by Nevada Barr
"You're kidding!" For the first time that evening he sounded like a person who might not bite the heads off kittens if given the chance.
"No. I'm pretty sure the next street up is Rampart. This was the building."
"Kneepads said this club is legal," Jordan said. "Private clubs can do anything they want as long as the 'members' are over twenty-one and willing. What she gave me was rumors of other services to be had. Dougie, a sex club, and an opera studio. Gotta be something," he said with a cruel twist of his lips that Anna realized was his happy face.
"Welcome to Bonne Chance," said the young man on the stool. "Are you members of the club?"
Jordan stepped to the doorway. "We'd like to be," he said.
"Onetime memberships are very popular here at Bonne Chance," the man said smoothly. "But you'll want to come back, I can guarantee it. Right in there, and Jennifer will take care of your memberships." He smiled a lovely toothpaste-ad smile, beaming on them both equally. "I'll bet that dress comes off as easily as it looks like it will," he said politely to Anna, letting her know she was desirable, if old enough to be his mother.
"It's the shoes I want off," she told him as they entered the building.
THIRTY-FIVE
Inside the door was a small room with a ficus tree, a framed poster of New Orleans by night, and a reception desk. Behind it sat a lovely and exceedingly busty young woman in a low-cut but tasteful dress.
The desk had a green blotter, local brochures, a small potted African violet, pens, and a pile of papers. In short, it looked like any reception desk in any business anywhere. Anna didn't know what she'd been expecting, but this wasn't it.
"Welcome to Bonne Chance. My name is Jennifer," the woman said with what looked to be a genuine delight in seeing them.
"This is their first visit," said the young man from the stool. "They'll need a onetime membership."
He went back outside, and Jennifer set about the simple but expensive process of providing them with official access to whatever lay within. Jordan paid out another two hundred dollars; Jennifer put it in a cash box, then stood and, still smiling, said, "Right this way." They followed her three steps to the door leading into the building, where she knocked gently.
"Whoa, little fellah! Where do you think you're going?" This shout, followed by a scuffle of footfalls, came just as the door to the inner sanctum began to open and Mackie, tongue lolling, eyes wild, dashed in from the street. Before the agile young man could catch him, Anna scooped him up.
"No dogs allowed here, ma'am," Jennifer said politely.
"Mack's a therapy dog," Anna said, holding him more firmly. "He warns us when my husband is going to have an epileptic seizure."
Jordan trumped her appeal to the goodness of their hearts--or their naivete--and pulled out his wallet. Without preamble he yet again pulled out two more one-hundred-dollar bills and handed one each to Jennifer and the stool man.
Jennifer hesitated a moment. The man said, "Whatever floats your boat," and retreated to his post outside. A third person, the guard of the inner sanctum, stood in the open doorway to the club. Jordan plucked a third bill from his wallet and gave it to him. "Long as the dog's over twenty-one," the man said with a wink. Absolved of responsibility, Jennifer poked the bill into the front of her dress and resumed her seat. Jordan, Anna, and Mackie were ushered inside.
The place was no different from many watering holes, though the decor left something to be desired. They were in a large room crowded with patrons, a bar at one end, a small dance floor, and a scattering of tables with candles and couples. Music was piped in and played loudly enough to make conversation difficult. Corners and ceiling were lost in darkness.
"Is this your first visit to our club?" the doorman asked. Anna looked at him seriously for the first time, the drama of dogs and bribery having distracted her when he'd appeared on the scene. Like the two young people in the outer area, he was well dressed and good-looking and spoke with respect tinged with appreciation for Anna's form and figure. It was flattering. It was also, undoubtedly, company policy. It was uphill work to feel sexy and gay if one was made to feel ugly and unwanted. The Chance employees were so adroit at the subtle compliment--one that didn't exclude either sex--that Anna wondered what sort of training they went through. Whatever it was, it had to be more interesting than the annual forty-hour refresher courses law enforcement rangers had to endure.
"First time here," Jordan said.
