Chapter 8

Except for Natty's vague reference, throughout the long journey they didn't discuss the problem that had upset Natty and Joseph and sent them on their way, or what their plans were once they reached Montreal. All Karen asked for was the address to SHE's place once they reached the outskirts of the city.

Living in Vieux Montreal, a central tourist area, they ended up parking a couple blocks from SHE's apartment where Karen secured their luggage under a tight tarp in the truck bed. Standing below the apartment, they discussed buzzing her or calling from a nearby restaurant. Starving, they decided on the latter. When the hostess approached them to seat them, Joseph asked if they had a public phone and she was nice enough to let him use their private line. While Natty and Karen were seated, Joseph phoned the apartment, letting the phone ring five times before the answering machine picked up. "Obey me and leave a message," it said and Joseph did, only to be thankfully interrupted by SHE herself in a rough, just awakened voice.

"Karen, Natalia, Devi and I are across the street at Chez Justine. Come join us or we can come up afterwards. We'll buy."

"That's not a problem."

"I know it's not, but it's the best I can do to tempt you to join us. And we want you straight."

"Joseph..."

"Just for the night. We need to talk, but first we need to eat. See you soon." Before she could answer he hung up.

Hors d'oeuvres were being eaten when SHE joined them looking like she could use a fix, worn out and haggard, her thin pale flesh projecting a yellowish cast with a pattern of vaguely visible dirty blue veins giving a general impression of green. While the others enjoyed heavy meat dishes swimming in cream of thick gravy she went for the crepe, but the light dish seemed to invigorate her a bit.

Conversation dwelt on Karen's imminent divorce and change of persona, which SHE had always thought was a good idea despite her fondness for Uncle Mike and his quiet gentleness. Everything steered away from the reason why Joseph and the women had so quickly traveled to visit her, though Natty apologized for snapping at her and made clear without being specific that it was purposeful and not a jealous snit.

Not until the end of the meal did SHE inform the surprise guests of her plans for the night, inviting them to join her. Devi would probably not enjoy a night of rehearsal and bar hopping, and Natty was going to beg off though she was actually intrigued by the idea of hearing new music, and whether Karen sensed this or she knew the plight of the new mom bound to a child night and day and looking for the occasional respite or she just wasn't interested in the music scene or all of the above, she volunteered to baby-sit Devi while the others had a night on the town. Then the question came up whether there was room for the unplanned guests in SHE's relatively small apartment which was resolved by her intimate knowledge of a moderately priced hotel on the edge of Vieux Montreal where Linda and Roy were staying, the intimacy coming from her stay there when she first came to town and her occasional involvement with the night manager, a tall and solidly built bull dyke who loved being dominated by the deceptively petite SHE, and who could be persuaded to give them one of the suites if one is available for the price of a regular double.

First they stopped at SHE's apartment, two rooms, a large kitchen and an especially large living room facing out into the street, sparsely furnished with expensive antiques covered in the general chaos covering everything. If the piles of junk, some clothes but mostly boxes of books, empty boxes, three guitars, wires and amps, records and cassette tapes, dirty dishes and pots and pans, posters of the band, drawings and other art work strewn about were cleaned up there probably would have been plenty of room for everyone, but it would take a Herculean effort and SHE was no Hercules.

As soon as the door was closed, Joseph began the confrontation despite the exhaustion of all parties or perhaps because of it. He took out the silver packets of cocaine SHE had given him from his side bag and handed it to her. "You want to keep the heroin?" she said smirking at him. Not having informed Natty of SHE's generosity, he braced for an explosion and when none came, he glanced at Natty who was smiling sadly and shaking her head.

"I figured SHE had left some for you, and that you'd tell me when you were ready to decide whether you wanted to try it again, not wanting me to rob you of the choice before it was made," said Natty. Joseph nodded. "Who knows, I might give it a try, but you will not inject it without me present. And you will never do it without more than a week separating your partaking."

"I hear and I obey," said Joseph.

"Hey, I am the one who must be obeyed!" said SHE looking cute in her fake swagger. "We need to head out soon, and I do need a shower."

"How soon?" asked Joseph.

"The band's meeting at midnight." It was a little after ten pm.

"Good. We have time," said Joseph. "The drugs in the attaché case, do you still have them?"

"No ... What ... Oh fuck ... No, I sold them this morning after dropping off Linda and Roy. Not all of it, but ... Well I have friends and my own needs of course, so..."

"I take it that's not part of the deal."

"Well, I mean it's silly to supply those assholes and expect to buy it back from them at some indecent price, but yeah, I skimmed a few grams out of each bag so they won't notice."

"But they do notice. Dishonesty is part of the business."

"When did this dealing start?" asked Natty.

