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I took out a short whip with a dozen leather straps the length of my forearm and snapped it through the air a couple of times. "You don't actually hit each other with these things, do you?"

"Why don't you give it a try?" he asked.

"I don't think so," I said. "I'm not that way."

"Just once," he said. "You might like it." He turned around and spread himself against the rack. The bare skin of his back looked golden in the candlelight. I walked up behind him but didn't do anything. "I can't," I said.

"I don't mind."

I hit him with the whip as hard as I could. It made the same kind of noise as punches do in movies. I was surprised to see blood on his skin right away.

"Jesus Christ!" He jumped away from me and stumbled over one of the benches, fell to the floor. "You fucking maniac!"

"What?" I asked. "You said I could."

"Not that fucking hard," he shouted. He felt around behind his back and then showed me his bloody fingertips. "Look at that! I'm going to need a doctor now!"

"Maybe they have a first-aid kit here," I said.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?"

"But isn't this what you all do in here?" I asked.

The only waitress working came to the door and stopped.

"Do you know where the first-aid kit is?" I asked.

She looked at me standing there with the whip and the mask, looked at Christopher writhing on the floor, and then she closed the door.

SOMETIMES THE PEOPLE from the modeling studio upstairs used the room for shoots. It would always be one man - the photographer - and a group of women. They'd come in and get the key from whatever waitress was working and lock themselves in there. Sometimes they wouldn't come out for hours. I imagined them having sex in there, on the couches or maybe on piles of the clothes they brought in with them, like a scene out of some movie.

One night I helped with a shoot. A photographer came in with three models from upstairs. None of the women looked over eighteen, but one of them paid for a round of drinks with a gold card. They sat at the booth underneath the Hepburn poster and smoked cigars all night long. They were sitting in the No Smoking section, but the waitress working that night - a new woman I didn't know, who charged me full price for the drinks - never said anything to them.

Around midnight, the photographer came over to the bar, where I'd been sitting all night. "You work here?" he asked. I looked around for the waitress, but she was nowhere in sight.

"Yeah," I said. "I work here."

"We're ready for the back room now," he said.

I wasn't exactly sure what he meant, but I went around the counter and got the key anyway. When I opened the door, the models all wandered into the room and sat down on the furniture there. Each of them carried a couple of garment bags that they dropped to the floor once they were inside. "I could use a glass of water," one of them said. She held her foot up to look at her toenails. I went back to the bar and poured some water into a glass, threw a lemon slice from a bowl into it, and brought it to her. She took it without saying thanks or even looking at me.

The photographer had taken the sheets off the fetish equipment and was looking at it all.

"We need this stuff brought out and, um, arranged," he said.

"All right." I dragged the wooden crosses out to where he pointed and turned them around under the lights until he told me to stop. The models watched in silence. One of them fell asleep for a while.

"That's enough," the photographer eventually said to me. I let go of the aluminum cage I'd pushed out of one of the corners and stood next to him, like I was his assistant or something. "Why don't we start with that black vest thing?" he said to one of the women. She nodded and stood up, started to take off her shirt. She had on a black lace bra underneath.

"What kind of shoot is this?" I asked. I imagined seeing this room and these models on bus ads, or maybe even billboards.

"It's nothing like that," the photographer said. "These are just, ah, audition photos."

The model opened up one of the garment bags and took out a sleeveless leather vest, put it on. It zipped up to her throat. The photographer pushed her against one of the crosses. "Could you hold her hands?" he asked. I thought he meant me and I started to step forward, but he was talking to one of the other models. She walked around behind the cross and held the first one's wrists. The third one took a cell phone out of her pocket and started talking on it. "I won't be making class tomorrow," she said. "Can you take notes for me?"

"Maybe one of those balls in her mouth," the photographer said, and this time he looked at me.

I went over to the boxes and searched through them until I found what he wanted, a red plastic ball with a leather head strap attached. "You want me to put it on her?" I asked.

Just then the waitress came in. "What are you doing in here?" she asked.

"We're working," I said.

