by Allyson Bird
She thought of him one final time as she smoked a cigarette on her own balcony. It was like Roy—pleasant, but unsatisfying; not all it should be. She could enjoy neither as much as she would have liked, not after tasting the one the woman had given her; not after seeing Roy for what he was. She withdrew the stub from her pocket, gazed on the strange mark. She could not tell what it might be, not even under the brightest light of her apartment. The squiggles would not resolve themselves into anything meaningful. “An abstraction,” she murmured, smiling. She traced the insignia with the tip of her finger. “What are you?”
Have you found the Yellow Sign?
The woman’s voice came to her in that moment, her clipped, European accent, the strange, unanswerable question she had posed. Docia stopped smiling, tucked the butt away, and poured herself another drink. As she took it to bed, she looked at the phone. She wondered if Roy would call. She thought not—and indeed, he did not.
She had broken up with unworthy partners many times before. It was never fun, but it was also somewhat liberating. To remain in a relationship with someone she could not esteem would be to debase herself, a betrayal of her fundamental convictions. That was why she woke the next morning not feeling bleak and abandoned, but refreshed, renewed—and determined.
She made herself coffee, and after a hurried cup headed to the drugstore on the corner. There, she consulted with the owner on the matter of the strange cigarette stub. He inspected it, and declared he’d never seen one like it.
“Really?”
“I can try to find out, if you like… then again, perhaps I’d better not.” He returned the butt to her, a curious expression his face. “Or maybe I should say… I’d rather not.”
“Why? It’s the finest I’ve ever had.”
“Be that as it may. I don’t know. You… keep that. Don’t bring it in here again.” He was getting oddly aggressive with her. “I don’t want to look at it!”
“All right!” she exclaimed, and left, vowing to never shop there again.
The strangeness of the encounter cast a pall over Docia’s day. Usually she disliked slow days at the office, but after her queer morning, she was grateful for the peace. She was troubled by everything she had to do, nothing sat right with her, and all the lights seemed too dim. She kept rubbing at her eyes, until her assistant pointed out how she’d smeared her mascara.
“Damn,” she swore. “I’ll have to re-do it before I go out tonight.”
“Seeing Mr. Irving?”
Louise was an excellent secretary, so Docia didn’t scold her for nosiness. “No, with Fulvius Elbreth, the theatre critic. He’s taking me to some play that was banned in Europe. Probably has anti-Socialist sentiments or something that would offend the delicate sensibilities of those snooty soap-dodgers.”
“Well, I hope you have a good time.”
“I believe I shall,” said Docia.
Even the lights of the Great White Way seemed dull and flickering beneath the clotted, starless sky when Docia arrived at the theatre, her arm threaded through Fulvius Elbreth’s. She noticed, but was having too good a time to care. Elbreth treated her with respect and gentlemanly charm. To her delight, he had called ahead to ensure a booth would be waiting for him at his favorite Jewish deli.
“It’s not fancy, but I just love a pastrami on rye after a show, and their cheese danishes are… well, they’re just like Mama Elbreth never made,” he said. “I hope that’s all right.”
“How’s their corned beef?” she’d playfully replied.
“To die for.”
“Sounds great.”
“You’re… full of surprises, Ms. Calder.”
She realized she’d just passed a test of sorts, and was surprised to find she enjoyed his approval.
“So are you,” she replied. “Or… perhaps I shouldn’t assume. Perhaps their corned beef only an abstraction of a sandwich?”
He laughed. “See? You’re making me question my convictions, for while very real, their corned beef sandwich is indeed a work of serious art.”
They continued to chat as they picked their way to their seats. The theatre was already packed, and as Docia sat, she noticed they were all squinting at their playbills, or blinking in the light. So she wasn’t the only one—Roy was just thick. But then again, Elbreth, who seemed a substantially sharper tack, seemed unaware of anything being amiss.
“Here we go,” he said cheerfully, as the lights dimmed into darkness and the curtain rose. “Let’s see what the governments of Europe think is too dangerous to be seen.”
