by Doucette, G
There was a step up from the front stoop in order to get inside, which temporarily hid the fact that her host was surprisingly tall, much taller than anyone she’d ever met before. Mask or not, he was clearly not someone she knew outside of this moment.
His clothing was formal and somewhat antiquated: a tuxedo with tails, the kind of thing one only ever saw in period dramas or classical music concerts. Like her, he had on gloves, the same white as his mask.
She took the hand he was extending for her and stepped over the threshold. He guided her the rest of the way in and closed the door.
They were standing in a small room, dimly lit by an elegant chandelier. Directly before her was a staircase, and to one side two chairs and a round table. The furniture had a distinctive old money look to it.
“Can I take your coat and purse?” the man asked. When she looked uncertain, he added, “They won’t go far, only to this small room back here behind the stairs. We keep all the personal belongings there and can retrieve them the minute you wish to leave. I can show you if you like.”
He pointed to a door next to the stairs that she hadn’t noticed before. She had also missed the sliding doors to the left and right of the room they were in. All were closed.
“No, that’s all right.”
“Then allow me.” He stepped behind Lindy and helped her out of the jacket with a practiced expertise. Once that was accomplished he held out his hand until she had placed her clutch in it. “Take a chair, I’ll be back in a moment.”
She sat. The chair was old enough that she could feel the individual springs tense, which had the strange effect of reminding her how little she was wearing under the dress, and that got her thinking about how insane this all was. Nobody knew she was there except Elijah, who didn’t appear to even know her name. She was probably about to be murdered and eaten by a tall man in a white mask.
Elijah said he saw people come here more than once, she reminded herself. That made murder less likely. Unless the cab driver was in on it.
The man didn’t come right back. It might have seemed that way to him, but to her it was an interminable delay, made longer because she realized she’d just handed him her cell phone, wallet and house keys.
There wasn’t any actual proof of a party. She strained to hear something from upstairs—surely that was where everyone was, provided (again) she wasn’t about to be murdered. But she couldn’t hear anything. At one point she swore the chandelier moved. That could have been due to whatever was happening on the second floor, unless it was from a passing truck.
After the eternity passed, the man returned and made no attempt to kill her. He took the other seat at the table.
“You must forgive me,” he said. “I’ve forgotten to make a proper introduction. I’m Mr. White.”
“Hi,” she said. “I’m—”
“You are Ms. Burgundy. And since this is your first time, we have to discuss the rules.”
“Rules? I don’t even know where I am. Who are you really?”
“Yes of course you’d have these questions. I understand. You’re at Club Himeros. And as I’ve already said, I am Mr. White.”
“I’ve never heard of it.”
“Good. That’s how secret clubs are supposed to operate.”
“Right. Secret club. How did I earn an invitation to this secret club?”
“That’s unimportant. What is important is that you decided to accept, and here you are. Now: the rules. The first rule is that your name is Ms. Burgundy, or if you prefer, Burgundy. That’s the only name you have while you’re here. You will meet many people whose names should be self-evident, in the same way it must have been apparent that I am Mr. White. Do you understand?”
“I gather not being colorblind is one of the requirements for an invitation.”
He laughed. “No, but we should consider it. Second rule: no alcohol or drugs here. Are you sober, Ms. Burgundy?”
“I am, yes.”
“No recreational drugs?”
“Not in me. What kind of party is this, if there isn’t any alcohol?”
“A different kind. We have the occasional champagne toast on special occasions. We’re not monks. But our refreshments, though plentiful, are typically of the non-alcoholic sort. Third: no photography of any kind.”
“You already have my phone.”
“There are other kinds of cameras. You’d be surprised what we’ve had to confiscate.”
“I’m pretty sure nothing will surprise me at this point, Mr. White.”
“Oh, I doubt that. Fourth: be courteous. Talk, mingle, engage. Watch, but don’t stare. Look, but don’t ogle. You understand the distinction?”
“Not really, no. I’m pretty sure those words all mean the same thing.”
“They don’t.”
“I’ll take your word for it, stranger in a mask.”
“Sometimes a mask makes a man more honest.”
“And strangers have the best candy.”
He laughed again. “I think you’ll fit right in. Now, the fifth and most important rule: don’t do anything you don’t want to, and don’t ask anyone to do anything they don’t want to.”
Oh my god, Lindy, what have you gotten yourself into?
“…Okay.”
“Do you understand all of the rules?”
“Sure.”
“Are you ready to go upstairs now?”
“No, Mr. White, I’m terrified now. But if I don’t go upstairs I will probably die of intense curiosity right in this chair. So I guess we had better go upstairs.”
* * *
Mr. White led her up the stairs to the door, the butterflies in her stomach doubling in magnitude with each step. She got the sense she was being shown to some kind of sacred thing, a secret knowledge nobody else—certainly not Jamaican taxi drivers—were privy to. And so there was a certain disappointment when the door was opened, revealing nothing except a black curtain. It was decidedly anticlimactic.
“There are six floors, counting this and the first floor,” he said. “You’re welcome to visit any floor at your leisure. There are no private rooms aside from the toilets, so don’t look for any. Are you ready?”
