Chapter 11 Medusa
MEDUSA
Before I can summon the words to resist or question, we are rushed into a dark room lit by green neon tubing.
It shines beneath the bar and around several platforms. Gargoyle sconces glow against emerald velvet wallpaper, and the twenty-foot antique saloon bar, dark as a Tuscan cigar and set with beveled mirrors, reflects light throughout the room.
Music pumps from the back where a DJ is playing a sultry swing remix on a raised stage that juts from the wall, shaped like a broad pulpit and backed by black velvet curtains, and the floor is filled with bodies in all stages of dress and undress, grinding, twirling, slithering against one another.
In a corner near the entrance, a giant birdcage contains a man dangling from a complicated network of jute ropes, and my shibari remark comes back to haunt me.
And on a central platform, a woman with a fall of long, golden marcel waves is covered in pearly balloons.
She gives an enormous pin to anyone who tips her as they line up to pop them, one by one.
Arla drags me to the bar where a gentleman with a handlebar mustache and suspenders—and well-defined pectoral muscles in lieu of a shirt—drops what’s he’s doing to lean in.
“A maiden’s prayer for my friend and me, please, Fen.
With a kick for the newbie,” she adds with a wink.
He quickly mixes the ingredients in a shaker and passes us each a martini glass.
I take a sip and taste the fresh tang of citrus with the dry, piney undercurrent of gin.
“What is this place?” I practically shout over the music into Arla’s ear.
“It’s my club,” she replies, fighting bodies to pull me across the dance floor and through a keyhole-shaped doorway into a second, quieter space with more of a lounge feel.
Spotlights rain silver onto another smaller stage to our left, this one curving out with a couple of steps terracing to the floor, the same plush curtains I saw behind the DJ running behind it—they must share a backstage hall or dressing room.
A woman so pale she almost glows is wearing a drooping sash of rainbow sequins tied in a voluptuous bow over her ass and four-leaf clover pasties, orange curls pinned behind her head.
She’s bent over an enormous cauldron while another woman in a top hat and breeches runs a golden cane across her backside, giving it a loud whack now and again.
Round booths upholstered in green leather are set against a black-marbled wall across from us, angled toward the stage.
The opposite wall is lined with velveteen sofas on either side of the doorway, and the long room is dotted with small tables and chairs, all full, while people laze atop one another on the sofas like sedated cats.
A second, smaller but no less impressive bar glows under golden chandeliers opposite the stage to our right.
The booth nearest the stage is separated from the rest of the room with an elaborate gold railing like you’d see on an opera box in a theater, something carved for King Louis XIV. But Arla releases a latch, swinging open a small gate, and herds me inside. She closes it behind us and joins me.
“I reserve the best seat in the house. Perk of the job,” she explains.
What job is that? I wonder. Ringmaster of the naked circus?
Guardian of the padded sex dungeon? Mad Hatter at Alice’s swinger tea party?
It’s not that I have a problem with what I’m seeing here.
There’s something luscious and beautiful about the acts and performers, something undeniably erotic about the music and the aesthetic, something magnetic and free about the people.
Everyone is clearly enjoying themselves away from prying, judging eyes.
And it feels undoubtedly Arla, as little as I know about her.
It’s more that I can’t classify Medusa as my brain so likes to do.
It is one part speakeasy, one part burlesque show, one part BDSM act.
If an adult circus pitched a tent in the Emerald City …
that would be the equivalent of Medusa. And I had no idea it was here, though I’m evidently alone in that.
The place is packed, so she’s not hurting for business.
This club must be one of the city’s worst-kept secrets.
Arla unbuttons her old-fashioned coat, revealing a fitted black lace top with a scalloped neckline and a pair of matching wide-leg trousers. “So, what do you think?” she asks.
I look around and return her ardent gaze. “It’s … unique,” I finally manage.
She smiles, relishing my unease. “It’s one of a kind. There isn’t another club like Medusa in the world. We have members from all fifty states and nearly every continent, excluding Antarctica.” She leans in and places a hand over mine. “It will grow on you. It’s home, after all.”
