by Penny Reid
He lifted his hand to get the bartender’s attention as he spoke, “I would switch them. I would call the cages a ‘latex of cages’ and the women a ‘vulgar of women’.”
I considered his comment before responding, “Why is that?”
He leveled his gaze on me and gifted me with a small smile, “Because that group of women over there are more vulgar than what is happening in the cages and the couples in the cages are wearing latex.”
I watched him for a moment, my brow wrinkling, then moved my eyes to one of the cages to watch the couple. I chewed on my lip, studying them, “The women look completely naked and the men are in monkey suits. Where is the... the-” I sucked in a breath, my wide eyes moving back to his, “Are you saying... they’re, are they...?”
He laughed and shook his head; a bright full smile lighting his eyes with amusement, “No, no. I guarantee they’re not engaging in any monkey business.” He laughed again as he watched me, “I know for a fact it’s all choreographed. It’s a show.”
I narrowed my eyes at him, “It’s a show?”
His laugh was deep and open, it was doing strange things to my insides, especially since I suspected he was laughing at me. My stomach fluttered with a mixture of embarrassment and apprehension. I narrowed my eyes at him, trying to ignore my body’s continuing hysterics; “It’s still disconcerting. I mean, would you want one of those cages in your house?”
He continued to grin at my incredulousness and answered, “Not with the monkey in it.”
“The man or the primate?” I countered.
“Neither.” his gaze narrowed, mimicking mine, and he leaned still closer.
I swallowed unevenly and half croaked, “But, you would want the woman?”
“Not that woman.” his voice was so low and I almost didn’t hear his response, his eyes moved from mine and traveled over my hair, forehead, nose, cheeks, then remained on my lips for longer than I felt was necessary... or appropriate... or whatever word adequately conveyed my discomfort at that moment.
“What do you need?” The bartender’s polite query sounded from my left which, to my dual relief and disappointment, caused Quinn to move his attention from my lips.
“Hey David, please put whatever these two are having tonight on my account.” Quinn said.
David shook his head slowly, his eyes flickering upward then back to Quinn, “I can’t do that, Mr. Sullivan.”
Quinn frowned, “Why not?”
“Someone else already volunteered to cover their tab.” the bartender grimaced, his shoulders stiffening.
“Who?” Quinn asked.
David’s voice was tinged with uncertainty as he responded, “I can’t tell you that.”
The bartender’s response surprised Quinn, I could tell by the narrowing of his eyes. I saw the muscle tick at his jaw before he pressed in a low voice, “Yes you can.”
I turned to Elizabeth but she was distracted by her pager which, I didn’t notice until that moment, must have been going off. I gave her a questioning glance as I listened to Quinn and David the bartender’s discussion.
I heard David sigh, “Alright, listen, I’ll tell you but don’t look at them, ok? They’ve been really great with the tips.”
“Who is it?” Quinn didn’t raise his voice but his tone clearly betrayed impatience.
“It’s the guys on the second floor, don’t look up there, the ones in the Canopy room.” David sighed again.
I sensed, rather than saw, Quinn step closer to me as I suppressed my urge to look up to the previously unnoticed second floor; I wondered where the ‘Canopy room’ was. Before I could give this much thought, I felt a shock as Quinn placed his hand on my arm above the elbow and turned me to face him.
His gaze was no longer warm and friendly; in fact it almost looked hostile as he addressed me, “You need to leave.”
His touch, his closeness, the intensity of his stare all made my insides feel like lava. I couldn’t understand my erratic and completely unintentional reactions to him; it was like I was someone else, some daft dimwit.
I resolved to pull myself together and opened my mouth to respond but, before I could, Elizabeth chimed in from behind me,
“Yeah, actually, we do need to go.” She lifted her pager up, stepping to my side, and gave me an apologetic frown, “I just got paged. They need me to go in. I’m sorry, Janie.”
I looked between Elizabeth and Quinn, a confused frown securely in place, “Wait- why do I need to go?”
