by Rick Wayne
Irfan paid and led us under the fire escape and around a corner. Someone had painted a road sign on the alley wall, like something Wile E. Coyote would stick in the ground to tempt the Roadrunner. It was really well done too, with a huge cartoon arrow and everything. It said ESCAPE THE GORILLA CITY, like everyone in New York was just a bunch of mindless apes living out their biology and we were treading the only way out.
Concrete steps to our right led down to a basement door, which was propped open. Beyond was a wide hall with carpet that had been worn flat. It was also torn up in places, and there were bits of debris huddling in the corners as if it had been kicked there over years of use, rather than swept. On the floor were bits of plaster and other litter—anything small enough to be pressed into the flat carpet rather than swept aside by swinging feet. It seemed like this place had been abandoned. Smelled like it, too, but only in the background, under the haze of cigarettes and weed.
We walked a good two hundred meters down the subterranean passage in near total dark, following the giggling college kids ahead of us. Another group of friends was maybe ten meters behind. We turned right and went through a set of double doors, chained open. The space beyond was illuminated only weakly, and I heard music. Some crappy neo-industrial warm-up band. There were some punk kids milling, too. Just past them on the right side of the hallway was a wide, shallow-stepped staircase going up to a large open space above.
“Oh, shit.” I smiled as we walked in. “Is this a theater?”
I hurried up the steps.
It totally was—one of those fancy movie houses from the pre-WWII era with the balcony seating and the single giant screen. Only this place had clearly been abandoned long ago. The screen was gone, leaving a stage-like gap over the mezzanine. The box seats that ran around the walls on two levels gave the place a Colosseumlike vibe. All the nooks and balustrades were lined with large lit candles from the ground floor to the balcony overhang.
“Wow . . .”
The high, domed ceiling had been painted midnight blue back in the day, but the paint had chipped and fallen in spots, revealing the white plaster underneath. In the dim light, it looked exactly like stars, as if the ceiling itself were a shadowy portal to a real night sky. Long chains hung down at odd places. Lines of neon lettering filled the apex of the dome where I’m sure a chandelier had once hung. It seemed like they were floating in space:
THERE WAS NEITHER NON-EXISTENCE NOR EXISTENCE:
THERE WAS NO REALM OF AIR, NO SKY BEYOND IT.
THERE WAS NEITHER DEATH NOR IMMORTALITY.
THERE WAS ONLY ONE, BREATHED BY ITSELF:
AND APART FROM IT WAS NAUGHT.
AND THEN CAME DESIRE,
THE PRIMAL SEED.
-RIG VEDA
Graffiti filled the walls, and not just the usual names and colorful street slang. There was some genuine street art, some of it quite good. Rows of folding seats sloped up under the large balcony to the original entry two stories above us. Someone had hung heavy curtains in the archways. A small crowd was already inside, hanging in small clusters, as people do. I walked up the slope to get a better view of the place, of the art and rows of candles, which is when I saw Bastien behind the bar. I think it had been the coat check originally, or something like that, but someone had taken parts from a carousel, gold and mirrors, and turned it into a long hutch and filled it with bottles. Bastien was one of three bartenders. The others were girls. Go figure.
“You wanted to meet them.” She motioned over the crowd. “So here they are, in all their disgusting glory. The mizzen. Some of them, anyway.”
Near us, there was a group of three standing together. They had turned to look at us as we walked in. I admit, I was looking pretty tame in my flower-print Keds and lavender purse, but then I’m sure it was the black eye that did it. The woman nearest us stared. She had a Mohawk and some kind of reflective contact lenses that made her eyes glow blue-white—or so it seemed. A zigzagging tattoo ran over the heavy scar that circled her neck, making it look like her head had been completely severed and then sewed back on unevenly with a dark cord.
