Chapter 42 Jillian
JILLIAN
“Me and the Devil / Walking side by side / And I’m gonna see my man / Until I get satisfied”
— “Me and the Devil” by Soap&Skin
Five days is a long time to argue with yourself and lose.
When I woke up on Sunday after the cathedral sacrilege, I was sure I wasn’t going.
Monday, I changed my mind.
Tuesday, yes.
Wednesday morning, no.
But now that it’s Wednesday night and I’ve flip-flopped enough times and with enough violence to concern every chiropractor in the five boroughs, I’ve finally decided to concede what should’ve been obvious from the start:
I’m going on the date.
But first, I have to decide what to wear. Which is how I find myself standing in front of my closet in a towel, dripping on the hardwood, staring at my options and gnawing at my lip.
I pull out a black dress first. I bought it for a work event in my first year at The Times and haven’t worn it since.
It’s nice, though—fitted, knee-length, with a high neckline in front but open in the back almost to the waist. Rae called it my “secret weapon dress” because it looks conservative from the front and then you turn around and it’s a whole different situation.
I hold it up against my body and look in the mirror.
It occurs to me that I have never dressed up for Kir.
He’s seen me in flannel pajamas and inside-out blouses, in jeans I pulled on in the dark.
He’s seen me in nothing at all. But he’s never seen me try.
The idea of trying—of wanting to look good for him, specifically, on purpose—makes me extremely nervous.
I wish I could call Rae. I’ve picked up the phone a billion times today to text her about this, and every time, I’ve put it back down.
Because calling Rae means explaining the situation, and explaining the situation means telling my best friend that I’ve been sleeping with the son of the man who bought her at a charity auction for five million dollars and is currently in the process of consuming her whole.
That conversation will not go well for either of us. Besides, she’s got enough going on.
So Rae stays in the dark, and I stay in my towel.
I survey my other options, but I keep coming back to the first over and over again. Eventually, the black dress wins.
I drop the towel and pull on underwear first. Black lace, not red, just to keep Kir on his toes.
I step into the dress and zip up the side, then turn to check the back in the mirror.
The open panel shows the knobs of my spine, the two dimples at the base of my back, and, worst of all, a fading bite mark just below my left shoulder blade that I forgot was still there.
I touch it with my fingertips. It doesn’t hurt anymore.
It just exists, a little souvenir from the man in the mask.
I sit at the vanity and start on my face.
Foundation first, then concealer under my eyes to keep these bags out of the public view, because ain’t nobody needs that.
Blush, just enough to look alive. For eyeliner, I go heavier than usual, a thick wing that makes my green eyes sharper.
Mascara next. Lipstick: a deep berry that Jillian-from-five-years-ago used to wear every single day and Jillian-from-now hasn’t touched in ages.
I uncap it and apply it slowly, watching the color transform my mouth into a wicked slash of crimson.
Something that makes you feel dangerous. That was the assignment.
I’d say this look meets the criteria.
The earrings from Bloomingdale’s are gold, simple, and elegant. My hair is half-dry, so I scrunch it with some product and let it do its chaotic red thing because there’s no taming it. More importantly, the chaos feels right tonight.
I spray Lost Cherry along my collarbones and wrists. The cherry and almond hit first, then the deeper notes underneath. Tonka, sandalwood. It smells expensive and reckless, which is exactly how I want to feel.
My heels are black with a pointed toe. They’re high enough to make my calves look good, but low enough that I can sprint away if the date goes sideways and I need to flee on foot. I’m nothing if not practical.
When my battle armor is fully assembled, I stand in front of the full-length mirror and take stock. It’s the unabashed openness of it all that shocks me most. I look like I want something and I’m not afraid to show it.
I’m nervous on the inside, though. My palms are damp and my pulse is racing. The men I’ve gone on dates with over the past five years were safe bets, low stakes. I chose them because I knew I’d leave before dessert. They didn’t matter.
Kir does matter. I wish he didn’t, but he does, and I can no longer pretend otherwise. We’re both far too gone for that.
I grab my coat and my clutch and check the time. 7:32. If I leave now, I’ll get to Chelsea right on time.
I lock the door behind me and head for the stairs.
The corner of West 28th and 10th Avenue is dark, industrial, and worryingly empty. For a second, I think I have the wrong address. Then I spot him.
Kir is leaning against a brick wall under a dim awning, wearing a dark wool coat over a black button-down shirt.
His hair is pushed back and his jaw is clean and gleaming in the low light.
He looks like a dark dream—not a nightmare, but a sexy, twisting void full of shadows. A seductive kind of darkness.
He sees me coming from half a block away and pushes off the wall. I come to a stop in front of him. His eyes move down my body and then back up, slow, and his mouth opens just a fraction and then closes again. It’s a tiny gesture, but it makes me feel flushed and giddy all over.
“Hi,” I squeak.
“Hello, little fox.” He reaches into his coat pocket and pulls out something white.
He holds it out to me. It’s a mask. Not a ski mask, like the one he wears—this is a white, Venetian-style mask, the kind that covers the top half of your face and leaves the mouth exposed.
Blank, featureless, and weirdly beautiful.
I take it and turn it over in my hands. “What is this?”
“Put it on.”