"Welcome."
So many charming people smiling and complimenting and seducing her--even for a price--made Anna feel rather like a blood donor at a vampire reunion.
"My name's Jason." Another lovely smile and appreciative look at Anna's cleavage. The effect was somewhat spoiled by the fact that her decolletage was covered by a panting dog with black hair and white roots.
"Bar and dancing, as you see." Jason waved an arm to take in the room. "Upstairs is where the magic happens." He led the way to an elevator--not a bank of modern elevators but a single elevator old enough to have carried Otis himself, in a corner of the room so dark Anna had to gauge when the doors opened by the slight thunk heard through the blare of the bar.
The four of them crowded in, and the door slid shut. The ensuing silence lowered Anna's blood pressure a few points. "We have some house rules," Jason said. "Ask before you touch; no means no; and have fun."
The same rules as in kindergarten.
"Take off your belt," Anna told Jordan.
"That's the spirit!" said their guide.
Jordan did as he was asked, and Anna threaded Mackie's collar through the buckle and snapped the collar back around the dog's neck. That done, she lowered him to the floor, where he sat obediently on his new leash.
The elevator door opened.
The second--or was it third?--floor of the club was a different world from the noisy modernism below. They stepped out into what appeared to be a Victorian library. The ceilings were high and the walls lined with books. Though looking old and important, they were probably bought by the yard for decoration; still, Anna had the untimely desire to read the spines. She quashed it.
Arranged in the center of the room were two oversized leather chairs and a couch forming a conversation area. Tall lamps in faux alabaster--or, given the price of admission, real alabaster--lent the room a romantic glow. Potted plants that had to be silk or plastic, considering there were no windows, suggested a tropical feel appropriate to New Orleans. A fireplace with a fern in it finished the illusion. Double doors opened off one corner, and the dark maw of a hallway gaped in another.
Three couples sat on the couch and chairs. One was kissing deeply, the man's hand on his partner's breast. Two women, dressed in dominatrix leathers, boots, and bustiers, chatted together.
Anna, holding on to Mackie's leash as if, like Sammy, he were a guide dog and could hold her to a moral compass, passed them and was startled by a scrap of overheard conversation.
"So I dropped the kids off at piano lessons--you know, that new woman from the gym--and I see the perfect claw-foot tub for the guest bath. Perfect!"
The ordinariness of it was surreal, chitchat in Hades. Perhaps they were longtime members and the shocking had grown sufficiently mundane that home redecoration trumped wild orgiastic sex with strangers.
The third couple had gotten more into the swing of things. The woman, her skirt pulled up and her blouse unbuttoned, straddled the man's lap, rocking gently, while he sucked her. Two men, apparently without partners--or maybe the husbands of the dominatrices discussing porcelain finishes--watched the copulating couple with mild interest. Both were sipping drinks.
Jordan tapped Anna on the shoulder, and she flinched. Being touched in this environment gave her the same willies as being offered food from dirty plates. "Nothing here," he said and jerked his chin toward the doors in the corner of this weird universe.
Anna went first, Mackie sticking so close to her heels that she bumped him when she walked.
The attac
hed room was set up as a theater. A full-sized screen was on the far wall, and sumptuous leather couches formed three arced rows in front of it. Maybe the club preferred leather because it could be wiped clean of effluvia. The only light came from the screen. Several couples lolled and watched the porn, but there was little interest or action. Undoubtedly voyeurs didn't come to the Chance to watch what they could get on their computers at home.
"Not promising," Anna whispered and wondered what would be promising. A room full of toys and dolls? The sound of little feet scampering between sexual athletes? Surely that sort of thing would not be in the open. The women in the library might like leather and whips and home decor, but Anna guessed they would go ballistic if they saw little girls being abused.
