“Seems he moved on to bigger and better things.”
“Janice? Oh my God, Bennie! She’s like what? Eighty?”
“She’s eighteen, Sierra, jeez!”
Sierra laughed and then it happened: She started talking. The whole weird situation poured out of her mouth, all the things she hadn’t even known how to express to herself, from the crying murals to Grandpa Lázaro’s strange, doomed fellowship to Nydia the librarian and the search for this spirit Lucera.
“Dang!” Bennie said when she’d finished. “That’s wild!”
“Pretty much,” Sierra said, breathing a sigh of relief now that it was all out of her system and her friend hadn’t called her a raving lunatic. Not yet, anyway.
“I’ve never hearda anything like that in my life.”
“Basically.”
“But still, there must be some explanation.”
“You and your explanations!”
“I can’t help it,” Bennie said. “I’m a scientist. That’s what we do: We explain stuff.” Bennie had spent every year of the decade that Sierra had known her obsessed with one branch of the natural sciences or another. She had settled on zoology recently, after having one eye glued to her telescope for what seemed like forever. “I’m just saying not everything is necessarily how it seems. Okay?”
“Okay. Ow!” Sierra wrenched her head away from Bennie’s fingers. “Leave it!”
“You can’t leave a half-done braid. C’mere.” Hands returned to hair, and the yanking and tugging began all over again. “Look,” Bennie said, glaring at Sierra’s reflection in the mirror, “I know you excited ’bout seeing Robbie tonight, but I really don’t think you should be talking to him about everything that’s going on.”
“What? Why not?”
“Think about it, Sierra.” She began wrestling another strand of wily hair into submission. “He’s clearly all up in whatever that whole strange world is. Shadowshapers and all that.”
“True.”
“And he disappeared right when that creepy dude showed up at Sully’s.”
“Ow! Be easy! Anyway, he was trying to draw it off, I think.”
“I’m just sayin’: You can’t assume Robbie’s on our side.”
“What side are we on?”
“Our side. We on our side. Just be careful, Sierra. That’s all I’m saying. Do what you gotta do, but don’t run your mouth about everything. Just keep that stuff to yourself.”
Sierra tried to turn her head, but Bennie tugged her back. “What are we supposed to talk about then? You know I hate small talk.”
“Suck it up. What do you think the rest of us normal people do on dates?”
“It’s not a date!”
“Whatever.” Bennie grabbed another two strands of hair and went to work. Sierra couldn’t help but feel that her friend was enjoying herself quite a bit.
“What if he doesn’t like my ponch?”
“Your what now?”
“My little belly ponch.” Sierra patted her tummy.
“Oh lord, Sierra, really? Everybody has a little gut, and plenty a’ dudes go crazy for ’em. Stop fretting.”
They sat in silence for a while, Bennie twisting and pulling away as Sierra tumbled the past two days around and around in her head like a load of laundry.
“Ow!”
“Relax, I’m done. How you feel?”
“Like my face is being slowly yanked around to the back of my head.”
“Awesome. Well, you look hot, so go get ’em.”
Sierra got off the Q train at the dimly lit Church Avenue station in the heart of Flatbush. The platform was deserted, and a gentle rain drifted onto the tracks.
Robbie smiled as Sierra came out through the turnstile. His long locks were tightened and wrapped into a bun behind his head, and he wore a dignified blazer over a T-shirt and whitewashed jeans. He also had on old sneakers, but Sierra decided to let that one go.
“Not bad,” she said.
He looked relieved. “Not bad yourself.”
“Why, thank you.”
He stopped just in front of her, just a little too close, and then leaned in and kissed her cheek.
“Hey, when did you get so slick?” she said, pulling away. “You’re supposed to be the quiet, dorky type.”
Robbie laughed shyly. “I am the quiet, dorky type,” he said. “I’m really, really nervous.” Sierra felt her stomach relax a little. “In fact, that move’s all I got, really, and believe me, I rehearsed that like six thousand times.” He exhaled sharply, and she realized his fists were clenched at his sides.
