The Virgin of Flames

by Chris Abani

  “Feed me, shithead,” he said, getting up.

  Bomboy struggled up.

  “You are going like that?” Bomboy pointed to Black’s face.

  “I came here like this.”

  “Please wipe your face,” Bomboy said, passing Black a handkerchief, indicating the white makeup.

  Black shook his head, refusing the handkerchief.

  “It’s okay, I’ve got wipes in the car,” Bomboy said hopefully.

  Black just smiled and shook his head. They headed for Langers. On Seventh and Alvarado, the deli was a favorite. They both ordered the pastrami sandwich and waited impatiently for the food to arrive, doing their best to ignore the stares Black’s face was getting. It certainly had a few of the waitresses talking, and the head chef even came out from the kitchen to see this character.

  “Shooting a movie?” he asked. “’Cause nobody told me. If you’re shooting a movie in here, we’ve gotta be paid.”

  “No movie, sir, my friend is an artist and this is just an idea he is playing with,” Bomboy said. “We just came in for some lunch.”

  “Can’t he speak for himself?” the head chef asked.

  Bomboy shrugged.

  “He’s a mime.”

  The head chef sniffed.

  “Well, in that case he can’t complain.”

  Laughing, he returned to the kitchen.

  “Why do I embarrass you, darling?” Black said. “Mime?”

  “Do you have a better idea?”

  “You could say that I am your girlfriend.”

  “That’s not funny, my friend. That is just preposterous.”

  The food came and they ate fast and noisily, without talking, appetites fueled by the pot. Finishing, Black wiped his mouth and said:

  “Now, pay up and let’s go.”

  “Okay, but you’re still taking me to Alvarado. Like I said, I need to buy some new papers. You know, license, green card.”

  “How many identities have you had, man? How many lives have you got?”

  “Nine.”

  “Okay, but ándale, hermano.”

  Bomboy put down the toothpick he had been using to root around inside his mouth. He picked up the bill and examined it for a minute.

  “Sure,” he said, getting to his feet and heading for the cashier.

  At the intersection where most of the deals for fake IDs in Los Angeles were made, Black walked up to a man leaning against the wall of the 7-Eleven. Speaking rapidly in Spanish, Black gestured toward Bomboy. Nodding, the man asked for a photograph. Black turned to Bomboy and interpreted. Bomboy handed over the photograph. Then the man pulled an inked stamp pad from his pocket. It looked like a prop from the set of an archaic post office, like the one from his childhood memories, where tired and bored-looking workers inked heavy brass seals before slamming them down wearily on brown envelopes.

  “What’s that for?” Bomboy asked.

  “Fingerprints,” Black replied. “For the green card.”

  “But it’s a fake. The moment they scan it, it will come up fake. Why doesn’t he use his fingerprints? It won’t make any difference.”

  “Does he look like the kind of guy who would do that? It’s just to make the ID look real. Come on, ’mano.”

  The man with the stamp pad stood patiently through this conversation. With a cough, he flipped the lid open and held it flush with his body, out of sight to anyone more than a couple of feet from him.

  “Come on, you’re making me nervous, pendejo. This place is crawling with undercover cops. Let’s do this and go,” Black said, looking around.

  “Looking like that in this neighborhood, I think the police are the least of your worries,” Bomboy said, extending his hand. The man grabbed it roughly, pressing the right thumb deep into the ink. Releasing Bomboy’s hand, he pocketed the stamp pad in one fluid motion and produced a piece of photographic paper in its place. He pushed Bomboy’s thumb onto it firmly, and then let go.

  “Fifty dollars,” the man said.

  “Pay him,” Black said.

  “How do I know he’ll come back?”

  “Okay. Pay me later,” the man said, clearly not in the mood to argue and indicating for the first time that he understood English. “Come back in twenty minutes.” He melted away so fast that the only proof that he had even been there was Bomboy’s inky thumb.

  “Now what?”

  Black was smiling. It was nice to see the usually confident Bomboy so out of his element.

  “Now we wait in that McDonald’s over there. Drink a cup of coffee slowly and come back in twenty minutes.”

