Manhattan Grimoire

by Sandy DeLuca

  Tony glanced at him and nodded. He smiled slightly then he turned back to me. “Don’t know anyone by that name.”

  The man seemed amused, but he gave me a sick feeling in my gut.

  “She may have lied to you, told you another name.”

  The liquor was giving me a headache. The man began to look like a demon I’d seen in an old surreal painting. His eyes narrowed and drool trickled down his chin. Tony seemed more dangerous, suddenly, his eyes hardening. But it didn’t scare me. I wanted him no matter what.

  He moved closer. “What’s it matter anyway? You’re taking me home, right?”

  “Yeah.” I wondered again if it was my sister who’d hung on his arm, kissed his cheek through blue smoke, wrapped her sequined shawl around her shoulders and tossed her hair as his hand slipped to her waist. She’d never admit it when she was alive. Now she won’t confess it in dreams when she comes to me from her secret burial plot. Tony would never tell me the truth either.

  Other people joined the man at the bar, all were dressed in old clothes, their arms and legs bent at odd angles and their eyes void of emotion. Strange tattoos, inverted crosses and bloody knives, stretched across hues of cinnamon flesh.

  Tony didn’t notice; he just kept talking to me, using his charm. “I just got evicted, couldn’t swing the rent on a street artist’s income.” He told me that the first night. My heart leapt at the thought of taking him home and keeping him like some stray cat.

  Lately my fascination has diminished to say the least. I’ve been wondering what made me think he was so exalted before he came here, so unapproachable. He’s just a guy, a bum who’s living off me.

  I want to sleep, dream of the woman. Perhaps she’ll tell me where to find her, where to find Allie’s rotting flesh. Maybe the detective is parked on the street below looking up at my apartment, wanting to come inside. Maybe we can dream together. The cop and dream woman are my lovers in fantasies, and Allie is whole, smoking clove cigarettes on the front stairs, drinking hot coffee and smiling when our voices float through the window.

  I want to call Officer Harris, ask him if he knows more than he’s telling. But I don’t, and try to sleep instead. I slip between white sheets, glance a moment at empty pill bottles by my nightstand. I think about Dr. McKinley and the appointments I never kept. She made me uncomfortable, prying into my past.

  The last session with her brought me over the edge and I remember thinking, this is the last fucking time I’m coming here.

  She sat before me, so stoic in a plain gray suit, hands clasped in her lap. Her eyes were the color of her suit. They seem to condemn me when she asked, “Maybe this isn’t all about your sister, maybe there’s more. Do you wonder about your mother? Do you think perhaps she was mentally ill and that your father kept it from you? Don’t you wonder, Gina?”

  “She just left, decided she didn’t want a family, didn’t love us.” My voice was harsh. Who the fuck was this woman to accuse my father of deceit? Images of my mother haunted me at that moment. Her face white, horror etched across it as she waved her hands. Her words were senseless. “Don’t you see them? They live here now. They’ll come to you too, Gina. Wait, you’ll see.”

  Dr. McKinley studied me for a moment. “You need to confront the truth about your mother and yourself.” She leaned forward, her eyes grew dark, more accusing. “I think deep down inside you want to know.” She took a prescription pad from her desk, scribbled on it and then slid white paper towards me. “You need to stay on the medication and you need to see me more than once a month. Have the receptionist book an appointment for next week. If we haven’t made progress in another month, then we’ll talk about hospitalization.”

  Her pills took away my dreams of Allie, of the black woman. I need them too much. Tony told me a good therapist wouldn’t have been so blunt, that she sounded like a quack. So I’ll figure it out myself. It’s time to move ahead, to resurrect what’s been dead inside me. I close my eyes and pray for sweet slumber.

  4

  I couldn’t sleep, so I walked to Soho, blending with tourists and weekend shoppers.

  Broadway is a nightmare. Men dressed in worn army coats sell bootleg movies and silver jewelry from makeshift stands while eyeing passersby with hollow faces. There are things on rooftops no one else sees but me, creatures from Hell that spring down on innocents upon command from the Devil. I’ve seen them; slithering and scurrying above since I was little, and I’ve always wondered if I’m one of their offspring. Why else would I be able to see them?

