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  Charles motioned for Ellen to follow him inside. “C’mon. Let’s enter the Cave.”

  They stepped through the door together. It slammed shut behind them. A burly man with a shaved head checked their IDs with a tiny flashlight. A bony woman next to him collected the cover charge. She wore a black minidress, sleeveless black blouse, black lipstick and a small hat with a mourning veil. As she took the money from Charles, her eyes stared at Ellen. Either she was attracted to Ellen or simply amused by Ellen’s nervous expression. “Have a good time, sweetie,” she said.

  Ellen and Charles went down a tunnel. The walls seemed to throb from the music. They turned a corner and spilled into a large, multi-level dance bar that looked carved out of rock. An eruption of people jammed the floor and overhead catwalks, bathed in black light.

  Ellen noticed her white blouse and pearls glowing purple and felt self-conscious, exposed for being unhip.

  Charles was shouting at her and she could barely hear him. On the third try, she heard “…go to the bar and get some drinks.”

  She nodded yes.

  They had to snake through the dance floor to get to the other side. Ellen dodged elbows and feet, jostled by the crowd. She noticed that Charles drew hungry looks from many of the women and even a few men. He was handsome in a dark way that this crowd apparently found appealing.

  On a shelf above the bar, a lineup of bleached animal skulls stared down at them. Charles ordered drinks. As they waited, a woman standing next to Charles started a conversation with him. She had short, copper-colored hair and wore a cat collar with studs. Ellen couldn’t hear their words, but forced herself closer to Charles so the woman could see that he was taken.

  Charles handed Ellen a plastic cup filled with green liquid. It was very full, so she took a sip. The strong taste jerked her head back. She felt an immediate warmth rising inside.

  She heard a hissing sound. She turned to see fog from dry ice pour onto the dance floor. She watched an entangled couple clad in black kissing and groping before they became lost in the rolling fog. Large video monitors hung from the ceiling, displaying a montage of horror and cult movie clips.

  Charles stepped in front of her, taking a large swallow of his green drink. He shouted something that she couldn’t hear. She shrugged, so he moved closer and reduced his words to, “Follow me.”

  Charles circled the perimeter of the dance floor and Ellen followed close behind. He slipped into a passageway that looked like a crack in the wall. She accompanied him into a network of tunnels that led to various pockets of space, private compartments that held couches, overstuffed chairs, tables and occasional video monitors. When he found a small empty room, he eagerly occupied it.

  “We’ve got some privacy,” he said. “It’s easier to talk. We won’t have to lip read.”

  “I feel out of place without my nose ring,” she said.

  “You’d look good with a nose ring,” he said, and she couldn’t tell if he was kidding.

  “Do you come to this place a lot?” she asked.

  “No,” he said. “Just when I want to do something a little different, when I want to explore the dark side.” He took another swallow of his green drink.

  “You certainly know all the trails through here.”

  “It’s not that complicated. It only seems that way because it’s so dark.”

  “Do you have a map to the bathroom?” Her plastic cup was empty and she really had to go.

  “You’ll have to go out the way we came,” he said, and he offered a zigzag of directions.

  She promised to return in a couple of minutes.

  Ellen wound her way back to the dance floor, walking in stops and starts as the path offered split trails and alternate routes. The drinks at dinner, followed by the green thing here, didn’t help. Ellen finally asked another girl the way to the bathroom. The girl looked underage. She wore long black gloves and a skirt that stopped mid-thigh.

  “That’s where I’m going. Follow me.”

  In the women’s room, Ellen encountered decent lighting for the first time and had a chance to check herself out in the mirror.

  She was definitely dressed all wrong for this crowd. They wore their darkness on the outside.

  My darkness is all on the inside, she thought. And that’s where I want it to stay.

  She washed her hands, played with her hair for a moment, and then headed back to find Charles.

  She became hopelessly lost.

