NightWhere (3 page)

There was nothing about the building that would have suggested that behind the brown door was a den of sin. Mark had parked on the street a couple blocks down and they’d walked the cracked and weed-overrun city sidewalk to the address quickly. As much from nervousness of the neighborhood as from anticipation of the night to come. Rae’s heels cracked on the pavement like small gunshots with every step. That’s what Mark thought they sounded like, anyway, until somewhere nearby, maybe a block or two away, something cracked with a larger, fast report. Now
that
was a gunshot. A moment later, someone screamed. And then the snaps of Rae’s shoes were all that echoed in the night air.

Her steps quickened.

“Not crazy about the neighborhood,” she breathed.

Mark shook his head. “Gotta agree. Though the architecture is
tres
modern.”

Rae snorted. “Modern Ghetto?”

This was the industrial section of town; the broken sidewalks snugged to brick walls that held no trace of architectural motive, despite Mark’s jibe. These were walls that were simply that—walls. Steel-framed windows flanked in crumbling concrete occasionally interrupted their unwelcoming façade but mainly…these were barricades. Proud factory faces that had grown old and creased with time.

The factories were gone now, and this South Side Chicago neighborhood remained quiet most of the days. Except for the warning shots of gangs and drug deals gone wrong.

“Well, I didn’t figure they’d set up shop at the Four Seasons,” Rae admitted. “But I still don’t like it!”

“It’ll be different inside,” Mark promised.

At last they arrived at the door. There was no sign. No Playboy symbol silhouette or kitschy neon sign saying
Open 24 Hours
. It was just a door, with the numbers 2367 in rusting letters nailed to the front.

“They could have at least gotten an address like 6969,” Rae said.

“Always looking for the extra kisses, aren’t you?” Mark laughed.

He lifted his hand to knock, but before his fingers touched the wood, the door creaked open six inches.

“Invitation?” a masculine voice demanded.

Mark pulled the folded paper from his front pocket and handed it to the hand that extended through the narrow opening.

The hand disappeared inside.

Mark looked at Rae. Her eyes were narrowed, her anxiety visible.

Mark leaned in to kiss her and she smiled just a little before gently pushing him back and nodding. “I’m okay,” she whispered.

The door opened.

From inside, a sinuous drum-and-bass combo pounded strongly. Blue and red lights reflected off the dark eyes of the doorman, who now revealed himself to them. He was tall, maybe five feet eleven inches, and thin. He wore a black, button-down shirt and dark jeans. Over his shoulder, Rae could see wisps of fog and the movement of tousled hair. A dance floor.

“You’re first-timers,” the doorman said simply. His tone left no room for argument, and Mark nodded.

“I will tell you this now,” the man said, his eyes unblinking. “And I will tell you this only once. You have been given a gift to come here. Very few people receive this invite. But there is a reason. What we do here? It cannot be revealed. Where we hold the club? It cannot be revealed. NightWhere exists where we want it, when we want it. Any member who reveals anything about this club outside the walls of this club…will be killed.”

The man smiled. Thinly. His lips were pink and drawn.

“I’m not joking here,” he said. “If you breathe a word of NightWhere to anyone, you will not live to see tomorrow. We are serious about this; it is the only way that NightWhere can survive.”

The man smiled then, and his teeth were shark white in the shadow. “Go in and sin.”

He moved away from the door and Mark stepped past him uneasily. Rae followed fast, both of them walking past the doorman until they stood in the open foyer. After weeks of wondering whether the subject of the furtive whispers was real, Mark and Rae got their first look at NightWhere.

Rae slipped her arm around Mark’s waist. “It looks normal enough,” she said.

He nodded. “Looks,” he said.

In front of them, a couple dozen men and women moved on an impromptu dance floor, dry-ice smoke jetting out in plumes between their feet. Now and then, when the grey cement of the warehouse floor was fully obscured, Rae could only think of one thing. They were dancing on a cloud.

“This is just the doorway,” Mark said. “Let’s have a drink and get the lay of the land.”

