Jordan looked back at me, smiling faintly from beneath a scruffy beard, his half-smoked cigarette dangling from his mouth. “Hey, Jamie, shut the fuck up, alright? I didn’t expect it either. But she’s beautiful, man, she’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life.” His face lit up as he described her – her tiny hands and feet, her perfect ears, her soft tuft of black hair. “And Rosie, man – she handled labor like a champ – all that pushing and oh my God she was in so much pain, and the next thing I know, I’m on the floor and I hear that little baby crying, she sounded like a wounded bird…”
Willie and Tom, seemingly out of nowhere, were behind us. “I’d cry if I had to look at your sad ass on the floor, passed out like an old maid, too,” snarked Tom. “Really, man? A little bit of blood gets you like that?”
Jordan narrowed his almond-shaped eyes until all we could see were slivers of blue tourmaline. “Yeah, Tom, ‘a little bit of blood,’ it was like a pin prick,” he shot back. “You didn’t see what I saw in there, man.”
“Oh yeah,” Willie retorted, egging Tom on and rolling his eyes, “must have looked like a war zone down there. Looking like bloody chopped meat and roast beef au jus. The horror! The horror!”
Jordan rolled his eyes and promptly outstretched his right middle finger. “Like Apocalypse Now, you got it. Fuck you, Willie. Are we going up to see my daughter or not?” He opened the front door and gestured for us to enter, touching each of our shoulders as we walked through the door, perhaps just as much for our comfort as for his.
After the obligatory check-in procedure, which sounded suspiciously like a CBGB’s VIP check-in procedure – show your ID, take your picture, get your pass, hear a lecture about how visiting hours are over at 8:00 p.m. on the nose and you don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here after that time, questions about which baby was ours (God bless Willie, who never met an opportunity for sarcasm that he didn’t like, and who almost got us all permanently banned from the hospital when he replied, “I don’t know, I haven’t picked one out yet”) – we were ushered into an elevator that seemed to shoot up to the 21st floor in seconds.
When we reached our necessary floor, we – the members of Faust, who were rehearsing for their next album but who hadn’t performed together on a stage of any kind in about 9 months up until that point because of our generosity in granting Jordan “paternity leave” – walked through the door as if we were going through a green room and onto a stage. Almost on impulse, we grabbed one another and huddled together as we’d done so many times before – except instead of me leading the huddle to discuss what songs we were going to play first, Jordan led the huddle to discuss how we were supposed to act when we finally got into Room 2104.
“Alright, you heathens, listen up,” he said with a shocking air of authority in his voice, “first, and foremost, you all smell like absolute living shit, so at least do me a favor and slather your damn selves with some hand sanitizer or something. I don’t want you sullying my precious baby girl with your nasty germs. I know where those hands have been, guys…”
“Jordan, cut the shit,” I interrupted. “Angelique is Rosie’s best friend and you know damn well I’m loyal to her, and you know damn well she’s carrying my baby…”
“Wait, what?” Tom jumped in. “When did this happen? When were you gonna tell the rest of us?”
“I was gonna, asshole, I was gonna!” I replied. “We were waiting for the first trimester to be over, just so we could be sure that she wouldn’t miscarry, but yeah, Angelique is officially my baby mama, you guys. I hope she’s carrying a boy, so we can marry him off to Jordan’s baby girl and keep her safe from guys like us” – this comment generated much ribald laughter from my bandmates – “wait, Jordan, hold up. What’s the baby girl’s name?”
Jordan smiled, sincerely. “Evanora Joy,” he said, the smile on his face seeping into his voice. “Eva, for Rosie’s mother. Nora, for mine. And Joy, for all the joy she brings us.”
I blinked rapidly and tried to focus on the girl – well, the woman – before me. She certainly favored her mother, looks-wise, but there was no question as to who gave her the almond-shaped eyes and the pixie nose. And with that name, there was no way she could be anyone else…
“I don’t know if you know anything about me,” I said, in a disembodied voice that didn’t feel like my own, “but if you are who I think you are, I knew your father. Your real father, I mean…” My voice trailed off.
