Got Luck

by Michael Darling

  We parked and the three of us went up to the entrance. I was wearing a polo shirt and slacks but Nat was wearing ripped jeans and shades and a black t-shirt. There were two women waiting for us. As it turned out, they had the passes for us to get in. Nat hadn’t mentioned there would be a pair of girls or if one of them was meant as a date for me. He also hadn’t said anything when Erin got into his truck for the ride over. He didn’t know Erin and I were magically married and had just brought us all together in his customary silence.

  The girls smiled at us and Nat introduced them. Brandy was a blonde and Carlene was a redhead. I introduced myself and introduced Erin and put my hand on the small of her back to show we were together. Nat smoothly put his arms around both girls, one on each side. The girls were happy to settle in under him and give Erin sideways glances. They were dolled up to the nines with short skirts and heels.

  Sorry ladies. Erin’s the prettiest girl at the dance tonight.

  We went up to the doorman. He paid no attention to Nat or me but he looked at the girls with official thoroughness. His review of Erin started at her toes and went up from there at a pace that I found more lingering than necessary. Then he marked his clipboard and gave us the thumb in. He didn’t even check our passes. Twerp.

  The music was loud with a pounding beat synchronized with the lights. The aesthetic of the place was entirely built around an industrial manufacturing theme with lots of steel beams and metal walls and oversized machinery. The main dance floor stood in the center of the warehouse and featured what appeared to be, at first look, a catwalk, about forty feet long, but turned out to be a working conveyor belt. Dancers took turns boarding the conveyor belt to do their thing as it carried them slowly down to the other end where they disembarked. There were handrails down the length of the conveyer and they were crowded with observers who expressed their appreciation of the dancers with applause and whistles and outstretched hands. There was too much distance for the watchers to touch those who were dancing, but the dancers could reach out and exchange a high five or a fist bump. One of the several bars was situated a few feet behind the belt on one side so that the customers could get drinks without losing sight of the action.

  Above and surrounding the dance floor was a wide balcony, accessible by stairs from the main level. Sections of the balcony were being used for dancing and were lit for that purpose. There were additional bars on both sides as well. The place had a spacious freight elevator, situated next to one of the stairways, which was also filled with dancers. The elevator appeared to be constantly and slowly going up and down with a pause for a few seconds at the top and bottom in case people wanted to get on or off. Opposite the elevator was the DJ booth and it looked like almost a full circle of equipment suspended over the crowd. Below the booth was a set of huge metal gears, lazily turning. The largest gear was eight feet in diameter.

  The far end of the warehouse was glassed off from floor to ceiling. There was another stairway going up which was flanked by a pair of oil pumps. These were also in motion and seemed to be nodding in solemn worship of whoever was walking up. The stairs undoubtedly led to the VIP rooms. Overall, the effect was an intoxicating mélange of movement, sound, and light.

  Party paradise.

  The women loved the place. Erin clapped her hands together and all three of them started moving their hips, responding to the music without being fully aware of the rhythm affecting them. Nat remained opaque behind his shades and granite-chiseled expression, so I had no idea what he was thinking. I thought the place was cool.

  Brandy gave Nat a pat on the shoulder, “Champagne’s on you,” she said. Nat pulled out his wallet and handed her a pair of hundred dollar bills. She took them and said, “Ladies, let’s go.”

  I was glad to see them include Erin. Brandy hooked Erin’s arm and led her and Carlene towards the bar in the corner.

  “How’d you meet those two?” I asked Nat.

  “Iron Foundry,” he replied. “Carlene teaches aerobics and kickboxing. Brandy’s her roommate.”

  “And they knew how to get into this place?”

  Nat shrugged. Eloquence in shoulder movement.

  “Which one are you dating?” I smiled.

  Nat didn’t respond.

  “Unless you tell me otherwise, I’m going to assume you are going out with both of them.”

  Nat turned his head just enough to look at me dead on.

  “Dude!” I said, just to mess with him. Knowing Nat, he would have reacted the same whether he was dating them or not, so I still had no idea. Curse his wall of stone.

  “At some point, we need to have a look around,” I said. “I especially want to see if there’s a back room.”

  “Okay,” Nat replied.

  “Or maybe a basement.”

  “Basement? In Miami?”

  It was my turn to shrug. “Elevation here could be twenty or thirty feet above sea level. It’s not unheard of.”

  “Okay.”

  I was thinking about Béil’s words. What was once above is below. What was below, above.

  I couldn’t really be sure what it meant, but maybe I’d know it when I saw it. Might be a basement, right? I scanned the crowd trying to identify security. I didn’t see anyone who stood out. There were a few obvious cameras in the ceiling. There would be other cameras as well that would be hidden.

  The girls came back with champagne for everyone. We walked down the length of the warehouse sipping and watching people gyrate. Erin pointed at the stairs between the pumping pumps. “What’s up there do you think?”

  “VIP rooms,” I said. “Offices.”

  After we finished our champagne, the most horrifying monster reared its ugly head.

  “You owe me a dance.”

