2
That last thought should have been reassuring. It wasn’t.
The address Kavi had texted me led to an unmarked metal sided building squeezed between a shuttered textile factory and what looked like an abandoned warehouse.
No sign. No indication that anything at all was happening inside.
I sat in my car for a solid five minutes, hands still on the wheel, staring at the steel door with its single neon sign that read OPEN.
Anonymous. No names shared. No questions asked.
I got out of the car before I could overthink it further.
The door was unlocked and opened easily.
Inside, I found what looked to be a standard waiting room with vinyl floors, fluorescent lighting, a couple of fake plants, and two chairs.
On the far end was a man with silver hair sitting behind a desk.
His nose was currently buried in a book, and he didn’t bother looking up when the door closed behind me. The place seemed normal enough.
I stepped up to the desk, feeling a bit awkward in just my golf clothes. Was I suppsoed to bring a towel? Cash? Clothes to change into? Swim trunks? I had no idea. I hadn’t even bothered to ask. I just wanted to make Kavi stop looking at me like that.
“Membership card,” the man said, not looking up.
“I don’t have one,” I replied. “My friend Kavi told me to come here?”
The man finally looked up from his book. He was older, maybe fifties, with deep lines around his eyes and a calm expression that suggested he’d seen everything twice and wasn’t particularly impressed by any of it.
“Kavi,” he repeated, as if testing the name. Then something flickered across his face—recognition, and maybe amusement. “Kavi Rajan? He’s been coming here for years.”
I felt my shoulders relax slightly. At least I wasn’t walking into some kind of scam.
“He said I should come. That it would help me... relax.”
The man set down his book and leaned back in his chair, studying me with an intensity that made me want to fidget. “You look like you need it,” he said finally.
I didn’t know how to respond to that, so I didn’t. I just waited.
He reached under the desk and produced a clipboard with a form attached. “Fill this out. It’s mostly just liability stuff. We need a name and a number in case of an emergency. Everything else is optional. We don’t keep records longer than ninety days, and we don’t share information with anyone.”
I took the clipboard and pen, my eyes scanning the form. It was sparse, just what he’d mentioned, plus a few health questions. No credit card information. No address beyond a zip code. It really did seem designed to be anonymous.
“The locker room is through the door behind me,” the man continued, already turning back to his book.
“Leave everything in your locker, including jewelry. No electronic devices are allowed inside the bathhouse. There’s towels in the lockers already, and showers around the corner. The main bathing area is just beyond the locker room. Steam rooms are on the main floor, private pools below.
Play rooms are upstairs. Take your time. Stay as long as you want.”
“Play rooms?” I asked. “Like board games or something?”
The man laughed. “Yeah. Something like that.”
I finished filling out the form and handed it back to him. He barely glanced at it before filing it away in a drawer. He grabbed a wristband with a key attached and pushed it across the desk toward me.
“Locker forty-nine,” he said, and I could have sworn there was a slight smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Welcome to the bathhouse.”
I took my key and made my way through the door to the locker room, half-expecting it to be dingy or run-down.
But it was clean and well-maintained. Soft lighting, warm tile floors, and rows of lockers along one wall.
There were a few other men in there already.
A couple were changing out of their street clothes, and one older gentleman was in just a towel, heading toward the bathing area.
They glanced at me as I walked by, but not much else.
When I found locker forty-nine, I began to strip down.
I stuffed my golf clothes and phone inside the locker and grabbed one of the white towels.
It was thick and soft, and surprisingly nice.
Wrapping it around my waist, I shut my locker and headed for the showers.
After a long day on the golf course, I could use the rinse before going to relax in some of the other tubs.
Besides, I’d been a member of enough gyms and clubs to know that it was just a common courtesy to shower before using a pool of any kind.
The shower was a big open plan, kind of like the ones I’d had back in high school.
But it was also mercifully hot and strong with the kind of pressure that actually worked the tension out of your shoulders instead of just trickling down like some sad gym shower caked with lime buildup.
I stood under it for longer than I probably needed to, letting the heat work into my muscles.
My back cracked in a few places as I stretched, and I realized just how wound up I’d been.
There were a few other men in the shower at the same time, all of us on full display to one another.
But it didn’t really bother me. After playing hockey for all those years, I’d gotten used to showering with the guys.
After a while, I just stopped noticing the nudity.
Here was no different. When guys glanced my way, I gave them a nod and went back to my washing.
There was one thing I noticed though. More than half the men I’d seen so far weren’t human.
It wasn’t uncommon to see someone of a more monstrous lineage out and about, but I didn’t run across many in my line of work beyond Nadia.
When our worlds combined, it wasn’t a smooth transition.
It took a couple of decades for humans to accept that the werewolves, orcs, and vampires in the world weren’t dangerous.
Because of that, you didn’t see a lot of them in executive level positions like I was.
Things like that were changing now, of course, but it was taking time to level the playing field for everyone. Old prejudices died hard.
But here? In this place? Whatever it was, it seemed like neutral ground. A sanctuary where everyone, human and monster alike, could just exist without judgment.