Bondage

BONDAGE
By Serin
Warning: No actual bondage. Get over it.

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"October 25th, 1984. Diane, espionage is popularly supposed to be an exciting line of business. When I transferred to Counterintelligence from Violent Crime I hoped to find work that would adequately challenge my faculties without overly challenging my belief in any possibility of human goodness. The routine placement of a small packet in the temporarily unwatched briefcase of Agent Tim Lawhon, who can't be approached directly due to the deep-cover nature of his work in the defense industry, was not really what I had in mind, but as on several previous occasions, that is the task I now find at hand. A rare opportunity for getting close to Agent Lawhon, or more accurately to his briefcase, has come up: he will be at a large masquerade party thrown in the Laguna Beach mansion of a Lockheed executive this evening, and as a considerable number of out-of-town aviation industry representatives have been invited to this particular party, it has not been difficult to secure an invitation, and my unfamiliar face will not arouse suspicion.

Tonight's transfer will be only slightly complicated by a need for careful timing: the expected intelligence that Agent Lawhon needs will not arrive in San Francisco until five o'clock this evening. Gordon has already found a way around this possible difficulty, however. Agent Sheila Prater has also been secured an invitation to the party, and, dressed I am told as Emma Peel from 'The Avengers,' will transport it to Laguna Beach and leave it in the piano bench in the music room. By no later than nine o'clock I will be able to retrieve it and transfer it to the Agent Lawhon's briefcase in the cloakroom. My biggest challenge in the whole affair seems to be coming up with a costume on short notice. I think I'll wear my tuxedo, perhaps with a white dinner jacket, and declare myself to be James Bond. Very practical, you'll agree, and if a bit ironic, well, a man is entitled to a little irony every now and then."

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My first portent that this particular assignment would be other than routine came in the form of a phone call from Gordon Cole's assistant as I was laying the various components of the tux out on my bed.

"Listen, we have a little snag. It turns out that there's a possibility that Agent Prater could be recognized from a previous assignment. It's slight, but we don't want to risk it. You proceed as planned, though. Albert Rosenfield is here, and Gordon has pressed him into service. He'll make the drop using Sheila's invitation."

"I don't suppose there's any chance he'll be wearing her costume."

"I guess it didn't fit, he said he was going to Chinatown to get something and then he'll be on his way. Hang on, Gordon's here, he wants to say something..."

"COOPER?"

"Yes, Gordon?"

"LISTEN, BE SURE TO WEAR A RED CARNATION."

This was a new twist. "What's the significance of the carnation?"

"MY THOUGHTS EXACTLY. MUCH COOLER THAN THAT NEW GUY. HE WAS OKAY AS THE SAINT BUT HE'S JUST NOT JAMES BOND."

"OKAY, GORDON!"

"TAKE CARE, COOP."

"AS ALWAYS."

Well, this will be interesting, I thought. Albert was a sensible choice as a fallback courier; he was a professional, and very loyal to Gordon, and there was certainly no danger of his being recognized. But he privately disapproves strongly of intelligence work. Secrecy and surveillance sit poorly with him, being associated in his mind with HUAC and classified dossiers on the private lives of civil rights leaders. Needless to say, my relationship with him had not become easier with the new direction my career had taken.

The house where the party was being held was a vast white stucco complex that crawled up the side of a hill like a South American shantytown. The adjoining living room and dining room, where the majority of masqueraders congregated, were each some forty feet long, with a western wall made entirely of glass. This was really all the ornamentation the rooms required, I thought, particularly when the sun was setting over the Pacific. Unfortunately, the owners of the house did not share this opinion; the place was decorated in an unintelligible mix of baroque and swank, with a little Southwestern Mission thrown in for good measure. Add to this a large number of historical personages and fictional characters, each making enough noise for two or three people, and nine o'clock couldn't come fast enough.

I had not seen Albert, but the party had spilled over into many rooms and terraces of the house. My costume seemed to be a success; everywhere I went, people pointed at me and said, "James Bond," except for one or two who mistook me for a waiter. I was handed completely unasked for vodka martinis. I don't really like vodka martinis, but if I tried to set one down another appeared in short order, so I just held onto the glass as I made my way to the music room. Browsing through the music at the white grand piano, I quickly found what I was looking for: what appeared to be a sealed envelope from a commercial one-hour photo developing business. Good old Albert.

Minutes later, I stepped unobserved from the cloakroom. Mission, such as it was, accomplished. But I was sure he was there somewhere and I didn't want to leave without seeing him. There was no reason for us to avoid each other. It was Agent Lawhon who needed to be careful about being watched, not us; we were nobodies in this crowd. Admittedly, the last time we had seen each other, over a month ago, we had argued, and he had been even more inventive and acerbic than usual on the subject of protecting democracy with the methods of fascism. Still, he wouldn't simply perform his assigned task and leave without seeing me, would he? Fortunately I had a better grip on my glass than I had on that certainty as I made my way back through the library, the art gallery, the billiards room, the card room.