I heard a raised voice and looked up. Sitting with a handful of people on the upper level, like an emperor above the crowd, was the Kingfish. He was dressed all in black and having stout words with a man who looked even more out of place than I did—white guy, mid-40s maybe. His hair was slicked back and he wore an expensive suit. He looked like a banker. Whoever he was, they were really having it out.
Irfan stood next to me in a very self-satisfied way, like a bellman waiting for his tip. She took out a phone and started scrolling. “This is gonna be fun.”
“Where’d you get that?” It looked like Kell’s phone.
“You’re not gonna survive this,” she replied as she stepped away. “You know that, right?”
“So you said. Twice.”
“No matter which one of them you choose, you’re still going to die. It is written.”
“Everyone’s going to die.”
“Not me,” she said as she flickered like flame into the crowd.
A guy across the way from me nodded at Bastien. He had a shaved head and a long beard and he was standing near a giant circular pit that had been built in the middle of the open space. The vertical metal spikes that lined it, like a wicked fence, were charred black. I caught a whiff of ash. Bastien raised a hand in greeting.
He knew everyone. And everyone knew him.
Since it seemed like he wasn’t going anywhere, I made my way toward the nearest sloping walkway to the mezzanine, but I was stopped by a frayed velvet rope and a very large man who didn’t buy any of the three stories I tried. It was barely a minute before I felt a hand on my arm, pulling me away.
“Word is,” Bastien said as he dragged me stiffly toward the bar, “some Asian smed is poking around in Fish’s business. And asking about me.”
“Smed?”
“Yeah. Smed. Someone who doesn’t know shit.” He deposited me at the end such that my back was to the mezzanine and walked around to the other side. “He’s a dangerous man, Cerise. And the people he’s working for even more so.”
I glanced back, but the suited man was gone, as was Fish.
“And who’s that exactly?”
“I’m serious. You’re not gonna get a warning with these guys. Okay? They’re not gonna come make polite threats or whatever. That’s not how it works. If they think you’re a threat, one day, you just won’t be around anym—” He must have got a better look at me in the dim light because he recoiled a little and wrapped his lips around his teeth to choke back a laugh.
I made a “yeah, yeah, very funny” face.
“I take it back. Looks like you already got a warning. Damn, you look like shit.”
I touched my ear. “Naw, it’s the newest thing. You’ll see. I’d tell you more but the first rule is we’re not supposed to talk about it.”
“Fuck.” He rubbed his forehead. “You don’t give up, do you?”
I shrugged.
“Kell told me about the fight. With the lesbians.”
“Did she tell you she was the one who got in their faces and started the whole thing?”
“She said they were making fun of your friend, the one who died. She also said it was you who threw the first punch. Said it came outta nowhere, too. Bam!” He smacked his palm.
“That bitch said Rey was a waste of space who should ‘off’ himself. He practically shriveled. He’d been wrestling with depression and everything since he was a kid, and she just threw that out like it was nothing, some harmless joke or whatever. She’s lucky I didn’t have a gun.”
“I used to really like that about you.”
“Used to?”
“You won’t stand up for yourself worth a shit, but you’ll take a beating for someone or something you believe in.”
A guy came and gave and order for something called a Tasmanian Moon and Bastien filled it while I picked at a divot in the counter. I tried to catch my na
il in the wood but it was too smooth and kept coming out.
Was I flirting?
“He killed himself, didn’t he?” Bastien asked as he put the clinking bottles away. “Your friend.”
I nodded. “Later that year actually.”
He thought for a moment. “He ever talk about feeling like there was a cloud or a shadow in his head? Maybe a presence?”
I scowled. “Not sure. Why?”
Bastien shook his head. “No reason.”
I watched him straighten the bottles. “You think he had a spirit or something? Is that it?”
“Hey, it happens more than you think. Trust me.”
I saw his tarot cards in a stack on the shelf behind him.
“You really believe all that shit?”
