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  “Stanley, come see who’s here,” she called over her shoulder. “I’m really happy you decided to come. Stanley wasn’t sure . . .”

  He appeared behind Tracey and moved to kiss Mora. It was the first time I’d seen him dressed – patent leather loafers, loud green slacks, loose patterned shirt open four buttons. He looked better in a towel.

  When he kissed Mora’s neck, he looked up at me from under her ear, blowing her hair away, his stiff palms moving down her back to cup the soft weight of her ass.

  “My queen for the evening.” He smiled.

  Tracey frowned at this and took my hand from her breast, leading me into the apartment.

  She showed me where I could hang our coats, playing the hostess. “I bet he says that to all the girls,” I said.

  She smiled brightly and excused herself. There were more people at the door, and Stanley and Mora were holding up traffic. “I don’t know where we’re going to put them all. If people don’t start moving into the bedrooms, this is going to turn into a cocktail party – you know what I mean?”

  People were sitting on couches and chairs and on the carpeted floor, passing around joints and talking about lawn care, good gas mileage, swingers’ clubs – and relationships.

  Relationships. It might have been a party of middle-aged people anywhere in America, except they weren’t talking about business because, for swingers, it’s not status that’s important – what you do – but what you look like, and what turns you on. They were talking about the arrangements men and women make in order to balance desire with duty. The structures of love. Marital balance sheets.

  I listened because it was an opportunity to hear how serious swingers – the people who pursued this life week after week, year after year – dealt with the problems Mora and I had encountered since we stepped outside the closed circle of marriage.

  As a group, they were no more nor less attractive than the crowd you’d find on a Saturday night in a disco in Fort Lee, New Jersey. No matter what shape their bodies were in, they dressed in tight, light clothing; they wore gold chains and digital watches, and the men tended to show more chest than their women showed cleavage. They smoked a lot of cigarettes but they didn’t drink much.

  At first, their faces were hard to distinguish, because the only light in the large living room came from recessed spots set behind greenery that grew on one wall, over a bubbling fountain constructed of plaster made to look like stone. Another wall was decorated with paintings of bull fights and crossed swords on wooden plaques, but the opposite two walls were glass, to take advantage of a magnificent view of the Manhattan skyline at night. I was sitting on the floor, in a line with the Empire State Building, and when I stood up I could see the twinkling lights of the city reflected in the inky blackness of the Hudson. Some people were looking through a telescope set on a tripod in the corner of the room.

  You could tell the party hadn’t really got underway by the lack of people in the bedrooms. We strolled in and out of four of them, and saw a few people having serious conversations or simply petting, before I noticed a brunette lying on a bed masturbating. Her skirt was thrown up around her waist and her ankles were locked together. She had both hands between her legs, her back was arched, and the sweat poured from her forehead. Her eyes were shut tight.

  A man wearing a white turtleneck and blue blazer – a man in his mid-fifties with a grey toothbrush moustache – was kneeling on the bed next to her, with the intent expression of a man helping his wife give birth by breathing with her. He didn’t notice us.

  Both their faces were bright red and she was babbling when he put his hand on her thigh.

  Her eyes snapped open and she brought her hands up to hold out to him. He clasped them and kissed her fingers, one by one.

  “Can I get you a drink, darling?” he asked solicitously. He had an English accent.

  “You’re not getting me drunk tonight.”

  “No, of course not. That’s not my intention. But I do want you to have a good time. I want you to mix with people and be gay.”

  He treated her like she might explode, like someone who’s just been released from a mental hospital. I was fascinated. She jerked her skirt down when she noticed us standing there in the darkness.

  “I wasn’t putting on a show,” she growled.

  “Didn’t mean to intrude, but it was getting crowded in the living room,” I explained hastily.

  “Oh, hello,” the Englishman said, stepping around the bed and holding out his hand. “Peter’s my name. This is Johanna.”

  He and Mora smiled at each other.

  Johanna looked coldly at me. “You’re a voyeur,” she accused.