“Stop asking me that,” she said, although she didn’t think she was.
“All right.”
He pulled aside the curtain.
It took a few seconds for her eyes to adjust, but when they did she found herself standing at the edge of what was mostly an open floor plan, like a warehouse. No dividing walls, but the room had distinct areas defined by a combination of lighting and furniture. Couches, chairs, chaise lounges, bean bags, mattresses, futons, and one hammock. There were two raised platforms that could have been stages if anyone was on them doing something stagey, which nobody was. On the back wall of the room was a fireplace with an active fire, with a pile of some combination of rugs or blankets in front of it.
It seemed at first as if there were only maybe a dozen people in the room. They all had their own masks on, and while the lighting was not fantastic, it seemed like each mask was a distinct color. Beyond that, everything looked as normal as it could be in a party where everyone has a matching mask.
But as her vision improved she became aware of some of the happenings on the edges. Just off to the side of where people were sitting and talking quietly over what looked like bottles of water, there was activity that was so discordant she wasn’t positive it was actually happening.
It was in one of the areas to her right, among an arrangement of cube-shaped sectionals. Masked people were sitting there, chatting away as normal as anything, but right there among them was a man in a suit with a woman in a dress on top of him, and not in the way a woman might sit on a man’s lap in a social setting. The woman was facing him, her knees out and thighs open. He had lifted her dress enough so that each time she lowered herself everyone could tell she was wearing the mandatory G-string. They were working on a steady rhythm that could last for a while, and as much as the woman’s bac
k arched with pleasure and the man trembled and clutched at her—her ass, her chest—they didn’t seem to be in any real hurry to finish. There was nothing furtive or rushed about it.
It was discordant for many reasons, but mostly because nobody there appeared to be bothered by this private act happening right next to them. She could swear she even saw one of the other men on the couch ask the one in mid-coitus a question.
“Am I the only one seeing this?” Lindy asked. Turning, she expected Mr. White to be there with an explanation, but he wasn’t. She was alone at the curtain.
She looked back and verified that the sex was indeed still happening. She wasn’t losing her mind, but maybe everyone else there already had.
What do you do now, Lindy? Stay or go?
She was entirely ready to turn back around and go home and write off the entire experience as not for her. Later, when she reviewed the evening as a whole, she would wonder why it was she did not do so, as that was the sort of thing she would have expected of herself when faced with such a scene. Maybe it was that her curiosity had not yet been sated; the illogic of the tableau was both alarming and clinically fascinating and she was a little interested in learning more, if only from a sociological perspective. Maybe she was a little more aroused in that moment than she was later prepared to admit to. Or possibly that idea—am I bad at sex?—was weighing on her more than she realized.
Whatever the reason, Lindy didn’t go. Instead, she looked around for a place to sit or stand, an entry point to the party—or club, or whatever this was—that she would be comfortable with.
She saw more impossible things instead: A man near the fireplace with a woman’s head between his legs; a woman lying across a couch on the laps of two other women, with one massaging her breasts and the other caressing everything beneath her skirt; two men undressing one another slowly in a dark corner.
All of it was on the fringes of the room, far from her, and she was okay with that. But then a man in an orange mask walked right past her, nodded a quick hello as if this was the most normal thing ever, and then continued on his way. It wasn’t normal though, because even though he was fully clothed, he had in his hand a thin gold chain. The other end of that chain was attached to the loop on the choker of the woman trailing behind him. She walked with confidence, chin up, wearing the required mask (lime-green), gloves and G-string, and no other clothing. She did not nod a hello. Her eyes were straight ahead, fully on the man leading her by the neck. If she cared that she was naked, she didn’t show it.
Once again, Lindy was ready to turn around and leave, but her feet simply didn’t agree with this decision. Instead, they headed for the staircase.
Maybe, she thought, things are better upstairs.
The next floor, while distinctive, appeared no better. There was different furniture and different people, and a slightly more inventive arrangement of area and lighting—colored lights, darker corners—but she could sense that the transgressions on the floor below were being repeated on this floor. What this sense was, Lindy couldn’t have put into words.
There was also a table in the center of this room. It was set up the way one might expect to see a buffet at a party, and indeed it did have a large bowl of iced water bottles in its center. But that was the only edible product on display. The next few bowls held a wide selection of condoms, a stack of fresh white towels, and an array of chains like the one she saw attached to the naked girl’s neck.
She held up one of the chains. They were flimsy, really: hardly strong enough to hang a proper piece of jewelry from. If she wanted, she probably could have pulled one apart.
Decorative.
“Do you want one?” asked someone from behind Lindy.
The speaker was a blond woman in a mask that looked brownish in the lighting. She was shorter than Lindy, partly due to the difference in footwear: Where Lindy had on four-inch heels the woman had gladiator sandals. She was in a skirt that hugged her hips and upper thighs, and no blouse. She had one of the chains attached to the loop on her choker. It fell between her naked breasts and went around her waist a couple of times.
“They’re really long,” she explained, fingering her own chain, “but I find this works pretty well.”