“Okay,” she said, laughing. “You can relax, buddy, you’re doing fine.”
“Okay,” he whispered. “You ready to go?”
“Where we going?”
“It’s called Club Kalfour. I painted a mural for them. I want you to see it.”
“You’ve been planning this for a while,” Sierra said, her eyes narrowing. “Either that or you take all the girls there.”
Robbie let out a nervous burp and then looked more relaxed. Sierra did her best not to burst out laughing again. “No,” he said, “I’ve been planning this a while.”
They walked side by side out into the night.
Club Kalfour turned out to be a discreet little operation on the corner of two quiet streets in East Flatbush. An ancient marquee announced C UB K LFO R, and threatened to collapse at any moment.
“Nice,” Sierra said.
“Listen.” Robbie stopped at the wood-paneled door. “I told you I’d tell you what I could about shadowshapers and what we do.”
Sierra nodded.
“And Imma do that. Imma show you, actually. All I ask is that you not freak out.” The boy’s face was serious.
“Look, I’m not promising I’ll stay if things get messy, Robbie,” she said. “You know what kind of week it’s been.”
“It won’t be no corpuscules, I swear. Just — trust me for a bit, okay?”
Sierra nodded. “I’ll try.”
“I want you to understand, this isn’t something I show people, like, ever. Got it?”
“Got it.”
“And I’m only doing it cuz it’s easier to show you than explain it and cuz you’re …”
“I’m what?”
“Cuz you’re you, Sierra. Okay?”
Sierra realized she wasn’t sure what to do with her mouth. It kept trying to move around to different parts of her face. She clenched her teeth to keep it in line. “Okay,” she said tightly.
Inside, a disco ball sent tiny flickers spinning around the dim lounge. The lights passed fleetingly across the faces of couples dancing, teenagers chatting in corners, some old guys nursing drinks at the bar, and waitresses working the floor. A haze of smoke hung in the air; it wasn’t the sweet mustiness of her abuelo’s Malagueñas but a danker, cigarette smell. Some old swing-style jazz melody with a calypso beat chortled from a jukebox in the corner.
Sierra wasn’t sure why, but she felt instantly at home at Club Kalfour. No one turned to glare at them or size them up like at most of the teenage clubs she’d been to. Robbie didn’t appear to be in any imminent danger of getting jumped. People of all ages mingled and joked happily with one another, and most shockingly, no creepy guys tried to devour her whole with their eyes. “I like this place,” she whispered in Robbie’s ear. Then she surprised even herself by leaving her lips by his neck for a sweet moment.
“I was hoping you would,” he said, a goofy smile breaking out across his face. “Come with me.” He led her over to the jukebox corner and said, “You see it?”
“Uh, the music box?”
“No, Sierra, the wall.”
She had completely forgotten that he’d said he painted murals for the place. She squinted through the foggy air at the walls. The light was so dim that at first she could barely see the images, but as her eyes adjusted, the swirling lines and figures seemed to jump out from the wall. She followed a blue pant leg up to find a well-dressed skeleton waltzing with
his skeleton bride. Behind them, palm trees swayed before a burning red sky, and beyond that churned a wild ocean full of beautiful dark-skinned mermaids and swirling dragons.
“It’s amazing,” gasped Sierra.
“Thank you,” Robbie said. “It was even brighter before … everything happened.”
It was true — the mural looked as though it had been around much longer than either Sierra or Robbie had been alive. Farther down the wall, a tall black man in an elegant colonial military uniform stood on top of a jungle mountain. He stared down into a forest full of growling tropical creatures and magnificent birds. The light blue Caribbean sky was alive with angels of all colors and sizes; they fluttered merrily toward some unseen source of brilliant light.
Sierra spun slowly around. Each wall of Club Kalfour was covered with an epic masterpiece rendered in Robbie’s distinctive graffiti-like style. “You see,” she said, “you say you’re not slick, and yet, here we are, in this romantic little club surrounded by all your hot paintings. I think you might be slick, mister.”
