“So, when the Roman emperor said—”
“Don’t care. Eating.”
Her words were slightly muffled in the broccoli mush swirling in her mouth, but Gary could understand what she was saying. She was saying that she was more interested in food than in conversation. He leaned back and nodded. This was officially the worst date he’d ever had, and he had no idea why it had to be with the most beautiful girl who’d ever said yes to dinner with him. It seemed that luck was based on a sliding scale.
At exactly 6:45, Nikki pushed her plate away—she still had more than a third of her dinner left to eat—and backed off from the table. Her chair made a rough squeaking noise along the surface of the polished wooden floor.
“Okay,” she said. Then she stood up and draped her purse strap over her right shoulder. “I’m ready to go.”
Gary watched as she took her sunglasses off the table and stuffed them in her open purse. She was watching him back.
When Gary made no effort to move, Nikki beckoned him to stand.
“Come on, pay the bill already,” she said. “I’ve got somewhere to be at seven.”
Gary shrugged.
“You don’t have to wait for me,” he said. “If you have to go, then go.”
She tapped her foot against the floor. The hollow wood made a thumping sound just over the white noise of nearby idle chatter. Her eyes were veering focus toward the ceiling.
“The bus won’t get here until after seven. I need you to drive me.”
“Drive you where?”
She reached into her purse and checked her phone.
“Wild Luck Hut.”
Gary wrinkled his nose. Something about that name rubbed him the wrong way.
“I heard of that place. What is it?”
“Where I’m supposed to go. Look, don’t worry about it. Just be a gentleman and drop me off, ‘kay?”
Gary reached for his wallet and pulled out a credit card. He passed it to the server when he caught her heading back for the kitchen. She had put not just his and Nikki’s dinners on the tab, but Shawn’s, too.
After he paid the bill, he led Nikki to his car, an old Ford, and opened the passenger door for her. At this point, he didn’t care about salvaging the date. She was certainly a joy to look at, but not to be around. If this was what it was like to date a beautiful woman, he thought, then he would just stick with the Plain Janes from now on. He certainly didn’t want to waste his time on someone he’d have to seek out on the street.
He waited for her to take the passenger seat before closing the door—it had taken him great effort not to close it while she was still climbing in. Just before he completed the seal, he heard something drift out of her mouth. It sounded almost like gratitude. He was certain he’d misheard her.
The Wild Luck Hut was just a few blocks away, it turned out. She probably could have covered the distance by foot and still gotten there by seven. But she was wearing stiletto heels, and Gary had heard on more than one occasion that high heels of any kind were difficult to walk in, certainly at a clipped pace. So, even though he didn’t want to spend another moment with her, he understood why she would want the ride, and why he would need to offer it to her. Even if the date was awful, he still had to do the right thing, and making a young, beautiful woman walk the streets in stiletto heels at night in the short black skirt she was wearing was not the right thing. The right thing didn’t require him to speak to her again, just to get her to her next destination safely.
When Gary parked at the curb a few doors down from the club, he waited for her to climb out, but she didn’t move. She held her gaze out the window for the next ten seconds. Gary squeezed the vinyl in his steering wheel, imagining that sweet moment when she’d get out and stay out of his life for good, giving him room to date a less attractive but more interesting woman in the near future. Her hand made no motion for the door handle. When nearly a minute passed without action of any kind, he finally dared to ask her what was taking her so long.
“You haven’t opened my door yet,” she said.
Gary closed his eyes and smiled at his ill luck. He was doing the gentlemanly thing by bringing her here, but he hadn’t anticipated having to walk her all the way to the club entrance. By her expecting him to open the car door for her, she had made it obvious that she was going to milk his generosity to the very end.
“Sorry,” he said.
