Room. She had found the address on the internet and was almost surprised to see that not everything connected with Valerie had vanished into thin air, leaving no trace.
She got out of the taxi just before midnight and joined the line waiting outside the club. It was on a side street and, like so many other buildings in this neighborhood, had once been a slaughterhouse, as an antiquated inscription on the dark brick masonry of the second floor boasted. The neon sign of the Dream Room, however, looked almost modest. A few dozen people were waiting outside its steel door. Two burly doormen were checking the guests’ IDs. Rosa, in her short dress, black tights, and steel-capped boots, was let in easily enough. She hadn’t gone to much trouble with her outfit, but because her wild blond hair wouldn’t be tamed, and was in such contrast to her black clothes, she looked dressed up enough for Manhattan’s chic club scene. At least an Asian girl with pink hair extensions, on her way down the concrete steps, cast an envious glance at Rosa’s blond mane.
The interior designers of the Dream Room had removed the floor of the second story to make an enormously high-ceilinged chamber. From the stairs, all you saw was a wide, wavering surface—cloud cover made of dry ice concealed the view of the dance floor from above. Here and there the swathes of mist parted to reveal a milling throng of bodies. A continuous salvo of beats, somewhere between industrial and jungle music, boomed from unseen speakers.
Now Rosa could see how the Dream Room got its name. Thousands of dream catchers hung from the ceiling, high above the sea of dry ice. Someone must have bought up the entire stock of the souvenir shops on Indian reservations to get so many. The dream catchers dangled up there like mobiles made of wickerwork and feathers, strings of beads and horsehair, some right beneath the ceiling, others deep in the mist. There were dream catchers large and small, plain and extravagant, and they all shook, swinging and turning, from the booming music from the loudspeakers.
Only now did she realize that she had stopped halfway down the stairs. Guests impatient to get in pushed past her, but a few others also stood there taking in the sight.
She tore herself away, walked down the remaining steps, and broke through the layer of dry ice. The scene below was equally eccentric. The floor was crisscrossed by a labyrinth of corridors, like trenches on a battlefield overhung by mist. They linked half a dozen dance floors together. Guests dressed to the nines pushed along the narrow aisles; physical contact was desirable and couldn’t be avoided anyway. Spotlights flickered above their heads. In the trenches themselves, diffuse strip lighting showed the way, and there were other dim lamps here and there, illuminating the corridors for only a few feet ahead. Most clubs tried to present their guests with a world of their own, but Rosa had never seen one that did it so effectively, and by such simple means, as the Dream Room.
Soon she too was making her way along the aisles, looking hard at the waitresses, but she didn’t see anyone at all like Valerie. She hadn’t really expected her to still be here, but maybe someone remembered her and would know where to find her. Trevini would certainly have some explanation ready of how he had come by Valerie’s video, but she doubted it would be the truth. It couldn’t hurt to find out as much about Valerie as possible on her own.
On the edge of one of the dance floors, she leaned over the bar and asked the bartender if he knew a girl called Valerie Paige. He shook his head. The same with her second and third attempts. She was about to plunge back into the turmoil of the trenches when she stopped to watch a remarkable entrance.
The crowd gave way before a group of black-clad bodyguards. The men towered above most of the guests by a head, and beside the wraith-like emo girls and the heavily made-up Goths they looked like trolls. In their midst swooped a figure from another age. A young woman in her midtwenties, with raven-black hair, high cheekbones, and strikingly large eyes, came gliding out of the mist of dry ice onto the dance floor and immediately took possession of it. She was wearing a wide, black hoop skirt, floor-length and trimmed all around with lace