by Nevada Barr
Anna turned her back to unlock the gate, wondering if Clare was still in there at all, or if she’d killed herself in one way or another.
As soon as the gate swung open, Jordan pushed through, his shoulder bumping Anna’s rudely. She held the gate till Geneva was in, then closed and locked it. “Get a move on,” Jordan growled over his shoulder.
“Thank you for a lovely evening,” Geneva said dryly as she passed Jordan’s door, open now and spilling out light. Anna stepped into the small apartment.
Jordan closed the door with a kick, dumped his plastic bag beside the computer, and vanished into the bedroom.
Anna heard the toilet flushing. Mackie, unsure why his mistress had ignored him, stood in the doorway between the two rooms looking first at the bath, then at Anna, as if waiting for an explanation.
Tired from walking on unnatural surfaces for the past five hours, Anna dropped into the chair in front of the computer. Mackie trotted over, and she scratched his ears. At times like these she envied her fur-bearing friends. It would be so good to eat and sleep and live without complications.
Jordan reappeared, zipping his fly. “Put on the clothes in the bag,” he said. “We’ve got to check out a place called Bonne Chance. It’s a members-only sex club a hooker told me about. Membership can be bought at the door, but they don’t like guys showing up stag.”
“It’s nearly midnight,” Anna said. “Won’t they be closed?”
He shot her a look of such scorn she worried Clare would never survive this night.
“Right,” she said. “Party’s just beginning.”
“There’s a dress and shoes in the bag. Put them on. Looking like you do will get us noticed. I’m thinking the old hippie thing won’t play at a place like the Bonne Chance.” He turned back into the bedroom, crossed to the bit of mirror above the battered bureau, and ran a comb through his hair. Then he did something that Anna found too creepy for words. He rubbed his fingers along the edge of his jaw as if testing to see if his beard had grown out enough that he needed a shave.
She glanced down at her baggy drawers, her cinnamon-and-pepper braid falling across her old shirt like a harbinger of age on Pippi Longstocking. She made no move to do as he asked; instead she said sharply, “Clare!” For a long enough moment that she began to worry, Jordan didn’t respond. Finally he turned from his self-inspection and looked at her.
“Clare Sullivan?” Anna pressed.
Jordan shook himself the way a horse will when the flies are biting. “Yes,” came Clare’s whisper.
Anna told her about the boy thugs, the warehouse, the studio of the long-gone opera singer, Dougie, and the locked metal door.
Clare didn’t move throughout the recital but remained standing in the middle of the bedroom, listening through the open doorway. Mackie, sensing perhaps that his mistress had returned in some indefinable way, trotted over and was sitting, his tail sweeping an arc in the dust on the floorboards, his eyes on her face. Even the dog couldn’t reach Clare tonight.
“No perfume of flowers? No strange hissing drop sound?” Clare asked when Anna’d finished. “Just Dougie and a door?”
“And the apartment where an opera singer practiced when Candy was at the fancy house.” Then Anna remembered the newer garage door cut into the side of the building. Construction. “The hissing thud could have been the sound of a nail gun,” Anna said with sudden certainty. “They were doing construction near where Candy was kept.”
“This is post-Katrina New Orleans. Everybody’s doing construction,” Clare said. “You’ve got nothing. A door. A creep.” Anna watched Clare sink into the dark pools of Jordan’s eyes, like the fading smudge of white as an undertow sucks a swimmer into the deep water.
Clare no longer had the strength to so much as remain on her feet without Jordan. Even with his fury and insolence, Anna doubted either of them had much more time. Anna’d yet to see Clare or Jordan eat. They lived on smoke and disappearing dreams.
“Change,” Jordan snapped.
Anna stripped off her limp trousers and shirt. “Old hippie, my ass,” she grumbled as she picked up the plastic sack from the table and upended it. A dress with straps and spangles and very little else was tangled up with a pair of red high-heeled shoes comprised mostly of more straps.
“Is this all?” she asked, somewhat dismayed.
