This is my entry for the One Night in XXX contest. Please enjoy yourself.
They exist.
I have seen them, talked with them, moved with them. I have eaten their food, drank their drinks, slept in their beds.
They are individuals so rich, so powerful, that they do not exist — not in our world at least.
They are a breed apart.
You will find no record of them.
No corporate prospectus lists their names.
Their pictures feature in no school year book.
Not one has ever so much as received a parking ticket.
Their faces never appear on magazine covers or newspaper pages.
No bank has — at least not knowingly — an account with one of them.
No university has one of their names on a wall of distinguished alumni.
Their faces are absent from the contents of check-out aisle magazine racks.
They feature on no voter list. No Department of Motor Vehicle database, no tax file, no home registry bears their names.
Yet they exist and, as the poet said, they have spread their wings before me and I shall never be the same.
Their power is greater than that of presidents, international bankers, corporate CEOs or Latin drug lords.
No, they are not the jejune fantasy of paranoid basement-dwellers. They are not Illuminati and hardly think of themselves as a new world order, for they are anything but new. They have no wish to spread AIDS or cause wars. Such fictions are beneath them; they are far more indirect.
To be sure, if they so wished, DC residents would wake up tomorrow morning to find 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue a pleasant wooded park. Tin-pot peninsular despots would initiate nuclear wars, economies would collapse, rivers would change their courses.
If they wished.
Don't mock — I've seen them in action. Small things, perhaps, but one may deduce an elephant from but one cross-section of tusk.
They have the power, but they are the most subtle beings on the planet. For them, their unimaginable power exists to not be used.
Think of the most complex machine in existence, one composed of endless banks and serried rows of mutually-interacting levers. So constructed, a small child could push lightly on a handle on one side and thereby cause a mountain to move on the other.
They are that machine. They are those levers.
I have since spent years trying to trace their movements, find their abodes. That much is impossible or, if not quite, then probably life-changing to those approaching too close. Probably not lethal in the normal sense, of course. A Mafia don will hesitate not at all to publicly and colourfully terminate an overly-curious reporter, if only as a warning to other meddlesome scribblers. They would never conceive of such gaucherie. Instead, the reporter might receive a far more lucrative job offer from a journal on the other side of the country. Or, perhaps, a far more interesting story would present itself, leading the reporter to investigate things far away from Them. And, if necessary, another and another, ones if needs be leading to the rise of mountains, the fall of thrones.
It has happened. They are the fulfillers of dreams, the stealers of souls.
+
"Félix," she said. "Please do not be upset, but this place is far too noisy. Would you care to come back to my apartment for a drink?"
I'd wandered into the
Ste Anne
to get out of a sudden downpour. It was not a club I had ever heard of, much less been into before and the alley it was on was not one I normally walked to and from work. But today there'd been a sidewalk ripped up on my normal route. A delivery van parked across the sidewalk a block later had caused me to slip into the alley in hopes of regaining my course. Then, with remarkable speed, the skies had clouded over and rain had begun to come down in monsoon quantities. I had ducked into a shallow doorway in a wall of alley bricks. Just a foot deep, it had provided very little cover from the hammering rain.
Huddling there, I'd noticed an ever-so-slightly-tarnished brass sign mounted on the brick wall inside the doorway. Not much larger than a double deck of playing cards, it simply said, in elegant script:
Ste Anne
Pour nos péchés
Hesitant, yet eager to escape the rain, I pulled on the handle. To my surprise, it opened easily. Inside, it was warm; a short flight of steps led down to almost-darkness and barely-perceptible music.
I was met at the bottom by a man in a tuxedo, obviously a well-dressed doorman — a gate-keeper by whatever name. There was a curly earphone in his left ear. He examined me with no distain but certainly no more enthusiasm than I deserved.
"Are you open?" I asked.
"Are you a member, sir?" he responded.
"Um, no. But may I at least just wait here until the rain stops?"
He listened. Even from down here, the elemental roar outside could be heard. He looked me over, feet to head, before raising his left wrist to his mouth and whispering something. A few seconds later, I could barely hear some sort of response from his earpiece. With that, he smiled.
"Sir will please take a seat at the bar." With that, he opened the inner door and stepped out of my way.
While hardly dark inside, the lighting was, shall we say, carefully contrived — bright enough to read a newspaper, yet still soft enough to make complexions softer, women look younger.
