Master of Babylon Ch. 01

Babylon is a world entire. In the early hours of the morning, it's hard to believe that there's a whole city beyond her towering walls and hedgerows that muffle the traffic and leave her as an island of darkness in the urban glow.

For a few brief hours, Babylon seems almost asleep, her illuminated flagstone paths tracing out winding lines through the blacked-out voids of her immaculate gardens, broken only by the occasional eye-catching ornament lit by hidden spotlights. The only sounds are the trickle of flowing water, the rustle of wind through the trees and the low symphony of unseen insects.

A man in Babylon could feel like the only living creature in a world shaped for him alone, exploring her twisting pathways and worlds within worlds, each landscaped and architected to create a hundred hidden spaces to discover. He might strip off his clothes and wade into the water, descending into a chamber where the rippling surface casts its reflection on a cave's stone ceiling. He might find a nymph there, asleep on a cot in a pagan grotto. She stirs at his touch, shuffling back and inviting him with a coy smile to join with her and bring new life to the lonely world.

Babylon is a dream, her dreamers lost in her glamour. But while they dream, dozens labor to create their perfect illusion. Our Babylon is never quiet, she never sleeps and her subjects are never alone.

The black telephone on the wall shocks me out of my half-awake state, my body propelling me across the tiled floor of the kitchen before my mind can catch up, sense only surging back in the instant I lift the phone from the hook.

"Kitchen," I say, my free hand reaching for a dry-erase marker to note down the room number on the digital display before thumbing the button to summon a duty maid.

"Hi there. Could you send up some steak? Rare."

"Anything to drink?"

"Thank you, but we still have a bottle."

Unsurprisingly, the voice belongs to a young woman who's kept up the illusion of energetic enthusiasm throughout the night. The clients don't order for themselves. If they do pick up the phone in their rooms without keying in the number for a specific service, they get routed to an admin office a few doors down from the kitchen, the domain of a select circle of women chosen in a contest to find the most seductive voices.

It's important to Babylon that her guests never see or hear a man that isn't Babylon's master or another guest. It's part of her illusion and allure, a web spun so that her guests can fantasise that they're the only men their companions have ever seen, which means their shortcomings can't be compared to the rest of the male species.

Steak is a surprisingly common order for this time of night. It's quick and simple to prepare, but that's rarely a factor in the other snacks Babylon's guests demand. I'd never presume to understand how the guests think, but I imagine there's something appealingly masculine about celebrating your conquest with a plate of bloody red meat.

It's the same reason they always order it rare, even though I've heard it's often immediately clear that's not their preference. Nothing they say or do in Babylon will ever leave her walls, but that doesn't stop them from performing even if they're only performing for themselves and girls who'd feign love no matter who they really are.

I finish the steak, cutting it into bitesize slices and laying them out on a plate, each slice laid against the next with enough space between them to expose plenty of vivid red meat. The plate goes on a pre-heated metal tray with a napkin and a two-pronged fork, covering it with its lid just in time for a waifish maid to saunter into the room, her thigh-length skirt swishing around as she takes in the empty kitchen.

"Looking lonely, Julius," Arete drawls, her brown eyes gleaming cruelly below her bangs. "No company for the night?"

A pair of rabbit ears rise out from her hair, black on the outside and pink on the inside. The ears aren't symmetrical; at some point, Arete cut a notch out of the right one, about a third of the way up. Her collar is a black strip around her neck, with wavy ruff pinned beneath it that matches the white strips stitched to her uniform.

"I like the quiet," I say in a neutral tone, nudging the tray across the countertop and hoping she'll get the hint. "Steak's cooling. It's got to get all the way to suite seven."

"You have no idea how far suite seven is," Arete counters, placing her hands on the counter and leaning over the steak, low enough to give me a view right down her cleavage. "Poor man, shut away down here with so many beautiful girls so far out of reach."

To emphasise her point she steps back and pulls up her skirt with practiced slowness, making a show of the strip of bare leg above her stockings but stopping just short of the polished metal chastity belt that's the source of her frustration.