“It’s about sex, not coverage.” The sound of a match striking brought Anna’s attention back to Clare. Not Clare, Jordan. He was lighting up and looking at her in her underpants and little muscle shirt as if he were precisely as male and immoral as Clare had designed him to be.
Refusing to be intimidated, she peeled off the tank top and, wearing nothing but panties covering too much to be considered fashionable, stepped into the abbreviated dress.
“Is this yours?” she asked, threading the strappy top over her arms and arranging it so she was not visibly hanging out anywhere. “I mean, where did you get a dress and shoes in the middle of the night?”
“Delilah gave me the dress. The heels are Star’s. Her feet are smaller. I figured they’d fit you better.”
He was staring at her with enough heat in his eyes to convince the most discerning audience member that he harbored a Y chromosome.
“Would you stop pumping imaginary testosterone for a minute?” Anna snapped irritably. “I feel enough of a fool without a fake Lothario ogling me with fake lust. Save it for the matinee crowd.”
“Hurry it up,” Jordan said. “I’ll wait outside. Do something with your hair. You look like a mountain woman after a bad couple of winters.” He left. Mackie followed close on his heels, looking frightened and emitting low whining sounds.
Finding the insult amusing, Anna finished buckling on the high-heeled sandals, then went to find the mirror and comb he’d been using. The shoes couldn’t be called comfortable by any stretch of the imagination, but they fit well enough. Once she suppressed the irritation at being crippled by fashion, she managed to walk with a modicum of grace. The braid she undid and combed out with her fingers. She’d done it up wet, and it fell in a silver and red rippling cascade.
It might have been sexy and it might have been Bride of Frankenstein, but that was as good as it was going to get. Wishing she had a purse for key and cell phone, she palmed them and joined Jordan on the narrow walk.
“In low light you don’t look half bad,” he said.
“Thank you,” Anna said dryly. Handing her cell and keys to him, she said, “Carry these, would you? Men think women have penis envy. Not so. We have pocket envy.”
He stowed them in the pocket of his pants. “Come on, Mackie. Inside.”
The little dog, usually friendly and obedient, was so anxious Anna could see the whites of his eyes gleaming around the brown irises as he skittered sideways and, tail down, ran away from Jordan’s reaching hands.
“Come on, guy.” A touch of Clare’s sweetness softened Jordan’s voice, but the dog wouldn’t come. Jordan straightened up. “He’ll be okay in the yard. Let’s beat it.”
Anna didn’t argue. The yard was dog-proof and the night cool and pleasant. There was even drinking water if Mackie didn’t mind turtles swimming in it.
Jordan preceded her down the narrow overgrown walk and, with a rusty clanking, unlocked the gate. “God damn it!” he hissed as Mackie darted past Anna, between his feet, and out into the street. He made a grab for the animal, but Mackie was having none of it. He looked as if it pained him to run and disobey, and the angrier Jordan got, the more tragic the little dog’s face, but he wouldn’t be caught, and he wouldn’t go back into the safety of the yard.
“So be it,” Jordan snarled. “You’re on your own.”
Anna could tell Mackie was not going to give in, not for Jordan and not for her.
They walked down Ursulines toward Rampart looking for a cab. Mackie followed, but never close enough to risk capture. Anna wondered if he sensed danger or the nearness of his children or the pain of Clare hidden beneath the carapace
of Jordan or if he was simply scared and didn’t want to be left alone. “Phone,” she demanded of Jordan.
“What—”
“Just give me the damn phone,” Anna said exasperatedly. She punched the speed dial. Geneva answered, hoarse and cranky with sleep. Anna told her about Mackie, and the crankiness vanished.
“I’ll try and get him,” Geneva promised.
Past Dauphine, Jordan flagged down a cab. He didn’t hold the door open for Anna, and she didn’t expect him to. “Where to?” the driver asked.
Jordan told him.
If he knew it was a sex club, he didn’t make any of the cracks.
“That your dog?” he asked after they’d driven half a block.
Anna turned in the seat, aware that her dress hiked up nearly to her crotch when she did, and looked out the back window. Mackie was chasing the taxi.