  They crossed the street and while Black fetched the coffee, Bomboy made his way to a table at the back. He yanked a handful of tissue from the dispenser on the table and tried to wipe the ink off his thumb. Black returned with two coffees. The hot bite on his tongue caused Bomboy to wince.

  “What’s wrong with you?”

  “Hot coffee.”

  “All the bad things you have seen and a little hot coffee has got you acting like a pendejo.”

  Bomboy mumbled something under his breath. From the window, they could see that the guy they had spoken to had returned to his spot, leaning against the wall of the 7-Eleven.

  “Our guy is back. Let’s go,” Bomboy said, getting up.

  As they were about to cross the street to the 7-Eleven’s parking lot, a quarter on the sidewalk caught Black’s attention. It was brand new and shining. Was it a good luck omen? He considered it thoughtfully.

  “Hey, what’s the delay?” Bomboy asked, foot poised over the edge of the curb.

  Black ignored him and bent down for the money. As he straightened up, he saw several police cars pull into the 7-Eleven’s parking lot. He and Bomboy stood on the sidewalk across the street and watched all the loitering men, including the one with Bomboy’s green card, being arrested.

  “Shit. LAPD,” Bomboy said. “Shit, fucking shit! And that guy has my picture and fingerprint on a fake green card.”

  “It could have been worse,” Black said, staring at his reflection in the window of a car parked near them. The blue lights from the cop cars, also reflected, flashed across the white sea of his face.

  “You’re right. It’s good to have someone to watch over you.”

  “Yes,” Black said, his voice dull, glancing about for Gabriel. “Someone to watch over me.”

  three

  yellow.

  Not canary but vibrant nonetheless, Black’s dilapidated Volkswagen bus. Nicknamed the Blackmobile, it was his home away from home, cluttered as it was with books, dog food, clothes and a sleeping bag. The windscreen was steamed up. At night, winter in Los Angeles was like winter everywhere else, except for snow of course. But with temperature drops between ten and thirty degrees as day fell to night, it was still cold. He shivered and thought at least the rain isn’t too bad yet. Before he turned the key in the ignition, he reached out and touched the bobble-head Alsatian on the dash. Black loved dogs but had a long and complicated history with them, somewhat shamanic and somewhat desperate. He dropped his hand from the plastic toy and turned the key. The engine coughed a few times and then, as it banged into life, Black leaned his head back and howled. There was something decidedly feral about him.

  As he waited a few minutes for the engine to heat up, he lit a cigarette and reached into the glove compartment. He pulled out Randy Newman’s Land of Dreams on eight-track, and selected “I Want You to Hurt Like I Do.” It reminded him of his mother. Fuck, he thought, fuck it all, as he pushed harder than necessary against the accelerator, ignoring the looks from the patrons outside The Ugly Store, tearing off in a squeal of tires, the old van shaking from the effort.

  He followed the flood bed of the Los Angeles River, but instead of fingers of water fanning into a delicate delta, this flood bed was scarred and then zippered over with railway lines. Only the slight levee running by the road proved there had been a river here once. Black’s journey, from the Pasadena of his early childhood
to the East Los Angeles of the rest of his life, seemed guided by this river and its ghosts. He cut through downtown, to San Pedro Street and then across to the 10 West, heading for Santa Monica. A circuitous trip, but less traffic: in Los Angeles, to go the long way round was sometimes the shortest path between two points. It was a quantum thing.

  When he got to Santa Monica, he parked in the pier lot. He got out of the van and stood awhile staring through the space between the slats into the water below. He spat carefully, aim perfect. Turning, he headed for the beach. He never bothered locking his van. There was nothing to steal from it.

