Club Delirium

Carmen was beautiful, and I couldn't keep from glancing at her from time to time in dismay as she and I got ready for our big night out.

She was a tall woman – easily surpassing six feet. And, do you know how some really tall women walk hunch-shouldered so they think they won't appear so tall? Well, that wasn't Carmen, and she didn't do that. No, she embraced herself, and her full height. She even wore stiletto heels, and fuck anybody who she towered over, woman or man.

She was something of a bombshell too. She currently had bleached-blonde hair that she wore in a cute pixie cut. Her makeup was heavy and immaculate, like she had a makeup artist always at her beck and call. Her nails were painted a deep, dark purple, except for her ring fingers – those nails were poison green.

"Would you stop acting so...so damned depressed?!" Carmen lamented as she dug around in her suitcase and tossed several scarves at me. "Hold these up one by one by your neck. One of these will work...trust me."

I rolled my eyes, ignoring her, because this was never going to work, no matter what Carmen said. Me trying to accessorize with her colorful scarves was like trying to pretty up a stick by rubber banding a flower around it. It just didn't work.

I wasn't built like a stick, however. I had an administrative assistant job that kept my plump butt firmly in my uncomfortable office chair for 8 hours out of every work day. By the time I got home every evening I was too mentally tired to work out so I'd given that up several years ago and my waistline had paid the price.

"If you would work out for a half an hour every day, Kiki," Carmen once had told me, "even if you walked for 15 minutes at lunch and then 15 minutes when you got home from work, you'd slim right back down!"

I didn't fault Carmen for trying to help. After all, it was part of who she was. She had probably popped out of her mother dressed in running shoes, showing off her kickboxing skills with the delivery nurses and doctor. I however, was born holding a donut.

Nearly an hour had passed since this had all started, and after all the work Carmen had done on me, my god, I still looked a mess. Nothing I had in my closet passed the Carmen test, so, as a last resort, when she suggested I try on the tan, thigh-length knit dress that Carmen had worn here on the plane, I had laughed. How would that fit me?? But amazingly the dress did. It came up to my neck and fell to the top of my knees, and unless I was mistaken, it had stretched out a bit as she'd worn it so that it now hugged my thighs and my waist and my breasts like a second skin. We both let out a whistle when I turned to face the mirror.

"This looks..." I'd begun.

"Perfect," Carmen had finished.

I had laughed again. "I was going to say 'way too tight and inappropriate'," I'd confessed, but Carmen had just shaken her head. True the dress covered me from neck to knee. But it was skin tight. I was not a skin tight clothes kind of girl.

"No. It looks great on you! Who would have thought? I mean, let's spray it with Febreze in the underarm area because since I work out so much you know I'm a hard sweater."

"You don't think It's too slutty?" I'd asked her.

"Uh, no? It comes up to your neck," she'd responded.

"Yeah, but it hugs me like a wet blanket."

Carmen had just winked. "You want a guy on you tonight as tight as this dress. I think with this look, you just might get it," she'd said.

But I still sighed as I looked at myself. My hazel eyes were alright – I always considered them my best feature. It was too bad that they were so small. I mean, if my legs had been long and sexy, at least legs you can see on a person from far away. But, no, you had to get past the rest of me first to even get to my eyes. I was on the heavy side, and I had boring brown hair that went down my back, almost to my waist. No matter what I did to it, it frizzed like a shrubbery in the slightest hint of humidity, and I'd threatened to shave it all off more than once.

Carmen, however, had brought along a special curling iron for me. It was as thick as a soda can and she used it to curl my hair into these huge, long ringlets. I had to admit, thanks to her know-how, my hair looked...for once, really great.

I let out a huge puff of air as Carmen tried to do a "smokey eye" on me. Of course it looked fabulous on her – sexy, mysterious, and trendy. On me, it was starting to look like I'd been in a fist fight. "It's just hard for me. It's so easy for you, Carmen," I told her.

She stopped blending colors on my eyelid and looked at me quizzically. "What do you mean, easy?" She said, with an edge to her tone that let me know I'd just stepped in it.

I flushed scarlet when I realized what I'd just let slip. "Well, I don't mean it's been all easy for you," I mumbled. "But -"

"Kiki, my mother died when I was in middle school," she said, one hand on her hip. "How has any of this been easy for me?" She asked, waving her hands around.

