Balustrade

by Mark Henry

  “Oh but you will.” The Hilary-thing said and then glanced at her watch hanging limply from her bone-thin wrist. “And soon. Soon.”

  ***

  Hilary woke with a start, her breathing shallow. A dream. A fucking dream. And a ridiculous one, at that. Also terrifying. She couldn’t deny that. But she certainly wasn’t going to take it seriously. She hadn’t believed in demons or the capital d devil since never. A dream wasn’t going to make her see the light on Christianity.

  It took her a moment to settle her breathing, her racing heart.

  She glanced at the bed to see Jack still sleeping, coiled in the sheet like an aerialist who’d fallen to his death. Beside her chair lay the teacup, a fresh beige stain drying on the carpet.

  Jesus. How long had she been asleep?

  Morning light streamed in from the courtyard and she stood achily and stumbled into the bathroom, searching for an ibuprofen or six. She scrambled inside her toiletry bag, fumbling for the correct bottle.

  “I’m sure I packed it,” she said aloud, finally dumping the bag onto the counter. Creams, solutions, pastes scattered but not even a stray Tylenol rolled around the marble surface. “Goddamn it.”

  As she drew a brush through her hair, a shuffling sound drew her out of the bathroom.

  Suggestives dragged their feet sleepily past the room—a long night for them, no doubt. A bell dinged once, followed by Chantal's French-inflected English, “It's time, travelers. Take a break from your pleasures or slumber and join us around the Balustrade for a light breakfast social. The Indoctrination follows!”

  “She sounds awfully chipper,” Hilary muttered.

  Jack staggered around the corner, yawning and hunting for the toilet. He kissed her cheek as he passed. “Mornin’.”

  “Mmhmm,” Hilary leaned against the wall, watching the suggestives.

  Each seemed blander and grayer than the one shuffling along before them and were followed with some immediacy by the groggy, the disheveled, and the recently fucked, their hair mussed, some walking open-robed, genitalia swinging, arousal glistening on pubic hair. Others, like her, curious and forlorn, dirged forward, terry cloth tightly drawn around their bodies, wearing frightened suspicion like armor.

  “I guess we better grab a Danish,” she said over her shoulder before returning her gaze to the front window.

  Hilary made a note to remember those dubious faces, in particular. She needed to make some sort of a connection to like-minded people to get a read on the experience. Jack was so on-board he'd be open to anything, so she’d lost a sounding board there. And what that anything could mean frightened the shit out of her.

  Jack's hand slipped into hers, fingers threading and pulling her toward the door.

  “Exciting, huh?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “That's a word.”

  “That's the word.”

  Hilary followed Jack out onto the balcony and when she turned toward the stairs, nearly ran smack into Glynnis, leaning casually against the window of the next room and snickering lightly. Hilary pivoted as she passed and poked the woman between her tits.

  “Back off. I don't want to see you again.”

  Glynnis stared at her with that same hangdog expression, unimpressed.

  Beneath them the courtyard began to flood with people, so many robes you’d think they’d pulled a fire drill, if you didn’t know better or had morals. They filed in and circled the black cage in the center of the floor. Just looking at it brought back the stitch in the pit of her stomach. Whatever was down there wasn’t right. The staircase led to something dark, somewhere dark—to call it a basement might have been an over-simplification.

  The people in the crowd seemed to fall into one of three groups, the overly sincere about mending fractured relationships (lingering eye contact, firmly-threaded hand-holding), the obviously horny (boners and nipple pops were prevalent), and the suspicious and more than slightly terrified (her scoffing neighbor). Jack's stunt in the steam room had Hilary teeter tottering between those last two, though suspicious was a much more comfortable box to check.

  Hilary slipped in next to the frightened woman she'd seen earlier. Her name was Claire and she had the jittery eyes and frayed nerves of a war vet, if that war involved repeated viewings of Cracked on cable television—you know the show, the one where a seemingly normal woman suddenly cracks up and kills her cheating no good husband with an ax, corkscrew or broken wine glass shard.

