LE ROISSY, 2022
I rubbed the pad of my finger across the hardwood table. The lights were dim, but the booth afforded us an elevated overview of the entire club. Thea and I had been invited up to Madam Dupres’ table the moment we entered the club. I can scarcely say how it happened. One minute we were at the entrance, the next Thea and I were slipping into the booth. I would later learn it’s a kind of Serpentine magic called elision. Essentially, what is certain to happen, just kind of condenses, like a summary. It’s an outgrowth of courtly politics, people got really tired of all the formalities. They couldn’t get rid of them exactly, so they just made them happen at high speed, in an alternate dimension. I am told it makes political negotiations rapid as well.
“You smell like a freshly bathed dog.”
I smiled politely at Madame Dupres. She was a stern and oval-faced Senegalese woman bedecked in silver jewellery. She wore a flowing black dress cut at a sharp angle at the knees and a silver-plated corset. Her ample breasts sat proudly over it and displayed the jagged scars where her nipples once were.
She stared at me with her blank white eyes.
“I’m a Satyr. I suppose I would smell something like that.”
“I like it.”
I shifted in the booth and looked around. Thea took a small compact from her clutch and picked at her traction red lipstick with the fingernail of her pinky.
“Have you seen Lucian?” Thea asked.
“Not for several weeks ma cherie.” Madam Dupres stared into me as she spoke to Thea. Her brown lips would purse and relax. Dupres was intimidating and painfully attractive.
“Is Fenriss here?” Thea snapped her compact shut and crushed it into her purse.
Madame Dupres clucked her tongue three times. “He is.”
“I’ve never seen so many — appealing outfits,” I said.
Madame Dupres snorted. “I’ve never seen anything. But I’m told we’re all very shocking to most anousio.” Anousio was what Serpentines tended to call everyone who wasn’t a Serpentine. I suppose it was the equivalent of mundane for them. Mundanes are just normal people, anousio are the Eldritch whose wardrobe and bedroom practices would be considered — bland.
As Dupres spoke, a bald woman with a tall leather collar walked by. From the front she looked quite attractive. However, the skin of her back had been peeled out into small membranous batwings supported by very fine titanium wiring. I turned my head to stare impolitely as she walked passed. I was both disgusted and aroused. She was particularly striking from the rear — a bit more red and sinewy than is my taste though.
“I suppose being blind has its benefits in a place like this,” I said.
Dupres laughed, and a wide toothy grin spread across her face.
“You want to try one of them? You really haven’t lived until you do. Perhaps for an exchange?”
I suppose the ‘Madame’ wasn’t just a polite term of respect. “It’s not my sort of thing, really. I’m not in the habit of paying someone to pretend to like me.”
“Oh, here they don’t pretend to like you. That’s really the point.”
“I appreciate the offer, truly; they’re all — lovely — ladies, of course. But even if I did enjoy such delightful interactions, I haven’t the coin for entertainment.”
“I’m told your powers — moderate excess?” she asked.
“Yes, to a degree.”
“Excess is always a problem here. Sometimes the girls are not enthusiastic, and sometimes the customers are a little too enthusiastic. I could make use of someone capable of rounding the edges.”
“It sounds like a definite sort of problem, yes.” I can’t say precisely how I felt. Most who asked about my seductive powers did so for personal sexual interests. I must say she was the first who thought there was a business value in them. I couldn’t decide if I liked her or not. She was completely terrifying. Sometimes terrifying women are the most alluring, they have brutal femininity.
“Actually, that might help,” said Thea. “Do you think you could, ya know, turn it on?”
“The last time I did that, a girl died,” I said.
“Yeah, but I brought her back.”
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
“And then you’re — I mean, Fany slit her throat. I don’t like using my powers; they’re dangerous.”
Thea looked frustrated. “I understand; I’m sorry I asked. Look, you stick around here, I’m gonna go find Fenriss, I’ll — be back.” I slipped out of the booth. I felt bad. I’m not sure why she wanted me to turn my powers on. She didn’t work for Dupres, did she? Not that I would judge. I mean, a girl needs to make money in some way, and it’s a time-honoured vocation.
“If you were really her friend, you would do it. It would save her a lot of pain,” said Dupres.
“I don’t take your meaning?”
“Without Lucian here, the pack is, how shall we say, a bit more barbaric. Fenriss is no gentleman.”
“I see, I thought she was here on business, her — personal engagements — aren’t my concern.”
Dupres laughed. There was a lot of Fulvia in her. That kind of maternal and sultry chthonism that women attain in their middle age.
“Your friend has expensive tastes and not the coin for such delicacies. Well, every young woman is her own mint if she’s smart. Thea is nothing if not smart.”
