Refracted Crystal: Diamonds and Desire

by M. J. Lawless

  She nodded once more at this. They were both quiet for a moment, sipping coffee and thinking, their minds running along parallel lines but not quite meeting. At last, Kris remarked: “You said that you have to be invited to attend. Did this Maximilian Roth invite you?”

  Daniel almost spat out a mouthful of coffee as he laughed. “Max Roth? You’re kidding me!” He had almost shouted and some people looked in their direction, smiling when they saw his laughter. He shook his head and chuckled to himself for a few moments. “No,” he replied at last. “There might be other Roths there, but not Maximilian.”

  “So who did invite you?”

  He paused for a moment, his eyes gazing off as he searched his memory. “God,” he said at last, very quietly. “I had almost forgotten. Some oilman, a Texan named... now, what was his name? Harry K. Grant, I think. Utterly forgettable.” He shook his head at this, and Kris watched him as he was wandering through some not entirely pleasant memories. Part of her hated to do this, to make him recall a past he so obviously wished to forget, but it was important. In less than two weeks, this man would be her husband and she wanted—she needed—to understand him more completely than ever.

  “I want to go there,” she said at last in a low voice that only he could hear.

  His eyes flicked straight back to hers and he looked directly at her for a while, not speaking. His gaze was not harsh or angry, but it was strangely cold, as though evaluating something. At last he nodded.

  “I’m not surprised,” he said at last. “Are you sure? This really is my past you’re dredging up, you know.”

  “I know, and I’m sorry to do it,” she said, speaking honestly. “But... but I just want to know.”

  “Let me think about it,” he replied. “Please, give me that. Just a couple of days.”

  Chapter Five

  It took him five days to finally agree to visiting Victor's. For the first, he refused to say anything about it and Kris knew better than to push him again. On the second and the third days, he tried to talk her out of it, revealing various salacious details which, if they were intended to put her off only made her more curious. On the fourth day he relented, making arrangements to take her to Victor’s the following evening.

  Kris found herself strangely excited at the prospect. In her mind, she had built up a considerable fantasy around Victor’s, some palatial underground pleasure palace, full of sickening and depraved practices that would have looked more at home on the set of a Bond movie. When Frank finally dropped them off beside a fairly nondescript door the other side of Manhattan, she was shaking with anticipation at the thought of what she would find beyond.

  She had dressed very conservatively—Daniel had been very insistent on that—in a long dress that covered her from her neck to her ankles. The fabric was luscious, certainly, but Kris did have the feeling that she was being arrayed in something that was closer to a Burka than anything else. The short coat across her shoulders was more revealing but, on a night as warm as this, she had refused anything heavier.

  Daniel himself was dressed in a neat, dark suit and tie. “No jeans policy,” he had said with a wink, then shrugged at the lameness of his joke. As they climbed out of the car, however, Kris felt butterflies in her stomach. Her sickness had not particularly affected her over the past few days, but that morning nervous anxiety and plain, old fashioned excitement had hit her again.

  “It really is... well, there’s not a lot going on here,” Kris said as she looked around the street. Some distance away, she could see elegantly dressed couples walking along the sidewalk, but there was not even much traffic in this part of town. “I would have expected a bouncer at least.”

  Daniel smiled humourlessly at this. “If you don’t have the right access, you don’t get through that door,” he told her. “I did make a discreet inquiry as to my own... status. Part of me hopes this will be the shortest night out you’ll ever experience.”

  As he spoke, for the first time she noticed that there was a pad against the door, apparently made of glass and shining with a very faint glow. Daniel paused in front of it and then, slightly reluctantly, raised his hand and placed it on the panel. She heard a very audible click in the door and Daniel’s expression became suddenly unreadable.

  For a few seconds he simply stood there, unmoving. Kris thought she was going to burst and almost pushed past him, but he lifted his arm and turned the handle, opening the doorway into a low-lit corridor beyond. “Abandon hope all ye who enter here,” he said to Kris, his mouth smiling slightly but his eyes completely flat.

