Meet Me in the Strange

by Leander Watts

  I headed the other direction, to the back spiral stairway.

  TWELVE

  Knowing the ins and outs of the Angelus better than anyone, I made it down to the ground floor before them. I went through the kitchen and dining room and into the main lobby. Though I’d grown up here and had never known another home, sometimes I still got a little flicker of joy when I entered the lobby and saw the huge chandeliers, the ranks of sofas and black enameled tables, the broad stairways and alcoves where people lounged and met, waited and read their magazines, drank bitter coffee from beautiful silver cups, nibbled glazed chocolates, and made slow elegant clouds of smoke with their Turkish cigarettes.

  Today I had only one thing on my mind: following the girl, hoping she’d get rid of Carlos.

  The elevator doors came open with a hissing sigh. Carlos got out, then the girl from the concert, and last was the other girl—the one I didn’t know—who said goodbye and went to the coffee shop just off the lobby.

  I wasn’t hiding—not exactly. Sometimes I thought I didn’t need to hide as I snuck around the hotel, that I was almost invisible. Today, I just stayed back, hung around with others, blended into the background.

  Carlos pointed to the hallway that led to D’Annunzio Boulevard. He was pouring on the charm, though it didn’t seem that the girl was paying much attention. She stared at the opulence of the lobby, stood there a minute just soaking up the overload of gold, silver, and bronze; of silk, damask, and satin.

  Smooth as the maitre d’ of a great restaurant, puffed-up like the conductor of a world-class orchestra, Carlos gestured for the girl to go with him out to the street. They were talking, though I could barely understand any of the words. Luigi, Lukas, Santa Lucia, Jules. The names they’d mentioned upstairs came back to me again: L’s and oohs, floating in my mind.

  I cut through a utility hallway, a narrow passage that guests never saw, and came out into sunshine on the east side of the hotel. For a second I panicked, thinking that Carlos had seen me and headed off another way. But then the doors opened and out they came.

  He was still talking. She was silent.

  THIRTEEN

  Something had changed in those few minutes while I’d lost sight of them. The girl was shaking her head, backing away. Carlos was trying to keep his cool, still using his slickest voice. He’d said or done the wrong thing, though, and she was making it obvious now that she wanted him to leave her alone.

  “You’re sure you don’t want to—”

  “I’m sure,” she said. “Absolutely positively.”

  He gave up with a shrug and a suave smile. I heard him say, “We’ll see you tomorrow?” Without answering, she turned and headed down the street.

  Carlos went back into the hotel, and I didn’t need to keep hidden anymore. The girl hadn’t noticed me at the show. Why would she? What she’d gone through at the Maxima was pure Django-possession. I’d just been one more nameless, faceless body floating nearby. Even if I’d slammed into her and screamed in her face, she wouldn’t have noticed me the night before.

  So it should have been easier now to follow her.

  And for a little while I did fine, watching her move down the sidewalk, wondering what she was looking at in the store windows, trying to conjure a name for her in my mind. Something plain? Something exotic? None of the names I called up from memory, and tested out, seemed right. I pretended, in my head, to introduce myself. “Hi, I’m Davi. I was at the show.” I thought about racing right up to her and grabbing her arm. But that was wrong too.

  I suppose I was still a bit blurry-brained from the night before, and definitely playing with the names made me lose concentration. I saw her go into a little boutique jewelry store. She came out then went back in again, as though she’d forgotten something.

  Then she went quickly down the street, and I hurried to catch up with her. Or maybe it wasn’t her who’d come out the second time. There weren’t many girls on the street with her look—wild hair, sphinx-skin jeans and creamy silk jacket—but the crowds there were pretty heavy, and the bright sunshine was messing up my vision.

  I was running now, trying to catch a glimpse. The crowds on the street got denser and pushed back against me, like a tide coming in. I saw her—I think—turn down an alleyway. By the time I’d gotten there, she was gone.

