14
Ophelia.Then.
Phantom waited for me on the steps of his brownstone. When the taxi stopped, Phantom stepped over to us. He greeted the driver, paid him, and then opened my door for me.
Did men still do that? Open the door for women?
Apparently so. I let him hold it open for me as I stepped out onto the sidewalk.
The club looked different in the daylight.
It was funny to see it as…just a house. Just a normal brownstone. The jazz club next door was quiet. A couple of kids were tossing a basketball back and forth down the street.
Last night, it looked so magical. Like a portal to another world. Today, things were…normal. Even Phantom looked domesticated. He still made me feral, but this was dressed-down Phantom. He was wearing sweat pants, and he had some unshaven grey stubble on his jaw.
“Good morning,” he said.
“Good morning,” I parroted back. I was stricken with sudden case ofshy. There was a special kind of morning-aftervulnerability that the daylight brought out of me that I wasn’t prepared for.
Last night, I was a wild, horny mess of a woman who squirted all over his hand.
Who did he see this morning?
More to the point: did he like this version of me just as much as he liked the version of me last night?
He escorted me inside and closed the door behind us.
“I’m never awake in the daytime,” he said. “Excuse all of this.”
He made a vague sweeping gesture, motioning to…I don’t know what. The place looked spotless. Just lived-in, now. No whips, chains, or spank benches. Now, it was just a house with anold New Yorkaesthetic. Lots of velvet reds and billiard greens decorating the house. Mirrors in ornate, dark frames. Paintings and sketches on the walls. He’d pulled open sliding, rounded double doors behind the staircase and through it, I found a kitchen swathed in daylight. Phantom led me into the kitchen, the most well-lit part of the house, with large windows that let in the morning sunshine. Outside, a rare treat: an elusive, city backyard.
It smelled like coffee in here. And oranges. There was a bowl of them on the table. I traced my fingers over the thick skin.
He offered: “Coffee? Fresh pot.”
“No. Thank you.”
How could I tell him what was on my mind?
Sorry, I thought I’d come over and you’d bang my brains out. Instead, I feel like a teenager sleeping over at my friend’s house, only I’ve woken up before her and now her dad is forced to awkwardly entertain me in the meantime.
The tension broke, however, when a woman entered the kitchen. It was the aloof blonde who greeted me at the door. She was tall, I realized—almost as tall as Phantom. She wore purplepajamas and these bulky, old-school headphones. She didn’t look at either of us; she just went straight to the cabinet and pulled out a coffee mug.
“Don’t mind me,” she said. “Just came for this.”
She filled the mug with coffee, milk, and a large heaping of sugar, before scurrying out just as suddenly as she entered.
I lifted my gaze to Phantom. “Is that your…?” I silently mouthed the wordwife.
He furrowed his eyebrows at me. “No. That’s Princess.”
As though that should mean something to me?—?
“She lives upstairs,” he clarified.
“Oh. So like…a roommate?”
“She helps around the house. And helps me run the club.”
