by Rick Wayne
And then they lit it. It burned slow at first, but as the fire grew, it stirred the air, hot and dry like a dust devil turning in the desert. Bastien hopped back over the bar then, pulled his vest down, took my hand, and led me into the crowd. We went right to the pit, when the music stopped suddenly. There was a second of silence, but before anyone could speak, a discordant mix of overlapping audio clips burst through the speakers on the stage: political speeches, the explosions of war, sitcom laugh tracks, drilling, logging, traffic noise. It got louder and louder and louder until I actually had to squint. I was about to cover my ears when the sound collage broke and I heard the simple spoken words from the beginning of an old familiar song.
I am the god of hellfire and I bring you . . .
“Fire” by The Crazy World of Arthur Brown. 1968.
I shrieked and turned to Bastien, mouth wide open.
“You totally told them to play this!” I accused. I had to yell it into his ear to be heard.
He raised his arms like he was an innocent man and he had no idea what I was talking about. I grabbed his hand and pulled him deeper into the crowd, my hips swaying. His hands went on them right away and we started dancing as the song hit the first refrain,
Fire!
To destroy all you’ve become.
While we were dancing, his friends at the bar passed a dozen or so large metal goblets into the crowd. The revelers kept the cups high to keep from spilling, lowering them only to take sips as they passed. Bastien took one and put it to his lips. He grimaced as he swallowed and passed it to me.
“What’s this?” In the dim light, all I could see was dark liquid.
He closed his eyes and his head fell back like the high was hitting him. He lifted his hands in the air and let the jostling push him to and fro. I took a sip and coughed. It was thick like runny syrup and tasted sour-bitter, like vinegar and Sour Patch Kids. With the swallow, a prickly mash of ground peppercorns poked the back of my throat like tiny needles and made my eyes water. I felt heartburn—but not my stomach. It was like my heart really was on fire inside my chest.
“Shit . . .”
My eyes watered. I sniffed. My stomach gurgled angrily. But I held it and passed the goblet along. It went around like that a few more times. I took a tiny sip when it came back but passed the third time around. Bastien saw, stopped the cup, and tilted it to my lips so far it ran from the sides of my mouth and down my shirt between my breasts. Across the swaying crowd, I saw Mohawk-woman take a drink from a goblet and breathe green fire, like she was a dragon. People cheered. She took another swallow and did it again. Another man’s eyes glowed red. Not the whites. Just his irises. He stared at me in hunger.
Whatever I had drunk was working. A strange high came, like a dark hood pulled over my mind, and I felt the pang of uncertainty, that feeling I got every time I tried something new, unsure how my body would react or what would come next. I had the sensation first of floating in visible sound. A murmuring chant vibrated into my ribs and yanked my mind left and then right like a whiplash current, like it was trying to shake my last inhibitions out of me.
“Let’s go up to one of the booths.”
Bastien pointed to the old box seats that rimmed the floor.
I looked to him, eyes dulled from the high. He smiled and kissed my neck. My skin was dewy with sweat and I felt his lips slide over them. He had his ringed fingers on my curves and was playing them like a violin. His erection was pressed hard to my ass and I leaned my head back as his hands slid up over my chest. I opened my eyes and saw symbols floating across the ceiling, moving but not moving, like how a room spins when you’ve had too much to drink. I hadn’t seen them before. They glowed, and I thought they must have been painted in some kind of reflective chemical that caught the firelight.
Bastien led me out of the crowd and up the sloped archway that ran along the far side of the old theater, and from there to the box seats on the second level. There was another bouncer there keeping the VUPs—very unimportant people—from going up, but Bastien just nodded to him and the man let us pass.
He knew everyone, and everyone knew him.
“Irfan said my soul sparks,” I breathed, barely able to walk straight.
“Like a live wire,” he said.
We went right to the front, to the first box, which had a high view of the stage and the pillar of fire that turned now like a dancing god. There was a fancy bench with a maroon cushion. It looked like something you’d find in a hall or foyer. We dropped onto it and his hands ran up my body. I was so aroused and high by then that I did nothing but bend sideways and stick out my ass. He slid closer until our pelvises were touching. His hands went up my shirt and under my bra. My nipples were already erect and his fingers brushed back and forth over them. I moaned and he pulled my jeans down in hard tugs. His fingers fumbled between my thighs. And before I knew it, he was in me. A single thrust that barely made it past my labia. Because my body rebelled instantly.
