by Brad Oates
They opened of their own volition, revealing the thick grey fog without. Behind him, the vaulted ceiling, the booze, and the Golden Ballroom faded. Edgar's few remaining friends watched in regretful silence as he heaved a contented sigh and marched away from it all, disappearing into the murky fog like a long overdue homecoming.
Chapter 9
The Bloody Alley
No matter the deplorable circumstances Edgar managed to get himself into, he'd always maintained an impressive ability to find the silver lining. No fallout with a woman had ever derailed his steadfast determination, nor left him with anything less than a throbbing headache and a strengthened resolve to troll the depths for better fish in the figurative sea.
His long history of agonizing Sunday mornings had never diminished his passion for the preceding Saturdays; a quick check for missing belongings and regretful phone calls always sufficed to put Edgar back in motion and set his path towards the next inevitable night of debauchery.
Indeed, the endless trail of chaos and calamity which followed in Edgar's wake had historically served as little more than an increased impetus to seek greener pastures, and it was difficult for anyone who knew him to deny that, with an apathetic shrug and optimistic smile, Edgar was certain to find them, violate them, and leave them barren as he blazed recklessly on.
Once, Edgar had been released from a very promising job scoring for a short feature film. The dismissal came not as a result of his frequent absences and occasional on-set dalliances, but rather was the product of his reaction to an admittedly mild tongue-lashing from the producer. Edgar spent an entire night splicing together recordings of the producer, taking a word here and a phrase there to create an embarrassing, Frankenstein-monster confession of sound bites. He'd then left it playing on loop, forcing the bewildered morning staff to listen to it incessantly as they arrived for their day's work.
As he'd left the studio with his belongings in a duffle bag later that day, Edgar had felt it was a personal low point.
Of course, that was many personal low points ago.
Following a quick bender, he had rationalized that the project hadn't been right for him after all.
At any rate, he had little trouble finding a more suitable position. The director of a small-budget infomercial, in need of an affordable composer, was a well-known drunkard and womanizer. He and Edgar forged a strong bond as the project moved forward, until a disagreement over "claiming rights" managed to spoil that relationship as well. But infomercials had never really been a passion for Edgar anyway.
Unaffected, unrepentant, and undeterred, he was a veritable model of resilience. Yes, the situation had to be dire indeed to throw old Edgar off— and dire it was.
The cracking apart of his sticky eyelids coupled with the resulting influx of glaring light sent sirens of protest across the battlefield in his skull. A shocked cry of pain revealed a desert in his mouth—a fire in his lungs. His entire body ached, and his stomach roiled. The inside of his throat was lined with barbed wire, and his blood ran slow and cold through his brittle limbs.
Edgar awoke with a start, suddenly aware of the unmistakable weight of a dainty arm clasping him in its peaceful slumber.
Still here on Sunday? he wondered woefully. Edgar didn't know the half of it.
His dry teeth tasted like old whiskey and stale cigarettes, and the entire room stank of sweat. From somewhere in the distance came the slow rise of beating drums, accompanied by what might have been a mandolin.
Thud. Thud.
Edgar was reasonably sure the tune was one of his own. The notion struck him as odd, but with his head spinning and a terrible ache in his guts, he couldn't begin to sort it out.
Time for a tactful extrication, he determined.
Falling instinctually into habits long since ingrained into muscle memory with the precision of a well-practiced dancer, Edgar lifted the thin appendage barely an inch and began to squirm out from under. Supporting the limp arm with one hand, he combined the efforts of his opposite elbow with small movements of his hips to begin the careful retreat from this Sunday's heartless impositions.
Thud. Thud.
What the hell did I do to my abs? he wondered, grimacing with pain before rolling his eyes and accepting the increased suffering necessary to mute a self-conscious chuckle.
Continuing his slow extraction, he was startled by a sudden giggle from his right that sent hot, grenadine-scented gusts of breath searing across his tired face.
It took no time for Edgar to realize his situation was more difficult than he'd initially thought.
