Just like that, all of a sudden: “Would you like to go with me to the Masturboats?”
“I’m not sure I’m ready for that,” Luna replied with a laugh, not knowing exactly what the Masturboats were. But inside she was saying, Why not? Because she knew that his kind of easy glancing manner was not all that common. Men turned thirty-eight, thirty-nine, and it was like someone dimmed the lights. When they’re young, they’re hilarious and bubbly and boyish. And bad. So bad. When they’re old, they’re flat and stupid and dull. She watched them in airports with their wives: brain-dead, mostly. And yet this man, Chuck, was probably forty-five at least. He still had some humor left in him. He was funny about how hot the plates were. Not funny in a poking kind of way, but in a cheerful way. He had a shock of Jimmy Stewart hair that he flung around. In some ways a beautiful man, with a rough grace to him. Why had she refused his polite offer? Of course she should have said yes to the Masturboats, whatever they were. But she just didn’t want to.
Chuck was unfazed. “Then would you like to go with me to an intimate concert of Russian piano music and sit in the Velvet Room, and I’ll toy with your hair?”
She took a breath, thinking. “I like Russian music,” she said finally. “That sounds nice. Sure.”
First, though, she needed to go to Tan Wizards. She didn’t want to have white shoulders when she wore her black dress with the spaghetti straps. She didn’t want to be some blinking creature coming out of her nocturnal burrow for a grand musical adventure. She wanted to be working from a position of strength, with cinnamon-colored shoulders that shrugged and moved alluringly.
So she went to Tan Wizards and signed up. The girl there asked her which room she wanted, Room 1, Room 2, or Room 3.
“Which do you recommend for very fast results?” Luna asked.
“The bulbs are best in Room 3,” the girl said, and she winked. “And I recommend this bronzer. It’s on special, only twenty-seven dollars tonight.”
“Leo’s Tanlord Bronzer?”
“Yes, it’s fantastic, it makes you irresistible.”
So Luna went into Room 3 and closed the door. The upright tanning booth, with its rounded blue door, filled most of the room. There was a stool with a towel and a pair of goggles on it, and a clothes hook on the doorjamb. The walls were a deep red, and taped to one wall was a gross-out picture of an eye with a tumor in the tear duct, there to scare people into using eye protection. Next to the tumor picture was a large poster of a minister with a Bible in his hand, wearing a full robe, but exceedingly bronzed. The poster quoted him as saying that going tanning helped him be a better minister. Luna stripped down in front of the eye tumor and the tanned minister. Three eyes stared at her as she slathered on the Tanlord Bronzer. She circled her nipples with it and they began speaking to her in an odd kind of Braille.
With her goggles on, she pressed the on button and went into the warm blue privacy of the booth. It was loud, because there was a powerful fan over her head, and it lifted her hair up. She felt like Botticelli’s Venus. She was standing nakedly there, with both her nipples on stun, and she heard a low voice behind her — almost a metallic voice, but confiding — and she felt some localized warmth on her shoulder. She said, “Who are you?”
“I’m Leo, the Lord of Tan,” the voice said.
She looked back, and there standing close behind her was an elongated kind of luminous being, made up of long ultraviolet lightbulbs. He resembled a balloon sculpture, except that he was almost impossible to look at because he was so blindingly bright.
“Why are you here in the booth with me?” she asked.
“I’m giving you an irresistible allover tan,” Leo the Tan Lord said, “and when I’ve given you an allover tan, I’m going to take you to the House of Holes, so that you can go with your new friend Chuck to an intimate concert of Russian piano music.”
“This House of Holes,” she said. “Is it safe?”
“They scan you seventeen ways when you’re going in. Chuck is a recruiter, and he likes you, so you’re getting a scholarship. Oop, it’s rather close quarters in here. I’m afraid you’ve given me a large fluorescence.”
Luna, glancing, couldn’t help but admire the blinding watt-age of Leo’s long, warm blue bulbs. She felt she needed to be enveloped in his endless warmth. So she closed her eyes and let Leo do what he did so well. The fan was wonderfully loud, and Leo’s humming bulbs felt good on her skin, and then he murmured, “Open yourself for me, let me take you to the House of Holes.” She felt a long steady pressure, and then he lit her up inside. All at once she was liquefying into pure blue.
When the light went away, she was standing in front of the House of Holes concert hall, wearing her black dress and black stockings, still out of breath from her recent exertions. She looked at her shoulders — they were perfectly tanned, not too dark, just right. Chuck came up wearing a rumpled blazer, carrying floppy tickets. His shock of hair excited her.
“Hello, hello,” he said. “You look lovely. I got us the Velvet Room.”
They went inside, past the bar, and up a wide red stairway to the balcony level. It was very warm, and there were gold sconces in the shape of mermaids.
“Where’s the rest of the audience?” Luna asked.
“It’s a special kind of concert,” said Chuck. They came to room 28L. The door said “Velvet Room.” They went inside. It was very quiet, very private, and there were two holes in the wall. A strangely shaped low chair was positioned in front of the two holes.
“This is nice, but I can’t see the stage,” said Luna.
“You can’t see the stage in the Velvet Room. It’s not about seeing.” Chuck smiled and moved his hand lightly over her hair. His eyes had an inner level, through the irises — it felt as if she was looking down a spiral staircase. “Now you must take off your shoes and your black stockings, although they’re very nice, and sit in the chair.”
“Okay,” said Luna. She slipped off her stockings and handed them to him. He folded them and put them on a little side table.
“Good,” said Chuck.
“And now I sit?”
Chuck nodded. “Make yourself comfortable,” he said.
She sat and looked up at him, taking another hit of his eyes. The chair was low, and her dress rode up. “Sorry, a little indelicate here,” she said, hitching to cover the sight of her red panties.
“Don’t worry. You’re going to put your legs through the holes.”
“Now?”
Chuck nodded.
She pointed her right foot and put it through the hole. Then her left foot.
“Good,” said Chuck. “All the way now.”
Luna scooted forward on the seat.
“A little further,” said Chuck, taking a position behind her in the chair. Luna felt her legs dangling out in space, and then she felt a man’s hand touch her and cradle her right heel. “I do believe someone is holding my foot,” she said.
“That’s Alexander,” said Chuck.
The touch was gentle, and Luna sensed that Alexander had a little French-style goatee, perhaps. She could hear him murmuring. Her main thought was: Boy am I glad I shaved my legs this morning.
“What’s he saying?” she asked Chuck.
Chuck turned up a volume dial. “You can speak to him if you’d like,” he said.
“May I ask who you are?” she asked politely.
The hands stopped. “I am Alexander Borodin, the very famous Russian composer,” said the voice.
Luna looked back at Chuck, who had begun playing with her hair. “But Alex,” she said, “didn’t you write the Polovetsian Dances something like a hundred and twenty, hundred and thirty years ago?”