"No," I said, quickly backtracking. Carmen and I had been friends since high school – her mother's death had set off a chain of events that had eventually led to her dad remarrying and them moving three states away and settling just three houses down the street from me and my family.

"I'm sorry. That was a thoughtless thing for me to say. You've been through a lot of shit...I don't know why I said that. That's not what I meant," I said.

"Okay," Carmen said slowly, her eyes narrowing. "So, what did you mean?"

"I mean, look at you, Carmen!" We both looked at each other in the big wall mirror I had. "You're gorgeous! I know you've had to overcome a lot of crap in your life, but you're just...everything that I'm not. You're pretty, and thin, and you've got an outgoing personality that makes everybody love you," I paused, taking a great breath. "But...ultimately...you're beautiful. And I -"

"Just need a little more styling," she said.

I laughed. "Yeah. Styling. And I need to get a personality replacement because I'm too serious and boring. And you - you've always been beautiful. Plus, you don't ever seem to age," I said, touching the missing laugh lines that should have been around her eyes as they now were around mine.

"Botox," she said quickly. "Okay, that, and facial peels," she rolled her eyes with a grin.

"And your body and your perky little boobs-"

"I only eat a tiny bit once a day and it all goes to my tits," she laughed out loud.

I couldn't help but chuckle at that. She ate a helluva lot more than one meal, and we both knew it. She ate like a man calorie-wise. But she had a great body because she was a "personal trainer to the stars," as she always liked to say. She spent her time running and lifting and circuiting and jumping and stretching alongside her clients. Her "trainer to the stars" used to be kind of an inside joke between the two of us, since she used to mostly work with stay-at-home-moms or with guys after work trying to ditch their dad bods. But once she moved to Los Angeles and started working at a new and up and coming gym there, things had changed, and so had her clientele.

I mean, she told me about her clients all the time, and it wasn't like she trained Chris Hemsworth or Jada Pinkett Smith. So, so far I'd never heard of any of the people she trained. But she took selfies with them: before and during and after photos. She added them to her website and social media accounts and...well, she worked with some of the most beautiful people I'd ever seen. I'd never tell her, but some of them were even better looking than she was.

Her clients might not be on any A-list actor's party lists, but she kept the kind of people fit who used their bodies as she did – as elements of their jobs. She had trained a few former navy seals who were now personal bodyguards. She'd had a gay porn star as a client that though he didn't swing my way, I knew a beautiful man when I saw one. He even had full, colorful sleeve tattoos that ran up and down both arms.

Oh, and also, she trained models.

She worked with some of the best goddamned looking models I had ever seen.

Carmen had flown in earlier in the day, and we had drooled over her new website clientele just as soon as Carmen had stowed her bags at the far end of my couch, which would be her bed here for the entire next week. We'd stared at length at one man who had something brooding about him. He was gorgeous. So gorgeous, he was painful to the eyes. So good-looking, he looked almost fake.

"Is he smeared with oil?" I'd asked with a scowl.

"He's sweaty, dear heart," Carmen had said. "He had just finished with his jump rope routine and was nice and warm and moist."

"Ugh! I hate the word 'moist'!"

Carmen had only snorted as her nail tapped against the screen. "I think Rodolpho here said something about how he was going to be in an ad for sunglasses soon," She said. "Or...maybe he said he was going to get new sunglasses – it's hard to tell sometimes with him since his English is so bad," she grinned. "But with his face and that body, I'm not always listening to what's coming out of his pretty mouth, if you know what I mean," she added conspiratorially, giving me a wide, I-am-so-guilty smile.

I nodded, but then It dawned on me after a few seconds what Carmen was really saying, and my eyes went wide. "Rodolpho? That guy with the sweat and the dark hair and the shaved armpits?" I squeaked. "You don't mean that you've...uh...um..."

"Boned him?" She said, laughing maniacally as she moved away from the table from where we'd been staring at her laptop. "Hey, he had a sore thigh muscle that needed some deep massaging. It wasn't my fault his shorts were so tiny that the head of his cock peeked out of one leg."

I just gaped at her. "You're making that up," I said.

She cackled. "No, I am not. Just ask the weight bench," she added, finishing off the bottle of water she'd gotten on the plane.

I groaned. "That is so over the top gross. Even for you," I told her.

"Nothing gross about it." She said.

