He looked to Danielle who still held his hand and did well to keep up with him. Her expression was strangely calm, and her eyes shined upon him. Though she hadn’t said anything yet, Joe could somehow feel her great approval. Not for the first time he wondered who was seducing who. Though her last comment—the slam dunk one—had surely tipped the odds in her favor, Joe thought. Yet his walk hastened anyway. He even held onto her tightly as though afraid someone else might try to split them up again. They passed others, mostly quiet couples but also one larger group of rambunctious partiers. Joe kept his head down and his arm around her as they passed swiftly by.

“I’m just wondering why it feels like everyone is trying to keep us apart,” Joe ruminated. “I’m tired of it, Danielle. I mean, fuck Roy, and fuck everyone else. And you know what? Fuck HR, too. I’ll quit that fuckin’ job. They can all just go to hell. The whole world can go to hell. I just want you, and I don’t care what anyone else thinks or has to say about that.”

She snickered agreeably. “If we’re forbidden, then that just makes it hotter. Am I right?”

“God, yes.” With each step forward, and with his hand gently around her waist, Joe felt loads of weight falling off of him, like he was drunk with it, the pure relief from having overcome all the doubt and uncertainty. He was finally where he needed to be. For better or for worse. “This really has been the answer all along,” he said, the words bubbling out of him, his voice a bit slurred.

“You mean… us?” she asked, her hand curling around his hip.

“Yeah,” Joe replied.

“You need to come with me tomorrow, too,” she said. “I mean, if you want to take things a step further.”

Joe felt his rapid pace decline ever so slightly. “To Manhattan?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said, looking back at him. “What’s wrong?”

“You always go there,” he replied, picking back up his pace, trying to recover.

“Come with me. I want you to.”

“What kind of party is it, exactly?” he asked.

She smiled mischievously. “It’s the End of the World Party.”

Joe knew that not many things gave Danielle that kind of a sparkle in her eye. “What the hell does that even mean?” he asked, his voice flustered.

“I don’t know, but don’t you want to find out?”

“I guess so,” Joe replied, soullessly.

She giggled. “Chill out, Joe,” she said. “It’s just a club.”

But from the way she said it, he couldn’t tell if she meant it was a nightclub, or the other meaning of club. One that could be synonymous with sect.

“We’ll go to the next level,” she added, her voice raspy from alcohol.

For a brief flash, he could actually envision the sect, as some kind of secret, inner society, living in the city. They had no rules, and no boundaries; they did as the pleased, as they wanted, as they dreamt. They were a hedonistic group for sure, and there would be women like Danielle who would shepherd the proceedings, women so fantastic it was unclear whether or not they were real or imaginary. This was the one and only chance for a guy like Joe to get in. If he passed it up, he’d never even glimpse this group ever again. Women like Danielle would be gone from his life forever, off to engage with better prospects than he, and they wouldn’t even give him the time of day. Well, they might offer him a little bit of pity, but that would be it. And all along, in his eyes these women would grow ever more beautiful, and tantalizing, as they lived their life of luxury and excitement, while Joe would be pushed off to the side, ignored and unseen, and there he’d grow fat, boring, and old.

“Okay, I’m in,” Joe muttered blandly, nonchalantly, while dismissing all of his unbridled thoughts. Truthfully, he didn’t care about tomorrow—not one little bit. He didn’t even want to think about tomorrow. In his mind, there was only tonight. And there was only Danielle.

Down the street he saw Dave’s building was finally in sight, and so was his car, parked in the street out front. Reaching into his pockets, he realized with great dismay that he’d left his keys inside of Dave’s apartment. He’d done that purposefully, as an extra precaution to help ensure he wouldn’t even think about driving anywhere. Joe often did employ such preemptive measures, to save himself from himself. He grimaced, and then cursed bitterly.

“What is it?” Danielle asked.

“I have to get my keys,” Joe replied, and then led her to the front door of Dave’s building. It was locked, of course, but they were able to follow other people in, a man and a woman who appeared around Joe’s age. Danielle leaned against him in the elevator on the way up, in a strange silence they shared with the other couple, while Joe kept an arm draped around her. The elevator bell sounded at the 3rd floor as the doors opened and they walked out together into the hallway. Nick’s door was unlocked, and upon opening it they heard music, and they were greeted with pot smoke, all of which was perfectly predictable. He led her through the living room, where people were parked on the couches and chairs, with squinty eyes and wide grins plastered on their faces. Joe strode through the dim hallway and into one of the bedrooms, presumably the guest bedroom by its appearance. Thankfully it was empty, and so finally there was no one in sight. Any thought of actually finding his keys and returning back to his car was entirely forgotten once he turned towards her and her dark eyes fell upon him. During the kissing that ensued he thought his aim mostly hit her lips but it was everywhere else too, on her neck, her shoulders, and all the while her hair was messy and absolutely everywhere, his face buried in its silky lengths. Meanwhile his hands again found the hem of her dress, but this time in the privacy they’d found he could pull it up further, and so he did, until it was all bunched around his arms that were wrapped around her lower torso. They paused momentarily at the sharp sound of breaking glass outside followed by shouting and some kind of commotion—but in the world he and Danielle had created these were just distant, ineffectual details. They carried on, almost grappling with one another. She gained the upper hand momentarily, when she reached for his waistline to unbuckle his belt, and her palms meanwhile assessed the length of the steel pipe within, as Joe was held frozen, stunned. Then it was like he merely blinked and a second later he realized he had surged toward her in response, having collapsed her against the wall, with his arms encircled around her small frame as she gasped in surprise. He realized further that he actually held her fully aloft in his arms, grinding against her. They were still shielded by their clothes though, as this was the proper sequence he was accustomed to. Suspended in the air, her face met his directly, her eyes asking him what he was waiting for.

Then the lights flicked on, first in the hallway, and then within the room as the door glided open. Nick stood in the entryway, for the moment speechless, as Joe let his arms fall slack and Danielle gradually slid down his body until her sandals touched the floor, followed by her dress slowly falling back down around her thighs.

“Joe,” he said. “There’s a guy standing on top of your car.”

“What?” Joe asked. The awareness of the last thirty minutes of his life gradually seeped back into him.

Nick walked away and Joe followed him down the hall and back into the living room. The chilled-out, pot-smoking contingent of his friends were mostly gathered around the sliding glass door that led out to the balcony. Joe looked back behind him and saw Danielle slowly following. Her long hair was roughly tousled from their passion, and many long strands of it hung in her face. She looked back at him with her doe eyes. This alone was disconcerting, her sudden vulnerability, and she looked entirely innocent, even shaken, like she too had just come down from wherever they’d been. His head spun, realizing that, between the two of them, he still had no idea who was seducing who.

The air was a stream of cascading words and laughter from the partiers, but one voice stood out from it all.

“There’s a guy on top of your car,” Nick repeated.

The words were just so bizarre that Joe felt himself turn back around and walk closer to the balcony. Though he felt like he moved calmly, when he tried to open the sliding door, he did it with such force that it opened and then bounced back along the track and closed again. He reopened it, more in control this time, and he stepped out onto the balcony. Then he peered down at the street, squinting. In the dim glow of the streetlights he saw it was exactly as Nick had described.

There was a man standing on top of his car.