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“Why don’t I just meet you?” I suggest gamely. “I can pop by the dorm, wash up, drop off my stuff…”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You look absolutelygloss!”
Okay, I didn’t say anything about how I look. But now I’mthinkingabout how I look. Goddammit. Why does she always get to me?
As soon as I can smell the spicy aromas coming out of the tapas place, my resolve softens. I am hungry. I wouldn’t mind a couple of small plates. They make the most beautiful scallop tacos. Oh, and the arancini is amazing.
But we walk right past the door, and Seattle drags me into the adjoining alley.
“Wait, what?” I object, letting my voice get louder. “M Club? No, please. Come on, Seattle.”
“Just a quick drink,” she sniffs from behind her blackout veil. “We have to pick up Ansel. He will be simplymobbedthat you are here.”
“I would really rather not,” I explain meekly. “I have a new class I’m starting tomorrow and no time to prepare. I still have work to do tonight. I still have all my stuff…”
None of this makes any difference to her. We walk down the alley to the blue neon sign over the old access door. All it says is “Club.” Very chic, I guess.
Bellman is an old town, kind of a failed logging town. But some of the buildings are really old. The first stone buildings are still here. As a result we have interesting alleyways. Abandoned steam tunnels. Architecture that looks like something out of a comic book.
The club is in one of the limestone block buildings. I think it might have been the original bank in town. Huge stones. This doorway is arched with trapezoidal blocks that make a dramatic impression. The door itself is timbers reinforced with cast-iron bars. You really have to put your shoulder into it to get it to open.
Seattle gestures with a hand behind the cloth, resulting in just a kind of amorphous triangle in the door direction.
“Ugh, fine,” I grunt. “You are buying. Remember. You said that.”
I reach out with both hands and grasp the old knob, digging back on my heels to pull the thing open. I swear this door weighs two hundred pounds.
“Ansel is buying,” she corrects me in a singsong as she floats in behind me. “It’s his job.”
The club isn’t as fancy as it looks on the outside. Kind of a disappointment, really. It’s dark, of course. The flagstone floor is interesting. But the rest of it is kind of boring. A U-shaped bar in the center of the room. A DJ box in one corner, of course. This is a college town. A dance floor. A bunch of little tables.
Lights swirl frantically over the dance floor, even though nobody is on it. Seattle takes me to the line of booths along the far wall. In the last booth, Ansel sits at the back with his arms spread out, draped over the top of the seat back. He’s wearing small, round sunglasses for some reason. A blue light shines down on him from overhead, smearing his silvery hair with an incandescent halo.
As usual, he’s wearing a linen jacket and a shiny silk shirt, unbuttoned one button too far. Somehow, it’s just too damn far.
It is not that I think that older men are unattractive, it’s just that this particular older man is unattractive. Ansel is in his mid-sixties, maybe. He owns galleries in Miami, New York, and Basel, and a lifetime of having young, hopeful artists kissing his ass has given him an inflated sense of his own attractiveness.
That’s just my opinion.
“Oh, Belinda, yes,” he says in a kind of creepy voice as I approach.
I am ready to simply abandon all thoughts of tiny tacos and flee, but somehow Seattle positions herself behind me and snatches my portfolio from my hand, stopping me. She places my portfolio in the adjacent booth.
“Easy, see?” she giggles.
“It’s Lindy,” I correct him softly.
He raises his chin and purses his lips in reaction. But since he is wearing those sunglasses, I can’t really tell what this reaction is.
“Thank you for waiting,” Seattle sings. “Lindy just took forever to meet me!”
“Hey, I—”
But my objection is cut off by the spectacle of Seattle escaping from her shroud. First she stands there, completely still, with all the fabric reaching to the ground like a column of smoke. Then her hands emerge from a split in the front that I hadn’t noticed before. They are pressed together like she is praying.
In one smooth movement, her praying hands slice upward and then spread apart, pushing the fabric away on both sides, revealing her figure all at once. It is as though she is erupting from a single-person stage, pulling back the theater curtain on a play in progress.
She’s wearing a tight, silk brocade dress in violet and chartreuse that reaches to just below her knees. Her shapely calves gleam with just a little bit of iridescent lotion. Her shoes are gold, vintage spectators with an ankle strap.