"So you're out robbing cradles again?" I taunted. "He has to be several...several years younger than we are," I said.

Carmen tilted her head back and laughed. She had a long neck that was so regal looking. "I'm sure the fitness club where I work has some security camera footage of us somewhere," she snickered. "I'll check it and send it to you as proof."

"You better hope they don't pull it out for viewing at the Christmas party," I said.

"I live in LA, Kiki. We don't have Christmas parties. We just meet at a bar somewhere and get shitfaced."

I rolled my eyes. "Okay, semantics. Or like tomato, tomahto. So, you had sex with that guy?"

"Yep," she yelled in from the kitchen. She was tossing her empty bottle into the recycling.

"Jesus," I whispered, looking back at his picture. "What was he like?" I finally asked.

"Oh, you know...ehh," she said with a half shrug.

I turned in my chair to look at her. "What?! How can a guy who looks like that be bad at sex!"

"Well, he kind of expected me to do all the work. He moaned a lot, but I think he just liked to hear himself make sex noises."

I snorted. "He sounds like he didn't even need you in the room," I said.

Carmen laughed coming back to the dining table. "Yeah, maybe not. Whatever," she shrugged. "There's more where that came from. I mean...I don't...Kiki, don't think I sleep around with all my clients," she said, now standing next to me. "I didn't really do anything with Rodolpho until after his last training session, so he wasn't my client then, because I'm technically not supposed to have relationships with them. But...well, sometimes I've had to be more discreet and...I've met people outside of work before," she ended on a whispered grin.

I shook my head at her. "I can't imagine sleeping with somebody from work," I mumbled.

Carmen giggled. "Yeah, you can't even have an inappropriate relationship with your boss because he's five hundred years old."

"Yeah. No," I said on a shudder.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

"The club is here?" I asked as we got out of the cab. This was my city but it was an unfamiliar part of town for me, and I frowned as I looked up and down both sides of the street. If it was here, then I didn't see it.

"No, we're just a few blocks away."

I looked at her quizzically. "Huh?"

"Humor me," Carmen said shoving the cab door shut with her hip. I marveled as she stayed balanced on her high heels. "I like to look at people a little bit. Let's man ogle as we close in," she said.

I gaped at her. "But it's February!" I said as the cab drove away. "In Chicago!"

"Yeah! I know! Hey, look at that guy, is that a Hermes coat and scarf?" She said distractedly as a tall, fit man with snow-sprinkled shoulders and slicked back blonde hair walked buy. He shot a mega-watt smile and a wink at Carmen, which she returned." Anyway, let's go, girl! This is all for you tonight!" She said, wrapping her arm around the crook of my elbow and tugging me along.

"All for me," I said under my breath, Carmen's dressy boots I wore kicking up little bits of snow. "This was all your idea, remember? And how is it that you know about this place and I've never heard about it? I'm the one who lives here," I said to her, my teeth chattering.

Carmen patted my shoulder, but we were both dressed in knee-length puffy coats, mine black and hers red, so I could hardly feel my friend's touch. I hadn't seen her for nearly a year and I'd forgotten how touchy-feely she could be. "The models I work with get around," she said by way of explanation.

"I'm sure they do," I said sourly.

Carmen rolled her eyes. "Not like that, but...okay, well, some do like that. But that isn't what I'm talking about. I'd heard about this place back in LA from a model named Misha. He was shooting something or other here in Chicago a few months back and found out about it."

"Wow. Misha. That's a pretty exotic name. Where's she from?"

"He's a 'he', and he's Russian," she answered. "Heavy accent, square jaw, and he's sexy as fuck – well, the accent is...as well as his face and body. He's gay, though, and he tries to make that very obvious. So please don't hit on him." She smirked.

"I don't hit on guys! It's too embarrassing!" I said. "And where would I ever be with him where I could hit on him?" I asked.

"Oh, didn't I tell you? He's meeting us tonight," Carmen said. "He's fun. You'll love him."

I blew out a breath. "Carmen, introverts don't do well with new people. Or crowds. Or clubs. Or people in general," I said.

Carmen threw her head back and laughed. "You could just stay home and live in a box, then, but I won't let you!" Carmen said. "You, my girlie, need to get out more, cut loose, dance your butt off, and maybe get felt up by a good-looking guy."

I gave her the side eye.