"You ever go after Agrippa and Mark like this, or are they too old for your tastes?" I flash her a cruel grin of my own. "I figure they're more your type, right? It's what you're missing out on, after all."

She flushes, snatching up the tray and scurrying out of the kitchen. It was a mistake and I know she'll make me pay for it, but I can't face Arete's shit at half-three in the morning. It's not her fault that she was pulled off the roster and stuck in that belt, but I didn't have anything to do with it. I'm just a surrogate victim because her real enemy isn't coming back to Babylon.

With her gone, peace returns to the kitchen. I let myself indulge in the fantasy that it's my kingdom, at least until Matia and the others get up for the morning rush. Then I'm just another slave working on the line, dressed in the same white chef's tunic and black slacks as everyone else in here, the tunic's collar just high enough to cover the synthetic leather band cinched around my neck, clasped shut with a red heart-shaped padlock.

We toil in the hot, cramped kitchen, each of us dancing around each other to prepare individual meals for Babylon's guests, the requests coming down at random intervals from six until well into the lunch rush, depending on the habits of the recipients. We'd never dream of making them stick to a set schedule, unless they're in a group or we're catering for an event.

The night shift is a welcome break from it all, especially since it means I get to sleep through breakfast so long as I'm back at my station by lunch. I always feel like I should be doing more with the time, but with how exhausting my day to day is I usually just end up staring at the wall, drifting in and out of consciousness.

The shift passes quickly like that, the clocks losing half an hour in the blink of an eye before I'm roused back to awareness by someone tapping against the wall. My eyes are blurry and halfway to sleep, but my ears work.

"Heya bro, how's life?"

"Oh, you know," I say, leaning back against the wall and closing my eyes. "Can't complain."

When I open them, I can see Julia clearly, one hand resting on the countertop as she looks over the kitchen with a casual eye.

She's not naked, but she's wearing less than Matia would like in a food preparation area. I've never mentioned these catch-up sessions to her, but the head chef has to know what's happening in her kingdom even when she's not there. So long as I don't bring it up, she doesn't have to do anything about it.

"And you?" I ask, with practiced indifference.

"Can't complain," she repeats the words like the mantra they are, then moves to sit beside me on the little day bed tucked in the corner of the kitchen, with a wipe-clean plastic mattress that's only two inches thick.

Like me, my sister is olive skinned, with dark hair falling to her shoulders while I keep mine short. Anyone who sees us together knows we're twins, but that doesn't happen often. If Babylon is a world, we live in very different countries.

As she sits I rise, leaning against the countertop to get a good look at her. Her make-up is a little smudged, her hair out of place and the point collar she folds over her own leather band is entirely absent, though one of the shirt cuffs on her wrists is still clinging to life. Her stockings are gone, as are her heels, but she's slipped her dark blue leotard back on, her breasts supported by its strapless cups.

There are no bruises or love bites I can see, and she's taken the time to collect her ears and set them on her head. Hers are black lined with white, perpendicular and arrow straight as they rise up from her head, making her look perpetually eager, attentive or startled depending on what she does with her face. When she was given them, I cut apart a wire-frame hanger so she could stitch a pair of metal rods inside. The headband hasn't been more than a few paces away from her since.

She weathers my inspection without comment or even acknowledgement, leaning her head back against the tiled wall with her eyes closed. On the night before her debut, she made me promise never to act squeamish or judgemental about her duties. In turn, I made her promise that she'd never hide anything she did from me. In the four years since, we've both kept our word. She needs to be able to confide in me without worrying about how I'll react, and I need to know she's okay.

"Had an order come in half an hour ago," I remark. "Steak, rare, and one bottle of beer. Steak went up fine, but I forgot to put the beer on the tray."

Julia hums appreciatively, finally opening her eyes and fixing me with an eager grin.

"That sounds perfect, but did he order a water as well?"

"I think he did."

I fetch her a glass, then root through the drinks fridge for a beer while she disappears off to the bathroom down the hall. Once she returns, her mouth freshly rinsed out, I decant half the beer into her empty glass and keep the rest of the bottle for myself. She leans against my side on the day bed, her head resting on my shoulder and her legs folded up to her chest.