It wasn’t an anti-Socialist play, as Docia had assumed. Nor was it blasphemous or seditious. At least, not in ways that she could openly identify. All she knew was it was the strangest hour and a half of her life, watching… whatever it was she was watching. There was poetry, there was action. Things occurred, and did not occur. It was more confounding than alarming. It reminded her a bit of Antigone, which she had also not quite understood, when she’d read it in school.
Her feelings were not shared. When the lights came up—as much as they did—Fulvius Elbreth looked pale, and sweat beaded his forehead.
“Forgive me,” he said, when she remarked on his condition. “I fear I must… a rain check, if you will, on the deli? I do not feel I should stay for the second act. Something… something is wrong. I must go.”
“Of course. I’m so sorry you’re not feeling well… let me call you a cab.”
The look he gave her was that of a man beholding a horror. “You’re not leaving? You… want to stay?” he whispered. “Are you sure?”
“You are unwell,” she said, alarmed by his behavior. “I’ll see you home.”
“I’m perfectly able to get myself away from here!” he exclaimed, and fled the theatre, not even bothering to collect his coat or hat.
Docia watched him, confounded—but the lights flickered. Eager to see the second act, she returned to her seat, alone.
Docia did not rise to get a drink or visit the powder room between the second and third acts, nor between the third and fourth. She remained in her seat, riveted, entranced. It was the most wonderful, terrible thing she had ever seen in her life. The most fascinating thing was, it was not an abstraction, as Elbreth had insisted theatre must be; what was occurring on stage was more real than anything Docia had experienced outside of the theatre. The truth of it resonated within her, as if the actors’ words were mallets and her soul a tuning fork—she felt right, happier than she ever had, at work, in bed, eating delicious food, dressing for a meeting, any of the things she previously would have called pleasurable.
She could not say if she was alone in her sensations. The darkness of the theatre, and the troublingly insufficient light when at last the final act concluded and the curtain fell, made her feel as if she were alone in her seat, alone in the aisle heading toward the door, alone in the street when at last she emerged in the silent, pitch-black city. She looked up, and laughed. At last, the clouds had dispersed, and the night sky greeted her, the swirling constellations of black stars brighter than any artificial, earthly light, the moons—how many, she could not say—emanating a radiance undreamed. The foreign constellations did not disturb her; rather, she realized with a laugh that she had been lost her whole life, and had finally found her way.
The sound of a lighter drew Docia’s attention from the vast and wondrous sky. The woman from the party was there, leaning alone against a streetlight, a cigarette burning in her stubby fingers. A trilby, worn low on her brow, shadowed her features, but it was unmistakably her. Oh, but she was a woman who could wear a suit—the drape of the wool crepe looked like a priest’s vestments or royal robes of state, austere, somber, even awe-inspiring, but completely natural and lived-in.
“Did you like the play?” she asked. When she looked up, the yellow flash of her eye almost blinded Docia.
“I think so,” she replied.
“You’re not someone who appreciates uncertainties,” said the woman. “Come, h
ave a cigarette. We can talk about it.”
She stuck another cigarette between her lips, lit it, and passed it over. Docia accepted it, inhaling deeply of the rich and fragrant tobacco. She knew without looking it was the same strange brand, with the strange symbol.
As she smoked, she found she did not want to speak. The silence was wonderful; the stillness felt right. Content, she took a long drag, and exhaling, noticed through the smoke the gold insignia was even brighter than the ember.
STRANGE IS THE NIGHT
BY S.P. MISKOWSKI
Rain cut diagonal streaks down the windows of offices and shops all over the city. Where the asphalt had been laid by cheap contractors puddles overflowed in the potholes, displacing gravel and slowing traffic to less than ten miles an hour. Occasionally a driver would lose patience with his timid compatriots and hit the gas pedal in a panic, only to be stranded without a lane at the next intersection.
