Ambassador Whiskers' Curriculum of Desire
Copyright© 2025 by Eric Ross
Chapter 4: Claudia and the Art of Being Seen
The yoga mat sat propped against the radiator like a witness unwilling to testify. Lawrence stared at it as though it might explain what had happened yesterday—that he had farted in a room full of strangers, collided with a goddess’s thigh, and somehow left alive. The mat refused commentary. Its purple sheen hummed faintly with approval.
A cough, low and purposeful, rumbled from the armchair. Whiskers perched there, front paws neatly aligned, a half-mask of black satin secured behind his ears with ribbon. “Tonight,” the cat announced, “we enter society.”
Lawrence blinked. “What?”
“Lesson two: Risk. Your curriculum continues.” Whiskers produced, from somewhere in the architecture of his tuxedo, a thick cream card edged in gold. He held it delicately between claw and pad. Masquerade at the Orpheum Loft. Theme: Gods & Monsters.
“I’m not going to a party.” Lawrence pulled his hoodie tighter, as if fabric could be a barricade. “I don’t go to parties.”
“Precisely. Which is why you must.”
He almost said no. The word queued up behind his teeth, familiar as breath. Whiskers snapped his claws like a maître d’ calling a table to order.
“You mistake invisibility for immortality,” said the cat. “It is neither. It is boredom. You will dress, you will risk, and you will learn that being seen is not the same as being slain.”
“I don’t have clothes for—”
Whiskers leapt down, tail curling like punctuation. “We will improvise. Gods improvise. Monsters do too. You may as well join them.”
Lawrence looked at the mat again. The mat, mute and purple, offered no rescue. Somewhere deep inside, his stomach performed a small panic. Parties were for other people, the ones with sequins in their closets and laughter that didn’t sound like loose change in a dryer.
“I’ll die,” he muttered.
Whiskers’s whiskers twitched. “Then you will do it well dressed.”
Whiskers led him to the closet with the brisk authority of a lawyer demanding evidence he knew would incriminate the defendant. Lawrence tugged open the sliding door. Inside: a mausoleum of gray. Three identical T-shirts sagged on hangers like widows. A funeral tie. A sweater with a hole under the arm that had never stopped being a hole no matter how many times he folded it differently.
“Your wardrobe,” Whiskers intoned, “testifies against you.”
“It’s comfortable.”
“It’s camouflage. You are not a couch, Lawrence. Stop dressing as one.” The cat leapt to the bed, surveyed the sheets, and in a motion half-priest, half-thief, ripped the top one free. It fluttered to the carpet like a fallen flag. “Behold: fabric.”
Lawrence frowned. “That’s a sheet.”
“That’s a toga.” Whiskers twisted, bit, and tucked until the white sheet clung around Lawrence’s torso with the tenacity of desperation. The cat’s claws clicked as he cinched it with a strip of duct tape from the desk. “And this,” Whiskers declared, smoothing the silver belt, “is couture.”
“I look like I’m waiting for a frat hazing.”
“You look like an emperor demoted to community theater.”
In the mirror, Lawrence saw a pale body half-swallowed in bed linen, the duct tape gleaming like a badge of defeat. His knees knocked together beneath the hem. The sheet threatened to slip with every breath.
“Perfect,” Whiskers purred. He produced from somewhere—a box of old craft supplies? A forgotten Halloween bin?—a plastic ivy garland. Looping it over Lawrence’s ears, he fashioned a crude laurel crown. The leaves crackled like sarcasm.
“I can’t—”
“You can. To be seen, first be ridiculous.” Whiskers hopped down, circled, nodded with the gravitas of a tailor. “Bacchus on a budget. Apollo on parole. Exactly right.”
The mirror gave no mercy. Lawrence looked like a budget god who couldn’t get a liquor license.
His mouth worked. “People are going to laugh.”
“Yes,” Whiskers said. “And then? You will still exist. Novel, isn’t it?”
Lawrence clutched the toga like a life raft. The duct tape scratched at his ribs; ivy leaves rattled when he moved. The mat leaned in the corner, silent witness to new humiliation.
“Lesson two,” Whiskers said, eyes bright as coins. “Risk.”