Evanora furrowed her brow, then suddenly widened her eyes as a look of recognition seemed to cross her face. “Jordan Barker,” she whispered, immediately causing my knees to feel like jelly. I hadn’t heard anyone speak his name out loud in such a long time. “You know – you knew – wait, are you…” Her voice trailed off as she looked at Kanoa, then Basile, and finally looking all around us, before looking back at me. “Lead singer of Faust. Ivan Sapphire. Jamie Ryan. Oh my God. You’re real. You’re alive.”
Upon hearing my two names – especially my stage name, which I hadn’t heard in what felt like a lifetime – I dropped to my knees and wept, silently. I could feel my hot tears run down my cheeks and hit my chest, but I didn’t bother to wipe them away. For years, I had wondered what happened to her mother, and to her, especially when I got word that Jordan had overdosed, and for years, it seemed Kanoa knew but never told me…
Like a good Cabal officer, Kanoa heard my thoughts and was almost immediately by my side. He put his hand on my shoulder and spoke softly. “On God, Jamie,” he said, “I had no idea she was Barker’s kid. Really, I didn’t. If I had any idea, do you think I’d have kept it from you while we were in the Cabal, and especially once we weren’t?”
I looked up, biting my lower lip in the hopes of making the tears stop. “No, of course not,” I replied. “I just – I can’t believe – Evanora…”
Instantly, Evanora was on the other side of me, stroking my face. “Oh my God. Jamie Ryan. You’re real. You’re alive. But you look…different…”
I side-eyed her. “It’s the hair,” I said dryly.
She smiled and shook her head. “Yeah, that’s it,” she said, giggling. “But otherwise you look the same, Ivan Sapphire. The same.”
She has her dad’s sense of humor, I thought wistfully as I smiled and rubbed my face violently to stop the tears from falling.
“Hey. Hey! I don’t mean to interrupt the family reunion or nothin’, but can you tell me what the fuck you wanna do with this asshole Sherman?” Basile boomed from behind us. He was still grasping onto Sherman’s neck tightly, and his skin was beginning to crack from the force he’d been applying.
Almost in an instant, Tommy was standing next to Basile. He looked at Mathieu with sheer hatred in his eyes. “You piece of shit,” he growled at his father, “how could you let them do that to me? To him? To all of them?”
Mathieu whipped his neck to the right, eager to face his son. “Faggot,” he spit. “You deviant. You almost destroyed my career with your ways…”
Basile growled at the F-word, then tightened his grip further around Mathieu’s neck. “Easy about what you say to your boy, Ensign. You built your career on murdering a pregnant woman – you got no room to talk about your boy and what he does with whom.” Basile’s drawling Southern accent was in full bloom, and all thoughts of gentility were demolished. “Some of us don’t got a boy no more, Ensign, so you don’t get to abuse yours in front of us. Now I was content to let you live, but you’re really starting to piss me off here, and you don’t want me to lose my patience, Ensign, because I’m a real son of a bitch when I’m angry.”
Tommy looked at Basile with a genuine look of gratitude, then turned back to his father, the venom dripping out of his voice. “Your career. Your worthless, militaristic career that you spent doing nothing but hurting people that were just a little different from you and your shit-stain leader. Afraid because the United States was tired of you and people like you and your vicious ways. And proving us all right because you were
willing to hurt me – me, your son, your own flesh and blood, your only child – in the name of your pathetic Cabal,” he said, nearly spitting out the last word like poison in his mouth. “Imagine loving the gun so much that you’d be willing to sacrifice your own son in its name. ‘For the gun so loved the world,’ right, Father? Fuck you, old man. I’m gonna make you pay. And you and your stupid Cabal and your ridiculous Emperor will never, ever win!”
Evanora rushed to Tommy’s other side and took his hand. “Tommy? Tommy. It’s okay, Tommy,” she said, soothingly.
Basile, who’d had enough of Major General Sherman’s bitching at his son, roared loudly before snapping Mathieu’s head off his neck with his bare hands, killing him instantly.
