"The House of Everything" by Jai Chakrabarti
A selection from our Summer 2023 issue. On July 25th, Jai Chakrabarti will be reading along with other contributors at the launch party for the issue. Visit our Eventbrite page for more information.
Sagar didn’t know what to expect at the sex party and Liz, his wife, had as little a clue. It was happening at the House of Everything, tucked away in a post-Industrial part of Brooklyn on the cusp of hipster celebrity. Florian, as his nametag said, greeted them at the door with a whip, and, checking their tickets, gave them both a tap.
“Ouch,” Sagar said, though the whip’s smack hadn’t stung. Not knowing the right response, it was simply the best he could come up with.
“We’ve never done anything like this,” said Liz, though he was sure Florian could already tell from their faces, or their attempts to dress more fashionably than they had for a date in years. She had gone to Beacon’s Closet and searched for what she’d called nouveau Paris. He wasn’t sure what that meant, but she’d ended up with a short red dress that had holes in its sides, exposing the curvature of her ribcage. He too had gone to Beacon’s Closet, emerging with a cowboy shirt and leather boots, which he paired with leather pants he already owned. Even shopping for an outfit had felt nerve-wracking, but he’d done it anyway, paid for the boots under the cashier’s questioning gaze. He’d soldiered through, as he was soldiering now, for this night was meant to resuscitate their marriage from the shoals of middle age.
Florian grabbed them both by the elbow. He had exquisitely chiseled pectorals and soft hands. “I will show you things,” he said. He had the kind of eastern European accent Sagar would’ve pegged as Romanian, but who knew? In the density of New York, all the known and unknown accents blended into stone soup.
The House of Everything was in fact a house. A thick rope marked off the upstairs where Florian and other sex-positive people lived. Downstairs was where the party was. They were early enough that they could observe the bones of what in a few hours would become a rager. First, Florian showed them the cuffing station where they could put on handcuffs wrapped in fur and be teased by a variety of floggers.
“This one is my favorite,” said Florian, picking up what once might have been used with a donkey. “It both stings when it lands and is also soothing same time.”
Around the cuffing station there were three mattresses. Already a couple was lying down on one of these, petting each other. The man stopped what he was doing and said, “Welcome!” He was bald everywhere, and Sagar wrestled with wanting to look away but also respond courteously. “Nice to meet you,” he said, clutching Liz’s hand tighter still.
They’d only made one rule for the evening: no intercourse. He’d tried to understand the origins of that word. Intercourse. Late Middle English introduced the word to the lexicon in the context of commerce for the traffic and exchange of goods and services, though even before Latin knew it as intercursus, meaning a “running between” or an “intervention.” He loved the sense that sex could be an intervention between two people. By now he knew enough to know it could also affect the slope of a marriage in distress.
Ever since a child had come into their lives, sex had become the lighthouse they’d visit when the weather finally permitted. He didn’t mind putting off intimacy, but for Liz his lack of desire had turned into a core wound, as if she feared that after birthing the child her job with him was done. Now this intervention—in fact, simply the thought of a sex party—had resurrected nocturnal delights not seen since the days when they’d first met in a community garden, the dahlias droopy with bloom.
Fabian brought them to the backyard, where there was a fire pit around which couples were exploring various stages of undress and a hot tub already filled with the fully nude.
“Enjoy all of it. Who knows when you will again?” said Fabian, taking his leave.
Shortly thereafter a balding man dressed all in black arrived with a set of ropes. He hooked a couple of carabiners to a tree where a hammock had been fastened. A woman who’d been hot-tubbing and seemed to know him asked if she could be first. In no time at all the ropes guy did his work. She hung blindfolded and on display, a few feet away from the fire pit but close enough for Sagar to wonder whether this tradition originated from tribal cannibalism.
Sagar had been so consumed by the ministrations of the ropes guy that he’d lost track of Liz. She was no longer next to him. She’d been tiptoeing her way to the bar and was sipping something blue and then she was nowhere in sight. He was going to search for her when a man plopped down next to him.
“Are you from Bangladesh?” said the man with a British accent.
“No,” Sagar sighed. “Kolkata, originally.”
“Me too! I’m Rahul.”
Sagar had no wish to seem like the one person in the space who didn’t know anyone, but at the same time he didn’t want to be cornered by a fellow Indian, the two of them bonding simply because they shared some ancestral history. He cringed at the thought of people seeing the two of them in their shells of ethnic similitude, so he tried to find a quick exit out of the conversational phalanx. Except, Rahul was indomitable. He, too, had lost his partner in the shuffle of bodies, but unlike Sagar, he had more experience with these parties.
