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secluded,
pseudo-Edwardian estate, I thought. After all, the Queen was on Canada’s money. Why shouldn’t things become even more gilded and fairy-tale tinged?
     
    I was still picturing ladies’ maids and poisoned apples when
we turned off the freeway and onto a dark, gravel road. A few moments later,
the car pulled to a stop. We were beside a signless, ramshackle roadhouse.
Filthy, bare particleboard formed the exterior walls. The only light was from
neon beer signs in the tiny windows. A handful of muddy trucks and junked-out
cars were parked haphazardly in the packed dirt.
     
    The driver came around and opened my door. I climbed out.
The air smelled like tar.
     
    “Oil sands,” said Jack, again hearing my thought.
     
    “Is this a joke?” I said, stopping in my tracks. “We’re not
really going in there, are we?”
     
    “If you’re still playing, we are,” he replied, and looked at
me expectantly. “Are you?”
     
    “I don’t know,” I said. Walking into a rough bar in the
middle of nowhere in an extravagant fur coat somehow scared me more than the
prospect of fucking whatever hulking, tar-covered brute I expected him to
recruit for me once we were inside.
     
    He didn’t say anything, didn’t move, didn’t seem about to
plead for me to change my mind. He simply stood there, and I stood there, and
after a long, silent moment he held out his hand.
     
    I took it, and he gave it a good squeeze and drew me toward
him. I squeezed back, tighter, and he put his arm around me and held me to him,
then turned his head to kiss my temple, then the top of my head.
     
    “I’m here,” he said. “Everything’s safe. Okay? I promise.
Always.”
     
    I nodded tentatively, and he pulled me toward the door.
     
     

5.
     
    We stepped into the bar and, just as I’d feared, everyone
stared. But they seemed to recognize Jack, and so after friendly nods they
mostly returned to their drinking. It wasn’t particularly crowded—maybe twelve
or so guys in there, plus the bartender.
     
    I felt a couple men still stealing glances at me, or for all
I knew, at the absurdly expensive coat I was wearing. It had been a generous
gift but from what I knew of Jack there was no way he wasn’t aware of how
grossly ostentatious it would be in a place like this. The only thing I could
conclude was that he’d done it on purpose—that the conspicuousness I now felt
was part of the game.
     
    We approached the bar and I feared he would order champagne.
But instead he handed me a Miller Genuine Draft. “The Champagne of Beers.” I
laughed, and he saw that I’d caught the joke and smirked as he leaned forward
to converse with the bartender. I took a swig of my beer and tried to subtly
survey the men in the room.
     
    I don’t know that it would be fair to say it was a rough
crowd, but it certainly looked rough. To a man these guys were sun-baked
and wind-chapped and dirty. I had only the vaguest notion of what “oil sands”
were but I concluded that these men must work out in them. We’d driven easily
an hour to get to this bar, too, so I supposed they must live somewhere out
here, rather than in the city. My guess was that there wasn’t much of a dating
scene. A whore out in these parts must certainly clean up.
     
    The bartender nodded and Jack left me at the bar and next
went to confer with a small group of men sitting at one of the tables. They
kept glancing up at me. It seemed strange I hadn’t been admonished not to watch
this process this time. I felt my heartbeat quickening—but I wasn’t actually
aroused.
     
    However, I was already halfway through my beer.
     
    Jack straightened up and the whole table he’d just talked to
got to their feet. But they didn’t come to me—they headed toward the back. Then,
after a minute, one at a time they returned to the main bar, shaking water from
their hands, wiping their faces with paper towels that they then dropped
unceremoniously on the floor.
     
    It dawned on me: