by Doucette, G
“Yeah. Panjeeb. Or Punjab or something.”
“Right, and she wouldn’t say why, and nobody knew him to even ask, but next thing we were all talking about cultural differences and aren’t they a bitch to overcome and we don’t even know. Maybe he had a little dick, maybe his green card just ran out and he had to go home. She wouldn’t say, so we had to. Nature abhors a vacuum, sweetie.”
Vivi took the half-smoked second cigarette Lindy should never have started, and refilled her own wine. Lindy wondered if she was blushing. Her face felt hot.
“Of course people want to know what happened,” Vivi said. “Were they unhappy and we didn’t notice? Looking for clues, right? That’s all. And maybe some of us noticed when you guys stopped holding hands, and kissing each other goodbye, and started doing things on your own and stuff, things you didn’t used to do or did used to do and stopped. I mean, with Mary we could make up stuff or we could just say, they didn’t work out and that would make all kinds of sense because even if they seemed happy they were only together for a year. But you and Mikey did work out. You were working out right in front of us. You guys were what we compared ourselves to. It’s like mom and dad getting a divorce.”
Vivi sipped her wine and blew smoke up the ventilator over the stove and waited for Lindy to calm down, which she wasn’t ready to do yet.
“Michael did say something,” Lindy said. “Didn’t he?”
She sighed. “Why don’t you tell me? I’m not here to talk about what he thinks, I want to know what you think.”
“None of my answers have anything to do with what went on in the bedroom. If he’s of a different opinion, it’s news to me.”
* * *
Vivi didn’t stay much longer. A few awkward subject changes were attempted, one or two more probes to figure out what the Big Secret might be, and then she was in the bedroom taking a pile of Michael’s clothing and tossing it into a green trash bag and wishing Lindy a good night with a big wet kiss and an overlong hug.
Then Lindy was alone with her thoughts, which was a terrible place to be. She should have been picking up the leftovers and fumigating the kitchen, but the couch was where she ended up, along with the latter half of the second wine bottle.
A part of her wished there had been a big something. An affair, maybe. She heard that was a pretty popular reason to break up. But so far as she knew he had been faithful, and if one didn’t count getting really drunk and screwing around that one time with Tina in college—which she didn’t—Lindy had been faithful as well.
He hadn’t asked her to marry him. That was sort of a thing, probably. It had never been an issue for her, yet when she called her mom to talk about the whole matter that was the first thing out of her mother’s mouth. He should have proposed by now, you’re better off without him because if not now then he never will. Lindy had played it off as the foolish logic of another generation, but now she wasn’t so sure. Yes it was true he never proposed, but she never brought it up either.
Why didn’t I propose? She wondered. There was nothing wrong with that. Or if not proposing, at least broaching the subject without joking about it. It came up now and again in safe circumstances, when nothing either of them said could be taken seriously. Like at parties or whenever one of their friends announced an engagement. They were trifling non-events, but suddenly Lindy could remember every single one of them.
It was supposed to be a foregone conclusion that she and Michael would eventually make formal what seemed like an informally true thing already. Clearly, that was how their friends saw it. Except every time someone joked about when the date was and so on, or called them Mr. and Mrs., it always made things a little awkward. Neither of them was comfortable with the idea of marriage, clearly.
Unless it was just her that was uncomfortable. Michael was probably telling everyone Lindy was the one who didn’t want to get married, even if it was—in her mind—an unspoken joint decision.
“Or it was about the sex,” she said, to nobody.
That was the part that was going to bother her for a while. She knew it the very instant Vivi brought it up, and she had no idea who to talk to about it or how to get the idea out of her mind. Her usual go-to friend when unreasonably preoccupied with something was Vivian.
She’d been with only two men in her life. The first was a guy named Randy, in high school, and it had been only one time: two fifteen-year-olds fumbling around on top of each other in an experience that was awkward, only a little pleasant, and terribly brief.
Michael was the second, and it had only been him since. (Again, save for that one drunk encounter with Tina that they never, ever talked about.)
The idea that she might be bad at it was one that had always haunted her for some reason. It wasn’t rational. She never questioned whether he was bad at it, so why would she worry about herself?
And he was not bad at it, so far as she knew, although all she had to go on was the efforts of fifteen-year-old Randy and the occasional dirty book. She could maybe compare Michael to the sex scenes in movies or the late night soft-core porn she sometimes discovered when she couldn’t sleep. Lindy never had the kind of sex that looked like the cinematic version of the act, but she was pretty sure neither had anybody else.
She couldn’t stop thinking about Michael going around and telling people the sex was subpar, which would have been ridiculous anyway. First, his experience was only slightly more extensive than hers—again, assuming there were no affairs, which she was assuming—so how would he even know? Second, he just wasn’t that kind of person. She supposed it was possible for him to imply something, possibly by not answering V’s question the same way Lindy had, but that was about all.