I didn’t want to pry. I was deadly curious about what she meant though. If I asked she might tell me. If she told me I might not want to know, or worse I might not be able to hide that I knew. Participating in gossip is a low sort of thing. I knew Thea was sensitive on the topic. As someone oriented towards being sociable and networking, I had a natural tendency to want to find out about people, but I had to play it subtly. You never want to let someone think you’re indiscreet. Otherwise, they’ll never tell you the good stuff.
“I’ve taken up enough of your evening, Madame Dupres, thank you. I will shuffle about and make the best of my time in your club.” I left with a polite bow.
Le Roissy was an immense converted vintners storehouse underground. It had low ceilings, which didn’t bother me as I was rather short. Every few metres there were supporting pillars of brick. The place smelled of wine and earth and there were many small and private booths around the walls. The centre was an open dance floor, thick with creatures of the night. All of them writhing, dancing, or hunting.
There were Leathermen with their gimps or Hanky wearing bottoms, Dominatrices of every style, including several in military uniform. Fiendish vampires crawled through the crowd on the lookout for willing backroom donors to their blood lust. Sadistic butch dykes in spiked jackets sprawled against the bar. It was a circus of freaks, like something out of a demonic Norman Rockwell painting. Something to display all the least wholesome things that life could offer. There was a profound beauty to it all. A sinful aesthetic of excess and depravity.
I was so engrossed by the scene that I bumped into a cowled woman and almost knocked her to the floor.
“Watch it you freak,” said Fany Deveraux as she pulled back her cowl.
“I almost apologised. Good thing I realised who you were; I might have wasted good manners.”
Fany crushed out a smile that I don’t think she wanted to show. “Careful, I’m a Marquess now.”
“I suppose they’ll let anyone be one these days. Two more cup sizes and I might add an honorific.”
Fany clucked her tongue and turned her head to the side. Her eyes were amused. You can’t hide it in your eyes. “What are you doing here? Is that little snake with you?”
“Buy me a drink and I might tell you.” It was so much easier to flirt with someone when you disliked them. She may have been Charles-Francois’ daughter but as far as I was concerned she was a dead woman walking. And she was uncouth in the extreme. I chose to be respectful when I wanted to be, there were no longer any laws that required it, and I didn’t feel that Fany deserved any respect.
“How did you even get in here if you’re not with the snake? There’s no way you’re rich enough for a membership.” Fany crossed her arms and tilted her shoulders back.
“If I knew you were employed here, I wouldn’t have bothered. Fetch us a drink, will you? “Talking to snobs makes me thirsty.”
Fany leaned forward as her head wobbled. “You shouldn’t try to play this game with me. You’ll lose. Tell me why you’re here.”
“I told you, I’m parched.” I knew this game. The first one to give in and answer truthfully was the loser. She was pumping me for information, and I would be damned if I was going to give this slattern an inch.
Fany faked a yawn. “Your banter is tiresome and boring, boy.”
“Yeah, I know. I’m working on it. I got it out of a correspondence course, How to Seduce Débutantes in Ten Easy Lessons. If I get really good they’ll send me a certificate and everything.”
Fany smiled again. This time she didn’t wipe it off her face. “You’re clever, I’ll give you that. What was your name again?”
“So, is that a no to the drink?”
“Get it yourself.”
“Changed my mind; why do you care why I’m here?”
“I don’t care, I’m just making conversation. What’s your name?”
“So I’m worth your conversation now? I feel so blessed.”
“You’ve graduated from donkey to horse in my esteem.”
“At least I’m still in the category of things you might mount.”
“I don’t see why you’re being so cagey about the snake, you should be ashamed of your manners talking to me like this.”
“I’ll be sure to grieve over your disappointment for minutes. Very long minutes.”
Fany turned on her heel and walked towards a booth. I looked around and spotted Thea against the far wall, talking with a tall shadowy man with a wild mane of blond hair and a pencil-thin beard that outlined his square jaw.
Fany turned back over her shoulder. “Coming?”
I slipped into the seat across from her. I suppose I would be coming after all. She was trying to get something out of me, I decided I should return the favour. She was a spiteful snob, and I detested her, but she was particularly well-dressed in a leather pencil skirt. The kind that made her look like a sadistic schoolmistress.
I felt the modern day had really lost something by calling them teachers. Modern gentlemen were robbed of the anxiety-ridden confusions of the first time they really noticed the erotic curve of a grown woman’s hip. Once you notice it, calling the woman it belongs to a teacher makes them significantly less exciting.
She wore a black velvet bustier that made her torso look long and equine with a sharp sort of sweep. It made me painfully aware of the injustice of the universe that I could never quite fill that length as much as I yearned to. Her firey red hair was wrapped into a stern bun at the top of her head, the universal crown of sexual severity, of the sensuality of an educated and very serious sort of woman. So yes, I was coming, and yes I was going to continue the conversation. I’m still a man after all. I don’t have to like a woman to want to sleep with her. Liking is really beside the point; it usually just gets in the way.