There were times when being friends with a supermodel and hot up-and-coming singer really sucked.
I stared at the plain, unmarked, black-painted
door of the newest, hottest, secret club in the city and really wished I was home. But I was in the East Village having a staring contest with the discreet black camera mounted to the top right corner of the doorframe.
The blinking of the red recording light was starting to feel judgmental.
“I am a good friend,” I told
myself and pressed the buzzer.
Nothing happened.
Excellent, the door was defective. I could go home.
ELAN: At the door. Can’t get in. Maybe it’s a sign?
VASSILISSA: Read email.
I sighed and brought up the email she’d sent. Under step one was press doorbell three times in quick succession.
The door opened.
Inside was a small, black-painted room with another door and an ornate vintage
payphone with one of those rotary dials. The door was locked and the phone did not have a dial tone.
ELAN: In foyer. But the phone is disconnected.
VASSILISSA: Read. Email.
I did not want to read the email. One of my authors had broken my reading comprehension
somewhere around noon yesterday. What I wanted was for someone to spoon feed me the answers.
“I am a good friend. Good friends show up, even when it’s a Friday and they’ve had the week from hell.” I repeated to myself and dutifully read the email.
Then reread it saying several bad words before finally ending with,
“You have got to be freaking kidding me!”
Step two was a goddamned puzzle. The email contained what it assured me was unique number combination keyed to my reservation. Solving the cipher and entering the seven digit code into the rotary dial would open the locked door.
The real kicker was this would normally be my kind of thing.
I was a crossword, sudoku, any kind of word puzzle junkie. But that was when my brain didn’t feel like it was trying to escape my skull but liquifying and dripping out my ears.
Grumbling under my breath and using every bad word I knew plus a few I’d picked up from an annoying British guy I worked with, I solved the godforsaken puzzle.
It took a lot longer than it should. And six attempts to make the stupid rotary dial work.
“Would push buttons have killed you?” I snarled as I slammed open the now unlocked door.
Only I was talking to a long and empty corridor. It led to a curved stairwell and once I’d gone down the steps, past a narrow and
hectic kitchen that smelled strongly of hot grease and garlic, until I finally emerged into a small entryway.
There was a reception desk with a man behind it and yet another godforsaken door. The faint echo of dance music filled the small space.
“Congratulations,” the guy behind the front desk said, sounding bored
and like he was reading from a bad script. “You’ve made it to the final portal. Are you ready to receive your last challenge?”
“No.” I stalked forward to stare him dead in the eye. “Do you know why I’m here tonight?”
“Huh?”
“I’m here because
one of my friends is playing a set tonight, because her maybe-maybe-not girlfriend asked all our friends to come, only no-one else is going to make it because everything in all our lives seems to be going to hell in the same or at least adjacent hand baskets. We’re all running on too little sleep and too much stress and, yet, someone had to show up tonight and I volunteered because I self-identify as a good friend and most of the time I try to live up to that, but, seriously, you people are
destroying the remaining fragile threads of my sanity.”
He blinked at me. “Wow, that was a lot.”
“I have more.” I leaned across the desk. “If you try to make me solve another puzzle before you let me through that door, I swear by my second best pair of thrifted Manolos that I will gut you.”
A small half-smile lifted one corner of his mouth. “That kind of week, huh?”
“That kind of month.”
