Still Life Las Vegas

by James Sie

  Lee swiped his card at the metal door and ushered Emily inside. She felt like she was trick-or-treating, peering through the Pierrot mask, her oversize white tunic billowing around her. Take away the shiny black buttons running down the front and the ruffled collar and she could have been a Halloween ghost, floating down the white cinder-block hallway, begging for candy.

  Emily followed Lee down the corridor. Her feet, clad in black dancer slippers stuffed with tissue, made no noise on the concrete floor. Here, everything was institutional and clean. Nothing hung on the walls but emergency evacuation maps and mandatory employee notices encased in Plexiglas.

  “I’ve always wanted to visit here,” she told Lee.

  “Believe me, this isn’t the Venetian’s best side.”

  Emily went to sweep the hair away from her neck, but her hand met only the stiffly starched ruffles of the collar. Back at Lee’s apartment, after showering, she had stared at herself in the mirror, at the sodden mass of tangled hair, matted and twisting like underbrush. She opened the door to the bathroom, towel-clad. “Cut it off,” she called to Lee. He already had the shears in his hand.

  They stopped in front of a station marked SECURITY in somber blue. A slim black man stood before them in a navy jacket with the Venetian’s lion insignia pawing at his breast pocket. He had an ID card hung around his neck and a walkie-talkie in hand. “Where’s Maggie?” he asked. Below his insignia a small badge announced his name in gold lettering: JOSEPH SULLIVAN.

  “Where’s the lute player?” Joseph asked Lee. “The lute-ist?” Joseph tossed the walkie-talkie up and down, spinning it in the air. Emily thought he seemed too young to be a guard. He barely filled out the jacket.

  “Sick,” replied Lee. “Luckily, we have a replacement.” With one swift move, he swept Emily’s mask onto the top of her head. “Emmie from Vietnam.”

  Emily drew in her breath, but Joe wasn’t even looking at her face. “That’s not a lute,” he said, staring at the accordion case.

  “Even better,” Lee promised. “Just wait.”

  “Weird weather,” Joseph said.

  “Weird,” echoed Lee.

  Joseph spoke into the walkie-talkie. “Performers coming out,” he said. They walked through a series of hallways to a plain door with a 4 stenciled onto it. Joseph swiped his ID into a security reader. “Emmie, huh?” he said. “I thought you were a dude.” He laughed and disappeared through the door.

  Emily glimpsed herself reflected off the glass of a fire safety display. She did look like a boy. In fact, with no makeup on and her hair cut short, she bore a striking resemblance to Walt. The cheekbones, the flattened bridge of the nose, the delicate shell of an ear …

  “Mask on,” Lee said. She shoved her face over her face.

  Almost immediately Joseph reappeared, holding open the door. “Come on in,” he said. Emily glimpsed the arch of a building and a cobblestone street on the other side, the glow of lamplight.

  Lee took a deep breath and lowered his leering mask. He tilted his head toward Emily, displaying the large bump protruding from his leather forehead. “Rub it,” he said, “for luck.” Emily reached out and touched the bump. It was soft and smooth. “Let’s go,” Lee whispered, offering his arm. She took it, and together, they strode out into the past.

  They were standing in Old World Venice, and it was exactly as she’d hoped it would be. The metal door they had stepped through disappeared into the facade of a redbricked villa. In the same way, all the modern storefronts and the chattering tourists milling around Emily seemed to fade away, leaving behind only the cobblestones, the warmly welcoming streetlamps, the graceful porticos and balconies and gently rippling waterways of impossible Mediterranean blue.

  She was only dimly aware of photos being snapped. In her periphery, Lee was extending his arms, bowing his body, striking a pose. Lee was waggling his head, Lee was squeezing a woman by the shoulders. Lee was thrusting dollars into a small leather pouch that hung from his belt. No one paid attention to her, not with the bright Harlequino capering at her side. She was largely invisible to them, as they were to her. Every so often she felt her elbow being lifted, and in this way they made their way down the street.