Closing her eyes against the actors going through the motions with disquietingly bored expressions on their faces, Anna called up images of the back of the building where the boys had chased Dougie. If Dougie's door and that of the Chance shared the same structure, the building was a block deep and comparatively narrow. It was possible Dougie worked at the Bonne Chance as a bouncer or bartender--or whatever else perverts do as a day job. From what she'd seen of the club employees, Dougie wouldn't have a front job. He was too uncouth. There didn't seem to be a kitchen on the premises, so cook and dishwasher were out. That left cleaning or stocking liquor for the bar. There would be other jobs in an establishment this large, but Anna didn't picture the yellow jacket in management or laundry. The thought triggered a memory, Candy's pssst-chunk. Could it have been industrial steam irons ironing the many sheets a place like this might go through in a day? She shelved the thought for later.
Taking Jordan's hand, she pulled him close. Their noses inches apart, she whispered, "Let's take a walk into the bowels; see how deep the club goes, if there's another building behind it, or if it runs the length of the block."
Jordan nodded. "You want I should take the dog for a while?"
"No." Anna wanted the dog as close as possible. Mackie's innocence and loyalty were her talismans against the curse of finding herself totally disgusted with the race to which she nominally belonged.
They traversed the library toward the dark opening to what they assumed was the rest of the club. The fornicating couple had reached the moaning stage, and their observers, the drooling stage. One dominatrix was gone. Now that Anna thought of it, they might share decorating tips, or which whips were the best, but, given their proclivities, it would be tough for them to work or play well together.
The remaining dominatrix was allowing a woman, who hadn't been in the room earlier, to kneel in front of her and respectfully stroke her inner thighs.
Reminding herself it was okay to look, that they were doing it in public for a reason, Anna quelled the unpleasant feeling one gets when a guest fails to lock the bathroom door and sidled past to the dark doorway.
It opened into a hall. Walls, ceiling, and floor were painted black. Down the middle of this fun-house darkness ran a skinny carpet in harlequin black and white. To the left were half a dozen or more door ways obscured, or partially obscured, by heavy red drapes. Between each pair of the curtained entrances a wall sconce. The bulbs in the shape of the Statue of Liberty's torch, emitted enough light to pick up the crimson highlights and make the white squares on the carpet shine. The glow was pronounced enough that they might have been black lights.
The carpet was thick, and she and Jordan made no noise despite Anna's stiletto heels. The curtained rooms were mere alcoves, large enough to hold a double mattress covered in a white sheet. Several of the curtains were closed for privacy, but a majority were completely or partially open. The insides of the cubicles were lit with smaller wall sconces in the shape of seashells and giving off a flattering peach-colored light.
Anything flattering was a boon. Most of the patrons of the Bonne Chance weren't the sort of people one would cross the street to see naked. At a guess, the average age was midforties to midfifties, with a spackling of thirty-somethings. Anna saw no one who looked to be in his or her twenties. Body types were the kind filling the streets and malls on any given day: a lot of plump, a lot of bald, and a lot of gravity dragging things from pert to ponderous.
Mardi Gras was over and Jazz Fest yet to come, so the city wasn't as crowded with tourists as it sometimes was, but still the club was doing a good business. Passing the alcoves, Anna grew tired of views of a personal nature, but there was no relief to the other side.
There a doorway opened onto a room with salmon-colored lockers floor to ceiling, the kind one might find in old high schools. In the middle was a swing made of straps of leather woven into a seat and affixed to a chain hanging from the ceiling. A long black cord hung down next to it with a black box the size of a paperback book at its end. In the middle of the box was a toggle switch.
"If that's not for adjusting the height, I don't even want to know what it does," Anna whispered as they stopped. Jordan grunted. Mackie whined. Anna picked him up. She didn't want him to get anything on his paws, then lick them.
Beyond the swing were three doorways, one to the left and two, side by side, directly in front of them. Those were closed; Anna couldn't see what lay beyond the other.
"This way?" Anna asked.