“This is like my seventeenth one,” explained Rahul in Bengali. “In the beginning I was as scared as you look.”
Rahul was younger and arguably more handsome but still exuded a guru quality. He was also, it turned out, as they continued to converse, full of aphorisms: “The body is the only sacred thing. When you have sex with enough people you see that what matters is not the body but something else—something deeper.”
The rapid stream of Bengali infused with words in English, specifically words to do with sex, suggested that Rahul, like he, had been raised convent-style, their formal educations lacking the vernacular these moments demanded. Rahul was also friends with Vernon, the ropes guy. On nights when he didn’t have the kids, Rahul and Vernon would go bowling. They were both competitive and loved the feel of the greased lanes on their bowling shoes.
“Wait, you have kids?” asked Sagar. They’d left their toddler in the care of a babysitter, but he’d assumed everyone else here was free of child-rearing obligations.
“Yeah, I’d say most everyone has them or is thinking about them,” Rahul said. “I have this idea for an app for us. Poly parents. Why pay for a babysitter when your fellow poly parent can watch your kids for your one good night out? Anyway, what do y’all do for fun?”
Sagar froze. Besides changing diapers and crawling after their little person, what exactly did they do for fun? Early on in their courtship they’d dazzled onlookers by winning speed chess at Washington Square Park. He’d learned the game with studious rigor as a child while Liz had picked it up as a college pastime. Her lack of experience combined with her pinpoint intuition made her doubly dangerous, and they’d played each other into their hearts, though a few years after getting hitched they’d taken a pause.
“It’s been a pleasure, but I need to find my wife,” said Sagar.
“Life can feel like a labyrinth,” said Rahul. “Let me help. Mine is God-knows-where, but you are worried.”
It wasn’t exactly a large space, but in the traffic of bodies Rahul turned out to be a worthy companion. He knew people. First, he asked Vernon who was mid-knot on another victim if Liz had walked his way. Sagar described her as a petite brunette with excellent teeth. This drew no recognition from Vernon, so they moved onto the hot tub. Rahul was splashed and invited in, but Liz was nowhere to be found.
Inside, the party had roared into shape. Now, there were enough people to justify the enthusiasm of the techno beat. Clothes were strewn on the floor. Boxes of condoms were passed around. A bacchanalian spirit had consumed that level of the house so that no one was asking the polite questions. In fact, hardly anyone at all was talking. There were only the different kinds of moans—some guttural, others chirpy like birdsong—amid the friction of bodies.
“Hey, you!” a woman called to Rahul. She was out of her clothes on a mattress, but somehow the greeting didn’t seem sexual.
“Oh, hey Maria!” said Rahul.
“You know each other?” Sagar asked.
“Only biblically,” said Rahul. “Look, why don’t you talk to Maria for a bit, and I’ll go look for Liz?”
Before Sagar could object, Rahul was gone. Maria remained alone on the mattress, and it seemed rude to at least not sit next to her. Then it seemed awkward that she was entirely naked while he was still wearing his cowboy shirt, leather pants, and boots. To strike a balance Sagar stripped down to his undies, which Liz had ordered special for the party. They were tight to his bum and inscribed with the words, Milkman. Upon first wearing them, he’d felt an enormous sense of possibility. Of course, there were the sexual connotations to being a milkman, but in his culture the bringer of milk was a special person, the one who could cajole the cows to do their duty. No longer would he be bound by the conventions of his ancestors, he’d thought, trying the underwear in front of Liz—as she had him turn around, inspecting the briefs from every angle.
In front of Maria, though, his sense of possibility diminished. She studied him while resting an elbow on the mattress. “Nice underwear,” she said. “I almost bought the same for Bert.”
“Bert?” he asked.
“Oh, my boyfriend,” she said. “He’s off watching arena football, but don’t worry, he is entirely okay with the two of us getting it on.”
“Well, that’s good.” Sagar tried to imagine Maria’s Bert. She was curly haired and full of curves. Her breasts reminded him of weathered buoys. In a wrestling match, with her muscular legs, she might have the upper hand. The Bert who watched football might be loud, gregarious, and seven-feet tall. Then again, who knew, Bert might be half Maria’s size, but an excellent match in bed.
Maria tapped him on the forehead. “Hey, don’t think so much,” she said.
“I’m trying not to,” he said.