"What are you talking about?" she asked. "You don't work here."

Everyone looked at me.

"It's just for tonight," I said.

"No," she said, "you don't work here."

The photographer took the mouthpiece from my hands. "Maybe you should lock the door," he said to the waitress.

"Oh, come on," I said.

NOW IT WAS THE day after that incident and I was sitting alone at the bar again, watching television. Someone drove a Volvo off a cliff. A group of men and women in white lab coats watched. The sky was a shade of blue I'd never seen before. There was a quick close-up of the driver of the car, screaming as it fell down toward the ground.

"Isn't that your boyfriend?" I asked Mercedes.

"I don't have a boyfriend," she said.

The camera cut to the wrecked car at the bottom of the cliff. It looked like it had been run through a crusher. Then the door opened and the driver stepped out, waved at the men and women in lab coats. The Volvo logo appeared on the screen.

"Yeah, that's your boyfriend," I said.

She looked at the television. "I don't know who that is," she said.

BUT HE CAME in that very afternoon. He stood beside me and leaned against the bar. He was wearing a silver Rolex that looked new. Mercedes was sitting at the end of the bar, smoking a cigarette and reading a Vogue. "What do you want?" she asked him.

"I want my videos back," he said.

"Not the ones I'm in," she said. "No way."

"I don't want those," he said. "I want the films."

"Fine. You can have those."

"I know I can have them. They're mine."

"I'll drop them off on the weekend."

"All right." He sat down beside me and tossed a gold card on the counter. "In the meantime I want a latte."

"I'm not serving you."

He looked at his reflection in the mirror. "I want a latte. With cinnamon."

"You hear that?" Mercedes said to me. "He wants a latte."

"I don't hear anything," I said.

He turned to look at me. "Who the fuck are you," he asked, "to talk to me?"

I looked at Mercedes, but she just kept on reading the Vogue. I reached behind the counter and grabbed the key, went to the back room. I emptied the boxes onto the floor until I found one of the whips. Then I went back into the main room.

Mercedes and the actor both laughed when they saw me. "What do you think you're going to do with that?" he asked.

I stopped behind him. "The lady asked you to leave," I said, meeting his gaze in the mirror.

"All right," Mercedes said. "I think this has gone far enough."

"Is this what you've been reduced to?" the actor asked, looking at her. "The lady? You sorry cunt."

I hit him with the whip. I was careful not to hit him hard, but the leather straps still made a sound like a slap.

"Hey," he said. He covered his face with his hands, even though I hit him on the back. "Hey hey hey hey!"

I kept hitting him. He got off the stool and ran toward the door, and I followed him. Mercedes was laughing even harder now, and I started laughing myself. "Who's the cunt now?" I asked. "Huh? Who's the cunt now?"

THE RAIN HAD FINALLY stopped, and now I was sitting beside a table of three women who looked like secretaries. One of them was wearing a red silk blindfold, even though it wasn't a fetish night. A sign made of red construction paper hung from a string around her neck. It said, Kiss Me, I'm Getting Married. The others already wore wedding bands. There was no one else in the place.

Mercedes had stopped coming to work. I went to The Code every day for a week, sometimes staying six or eight hours, but she never showed up again. None of the other waitresses knew what had happened to her. That's what they told me, anyway.

"When are you getting married?" I asked the blindfolded woman.

"Next month," one of the other women said. She had blond hair that was black at the roots.

"Well, you've got plenty of time to live a little then."

"That's what we're doing," the blond-haired woman said. They were all smiling and pushing their gold bracelets up and down their arms.

"You know what I mean," I said.

"No, we don't," she said, but she was laughing when she said it.

I went over to the bar and ordered a round of martinis from the waitress, the one who charged me full price for everything. "Put it on my tab," I told her.

"You don't have a tab," she said. "But I can put it on your bill."

"That'll be fine," I said.

"How are you going to pay for all this?" she asked me.

"I have three credit cards," I told her.

"Maybe you should give me one now. Just to make sure."