  “Look, if you wanted to play with yourself in private, you could have stayed home and drawn the blinds.”

  I was glad she hadn’t; she was ravishing, with long dark hair loose about her shoulders and breasts heaving beneath her sweater. She had delicate nostrils and a thin, painted mouth and her eyes burned with frustration.

  “Wait a minute, darling,” Peter said. “No reason to get upset. We’ll go get some drinks and give you a chance to get yourself together.” He pushed us out and closed the door.

  “The first attractive woman besides you I’ve seen, and she’s crazy,” I whispered to Mora.

  “She’s off, tonight,” Peter said. “But Johanna is as changeable as New England weather. You just have to be patient. When she’s good she’s very, very good, but when she’s bad . . .” He sighed, and shook his head. Then he looked at me and brightened. “But maybe your meeting was fortuitous. I’ve known her to start out an evening hating someone, and then surprise me. She likes the unexpected move.”

  “It must be exhausting to deal with her,” Mora said.

  “I know she’s much too young for me. She’s on her own trip, as you say here. She says I can accompany her on it, if I want to, but I’m not allowed to complain.”

  We refilled our glasses and he went back to collect Johanna. While we’d been gone, the crowd in the living room had thinned out.

  Then I heard a familiar voice. Stanley led Vy and Charles into the room, feathers of snow in their hair. They looked glamourous and happy and the talk in the room stopped for a minute to register their presence. Stanley made an attempt to introduce them, but Vy stopped him.

  “Surely I haven’t been gone that long, Stanley – that people have forgotten. This is like a family reunion. Hello, Peter. Is that Johanna in the corner, over there?”

  “Hello, Vy,” I said.

  “I was hoping you’d be here. Baby, it’s so good to see you! Did you know they’d be here, Charles?”

  Our reunion was a four-way hug in the middle of the living room; for the moment we were a closed circle, oblivious of everyone around us.

  “I hear you liked Plato’s,” Charles said. He smirked.

  “You know we did,” Mora told him.

  Vy examined us both with a look of mock severity. “So while the cat’s away, the mice played? You let the Devil tempt you – you couldn’t wait for me?”

  She exchanged greetings with the other people in the room – apparently she knew them all – and sat down on the rug to pull off her tight velvet trousers. Like a restless hen on a nest, she squirmed provocatively until her long white legs were bare. The dark blonde tuft of hair at the bottom of her belly gleamed like wheat. She reached for her big leather bag and pulled out a long madras skirt to wrap around her waist.

  “No more underwear, thank God. For some reason, Maurice insisted on lingerie in London. He said that his friends would be shocked if I didn’t have any, but I think he had a kinkier motive.”

  She hadn’t lost her ability to grab the centre of attention. Every eye in the room watched her get into her skirt. What was it that made me think she was changed – or had my perception of her altered? The circles under her eyes were darker, she’d braided her hair, her fingernails were bitten – but it wasn’t the details that made me see her fresh; it was an aura, as if s
he’d learned something about herself in England and the knowledge was spreading in circles from the centre of her being.

  Peter handed her a drink, and Stanley asked her about England. She was gracious, a queen with her court. Maybe that was what I noticed about her: a new authority that enabled her to hold the floor with ease.

  “I met more submissives in England than I could shake a stick at,” she chuckled drily. “And more lords this-and-that with beautiful soft eyes and eccentric tastes . . . They all have old names and large country places with butlers, and their great soft eyes get wickedly moist when you flick a riding crop. Leather is very popular, very chic with Maurice’s friends.” S&M was unexplored territory for us.

  Mora and I looked quizzically at each other. We had only the vaguest notion of what she meant, but I could see that everyone else knew what Vy was talking about and that she was a star.

  Charles walked into the kitchen to get himself a drink – I think he was probably feeling neglected – and I followed him, hoping that he could enlighten me.

  “What is a ‘submissive’?” I asked.