He climbed out of the cabin and walked around the front of the hood to reach her passenger door. Then he opened it. She extended her slender hand to him. He took it and lightly pulled her toward him. She stepped out one slender leg at a time and leaned forward, nearly losing her balance from the shaky heels she was wearing, recovering her stance by grabbing his shoulder with her other hand. Her face got close enough to his in her rebalancing that he could sense the warmth of her breath. At some point between broccoli and the Wild Luck Hut, she had slipped a mint in her mouth. When she released his shoulder, her deep blue eyes flashed briefly at him. They were intoxicating to say the least.
“You may as well walk me to the door,” she said.
Gary had already anticipated her demand—well, request—something in between—and was gently pulling her toward the curb before she finished speaking. Her hand was smooth, and he liked the sensation of her touch, and he decided that even though he didn’t like her in the slightest, he liked her enough to hold her hand all the way to the club’s entrance. And when he opened the studded leather doors for her, he hesitated to release her grip.
“Okay, well thanks,” she said.
She broke the hold for him, but she didn’t scurry away just yet. She held his gaze for just a moment. Then she did something he didn’t expect she’d ever do. She smiled at him.
“You’re a nice guy.”
Then she patted him on the biceps. Then she stepped through the doorway.
Against all sound sense or judgment, Gary followed her in. She might’ve been ready to start her 7:00 date with her “boyfriend,” but Gary wasn’t quite as ready to end his date with her as he’d thought just a moment ago.
Chapter 5
“Wild Luck”
The Wild Luck Hut was a den of joyful horrors unlike anything he had ever seen, in the movies or in real life. It was part gambling den, part spa, part dance club, with an unusual mix of themes ranging from unicorn fantasy to biker chic. It was a classic case of an establishment with an identity crisis, and Gary couldn’t make heads or tails of it.
The lobby was shaped like a mouth, with sharp spiral horns coming down from the ceiling like a set of fangs. The door straight ahead was agape, curved at the top like the entrance to a cave. Above the door was a glowing lamp in the design of a uvula. To the sides were small anterooms leading off to other strange places. A bouncer sat on a trapeze rigging beside the door, ready to swoop in on the uninvited.
Nikki drifted away from Gary while he took in the sights. The crowd swallowed her within an instant and he was left alone, left staring at the physical representation of a jigsaw puzzle where none of the pieces fit. He took a few steps after her to avoid being separated, but it was of no use. She was engulfed and the pulsating crowd pushed him off to the left where he was spun around and tossed through a door and into an open area doused in sapphire light and reeking of steam and pheromones.
He blinked a few times and found himself drifting off, deeper to a place where the atmosphere transformed from a simple gray concrete ambience to a humid steam room bathed in a bluish light, guided by a maze of velvet ropes. An awful mix of perfume and chlorine ignited his allergies.
He sneezed. After the third sneeze, he wiped his nose with his sleeve. Then he looked up to see a sign on the wall beside him that said: WELCOME TO THE WILD LUCK HUT.
“Welcome, indeed,” he said.
Now what am I supposed to do? he thought. And where did Nikki go? To his right, he saw the organic crowd fluttering just outside the doorway, so he wasn’t getting back into the mouth. And he didn’t think
that Nikki had come this way. But now he was stuck and had to move forward. The one thing he knew for certain was that he wouldn’t find Nikki by standing still. He continued left, into the maze of velvet ropes.
The “blue room” was a chill section of the club, where a diverse mix of visitors hung out by the side of a Jacuzzi. Even though the whirlpool was raging, no one was in it. A handful of couples lounged around the edges in full formalwear, sipping champagnes and chardonnays, but no one was getting wet. The room’s theme extended to a groovy-style poolside patio (even though there was no pool to speak of), where a visual odyssey of rainbow-colored liquid lights reflected off the surfaces of lounge chairs, patio tables, and magenta umbrellas. A soft presentation of downbeat chill music piped through several corner speakers, filling the room evenly. It was loud enough to engage the senses, but quiet enough to stay in the background.