Gingerly, I pull my hand away. “Home? You mean you live here?”
The Fathom is looking more and more like the kinky sex cult Aaron hoped it would be.
Even if it’s missing the satanic bit, I sense something at the core of this group I have yet to be introduced to.
Brennan’s comment about “the beast,” Arla in the cemetery promising to put exhumed remains to “good use,” and that initial invitation—learn what waits in the deep …
I’d thought they meant it philosophically, but Medusa is spectacularly tangible.
And the question remains—if Arla’s initiating everyone else, who initiated Arla?
“You make it sound repugnant,” she chides with a margin of offense. “The world is a scary place, Jude, and we’re stronger here. Stronger together,” she says, watching me.
I look around, trying to picture a quaint home tucked behind the curtains or the bar, but every seedy corner is filled with bodies. “Brennan and the twins live here too?” I can’t imagine where.
“In time,” she says adamantly, ignoring my questions, “you’ll understand.”
I take a long sip of my drink. Something about her proximity makes my hair stand on end, like I’m sitting too close to an electrical current.
I want to crawl out of the booth she’s shut me into, but there are patrons watching us with envy in their eyes.
Arla is someone they all want to be close to. Lucky me.
“So, this is it? The circle, the big reveal? I get a lifetime membership to your club because I’m willing to go to ridiculous places at even more ridiculous times?
” I ask after another drink. The gin is already working its way through my veins, causing my muscles to loosen, my tongue to lose its inhibition.
I stare at the stage where the redhead has been replaced by another woman with a black bob and an intricate harness fitted with dozens of gold rings.
She is strapping a man in assless leather pants onto a Saint Andrew’s cross that she wheeled out on casters.
Arla chuckles.
“What’s so funny?” I ask, indignant.
“You think I brought you here for a little burlesque and handcuffs? You think I’ve been hazing you for a membership to Medusa?” She leans back in the booth, her eyes coy.
“Well, haven’t you?”
“Look around. You have nothing in common with these people. They’ve more adventure in their fingernails than you have in your whole body.
The things we’ve had to do to coax even the tiniest spark of magic out of you…
” She rolls her beautiful eyes, which I can now see are a deep, pond-water hazel.
“Besides,” she says, looking done with me, “you couldn’t afford Medusa. ”
I bury my nose in my gin and juice, her dressing down cutting deeper than expected.
But one thing gives me a small squelch of triumph—she doesn’t think I can afford this place without her.
And frankly I can’t. But it means she doesn’t know about the inheritance in my old name.
It can rot for all I care, but if she doesn’t know it exists, I’m keeping at least one secret. Arla isn’t all-knowing.
When I set my glass back down, I ask, “Why am I the one sitting here, then? Everyone looks like they’d give a digit to sit where I am now. Why am I the one beside you?”
“You know why,” she counters. Her eyes rove the clusters of people.
“Despite their divine passions and succulent creativity, their exquisite taste and ample resources, they still don’t have the one thing you do, Jude.
Even if you’re doing your damnedest to ignore it, to bury it so far down inside yourself that it withers to nothing in the dark center of your being.
They have money and they have spirit, but they don’t have magic.
” Her face takes on a leering sort of sparkle at the word.
“I can’t say I agree with the method of distribution.
Were it up to me, it wouldn’t be squandered on wallflowers and do-gooders, those who can’t possibly appreciate it. ”
“I’m not a do-gooder,” I argue pathetically. It comes out all the more defensive because it’s true.
She smirks, knowing she got under my skin. “Yes, well, there’ll be plenty of opportunities to prove that later.”
“I never asked for this,” I say resolutely. “I don’t use it because—”
“Because you’re afraid”—she cuts me off—“because deep down you don’t trust yourself with your own interests. Because someone, somewhere taught you that you weren’t worthy of it.”
It stings like salt on an abrasion. More accurate than I care to admit.