Chapter 11

11

My breath hitches in my throat. I watch in horror as my hand reaches out for the cigarette, accepts it, brings it to my lips. My body has gone rogue.

I take a puff without inhaling and pass it back to the man, whom I can’t really see, his face obscured in shadow.

“How scared?” I ask. For some reason, I’m now more intrigued than afraid.

“Depends,” he says, then pauses to take a long drag.

Spellbound, I wait for the rest, until I can’t any longer, until I have to ask, “On what?”

“How brave you are.”

“Oh,” I say. “Not at all.”

“No?”

“No.”

“You admit to being a coward?” He’s British, his accent haughty.

“Not being brave and being a coward are two different things,” I say.

“How so?”

I think for a moment. He passes me the cigarette again, and this time I inhale, welcome the poison into my lungs. I wash it down with gin. I haven’t smoked a cigarette since I was twenty.

“Cowardice is selfish,” I say. “It’s an active choice to do the wrong thing. Not being brave…it’s passivity. And no one suffers but you.”

“You suffer?”

“No,” I say. “Well…we’re off topic. You were warning me.”

There’s a very loud grunt. Costel is taking Miri from behind. I avert my eyes, my cheeks scorching red.

“You were brave enough to come here,” the man says.

“I didn’t know I was coming here until I was here,” I say, and finish off my gin. “And I didn’t know the, um…I didn’t know what kind of party it was until about five minutes ago.”

“If you did, you wouldn’t have come?”

“No.”

“Why don’t you leave?”

“Do you want me to leave?” I say, surprising myself.

“I’m asking.”

“I don’t have a car. And I can’t call one because I don’t have my phone. And the weather is bad. And I’d have to convince Naomi to come with me, and it’s pretty much impossible to talk her out of doing something she wants to do.”

I gesture to the room, to the giant knot of bodies.

“You wouldn’t leave without her?”

“No,” I say. “I wouldn’t.”

“You’re a good friend,” he says.

“Thanks. Thank you. For your, um, approval. Sorry—it’s a little hard to carry on a conversation when…”

Someone’s getting spanked. There’s the distinct sound of a hand smacking against skin, at a very specific cadence. There’s a chorus of incredibly enthusiastic, sensual moaning. I haven’t watched enough porn to confidently say this sounds like live porn, but it sounds like live porn.

“Not brave enough to join in?” the man asks me.

“I’m not interested in joining.”

He leans forward, leans in close to me, close enough that I can finally see him. Through a tangle of totally overgrown dirty-blond hair, his eyes find mine. His face is almost too pretty, too perfect. But there’s some asymmetry about it, some elusive chaos in its terrain. It’s what I find most attractive about him. The mystery of what makes him more strange than beautiful.

He lifts his chin, flaunting a jaw sharp enough to cut glass. “Because you don’t want to, or because you are a coward?”

“You’re sitting in the corner, same as me.”

He laughs. “This is true. But I am a coward.”

“Why did you tell me I should be scared?”

“Never mind.”

“Never mind?”

He sighs and leans back, vanishing into the dark. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“I don’t believe anything you say.”

He rocks forward and stands up. He’s tall, must be over six feet, with long limbs, a narrow neck. “Would you come with me if I asked?”

He extends a hand. His palm wide, his fingers reaching.

“Where?” I ask.

He grins, revealing dimples and big white, crooked, magnificent teeth. “Does it matter?”

Behind him, there are things happening that I’ve only ever heard frat boys joke about. Things I had no idea people actually did. I can’t decide if I find it amusing or upsetting. I see Naomi’s naked back pop up from behind a couch. She appears to be actively involved.

I never envied her adventurousness. I was bold in my own way, until I decided not to be. But there’s an ugliness percolating in my chest, a venomous resentment rising from the depths.

The truth is, I doubt she brought me here because she thought it’d be good for me, that it’d break me out of my shell or help me get my mind off the Joel situation. Whether she realizes it or not, this isn’t some benevolent excursion to bring me back to myself. We’re here because she wants to be here. Because this is her kind of reckless endeavor.

It inspires this need in me to spite her. The question is, do I spite her by sitting in this corner with my arms crossed or by taking this man’s hand and letting him lead me somewhere?

Or do I take his hand not because of Naomi, or because of Joel, or because of all the decisions I’ve ever made in my life that haunt me, that make me doubt myself and my ability to choose anything, to do anything right? Do I forget all that and take his hand for the simple reason that I want to? That I really, really, really want to?