Gary circled the Jacuzzi to get a better look at each guest’s face, trying to determine the difference between Nikki and the hot women who looked like Nikki. One of the unfortunate side effects of wandering into a classy club that attracted a beautiful woman like Nikki was that it attracted many beautiful women like Nikki, and picking her out of a crowd was not as easy here as it was when he’d seen her standing amid a group of passengers beside a damaged bus. But it still wasn’t impossible.
He counted at least a dozen people sitting along the edge of the Jacuzzi and double that lounging in the patio chairs. Most were engaged in conversation with their neighbors, and those neighbors were splitting topics with their opposite neighbors, and the whole thing resembled one continuous train of inconsistent discussions circling the bubbling pool at their feet. And none of the discussion points were of any real significance, it seemed. Most of the fancy guests just talked about themselves and how great they looked tonight.
When he dared to ask the nearest person, a dapper George Clooney look-alike, if he had seen a lovely girl matching Nikki’s description, he simply said that all the women here were lovely, so both probably and no. Gary decided this wasn’t the right room.
Getting out of the patio area was a challenge. The Jacuzzi had a misting effect that fogged the room, and Gary found it difficult to locate the door. Compounding the problem was the roped queue that wound like a pretzel and had two opposing ends. To get to the patio area, the guest had to navigate the line, and to get out he had to go back through. But the velvet ropes were inconsistent, and not all paths led to the patio or the door, and one wrong turn could take the guest to another room entirely. And, as Gary tried to find his way to the main exit, the mist confounded his sense of direction, and before he knew it, he found himself not back in the gray anteroom to the right, but in line for the adjacent room.
Through that wrong door, he found another gray room, this one a narrow hall where the emo kids hung out. They were dressed in gothic clothing, covered in eyeliner, and complaining a little about life’s cruelty and a lot about puppies. Beside them was a pizza bar decked out with all the best types—pepperoni, Margherita, white, and so on. Nikki wasn’t there, either.
When Gary asked them if they’d seen her come through, they simply stared at him.
“She’s about yay high,” he said, holding his flattened palm just above the bridge of his nose. “Dark hair, kinda like yours. Blue eyes, almost icy. Black, slightly checkered skirt. Dark gray blouse. Deep blue eye liner.”
He scanned each black-lipped pale face before him. Everyone had a blank stare.
“Come to think of it,” he said, “I’m a little surprised she’s not in here. She’d camouflage well among you. Except, her lips are hot pink. Yours are just gross.”
“We reject your compliment,” said the emo goth nearest to him.
Past the pizza bar was another door and through it was the “magenta room,” which, according to the electronica music thumping through the speakers, was the dance parlor. As was to be expected on an unpredictable evening, the floor was crowded with people from many backgrounds, ranging in ages from early adulthood to late middle age. Everyone was lost in the dance, and no one seemed aware of the other dancers nearby. It was as if all of the recluses in the city had suddenly snapped, gone out into public, and retreated back into themselves as they attempted to socialize through the power of dance. Some people were busy with their phones while they boogied. Some had brought a book with them.
Gary saw the exit at other end, but to get there he had to plunge right through the heart of the dancefloor. And that was no easy task. The 1000-megawatt speakers were piping hot with the siren sounds of a melodious sex vixen, and the happy introverts obeying her commands bounced around like ping pong balls to every rise and fall of her voice. Getting through to the other side was a bit like playing Frogger.
The other challenge, of course, was in searching the dance area for a sign of Nikki. Fortunately, the room was small. It had maybe fifty feet from one door to the other, with about thirty feet in width. Unfortunately, the room was packed tight, and to find her, Gary would have to look into the eyes of about a hundred other people. It was so claustrophobic that it would’ve been impossible for him to even hug the wall on his way around the room, much less position himself to see everyone he was sharing space with.
He tried anyway. He was there for Nikki, and he wanted to finish his date with her properly, even if it had been a wasted experience so far. But after fighting to look into the eyes of about twenty different dancers and fifteen of the same dancers two or three times in a row, none of which bothered to look at him back, he decided that he was going for the impossible. He still had at least eighty unfamiliar faces left to scan, and he just didn’t have the patience.
