by JA Huss
“What the fuck is he doing?” Quin asks. “Why the hell is she dressed up like that?”
“I can only assume her clothes weren’t dress code-appropriate and he improvised.”
“I don’t like it,” Quin says.
“He doesn’t care,” I reply, absently. The party almost goes silent when people notice Smith and the woman. Not quite. There’s music and people in the Black Room can’t see him yet, so it’s only the grand lobby that shuts up. But it’s enough to be noticeable.
Lucinda is first to approach. “Smith.” I can’t really hear her soft greeting, but I can read her lips. “I didn’t think you were here.” He kisses her on both cheeks, leaning in the way he does. Probably to say happy birthday. And Lucinda smiles, pulls back, and studies the woman on Smith’s arm. “Who’s this? Is she your date? I was hoping…” She trails off.
We all know what she was hoping.
“I’ve got to take my date home, Lucinda. I’m sorry, I’ll probably miss the opening scene. But I’ll be back later.” Smith’s voice is easily heard. The entire club is watching now.
“Do you promise?” she asks, hurt and disappointed.
“Promise,” Smith says, using that charming smile he’s mastered over the years. “Don’t wait for me though. I’ll find you later.”
“Jesus Christ,” Quin says, grabbing his snifter of brandy and downing the rest of it. “What kind of drugs is Lucinda on? He’s not coming back for her.”
“He’ll be back,” I say, watching Smith work the crowd as he makes his way to the front of the lobby. The staff at the door are busy, trying to get the car up to the curb before he reaches them. He hates to wait. They know that much. “If he wasn’t interested in the afterparty he’d have never showed up at all.”
By the time Smith and the woman make their way to the front podium where the White Room maitre d' stands, quietly barking orders at the valet men, a coat-check girl is helping Smith with his coat.
A few seconds later they disappear into the snow.
Quin sighs.
“She was pretty,” I say. “Don’t you think?”
“She certainly looked good in Rochelle’s clothes. Does that mean… Do you think Rochelle left everything behind?”
“I don’t know,” I say. But it’s a lie. We both know she did.
“Do you think it means she’s coming back?”
“If she does,” I say, “we won’t be keeping her.”
“Fuck,” Quin says, standing up. “I’m going upstairs.”
I grab him by the sleeve of his jacket and stand as well. “You’re going home,” I say. “She left, Quin. It’s over. You’re not staying up there.”
“She could come back,” Quin says, shrugging off my grip. “Maybe this woman was some kind of kink? You know? Maybe Rochelle stepped out to get something?”
“What?” I laugh. “You actually think Rochelle brought that woman upstairs to fuck? With you? And then she forgot she needed condoms? Went to the drug store to pick some up? Is this something the two of you do?”
“No,” Quin admits.
“She left, Quin. I’m sorry. I liked her too. It was fun for a while. The fact that it lasted as long as it did is a small miracle. But it’s over now. You’re going home, we’re gonna clear that apartment out, and we’ll decide what to do next together. Do you understand?”
Quin doesn’t answer me. Just walks out. I watch him as he descends the stairs. He stops to talk to Lucinda, who has her hands all over his body, something she wouldn’t dare do to Smith. But Quin is easy-going. Doesn’t mind being touched. Enjoys it, actually. His smile is forced as he makes his polite, parting conversation. And by the time he’s finished, the coat-check girl is ready for him.
He steps out into the snow as well.
I wait a few minutes. Sip my drink. Watch Lucinda choose Jordan as her guest of honor downstairs. Probably because of the fact that he’s new. I stand up as they make their way towards the back of the lobby where the sentries stand guard in front of the other elevator. The one that goes down instead of up.
I’m not going. Not yet. But I would like to go upstairs and check out Rochelle’s apartment real fast before Smith gets back. I don’t think Quin looked around too much. I think he was in shock. And if Rochelle left anything behind I need to know about, I’d like to find it before he does.
A few minutes later I’m standing in the living room. The decor has a Bohemian flair. Crushed velvet couch, soft yellow in color. Too many pillows to count. Long, heavy drapes in the darkest purple you can imagine. The coffee table is a clunky thing. The kitchen is neat and tidy. It has a French-country feel to it. Distressed yellow cabinets and butcher-block counters.
The four-poster takes up most of the bedroom. It’s massive and Rochelle has long draperies hanging from the canopy at each corner.
I spy the new girl’s clothes on a chair and decide Smith had no choice but to dress her up. Jeans. Shearling boots. She couldn’t have come up through the front, which means Rochelle sneaked her in the back. Hid her.
And the woman went along. I guess that’s the part that troubles me the most. Why the hell did she go along with this? Why did she let Quin fuck her? Did Rochelle tell her about our arrangement? Did she set us up with a new girl? So we’d forget all about her and leave her alone? Did she think we wouldn’t leave her alone?
The last question bothers me. Why would she go through all this when she knows we’d never follow her? We’d never look. It’s part of the rules. And yeah, we bent some of the rules. But leaving is sacred. If a girl wants out, she leaves. No discussion is required, or wanted, if I’m being honest.