Robbie replied with a “Who, me?” shrug. “There’s more.” It was the kind of line that would have struck Sierra as cocky if he hadn’t said it with such a solemn face. He walked up to the wall and then turned to face the club. “Do you see anything around the place? Anything strange?”
Sierra looked around the room. There were a few more scattered couples, a full family of six eating dinner in a far corner, and a pretty waitress in her thirties walking from table to table, putting down silverware. “Not particularly.”
“Squint,” Robbie said.
“What?”
“Try to relax your vision, if that makes any sense …”
“It doesn’t.”
“It’s called ‘soft eyes.’ Don’t look at any one thing. Just sort of squint at the room so it becomes blurry.”
Sierra closed her eyes almost all the way, letting her lashes meet across her view. The room became a blur of color splotches and spinning lights. No big deal.
Then something moved across the room toward her. It was tall. It was dark. It was almost invisible against the foggy haze of the bar. Sierra’s eyes shot open, but there was nothing there. “What was —”
“You saw one!” Robbie smiled at her.
“One what, man?”
“I knew you could. I knew from way back. Anyway, okay, look at the wall again.”
“Robbie, this is no kinda explanation if all I am is more confused and freaked-out at the end of it. You realize that, right?”
“You said you wouldn’t freak out. Now look at the wall.”
Sierra made a face at him, but he’d closed his eyes, his forehead only a few inches from the painted skeleton foot. He raised his left hand and touched the wall with his right. Sierra squinted and then almost toppled over: The tall shadow charged across the club toward them, dove straight at Robbie, and then seemed to vanish into his chest. Robbie barely moved, his hand still on the wall.
Sierra’s eyes went to his painting. She couldn’t say exactly what, but something was definitely happening to the mural now. It was … different, brighter and …
The painted skeleton trembled.
“Robbie!”
“Shh.”
Sierra watched in awe as the skeleton’s painted skull turned ever so slightly as if to regard her and Robbie. It was smiling, but skulls were always smiling those damn death grins, so that didn’t mean anything. Then it started tapping its foot. She could see it beating in time with the music.
Sierra opened her mouth to gasp but fought it back. She’d promised not to freak out. And anyway, how different was this from the strange changes she’d been seeing in murals all week? Something about it made some wild kind of sense.
“You run off?” Robbie’s eyes were still closed, his hand still touched the wall.
She shook her head, then remembered he couldn’t see her. “No. I’m here.”
More tall, dark shadows moved across the club. Sierra could sense them flickering along the edges of her eyes, but she couldn’t look away from the mural. One by one, the tall shadows approached Robbie and then vanished into him. The painting brightened and then seemed to awaken, each mermaid and monster flexing and turning ever so slightly, as if rising from an epic nap.
“I just … I just …” Sierra whispered.
Robbie was smiling when he opened his eyes. “Shadowshaping. The shadows come to me. When they’re just in shadow form, they can’t do so much in the living world, just whisper and rush around mostly. Some can do other stuff, but it takes a lot of their energy. But when I put their spirits into the painting — a form — they take on way more powers.”
“Can other people see it, though?” No one else was looking up, no one gaped. The murals were bursting to life, and everyone around her was like la di da, another day at the club.
“Not most of ’em, no.”
“Why … why not?”
“It’s like I said the other night: They’re not looking.”
Sierra just stared at the churning wall.
“But it’s real,” Robbie finished. “Anyway, you … You wanna dance?”
Sierra had to peel her eyes away from the swirl of living paint. “I do but … I don’t dance Haitian.”
“Do you salsa?”
“More or less.”
“Then you’ll be alright.”
A group of older gentlemen in matching white suits shuffled onto a stage at the far end of the club. Most of them looked well past retirement age, and a few seemed ready to check out at any moment. “Don’t they have curfew at the nursing home?” Sierra asked.
Robbie rolled his eyes and led her onto the dance floor. The old men all raised their instruments at once, and the room filled with a shock of horns over the gentle footsteps of conga drums. Then the pianist let loose a sequence of rising and falling syncopations and a man’s crooning voice stretched over it all. It sounded like some of the old boleros that Lázaro used to put on his phonograph in his house on Myrtle Ave, but the little fellow on stage was definitely not singing in Spanish. Whatever he was saying, though, it was heartbreaking.