The sheer brutality of the act, while not shocking to Basile, Kanoa, and myself, only stunned us in its quickness – but Evanora, clearly not accustomed to the violence, shrieked and began to cry. But before I could get up to comfort her, Basile cradled her in his arms and whispered words of comfort.
“It’s alright, baby. Don’t look – don’t look – it’s alright,” he said, over and over. He kicked Mathieu’s lifeless body off the curb as Evanora yelped and hiccupped. “Fuckin’ bastard. May he rot in hell.”
The air on the Bowery became still, stagnant, and lifeless again – the Cabal officers around us were dead, and any survivors had the sense to run as far away from the Bowery as possible.
As Basile surveyed the area to make sure we were, in fact, in the clear, Tommy, Kanoa, and I all ran to Basile’s side to comfort Evanora. But while Tommy and Kanoa were quick to reach out to her – to offer her even the slightest “there, there, it’s okay Evanora, don’t cry” – I hesitated.
It was a combination of things that prevented me from coming too close. Was it really her? Could it really be? What does she know about the Uprising? What does she know about me? Where was her mother? Had she been brainwashed by Emperor into believing that we were nothing more than terrorists?
When I got to Room 2104, I pulled my hair back into a messy ponytail and slathered my hands and arms with a clear hand sanitizer that smelled like floor cleaner, as I’d promised Jordan I would do. Jordan Barker and Angelique Denham were the only two people on Earth who could get me to agree to smell like a janitorial closet for their benefit.
Angelique and Rosie were there, lost in the reverie of the new baby – apparently named Evanora – whose face I couldn’t see, but whose black hair jutted out from underneath a swaddling cloud of pure white blankets. Angelique, softly glowing with her own impending motherhood, was beaming down at the baby, making cooing noises and giggling with her best friend – who, while looking queenly in her “new mother” glow, also looked like she could use a good night’s sleep.
It’s amazing how people look when they’re unaware that others are watching them. Their guards are let down – they aren’t as likely to put on airs – and that vulnerability makes them even more attractive.
With each passing day, I’d realized how much I loved Angelique so truly, madly, and deeply, but seeing her with her best friend and her best friend’s – and my best friend’s – new baby made me earn a whole new level of love for her. Was honor too strong of a word, in this case? Perhaps – but it was also very, very accurate, because we, she and I, were bringing a new life into this world, a life we would raise together, a life that assured us of our immortality…
Angelique suddenly looked up and, upon seeing us, rushed over to me and planted a tender, loving kiss on my cheek. “Jamie,” she said, the smile on her face permeating into her voice. “Jamie – come, come and meet the baby!”
She took me by my hand and led me to Rosie’s bedside. Rosie looked up at me, gave me a shy smile of acknowledgement, and used the tips of her fingers to move the blanket out of the baby’s face so I could see Evanora Joy Diaz-Barker for the first time.
Almost immediately, Evanora’s eyes opened, and I observed the amber-like-a-lioness color with a bit of curiosity. “Such amazing eyes,” I said, stunned.
“Thank you,” said Rosie, meekly. “I don’t know where she got them from, but God, I love them on her.”
I leaned in to look closer at these magnificent orbs, and as I did so, I felt a tiny hand grasp my second finger and let out a barely-audible sigh.
It was then I realized it was Evanora. And while it was wishful thinking to hope that a newborn baby had complex thought processes, I couldn’t help but wonder if she did, in fact, have some idea of who I was.
“See, Jamie?” Angelique replied, beaming beatifically. “She likes you. You’ll make an excellent daddy.”
I felt a hand grab mine. It belonged to the baby who was no longer a baby.
“Hey,” said Evanora, “so this is Tommy, my new friend.”
I looked over at Evanora and Tommy while trying to make sense of everything happening to me at this moment. When I left my hovel tonight, with my brothers in arms, I had every intention of simply cracking a few Cabal skulls in the hopes of maybe – just maybe – bringing back the old New York. I didn’t think this night would be any different from any other.
