Shades Of Obsession

by JR King

  The other bouncer could have been Samoan or Maori, with caramel skin, shaved head, and massive barrel chest and biceps. He had a baby face and was downright adorable when his arrogant scowl was replaced by a broad grin. “Maria! What gives?” His hands rested on his hips in a laughable Superman stance.

  She said, “You gonna open the accordion gate or what?”

  “Ants in your hot pants?” he countered in a deep voice, giving each of us the European double-kiss greeting.

  His breath billowed out in frosty plumes, and I wanted to fan my face to chase the slightly fetid smell of cigarette smoke away from me.

  Nice night, I learned. Apparently, we were on the VIP list. He stepped aside to let us in, waving at a hostess wearing a headset to direct us to a table. Not wasting her precious time, she quickly whisked us away from the hoopla, moving with agile purpose despite her six-inch heels.

  We entered a modern and extravagantly decorated white-and-black space, electro-heavy tracks pumping throughout it. The room was huge, the dance floor the principal focus, but there were still plenty of people crammed into the bar and seating areas. The décor skirted the edge of depraved excess. People were sprawled on low black leather banquettes, some lounging comfortably with snow-clad cushions. There were leather-lined booths around the ground floor, and a glossy bar with mirrored shelves behind it filled the back wall, creating an illusion that the massive room was even larger. It was an eclectic mix of polished leathers, brushed metals, and dark woods, the multihued lighting creating sensually shaped silhouettes. In the middle of the main floor was the spacious dance floor, complete with moving headlights that were creating a dizzying array of colors, electronic music pounding through the darkened space with a primitive, seductive beat.

  Stairs rose up from the ground floor to a VIP area on a higher floor where black booths were sectioned off by nubby red velvet stanchions. In one section of the VIP area, a Plexiglas partition allowed all below to see the DJs spinning the music that brought the fuggy club to life. Model-worthy waitresses flitted about in butt-baring designer shorts and sky-high heels, jeweled clasps adorning their hair.

  Our table was like a dream. Pin circular sofas were coiled around low coffee tables. There was even a skywalk, dancers dry-fucked to the music from twenty feet above us, the darkness punctuated by the fluorescent colors on the railing. Beverages and finger foods were on the house. His and hers drinks: a thousand dollar bottle of Cristal and an exclusive bottle of Laphroaig—40yo—on our table. Incidentally, Maria’s rich boyfriend had redirected all our requests to his tab.

  With a flourish, the hostess voiced usual customer service idioms, her kohl-colored eyes smiling. Her hips and her hair swung about in smooth bearings when she shimmied away.

  When I removed my houndstooth coat, the dull throb of the music started pulsing through my body.

  Maria said, “Well, ain’t this the plush life. Pretty high maintenance.”

  “Swish, swanky, sophisticated. Unlike us.”

  “Talk for yourself, Elena.”

  Life in lala-land was like this. People focused on what you owned, what you looked like, and what others thought of you. Intelligent matters were few and far between.

  “On the house,” a hostess announced, offering us Patrón shots.

  I wrinkled my nose.

  An exquisitely befuddled look popped on Maria’s face. “Waspy wet blanket!”

  “You’re on.”

  We clinked glasses and tossed back the shot. I winced at the burn, placing the back of my hand to my mouth. The alcohol numbed one part of me and awakened another. With a rented driver, it’s not like we needed a doyen for the evening. I raised another shot glass, an intrepid smile playing on my face as I tapped it to Maria’s. The sting of the second one wasn’t as bad, and my body warmed from the liquid, but it still tasted like shit.

  When Jenny, Jessica, and Jennifer arrived, a trio of social butterflies dubbed the Js, cheeks were air-kissed and fond hellos exchanged. This was a true girls’ night out. Not that Stanford students would ever use such an overwrought cliché to describe an evening out, but if it had to be broken down in Bostonian: only girls were allowed in the group, it was Saturday night, and we were definitely out.

  We hit the dance floor en masse, Maria leading the way. I was swallowed whole into a mass of writhing dancers, finding myself pressed between steamy male bodies. Between chemical-peeled skin, blanched teeth, personal-trainer bodies, orange spray tans, and salon-colored hair, I was easily distinguishable. I let go, giving myself over to the grinding beat of the music and the sexy atmosphere of the club. Lifting my hands in the air, I swayed, releasing lingering tension.

