Shatter (Club Grit Trilogy) (2 page)

“How do you know I’ve been here before?” I asked, confused and also wary. The last thing I needed was a stalker, but this guy...didn’t seem the stalker type. I didn’t even know his name but I already trusted him to not be some weirdo creeper, but why? What was it about him that made me trust him, what was it about him that made me feel, dare I say, safe?

“You mean, how do I know that your sorority attends the major events, mostly the theme nights?” He gave a small smile and I tried to figure out if I recognized him from somewhere. He had to be associated with the club...I hadn’t seen him around before, not on the dance floor, but maybe he worked in the back, as a manager? Maybe he was a promoter, one of the many who talked with Becca about which club would enjoy the “privilege” of our “company”, read: the privilege of cleaning up the vomit of some freshman who had too much to drink because they somehow were “accidentally” given a hand stamp and went crazy at the bar.

“I never told you I was part of a sorority,” I said, resisting the urge to smirk at the fact that I’d shown the mysterious stranger up.

“Pretty sure that’s why you have an omega symbol around your necklace, and that OMG doesn’t stand for “Oh My God”,” he joked. He wasn’t mad that I’d challenged him? He wasn’t about to call me a stuck up bitch? I’d definitely died. This was definitely not real life.

“Cute, you know a few Greek letters, who doesn’t? This is a college town,” I said, as if it didn’t impress me that he noticed the small details, and used them to deduce things about me. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t glad that for once, I didn’t have to explain minute details about my life to a stranger, that they could just “get’ me, and understand things based on the things they noticed about me, rather than through a series of inane and unimportant questions.

“And this is not a college bar, or an all-ages nightclub. This is Club Grit,” he said, accentuating the last two words as if he was whispering a proud secret.

I rolled my eyes. “I know where we are, but what I don’t know is who you are.”

He smirked. Apparently, two could play at my game. “Is that a question? Because it sounds more like a –”

I interrupted him: “Like a statement. Because it is one. If I wanted an answer, I’d ask a question.”

“And do you have a name?” he asked.

“It’s not important,” I said, and I turned, but then, inevitably, turned back again at the sound of snapping fingers. It was the man, looking to signal not me, but the cocktail waitress, who came prancing up the stairs in her tight black dress and stripper heels, fake bleached blonde hair swaying in the air, almost white enough to glow under the black lights, the way that the man’s shirt did, the way his suit could never.

“A round, please,” he said to the waitress, who was looking at him rather than me. Weird: this wasn’t his table, and I was pretty sure Club Grit hadn’t sent a limo to his house to pick him up and take him to a prepaid VIP table obtained by a random promoter who had contacted Becca or Pearl, and arranged for Club Grit to come on certain nights and have their tab paid for.

“Now, wait a minute. He’s not part of our party,” I started to explain to the waitress, but she was focused on the man. Even though our tabs were basically paid for, except the tip, which ended up being high but not terribly so, at least, most nights, I didn’t need this random mooching off Omega Mu, and I didn’t want him to think that I wanted him around any longer. If I had, I would have said so, but to be fair...if I wanted him to leave, I would have just asked him to before. I hadn’t, because there was something hypnotic about his mystique, something which drew me in and wouldn’t let me go.

“Of course, Mr. Lamont, at once,” she said, and she went off. She knew this man? And he wasn’t just some loser from the dance floor who wanted to get free drinks from girls because he’d read on Reddit that the best way to get into a girl’s pants was to make her jump through hoops?

“You’re paying for that, right?” I asked.

“And yours, too,” he said. “The whole tab.”

“Why?” I asked, incredulous.

He shrugged his shoulders. “Why not?”

“Because most guys don’t pay bar tabs that are in the thousands, for random girls, for no reason,” I explained, as if it needed explaining.

“I’m not going to tell you I’m not most guys. What I will tell you is that you’re not most girls,” he said, giving me a small smile.