"Long night?" I ask.

"Not really," she says, her voice almost dreamlike. "You know how these old guys are; they talk a big game, fall asleep right after round one then wake up hard in the middle of the night and decide to try again, only to realise what they really have to do is take a leak. Then it's right back to sleep."

I try not to react. It's getting easier over time, which I don't necessarily like, but when you grow up in Babylon you don't get to have any illusions about how the sausage is made. I know Julia's always honest with me, so I know she's holding up alright. The least I can do is be just as blasé about it as her, given that she's she the one actually getting fucked.

"When are you next on a night?" Julia asks.

"Four days from now. You with this guy for long?"

"He's going in the morning. Then I'm on a floating shift until my next guest arrives in the evening. I'm going to spend some of it shadowing Miss Amata."

"You too, huh? I figured she'd stop after getting me through my GED."

"Well, maybe she wants you to run the kitchen someday? If you can, you should go for it. You could embezzle me some better drinks."

I chuckle, feeling the weight of her head shifting as my shoulders rise and fall. My arm feels frozen in place, like Julia is a Medusa who can turn it to stone through mere proximity. We sit there in silence for what feels like an age, the felt backs of her ears brushing my cheek, before my sister finally yawns silently and gets to her feet.

"I should get back to it. My beloved guest will be expecting someone naked and enthusiastic under his arm when he wakes up."

"Wait," I say, rising to my feet as she turns in the doorway, leaving her body in profile with the puffy white ball on the back of her leotard silhouetted against the dimly lit corridor. "How's the old man?"

"I told you," she drawls with a confused smile. "Relieved and drooling onto his pillow."

"Not him, the old man. I hear he's been asking for you a lot."

She looks down for a second, leaning against the doorway and crossing her arms below her breasts.

"Yeah, feels like whenever I'm not with a guest I'm up there with him. Amata had to put on a distraction for my guest today so that I could sneak off, because he just wouldn't stop asking for me. I don't know why it's me; he's got a nurse to handle all the medical stuff, I've just been keeping him watered. He seemed a lot more lucid today. More than he's been in weeks."

"That's good, right?"

Julia purses her lips, pain creeping into her eyes.

"I don't know. Even if it is, it won't last. Then what?"

"Who knows?" I ask, trying not to let my own fears show. "Well, hopefully Amata does. I mean, we're all expecting it."

"That's life, right? At least the food is good."

I grin at her, and at least some of it is genuine.

"I can't take that compliment; you're a professional flatterer."

She fixes me with a mock wounded look, playing it up with wide eyes and her hand on her heart, before firing off a couple of finger guns and leaving me to prep the kitchen for the breakfast rush.

By the time Miss Matia and the rest of her small crew of cooks marches into the kitchen, I feel drained and near death myself. She takes a moment to survey my work, then dismisses me to bed with a squeeze of my shoulder.

I can't even remember finding my bed or getting undressed, just stumbling through the whitewashed hallway of the architectural afterthought that is the male barracks one moment and being jostled awake the next by a hand shaking my shoulder through the sheets of my narrow bed.

My mouth feels dry, my head heavy with interrupted sleep, but my instinctive reaction to the person who woke me brings me back to the present in a surge of adrenaline. I pull back the covers, clambering out of the bed and forcing myself to stand up straight in front of her, never mind that I'm only wearing a pair of boxer shorts.

Miss Amata looks me up and down like she's valuing me for sale. I know what she sees; a twenty-year-old man who grew up surrounded by girls with fitness plans, meal plans, lifestyle coaches, etiquette lessons, an expansive gym and a twenty-five-yard pool in the sub-basement. The teasing alone would be enough to keep me fit, but it's also become a kind of comfort. I don't have control over much in my life, but I can control that.

Miss Amata is the end product of that lifestyle; a Middle Eastern woman in her early forties who's had exactly one kid and bounced right back to the same shape she was in before, the beauty that earned Babylon a fortune only sharpened by age.

