Loved by Mr. Night

Chapter 18

 The room is hot. Steamy. The heat of all those bodies thrusting and grinding to the thunder beat of the music rises and condenses, forming a fog of sweat and pheromones. The cloud settles over the club, making the air thick and nearly cloying, coating the windows with fat droplets of moisture which run down the glass in tiny streams, the distilled essence of the evening. I have been standing here for half an hour by now, on the outskirts of the crowd, watching the dancers, envying the grace of all those sleek, perfumed creatures whose bodies tremble and shiver like reflected sunlight. They seem like hallucinations to me, like projections of a fevered imagination.

I came here with no one, wearing as little clothing as decency allows and heels so tall that by the end of the night it'll feel like I've been wearing iron hobbles. Men look at me every now and again, their eyes sliding from gleaming red shoes to the froth of blonde curls surrounding my face, lingering on the landmarks in between. I try to smile at them, my lips slick with gloss, red, pouting, practically begging to be put to a better use. They walk over to me, smiling in that secret satisfied way men have when they think they're about to discover a shortcut to the land of intercourse and I try not to shudder away from them. They buy me a drink; we talk for ten, maybe twenty minutes. After awhile they leave. They don't come back. I drink my drink. I like them rough; I want to taste the sharp, mind-numbing tang of the alcohol, feel the burn as it slides down my throat and into my belly. I prefer the dark liquors, the oak and smoke of whiskey, the exotic, desert wind taste of tequila. I've got three or four drinks in me by now and my buzz is starting to edge over into drunkenness. I feel looser now, less anxious about my surroundings.

The feeling of being hemmed in by hundreds of warm bodies sometimes frightens me, makes me feel short of breath, but after coming here every weekend for months on end, the fear has for the most part left me. The first time I came here I had to leave only a few minutes later, shocked by the onslaught of masculine interest I had received. That first time was only a whim, coming to the club, but I realized afterwards, driving home with my heart still hammering in my chest, that this was something I had to force myself to get used to. Normal people went to clubs. Normal people enjoyed going to clubs. Normal people did not spend every day of the week secluded in their apartment reading or just staring out the window, wondering what was going on outside. I would force myself to be normal. So Every Friday night I dress up in my skimpiest outfits (not that I have very many of them) and, feeling as if I have already been stripped half-naked, I go to the club and force myself to talk to men. This has been going on for months by now, and I think I've become pretty good at scaring them away within twenty minutes or so.

Someone touches my arm lightly and I jump, almost tripping over my own feet. Fingers dust over my skin, tracing the point of my elbow briefly before settling lightly on my forearm. My skin tingles where the fingers touched me, as if I had just been brushed with a bundle of live wires, and I wonder whether the sensation is physical or just in my head. He cups my elbow in his palm. "Are you thirsty?" he asks, and now I look into his face. He's cute. Probably too cute for his own good judging by the way he carries himself. A man like this is not used to rejection, especially from women who look like I do tonight. The way he touches me is not too invasive, but just familiar enough to indicate a knowledge of exactly what it is that girls like me are supposed to want to do with boys like him. My first instinct is to jerk my arm away, but I restrain myself. I let him touch me.

"Yes," I say. My throat is dry and the words come out almost as a croak. He smiles at me and I look into his eyes. They are dark hazel, a light brown shot through with green. I realize that this one is dangerous, but not in a predatory sort of way. I could easily lose myself in eyes like that.

"I've seen you here before," he says. His voice is pitched low but even so, I can hear it over the pulsing of the music. It's a deep voice, slightly rough as if he had either just been smoking or screaming. I smell no smoke on him. Only clean skin, the faint musk of cologne, and the barest hint of whiskey on his breath.

"I come here a lot." I say. I keep snatching little darting glances at him. He never seems to be looking anywhere but at my face, so our eyes are always meeting. Every time it happens, I feel a jolt in my belly. It makes it hard for me to concentrate.

"Could I buy you a drink?" It's barely a question.

He's already leading me to the bar when I say,

"Yes."

He makes his way easily through the crowd, who seem unconsciously to move aside for him. His hand lingers on my elbow, pulling me along in his wake. I'm surprised that I feel no desire to shake loose of him. He approaches the bar and the red-haired woman working behind it gives him her immediate attention. "Yes sir?" she asks.