  It couldn’t be more than a few minutes past nine and the boardwalk was crowded, though the sounds grew fainter as he made his way down the sand. In the floodlit parking lot to the left, teenagers made out in cars with open doors, pumping out loud music. Some, in groups, like gaggles of half-naked geese, lounged on top of parked cars, or on the floor passing joints or drinks. Parked at the edge of the lot was a police car, content to watch for now. The homeless spread along the sand in the dark like an infestation of ants, Black thought. He knew they came here to escape the dangers of downtown LA. He changed his mind. They didn’t look like an ant infestation, more like melancholic whales beached so long they had shrunk to dark forms half their original size and had forgotten how to swim. Something in him wanted to minister to them, to save them. He could do that. He did it for dogs already, so why not people? He knew all about being lost. All of his own melancholy was wrapped up in this desire. He remembered the time he bought an on-line reverend-hood from the NewWineChurchofGod.com.

  It had been simple enough. He downloaded the six-page church theology, charged the fifty dollars administration fee to his credit card, clicked the OK button, and waited for the dialog box that would announce his ordination, as promised, in gaudy gold letters. But his laptop had difficulty downloading the Flash document. Something to do with Active X Controls, the error message informed him. He liked the sound of that. Active X Controls. It sounded liturgical.

  Irritated, he had stared at the white dialog box with the red X in the corner. It stared back, like a blind cornea with red stigmata. The vocal section of the document was unaffected, though, and a strangled robotic voice that reminded him of Hal from 2001: A Space Odyssey said: “Congratulationsyouhave been ordained apastorat The NewWine Churchof God . . .”

  In the ghostly glow of the notebook’s LCD screen, it had almost been possible to believe that it was the voice of God. After that everything else had seemed rather anticlimatic: the gold-trimmed certificate in its imitation rosewood frame, the complimentary CLERGY car sticker and the dog collar.

  He turned away from the homeless; they didn’t need him. He glanced at the luminous dial of his watch; it was nearly ten. He looked up and saw a woman standing at the edge of the water. She was graying, with a gentle face and a dignified air. She seemed unaware that little tongues of surf were licking at the legs of her business suit, wrapping themselves around the leather briefcase in the sand next to her, gently moving it further out to sea with each surge. Her sadness seemed absolute. He was riveted, as though she and he were the last people left on earth. He wasn’t attracted to her, but to her absolute aloneness; this was what had drawn him to Sweet Girl. He wanted to approach her, this stranger on the beach. He wanted to save her. He knew he could do it. He could make up the rituals.

  “Good evening,” he would say, holding out his hand.

  The woman would smile and take his hand in a shy shake.

  “This way,” he would say, leading her closer to the water’s edge. With his heel, he would draw a square and in its middle, a circle, both in the sand. He would ask her to take off her top and kneel in the circle as he stood before her. He would reach down to the sand, pick up fistfuls and pour them over her head. The soft light would be reflected by the silicone and it would look like she was being showered in glitter. He would say: This is our body. The one true home. Feel the fall of it. Feel the wind carry it. This is the ancient way. Do this in memory of us. Don’t forget.

  Then, dusting off his hands, he would bend her head, first back then forward. Washing it gently with the salty water of the ocean, fetched in his cupped hands, with the tenderness of a woman washing a child in a long-ago gathering of shadows. This is water, he would say. This is mother. The path. Taste the salt of it. Feel the flow. This is the ancient way. This is dread. This is freedom. Do this in memory of us. Don’t forget.

  Then pulling her to her feet he would point her to the water and say: “Go,” pressing pennies into one palm, cowries into the other. “Go, throw the money in the sea, one palm for the new coin, one for the old, pay for your sins. Then place something precious to you on the sea’s lip, set it free on the water of life, set your heart free, this is the ancient way.”

  Instead, he approached her, this stranger he wanted to pull back from the edge of that dark body heaving in the night, and said: “I think your briefcase is getting wet.” But she didn’t hear him. Without another word, he climbed back up to the pier with its lights and Ferris wheel and crowds and fishermen. He bought a hot dog and a cola. Sitting on the wooden rail of the pier, feet dangling over the darkness below, he ate quickly and putting the can to his lips, he drained it in one gulp. With a loud exhalation he crushed the can against his head and sent it skipping over the waves. Large drops of rain began to fall as he lit a cigarette. Match held defiantly into the wind, he smoked, wishing he could see Sweet Girl again. The rain grew heavier and he jumped down and ran for the Blackmobile. He settled into the van, starting it and watching the single blade try futilely to wipe water from the windscreen. His obsession with her had led to him following her in the past. But he had stopped that. It wasn’t healthy. I’ll see her tomorrow, maybe, he told himself, but not tonight.