She led his hands to those buoys, and he marveled at the fullness under the palms of his hands. Liz was not so well endowed, a fact he’d rarely minded. He got in a rhythm that reminded him of kneading dough with one hand while stroking the curve of her hip with the other. She made a purring noise and drew him in with fingers stroking the back of his neck. There were no fireworks in the kiss. Liz’s lips were softer, her technique with tongue more intricate. Still, it was novel, exploring another woman in this way. Their agreement had been loose. No intercourse was all. Everything else was up for grabs.
He found the curve of her hip inspiring and kissed her on the bend of bone and flesh, where she’d also placed a tattoo.
“What does that say?” he asked. In the dim light he could make out a heart, but the letters around it were impossible to read.
She paused her stroking of him. “I’d rather you didn’t ask that. It’s private.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, feeling like he had that day when he knew no English and his first American teacher had scolded him for who-knows-what.
“It says mama. She carried me, all my life. When she got cancer, I got inked. Look, this is personal, okay?” Her tears began to smear her mascara.
“We don’t have to talk about this,” he said, stroking her shoulder.
“It’s too late,” she said, reaching for her dress. “I was going to show you a good time, but you had to get personal.”
“Not my intention,” Sagar exclaimed, but she shook him off and put her dress back on.
“Go fuck yourself,” Maria said, leaving him alone on the mattress.
Without either Liz or Rahul, the party seemed gargantuan. The people around him were engaged in all manner of sexual escapade. Legs, arms, and lips moved in syncopated rhythm like in the march of a colony of ants. For a moment he was pulled toward a tourniquet of cunnilingus. A man two decades older than he was giving head to a lady who looked a bit like their babysitter. She opened her eyes to invite Sagar in their direction, and the old man stopped his furious lapping and looked up. “I could use a break,” he said. “I’ve got a crick in my neck.”
“Sorry, I’m busy,” Sagar said, leaving them be.
Where, anyway, was Liz? They’d met so long ago when he was still working on hiding his Indian accent. She liked that he could play classical music but also sing old country tunes. Willy Nelson, Johnny Cash, and Waylon Jennings. Now they had a child, who had to be fed, transported to and from daycare, and cuddled into bed. In the middle of all this, Liz wanted more. She missed their earlier quest of intimacy. What did it mean that she’d left him to fend for himself?
He began to look through the house. There was no Liz on the main floor, but there was an upstairs that had been secured with a velvet rope. Florian stood by and prevented ingress. “Sorry, friend, this is for the people who live here.”
“I’m looking for my wife. You know, she’s a brunette, this tall, with excellent teeth?”
“She does have excellent teeth,” said Florian, letting him through.
The second floor of the house was a sprawl but quiet. The party’s din didn’t reach the bedrooms he passed through on his way. The people who lived here, whoever they were, could benefit from being more tidy: in every bedroom, the sheets were crumpled, and clothes were piled on the floor. He believed making your bed was key to every day. Otherwise, you risked being stuck in the past. Liz subscribed to a different theory where a made bed was the last priority. Not only that, often their child in her care would be seen crawling around for hours in a stained onesie; he’d restrain from comment, picking up all the toys on the floor in silent protest.
The sound of laughter quickened his pace, and he found himself entering what in the house’s pre-war history must’ve served as a library. Wall to wall mahogany shelves restrained books in leather covers; a swivel ladder provided access to the books adjacent the room’s high ceilings. In the center of the library there was a table with two bar stools occupied by his unclothed wife and similarly bare Rahul. Between them was a chessboard. They were so into the flow of the pieces that it took them a moment to notice his entrance. He had to clear his throat, feeling like an intruder.
“Oh, hi babe!” said Liz.
“Welcome to my library,” said Rahul.
After his encounter with Maria, he had donned his cowboy shirt, leather pants, and boots, but Liz and Rahul, whatever they’d been up to, didn’t feel the need to do it in their party attire. He surveyed the situation on the chessboard. Liz was castled and had done a good job of protecting her flanks, but Rahul had managed to sneak into her territory. He was up a pawn. She was in trouble. Rahul had squeezed his knight and bishop in striking distance of her king. Her choices were narrowing.
As Liz lifted her hand, he shouted, “Wait! I have an idea.”
They stared at him as if he’d awakened them from their trance, which indeed he had.
“Liz is in trouble here, but there is a way out. Here’s the deal: I’ll play her pieces, and if I win we all get dressed and go home,” he said.
“Go home? I live here. That’s my bedroom next door,” said Rahul.
