“We surprisingly had another booking come in after yours,” Ms. Ross informed me.
I looked her way, not thrilled at this news.
“A new member, I’m afraid,” she carried on. “He’s been notified of the rules, of course. He’s also been here more than once and behaved accordingly so you both should be able to enjoy your viewings without concern and with minimal interruption.”
“When is he due to arrive?” I asked.
“Sometime between now and midnight,” she answered.
A vague arrival. Something else I didn’t like.
“He orders his drinks when he’s here,” she continued. “So I’m afraid unless you want us to interrupt you to inform you of his arrival, you’ll have no warning prior.”
I nodded, offering no reply, and made a move to the steps that led down to my seat.
“Enjoy,” she murmured to my back.
“Thank you,” I returned, not glancing at her when I did.
I moved to my seat, stowed my clutch, took a sip of my drink and then pulled out my phone to check email and otherwise kill time while the women finished their scene.
The club, obviously, was a sex club. Intensely private and relatively secret (“relatively” because they had to be known to attract members), it was independently owned.
All players in all scenes were freelance, auditioned and paid well.
There was a member section which had an entry from the street, but, like VIPs, all members needed to pass a vetting process, pay a yearly membership fee but also pay an hourly or nightly viewing fee. Non-VIPs could show when they wished without a booking, paid for their drinks at the bar and sat in a common viewing area with their brethren.
The scenes were played out on the upper floor. The lower floor for non-VIPs was simply a nightclub. There was music, liquor, dancing and men and women behind screens performing dances that hinted at the real thing, that real thing being something that could be found beyond security up a set of hidden stairs.
Obviously, there was also the VIP section, which had its own entry and a higher level of service, providing much more discretion and vastly superior accommodation.
The owners paid Benito Valenzuela for protection and assistance in making certain the club was not discovered by law enforcement.
This protection was at one time paid to Marcus Sloan. Seven years ago, in the days when Sloan was still acknowledging my father’s existence, he’d sold that protection to us. This was why I knew of the club.
In a brutal takeover that meant we lost one man and two more were injured, three years ago, Valenzuela had taken over.
After that, I continued my membership because it continued services I appreciated at a caliber that was more than acceptable. I did this even if the club was under Valenzuela’s umbrella.
Benito Valenzuela was not the most couth individual on the planet. In fact, he was one of the foulest people I’d ever met. He reminded me of my grandfather, including the fact he’d convinced himself he was the opposite of vile when he was not.
My father and my sister didn’t know I continued to belong. Neither would be pleased, though it would be Dad, as usual, whose displeasure would be communicated in a way that I would have no choice but to desist doing something he did not like.
But in my life where I had very little I enjoyed and absolutely nothing I looked forward to, the club served a variety of purposes.
It was a secret defiance to my father, and even my mother, the former who would be furious if he knew I went there, the latter would be horrified.
It was also mine.
Mine.
Georgie didn’t go there. Dad didn’t. None of our men went for fear of Dad’s (or Georgie’s) displeasure. And certainly none of my legitimate colleagues or acquaintances went there.
So I could go and not run into anyone who encroached in my life.
A life that was less of a life and more of a world.
I understood there was a real world. I knew it existed beyond the bounds of the world in which I lived. But the boundaries of my world, or more aptly put, the bonds, meant it seemed alien to me. There but not there. On the cusp of my existence but as unattainable as Mars.