Chapter 1

I've never thought of myself as the blindfold type.

Not on planes, not in beds, and certainly not in restaurants. Especially not a place like DC Coast, where I was sitting on the evening of my thirtieth birthday, listening to my dinner companion trying his best to be persuasive.

"What happens next will be very special." Hugh said, picking up the small black mask that he'd placed next to our shared dessert. "You don't have to put the blindfold on inside here. Just a little later."

"You promised no party," I reminded him, but not sharply. My stomach was filled with a pleasant mélange of tuna tartare and crawfish risotto and crispy fried bass. It had been an orgy of seafood and good wine, just my kind of night.          

"Hmm," Hugh said, studying the restaurant bill.

"If it's not a surprise party, where are you taking me?" I prodded.

"Let's just say I've got two tickets to paradise." 

I rolled my eyes, thinking Hugh was showing his age, when I'd rather keep mine confidential. I didn't mind having a delicious, leisurely dinner, but he'd practically rushed me through cappuccino and crème brulee. Hugh was frantic to leave, which made me think he definitely had something planned.

As we waited for the car to be brought to us on the busy corner of 14th and K Streets, Hugh folded the tiny black blindfold into my hand. "It's never been used, if that makes you more comfortable. I saved it from my last trip to Zurich."

"I thought you didn't believe in re-gifting?" I asked lightly.

"Well, you didn't want a ring. What else can I offer you?" The undercurrent of irritation in Hugh's voice was clear. I'd worn his beautiful, two-carat emerald for a short while, but ultimately returned it, because engagement rings scared me just as much as turning thirty did. Hugh was thirty-two; he'd been ready for the last three years. I wondered if I'd ever be.

The valet pulled up with the car and jumped out to open the passenger side for me. I got in, feeling a mixture of excitement and fear about what lay ahead. As we pulled off into traffic, I reclined my seat as far as it would go, hoping that this way, nobody would notice the girl with short black hair and a matching mask over her eyes. If anyone caught a glimpse, they might I'd just come out of plastic surgery or something like that—though most Washington women who went in for that flew to Latin America, where the plastic surgeons were good, and there were no neighbors to bump into.

"Are we headed for the airport?" I asked, with a sudden rush of hope. 

"No chance." Hugh sounded regretful. "It would have been fun to get away, but I can't risk any absences when the partner track decisions are forthcoming."

Hugh was a lawyer at a high-pressure international firm a few blocks away. He'd been working for the last year on a class action suit that still wasn't ready to roll. His work involved frequent travel back to Japan, the country of my heritage, where we'd met a few years earlier. I would have loved to travel with him, but couldn't because I was banned from Japan. It was a complicated story I didn't want to revisit on a night that I was supposed to be happy.

"Don't think about it," I muttered to myself. It was my habit to talk to myself sometimes, to try to shut out the bad thoughts that threatened what was a perfectly pleasant life.

"What don't you want to think about?"

"I'm getting nauseated from wearing a blindfold in a moving car," I said. "Not to mention, my nerves are shot because you won't tell me what's going to happen next."

"Oh, I'm sorry. Just hang on, I'll open the window." Hugh pressed the control that slid down the passenger side window next to me. "We're just going around the corner to park. Will you survive another two minutes?"

I nodded, glad for a chance to listen to the sounds of the road. I could tell this wasn't our neighborhood of Adams-Morgan, with its mix of pulsating salsa music, honking horns and shouting truck drivers. All I heard was a slow, steady purr of cars caught in traffic. After a while, the car moved again and turned a corner. Then it stopped. Hugh's window slid down.

"Paradise, sir?" A strange man's voice asked.

"That's right. Were staying till the wee morning hours," Hugh said. "Will this cover it?"

Before the parking valet could answer, I had a few words of my own. "Hugh, you know that I have a nine-thirty meeting at the Sackler Gallery tomorrow. You can very well stay until the wee hours, but I can't."

"Job interviews come and go. Thirtieth birthdays are only once!" He sounded positively gleeful.

My door was opened, and I unbuckled my seat belt. Then I felt a hand on my wrist, helping me out.

"You must be the girl getting the big birthday surprise." The valet's voice came from somewhere to the left.

I was busy working through the situation—was this a boutique hotel, maybe?-- when Hugh tugged my hand. "There's going to be a downward flight of steps in a moment. Just take it slowly."

"What kind of a hotel has subterranean rooms?" I demanded.

