What Comes Next by John Katzenbach Read Free Book Online Page B

fare, although few of the thirty-odd guests were paying much attention to filmed versions of what they were actually doing. Clothing was shed rapidly. Liquor was abundant. Ecstasy tablets were offered like hors d’oevres. The oldest partiers were probably in their early fifties. Most were in their thirties or forties, and when Linda came through the door and began the process of dropping her clothing more than one man looked appreciatively in her direction and instantly made plans to approach her.
    As required, both Michael and Linda had arrived at the party with someone else. But they left together. Michael’s “date” for the evening had been another student, a sociology doctoral candidate ostensibly interested in real-life research, who had fled the party shortly after three naked and thoroughly aroused men had cornered her, completely uninterested in her schoolgirl questions about why they were there, unwilling to listen to her weak protests as they bent her over. There was an informal request at the party that no one be forced to do anything they did not want to do. This was a concept that lent itself to widely different interpretations.
    Linda’s “partner” for the evening had been a man who called her service, and then, after treating her to an expensive dinner, had told her where he wanted to spend the rest of the evening. He’d offered to pay her more than her regular $1,500 fee. She had agreed, as long as the money came in cash and in advance, without telling him that she probably would have accompanied him for free. Curiosity, she thought, was like foreplay. After they’d arrived at the party the “partner” had disappeared into a side room carrying a black leather paddle and wearing nothing more than a tight black silken facemask, leaving Linda alone but not lacking in attention.
    Their meeting—like all the meetings that night—was chance. It was an across-the-room connection in their eyes, in the languid arc of their bodies, in the silken tones of their voices. A single word, a slight dip of the head, a shrug of the shoulders—some small act of emotional intensity in a darkened room devoted to excess and orgasm, filled with naked men and women coupling in all imaginable positions and styles—were what bought them together. Each was engaged with someone else when their eyes met. Neither was enjoying what they were doing at that very moment. In a room filled with what most people would have considered events that were wildly different, both were a little bored. But they saw each other and something deep and probably frightening sounded within them. In fact, they did not have sex with each other that night. They merely observed each other in the act, and saw some mysterious singleness of purpose amid the groaning and cries of pleasure. Surrounded by displays of lust, they made a connection that nearly exploded. They kept their eyes locked on each other, even as strangers probed their bodies. When Michael finally picked his way through sweaty figures to her side, he displayed an aggressiveness that surprised him. He usually hung back, stumbling over words and introductions, all the time letting his desires echo unchecked within him. Linda was being slobbered over by a man whose name she didn’t know. She saw Michael approach out of the corner of her eye. That she knew instinctively he wasn’t coming to her side to seek out some orifice spoke to her own sea-tossed feelings. She roughly disengaged from her partner, whose clumsy administrations had bored her anyway leaving him surprised, uncompleted, and a little angry—shutting down his fervid complaints with a single fierce glance. Then, naked, she’d stood up and taken the naked Michael’s hand as if he were someone she had known for years. Without much talk they’d left the party. Just for an instant as they went in search of their clothing, hand in hand, they looked like some Renaissance artist’s rendition of Adam and Eve being driven from