“Can we, uh, dance now?” Robbie asked. Sierra had just been standing there staring at the band. She put her arms in salsa position, remembering the feeling in her muscles from weekend after weekend of classes when she was a kid. Robbie took her waist in his hands. They started moving, stumbled slightly, and then caught their rhythm.
“It’s salsa!” Sierra laughed, her feet stepping naturally in time with Robbie’s.
“Not exactly, but close enough.”
The music swirled around them, moved with them, for them. Sierra saw little old couples tear it up, putting some of the awkward younger folks to shame. Two eight- or nine-year-olds spun happily past. The song surged as the crowd swelled, or was it the other way around? Sierra couldn’t tell anymore. Didn’t even care.
After a few numbers, everyone was covered in sweat and laughing. Some octogenarian politely tapped Robbie on the shoulder, and Robbie offered him Sierra’s hand. Sierra smiled down at the old fellow as he wrapped his little arms around her waist and the band glided smoothly into another song. Two middle-aged women blocked Robbie’s path to the sitting area and escorted him back to the dance floor.
Something in a far corner caught Sierra’s eye and she swung her partner around to get a better look over his head. The vast paintings churned and swayed in time with the music. The elegant soldier leapt from his peak into the sky and found himself a pretty angel to swing with. The classy fellow and his death bride spun wild circles from one wall to the next. The pretty black mermaids formed a dancing ring around one of the dragons, who appeared to be showing off a sultry two-step.
Sierra glanced over at Robbie, who was laughing as he tried desperately to keep up with his two dance partners. The song wound down, and one of the ancient trumpet players announced that they’d be taking a twenty-minute break. When Robbie reached Sierra, he was still trying to catch h
is breath.
“You alright there, buddy? Gonna make it?” Sierra asked. “I’m sure someone here knows CPR …”
“Those two ladies …” he gasped, putting his hands on his knees. “No … joke …”
Before they made it off the dance floor, the room filled with a thundering beat that threatened to blow the rickety old sound system to pieces. Sierra stopped short. “This,” she announced, putting a hand on Robbie’s shoulder, “is my jam!”
Actually, it wasn’t her jam at all. The track was slick, though — a heavy double downbeat you could feel in your gut and clickity-clack rim shots bouncing back and forth like two stuttering ghosts. Sierra preferred crazy metal and alternative for relaxing or doing homework, but this would definitely do for the dance floor. She led Robbie back out into the gathering crowd of teenagers. He was smiling, but his eyebrows were raised in concern.
“What?” Sierra laughed. “You don’t dance to nothin’ made after 1943?”
“I mean …”
“C’mere.” It was hard not to dance with that beat pounding out into the smoky club. “Just use your hips. Find the one and do what you do.” Robbie caught the rhythm quickly and broke into an odd little jig, his long arms swinging wild circles. “That’ll work.” She smiled.
The floor had filled with dancers grinding up on each other, and the murals, Sierra noticed, responded in kind. All the swirling angels suddenly seemed much closer together; the military man was making out with one of the mermaids; even the palm trees swayed seductively in time with one another.
Sweat poured down Sierra’s body, giving her brown skin a shine she could only hope was sexy and not gym-class gross. She looked at Robbie and breathed a sigh of relief: The boy was even more drenched than she was. She caught one of his wayward swinging hands and spun into him, wrapping his long arm across her chest. “Don’t get slick now, just be easy with it,” she whispered. He laughed and stumbled a little. Sierra rolled her eyes. One of Robbie’s hands landed on her hip as he found his way back to the rhythm and fell into step, his body pressed up against hers. The song slammed on; various rappers took turns spitting sixteen bars in different languages. Robbie and Sierra stayed there, bouncing easily against each other’s sweat-covered bodies. They let the other dancers, the swirling paintings, the whole spinning city around them fade into a colorful blur.
Shadowshaper Page 7