  “Baby girl, you’re beautiful,” someone yelled by my ear. “You look familiar.”

  Of course I did. Not that he would know.

  I looked over my shoulder at the brown-haired guy curved against my back. Although the just-got-fucked hairstyle was trending among yuppies, to me the scraggly bed-head look made him come across as a bedraggled fool. “Maybe you recognized me as the little girl from Boston.”

  “TV star?”

  I flashed him a shit-faced grin. “Sure.”

  Close, but no cigar.

  It was sticky hot and we were dancing wall-to-wall. The music’s bass and guitar lines pulsated like a collective heartbeat throughout the dance floor, where about two hundred clubbers were gyrating and throwing themselves around, screaming for no apparent reason other than that it was fun. Overhead scanner disco lights swiveled about nonstop, cutting through the darkness. Fluorescent tube-lights adorned the walls, sometimes emitting a strobe effect, which made us all look like we were moving in slow motion even as we danced at top speed. It was a thing of beauty, the DJs above us orchestrating the entire dance.

  Jessica grabbed my arm and yelled, “I’m going to the bar!” She had to repeat herself a few times over the pulsating thumping of the music.

  “If you need to hit up a guy for a bottle of Cristal, go for a hand job,” Maria yelled by my ear. “It’s easy and there’s little mess.”

  “Okay, yeah,” yelled Jessica, which roughly translated to: “Stop talking, I can’t hear a word you’re saying.”

  I thought of following her to keep an eye, but I was having too much fun. I danced back-to-back with Maria, we almost stuck to each other from the sweat. Jennifer was pressed between a couple, the girlfriend at her back and the boyfriend at her front. We couldn’t find Jenny.

  The pop music raged on, shallow songs sliding into each other. It was deliciously dark, arrhythmic lights flashed, with music so diabolically heavy it felt like it hijacked my pulse. Ten songs later, I’d burned off all the calories from the day. Even Maria, the inexhaustible, was in need of a break.

  We danced back to our seats, a semicircle of black leather within which a large cocktail table was nestled, topped by rectangular candles. From my perch, I could see the dance floor that was located like a hub at the entrances to the reserved booths.

  “Champagne, Miss?” a young model lookalike started off in a low rasp.

  Not just your average white-coated garçon de comptoir. He wore the exact replica of what a reputable waiter would wear, apart from the lack of a shirt. Only when I threw a cursory glance around, did I become aware that the waiters were all male. Watching men at the coalface, one right in front of me, made me smile.

  I polished off my glass of champagne, and fussed with my hair. The jet-black locks clung to my sweat-damp temples and neck in a sticky tangle.

  Jessica was seated next to a swarthy, square-jawed man in an expensive suit with a manicured goatee and diamond earrings, easy enough on the eyes but attractive more for his evident ease with money. Leaning back on the banquette, he draped his arm along the top of the backrest extending behind, claiming Jessica. The sudden movement opened his suit jacket, exposing a trail of his shirt down to his waist. The bulge at his crotch was outlined shamelessly.

  Another man, wearing a dark suit and a maroon shirt with
an open collar, was chatting up Jennifer while he nursed a glass of clear liquid that could have been gin or vodka. He was younger and stockier than the other guy, a model maybe.

  Maria spoke to me in what passed in this place as a whisper, meaning she was practically screaming in my ears, “Who are the hotties?”

  “No idea.” I smacked my Dior-coated lips together and craned my neck this way and that to check out the clientele at the neighboring tables. People-watching revealed lots of artsy types, Birkenstocked surfers, leather clothing, rimless eyeglasses, and foreign looks.

  “Hey!” Maria grabbed me and pulled me to her. “I thought I saw that guy from Boston.”

  Interest piqued, I asked, “Who?”

  “Man on the sixty floor? He’s on every magazine cover this week. I wanna be like him.”

  I wiggled in my seat, nodded, but didn’t answer at first. Of all the handsome businessmen, this one took the cake. People like him and I would never cross paths. I was twelve when I started crushing on his rugged model looks—fodder for many wild fantasies. He’d taken up a job at his father’s company, and since then, the media went to great lengths to follow his career…and his love life.

