“Everyone crashed with me last night, but they live one floor down,” Arla answers for them. “I rent units, but I’m particular about my tenants, and it just seemed easier.”
My eyes skim their faces, but they avoid my gaze. That must be where Cadence lives also. All together on the same floor, the meat and cheese in an Arla/Medusa sandwich.
Claustrophobia begins to steal over me. The room is plenty large and mostly empty, but the doors at my front are the only way out, and the twins and Brennan are breathing down my neck. I am acutely aware there is no escape, no place to go but deeper in. It weighs on me like a bacon press. I can feel myself sizzling. Perspiration peppers my hairline and upper lip. No one says a word.
The elevator dings and the doors slide open. It takes everything I have to step inside, the others piling in after. Cadence runs to join us, clenching and unclenching her fists.
“Where are we going?” I ask, a refrain carried over from last night.
Arla smiles over her shoulder. I don’t know if she means for her smiles to be comforting, but they never are. She presses the lowest button. “Down,” she says.
Around me, everyone wears the same shit-eating grin, and the brassy mirrors that line the elevator distort their faces into alien shapes, their smiles over large and clown-like, their skin a terrible shade of Midas gold.
I swallow and face the front, watching Arla’s hair fall down her back in lustrous finger waves.
The doors open on a hidden corner of the club, but Medusa is quiet now. A cleaning woman is deftly vacuuming the floors and a man behind the bar is wiping glasses and taking inventory. Another man with a microfiber towel is polishing tabletops until they gleam. In the glare of overhead lights, the magic isn’t lost, but it has shifted. The space looks smaller now that it’s mostly empty,the tables and nooks less clandestine. The finery of it is no longer clouded by vape fumes and dimmed lighting and too many bodies. Every detail has been executed with aesthetic precision. This wasn’t cheap to acquire or create. Not in this city and not in this district. And Arla presumably did it on her own. Admittedly, I’m even more impressed in the light of day.
It’s hard to imagine that so many could press in here at night, living out their fantasies, letting themselves go on the dance floor or in the cove of a secret booth. What is it about Medusa that draws them in, brings out their wilder tendencies, things they don’t know are lurking inside them? It’s just a club, after all. Just a bar. Just some tables and chairs, a floor and a DJ. But last night, it was so much more. It was heat and energy and anguish. The clink of glass and creak of leather, the smell of sweat and perfume. It was a fever dream. The Shangri-la of Seattle. A Xanadu of passions. And it worked its magic on even me, an ascetic of the highest order.
“This way,” Arla says, taking my hand, pulling me around the bar to a small door papered and trimmed to look like the wall. On the other side is a storage and cleaning area that runs behind the back bar. We cross it swiftly, weaving around shelves and supplies to a narrow, rustic plank door with old red paint flaking off in patches. It and the club look like they exist in different universes. But I remind myself this is the oldest part of the city. Who knows what remains in some of these buildings?
Arla extracts a key from her bra and slides it into the lock, turning. I hear the bolt give way and the door opens inward to stone stairs that descend into darkness.
“How many floors does this place have?” I ask, bewildered.
“Four,” she answers impatiently. “But this is a basement.”
I take a step back, a dank odor creeping its way up from whatever lies at the bottom. “It doesn’t smell right.”
“It floods,” she says matter-of-factly. “Seattle wasn’t exactly built by engineers. At least, not the first time.”
“The first time?” I question.
“We’re sitting on what was nothing more than tideflats, a reeking, marshy mud deposit that some misguided soul once dubbed a lagoon. We may have a seawall now, but it weeps, kitten. The tide goes out, but it always comes back in,” Arla tells me. “Now, are you going?”
When I still hesitate, Twig and Rock slip past me, a challenge in their eyes before making their way down. Brennan sidles up next. “Don’t be chicken,” he says. “Fortune favors the bold.” Then he is gone, swallowed by the gloom.
I meet Arla’s eyes, something I can’t place swirling in them. A giddy energy pulses off her in contagious waves, but she holds steady on the surface, poised as ever.
“Do you smell that?” Cadence asks, her slinky skirt no match for how steep the stairs are.
“Smell what?” Arla asks.
At the same time, I say, “Rot.”
Cadence looks up, as if she can see the odor dancing in the air. “It smells like joy.”
Mold, perhaps. Or earth. Butjoywas not what sprung to mind. At least not for me. Joy wouldn’t smell like this, like slow death. It would smell like light and grass and nectar.
“No,” she says after a moment. “Not joy. Not exactly. More like…satisfaction.” And then she glides down the stairwell and disappears.
“Now or never, Judeth,” Arla says, watching me.
I don’t know what Cadence is smelling, but it can’t be coming from the basement, not if it’s satisfaction. What emanates from that den of bad humors smells more like fear or sorrow, hopelessness. I’ve had enough of those in my life. I am about to tell Arla as much when I hear the voice inside me—Down.
I sigh, and Arla notices the transition. “What is it?”
“Resignation,” I tell her without saying more. And then I take my first step.