  FOURTEEN

  I stood there panting, feeling one hundred percent imbecilo. Why hadn’t I just gone up to her as soon as she’d gotten rid of Carlos? Why hadn’t I shouted out for her? Maybe it would’ve made me look like a fool. But at least I’d have had a chance. Now, there were an infinite number of places for me to look.

  Countless streets, nameless alleys, tiny apartments and huge cathedrals, crowded bridges, empty promenades, piazzas and theaters, galleries and salons and palaces: the city was for me as big as an entire world.

  The most logical spots for me to look were the record shops. So I went a few blocks, crossed the St. Paulus bridge and down a narrow street crowded with antique shops and stuffy little coffee houses. There, tucked between a chapel and a two-chair barber, was a place where sometimes I bought albums. And there was Luigi, leaning on the counter, staring at a tiny TV. The place was small enough that he could watch for shoplifters from his place behind the cash register. There was no crowd of sticky-fingered kids that day, though. Besides Luigi, I was only person in the shop. He looked up for a second. I’m sure he recognized me, because I’d spent plenty of money there. But his greeting wasn’t much more than a nod. “Luigi,” I said to myself. He had to be the one Carlos had been talking about. Maybe this was where he met her.

  “Have you seen a girl?” I asked. “She’s got wild-looking hair. And glasses. She’s really into Django Conn. You know her?”

  Luigi considered this for a second or two, then went back to his TV without even answering.

  “I’m looking for her. It’s really important.” I surprised myself, saying this. “She was at the show last night. I need to find her.”

  “Sure,” Luigi said. “Five thousand kids. Sure. I remember everybody.” He took a heavy drag, blew clove-scented smoke at me, and ground out his cigarette as though wanting to grind me out. “Now, you want to buy something today or did you just come around to—”

  FIFTEEN

  The bell on the door jingled, and a guy who didn’t seem to belong there came in. I don’t mean he looked confused or lost. It was more that he didn’t fit in. After about five seconds, it was pretty obvious he wasn’t there to buy the new V-Rocket album or pick up the latest fan-mag. No, it was somebody, not something he was looking for.

  His eyes were like two inky holes. At least, that was what it seemed like as he turned to look at me. Not just deep, dark brown, but truly moonless, midnight black. I didn’t notice what he was wearing, because it was the face, the look, that went straight into my brain. Just for a fleeting flick of a moment, I thought the look was about hate, real loathing. Only I’d never seen him before. So why would he hate me? And then I thought maybe it was the opposite. But I was nothing to look at. Why would anybody with that kind of intensity even notice me, let alone care?

  I thought later that other people probably turned and stared at him all the time. He was that good-looking, like a film star who’d just stepped out of the movie screen. So maybe he was just giving me what he always got, but in reverse. It was a fierce gaze: sort of an attack to defend himself. Supposedly, other faces can be like mirrors. I’d read that in a Creedo interview Django gave. He said we look into other people’s faces and see ourselves, or what we’re feeling. It didn’t make much sense, but that’s what it seemed like when the guy stared at me.

  What did he see? I’m not sure. Boy or girl, plain or beautiful, rich or poor: he didn’t care about those. There was something else he looked for inside me, like an x-ray camera searching for secrets. But he didn’t find any, at least not then. He was about to say something, I think, but changed his mind. He gave up on me, as though I was a bug he’d found interesting
for a second or two. He glanced around the shop quickly then headed for the door. Luigi shrugged and looked up at me, as if asking without speaking whether I was going to spend any money that day.

  It took me a minute to calm down, to remember where I was and why. Should I stay, I wondered, waiting around to see if the girl showed up? Should I just wander from store to store, street to street, letting luck take me where I needed to go? Or should I give up right then, this impossible search to find someone whose name I’d never heard, and who had no idea that I even existed?

  SIXTEEN

  Back on the street, I told myself to just give up and go home. This was stupido, a total, embarrassing waste of time. The longer I spent wandering around, the worse I was going to feel when I got back to my rooms. Luck had given me my one chance, and I’d blown it.

