The fog had lifted and the hut was lit by a toppled pillar of light that angled through my porthole: they had left the floods burning on the Decca mast as a beacon. I lay there thinking about Ray Deville and imagining his encounter not with a bear or a walrus or a crippling fall, but merely with the Arctic in all its purity-an indifference that was boundless and exquisite, immeasurable to man.
After a time, I heard cries and answering shouts. Slamming doors and frantic voices-manly Vanderbyl and oboe-toned Wyndham. I hunched at my porthole, sleeping bag clutched around my shoulders. Wyndham was helping Ray across the last few metres of slush. Kurt waited, his back to my hut, erect and motionless, his shadow in the floodlight an endless black tangent. He said Ray’s name.
The staggering, limping boy looked up, and I saw in the silvery light the blank, staring eyes of one who has blundered into God’s private palace, who has looked his maker in the face and felt his marrow freeze.
12
Another mirror. Delorme stared into the black depths and was aware that this was one of many reflective surfaces she’d studied in the past week or two. This one was an onyx panel, almost as wide as a movie screen, with half a dozen brushed-steel sinks before it and the flattering globes of dressing-room lights surrounding it.
“First time here?”
Delorme glanced at the reflection of a tall brunette who was leaning over the marble counter to examine herself close up. Delorme told her yes, and applied a little powder.
“You come alone?”
“Yeah. You?”
She nodded. “Are you as nervous as I am? I’m totally freaked out, and I’m not the freaking-out type.”
The woman was about Delorme’s age, but she sounded like the ingenue in some movie about show business. A backstage drama. It was hard to see clearly in the dark mirror, but perhaps that was the idea, to not look like yourself. The dark wig helped. It was longer than her own hair and felt reassuring as it brushed against her shoulders.
“Do you think everyone gets this nervous?” the woman asked her. This time she turned to address Delorme and not her reflection. Delorme did the same. The woman had fine, pale skin, opalescent.
“You’d have to be pretty strange,” Delorme said, “to not be nervous.”
“Maybe we should hit the bar together. For moral support. I mean, I’m not coming on to you or anything. Just might be a little easier.”
“Let’s say one drink,” Delorme said. “Then we’ll reassess.”
“Cool. I’m not exactly a hundred percent committed to being here. Or doing anything with anyone.” She went first to the door and held it open. “What’s your name, by the way?”
“Stella.” That name had been part of her role as an undercover hooker, as had the wig.
“I’m Heidi.”
“Okay, Heidi.”
Arriving at Club Risque had been like stepping off a boat and sinking downward into the deep. The sense of pressure was immediate and building. Her lungs felt one-third smaller, as did her dress.
The smell of food was the first surprise. Delorme had forgotten there was a restaurant.
“Will you be having dinner?” the hostess said. Her smile was friendly, professional, nothing more.
“I think maybe just the bar. But I need the ladies’ room first.”
“Of course. Do you know how the club works?”
“You’d better tell me.”
The hostess explained the etiquette of the different rooms and levels. She had an engaging manner and seemed to really want Delorme, and all her patrons-members, as she called them-to have a good time. The twenty-dollar fee afforded the place its designation as a private club, thus freeing it from certain legal restrictions on sexual behaviour.
The woman’s positive demeanour, the inviting decor should have lessened the sense of walls closing in, but they only made things worse. The pressure wasn’t coming from the place or the hostess, it was inside Delorme. She signed the little scrap of paper that listed the club’s terms and conditions and headed for the ladies’ room.
Now, in the first-floor bar, the music was low and the lighting dim, but there was still nothing sleazy about the place. Five or six couples sat at the tables and the bar, sipping cocktails or glasses of wine. Delorme couldn’t see a single beer mug.
“Kinda surprising how normal it looks,” Heidi said.
“Except there’s no single men.”
“They don’t allow single men. Or I think only one night of the week.”
“Uh-huh.”
They didn’t say anything for a while. Delorme had intended to ask many questions-of the hostess, the bartender, the other staff-but was silenced. The pressure in her chest wasn’t fear. She knew what fear felt like: the sudden certainty that something terrible is about to occur and nothing will be able to undo it. Having that feeling on a regular basis was part of being a cop. But fear had an honesty about it, a directness. There was no certainty here.
Jesus, Delorme thought, I’m not even honest enough to know if I’m working or not. To know why I’m in this place.
“Don’t look,” Heidi said, “but I think the couple near the panther mural is sizing us up.”
“We need another round.” Delorme ordered two more, and when she turned to hand one of them to Heidi, the man from the couple Heidi had pointed out was standing in front of them.
“My wife and I were wondering if you’d like to join us.” He had a shy smile and what Delorme thought of as a Superman curl.
Heidi bit her lip and looked at Delorme.
“I think maybe it’s a little early for us,” Delorme said. “For me, anyway. We just got here.”
“Okay, no pressure. Join us later, if you feel like it.” He looked at Heidi. “Are you Irish?”
“Not tonight.”
The man laughed and went back to his table.
“I don’t even know what I meant.”
“I do,” Delorme said.
“We probably should go sit with them. It’s gotta be more comfortable than just wandering up to the second floor on your own.”
The second floor. The second floor was where people started taking off their clothes. Full nudity acceptable but not required. Partial nudity expected.
“It says on the web page that nobody has to have sex, but that it’s not a good idea to come here if you plan to say no all night.”
“I think they were talking about the third floor.”
“Actually, no. I believe they were talking about the club as a whole.” Heidi’s voice had lost the nervous- little-girl tone. The confirmation of her desirability seemed to have given her a shot of confidence.
“What made you come here, Heidi?”
Heidi looked at her martini. “I’m mad at someone,” she said, and took a sip.
The ladies’ room on the second floor had lockers.
“The only thing I can put in here,” Heidi said, “is my cami. And then what am I gonna do if I go to the third floor-put the rest of my stuff in another locker?”
“Or you could come and get it and take it up there with you.”
“I need another drink.”
The bar was circular, surrounded by a series of alcoves furnished with long, low couches and tables. Couples were making out in several of these, including a man and a woman who were wearing only jeans. The light was dark and flattering, the music an ambiguous throb, as if the building were an engine of some sort.
There were no seats at the bar. Heidi and Delorme had an alcove to themselves.
