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I pushed the purple door open and went in, because the key was warm, the ribbon was tight, and I had spent three years saying no to everything.
The old billiard room was a fever dream. Candles on every ledge, a table pushed to the middle with its baize covered by a heap of bare bodies, a leather sofa along one wall with three more entwined on it. Masks everywhere. Feathers, glitter, leather, lace. And above the noise a low warm hum of voices, nobody shouting, everyone checking.
“Is this good?” Somebody was saying it, right now, in the dark. “Yes? Tell me if it’s not.” And somebody else, “God, yes, don’t stop.”
A woman in a gold mask, tall, dark-skinned, naked except for the long glove I’d seen through the door, pulled me in by the cravat.
“You’re new. Welcome. There are three rules and one word, and you’ve been told them.” She looked me up and down. “I’m twenty-nine, and I’m going to take your trousers off in front of all these lovely people unless you say otherwise. Do you say otherwise?”
My heart was a drum. Across the room a man in a devil mask looked up from between a woman’s thighs and gave me a thumbs up.
I could say yes, and let the room swallow me whole. Or I could say thank you, let go of her hand, and walk back down the corridor to a red ribbon and a woman who had said ten minutes.