Part I The Basement & the Parlor — Chapter Seven

Outside the Parlor’s marble pillar, Senlin assesses two shabby, mismatched “guards” as impostors but approaches anyway, determined to follow Marya’s presumed path. He witnesses the thugs shove away a doomsaying monk and admit a fashionable young woman without charge. When Senlin tries to pass, the impostors demand a fee and silence his protest with punches, forcing him to pay.

Passing through the glowing glass doors, Senlin ascends a quiet, carpeted spiral to a queue of cleaner, better-dressed patrons. He notes the woman has been advanced because of a shortage of female players. He falls into conversation with the affable Edsel Pining, who extols the Parlor’s addictive novelty and hints that patrons return transformed by the experience.

The queue enters a lobby of box offices and marked doors: K, S, A, and I. Pale ushers direct patrons. Pining is called first; then an usher with a skirt of white hair gives Senlin a booklet and assigns him the role of Isaac the Butler. The usher explains that in the Parlor the audience are also actors, each following only the door matching their character’s letter.

Senlin protests and asks to skip ahead to the Baths, but the usher states removals go only to the Basement, not upward. He emphasizes the rule to stoke fires in any entered room, warning that neglect or entering the wrong door results in removal.

Required to pay twelve shekels, Senlin retrieves hidden funds from his boot, noting Pining does the same. He passes the turnstile toward the “I” door. As he goes, Pining cheerfully reminds him the experience lasts a week before ejecting participants, framing the Parlor as a dream from which one is abruptly awakened.