He choked back a laugh, and I immediately remembered the discussions I had with Rey our first weeks of school, when we were all hanging out in the dorms, getting to know each other. Some people paired off quick but Rey, Kell, and I stayed up until four in the morning almost every night talking about philosophy or art or current events. Rey was culturally Catholic, which is to say he hadn’t been to church in years but still felt a vague affiliation—enough that he had to defend his old faith from the bombastic Chinese girl who wouldn’t stop going on about how silly it was for him to believe in something that taught it was a sin for him to be who he was. Kell, meanwhile, sat idly by for most of it, either making sardonic remarks and flashing the boys as they passed or else weakly taking Rey’s side—if only to keep things balanced, to keep the peace, since he was so meek and I was so not.
“Why is that so hard to believe?” Bastien asked.
I shrugged again.
“Everybody thinks they got it right and everyone else is completely wrong,” he said, leaning over the bar. “If you’re conservative, you think the liberals are nuts. If you’re Muslim, you think the Chinese got it all wrong. The whole world’s that way. Everybody thinks there’s no way normal intelligent people could be wrong about the really big stuff, despite that they believe just about every single person on the planet is, even people they know are otherwise smart. Thing is, something can’t be rare and common at the same time. So which is it?”
Our faces were close then. Pretty sure I glanced at his lips.
“What can I get you?” he asked softly. “On the house.”
I looked at the back shelves to decide, and he stepped out of the way. Next to all the clear vodka and neon blue gin were odd-shaped jars and bottles, some stopped with frayed cork and labeled in handwriting: Dried Mockweed, Anthemum, Malefoil Extract. The latter was a tiny vial barely larger than my thumb. I had to lean across the bar to read it.
“What the heck is malefoil?”
“An astringent. Opens the pores.”
He pulled a clear jar down from the third shelf. It was full of dried caterpillars with strange spindly growths erupting from their heads, like over-sized unicorn horns almost as long as the animal itself.
“And this is ophiocordyceps. A parasite. Used to make love potions.”
“Potions, again. What is it with you and potions?”
“What can I say? They’re my forte. My oeuvre. My one true calling.”
“That what makes you a mizzen or whatever she called it?” I asked.
He shook his head in humor, like I was a real comedian. “Something wrong with a good potion?”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“And you didn’t answer mine.”
“A potion?” I asked. “To make someone fall in love?”
“Why is that so hard to believe? You ingest chemicals that alter your mind on a regular basis, that expand you entire consciousness. Half the city takes pills to improve their mood or stop being anxious or get an erection. Why should love be any different than fear or sadness? Shit, beer does half the work by itself.”
I scrunched my face.
“The parasite hacks the nervous system of its host. Alters its mind. Makes it act against its self-interest. Look it up sometime.”
Someone bumped into me as they passed. The place was packed now, more than The Couch ever was. I didn’t like it.
“So what does a love potion taste like?” I scrunched my nose. “Please don’t say semen.”
He laughed again, genuinely, bending over slightly with the giggle, and then smiled at me warmly. He reached down and produced a long-necked, blue-green glass bottle from under the counter. It had a geometric pattern etched across its exterior.
“Share one with me?”
“No, thanks.”
“Why not?” He uncorked the bottle and handed it across the bar. “If we drink together, we’ll fall madly in love. If we do it a couple more times, we’ll never be able to forget each other. Burned in, like a bad trip.”
“You’re such a romantic.” I sniffed the bottle. It smelled like urine and beeswax, and I pushed it away. “Is that what you did to Kell?”
He recoiled like I had just kicked him in the balls, and I felt a serious twinge of regret. I opened my mouth to apologize, but I couldn’t squeeze out the words. I wanted to know what he would say before my guilt washed everything away.
“No,” he said as he backed away to take more orders. “I didn’t do anything to Kell. She’s a natural born enchantress. I just helped her find her art.”
I watched him go and then picked again at the divot in the bar. More and more people came and went and I got pushed closer to the wall, which was darkly mirrored. I caught one-half of my face in reflection. My awkward eye always meant that the right and left halves of my face looked noticeably different if you saw them separately in profile. I turned away after a moment.