Anna started to tell the cabbie to stop. “No!” Jordan barked. He grabbed her wrist hard and muttered, “He’ll go home on his own.”
But he didn’t. Stop signs at most corners in the residential area kept the cab from getting up any serious speed, and, whenever Anna turned, the dog was determinedly running after the car, sometimes a block behind, sometimes two. Finally they lost him.
Minutes afterward the driver stopped on a street that looked more industrial than anything else, the buildings high and without redeeming features.
“There.” The driver pointed to a nice-looking young man sitting on a tall stool in front of a nondescript door into a windowless wall. The door was open, and faint light shone onto the sidewalk. There was no sign reading BONNE CHANCE, just the number 69 in silver on the side of the building.
Jordan paid the driver. Anna stepped out of the cab, flashing more leg than she was accustomed to, and oriented herself with difficulty. Spending the short ride looking over her shoulder worrying about a Lhasa apso, she’d lost her sense of direction.
“I think this is the front of the back where Geneva and I were,” she said as Jordan came to the sidewalk.
“You’re kidding!” For the first time that evening he sounded like a person who might not bite the heads off kittens if given the chance.
“No. I’m pretty sure the next street up is Rampart. This was the building.”
“Kneepads said this club is legal,” Jordan said. “Private clubs can do anything they want as long as the ‘members’ are over twenty-one and willing. What she gave me was rumors of other services to be had. Dougie, a sex club, and an opera studio. Gotta be something,” he said with a cruel twist of his lips that Anna realized was his happy face.
“Welcome to Bonne Chance,” said the young man on the stool. “Are you members of the club?”
Jordan stepped to the doorway. “We’d like to be,” he said.
“Onetime memberships are very popular here at Bonne Chance,” the man said smoothly. “But you’ll want to come back, I can guarantee it. Right in there, and Jennifer will take care of your memberships.” He smiled a lovely toothpaste-ad smile, beaming on them both equally. “I’ll bet that dress comes off as easily as it looks like it will,” he said politely to Anna, letting her know she was desirable, if old enough to be his mother.
“It’s the shoes I want off,” she told him as they entered the building.
THIRTY-FIVE
Inside the door was a small room with a ficus tree, a framed poster of New Orleans by night, and a reception desk. Behind it sat a lovely and exceedingly busty young woman in a low-cut but tasteful dress.
The desk had a green blotter, local brochures, a small potted African violet, pens, and a pile of papers. In short, it looked like any reception desk in any business anywhere. Anna didn’t know what she’d been expecting, but this wasn’t it.
“Welcome to Bonne Chance. My name is Jennifer,” the woman said with what looked to be a genuine delight in seeing them.
“This is their first visit,” said the young man from the stool. “They’ll need a onetime membership.”
He went back outside, and Jennifer set about the simple but expensive process of providing them with official access to whatever lay within. Jordan paid out another two hundred dollars; Jennifer put it in a cash box, then stood and, still smiling, said, “Right this way.” They followed her three steps to the door leading into the building, where she knocked gently.
“Whoa, little fellah! Where do you think you’re going?” This shout, followed by a scuffle of footfalls, came just as the door to the inner sanctum began to open and Mackie, tongue lolling, eyes wild, dashed in from the street. Before the agile young man could catch him, Anna scooped him up.
“No dogs allowed here, ma’am,” Jennifer said politely.
“Mack’s a therapy dog,” Anna said, holding him more firmly. “He warns us when my husband is going to have an epileptic seizure.”
Jordan trumped her appeal to the goodness of their hearts—or their naïveté—and pulled out his wallet. Without preamble he yet again pulled out two more one-hundred-dollar bills and handed one each to Jennifer and the stool man.
Jennifer hesitated a moment. The man said, “Whatever floats your boat,” and retreated to his post outside. A third person, the guard of the inner sanctum, stood in the open doorway to the club. Jordan plucked a third bill from his wallet and gave it to him. “Long as the dog’s over twenty-one,” the man said with a wink. Absolved of responsibility, Jennifer poked the bill into the front of her dress and resumed her seat. Jordan, Anna, and Mackie were ushered inside.