  Erin was already pulling me out to the floor as she said it. Nat gave me the half-smile. He’d seen me dance before.

  The music was booming and I could feel big bass waves hitting my chest. I had to yell for Erin to hear me. “All I can do is a Bob-and-Sway,” I confessed. Loudly. “At one point, I had a special move called the ‘Flailing Octopus,’ but I was asked to retire that for reasons of public safety.”

  Erin smiled and shook her head and started to dance. She was graceful and sexy and she bounced smoothly in time with the music, swinging her hips while making elegant motions with her arms and hands above her head. Captivating.

  Meanwhile, I made do with a three-inch side to side motion that put every ounce of grace I owned on full exhibit. I also bobbed my head up and down, trying to find the beat. Nobody was looking at me anyway. Erin looked good enough for the both of us.

  Nat brought both Brandy and Carlene with him and they danced adjacent to us. Unlike me, Nat was capable of actual moves. They were mostly a variation of my patented B&S, but he actually put some masculine strength into it and looked cool.

  The music never stopped but flowed from one bass-heavy throb to another. Some of the songs had waifish, breathy female vocals, and some sounded like German men singing in English for the first time in their lives. Most of the songs had no vocals at all, and they changed every two or three minutes.

  After a while, the girls wanted to try the conveyor. Nat and I didn’t object, but there was no way we were getting on that thing ourselves. We strolled down the walkway and watched as the three of them put on a show. There were plenty of whoops and whistles from the male observers lining the handrails. Brandy and Carlene brushed their hands down their bodies as they shimmied and Erin bounced and turned in a blur. It took a full minute for the girls to be carried from one end to the other and by the time they stepped off the belt, the crowd was in a lather.

  Erin half-fell into my arms, losing her balance for just a moment as she went from the moving belt to the stationary platform. She laughed as I caught her, and I said, “You are amazing.”

  “Whew! That was fun!”

&n
bsp; We decided to go to the bar and get another drink. This time we just got fruit juice except for Brandy, who didn’t get a brandy, which would have been poetic, but an appletini.

  It looked like the evening was at its peak. The music and the people were as fevered as they were going to get.

  “Take a look around?” I asked Nat.

  He nodded in response.

  “We’ll be back in a few minutes,” I said to Erin. “Stay here, okay?” I said the second part to all three women.

  Erin understood what Nat and I were up to. Brandy, who didn’t, said, “The men’s room is behind that stairway.”

  I thanked her and we walked away.

  I wanted to start on the main level. The VIP rooms were probably too busy and too valuable to use for another purpose like a hidden lair. Most likely, we were looking for a room on this floor or possibly a basement. If anyone questioned us, we’d tell them we were looking for our dates.

  We found the restrooms. The first was for the women and the next was for the men. We looked inside the men’s room to verify it was nothing more or less than expected. Beyond that, there was a locked door that said “Employees Only.” The door was cheap and so was the jamb. I gave it a hard pop with my shoulder and there was a satisfying snap. Thanks to the cover of the thump-a-thump-a from the floor, I was the only person who heard it. My pocket-sized flashlight showed me that the room held janitorial supplies, and in the back was the machinery that operated the elevator. There wasn’t space for anything else.

  We backed out of the room and pulled the door closed. It didn’t stay shut, but it would go unnoticed for the time being.

  The hall continued on and we found ourselves in a storage area. Access was blocked by a chain link fence and a gate that was held shut with a heavy chain and a padlock. With the flashlight I could see shelves with everything from paper towels to cocktail onions, along with machines on standby like a wet/dry vacuum and window washing equipment. There was a whole lot of booze back there too, which explained the chain and padlock. The room was long and appeared to go all the way to the corner of the building. We emerged again onto the dance floor

  There were only two other rooms on the main level. Both were too small to be of use. One was blocked by a sturdy door with a sign that said “Machine Room.” Since it was right behind the area with the gears and below the DJ booth, I expertly deduced it was a room with machines in it. All the electrical for the sound equipment appeared to be in there too. The last room didn’t have a sign on it, but it had a little window in the door. Through it, I could see the building’s heating and air-conditioning equipment.

  No room here for inter-realm shenanigans. No access to a basement either. It was possible, though extremely unlikely, that the basement, if there even was one, could only be accessed from the upper floor. Such an arrangement would require a hidden stairway behind the walls somewhere, but there wasn’t any place where one could be hiding from what I could see.

  “Looks okay,” Nat said. “Upstairs?”

  “Maybe,” I replied. We’d been gone for about ten minutes. “Let’s check on the girls first.”

  We went back to the bar where we’d left the ladies. None of the three were there and for a second I felt a rising panic that tripped the beat of my heart. It must be the feeling parents get when their child gets lost in Wal-Mart. It didn’t help that the lighting was darker near the bar and a dozen more people than before waited for drinks. I started scanning the crowd and felt a hand on my shoulder. Erin.

  Relief. Cooling and sweet. But there—Erin stepped in close and kissed me. Her mouth was soft and warm and I again caught the scent of her perfume, lightly-sweetened now with her perspiration. Her tongue flicked between my lips, which was even more unexpected.