  At the end of the corridor they finally saw a bouncer, a large, black man who, for once, was taller than Daniel and clearly more powerfully built, with a wire connected to his ear. He did not acknowledge them at all and Daniel ignored him, instead moving to a desk where a stunningly beautiful Asian woman was seated next to a flat screen. “Ah, Mister Stone,” she said, looking at the screen. “We haven’t seen you in a long time. And you have brought a guest, I see. Would you care to sign for her?”

  The woman really was ravishing, dressed in a traditional Chinese style silk dress that appeared incredibly demure. As Kris came closer, however, she saw that it was cut so short that her thighs were exposed, her legs long and lithe. For a second, Kris felt intensely jealous and wished to back out of the whole stupid plan, particularly when the woman looked up at Daniel with an appreciative look. Two things stopped her, however.

  First, the woman’s gaze was so clearly mercenary that it almost made her want to laugh—an approximation of desire that was ridiculously over the top. In addition, as Daniel picked up the pen he utterly ignored her, not as a deliberate rebuff, Kris suspected, but because he had wrapped himself up in an armour that no one was going to penetrate this evening. This in turn made her wonder whether they should go, for his sake more than hers, but she knew that her curiosity had not been sated enough yet.

  When the woman transferred her gaze to Kris, her expression was extremely cool. “Property?” she asked, looking back at Daniel. He shook his head.

  “Ms...” she glanced down briefly at the sheet Daniel had signed, “Avelar, I hope that you enjoy your time with us. Would you require a private room together?”

  “No,” Daniel replied. “Ms Avelar simply wishes to experience Victor’s for herself.”

  At this, the woman tilted her head sideways. “I hope it lives up to your expectations,” she said.

  Kris held onto Daniel’s hand as he led her through another door. Beyond, she was a little disappointed to see a rather small dance floor with barely a handful of people, mainly women, dancing on the central floor and groups of women seated at tables and at a bar. The whole place was underwhelming to say the least, with loud techno music blaring away.

  “Is that it?” she asked at last. Daniel, sensing that she spoke rather than hearing her, turned to face her.

  “Is that it?” she repeated, lifting herself up on tip toe and almost shouting in his ear. This reminded her of a rather poor provincial disco and she was rather disappointed at the atmosphere of the place.

  “Most people don’t bother staying here. It’s just where you can find someone or enjoy a show,” he shouted back, his eyes flicking across the room to the left.

  Following his gaze, Kris lifted her hand to her mouth and was shocked—more by surprise at something unexpected—and then began to giggle.

  There was a stage away from the dance floor, on which a white woman was being double penetrated by two black men. That was certainly more like it, Kris thought for a moment, but at the same time it was so stereotyped and so obvious that she felt it missed the point. It was all just too crude, too unerotic.

  In addition, paying more attention to the women on the dance floor and sitting talking to men (and the occasional other women who were presumably clients), Kris noted that they were united by two key factors: every single one of the women here to serve the needs of Victor’s clientele was astonishingly beautiful, all of them slender and
tall with slightly preposterous bosoms, though of various ethnic backgrounds; and all of them looked extremely bored, though whether this was an affectation that was meant to be cool and stylish or a genuine expression of their states of mind Kris was unsure.

  A few of them were watching the stage show, and now Kris could just make out some grunting and wailing when the music paused for a moment, but most of them were locked up in their own private universes. She did consider for a moment that the somewhat dazed expressions might be the effect of drugs. Above the pumping soundtrack, she heard a high-pitched laugh and turned to see a woman seated between two men: they had pulled down the top of her dress and were taking it in turns to suckle on her very pneumatic and clearly artificially inflated breasts.

  “The first circle of hell,” Daniel said loudly, bending to speak into her ear. “Come on, let’s go and find somewhere more quiet.”

  He pushed between some of the women on the dance floor, ignoring their automatic groping hands as he went by and leading Kris by the wrist. She was more amused than anything as she in turn was felt up, fully aware that this was not anything personal in the slightest. This was the market, and she was meat.