I spend another five minutes checking for a message. An envelope with our names on it or something that might give me a clue as to what just happened. And more importantly, why?
It’s not like I really care that she’s gone. I’m not attached to her. I like her. She played the game well enough for me. But why bring that woman into it?
Rochelle has to have talked. Has to have told her what to expect once Quin came up here. Has to have explained our arrangement.
Which begs another question. Who the fuck is that woman? And more importantly, what does she want? Will she try to blackmail us?
I shake my head. Conspiracy theories abound. But I’m not really a conspiracy theory kind of guy. So I let it go. I leave, go back down to Smith’s room. Sit at his table. And wait.
A good thirty minutes later he walks back in. The lobby has cleared out by now. Everyone has gone either home or downstairs.
Smith shrugs off his coat, looks up at me as he’s relieved of it. And then he’s passing the sentries as they hold open the black velvet rope and walking up the stairs.
“Well?” I say, when he enters the bar and takes a seat across from me where Quin was sitting. I’m in his chair and I know that pisses him off. But it has the best view. “What happened?”
“I really wanted to fuck her in the car.” He says this while he fills the snifter the bartender has placed in front of him and takes a drink.
“Why?” I ask. Trying to think it through rationally.
He shrugs. “She’s dirty, I can tell. I played with her pussy in the closet and she got wet. She sucked my finger like it was a cock.” He shrugs again. “She’s new and shiny. And it’s been a while since I had a fuck. So it crossed my mind. Are you going downstairs?”
“Are you going downstairs?” I ask, cocking an eyebrow.
“If you’re gonna play, I’m not staying behind. Are you gonna play?” He takes a long sip of his brandy, his heavy-lidded eyes trained on mine.
“Probably,” I say.
“Well, then,” he says, standing up. “Let’s go.”
I follow him out of the bar, then downstairs. We wait at the back-lobby elevator. “Did you get her name?” I ask.
“Nope,” he says.
I nod as the elevator doors open.
We step inside and descend.
Chapter Four - Chella
She was like a throwback from the Sixties. Long, straight, dirty-blonde hair with flowers weaved through braids on either side of her head that ended up as a chain of daisies.
She was singing. A church song I sang when I was a little girl. She strummed a guitar and even though Buskerfest is nothing if not wild, it was like she had a little sphere of silence surrounding her performance area.
That was the first time I noticed her.
The first time I met her was in a second-hand book and vinyl store half a block down from the art gallery I manage on the 16th Street Mall. It was about two weeks later, maybe. I was looking for a gift for my father’s sixtieth birthday. He’s a man who has everything and needs nothing. People like him require very thoughtful gifts or no gift at all.
I have tried the no-gift approach and didn’t find it quite got me where I wanted to be with him. So this year I made a commitment to find him something meaningful. Something he’d notice. Something that would show him that I cared. Remind him that I was still interested in his opinion.
Henry Walcott really is a man who has everything and needs nothing. But he’s sentimental about Sixties pop music, especially if it’s on vinyl. So I was in the bookstore that day to pick up a 45 that I had asked the owner to try to find for me.
Rochelle was in there at the same time. When I walked in she was chatting with the owner, so I decided to wait my turn over in the used book section.
That’s when things started to unravel, I think. That innocent trip to the used book section. That prominently displayed first edition copy of Nicole Baret’s The Longing propped up, front and center, inside the rare books case.
The Longing. It was an urban legend up until nineteen seventy-nine when a whole cache of books was found in an attic. It had been rumored that only two hundred copies were printed and that attic had all two hundred of them.
It makes me wonder… did Ms. Baret self-publish them? No publisher came forward to claim them. Ms. Baret died two decades before from an overdose while she was at a sex club. And if she did self-publish them, was there more than one printing? How could all two hundred copies of The Longing still be boxed up in someone’s attic when the book was legendary? Everybody knew about it. So how could they know about it, if no one ever read it?
It was such an intriguing mystery in so many ways.
“Do you think it’s real?”
I remember whirling around in the store, startled by her soft voice. She was wearing a long dress made of pale yellow velvet that day, even though it was hot outside. It was low-cut, so her cleavage was ample and there was no way—I don’t care who you are, man or woman—to avoid looking at it, it was that beautiful.
When I got over her tits, I looked up into her blue, blue eyes and recognized her from the carnival. “I don’t know. I heard they were all auctioned off at Christie’s thirty years ago.” I stopped and shook my head. “I just don’t know who would sell it. And here?” I crinkled my nose. “I love this store, it’s great and all, but how did The Longing get here?”
That’s how it all started. With me trying to be a good daughter, and then Rochelle, asking me, a girl who had everything and needed absolutely nothing at all, about that book.
A book I really did need.
I bought it. There was no way I wasn’t going to buy it. I paid eleven thousand, two hundred, and seventy-seven dollars for it. The owner thought I was nuts. He talked about it every time I went in the store for the next three months.
But by the time three months passed, Rochelle and I had already started making plans.
When Smith Baldwin came into the closet to release me, my head was pounding. I was scared and nervous. Mostly nervous. But he was nice. I think. I don’t know him, but I think that was him being nice. The way he dressed me, chose my clothing—my shoes, my coat, even, and then that jewelry. When he fastened the clasp on that gold collar around my neck I got a chill through my whole body and knew… that all the decisions I had made to get to this moment in time were justified.