The elevator shuddered to a stop, its brass doors groaning open as though reluctant to release him into further disgrace. Lawrence clutched the edge of his toga, which had already betrayed him twice on the ride up by sliding south. The duct-tape belt squeaked with every panicked adjustment.
Whiskers stood at his feet, mask perfectly straight, tail curling like punctuation to an argument only he understood. “Enter boldly,” the cat instructed. “Or at least enter.”
The Orpheum Loft sprawled before him, all velvet drapes and gold uplighting, greenery suspended from beams like the hanging gardens of somebody’s Instagram feed. Music pulsed, disco strings braided to low bass that made the floorboards hum. Bodies gleamed everywhere: feathers, lacquered masks, fields of light. Every person seemed engineered for spectacle.
Lawrence took one step inside and immediately wished he hadn’t. Goosebumps prickled under the sheet. The hem swayed dangerously. The duct tape rasped against his skin like sandpaper’s tongue.
A server appeared, a vision in horned headband and shimmer, tray balanced aloft. “Champagne?”
He reached out, misjudged the weight, nearly dropped the glass. Caught it again with a spasm that sprayed bubbles onto his laurel crown. Pretended this was a flourish. Sipped too quickly and coughed. A couple nearby chuckled—not cruelly, not even looking at him—just noise in the night. He lifted the glass again anyway. The bubbles fizzed bitter on his tongue, and the decision to swallow felt like progress.
Around him the masquerade whirled—dancers arcing like painted birds, laughter ringing against the rafters, the smell of sweat braided with perfume and spilled champagne. Masks caught the light, gleaming like a hundred hungry eyes.
Whiskers padded into the throng, disappearing almost instantly, the black satin mask making him look like a tiny Venetian duke on clandestine errands. Lawrence stood alone at the threshold, a bedsheet Roman god of duct tape and poor choices.
And then someone across the room turned toward him, her dress throwing constellations.
She was impossible to miss. Beads spilled across her body like molten midnight, each step catching light in a different pattern. Her mask glittered silver, a sharp crescent that revealed more than it hid, and her smile suggested she had invented the word appetite. Claudia didn’t move through the room—the room rearranged itself around her.
Her gaze found him instantly, as if the toga had been bait. She arched one brow, sipped champagne, and crossed the floor like gravity had been temporarily reassigned.
“Well, well,” she said, stopping close enough that the sparkle brushed his bare arm. “Did the Romans start selling by the yard?”
She tugged at his duct-tape belt with two fingers, amused but not cruel, testing the adhesive with a slow pull before letting it snap back against his hip. The sound cracked like punctuation, and Lawrence nearly choked on air.
“You’re adorable,” she declared. “My thrift-store demigod.”
Words jammed in his throat like commuters.
“Don’t worry,” Claudia said, already sliding her arm through his. “I collect gods, even the duct-taped ones.”
And just like that, Lawrence was moving with her, paraded into the center of the masquerade.
Whiskers reappeared briefly on a nearby table, perched beside an ice bucket, and raised a paw in a mocking toast. The cat’s eyes gleamed: Yes. Risk.
For once, Lawrence didn’t drop his arm from hers. The rasp of her dress warmed his skin where it touched, and the laughter around them, impossibly, wasn’t about him—it orbited her, and she had pulled him into it.
Claudia didn’t so much walk him as display him. Arm looped through his, she cut through the masquerade like a prow, scattering brightness. Lawrence, pale knees flashing beneath the toga, tried to shrink; Claudia’s grip corrected him, tugging his spine straight as if he were a mannequin in need of stiffening.
“Everyone, meet my Roman conquest,” she declared to a knot of masked dancers. The group laughed, delighted, not unkind. One man raised a glass in salute; another whistled. Lawrence’s ears caught fire.
Claudia wasn’t finished. At the bar she leaned close to a stranger, conspiratorial. “He speaks fluent decadence,” she said, giving Lawrence’s arm an affectionate squeeze. “Say something decadent.”
His mouth opened, flailed, shut again. The stranger chuckled warmly, as though Lawrence had told a clever joke. Claudia leaned in to whisper, lips grazing his ear: “Perfect. They adore you.”
Another circle, another set of lies: “He’s dangerous,” Claudia purred to a woman in a feathered mask. “Duct-taped men always are.” She tugged the belt again; it squeaked in reply. The woman’s laughter chimed like bells.
