Taking Scarlett’s arm in my hand, pulling her back to my front, I waited for the panic, for the rush of people, but it never came. The crowd expected it, anticipated it—a surge of energy seemed to make the air crackle around us.
Violet was one of the few who didn’t care for it. “Mick?” she said, hitting me, groping for him. “Mick?”
“I’m here,” Mick called from someplace close.
“Brando,” I said. “You have me.”
“I don’t care!” She squeezed my arm, her nails digging in. “Where are the lights? Lights! What’s going on?”
“It’s all right, Violet,” Scarlett whispered, her voice not her own. “Be patient.”
“Scarlett! Oh my God. Scarlett. What’s going on? Where are the lights? I have children!This a cult,” she hissed, a byproduct of her intense fear.
The sound of a tinkling piano interspersed with sounds of an oncoming storm broke through the quiet. Wind whistled—I could feel the coolness of it against my face—and a sound like rushing water about to sweep us away made the entire underground tremble with its power.
The circular area next to the stage burst awake with a ring of fire. In the middle of it a cloaked figure stood, a microphone in front of him or her. The face of the performer was hidden from the crowd.
She started to sing.The music was so loud that it filled the air, pushing in like a terrible pressure. The beat of it could be felt in blood, inside of the heart. It pounded inside my head. There was no place to escape from it.
I must have been looking all around, trying to find a way out, when I felt her move away from me. Our eyes connected through the murk. She took three steps back, the sea of people parting for her. The drink in her hand had disappeared—a server must have taken it from her in the darkness.
She closed her eyes, arms and hips starting to sway in a smooth rhythm.
Her mouth started to mimic the singer’s words. It might as well have been her singing to me. Every movement was timed to perfection, correct, not a word out of place. When the singer sang about touching like this, holding like that—she put the words into action against her body, using the music to bring her feelings to life, our love out into the open.
Then she really started to move.
My entire body trembled with anger. I refused to shield myself from this—she meant to punish, and that’s what I’d allow her to do. Take the weapon to me without even flinching at the pain.
One verse in particular caused her to pause, and she searched me out, pointing. Accusing. Sentencing.
You cut me. Now I’m going to cut you even deeper.
What’s new?I wanted to roar back at her.
Every head turned in my direction and then right back to her. She had hypnotized them; instead of spinning sugar under her feet, this version of her spun ecstasy.
Violet stood on one side of me. Mick was on the other.
“I—didn’t know she could dance like that,” Violet said. A whisper lost in the great ocean of music.
Ah, I did. But she had only danced like that for me, in private. Before I made love to her for the first time. She was giving the world what used to be mine only.
It would have been easier to give over my shirt to the executioner, accepting my lashings like a man, instead of watching this go on and on. Over time, flesh wounds heal.
Still, I stood firm, my eyes on her, taking each and every move like a crack to the soul. I adjusted my pants, the physical reaction to her hard and painful, and another reminder that there was no control when it came to wanting her—the body doesn’t give a fuck. It just wants, wants, wants, no matter how much the heart hurts.
Two men hurried through the crowd, taking her by the arms, lifting her to the makeshift stage. White feathers twirled at her feet, most of them drifting into the air before finding places on the floor.
Instead of facing me, like she had been, she faced the mirrors, three of her being given to the gluttonous eyes of the crowd.
Time refused to exist. She could’ve been dancing for five seconds or a hundred years when the end of the song played, soft and reverent, the bravado of the tempo fading, and with it Scarlett’s energy.
She stared at one of the mirrors, her trembling hand reaching out to touch it. The reflection she reached out for was mine. Her palm on the mirror came to my face, and though her face was hidden, the pain on the surface was so cold that I felt it against the heat of mine.
After the impressive lightning show came thunderous roars of applause. Scarlett’s hand slid down the mirror as she collapsed to the floor of feathers, lost to the noise.
“Brando!” Violet shook my arm. “Scarlett—”