  In the article in The New York Times, a reporter called Alexander Turner The Man On The Sixtieth Floor. What really made the moniker stick was a picture of him in which he looked down at Boston from his office. He was pretty rad, an embodiment of power, wore wealth better than any public figure. Then there was that magazine cover of him leaning indolently against his desk like the ultimate GQ model. Fair with a sun-kissed tan and midnight-black hair and gunmetal grey eyes, he oozed sexuality. A perfect specimen of archetypal masculinity that kicked up women’s heart rates quite a few beats. On the cover of Esquire he was undoing his tie, doubling his slick sheen of pretension as he stood in an ICA gallery. On the cover of Vanity Fair he was seated à la Carla Bruni, his forefinger perched on the cupid’s bow of his lips, looking ultrahandsome in a tailor-made Boglioli grey suit, lavender Hamilton dress shirt and plum silk tie. On the cover of Rolling Stone—and this one was my favorite—he was dressed only in leather overpants and an unzipped jacket, showing off his rippled six-pack as he stood leaning against a Harley.

  I picked a Brazil nut out of the ceramic bowl on the table and turned it thoughtfully between my red-tipped fingers. “Yeah, he’s the new CEO as of this week. We all want to be like him, Maria. Bostonians rule.”

  She flicked her auburn bangs. “If it’s him, will you go say hello? He’s so yummy! Rawr!”

  Thinking about the GQ article headlined Sixty Ways To Do Business, I laughed my head off so hard I had to clutch my stomach. I even clamped one hand over my mouth and held the other one on my belly as I shook. “For you, Maria, I will. But as Stanford says in SATC: how can anyone that gorgeous be straight?”

  Restless dreamer that I was, I had romantic notions of falling for a man like him. No sane person would say no to the experience of a lifetime. But damn, not that such a brilliant man who had more money than God himself would ever care to greet someone like me, for that matter. Maria had a star-struck disposition and liked head-gaming herself about celebrities, whereas I was the realistic one.

  My eyes stole around, noticing a guy in a tacky silk cream shirt and black slacks talking to another girl. Cherub’s cheeks, bulbed nose, crooked mouth, but he had that confident, slow swagger with shoulders back, arms swaying from time to time. His eyes met mine and within minutes he managed a seamless departure from his commitment. I slipped out of my chair and the next thing I knew, he was extending his hand to me. He was tall and tanned but on the fair side, a few days’ growth of beard on his face, short dark locks messed in a haphazard style.

  Flashing his unnaturally white teeth at me through the artificial gloom, he said, “You’re stunning.”

  I smiled, blushed, rolled my eyes heavenward. I couldn’t help it, the guy was a total babe. It took just that long for my brain to connect the dots, to recognize the face from all the posters and billboards littered across Los Angeles.

  “Jason Morgan,” we blurted simultaneously.

  “If I may,” he continued, then he kissed my cheeks. His baritone voice brought shivers through my spine and reminded me of my favorite British thespian: Timothy Dalton. His cologne was something sweet and oceanic. I felt something warm course through me that was neither the guitar line of the music nor Enrique Iglesias’ high, wailing chest voice. The feeling was one of vileness and hedonistic abandon.

  Despite my sexed-up appearance, my confidence was waning. “You may, but you’re not single.”

  His mouth curled into a parody of a smile. “I assure you that I am single. People are too gullible, present company excepted.”

  “So are you or are you not single?”

  “I might be.”

  I didn’t feel slighted as he cloaked the truth. The attention of an A-list Hollywood actor with a muscular chest and a deep voice and piercing brown eyes focused, for the moment, on me, was exhilarating. While Jackson ordered a round of forty-year-old Glengoyne for his buddies, Maria and I hurried through a packed ladies room, and hit the sink and mirror to freshen up.

  Most of my makeup had melted off, leaving me with smudged raccoon eyes and cheeks reddened by heat and exertion. My hair was a mess, both wildly mussed and damp around my face. Oddly, I didn’t look half bad. Not a total abomination, I looked sexual and down to earth. Since Jax had left me, I screwed when I had the itch. Which was more like…never.