Quinn’s hand moved down my bare arm, causing me to immediately shiver, and engulfed my hand, his fingers linking through mine; he tugged impatiently and began leading me toward the entrance as he spoke,
“Because your friend is leaving and it’s not safe to be in a club like this, looking like you look, by yourself.”
“But-” I sputtered, trying to understand what was happening and the meaning of his words, but my body was still achingly sentient, focusing on where his hand held mine, and my mind was decidedly distracted. Again I looked to Elizabeth for help but she was already some distance behind us and I wasn’t certain she could hear our conversation. He wasn’t moving particularly fast so we walked side-by-side holding hands.
Finally I said, “What’s wrong with how I look? And aren’t I safe with you?” my skipping record of stream of consciousness questions seemed to be on play again.
He glanced at me from the corner of his eyes and hesitated a moment before speaking, as though he were reluctantly about to give away a secret, “Not necessarily-”
“Can’t I just stay here-”
He withdrew his hand from mine and placed it on my back, pressing me forward, as he answered, “No. You can’t.” his firm strength at the base of my spine reminded me of how he’d escorted me to the basement on my worst day ever and, despite myself, I began to feel aggravated. My annoyance spiked further when he added, “Someone like you shouldn't be in here anyway.”
I stepped abruptly away from him and stopped walking; we were approximately ten feet from the entrance.
His words felt like a snowball to the face. “Someone like me?” I asked, squaring my shoulders, even as I felt an irritating blush spread up my neck and over my cheeks. I briefly looked around at the perfectly formed animated mannequins and knew exactly what he meant.
I was used to remarks about my strangeness and I’d long ago resolved to rejoice in the awkwardness of my appearance, but the offhanded comment, coming from him, from the knighted source of my weeks long stalkerish fantasies, chaffed against a wound I thought healed into a concealed scar long ago.
His attention followed my movements as I pulled away; a mixture of surprise, annoyance, and confusion apparent in his features. He took a step to close the distance between us, reaching for my hand, but I crossed my arms over my chest in order to avoid further contact.
I wondered at my see-saw of emotions, hot then cold; I didn’t enjoy how unbalanced I felt, especially when he touched me. I didn’t like that I’d given him, simply because he was beautiful, some strange power over my inner mechanics and chemistry. I didn’t like how my body seemed to be intent on sabotaging my brain, especially since my brain was so good at sabotaging itself. The burning in the pit of my stomach was replaced with a cold ache. I felt seasick and truly absurd.
“I think I can navigate the last few feet just fine without an escort. I do know how to walk.”
I tried not to notice how very nice he looked in his black suit and gave him what I hoped was a withering glare, but I suspected it was merely a stiff stare, and I pointedly walked around him. I didn’t look back as I exited the club and welcomed the windy Chicago city air.
Elizabeth must have been a significant distance behind me because she didn’t exit for what felt like several minutes; this gave me ample time to work myself into a tornado of heated annoyance and embarrassment.
When she finally arrived she was on her cell phone, obviously talking to the hospital; she gave me a huge smile, nudged my elbow wi
th hers and mouthed Oh My God. I frowned at her elated expression and shook my head. Elizabeth covered the receiver of her phone to block our conversation from whoever was on the other end; a questioning crease appearing between her eyebrows, her smile replaced with meditative concern.
“I thought you’d be over the moon, he was flirting with you.” She loud-whispered and indicated with her head toward the club.
I sighed, turned away from her, “No, he wasn’t.”
“What, are you crazy? He’s completely into you. Did he- Yes-” I listened as Elizabeth turned her attention back to the headless voice emanating from her cell, “Yes, I’m still here.”
I ignored the rest of her phone conversation, my own thoughts a black cloud of grumpiness at my maladroit personality disorder and gargantuan features. There were very few times in my life I truly wished I looked different, was different than I was. I was the middle child in a family of three girls and I was universally acknowledged as the plain Jane of the bunch.