By late afternoon, counter to the direction of the storm, dusk began to crawl over the hills and down to the bay. Darkness spread quickly to half a dozen residential neighborhoods where craftsman houses nestled between modular condos and homeowners competed for a view of urban greenery, although the parks were flooded for most of the winter and spring. There were so many more residents than the city planners ever expected. Street parking had become a vicious contest.
In his cubicle on the second floor of a converted warehouse on 12th Avenue, Pierce regarded the ceiling, listening. The storm continued with infinite patience. A growl of thunder overhead and Pierce imagined the ceiling cracking open, his oblong, cumbersome body drawn upward, sucked out of his ergonomic chair into the ebony sky. He regained composure with a measured pivot of the chair from left to right and from right to left, willing the dreadful weather away.
A photo occupied the center of his computer screen, a headshot of a young woman. Maybe nineteen, maybe twenty, she swayed and smiled uncertainly at the edges of his memory. Moon face; chestnut bob; an underlying fragrance, a mixture of honey and lemon zest.
“Plump,” Pierce said to himself. “Not pleasantly, just plump, a fat kindergartner offering to share candy.” Remembering irritated his sense of order.
He glanced at the open envelope and splayed invitation on his desk, an arrival in that morning’s mail. Expensively engraved lettering, cream-colored paper with an elaborate seal. The wax had been shaped like a hieroglyph, probably a company logo, now broken in half. A stray bit of the saffron wax had dropped between the ‘c’ and the ‘v’ on his keyboard.
Ordinarily Pierce hated these attempts at wooing him with media kits. A week earlier a playwright had mailed him a rubber rodent in a nest of straw with a copy of her seventy-page monologue, Memoir of a Rat King. Pierce had tossed the package into the trash. He considered the same fate for the expensive invitation with its wax seal. But the oddly familiar words of the enclosed poem piqued his curiosity.
Song of my soul, my voice is dead…
He had read the lines before. No. Had he heard them spoken? The phrases kept teasing him. If he said them out loud he felt sleepy and warm.
The girl’s photo, her insouciant grin, had occupied his computer screen when he’d returned from lunch. No one would own up to playing pranks on Pierce. The girl’s face had annoyed him all afternoon. He recollected her scent but not her name. Her face was so much like all the others.
He clicked through several issues of the online edition, scanning his reviews from the previous spring and summer. When he spotted the word ‘porcine,’ he stopped.
Well, it was true, wasn’t it? At least he hadn’t called her ‘fat.’ People were so sensitive about everything these days. Who could keep up with the ever-shifting nomenclature?
When Pierce went to school, name-calling had been almost mandatory, certainly expected. Bullying was a required chapter in the adventure of growing up. So his father had reminded Pierce every time he limped home to bury his bruised face in a pillow. But he had toughened up, and that was the point.
No wonder the paper’s interns acted like children. They were raised on faint praise and false promises, their education designed to accommodate weakness, delicate bones padded against injury, protected from the world for as long as possible. From pre-school to first job interview, no one ever told them the truth. Pierce could make them cry just by hiding their personalized coffee cups.
He had known the wrath of the sensitive all too well. He’d lost his chance at a coveted teaching assistant position at Berkeley over an ironic appropriation of the term ‘pickaninny’ in his graduate thesis. The department chair had made an example, rejecting his application, to the satisfaction--in some cases barely concealed glee--of everyone involved. In a final twist, the teaching assignment that would have assured his success went to the young Rhodes scholar who had accused him of racism.
The name listed in his review and the photo on his screen merged: Molly Mundy, roly-poly, round as a baby and just as free of guile. ‘Porcine.’
If anything, Pierce had been kind. Molly Mundy had been one of those girls who drive up the coast from Beaverton or Pine Hollow, move in with a houseful of slovenly friends, acquire jobs waiting tables or babysitting, and spend every minute dashing between acting classes and auditions, eyes sparkling, lips parted, betraying a bottomless hunger Pierce found repugnant. Each girl a special snowflake, a thousand snowflakes every year, and despite dozens of fringe theatres and a few equity houses, the city couldn’t support their fantasies. There was no film industry to speak of, no TV series, and very little commercial work, only theatre with its physical demands and non-existent pay.