  On our way back to the table, there was a line at the skywalk and we eyed it with dismay. Blame it on the alcohol; I wanted to be up there. Maria and I debated whether or not we should lump it, and the hostess, who was studying us in a businesslike way, crooked a finger at us. She pressed her earpiece deeper into her ear with one hand, clearly focusing on whatever was being relayed through the receiver. Within seconds her hand dropped away from the receiver and reached behind her to unhook the velvet rope blocking the passage. My jaw fell to the floor. Naturally, a roar of protest came from those who were queuing.

  “Knock it off,” a bouncer berated the odd blend of patchy goatees and self-important, plastic-surgeoned faces.

  “Enjoy.” The hostess gave us a five-finger toodle-loo wave.

  We were weaving our way through writhing bodies, my heart rate increasing with every step. The music up there was less loud and the air more humid, the lights dimmed to the lowest degree, the oscillating beat cradling bodies. Sweat glistened on exposed skin everywhere. I was almost at the end of the skywalk when a man caught me around the waist and pulled me against his rolling hips. Looking at my right, I saw the guy who spoke to me earlier. Parrotnose and spiky brown hair, lightly tanned with a dark stubble showing. He did move as if he wore an ultratight jockstrap, compression underwear maybe, but otherwise he was clean-cut and had a soft expression on his face.

  He yelled, “I’m Ian.”

  Engrossed in the current song, I started dancing, closing my eyes to lose myself in the music. When his hands started to slide over my hips, I caught them, pinning them to his hips with my own. He laughed and dipped his knees to my level, aligning his body with mine. We were barely one song out before a bouncer with a Van Dyke interfered, giving me the nastiest be-gone look I’d ever seen.

  Understanding dawned on me. My minidress was inappropriate for the skywalk. Perhaps I’d even mooned the crowd. Not wanting to strain my vocal cords, I gave him a tut, skirted the periphery and went straight back to our table, without ever breaking a stride.

  Ian, who’d followed me, issued the question of the night, “What’s your name?” I looked at his sports jacket, and guessed he’d never heard of a lint brush. Someone should have given him one for Christmas a long time ago. Or he was probably Jewish. The thought prompted me to remember the last time I went to Church.

  “I’m Elena.”

  Elena Anderson

  The Return to Boston

  Being gregarious, Ian had caught my attention. The next day, makin
g the call felt like calling that aunt you never want to call. I waited. My phone rang and plans were made. Assured he wasn’t screwing off, a few days later, he picked me up after classes.

  “Ready for some adventure?”

  I sucked my lower lip into my mouth, scraping my teeth against it as I released it slowly, watching my breath heave out of my lungs and go out in frosty plumes. “Ready, Ian.”

  He placed the car in gear and tore down the street. It slunk through the streets with the lissome speed of a cheetah, and once we hit the highway, Ian revved the engine and swerved in and out of lanes. A man’s motoring style always encapsulates the way he wades through life. As for Ian, you must know that it should have taken us half an hour to get home, but he got us there in half that time. He drove as if he had no idea that his precious Porsche Boxster came equipped with first and second gears, or a brake pedal for that matter. I came to the conclusion that he drove like a NASCAR driver: all power and speed; whereas I drove like a Formula One driver: all control and finesse.

  It was a scary drive. From what I’d heard, Porsches required a gentle touch. The engine sat in the back, not the front, and many Porsche owners wrecked their cars because they didn’t know how to handle a rear engine.

  Safely arrived, I thanked Ian. He didn’t make a move to bridge the gap of silence that was patently cast over us, so I asked, “What’s up with you?”

  “Let’s get serious,” he said, all sweetness and light.

  The smile dropped off my face, but I nodded.

  Opening the car door, cool air whooshed into my lungs when I breathed too quickly. My stomach rudely reminded me that my obstreperous ego shouldn’t have eschewed the dessert course at lunch in favor of my waistline.

  The student house stood majestically among the villas of suburban Palo Alto, a contemporary idyll, soulful and sung to by birds, the garden teeming with evergreen flora. At closed sight, you might have considered it a picturesque nonentity of a slovenly family, rotting away, since the family had neither regard nor respect to occupy the residence. The truth was that they’d lost it all with Bernie Madoff.