Lisa. They always had sex the way Tony liked it. The way he always thought she liked it. Fantasy not quite over the edge. Love with costumes and devices out of video porn and catalogs; games without points; play with roles and body parts. It had been enough for him and, he thought, for her. He had no idea what other desires had gone unfulfilled in Lisa, any more than he knew the source of the fear that kept him from following her in.
He knew only that he was afraid of finding out.
Tony pressed himself against one of the Parkway’s steel support beams, as if trying to draw strength from the vibration of cars passing overhead. Cold metal stole the warmth from his hands and face. The sussuration of tires on the wet highway pavement overhead whispered urgently to him as Lisa knocked on the steel rolling gate at one of the bays. She waited, perfectly still, looking down. A side door cracked opened. She held out her hand towards the darkness in the entrance for a moment. She nodded and slipped into the darkness beyond the doorway.
Tony shuffled his feet. Thunder rolled in from Manhattan; lightning flashed. Soon, the drizzle would turn to hard rain. Soon, perhaps tonight, Painfreak would move. Vanish from the city altogether, re-settle for a while in Paris, Bangkok, Berlin, Los Angeles, or some other travellers’ city. Guy had said clubs like Painfreak were only an idea that stayed on the mind of a big city for a little while. The various social scenes from which such elite clubs erupted did not have the energy to sustain the kind of activities that went on inside. There were only so many players at any given time, in any given place. Once depleted of energy, the idea simply moved to another mind. Another city.
Lisa might be swept away with the scene and find herself lost in a strange land. Or, driven by whatever pain and desperation that had brought her to the club in the first place, knowing the club might be out of her reach for a long time, she might make the move from tourist to player. And even if she emerged once more, unscathed, and returned tomorrow night to find Painfreak gone, Tony doubted she would come back to him. He would still not know the source of the pain and desperation that had made her suddenly abandon him, refuse any contact with him, and flee to Painfreak. And if he did not find out, then she would be lost to him forever.
The warehouse stood silent in the abandoned business district. No lights escaped its windows. No music, or any other sound, drifted along the street to him. Tony glanced back at his Lexus parked by the service road curb. Water dripped from the highway into shallow pools, splashed on to concrete. The city waited around him, vast and enigmatic, offering neither encouragement nor menace. He had to make his move on his own. Tonight. Or give Lisa up.
He took a step, then another. He left the comforting darkness under the Belt Parkway, crossed the service road, hit the sidewalk at a steady pace. He tried not to think about where he was going, what he was doing. He tried to keep his mind on Lisa: on her strong legs, gentle hands, her wide mouth and full lips, the way she laughed, and sighed, and turned her head away from him after they were both satiated with sex.
Tony hunched his shoulders against the rain and the breeze, which had chilled and grown brisk. Cold rain trickled down his neck. The warehouse loomed over him, but he was still not at the loading docks.
Thinking about her reminded him of the barren apartment that was now his home, the loneliness he felt sleeping alone. He missed her sitting on the sofa, reading, while he watched television. He missed her cleaning up in the kitchen after he cooked their meals, and coming back from the laundry with their clothes bundled in sacks, and pulling out coupons as they shopped in the supermarket. He missed the click of her high heels on ceramic floor tile, the play of muscle under skin when she tightened straps and flicked a crop or whip, the way leather and latex hugged her body. Without Lisa, he was empty. He could not give her up.
He realized suddenly, as he put his foot on the concrete step leading to the loading dock, that it was emptiness driving him into Painfreak.
The hollow feeling within him had been growing since she left him days ago without a word. Each failure to re-establish contact with her had sucked another piece of his inner self away. She had not gone to work in a week; Tony had called her line and waited outside her office building. She had run away from him outside her girlfriend’s apartment building, from which he had followed her to Painfreak. She had the doorman warn him the police would be called it he persisted in trying to talk to her.
He wondered how he had coped with the terrible, raw and aching hole at the center of his being before he met her. It was the pain of that emptiness that was overcoming his fear, making him return to Painfreak to find what he had lost.
On the loading docks, Tony took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Though he was afraid, the desperation of pain was stronger. And now he had something to tell Lisa. He understood there was more than fear inside of him. Surely, she could relate to his emptiness. Perhaps, he thought as thunder rumbled nearby and the rain suddenly began to pour, she felt the same way. Empty. Missing something essential. Perhaps he had failed her in some unknown way. Perhaps he had driven her to Painfreak with his failure.
He had words, now, other than the pathetic: please come back, don’t leave me. He had questions: are you as empty as I? what are you looking for in this place? how can I fill your emptiness, as you’ve filled mine?
Fist trembling, Tony knocked on the gate. The steel rattled. A gust swept rain across the open dock. The side door opened, and Tony approached the darkness.
Shadows stirred, then a tall, wide form separated itself from the deeper blackness and blocked the entrance. A thick-necked, bald-headed man crossed his arms over his chest and looked down on Tony.
Tony reached into his pocket for money, then stopped and stared at the doorman. He had a few more scars on his face and hands, and he was dressed in grey and black instead of the more colorful styles fashionable on his first visit, but there was no doubt the doorman was the same as when Guy had brought him in. It did not seem as if he had aged.
Someone reached out and grabbed Tony’s right wrist while he was pulling out his money. Strong fingers wrenched his hand back and twisted, paralyzing him in a painful joint lock. Tony knelt to escape the agony of tearing muscles and ligaments, then looked up. A slightly built Asian man dressed in a dark suit and turtleneck regarded him impassively while the doorman, his arms still crossed, stood behind him. Tony’s money fluttered away on the breeze.
“Referrals only,” the Asian man said softly. “Please leave.”
“My wife just went in—” Tony began, but then gasped as the Asian man twisted his hand a fraction more.
Wrong answer, but what was the right one? Guy had led him in the first time, talked to the doorman. No money, but what? The hand. Like Lisa, he had shown the doorman his hand. There had been a hand stamp, with invisible ink, to allow patrons to leave and return the same night. Both Guy and Tony had been stamped, but that was so many years ago. Stupid to even think—
“Been here, Guy brought me, long time …”
The Asian man released him, and the doorman gently helped him to his feet. They gazed at the back of his left hand. The faint outline of a bone mark glowed on his skin. Tony searched for the UV lamp, but found only blackness beyond the two men.
The Asian man stepped back while the doorman pressed a stamp down on the back of Tony’s left hand. His flesh tingled, and he remembered the sensation from his first visit. The doorman stepped aside and motioned him to enter.
“Always show the mark,” the Asian man said reproachfully before melting into the darkness.
Tony nodded and hurried into the warehouse, his heart beating fast and his wrist still throbbing. All those years he had worn Painfreak’s mark without knowing it had been burned into his flesh. Lisa had worn it as well. He had no doubt she had known about the invisible bone on her hand, just as she had always known how to find the club. A pair of secrets she had kept from him, like the unfulfilled dreams that haunted her, like the pain that was driving her back to Painfreak. He wondered how many marks she wore on her hand.
The narrow corridor he followed was dimly lit at the opposite end by a single bulb over a tight, winding set of metal stairs that led down. Seeing no other way to go, Tony descended the stairs. Bass pulsed up the stair well from the club’s speakers, sending tremors through the steel hand rails. A repetitive, mechanical tune echoed through the wider hallway he found at the bottom of the stairs. He headed towards another distant bulb, and the music became louder, bass beating inside of him like a second heart; cold, synthesized notes drawing his thoughts into an endless, pointless loop. At the steel double doors under the bulb, Tony shook his head, wiped his palms against his thighs, and pushed a heavy door.
The music washed over him like a cold wave of water. Something in the music, like the combination of