We were the Morris girls; my older sister, June Morris, was the pretty one, I was the smart one, and my youngest sister, Jem Morris, was the crazy one. Jem’s first arrest came when she was nine, shortly after my mother’s death. She stabbed one of her teachers in the hand with a cafeteria knife then told the police she had a bomb hidden in the school.
Even from an early age I was at peace with my family and my place in it. In recent years both June and Jem had become known, collectively, as the ‘criminal ones’. June had just been found not-guilty in California for her part in an organized escort service, which was my dad’s way of politely talking about her prostitution business.
The last time I heard from Jem she was calling the shots at a chop shop in Massachusetts just outside of Boston. To their credit, they were both leaders in their respective fields, masterminds at their craft. I, meanwhile, went to college to become an architect and the closest I’d come to realizing my dream was securing a job, bought by my at-the-time-boyfriend’s dad, as a staff accountant at a mediocre firm. And, I wasn’t sure it was even my dream anymore.
Elizabeth pulled me back into the present with a tug on my arm as she led me toward a waiting taxi, “Here-” she shoved cash in my hand, “-just go to the apartment. I’ll take a different cab to the hospital as it’s in the opposite direction.” She gave me a quick hug as I looked from her to the money in my hand. “We’ll talk tomorrow, I won’t be home till the afternoon.”
I nodded dumbly as she shoved me into the open door, closed it, waved through the window then turned to hail another taxi.
The car was moving. I frowned at the pile of bills in my fist. I wondered why my sisters were so fearless. I wondered if I had missed out on that gene along with June’s beauty gene and Jem’s crazy gene. I wondered why everyone- Jon, Elizabeth, even to a certain extent Sir Quinn McHotpants- felt like I needed oversight, someone to escort me, take care of me, usually out.
“Where to?” The cabbie’s baritone cut through my dazed preoccupation and I realized we’d already gone two blocks. “Where are we going?” his voice sounded again from the front.
I quickly considered my options: I could go back to the apartment, read my new book on the history of viral infections, and embrace my hermit tendencies or I could ask the driver to turn the cab around, take me back to the club, and- just for one night- live my life unescorted while I tried to unlock my Morris Girl fearless gene.
“Take me back to Outrageous.”
CHAPTER 5
There are times, after drinking too much alcohol, that I start to wonder if the prohibitionists were on to something when they coined the term ‘demon liquor.’ I felt like I had a demon inside of me and it was stabbing my eyes with a corkscrew, scooping pieces of my brain out with a spork, twisting cotton in my throat, and wearing soccer cleats as it jumped up and down on my bladder.
This was only my third time with a hangover and, like all the other times, I promised myself it would be my last. The first time was not my fault; my younger sister, Jem, diluted my breakfast of orange juice with vodka on the morning of the SATs. She said it was a protein drink which was supposed to be brain food. I ended up throwing up all over my examination and the proctor screamed that I’d ruined his perfect test administration record.
The second time I was with Jon at a tiki bar near his parents’ house in the Hamptons. He ordered me a drink called ‘the hurricane’ which didn’t taste like anything but fruit juice. I ordered several, liking the little umbrellas and other accoutrements which donned the rim of the glass, and ended up getting sick on the beach; I passed out on the sand and Jon, being just my height and of a lean build, wasn’t strong enough to lift me. He had to call two of his friends over to help pick me up and carry me back to the guest house. When I woke up I wanted to die.
Now, lying face down, my mouth tasting like whatever the Grim Reaper served at Thanksgiving, there were three things I knew for certain: 1) I was not at Elizabeth’s apartment, 2) I was wearing only my bra, thigh-high stockings, and underwear, and 3) I wanted to die.
I squeezed my eyes shut tighter, wanting to postpone my collision with reality for as long as possible, and willed myself back to sleep. I wasn’t certain how much time passed as I lay on, what I surmised was, a bed, hoping that my Fairy Godmother would appear along with little talking birds and mice, clothe me in jeans and a t-shirt, put me in a pumpkin carriage and send me to Starbucks for a soy latte. When I finally opened my eyes all my earlier assertions of certainty proved true.
