Only as it turned out, the offenders were already finished. The door to Penny’s bedroom opened, and Rich strutted out, dressed only in barely zipped jeans that showed plenty of pubic thatch at the top.
“Dude,” he sighed, and flashed the slippery smile that said, hey, we’re all buddies here, Bro-seph.
Cyrus turned back to the door. He needed to inject. More so, he had to escape, he thought, and exited the apartment.
But escape to where?
The question plagued him on his walk through the West Village, whose charming little shops and eateries glowed bright behind windows on yet another brisk afternoon. The apartment on Morton Street wasn’t home, he mused for the umpteenth time, just an illusion. At least the Village as a whole felt like one.
The shakes started, and then so did the cold sweats. His fingers ached. A pattern of black dots fluttered at the corner of his line of sight. He ducked into Newton’s, a place that still sold relics like newspapers and magazines, hot sandwiches, and cold sodas. He ordered an energy drink and sipped in silence at a bistro table facing the window. The dots disbanded and he started to feel better.
A gray wind gusted down the street, robbing the day of color. Whenever the glass front door opened, the building exhaled a locomotive breath. Hot air from inside collided with cold outside. It got so cold, so colorless, in the city sometimes.
Where else could he escape to? Back to his parents’ house in Little Dodd? The thought of working at Wellington’s Furniture when there was so much more he aspired to do tightened the cramp in his guts. Cyrus didn’t know exactly who he was, but he did know who he wasn’t. Five days a week in a tight button-down shirt, tie, and wingtips, with a plastic name-tag highlighted by the slogan All’s Well—You’re at Wellington’s Furniture! would kill his soul before the hyperglycemia finished off his flesh.
He couldn’t —wouldn’t— stay on Morton Street. At first, he sold himself on the lie that the decision was his, all his. But after the initial rush from the energy drink leveled off, Cyrus knew it was really theirs, hers. Her decision, because long ago Daddy had put her name on the lease. She had all the cards, owned all the power.
Still, like Wellington’s Furniture, she didn’t own him.
He still hadn’t taken in the Tenement Museum, which was running an exhibit on the tragic Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, subject of several poems. MoMA in Midtown had a Robert Crumb retrospective. So much to do, and not enough time. But he didn’t want to travel too far from the usual haunts, in case his symptoms degenerated.
Cyrus liked bookbook on Bleecker Street, and Unoppressive Non-Imperialist Bargain Books on Carmine. But his favorite place to vanish into the stacks of books new and, mostly, used and old existed on 8th Avenue. The Drifters was a West Village treasure. Beneath its elegant tin ceiling and track lighting were aisles of bookshelves behind glass doors, neat though informal piles of hardcovers and paperbacks, and the occasional nook with settee or camelback sofa for leisurely perusal of whatever bit of gold one came across following exploration of the territory. Soft jazz played over the sound system, usually something scratchy. It was the best place to read and jot down his thoughts in the Moleskine, addled and dark as they sometimes were.
The smell of books wafted out when Cyrus pulled on the brass door handle, inviting him to forget his problems, at least for the length of his visit. Another familiar fragrance teased his senses at one of the bends in the maze of books —citrus, only not quite. More exotic. Bergamot, he realized.
Bergamot, exuded from Cyrus’s favorite nook, a leather loveseat surrounded by piles of hardbounds on either side of the armrests that beckoned to the customer to stop, sit, and to get lost in any number of fictions and truths. A man sat on the loveseat, blond, though his hair color, like Penny-Pincher’s, had likely come from the bottle. He looked well put-together, as though every choice from soft linen suit jacket over shirt with silk pocket square to the frayed corduroy slacks, fancy shoes, and simple white daisy boutonnière were intentional.
Their glances crossed. The strange put-together man exhaled a breathy sigh and smiled. “I’ve just been reading the most amazing book. About the Sixth Borough.”
Cyrus realized the man was speaking to him and not merely thinking out loud. “Yonkers?” he lobbed back.
The man’s thin, pale lips curled into a smile. “No, and I don’t mean Fort Lee on the Hudson Waterfront. About Bella Vista, ‘the Beautiful Sight.’”