"You'll know soon enough." Ten steps, and then a flat surface. "I'm going to hold the door open. Just step through."

I had no sight, but my other senses were bombarded. First, the sounds—a Dead Can Dance song pounding ominously on a stereo, and lots of voices—talking, laughing, shrieking. Then there were the smells—smoke from cigarettes and sandalwood incense.

Someone took my other hand and pressed briefly down on the area over my knuckles. I guessed that I was getting a hand-stamp, like bouncers did at bars.

"Hugh, this is so silly," I complained. "I want to see where I am. If this is the S and M club we read about in CityPaper I'm not going any farther."  

Hugh sighed and said, "I'd hoped you'd stay blindfolded until the magic moment, but if you're that anxious, you may as well take it off. Go ahead."

Had I known about the series of events about to unfold—not that night, perhaps, but in the crazy, dangerous days that rolled out, right after my birthday—I might have just kept on the blindfold. I would have remained in Hugh's thrall, powerless to make my own choices, but secure—still twenty-nine and safe as houses.

But I'm not the kind of girl who stays in one place for long, whether it's a house or a nightclub vestibule.

I slid off the blindfold, and opened my eyes.

Chapter 2

The club was packed as tightly as Tokyo's Cube323 on a good night--impressive for a live venue rather than a DJ club. I had never been inside a place in Washington this crowded and smoky. Wasn't there a no-smoking law in Washington clubs now? I wondered about it as I scanned the crowd, looking for familiar faces.

"Is that Kendall?" I asked Hugh, pointing to a slender redhead in a black leather jacket who looked like my married cousin from Potomac, but who was embracing a handsome, younger man with a goatee.

"Yes, that's Kendall chatting up a toyboy from her office. But there's an even  better spectacle right ahead."  Hugh touched my shoulders and turned me so that I was facing the other side of the room. A stage was set up with a drum set and keyboards and microphones. Above it was a banner that said in glittering silver letters, HAPPY DIRTY THIRTY, REI!

I looked from it to Hugh. "You promised you wouldn't throw a surprise party."

He raised his eyebrows. "But I told you I was taking you to Paradise."

Suddenly I got it. This unfamiliar nightclub was probably Club Paradise, a hot new music venue on U Street. I was amazed Hugh had been able to book it on a Friday night for something as inconsequential as my thirtieth birthday party.

I asked, "Is this Club Paradise?"

"Yes, isn't it brilliant?" He squeezed my hand back. "I had to keep the newspaper away from you all week so you wouldn't catch wind what was going on." Hugh looked very pleased with himself.

"But I must know only a fraction of the people here." 

"Andrea, Kendall and I shared the invites. There are about 150 of our crowd here. The others, well, they've all paid to get in and that helps make up the cost of booking the space. I'm sure they'll be your friends by night's end—" As he spoke, he was putting a small glittering tiara on my head.

"People would pay to come to my birthday?" I was becoming even more confused as Andrea, a beautiful but moody restaurant hostess who'd become a good friend recently, came over to deliver some air kisses.

"Happy birthday, Rei," she said. "Now that you're here, I'm going to handle the door and make sure nobody gets in on the guest list who should be paying."

Kendall bounced up and gave me a kiss on the lips that tasted like a Cosmopolitan. "Happy dirty thirty, dear. You know, I tried to talk Hugh into staving your thirtieth off for a few more years, but he wouldn't listen. Men!"

"What do you mean? She's thirty tomorrow." Andrea looked at Kendall as if she thought my cousin, who loved to brag about her M.B.A., couldn't count.

"A lot of girls don't publicly celebrate thirty until they're a little bit older, like thirty-five. Some of my friends from boarding school are going to do that, and I'm trying to decide whether I can carry it off. What do you think?" As Kendall spoke, she was twinkling at the young man she'd draped herself over before.

"It looks like some of your friends are here," I said, not wanting to answer her question. "You'll have to introduce me."

"Hugh let me bring about seventy-five of my nearest and dearest. They're so excited about the show, just thrilled once I explained about—"

"Watch it, Kendall," Hugh said warningly.

"Hugh, I never! George is just my intern, okay?"

"I'm sure he meant about the show, Kendall, not your toy-boy—" I bit my lip. The Viognier I'd had at the restaurant had made me too loose.

"Let's get some drinks," Hugh suggested. "Then I've got to dash up there, get the emcee thing started. We're half an hour behind schedule."

