The Ziploc disappeared into a pocket, and the clerk knocked lightly on his table in acknowledgment while tapping his toe on a floor switch that triggered the inner doors, exposing Park to a blast of bass that went through his chest and slammed against the beat of his heart.
Inside, a scene reminiscent of the Precipice Bacchanal. More clothes in place, less blatant penetration, and no elves, but the same mass spasms of desperation and fear manifesting as revelry. The place reeked of sweat, ganja, cigarette smoke, infused vodkas, and cherry lip gloss. The flashing screen grabs from the hall were here: panoramas projected on the ceiling, crisscrossed by shadows cast by several catwalks that were populated by the most astonishingly beautiful of the club’s clientele, culled from the crowd by unemployed assistant casting directors who traded their expertise for drink tickets. The dancers themselves took their chances on the catwalks, after signing releases against any and all bodily harm, for the pure glory of having been selected, their physical perfection singled out and highlighted.
Park didn’t work Denizone. He didn’t work any of the clubs regularly. Came to them only at the request of regular customers who needed special deliveries. In the early days, before it had become apparent how rapidly SLP was spreading, he had been circumspect in these places. Doing his business in the bathrooms and back hallways, in the alleys where the clubbers slipped out to smoke in the night air. But soon enough everyone was lighting up inside, antismoking laws not carrying quite the same bite any longer, likewise the dangers of indulging the habit, and as the smokers moved inside and multiplied, so too did the drug deals. A subtle handoff was still appreciated as a point of style but was barely a legal necessity. To say nothing of using.
Staying on the cabaret level above the dance floor, moving toward the bar, Park walked past booths where lines of coke were being snorted from the black enameled tabletops, where a girl with a cupped palm full of little blue capsules doled them out to her circle of friends, where a couple snapped amyl poppers under each other’s noses, where any number of people took hits off pipes, joints, or blunts, and where a man slumped half off his banquette, rubber tourniquet still around his upper arm, hypo loose in his fingers, a drop of fresh blood welling amid a hash of purplish tracks in the hollow of his elbow. Park almost stopped to check the man’s pulse but saw him open and close his lizard eyes, a slight smile coming to his lips as he licked them, and so moved on.
These places were not for Park. Rose, on the one occasion when she made the mistake of dragging him to the Exotic Erotic Halloween Ball, thinking that he might lose his self-consciousness in the cheesy exuberance, realized almost instantly that she had made an awful mistake. It wasn’t that Park was a prude. Not by any measure. He was not offended or made uncomfortable by the expanses of flesh, the free displays of human sexuality in all its variations, the men dressed as naughty nuns, the women dressed as Nazi angels; it was simply that the whole affair made him terribly sad. The general air of insecurity and affectation made it too easy for him to imagine these once-a-year fabulous creatures as the cubicle dwellers most of them were in everyday life. Overly sensitive to the jittery signals regarding sex, longing, and rejection that were being bounced around the hall, he soon felt as if his nerve endings were being scrubbed with fine sandpaper. Seeing the look of extreme discomfort on his face, through the zombie pancake she had painted him with, she made the excuse that she wasn’t feeling well and asked if he minded if they left. He did not mind.
Riding BART under the bay, he watched their pale reflections in the dark glass, whited out in beats of safety lights as they swept down the tunnel. Dressed as an especially tawdry Raggedy Ann, Rose put her head on his shoulder.
He was thinking that he was a fool, that it was absurd to imagine that he knew what those people’s lives were like, that his inability to relax and enjoy himself had nothing to do with self-confidence and everything to do with immaturity and insecurity. Only a weak child would be afraid at a party. Stand in the corner. Not talk to anyone. Project his fears onto the people who were enjoying themselves. He added another entry to his personal accounting of his weaknesses. And swore to be better.
But crossing Denizone, turning sideways, plastering himself to the waste-high chains meant to keep people from tumbling onto the dance floor, finding an eddy in the crowd in which he felt for a moment almost alone, he could only look at them all and wonder which had kids at home, unattended, while their parents reveled.
Lost for a moment, he almost didn’t feel his phone vibrating, the tiny sensation lost in the whomping bass notes. When he answered, he could hear only the slightest tinny chatter. Clicking a button on the side of the phone, boosting the volume to max, and sticking a finger in his other ear, he shouted.
“Beenie?”
A barely audible scream.
“Yeah, man. What’s up?”
Overwhelmed by the combination of the noise, the crowd, fatigue, and the speed he’d taken, Park found honesty coming out of his mouth.
“Not much. Just standing here judging people I don’t know.”
He heard Beenie’s gulping laugh.
“Yeah, kinda hard not to in here, isn’t it?”
Park raised himself on his toes and scanned the crowd.
“Where are you?”
“I’m in the main dance hall. You?”
“Same.”
“Do you see, look up at the catwalks, do you see the girl dressed like classic Mortal Kombat Sonya?
Park looked up at the catwalks, and in a stutter of strobes found the girl, shaggy blond hair, big dangling earrings, green headband and matching spandex jazzercise gear, dancing, mixing crunk with choreographed kicks and punches straight from the old video game.
“Yeah, I see her.”
“Well I’m pretty much right under her, trying to decide if it’s worth going up there and risking getting my spine ripped out for a shot at living a junior high sex fantasy.”
Park started moving.
“I’m west of you, circling around the tables.”
“Good call, man. You don’t want to be on the floor right now. Not unless you had your shots and got a lifetime supply of condoms and dental dams with you. Swear to God, man, I have never seen it get so freaky in here.”
Park took a look at the dance floor, a single heaving mass, no way to tell who was meant to be dancing with whom, people clinging to one another, hoping not to get dragged down alone.
He stopped moving, looked up at the catwalks, found the Sonya.
“I’m about ten yards southeast of your dream girl. Can’t see you.”
“Draw a line from her to the back wall, where they’re flashing that tavern fight.”
“Okay.”
“Look straight down from there.”
“Okay.”
“See the sconce that’s been knocked crooked?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m just to the, wait, I see you. Don’t move.”
Park didn’t move, and a moment later Beenie was in front of him, buzzed head dripping sweat, narrow almond-shaped eyes bloodshot and dark-bagged, wearing his usual biking shorts and powder blue Manchester City FC jersey.
Beenie slid his phone closed and tucked it into the pouch on one of the shoulder straps of his tightly cinched backpack, leaning close to shout in Park’s ear.
“Good to see you, bro.”
Their hands met, the little ball of opium passing.
Beenie wrapped an arm around Park’s shoulders and gave him a light squeeze.
“Thanks for hitting me back so fast on this shit. That’s above and beyond, man. What do I owe you?”
Park looked around, found an archway that led to one of the alternative spaces in the club, and pointed. Beenie nodded and followed him around a knot of bodies, through the arch, into the reduced volume of a room shaped like the interior of a conch shell, center reached after a swirl of corridor, walls ringed with cushions and pillows, a haze of incense added to the cigarette and pot smoke, all of it fluoresced by a lighting system that was cycling slowly through various cool shades of green and blue. Clubbers reclined on the pillows or swayed to a slow trance beat.