The House on Black Lake (22 page)

“Come on, move.”

The sign on the building we approach says
Le Beau Monde.
Georgie rings the bell with one hand and holds my wrist with the other.

“Don’t play games with me, like you do with my cousin, you hear me darlin’?”

“Games?”

“You heard me. You’re in a different world now—my world. So set yourself free of your false modesty. Sex is an appetite like any other. You feed it daily, with as much variety as possible. I rarely eat the same meal,” he says and pounds on the door.

An aroma of spicy incense spills out as Oriana opens the door of her salon. She wears a blue satin corset and thigh-high patent leather boots. “
Bonsoir,
please come in. We’ve been waiting for you.”

Georgie escorts me into the darkened salon, where a single touchier highlights the masks on the wall. The Siamese cat lies asleep, sprawled out on the cheetah.

“I’ve prepared room number five—the one you requested Georgie,” Oriana says, as we follow her through the shop, past the pedestals with winged angels and down the long hallway to the hidden rooms. “Your hostess awaits you. You will love the masks I have selected; they are two of my favorites.”

We follow Oriana into a humid room hung with pictures of dour circus scenes. Dozens of candles in glass containers line the floor along the walls. The sweet berry scent does not completely camouflage the smell of stale perspiration and something even less aromatic.

A sinewy woman hangs from a metal bar in the center of the room. She is naked except for a doe-eyed mask decorated with harlequin triangles, tufts of purple fringed eyelashes and an open mouthed smile. A mane of platinum hair cascades to the floor. She dismounts with a flip as we enter the room. “
Bonsoir
Georgie,” the woman says, “who is your lovely friend?”

Oriana introduces me to Lana and tells me she works as an aerial artist for a prominent Montreal circus.

“I remember you liked this mask,” Oriana says, and hands me the transformational mask, the gilded sunburst with a malevolent moon hidden beneath. I despise the ugly thing, but none I have seen are more favorable, so I acquiesce and place it against my face while Oriana ties the satin ribbon at the back of my head. “There,” she says as she adjusts the mask and fixes my hair. “It’s not too tight, is it?”

I shake my head, and raise my hand to feel the smooth leather stretched across my skin. An alteration of perception accompanies the fitting of the double faced persona. And with it a rush of something else, a newborn feeling, the loss of self to anonymity. Whatever I do in this room is hidden from view. My flawed spirit is unleashed—free to do whatever it chooses.

“Perfect,” Georgie says. He drops his jeans and skimpy briefs and accepts from Oriana a bird mask with fanning plumes in brilliant hues and a huge orange beak.

“What a big beautiful cock you have; it’s magnificent,” Lana says.

Georgie stations himself beneath the hanging bar and raises his arms overhead. Oriana offers a small ladder to Lana, who uses it to climb up to tie his hands with straps. “Does this hurt your wrists?” Lana asks.

“The tighter the better.”

Lana whispers something in his ear that causes him to release a laugh that sounds like the squawk of a terribly disturbed parrot. Lana returns his ghoulish laugh with a high pitched squeak.

“Alexandra, let met help you remove your clothing.” Oriana says.

“I would prefer to watch.”

“You can watch for now,” Georgie tells me, “but when they’re finished with me, you’ll be stripped for my pleasure.” He shakes his plumes for emphasis.

“We have something special planned for you, Alexandra.” An enigmatic smile crosses Oriana’s face as she tilts her head toward a table stationed in the corner of the room. It resembles the workbench of a medieval executioner. Prominently displayed is the faceless mask she tried to fit me with on the day we met.

She fiddles with the dial on a panel set into the wall and the overhead lights dim to a golden hue, while instrumental music swells up and fills the darkened room. The music is eerily familiar. It is the final song from Georgie’s concert,
The Stairway to Heaven.

“Start working on me when you’re ready, Lana. Alexandra, move to the chair in front so I can watch you watch me.” Through the slits of his mask, Georgie bores his green eyes into mine.

“Prepare yourself for an unforgettable sight, darlin’,” he says in a voice deepened to the guttural.

Lana takes a long-handled brush and a pot from the corner table. She paints Georgie with a clear gel, top to bottom, then returns to the table to retrieve an ice bucket. With silver tongs, she glides ice along his contours, at times holding it against his skin until he cries out. Replacing the tongs, she takes a small gilded torch from the workbench. As Oriana takes the volume up a notch, she lights the device and carefully navigates his body, not touching directly, but bringing the flame close enough to burn without blistering skin. She lifts the torch above her head and commences an excruciating waiting game. His chest puffs in and out as he struggles for air, making horrid noises beneath his half-cocked mask. She dips her hand into the ice bucket and surprises him with a handful of ice, while nearly singeing his preternatural endowment with the torch. This titillation of fire and ice drives Georgie into a shaking and quivering orgy of ecstatic gasps and moans.