Her own point collar is patterned with oak leaves formed from golden thread, the heart-shaped red padlock on her real collar positioned perfectly between the two wings. It should be impossible to look that stern while wearing a pair of bunny ears, but Amata has never had trouble with it. She wears them with one ear upright, the other folded over at a jaunty angle.

The rest of her suit is a lot more formal than what Julia wears; the kind of outfit you can't just slip off in five seconds. It's almost a suit; a three-piece ensemble with sheer stockings, a strapless white bustier shirt and a black bolero jacket with two tails that fall down her back, on either side of her leotard's white puffball. All of it patterned with gilded leaves, as fits her station as the house manager and everyone's relentless taskmistress.

"Get dressed," she orders, "then follow me."

"Should I wash up first, ma'am?" I ask, already pulling a clean undershirt out of my drawers.

"There's no time."

My heart sinks. There's no rush order in the kitchen so urgent that it would make Matia abandon her hygiene standards, which means this is something else. Typically, that means something worse.

Still, making yourself presentable in a very short amount of time is another skill everyone in Babylon picks up. When I step out of my little room, barely twice as wide as my bed, I look almost as presentable as I did a few hours earlier. Amata scrutinises me again, then nods and strides off, her heels clicking against the floor with the precise timing of a metronome, her puffy tail swaying distractingly from side to side.

I follow her through one of the tunnels that runs beneath the garden before she opens up a gate to a set of stairs. I've never been up this way before, but when I was younger Amata made me memorise the entire layout of Babylon.

"Ma'am, this leads into a guest area?" I ask, a stab of fear shooting through me at the thought of breaking the most ironclad rule in my life.

"That doesn't matter," she says, bluntly, leaving me to follow her up into the light.

Despite her proclamation she strides quickly through the garden, past exotic plants, decorative fountains and a statue of a naked dryad coaxing a stone sapling out of the ground. The mansion looms over us, its stone walls glowing tan in the morning light.

Amata whisks me into a side entrance, across rich red carpets and black and white tiles, past wood-panelled walls and enormous red curtains framing nude portraits of our residents or visiting models. There are no men in the portraits, but their absence is always conspicuous. An empty chair, or an obvious gap in the framing of the piece that invites the viewer to imagine himself in that scene.

It's strange matching the memorised layout to the real thing. I've been in parts of the mansion before, on the scheduled days when Babylon shutters herself up for deep cleaning and staff recouperation, but this time I'm all too conscious that at any point I could round a corner and meet a guest coming the other way. Even the maids we pass are alarming in their way, the former escorts looking at me like startled rabbits.

Finally, I'm led to a study in the corner of the building. Amata stops me at the door, giving me one final once-over and straightening the collar of my chef's tunic before pushing opening the door and, astonishingly, holding it open for me.

I step through as if in a dream, taking in the empty chair behind the desk and the mousy little man rising from a smaller seat across from it, clutching a leatherbound folder that's barely containing a stack of papers. He holds out his hand and I shake it without understanding.

"Mr Hawthorne," he says in an aristocratic Spanish accent, "my name is Victor Navarro." I barely heard the words, my mind stumbling to a halt the impossible conclusion because I don't have a surname. None of us do.

The man notices my shock, the hand with the folder almost rising to support me before he thinks better of it.

"Perhaps you should sit down, sir."

Suddenly Amata is at my back, her hands on my arms as she coaxes me gently into the vast seat behind the desk, a wall of green leather rising up behind me. Mr Navarro clears his throat, setting his folder down on the desk and opening it up.

"Mr Hawthorne, it is my unfortunate duty to report the death of your father, Mr Thomas Hawthorne. It is also my duty to act as the executor of his estate."

I blink dumbly, my hands rising from my lap to rest on the green leather covering of the desk. Amata stands to one side like a servant, her head bowed and her hands clasped in front of her. The lawyer looks at me through the round lenses of his glasses, his mouth turned up in what's probably meant to be a reassuring smile.

"In his last will and testament, your father ordered your emancipation upon his death. He has named you the sole inheritor of his entire estate. Babylon is yours now."