THE PANAMA CLUB: Pas de trois // Chapter 3

He’d watched her from across the street, standing in the shade of the terrace above the sidewalk. Watched the woman park her black SUV, a big AMG Mercedes. Watched her get out and prance along the sunny side of the street, over the narrow red-brick road to the space she owned, the windows blacked out.

Then he’d watched her, standing inside the door, while the woman danced. She was mesmerizing.

London Perry was all he could think about since he’d seen her at the fundraiser with her famous fiancé. She was beautiful. Stunning, really. The kind of woman who looked at home on the arm of a celebrity athlete. Her hair was thick, black, and unruly, cut in a short, shaggy bob that danced above her delicate shoulders. Her eyes were amber, a chocolate ring around the edge, and her skin was sepia, tanned like warm copper from living in the Panamanian sun. When she smiled, her whole face came to life; her eyes sparkled, those brown lips peeled back in a joyous ring, showing off bright white teeth, perfectly even. But it was the way she moved that attracted him. Grace and elegance, lightness of movement. Of course she was a ballerina. Six years in South African ballet, then moved to Atlanta four years ago to teach ballet.

It had been a gift to watch her dance in this quiet space. Barefoot, wearing black tights and a loose black blouse that hung off one shoulder. No music, only the light thump of her feet on the dusty floor. Beautiful feet, flexible; her body long-limbed and lean.

He said to her now, “I can leave if you’d like, but I’m here for your benefit.”

“My benefit how?”

The woman was showing venom and he loved to see it in her. Loved the fire in her eyes, the defiance. The way the tendons stood out in her long neck drove him wild.

He said, “I thought you had business here that needed attention.”

She folded her arms over her chest, that smooth brow furrowing between her eyes, folding the tiniest comma in her lustrous skin. “Who are you? You’re with the Minister of Culture?”

He moved past her, hands in his pockets, wandering deeper into her space. Whatever renovations were being done here, they’d been postponed, the tools gone, the work left half done. “You can call me Mr. Ballard.”

She followed behind him, feet still bare, arms folded, walking in his wake, saying, “And what do you do, Mr. Ballard, besides sneaking into private spaces uninvited?”

“Consider me an attaché.”

“A diplomat? For who?”

“Something like a diplomat, yes. I’m with Ms. Aguilar’s office. Will you show me the room in question?”

“You’re here to see it finally?”

“Which way is it?”

London got ahead of him, walking in the darker ambience further from the windows at the street. Just a black shape moving in the charcoal dim, the glow of her bare shoulder and ankles and feet drawing his eyes. She led him near the back then turned right and stopped at a brick wall that had been partially knocked down. It would have stood between two units long ago.

She said, “This is it here,” stopping, turning in the dark with her arms folded again.

“How did they find it?”

“How do you think? I need the space for dance, we’re taking all the non-load bearing walls down. They knocked this one in and found it was a room.”

“Flashlight?”

London sighed, ran her hair back with both hands, fumbled around in the dim and produced a boxy yellow utility flashlight and flicked it on with the beam at the floor. She passed it to him and he made his way over the crumbled lip of brick and into the secret room that had existed between two apartments for hundreds of years.

“It’s just a refrigerator room or something. I don’t know why everyone wants to make a big deal of this.”

Ballard shone the flashlight around the rectangular brick room. It was cool and damp. Above head height, spaced every three feet and mounted into the bricks, were black iron hooks with sharp points on them. There was a rotten wooden door on the opposite side and he assumed it had been bricked up and walled over. Whatever the room had been, when it wasn’t needed anymore it had been sealed off. He reached to one of the hooks and tugged it, found it secured in place. Behind him he heard London coming into the space with him, the two of them enclosed in the small room. He said, “You’re not afraid?”

“Of an old fridge room? You know when the workers found it with the hooks and everything, they refused to come back to work because they thought it was haunted. That’s how news got out, everyone passing it around like a ghost story, and then the Minister’s office shut down our renovation to”—she made air quotes—“further investigate. . . . It’s been eight weeks now and you’re only the second person to even come by to look at it. We hired a historian and—”

“There’s blood on the walls under the hooks. You can see the stains.” He ran his hand down the cold brick.

“They hung meat in here, Mr. Ballard, and your boss knows that. She doesn’t want this to be successful because she doesn’t like my husband—”

“You’re not married.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I haven’t heard Ms. Aguilar say anything about Mr. Ortega.”

“But she’s talked about me. Right? What have I done to make her so impossible? I’m being treated unfairly here and you’ve got to realize that. At some point I’ll have to get lawyers involved. This whole thing is costing me so much.”

“What do you want to see happen?”

“I want you to let my workers get back to the renovation.”

“What if they’re afraid of ghosts?”

“We’ll find ones who aren’t.”

“You’re not concerned with the historical value this room might have?”

“What historical value?”

“You want there to be no investigation?” Now he aimed the beam of the flashlight right at her. She squinted and turned her face aside, annoyed, putting up a hand to block the light.