"That's a bit complicated. Around 1975 things were getting a little tight, profits on food trading and real estate, the cost of importing, all kinds of problems were creating a lull in our business, which was not the way us Niemi's like it. My dad had been training me like his dad trained him, by the time I was in my teens he was my business tutor, slowly bringing me up to speed in the financial, ethical, role playing, timing, risk, everything about making money the Niemi way, which has been a brilliantly successful way for generations, and one of the fundamental tenets, the one which I think has made us continuously grow, is adaptability, the first rule being all rules are made to be broken if necessary. Anyway, unknown to my father, I wasn't just doing fantasy models to learn business; I had my own profit making company selling drugs at my school. When he caught me indulging in my product, snorting some coke, I was sixteen, we had a little sit down in which he told my about my grandfather being destroyed by drugs which was new to me, I was five or six so I don't remember much about Granddad except I remember him being a very sick man before he died. In response, I told him about my profit scheme and showed him the wad of cash. A few weeks later, about the time my parents' divorce was finalized and I had unequivocally chosen to be with my dad while my sisters went off with Mom to Toronto, I don't know if it was a reward for sticking with him, which of course I couldn't not, or it was just one of those timing things, but he brought me into his bedroom and sitting on the bed was a suitcase, I'm not even sure how he got it, but it had four pounds of white heroin, China White they call it. He never told me who he got it from, but I knew we did business a lot with the South of France, so I figured it was someone from Marseille. Anyway, he told me he wanted me to take some of it to Montreal and find a buyer. I know it sounds insane, but I've always been precocious, and I was smart enough to do all I could to demonstrate to my father that I was an avid student both in his tutorials and in high school even if I didn't really give a shit about what I was learning in school. He wanted me to be smart and responsible, to inherit the business and improve on it, and I did everything I could to demonstrate my abilities, even making business decisions which created profit. Anyway, that summer I basically moved to Montreal and began researching the chain of drug sales until I met the men I needed to meet, blowing their mind I'm sure when they saw this scrawny kid with the best heroin in town. I convinced them of the wisdom of dealing with a kid, that being underage the law was less of a threat and would find it as unlikely as they did that I was a supplier. I even managed to deflect one of the men's interest in young girls by bringing him to the best pro in the city, a former employee of one of Dad's whore houses, and yes Karen, he does own whore houses and a couple of gay bars as well, the Niemi family business has never been shy about profiting from sin, and he became her most steady client, and according to her, not bad in bed and generous to a fault. Maybe I should call her and see if she wants to join us. I've always been curious what she's like in bed. So that's how it started and it's been going strong ever since. I heard we're getting a huge shipment of Persian since the Shah was ousted from Iran, so yeah, it's a moneymaker, and the most beautiful part is my father knows none of the people I sell to and I know nothing about his suppliers." She stripped off her shirt and walked to the bathroom. "I need a shower. If you want to talk, I guess you can hang out in the bathroom."

Leaving the door open, she revealed her lithe pale nakedness before disappearing behind the curtain. Instead of joining her in the small space, the three remained in the living room.

"It seems impossible," said Joseph. "It's her successful entrance into the family business which is everything to her."

"The only thing we can do," said Natty, "is to show her the results, the inevitable downward spiral. Maybe it would wake her up. After all, she has proved her skills to her father, and maybe he can bring her into another part of the business."

"The problem is, she has a cold heart," said Joseph. "I don't think she'd care or if she could empathize. As far as she's concerned, it's her world, and the rest of us fools just occupy it."

"What else is there?"

"We'll try it."

"I know the junkie neighborhoods having accidentally passed through them before. I could do some research while you guys are out having fun," said Karen. "And maybe the orgy will wake up her senses, make her aware of the universe beyond her solipsistic pleasure and greed."

"Should we have her call her prostitute friend and give you the chance to satisfy your curiosity?" asked Natty.

"Four women and one man!" exclaimed Karen. "Don't you think that would be too much even for Joseph?"

"With two gorgeous women, we're bound to find a man or two to join us by the morning," said Joseph.

"Three if the prostitute joins you," said Karen.

"But then she'll want to charge for her services," said Joseph.

"Maybe we could play whores, see how that affects things," suggested Natty.

"Not tonight," said Joseph, "we have enough variables."

"I was kidding, you serious boy."

"But maybe some night," Joseph continued, "and I could play the hustler."

"I bet you'd be good at that," said Karen.

"Let's have fun tonight and not worry and see what happens," said Natty. "But could you teach me some exercises, Joseph, to keep me awake and ready for love?"

As they awaited SHE, Joseph guided them through a meditation to sustain their energy distracting all but Joseph when SHE came out of the bathroom looking clean and sexy. She was turned on by Joseph's split focus consciousness, immediately straddling him, releasing his cock from his pants and sending it slowly into her hot, slippery, tight quim. Suckling her teat once he was in as deep as he could go, grasping her ass and guiding its motion, then shoving a finger into her rectum, he had her quickly writhing with passion. Screaming her pleasure, her firm walls quaking around his thick shaft, she held him tight then released him, threatening to fall to the floor with his cock still impaled, but Joseph lowered her slowly until she was on her back, and then withdrew his cock.

The ladies were watching from the moment his cock ascended into SHE's cunt and opened their clothes so they could pleasure each other, enjoying the single minded intensity displayed before them. When Joseph laid SHE on her back, he moved over to Karen and kissed her deeply, then moved to Natty, lowering her onto her back, spreading her open and sliding his dick inside. She wrapped her arms and legs around his torso, hanging in air as she swung back and forth creating a pendulum fuck.

