"Freak?" I think to myself. Is that who I am dealing with? Here I am, sliding open the steel plate door of a warehouse in an alley at 2:00 am on a Thursday morning wondering if I am going to be jumped and left for dead. I do not normally go wandering around at this hour of the night in places like this but there is a reason....
It all started so innocently, the two-hour conversation at a bar one Tuesday night. It flowed and felt right- it was evident there was a mutual interest. When I decided to leave, an exchange of business cards, because these days you do not want somebody to know where you live...it is just safer. And now, I find myself in the midst of something intriguing and bizarre.
At first I thought there would be the usual obligatory midday telephone conversations and maybe a date. Instead, it started with a telephone message left for me on my office voice mail at 4:00 a.m. on a Sunday morning telling me to not trash an e-mail from noirfriend34@blahblahblahISP.com because it was coming from her and was not spam or some infected file from a stranger. Well, I got the e-mail and it was not what I expected. It was cold, direct, to the point- no-frills. Time, date and place. Nothing more. It left me guessing.
I slide the door open and step inside. I peer in, no killers in here. An envelope hangs for me on an elevator door in the dim light of the alcove. I opened it and am instructed to take the elevator to the third floor. The elevator key is inside the envelope. Where am I? What the hell am my doing here this hour the morning? Why am I doing this again? It's turning out to be just like the two prior times. Yes, two prior times. Intrigued? The e-mails would come forty eight hours in advance and tell me when and where to go. The first time I reluctantly went despite the fact that it was at a bizarre hour in the middle of the week. Sometimes, curiosity kills a cat. Other times, sex drives the dog. I leave it for you decide which when I am.
The first time, she laid out her expectations, telling me what to do and how to do it. The second time, I was on my own to meet her expectations. She mentored me when I demonstrated a flaw. This time I am obliged to exhibit perfection or else...
I turn the key, the elevator shudders and takes me up. It is anticipation which courses through my veins. But the anticipation only serves to heighten the expectation of the lust that smolders deep within my soul... I am addicted to it, I cannot escape it. I do not know what she wants from me, but what I do know is that I cannot figure it out right now. I am left guessing. It is clear to me that despite our conversation in the bar, this is not personal, it is purely sexual, and at a level I have never known from a woman.
As the elevator eases to a stop my breath shortens knowing the door is about to slide open and I will meet her. I turn the key to lock the elevator on the third floor- access is everything. The door slides open to a dark room. My eyes need to adjust, I do not see anything but dim lights across the room. I smell something that is clearly not the warehouse smell I anticipated. It is some kind of incense. I step out of the elevator and into a dark cavernous room.
Each time we met in a different place, in a different setting- a closed office, a closed library and a docked sailboat. Once again, this time is something new. The room is large, maybe 30 by 30. The ceiling is about 10, maybe 12, feet high and the room is stark save for some carpeting and painted drywall. The wall opposite the elevator door is bricked and what looks like a platform for a bed juts out into the middle of the room....
...and there she sits on the edge of the platform. All around her are small votive candles. Maybe a hundred, maybe a hundred and a half, illuminating the wall behind her and the floor before her, creating a glow in just that portion of the room. Outside the glow is pitch black. It is shrine like in appearance. Total silence, flickering candles in the dead middle of the night.