"Two of the Chivas Regal, on the rocks," he says,

"The good kind please." I watch as the bartender reaches not behind the bar but beneath it, pulling out a gleaming wooden chest and setting it down in front of us. Out of it comes a squat brown bottle, its label so gilded and ornate that I can't even tell what the letters on it are. She pours a generous measure of the whiskey into each glass before handing them both to the man beside me. He begins to walk towards a bunch of high tables towards the left of the bar, a sort of annex divided from the rest of the club by a dozen potted palm trees. I follow him. He sits down at one of the high tables and I sit across from him. He hands me my drink and I raise it to my lips, taking a long, slow sip. It is the best whiskey I have ever tasted, smooth as velvet but burning with astonishing violence on its way down to the stomach. I feel drunker almost immediately. My body feels elastic, and everything is bathed in a warm whiskey-colored glow. The music pulses in my ears like a heartbeat. I wait for him to say something, but he just sips his drink and stares at me over the rim of his glass.

I say, "Do you come here often?" It's an inanity I know, but it's all I can think of to say.

"Yes, you could say that." He takes a few sips of his drink. Then he says, "You've been coming here every weekend night for the past month, but I've never seen you dance. Why is that?"

I have no idea how to respond. I wonder who he is, what he does for a living, but I won't ask him either of those things. They don't really matter do they? At least, not tonight. I wonder how to answer his question. "I guess I've never really felt like anyone wanted to dance with me," I say. It's not the truth. Plenty of men have asked me to dance. I've just never had the courage to say yes.

"You could dance with any man here," he says, gesturing with his glass at the crush of people just beyond the potted tree line. He continues to look at me and his gaze is hot, making my clothes, what little there is of them, feel suddenly too tight, stifling. I take a drink and the sensation of the ice-chilled whiskey first cooling my mouth and then burning its way down my dry throat makes me shiver. He notices.

"Are you alright?" he asks.

"Yes," I say.

"It's very hot in here, isn't it?"

"Yes." I stare at the tabletop.

"Would you like to come with me to some place a little bit cooler?"

I hesitate, images of the nasty things that can happen to a girl at the hands of a stranger flickering through my head. I force back the paranoia. "Where did you have in mind?" I ask, and I'm proud that my voice doesn't shake at all.

"A VIP room. The club usually keeps it for me and my guests. Would you like to see it?"

I hesitate again, unable to help myself. I should say no. He could be a crazed sadist wanting to whisk me away to a broom closet for a quick raping. I take another long sip of whiskey to quench my throat and then I say, "Yes." He finishes his drink in one smooth swallow and gets up from the table. I take the hint and follow his example, knocking back what's left of my drink and barely even wincing as it sizzles its way down to my belly. I stand up.

He takes my hand, folding it inside of his own, and leads me back through the club, past the DJ booth to an unremarkable door set into the far wall. He opens it with a key he carries on a gold ring in his pocket. Behind it is a staircase, dimly lit, paneled in dark wood. We climb it, him still keeping a tight hold on my hand, as if he is afraid that at any moment I might try to run away from him. The thought does occur to me, but I've come this far already. I might as well let myself go a little further.

The stairs lead directly up into a single spacious room. One wall in entirely taken up with a Plexiglas window which overlooks the club. The view is god-like. All those people, all their secret dances, the ways in which they flow through and over one another are visible to us in this eyrie. The rest of the room is just as impressive as its window. In its center, two black leather sofas stand on either side of a glass-topped wrought iron coffee table. A stereo system the size of a man stands against one wall and a well-stocked bar is sunk into another. The light is dim and golden, filtering down from the room's only real extravagant affectation, an ornate wrought-iron chandelier hanging from the ceiling. The door clicks shut softly behind me and I turn, realizing that now we are completely isolated from the crowd. He could do anything he wants to me up here and nobody would know. He's watching me take in his room.

"What do you think?" he asks. Now that we're insulated from the throb of the music, I can detect the barest trace of an accent in his voice. It could be Spanish or maybe Italian, something that lifts the edges of his sentences and makes some of his words sound as if he is about to sing them rather than speak.

"It's beautiful. The window," I gesture to it, unable to find words to describe the effect that the window has upon the room.

"Thank you," he says, "It cost roughly as much as the stereo downstairs, but I like to think that it was worth the money. I would have paid a fortune to be able to have this view." He crosses the room to stand beside me at the window. My first instinct is to draw away, but I restrain myself.