  I accidentally step on a vendor’s foot while crossing. He curses at me. I ignore him and make my way to a corner store where silver chains hang from rusty hooks. A butterfly necklace catches my eye. An Asian man quickly grabs it and says, “You want? Ten dollar.”

  “Eight,” I answer as someone brushes my shoulder, someone tall, with skin the color of rich mahogany, hair braided with red and silver beads. She turns. It’s the black woman from my dreams. She’s standing there, looking at my feet. She walks towards me, bends, gracefully straightens, looks me in the eye, “Is this yours?” She’s holding a silver hoop earring.

  “Yes, the hook is loose, keeps falling. Thank you.” I notice her jewelry, wooden beads, serpents carved from ivory and blood red stones.

  The Asian man frantically waves the necklace, “Eight dollar.”

  We ignore him. His voice becomes faint. He’s merely a silhouette existing in another world.

  The woman tips her head to one side. The beads in her hair make soft clicking sounds. “Want your fortune told? I read over on Canal Street, next to the paint store.” The serpents on a chain around her neck seem to move, rear their heads in my direction, spiral out with pointed fangs.

  I back away as a hissing noise erupts. “Maybe,” I say as serpents slither against her flesh, prick a pulsing vein. Red droplets trickle across her beautiful skin.

  “You OK?” she asks.

  I blink my eyes. It’s just a necklace. There’s no blood. I’m so fucking tired.

  She smiles. Her lips are moist, luscious. “I tell fortunes every Saturday for a while, other times I’m over in Harlem. I need to tend to my son. It’s a bitch, you know.” She studies my face. “Bye, then.”

  “Good bye.” My voice is so soft I don’t even know if she heard me.

  She terrifies me, but I want to follow her. She knows secrets, my secrets.

  On impulse I remove the camera from my pocket, snap her picture as she backs away. She giggles. Her laughter is like a song I’ve heard in my dreams.

  I turn onto Canal. The crowd chokes me, voices frighten me. I search in vein for the fortuneteller. The paint store is flanked by apartment buildings, people selling beaded purses, black umbrellas and Picasso scarves. The things on rooftops lean over and glare at me with leering faces. I wonder if the woman was real. I can’t find her. I want to cry. I’ll never see her again except in exotic, horrifying dreams.

  A girl crosses the street. She’s wearing a sequined shawl. Her hair is red-gold like Allie’s—like my own. I call to her. She turns. She’s old, her face scarred with deep wrinkles. Her skin hangs from her neck.

  A siren blares in the distance and I wish her away, leaving only smoke from a hotdog vendor’s tinny oven where she once stood.

  * * *

  I walk to West Broadway. I want to see how Tony’s doing, if he’s sold anything. Maybe I’ll bring him a cup of coffee and watch his paintings if he needs to duck into a restaurant to pee.

  The streets always smell of ash and pigeon shit. The cement is filthy with steam rising from it, and it reminds me of a carnival on West Broadway between Prince and Spring. Street artists hang paintings on racks and grin as you pass by, hoping you’ll stop to look at their work, perhaps even buy something so they can pay their rent or eat dinner that night. They’re pathetic creatures from an impoverished subculture. Nonetheless, like forbidden sex, they fascinate me.

  A photographer is spreading black and white photos of dancer
s on a portable table. His face lights up when I approach. I stop for a moment and he tells me his mother taught ballet back in Chicago, that he once worked for a glitzy music magazine. I wonder what his mother would think if she saw her son thin and pale, vending his work for so little, eyes, moist as light snow begins to gather on his torn jacket.

  I walk to a spot where Tony normally sells his paintings. He’s not here. I ask around. A woman dressed in thread-bare pants and a patched sweater smiles at me. Her front teeth are rotting. She’s leaning watercolor paintings against an empty building. “Haven’t seen Tony since the summer,” she says.

  “I heard he had trouble with his father,” says a woman with a Russian accent as she spreads tiny cat paintings on the walk.

