Honey Lee and I don’t have many separate friends or secrets, and I know my way around the city better than she does. So when we drove for a half an hour only to end up in one of the worst neighborhoods in town, I was sure that she’d gotten us lost, the one torture I cannot abide. I was about to break my vow of silence and tell her to move aside, when she pulled into a parking space. “This is it!” She grinned.

Fabulous. Was I supposed to pirouette to the corner and let the gang bang begin? But Honey steered me toward the creaky stairs of the Victorian flat in front of us. We were buzzed in, and she sent me ahead, up three flights of stairs.

The door at the end of the hall came ajar, and my mouth opened as wide as the sky. Greeting us was a fully uniformed member of the San Francisco Police Department. She was a woman cop I recognized from the neighborhood I work in, someone to whom I’d never said more than “Have a nice day.” Honey and she shook hands like old friends.

“Kelly, how are you?” Honey started.

“I’m just on my way to work. All I have to do is polish my boots.”

“What a coincidence,” Honey said. They were both speaking like marionettes. “I just happen to have a boot-polishing kit with me, and I think Susie would love to give you a nice shine.”

I broke my quiet spell. “I don’t remember how to shine shoes.”

Honey snorted. “Shame on you. We’ll give a you a little review.”

Honey Lee handed me a shoeshine box with all the equipment. In the corner was a Post-it note reading, “I will be back for you. Do your very best. Love, René.”

In The Story of O, René is the lover who requires O to submit to other men in order to prove her love and obedience to him. My premonition was coming true.

Kelly took me into her bedroom. She had a couple of guests visiting, a young man and woman who looked me over thoroughly and followed us to the doorway. “Can we watch?”

Kelly gave them the nod. I got out the black polish and tried to remember when the spitting part was supposed to be performed. She was very patient. In fact, for a police officer, I’d gotten a real pussycat. She saw how I kept eyeing her gun belt, and when I had polished her thick work boots as brilliantly as I could, she pulled me to my feet and asked, “You wanna try on my belt?”

She emptied the bullets out of her revolver and showed me where she stored her ammunition, her nightstick, her cuffs, and her flashlight. She slipped the whole contraption around my hips. It must have weighed thirty pounds.