“I thought we were just going to get a lay?” Rae laughed. Mark could see the glint of excitement in her eye. She was anxious for the evening games to begin.

They skirted the dance floor and stepped up to the bar on the other side. A bartendress almost wearing half a black T-shirt and a leather skirt raised one eyebrow as Mark leaned in to order.

“You gonna tell me what to do, or am I gonna tell you what to drink?” she asked. Her voice was low and throaty, but somehow Mark could still hear her above the grind of the dance music.

“How about you make me a gin and tonic and a Corona,” Mark asked.

“Can’t
make
the Corona, but I’ll pour you one,” she answered with a wink.

“Don’t mind her,” a voice next to them said. “She’s an attitude with a slut.”

“Don’t you mean a slut with an…”

A brawny guy in a white T-shirt turned on his stool and put up a hand to stop Mark’s question. “Nope. I mean she’s one big attitude. And she’ll take it from anyone. Even you, if you’re still drinking here at 3:00 a.m.”

“Like anybody is still out here at the bar at 3:00 a.m.” the dark-haired bartender laughed. She held one slender hand out to Mark, while with the other she pulled the ripped collar of her black T-shirt down to expose her breasts. “I’m Sin-D,” she said. Mark got the cute spelling since one tit had
Sin
written in black marker, while the other was punctuated with a big
D
. She released the ripped cotton and pointed at the guy next to Mark.

“This is Asshole.”

The brawny guy laughed. “Thing is, she likes assholes. You’ll find that out if you stay near the bar too long. My name’s Kendrick.”

“Call him Dick for short,” Sin-D chimed in.

“You’ll find that she likes those too,” he answered. He held a hand out to Rae. “You can call me Ken. Or anything else you like.”

Rae felt her face flush as he gripped her hand and held it firmly. His hand was heavy and warm. A serpent was tattooed around his wrist. Rae felt instant, biblical temptation. Mark answered for her when the silence stretched. “Hi, Ken, I’m Mark and this is Rae,” he said. “She’s not usually shy.”

“I said
she
could call me Ken, not you,” Kendrick said, never taking his eyes off Rae. “And no, I don’t suppose she is shy,” he added, still squeezing her hand, then moving his fingers up to stroke the inside of her wrist. “Or she wouldn’t be here.”

“How much do I owe you,” Mark asked Sin-D as he handed Rae her drink.

She shook her head. “On the house. I live to serve.”

Kendrick looked at Mark and smiled. “First time?”

“Do we stand out that bad?” Mark answered. “No,” Sin-D said. “It’s not that. But we get to know everyone at NightWhere pretty fast—it’s a closed club, you know. So…it’s pretty easy to tell who’s only been here once or twice. After that…”

“After that, Sin-D’s probably slept with you,” Kendrick finished.

The bartendress slugged him. “I hope you’re ready for some welts, mister.”

“She promises a lot, but her flogging arm is soft,” Kendrick said.

“You are soooo going to hurt tomorrow,” Sin-D promised. “I want to warn you about one thing,” she said, moving out from behind the bar. She took Rae’s waist in her hands and moved closer, until the swell of their chests nearly touched.

“You came to NightWhere because you have sexual fantasies that you still have not been able to fulfill. Well…you can do anything you want here. Anything.”

She looked deep into Rae’s eyes, and Rae found herself moving her hands to Sin-D’s shoulders, engaging in the sensual dance.

“You can do
anything
at all here,” Sin-D said again. “We are invisible. We are outside the law. But you’ll never do anything here at the bar. If someone here talks to you, it’s just bullshit.”

She put her hands on Rae’s breasts, gave them a gentle massage and then pushed. “Get out onto the floor and don’t listen to a word this loser tells you,” she said. Sin-D grinned and pointed to the strobing lights of the dance floor.

“Go.

“Get.

“Fucked!”

Kendrick shook his head and took a deep sip of his beer. “Whatever,” he said, nonplussed. “I’ll be here waiting when you get back. I’m always waiting.”

“Because every now and then, there is a chicken that comes back,” Sin-D finished for him. “Ken bats cleanup.”