  “He never mentioned his father to me,” I tell her.

  “You don’t need to know,” she answers. I back away as her eyes narrow and seem to take on an eerie glow.

  A group of abstract painters clustered in front of a deli tell me they heard he moved to the West Coast.

  No one has seen him. No one.

  How can he be so irresponsible? He’s been telling me sales are bad, that things will get better as the holidays approach. Where the hell is he, with someone else? Or is he getting high in some obscure place in the city?

  I decide I’ll leave him right now. This fucking does it. It hurts, kills me, but I can’t go on like this. He’s no good for me, and I don’t need this shit.

  I turn the corner, walk quickly down Prince Street. The rumble of the subway erupts and things hovering on rooftops explode with laughter. I look up and see a familiar face, the man who was at the bar on the night I took Tony home. Others gather around him. They point at me, mock me. I begin to run, bumping into people, slipping on the icy sidewalk. The rooftop beings take flight, hover above me as I hail a cab.

  I slide into the back seat, sigh heavily as snow begins to come down hard.

  “Where to, lady?” The driver is Middle Eastern. He’s smiling. There’s something off. His eyes seem dead. His hands barely touch the steering wheel as he slowly pulls away from the curb.

  I give him my address, watching streets and buildings float by as he speeds away.

  It’s not long before the streets no longer look familiar to me. Maybe it’s the snow coming down so hard, or maybe it’s just fatigue. Maybe it’s something else, something far deadlier.

  I’ve got to sleep, got to get my head straight.

  My eyes close.

  I concentrate on the motion of the taxi, and wonder if this is the closest I’ll come today.

  5

  This isn’t right.

  There’s no traffic here.

  I’d see headlights through the blinding snow if we’d driven down my street.

  The driver slows down, his shoulders slumped and his hands gripping the steering wheel. The cab fishtails to the curb and I clutch the edge of the seat as we ease safely in Park. I think about how in an instant life can be snuffed out. I remember my father and want to weep.

  At this moment I want to be loved, I want to feel tender arms wrapped around me while the city transforms, while the elements bury the morning like a lost soul, a child who shined for a moment and was then consumed by the beauty of a white shimmering cloak. Now that soul seems lost in all this frigid numbness, changing by the moment with each drift, with each tiny flake of snow, and I find myself hypnotized by the steady stream of white crystals. Maybe that lost soul is me.

  Eyes glaring at me in the rearview mirror darken my thoughts. They’re the eyes of a killer.

  The driver turns, smiles slowly, “Your destination.” Gone is the pleasant Middle Eastern man. The demon man who taunts me from rooftops, who sat at the bar on the night Tony came home with me has returned. He extends his hand to me, and blood drips from his fingertips. There’s a knife in his palm. “I think this is yours.”

  “Fuck you.” I wish him away, as I do when evil things whisper to me in the dark and awaken me from dreams. Lately, they come often.

  “I’m still here, bitch,” he says through ashen lips. The knife falls from his hand to my lap, smears my jeans with blood.

  I push the blade off me, and as it falls to the floor and slides beneath the front seat, I wonder whose blood is on it. With fear overtaking me, I throw open the door and tumble from the cab. As my feet touch the icy walk they slip out from under me and I fall. I look up in time to see the cab disappear into a veil of thick snow. Smoke curls from its exhaust, laughter rumbles from its open window. I lie there a moment, shivering from cold and fear, then roll and crouch into a kneeling position and reach for the support of a nearby newsstand.

  A single newspaper is predominantly displayed across the newsstand, its bold headline announcing a woman named Allie Roderick is still missing. Allie. My sister.

  But there’s no newsstand by my apartment. Where the hell am I?

  My hands ache from the cold, and I remember that I left my gloves in the cab, long elegant black ones with sequins at the edges. My hair is soaked and droplets trickle beneath my collar onto the back of my neck. I blink, strain my eyes, and wave away blinding snow, then take a few steps, moving carefully so as not to fall again.

  It’s then that I realize I’m at the old church.