  “There's something not right about this place,” she said in a conspiratorial whisper.

  Hilary blanched. “You think? What was your first clue?”

  Claire's eyes grew wild. “You didn't see the religious fanatics on the way here? Creepy.”

  “Yes, obviously. They were everywhere. I was being facetious.”

  Claire’s hand fluttered to her chest, oddly offended considering the jutting boomerang of an erection her husband sported. “Well, I don't see how this is an appropriate time for that.”

  “I apologize. There's just so much wrong with Balustrade, it seemed a comic understatement. I see now that you weren't...funny.”

  Claire glowered at her and Hilary felt as though she may have lost an ally...before even gaining one. It was par for the course in terms of her relationships with women, it seemed. The workplace wasn’t much different, particularly among the management.

  “Well, you can joke, but I've heard some things that would knock that grin off your face.”

  “Oh yeah? Like what?”

  “I heard our suggestive arguing with that filthy Montenegrin, that's what.” Her words dropped to a whisper as a surrogate—red sash loosely knotted and indicating her more…active role—sauntered by with a grin and a tray of iced tea of some sort. Claire snatched a glass while the cute young woman smirked and selected a beverage from the opposite side of the tray for Hilary.

  “This one’s the best,” she winked, her pixie cut bowing away from her flexing cheek.

  Hilary accepted and gave the drink a sip. Iced chai. Her favorite. They’d done their homework. Another swished by handing them each a napkin and offering them a selection of pastry. Hilary took a chocolate croissant, for obvious reasons (all of them being…chocolate). As she munched at the tender crust and rich filling, she pondered Claire’s bias against their facilitator.

  Montenegrin?

  She'd thought Ludovic looked like he could have been Eastern European, but Claire was terribly precise in her isolating his heritage down to the country. It seemed a strangely specific prejudice. Hilary decided to take the bait. She took a swig off her iced chai, letting the tea soothe her nerves and leaned in to Claire. “What were they arguing about?”

  “The suggestive, a guy named Chad I think or Craig, something starting with a 'C' anyway was complaining about his “accommodations.” Now, I assumed he was talking about his bunk on the staff floor, but then he said something quite strange.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes. He said, and I quote.” And she did too, going so far as making air quotes around her words. “This meat is the wrong color. Isn't that strange? This meat is the wrong color. What could that possibly mean?”

  “Were they arguing over dinner?”

  “No, just out in the hall. It didn't make any sense. There wasn't any meat around anywhere, except the ones dangling between their…” She paused, a look of distaste squirreling onto her face. “Down there,” she whispered finally, signaling to the spot between her legs.

  “Hmm,” Hilary said, stretching the sound out more to humor this woman than anything else. “Have you noticed anything else?”

  “Besides that this retreat seems to be a gigantic cover-up for some sort of swinger's convention?”

  “Well, yeah. That's been my take ever since we were shown our rooms.” But she thought back to Jack's seduction in the steam room and couldn't deny that there was something to the place that had had a sexual effect on both Jack and, to a lesser extent, Hilary. At least she'd been able to enjoy it and tha
t certainly hadn’t been the case as of late.

  “Well,” Claire confided. “There's also that Chantal. She's too pretty. I'm thinking a fembot.”

  “Nice talking to you.” Hilary tipped her glass in the crazy woman's direction and backed away quickly. Never turn your back on the actively psychotic. She'd remembered that quip from a management training course.

  The circle of guests parted and the staff of Balustrade marched forward one after the next, the suggestives followed by the surrogates, trailed by the Ludovic and Chantal in their New York best, fitted black suit and tie on him, anaconda intestine stretched over her—or possibly a dress, Hilary would lay odds on the former. The woman pressed through the group, producing a key and unlatching a gate into the cage, then descending stone-faced into the darkness, the rest of the staff following. Hilary's eyes were trained on Ludovic. He trailed the line by a few feet as if his presence were bulldozing the rest into the pit, only instead of standing at the top as they plummeted into uncertainty; he joined them, trodding willingly into the darkness.

  Swallowed whole.

