THE PANAMA CLUB: Pas de trois // Chapter 6

London had rules for the evening but when he questioned her on them she couldn’t explain. What to wear, grooming, punctuality, and “whatever you do, Alvaro, don’t tell your sister.” He’d abided her rules, complied with London's desires, but couldn’t deny that it was bothering him.

He drove the Porsche from the beach house into Panama City. London wore a slim black Gucci dress with tulle sleeves and large white cuffs and collars, and he wore a black suit, white dress shirt, and a pale blue tie. They drove into Casco Viejo, and London navigated. She said she’d walked by the place a few times during the day to see where it was: the south end of Casco Viejo, down a narrow one-way brick-paved side street. She instructed him to stop. There were other cars parked along the tiny street; two Porsches, two Mercedes, and a Rolls-Royce. She pointed a finger out the windshield saying, “That’s the place there.”

Alvaro said, “It’s falling down.”

“I’m telling you that’s the place.”

He went around to the passenger side and opened the door for London, and led her out by a hand. They walked arm in arm under the overhanging terraces, down the dark narrow street. The rest of the old neighborhood was lively, but this narrow street seemed too quiet. London brought him to the doorway and he gave her an expression showing that he was right the first time: the place was falling down. There was a towering front façade, all done up in that French colonial style with archways and ledges that reminded him of wedding cakes. But the paint had been baked away over the decades, and the glass was removed from the windows. The stone was revealed under the flaking, faded paint, gray and stained with dark rain.

“This is some kind of joke,” he said.

“I don’t think it is,” London assured him, but huddled against him tighter.

“Want me to go in first?”

Someone moved in the black vacant doorway and Alvaro put himself before London. A man stepped out now from the darkened archway into the streetlight. He was short but thick, like a fireplug, with a shaved head and black sunglasses. He wore a black suit and a black shirt and black tie.

“Good evening,” the man said in Spanish.

Alvaro looked back to London who was startled but standing tall. He said in Spanish to the short man, “We’re here for Mr. Ballard.”

The man said, “That is excellent. Who will I tell him has arrived?”

“Tell him it’s Mr. Ortega and his fiancée.”

“You are on the list,” the man said with a nod. “Please step through.” He made way, gesturing through the black doorway to nowhere.

Alvaro took London’s arm, led her up the three stairs to the crumbling palatial archway where no doors stood anymore. They walked through into an open air courtyard, the night sky above them, palm trees growing in the towering compound. But straight ahead there were glowing lanterns nestled in planters with small tropical palms, and little cups with glowing candles in them placed in the flowerbeds. There was a path from the doorway that led through to the interior of the old mansion.

The mansion had been built shoehorned into a crowded Casco Viejo block a few hundred years ago. Buildings huddled on either side of it, the space narrow and claustrophobic. There was the courtyard, and then a set of gates. These ones were wrought iron trellis. Another man stood there waiting for them, also thickly built, also with dark glasses, his hands clasped together and standing at ease.

Alvaro whispered, “What the hell are you getting us into, London?”

“You said you’d bring me.”

“I’m not afraid,” he said, and touched her chin as they strolled through the courtyard to the man standing at the iron gate. As they approached, the man swung the creaky old gate inward and gestured they could go ahead.

Past the iron gate was a small alcove with a glossy oak door bolted together with strips of black iron. Behind them, the man whispered into the alcove, “Knock on the door.”

Alvaro rapped a knuckle three times on the door, and a black rectangle slid open. A set of eyes on the other side of the door looked out. He showed no expression, a lock clicked, and the door was held open for him.

They entered into the foyer of the old mansion. The place looked unoccupied, broken down, decrepit, and ruined by nature. And yet it had been decorated. More candles set in cups, lanterns hanging on strings across the high ceilings. Birds flew within, flitting from tree to tree that had sprouted up from the floor of what once had been a beautiful place were a wealthy family had lived.

“What the hell is this, London?”

“I’m not sure,” she said.

The man who’d opened the door for them said, “Mr. Ballard is in the salon. It’s straight ahead.”

They walked across an uneven marble floor, heard the soft strains of music. Live music. Violin or cello, and a harp.

“Is this a party?”

“I think it might be,” London said.

“You think coming here will get your ballet school open?”

“I’m not here for the school,” she said.

That surprised him, but he wasn’t unhappy to hear it. London had been single-minded for a long time. And more driven by purpose once the Minister of Culture’s office had interrupted the renovation. For her to be taken from that track was momentous. Now he was more curious than ever. He’d figured this was some sort of cocktail function and he’d have to attend with London and be on his best behavior, do the big smile and the charisma thing that everybody loved, show off his prestige as a world famous athlete. But there was nobody here.