Now, looking at what’s just happened over the course of the night – looking at all that’s come to light before the sun, in the pitch-black of night before the dusk first broke – I realized the enormity of all that I was doing, and for what purpose…and now, with the knowledge that Evanora was alive, I had to wonder if, perhaps, there was more to what we were doing than we’d originally thought. And that, too, brought me some form of comfort – who were we bringing back the old New York for, if not for Evanora’s generation and all those that came after? We certainly weren’t going to be around forever…
“Hey, Tommy,” I said, extending my hand limply, “I’m Jamie. Jamie Ryan.”
“Tommy. Tommy Sherman,” he replied with a slight foreign accent, and I realized that he’d been subjected to Emperor’s Ways and Means. He grabbed my hand and shook it firmly. “You know, it’s a delight to meet you – I’d heard about you on Uprising Radio.”
I smirked at the word. Uprising. Even he knew about the Uprising. Or so he thought.
“So, everybody listens to Uprising Radio?” I asked.
“Good heavens, no,” replied Tommy. “Evie here didn’t even know about it until tonight. It’s an underground radio station that people like me listen to, especially if we want to be part of the Uprising…”
“Kid,” I said, “what is it you know, or think you know, about The Uprising?”
Tommy smiled and shook his head. “Stories, mostly. I’d heard about it first bubbling from the underground when Emperor rose to power. A few women. A few men. Someone named Angelique. You were mentioned as a folk hero of sorts – especially once you’d defected from the Cabal – which, to be honest, I never understood what happened there…”
I held my hand up dismissively. “That’s another story for another day,” I said, not really wanting to get into it now. How was I going to explain all this, especially in the face of everything that had just taken place? “Are there – are there more like you? You know, more people who want to be part of The Uprising, to overthrow this Emperor…”
Tommy smirked. “Oh, I’m sure of that. Chip over there, the man you just saved – that’s one of them. We’d just have to find the rest of them and get them onto this wretched island.” He shook his head, and I marveled at how bright his hair was – like a campfire, like a Roman candle -- while wondering if, in fact, he could ever travel anywhere incognito thanks to that damned hair. “But we’re here for another reason, you know – the blast that happened.”
At this point, Basile and Kanoa had joined us, and we were all sitting in a circle, listening to Tommy tell the story of the blast, as Evanora – all cried out and sniffling – scooted closer to me and put her head on my shoulder, leaving me confused, to say the least. “I don’t put anything past this bastard Emperor to make this his own personal Reichstag fire – probably to push more ridiculous law and order…”
“His Word, Before All and Above All, With Liberty and Justice for All,” muttered Kanoa, by rote and by memory. “Fucking prick.”
“Excuse me,” interjected Basile, his Louisiana drawl in full bloom. “I don’t mean to get in y’all business or anything, but can you tell me why, young man, you hated your pops so much?”
Tommy shrugged. “My ‘pops,’ sir, I’m sorry – he was nothing of the sort. My father – my sperm donor – was a distant, cold man who thought nothing of turning me over to the Emperor’s Means and Ways to make me ‘normal,’ and who was more concerned with his damn military career than he ever was about me and my mother. What I was subjected to in that program – and what my love was subjected to – I wish on no one, not now and not ever. He was dead to me a long time ago – you just made it official.”
Basile’s eyes widened as he shook his head and sat back against the wall of a building. I tried to make out where, precisely, we were, and what building Basile was leaning against, and it was only when I saw a decrepit sign for Kenmare Street that I realized he was leaning up against what used to be The Bowery Ballroom. I was amazed for two reasons: we’d come a long way down the Bowery during this battle, and holy shit remember when Faust played here, and we opened for fucking Incubus?
“Go on, then, son,” Basile continued, and I could tell by the way he said son that he was trying to tamp down his drawl. “How did you know to come down here when the blast happened?”
“I’d heard on Uprising Radio that the Cabal troops would be in full force down here tonight,” Tommy continued, “and, naturally, wherever the Cabal goes, Jamie Fucking Ryan and his other two Musketeers can’t be far behind. So, when the blast happened, and that damn Emperor’s Ball was smashed to smithereens, I grabbed Evie and came down here. I figured, if nothing else, you have no more love for Emperor than I do…than we do…”
The Gathering: Book One of The Uprising Series Page 9