He kept fighting and pushing against the crowd, determined to reach the next room. Sometimes they’d push back, sometimes they’d just spin him around and throw him at another dancer, and the whole experience had left him jostled. But, against all odds, he found his way to the exit and danced right on through.
He was back in the pizza hall with the emo goth kids.
“What’s the point in dancing,” one of the goths asked him, “if we’re all just going to die one day?”
Gary didn’t answer him.
“Tell us,” said another, this one grabbing at him. “Tell us what’s so special about your precious dancing. Is it the music?”
Gary tried to break away. Another one got in his face.
“And why don’t you dance with your girlfriend?” asked another. “Is it because you don’t care? Do you think you’re too good for her?”
Gary felt haunted by a similar argument he had made to Nikki about her “working” boyfriend the day before when he didn’t show up at the crash site.
He decided it was time to leave.
“Where are you going?” demanded the emo kid at the end of the hall. He was blocking Gary’s way back into the magenta room. “Do you think running from your problems is the answer?”
An emo girl spat at him. The glob of saliva missed Gary’s cheek by mere inches.
“That’s what I think of you and your happiness,” she said.
Gary backed the other way. Then he ran for the blue room before anyone else could stand in his way or ask him a nihilistic question or spit in his face for being happy.
The blue room had multiplied in the few minutes he had been away. More people were crowding around the Jacuzzi, and like a black hole, he felt like they were drawing him in with them. He passed through the mist and the velvet ropes, searching for the other way out, but the disorienting nature of the room caused the queue to spit him out onto the patio, right into the crush of fancy debutantes hanging “poolside” with their glasses of champagne in hand.
“The best part about being rich,” said the George Clooney look-alike to his twenty or so companions, “is the money.”
All twenty in unison suddenly angled their faces at Gary. They must’ve collectively felt his presence.
“How about you, lad?” the man asked. “What do you like about being rich???
?
Gary looked at how each of them were dressed. They were decked out in Italian suits and evening gowns—aspiring models or movie stars. The man before him was slick, dressed in a silver-gray three-piece, clean-shaven and head full of dark hair. Gary had no comparison between them and the jeans and T-shirt he wore. They looked back, giving him a once over. It seemed they had noticed the class disparity happening. Their curious faces were beginning to sag. Either the Botox was failing, or they were entering the early stages of disgust.
“Er, the money?” Gary said.
Suddenly, all the faces before him were once again refreshed. Many of them had a twinkle in their eyes as they laughed. The George Clooney look-alike smacked him with a sideways fist in the biceps. For a rich guy, he sure hit hard. Gary rubbed the impacted area once it began to smart.
“Elaine,” said the man. “What about you? What’s the best part about being rich?”
All eyes around the Jacuzzi refocused on a blond woman about five bodies to the first guy’s left. She was tall, painted in blue eye shadow, in an evening dress that came very high up her thighs and very low down her back, and bulged at her voluptuous chest. She was maybe about thirty. She looked down at her chest and smiled.
“The boobs, of course. Best money I’ve ever spent, and I’ve been divorced twice.”
The others laughed. Then they changed focus to the next person.
Gary tried to back away, but he felt a hand around his ankle.
“Hey, we’re just getting started,” said a shrill voice behind him.
He looked down to find a scrawny woman in her late twenties trying to pull him back toward the Jacuzzi.
“Nobody leaves the circle ‘til the ice is broken,” she said.
The intensity in her eyes suggested two things: she was in charge, and she was serious.
Gary shook his head.
“I have someone I’m looking for,” he said.
“We all have someone we’re looking for. Take your spot around the spa and join us.”
Gary shook his head. He had somewhere else to be. But he found no words to speak.
“We give everyone a chance to shine,” she said. “Please don’t disrespect the current speaker.”