Oriana turns the volume up yet another notch. Lana pulls herself onto the bar and rests her feet against his bound wrists. Her flaxen hair falls in cascades to the floor as she slides smoothly down his sweaty torso and wraps her dainty arms around his waist. When she is firmly anchored, she releases a hand and guides him inside her smiling mask.

“That’s it darlin’, perfect timing,” Georgie coos. He is now headed to the crescendo of the song—where he and the white stallion reach the balcony, the girls fly into the sky, and they all disappear in thunder and smoke. At the threshold, he throws back his headdress and lets out a groan, like he has been mortally wounded, echoing the theatrical moan of the song’s climax.

As Georgie explodes in union with himself, I rise and slip across the room, unlatch the door and race down the narrow corridor to the entrance of the salon. I tear off the transformational mask and fling it onto Oriana’s desk, where it skids across the smooth surface and knocks the dried leather hand onto the floor, breaking off the pointed finger. Kicking the dried appendage aside, I run out the front door and down the main street of the old town.

It is well past midnight, and most of the restaurants and bars are closed and the streets nearly deserted. Behind me, on the corner, two beefy men note my flight from the salon and toss away their cigarettes. As I run down the street, I see the fans waiting outside the tavern have dispersed, given up on their quest to bask in the reflected light of fame. In the window of Mimi’s shop, Gigi forlornly stands, a lonely whore waiting for an assignation that will never come.

Abandoning the exposure of the central old town, I move through the dark side streets and linger in the alleyways, seeking a cab driver who has strayed from the lighted avenues. I wander through the dreary streets like a nightmare crazed sleepwalker, stunned and drunk with fear. I stumble into a blind alley with nowhere to turn. Footsteps echo, deep voices whisper. I search for a route of escape and see the twin squires of the Basilica Notre-Dame loom above me, soaring into the sky, a symbol of hope and sanctuary. With mad relief I charge past shadowy figures and race across the Place D’Armes, to the entrance of the holy landmark. The doors of the cathedral are shielded by bolted steel gates, impossible to transgress. I dart around the massive building, stealthily checking for places of entry, but they are all securely locked and there is no response to my pounding fists.

Inside a shadowed corner facing the exterior the rotunda, I find a spot where I am hidden from view. I gaze through the stained glass depiction of the Madonna with child and see the red moon shining through a domed ceiling sprinkled with gilded stars. A voice echoes from deep inside me, as if to give direction:
‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all ye know on Earth and all ye need to know.... And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’
Sinking to the cold stone floor, I bow my head, cover my face with my hands, and succumb to cruel waves of despair.

I have never felt so alone.

“W
ATCH OUT FOR THE CREATURE IN THE LAKE;
I
SEE ONE OF ITS
heads!” Rand takes a flying leap off the raft, carrying with him a length of rope. He drags our gaily decorated barge-style raft to the dock’s edge, where he secures it around a post. The landing is lined with other barges and rowboats, decorated with garlands, streamers, and balloons, in varied themes and motifs, some quite extravagant, like the floats in a holiday parade.

“Lizzie is in charge of face painting, Rand and Eggie run the balloon toss, Jonquil makes head wreaths, and Sammy sets up the basketball game. Baby can help Ruth with the apple bob, and Gabrielle and I will run the fortuneteller’s booth,” Amanda says.

“Looks like the rest of the guests are already here.” Ruth adjusts a floppy sun-hat, then shouts, “kids, make sure you put on another coat of sun block.”

“What took you girls so long?” Ramey calls out from the crest of the path. He wears a straw cowboy hat with a rolled brim and stands with his dog, Jack, whose neck is tied with a blue bandana.

“Run along with the other children, Sammy. I’ll join you in a minute.”

Baby pulls at the hem of my skirt.

“What is it, dear?”

She lifts up her fist and shows me the snail she has cradled in her palm.

“Be careful. They’re fragile. The shell is his home.”

She tosses her pigtails and squeezes her hand until I hear a soft crunch.

“What do you have there, Baby?” Gabrielle asks. “That’s disgusting,” she says, then throws the snail into the water and lifts the kicking and squirming child to her mother.

“Mom, hurry up,” Sammy calls from the path.

“I’m coming,” I answer, and hoist the last bag of supplies onto the dock.

“Everything’s unloaded. The girls and I will carry up the provisions.” Ruth offers a hand to help me onto the dock, and departs with the others.

It is a beautiful day on the island and the Victorian looks stately, almost majestic—from a distance. Still, I can’t shake an unsettling sense of foreboding.

As I begin my ascent up the trail, I watch Ramey take a picnic basket from Amanda. Jack straggles behind, stopping occasionally to smell the wild grass along the perimeter. Rand now wears his dad’s cowboy hat, pulled down below his ears.

When I reach the lawn I observe the other guests arranging food on tables and setting up game booths. Most I have met before, at the clubhouse or the feast at Roger Sandeley’s estate.

“Let’s set up the carnival around the big oak tree,” Ruth calls out.