I woke up with a start from the dream and Jack wasn’t there and I felt terribly sad and alone and anxious. And I touched myself.
Jack doesn’t come home until near midnight. I’m sure it’s just to spite me. I run to greet him when I hear the door open. I try to throw my arms around him but he brushes me off.
‘Catherine, we need to talk,’ he says, impassively.
A wave of dread washes over me. He’s still angry and I don’t know what’s coming next.
He walks into the living room and sits over on one end of the couch, leaning forward with his hands clasped in front of him. I sit at the other end, like a child waiting to be scolded.
‘I think we should take some time off,’ he says.
He won’t even look me in the eye.
I feel like I’ve been punched in the gut. Like my world’s collapsed around me.
I don’t understand, I say, and I can hear my voice crumbling. ‘Why?’
‘You’ve been acting weirdly,’ he says.
‘What do you mean?’ I say.
‘You know what I mean,’ he says.
I really don’t know what he’s talking about. I’m starting to panic because he’s cut me off cold and I know there’s no way to get through to him.
‘What did I do?’
‘If you don’t know, there’s nothing more I can say,’ he says.
‘Please, Jack. Don’t be like this,’ I say.
Tears are welling up in my eyes but I’m trying to keep it together.
‘Can’t we just talk about it? What have I done wrong?’
‘I’m going to be away a lot for the next few weeks,’ he says. ‘It’s a good time to put a little distance between us.’
And he says it because he’s already made up his mind and doesn’t want to give me an opportunity to reason with him.
‘Jack, please…’
I’m crying now and pleading with him through my tears.
He doesn’t move.
‘I’m going away tomorrow,’ he says.
It’s the first I’ve heard of it.
For how long, I sob.
‘A few days,’ he says.
That’s all he’s going to tell me.
‘We’re not splitting up,’ he says. ‘I just need some space.’
‘OK… ’ I mumble. I don’t like it but I don’t have a choice. And I don’t want to push him and make things worse than they already are.
‘I’m going to sleep on the couch tonight,’ he says.
I don’t want to sleep alone but I know there’s no way to persuade him not to.
I cry myself to sleep and, when I wake up, Jack’s gone.
And the apartment feels so empty without him.
12
If you’ve never heard of the Fuck Factory, you probably wouldn’t know that it, or even a place like it, existed.
And even if you’ve already guessed from the name what kind of place it is – which, let’s face it, probably isn’t too hard – you likely wouldn’t have any idea what goes on inside.
Not in your wildest imagination.
If you never knew it existed, you had no idea what went on there, you’re probably better off not knowing. But you got this far so, what the hell, I’m going to tell you anyway.
It’s a sex club. The most notorious underground sex club of its time.
If, by some slim chance, you have heard of the Fuck Factory and wanted to go, but don’t know where it is, don’t try looking for it because you will never ever find it.
Anna and I are standing outside an abandoned, half-demolished warehouse in a section of the city that I’ve never been to before. That I had no reason to ever come to. That no one has any reason to come to.
Even the cab driver who brought us here had no idea where he was going and drove around in circles for twenty minutes trying to find exactly the right derelict warehouse, when there’s nothing else but warehouses, rows and rows of them. For some reason, the streets around here don’t have names. No streets or avenues, no North, West, East or South. Just a string of numbers, like the girls on Anna’s website.
But we’re here now. The moon is hanging low in the sky, there’s a chill in the air that’s pretty unusual for this time of year and I’m freezing my ass off in a denim shirt, knotted in the front across my midriff, Daisy Dukes that are riding so far up the crack of my ass I might as well be wearing chaps, bare legs and stiletto heels that make it next to impossible to maintain a steady footing on the rubble under my feet. I’m standing on a street corner, looking like a hooker, and feeling pretty damn exposed.
Jack and I are on hiatus. To me, that just sounds like a fancy way of saying ‘we’re breaking up.’ But it’s worse. It hurts like a break-up but without the closure.