“How can you chase bad guys like this?” I was breaking the no-talking rule again, but Honey Lee wasn’t around to keep discipline.

“I’m not interested in dying,” she said. She preferred to sweat it out in a heavy bulletproof vest every shift.

“Honey Lee is going to be back before you know it,” I said, pulling my original costume together. “You’d better tell her I didn’t say a word.”

Kelly handed me over with a high recommendation and no squealing. Honey drove us over the hills into yuppie heaven.

“The hardest part is coming up,” she said. “Maybe harder for me than for you.” She was headed for our friend Coral’s apartment.

Coral is what I would call a gourmet sadomasochist. Her home is decorated and constructed for sex play. Her collection of sex toys, particularly whips, is Smithsonian caliber. Honey and I love to talk about sex, pain, and pleasure with Coral, but we are intellectual companions, never participants. I wondered what kind of scene Coral could concoct with me, for if I was to be like O, then Coral would have to perform as a sadist, and I knew that would be a switch.

I should have guessed that Coral could dish out the pain/pleasure she loves to receive. She let us into the bottom floor of her penthouse with more authority and pure wickedness than I’d ever seen in her before.

“Of course, this is out of the ordinary for me,” she said. “But I love to make exceptions for the very young and the very pretty.”

She and Honey took me up to the master bedroom and told me to stand against the window while they talked about what to do with me. I felt a little rebellious.

“Look, Coral, why don’t I just turn you over and give you a good spanking. I should slap both of you for humiliating me like this.”

They couldn’t believe my cheek. “That’s ten extra strokes right there,” Honey said.

“Make that with the cane,” Coral added.