Exhibit (5 page)

“Drive”, I tell the driver, once Violet has accepted her destiny and is sat alongside me.

“Do you usually get into stranger's cars?” I ask her.

“I don't make a habit of it, no”, Violet says.

“What were you doing tonight?”

She smiles at me, and for a brief, heartbeat of a moment, when a car passes to our right and the lights filter in through the window, I see the next twelve hours run across her eyes like the flicker of a premonition in a deep blue flame nobody has the power to stop. It makes me hungry for her.

“It was a friend's birthday party, fuck, I should go back. I shouldn't be here. She'll worry.”

“Why are you here?” I ask her. “We can go back if you want, but I don’t think you want that.”

There is a crispness where the flat edges of danger level off with anticipation. Violet watches her decision melt away like the snow at the edges of the sidewalks.

“Fuck, I don't know. Where are we going?”

Soft lips and dangerous words.

“Where do you want to go?”

Violet plays with a ring she wears on her thumb, turning it over and over. The gesture speaks of an anxiety she's unable to control, a hunger that is never satiated. A curiosity.

“Somewhere fun”, she says with purpose, as though finally allowing herself to agree to it. Her conscious mind finally catching up with the decision she has already made. “Fuck it. Somewhere fun.”

“What about your friend?” I casually ask, trying not to appear inconsiderate. “Won't she be worried?”

Violet. Does she know she’s about to step behind the red curtain? What innocence lie behind those eyes, what darkness?

“Probably. I'll call her later. Or text her. Or not. Do you have anything to drink in here?”

Her eyes scan the cab, falling eventually upon mine. I soften a smile towards her. The big bad wolf. But you like that, Violet, don’t you? The big bad wolf coming to take you away.

“No, I’m afraid on this occasion I don’t, this isn’t my car. We can stop if you like”, I suggest.

“It's ok, I can wait until we get wherever we are going. Where is that by the way? Do we have a plan or are we just going to go cruising around New York getting to know each other?”

Feisty. That will come in handy later when she’s powerless to resist me.

“Kings”, I say, the word still fresh enough on my lips to feel unusual to say. “Have you ever heard of it?”

“Kings? Are you shitting me?”

I laugh. “You've heard of it?” I say.

“No, not really. Only tonight, fucking coincidence. It's an exclusive bar right? Wait a sec, are you loaded? How much fucking money have you got exactly? This isn’t your car, but it is your driver, I kind of got that. And that suit, that isn’t exactly something that you buy in Macy’s.”

“Very observant, Violet. Would you like me more if I was?”

“I don't know how much I like you now.”

“Oh come on, don't hurt my feelings.”

“You look like you can take it.”

I smile. Violet digs her hands into the hip pockets of her jacket. She’s twisted to the side to face me, her seatbelt slack across her shoulder, like the loosened strap of a bra. I notice she has a chipped tooth, a tongue piercing.

“It'll be a new experience for us both. I've never been there before either.”

She shifts position, a delicate movement to bring herself fractionally closer to me, one leg dropped lower, tucked underneath the other. Opening herself up now, showing confidence.

“Right, so why are you taking me?”

“You're in my car, Violet, it only seems fair.”

A little tilt of the head that reminds me of the movement Jack made at Aces earlier, when faced with the whore in the glass box. Hands out of pockets too, palms up to face me.

“You didn't have to invite me in.”

I look away, out of the window briefly and then back to her. Christmas is still here, dropping off storefronts and stuck to sidewalks.

“You looked cold”, I say. Vulnerable. Delicate. Breakable. Mine. “Besides which, I couldn't just go on my own.”

“What happened to Mrs. Power? Don’t tell me, she’s at home looking after the children. Wrapping the Christmas presents and hanging the stockings.”

“Relationships aren't really my thing”, I confess. “I was never very good at them.”

“Nor me”, Violet says.

She shrugs, digs her hands into her jacket again and looks away out of the window. I don’t even need to look to know she’ll be playing with that thumb ring again, turning it over and over. Someone cheated on her and broke her heart, someone just like me. I let the silence that descends bite into us like cold wind.

