Page 39 of The Perfect Ingredient
The hallway is dark, red paper lanterns bobbing overhead, and jazz oozing from somewhere deep below—warped notes rising through the floorboards. We descend a short staircase and the smell of smoke and sweat hits all at once, wrapped in clove, booze, and the perfume of men.
Jean hesitates on the last step.
I squeeze his hand. “We’re here.”
The room opens like a dream half-smoked. Low tables, velvet curtains, cigars, gloved hands around glasses of brandy, laughter from every side. A man presses a kiss to another man’s wrist in the corner. Another runs his hand slowly over the thigh of a man stretched across a chaise.
Jean stares. Not shocked—not that much, at least—but stunned, like a boy walking into a cathedral built just for sins he never knew had altars.
Hessou leans in and murmurs, “Like I said, this is Lyon. Just wait until Paris.”
And that’s to say something, because men here are not just men. They are silk and sparkle, lacquered nails holding cigarette holders, rouge on cheekbones, mouths painted the color of crushed fruit. Some wear top hats with nothing else but stockings. Others are dressed to the nines in tailored suits and shiny shoes. And in one corner, a man with false breasts pushed high in a corset flirts with a sailor.
Jean watches as if he’s trying to memorize every figure at once, eyes darting from table to table, taking in every corner of the room.
We move toward the back, to a booth sunk in a pocket of shadow. Hessou slides in first, one arm stretching along the backrest. I take the middle. Jean hesitates, then sits beside me, too stiff and too aware of the closeness.
A waiter appears before anyone can speak, glitter dusting his cheekbones, and sets down a small lamp that glows red.
“Three absinthes,” Hessou says. “Proper ones. Don’t embarrass yourself.”
The waiter only grins. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”
As he disappears into the low haze of smoke and perfume, Jean leans in.
“They’re all... like us?”
“Here, yes,” I whisper. “Here, we are the norm.”
He turns back toward the room. Two men sway in the far corner, slow-dancing to music coming from a gramophone behind the bar. One spins the other, and they both laugh. No one stares.
When the absinthe arrives, I show Jean how to prepare it—the spoon, the sugar cube, the slow drip of water turning the green to a pale cloud. His hands tremble slightly as he tries it, and I steady them with mine.
“Will this make me see things too?” he asks, voice hushed.
Hessou chuckles behind his glass. “If we’re lucky.”
We drink slowly. Jean winces, swallows, coughs once, then lifts the glass again.
The second glass goes down faster. His body loosens—shoulders dropping, collar open at the throat, legs spreading under the table just a little.
The metamorphosis is something fascinating to see.
Laughter rises from a corner. Someone starts singing—off-key and bold—and a man in a feather boa pulls two others in pinstripes into a clumsy waltz that sends a chair skidding. No one stops them.
Jean leans into me. His head brushes my shoulder, and when he speaks, I can barely hear him through the music.
“I didn’t know this existed.”
“It does,” I say, stroking his thigh beneath the table. “And it belongs to you now.”
Hessou smiles over the rim of his glass. “Welcome to the velvet below, mon cœur. You’re not in the fields anymore.”
The third glass tilts the room. The edges of Jean’s shoulders waver, then settle again under the red glow. Everything shines now—skin, lips, buttons catching the lamp-light. The song has changed tempo; now it’s a slow, slinky jazz number that winds itself around your ankles and pulls you onto the floor whether you mean to go or not.
Hessou has unbuttoned his shirt halfway down, and his skin gleams like lacquer in the lamp-glow. He sits sprawled and unconcerned, his fingers tracing lazy circles on the back of my neck. Jean, pressed to my other side, keeps blinking like he’s dreaming with his eyes open. His cheeks are flushed all the way to his ears. His hands shift without rest—on the table, on his lap, then brushing my leg again and again until I catch one and place it on my thigh.
“There. That belongs to you.”
