So I was at once thirsty and uncomfortable, having difficulty breathing through the microscopic nose holes of my mask, when a woman, one of the few under six feet tall, this one wearing a Nicole Kidman mask sidled up to me.
“You’re the only one with a primate mask,” she said. “It can only mean that they want to single you out. I’d get out of here if I were you.”
I looked around me. I was in fact the only one in the large room with a non-human mask. “Who’s they?” I asked.
“Take my arm,” she said. “It’ll look suspicious otherwise.”
I took her arm and went with her through one of the closed doors at the side and then I began to wonder about her reasons for concerning herself with me in the first place.
There was another couple in the room, the man in Bruce Willis mask sitting in an overstuffed chair, the woman in Margaret Thatcher mask kneeling in front of him. They took no notice of our arrival.
My date led me by the hand to a couch on the far side of the room and before I knew it, I was asleep with my head on her lap.
When I woke, or was awakened, a paunchy man with the demeanor of a carnival barker was looming over us.
“What are we going to do with you?” he said to the fake Nicole in the hushed voice of authority. “We need this man, you know that, for our ceremony which commences {looking at his watch} in four minutes time.”
I could feel my companion shiver under the weight of my head.
“Sir, he’s not fit,” she said. “He’s running a fever and he has an injured leg as you can see.”
“Does he?” he said. He poked my leg with the point of his shoe. “This is extremely awkward, given that our guests are expecting an appropriate subject. If he can’t stand on his own two feet, I suppose we’ll have to come up with a substitute. We can’t disappoint our guests.”
“I can stand up,” I said, lifting my head just enough to see who I was dealing with — a small paunchy man wearing the mask of a demonic clown. “Would you get me my cane, which is on the floor behind you, I think.”
“Up you go, cowboy,” he said to me. “Let’s see you stand.”
I tried. I made the requisite effort, but it didn’t happen. I stood on one leg in precarious balance before folding up onto the paunchy man’s foot. He pulled his left shoe out from under me, making an odd, barely human sound in the process.
Moments after the paunchy man and my former companion left the room, two uniformed attendants appeared and lifted me from my resting place on the plush rug and, one holding my head, the other my feet, carried me from the room.
As they took me down the long corridor to the entrance, I could hear the paunchy man in the clown mask in the background, his voice amplified. “We have quite a turnout tonight for our burnt offerings sacrifice and I want to congratulate you all for being here. We are indeed fortunate to have a volunteer, a distinguished volunteer I might add for our service tonight. I’d like a well-deserved hand for…”
I never got the name. By this time, I was out the door in the moonless night, moving with bumpy dispatch, sweating from the cold, expecting to be dropped at any moment or rolled into the brush or whatever the grunting attendants had chosen for my final disposition.
54th Night
I woke slumped behind the wheel of my rental car, which had an empty space where the CD player had once held sway. I didn’t allow it to matter. In most other ways, I was feeling improved. Waking up in opposition to the expectations you brought with you on going to sleep can be its own pleasure.
Then it struck me that the woman at the Nameless Club, who had saved me from some unspeakable fate, had put herself in danger as a consequence.
So I went off, retraced steps I had taken in another’s car, to find the estate in the woods the team of scientists had taken me to for celebratory recreation.
I had no way of knowing how much time had elapsed — my watch had stopped at midnight (or was it noon?) — but I was driven by a sense of urgency. I drove for several miles without spotting the off-road turn we had taken — there had been a yellow reflector as landmark — and so I assumed I had missed it and I went back the way I had come. And then back again the other way.
I tried two side roads that led nowhere or at least not where I needed to go.
I stopped at a gas station and, after filling up, I asked the clerk in the connecting convenience store if he knew of an estate in the vicinity hidden from the road by high walls.
“That’s funny,” the clerk said, rubbing his chin. “You be the second person this morning to come into the store with the same question.”
“And how did you answer him?” I asked.
“I didn’t get no chance to tell him anything,” he said, “because it was a woman not a man.” He smiled slyly. “Didn’t answer her either. Some men came in after her and she went off with them before I could say what I would have said.”
“What would you have said to her?”
“You’re kidding me, right?” he said. “I would have said I’m not from around here. You should ask my boss, but he’s not on the premises at the moment.”
“When’s your boss coming back?”
“I don’t expect him back,” he said, “because he’s already back. He’s already back but he’s in the back.”
“Well, I’d like to talk to your boss,” I said. “Does he ever make a personal appearance?”
“Yeah, no,” he said. “Last time I called him out he nearly fired me.”
I was about to give up, about to turn and leave when it struck me to ask him to describe the woman who had preceded me in inquiring about the estate.
The woman he described, or half-described — he was interrupted by the appearance of a vaguely familiar paunchy man emerging from a door in the back — sounded, allowing for his difficulty in expressing himself, as if she could have been Molly.
As the paunchy man approached the counter, the ache in my leg, which I hadn’t felt for awhile, returned.
I decided not to pursue my inquiry and moved toward the door.
“Hey,” the clerk said, “this is the man you wanted to as a question.”
I was already by the door, had my back to the counter, when his voice stopped me. I turned slowly to get another look at the paunchy man, my mind exploding with possible questions, none of which seemed reasonable to ask. “It doesn’t really matter,” I say.
“I’m at your service,” the paunchy man said, amused at something.
“Speak up. You may not get another chance.”
I wondered if his remark was intended as a threat, which would have meant he had recognized me from the club. “I’m looking for a woman,” I said.
“We don’t have any in the store at the moment,” he said. “Leave me your number and if one comes in, I’ll give you a shout.”
“He’s been asking how to get to the club,” the clerk said.
The paunchy man reached under the counter and I kept my eye on him as I backed out the door, noting what looked like a metallic object in his hand as it reemerged, though it may only have been a trick of the light. I didn’t stay around for confirmation.
I figured they wouldn’t shoot me in front of the two other cars gassing up. That was when I noticed that someone was in the driver’s seat of my rental car, the face obscured by the light glancing off the window. It was fortunate that I couldn’t run because I was three steps away when whoever it was started up the engine and the car in a belch of thunder exploded in flame.