  “Stop putting me on, Richard. You’re being ingenuous.”

  I held up my hands. “I ask in all innocence. I really don’t know what she’s talking about. She’s changed – hasn’t she?”

  He stared at me, his lower lip dropped in thought. “You really have some catching up to do . . .”

  Peter had been pouring himself a straight vodka without ice at the counter next to where we were standing. He broke in. “Excuse me, I couldn’t help overhearing what you said, Richard. About Vy, I mean. I’ve been a fan of hers since we met – I’d call it an encounter, because it was very dramatic, but she may have forgotten – at a party at the UN Plaza last winter. Do you remember how grand she was, Charles? Some of us were in awe.”

  “Tell him what a submissive is, Peter.”

  “I’d rather talk about Vy. She’s much more fun to talk about than my Johanna. Vy is a queen, but Johanna has become a pumpkin. Vy understands what a terrible responsibility she has. There isn’t enough of her to go around.”

  “You lost me,” I admitted. “I thought I knew something about Vy, but I guess I don’t.”

  “There’s a lot people don’t know about Vy. She shows everyone a slightly different angle – it’s definitely one of her charms.”

  Having said this, he drifted off in search of Johanna.

  “I’m still in the dark,” I said to Charles.

  “The English don’t know how to get to the point. Vy says sex with them is like a Japanese tea ceremony.”

  “I have the feeling that I’m going to have to ask Vy to explain – you’re being just as vague as Peter.”

  “And you’re being dense. One trip to Plato’s and you end up in the inner circle of the sex world on the East Coast, and yet you won’t see what’s right in front of your eyes. Vy is a dominatrix – that’s why Maurice took her to England. Do you know what she carries in that big leather bag? Whips. Leather cuffs. Nipple clamps. Dildoes. Rush . . .”

  I shook my head. “You could have told me.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Richard. You fell in love with her, didn’t you?”

  The living room was almost empty. I wandered down the hall towards the bedrooms, wondering what scenes I’d find Mora and Vy and Charles in the middle of, hoping that Tracey would be sitting somewhere by herself.

  The first bedroom I walked into was occupied by people I didn’t know. I stood and watched them for a while, feeling curiously lustless. Mora was in the next room, on a couch with Charles and Stanley and Tracey. It was a four-way connection: Stanley kneeled behind Mora, who had Charles in her mouth while Tracey kneeled above Charles’s lips. Stanley wore a bottle of Rush on a chain around his neck and I watched him lean over Mora’s back to hold the bottle to her nostrils before bringing it back to his own nose. They looked like a team of acrobats, totally absorbed in a difficult manoeuvre they hadn’t rehearsed for.

  In the third bedroom, Vy was sitting in an easy chair, next to a queen-sized bed two couples were romping about on. Peter was kneeling before her, caressing and kissing her feet. She was idly untwisting her braids, looking bored.

  “I’m glad you’re back,” I said, touching her hair.

  “I thought about you over there, Richard. Maybe more than I thought about Charles – isn’t that strange?”

  “Charles just told me how naive I am.”

  “Naive?”

  “About you. And what you carry in your bag.”

  She blushed. “I hope he told you good things.”

  “You’re a star.”

  “I do what turns me on when I’m in the mood. Are you shocked?”

  “Why should I be? It was just something I didn’t know about. Now I know.”

  “Does it make any difference?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  She reached for my hand and pressed it to her check and we remained like that for a while, staring and not saying anything.

  Peter stood up, realizing that he’d lost Vy’s attention. “Have you seen Johanna, old man?”

  “She’s in the living room.”

  “Oh, God. I’d better go rescue her. She’ll be getting drunk, and then she’s impossible to deal with.”

  “Poor Peter. He can’t handle that woman at any time. He’s an old teddy bear.”

  “I want to make love to you.”

  “I would like that very much.”

  She stood up and I pulled her into my arms, pressing her long body into mine so that I could feel her knees and pelvic bones and breasts. She shuddered, and I felt it go down her body.