As Hugh brought each of us a drink and then wound his way through the crowd to the stage, I watched Kendall's pretty girlfriends in their preppy prints and Hugh's lawyer friends in suits begin to circle each other. Around them were many more young people in black leather and heavy metal, as well as fashionable young men with shaved heads and guayabera shirts, and girls with ironed hair and thigh-high boots. Now I understood why Hugh had been so obstinate about my clothes for the evening.

I was wearing a pair of favorite black shorts with a vintage Adolfo jacket in purple and black boucle. Underneath the jacket was a purple camisole that barely grazed my navel, which glinted with a couple of pearls—a recent body alteration about which I had mixed feelings. Because I didn't want to be taken for a hooker, I'd insisted on mid-heel sandals rather than the Manolo Blahnik stilettos Hugh had given me that morning. Now I was sorry I hadn't worn the Blahniks, but overall, I was well dressed for the setting.   

"Come on." Kendall took my hand in hers. "Let's get close to the stage so you'll be right there for everyone to see when Hugh makes a personal tribute."

"Kendall, I don't know anyone! I hardly want to be embarrassed in front of hundreds." I was being so Japanese, I thought while Kendall resolutely dragged me close to the stage. She was from my American side—my mother's old Maryland family. I couldn't believe she was so enthusiastic about Club Paradise. She was no stranger to the bar at Zola, or X and Dove, but this place was considerably more downscale than her usual party haunts.

Hugh placed his whisky glass on a speaker and picked up a microphone. The raggedy buzz of noise faded as he greeted everyone in the suave Edinburgh-goes-to-London-and-next-flies-to-America accent that made Americans swoon. What was it about the British accent that made everything sound smarter? It was similar to the effect of a Japanese accent, which made everything sound sweeter.

Hugh said how pleased he was at the turnout for the birthday celebration for the woman known to readers of the CityPaper as the current "Most Notorious Woman Under Thirty."

"Rei's the first girl who's made the listing without sleeping with a politician, and for that, I'm enormously grateful," he said as a spotlight suddenly found me in the crowd. I waved reluctantly, because to hide behind Kendall would be pathetic. The people in the crowd were grinning at me now. A cocktail waitress with a nose-ring pressed a mojito in my hand and ignoring all the warnings I'd heard about taking drinks from strangers I sipped it, glad for something to do while the roasting continued. 

"Now, when Rei and I met, she thought we had nothing in common until I lured her into my car to listen to my collection of eighties and nineties tunes. To make her birthday really special, I wanted to bring her that music she loves."

If a band was the focus, the spotlight would move from me. Great!

"Knowing Rei's taste, I aimed my sights at the European bands. I tried for Echo and the Bunnymen, but unfortunately, that lot are playing a show in London tonight." A chorus of groans. Apparently Echo wasn't a big favorite here. "Next I went for Bjork, but she's undergoing a crisis of fashion confidence and won't leave the house." There was some light laughter. "Massive Attack are recording the score for the next Lexus car commercial, and Garbage said they have to put out their recycling tonight."

There were more groans and a call from the back of the room, "Get on with it!"

Hugh refused to be rushed. He took a sip of whisky and said, "I began to think there was some kind of bad star hanging over the night that Rei was born, but in the end, the answer was right before my nose. It's a mystery band, an up-and-coming British group that had its video premiere on VH1 last month, and made it into the British equivalent of Billboard's Top 200. They're touring the country, and this is their only stop in Washington. They turned down the bloody 9:30 Club to be here with us tonight!"

There was sharp applause at that, and I began to feel the hairs on my arm prickle. There was only one band that I knew Hugh was close to, and that was his brother Angus's group, Glaswegian Hangover, which was making a ragtag tour on the West Coast at present.

"So, without further ado, let me introduce a band with true grit and originality. Yes, the band you've been waiting for…Angus Glendinning and the Glaswegian Hangover!"

The lights started flashing, and the band took the stage. I screamed with the others because I hadn't seen Hugh's younger, guitar-strumming brother in three years. The twenty-year-old who'd slouched around Tokyo with auburn dreadlocks had shaved them off so only a thin auburn halo edged his head. He wore a black T-shirt studded with rivets and tight blue jeans tucked into motorcycle boots. 

The crowd howled as Angus picked up his guitar and lashed into the old Beatles song, ‘Happy Birthday," with a few new lyrics that made me blush. He followed it with a song that I'd heard him working on while in Japan, all discordant clanging, but with new lyrics about being dragged into a war by an older brother he'd once loved, but now hated with every ounce of his being. I would have liked Hugh's take on the lyrics, but he was back at the bar, grooving to the music while he waited for another drink.