There were five or six other reasons Michael would never have brought up the sex, and plenty of reasons to think their breakup had nothing whatsoever to do with it. There was no merit to the idea at all. But now that it was in her head, it simply wouldn’t go.
Jesus Christ, what if I’m a bad lay?
* * *
The question stuck with her through a fitful night in which she failed to pass out properly despite all the wine, an early morning coughing fit thanks to the smoke she could swear was still rattling around in her lungs, and a late morning and early afternoon in which she remained in bed and stubbornly demanded sleep to show up and calm her head down.
It never did, so she tried a shower, and then a short jog, and then she cleaned the dining room and the kitchen, throwing away leftovers that could have lasted through Monday if she hadn’t left them out.
Through it all, the idea that she and Michael had split up fundamentally because she wasn’t good in bed wouldn’t go away.
By Saturday night, for some reason, she ended up sitting on the bed and staring at the contents of the black velvet box.
She and Michael always had something to do on Saturdays, even if that something was nothing in particular. It was one of the things she missed the most. It was easy being single and also being busy, but single and not-busy stunk. Whereas when you were part of a couple you always had someone around to do nothing with.
The last couple of Saturdays had been busy due to events scheduled months in advance, but on this weekend, once Vivi left, she had nothing in her calendar until work began on Monday. Nothing except for a weird midnight costume party she knew nothing about.
She could spend the evening in the apartment, much as she had already spent most of the day there. And then she could have another restless night, and soon she’d be legitimately excited about Monday.
Lindy never wanted to be a person who was excited about Mondays. She had to go somewhere. But spending more time with friends after Friday night’s experience wasn’t going to help anything. She was also not one to go the movies alone, or a club by herself.
What she needed was exactly what she was looking at: an invitation-only party where, if she did know anyone, it wouldn’t matter because there was a mask on her face.
Yes, there were some is
sues. Receiving a G-string from an unknown party and being told it was mandatory was a particular problem, because the only way anyone would know if she was wearing it was by checking, and that invited all sorts of follow-up questions.
But it was still a party, on a Saturday, nowhere near the apartment she couldn’t stand being in for another second.
* * *
The cab picked her up a little after Midnight. Assuming nominal traffic, they would reach the destination at around half past twelve, which was just about the right kind of fashionably late she was hoping for.
It had taken her most of the evening to decide what to wear. Clearly, there would have to be more to her outfit than a mask, a choker, two gloves and a G-string, but how much more was a difficult question.
The gloves said elegant, but the underwear said sexy and the choker with the ring? That sort of said bondage except bondage chic had been in style for so long it was hard to see it so narrowly. But she didn’t wear chokers as a habit, so she didn’t know what else to associate one with.
The mask said anonymity, which was a lot more appealing to her on Saturday than it had been on Tuesday.
All of that added up to her still having no clue what to add to the mandatory items. In the end—meaning after trying very nearly everything she owned except for one pair of sweats—she decided on a simple outfit from the very back of the closet.
Finding it was something like an archeological expedition coupled with a sociological study, because as she dug deeper through her surprisingly (and unexpectedly) large collection of clothes she realized the outfits became less conservative with each layer. She couldn’t decide whether this meant her clothes were too slutty in college or not slutty enough now.
The dress was tiny, and black, and not something she could have seen herself wearing again as recently as a week ago. There were five or six other options that offered to show nearly as much skin, and a couple of those even fit her a little bit better, but none of them went with the burgundy gloves, whereas black went with everything.
As far as little black dress went it was pretty standard: spaghetti straps; tight around the waist and hips; terminating around mid-thigh. She would be showing an acre of leg and a ton of cleavage, and she was trying to be okay with that.
There were only five or six shoes to choose from. Lindy had a decent-sized collection, but she preferred flats to heels, and sneakers to anything. If this were an event that called for her to decide between running shoes, walking shoes, at-the-mall-all-day shoes, commuting-to-work shoes, or taking-out-the-trash-at-six-in-the-morning shoes, she’d have been all set. But this was a skimpy-dress-and-something-akin-to-a-bondage-style-costume party, and she had only one pair of shoes that worked for that.
She’d never worn them outside of the store where they were purchased. That was on a shopping day with Meg and Tina, when they had discovered a going-out-of-business sale. It was the kind of place with footwear that really didn’t work with Lindy’s style, but discounted shoes were discounted shoes, and as Tina said, “Halloween is coming up!” In truth, Halloween was always coming up, being an annual event, and this was in August. But the idea held, and all three of them bought shoes that were outrageously tall and utterly inappropriate for their respective day jobs, but which would be perfect if they felt like dressing in a naughty costume at the end of October.
Lindy dressed as a pirate that year though, and not a sexy pirate: the kind with a fake moustache and an eye patch. She never ended up wearing any outfit that went with the shoes, although when asked by Tina—at the same party in which she was a pirate while Tina wore her heels and a French maid costume—Lindy claimed she wore them for Michael all the time in private. This wasn’t true. Michael had never seen the shoes, which brought back the notion that maybe there really was something wrong with them in the bedroom.