I stumbled forward, leaving him sideways on the bench. I braced myself against the balustrade, jeans still down to me knees. I wanted to say “I feel sick,” but I was going to puke, and if I even opened my mouth, I knew I wouldn’t be able to stop it.
I had only moments.
Out of the booth, down the hall, using the wall for balance as my hands alternated between fixing my jeans and holding back the inevitable. I took a wrong turn at the base of the sloping hall and stopped abruptly at a doorless nook that I imagine had been a closet. There was a heavy curtain drawn across it, which promised exactly what I wanted: privacy. I ripped it open and saw a couple having sex. I lost it right there—it was the smell—and vomited over a pair of their legs. The woman shrieked and the dude pushed me, not that I cared. I stumbled backward until my butt hit the other wall. I laid my head against the crumbling plaster for a moment while I regained control of my stomach. I didn’t look in the nook again. That’s when I noticed the skin of my belly. There was something on it. My shirt had lifted partially in the fall, and I yanked it the rest of the way up.
There was some kind of strange circular design around my belly button. I could tell from the shape of the strokes that it had been made with my favorite brand of marker brushes, a set of which was scattered all over the floor of my apartment. As far as I knew, there was only one person who had access to both those brushes and my stomach at the same time. I ran a finger over it. It was so odd looking.
I was aware then that someone was looking at me. The couple had already left to clean themselves. I thought it might be Bastien at first, but whoever they were, they were on the wrong side of the hall. I looked up.
“Kell . . .”
I smiled. She said she’d find me. And she had. She was standing right there, staring. Her hair was up in a clip and she had a new bag. She was wearing a brand-new loose knit pullover that hung off one shoulder. I knew it was new because I’d never seen it before and because it was totally in season. Looked expensive. But not Chanel expensive. I was so happy to see her. I tried to stand, but my jeans were still halfway off my hips and I flubbed it.
She saw my panties pulled awkwardly over my crotch. Bastien appeared just then, fixing his belt. He stopped when he saw the two of us. I caught a pair of smoldering eyes then, watching us mischievously from just around the curve.
Irfan.
Kell pulled my colorful jersey from her bag and tossed it to the ground next to me before turning and heading for the door.
“Kell!” I struggled to my feet, holding my jeans up with one hand and snatching my jacket with the other.
“Stay away from me,” she said as she walked.
I was closer than Bastien and I stumbled forward, half propelled by the downward slope of the hall, and reached her first. I ran into her, nearly knocking her down, and grabbed her arm and she turned to pull away. I saw her face then. She wasn’t mad. Or maybe she was, but more than that, she was scared. Terrified, really. She wasn’t wearing any makeup and I could see where she
’d been crying, even before she saw me.
“You act like you’re this really good person,” she said. “But you’re not.”
I could see then where her makeup had run and she’d done her best to clean it up. Most of it was gone now. Her face was soft and tender. I knew that face. It was the “Please take the world away, I can’t handle it right now” face. I’d given her that face at least twice before. And she had done it. She rolled up her sleeves and pushed it all back. Now it was my turn and I was fucking it all up.
She pulled out of my grip and trotted for the exit. Without her support, I fell back on all fours.
“Kell . . .”
Bastien passed me then. I grabbed his leg and he tripped. Kell passed the bouncer and disappeared into the heavy crowd. Bastien stood to go after her, but I jumped up and pushed him back, hard, and he stumbled into the wall. I think he was tipsy, too. He tried to move around me to the left and I stepped in front of him. He moved to the right and I did the same. I was holding onto him, using him like a crutch, and there was no way he could shake me short of pushing me down.
I think part of him really wanted to.
Irfan stepped closer. She looked like she was getting off, like she wanted to touch herself right there.
“Gonna hit me?” I asked.
I tried standing straight and found it easier than before. I slipped on my jersey jacket for courage. The tiger logo on the back was from Uncle Wen’s kwoon. I put up my fists. They swayed with my balance.
Bastien’s jaw was set and thrust forward. His gaze caught the bruise around my eye. He turned to Irfan.
“This is you, isn’t it?” he accused.
“Pick on someone your own size,” I said, despite that I was a full head shorter than her.
“You think she’s innocent?” He pointed. “You think this is an accident? For fuck’s sake, Cerise. That’s what they do! You have no idea what her kind used to do to people. You have no idea how long it took to bind them or how many people sacrificed everything to see it done. You’re going back in the lamp,” he told her. “Tonight. She let you out and I felt sorry for you. Shit, I even thought maybe you could help, and that’s on me. But now you’re going back.”
