It's early Saturday, the 2nd of May, 1:22am. Lukas is walking across the lobby of the W Chicago Lakeshore, the glittering, expensive lobby with its blonde woods, its frosted glass, its pale and square-edged furniture.
He has a fistful of fabric in his hand. Black and purple, satin and chantilly lace, hooks and eyes, dangling straps swinging free of his fingers. It's unmistakably a woman's lingerie, and expensive, and provocative.
People are staring. Lukas doesn't care. He walks straight out, finds the valet captain and snaps at the man to make him hurry, but not because he's angry.
He's not angry; he's numb. He just wants to get away from here.
The MKZ is brought around. The valet boy that climbs out smiles at Lukas, but the smile pales as the Ahroun comes at him. He skitters to the side, but Lukas isn't going at him after all; he's going for his car. He gets in the driver's side, stuffs a bill into the valet's hand without looking. Throws the lingerie on the floor of the passenger's side and slams the driver's door shut hard enough to make the car rock.
The valet attendant is baffled. "What was that all about?"
His captain is signing the MKZ out, not looking up. "No idea."
"I thought he was going to kill me, and you know what he did?"
"Nope. What?"
"He tipped me a hundred bucks."
--
It's 1:48am, the 2nd of May. The MKZ rolls to a stop in the alley beside the Brotherhood. Lukas kills the engine and he just sits there for a while. He just sits there.
He hears her say:
I've had enough.
He hears her say:
This is killing me.
He hears himself say:
You'll survive.
He hears her say:
Miluji tě, Lukáš.
He looks up at the second story of the Brotherhood. He can see his window from here, and it's dark. There are no lights on in his room, but Mrena's light is on; so is Sampson's. There's no one in his room, but his packmates are around, and the thought of facing them like this makes him inexplicably furious. It makes him sick to his stomach.
He turns the key in the ignition. The engine's still hot, and it catches easily. The MKZ's taillights flash at the exit of the alley. It turns right, toward the heart of the city.
--
It's 2:16am, the 2nd of May. The club's name is SUBTeRRANeAN, and it's as good as any. The girl at the door wants to put a stamp on his hand. It's a four-point star, blue, like a russian prison tattoo.
"You just missed last call," the girl tells him, "but the bar reopens at 4. And we kick you out at 7."
I won't be here til then, he thinks to himself. And then he thinks, Yes I will.
--
It's 2:16pm, the 2nd of May. Lukas's neck aches. His head pounds. It's stiflingly hot. He opens his eyes: he's in the front seat of the MKZ. He fumbles for his cellphone, checks the time. He's been asleep six hours or so. SUBTeRRANeAN is a block down, and it's morphed from a surreal world of million-dollar light systems and million-watt sound systems into a plain, indistinguishable concrete block. It looks like a goddamn warehouse. It was a goddamn warehouse before it was a club. There's a bum pushing a shopping cart in front of it. It's like Cinderella after midnight, he thinks, and if there's symbolism there he doesn't care enough to tease it out.
He should go home, he thinks. He should at least call, let them know when he expects to be back. He should shower.
Lukas turns the phone off instead and throws it in the glove compartment. He starts the engine. Five minutes later he pulls into the first parking lot of the first inn he sees and checks in.
He takes a shower, throws off all his clothes, climbs under the covers, sleeps.
--
It's 12:26am, the 3rd of May. The club's name is Circle, and it's as good as any. The boy at the door wants to put a stamp on his hand. It's a circle, black, and it stamps across the faded four-point star.
"Cool," the boy says, "SUBTeRRANeAN is awesome."
--
He doesn't know what time it is. It's still the 3rd of May, but it's late enough -- early enough -- that the so-called VIP room is nearly empty. In this semiprivate booth with its dim lighting and its muffling curtain on its rail, the scent of spilt alcohol is thick and it's hot and airless.
"I love your eyes," she says, and he shifts his legs to give her room to kneel between them. "They're so fucking hot."
How can eyes be so fucking hot? he wonders. It didn't make sense to him. He wishes she'd just shut the fuck up. She's blonde too, but he sees the dark roots when she bends her head. He closes his eyes. She's undoing his fly and he's still wearing the same pair from last night, and he reminds himself to buy new clothes in the morning, because he's not going home.