I checked out the rest of the band. On bagpipes was a mournful-looking blond wearing a denim jacket and kilt with combat boots. An Indian-looking guy in a Manchester United football jersey was lost in the rhythms of the drums. There was a black bass player dressed in a battered leather jacket and jeans. All they needed was a Japanese to complete their United Nations, but I wasn't volunteering.

The band finished the song with a defiant, upward climbing riff and then Angus took a sip from a bottle that a fan thrust up at him. "Thanks, love. And thanks to Shug for organizing the venue and, what's that, a free round of McEwan's for all? Brilliant!"

Half the crowd surged toward the bar, wanting to take advantage of the beer. The die-hards who stayed at the stage starting screaming names of songs they wanted to hear. "Methadone Morning!" "On the Train!" "Bleeding Heart Liberal!" I realized that the band's CD must have aired on more than a few college stations. The Glaswegian Hangover were semi-famous.

"We'd love to get the jam going with a few songs off our new disc, Liberal Elitist. This song's called ‘Pudding' 'cause it's unhealthy, which is the way we like it." Angus's accent was affected Glasgow working class, which probably was crucial if your band was called Glaswegian Hangover. "We'll be playing our new songs mixed in with Rei's birthday track. Oh, and Shug—that's me brother, right?--wants me to let everybody know that our celebrity guest has arrived and will be appearing on stage shortly."

"Who is it?" I called out.

Angus shook his head. "Don't know exactly, but it's supposed to be a Japanese celeb. So don't go awaaayyy!" He launched into "Pudding" with a crash of guitar strings.

I wondered who the musician might be as I started dancing with Hugh, who had suddenly showed up and grabbed me around the waist. I had trouble keeping my balance, given the two mojitos I'd downed in the last half hour. Hugh moved behind me as the band slowly segued from its song about a Scottish school dinner gone wrong into the L.L. Cool J classic, "White Lines." I was quickly wrapped up in the beat and the feeling of Hugh's body behind mine—finally, Hugh had to physically direct my attention to the stage, where I saw the Japanese guest: a young woman in a gold leather skirt, white go-go boots and a white halter top. A curtain of perfectly streaked hair—gold and black—hung before her face like a curtain, and when the hair flashed back, I saw my twenty-two-year-old cousin Chika's face.

"Chika!" I screamed in delight.

"I gave her my frequent flyer miles!" Hugh shouted in my ear. "She didn't want to miss your birthday!"

I turned and hugged him. "So she's staying with us!"

"Yes, she'll come back with us tonight. And I hope you don't mind, the, ah, band will be with staying over, too."

"But where?" I knew I should be accommodating, but I felt a frisson of annoyance. Every week, it seemed, there were at least at least one or two overnight guests invited by Hugh. Whether they were lawyers from work having wife trouble, rugby players who'd been served eviction notices, or Adams-Morgan drinking buddies who'd had one too many—Hugh, unfailingly, brought them home. He liked company. Hell, he'd been keeping me in his apartment, on and off, for years.

"Any free bit of floor," Hugh shouted again to make himself heard over the din. "The lads are accustomed to bunking in bus stations and bathtubs. And they'll only be here a couple of days. It's not going to be like when Angus stayed for months in Tokyo."

"Hope not." I winked at Hugh, because I was actually fond of his hard-living brother. I turned back to the stage to admire my cousin Chika dancing in her high-heeled boots. Almost mechanically, she moved her arms and turned her hips, a robot-like contrast to the wild and woolly band, and the flailing bodies in the mosh pit in front of the stage.

"Chika's too cute," Kendall shouted in my ear as she danced by me. "Find out where she bought those boots."

"I'll ask!" I was overflowing with so much happiness that I wasn't shy anymore. My head felt light and my body full of rhythm as I jogged up on stage to join my cousin. We embraced and before I knew it, Angus had grabbed us both in a pelvis-grinding hug. Chika pulled away, obviously startled by the bald white boy, and the audience roared.

Angus launched into my favorite eighties classic, "Lips Like Sugar." As Chika and I started to dance together, I gazed over the mosh pit and into the crowd. All the way from the bar, I saw Hugh smile at me and raise a McEwan's in salute. 

Kendall had commandeered some male friends to boost her from the mosh pit to the stage, and in the next instance, she was dancing alongside Chika and me. I wasn't surprised; Kendall was the most competitive woman I knew. She wasn't one to stay out of the limelight for long.

