Ann nodded.
“Okay, go in.”
Heavy bloodred drapes separated the counter from the club proper, where an electro rhythm was pounding out. The purple light guided them into the next room.
Osborne stared wide-eyed. “What’s this?” he asked, like someone discovering America.
There were costumes hanging from the walls, dozens of them.
“Disguises,” Ann replied, clearly amused by the turn events had taken. “You have to choose one and put on a mask if you want to go in.”
Ann took down a lamé fairy costume and quickly put it on. It was very short, with a plunging neckline, and, Osborne had to admit, really suited her. She looked like Barbarella out for a good time.
“What do you think?” she simpered.
Her tapering thighs swayed his judgment. “Not bad,” he said.
She laughed. “Put one of these on and follow me!”
Ann chose his costume—a kind of Roman toga that drew stoned giggles from both of them. He didn’t know where she was leading him, and he didn’t give a damn. They put on their masks. Hers was of sequined feathers, and he couldn’t see her eyes behind it.
There was a door hidden behind the heavy drapes. She opened it, and they entered a large room with a vaulted ceiling and a long wavy counter. It looked like a converted cellar. At a far end was a dance floor where masked and costumed figures were milling about. Blue spotlights and Chinese lanterns brought out the luster of the costumes. The music was almost deafening. There was also an ostentatiously decorated sitting area with rococo armchairs. Everyone was feeling up everyone else with their hands, but nobody seemed to mind.
Ann Brook had brought him to a swingers’ club. This one seemed a very special one. Osborne’s eyelids flitted back and forth between the various figures as they approached one another.
Ann slid her hand over his penis. “Coming?”
She took his hand and led him to a cubicle concealed behind a thin gilded curtain and furnished only with two designer armchairs and a transparent plastic coffee table.
“What is this?” Osborne asked. “An art installation?”
“No. Quite the opposite, in fact.”
She must have given a signal, because a man soon came in through the gold netting, carrying two bowls, which he placed on the table. They sat down in the armchairs, almost tipping backwards. The man was huge. He wore a plumed serpent mask and an Inca costume that revealed his rippling muscles. The first thing he did was to tie towels around their necks. Ann was still smiling. That should have aroused Osborne’s suspicions.
The Inca took a pinch of brown powder from one of the bowls and crammed it in the end of a tube of dry wood. Having done that, he motioned to them to put their heads back.
“What is that? Osborne asked.
“Thunder,” Ann replied.
The giant approached him and abruptly blew the powder through the tube into his left nostril. Osborne let out a groan, but the Inca’s hand maintained his head in position. An intense pain hit him, a pain he’d never experienced. It was if someone had struck the bridge of his nose with a hammer. The powder burned everything in its path, spreading a wave of fire in his throat before reaching his lungs. Tears ran down his face.
Unable to breathe, Osborne felt himself going a long way away. A viscous liquid was oozing from his nose. He was choking. He was going to die. He was plunging into a dark pit. At that point, a wisp of oxygen reached him through the lump of mucus ejected by his sinuses. On the verge of dying, he breathed the cold air into his torn lungs as if he was being reborn.
A stream of snot and phlegm sprinkled with powder poured out of his nostrils, inundating his chin and neck and the towel. He couldn’t see anything. Ann and the Inca had both disappeared. Osborne was dizzy, shaking in every limb, regurgitating bowlfuls of slimy dribble, his lungs as fragile as lace. The acridness of the powder drew floods of tears from him. He was going to suffocate, he was suffocating. Then another influx of air unblocked his sinuses, phlegm and vomit spattered on the towel, and the pain faded.
Opening his eyes, Osborne realized he was still alive. His airways clearer than they had ever been, he didn’t feel sick anymore. He didn’t feel anything anymore.
The cubicle had grown bigger, his sight was becoming sharper, and he even made out the objects and people around him with extraordinary clarity. Ann, the Inca untying their towels: he was aware of every detail, and they seemed familiar and almost reassuring.
Ann was the first to stand, helped up by the Inca, who next did the same for Osborne. Their brains were reeling, but they could walk. Or rather, they flew. Somewhere below him, Ann’s smile seemed gigantic. Borne aloft by the tide, Osborne took her hand and left the cubicle. Didn’t they have eternity to themselves? A golden veil enveloped his mind. Freed from his carnal envelope, he was entering a world where the transmigration of souls was possible, where fragments of collective memory floated about in no particular order, only taking shape once put back side by side, as if by a miracle.
And somewhere through the haze the swingers’ club was still there, with its throbbing lights.
Emerging through the small door from this strange, repetitive coma, Osborne was still quivering. Space and time had cracked open beneath his feet. Ann having vanished from his field of vision, he wandered for a moment beneath the vaulted ceiling, searching for her. He could hear sounds without really being aware of them. His mind hovered, as if he could see everything from a great height. He felt double, triple even.
Through the storm, he saw a muscular man mounting a skinny girl who was kneeling on all fours, dressed as Donkeyskin in the fairy tale. A small audience had gathered to watch them, among them two tall and curiously identical figures in Highland costume, their legs hairy and thin under their kilts. The girl was breathing heavily. After a final groan, the man withdrew from her arched buttocks, and the girl moaned, whether in pain or pleasure it was hard to tell. The first man was immediately replaced by another, who sank into her as if into butter. Donkeyskin was breathing heavily again, seemingly barely aware that a substitution had taken place.
Still high as a kite, Osborne walked to the bar, where a masked girl in a Wonder Woman costume was serving glasses of champagne. He felt a hand slipping under his toga.
“Are you sure you don’t want to come into the salon?” a distorted voice reached him.
His fairy godmother was smiling behind her silver mask. Ann. Ann Brook.
“What salon?”
They could barely hear each other over the cacophony of noise bouncing off the walls. Ann took him by the hand and led him to a room at the far end of the club. The music wasn’t as loud here, but the light was harsher—a disco ball hit by red and purple lasers, reflected in the masks.
There were half a dozen people standing around in a circle. There were no tables or bar in here, just a damp clay floor where two men were fighting like sumo wrestlers. One was dressed as Peter Pan, the other as Jason, with a silver helmet pulled down over his eyes. Holding on by the shoulders and breathing noisily, each was trying to throw the other to the floor, egged on by the spectators. Jason appeared to be out of breath, and, in fact, he soon collapsed on the clay floor and stopped moving. The victor took up position behind him and, still panting from the fight, penetrated him to the hilt. His potbelly lying flaccid on the other man’s ass, he braced himself and started thrusting, harder and harder. The aim was clearly to push the loser out of the circle.
The spectators’ cries increased in intensity—it would soon be their turn. Jason was sliding about on the damp floor while the fat man straddled him and punctuated each thrust with an aggressive hiss that pushed them a little farther. Maintaining balance with his hands alone, Jason was visibly weakening. He collapsed on the floor and was ejected from the circle.
Peter Pan rose to his full height, glowing with malicious joy, his penis still hard. He wasn’t wearing a condom. Those awaiting their turns applauded. The next opponent got ready. Somehow still standing, Osborne watched, in a daze. The champion had barely had time to breathe before a girl entered the arena. Donkeyskin.
The spectators cried out insults. The fight began. The poor girl was so scrawny, she wasn’t able to put up much of a struggle, and soon fell. Peter Pan immediately rushed forward, held her down with her face to the ground, parted her buttocks with both hands and penetrated her so violently that she screamed, then writhed a bit and started weeping softly.
It was a disquieting spectacle.