Afterward she's spitting into a tissue she's pulled from her purse and he's barely breathing faster. He still has half a Tokyo Tea on the table, and he picks it up and drinks a sip, hands the rest to her.
"Do you want to come back to my place?" she wants to know. She climbs onto the seat beside him and starts to curl against him.
Lukas stands up. He can't even work up the strength of will required for basic kindness, basic courtesy.
"No," he says.
--
It's 1:22am, the 4th of May. The club's name is Ontourage, and it's as good as any. The girl at the door puts another star on his hand, but the first one is covered up by a circle, a triangle, a dog, an 8-ball.
"Maybe I better put it on your other hand," she says. Lukas gives her his left hand. She stamps a five-point star on it, and it's green.
--
"Here baby," she says, "try this."
He's too drunk to stand, but not too drunk to twist his head away instinctively from whatever pill she's trying to push on him.
"Don't call me that," he says. Then he takes the pill from her.
Twenty minutes later he feels great, he feels amazing, he feels just fine and he's convinced he's just fine and she whispers for him to meet her in the women's room and he nods, but when she's gone he goes to the coat check and his pupils are a little dilated and his skin is flushed and he's so fucking thirsty. He gets his coat and he leaves.
--
It's 1:04am, the 5th of May. The club's name is Red, and it's as good as any. They don't stamp your hand here. They just brush a stripe of red over your knuckles.
--
He's bored out of his fucking head. It's the same people, the same music, the same faceless masses, so he scores a joint from the fox-pretty girl in the underground room where they play nothing but drums'n'bass, nothing but headpounding rhythms drilled inhumanly fast. He can still feel it pounding in his blood when he steps outside into the cool night air, and he leans against the wall a ways away from the line and lights up and as the first curl of marijuana unfurls in his blood he closes his eyes and wonders
what. the fuck. is wrong with me.
and he knows it has something to do with trust, or lack thereof, and security, and insecurity, and love and fear, which is close to loathing, and
he recognizes the girl that's walking across the street; it's Gabriella. She reminds him of her sister, her brother, his packmates, his pack back at the Brotherhood, and jesus christ he hasn't been home in days, they probably think he's dead, only no, they don't think that because they can feel him, they're all bonded together, there's no such thing as privacy in a pack and if he went home now they'd look at him, see right through him, they'd see right through to the bottom
(the way she always did, and could)
and see that he was not okay, he was not fine, he was in pieces and all the king's horses and men couldn't put his ass back together again.
Fuck off, Gabbie, he thinks, but here she comes, and he already knows what to say, how to say it, how to make her go away.
--
It's 3:45am, the 5th of May. The club's name is Vain, and it's as good as any.
--
It's 10:43am, the 5th of May. Someone's knocking on the flimsy motel door and he's kicked all the covers to the floor; the window is shut but the air conditioner's blasting and he's freezing his ass off but when he got in here this morning he was burning up, he was burning up and his pupils were blown again, and this time he felt better, but not good, not okay, not fine.
He doesn't even feel better right now. He feels like shit, and it's Mrena knocking on his door; he can tell because he can smell her.
Fuck off, Mrena, he thinks, you can be Alpha. I don't care. Fuck off and leave me alone. I. don't. care.
--
It's 12:31am, the 6th of May. The club's name is Jbar, and it's as good as any.
--
It's 2:10am, the 6th of May. The club's name is Egypt, and it's as good as any.
--
It's 1:53am, the 7th of May. The club's name is Escape, and it's as good as any.
--
"We're sisters," they giggle. "We're not twins but we look just like each other, that's what all the guys say."
You do, he thinks. You look just like each other. You all look the same. You're all the same, you're all sheep, and I can't fucking stand any of you.
He opens his mouth to tell them this, but what comes out is:
"Which one of you am I fucking first?"
--
It's 3:26am, the 7th of May. The club's name is Psykotik, and it's as good as any.
--
It's 5:46am, the 8th of May. The club's name is Psyche, and it as good as any.
--
"You fucker," he says. "That's my girlfriend."
The girlfriend in question is a slip of a girl, bottle-red, watching wide-eyed from the frame of Psyche's back door. She looks a little scared. She looks a lot thrilled. Lukas can almost smell the chemicals. Whoever wins, that's who she's going home with tonight. That's what she thinks, anyway. That's what he thinks she's thinks, and Lukas can be cynical, cynical.
