The Devil's Interval (31 page)

He nodded. “Right.”

“So, then,” she turned to me. “Sounds like you're good to go.”

This was not evolving as I'd hoped. I rearranged myself so I was facing Michael. “And you don't want to talk about this?”

“Not particularly,” he said.

“Do you have any interest in going
with
Maggie?” interjected Dr. Mephisto. “Just out of curiosity?”

“She didn't invite me,” he said.

“Puck only had four tickets,” I said. “It wasn't my place to issue an invitation. I just got invited as a fourth.”

Neither Michael nor Mephisto responded. Oh, great, now they've both taken up some vow of silence. Of course, I had to start babbling. “Well, I mean, maybe I could get an extra ticket,” I said. “I mean, if you're interested in coming.” I added lamely, “The tickets Puck has are comped. So, an extra ticket would be a little pricey.”

“How pricey?” asked Mephisto. “Again, just out of curiosity.”

I wondered if that was emerging as her mantra. “About what it costs to spend an hour with you,” I snapped.

“Well,” she offered, “I don't provide music. Or refreshments. The evening sounds like a reasonable value to me. But Michael,
you need to respond to Maggie's question: Are you interested?”

“Am I interested in accompanying my wife to a sex club?” said Michael mildly. “I might be, assuming I wouldn't be cramping her style.”

On the way home, I cleared my throat in the car several times, waiting for Michael to look over. Nothing. “Okay,” I said, “I give up. Why didn't you come right out and say you'd be interested when I brought up the Crimson Club the other night?”

“What's your theory about why I didn't bring it up?” he countered.

“Oh, for heaven's sake,” I snapped. “How should I know? You were mad. You're shy about going to weird places like that. Which, for the record, I
am
shy about places like that.”

“How do you know?” asked Michael, mildly. “Have you ever been to a place like that?”

“Well, no, but I've been in analogous situations.”

Michael laughed. “I'd enjoy hearing what those analogous situations were.”

“Yeah, well, I'm sure you would,” I said. “But I did have a life before you, you know.”

“Not much of one,” he said. “You were an innocent little sorority sister when I met you.”

“Turn in here,” I said, gesturing at the Whole Foods driveway. “We need milk and yogurt and peanut butter.”

Michael grumbled, “Getting milk and yogurt at Whole Paycheck is like buying a lug wrench at Tiffany's.”

“No wonder I can't tell you about my ‘analogous situations,'” I countered. “You can't even do a decent analogy. You should say—it's like getting a pop-bead necklace or something at Tiffany's. They wouldn't have any kind of a lug wrench at Tiffany's.”

“You know,” said Michael, narrowly missing a sideswipe with a Land Rover loaded with kids and dogs, “you are in a dangerous drift from amusing to pedantic. And not fun.”

“I'm helping you exercise those analogy muscles,” I said innocently.

I
t was 11 p.m. on Friday night by the time we pulled up to the Crimson Club door. Apparently, as Puck explained, only the non-
cognoscenti
would dream of showing up before 10 o'clock. San Francisco's maniac valet service, the Parallel Universe Parkers, were on hand for this evening, complete with roadie jackets that read PUPs on the back. We had done a story on them in
Small Town
some years ago, in a roundup on essential services for the rich and famous. Their owner had patiently explained to me that since there are
no
parking places in San Francisco, they take the cars to a “parallel universe” to find spots.

Although the Crimson Club patrons usually had to fend for themselves in parking adventures, management had decided that the nonregulars would need some help navigating the SOMA alleys. Either that, or a bunch of guys from the local methadone maintenance clinic had just scored some PUP jackets and were going to whisk the cars away. Forever. To the parallel universe. Oh, well, good luck fencing the aged Volvo.

Michael handed me out of the car—part gallantry, part necessity, since I'd managed to borrow a painted-on black number from my neighbor's twentysomething daughter, and I could hardly walk, let alone hop out of the station wagon.

“If I see something I'm interested in,” said Michael into my ear as we walked toward the door, “should I give you the high-sign so you can catch a ride home with someone else?”

I looped my arm into his and pulled him closer to me. “I assume you're talking about refreshments when you say ‘something you like,'” I said fiercely. “And just FYI, a little reminder that only women can make the approaches.”

Michael smiled serenely. “Okay,” he said. “All the better.”

“Well, aren't you the self-confident Italian stallion?” I said.

Calvin, Andrea, and Puck were waiting at the front door. Andrea and I gave each other the once-over. She had on white leather pants and an off-the-shoulder, white cashmere sweater. And unless my eyes deceived me, there was not even a suggestion of a bra underneath.

“Nice threads,” I said.

“You, too,” she replied.

Calvin draped his arm possessively around her shoulder, his fingers coming to rest right above her right breast. “Isn't she a vision in white?” he asked the group at large. “If she ever proposes to me, I'm going to insist she walk down the aisle in this getup.”

Andrea rolled her eyes.

“Or maybe ‘sex up' that prissy Junior League fashion show in a few days. Show Mommy Storch some moves.”

“Calvin,” said Andrea sweetly. “Shut up or you'll never see another move from me of any kind.”

“Okay,” said Puck. “We're going in. Check your weapons at the door, boys and girls, and let's party.”

I had a visual landscape from Travis's description of the place, but nothing prepared me for the feel inside. The music was uber-trancey, repetitive, and seemingly without melody, the red walls appeared to glow, and I could feel the floor vibrating under my stilettos. Since the ceiling was red as well, and the floor was polished black, and there were no windows anywhere, I felt as if I was in a large, red candy box, or more accurately, like a slutted-up doll abandoned inside a giant music box.