“Hold your horses, buster. Not until you tell me what—”
He nods upward. I follow his gaze to the building behind him. Above the entrance, partially hidden by scaffolding and shadow, a sign I hadn’t clocked yet bears three words in blocky white letters:
SLEEP NO MORE
My brain goes blank for a second and then catches up all at once. “Wait. This is— Are you serious?”
“Dead serious.”
“Sleep No More?!”
“You know it?”
“Know it? I’ve wanted to see this for years!
” I’m holding the mask against my chest now, and I can hear the excitement in my own voice.
I sound like a gleeful little girl on a field trip.
“It’s an immersive theater production based on Macbeth.
You wear masks and wander through a massive warehouse and the actors perform all around you and you follow whoever you want.
It’s been running since, what, 2011? Rae and I have talked about going a hundred times, but something always came up. ”
Kir is watching me with a look I haven’t seen before. Soft, almost. Amused, but also quietly pleased. “I know what it is.”
“The whole thing is nonverbal,” I say anyway. “The actors don’t speak. It’s all choreography and set design and—” I stop myself. “You already know all of this. You bought the tickets.”
“I did.”
“This is incredibly thoughtful.”
“Don’t sound so surprised.”
“Given the history of our relationship, I’d say my expectations were calibrated accordingly.”
He laughs. “I suppose that’s fair.”
I look down at the mask in my hands. The irony is so thick I could saw it with a steak knife.
This man wore a mask to terrify me, to control me, to fuck me in the dark.
And now, he’s handing me one so we can walk into a building hand in hand—on a date, no less—and lose ourselves in a beautiful tragedy.
“Ready?” he asks.
I fit the mask over my face and adjust the elastic. It sits snug across my cheekbones, cool against my skin.
“Ready.”
Kir pulls a matching mask from his other pocket and fits it over his face. It covers him from forehead to cheekbone, leaving his mouth and jaw bare. He looks like a villain at a masquerade ball, which is kinda exactly what he is.
He takes my hand. His fingers lace through mine and squeeze once, and then he leads me through the entrance.
Inside, it’s dark in a spooky, mood-setting way.
We’re funneled down a narrow corridor lined with heavy velvet curtains as aromas of dried lavender and burning wood spiral around us.
A woman in a 1930s nurse’s uniform and a blank white mask materializes in front of us, presses a finger to her lips, and gestures us forward without a word.
Then the corridor opens up and I lose my breath.
It’s designed like a hotel. The whole production takes place here, in this sprawling set spread across what looks like five or six floors connected by staircases and hallways and elevators.
Every room is fully furnished with eerie decor.
I can see a bedroom through one doorway, a ballroom through another, a hospital ward through a third.
There are desks with papers on them, bathtubs filled with water, and bars stocked with actual bottles. The level of detail is mind-blowing.
And everywhere you look, people in masks.
Dozens and dozens of them. Maybe a hundred.
All wearing the same white masks we are, wandering silently through these rooms and brushing past each other without speaking.
Actors weave through the crowd. They’re the only ones who are unmasked.
Their faces are painted, costumes period-perfect.
A woman in a bloodstained nightgown tears past us on bare feet, crying black tears, and disappears down a staircase.
A man in a dinner jacket waltzes alone in an empty ballroom, his eyes focused intently on a partner only he can see as a ghostly white spotlight follows him around.
I grip Kir’s hand tighter. “This is amazing,” I whisper.
He pulls me closer and puts his mouth against my ear. “Rule of the house. No talking.”
“Since when do you follow rules?”
“Every now and then. Come on.”
We move through the hotel together, room by room.
In the first one, a study with a massive oak desk and bookshelves crammed with leather-bound volumes, an actor is hunched over the desk, scribbling frantically by candlelight.
When he looks up, his face is anguished, but his eyes look straight through me.
He doesn’t see us. We’re ghosts here. We’re all ghosts.
Kir leads us onward. His hand doesn’t leave mine.
We climb a staircase and find a bedroom where a woman in a white slip is tearing apart a vanity, throwing perfume bottles and hairbrushes to the floor.
The violence and terror of it is gut-level unsettling.
A cluster of masked audience members stand against the wall, watching.
The actress catches sight of herself in the broken mirror and freezes, then reaches out to touch her own reflection, looking horrified by what she sees.
More. Down a hallway lined with flickering sconces, through an eerie shop full of mounted animal heads and glass eyes that catch the low light. Through a candy shop with jars of real sweets on the shelves. Into a graveyard, fog-strewn, moaning.
Everywhere we go, I feel like I’m sinking deeper and deeper into our own dark story—and I’m fucking loving it. Nobody here knows or cares who we are. My mask has taken away everything that’s ever hurt me, and the masks everyone else is wearing means they are phantoms, too.
No one is tracking whether the CEO of Lazarev Global is touching a New York Times reporter. No one is connecting my face to his face.
We’re just two people in the dark.
The same as everyone else.
When I spy a chance, I pull Kir sideways into an alcove behind a heavy curtain. The fabric falls shut behind us. It’s a tiny space, barely enough for two bodies, and he looks down at me through the white mask. I can see his mouth and the hard line of his jaw.
I rise up on my toes and kiss him, mask to mask. His free hand finds the bare skin of my back through the open panel of the dress and his palm spreads wide between my shoulder blades, grounding me.
Our tongues clash briefly. When I pull back, he chases me for half a second before stopping himself.
“What was that for?” he asks.
“It was a thank you,” I explain shyly. “This is the best date of my life.”