The door opened and Michael invited Boom Boom and me to come in. We found Louis and Clark leaning on the kitchen counter while the guy I had figured was Boner filled the refrigerator with the groceries he had purchased earlier. "I guess you guys already met Irving," Clark smiled when he was finally able to tear his eyes away from the Irving formerly known as Boner and notice us. "Hi, Rick, I'm glad to meet you again." "Hi..." Well I had no idea what I was supposed to call him now. "This is Boom Boom. Boom Boom this is... Irving? Give him the twelve cents I owe him, will you?" "Call me Boner, will you? And I already told you to forget the twelve cents." Boom Boom stepped forward and shook Boner's hand. But there was a quizzical look on his face. "And of course you've already met Michael," Clark continued. "Irving... Boner forgot who we were, Rick. That's why he was surprised to find us in his apartment." "An apartment I share with Teddy," Boner added. "Or did anyway... before he disappeared. Any friends of Teddy's are welcome here. To tell you the truth, it's good to have a little company. Teddy disappearing like that really has me scared." "Have you talked to the police?" Michael asked. "They say he hasn't been gone long enough. They figure he ran into somebody he knows and decided to party with them for a while." "That's not Teddy," I opined. "He'd never do anything like that." "Yah, I told them that," Boner agreed. "But they pointed out the rather peculiar circumstances of Teddy's employment and hinted that, even if he had been kidnapped, he was probably better off than he was before." "Do you think he was kidnapped?" Michael asked. "It beats thinking that he may have been murdered," Boner responded. "What really bothers me is that he is down here at all," Clark grimaced. "Teddy comes from a good family. His house is one of those big jobs out on King Street. Teddy has everything going for him. What does he want to hang out here for?" "I think it was because of me," Boner admitted. "No offense, Boner," Clark apologized, "but how in hell did you two get together?" "Teddy wrote to me after he saw me perform one day. He told me that he thought I was hot and that we would probably make a good team. I told him to send me a picture of himself and he did. Of course it was just a department store quickie picture, but I liked what I saw and suggested that we get together. He said "sure," and we made an appointment to meet each other." "Does that happen a lot?" Michael asked. He had his notebook out for chrissakes. "You'll have to excuse Michael," Boom Boom grinned. "He's gathering information for his thesis." "Yah, he told me," Boner answered. "To answer your question, yes and no... There's a lot of guys who come onto you online, but they don't usually live close enough to make getting together possible. Occasionally you get a live one, and you eat well for a few weeks, but most of the time it's just email. "Teddy was different though," Boner admitted. "He actually sent me a picture of himself, and it was not a nude shot. He was a short train ride from town and he had the time and the money to come. When he got here, we hit it off right away. He phoned his folks and told them he had found a summer job and would not be home until September." "Just like that?" Michael asked. "Just like that," Boner responded. "Of course he wasn't working right away. It took a week for us to get a slot in the duos." "Oh yah..." Michael finally remembered. "I know the guy you're talking about now! That's Teddy? I thought he was a pro!" "He is a pro," Boner answered quietly. "But not in the way you were thinking." Michael looked a little ashamed of himself and put his notebook away. "Anyway, about the only thing I can think to do is to hang around here and wait for Teddy to show up," Boner sighed. "I've visited all the bars and nobody knows a thing about him. I left his picture in every place I went, so if anybody sees him, they're supposed to give me a call." "That means we've got to keep the telephone manned," Clark decided. "By the way, where is the telephone?" "Right here," Boner answered and patted his right breast pocket. "I like to get my calls." I detected an admiring glance from Michael. Boner had things under control in his life... even if his choice of careers was a little suspect. Still you couldn't fault the guy for making use of his endowments. "Do you have a kettle?" I asked. I had gone out for coffee. I didn't see much sense in not making some... especially since most of us had been up all night and were badly in need of a caffeine jolt. Boner found me a saucepan that would serve and I set about rounding up anything that looked like it might be clean enough to drink out of. There were a lot of used candidates in the sink, but neither Boner nor I had thought to buy dishwashing liquid. Our little group divided into three. Boom Boom, Clark and Louis took the mattress to bring each other up to speed on the latest developments and Michael corralled Boner to ask him a few questions about his chosen career and how he had come to perform in the sex rooms. I of course, stayed in the kitchen preparing the coffee. It took me roughly ten minutes to get the java brewed, but in that ten minutes quite a bit happened... that I was not immediately aware of. "Michael is going to be my new partner," Boner announced as he rejoined us. He stated it matter-of-factly as if it had been a foregone conclusion. "I said I'll give it a try," Michael corrected with a slightly embarrassed look. "I figure it would be a good idea to get some first hand experience." "Good... you guys can take our place tonight," Clark contributed. This caused Louis to look disappointed. "I don't think so," Boner responded. "We have our own slot at midnight... that's right after you two. I doubt if they'd let us do four hours in a row." Louis regained a hopeful expression. "I'd like to get in there too," Boom Boom told us. "Rick and I should