The walk downstairs was exhilarating. I was so sure he knew I was up to something. But maybe he thought my shuddering body was just fear? Or nerves? Or a combination of both? Because he was silent until we stepped out of the elevator and Elias Bricman asked Smith if he wanted him to take over.
“No,” was all he said.
A very firm no.
Then it was a whirlwind of activity and I tried not to notice people I really wanted to notice. All eyes were on Smith as we left. He’s the kind of man you can’t help but notice.
He’s also the kind of man you don’t demand attention from.
When he promised the guest of honor that he’d be back, a little stab of jealousy pained my heart. Would he go back for her? But no, I decided as we walked to the waiting car and he opened the door for me. No, he told her to start without him.
I have an idea of what they do down there in the basement. Rochelle was very upfront about what this deal was. Smith Baldwin, Quin Foster, and Elias Bricman were her partners in a very dirty game called Taking Turns. And since she was already in a game with them, she wasn’t allowed down in the basement levels of Turning Point Club to play a different game. She had never been down there. Three years she’d been dating them and she had no idea what it looked like.
Of course, we spent long nights imagining. It’s not hard to imagine naked bodies slick with sweat. Various bondage apparatuses. Groans, and moans, and orgasms.
I slip a finger between my legs, the soft silk of the red dress I’m still wearing fluttering along the skin of my hand, then my arm. I’m so wet. That one touch from Smith had me so wet. And the way Quin fumed at me. So softly and so hard at the same time.
Did you miss me? God, I missed you.
Why the fuck would Rochelle walk away from that?
She would never tell me. Just said she was done and left it at that. But she didn’t want them to think too hard about her disappearance and that’s where I came in.
The replacement.
My alarm goes off on my phone and I realize I’ve been sitting here in the dark since I walked in the house after Smith dropped me off. When I got in the car he asked me where I lived and told the driver when I answered. But other than that, he never said another word until we pulled up in front of my townhouse down on Little Raven Street near Coor’s Field.
When the car stopped, I said, “Do you want to know my name?”
“No,” he said.
In the same firm tone he had told Bric no.
I got out and came inside. Sat here on my bed. Alone in this massive four-thousand-square-foot townhome feeling cold, and alone, and empty, and discarded. Staring out at my view of Coor’s Field, lit up, but empty. Kind of like me.
It didn’t work. Rochelle’s plan didn’t work. And I wonder where she is now? I wonder, after hearing how upset Quin was, if he’s looking for her?
I wonder if she got away?
I can’t, for the life of me, understand why she’d give them up.
The whole scene was… surreal.
I could hear them on the other side of the closet. Quin was loud. I had no problem making out his words. Bric was soft. I didn’t hear much of his conversation at all. But Smith… Smith was neither loud, nor soft. And I had to strain. Try very hard. But I did hear what he said.
He was done with Rochelle.
The alarm is still wailing at me to get up, get ready for work, get on with my day.
If things had gone differently I’d be calling in sick this morning.
I sigh and stand up. I stretch my legs, which are cramped and stiff from sitting here in the same position all night. And then I
walk into the closet and start taking off the clothes that Smith chose for me.
I hang the dress on a wooden hanger and hook it on the back of the door so I can have it dry-cleaned and returned. One by one, I remove the jewelry, placing it all very carefully into the velvet-lined drawer in my closet. I look at that gold collar with longing, feeling the soft brush of Smith’s fingertips as he fastened it around my neck.
It gave me a moment of hope. That it might be a symbol. Or a claim.
“No,” I say out loud, repeating the single word Smith uttered to me in the car.
No. It is not to be.
I get in the shower and clean up. Wash Rochelle’s make-up off. Wash my hair, and then condition it. And let the hot water run down my body and ease my mind and my aches. My many, many aches.
When I get out, I dry off and put on a soft, white robe. I settle in on the vanity bench on front of the mirror, and try not to look at myself as I dry my hair and apply new make-up.
I dress like an automaton. The outfit is still wrapped in the plastic the dry cleaners in residence placed it in. Everything I need is there. The soft pink scarf, the cream-colored silk blouse, the tan trousers, crisply creased. The only thing missing is the cropped pink jacket with tan piping, because it’s been given its own plastic bag and hanger.
I slip my feet into a pair of nude-colored Louboutins, don’t bother to check anything in the mirror, and then walk down the two flights of stairs, past a whole other floor of empty, but professionally decorated and furnished bedrooms and bathrooms, until I get to the kitchen.
I feel numb but I am used to this feeling. So I make the single-serving cup of coffee, put in the two packets of artificial sweetener, add one teaspoon of half-and-half, and clamp the lid on my travel mug.
I am happy to be going to work.
It’s a mantra I say often. But it works, because it’s true.
Work is the gallery. Work is people whom I have to direct and interact with in order to check off the tasks on my daily list. Work is art installations and maybe, if I’m lucky—and today, I am—meeting with the new artists who will be on display for the next show.