All around us, people were moving to the music. Even though I could see the dance floor ahead, packed with people, it was as if the whole place was a giant anthill moving together, trying to get
somewhere and not particularly caring where. “There's a reason they use the verb ‘throb' in all those softcore porn novels,” I yelled into Michael's ear. “This place is one large, throbbing organ.”

“Oh, baby,” he said. “Is that how you talk about me to your friends?” During our pregame chat about the evening, we'd agreed to split up. I pointed toward a doorway, where I could see strobe-style flickering lights ahead. I put my mouth next to Michael's ear again. “I'm going in, coach,” I said. “If I don't come back…”

Michael shrugged and pointed to the bar, “If you don't come back,” he said, “there's a delicious-looking Ornamental behind the bar.”

“Racist, sexist…” I began

He covered his ears. “Can't hear you,” he pantomimed to me.

I headed into the next room and stood for a moment, just getting my bearings. A drink would help, I thought. At the bar, a Nordic-looking sleek blond, with the eyes of a raptor swooping down on prey, asked what I wanted. “Merlot,” I said. She reached under the bar, poured a glass, and presented it with a flourish. I looked around the bar for a tip jar. She raised an eyebrow. “Looking for something?” she asked.

“No, nothing,” I said.

“Never been here before, have you?” she asked.

I shook my head. “What should I know?”

She shrugged, “Nothing. Relax. Have fun. That's why we're here.” Well, that wasn't exactly why I was here, but I thought it better not to diagram the “we” in that sentence.

“Go ask someone to dance,” she said.

“I will, in a minute,” I countered. “A friend told me about this place. Maybe you know her—Grace Plummer.”

“Never heard of her.” She hesitated. “And just a piece of advice: Our clientele doesn't go in for last names very much.”

With that, she turned dismissively, and lavished a brilliant smile on a linebacker-size guy dressed in silk, from unconstructed jacket to loose trousers. I wandered away from the bar. Get going or get out, Maggie, I muttered.

There was, precisely as Travis had described, an uplit tall vase filled with red roses in the middle of the floor, and as the dancers moved around it, the vibration kept sending petals to the floor. I squinted through the dim room to the vase. The stems stopped me. They were white, and almost seemed to glow. I began working my way toward the vase to get a closer look.

A man's voice in back of me said, “Glow-in-the-dark stems. Couldn't possibly occur in nature.” I turned around and almost stepped on his toe. He put his arms out to steady me. “Whoa there, little lady. You're going to end up on the floor.” He let go of my arms, but not before he lightly ran his fingers the length of them. He was in his late fifties, not quite my height, well taken care of, and wore a bolo tie with a snakehead at his collar.

“I was looking at the stems,” I said. “I've never seen that kind of rose used as a cutflower. And usually the stems don't turn white til after the flowers drop.” He stared at me. “They're ghost brambles,” I finished, helpfully.

“Are you here from the garden page or something?” he asked, raising his voice. The room suddenly got quiet for a split second, as the piped-in music disappeared. Over the system came a disembodied voice, “Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us for the Crimson Club's first live concert. It gives me great pleasure to introduce the Spring Ramp Coalition, performing in our Carmine Room.”

From the next room, I could hear a few aggressive guitar riffs, followed by a moment of silence, and then—well, undistinguished weirdly mellow metal. “Whaddya think?” asked my garden conversation partner.

“Ramones-meet-Enya,” I said. “Not to jump to conclusions after just a few bars of music,” I added hastily. “Maybe they're pals of yours?”

He laughed. “No, but I'm mighty interested in their name. Do you think it's about freeway onramps?”

“Couldn't say,” I murmured. “Maybe it's all about early onions.”

He looked puzzled. “Come again?”

“Ramps are like onions. Or maybe they are onions, or at least a member of the family. And they come up early.” I gestured with my glass. “Hence, Spring Ramps. And maybe they're a coalition because they're fighting the good fight against, I don't know—green garlic or something.”

“You sure know a lot about gardenin',” Mr. Bolo said suspiciously.

“I know a little bit about a lot of stuff,” I said. “None of it's very useful.”

“My name's Doc,” he said.

“Pardon? I'm sorry, I didn't quite hear you—Doc like a doctor or Doug?”

“Doc,” he said. “Delta Oscar Charlie,” using the military alphabet. I wondered if he was really a vet, or was just doing a little macho swagger.

“Maggie,” I said and shook his hand. He didn't quite let go, until I let mine go limp in his hand.

We stood for a moment, and I watched him let his eyes wander with undisguised frankness over the little black dress and what was contained therein.

“You haven't been here before, have you?” he asked.

“No, I haven't,” batting two for two. I'd talked with two people and they'd both made me as a newbie in a flash. Turnip right off the truck.

“Let me clue you in on something,” he said. “You've got to ask me.”

“Ask you?” I said, confused. And then, I suddenly remembered our little coaching session.

“You mean, I have to ask you to dance?” I said.

“That's a start,” he said.

Not just a start, I thought to myself, as we headed to the dance floor, it's the middle and end, as well, Delta Oscar Charlie.

The music changed to some Latin salsa–style number as soon as we shoehorned ourselves onto the floor, and Doc snaked an arm
around my waist and pulled me close. For a guy who came across as a bit player from a cheesy Western, he could move. It took a minute, and a little readjustment on the stilettos, for balance, but soon I was following his moves just fine.

“What brought you here, Miss Maggie?” he breathed into my ear. “Looking for some adventure?” He smelled of Scotch and breath mints, not the worst combination.

“A friend told me about the place,” I said. “He came here once with his…” I hesitated. “His girlfriend. I think she was a regular.”