  “If Charles and Mora saw us right now, I don’t think they’d understand,” she whispered in my ear.

  I knew what she meant – that fucking was all right, but a long embrace was a sign that something serious was going on.

  “Can’t leave you two alone for a minute,” Charles said, from behind us. Mora was with him and they were both naked. A streak of semen glistened on Mora’s left thigh and her hair was matted. Her eyes looked like she’d been on a long trip.

  “Enjoying yourself, lover?” Vy asked, stepping away from me.

  “It’s like a geriatrics convention here. Mora and I are ready to play, and everyone is sitting around talking about relationships and the etiquette of a good swing. Can you imagine?”

  I kissed Mora and she snuggled into my chest.

  “How are you doing?”

  “I’m throbbing from my toes up. I could go on all night, but Charles is right – there’s nobody left to party with.”

  “We could always go to Plato’s.”

  Charles and Vy didn’t like the idea. I wasn’t crazy about it myself, but I wanted more time with Vy. I knew that Charles was getting restless and, if he went home, Vy would go with him.

  “If you feel like being adventuresome,” Vy suggested, “there’s a new place called Night Moves we could try. Maurice told me about it.”

  “I’m game,” Charles said, “as long as it’s not the same old faces.”

  “It’s on-premise, like Plato’s. Very hip, Maurice said.”

  “How do we get there?” Mora asked. “It’s too late for a bus.”

  “We’ll grab a cab, or maybe we can find a ride,” Vy said.

  “Let’s do it,” I agreed.

  “Who has a car?”

  “I have an idea,” Vy volunteered. “I’ll talk to Peter.”

  We all groaned in unison. Not Peter.

  “Have faith, children. Don’t forget that I carry special powers in my bag. Let me deal with this.”

  Charles and Mora dressed while Vy went off to talk with Peter. Ten minutes later, she came to get the three of us and she had her coat on. Obviously she had conquered.

  “Johanna is going to drive us in Peter’s Cadillac. He’ll get a ride with someone.”

  “How did you manage that?”

  “He wants a private session with me. And Johanna wants to pa
rty. She’s weird, and she’s getting drunk, but I approve of her nuttiness.”

  “Just a bunch of old farts,” Johanna said when we left, jingling the keys of the Cadillac in her hand. When Peter had tried to kiss her goodbye she’d turned her head so that he was presented with her ear.

  Mora and I sat in the front seat with her. We had to hang on to each other when she took the corners, but she was a good driver. She steered the big beast with one hand, swinging wide around taxis and surprised pedestrains. She glided over the dark slick streets, wet with the melting snow, like a skate on ice.

  SEVEN

  Night Moves was discreetly planted in the middle of a block of factory buildings and warehouses. Noisy with hand carts, trucks and honking traffic during the day, at midnight it was a closed drawer. The only signs of life on the empty street were the coloured lights of the firehouse across from the club. I could see firemen inside polishing a giant red engine.

  The light snow had stopped and a thin layer of white slush covered the sidewalks. Vy strode regally in front, head back, heels tapping impatiently.

  “Pinch me,” Mora said when we stopped at the glass front of the club to wait for Johanna to park her car. The sign said night moves, but otherwise it looked like the wholesale soda and beer distributor next door, blank and black and anonymous.

  I knew what Mora meant, so I kissed her instead.

  “Yes, it’s true. We’re doing this again.”

  “Just like we know what the hell we’re doing.”

  “Well, at least we all share the same fantasy. We have that in common.” I was excited but apprehensive.

  The five of us were a crowd in the pocket-sized reception area. There was a cigarette machine, a pay phone, a few hand-lettered posters too small to read in the dark (one announced a wet T-shirt contest), and – standing behind a counter next to the curtained entrance – a thin young black man with tack-sharp smartass eyes. He recognized Vy and made a small fuss over her while he checked our coats.

  “And I thought this was going to be a slow night,” he drawled, looking Mora and Johanna over.