Club Himeros (9 page)

And when
he
came it was like he found a new reserve of strength.  His hips locked and lifted, which raised her hips and then—with the help of his arms—her whole body.  He squeezed her as tightly as he could, as if it was possible for his climax to punch a hole through her.  And he made an adorable, high-pitched gasping sound, and held on until he was done.

Then he let her down, slowly, and pulled his arm out from behind her hips.

“Good?” he asked her quietly.

“Yeah, I’m good,” she said.

“Cool.”

He pulled out of her, rolled over, and sat back on the couch, legs splayed, her feet resting in his lap. 

She stayed where she was, pretty sure she wouldn’t be able to move for a little while and hoping nobody minded. 

A few seconds later someone was handing them towels.  She looked up to see the dark-mask man from halfway across the room.  Up close the mask looked purple.  She thanked him.  He nodded without speaking and produced a water bottle for her, then left.

“Wow, the service here is pretty good,” she said. 

Mocha laughed.

“So,” he said.  “I don’t know if you know this, but I was really looking for a conversation.  That was a
whole
lot better, but… I don’t know, I just wanted to say that.  I wasn’t on the make or whatever we call it nowadays.”

“You mean you didn’t want to have sex?”  She tried to sit up, decided it was too much work, and lay back down again.

“No, that’s not what I meant.”

“Good, because if that was you being reluctant, non-reluctant you would probably kill me.”

“I mean I’m not the kind of guy who does this kind of thing.  I guess.”

“As we already established.  And I’m not that kind of girl, either.  But as it turns out, Ms. Burgundy
is
that kind of girl.  And Mr. Mocha is definitely that kind of guy.  And I’m okay with that.”

*   *   *

It was difficult to say how much time she and Mr. Mocha spent together because while in the club there was no real communication with the outside world.  The windows were all blacked out, there were no clocks, and when she started asking other guests what time it was, she discovered the people with watches had been asked to leave them at the door along with the phones.

It
seemed
like a long time.  When they weren’t making out or actively having sex—against a wall one time, another in a bean bag, a third time on one of the rugs on the floor in front of a fireplace—they were talking about sex and a lot of other things about their lives.  They shared nearly everything except their real names, or anything that might connect them to the rest of the world. 

They were being mindful of the rules, but that wasn’t what stopped them from exchanging that information.  Sharing too much would have meant Ms. Burgundy went back to being Lindy, and Mr. Mocha to whatever his real name was, and it felt like that would ruin everything.  Like the whole reason this vacation from their lives was working at all was because they were pretending those lives didn’t exist to the people wearing their masks.

Not knowing what time it was, or how long the party went on, or what time of day it was, all meant when Lindy fell asleep she didn’t know when it happened or for how long.  What she did know was there were significantly fewer guests there when she awoke—sprawled on a futon on the fourth floor, not certain how she had even gotten there—and Mr. Mocha wasn’t one of the guests, so far as she could tell.

She was also profoundly hungry, which was perhaps the best indication that it had been very long indeed since she’d ventured outside.  So she gathered what she could.  Her mask was still on her face, and the choker on her neck, but her G-string and gloves were nowhere to be found.  More importantly, she still had shoes and her dress. 

She wandered down the stairs alone, as quietly as she could so as to not disturb the many sleeping clubbers, until she reached the first floor.

Mr. White was sitting at the table at the bottom of the stairs, looking exactly as proper as he had when she first walked in.  She wondered if he had stayed on the first floor the entire night, greeting people and getting their stuff, and if so what he did when there wasn’t anybody to greet.

It was only one of about a thousand questions she had about Mr. White and Club Himeros.  But before she got around asking any of them there was the welcome discovery of food: a plate of croissants and an urn of coffee were resting on the table.  It was exactly what she needed.  Without even a hello to the host she sat down and dove in.

The coffee was still hot, and the bread still fresh, which was amazing.  She was pretty sure it was at least early afternoon, so it hardly seemed possible for these things to be true.

“Thank you,” she said, between bites.  “This is great.”

“You’re welcome,” Mr. White said.  He looked highly amused with her.  “I hope you enjoyed the evening.”

She had no access to a mirror—there weren’t any upstairs, even in the bathrooms—but imagined she was quite a sight.  Her hair was a tangle, and she thought it likely the mascara under the mask had managed to run down her cheeks.  There were two or three fresh bruises on her arms and legs, one bite mark and a couple of scratches.  The dress, remarkably, remained without stain or tear, and the shoes were only a little scuffed.  Still, she had to have been a sight.

“I had a wonderful time, thank you.”

“I’m glad.  We have a car waiting out front for guests.”  He lifted, from his lap, her clutch and jacket.  “Whenever you feel ready to leave, the driver will take you where you wish.”

“Wow, that’s… that’s really fantastic, thanks.”  She was certain she had an awkward cab ride waiting for her, along with an awkward wait for that cab.  A private car was a perfect solution.  There would still be the awkward walk up the stairs to her apartment, but maybe it was late enough in the day for Mrs. Bell to be having her nap. 

“There
is
one thing I wanted to ask before I leave,” Lindy said.  “There was this guy, he was… well, he was Mr. Mocha.  We really hit it off, and I was wondering if you could help me out.”

“You mean, you wish to reach out to him
out there
.”  He said it in a way that suggested he never, ever personally went
out there
, like zombies were roaming the streets or something.

“Yeah, you know.  I figured outside of the club, no masks, different rules, that sort of thing.”

“I’m sorry, that I can’t do.”