"I would have said you needed to get laid, but I know there's no way you'll do something like that tonight," she said.

"No! I don't screw guys I just meet!" I squeaked.

"Well, you don't date either, so duh. Plus, how long has it been since Jeremy left? Has there been anybody since him?"

I scowled at her. "No. You know I would have told you if I'd met anybody."

"Jeremy. The meaning of that baby name is 'douche'," Carmen scoffed, waving at a cute, male, passer-by.

I shot her a quick grin. "In his particular case, yes," I agreed.

"What was his whole-body-cleanse/no-sex stuff about, then? Were you guys having sex much before that?"

"No," I sighed. We had been all over this over the course of many cell phone conversations. Plus when he left me for the crunchy girl that ran the cleanse shop, he dumped the full rent of our tiny apartment onto me too. Luckily my grandparents had been helping me out financially ever since. I hadn't been able to tell my parents yet about our split. It was just too humiliating.

"Well, they can wear sandals and eat granola together all they want," she said, giving me a quick side hug as we walked. "Let's get you a man tonight!"

"Will you stop it? I'm not getting a man tonight," I groaned.

"I'm going to do my damndest to get you one. And if you do get one, I want you to make me complain about the noises you'll both make tonight...tomorrow morning when you make us both breakfast!"

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

We walked the remaining freezing blocks swiftly, watching people moving quickly around us to get to where we had just been. We arrived at the club sooner than I was probably ready. It, on the surface, looked like a little hole in the wall. I wasn't even aware we were there until Carmen yanked a heavy wooden door open and "Starships" by Nicki Minaj spilled out into the dark air. I just stared at her for a second. "Well, what are you waiting for?" She asked.

"This is it?" I said. There was a small, blue neon sign that hung above the plain, unmarked gray door that simply said: CD.

"This is it," she said.

"Where are we?" I asked skeptically.

"Club Delirium," She said with a wide grin.

"Club...Delirium?" I repeated.

"You betcha. It's where we're going to get delirious!" She squeed.

I just looked at her. "Of course it is," I muttered sourly.

"Watch your step." She told me.

I walked just inside the door and a wave of heat immediately struck me. I was also assaulted with the scents of a combination of hundreds of different, freshly-applied shampoos, perfumes and colognes. I was glad Carmen had warned me about the floor, because it suddenly dropped down, then dropped again, until I realized I was on a slim wooden staircase descending into the heart of the club.

The bouncer was at the bottom of the stairs and he checked my driver's license with a flashlight that looked tiny in his big hand. He handed it back to me with a smirk. I probably was going to set the age curve, along with Carmen, given the much younger clientele that I could see dancing on the dance floor.

We had just paid the cover charge and were checking our coats when a very good-looking, fair, blue eyed, dark haired guy walked up to us from out of the club's haze. "Hey, Carmen!" He yelled. He held some sort of blue-colored drink in a tall glass.

"Misha!" Carmen said with a huge grin.

"Hey! Glad you girls could make it!"

I watched with a grin as they did that awkward hug and double cheek face kiss like people only did on TV and in the movies.

"Yep. Nowhere else I'd rather be!" She said. She immediately turned to me. "Misha, this is my very, very best friend in the world, Kiki. Kiki, this is Misha whom I told you about before."

I stuck my hand out but he also pulled me in for a double face cheek kiss.

"Oh! Okay," I said uncomfortably, accepting the odd greeting.

"Carmen talks of you often!" He said. "She shows me pictures of your...what...unfortunate accidents?"

His Russian accent made him a little hard to understand in the loud club, but I got that Carmen had shown him my blog. "Oh, yeah?" I nodded with a grin.

"You were right that wiping hands on white pants with wheel grease on them was not a good idea!"

I laughed. "Yeah. I'd changed that tire, then got so excited I got my cell phone out to record it, and then I got my pants filthy. Later when I went to drive off, the wheel turned a couple times, then it fell off. That was a real expensive blog entry."

"She has several thousand followers. She's very famous," Carmen said.

I pointed at her. "You lie," I grinned. "I have several...okay, several thousand followers, true. But I'm nowhere famous,"

"You should be, maybe!" Misha said.

"Well, thanks. That's sweet!" I said, beaming.

"Hi, all!" Said another male voice. "I wondered where you went off to!"

Misha smacked his arm. "I tell you Carmen is here now! You never listen!"