  On the other side of the dance floor was another door which Daniel now opened. As Kris followed him through and the door behind her closed, she was surprised at just how effectively the noise was silenced beyond and at how sedate this new room was. Here a number of people, nearly all of them men, were drinking and talking: a couple of astonishingly beautiful women, similar to those from the dismal discotheque next door, were sitting in chairs but, to Kris’s surprise, they were completely ignored. Indeed, nearly every man paid equally scant attention to the waitresses who were dressed in little more than stockings and high heels, with red patches covering the nipples of their fulsome breasts and pudenda. In any other circumstance, Kris would have been utterly jealous of their bodies, but once again she was struck at just how unerotic this appeared. The men in the room, most of them nondescript but for their elegantly groomed suits, were apparently discussing business. One or two of them appeared to be naked from the waist down, pale, scrawny legs stretched out in front of them. About half a dozen more doors led off the room.

  She was just about to mention this to Daniel, who was grim faced, when both of them were disturbed by a shout from the other side of the room.

  “Daniel Stone! What the fuck are you doing here?”

  The speaker was one of the younger men present and Kris suspected that he was almost the same age as her. He had stood and was coming across to them, of above average height though considerably shorter than Daniel, and of a fairly substantial build. His hair was neat and sandy coloured, and his face would have been attractive but something about the leering way he held his mouth disturbed Kris slightly.

  “Hello, Francis,” Daniel said somewhat stiffly.

  “Jesus, man, is that all I get? Come here! Give me a hug you stupid old fucker!”

  Without waiting for a response, he threw his arms around Daniel and pulled him closer. Daniel did not reciprocate, but the youth did not seem to mind particularly. When he finally let go, he looked across at Kris, and he raised an eyebrow. Some of the men sitting down were watching them with expressions of curiosity: the girls sitting by the wall looked as bored as those outside.

  “So, is this your property?” he asked. “Got something special lined up for us with her?” He frowned as he spoke. “Fuck, your tastes have changed old man. No problem, though. We’ve got this gorgeous Ukrainian bitch next door. She’s a bit tied up at the moment, but sure she’ll be willing to join in once those fucking Arabs have finished with her.”

  “She’s not... property,” Daniel said quietly. A tic had begun to flex the scars in his cheek.

  “Oh.” Francis looked genuinely surprised at this and, for the first time, looked at Kris properly.

  “This,” said Daniel, gesturing to the young man, “is Francis Roth. This is my fiancé, Kris Avelar, soon to be Kris Stone.”

  For a second, Francis Roth’s face was a picture of confusion then, as he realised what he had just been told, he burst out laughing, slapping his thigh and looking between Daniel and Kris incredulously. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m really sorry. That was really rude of me but... Wow! You’re getting married. Fuck!”

  He giggled for a moment, and Kris wanted to reach across and slap his slightly chubby cheeks, to wipe that obscene smile from his fat face. When he calmed down at last, Francis continued: “No hard feelings, eh? But you wanted to come here?” He now directly addressed Kris and one of his eyebrows was raised solicitously. “Well, I guess you must have a few secrets up your sleeve.”

  He smirked and looked at Daniel. “Well, I’m sure we can find something for both of you.” He pointed around him. “That Ukrainian I was telling you about is in there. About five or six guys giving her what for at the moment. Sweetest bit of cunt I’ve seen in a long time and a fucking ass to die for: still tight, though god alone knows for how long. Couple of lezbos in there, bit of a show and they don’t mind men joining in, though I think they’d prefer her to you. I don’t recommend that one: last time I looked it was some sick fuckers getting all scatological—don’t get that myself.”

  “Bloody Europeans,” one of the seated men remarked.

  “And those two?” Kris asked, gesturing to the two others he had not pointed out.

  “Well, that one’s currently empty,” he said, then with a wink added: “Perhaps you’d like to get something started.”

  Kris instinctively pulled away from him. “And the other one?” she asked.