Squinting against the invasive light, he barely managed to discern the outline of a pigtail jutting up from the shaking, chortling form beside him.
Tiffany, he realized with a shameful grimace. But the arm still in his hand stretched off in the opposite direction, and with a slow turn of his head, he distinguished Tyra's long auburn hair strewn across his fresh white pillows. Suddenly, the unnerving implication behind his own music being on struck home.
Thud. Thud. Boom!
At my own house to boot? Dammit, Edgar!
No matter—Edgar was no rank amateur. Adjusting his exit strategy on the fly, he raised Tyra's arm an inch further and, with the joint effort of his elbow and ass, began inching down towards the bottom of the bed.
The startling sensation of his toes sinking into the fatty excess of a large breast proved enough to kill any lingering hope for a subtle exit.
"Goddammit!" he bellowed, again changing tactics like the vet he certainly was.
Thud. Thud. Slam!
A sudden flurry of motion caused the bed to jump and heave like a freshly branded bull. In the scorching morning light, Edgar sank despondently back into the mattress and watched as Tiffany and Tyra, Chanel and two unfamiliar angels made a hasty retreat in a brilliant display of flesh, which would have prompted a less experienced man to snap a quick mental image.
"That's more like it," Edgar rasped, his raw throat straining with the effort.
Peeling himself up from his bed of sin, he took quick account of his room. A lamp in the corner was tipped over, and the floor might as well have been a graveyard for albino snakes with all the condoms strewn about. The room's corners were piled with undergarments, and he noticed the empty frame of a mirror leaning atop the headboard as he grabbed a fresh pair of jeans and an undershirt from his closet.
Pulling them on, he stepped carefully around the shattered glass of the actual mirror near the door and shook his head with a resigned laugh as he left his room and started down the hallway. Earrings, empty bottles, and twisted thongs were strewn along its booze-reeking length. He had no idea the whereabouts of his phone, but his current mood didn't leave him particularly inclined to place his celebratory call to Emmy anyways—even if his present circumstances assured him it would be entirely justified.
Turning into his study, he watched as the last few angels scattered out the front door. Leslie held a pillow to her chest as she fled bare-assed down the hall, while Jasmine strode out with all the poise and grace that could be afforded a nude woman in her present circumstances.
Following the sound of his music, Edgar found an old battery-operated stereo lying on the floor. Thud. Thud...crack! He slapped the power button with a dismissive shake of his spinning head.
He smiled. That's the end of that. However, a quick glance around his study told him this was far from the case.
The instruments formerly lining his walls were now littered carelessly about the apartment—strings broken and levers bent. His prized Telecaster guitar was a steampunk cactus rising from a pot of dirt; the plant previously inhabiting the pot lay like a dead squid on the ground beside it, bereft of leaves.
"He loves me, he loves me not," Tyra's tuneless song echoed through his mind as the fiasco that was his home assembled into a blurry mosaic of the preceding night's ill-advised decisions.
His synthesizer was soaked, his mixing-station mangled, and speakers of all shapes and
sizes were scattered about in a sordid state of disrepair. Half-finished drinks were set out upon his keyboard, his bar was utterly empty, and cigarette burns dotted the sticky surface of his cherished old desk.
Indeed, there appeared to be only one survivor. Resting on a loveseat in the far corner of his study, swaddled in a blanket Edgar didn't recall owning, sat his fucking keytar. Torn leaves were braided into its shoulder-strap.
"Bye baby bunting." The strange audio memory was Tiffany this time. Edgar shook his head, a flat chuckle rumbling up his aching throat as he took in the depths of destruction.
"What the fuck happened?" he wondered aloud, his fingers tracing slow circles around his temples.
"Beats me, broseph! But I'll never forget the sight of those fine ladies leaving!" Jake's giant hand clapped into Edgar's back, very nearly causing his night's indulgences to spill over the floor of his study.
Jake was leaning against the couch, slumped over and exhausted. His eyes were red, his cheeks were sunken, and he wore only a towel.