Back at the table, I asked the blindfolded woman what her husband did.

"We're not married yet," she said. It was the first time I'd heard her speak. She sounded like she'd been drinking for some time before they came in here.

"What's your boyfriend do then?" I asked.

"He's a lawyer," she said.

"A corporate lawyer," the blond-haired woman put in.

"A lawyer?" I said. "That the best you can do?"

"What about you?" the third woman asked. She had a huge purple blemish on her cheek, like she'd been burned or punched hard. "What do you do?"

"Me? I'm a doctor."

"A doctor."

"That's right."

"What's your specialty, doc?"

"I fix kids."

When the martinis came, the two women who could see just stared at them. "We didn't order these," the blond-haired woman said.

"What are they?" the blindfolded woman asked.

"They're from him," the waitress said, nodding in my direction. The secretaries all turned their heads my way for a moment.

"To marriage," I said.

They sipped the martinis and started talking about something to do with the wedding - the colour of the dresses or the flowers or something like that. I got up and went to the washroom.

When I came out, only the blindfolded woman was sitting at the table, alone with the half-finished martinis. The others were at the bar, ordering more drinks. I stopped and stood beside their table for a moment.

The blindfolded woman turned her head in my direction, like she sensed me there. I bent down beside her. She licked her lips, flattened her hands on the table. For a moment I just looked at her, watching the way she strained against the silk covering her eyes. Then I kissed her gently, just brushing my lips against hers. I could taste mint on her breath. She put her hand on my chest. We only went on that way for a second or two, but it was like we had been lovers for years.

THIS ISN'T WHAT I WANTED By Peter Darbyshire

DURING SOME OF THIS TIME, I worked in a call center. It was the kind of place you see on television - all pink cubicles and windowless walls. I worked the night shift, taking roadside assistance calls. It was the only job the temp agency could find for me.

People phoned me for help all night long. The woman who trained me - an older woman who wore bifocals and whose name was actually Hope - told me to always act like I cared about their problems. "Ask them if they're all right first," she said. "Then make sure their membership is still valid." She told me she'd been a social worker before this.

"And what if their membership's not valid?" I asked.

"Then you don't have to pretend to care anymore," she said. "Get them off the line."

"But what if they're in real trouble?" I wanted to know. "What if they're lying in a ditch somewhere, pinned inside the car while water rises all around them?"

"Then you're the last person they should be calling for help," she said.

BUT SOMETIMES PEOPLE did call when they were in real trouble. Once, a woman started screaming that she was on fire before I could even say anything.

"Are you all right?" I asked, remembering what Hope had told me.

"I just said I'm on fire," she shrieked. "Does that sound all right to you?"

"What part of you is on fire?" I asked. "Is it your clothes? If it's your clothes, just take them off."

"My car," she said. "My car is on fire." I could hear a horn go off in the background, and what sounded like a child's laughter.

"Shouldn't you be calling 911 or someone like that?" I asked.

"I did, I did," she said. "But I need all the help I can get here."

"All right," I said. "I just need your membership number."

"My membership number?" I could hear a car alarm going off now. "It's ... Don't you even want to know where I am?"

"I need the number first," I told her. "I have to enter everything into the computer in the right order."

"My car is on fire," she shouted, "and you're talking to me about order?"

"There's nothing I can do," I told her. "It's the system."

Her voice faded. "Don't worry about the damned groceries," I heard her yell at someone. "The car is going to blow up!"

"I don't think cars actually blow up," I said. "I think that's only in the movies."

"What are you saying?" she asked, back now. "Are you telling me my car is not blowing up?"

"I'm just saying I think that's only in the movies."

"I wish this was a movie."

MOSTLY, THOUGH, it was just sending out tow trucks for cars with dead batteries or empty gas tanks. During storms, the calls were back to back, all night long. I couldn't take a break until it slowed down, because the system automatically routed waiting calls to me. When I did get a break, I had to sign out of my computer. The router stopped sending me calls for exactly ten minutes, after which it started up again whether I was in my cubicle or not.