Eventually all but a few of the snowflakes would drift back home to settle, in every sense. They would gain weight, fry their hair with henna streaks and home perms, and marry men they didn’t love, men they wouldn’t have glanced at when they’d thought of themselves as ingénues. They would birth another generation of unremarkable girls named Molly, who longed to be famous for some glittering accomplishment beyond their reach. Pierce clicked on the photo and dragged the moon-faced young woman to the trash.
All afternoon there had been lulls between the spells of icy rain. Again and again the storm subsided; then came another swell of clouds. In the evening, after rush hour, the dark streets grew sullen beneath the shivering damp.
“In short…” Pierce mumbled, hunched over his computer. His fingers arched and quivered above the keyboard. He was on deadline with another six hundred words to go.
“In brief…” Hurley corrected, sidling up to spy over one shoulder. Hurley’s gag-inducing aftershave followed, a slowly evaporating shadow.
Pierce regained focus and nodded. Everyone knew Hurley was the worst editor-in-chief in the paper’s history. He had attained the degree of incompetence and self-regard of which legends are constructed. He liked to stride around and sneak up on his writers, offering pearls and threatening extinction.
“In brief…” Pierce corrected the onscreen text. He continued, “Actors ought to use their well-trained bodies to act. They should not reveal their intellectual shortcomings like stained underwear at fundraising summits…”
“Good! Whip the losers into shape!”
Hurley clapped him on the shoulder and strode away in the direction of his office, the only one with a door. Editors and staff writers who had survived the last cut occupied cubicles with peeling walls ranged across one cavernous room. Underlings, mostly interns, divided their cubicles into smaller, shabbier units resembling rabbit hutches. The only remaining senior editor commanded a medium-size cubicle and worked at a lectern to give the illusion of more floor space. All labored under the shadow of the weekly paper’s name, painted across the windows of the eastern wall. The paper occupied half of the second floor in a building that housed a healing arts studio, an herbal tea emporium, and a thrift shop.
“Corner of Zen and Mothballs,” Pierce quipped whenever someone asked for the address.
He relaxed the muscles across his back as soon as Hu
rley walked away. He’d escaped torment this time. Hurley of the many backslaps also enjoyed impromptu wrestling matches and headlocks. He was a boy with an indestructible trust fund, a guy’s guy who bragged about squandering his education and didn’t believe in matching furniture. Behind that lone door lurked a monstrosity of post-modern decor shot through with an odor of moldering jockstraps.
A rumble of thunder brought Pierce to his senses. He typed. He forgot Hurley. Words raced across the screen.
Only two hundred words from his objective, Pierce was making excellent time when he noticed Ali Franco staring at him from her cubicle across the aisle.
“Problem, Ali?”
Instantly he regretted acknowledging her. The pause was negligible. She must have been biding her time, waiting for an invitation. She strolled the short distance to his desk and stood watching him type.
“Why the heck do you do it?” She asked.
Typically cryptic Ali Franco, with her intuition, her healing blog, her spirit guides and crystal skulls, or were they balls? In the evening she burned aromatherapy candles at her desk. They made the office stink of green tea and wax, and another note he couldn’t identify, a spice he found irritating. Ali Franco, with all of her woo-woo (or was it voodoo? or hoodoo?) was unwittingly doomed.
Only a month earlier Pierce had conned Hurley into a drunken ramble across Capitol Hill. The idiot-in-chief confided; he was ditching Franco’s column. She didn’t know it yet. How about that for intuition? Pierce had to laugh. He was keeping quiet but it was killing him.
“When are you breaking the news?” Pierce had asked.
“Sometime next month.” When he wasn’t smirking Hurley puffed on a twenty-dollar cigar.
“When the moon is full and the wolfbane blooms at night?” Pierce asked.