  Its door is open, and music plays inside. I take two steps closer, and see someone standing in the doorway. A woman…the beautiful black woman…she’s waving. She looks ethereal and magical because her hair glistens with countless diamonds—or is it just snow? Her skin shimmers as I move closer. “I’ve been waiting for you,” she whispers.

  I want her to cradle me in her arms, to offer me her breasts so that my soul will be nourished. I want to be a babe safe in her womb, and I think if only I could die now, if only I could end this life and be reborn from her flesh, everything would be all right again.

  She puts a finger to her lips, backs away and shuts the door.

  “No,” I cry to the storm, to the slate gray sky. “Wait!”

  “Gina,” a familiar voice says from somewhere behind me.

  I turn quickly, lose my balance. My hands slap ice, and just as my legs begin to turn numb, two strong arms lift me back to my feet. “What in God’s name are you doing out here? How’d you get here?”

  Through the swirl of snow, I see Officer Harris scolding me, but I can think of nothing to say. I just stare at him, as if seeing him for the first time.

  “Come on,” he says, “I’ll get you home. You need some coffee, something hot, you’re shivering. There’s blood on your hands and on your clothes. You’ve scrapped yourself.”

  “I’m fine,” I say, suddenly able to find words. But the voice is not my own. It belongs to the woman that entered the church, whose body is warm and loved and new. “No coffee, thanks.”

  Now I’m in his car watching snow fall in heavy drifts. A blast of heat warms my hands and feet. Harris tells me to buckle up. He’s silent as he pulls away from the curb and drives away slowly. A half dozen women dressed in black and walking in a single file seem to creep alongside empty buildings on this street. One of them peels back a scarf from her head and glares at me. She’s not human.

  A gasp dies in my throat.

  The detective looks at me quickly then his attention is back to traffic and snow. He turns onto a busy avenue where people are streaming from small grocery stores with bags filled; supplies for the wintry day and night ahead, I imagine. They all look normal, not otherworldly like the people I just saw. A light changes to red and the detective looks at me again. “Something startle you back there, Gina?”

  “Those people.”

  He rubs his chin. The light turns green. “A young man was murdered around there two nights ago. They were mourners on their way to the old cemetery at the end of the street.”

  “Oh.” I want to believe him. I want to believe I’m just imagining things again.

  Detective Harris pulls onto Fifth Avenue. He’s silent, lost in thought, and I don’t dare speak again for I fea
r something terrible and deadly will come from his lips. He’s a powerful man, I can sense it. I wonder if he’s ever killed anyone. If he has, I wonder if it haunts him.

  Time moves slowly as windshield wipers tick back and forth. His car radio is tuned to a sports channel but the volume is low. I’m able to make out most of what the announcer’s says, some grave prediction on the outcome of a NFL Wild Card game airing later tonight.

  Harris glances at me. “You like football?

  Warm memories of my father standing on the sidelines and snapping photographs flood my head. “My Dad was a sports photographer for the Providence Journal,” I tell him, my voice again my own. “He used to take Allie and me to the games sometimes when we were kids.” I wonder what’s happened to my father’s collection of photographs, all the negatives he once had so meticulously cataloged and tucked away in plastic sleeves. Did Allie sell them, or did she simply abandon them? She always just walked away from things, never looking back and seldom concerned with who or what she left behind.

  “That must be where you got your talent from, your father.” The detective turns onto Broadway, leans over to turn the radio lower. “You still follow the game?”

  “I did for a while, even after my Dad got killed.” That was ages ago, a time when Dad, Allie and I would drive to Schaefer Stadium in weather like this to watch the Patriots play. It felt safe then—even if the highway was sheer ice, even if we were in the middle of a nor’easter—it seemed nothing could harm us. Until the night our car skidded on black ice, veered off the highway and flipped over. From that night forward, I no longer had the luxury of little girl dreams of safety and warmth.

  My father hadn’t believed in seatbelts. He was thrown through the windshield and killed instantly. I escaped with whiplash, Allie with cuts on her face and a few bumps and bruises. We survived, but were never the same.

  I want those days back so badly. Our father never should have died that way.