  For the first time, Francis looked furtively at Daniel. His hand unconsciously came up to his nose and rubbed at it. “Nothing important there,” he said at last.

  Kris was about to speak again, but Daniel’s hand squeezed hers, communicating his desire for her to remain silent. “It was a mistake coming here,” he said with a weary finality.

  “Don’t be like that,” said Francis with mock joviality, but Kris noticed a degree of nervousness in his voice.

  “I agree,” Kris said quietly. “Let’s go.”

  Francis’s eyes narrowed at this. “Is this because of pop? Has he pissed you off? Come on, Daniel. no hard feelings, eh? You know everyone’s equal here.”

  “Unless your property,” said Kris, feeling her venom rise within her. Francis looked at her confused for a second, and she suddenly realised he had not expected her to speak. When he finally understood what she had said, he began to move towards her but one of Daniel’s hands, large and heavy, interposed between them.

  “As I said,” Daniel remarked. “She’s not property. Give your regards to your father, Francis. Kris, come on. We need to go.”

  Chapter Six

  “Property,” Kris scowled. “Property! I was going to say that was nineteenth-century thinking, but hell—it’s medieval!”

  The flight taking them to San Francisco was a private jet that Daniel had chartered. As such, there were only the two of them on board along with two pilots and a flight attendant, a young man in his early twenties who looked the archetypal role model for such a position and was polite and attentive. When Kris had asked Daniel why he had not gone with a woman, Daniel’s crotchety reply had been: “I think we’ve seen enough vacuous, beautiful women for a while, don’t you?” They were two hours into their flight, not yet halfway across the States, and Daniel had been somewhat distracted all the time they had been travelling.

  Now, however, he looked straight at her. His face was tired and his scars looked paler than usual against his skin, with slight dark shadows beneath his eyes. “I agree,” he said. “I stopped attending a long time ago, if you remember.”

  While unable to deny the truth of that, Kris was still not satisfied. “But, I mean... did you... did you really consider the others property?”

  When he looked at her there was pain in those strange, hazel eyes of his and he did not reply immediately but instead looked out of the wi
ndow at the clouds that were passing beneath them. Then his shoulders heaved as a profound sigh escaped his lips as he turned his head back around, not to look at her but to stare straight ahead.

  “I shouldn’t avoid this,” he said at last. “I told you that while I may sometimes evade the truth, I haven’t lied to you. So as for this... well, I guess I should face up to myself.”

  Something about the tone of his voice dissipated Kris’s anger and, though he didn’t speak for a few minutes, his brow creasing slightly as he thought, she did not interrupt him. This was important. She was pushing him, she knew, but just as he had once pushed her to a new freedom that she had not believed within her, she felt inside that it was essential for him to be aware of the thoughts inside him now.

  “I guess the truth is that I did, think of women as property. Damn it, everything was property for a time. After... after Karen died, I measured everything in terms of profit and loss. Nothing was safe from those calculations.” He paused again for a few moments, but still Kris did not intervene.

  “For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” His face looked mournful as he looked towards the window again. Unable as he was to return his gaze towards her, nonetheless Kris did not force him: she did not need to look into his eyes to know if he was telling the truth. She was quite aware that Daniel had once belonged to that class of men that could sell their own souls with a smile and a twinkle in their eyes. The shame that he obviously felt at this moment was more telling than any show of honesty.

  “And I lost my soul,” he said, almost too quietly for her to hear. “Drugs, sex, money. I thought it was... important. But perhaps that’s too hard to explain.”

  Kris could not contain herself at this but scoffed loudly: “Oh, love,” she remarked, a little more sarcastically than she intended. “So, you took some cocaine—believe me, you can’t teach me anything about drugs.” She suddenly realised that the bitterness in her voice was born of self-reproach rather than anger at him and she tempered her voice, placing a hand on his as it lay on his lap. “And I do think it’s rather sweet,” she continued, much more softly now, “how you keep on thinking that I was a virgin before I met you.”