really try to find something that would give us a lead on Teddy. I'd like to see that email he got." "Well then, you two can take our place," Clark offered. "We only want to look around," Boom Boom declined. "I didn't say anything about wanting to strip." "Well, you're gonna have to. Nobody gets in there who doesn't work there... except to audition." "He's right," Boner agreed. "I have to take Michael down this afternoon for his audition. I don't imagine he'll have any trouble passing it though." Michael allowed a small smile to form at the edges of his lips. This lasted until Boner added, "Nobody who has ever auditioned has ever been turned down." That also accounted for Clark's quick glance at Louis, who continued to smile hopefully. "Then we will have to audition," Boom Boom decided. "That doesn't mean we will have to perform on line, does it?" "No... of course not. But you don't get paid to audition," Boner told us. I poured the coffee and wondered what the hell had happened in the twelve hours since Michael had phoned me to look at the site on the Internet. Naturally I did not mind the prospect of a little afternoon delight with Boom Boom, but I did have some second thoughts about doing it in front of some cigar chomping ape, who might have some thoughts of joining us for a quickie. Still, I couldn't fault Boom Boom for wanting to find out what had happened to Teddy. I wanted to know as well. The cigar chomping ape turned out to be a good-looking guy in his thirties who did not appreciate anyone smoking in his office, which was, by the way, the largest room in the suite of rooms in the basement of a building on Ste Catherine Street which contained two bars on the ground floor. This was not immediately evident. We did not find that out until much later. It was also the only room that did not have a skylight in its ceiling. I know this sounds odd for a basement, but take my word for it; all of the other rooms had skylights. They were not there to admit light however. The skylights opened into the two bars. One of the bars was a gay bar. The other wasn't. That was the thing about Winchester's... it wasn't particular about what type of sex was practiced within its walls. It had rooms for just about every taste. There were girls and guys together, girls together, guys who dressed like girls together, guys who did not dress at all together, and a bondage and discipline room that catered to all of the above. Some of the single performers appeared in all of the rooms. They were the greedy ones who hung around and filled in whenever another performer failed to show. Some of those boys brought home upwards of a thousand dollars a week. Michael would have liked to talk to them, but he was the first up on the audition list. We cooled our heels in the hallway while he worked his magic for the boss; a guy named Lennie, who videotaped the whole thing. Of course Michael passed and then it was our turn. I followed Boom Boom in and Lennie put us immediately at our ease by having us sign a document that absolved him of all responsibility for everything from the harm we might feel was caused to our psyches to the sinking of the Lusitania. I wanted to read the thing, but he assured me that it would take too long and if I wanted the damned job, I should just put my John Hancock on the thing and leave the legal stuff to the lawyers. This seemed fair. So I asked for a copy of it to read at my leisure. He ripped a copy off the pad of them he had in his desk and I stuffed it into my pocket. Then Lennie slapped a new videotape into his camcorder and told us to open the couch up into a bed. We finally figured out how to do it, and Lennie began to give us directions while he worked the camera from the monitor built into his desk. Neither Boom Boom nor I had any idea what he was shooting, but there were a few times when we exposed some things that had never been exposed... to photography that is. It took about an hour and Lennie kept us hopping... sucking and fucking and rimming and lapping up each other's juices. The only thing he did not tell us to do was kiss each other. I guess that just never occurs to somebody like Lennie. I occurred to me though and I would kiss Boom Boom every time I got in the neighborhood of anything that was kissable. That is just about everything with Boom Boom. That earned us extra points. After we were through Lennie inquired if we had any hang-ups. We couldn't think of any, and Boom Boom even admitted a fondness for having his nipples tied up. This raised Lennie's eyebrows and he checked a few things on a clipboard he had in his hand. In fact he checked quite a few things. Then he told us we would start that night. Well that confused us a little. To begin with we hadn't thought that there were any spots left... in the immediate future. Lennie explained to us that Winchester's provided feeds for several different Internet customers, since what we were doing was essentially illegal in several countries and quite a few provinces. Having the thing emanate from Montreal satisfied their lawyers... and had made Montreal into a bit of a Mecca for tourists looking for a good time. The way he explained it made it sound like it was a patriotic thing we were doing. But we knew that could not be right. After all, Teddy had disappeared. Another thing that bothered us was we had not really planned to take the job. But when Lennie offered us our own show that very night, Boom Boom looked at me and I could see what he was thinking. He had had a good time during the audition and was getting a bit of a charge out of doing it in public. To tell the truth, which is one of my weaknesses, I was pretty excited about it too. There was a glow in Boom Boom's eyes... him having brown eyes it is difficult for them to twinkle... and when I pulled my pants up and felt the two twenty dollar bills in my pants pockets, I nodded my agreement. "Good," Lennie smiled. "We'll start you two off in the bondage room."