The Pairing(15)

“Phil Collins,” Blond Calum says with a sage nod. “Good lad.”

“Good lad,” I agree.

When the lights go down and the curtain rises on the luminous heart-shaped stage, I remind myself not to get sappy. I don’t watch Kit’s reactions from the corner of my eye. I choose the loveliest dancer on stage, and I focus only on her. It helps.

But it doesn’t prepare me for the way Kit catches my elbow as we stand for the final bow. I find him gazing at me, golden in the chandelier glow.

“Do you still want to make up for last night?” he says under the cheers of the audience.

“What?”

“When I couldn’t go out with you,” he says. “Do you want to have that drink now? My favorite bar is around the corner, if you want to see it.”

It’s the fault of nostalgia, of my surprisingly successful morning, of blurry memories of Ewan McGregor’s earnest belting and Kit spinning me under a disco ball, that I hear myself say, “Yeah, why not?”


We head off from the Moulin Rouge’s red windmill, down the wide Boulevard de Clichy, past sex shop after topless bar after sex shop. Girls grasp their heaving bosoms in portraits over shop fronts full of mannequins in lacy red chemises. Flashing displays advertise vibrators in every imaginable shape and size, and some I’ve never even thought to imagine.

“I hope that’s where we’re going,” I say, pointing at a three-story emporium, ominously emblazoned with the name SEXODROME in neon red letters. I’m nervous and searching for jokes. “I’ve always wanted to go to”—I drop my voice to the guttural register of monster truck announcer—“THE SEXODROME.”

Unable to resist a bit, Kit replies, “You need a Parisian mailing address to get into THE SEXODROME.”

“Canceling THE SEXODROME for discriminatory business practices.”

He laughs and takes a left at a violet-painted club called Pussy’s, down a sloping side street with ivy-covered apartments and fenced private gardens. At a bright red door beside a window promising pints for four euros, he stops.

“This is it.”

Kit’s favorite bar is the width of my room at the hostel.

“Are we gonna fit in there?”

Kit just smiles and pushes inside.

My love of cramped dives is extensive and well-documented, but I don’t see anything unique about this one. Standard-issue scuffed bar top and sagging liquor shelves, the usual worn barstools. Maybe Kit has cultivated a sentimental attachment to absinthe drippers. It’s too loud to hear each other, so he has to lean in and speak right into my ear.

“I’ll get you a drink.” His breath hits my neck, tangling in my hair. “Still the same?”

I do want my usual whiskey ginger, but I don’t want him to think he can use the same old map to navigate me.

“I’ll have a boulevardier, actually,” I say. Kit pulls away, blinking. “Are there tables in the back?”

“Ah, yes, should be,” he says. “Go through the doors at the end of the hall.”

I squeeze past the bar and down a crowded little hallway, where an antique wardrobe stands against the back wall, its doors carved with scrolls of leaves. These can’t be the doors Kit meant, but they’re the only ones here. At the risk of looking like I’m raiding coat check, I grab both handles and pull.

Oh.

The back of the wardrobe has been cut out, revealing a hidden room decorated like a hotel suite Oscar Wilde would have done opium in. Violets and palms fan out on the peeling wallpaper behind red-shaded sconces. Two men drink cognac on armchairs draped with dustcloths. Beside them, a group of women gossip atop nightstands piled with cushions, coupe glasses glinting on a battered travel trunk. A couple toasts champagne in a sawed—open claw-foot tub. And at the center of it all is a huge antique bed.

It’s exactly the kind of place I love, the kind of place Kit knows I love. I’m a speakeasy person. I love a brilliant secret.

The only open seat is a corner of the bed, and when I sit, my ass plummets into the downy mattress. Kit finds me wriggling out of the abyss, elbowing cushions to pull myself upright.

“Oh, you got the bed,” he says, setting the drinks down on a nearby stool. “I’ve never gotten to sit here before.”

“I should warn you, it’s not very supportive—”

Too late. Kit sits, and the mattress collapses under his weight, dumping him backward and sideways until we’re piled on top of each other.

Except for the collision on the bus and our cease-fire handshake, Kit and I haven’t touched. Now, he’s everywhere. All of his body covers all of mine at once, his body heat and the scent of lavender surrounding me. His knees crash against my knees, his hips pushing mine deeper into the bed, and the only way out is for him to twist around and plant his hand on my other side, bracketing me in his arms. He’s so close, I can almost make out the threads of the flowers on his shirt.

“Ah,” he grunts, eyes dark and unfocused. “Hi. Sorry.”

He exhales a short puff of air that ripples the hair around his face. An evil part of my brain tells me to tuck it behind his ear.

“I like the bar,” I say conversationally.

“I thought you might.”

“Almost as exciting as the Sexodrome.”

“It’s actually pronounced THE SEXODROME.”