  Ellen re-entered the web of tunnels and small rooms. Everything looked the same—and nothing looked familiar. She proceeded deeper into the passageways, the thumping music from the dance floor fading behind her. She circled past a threesome of staring, black-clad goths and feared they could sense her growing anxiety. The farther she went, the colder and darker the faces around her became.

  Passing one of the cubbyholes, Ellen heard a woman in torn fishnet stockings tell her friend, “I heard a girl was raped in here last month…”

  Ellen turned a corner and faced a stone wall. She retreated, found another tunnel, and stepped into a space where two shadowy figures slid up and down against one another, hands underneath each other’s clothing. She had to squint to identify the pairing. Man-woman, man-man, woman-woman? It was anyone’s guess.

  Ellen headed back in another direction, following another path. She thought about Charles waiting for her, growing impatient and irritated. She picked up her pace…

  …and crashed into a large, broad-chested man with wild, frizzy hair. He scowled and she quickly spun away from him. She ran on, entering another corridor.

  Ellen heard laughter and encountered several more dark figures. One of them called out, “Nice outfit, Grandma.”

  A second voice shouted, “Come party with us.”

  Ellen hurried away from them, heading into another passageway, which led to another dead end, forcing her to turn left, then make a fast right…

  …slamming into Charles. He broke out laughing. “There you are!”

  “I got lost…” she started to say, and then his arms closed around her, tightening his hold. She welcomed the embrace, its rugged warmth, and leaned up to kiss him. He returned the kiss, lips rolling against hers, and she dug her fingers into his shoulders. She shut her eyes, completely succumbing to the dark, all things reduced to the senses he brought to life with his touch, smell and lips.

  When they came apart, he said, “You must have really missed me.”

  She smiled, couldn’t come up with any words and looked away shyly.

  “Do you want another drink?” he asked.

  “Actually…” she said.

  He could read it off her face. “You want to go someplace else?”

  “Sure,” she eagerly accepted.

  “Well, I picked this place. You pick the next place. Anywhere you want to go.”

  She thought about it. She didn’t really have a favorite club or hangout. But she didn’t want this evening to end. It was still early…

  She blurted out the only bar in the area that she knew, Dartz, because it was close to her apartment and she had gone there a few times before with friends. The familiarity would be comforting, even if she was indifferent to the environment and its clientele.

  “Dartz,” said Charles. “Sure. I’ve been there. We can go there. It’s not far.”

  “Unless you want to stay here…” she offered.

  “No,” he said. “Let’s keep moving.” Then he said, “Before we go…” and leaned in and kissed her again. It began as a short kiss, but she grabbed him and held him in place, capturing the moment.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Within her first five minutes inside Dartz, Ellen felt a thrill. It was the same old bar, but she felt altogether different. She had stepped across a boundary. Instead of being another lonely single hanging along the rim of an urban meat market, she had become one of the people she used to watch with envy: a confident woman attached to a good-looking man. She felt taller, lighter. She could see yo
ung, upwardly mobile women stealing glances at Charles—and their eyes traveling to the date at his side. He’s taken.

  For a moment, Ellen had an out-of-body experience. She observed Charles and herself from somewhere across the room. She watched through the eyes of her old self, shoulders slumped, afraid to make conversation, uncertain about her body and face and personality. That was the former Ellen: hungry for human contact, yet frightened by it, anxiety level high from the contradiction.

  But entering tonight, here and now, this was the new Ellen.

  Dartz was crowded, but with Charles at her side, she could cut through the walls of bodies in her path. People wouldn’t move for her, perhaps, but they did move for them. The claustrophobia she often felt in crowds melted away.

  Compared to the Cave, Dartz had more light and color, spread through a simple, sprawling layout. Muted plasma TV screens showed a hockey game. High-energy pop hits rained down from elevated speakers, providing a steady pulse that didn’t interfere with conversations. Voices came at her from every angle, entangled threads of chatter without beginning or end, punctuated with laughter and shouts.

  Charles led her to an open space near a corridor that connected the bar to a restaurant. He asked her what she wanted to drink.

  “A beer,” she said.

