Page 108 of Boardroom Mask

I look down at the mask in my hands. The irony is so thick I could saw it with a steak knife. This man wore a mask to terrify me, to control me, to fuck me in the dark. And now, he’s handing me one so we can walk into a building hand in hand—on adate,no less—and lose ourselves in a beautiful tragedy.

“Ready?” he asks.

I fit the mask over my face and adjust the elastic. It sits snug across my cheekbones, cool against my skin.

“Ready.”

Kir pulls a matching mask from his other pocket and fits it over his face. It covers him from forehead to cheekbone, leaving his mouth and jaw bare. He looks like a villain at a masquerade ball, which is kinda exactly what he is.

He takes my hand. His fingers lace through mine and squeeze once, and then he leads me through the entrance.

Inside, it’s dark in a spooky, mood-setting way. We’re funneled down a narrow corridor lined with heavy velvet curtains as aromas of dried lavender and burning wood spiral around us. A woman in a 1930s nurse’s uniform and a blank white mask materializes in front of us, presses a finger to her lips, and gestures us forward without a word.

Then the corridor opens up and I lose my breath.

It’s designed like a hotel. The whole production takes place here, in this sprawling set spread across what looks like five or six floors connected by staircases and hallways and elevators. Every room is fully furnished with eerie decor. I can see a bedroom through one doorway, a ballroom through another, a hospital ward through a third. There are desks with papers on them, bathtubs filled with water, and bars stocked with actual bottles. The level of detail is mind-blowing.

And everywhere you look, people in masks.

Dozens and dozens of them. Maybe a hundred. All wearing the same white masks we are, wandering silently through these rooms and brushing past each other without speaking. Actors weave through the crowd. They’re the only ones who are unmasked. Their faces are painted, costumes period-perfect. A woman in a bloodstained nightgown tears past us on bare feet, crying black tears, and disappears down a staircase. A man in a dinner jacket waltzes alone in an empty ballroom, his eyes focused intently on a partner only he can see as a ghostly white spotlight follows him around.

I grip Kir’s hand tighter. “This is amazing,” I whisper.

He pulls me closer and puts his mouth against my ear. “Rule of the house. No talking.”

“Since when do you follow rules?”

“Every now and then. Come on.”

We move through the hotel together, room by room. In the first one, a study with a massive oak desk and bookshelves crammed with leather-bound volumes, an actor is hunched over the desk, scribbling frantically by candlelight. When he looks up, his face is anguished, but his eyes look straight through me.

He doesn’t see us. We’re ghosts here. We’re all ghosts.

Kir leads us onward. His hand doesn’t leave mine.

We climb a staircase and find a bedroom where a woman in a white slip is tearing apart a vanity, throwing perfume bottles and hairbrushes to the floor. The violence and terror of it is gut-level unsettling. A cluster of masked audience members stand against the wall, watching. The actress catches sight of herself in the broken mirror and freezes, then reaches out to touch her own reflection, looking horrified by what she sees.

More. Down a hallway lined with flickering sconces, through an eerie shop full of mounted animal heads and glass eyes that catch the low light. Through a candy shop with jars of real sweets on the shelves. Into a graveyard, fog-strewn, moaning.

Everywhere we go, I feel like I’m sinking deeper and deeper into ourowndark story—and I’m fucking loving it. Nobody here knows or cares who we are. My mask has taken away everything that’s ever hurt me, and the masks everyone else is wearing means they are phantoms, too.

No one is tracking whether the CEO of Lazarev Global is touching a New York Times reporter. No one is connecting my face to his face.

We’re just two people in the dark.

The same as everyone else.

When I spy a chance, I pull Kir sideways into an alcove behind a heavy curtain. The fabric falls shut behind us. It’s a tiny space, barely enough for two bodies, and he looks down at me through the white mask. I can see his mouth and the hard line of his jaw.

I rise up on my toes and kiss him, mask to mask. His free hand finds the bare skin of my back through the open panel of the dress and his palm spreads wide between my shoulder blades, grounding me.

Our tongues clash briefly. When I pull back, he chases me for half a second before stopping himself.

“What was that for?” he asks.

“It was a thank you,” I explain shyly. “This is the best date of my life.”

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