“You need one of those cool names,” he said a minute later as he reached for some bottles near my end of the bar. “Like Banksy. Or Invader.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Call the papers. Take credit for the mural at the school.”
“You saw that? I mean, what mural?”
“Lots of people are impressed. I doubt you’d get into too much trouble. Why’d you do it, if not to make a splash, get your name out there?”
“Because people don’t think art matters,” I answered too quickly. “They think it’s silly, the first thing you can cut from the school curriculum when money gets tight. But it does matter. It’s important, maybe the most important thing there is. If I take credit, then it’s not about the work anymore. It’s about me and how old I am and how many guys I’ve slept with and whether I earned it or had enough experience or broke any laws and it shouldn’t be about any of that. It shouldn’t even be about the art. It should be about the effect it has, how images can change someone’s whole perspective on the world. Prison to playground.” I snapped my fingers. “In an instant. It’s almost—” I stopped.
“Magical?” he asked with a smirk.
I shrugged.
“It’s funny,” he said.
“What is?”
“It’s always the people who don’t even believe in something that think they know everything about it.”
He took an order from a man in front of him, and I watched him fill it, deftly turning bottles with his ringed fingers, dropping ice into the plastic cup, and handing it on.
“How come you and I never went out?” He set a glass of water in front of me.
“Because you hooked up with my best friend,” I said, taking a drink. “Practically on sight.”
“Whatever.” He leaned back against the hutch, relaxed. But it was bittersweet. He almost seemed hurt. “I’m not a clairvoyant, Cerise. You said like two words to me that whole night. In fact, I think you’ve said more to me in the last ten minutes than you have the whole time we’ve known each other.”
“I’m shy.”
“You were wearing a T-shirt that said Please Don’t in giant black letters.”
“I’m really shy.”
“You were encouraging her to flirt with me. What was I supposed to think?”
“No.” I shook my head. “No, I was not encouraging her to flirt.”
“Then what do you call it?”
“You were each sitting at a four-spot. Separately. Next to each other. Taking up eight seats total. I was just being respectful of the other hungry patrons waiting for a table by suggesting you sit together since you guys weren’t doing anything but talking to each other and ignoring everyone else anyway.”
“Patrons?” he mocked.
“Whatever. It’s not like you left me much of a chance to say anything in the three seconds between when we arrived and when your tongue was down her throat.”
“Hold on. That thing with the seats was at the all-night diner. After the party. You do remember the party, right? As I recall, you got blitzed out of your mind and were dancing shirtless with Chaz the Magnificent. Nice boobs, by the way. For all I knew, the two of you were dating.”
“Chaz is gay.”
“Chaz is bi,” he corrected.
“Really?”
He nodded solemnly, as if to underscore it was a true fact, 100% verified.
“Wait. How do you know that?”
The music got louder then and drowned out all conversation. I sat at the bar and listened to the DJ set while Bastien took shouted orders from patrons, glancing back to me at every chance. He joked and flipped bottles as he mixed and jerked his head a little to shake the wavy locks out of his eyes. He flirted with the ladies—but not too much. I tried not to watch him. I glanced around the crowd and up to the small groups standing near the edge of the balcony. Everyone was drinking, but I didn’t see any bottles or anything. Just red Solo cups.
The mood shifted quickly as the DJ set got harder. The music was shit, but whatever. That crowd didn’t want music. They wanted sonic rage. What they were raging against was less clear. Very quickly, head-bobbing turned to pushing and a mosh pit opened directly in front of the stage. Those at the back ran up the sloped walkway and began smashing and tearing at anything they could break free: loose drywall, wood molding, seat cushions, whatever wasn’t so solidly attached that human limbs couldn’t kick or rip it free. They flung it around like beach balls as a concert, but eventually each piece made it to the spike-lined pit. In minutes, I could see a good-sized pile poking from the gaps between the bars.