“Yeah, whatever.”

Sin-D shook her head and pointed towards the dark corners of the room beyond the bar, where men and women danced provocatively in the dark. Farther past them, in the blue light of shadows, he could also make out nude bodies strapped on some kind of contrivance.

“This is the foyer of NightWhere,” she said. “Over there is the front room. This is the place to have a drink so you can kick off your shoes and move on inside. Sooooo…” she said, “…drink up, and get in there and get it on.”

Mark took Rae by the hand and led her out into the smoke and lights of the dance floor. “C’mon,” he smiled. “I’ll get you started.”

Rae kissed him, her mouth warm and soft. He could tell she was already excited. “You always do,” she said.

An old New Order bass line slapped through the fog and green strobe lights, as the singer sang about playing with his pleasure zone. Rae let the strap of her tissue-thin black blouse slip down her shoulder as she moved her hips and shifted her feet in a careful kaleidoscope across the floor. The blouse was really just strategic. If you looked hard, you could see all of her through it anyway, but it offered the illusion of clothing. It was a lot like this place. The black walls and black floors and mirrors that made it all seem larger and more grand than it really was…all just illusion. The clean smell of the smoke machines and the dancing arcs of light that made the whole place seem like another world. All illusion. It looked like a goth dance club, but this was simply the antechamber. The lobby, for pretense. People gathered here, got their blood pumping with a couple drinks and the ultra dance mix of an ’80s Depeche Mode song and looked for the reason to walk farther inside. Because nobody went anywhere just to stand in the foyer.

The dance floor was just the appetizer, not the main event.

People danced singly for a while there, running their hands seductively across their bodies, as if making love to themselves in public. And pretty soon, they weren’t dancing alone anymore. Not long after that, they weren’t dancing at all. At least not upright. And they most likely left the dance floor at that point for the seedier, darker corners of the club.

The beat from the speakers throbbed all around as Mark and Rae stepped into the mix of people on the floor. There were a dozen or so other couples moving in the circle that had been marked off on its perimeter with chairs and round tables. A few people stood on the sidelines, watching the action, but Rae loved to dance and didn’t slow as they stepped onto the floor. The vibration of the music sank into Mark’s bones, and while he was normally shy about dancing, it didn’t take long to fall into the rhythm. This was a dance floor unlike any normal goth or dance club because here…there were no rules. That was obvious at the start, as Mark watched one bald guy lift the black Harley T-shirt over the shoulders of a blonde woman. He dropped the shirt and fondled her tits right there on the floor as she ground her ass backwards against him. No false pretenses of propriety here.

Next to them, another couple had been engaged in a slow, very tight sway, but at the sight of the blonde’s disrobing, the woman—a thin little thing with a short-cut shock of black hair—suddenly broke away from the sinuous embrace with an equally rail-thin guy and instead knelt before the sumptuous, formerly Harley-clad, blonde, pressing her face to the blonde’s belly and reaching her hands around to cup the ass of the bald guy, drawing the three of them tight. Her former partner didn’t waste a moment, but instead moved behind the kneeling woman and raised his hand to spank her miniskirted ass. The skirt slipped up after he delivered the first couple blows, driving the small woman’s face against the blonde’s bare belly, before she moved her mouth lower.

Mark watched the spectacle and Rae bit his ear and whispered, “I think you can get some blonde or brunette here if you want tonight. But you might have to use your hand on them.”

“You know I don’t like that,” he smiled.

She slapped his ass playfully. “Well, maybe what you need is a mistress, since you don’t want to be a master.”

Just then, another man in a black silk button-down shirt split off from where he’d been moving closely with a fat woman whose heavy chest seemed ready to explode from the overly constricted confines of her pink blouse at any moment. He grinned as he shook his hips and stepped across the floor three strides to slip his hands up on Rae’s hips. Mark smirked at the tuft of wiry black hair that escaped the man’s equally black shirt. He had a sudden image of his wife braiding the man’s chest hair. Now that would be a different kink from the usual whips and chains…