"You fucker," he says again, and then he shoves Lukas back against the wall, hard.
He's not as tall as the Ahroun but he's built like a brick shithouse, wide and solid. Lukas is mildly surprised to find that it hurts when his jaw makes contact with the boyfriend's fist; the blow snaps his head to the side, and the girlfriend makes an excited little gaspy noise, and Lukas thinks, I could look as deep as I like and I'll find nothing but dullness in you, either of you, any of you.
The boyfriend drives his fist into his stomach next, and Lukas doubles over. "You fucker," he says yet again, and turns to look at his girlfriend to make sure she was watching, and Lukas thinks of sheep bleating over would-be mates, clashing horns over mating rights; Lukas thinks of the brick shithouse on top of the bottle-red slip, he thinks of them copulating stupidly, mechanically, like sheep, and then the image shifts; he thinks of sheep-men on top of someone else entirely; he thinks of her legs around their waists or over their shoulders; he thinks of her gasping
ano. ano. prosím. dej mi to.
and he doesn't understand how she can stand them, they who were so fucking empty inside that he could look as deep as he wanted and never, ever see light like hers inside them.
And Lukas is suddenly enraged. He steps forward and the next punch the boyfriend throws hits nothing but air, arcs right over his head as he ducks under and into it; he drives the other back against the opposite wall with his shoulder and pins him there, draws his fists back and starts hammering. His knuckles batter muscle to mush, shear tendons with their sheer brutality. A rib snaps. Organs deform and bruise. The boyfriend is coughing up blood, slumping, and he doesn't care. He keeps at it, his fists slamming into the other's torso over and over, a freight train behind each blow, and the girl isn't gasping or tittering now, she's screaming, she's pulling at his arm to try to get him to stop and he throws her off and she's yelps when she hits the ground; she's screaming now, and he looks back at what he's doing to realize he's grabbed the boyfriend by the collar and has been slamming the heel of his hand into his nose again and again and again, crushing bone to shards, to slivers, and if he didn't stop soon he was going to kill him.
His hand comes open. The man slides bonelessly to the alley floor. His girlfriend is crying so hard long runners of snot are hanging out her nose, and she crawls over to him and shrieks incoherently at Lukas.
All Lukas can think to say is, "Promiňte. Promiňte," and the truth is he's not sure who he's talking to. He turns and walks away, swiftly.
--
It's 12:52am, the 9th of May. The club's name is Blue Line, and it's as good as any.
--
"Do you want to meet me in the bathroom?" she asks.
The lights turn her blonde hair blue and purple. It turns her skin blue and purple. It turns her eyes green.
"No," he says. "My car."
She flinches a little when he takes her hand. She doesn't even seem to notice. She doesn't say anything stupid; she hasn't told him how hot his eyes are, or that she looks like someone's twin, or that her boyfriend was going to kill him if he finds out. She hasn't offered him Ecstasy, or even ecstasy; she hasn't offered him pot, and she hasn't offered him poppers, uppers, downers, designer pills.
Just herself.
Maybe that's why after, when the windows are a little fogged up from their breath and she's shifting to the side so he can get out from under her and move over to the driver's seat and she asks, "Do you want to come over to my place?" he doesn't answer no immediately.
Her heel catches on something as she's settling back into the passenger's seat. She looks down, inquisitive; when she picks it up off the car floor it turns out to be thong panties, purple and black, satin and chantilly lace, ridiculously expensive, ridiculously erotic.
She gives him a look. He returns it levelly. She doesn't say anything about it, and this makes up his mind.
"I have a room at the Holiday Inn about five minutes away," he says.
--
It's 3:52am, the 9th of May. She's curled against his side and her body is narrow and thin; she feels almost right but she smells completely wrong.
He stares at the ceiling and he wonders what he's doing here, and he's not sure if here means with this woman, in this bed, at this hotel, or in this city. In this state of mind. He's not sure when it went so wrong, where he let down his guard, how he's ...
come undone.
She moves. She kisses the line of his jaw. She says, "I've never felt this way before."
And he closes his eyes.
"Don't," he says. "Don't do that."
"Do what?" She's puzzled, drawing back, a shadow in the darkness.
He sits up. "Don't make this out to be more than it is. You don't know what you're talking about. You think this is something real, but it's not."