  Hilary glanced at Jack. “If that was the indoctrination,” she whispered, “so anti-climactic.”

  “Hugely,” he agreed.

  A man chuckled behind them but when Hilary turned to acknowledge him, he shook his limp penis at her. She scowled at the man who smiled back pleasantly, as though this were a perfectly reasonable greeting.

  What are you in for, buddy? She wondered. She’d seen that kind of behavior before, in street people, but never in someone who appeared to bathe. One thing is for certain, if you’re comfortable shaking your genitalia at a perfect stranger, guaranteed, that’s what’s wrong with your relationship. It’s not them, buddy.

  It’s you.

  “Pervert,” she mouthed.

  He chuckled some more, sparking in her a need to lunge for him, lay into him like a lazy employee. She had to stop herself from putting him in his place. But what was his place? Probably best to ignore that kind of thing, particularly within Balustrade’s anything goes fuck all atmosphere. He could end up being a dick-shaking trendsetter.

  Just then a shushing began at the front of the crowd closest to the balustrade, it grew in a wave until, counter-intuitively, everyone was shushing so loudly it drowned out any other possible sound.

  Eventually, the cacophony died down just as a storm-front cast the courtyard in lavender shadow. Hilary stared into the roiling square of clouds, hot veins of lightning webbing through it, and wiped the first fat drop of rain from her cheek.

  A jarring squeal issued from the darkened bottom of the wrought iron cage, like claws scrabbling against metal. Hilary staggered backward, glancing at Jack as she withdrew. His eyes were cast down, heavy-lidded like he hadn’t just slept like a baby. And not just him. The rest of the crowd was noticeably tamer.

  Subdued.

  She glanced down at the glass in her hand, half-empty. A raindrop rippled across the surface of the tea, sloshing the ice cubes lightly. If the drink were drugged, why wasn’t she experiencing the same lulling effect?

  Another squelch screamed from the pit in the center of the room, pushing Hilary unconsciously backward, away from her husband and toward the wall.

  The devil.

  The word popped into her head in a voice not entirely her own. The sound of it was a memory and she was reminded of the horror of the dream, that ridiculous amalgam of their trip, of the contract. But still, something was coming.

  An ashen smoke billowed from the cage, bisecting in its cross-hatching, thick, chunky. It didn’t smell like anything was on fire, rather a sweet stickiness filled the air, the scent of rotten fruits, third world cities. It spilled into the courtyard, a low-lying fog casting the participants in gray-scale, a strange charcoal sketch.

  Shivers rolled through her, embarrassingly. She wasn’t this woman. She was perceptive. Intuitive. But never superstitious. The only thing sinister about the place, she told herself, was everyone's seemingly wicked intent to get debaucherous.

  It was like a calling, as though someone had poisoned the water with Spanish Fly or Viagra or whatever the female equivalent was called. Hilary reached for Jack's hand, clenching it in a fear-addled vise.

  Chantal was first to rise. And her presence was greeted by gasps and then applause, cheers. She wore the same type of dress, severe and black, tight to her form, but she seemed more vibrant, her lips red and cheeks and décolletage flushed with her apparent arousal. She smiled broadly at each face she passed, reaching out to touch and let her fingers linger on cheeks, breasts, crotches.

  “Jesus,” Jack muttered and Hilary glanced at him to see his face flushed as well, and then noticed his robe tenting forward, open a bit where the fabric overlapped. Damn if he didn’t have an erection. Hilary reached out and covered it with her palm, flattening it. She heard him moan, slightly. Had he thought she'd done it as an advance rather than to cover his shame? The shame he should have felt, rather.

  Chantal made her way to a small dais and spoke briefly. “As the sun slowly sets, let’s take this opportunity to cleanse ourselves of inhibition, to rid ourselves of regret and humility. These are the barriers to restoration. Disrobe and take pleasure! This is your indoctrination! This is your journey!”

  Robes began to fall, staff and participant alike, even as lips found the hollows of throats and hands and genitals. Jack tugged at the tie on her robe, eyes heavy with lust, but Hilary slapped his hand away. She watched as he merely shrugged, tossing off his own vestment and walked naked into the throng.