  Then, at the end of the street, I thought I saw her again. Just a quick glimpse, like a flash of movement in the corner of my eye. There and then gone, into a doorway. One more try, I told myself. One more time chasing the black and red girl-ghost.

  It was another record store, and I’d messed up again. She wasn’t there.

  Like at the last place, there was only one other customer. This one was a kid with a wild green-gold shag haircut, turquoise jumpsuit, and platform-heeled shoes. Of course it couldn’t be, but I thought at first it was the guy I’d just seen at Luigi’s. Somehow he’d made a transformation, and gotten to the next store ahead of me. I stared at him, a little woozy and weak in the legs. He stared back, as though I was the one who was out of place. I saw then that it was somebody new, somebody I’d never run into before, though like the guy with the inky black eyes, there was something a little off about him.

  It seemed odd to see a glister-boy, in full Django-drag, at that time of day. Especially since the boy was alone. In a gang of other kids, it would’ve seemed somehow more right, or safer. At the Maxima there’d been hundreds of them, like a flock of birds with the same splendid plumage. But with the late afternoon sun shining in the shop windows, it seemed too open, too bold. I’d never played with dressing that way, in public or in private. No makeup, no lipstick, no mascara. No gold lame or silvery chiffon. I’d stare for hours at the record covers and color pictures in Creedo, imagining what it would feel like to have such a look. Boy-girl, both-neither, fake-real, yes and no. Wild, outrageous, way beyond, and free. But I never once crossed the line and tried to imitate Django.

  I glanced over at the bin the kid was looking through. The Sabbath-Breakers, the Salamanders, Sergeant Silvero, Sigmund Boyd, Sweet Tooth: these bands were okay, but nothing compared to Django and the Reptiles. I went to his bin and flipped through the records. I had everything, but it felt good to see the albums in their shiny plastic wrappers, sealed up tight. Four copies of Man in the Moon in the Man. Five of Gimme Back My Phantom Limbs. A New World import version of “Stellar Bodies” and six copies of Django’s first record, when he was still a solo act. It felt good to see so many of his faces, different looks from album to album, and the same cover pictures lined up four, five, six in a stack.

  There was an espresso bar down the street where sometimes I’d see glister kids gathered. That day there were just two old men there, playing dominoes and listening to the sad wail of Madama Butterfly. I peeked into a church where somebody was getting married or having a funeral, but I didn’t stay long enough to find out which it was. Crossing the Bridge of Tears, I looked into the oozy, black canal. The sun made a long, blood-red wound in the surface of the water. A boat went by, moving slowly, almost drifting. It broke up the play of light, and I moved on, ending up over near the Duce’s Dome, standing in line to see a movie.

  It was a B-grade horror flicker from the New World called something like Daughter of the Shadows, or Darkness and the Girl. I didn’t pay much attention to the name or who was starring in it. There was a gloomy, gothic castle of course, and lightning bolts, and big swells of overloaded orchestral music. The girl in the movie had crazy, wild eyes, and I think some kind of powers that let her see what no one else could see.

  In the film, there was another world, I think. A world that overlapped this one, or crossed through it the way clouds of smoke cross the sky but the things behind are still visible. She could go back and forth, I think, or talk to people in both worlds. And of course no one took her seriously until the end when it all came crashing together. But the movie had pretty good special effects, and so, at least for the two hours I sat in the darkness of the theater, I almost believed it.

  SEVENTEEN

  The movie finished and I walked out. Giving up the search and watching the movie had calmed me down. It was okay, I told myself. Maybe I could ask Sabina who the girl was. Or I might run into her again at another show.

  Maybe it was letting go that did the trick. Good luck, dumb luck, karma, surrendering to the totally random—whatever it was—I’d found her.

  There she was, the girl with the glasses and the wild black hair. The girl I’d heard—from my secret place—talking about music and mutation. She’d been in the theater the whole time with me, watching and hearing, soaking up the shadows and the sounds. She was alone too. And like me, going from the black and white shadows to the pomegranate reds and lemon yellows of sunset, she was a bit unsure of herself, at least at first.