"No, wait -- "
"Shut up and listen. You looked at me and you just had to get fucked by me, and you're mistaking that for some sort of love at first sight. It's not. It's just goddamn chemicals. It's just instinct. It's curiosity and the thrillseeker's fatal attraction to danger. It's what's kept proto-man chasing after wolves and tigers for eons, painting pictures on cave walls to commemorate the beauty of the very thing that would, without a thought, tear them to shreds."
She gets up and turns her back suddenly; he tries to summon up some shred of compassion, some shred of sympathy, fails utterly. It's the destroyed man's urge to destroy, he realizes; the urge to make everything else into what you are.
"God, you people disgust me," he sighs, and watches her shoulders slump. He can't seem to stop. "Always assigning significance to the shit that'll kill you because somehow that makes it okay for you. This is not significant. This is as empty as anything else in your pathetic, ordinary little life. It has no meaning. It won't gain any meaning, and it won't give you any meaning. So don't even try to pretend."
She's crying now, silently. Her shoulders shake.
"Get the fuck out," he says; not angrily; wearily, almost gently. "Call a cab from the lobby."
He turns his back and closes his eyes.
--
It's 1:11am, the 10th of May. The club's name is 550, and it's as good as any. There have been so many stamps that the backs of his hands are smeared, are smudged, are bruise-colored with stamps overlapping and stacking and washed off and renewed.
This one's turquoise blue. It's simple, a 5 and a 5 and a 0 forming a ring around the two digits.
--
He's seen so many lean, long-legged blondes in so many clubs in the last week he isn't sure it's her the first time he sees her. Then the crowds part again. 550 is narrow but deep; barely fifteen feet across, but a good seventy-five, hundred feet long. They're sitting against opposite walls, and there isn't a lot of room between them. He can see her clearly this time, and it's her, there's no doubt. He stares.
The next time he sees her she's standing in the middle of the dance floor. She's not dancing. She looks gorgeous, and lazy, and she looks like a slut. Her shirt is nearly see-through when the lights hit her right. The lights paint her blue and purple and green.
She's looking right at him. Her eyes don't need the lights to look green. They never did.
He gets up and goes to her.
--
She says, meet me in the bathroom, and he goes.
She says, jsem mokrá a chci vás uvnitř mě.
She says, I need.
He thinks, you don't know anything about need, only that's not true.
She says, I can handle it.
He says, Maybe I can't.
He says, I need to think. I'm sorry, Danička, I need time to think.
--
He doesn't know what time it is. It's night time, but only barely. He thinks it's still the 10th of May but he could be wrong.
He scrubs his hands under the tap, over and over and over, and a week's worth of ink is smearing off his skin. The colors run together and drip down his fingers, filthy. Ink, mixed to a dull grey-black color, flecks the inside of the sink. He washes his hands until his skin is bare and pink, and the last of the ink has swirled down the drain.
Then he throws his clothes off -- his new clothes, one of a pile that he bought back on ... what day was that? It doesn't matter. They're all new, all worn once and tossed aside, a pile in the closet. He hasn't been back to the Brotherhood in ten days. He's lived in this motel room for ten days. Every morning he gets in sometime between dawn and noon; he orders takeout food; he eats it, sometimes before he sleeps and sometimes after. He leaves the boxes scattered around the room. Every night he's gone by midnight, and usually by the time he's back they've been thrown away for him. The bed is made. The detritus of his daily life has been wiped away, and the room is characterless and blank again.
He's sick of it. He's ready to go home.
He crawls under the covers and closes his eyes.
--
It's 12:14am, the 11th of May. The Brotherhood is the way he left it. He parks in the alley and looks up at his darkened window, waiting for the revulsion, the aversion, the desire to drive the fuck away and not come back for days.
It doesn't come. There's only a vague sense of shame, of having abandoned his post for an unconscionable time, of having neglected his duties, of, very likely, having hurt the people who should, by all rights, matter to him. He suspects the feeling will be a lot stronger in the morning, but for now it's only academic, only a faint reminder of itself.
So Lukas kills the engine and gets out. His trunk is full of clothes; he leaves them there. He'll get them in the morning.
The kitchen door unlocks. He steps inside, and mounts the steps to the upper story.
celebration.
9 years ago