  Hilary licked her lips, stunned by the lack of hesitation.

  She followed Jack’s naked form as he pressed through gaps in the wet bodies, his hands moving across breasts, buttocks, the smalls of backs, stiffened pricks and swollen vaginas, indiscriminately. There was a freedom to Jack’s movement to his boisterous machinations—grinding against this person, curling his tongue around the earlobe of the next—that Hilary, at once, admired and detested. It was foreign, unperturbed by convention.

  It was against the rules, and she was, if she were being honest with herself, a stickler. Always had been.

  She crimpled against the courtyard wall, unable to look away. Bodies now flattening into the low-lying fog of gray smoke, arms jutting, heads and shoulders wrenching upward in ecstasy. Thickets of bodies entwined like living vines. The pitter-patter of steady rain giving way to the moans and groans of sex, in all its forms.

  Hilary couldn’t look away, even after losing Jack in the whirlwind of carnality. It dawned on her that they’d never discussed this potentiality. And yet, he’d had no problem drifting into any number of positions and orientations. He seemed to lavish in the attentions of these strangers, their curious proddings, their anonymous throats.

  It was as she pondered this, and her dull emotions around it—after all, she wasn’t sure she cared, that feeling nagging at the back of her skull wasn’t jealousy, but rather apathy—that she saw Chantal sauntering toward her, sidestepping mounds of pumping hips, sweaty appendages woven together, writhing.

  The woman snapped her fingers and several suggestives poked from the haze in unison, she pointed at a fair-haired man with even paler skin and said, “Two chairs for me and Mrs. Carson-Bartleby. We need some comfort for our bonding.”

  The man scuttled away, naked save his boxers, through the passage into the office wing and returned hastily with one and then another lushly padded chair. Chantal lazed into one and gestured for Hilary to take the other.

  “Refill on your tea, darling?”

  “The drinks are drugged.” She said it matter-of-factly, as though it would be simply agreed to, as though Chantal would simply say, “Duh.”

  Instead, the woman’s mouth curled into the wryest smile. “That’s an unusual presumption, Hilary.”

  “As unusual as a room full of presumably sane people jumping off the sexual cliff?” She glanced across the storm of bodies.

  Chantal laughed—a loud boisterous s
ound that echoed in the courtyard. “It is a strange world we live in, Hilary. But this serves its purpose and I could have sworn I saw you enjoying it. Just a little bit. Right? Even just a smidge?”

  Hilary ignored her.

  The longer they stayed at Balustrade, the less convinced she was that the place had anything to do with healing relationships. After all, the entire focus seemed to be on sex...and while their shower had been unusually evocative, there was something questionable about a therapeutic practice that didn't place an importance on talking through the principal issues in a marriage. Hilary had been prepared for encounter groups. Primal screams. Rational-emotive behavioral exercises involving sand trays or clay sculpting or whatever it was that the shrinks were using these days to shake up couples gone stale.

  All they'd need to do is ask.

  “Was there going to be any focus on actually fixing our marriage?” she asked Chantal, finally.

  The woman’s lips curled into a bemused smile. “Is that what you really want?” she asked, but didn't wait for an answer. “Our consultation with Dr. Madrigal indicated that the commitment level to making dramatic changes was decidedly one-sided, in favor of poor Jack over there.” She flung a gesture in the direction of the smoke and, as if on cue, Jack rose from the mire, a pained look of ecstasy creasing his face.

  Hilary sighed. She couldn’t say that she felt much of anything at the sight of her husband in the throes of passion. She shook her head, acquiescing.

  “There’s more to you than anyone knows, isn’t there?” Chantal drew a single crimson fingernail across the back of Hilary’s hand and across her wrist.

  She pulled away, suddenly uncomfortable. “If we’re not here to work on our relationship, then—”

  Chantal finished her question, “Then what are you here for?”

  “Right?”

  “This is an opportunity for self examination. You’re a powerful woman, Hilary. You manage a large number of employees in your work, correct?”