  Tonight it was raining.

  four

  incendiary.

  Black thought as he watched Sweet Girl walk toward the stage. He knew all eyes in the room were riveted on her. She looked at him as she passed and smiled thinly, the lacy fabric of her top teasing his cheek. He opened his mouth to speak, but she was gone, already climbing the three steps up to the stage.

  She paused for a moment, hands above her head, fingertips trailing on the ceiling, which was mirrored, waiting for the jukebox to start. He liked this moment best. The pause between when the stripper came on stage and the music started. In that hush everyone held their breath, even the other strippers, every face marked with something like lust. That pause held everything for Black, who as an artist, a muralist, saw everything as whole—texture, silence, sound, color and image. The expectation was elastic, a bubble spreading out into the room. And when it burst, the dancer would have them. Or not. Just as it became unbearable for Black, the first notes of the song started and he let out his breath in a shudder.

  Slow, slow, almost languid, Sweet Girl began to move to the music. Eyes closed, lips part open, front lower teeth visible, face turned up to the light, to the mirrors. The feeling was worship. Then she smiled and her eyes opened. Chin still up in worship she looked surprised to see herself in the mirror. Smiling she traced her forefinger over her lips and then with aching slowness, the tip of her tongue flicked over it.

  Everyone in the room was looking up. Not at the elevated stage, but at the mirrors on the ceiling. Seeing Sweet Girl see herself as if for the first time. Feeling all of it spilling from her eyes. The smile on her face, a phantom, a ghost of a thing, emerged as she examined her wet fingertip. Reaching up she traced her face in the mirror, leaving a snail trail of dampness. In his seat, Black moaned softly as though she had touched him.

  Faces, the audience’s, like globular stars, filled the clear sky of the mirror. Sweet Girl selected a face from the many hanging there. A man. About fifty, balding, nostrils flared in excitement above a dirty moustache: a shaggy dog of a man. Sweet Girl looked directly into his eyes hanging there in the mirror, holding him in her smile. Then like the slow drip of new honey, she shimmied o
ut of her diaphanous top. And as it slowly fluttered to the floor it was his release. Another face. A woman. Alone. This look wasn’t performance. It was lingering. Sweet Girl’s nose curled slightly, as though the smell of the woman was in her, held, just a moment too long, then gone. Another. A thin rake of a man whose eyes held all the fire his body couldn’t. With the same forefinger, Sweet Girl teased one reluctant bra strap off, then the other. Without taking her eyes from his, she reached back with one hand and released the clasp, the other holding on to the mirror, pinning the man’s face to one spot. A casual shrug dropped the bra to the floor and Sweet Girl danced back and kicked it forward, the bra landing just short of the stage lip. The move, though clearly practiced, held ease.

  All this time, Sweet Girl was still looking up, and Black wondered how come she didn’t get a crick. Spinning around slowly in her panties and plastic-cone pasties hard like arrow tips, there was a stillness about her. As though she was stationary and the mirror was a wheel of fortune. Stopping at Black’s face, she smiled. Then looked down. Straight at him. He felt self-conscious, but in that masked way that men who are over six feet tall and weigh about two-fifty have learned. She cupped her breasts with both hands and held them up as though in offering. Black felt his own hands, delicate and incongruous given his weight, sliding up his sides, stopped just short of his own plump chest by her teasing smile. No one else noticed. They were all leaning forward intently. Black hesitated. Was Sweet Girl mocking him? As he watched, her tongue snaked out to its full length; six inches from root to tip. Like a thing with a life all its own, it strained downward toward her nipples. Black pushed away from her, the spell broken. He got up and walked to the bar, noting that it was just past seven p.m. For a moment he wondered what it said about him that at seven on a weeknight evening he was in a strip club. He knew Bomboy Dickens, who was nursing a drink at the bar, would say: We are lucky, that’s what it says; in that thick accent that was like a gel over everything he said, making it seem more authentic.