“Just for, like, coffee or something.”

“I understand what you’re asking, Ms. Burgundy, but the preservation of anonymity is very important to us here.”

“Here, yes but not… I mean, what if we left together, would that have been okay?  We could go outside and take off our masks and trade real names then.”

“But you haven’t.”

“Yes, Mr. White, I appreciate that.  But what if we had.”

“That would have your business.  You could have also traded names and taken off your masks upstairs.  Nobody would have stopped you.  You didn’t, and now you’re here alone asking me for information I’m not allowed to hand out.  You appreciate my dilemma.”

She was getting more frustrated as this exchange continued.  What White had to say was probably the only answer she could have expected, but at the same time what he had shared with Mr. Mocha didn’t feel like a temporary thing and she wanted to find a way to make that clear, somehow.

“But doesn’t this happen?” she asked.  “Like, a lot?  I mean, you know what goes on in this club.”

“Of course I do.  But Club Himeros isn’t for love, it’s for self-discovery.  If you believe you
found
love while on that journey, you’ll find that love again.  Only not here, and not with my help.”

“Right, sure, okay.  Well can I come back?  We’ll have to find each other again.”

“I can’t guarantee anything like that.”

“Great.”

“As I said, this is not how things work around here.”

“How
do
things work?  How did you even find me?  If you took that mask off would you be someone I know?”

He smiled, and stood up.  She had forgotten how tall he was, and for the first time she took that height as an implicit threat.  “How Club Himeros operates is a much larger secret than the identity of your Mr. Mocha.  I appreciate that you have many questions but here’s the only truth I can offer you: I don’t
know
his real name, any more than I know yours.  You are only Ms. Burgundy to me, and that’s all you will be.  I also appreciate your desire to reconnect with this man, but I promise you, the universe isn’t so cruel as to keep you both apart if you’re destined to be together.  You’ll find him if it’s meant to be.  As for myself, if you don’t recognize me now you never will, because this is my only face.  I’m not wearing a mask.”

He opened the front door, either ignoring her surprise or not caring about it.

“Now,” he said, “let’s get you to your car.”

*   *   *

By the time Lindy made it back home she had managed to convince herself of a number of things.  First, Mr. White was surely speaking metaphorically, insofar as he certainly did have on a mask.  Second, he may have been telling the truth about not knowing the true names of the guests.  If she were putting together an arrangement like that she would probably keep the man at the door from having that information.  Certainly she wasn’t the only guest asking those kinds of questions about the other guests.

She also talked herself into the idea that her connection with Mr. Mocha had been due largely to the nature of Club Himeros, and not because of anything genuine.  And when she got her next invitation she would prove it.  She would return to the club and behave as unabashedly carnal as Ms. Olive, and just enjoy herself with someone else the same way she had with him.

Yes, that was what she would do.

But in the days and weeks that followed, she found it incredibly difficult to get Mr. Mocha out of her head. 

What stuck wasn’t even the sex—although that was certainly a powerful enough memory—it was the conversations between the sex.  It was the way he played with her hair while they sat together and watched other people, and made quiet jokes about what they thought everyone did for a living.  It was how they broke down each other’s failed real-life relationships: hers with Michael, his with some girl named Barb.  And how after their first time together they decided, without words, to be monogamous for the rest of the night.

She wanted to find him, but didn’t know how.  The city was too large. 

She also couldn’t tell anybody.  Michael, who formally moved out a week after Lindy’s night at Club Himeros, kept in touch often enough to make it clear he was interested in possibly reconnecting and repairing what they had, but she couldn’t even think about doing that.  So she pretended she didn’t get the hints.  And when Vivi showed up to drop the same hints she ignored her too.

“Is there someone else?” V asked one day.  Lindy had to tell her no, both because she felt obligated to keep Club Himeros a secret and because the truth was so outlandish her friend would probably not have believed her.  On top of which, there
wasn’t
anybody else.  Just a man whose real name she didn’t know.  She may as well have fallen for a fictional character.

*   *   *

Eventually, she stopped looking, having decided the universe Mr. White spoke of was much more cruel than he thought.  And that was when she heard a familiar voice.

She was in a liquor store at the time. 

One of the many, many things she and Mr. Mocha had discussed was taste in wine.  This was likely triggered by the Burgundy portion of her name, and the discovery that neither of them much cared for burgundy.  He was fond of tempranillo, a Spanish wine that was—she thought—rare.  So she had developed the habit of searching liquor stores in the city for tempranillo, occasionally purchasing a bottle or two and finding she liked it very much. 

Her hope had been that only a handful of places carried it, but that didn’t end up being true.  It wouldn’t end up being that one sufficiently unique thing about Mr. Mocha that would lead her back to him.

She wasn’t at the liquor store for wine.  She was looking for something stronger.  It was a Saturday afternoon, and after a particularly rough Friday night in which she had foolishly dug up the burgundy mask and walked around the house all night with it on, she’d come to an important decision: it was time to move on.

Her plan was to buy an expensive bottle of something—scotch, perhaps—get drunk and burn the mask.  No new invitation had come from Club Himeros, and she was nearly positive she would never see another one after all the grief she’d given Mr. White, so there was no reason to keep it any more except sentiment.  But the sentiment was killing her.

The choker she wasn’t so sure she was willing to part with.  Since the club, she’d made it a regular part of her wardrobe. Most of the time she forgot she even had it on.

He was at the register and chatting with the clerk, buying a six pack and not noticing her at all.