“Never heard of it,” said Cyrus.
“Oh, I bet you have, perhaps in the yearnings of your heart, only you didn’t know it.”
The man hugged an old hardcover to his chest and then stood, his liquid movements stirring the fragrance of bergamot and used books.
“They created it, back in the day,” the man continued. He set down the book, smoothed his clothes. “A secret community for thinkers and creative souls. Safe and warm and filled with inspiration. Where the rent’s always controlled and bullshit’s verboten.”
“Sounds like paradise.”
He considered moving on, perusing the nearest shelves and stacks as a way to put an end to the conversation, which Cyrus hadn’t asked for but found himself caught up in all the same.
“Paradise, maybe,” the man continued. “More like Coleridge’s poem about Xanadu —or even that movie musical from the 1980s! Or Oz. Or Nirvana, Shangri-la, if you believe in that sort of thing.”
Cyrus checked several spines, but only with one devoted eye. “Yeah, where do I find this happy place, so I can sign up? My lease—”
“Now that’s the big question,” the man said. He punctuated the statement with a throaty chuckle. “Some think Bella Vista is underground, part of all those subterranean tunnels beneath the city. Others think it’s a vast rooftop terrace warmed by the sun and run by solar energy harvesters. Others…”
Cyrus drew in a deep breath. Bergamot seduced his senses. “Go on.”
“That they’ve somehow hidden it.”
“They?”
“The poets and artists and creative thinkers who laid claim to the space. That the Sixth Borough, with its courtyards and fountains, its cafes where coffee flows twenty-four and seven at five cents a cup, was hidden by what Jean-Michel claimed, after he found one of the doors, went there, returned and began to paint all that he saw, were oracles.”
Cyrus turned away. “Jean-Michel? You mean Basquiat. It’s a nice dream, your Bella Vista.”
He expected the man to come back with something coy, like: Oh, it’s not my Bella Vista—I haven’t yet found the way there. Instead, the air stirred with what sounded like the flap of wings. Cyrus spun back to see the area around the leather loveseat empty, a single book resting on the dimpled cushions. The strange, elegant man was gone.
“Hey,” Cyrus called. “Dude?”
From the cut of his eye, he saw the man at the register take notice. Nope, he attempted to signal through his movements—just checking out books, moseying the aisles, everything here’s just fine, yessir. The mysterious man who’d engaged him in talk had simply gone into the stacks in search of fresh dialog, he reasoned.
Cyrus glanced at the lone book left on the loveseat. He bent to pick it up. Bergamot teased his nostrils, only now the scent seemed barely there, a ghost.
The book’s jacket was torn in places; either tan by design or it had yellowed from age. The cover showed part of a water fountain, dissected at an angle by one of the rips. But the title of the book prevailed in gothic calligraphy letters.
Bella Vista.
*************
He fell into the pages, the words —first with his eyes, then his full concentration, and ultimately with something he attributed to his soul.
According to the text, Bella Vista was born in the imagination of the legendary painter Hieronymus Lloyd-Key, who then set about to make his dream of a creative colony for the best artistic minds manifest…
If Lloyd-Key was a legend, the legend likely only lived in Bella Vista, Cyrus thought
. He certainly wasn’t familiar with the artist’s work, despite months of visiting the best galleries and museums in the city. But as soon as the concept crossed his mind, images formed of walls in an apartment set before French doors leading to a terraced garden, and the most beautiful summer watermelon sunset in the history of the universe. The walls were empty of any artwork or design, but the sun lapped rosy light across the blank canvases, and temporary paintings appeared.
From outside the French doors, he heard water flowing, giggling. A fountain. The picture on the book’s cover materialized. Cyrus’s eyes burned, and he realized he’d stopped blinking.
“Bella Vista,” he sighed. “Beautiful sight.”
Icy-hot flickers of energy cascaded over his skin. The starlight pinpricks worked beneath his epidermis and into his blood, then deeper even than marrow. Soul. For the first time in his quest at self-discovery, Cyrus felt truly enlightened. Watermelon sunset on blank apartment walls wasn’t a Lloyd creation —it was his.