I wasn’t in Elizabeth’s apartment. In fact, I had no idea where I was. Swallowing with a great deal of exertion, my mouth professedly free of saliva, I slowly tried to move my gaze around the room. My eyeballs felt like sandpaper and I had to blink several times, both in response to the unforgiving brightness of the world and the dryness resulting from sleeping in my contacts.
When they were appropriately lubricated, I scanned my surroundings from where I lay. It was huge, the walls made of exposed red brick, and it was sparsely decorated. The ceiling was tiled tin, rusted in a few places, beige everywhere else. There were no overhead light fixtures; rays of sunlight poured in through tall windows along two adjacent sides of the room. Near the bed there was a floor lamp which was currently off. The floor was sealed cement.
From my current vantage point I saw only five other pieces of furniture besides the mattress and the floor lamp: a drafting desk, a tall wooden chair for the desk, a bookshelf, a brown leather couch, and a side table. The drafting table was covered in papers and the bookshelf was littered with what looked like machine parts.
I was wearing only my bra, stockings, and underwear. I confirmed this belief when I peeked under the white sheet which had pooled at my mid-back. I glanced again around the room and found my dress folded in half over the back of the wooden chair and my shoes neatly settled under the desk.
My hands went to my chest as I struggled to sit upright; adjusting the strapless bra to ensure it covered my breasts as I deliberately attempted to find equilibrium in the vertical world. My hair fell to my lower spine in a puffy, untenable tangle of curls; it must have come completely loose sometime during the night. Elizabeth called it my mane of hair; I called it my bane of hair. However, it was far worse looking when it was short, sticking straight up or out at awkward angles; at least when it was long it almost obeyed gravity.
I wanted to die. Almost as soon as I was in a sitting position on the mattress but before I was fully able to bring the world and my current misadventure into focus, I perceived the sound of running water, of a shower, emanating from a door to the right of the bed. A sudden thunderbolt of panic struck my heart and I stiffened, immediately regretting the ungraceful movement and the resulting stab of pain in my temples.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I took several deep breaths. As exigently as possible I went to the invisible closet space in my head and went through the motions of wrapping up the panic in the beach towel, somehow fumbled with the lid of the box, finally
found the damn key for the box and inserted it into the lock. I tried to ignore the shaking of my hands as the pretend me in my head put the box on the top shelf of the closet, quickly turned the light off, and ran screaming from the make-believe closet.
I needed to focus, I really needed to.
I had to get out of here before the mystery shower person emerged from the bathroom. At this point, as my memory was drawing a complete blank, I had no idea if the mystery person was a man or a woman. I wasn’t sure if, at that moment, I really had a preference in their gender but I drew some hope from the fact that I saw no discarded monkey suits by the bed or littering the floor. I raced to the chair, grabbed my dress, and quickly pulled it over my head. It felt just as inadequate in daylight as it had the night before. I shimmied into my shoes just as I heard the water cut off in the bathroom.
“Oh God.” I couldn’t find my bag. My gaze swept over the desk and the chair but they proved to be a purse-free zone. The brown leather couch and side table were also bagless. I automatically tiptoed to the queen mattress and lifted the sheets. The box spring was lying directly on the floor otherwise I would have crawled around looking under the bed.
I gave up my search for the bag and instead started hunting around the room for a phone. However, before I could initiate my first sweep, I heard the handle on the bathroom door turn and I sucked in a sharp breath.
This was it.
This was going to be my second walk of shame in two weeks. I just hoped that whoever was on the other side of the door didn’t insist on a no-eye-contact breakfast. It wasn’t just the fact that my stupidity had resulted in a probably one-night-stand and maybe a plethora of incurable venereal diseases or my immediate embarrassment at the situation, but that Jon and Elizabeth had been right: I needed an escort. I had reclusive tendencies for a reason, I couldn’t be trusted to live in the world and make decisions on my own.