“No way,” said Liz. “Don’t think you can steal my thunder. I know how to get out of this bind.”
In two moves she was as good as done and in five her king was felled.
“Nice match,” said Rahul.
“Don’t gloat,” said Liz.
Naked and pouting she roused him. To still his heart, Sagar tried to change the subject. “Hey, where are your kids? Earlier, you said you had two of them?”
“Oh, they don’t live here. They live with my partner and her husband in Park Slope,” answered Rahul.
“Makes sense,” said Sagar. “And speaking of kids, our babysitter is sitting on her clock. We are past due, darling.”
Liz asked for privacy to get dressed. She’d always been nervous in liminal states. Fully clothed or the opposite was one thing, but she loathed having anyone—even her husband—spectating the transitions.
Outside the study, he shook hands with Rahul, who’d preferred to remain nude. “We should play chess sometime,” Sagar said, a little loudly.
“That or we could go bowling,” rejoined Rahul. “Oh, and your wife’s a real killer. I hope you know what you’ve got on your hands.”
“If she practiced more, she’d be a killer,” Sagar said, referring to Liz’s chess skills.
When they got to the cab, the driver opened the door for Liz, a gesture he hadn’t seen in the city in years. It was just a Prius, but the driver seemed smitten with her.
“Good evening, madam,” said the driver, ignoring him entirely.
Yes, there was a glow about her. She was wearing flats but walking to the cab she’d bloomed taller just the same.
“Do you know twenty people live in that house? I can only imagine the drama that goes on there,” said Liz.
“Do they all play chess?” he asked.
“I dunno. Maybe only the Indian guy.”
“Rahul,” he said.
“Right, Rahul,” she said. “So, what were you doing downstairs?”
He didn’t know how much to tell her. Holding something back felt important. “Rahul introduced me to a girl named Maria. She had this tattoo on her hip, but when I asked her about it, she got defensive.”
“Sorry I left you in the backyard,” said Liz. “I had to go pee and then I just started exploring the house. I ended up in the study, looking at their books. Then a handsome Indian guy challenged me to a game of chess.”
It had been years since she’d called him by the same, a handsome Indian guy. But she’d left out a detail: nowhere in their history of speed chess had they taken off their clothes. She did have a gene for that, though. Nudity, that is. Her mother had once run along the Venice canals of Los Angeles naked. It had been early in the morning, so only the homeless had noticed. Decades later, had the same gene activated in Liz?
“So, Rahul invited us both bowling. What do you think?”
“Naked bowling?” he asked.
“There’s a place in Williamsburg,” she said.
“What an idea.” His fear was that of being left behind. Left to his own ends, Saturday night would’ve meant reading together on their fraying couch. He loved the early modern philosophers, oscillating between the gaiety of Hume and the sobriety of Kant. On bad days he was stuck with categorical imperatives: Thou shalt neither bowl nor play chess nakedly! He tried to switch into a more stoic interpretation of the problem. No one was leaving anyone. They were going to sex parties and playing naked chess—that was all. Still, the earth felt off its tilt.
When they got home, they found the babysitter asleep on the couch. She awoke in a daze seeing them but managed to ask, “Did you have a nice time?”
“Oh, it was lovely,” said Liz, seeing her out.
Their son was snoring quietly in his toddler bed. Sagar squeezed next to the little boy. It was a tight fit, but he loved the warm feeling. When Liz came in, she kissed them both on the cheek.
“Aren’t you coming to bed?” she whispered.
“I’ll sleep here tonight,” he said, feeling spiteful.
She paused for a moment and then left without a word. Out on the street he heard a bird call into the night, and it sounded like a loon in distress; but how could that be, they were in Brooklyn after all, no water for blocks. Here the only birds were the pigeons who chased the rats. He turned fitfully in the toddler bed, and in the quiet a terror seized him. He startled, not caring if he’d wake his son. Oh honey, he wanted to cry out, You’re a killer after all.
Jai Chakrabarti is the author of the novel A Play for the End of the World (Knopf), which won the National Jewish Book Award, was the Association of Jewish Libraries Honor Book, was short-listed for the Tagore Prize, and was long-listed for the PEN/Faulkner Award. He is also the author of the story collection A Small Sacrifice for an Enormous Happiness (Feb-2023). His short fiction has appeared in One Story, Electric Literature, A Public Space, Conjunctions, and elsewhere and has been anthologized in The O. Henry Prize Stories, The Best American Short Stories, and awarded a Pushcart Prize.