“What investigation? I just told you you’re only the second person to even come by. This whole thing is a debacle. I’m being singled out because my husband is American.”

“Ridiculous,” he said. “You’re not married. And I’m also American.”

“Good for you. Tell me one good reason then that I can’t continue work. There is no investigation.”

“That you know of.”

“There’s no investigation!”

“No need to shout, Ms. Perry.”

“Get that light out of my face,” she snarled at him, hate in her eyes, her delicate palm held between her face and the flashlight’s beam.

He flicked it off and sealed them in near total darkness.

“There’s an investigation, Ms. Perry, I assure you. Work is being done, and more representatives will be here soon to examine the room once the history of the building has been confirmed.”

“This is total bullshit. You should be ashamed of yourself.”

“Be careful how you address me, Ms. Perry.”

“You’re just another one set to make my life difficult. What do you people want from me?”

“Patience, Ms. Perry.”

“Well, I’ve fucking run out of patience, Mr. Ballard. You’re all jerking me around, treating me like an imbecile, not responding to my requests, ignoring me, pulling juvenile shit like switching the seating arrangement so we wouldn’t have to be near each other.”

He moved closer to her in the dark, close enough he could feel the heat of her body. “Wasn’t it you who’d arranged the seating? Why is it not juvenile when you do the same?”

“I didn’t arrange the seating,” she spat.

“You arranged the seating and I rearranged the seating.”

“It was you?”

“I handle Ms. Aguilar’s affairs, and when someone is motivated to engage the Culture Minister I am motivated to determine why.”

“This fucking room is why,” she seethed in the dark, issuing the statement through clenched teeth. “You’re obviously planning on making my life difficult.”

He was standing close, and her chin must have tilted up, this defiant ballerina in her luxury clothing trying to meet his eyes in the dark, show him she wasn’t intimidated by him.

“That’s up to you.”

She said, “You have a lot of nerve threatening me.”

“If I’d threatened you, Ms. Perry, you’d be shaking right now.”

He swore she went to her tip-toes. “Don’t be so sure.”

“You might think you’re a spitfire around men who don’t know how to handle you, and you can put on this fiery act, but I’ll remind you we’re alone in a dark room and I could do whatever I wanted to you and there’s nothing you could do to stop me.”

London scoffed. “I don’t know who you think you are, but you know what?— When I saw you at the fundraiser I thought you were a gigolo. A big dumb gigolo the Minister of Culture hired to fuck her bony old ass, you look about as smart as—”

In the dark, he snatched the foul-mouthed woman by the wrists. It was time London Perry was taught a lesson.

* * *

London screamed and struggled but the man called Mr. Ballard was incredibly strong. He pulled her up so her feet weren’t even on the ground and she kicked his shin with her bare foot. It hurt her more than it hurt him. She hollered for help, screamed and cried, but Mr. Ballard walked with her suspended, her hands held over her head. Then he was sitting, and she fell into his lap. He’d plopped down on the rough broken-brick lip they’d had to step over to enter the secret room. Her stomach lay over his thighs. She shouted, “What do you think you’re doing?”

“I apologize, Ms. Perry, I wish I didn’t have to do this, I don’t want to do it, but it’s for your own good.”

She struggled more, but he’d secured her in place over his lap and she couldn’t work free. “You better let me—”

Snap!

His huge hand crashed on her bottom. Her venom got her hissing with surprise and fright and disbelief. This man from the Culture Minister’s office just spanked her. “You fucking spanked me!”

His hand crashed again, right across her bottom, getting her jumping and her legs kicking, and she cried out louder. “Ow! What do you think—”

He spanked her again and again and again, his hand swatting her bottom over and over, the slap of his hand on her Prada leggings echoing in the small brick space. Her bottom burned and stung and out of the blue she started tearing up and sniffling.

He paused a moment to say, “Tell me you’re sorry.”

“Sorry for what?” she blubbered, the backs of her thighs feeling on fire, her bottom sore and prickling. “You have three seconds to let me—”

He swatted her bottom again, harder than before. Hot sheets of shame worked up her back and an uncomfortable knot tightened in her tummy, a familiar but oh-so-out-of-place feeling. It got her thighs squeezing together and her stomach rolling against Ballard’s hard and powerful thighs.

He paused again. “Mr. Ortega doesn’t discipline you.”

“I don’t need disci—”

Ballard spanked her hard three more times and now a slick and vicious thrill raced between her legs.

“Ah, mm,” she coughed, then bit her lips, squirming in his lap as something happened to her that she hated. She trembled against him, her breaths coming in gasping chuffs. Ballard rode it out with her, one hand gripping her waist so she couldn’t get away or fall out of his lap. His other hand lightly patted her burning bottom.

As the unwanted orgasm wormed through her and she flexed every muscle against it in resistance, she whispered at last, “I’m-mm s-sorry.”