“Oh, uh, no.” Lindy put the chain down. “No, but thanks.” She couldn’t seem to stop staring at the woman’s breasts. Am I ogling? Is this ogling?
“I’m Ms. Olive,” she said, extending her hand. “I know the lighting sucks, but that’s the color of this thing in sunlight. You’re… kinda red, right?”
“It’s burgundy,” Lindy said, adding, “I don’t know what it looks like in the dark.” Then she felt silly for putting it that way because of course nobody sees colors in the dark.
She’d been around naked and near-naked women her entire life, because of locker rooms and school roommates and bathrooms and gym saunas, and so many other situations where it was a perfectly normal thing, but now facing a masked girl and her breasts she was ridiculously nervous and uncomfortable. She shook the girl’s hand.
“Ms. Burgundy, then. Much better color, looks almost black. It’s your first time, huh?”
“Yes. I just got here, so…”
“It’s my third. Yeah, I know: all of this is crazy, right?” She made a sweeping gesture with her arms indicating she was giving a review of the entire floor. “And, you know, these.” She put her hands on her own breasts. “It takes a while, honey.”
Ms. Olive grabbed two bottles of water and handed one over, then put her arm around Lindy’s waist. “Here, I’ll rescue you. Let’s go upstairs, get you into a quiet corner, give you a chance to get your head around all of it, huh?”
* * *
Olive found a spot on the fourth floor near the front of the building, next to a blacked-out window. There they were alone, amidst a pile of firm but comfortable beanbag chairs large enough to double as beanbag couches and beanbag beds.
It took Lindy a while to figure out how to position herself so she didn’t look awkward on the chair, which was really more suitable for the way her new friend sat: feet curled up underneath. Lindy didn’t have that option without taking the shoes off, and she wasn’t prepared to do that. (There were buckles. Removing them was a process.) She had to lean back, on her side, and extend her legs just to adopt a pose that felt almost natural and didn’t involve spreading her legs to keep her balance. Lindy knew perfectly well her legs looked damn good, and this pose certainly showed them off, but couldn’t really appreciate that while also freaking out about everything happening around her.
“It’s still early,” Ms. Olive said. “People don’t usually fill out the upper floors until later, so this is a good place to camp out if you’re fighting a case of the jeebees.”
“I am, I think,” Lindy said. “I don’t really understand what I’m doing here. And… where’s your shirt?”
“You should definitely consider going without next time, Ms. Burgundy. And I don’t know what you’re doing here either, but I don’t know what I’m doing here. Just be happy you are.”
“I don’t know about that.” Lindy was feeling a lot of things, but happy and grateful weren’t on the list. “What is all this? That Mr. White told me… a lot less than I realized until after he disappeared.”
“Yeah, so it’s a secret club.”
“Yes I… I got that much.”
“A secret invitation-only club, and I guarantee whoever runs it—and nobody knows who runs it so don’t even ask—did all sorts of background on you before deciding you’d fit in here. I mean, think of how cool you have to be just to get in the door, right?”
“Somebody decided to invite me to an orgy. I’m not positive that’s a compliment.”
“It’s not an orgy. I know, I know, you saw some things, probably right when you came in. Those are the exhibitionists.”
“That’s a funny thing for a topless girl to say, I have to be honest.”
She laughed. “First time I came here, Burgundy, I spent th
e whole night talking to people on one side of the room while watching people on the other side of the room having one hell of a good time. And I kept wondering, hey, why aren’t I doing any of that? I have a mask on, it’s not like anybody even knows me, so why not join in?”
“What if I don’t want to?”
“Then don’t. I’ve met folks who’ve been coming to this club for a long time, who swear they’ve never done more than talk, and watch. The point isn’t to fuck some stranger, it’s to enjoy other people in a way we don’t get a chance to all that often. If that’s sexual, super, but it doesn’t have to be.”
“Of course it has to be. Look how we’re all dressed.”
“A little sexual, then. But nobody told you to pick out that dress and those heels, hon. Ooh, this looks interesting.”
On a couch nearby, a man and a woman had just sat down. The woman was naked except for the G-string, and Lindy realized it was the pair she’d just seen downstairs, Mr. Orange and Ms. Kinda-Lime Green.
The man was telling the woman something inaudible to Lindy, but with a sort of jerking on the chain that indicated whatever it was had the weight of a command. In response, Ms. Lime Green got off the couch and onto her knees in front of him.
“Tell me about the chains,” Lindy said, as Orange pet the woman on the head.
The lighting being what it was, there were difficulties in identifying the exact mechanics of what they were watching at this point, but it seemed like the naked woman on her knees was now pleasuring herself with her fingers.
Olive was playing with her own nipples while this was happening, a kind of long-distance act of participation.
“They’re a signal,” she explained. “If you wanna be a sub, you put a chain on. If you wanna be a dom, you look for someone wearing one and ask for permission to dominate them.”
“Seriously?”
The woman’s wrist curled up between her legs—at least two fingers now—and she was rocking her hips back and forth, touching her own erect nipples, panting. The man only watched and spoke quietly to her from time to time. It was hard to understand what he was getting out of it.