“Apparently so.” Nora held the handle of her crop in her right hand and the tip in her left. She held it, he discovered with a jolt of recognition, like a scepter. Even her posture, usually intimate and conspiratorial, had transformed. She held herself like a queen, her chin high, her back straight. She wore the hauteur well.

“Then how will we get out?”

Nora looked at him as if the thought had never occurred to her.

“I suppose we won’t.”

“That girl worships you but she doesn’t know you’re a writer. How did she know you, Nora?”

“Down here everyone knows me. Oh, and to answer your earlier question,” she said as the elevator slowed. “Yes, you should be nervous.”

He heard the muted grinding of the elevator coming to a shuddering stop. The doors opened. Nora turned her face to the dark outside the doors, and in a low voice said, “Let the wild rumpus begin.”

Nora stepped forward and across the threshold. Zach called her name as she disappeared into the dark. Her hand reached back; Zach grasped it and let her pull him across blindly into the abyss. It took a few moments for his eyes to adjust. Zach stepped back when he realized he now stood teetering at the top of a steep staircase. But Nora stepped forward and went down, and he had no choice but to go down with her.

He felt the music before he even heard it. It beat into his chest, a pounding, visceral symphony of violence. Nora descended the staircase, and he had to trust her since he could barely make out his own feet below him. As they reached the middle of the staircase a deafening roar erupted as the throngs below recognized Nora. When they reached the bottom step a horde of near naked bodies congregated to throw themselves at Nora’s feet. She brushed past them, kicked some away, and swatted a few dismissively like flies with her riding crop. The more viciously she dealt with them, the more they groveled.

Looking around, Zach saw sights his eyes could process but his mind could not. Above him hung bodies hoisted high on suspension harnesses. A woman in leather dragged a man to a cross and lashed him to it. A line of people queued up to take turns flogging him. A naked woman was tied spread-eagle to a large spinning wheel. A huge bear of a man whipped her as the wheel turned and turned. Another woman strapped to an X-Bar volunteered her services to a man covered in head-to-toe vinyl except for the part of him in her mouth.

Into all this wet, red hell Nora strode without blinking, without flinching, without missing a step. She floated light and buoyant across the black waters, her eyes burning like flags afire. Zach imagined they could be seen for miles.