“So, we are both single, unattached and without plans”, I say eventually.

Violet looks towards me again. “We've got plans”, she reminds me like one old friend might another. “Kings, remember.”

“Of course. What better way to spend Christmas?”

The car pulls across two lanes of traffic and up to the sidewalk after a few more minutes, crawling slowly while the driver reads the numbers on the storefronts to our right. He stops when he finds what he’s looking for, clicks on the interior light and turns around to face us. He looks much older now than he first appeared in the yellow, artificial light of the car that spills across his jacket to reveal dandruff, fallen strands of hair and wrinkles where it hasn’t been creased properly across the shoulders.

“This is the address I've been given for tonight”, he says. “Go through the restaurant, and Kings is out the back through the kitchens. James fucking Bond.”

“James fucking Bond”, I repeat.

I give the driver a tip, which he palms without acknowledgement, before giving Violet a look up and down, which produces within him a kind of intestinal grunt he finds impossible to control. He has the wonky, shifty look of a wife beater and the nose of an alcoholic. Just looking at him makes me angry.

“Shall we?” I’m ready to leave him behind and focus my mind on something else entirely. I’m ready to take Violet down the rabbit hole.

“You don't have someone to open the doors for you?” Violet asks.

“I'm rich, darling”, I say, “I'm not an invalid.”

W
hat the fuck am I doing? The moment I get into the car, I realize I probably shouldn't have. Bain seems like a nice guy, but he could just as equally be a fucking murderer. The two things aren’t always mutually exclusive.

Something inside me wants to find out more about him, so at every opportunity he gives me to leave, I don't. I feel bad for Vicki, but I also feel like I need this. It’s a weird fucking thing to say, but I need a night of adventure and risk and spontaneity and this seems like the best opportunity I'll get to do that, perhaps in a whole lifetime.

So who is he? Well, he's fucking rich for one, I could tell that immediately. He's dressed like a king, and I can almost smell the money on him. No fucking heating problems in his apartment, that's for sure. Fuck it, I bet it's not even an apartment, I bet the guy owns a mansion that looks out over central park, a holiday home in Florida and a castle in Scotland just to get away from it all.

Maybe I'll see it. Maybe he'll fuck me hard on Egyptian cotton sheets and then cut my throat afterwards so he can drink my blood. Am I looking for that? The fucking, not the throat cutting.

Maybe.

My throat is dry and I can still feel the effects of that MDMA fucking with my head. I like it. I don't think I would have left that bar had it not been for the drugs, and I definitely wouldn't have got in the car if I wasn't a little high. Where was I going before he picked me up? That's a damn good question that I definitely don't know the answer to.

Where are we going now? Kings. This goddamn, invented place that everyone seems to be talking about, at the back of a Chinese restaurant on the upper east side. I think this is the upper east side at least. We're still in Manhattan, that's one good thing.

At least for now, he's not going to ass fuck me in an alleyway in Harlem while he presses a knife up against my throat and dump my bruised and broken body in a field somewhere to be found, half rotten, by a vagrant ten days from now.

Actually, the ass fucking part sounds pretty good if I’m honest with myself. It’s been a long fucking time. Everything feels good about this, apart from the slim possibility of being raped and left to die.

Bain. Bain fucking Power. This guy’s got day trader written all over his too-young-to-be-this-rich face. He's hot, fit, well maintained, groomed to perfection, Grandma’s favorite, that's for sure. What's his secret?

When we get out of the car, he hurries around to my side to lift me out and then takes my arm like a fucking gentleman, to lead me carefully around the slushy snow and on towards the Chinese restaurant. My doom, my destiny, my future.

I have no idea what to expect. The place looks like a million other Chinese restaurants from the front. They must get all of this shit from a catalogue, because every one I’ve ever seen looks exactly the same. The guy selling these gold waving cats must be making a fortune. Bain lets me take the lead and once inside, I have no idea what to do. A few people look up over their noodles and soup, but nobody does anything more. Nobody greets us and nobody comes over.