The shoes were kind of a big deal. They were four-inch heels, soft black leather straps with peep toes, backless, with wide ankle straps and heavy buckles. They were the kind of shoes you’d wear if you planned to use a whip for recreational purposes. She was surprised by how comfortable they were, and how much she liked having them on.
The rest of the ensemble consisted of a light jacket, and a clutch that was large enough to hold her wallet, keys, cell phone and the mask and not a whole lot else. She wasn’t going to put the mask on until the last possible minute, a decision she mildly regretted when the cabbie opened the door for her and checked her out from top to bottom and up again as she climbed into the back of his taxi. She could have taken this as a compliment, but mostly it made her feel tawdry, and overly aware of how small her dress was. Mercifully, he was something of a gentleman in all other regards.
The driver repeated the address back to her once they got moving, and she started to tell him where she thought it was in the city. This was something she ended up doing whenever she took a cab. It seemed like none of them knew where things were any more, intuitively, and relied on their GPS instead.
But he interrupted her before she could get very far. “I know where it is, miss,” he said. He had a Jamaican accent, she decided. “Your first time?”
“Excuse me?”
“I say, is this your first time to this location. Pardon my question.”
“Yes. To this location, yes. It’s a party…?”
“It’s a party, every month it’s a party at this address. This must be your first time. I’ve driven many times there. Where is your mask?”
“It’s… in my bag.”
“Everybody I pick up has the mask already, all except the people never been before. That’s how I know.”
She leaned forward and squinted—soon she would have to admit it was time for her to get glasses—and read his name, which was Elijah. “What else do you know about it, Elijah? I’m not sure what I’m walking into.”
“I tell you the same I tell everyone: you keep my number, you call me if you don’t want to stay. Nobody do, but people feel better.”
He stuck a business card through the plastic divider.
“Thank you, that does make me feel better,” she said. “But you don’t—”
“I don’t know what goes on in there, miss. Nobody ask me to take them home from there, so nobody say what goes on in there.”
“You’re not curious?”
“I am curious about many places. This city is full of mysteries. But you’re not supposed to tell and I’m not supposed to ask.”
She laughed. “Fair enough.”
“So go on, put on the mask, let’s have a look.”
Lindy slipped Elijah’s business card into her clutch and pulled the mask out. She hadn’t wanted to wear it until necessary, because while the gloves might attract some attention and the choker may turn a few heads, the mask was out-and-out unusual. It shouldn’t have mattered, because the whole point of the mask was that nobody would know who was wearing it, unusual or not.
She held it up to her face, tied the straps behind her head, and pulled her brown hair over the strap. It was a close fit, and very comfortable. The soft leather appeared to have been shaped for her face.
“How does it look?” she asked.
Elijah looked at her through his mirror. “You look beautiful, and also not like yourself.”
She smiled. “Thank you. I feel silly now. I put makeup on my whole face.”
“No-one will know one way or another. We’re here, are you ready?”
They had come to a stop in the middle of a winding side street, in front of a tall brownstone that looked little different from any of the other brownstones that dotted the neighborhood. They didn’t look like much other than very old apartment housing, but Lindy knew most of the front doors led to single-family homes that were some of the most expensive in the city. It was not the sort of place she ever expected to be invited.
“That’s it?”
“Everybody say that. Yes, that’s it. Just walk right on up the steps, ring the bell, that’s all I know.”
She pulled cash from the clutch and handed it through the slot. “One more thing, Elijah. You say you’ve taken people here before. Have you ever taken the same people more than once?”
“A couple times, yah. They wear the mask, but mostly I know when I see them.”
“And none of them ever told you what kind of party it was?”
“I never ask. Better not to, I don’t want them telling the boss not to send Elijah.”
“But they must know you’re curious. I’d tell you if I saw you again.”
“I’m sorry, miss, you’re very nice. But no you won’t. Nobody ever does.”
* * *
She took the tall stone steps slowly, because they were the unpleasant kind of steep that was commonplace in older buildings—especially the ones that were built out right to the sidewalk, as there was very little real estate for more gradual rises. There was also no railing, so she was risking a broken ankle in her unfamiliar heels.
Elijah’s taxi pulled away from the curb before she even made it to the door. Either he was no longer curious enough to see what happened next or her butt wasn’t interesting enough to stick around for, or possibly both. She couldn’t imagine knowing as much as he already did and never knowing more. It must have been maddening.
The door was heavy oak and had a huge knocker in the middle of it that reminded her of every black-and-white horror movie door ever. There was also a doorbell, though, in the frame next to the gothic door, and she went with that instead.
After a pause, the door was opened by a man in a white mask.
“Ah, Ms. Burgundy,” he said, in a deep, accent-free voice, “I’m glad you could come. Please. Mind the step.” He held the door and gestured for her to enter.