  “It’s a micro-brewery. I think we can do that. Anything in particular?”

  “No,” she said. “Surprise me.”

  “I’m full of surprises,” he said.

  “I know.”

  “Don’t disappear on me. I’ll be right back.”

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  She watched him move through openings in the crowd until he vanished from view. Then she turned her sights on the faces around her. She wondered if she’d find Peg—it was one of her favorite hangouts. Peg was not shy about describing the occasional one-night stands she picked up here. In her storytelling, she turned the men into cartoons, describing their oafishness and idiosyncrasies in hilarious detail, concluding her anecdotes with “I was shitfaced. I’ll never see him again because I’ll never recognize him again.”

  Ellen thought about Peg’s open admiration of Charles. Earlier in the day, Peg had told her, “I go fishing every weekend, hitting every bar in the city, while you stay at home, reading books, doing nothing, and you land the big prize. There’s no justice.”

  Peg was kidding. Sort of.

  “Ellen! What are you doing here?”

  Ellen turned, searching out the source of the voice. She scanned the people around her.

  Jeremy stepped through the crowd.

  For a moment, she locked up. It was like two worlds colliding. Jeremy didn’t compute. He was part of another life.

  She was shocked to find her newfound happiness and confidence melting away just from his presence. He reminded her of everything that was wrong.

  “What’s with the big hair?” he laughed.

  All at once, she felt self-conscious.

  He said, “Makeup…fancy clothes. Lip gloss. Jeez, I almost didn’t recognize you.”

  “Hi, Jeremy,” she said flatly. “What are you up to?”

  “I’m in the back room with C.J., playing pool.”

  C.J. was one of Jeremy’s dorkier friends—he ate nothing but fast food and sold bootleg DVDs of Japanese martial arts films out of his apartment.

  “Sounds like a blast,” she said, an unusual blurt of sarcasm for her, but it felt good—as if she was meeting him on his level of snideness instead of cowed by it.

  “C.J. says he saw you working at a bookstore.” His voice was slurred.

  “The Book Shelf? Yes.”

  “Still into books. Nothing new there. What else have you been up to? Living a life of excitement?”

  “More exciting than playing pool with C.J.”

  Jeremy’s eyes narrowed, startled by her tone. “What? You’ve got an attitude now?”

  “I guess yours must have rubbed off on me.”

  “Lighten up. You know me. I kid around. I don’t mean anything.”

  “Like when you said we were going to get married?”

  “You’re not still mad about that?”

  “No,” she said, which was honest. She had to bite her tongue because she wanted to add, “Thank God it didn’t happen.”

  “You need more meat on your bones,” said Jeremy. He poked her arm. “It looks like you got AIDS or anorexia or something. I’m not saying you should get fat, but Jesus…”

  “Thank you, Dr. Jeremy,” she said, and her gaze left him and scanned the crowd for Charles.

  “So are you here all by yourself? I gotta tell you, nobody’s going to pick you up if you hide back here looking at the floor.”

  “I’m here with a date,” she said firmly, looking back at him, square in the face. I hope Charles gets here soon so you can see how good looking and smooth he is. He’s way out of your league.

  “A date?” Jeremy said, perplexed, as if she had just told him a flying saucer had landed.

  Ellen felt her back and neck tense up. “I don’t like that tone,” she said. “I never liked it. All the time we were dating, you always used such a condescending tone with me.”

  “Oh, what, you’re going to dredge up stuff from the ancient past?”

  “I mean it.”

  “You liked it when I treated you that way. You just won’t admit it. You liked playing the soft, passive little girl that other people tell what to do. That’s your shtick.”

  “My shtick?”

  “So who’s this guy? Does he work at the bookstore? Is he a nerd?”

  “Why don’t you leave me alone, Jeremy?”

  “You don’t want me to leave you alone. You still have a thing for me. I can tell.”

  “Hah. You are way off.”

