THE PANAMA CLUB: Pas de trois // Chapter 2

With thumb and forefinger on the point of her delicate chin, he guided London to kiss him. The dress slid down her skin and fell to the floor. She stood before him in her heels and panties. She’d worn no bra to the function tonight. Something he’d been aware of throughout the evening.

He stepped back, handmade shoe heels clopping on the ivory marble flooring. London enjoyed when he watched her. She was used to prancing on stage wearing a ballerina leotard indistinguishable from nudity. Every long tendon and muscle could show through her skin when she moved. And even standing still like this with the light behind her, her grace showed even in immobility: the sweep of her muscular leg, the way her toes pointed in her high heels, the stance at once feminine and reserved and yet coiled with elegant tension, like she could leap and flutter off into the night on fairy wings at any moment.

In the day, London’s skin would be tawny and golden, but in the Panamanian moonlight she was indigo and electric blue, the chocolate of her hardened nipples gone inky.

“You should see what you look like in this light.”

London said, “I can see in your eyes how I look.”

“I love that my London knows how beautiful she is.” He closed the distance again, running his hands up her lean stomach, over her ribs to cup her breasts. The hardness of her nipples scored his palms.

He took her mouth again, his hands smoothing around to her back, the blades of her shoulders against his fingertips. That graceful tension eased, and London melted against him while they kissed.

As his hands drifted over the tight skin at the small of her back, her arms went around his neck. With ease, he hefted her light weight. While they kissed, he turned, his future bride clinging to him, long arms folded behind his neck, fingertips playing with his hair. Her tongue worked into his mouth.

He walked with her clinging to him, down the long wide hall, their lap pool glowing in a turquoise strip beyond the window, the tall palm trees in the garden flood-lit from below in hot pink.

Into their bedroom, kissing her the whole while, his two hands cradled her narrow but round bottom, walking with London’s powerful legs scissored behind him, her sex riding against the point of his throbbing erection.

He lay her on the foot of their bed, his kiss chasing hers, getting over her and taking her hands, stretching those long arms toward the pillows.

With his face looming over hers, their kiss parted. He said, “They’re all bureaucrats. All of them want to be in your way.”

“You see it,” she said, writhing underneath him, wanting his cock, wanting everything he could provide. “You see what they do to me.”

He let her hands go. “How dare they,” he said, unbuttoning his suit pants and drawing down the zipper. His rock hard erection eased out of the gap, the foreskin peeling back and exposing the bulb end of his eager arousal. London bit her lower lip, eyes watching.

“Let me see you,” she said, eyes hooded now.

He stood at the bottom of the bed between her open highs and London pushed aside the silk panties’ crotch and ran her long fingers over the wet and ruffled folds that cushioned her tight and exquisite pink interior, the enormous diamond reflecting a dancing rectangle of moonlight on his own thighs. The tuxedo pants fell around his ankles. He toed away the Gucci loafers he wore and unbuttoned his shirt. London admired his body as he undressed, pulling the jacket and shirt off his shoulders and getting naked for her. Then he was kissing her stomach, pulling her panties down while he did, kissing lower, across her mound and down the inside of one of her thighs. He tossed the panties away and mounted the bed again, London raising her knees to her chest and letting him get into place between her thighs.

“You belong to me, London,” he said. “No one is going to help you in this world except for me.”

She purred and ran her nails up his sides. “You’ll help me, won’t you?”

He said, “Tell me who else will help you.”

“No one, baby,” she said. “No one but you.” Her lips found his then, and he got into place, the point of his thick arousal finding the wet seam of her entry and pushing inside her, London’s nails digging harder, her soft gasps coming quicker the more of his cock he pushed inside her.

***

A twenty-minute drive brought London from the beach house into Panama City, to Casco Viejo, onto Avenue B, to the long, three-story block house she owned with Alvaro. A French colonial building in tropical colors, paprika stucco walls, and arches and trim in turquoise; wrought iron lanterns hung on the walls every dozen feet along the sidewalk and there were terraces and balconies above.

She parked the Mercedes street-side around the corner and walked to the front doors of what one day would be The London Perry Studio. For now, it was an empty space filled with construction equipment and half-finished renovations.

All because of a secret room.

At least the upper floor rental units were all occupied and unaffected by the recent discovery by the contractors hired to turn the entire street level into classrooms with dance floors. The neighborhood of Casco Viejo, or San Felipe, was the old quarter in Panama City, the place where the city began again after the pirate Henry Morgan ransacked the original city.

She opened the double doors with the key, entered, and closed the doors behind her. The space where she should be teaching ballet was dim and dusty, dotted with sawhorses and draping plastic sheets. Work had stopped. Power tools removed, no more workers.

Waiting.

Waiting, waiting, waiting.

Her phone rang, and she fished it out of her purse. It was Alvaro’s sister Dominica.

“What’s up?”

Dominica asked how Alvaro was and what he was doing today, and London told her she hadn’t seen him this morning. He was up and gone before she’d woke. Then London said, “Why didn’t you sit me next to Aguilar at the Faith Hearts dinner?”

“Are you mad about it?”

“No, but you know what kind of break I need here.”

Dominica was quiet, like she was pretending to be busy calling mid-morning from her office, but London could tell something was up.

