Dark Intentions, #1

by Charlotte Byrd

  Dante was sexy as hell, I won't deny that and we definitely had a lot of chemistry. I look down at a small card that Cassandra handed me, black with little gold fleur-de-lis in the corners.

  Masquerade Party

  555-456-7890

  RSVP: cassandra@theredemption.com

  * * *

  There’s nothing else on the card. No name, no location. They operate in secrecy and privacy is of the utmost importance.

  I walk back to my car and I smile thinking back to tonight. Dante knew what he was doing and he knew exactly how to do it. He was so smooth, romantic, powerful and yet, shy just at the right times. If it’s an act, it’s a really good one.

  There's still snow on the ground and my feet make a loud squishing sound when I step through the slush.

  I climb into my used Toyota Corolla and start the engine and more importantly, the heat, and suddenly, tears start to stream down my face.

  This wave of emotions is so strong, I just cry and cry and bury my head in the steering wheel.

  It has nothing to do with what happened tonight. It’s something else completely, and it's the reason I was there in the first place.

  5

  Jacqueline

  My twin brother died three months ago.

  Every day after I received that call, I have lived in a daze. There is no morning, day, or night. There’re just minutes and hours without my brother.

  We grew up doing everything together. We were inseparable. We read each other's minds, and no one penetrated our circle of trust or love. When we were teenagers, he told me about the girls he dated and kissed, and I told him about the boys I liked.

  Nothing was forbidden or wrong to talk about. He was my best friend for years. And then, after we graduated from college, he moved away. He got a job, traveled a lot.

  We still talked almost every day but, of course, things were different.

  Michael fired people for a living. It was an awful job, but he did it with care and dedication. Large companies employed his company to come in as an outside consultant and do major layoffs of many employees at a time.

  As he advanced up the ranks and became an assistant manager and then a manager and then the director, I stayed behind. I got lost. He helped me get a job in a currency trading company, but it didn't last more than six months. I didn't like it.

  So that's how I ended up going to graduate school for journalism. I was still looking to do something that I really cared about passionately. Everyone made fun of my career prospects, everyone except Michael.

  Michael believed in me even when I didn’t. He said newspapers and the old style of reporting might be dead, but there’re so many online news outlets now and they constantly need stories. The truth was that I didn't know what I wanted to do. Graduate school postponed that decision and that was good enough.

  And then he died.

  I was supposed to graduate this semester. This was going to be my last one. I was going to be filling out job applications and sending out resumes and cover letters this whole time and he was going to help me.

  He knew what employers were looking for. He knew the language that they wanted, especially if the employee was like me, without much experience.

  But when that car hit him, the world stopped spinning on its axis. I couldn't go to class, let alone fill out job applications.

  I couldn't sleep.

  I couldn't leave the house.

  I took a leave from school. And the only thing I have now is a part-time job at a bar that his friend owns. And I have a suspicion that the only reason I still have that job is because I am Michael's sister.

  When I get home, I walk carefully on my tiptoes to make sure not to wake anyone up. It's a small three bedroom 1970s ranch style home with paper-thin walls and my niece is a light sleeper despite the fact that she's a toddler.

  This is where I live now and where I've lived for the last six months after I had a fight with my roommate because her boyfriend was staying over too much. It was originally her apartment and after I complained, she kicked me out. So I moved back in with my mom.

  I spent a week at Michael's apartment about a month before his death and he asked me to move in with him after I complained about our mom and Alexa.

  "I know they need my help," I say, "but I can't be there all the time. Alexa wants me to take care of Sadie because she's twenty years old and she wants to party. I totally get that but I wish that she hadn’t brought someone into this world that she didn’t want to take care of."

  Michael listened and offered to pay for a babysitter to help Alexa, but mainly to help our mom. He was always good like that, kind, loving. He was too good for this world. I said that at his funeral with tears streaming down my face and I still say that now.

  There was a fire in the car and his body was so badly burned and beat up that they had to use dental records to confirm that it was him who was driving.

  It was a closed casket because the accident left his body and face too mangled to display. I hate the fact that I never got to see him. A rude old man who probably should've retired years ago called me and turned my whole world upside down. He said that the records were a match and that it was my brother.

  He gave me a number to give to the funeral home, urging me to get him out of the morgue quickly. Apparently, summer was coming and it was going to be a busy time for the department, lots of bodies.

  If this had happened in person, I probably would've punched him in his face. But as it happened over the phone, all I could do was hang up and shake in disbelief.

  6

  Jacqueline

  I climb into bed and darkness comes over me. I close my eyes, but I can't shut out my thoughts. I went to the Redemption Club, but I didn't find redemption there.

  Not yet.

  This isn't something that I have ever done before. I was always a good girl. I had boyfriends of course, but no one that serious or long-term. I had been single for almost a year, dating casually, having one-night stands with the guys I met at bars and dating apps. No one stuck.