  Emily stared up at the sky, a serene blue muted by clouds tinged with gold. It was so tranquil. There was a small red balloon in the distance, floating up to the sky. She couldn’t take her eyes off it. It was supposed to get smaller and smaller and finally disappear, but it never did. Instead, it stayed, pushing against a wispy cloud, never diminishing, unable to escape. Its white cord slowly undulated in the air.

  “Go,” Emily whispered. “Go.”

  She felt a tugging at her accordion. They had reached a small circular platform with a railing. She pulled away from Lee, who was trying to take her case. Lee bowed in apology and extended his arm. She stepped onto the platform, knelt down, and unsnapped the latches on the case. She thought she could hear the distant rumbling of thunder, but the heavens were still blue. She looked at Lee.

  “Play,” said Lee.

  * * *

  —They were on the bridge. Owen led Emily there, directly from the shadowed alcove where they had been hiding during the chaos of the evacuation. He guided her gently, like she was a sleepwalker he didn’t want to waken. She had followed, yielding without words. Her fingers had no weight.

  I found you, he whispered in her ear, but he knew better than to embrace her; he knew, instinctively, that he must only lightly hold her hands. It was delicate. To hold Emily more closely might mean to lose her. At the same time, he wouldn’t take his eyes away. She might vanish. At any moment the oversize white clown costume she was wearing might slide to the floor, revealing that it was all a magician’s trick, that she wasn’t really there at all. He couldn’t take that chance.

  They were on the bridge. The sirens had stopped. That which was going to fall seemed to have fallen. The people had left, and other people had not yet arrived.

  Look. Venice, he said. She was silent.

  Walter’s fine, he said. He’s with Vee.

  Emily’s eyes were focused downward, but Owen could tell she wasn’t seeing the blue water beneath them.

  I know about the pills, he said.

  She wasn’t seeing anything at all.

  Emmie? he said. He wanted her to look at him. He wanted to see her bright eyes.

  Emmie, I love you so much.

  Perhaps that was why he was on the bridge. He was proposing. He was proposing that she come back.

  Emily began shivering.

  Come home.

  Emily’s head shook slightly, more a tremble than a shake.

  Let me take care of you. I want to take care of you.

  She shook her head, more definitively this time. Owen took a step closer.

  You’re right, he said. Let’s not go back. Let’s stay.

  A flash, and Owen saw it: a life, a new life, this place, they could stay here, perhaps not exactly here but somewhere near, another city within a city, a place domed, contained and secure, safe.

  We could live here, he said.

  She would not stop trembling. Owen grabbed her shoulders.

  We can be safe here, he said. Together. Our family. No driving. No cars. No curse.

  She looked at him, then, Emily of the Bright Eyes.

  No.

  Her eyes burned.

  No, she said louder. She threw out her arms, pushing his arms away, and then she was beating her fists hard against him, striking him on the chest, again and again, like she wanted entry.

  It wasn’t the curse, she said. It was you. It was you. It was you.

  Owen welcomed each blow, never falling but bowing down so she could strike at his head, if she wished. But now, Emily was sobbing, loud and fast, and now he could hold her, she was truly back, and he lifted her up like he would have held little Georgia, she seemed to weigh no more than that, and he carried her easily to the steps leading down to the water, and there was a gondola, waiting, a white gondola
with gold trim and gold leaves adorning its prow. He stepped into the boat, setting her down gently, and then he sank down beside her, cradling her, and they set off—

  PART 3

  “When I woke up, she was gone.”

  That’s how the story ended, as I remember it being told. A piece of sky had fallen from the ceiling into their gondola and knocked my hapless father out. When he came to on a gurney on the side of the canal, there was no one beside him. The paramedics told him he was the only one they had found in the gondola. She had disappeared again.

  It was something like that. All these decades later, I know the story blow-by-blow but only as family history, events seen from the wrong end of the telescope, far away and indistinct. The years have eroded the details. Or maybe they were never there. Perhaps my father passed along his past intentionally vague; generality gives hard facts the sweetness and inevitability of fairy tales.