Instead, I ask him something which I had begun to suspect ever since I saw him order the Chivas Regal. "Is this your club?"

He pauses for a moment. "Yes. One of them. Probably my favorite. My name is Andre." He offers me his hand and I take it. The handshake is more intimate than such a cursory gesture should be. He presses his palm to mine for several long seconds, and I can feel his pulse. It's steady. He is perfectly at ease. If he can feel mine, he'll know that my heart is pounding in my chest. He releases my hand and says, "Do you have a name?"

My cheeks sting. "I'm Sophie," I say, without stopping to think. I don't usually tell men my real name. I give them a fantasy name like Desiree, or Veronika, or Justine, something that sounds like the handle of a high-priced call girl.

"Sophie," he says. From his mouth, my name sounds exotic, even sexy. I've always thought it sounded like the name of a pre-pubescent girl, but hearing him say it makes me feel like a woman. "Not quite what I expected, but it suits you." There is a pause and then he asks, "So, do you often abscond to private rooms with strange men?"

The question catches me off guard. "What?"

He laughs. "I'm sorry, I was just kidding."

"I don't usually do things like this," I say, and despite all my drinking my throat is dry. "You're the only one who's ever asked me."

"I find that very hard to believe."

"It's true."

"What a shame." He raises his drink to his lips and half of the liquid inside slips smoothly down his throat. "Now, there is one thing that has been puzzling me. Why do you come to a dance club if you don't dance?"

"I guess I come here to watch."

"Just to watch?"

"I don't know. Maybe if someone really persuaded me I would join in." He smiles very slightly and raises an eyebrow. I look down, my face flooded with a hot blush.

"Would I be right in assuming that that was a hint?" He asks, finishing off the liquor in his glass and putting it down on the coffee table. I do the same.

"Yes." I smile at him, trying to act composed, but inside I'm trembling. This is as close as I've allowed myself to come to another human being in two years, and I'm pretty sure that he's going to want to come closer. I'm pretty sure that I want him to come closer.

I watch as he picks up a tiny black remote control from the coffee table and presses a button. The stereo in the corner comes to life, purring out the strains of some exotic music, mambo or samba. He holds out his hand to me. "Will you dance with me Sophie?"

I hold my breath, and then let it out. I look into his eyes, dangerous eyes the color of dying sunlit leaves and I say "Yes." I put my hand in his and he pulls me up from the couch. I feel the strength in his arm as he takes me and leads me into the middle of the room and little shivers tip-toe over my skin. I realize that although I've always wanted to be in this position, I really have no idea what I'm doing. I stand stiffly, his hand still holding mine. Do I put my hand on his waist or is he supposed to do that? I feel myself beginning to blush again as I stand there, stupidly doing nothing.

"Here," he says, and pulls me so that I'm standing very close to him. I smell his cologne, very faint, a spicy musk. He rests one hand on my hip, keeping a firm hold on my right hand and raising it into the air. He begins to sway, his feet performing an uncomplicated series of steps. I try to imitate him but my feet are clumsy and I stumble into him, inadvertently pressing myself against his chest. The hand on my hip flexes and instead of pushing me away again, he holds me in position, with my breasts pressed firmly against his chest. "That's better," he says, and begins to sway, his feet no longer sketching the steps. We're too close for that. He just moves his body with the music, moving me along with him until I do it of my own accord.

I realize that I'm drunk. Only a little, but it's enough to make the light from the chandelier hazy and to make the music feel like it's inside of me as well as all around me. It takes over my body, relaxing the muscles and whispering to me to move just a little bit closer to him, to close the half-inch gap that still stands between us. I move my body forward. It's one of the hardest things I've ever done. The gap between us closes and I realize immediately that he has an erection. I can feel it through the taut cloth of his jeans. A part of me wants to draw away again, to blush and apologize and then beat a hasty retreat, but I'm tired of being afraid, afraid of men and afraid of myself. Fear's been ruling my life for way too long. Instead of drawing away, I angle my hips so that I brush against the front of his jeans when we move. I'm wearing only the most minimal panties, so I wonder if he can feel the wet heat of me underneath my skirt. The thought excites me and I realize that this really is it. I'm going to do it.

“Will there be someone waiting for you tonight if you don’t go back home Sophie?” asked Andre and I looked in his eyes and suddenly thought that what if I never get to go back home again.

That was before his fingers gripped my throat like a steel band.