  “Hey…” He moved in closer. She tried backing up, but her shoulder blades touched the wall. “Hey, Ellen,” he said, reaching up and touching her hair. “Remember that time we came here on a date? It was summer, and the rooftop deck was open. You could see the lights of the skyline. We found that area where no one could see us…”

  She remembered. He had been drunk and grabbed her breast—hard, not gently—and started dry-humping her until her lack of response pissed him off.

  Jeremy’s eyes came alive, as if it was a highlight of their relationship. Perhaps he only remembered his erection, and not her pleading, “Stop it, there are people up here. You’re hurting me…”

  Jeremy leaned in closer. She could smell the beer on his breath and see the sloppy way his mouth moved when he was drunk. “Let’s go to my place. I have rubbers. It’s okay. I think it’s the big hair thing. It turns me on.”

  She turned her head away from him. “I think it’s the beer. You’re drunk, Jeremy.”

  His face hardened. “Bullshit. A couple of beers does not make me drunk. You, maybe, because you’re a friggin’ skeleton.”

  “You’re drunk. I know what you’re like when you’re drunk. I know how you sound, how you behave. I wish I could hold up a mirror so you could see yourself.”

  “So are you screwing this new guy?”

  “Gee, that came out of nowhere.”

  Jeremy echoed her words back at her, scrunching up his features, pinched and mean, spitting out the remarks in a grotesque sing-song voice. “‘Gee, that came out of nowhere.’”

  “I’ve had enough.”

  “I’ll bet he’s not screwing you. Or if he is, you’re so goddamned frigid, it’s like screwing a board.”

  “You ever heard of foreplay, Jeremy?”

  “Fuck you,” he spat, and Evil Jeremy was back, the person she hated, the person who had hurt her a thousand times, who wanted nothing more than to belittle her and cut her down and then plead for forgiveness when he got horny. It made her sick.

  She tried to squirm away. “Leave me alone. Go back to your pool game.”

  “This is public property. I can stand here. I can talk to you. Freedom of speech!” Slivers of spittle sho
t from his lips. He looked and sounded ridiculous. He moved closer to her, toe to toe.

  “Jeremy, I mean it—!”

  “Move away from her!” Charles appeared, gripping two glasses of beer, jabbing his elbow into Jeremy’s chest. Jeremy stumbled to one side.

  “What the fuck, buddy!” shouted Jeremy. “You don’t touch me.” He sprung back at Charles and shoved him.

  The beers splashed back on Charles. As soon as the beer hit his shirt, Charles threw both glasses to the floor and charged Jeremy.

  The two men started to tangle, clutching at each other’s shirts. A large bouncer in a white Dartz shirt jumped into the fray, pulling them apart.

  “This asshole—!” started Jeremy, panting.

  The bouncer cut him off. “I don’t give a shit. You don’t fight in here. Take it outside. I don’t care what you do out there, but you will not fight in here.”

  Charles’s hands remained clenched into fists. “Fine. Outside then.”

  Jeremy hesitated, recognizing that Charles was taller and thicker. But a fire still burned behind his eyes—no doubt fueled by alcohol. “Okay. You want it, you got it. You don’t know what you’re getting into, fella. I’ve got a fucking black belt.”

  Ellen seriously doubted this claim, unless a black belt could be earned simply by watching a lot of bad karate movies.

  “This is stupid,” said Ellen, “Let’s just leave.” She moved to Charles’s side, wrapping an arm around his waist to pull him with her. She couldn’t budge him.

  “Who is this creep?” asked Charles.

  “He’s an old…acquaintance.” Ellen didn’t even want to honor Jeremy with the word “boyfriend.”

  “That’s right, fucker,” said Jeremy. “So why don’t you cool it before you get hurt in front of your bitch.”

  Charles pulled away from Ellen and stepped toward Jeremy. He jabbed a finger at him, nearly striking him between the eyes. “You, me, outside, now. RIGHT NOW!”

  Ellen shuddered. Charles’s voice had reached a volume and fierceness she had never heard before. Faces in the crowd stared at them from every direction. She said, “Please, Charles…”