  I wouldn't say that I was looking for anyone in particular. Not at all. More like a distraction.

  That's what it was like in graduate school, at least it was for me. Those of us who weren't involved with anyone else would meet up at a bar. We'd drink, we'd try to go home with someone, but then Michael died.

  After the dust settled, so to speak, my friends tried to get me out of my funk. They tried to help me forget, not about my brother, but about the pain.

  I'm not sure it is possible to do that. Not so soon, but again, I craved distraction. That's why I watched so many hours of television and read so many books, anything that took me away from this pain.

  When Allison first told me about Redemption, she said something in passing like, "Did you know that Dean and Melanie went there?"

  I asked her more about it and I was curious, of course, not just as a journalist, but as a human being. I found it fascinating that couples and people in committed relationships would go to places like that to explore their sexualities.

  We didn't mention it again until she and I got drunk one night on too many wine coolers and played Truth or Dare. I had asked her to tell me the one thing that she’d never told anyone and she told me that she’d gone to Redemption.

  "What was it like?" I asked, excited and a little bit shocked.

  “I don't know it was, liberating, you know? It was like the veil had been lifted and you didn't have to play these games that you do at a bar,” she said with a sigh. "Do you like him? Do you just sort of like him? Does he like you? How far will this go? And then the ultimate game of all, will he call? Will you call? Do you even want him to call? Because, come on, let's be frank, most of the time the answer is no.”

  Allison laughed, tossing her hair from side to side.

  I folded my legs underneath my butt and leaned closer to her. "Okay, tell me everything."

  She licked her lips and held up her wine glass in front of her a
s if she were holding court. "Well, the couple I told you about, Dean and Melanie, they invited me. They sort of vouched for me to get the invitation."

  "But I thought you had to be in a relationship.”

  "No, generally there’s a whole screening process for people who are couples who are interested. But single women, they're what they call unicorns because, you know, very few single women want to go to a place like that."

  "What about single men?" I asked.

  "Many, many want to and very, very few are ever allowed. Otherwise, it'd just be a whole sausage party.” She tossed her hair again and took another sip of her wine.

  Allison McGivers is my friend from Dartmouth College. We were roommates for the last two years of school and we moved to the city together. And by the city, I, of course, mean New York.

  But six months later, she found a guy and wanted to move out to live with him and this beautiful single life where we both took the city by storm ended in a little bit of a disillusionment when I couldn't pay my rent. She had paid two months ahead but I couldn’t find a roommate that I didn’t hate so I had to downsize to a studio that cost $1500 a month and wasn't worth $500.

  And that's when I realized that it'd be better for me if I even rented something in Brooklyn or Jersey City and commuted because commuting, after all, wasn't too bad. But that was a huge hit to my pride.

  It is hard to explain to people from other places, but somehow living in Manhattan made you feel like you were part of something bigger, at least that was what all the television shows and movies told me.

  That’s not to say that people elsewhere were less but I thought that my dreams had a much bigger chance of coming true if I lived in New York.

  And what was this big dream? To be a writer. The only job I was able to score, even with my Ivy League degree, was a receptionist at the same media conglomerate that Allison worked in. I worked more than the standard eight hour day. I got paid barely forty grand a year, hardly enough to pay off my loans from a private university, but that was fine.

  I was good with that. This job was going to lead to another one, maybe in publishing.

  Of course, I never did an internship in publishing and that's required, but how the hell was I supposed to make enough space in my schedule to work for free for someone for forty hours a week for a whole summer or semester, just in hopes of landing a mediocre paying job as a copywriter, or maybe an assistant to an assistant to an assistant editor?

  But that's the thing about being in your early twenties. You don't really know what's going on and just have to figure things out. So, I continued to live my life kind of in limbo until I decided to pursue my master's degree in journalism. That way I could possibly get a job doing something with writing and put my fiction on the back-burner.

  "Hey, are you listening to me?" Allison snapped her fingers in front of my face, and suddenly I remembered that we were having a conversation, about what I couldn’t remember. "Do you want to hear about Redemption?"

  "Yes, I do. Everything," I said.

  "Well, I went there, I met with this woman called Cassandra and she laid out the rules after my application was approved.”

  "Application?" I asked.

  She nodded her head vigorously, "Yes. I think I have filled out smaller applications for college."

  "Wow. What did it require?"

  "Just a lot of information about who you are. It's all very confidential, but yeah, you also have to submit this video, talking about your intentions for going to Redemption. I have a feeling that they just wanted to see your face, make sure you're not a troll.” She laughed and stumbled up to the counter to get more wine.

  "Why didn't you tell me about this earlier?"

  "Ah, because you would have told me not to go?"

  "Yes, that's true.” I nodded.

  "Listen, you're always the sensible one doing your own thing. So, you know, I don't know where you stand on that kind of thing."

  "I don't know where there is to stand on that kind of thing," I said with a shrug. "As they're all happy and consenting, I don't know, why does it matter what anyone thinks?"

