October 3 - Taking a Detour

“I’m almost home already,” I said, when the phone call came, annoyed at the buzzing that tickled my armpit because my purse was tucked close to my body. My shoes sounded unnaturally loud on the pavement; people were sleeping, in this neighborhood.

“Take a detour,” Lara insisted. Lara had a way of insisting that melted resolve. What else could I do?

So I detoured.

The club had a line outside to rival ticket sales for a new exhibition at MoMA on an opening day, spidering down the sidewalk and around the corner and disappearing long past where the velvet rope disappeared. People spoke nervously to one another, pressing up close, their bodies waving back and forth like algae caught in a tidal pool whenever there was a sham of motion.

“Aja.” I whispered the secret password into the ear of the bouncer, a man four times my size with arms like small footballs, his extra extra large shirt straining to cover his belly, but not because of fat. That girth was from bulk. From size. One imagined he could bounce the next biggest man from here to the Meatpacking district with one shove.

He looked at me, considering a moment – did I look the part? I wore jeans, a sweater. I had been out for coffee with a friend, decaf, a late night cuppa, not expecting this. But I had detoured. So he considered, he nodded.

Velvet ropes parted.

Inside. Sweat. Music. Drum beats; that’s what I noticed, the beat tickling up my thighs and down to my toes again. Bodies bumped against one another in the dark, unaware of which liquid was alcohol, which saliva, which sweat. I would never find Lara in this crowd.

Chic, everyone, impossibly chic, so I wished for a moment I hadn’t been out for a mere cup of late night decaf, wished I had worn one of those silver New Year’s Eve style tops, and then instantly wished I hadn’t had this wish, my thoughts hadn’t diverged down that road in the woods because it instantly reeked of superficiality. I tugged at my neckline, pushed up my sleeves. Hot. There was heat in here not normally reserved for an October night.

Aja was the owner of the club, Lara said. “Our age,” she gushed; I could picture saliva beading up on her lips, anticipation of something with a man who would never give her a thing; I should have warned her of that now. She, too, was a diversion. “He’s our age, but already runs his family’s business. Empire.” A laugh. “Better call it an empire.”

Hotels. Chocolates. Other niceties; I didn’t let the particulars trouble my brain for long.

“It’s his birthday,” she had insisted over the phone. “Private party. But whisper the password and you’ll get right past the bounce.” Behemoth, she had neglected to mention.

Lara, I texted. I’m here. Massive crowd. Can’t find you. Best if I go.

I turned.

And ran into a body.

“Ooph!” I said.

“Hello,” it said. The owner of the body had a handsome face. A smile slicked across that face like oil.

He was tall enough that my neck had to crane to take him in from pate to shoes, polished shoes, I noticed, even in the dark; that was how much they were shining. Smooth black hair – how many bottles of gel, I wondered, but didn’t let it trouble me for long – smooth black hair pressed against a face, a handsome face, a model face, thick trembling lips, angular lines around his jaw that might have worked just as well to chisel stone. He reached out a hand, not to shake my own, nothing proper like that. He reached it out to rub my arm. For a moment I thought he was being overly familiar, then realized he was fingering the wool.

“You must be warm.”

“No,” I said. “Gail.” Supplying my name. My name was not warm. He frowned in confusion.

“You are here for Aja’s birthday?”

I shook my head again. “I am here on a detour. I was out for coffee.”

The frown deepened. Perhaps he had never heard of coffee. He was drinking clear liquid, but I knew instantly that wasn’t water, swirling around those bergs of ice. The crowd thumped. Bumped. Someone stepped on my heel.

“But you are here now.” He found solace in his own revelation. I shook my head a third time. Three times the charm, lucky charm. I tucked my purse tighter against my sweating armpit and felt Lara’s return text buzz like a vibrator against my upper arm, tantalizingly tingling. Reminding me I’d rather be at home where things were in my own hands.

“I was just leaving. I was just –”

“Gail!” Lara called. She raised one bronze arm high, a lighthouse. Lara was bronze in a February blizzard. She had dressed, as they say. Not prepped, not preened, but dressed. A production, a big budget Hollywood film. “Gail you came!” Everything an exclamation. I read her lips more than I heard her words.

My captor smiled at me slickly, wrapped his hand around my bicep again, not to feel the wool this time.

“You are here for Aja’s party,” he said now, certain. “Come, we will dance.” What else could I do?

So I danced.

I became a bumping, grinding, leaping, thumping, wriggling human among the mass of humans doing likewise. More like caterpillars, squirming after a spring rain, wiggling worms, burrowing moles, jumping kangaroos. Someone had put a drink in my hand – my captor maybe? Lara I hoped. So I drank. Someone else stepped on my foot, and I tried to throw them a glare. The lights were too bright for them to notice. Someone’s hair whipped in front of my face. It may have been my own.

My glass was empty. Ah there, replaced now.

So I drank.

Someone stepped on my toe again, I think. The thought didn’t last long enough to register.

I always looked at my watch, but the battery had died that afternoon while I ran errands. I had glanced at it all afternoon, forgetting already that it would still mockingly tell me time had frozen at 1.14 p.m. I looked now. It was still 1.14 p.m. on my silver strand of metal. It may have actually been midnight. It may have been three in the morning. It may have been another year from now.

“I was supposed to be in bed by one!” I yelled to Lara, understanding now why we exclaimed in this space, didn’t just speak.

“Forget it!” she exclaimed.

“Right!” Exclamation! Point! What else could I do?

So I forgot.

Dawn stained the sky when we stumbled out, I was gripping Lara’s arm, or she was gripping mine. Bed, I thought, kicking off my shoes into a corner in my room. Bed as the sun comes up outside my window.