The place was no different from many watering holes, though the décor left something to be desired. They were in a large room crowded with patrons, a bar at one end, a small dance floor, and a scattering of tables with candles and couples. Music was piped in and played loudly enough to make conversation difficult. Corners and ceiling were lost in darkness.
“Is this your first visit to our club?” the doorman asked. Anna looked at him seriously for the first time, the drama of dogs and bribery having distracted her when he’d appeared on the scene. Like the two young people in the outer area, he was well dressed and good-looking and spoke with respect tinged with appreciation for Anna’s form and figure. It was flattering. It was also, undoubtedly, company policy. It was uphill work to feel sexy and gay if one was made to feel ugly and unwanted. The Chance employees were so adroit at the subtle compliment—one that didn’t exclude either sex—that Anna wondered what sort of training they went through. Whatever it was, it had to be more interesting than the annual forty-hour refresher courses law enforcement rangers had to endure.
“First time here,” Jordan said.
“Welcome.”
So many charming people smiling and complimenting and seducing her—even for a price—made Anna feel rather like a blood donor at a vampire reunion.
“My name’s Jason.” Another lovely smile and appreciative look at Anna’s cleavage. The effect was somewhat spoiled by the fact that her décolletage was covered by a panting dog with black hair and white roots.
“Bar and dancing, as you see.” Jason waved an arm to take in the room. “Upstairs is where the magic happens.” He led the way to an elevator—not a bank of modern elevators but a single elevator old enough to have carried Otis himself, in a corner of the room so dark Anna had to gauge when the doors opened by the slight thunk heard through the blare of the bar.
The four of them crowded in, and the door slid shut. The ensuing silence lowered Anna’s blood pressure a few points. “We have some house rules,” Jason said. “Ask before you touch; no means no; and have fun.”
The same rules as in kindergarten.
“Take off your belt,” Anna told Jordan.
“That’s the spirit!” said their guide.
Jordan did as he was asked, and Anna threaded Mackie’s collar through the buckle and snapped the collar back around the dog’s neck. That done, she lowered him to the floor, where he sat obediently on his new leash.
The elevator door opened.
The second—or was it
third?—floor of the club was a different world from the noisy modernism below. They stepped out into what appeared to be a Victorian library. The ceilings were high and the walls lined with books. Though looking old and important, they were probably bought by the yard for decoration; still, Anna had the untimely desire to read the spines. She quashed it.
Arranged in the center of the room were two oversized leather chairs and a couch forming a conversation area. Tall lamps in faux alabaster—or, given the price of admission, real alabaster—lent the room a romantic glow. Potted plants that had to be silk or plastic, considering there were no windows, suggested a tropical feel appropriate to New Orleans. A fireplace with a fern in it finished the illusion. Double doors opened off one corner, and the dark maw of a hallway gaped in another.
Three couples sat on the couch and chairs. One was kissing deeply, the man’s hand on his partner’s breast. Two women, dressed in dominatrix leathers, boots, and bustiers, chatted together.
Anna, holding on to Mackie’s leash as if, like Sammy, he were a guide dog and could hold her to a moral compass, passed them and was startled by a scrap of overheard conversation.
“So I dropped the kids off at piano lessons—you know, that new woman from the gym—and I see the perfect claw-foot tub for the guest bath. Perfect!”
The ordinariness of it was surreal, chitchat in Hades. Perhaps they were longtime members and the shocking had grown sufficiently mundane that home redecoration trumped wild orgiastic sex with strangers.
The third couple had gotten more into the swing of things. The woman, her skirt pulled up and her blouse unbuttoned, straddled the man’s lap, rocking gently, while he sucked her. Two men, apparently without partners—or maybe the husbands of the dominatrices discussing porcelain finishes—watched the copulating couple with mild interest. Both were sipping drinks.
Jordan tapped Anna on the shoulder, and she flinched. Being touched in this environment gave her the same willies as being offered food from dirty plates. “Nothing here,” he said and jerked his chin toward the doors in the corner of this weird universe.