  "I don't know. I know that you talk a good game. You're all open-minded and whatever, but I know who you are, Jacqueline."

  "And who am I?"

  "You are Jacqueline Archer."

  I nodded. "Is that supposed to mean something?"

  "You're shy, you're not that outgoing, and you'd like to be in these long, boring relationships where all you talk about is what does this all mean?"

  I knew that she was quite intoxicated, but the words still hurt.

  Allison knew all about the men that I couldn’t stand and the ones who had broken my heart, and I hated the fact that she was throwing it in my face.

  "Okay. I'm sorry.” She walked over. "Don't look like I just kicked your puppy. You were pretty much just getting into one relationship and then another. I wouldn't say that you are that sexually adventuresome."

  "Yeah, that's true,” I admitted.

  "And that's why I went without telling you."

  She poured herself another glass and offered me one. I wanted to say no, but I didn’t want to confirm her opinion of me as being kind of straightedge.

  "So what was it like?" I asked.

  "Well, Dean and Melanie were the ones that brought me, so I was kind of with them. Met their friends, the ones they play with."

  "Play with?"

  She nodded.

  “Is that what it's called?" I asked.

  "I've actually met a couple there who I had previously met at one of their barbecues, if you can believe it."

  "Wow.” My mouth dropped open.

  7

  Jacqueline

  Dean and Melanie are as plain as white bread. We met in Dartmouth, they graduated a year ahead of us, and I was never really that close to them.

  But I'd see them at parties. They’d been together for almost four years by the time they graduated after meeting at freshmen orientation.

  After college, Dean got a job on Wall Street at an investment bank and Melanie got a very prestigious internship at an art gallery in Soho. A year later, they held their three hundred person wedding and bought a house in Greenwich, Connecticut, where schools are good and the commute isn't too bad into Manhattan.

  "The last I heard from Melanie was that they had two kids and besides being a stay-at-home mom, she had opened a Pilates studio,” I said.

  "Something tells me that this story will probably be a little bit more memorable." Allison laughed.

  "So did you reach out to them?"

  "I've been in touch with Melanie for a while and she told me. I remember her mentioning that they were doing something like this back in college, you know, swapping partners. When we met up for lunch, I just sort of asked her about it again and she told me. She was very frank."

  “What about their friends from the barbecue?"

  "I saw them again at Redemption,” she said, her eyes twinkling. “Then I slept with the husband. Actually, both husbands."

  "What about Dean and Melanie?"

  "Um, I was a little bit apprehensive about that, given our friendship, so I told her straight up that I just wanted to feel the room out when I got there, but not to get their feelings hurt if I didn’t want to hook up. It is my first time and all and I've never even kissed a girl."

  The following morning, I called Allison again who was very hungover and sorry about oversharing. I guess, in the light of day with a sober mind, she was no longer that sure that it was such a good idea to tell a friend of hers about her private life.

  When I brought it up again, she brushed me off and I figured the conversation was over.

  Still, I was interested.

  I was in between relationships, dating, meeting people, not really looking for anyone in particular, but still looking to meet someone. I went on these dates, I was bored by most in the first ten minutes, but there was no escaping.

  I mean, I did manage to leave early a
few times when the conversation became very unbearable. Sometimes, I would just go home and wonder about the stupidity of it all, because what I was really doing was going out there wanting to hook-up with someone, but I was pretending that it was something else.

  I was pretending that this guy was going to be someone significant or someone whose name I would even remember. Neither of those things turned out to be true.

  Still, I didn't dare ask her about the club again until she came over for the third time to try to get me out of my depression after Michael was killed.

  "Come on," she said. "Come with me. We'll go to Lemons, meet some guys, have some drinks, have some laughs."

  I finally caved. The guys were nice enough, mildly interesting, but my head wasn't in it, but I'd be lying if I didn't say that I wanted to get laid.

  "Tell me about Redemption again," I asked, as we sat in the back of the bar right before last call.

  Her eyes lit up. She wasn’t inebriated but not sober either, and I figured this might be a good time to inquire.

  "What if I wanted to go?” I asked. "How would I do that?"

  "Well, I can reach out to Dean and Melanie, or you can come with me."

  “Okay, don't take this the wrong way," I said, "but what if I just want to go by myself? You know, I want it to feel like a regular bar, picking up someone, having a good time, then leaving.”

  She nodded her head. "Yeah, I get it."

  "So what would I do? How would it happen?" I asked.

  "Well, after I make the introduction, I suggest that you go tell them that you'd like to go as a single woman. They'll send you this application, you fill it out, make the video, and wait for a gold envelope to arrive."

  "A gold envelope?"

  "Yeah, it's all gold. Nothing on the front and somebody is going to hand deliver it, just to you."

  "Like a courier?" I asked.

  She nodded. "You'll have the date and time of the next party or event, and I guess you just go there."