Dominica came back, a decision made, her voice resigned to a duty or task she didn’t want to do. “Don’t be mad at me.”

“I told you I’m not mad.”

“London, don’t you think I’d seat you with Aguilar?”

London leaned her butt on a sawhorse, a sheet draped over it. Alone in the cavernous space, most of the walls knocked down, metal supports holding up the ceilings; the windows tinted, passersby walking the sidewalk but unable to see in. “I thought you would have.”

Dominica admitted, “The Minister rejected her seating.”

“Rejected her seating? You mean she didn’t want to sit next to me?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Why didn’t you tell me that earlier? . . . Oh, I know why—because I wouldn’t come, right? And then your brother wouldn’t come.”

“Alvaro would come for me, and you know you wouldn’t stop him. It wasn’t Alvaro I was thinking of. It was you.”

“That’s why you failed to tell me the Culture Minister hates me enough to make sure we weren’t seated near each other?”

“If you’d stayed at home, what would that accomplish? If I didn’t tell you Aguilar had changed the seating, and you showed up and you acted unaware of her request, then you win, London. You know Aguilar would think you’d been told of the seating arrangement and what she did, and yet you still came. You’re persistent, unintimidated, still looking to make your business work in the middle of this debacle.”

“I don’t need saving from myself.”

“You’re a crusader, London. I love you, but you’re a champion of fairness and that’s not how business works most of the time.”

“That’s why I need the more ethically flexible looking out for me?”

“I’m ethically flexible? I’m going to take that as a compliment.”

“I wouldn’t.”

“See? This is why no one wants to sit next to you.”

London sighed and rubbed her neck, looking up at the ceiling of the space where she should already be teaching ballet students. “You’re buying lunch today.”

“That’ll teach me to look out for you.”

London said, “And the bar tab, too.”

“Now you’re being cruel.”

They arranged where they’d meet (the rooftop, CasaCasco, where they’d have sushi and cocktails), and when they’d meet (two hours from now).

With her phone shoved back in her purse, she strolled into the dim cavern. Beyond the smoky windows, pedestrians walked in the sunshine, oblivious to the drama playing out in the vacant blacked-out space. They might wonder what was going to open up next. Some boutique, maybe a new restaurant . . .?

A decade ago this crumbling neighborhood had been a dangerous place, a place of poverty and violence. Gentrification had arrived, and Casco Viejo was transforming. Gabriella Aguilar, the Minister of Culture, had been born and raised here during that time. There was a truth to the neighborhood Gabriella wanted to preserve.

London kicked off her Gucci loafers and nudged them under a sawhorse. Long strides stretched out her legs, and she walked in circles on her toes, picturing the space as it should be right now: polished hardwood floors, mirrored walls, barres. Not dusty, not dark, not the old crumbling walls of a hundreds-year-old building that had been converted to tenements.

From fourth position now, she went to a deep plié, then into slow and controlled grand adage, each time moving the leg higher in the movement. Long strides again, the strides going to sauter, the jumps high and light. There was an old twinge in her right buttock: residual clicking and tightness from a hip labral tear when she was twenty-five. She explored the space, dancing and jumping in the quiet, hearing Swan Lake in her ears, timing her jumps, her spins, doing a half-assed cold and bare foot fouette. The fouette went into another sauter so she could get momentum for a pirouette, a move she still could pull off even at this age and this weight. She was seven pounds heavier than when she’d performed for Joburg, but countless hours of pirouette hardship had distilled the essence of the movement in her mind, and her body still complied, used to the testing of her balance and speed and technique—

The sound of slow clapping startled her, and she emitted a brief, thin shriek and jumped to her toes, snapping out of the pirouette and stepping back, wide-eyed, seeing the dark silhouette of a tall and imposing man leaning by the front door. His voice was low and deep and gravelly: “Brava, Miss Perry, brava.”

“How did you get in here?” She said, “The school isn’t opened yet—there’s nothing for you here.”

“Your door was open,” he said.

“No, it wasn’t—”

“Unlocked.” He eased off the door frame, taking his time.

Her heart pounded in her throat. “My husband is in the back somewhere. Are you here to see him?”

“Mister Ortega? He’s not here, Miss Perry. You’re here alone.”

That’s right, the man knew her name. He wasn’t some criminal off the street looking for an opportunity, looking to take her purse and have his way with her. He was here for a purpose. “What do you want from me?”

The man put his hands in his pockets and strolled to the side, not straight toward her but into the space where she’d just been dancing. God, he’d been watching her dance. He wore a plain white untucked shirt, linen pants, and she could see a hint of gold in his long hair. He said, “I’m here to see what has caused you so much grievance.”

She frowned, tracing the too-confident man as he crossed what should be a dance floor by now. The long hair, the build, the arrogance . . .

“You were with the Minister of Culture,” she said. “I saw you at the Palacio de las Garzas.” It was the tall and handsome man, the surly one. The gigolo.

“That’s correct,” the man said, but offered no more information.

“Who are you?” Now she was getting mad at him, this man so obviously trying to control her, control the situation. Just like everyone she’d had to deal with since the contractors discovered the secret room. “And what makes you think you can walk in here without even knocking?”