  Holy wow.

  She broke the kiss. I wanted another.

  “Brandy and Carlene are in the ladies’ room,” she said.

  “Okay,” I replied.

  “Be right back.” Her voice was husky. And soulful.

  As quickly as she’d appeared, she was gone, lost in the crowd. She was extra-tall in her heels and once, for a moment, I saw the spectacular fall of her hair over the press of humanity and then she dissolved into the light and shadow.

  I looked at Nat who was standing immobile like he was carved in marble. I responded anyway.

  “A little champagne and a little dancing gets her worked up, I guess.”

  I couldn’t wait for her to come back.

  * * *

  She didn’t come back.

  I waited for ten minutes before I started to wonder. Five minutes more before I really got worried. Like every guy, I’d had to wait for a woman to come back from the restroom before. Sometimes it took a while but this didn’t feel right. I gave Nat a shake of my head and we headed back over to the restrooms. There was a group of girls standing outside the entry shifting back and forth in their heels and staring at their cell phones.

  “Hey, can you check on the people that went in there?”

  I found myself accosted by a skinny blonde chick in a striped outfit that looked like it had been designed by Tim Burton. She was standing nearest the bathroom. Maybe it was the latest dance move she was doing, but I guessed it was a standard pee-pee bounce in a black and purple dress.

  “Who went in there?”

  “Some freaky-looking guy and a woman in a red dress. He kicked us all out and said we had to wait here until it was all clear.”

  “All clear?” I asked.

  “That’s what he said. Until it’s all clear.”

  “How long ago?”

  “Like forever.” The high-pitched whine of her voice indicated her bladder had taken over her larynx.

  “The woman, was she about five-foot ten? Long, dark hair. Beautiful?”

  “Yeah. Totally.”

  “And the guy?”

  “Light blond hair. Red soul patch. Creepy.”

  I pushed my way past the group and went into the ladies’ bathroom with Nat right behind me. There was nobody inside. We banged open the doors to the stalls as we worked our way to the back. Empty. Facing the stalls were some tall mirrors and a row of sinks. The two guys in the mirrors looked big and mean and the shorter one looked worried. Like his girlfriend/wife was missing. In the rear was a small alcove with another mirror and a vanity about eight feet wide. The mirror here had a series of warm lights so that the women could repair their makeup in a more dramatic setting.

  On the floor was a gauntlet. From a set of red armor.

  Nat took in the scene in about two seconds.

  “Somebody’s calling card?” He asked, jutting his chin at the gauntlet.

  “Yeah,” I replied.

  There was a circle of gray ash on the floor but it wouldn’t mean much to Nat. I knew it was a place for a portal. There was no pattern on it that I could see, like when the silver snake had made itself into a circle. This must have been the same kind of thing.

  Nat was checking the walls and ceiling as well as the floor. “Secret exit?”

  “Must be,” I said. That was as close a guess as anyone could get without knowing about the other realm. “No time to figure it out.”

  Nat followed me back out of the restroom the same way we had come in.

  “Were there any other girls in here?”

  The pee-pee dancer shrugged her shoulders.

  “Two girls, maybe? Blonde and redhead?”

  The women gave us a variety of non-committal grunts, which apparently passed for communication in a dance club crisis.

  My heart had fallen somewhere near my gut and I was feeling nauseated. Amad had Erin and could be anywhere in the world by now. Or another world. I waded into the girl-ball that was pressing closer and said, “All clear now. You can go in.”

  Pee-pee dancer led the charge.

  For a pa
nic-filled moment I was swimming upstream. Shouldering like a bull through the mass of women earned me a couple of expletives and a well-manicured hand pointing an accusatory finger in my face.

  We moved up the dance floor at a steady walk, even though I wanted to run. We climbed the stairs between the pumps at the far end of the room. To the left was a short hall with a door marked “Management.” If nothing else, this place did a great job of labeling. The door looked like it was set in a reinforced steel frame and it had a deadbolt along with a door handle lock. I tried it but it didn’t move at all. I looked at Nat for the space of a heartbeat and pointed at the locks on the door. He nodded and reached into his pocket. He pulled out a set of lock picks, and I turned up the hall the other way. We would stay quiet as long as we could, but there was an undercurrent of urgency now pressing us forward.

  There were four doors up the right side of the hall. VIP rooms. The first one was open and empty. Inside was a couch, a private bar, and a couple of overstuffed chairs with a short table between them. On the wall was a television with a feed showing the dance floor below. Across the back the glass was frosted, so no details could be seen at all, but the lights bled through and painted moving colors across everything in the room. The sound was muted enough for conversation.

  The second room was closed, but none of the doors had locks. I opened the door and saw six people inside. Everybody froze when I came in. I didn’t know any of the women so I left.

  The next room had a guy in a fifty-dollar suit with a couple of girls who hadn’t got their party going quite yet. Small favors.

  I burst into the last room. There was a guy making out with a woman old enough to be his mom. Maybe it was his mom. I went back down the hall. Nat was coming out of the office.