Each introduction was a tiny combustion. Laughter flared, not cruel but complicit. Claudia steered him into it, through it, always with her hand on his shoulder or arm, turning him like art in a gallery. He realized, dimly, that no one was laughing the way he feared—they were laughing because Claudia had written him into her script, and the script made him hers.
A man with a lion mask raised a phone. “Photo?”
Claudia seized the opportunity. “Of course. Hold still, my dangerous Roman.” She set his chin up, chest open, adjusted his laurel crown with a queen’s efficiency. Flash. The photo caught him in ridiculous dignity—sheet slipping, ivy crooked, face alive. He survived the moment, a prop turned centerpiece.
Claudia leaned down, pressing her cheek briefly to his. “Look at you,” she murmured, her dress rasping pleasantly against his skin. “I should charge admission.”
Lawrence’s heart rattled. He wanted to flee, but Claudia’s arm anchored him—and impossibly, he noticed he hadn’t died of shame. Not yet.
The music shifted, bass swelling under a disco violin, and Claudia tugged him straight into the thrum of bodies. The floor vibrated like a living drum. Masks glimmered. Light winked. Lawrence’s toga flared at his knees like a flag in a storm.
“Two rules,” Claudia said, turning to face him, her palms sliding up his chest. “Take up space, and commit.”
“I don’t—”
“Shh.” She grabbed his wrists and planted them on her hips. “Start here.”
The contact sizzled. Beads bit against his palms. The duct-tape belt squeaked under her tug as she positioned him, feet clumsy under the pressure of her direction. “One, two. One, two.” She counted in his ear, body pressed to his, heat everywhere.
He stumbled, nearly crushed her toes. She gasped, exaggerated, then moaned dramatically loud enough for the crowd to hear. “Finally,” she purred, “a man who leaves marks.” Laughter rippled nearby. Lawrence’s ears blazed, but Claudia only grinned, hips grinding against him in rhythm.
The music crested. He jerked off-beat, arms flailing. Claudia caught him with a hooked finger in his duct-tape belt, yanking him back into time. “Good boy,” she whispered, lips brushing his jaw. His knees nearly gave out.
“Spin me,” she demanded.
“What?”
She lifted his arm herself, pivoted under it, let herself whirl in a shimmer. Applause broke out from strangers, a delighted ripple across the dance floor. He blinked, stunned—he hadn’t earned it, hadn’t even done it properly—but the crowd treated him as though he had. For a moment he was the man attached to Claudia’s laughter, Claudia’s shine.
Claudia leaned close again, lips grazing his ear. “You’re radiant,” she lied or maybe didn’t. Then, softer, filth wrapped in velvet: words he had only read in late-night threads, spoken now with a smile.
He sputtered, stammered—and then, impossibly, laughed. An ungainly laugh, but his own. His shoulders loosened. The rhythm found him.
For three songs he forgot to hide.
The song ended in a crescendo of strings and clapping. Claudia tugged him by the duct-tape belt off the floor, laughing as though she’d just won a bet. They wound their way to a side door that opened onto the loft’s balcony.
Outside, the air was cooler, sharper. City lights scattered below like a spilled jewelry box. The muffled bass thumped through the walls, but out here the night carried more weight than sound.
Lawrence leaned on the rail, toga clinging damply to his chest. He felt like a wrung rag. Claudia leaned beside him, champagne refilled by some miracle, dress breathing light.
She studied him with the lazy interest of a cat batting a toy. “Toy Roman, what’s your deal?”
He cleared his throat. A defensive speech queued itself—about not belonging, about a cat, about humiliation as birthright. Claudia waved it away. “Not your story. Your body. What’s your deal?”
Heat crept up his neck. “I don’t ... I don’t know how to be seen.”
Claudia tilted her head, watching him as though the admission were a morsel she’d coaxed out. Then she took a sip, eyes bright over the rim of her glass. “Being seen is a muscle,” she said. “Flex it, and it looks vulgar. Relax it, and it’s divine.”
He barked a laugh, nervous. “Divine? This?” He gestured at his toga, his taped-up belt, his sweaty chest.
She grinned, touched a bead over her breast as if invoking some patron saint. “You think the divine is about perfection? It’s about showing up. You showed up.”