  “Why are you following me?” she asked.

  “What do you mean?” My words came out a little awkward, as they usually did.

  She edged up closer, as though to get a better look at me. “Following me. I saw you go into Luigi’s earlier. Then over on San Mateo. And now here.” She didn’t seem angry, just confused. “What’s going on?”

  “I saw you at the show.” No intro, no small talk. “Django Conn.” She gave me an off-kilter look. “The Maxima. Last night. The Albino Reptiles from Dimension X.” I started right in, which was something I hardly ever did, talking to a girl like that.

  She looked at me like she didn’t believe anything I’d said. So I rattled off the songs from the show, and the names of the Reptiles, and described what Django had been wearing, to prove to her that I’d really been there. “He’s the greatest.”

  “Absolutely,” she said, relaxing a little. “The greatest.”

  “My name’s Davi.”

  She waited just a couple of seconds, then said, “I’m Anna Z.”

  That was the shortest thing I ever heard her say. Soon enough, so many words were coming out of her that I felt like I was drowning. Wild stories, charming lies, true facts and fairy tales, rambling rants, song lyrics, rhymes and riddles and beautiful secrets. But for those couple of minutes, she still didn’t know if she could trust me. So she didn’t say much at first.

  I asked about her favorite album. Of course, like me, it was Man in the Moon in the Man. We agreed that it was amazing and that we could listen to it a thousand times and never use it up. Only ten songs and there was a whole world hidden there in the grooves.

  “Radiation Nation,” I said.

  “Signs and Wonders,” she said back. “With the wild gamba solo, right?”

  “Love and Gravity, Royal Shining Things,” I said the song names like I was using secret passwords. “Forty Months and a Day. The first time I heard that one, I thought my brain was going to catch on fire.”

  She didn’t walk away saying I was a freak or an imbecilo turd-toy. I’d been through that enough times before, people telling me to go away, that I was too fanatical, too wound-up, too much. But right there in front of the theater, I went up to her and started talking about Django Conn, and that’s all it took to bring us together.

  “I’ve got some bootleg LPs and some really rare 45s,” I told her, not bragging, but saying it just to see how she’d respond. “I saw a ticket stub from his first show with the Reptiles. A guy had it for sale. It was supposedly autographed, but how could you prove that Django really signed it?”

  I kept thinking how amazing it was that she didn’t walk away. Once she’d gotten used to me, and that didn’t tak
e long, she stood there like she was really listening. And I did too. Of course, that was probably easier for me because she was Anna Z, and there was nobody like her on the whole planet, maybe in the whole universe. Her hair wasn’t quite so wild as at the Maxima, but there were still black snakes tangled in it. No liquid blurs of color moved on her glasses. All the same, it was hard to see her eyes. Swept up into Django’s sound, she was lost and found. Standing on the street with me, she wasn’t so free, so spontaneous. But I remembered how she’d been, and I knew she’d be that way again.

  I told her about the Angelus, that my family owned it and that I had always lived there. I mentioned Sabina and Carlos and the others. And that was all it took to make the final link between us, because she told me she’d been there just a few hours before. It really was her I’d heard through the wall, talking about blood, fire, moonlight, music, and mutation. It was no phantasm I’d seen walking down the hallway to the elevator.

  EIGHTEEN

  “I met Carlos just a couple of days ago,” she told me, as we headed for the Angelus. “I thought he was cool at first. And he knows everybody who’s anybody. He said he had some friends who’d found ‘a thin place between here and there.’ That’s how he put it, and it sounded like the real thing, not just kids playing around with Ouija boards and black candles. Not just fooling and faking but really going across the line to the Big Beyond. So I met up with them, just yesterday at Santa Lucia’s, that’s over by the Don Rodrigo canal, and we had cinnamon coffee and talked, and so that’s your sister? She doesn’t look anything like you. I don’t mean she’s not pretty, but she’s dark and you’re so pale. I can’t believe that you two are really related.”