Free Eighty Days Blue by Vina Jackson Page B

everyone shares your opinion. Some find him rather repetitive.’
    â€˜Does your family celebrate Thanksgiving?’
    â€˜Not really. My mother did, but she’s taken up the Venezuelan lifestyle now. I’m actually having a little soirée at mine on Thursday. Just a few other “orphans” in the city who don’t have family dinners to attend. You’re very welcome to come. There’s someone I’d like to introduce you to.’
    â€˜I’d love to,’ I replied, ignoring a lingering worry at the back of my head that said that encouraging Simón wasn’t fair, on either him or Dominik.
    A few days later, I was in the same café to meet the woman who had answered my query about the rope workshop.
    Cherry looked exactly as her name suggested. Her hair was dyed a vivid pink and cropped into a perfectly smooth bowl shape. She was short, buxom and dressed entirely in pink, aside from a black leather bomber jacket, which gave a rough edge to a look that might otherwise have seemed girlish. Her thick lips were liberally glossed, and her fingers were decorated with a variety of large rings, which shined in the light as she gesticulated. Cherry talked with her hands almost as much as Simón did.
    â€˜So you’re new in town?’ she asked, in a voice that suggested she might originally hail from further north. She told me she was from Alberta, someplace near Calgary, originally, and I guessed that explained why she was going out of her way to help out another newbie.
    â€˜Not exactly,’ I replied. ‘I’ve been here a few months. Just new to . . . the scene.’
    â€˜Don’t worry about that. We’re all friendly. Have you been tied up before?’
    â€˜Not with rope.’
    â€˜Well, it’s better to learn in a place like this than stumble across a rigger at a party who doesn’t know what they’re doing or strings you up and leaves you hanging there. I’ll keep an eye on you.’
    I watched her hands lightly caressing a large cup of iced coffee with all the trimmings. One of her rings, I noticed, was a large spider, its thick body a long, black stone, with eight silver legs that wrapped round her finger like a cage. Another was a skull, with glittering faux-diamond eyes. I doubted she would be the gentle sort, but it’s not always possible to tell. If everyone’s public behaviour mirrored the way they responded in the bedroom, then I’d presumably have a lot more success in dating.
    The workshop was held in a loft space between Midtown and the aptly named Meatpacking District. The room was part of someone’s apartment, though the hallway leading to the bedrooms was cut off by a privacy screen, and the living room had been transformed into a ‘play space’. It was light and airy, more like a yoga studio than a dungeon. Cushions were dotted around the room, and sitting upon them, attendees in a range of ages and sexes.
    A young couple huddled into each other on a fake cowhide bean bag, looking like predictably nervous first-timers. The rest of the crowd were relaxed, chatting together happily. The sound of a continually boiling kettle gave the room a sense of homeliness, and the kitchen was filled with people waiting to pour water into mugs of tea and coffee. A table to one side displayed a range of herbal teas and a platter of fruit and organic chocolates. Near that sat a lone man with long hair and a scuffed leather jacket, defiantly eating a bowl of potato crisps.
    Cherry introduced me to a few people, and I took a place beside her at the front, alongside Tabitha, who was running the workshop. Tabitha looked like a pagan goddess, with long, dark hair that flowed over her shoulders like a river, and a floor-length crimson dress, patterned with vivid, tiny blue flowers. She was barefoot, and she wasn’t tall, but she commanded the room in a way that made it seem as if she was.
    Tabitha began by outlining the