Watching the new performance, Karen stripped off her pants and panties to spread her legs wide. SHE awoke and immediately strapped on her favorite dildo and slid it into Karen. "I always wanted to fuck my auntie," she said before attaching her lips to Karen's and suckling on her tongue. The two heated side by side fucks, filled with sighs and moans and nasty words of pleasure, amplified each other until all but SHE were cumming, but feeling the bliss of the three orgasms combined into one explosion penetrate through her body caused her to shudder with her own little cum.

In the midst of the lovers, lying on a thick cotton blanket, Devi unselfconsciously was diddling herself with her little fingers and giggling. The lovers spread out forming a circle around her and laughed.

"With you three raising her, she'll be insatiable," said SHE.

"She'll probably be a rebellious little prude and turn out to be some insufferable school marm," said Natty.

"Masturbating behind the desk and seducing the lucky adolescents, fucking their little penises or licking their mini quims in secret after class," said Joseph.

After stopping at the hotel where one of the suites was available, made cheap by a seductive wink and an extended tongue and a whispered promise to the night manager, her large body making the uniform two button jacket impossible to button, SHE helping bring up the luggage along with a bell boy carrying the crib who was given a generous tip but the several winks from the beautiful ladies may have impressed him more, they left Karen with Devi and dashed out to make the appointment at a basement makeshift rehearsal space, SHE pulling her guitar out of the trunk of her Citroen, Joseph assisting with a bag of cords, petals, mics and other guitar related paraphernalia, a large duffel bag poking out in all directions. Her band mates were mostly already waiting for them in the space except for the drummer hauling her own heavier equipment, Joseph joining Natty in assisting the baby faced, solidly built blonde.

The five women, all about SHE's age finished assembling their equipment and sound checking, the sole male of the ensemble working the sound board, obviously not a visual element, and once completed the drug taking began. A joint was passed around as well as a jug of red wine. SHE disappeared with two members, the keyboard player and the bassist, and when they returned, the two looked washed over with drugs, a dull but satisfied expression on their faces while SHE looked the same as she did before. Joseph brought the joint to her and before he could ask, she said, "I promised. It was just a delivery."

Though definitely not tight, exacerbated by the complexity of the music, Joseph was surprised by its quality, then looked at SHE and realized excellence should be no surprise with her, a woman a year or two older than him who had the self confidence and self awareness of an older, wiser woman, even if the choices she had made were self destructive and self defensive to the point of coldness, keeping any warmth directed towards her in the form of love from penetrating, making him wonder how or if she had let him in so easily. The first song turned out to be the tightest, obviously their theme song, beginning with a Middle Eastern sound created by the keyboard player playing a synthesizer with a tonality like voices chanting, the multi-instrumentalist playing an oboe, the drummer stroking chimes and SHE playing a radically tuned acoustic guitar, the music seemed to float, but subtly metamorphosed into a rocking riff made solid by the drummer pounding out a straight ahead rock and roll rhythm at a hard rocking speed.

"I am S.H.E. who must be obeyed," shouted SHE.

"Whatever you say. Whatever you say, " sang the band in response.

After repeating the refrain four times, the beat suddenly stopped, leaving only feedback from SHE's guitar and the oboe player squawking. Then the drummer tapped a light, jazzy rhythm, the rest of the band coming in at the second measure with a jazz tinged Middle Eastern folk riff, breezy and if not funky, somehow encouraging dancing and SHE began the verses.

The oboe player took a long solo before SHE began the second verse.

The band stopped for a couple beats unevenly, then burst into the heavy rock of the chorus, letting the feedback decay while the drummer took up the jazzy beat of the next verse.

After the semi abrupt stop of the band before SHE's last five words, sung in the relative silence, a brief pause ended with the screaming final chorus. The refrain kept repeating, with SHE pointing at her audience, Joseph and Natty, and shouting, "And you and you, you must obey me," at which point the driving music collapsed and ended.

As soon as the reverberations quieted, everyone laughed. "Sounded cool," said the cute drummer. "What's next?"

"Fido Bites Back," was a reverse take on "Now I Wanna Be Your Dog," by the Stooges in which the woman would prefer a dog to a man, essentially a song in praise of bestiality. It was a lilting melody reminiscent of "Nature Boy" that sped up double time for the chorus. After they ended the song they performed the Iggy Pop song, showing respect to one of their heroes.

An instrumental which SHE informed her audience was called "Le Chaud Mange Les Jeunes Filles," presented the musical ability of each player, with shifting tempos, each member would solo except for SHE who seemed resigned to being a competent rhythm guitar player, which keeping up with the shifts was demonstrated, but was not an inspired lead guitarist or just wasn't interested. The others however seemed to push themselves to the limits of their abilities and beyond, proving not that they liked to show off, but that they wanted to continually improve as well as to explore the possibilities of their instrument. Joseph wasn't sure if he was reading too much into it, but knowing how clever SHE was wouldn't put it past her when he realized her ambivalence to soloing and the other women's enthusiasm for it, she was using the instrumental to please her band mates to make them more amicable to her leadership, making it easier for her to be obeyed.