Stumbling over to a crinkled pile of black fabric pushed against his desk, Edgar recognized his crushed suit-jacket with a barely subdued grin. A quick touch told him it was soaked, and a follow-up sniff pinned down the culprit— gin. His stomach turned over in proactive protest.
The shattered glass of a pipe sat neatly gathered amidst the burn marks on his desk, but upon the chair his leather jacket hung unharmed, bringing a relieved smile to his haggard face. "Where did we go after the gala?"
"Can't say," Jake answered groggily. "I only know where we ended up." As his hands slowly returned to his pulsing temples, Edgar concluded that he'd set a new precedent for god-awful hangovers. "I don't remember a fucking thing."
It wasn't strictly true. He did remember the gala: the lilting balloons, the tattered streamers, and the great golden bull. He recalled the argument he'd had, and he remembered...
"Duncan. I ran from Duncan."
"So, what now?" asked Jake.
"I don't know." Edgar absently shuffled some broken glass across the wooden floor with his bare foot. "I think I was onto something last night; like I was beginning to put it all together..." He moved slowly across the room as he spoke, circling around his desk and opening the bottom right drawer, careful to avoid making even the slightest noise. Inside, the bottle of celebratory scotch reserved for the completion of BHI sat untouched. His tattered old tie lay haphazardly beside it. By all evidence, the scotch was the only alcohol which had made it through the night. The last man standing in a once-crowded arena, he thought with a silly smirk on his face and a queer feeling in his gut.
Shoving the drawer shut and circling back towards Jake, he sighed. Then, pulling a smoke from a pack he found on the couch and sparking it to life with a lighter from the floor, finally concluded, "I'd been reflecting on something... damned if I can recall what it was now, though."
"You know what that means?" asked Jake, a wry smile creeping out from beneath his pained countenance.
Edgar's body groaned as he stared shakily at his well-weathered friend. Considering a moment, he came up empty and raised an inquisitive eyebrow in the big man's direction.
"It means this adventure ain't done yet," Jake stated matter-of-factly, nodding curtly towards the door.
Edgar glanced around with an aching head and scorching throat. The wreckage of his apartment was a potent, albeit familiar, harbinger that something needed to change. He knew he needed to find direction—to transition from the desolation surrounding him into the greener pastures beyond.
"Hair of the dog," he affirmed, reaching for his jacket with a cavalier grin.
*****
The bar was a trashy sort of place—just the type of dive Edgar used to retreat to when he felt the need to push aside his sorrows and focus on the happier things in life. It was a place to unwind and seek comfort, a seedy little corner of nowhere free of judgment, where he could safely assume that most of the other patrons were at least as bad off as he was.
It wasn't the first one they'd been to. After passing through his front door into the expected fog without, he and Jake had visited a dozen just like it.
Flashes of neon lights and the clank of dull brown beer bottles formed an ineffectual roadmap of their bender. It had seen the increasingly inebriated duo through the musty alleys and brightly lit streets of a city-scape that perched ever on the distant side of familiar.
With each new bar had come new starting shots, new angels, and old conversations. They sat now on tall black barstools, sipping their beers in pensive silence as they watched a menagerie of angels flit about on the checkerboard dance floor to their left.
It was the dance floor that stood out the most to Edgar, but no matter the effort he exerted in racking his memory for a name, in the end, he'd fallen short. He harboured vague recollections of the place and was relatively certain he'd been there at some point in life with Duncan.
Desperate times indeed. Edgar shook his head moodily. If he'd been here with Duncan, he must have been in a truly sorry state. Although his oldest friend, Duncan's success had gone to his head to an unbearable degree, and Edgar only opened up to him now in dire need. More often he relied on the company of Jake, whose judgment was non-existent, even if his interests were somewhat linear.
"Check out that one!" Jake broke the silent screen of Edgar's sullen reflections, his beefy hand stretching across the table to indicate a Latina angel wearing pink velour pants and a low-cut rhinestone top. She ground sensually to the heavy bass loops, shaking her posterior in a mirror image of Tyra, who danced behind her.