The warm light in his consciousness persisted. He even made out additional details of the imaginary study, like the sagging marigold blossoms outside, their heads heavy with ripening seeds. Among the garden plantings were Dusty Miller and white daisies, like the one in the strange man’s boutonnière.
If he tried enough, he could smell the pungent fragrance of the flowers. Also, a clock ticked from somewhere close enough to hear. He hadn’t noticed a clock inside the Drifters, a place that seemed to exist out of time apart from the hours posted on the front door sign. But there was a clock in his mental painting, an antique on a mantel at the periphery of the watermelon-colored wall. In addition to the image came words. A poem. If he didn’t catch it quickly—
Cyrus gasped, jerked. The two halves of the old book slammed shut, and the vision crackled out. A ghostly afterimage of pale pink color hovered in the air for another second or so, but that, too evaporated in the shutter clicks between blinks.
Aches from knees, lower back, ankles, and shoulders pulsed. Cyrus stood and stretched. The stings shorted out after a few steps. He noticed the world beyond the windows had gone dark around neon colors. How long had he sat there, lost in the book and that sunset?
“I’m closing soon,” said the man at the register.
Cyrus carried the book to the counter. “I’ll take this one.”
The man glanced at the book’s ragged front cover then flipped it over. Shrugging, he rang up the sale.
“Two bucks.”
*************
It was raining in the vision. A stiff, silver downpour embossed in shards of moonlight hammered the terrace garden and dappled the bare walls inside the dream-apartment. Wild electric patterns performed fluid figure eights and looping, self-contained circles. Ouroboros, thought Cyrus—the serpent eating its own tail, symbolic of self-recreation.
Other, smaller pinpricks of reflected light joined in, their wiggling tails conjuring images of new life.
“Sperm,” he whispered, and chuckled.
The walls had come alive. His creativity was both sperm and egg, as well as the cosmic spark that allowed them to merge and blossom.
The light on the walls transformed into eight-point nautical stars. Constellations formed —whole galaxies! The compass stars were, Cyrus imagined, physical manifestations of creativity. Those sparkles had jumped out of his blood and into the space before his eyes.
“So this is true happiness,” he whispered.
All at once, the universe dimmed. A scratching sound slithered through the galaxies, conjuring dark matter. Black holes tore into the fabric of space. Cyrus blinked. He was back in his rented room on Morton Street, huddled on the mattress and bunched blankets, the book open on his knees. The sound repeated, this time untold light-years closer. He tracked it to the bottom of the bedroom door, where the short edge of an envelope tested the gap.
As Cyrus stood, the envelope shot all the way through and whisked into the room. Happiness was fleeting; he knew even before opening it what the envelope contained.
*************
Thirty (30) Day Notice, thought Cyrus as the Blayne Building and the luxury condos at 51 Hapsburg attempted to crush him. A version of the argument that had followed played out, broadcast onto the scabrous patches of gray mortar.
“How the hell are you going to make ends meet without me here? Oh yeah, that’s right —the rent’s only $172.00, and I’ve covered it for the next two years!”
Rich stepped in to defend her —so chivalrous! Defend her honor? He bought his own groceries, which they’d both helped themselves to. Two nights earlier, he’d walked out of the room to find them seated at the hideous dining room table, enjoying a dinner of roast chicken. A single white taper in a ceramic candlestick was lit, establishing the nature of the meal as being for two, not three. Only when Cyrus opened the freezer for ice, he saw that the whole chicken he’d purchased on his dime was missing.
“And how are you thieves planning to eat without me around? You gonna use the extra money I paid in rent to keep yourselves fed?”
He’d ruined their dinner; there was that much to gloat over. But the joy was fleeting. She’d done him worse, because in thirty days time, he’d be back in Little Dodd or living on the street.
Cyrus remembered tossing the letter and envelope at them. It didn’t matter, because a copy was due by certified mail, according to the details spelled out on the letterhead.