Irfan looked like she wanted to rip his eyes out. She hissed at him then. Like an angry cat.
But in her short span of freedom, she had planned her revenge well. I think she knew she didn’t have long, so she made the most of it. She caused her jailer, she caused all of us, as much trouble as she possibly could.
A single voice broke loud over the crowd. “POLICE!”
The music cut and everyone started yelling. I remember thinking that it was very important for some reason that I not get arrested. Again. Wait, had I been arrested? Yes, I’d been arrested—a couple of times, thank you very much. I couldn’t remember why just then, but it was all very cool, I assure you. I think my idea was to follow Bastien, who seemed to know a way out. Or at least, he was confidently leading Irfan away from the scrambling, yelling crowd, which suggested that was a good way to go. But I couldn’t move. I looked down at large black hands around my waist. I felt myself being lifted from behind as if I weighed nothing. I was slung over a man’s shoulder and hauled off.
“This isn’t over,” I yelled to Bastien as I was carried away in bouncing steps. The motion put up-and-down pressure on my stomach and I vomited again, all down the back of the man’s oversized track suit.
He cursed at me, over and over, with a raw talent that would make any sailor proud, including quite a few about my cunt, which made me realize my jeans were still open. But he didn’t let me go and he didn’t slow down. He took me to a stairwell. He started panting heavy on the way up. I wanted to hit him, but his back was now oozing red-purple slime from my stomach, studded with bits of chewed food.
“Dude, frickin put me down already. I can walk myself.”
He was a heavy guy and getting tired and after a moment’s pause, we tested my theory. I was wrong. I was still having trouble with basic balance and he cursed ad slung me hard over his shoulder again, which hurt. My next distinct memory is of looking down at my flower-print Keds, planted on the lip of the roof. I remember wanting to make very sure they had a good grip because the rest of my body was leaning backward over the side. The very large black man who had carried me now had ahold of the front of my jersey jacket, which was Kai’s jersey jacket that he gave me the night we found out I was pregnant. The flaps were bunched in the man’s hands. Half a square yard of silk was all that was keeping me from falling.
It was dark on the roof, so it took me a moment to see Kingfish walking toward me. He didn’t look happy. But then, he was still wearing his sunglasses, so it was kinda hard to tell.
He stopped near me and took them off. I could see the scar. I could also see he had no eyes.
No. Eyes.
He wasn’t blind. His eyelids were open. But his sockets were empty.
“You know how much money this place makes?” he asked, knowing full well I was too shocked and petrified to deliver a good, solid comeback. “No fire code. No liquor license. No liability insurance. No minimum wage. If it weren’t for the payoffs, this would be the best business I got.”
I smelled smoke. Like, a lot of smoke. Like maybe the building was on fire. And there were sirens approaching. Not cops. Fire department. Or ambulance maybe.
“We gotta go, boss,” the big man urged.
“It’s not my fault,” I stammered, both unable to look at or away from the gaps where his eyes should be.
“Woman, do I look like some kinda fool? First night you show up, the cops put the squeeze and the building catches fire. That ain’t no effin’ coincidence. You connected to it. Somehow.” He held up a heavy finger. “I told you, Spence. I told you, you was trouble. I told you to stay away from my man. I told you not to give me regrets. I want you to contemplate that. On your way down. With some luck, you’ll survive and get a chance to make it right.”
“Make it right?“ The patent terror of plunging to my death suddenly outweighed the terror of talking to a man with no eyes. “Fuck, man. Falling four stories isn’t enough?”
Just then I noticed someone else on the roof—not as tall as the guy who held me but tall enough, and stocky. He was in a short leather jacket. He was walking toward us, expressionless, as if he were taking a stroll in the park and not across the roof of a condemned and burning building. Fish and his guy had their backs to him, and with the dark and noise, they didn’t notice at first. Not until he was just steps away. I recognized him. It was the cop-looking guy who’d been following me. There was a very large revolver in his very large hand. Fish’s man heard the scuff of boots on gravel and turned. Feeling spry in my colorful tiger kwoon jacket, I took that moment of distraction to bust out a little wing chun—not that I really know any. I twisted free, ready to kick some ass—or at least to kick Fish in the balls—but I was still a little wobbly and not thinking terribly clearly and when I pivoted, my foot landed awkwardly on the lip of the roof and I tumbled over the side, just as Fish had wanted.