  I didn’t ask for many details when I lived with him. You’d have thought I would have been more curious, back then; human nature demands we chew on all the grisly details of a catastrophe. It’s never enough to know that there was a hurricane that caused fatalities—we want the body count, the gore, the pain. How many died? How many injured? In what ways? Were there drownings? People crushed by falling houses? What about that woman who got decapitated by a falling street sign? And tell again about the baby that was swept away in the rains but found, miraculously, three days later, coated in mud by a drainage ditch, unhurt. Give us more.

  Only I didn’t want more, back then. I had no appetite for it. Parsing the past was a dicey affair: may cause dizziness, depression, and, in some cases, death. It didn’t seem particularly relevant, or helpful, to delve into specifics.

  When I woke up, she was gone. How much more do you need to know?

  WALTER

  CHRYSTOSTOM

  I don’t call Chrysto for almost a week. Partly it’s because I don’t know when to call, I work during the day and I know he does, too, and at night my father’s been up and around more so by the time I can call I don’t know if it’s too late to call so I don’t call and I put it off ’til the next day, and partly it’s because I don’t know what to say, but mostly, mostly if I’m being perfectly honest, mostly it’s fear. I can’t get those images of Icarus out of my head: the boy with his faulty wings heading straight for the sun, loving his freedom, making the mistake of wanting more; lost at sea.

  But eventually, desire trumps fear. I know I have to either call or throw away the business card. There’s this invisible expiration date stamped all over the card: Offer good for one week only. After that, no guarantees. It’s now or never.

  I pull out my cell phone Monday morning. It’s really early, but I don’t know when he goes to work, so I risk it. I’m out on the balcony, punching in numbers slowly, like I’ve never used a phone before.

  It rings. And rings. And rings. Finally, a click, and a guy on the other end of the phone says, “Yes?” and I hear the barb at the end of the word. That’s when I start to feel the awful pull of gravity. The actual plunge begins the exact nanosecond after I blurt out, “It’s Walter,” and the voice on the other end says, “Who?”

  I freeze. The dark sea opens before me.

  I’m trying to gather up the syllables necessary to make up my name, but Chrysto saves me with a “Hey! Wal-ter! This is you?”

  Damned if those wings didn’t work after all.

  “Hi,” I say, grinning like a mad fool.

  “What are you doing?” he asks.

  “Nothing.”

  “Come over.”

  It’s that easy.

  * * *

  Here I am, over. No buzzing in, since the gate to the building’s been left ajar and the lock to the outer door is busted. The apartment that Chrysto and Acacia share is at the end of a long corridor on the third floor. The door’s cracked open. I’m not sure what to do. Tapping seems too timid; yelling, rude. To grab the knob and go right in seems, well, a little pushy, but knocking would push the door open.…

  My indecision must be deafening, because a voice calls from inside: “Walter? Come in!”

  The room looks large, but that’s because it’s mostly empty. A couch. A wooden chair. A small table, with a long white vase on it. That’s it. And in the middle of the room, Chrystostom, who’s standing absolutely still on a thin mat, unblinking. His dark hair is gathered together into a topknot, and he’s got on what looks like a pair of white boxer briefs, but aside from that, nothing. The sunlight shafts in from the window, creating a frame around Chrysto. He’s in a room of light within the room, set up for display.

  Oddly, it puts me at ease, him half naked and immobile. It’s what I’m used to. I take my place on the couch. The azure in his eyes has receded into a muted blue. Even his skin seems to have paled.

  I say he’s motionless, but that’s not entirely true. I don’t notice this until I’ve sat down. He’s standing on the balls of his feet, and there’s not a twitch of his ankles, not a waver, but because I’m close I can see there’s movement. He’s shifting his weight from the balls of his big toes to the balls of his second toes, slowly, then onward to the next toe and the next until he’s reached the base of his pinkies. Nothing else has moved but this subtle shifting of his feet. He repeats this twice more, back and forth along the balls of his feet, within the space of two minutes.