“What...do you mean?” That was the scariest thing he’d said all evening, in terms of the way it made me feel. There was nothing weird in the sentiment: guys always tell girls that they’re super special snowflakes, even if they’re all clones, either wearing their galaxy print leggings and large black shirts with some shoes they bought off the Internet, or wearing jewel tone hoodies with white strings over green corduroy skinny jeans with ankle boots, or even in flannel shirts over tank tops with denim cut-offs, but I wasn’t told that I was special by random guys unless they were trying to hit on me, but what the stranger was doing, this “Mr. Lamont”? It wasn’t flirting. Nothing he had told me was a lie, and nothing I’d said was less than true, but he also hadn’t tried to overtly hit on me. He hadn’t used cheesy lines. He’d given me respect and privacy and space, and he hadn’t tried to do something stupid like touch me over and over to get me into bed, starting with just grabbing at my hands and then later pawing at my shoulders. He hadn’t tried to say negative things to me to trick me into liking him. He hadn’t played any games, but he also hadn’t overtly stated he was interested in me, sexually or romantically.

But this? Saying I’m different? I had no idea how to interpret that and figure out the meaning behind what he was saying. Was it just statement of fact...or was it statement of feeling?

“You’ve made a choice to do something different with your life than everyone else here. There are tons of men around the city popping bottles of champagne to give girls foam facials, by the minute if not the second. But how many young women are taking notes on their peers within this unique setting? I wouldn’t be surprised if you were, say, a sociology major, given the fact that you’re observing this situation the way Jane Goodall would have observed her apes.”

“Chimps.”

He raised an eyebrow. “That’s not a nice thing to say about your friends,” he said in a tone I wasn’t sure was joking.

I rolled my eyes. “No, Jane Goodall studied chimps, not apes.”

The waitress came up to the VIP with two bottles of luxury champagne in a silver champagne bucket, filled with ice, still frosty from the freezer. Before she opened it, I stopped her. “My party can’t afford this, sorry.”

“I’ve got it,” said the man, giving the waitress a nod, and I sighed.

“You know, I can’t repay you,” I said, and it was a matter of fact, not a thanks.

“I’m not going to ask you to.”

“Well, I’d want to, but I didn’t want this in the first place.”

“Well, it’s here now, so you might as well enjoy it,” he said, raising a glass and not letting it touch his lips until the lips of our glasses met first, the crystal ringing metallic even in the loud nightclub. “Pay me back with your company.”

I put the glass down. “I’m not that kind of girl.”

He let out a laugh. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean like that. I meant conversation, keeping me company here, right now, until you want to get up and leave for any reason. I don’t meet people like you often. My name is Lawrence Lamont.” He looked at my face, as if he expected me to recognize him or the name, typical rich guy attitude. I resisted the urge to roll my eyes, but I was intrigued. Was this some sort of intricate play to get in my pants, or was he someone I actually wanted to spend the evening with, in a way that was less than chaste but more than fleeting.

“Kim Lee,” I said, shaking his extended hand. This was the first time I’d actually touched Lawrence, and his hands, so warm, so strong, were hands I didn’t want to let go of, but as soon as he broke the handshake, I pulled away too, all of a sudden nervous about what I was doing with my body parts and whether I looked awkward or weird.

“So, you attend college around here, Miss Lee?” he asked with a smile.

I knew I blushed, I knew it, because whenever anyone called me “Miss” I had an arbitrary habit of blushing. Maybe it’s because it made me feel special. Maybe men like Lawrence knew this, knew that women wanted to be treated like princesses and made to feel special, or maybe it was just his nature. I had no idea yet. “It’s Kim, just Kim, and yes. I go to UCBH.”

“A great school,” he said, sipping at the bubbly and nodding his head.

“Yeah, it is.” And over the next half hour, we chatted about things that were inconsequential, that were probably indistinguishable from what the people on the dance floor were discussing. What we talked about wasn’t special, but the way we met, and what draw him to me, and what drew me to keep talking to him, was. There was so much that I didn’t know about Lawrence, and so much he didn’t know about me.

Samantha straggled up the stairs and took a seat and a glass of champagne. I introduced her to Lawrence but she was more interested in the free alcohol, so Lawrence took the unopened of the pair of bottles and two glasses. As I got up to thank him for his time, he pulled me in close. Lawrence wrapped his arms under mine, pressing his hands up against the back of my shoulders, and pulling me into his chest, so he could whisper, “How about we go upstairs?”

