked around Hollywood Boulevard as they strolled forward, the gritty underbelly of the famous tourist trap revealing more to her with every step forward. “Would you do it?”

Isla gave it a little thought, one shoulder arching up toward her ear. “Well, it’s not so weird, is it? I mean, there are people out there doing all sorts of shit! Nothing wrong with getting in touch with your wild side once in a while.”

Though she was almost afraid of the answer, Amy asked, “Have you ever … ?”

Isla’s smile told Amy everything she needed to know; well, almost everything. As she learned more and more, Amy realized that she knew less and less. “Isla!” Then, after a conflicted pause, Amy asked, “Who? When?”

“Christian, last year, loved to tie me up.”

“Get outta here!”

“It was the only way he could get it up, actually. He’d be limp as an old gym sock until I put up a bit of a fight, he’d get out the duct tape, and we’d be off to the races.”

Amy was stunned, barely able to put together the very simple and logical question she knew she had to ask. “What about you? Did you like it?”

“Best sex I ever had.”

“Really? Why?”

Isla just shrugged as they walked on. “I dunno. It’s the old dom/sub chemistry, I guess. Who doesn't love the feel of a big, strong man, all that power and energy? That has a natural attraction, it touches on a biological mandate. And there’s nothing wrong with it, society promotes it. I think the real maladjustment is in not accepting it, not fully understanding it … or yourself.”

Isla found what she was looking for in her purse, The Jaguar’s business card with a word and a phone number scribbled on the back.

Longshadows.

* * *

Curled up on her plush king size bed, Amy grabbed her laptop and stared back at the results of her google search. The internet was crawling with bondage-related material, nothing that surprised Amy, of course. But the articles on the subject were far outnumbered by websites offering dating services and cheap video downloads.

One Youtube video was an hour-long instalment of a History Channel documentary on the history of sex. The episode entitled Strings Attached was dedicated to the development of the popular kink throughout ancient and modern history.

The stately voice of actor Peter Graves evenly described the development of bondage sex over the years, narrating a series of photographs of ancient artifacts and other evidence. A series of pictures of small stone statues, worn by time, pictures fertility Gods in sexual combat, arms and legs intertwined, several figures gathered around one in the center, and other provocative poses.

“The Ancient Egyptians practiced bondage as a delight of the rich and powerful, which is where the practice remained for much of its time in the human experience. The Indian cultures’ sex bible the Kama Sutra outlines several sexual ways of hitting your partner during sex, though ancient social balances have to be taken into account.”

They sure do, Amy thought. Nobody’s hitting me, that’s for damn sure!

Peter Graves went on, “However, the modern traces of this include playful spanking and paddling. And the modern Japanese culture still embraces bondage today, indulging the ancient tribal dominance and submissiveness that is so intrinsic to their culture.”

Other pictures, black and white engravings of wealthy men and women in Elizabethan wigs and hoop skirts, happily throttling each other, filled the screen in slow succession. “Aristocrats through European history were eager enthusiasts, with writers like the French aristocrat and revolutionary politician Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade, leading the call of the rich and curious.”

The screen was then dominated by a series of old comic book panels, some in black and white and some in color, most featuring the popular heroine Wonder Woman in tight bondage; tied to chairs, standing against poles, always gagged and often menaced by some monster or criminal.

“Young men of a certain generation grew up on the bondage adventures of Wonder Woman, Lois Lane, Brenda Starr, and countless other Golden Age damsels in distress,” Peter Graves explained as casually as if he was recounting a fishing expedition at a neighborhood pond. “The effects of this influence were pervasive twenty years later, when these same readers were creating programming of their own, on television and movie screens in the United States and across Europe … ”

Amy clicked off the video and kept browsing. Is that it? Are we trained to want this? And then are we trained to be ashamed of it? These people, Wonder Woman, Lois Lane, they're actresses playing characters, they’re drawings, they're not real people. Nothing bad really happens to them …

Still, the whole thing was just too much to digest and Amy closed the laptop shut and fell back onto one of the many large, soft pillows arranged on her bed.

There must be some other way.