Bain takes my hand and together we walk towards the kitchens at the back. After that first time, no-one looks up again at us as we cross the restaurant floor. The place is full of Asians in suits around circular tables, silently struggling their way through dinner. We push our way through the swing doors to the kitchen, where one of the chefs glances over and gives a kind of nod and jabbing, index finger point to a corridor behind him, which we find leads us to an elevator at the back.

At the elevator, we look for a button, but there isn't one. The whole thing looks like it’s recently been built into the wall.

“This it?” I ask.

“I guess so”, Bain says, observing the metal slide door closely.

No-one comes to our aid. To the side of the elevator is a camera, and below that a card slot. I put my hand in it just to feel around. I do that sometimes without thinking, put my hands on something just to feel the shape of it. Try and work out how it works. I wonder if that’s what I’m doing with Bain.

“You got a card?” I ask.

Bain takes out a silver card holder from his inside pocket and a jet black metal credit card shaped sliver of pure perfection from inside that. “I guess this is the key”, he says. Inside I can see a gold K floating like a trapped bubble in a cross section of the earth.

He puts the card in the slot, and a moment later the elevator doors open. We look at each other with barely concealed excitement. I have never done anything like this before in my life.

“Welcome to the rabbit hole”, I say and step inside.

The elevator has red velvet carpeting all over it. It’s like being inside a giant fez hat. There are no numbers either, nothing at all that indicates where, in which direction or for how long we might be going. When we are both inside, the doors close quickly and the lift begins to descend without a sound. I only know it’s going down because of the movement and vibration I feel inside me. It appears there is only one destination and it's taking us there whether we like it or not, or only one destination that Bain and I are destined for.

“What's it going to be like?” I say, holding tightly onto him.

“Wild”, Bain says, his eyes lighting up. “Fucking wild, I hope.”

Is this the beginning of the end? Am I being tricked into a very rich, very creative murderers basement underneath a Chinese restaurant in the upper east side? Is that why nobody gave us a second look? Is Bain a regular here and this is something he does all the time? Am I going to die?

We are in the elevator for maybe fifteen seconds before it comes to a stop. A moment later, the doors rocket open.

'Fuck', I say, and tighten my grip around Bain's hand.

S
he sees it before me and then I realize when I see it why she's got all clingy all of a sudden. I hold on to her and practically drag her towards them, unable to resist it. A fucking pair of lions just sat there at the entrance to the gates of hell.

“What the fuck?” Violet says.

One of them pads quickly across the floor towards her and she can do nothing but freeze with panic, unable to avoid it. Eventually, when it’s felt like it’s investigated her enough, it sits back down on its haunches, yawns just to let us see its teeth, and looks up to the maître d lazily.

Two fully grown adult lions. I can hardly believe it. I'd heard this place had surprises, but to tell you the truth, I wasn't expecting that. Violet looks frozen solid.

“Don't worry”, the maître d says, unimpressed by her lack of resolve. “They won't bite. Not unless they have reason to.”

Violet doesn't look convinced at all. Her hands are trembling and she’s still clinging onto me for dear life.

“We don't like trouble makers you see”, he says coldly. “We literally throw them to the lions.”

“Right”, I say. “You’ve got a pit for that as well I expect.”

“Yes”, the maître d says, without even a hint of irony. “Your card”, he continues.

I hand it over, he does something with it on the computer and then hands it back. The lions lick lazily at their lips, fat tongues long enough to almost reach their eyes.

“When did they last feed?” I ask.

The maître d smiles. “An hour ago”, he says, and I refrain from asking on what?

“Welcome to Kings, Bain Power”, he says. “May I ask who is accompanying you tonight? I don't believe I've had the pleasure of entertaining either of you before.”

“Violet Buchanan”, Violet says.

“Charmed”, the maître d says, with a multi-million dollar, shit-eating grin.

“Feel free to explore all of Kings’ delights”, he goes on. “I can see by your credit level that you are well within range for an evening of fun. Your card will be charged upon exit.”

“Thank you.”

As we pass the lions on the way through a network of curtains that form a barrier between the entrance hallway and the world beyond, I run my hand through one of their manes, just to feel the power of the muscles across their shoulders.