Next to the kitchen was a passage I hadn't seen before; a short hallway lined with Art Deco wall lamps. A door on one side opened onto a TV room, in which Marilyn Monroe and Napoleon were playing chess on a polar bear skin rug. I apologized for interrupting them and advised Marilyn to consider the Gunderam defense. Napoleon glared at me and said, "Very clever, Mr. Bond." I retreated. On the other side, one door opened onto a game closet, another onto a half-bath, with gold fixtures and walls and door covered with quilted red Naugahyde. At the end of the brightly lit hall I came to a large sunken room with a row of glass doors to one side and a long curved standing bar upholstered in dark green leather ahead. The overhead lighting was dim, but a low soft shimmery light emanated from the pool area outside and from behind the bar, where an enormous aquarium housed huge slow prehistoric-looking fish.

At one end of the bar clustered a group of genially drunken "Wizard of Oz" characters. Toward the other end, Albert sat on one of the rattan barstools. Though his back was to me, I recognized him by his posture right away. At first sight I thought perhaps he had duplicated my costume as a little joke. But as I walked down the steps, he caught the movement reflected in the aquarium glass and turned, and I saw that his white jacket was a formal Mandarin, buttoned all the way to the high stiff collar.

"Mr. Bond," he said as I approached, nonchalantly waving a hand sheathed in a shiny black vinyl glove, "You'll forgive my not shaking hands."

I felt myself smiling as the tension that had been building between my shoulder blades and behind my eyes melted and was replaced by an agreeable, almost giddy, appreciation. "So we meet again, Dr. No," I said as I set my martini glass on the bar, where it was whisked away by a grinning bartender. "My favorite archnemesis," I said in a low voice, regarding him with so much affection I could hardly contain it.

"Flattery, Mr. Bond? You disappoint me." Seemingly from nowhere – he had no visible pockets – he produced a bidi cigarette in a black lacquered holder. I picked up a monogrammed matchbook from a dish on the bar to light it for him.

"No, it's true," I insisted, "I always thought it the height of injustice that Goldfinger of all people got the excellent theme song. You were robbed."

The Diabolical Mastermind liked that. He bent his head a little to study me with a speculative, sidelong gaze.

"Don't imagine that by turning on the charm you can get me to tell you all about my fiendish designs, bare my soul about the dark forces that drive me, and then maybe show you my undersea nuclear reactor. I mean, fool me once, shame on you..."

I hid my laughter by taking a sip from the fresh martini that had appeared beside me. A small sip. I really, really hate vodka martinis. A well-made martini is a beautiful object to contemplate though, and that surely counts for something. I studied mine for a moment, aware of inner tension rebuilding itself into an altogether different shape. Then I leaned toward him and said, "Then it seems you have me in your power."

"I enjoy having you in my power," he confided after a second's pause, "In fact, that's the real reason I built my supposedly impregnable island stronghold in the first place. Because – if I may speak for a moment on behalf of the sovereign disenfranchised, on behalf of the racially marked and the politically suspect, on behalf of the queer, on behalf of the freakish, on behalf of all the angry geniuses and noncompliant Others – I am forced to concede that for a tool of the establishment you are very, very hot." As he got to the end of this amazing little speech he deliberately looked away to tap the bidi out on the edge of an ashtray. Then he looked up. "Would you like to see my nuclear reactor now?"

"I would love to see your nuclear reactor."

"Let's walk," he said.

I followed him from the room and as we ascended into the little hallway I quickly pulled him through the red Naugahyde-covered door and pressed him up against it. We were kissing like fools before the door was even entirely shut, feverish, famished kisses.

"I guess the bearskin rug was occupied," he said, as I tried to find the tiny hidden buttons holding that damn collar in place.

"As a matter of fact, it was," I said, finally uncovering the hammering little pulse in his throat and fastening my greedy mouth upon it. He pulled me to him with all of his strength, and I pushed against him, looking for, and finding, the evidence that his desire was accelerating as quickly as my own. "So we meet again, Dr. No," I said softly against his neck, and felt him laugh silently in response.

"Do you suppose James Bond spent much time making out in the bathroom with archvillains?" he asked.

"Probably not," I answered truthfully, "But if he did, it would be exactly like this." I held off devouring him for a minute to rest my forehead against his. "I have to confess, *I* think there's something exhilaratingly adolescent about sneaking away from a party to make out in the bathroom. Exhilarating because of course I never did anything remotely like it when I was an actual adolescent."

"I was pretty much a washout as the Great American Teenager myself," he said, "So I see your point."

As always, his dark eyes looked deeper, softer, and more receptive in extreme closeup, though I was never certain how much this was an actual change of expression attributable to physical intimacy and how much simply a change in perspective. At times I would watch the quick darting mental ephemera I saw there for as long as he would allow – more than a few seconds usually tried his patience - but caught in the rushing buildup I had to kiss him again, a really deep insistent kiss. His hand slid between our bodies and rested against my stomach for a second. Then with what seemed like a single fluid motion his vinyl-gloved fingers unzipped my fly and snaked inside. This produced sensations which render me completely inarticulate now as they did then. It was frankly indescribable. Besides, unlike James Bond, I actually take neither sex nor death lightly; underneath the required negotiations of modernity, I always find in myself a primitive man's bone-deep respect for the dark forces that drive us.

The End

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Serin

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