I thought at first that it was a small room. I then realized that I couldn't really see how big it was, for the place was broken up into small spaces by walls and dividers, allowing one to see not more than 10 metres in any direction. The decor was hard to define, but was above all comfortable, designed to put one at one's ease while still seeming to be constructed of fifty-dollar bills and gold sovereigns. There were paintings and etchings on the wall which, even to my layman's eyes, belonged in some high-end gallery to be
oohed
and
ahhed
at by impressionable visitors and connoisseurs alike.
It was the smell of the place which struck me next — vanilla, oranges, leather and aged fine cigars. It was a solid, respectable smell, comforting in every sense of the word.
The central bar in the main room looked like what bars everywhere aspired to be when they grow up. I could mention polished brass, mahogany, crystal — if it pleases you to imagine something else, feel free, for it was present. The rows of bottles on its glass shelves contained some old friends of the single-malt variety, some expressions I had long dreamed of trying and many I had not even read about.
I was obviously out of my league here. Rather dazed, I sat at the bar, trying to listen for the sound of the rain. Inside however, it was dead quiet.
A starched man of medium height and indeterminate age appeared on the other side of the polished bar.
"What may I get sir?"
I shook my head. "No, thank you. I'm not a member — just hiding from a storm."
He smiled. "Ste Anne always provides the first drink, sir. It is our policy and..." here he smiled again, "...my privilege."
I pointed at a scotch whose very existence I had only heard whispered of in whisky aficionado magazines. The bottle appeared in his hand a moment later.
"Sir does not look like one who takes ice," he said, placing a heavy crystal glass on the bar and pouring a generous, unmetered shot. He placed a small, matching pitcher half-full of water beside the glass.
I added a couple of drops of water to the golden liquid, swirled the glass. He stood quietly, patiently, as if awaiting my endorsement.
Complex and deep, it tasted like a toddler's Christmas — an endless procession of unfolding surprises, all delightful. I closed my eyes, floated through to the sublime finish.
An eternity later, I opened my eyes, nodded at him and tendered my thanks. He nodded in his turn and stepped away into wherever it is that superb bartenders are elevated to for magnificent service.
The lingering taste of that first sip continued to fill my nostrils and I suddenly felt relaxed, at home. I began to examine the place in more detail.
There were perhaps a dozen others — guests? members? patrons? They seemed to mostly be in pairs or small parties, mainly but not exclusively male. One older gentleman was reading a newspaper, most were engaged in quiet conversation. One couple were eating. No, not eating — in the Ste Anne, one clearly did not merely 'eat', one
dined.
Looking over the circular bar, I suddenly noticed a woman sitting on the other side, visible through a gap in the rows of bottles.
I was, to be honest, stunned. Hers was an ethereal beauty, unworldly, alien — certainly so to my circles. It was a elegance, a loveliness any top-flight fashion model would sell her anorexic soul for.
Next to the superficial, brazen tackiness of those adorning our red carpets on awards nights, the woman was sophistication personified, femininity at its purest. Mother Eve must have looked like that the very instant after her creation by the Almighty, before even the purity of pre-fall Eden had had a chance to corrupt her.
I could describe her if you wished — things like medium height, a fine figure, curly dark hair. None of those things, no single part of them, would be unusual and none in and of themselves were exceptional. Put together as a package however, I had never seen a woman so lovely, so utterly desirable. I found myself staring, more in wonder than in lust.
She was wearing a simple, form-fitting grey dress of the finest wool. I knew enough about women's fashions to realize that such garments are either very cheap or else are utterly beyond the reach of ordinary women. This one was not cheap. It would have been appropriate in imperial purple.
She looked up from her drink and caught me staring. I flushed, mouthed 'sorry' at her and turned away.
Briefly. Very briefly, for I couldn't help myself.
My eyes were drawn back to her, as if tethered. This time, she was looking at me. Without breaking eye contact, she took a sip from the glass on the bar in front of her. Putting it down, she licked her lips, slowly. Her hand came up to catch a strand of her hair, rolled it around one finger.
I couldn't look away.
She smiled gently, rose and slowly walked around the bar to my side.
My heart began to beat faster and faster.
Her walk as she approached was as graceful as any falcon drifting the high winds.
I began to stammer an apology, but she cut me off with a finger raised to my lips.
"I have been hoping you would come," she said with a little smile. Her voice was rich, melodious; she sounded like the scotch had tasted. There was a faint accent but I couldn't place it.