“I guess we follow the music,” London said.

They walked between trees, deeper into the mansion, and near the back the hall opened to an interior space. Not open to the sky above, but tall ceilings just the same. This was where the party was.

But it wasn’t what he expected.

Not at all.

***

Mr. Ballard was the first person she saw. Like she was drawn to him. The rest of the faces in the parlor were just pale smudges.

At her side Alvaro showed tension in his hesitation. Alvaro was never hesitant. Alvaro was always brash. Always masculine. Never intimidated. Not that she should interpret his hesitation as timidity. But the sight they were presented with was unexpected.

This part of the mansion was an interior space; a room where whoever had built the mansion might have entertained guests. In the corner a duo played Strauss on cello and harp. The musicians were two women wearing bright red ball gowns. They were young, with chestnut hair pullback in buns. Both of them with black lipstick. The ceilings were high, palatial walls extending twenty feet overhead. Someone had strung black linen bunting from point to point, crisscrossing the ceiling with strings of fairy lights. There were a dozen people congregated in the room. Ballard alone at a table for four; all the tables and chairs the kind you would see on streetside cafés in Panama; round marble table tops and iron legs. There were other people sitting at adjacent tables, and a bar extended along one wall. A lone barman with white shirt and black vest polished glasses. Standing at the bar was a short, affluent Latin businessman with a goatee and slicked back hair that hung in curls at his shirt collar. The woman he spoke to was an example of the more intimidating aspect of the scene into which she and Alvaro had entered. The woman was middle-aged, full-figured with heavy bosom hefted in a porch-style bustier; part of a corset. The corset’s waist flared out in taffeta, but below that she was naked. Naked except for garter straps that hung from the corset to clip-on thigh-high stockings. She was bare between her legs, a thick pelt of pubic hair on display.

There were others like that woman, too. And it wasn’t just some of the women who dressed provocatively. There were two Latina businesswomen, faces from Panama City she swore she recognized—at least below their cat eye masquerade masks—but they both walked the same man, a draping shiny metal chain from each of their hands to a loop attached to a leather collar around the man’s neck. The man wore a muzzle, a leather strap harness over his mouth and nose and buckled behind his ears. His hands were cuffed with black leather bracelets in front of him. Between his legs, some cruel person had affixed a metal cage over his genitals. His package swung stiffly between his legs, a ring hooked around his scrotum and the base of his penis, the penis tucked into a ribbed metal sleeve. She could see the penis behind the wires, and knew the cage was a chastity device. The cage would restrict the man’s arousal.

She huddled tighter to Alvaro thinking how uncomfortable that man’s sexual equipment must be. And how must this make Alvaro feel? Did Alvaro assume she brought him here to lock up his beautiful penis in a cage?

Would she do that?

Would she do it if instructed?

Her heart began to race.

All the assumptions she’d held about the invitation Mr. Ballard had extended to her seemed to be true. The man had been dominant with her, and it seemed the domination extended like dark tendrils into another aspect of his life. Or perhaps sexuality was the original source, and the way he disciplined her that day in the secret room at her ballet school had been tendrils extending from his sexuality, though Ballard had never made what happened between them in the secret room a sexual act, the sexuality of it was bountiful. But that was all in her own making. Mr. Ballard was a man that you did not speak harshly to or talked down to. Ballard made that known to her. Made it known to her with no sexual provocation. The strong sexual moment that occurred between her thighs that morning had been her own making. Had been the way she responded to Ballard. When he’d spanked her for her surliness, it was she who turned her rump up higher to Ballard’s large striking hand, some secret and sinister part of her compelled to feel his masculine swats against her deserving bottom.

Now Alvaro spotted Mr. Ballard. He scissored his fingers against hers. An uncomfortable feeling of being discovered slithered through her. Like when Alvaro laid eyes on Ballard, something would pass between them that would give away that this man had made Alvaro’s future wife orgasm by barely doing a thing.

It was Ballard’s presence that had sent her over the edge. And what would Alvaro make of that? That would be tricky. For if Alvaro were told what had transpired, he would without-a-doubt pummel Mr. Ballard within an inch of his life. Or perhaps, even kill him. The insult to his masculinity would be too much to bear. It was a notion that delivered to her incredible power over Ballard. If she wanted revenge, she could exact it. Right here and right now.

But surely Ballard must know that. He was the one who told her to bring Alvaro.