Chapter 2
The Foundry doesn’t look like anything from the street. Brick, a black steel doors, a former ironworks. Inside, there is a foyer—coat check, a desk, warm, low amber light on old brick.
A woman intercepts us six feet past the door. Fifties, silver buzzcut, waistcoat.
“First-timers,” she says. “Don’t argue. I can smell hesitation.”
“Is it that obvious?” Anjali asks.
“You’re standing like you’re about to play ‘The Floor is Lava.’” The woman spreads her arms. “Welcome to the Foundry. Formerly an ironworks, currently also an ironworks, depending on your kink.” She waits one full beat for the pun to land.
Anjali gives her a slow nod of respect.
“I’m Mona. I own the place. House rules, short version.
Watching is welcome, that’s half of why anyone comes.
Nobody touches anybody without words first, actual words, out loud.
The people in gray shirts are monitors. They circulate.
They will absolutely interrupt you mid-anything if something looks off, and nobody gets to be precious about it. ”
I know this woman. Not her specifically, the type. Theater kid, never left, found a bigger stage. The orientation has blocking. She’s done this monologue four hundred times and still commits.
“Two more things,” she says. “You’re allowed to play tonight if you want to.
First visit, doesn’t matter. Some people need permission, so there it is.
And if anybody in there catches your eye and you want to know what their deal is, come ask me.
I know everybody’s deal.” She points at Anjali.
“You, I like. You have stage-manager energy.”
“I have a stage-manager job.”
“I knew it. Now I know your deal, too!” She’s already moving, pulled toward the street door by whoever’s arriving behind us.
She waves us toward a black steel door across the foyer.
“Play space is through there. Bar’s to the left once you’re in.
We have the finest non-alcoholic beverages available.
Have fun, ask questions, and don’t lean on the ring bolts—they’re load-bearing. ”
Mona goes.
Anjali looks at me. “I love her.”
She pulls the door open, and the sound arrives first—a low murmur, music under it. The crane track runs across the ceiling of the room beyond, bolted where it’s hung for a century.
We drift toward the back. Stations spread out under the crane track, farther apart than I expected, each one its own pool of light. A St. Andrew’s cross stands dead center, occupied. The room hums at conversation volume. A gray shirt passes us going the other way, nods, and keeps going.
Anjali walks like she’s checking sightlines before house open. I keep my hands in my jacket pockets.
We stop at the first station. A woman kneels on a mat while her partner ties her, rope moving in slow passes around her chest, over, under, tensioned, laid flat. He works the way a wardrobe head fits a bodice—unhurried, checking with two fingers under each band.
The woman’s eyes are half closed.
I make faces for a living. I know what calm costs. The jaw does most of it, the small muscles around the eyes give it away by minute twelve, and nobody holds it clean past twenty without a break. I’ve faked serenity in a corset under stage lights. I know exactly which parts of my face are lying.
Her face is doing no work at all.
We watch for at least five minutes. She’s completely immobilized. Thighs bent under her ass, arms behind her back. Rope underneath, above, and between her breasts.
“Open,” the man says. She opens her mouth, and he places rope inside of it. He pulls on it until her jaw is pried open before tying it off around the back of her head.
Her eyes are closed as she starts to drool. He pushes gently, and she rocks to one side before regaining balance. She giggles through the rope and spit drops onto her thigh.
I look to Anjali who is biting her lip. She likes it. I wonder for a moment if I like what we’re watching and realize I’m not sure.
A yelp comes from somewhere behind us, high and short, then a laugh from the same throat. Anjali tips her head toward the next pool of light, and I follow.
There’s a piece of furniture I don’t have a word for—a padded sawhorse, or a vaulting horse rebuilt by an upholsterer, little cushioned rests coming off it at four points.
A man is bent over it, forearms in the padded rests, shirt off, trousers around his knees.
The furniture is doing all the work of holding him there.
A woman stands at his hip in flat boots and a plain black dress, no theatrics, and brings her palm down across the back of his thigh hard enough that I hear it over the room.
“Eight,” he says.
She waits. Not for effect, I don’t think. She’s watching his shoulders. Then the next one lands, and he says, “Nine,” and pushes back into it, lifting his hips an inch to meet her hand.
This is my blocking. Standing woman, presented man, downstage right every night at the same mark.
Except Jonas holds a position because the script says hold, and my crop stops four inches off his back because the fight director says stop, and this man is arching into strokes that leave prints I can see from fifteen feet away.
“Ten,” he says, loose around the edges, and she doesn’t stop. Ten is apparently nothing. She works down one thigh and up the other, unhurried. I stop watching him at all, because her face.
I’ve been building the wrong face for five weeks. Mine is cold. Jaw set, eyes flat, the “worship me, you worm” look. Hers is lit up. She’s watching every stroke land like it’s coming out perfect, like the thing she’s making is turning out even better than the plan.
“You’re staring,” Anjali says.
“I’m researching.”
“You’re staring at her.”
I don’t answer. The woman leans down and says something into the man’s ear. Whatever it is makes him laugh, and she starts spanking him again.
“Look at her face,” Anjali says.
The woman grabs onto his right cheek and brings her mouth to the left. She bites down, and he laughs again. She kisses and sucks the place she bit.
Her hand reaches between his legs. I can’t quite see what she’s doing, but they are both pleased with it.
I’m wet.
Fuck.
We move on. Anjali doesn’t say anything about my face, which means she’s seen it and is saving it.
The third station is a yoga mat and three people. A woman kneels in the middle of it, arms roped behind her back, ankles crossed and tied. Two men stand over her, both undressed from the waist down. She looks up at one, then the other, mouth wide open, tongue out flat past her lower lip. Waiting.
The man on the left steps in and pushes his cock into her mouth.
“Oh my god,” I whisper without meaning to.
“Be cool, Mistress Havoc,” Anjali says out of the side of her mouth.
The woman takes it deep and closes her eyes. He holds her head with both hands and moves, slow at first, then not slow. she can’t do anything about the pace, can’t steady herself, can’t even wipe her own chin. Her whole body rocks with it, knees fixed to the mat.
I don’t know how long it goes. I lose count of anything countable. When he pulls out, she gasps once, strings of spit swinging. Before she finishes the breath, the second man is already in her mouth. She moans around him. Her hips work against nothing.
She’s the most helpless person in this building. Bound at every joint, breathing on someone else’s schedule.
But nothing is forcing her mouth open. She’s keeping it that way.
And she’s radiant. Every time a cock leaves her mouth, she opens wider for the next one.
“Water?” Anjali says.
“Yeah.”
Neither of us moves yet.
One of the men says, “Should she get a break?”
The other says, “Does she even want one? You know what cum-hungry sluts are like.”
The woman is nodding her head up and down, saliva hanging from her still-extended tongue.
“What are you nodding about?” the first asks, kneeling down a little like he’s asking a dog what he can do for it. “Are you saying ‘yes, you need a break’?”
She starts shaking her head back and forth.
“I know,” the other man says, “she’s agreeing that she’s a cum-hungry slut!”
The woman immediately nods again, eyes wide.
The men theatrically shrug their shoulders, and she has a dick back in her mouth almost instantly.
“Okay … now I want a non-alcoholic beverage,” Anjali says through a big smile.
I start to turn, and as soon as my thigh moves, I’m reminded of something I’m not thrilled about. I’m extremely wet.
We both turn to find the bar, and that’s when I see him.