"We'll come back if we have to," Jordan said and walked away. With the dog and Star's fancy shoes, Anna had to hurry to catch up. She didn't relish being left alone. It wasn't fear, exactly. Except for being in various states of undress and/or masks and costumes and having public sex in groups, the people seemed well behaved and ordinary. There wasn't any doubt in her mind that the nice young people downstairs would let her out should she wish, nor did she really think she would catch some icky disease from the air. Mostly she felt like a stranger in a strange land, a fish out of water, a bull in a china shop, a rube in the big city, a park ranger in a sex club. It made her want to stay with her own kind, even if that kind happened to be a dog and a woman whose personality had been co-opted by an imaginary gutter punk.
She caught up with Jordan and fell into step beside him.
Beyond the locker-room-cum-swing-set were two rooms, each easily twenty by thirty feet and each paved in one gigantic mattress. Viewing windows were set into the walls so those in the hall might watch the events. Inside, groups and couples squirmed about amid cast-off bits of clothing, some hardy souls moving from group to group in hopes of joining in.
Past what, for lack of a better term, Anna mentally dubbed the orgy rooms were four more curtained cubicles, then a dead end. A wall of brick, painted flat black, ascended into the gloom.
"Shit," Jordan said. He balled his fists and uttered a low feral growl as if about to physically attack the brick and mortar.
Anna grabbed his arm, jockeying Mackie aside to do it. "We've got a few more places to look--the doors leading out of the locker room. We do that, if there's nothing, we go to plan B." Whatever that was.
For a minute she didn't think Jordan could hear her past the white-hot noise in his brain, and she braced to make a run for freedom with the dog if he snapped and brought the Chance's muscle down on them. His fists stayed white-knuckled, but he nodded, a sharp jerking down of the chin. When Anna started back past the orgy rooms and the fornication alcoves, he followed stiffly, moving as if the heat of his anger had partially welded his joints.
Clothes might not make the man, but they could certainly unmake him or, in this case, her. In the strappy high heels, no good for running or kicking, the dress built only to fall off at the least provocation, and the cascade of hair just begging to be grabbed by others or blind its wearer, Anna felt more helpless than had she gotten in the party mood and gone naked. It was no wonder women did a fairly rotten job of defending themselves. Not only were they smaller and less muscular by design, but they were willing collaborators in the bondage of fashion. Anna longed for boots and jeans and a good solid shirt: armor against the world.
The leather swing was now occupied by an ample woman in a cat mask and green high-tops b
eing serviced by a geeky bald man in thick glasses.
Murmuring, "Excuse me, pardon us," Anna squeezed between them and the lockers to reach the far doors.
"Cute dog!" said the cat mask.
"Thank you," Anna said politely and pushed on. With nothing between people but air, good manners seemed a necessity.
The archway they'd noted to the right of the two doors opened into a smallish room that had been convincingly transformed into a medieval torture chamber. The walls were of stone the color of a stormy sky. Iron rings and belt restraints and chains were affixed to them. Opposite the archway was a rack the Catholic Inquisition would have been proud to own. Shackled to the rack was a naked man, a little fleshy around the belly but not too ugly by modern standards. The missing dominatrix was running her long acrylic fingernails down the side of his chest, leaving welts, but no blood, as he groaned with . . . pleasure? Pain? Whatever.
As Anna and Jordan entered, the man opened eyes bleary and bloodshot with sex or booze. "Cute dog," he said.
This time Anna didn't thank him. Backing into Jordan, the heel of her stiletto grinding into something softer than the floor, she turned to the other doors.
"They're locked," the naked, shackled masochist called helpfully.
Beside each was a keypad for the code.
Anna and Jordan stared at them as if they would tell them something, then, simultaneously, turned away, squeezed back around baldy and the cat-woman, and retreated to the far side of the hallway. Ducking into an unoccupied fornication alcove, Anna waited till Jordan joined her, then pulled the heavy drape closed.
Jordan dropped onto the edge of the low mattress, his knees up around his ears and his face in his hands. "What now?" he said.
"We wait and watch," Anna replied. The dog struggled, and she set him on the mattress next to his master/mistress. "Don't let Mackie lick up anything, okay?"
THIRTY-SIX