I look up at him, at his enormous round, brown eyes, at his excruciating beauty, and I slide my hand into his. There’s a slight shock, an electric current that passes through me, that I might be imagining. The touch of him makes my insides fizz, like I’m a shaken can of cola, like I could erupt. His skin is cold, his palm calloused.

He gently pulls me up, and my knees creak as I stand. My legs give, angry at me for sitting on the floor, and I stumble into him.

I mutter an apology, staring straight into his chest. He wears a ratty old sweater that has holes, that’s far too big. It looks grimy but smells clean. He smells like bergamot.

I want to put my ear to him and listen as if he were a seashell.

Who even am I? What is this complete and utter anarchy that’s occurring under my skin? My blood rages through my veins; my heart’s thrashing in full riot mode.

I take a step back. Embarrassed by own my thoughts, I attempt to compensate by playing it cool. “Lead the way.”

But he doesn’t move. He stands right where he is.

It’s all sensory overkill. The smell of the fire and the incense and the sweat, which is now the most dominant note. “My Wife” plays, one of my favorites on that album, and it’s almost but not really louder than the fire and the moaning and the sound of bodies on bodies on bodies. My vision is gin blurred, and my eyes struggle to adjust to the shifting firelight and the shadows fighting to claim the space.

There’s the taste of juniper and tobacco, and there’s my hand in his. This new touch.

When was the last time I was touched by somebody new?

After a minute or maybe an eternity, he turns his back to me but doesn’t let go of my hand. He leads me out of the living room, and we turn down the hall on the right, pass the powder room, continuing on. We move by a series of doors. They’re all shut.

On the left there’s a door that suddenly, terribly, catches my attention. Another step and it’s at my side. And it’s moving. The door rattles, rebelling against its frame, and the knob twists, as if there’s someone on the other side trying to get out. As if they’re locked in.

And I hear it again. The clanking. And a short, guttural groan.

“Hey,” I say, yanking the man’s hand.

He stops but doesn’t turn around to look at me. He tucks his hair behind his ear, a signal that he’s listening, and that he’s an asshole.

The regret comes swiftly. Why did I follow this strange man down this dark hallway? At best there’s disappointment; at worst there’s danger. Why did I allow my want to decimate my logic? Why is it always a battle between the two?

“What’s behind this door?” I ask. Maybe I’m braver than I give myself credit for, though I’m not sure what it matters, what it’s worth.

“The cellar,” he says. “There’s a draft. It knocks. Huffing and puffing. We lock it out.”

He takes another step, pulling me along with him.

“I’ve lived before in many drafty castles,” he says. There’s a change in his accent, so subtle and so fluid, I barely catch it.

The way he just pronounced “many.” There was a heaviness to it. It betrayed him.

“Castles where?” I ask.

“I would tell you, but you said before, you don’t believe anything I say,” he says, his accent consistent.

“Should I?”

He stops again, this time turning to face me, wearing a grin like a fox with feathers still in its teeth. It’s so unapologetically devious that I want to smack it off him.

He stoops his shoulders and lowers his long, serpentine neck so we’re eye to eye. “I can’t honestly tell you that I’m good. But I am honest.”

“I’m not charmed by a bad-boy persona,” I say, the lie sticky on my lips. “I think it’s boring.”

He laughs, and it’s this loud, clumsy laugh. An authentic laugh. It wraps itself around my dread and squeezes until it bursts into excitement, into this eagerness to touch him, to stick a straw in him and drink, drink, drink.

“You should know it’s not a persona,” he says, again giving me his back as he continues to lead me down the hall.

“And you should know I’m not impressed.” I hear myself say it, and it sounds like something I would have said at seventeen. Am I reconnecting with my true self or being an idiot?

“Here,” he says as we arrive at the foot of a winding staircase. He bows slightly, gestures for me to go ahead.

“You first,” I say. “It’s too late to pretend you’re a gentleman.”

He raises an eyebrow, and then his face falls to a frown, as if I’ve hurt his feelings. Then he starts up the stairs. I follow him, taking a final glance over my shoulder back down the dark hall.

That one door, the cellar door, is still rattling on its hinges, and I wonder if it’s possible for a draft to be so persistent. To have such strong arms.

“Let’s see if I earn your trust with this view,” he says, just as the hall vanishes behind me, as the stairs twist and I arrive somewhere new.

We’re in a conservatory. Glass walls, glass ceiling. All around us there’s the night, the falling snow, the intricate patterns of shadow and frost.

“What do you think?” he asks.

“Not bad,” I say, and he laughs again.

That laugh.