"C'mon Edgar, tell me something Spanish to say," Jake pleaded; failing utterly to conceal his giddy anticipation as he once again set a trap he was certain his despondent friend would finally fall for.
"Fuck you, Jake," Edgar answered curtly, his strong jaw resting in a shaking palm. With each beer he'd consumed—a copious number to be sure—he'd only slipped further into his own sinister reflections. Imbalance and towers, isolation and the uncertainty of turning around. And Duncan—the endless posturing and insistences. As if he knew my life better than I did.
"Can you believe his nerve?" he asked around the lip of his beer.
"Who, buddy? We're the only dudes here." Jake was confused. It was by no means an unusual state for Jake, but it had been even more common this night, as Edgar continually trailed off into seemingly unrelated mumblings and long strings of expletives.
Jake wasn't wrong, however; aside from themselves, the bar was filled solely with angels. "Isn't that the point?" Jake finished, an uncertain sneer gnarling up his heavily stubbled cheeks.
"Duncan, you idiot—trying to tell me how to live my afterlife. What's he trying to achieve? I'm already dead, and as events have clearly proven, I can't get any deader.
"What I can do is use my situation to find a bit of fucking satisfaction. Is that really too much to ask?"
Jake frowned, tacitly realizing that even he should have known who Edgar was referring to at this point. "You're right, man, Duncan's an asshole." Jake pulled a cigarette from the open pack Edgar had left in the middle of the table and fired it up. One of the benefits of death the two men had agreed on over the course of their binge was that the rules of polite society were no longer in effect.
That, and the imperative ability to adapt their surroundings to Edgar's own expectations.
...And the angels. Jake seemed to appreciate the angels more than all the other benefits combined. "Don't let him get you down." Jake stared over with a satisfied smile, eager to believe his sage advice would put an end to Edgar's dark fixation.
"It's not even about change," Edgar interjected between puffs of his own smoke, proving Jake's hopes fruitless. "It's just that considering the fucking circumstances, it's kind of nice to feel alive." He waved a hand, and a waif-like waitress sped by, depositing a large tray of assorted shots and beers on the table. Both men eagerly helped themselves.
A sudden cheer was taken up on the danc
e floor, and Jake beamed as he watched Tyra gyrating atop a speaker stack. Below her, Tiffany had managed to uncork a bottle of champagne. The infamous foamy spray had eluded her, however, and she shook it now in a haphazard effort to compensate, sending large puddles splashing onto the floor and the occasional burst splattering over her thin face. This sight only caused Jake's enthusiasm to grow, threatening to split his smile in two before he finally managed to pull free of the siren's trance and return his attention to his maligned friend.
"I'm with you, Edgar. The way I see it, I could sit alone at home and read a book or something—"
"Definitely 'or something,'" Edgar interrupted with a snarky grin.
Jake huffed. "Whatever."
"A comic, maybe."
"Fuck you! A comic then," Jake conceded petulantly. "Anyway, I could sit and do that every night, and I'd live to be old and lonely. Well maybe I can't avoid getting old or being miserable, but at least I can try to avoid the double whammy."
Edgar smoked in contemplative silence. Jake had taken the words right out of his mouth. I wonder why Duncan was so insistent anyway.
"Hey sweetie, why don't you read between the lines?" Leslie bent over the table, a tall shot glass full of clear liquor held snugly between her ocher breasts.
"Try that guy." Edgar brushed her off. "It's the only reading he'll do all year."
Jake beamed, the pleasure of the act far-outweighing the sting of the insult.
Edgar shook his head, washing the thoughts from it with a long swallow of beer. He knew he shouldn't be so hard on Jake, but the potential for comedy was just so ripe with the big lout. As a matter of fact, at Edgar's urging, Jake had once made a three-month, 10-page foray into writing. Edgar thought it would broaden Jake's mind, thus making him a more balanced drinking partner. The novel never worked out, but Edgar remained mildly impressed with Jake's chosen title, although he doubted his dough-headed friend fully comprehended how apt Titular was, given the subject matter.