His embrace was like his handshake: powerful, protective. I wanted to just press all the way into his chest but something inside me told me not to, because I wasn’t worth it. Instead, I pulled away a few inches and looked up at him and the behind him before answering with a question: “Upstairs?” The only way we could go up was if we went into the part of the VIP I’d never seen, the part hidden behind many layers of curtains, some sheer, some opaque, but from the outside, there was nothing visible. I’d wondered what was up there before, so I let him place his hand on my lower back and take me up the stairs as Samantha took over my post. The only things I took with me was my clutch and thin black cardigan, and, of course...the clipboard.

Before we even entered, the curtains were drawn back by three women more graceful and beautiful than those that served bottle service to people like those in my party. Their dresses were as expensive as Lawrence’s suit, dresses by designers like Alexander McQueen and Rick Owens, not stuff from a discount store or a big box behemoth, but items that were works of art meant to augment the appearances of their hangers, to which they were frames. Their shoes all had red soles, a deeper red than the false Louboutin inspired aesthetic adorning my clipboard and the many like it back at Omega House. The only thing I could barely judge was their faces, which were red tones in the low light of the VIP, lit by a few red lights as if we were in a display window in Amsterdam, selling our wares to the first man to come our way, although the only man present was Mr. Lamont.

“Welcome back, Mr. Lamont,” said one, and the others joined like a Greek chorus before moving to take the bottle from his hand, but he held fast.

“Your services won’t be necessary tonight, ladies, but thank you,” he said, as they bowed and curtsied before disappearing into the shadows and then, into the curtains.

“Are those your girlfriends?” I asked, half joking, half scared.

“No, no, they’re just...the best employees Club Grit has to offer.”

“That’s not hard to believe,” I said with a sigh. “They’re so...”

“I know,” he said, taking me by the hand to the pile of pillows and fabrics in the center of the room. It wasn’t until I sat on it that I realized it was a large bed, a California King at least. I think the fact that there was no frame, no headboard, and no walls bordering it made me think it was just some elevated platform at first, but as my thighs sank into the soft mattress, there was no mistaking the seat as anything but a bed. I knew I was playing a dangerous game, coming up to the VIP with a strange man I’d just met, after drinking, and getting onto, if not into, bed with him, but I didn’t want to stop.

“Champagne?” he asked, and before I could answer, he’d popped the cork, the champagne’s still cold foam spraying the two of us. My dress, a bargain basement knockoff of a designer piece, could be thrown in the wash, but his suit was expensive and to see him soak it with the sticky, sweet fermented juices without a care was so alien to me.

The only thing stranger was him pulling the bottle away from me, him shielding me from the spurting foam as if the bottle was a grenade and the bubbles shrapnel, and the fact he apologized and offered to call for a towel to help me clean up. I refused, and instead, looked out onto the club as he poured us both glasses of champagne.

Even though nobody could look in and see us, we could look out and see everyone, not as clearly as if there weren’t layers of sheer curtains, but still better than they could ever hope to see us. It was weird and voyeuristic, but in a way, it was just a more covert version of what I did from the normal VIP section, but with better angles, and, of course, it had to cost much, much more.

Who was Lawrence? Who was Mr. Lamont? And how could he afford this room? Why did the waitresses know his name? This was a set of questions that I hadn’t received answers too, and wouldn’t that night.

We just sat in silence, watching the masses dance in small, independent groups of at least one, at most five, and most often, in pairs, and commented on the people, people who we’d never meet, who would never know we were talking about them, who might not even know about the secret room overlooking Club Grit. The masses, which turned to a thick, populous gelatin that wobbled and throbbed at certain points in songs, points that everyone knew, like points of call and response, of choruses, of memetic lines spewed ironic as people raised their fists in the air, shattered and reassembled over and over that night, multiple times in certain songs, and sometimes, not at all for a few songs: sometimes unified for chorus after chorus, other times, barely even facing the same direction.

We sat next to each other on the bed, the curtains open, looking out over the VIP. The most comfortable bed I’d ever been on and I was sitting on the edge, not lying down, but at least my thigh was touching Lawrence’s, not crossed over it, not draped, not like some distracting doll, but just next to him, because to anyone looking up not into the VIP, but past it, they’d see two people sitting next to each other, two shadows, looking like any other shadow found in Club Grit or outside, from the shadows cast by the dancers on the floor to those cast by the homeless that were sure to be panhandling outside the club at closing hours.