Return to Little Dodd and live out his days, however many or few, in a nine-to-five purgatory at Wellington’s Furniture? No way. And so he began to search for the Sixth Borough on foot, where he knew an apartment with terraced gardens and art gallery walls waited for him to decorate using the brushstrokes conjured forth from his imagination.
Right before the book disappeared from his room, Cyrus read a passage about a secret doorway that existed at Cromwell Court. The window into Bella Vista, according to the text, gazed upon a terraced garden and a fountain of Greek design whose water boasted healing properties, like Ponce de León’s elusive raison d’être. Water that could also heal a broken body. His blood pulsed with fresh hope.
He called up Cromwell Court on his phone, only to meet the same dead end as when he’d conducted his original search —the only listings for Bella Vista were in South America, Europe, and a small private beach in New Hampshire. Cyrus scrolled through the few listings for Cromwell Court and discovered there had, indeed, been such a place in Old New York, once upon a time, before elegant manor houses were razed and the city’s skyline emerged from the rubble.
Cromwell Court used to exist near what was now Hapsburg Street.
He was sure she stole the book, or Rich the Dick had taken it —one final bit of thievery before his eviction. In the rage that bloomed up from Cyrus’s guts, he forgot how the pages had sometimes vanished while still in his hands, and how the book’s spine turned into an apparition, not fully there between blinks. It was, he concluded, a relic from Bella Vista that had come out of the landscape of oracles, but only halfway.
Anger poured out of him, along with words. Penny threatened to call the cops, and so he left, abandoning most of what he owned, even the insulin bottles in the fridge. Let them have it, those rotten grave robbers. He only needed the creative freedom and healing powers hidden behind an elusive doorway, located somewhere on Hapsburg Street.
Cyrus passed the columned façade of a luxury condo building and tossed a glance up, to his left, in time to see a thin alley, no more than a yard wide, running between it and its too-close neighbor, the Blayne. Cyrus dug in his feet. The treads of his well-traveled boots ground on the crusty pavement. He back peddled, performed a version of a figure eight, then a slow circle, transforming in those few seconds into Ouroboros. He was ready to be recreated.
Dusty gray light filtered into the little of the alley he could see. Cyrus made out lengths of plank, a skin of ruddy bricks breaking through the fractured outer skin of the condo building, and a narrow path leading deep into darkness. And, f
or a second, his wide, gazing eyes betrayed him with swirls that looked like comets, racing around one another in a playful Yin-yang.
It’s there, Cyrus thought, afraid to mutter the words aloud for fear someone might be listening. The doorway onto Old Cromwell Court. The terraced garden. Bella Vista!
Cyrus shot glances around the street. In typical fashion, the few pedestrians braving the Arctic blasts walked with their heads low, not making eye contact, either focused on their phones or the sidewalk. The perfect situation for vanishing into the ally —into the secret paradise hidden within the infrastructure and atoms of New York City.
He pressed between the towering gray stone monoliths. Going in clean and forward was impossible, so Cyrus turned to the side and angled in. Fear attempted to turn him back while he still had wiggle room, but he ignored it. A fine mist formed around him, and hope briefly killed his fear. He’d found the way in! But instead of a door, his boots had kicked up a fine, particulate dust. Something crunched underfoot. The wind blasted at his ear, stirring the desiccated smell of long abandoned places. The narrow alley had bottled the city’s aloofness and anger. Of course it had, Cyrus reasoned; not just anyone could traipse into Bella Vista, only those who cared enough about the arts to suffer, truly suffer, on their way to rebirth.
The gray stone blocks pressed closer together, trapping him. Breathing no longer became voluntary or even possible. He attempted to back out, but his ear grazed cold stone, and his forward-facing boot was glued in place, as was the other.
“No,” he sobbed, unsure whether the plea made it past his lips.
Cyrus struggled a sip of air down into his lungs. Darkness swirled before his eyes. He imagined drawing a moon on that canvas, and surrounded it with a sky filled with eight-point nautical stars. A line of words pulsed.
“I gazed at the sky, and suddenly I didn’t feel cold anymore…” he whispered aloud.
The walls seemed to relax the slightest. His next breath came easier.
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