I danced between my cousins, thinking about my Japanese past on one side, and the American future on the other. I was shot through with joy, not caring that my Lycra top was inching upward, revealing the navel ring glinting in the spotlight. Chika was performing a careful series of steps, and Kendall was unzipping her black leather jacket and now, pulling off her T-shirt…

Her T-shirt? I took a second look. Kendall, seemingly delighted by the catcalls of the audience, was wearing only a red lace bra and jeans. I glanced at Chika, who looked unimpressed, probably because girls in Japan had been disrobing on nightclub stages for years. Now I glanced back over the bobbing heads on the dance floor for Hugh. He wasn't at the bar. He was probably in the mosh pit, close to the stage, getting a bird's eye view of Kendall's cosmetic enhancements. That's what they had to be. We'd shared an outdoor shower during a beach vacation in college, and she'd been much smaller. Although maybe I was being rough on her—could the breasts be a result of childbirth?

The crowd was screaming for me and Chika to take it off, too, and I felt a frisson of nervousness. I'd brought it on myself, I knew it, but suddenly I felt that my navel ring was more than I wished anyone had seen.

"I'm stepping down!" I shouted to Chika as ‘Lips Like Sugar; drew to a close.

"Okay, I'll come along," she shouted back. "That girl is crazy!"

After we made it off stage, Chika asked me where we could get water. I was parched, too. I glanced back and saw Kendall had started working on the top button of her jeans.

"Where's Hugh-san? I'd like to say hello to him—he was so kind to give me the ticket. Business class, even!" Chika's happy chatter brought me back to the reality that I was with her, and life wasn't as out of control as I'd feared.

"The last place I saw Hugh was the bar," I said, leading my cousin along. But he wasn't there. After Chika and I each bought a bottle of water, we threaded through the crowd into the back where Andrea was standing at the door, checking names against a guest list. She was being very hard-hearted with a group of Georgetown students who were claiming they should be on the guest list.

"But I know Rei," one of them was saying. "She's, like, my best friend."

"Do you know this girl?" Andrea, her arms folded over a skin-tight Power to the People T-shirt, appeared ready to grind the girl under the heel of her six-inch boot heels.

"Sure. Let them all in. Have you seen Hugh?"

 "Last time I saw him he was buying drinks for all his rugby friends. Are you loving your party?"

"Very much so," I said, and gave Andrea a quick hug before going back into the depths of the club.

"Is that Hugh-san?" Chika tugged my hand and I followed her down a hall lit only by an Emergency Exit sign. There, one of the suits was vomiting over a trash can.

"Oh, no!" I said, because I recognized the suit. It was Hugh's.

"What did he eat for dinner?" Chika asked in a horrified voice.

"I don't think it was the dinner." I'd tried everything Hugh had eaten, and the restaurant had an impeccable reputation. Hugh must have been done in by the bottle of wine chased by whiskey followed by the lager. It wasn't really his fault—he'd once been able to drink like that and hold his ground, but now he was thirty-two. Perhaps his metabolism had changed—as mine would, too. 

I sent Chika into the ladies room to bring back both wet and dry paper towels, while I helped Hugh through the end of his agony.

"Sorry," he said, sounding weaker than I'd ever heard.

"Don't be." I stroked back his hair, examining him. The charming Scot who'd toasted me with champagne a few hours earlier had been replaced by a red-eyed stand-in who had almost lost his accent. It was getting exhausting, living like this. Just two nights before that he'd gotten sick after a dinner party in Kalorama. I reminded myself that this was the same man who'd loved me enough to let me live in his apartment, who hauled antiques without complaint, who made a pot of tea for me every morning. 

"I'm missing a great show, aren't I?" he asked, sounding pitiful.

"Angus and the band are amazing," I said. "But you'll hear them again."

"Yes. He's coming home with us." Hugh sat down on the floor, his back against the wall for support.

"That's right, but a little later on. I'll figure everything out. We'll have to take a taxi home, because I can't drive either."

"Don't take me home," he said. "You're having a—grand time—a birthday time—"

I shook my head. "Staying here doesn't matter. I'm as trashed as you are, practically. I'm beat."

It was true. Three years earlier, I would have stayed the whole night. But now I just felt exhausted.

My twenties were over. Thirty had taken a very dirty toll.

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All content © 1998-2008 Sujata Massey.
Photo of Sujata by Jim Burger.