  And then, in a gesture that seems gigantic after so much inaction, Chrysto slowly raises his left leg. His foot comes to rest against his inner right thigh; the rest of his body could have been stone. Still elevated on his right foot, he again repeats the pattern shifting from big toe to pinkie. ON ONE LEG. Once, twice, three times, then the whole thing happens again standing on his other leg. There’s never a bobble, not so much as a tiny sway.

  It’s crazy. It’s impossible. But he does it. If he had lifted both feet off the ground and just floated, I wouldn’t have been surprised.

  Finally, his right foot glides slowly back down to the floor, but just for a moment, and then suddenly, with a snap, he kicks off it and is upside down, on his fingertips. He wheels his body around to face me, lifts one hand to give a quick, silly wave, and then pushes off to land, feetfirst, back on the ground.

  Chrysto’s laughing, and so am I. I’m amazed, and grateful. I feel like I should throw coins.

  “Hello, my friend,” he says, pulling me in for a quick kiss on each cheek and a happy shake of my shoulders. He’s not even winded. “I am finished. Some water?”

  I follow him as he pads into the kitchenette, pulling the band from his hair and shaking it free. In motion, he becomes smaller. The hard rock of his muscles melt into something younger, more fluid.

  “That was, that was amazing,” I stammer. “How do you do that?”

  He hands me a small bottle of water and shrugs. “Many years of practice. Since I was boy.”

  “Is it, like, yoga?” I ask.

  Chrysto scoffs. “Yoga! No, not like yoga. Older.”

  His hand goes to his throat, and for the first time I notice the necklace he’s wearing, a small white stone hanging from a thin silver chain that he fingers.

  “Yoga’s pretty old,” I say.

  He looks at me as if he’d like to pat me on the head.

  “You bring the book?” he asks.

  I take the sketchbook I’ve promised out from under my arm and slowly offer it up. I notice how scratched the cover is, how the binding is beginning to fray. “I don’t know why you want to see it,” I say, but he’s already grabbed the book and has hopped backward onto the couch, legs folded under him. He opens it with one hand and pats the cushion next to him with the other.

  There’s a certain tang his body gives off: salt and citrus. Sitting next to him, I try to breathe slowly, to keep my eyes open and not look like I’m inhaling big greedy gulps of him. His head is bent over the book but I get the feeling that he’s still somehow watching me, or watching me watch him.

  Chrysto flips through the pag
es backward so he’s seeing the most recent drawings first. He grunts appreciatively as he views himself in pencil and pen, running his finger across the page. “Yes,” he repeats over and over. “Yes.”

  He turns a page. “This is Acacia! Exactly.” She’s in her dying swan pose. More pages of Chrysto, hands and shoulders and muscled arms. Chrysto spreads his own arm out in front of him and clenches and unclenches his hand. “Is perfect. Exactly.” The hair on his arm is quite dark, but in the pictures his arms are white and smooth. Where could all the hair have gone?

  He laughs with delight. “You are excellent, yes?” I smile without meaning to, and he smiles back. He goes quiet for a moment, then raises a finger toward me. “You must do more, Walter. This is important.”

  He bends back to the book, flipping several pages. “Your mother?” he asks. He’s pointing at the drawing of the question mark woman, the one with the long hair who ran out of Viva Las Vegas! “The cheek, the jaw, these are the same.” I hadn’t noticed that before. He traces the outline of the face on the page with his finger, then brings his hand to my face. I flinch, and hate myself for it.

  Chrysto lets his fingers linger in the air before bringing them back down to the page.

  “You see?” he says.

  “I … I don’t know who that is,” I tell him. “I just drew her. I don’t have a mother.”

  Chrysto’s eyes open wide. “Ahh!” he says, turning his body toward mine. “This is me also! I am orphan! No parents. They die. Big explosion, boom! Terrorist. I was very small. You also?”

  I try explaining that this is not the case, but I’m having difficulty coming up with words, even syllables are hard, because at this moment Chrysto has placed his hand on my cheek. This time I don’t flinch. He doesn’t pat my face but instead cups the side with his palm and leaves it there.

  European, I think. It must be a European thing. I will move to Europe.