“You got it, boss.” The barista measures and scoops tea leaves into a tiny glass jar from an unmarked baggie under the counter and fills it with steaming water. “This is my own special blend. I call it Howard’s Hawthorn Horny Heroin.” He hands me the glass jar with the tea and a mug. “Nice to meet you. I’m Howard.” His teeth are yellow little fuckers and his nose bone is bothersome.
“Now when you say heroin,” I say.
“All you need to know is that hawthorn is the business.”
“I’m sorry, Howard, you’re going to have to help me here,” I say.
Howard taps the glass of my crazy, fucked-up horny tea. “The berries, leaves, and flowers of the hawthorn plant improve a man’s blood flow.”
“No,” I say.
“Yes,” he says. “Circulation.” Howard makes two fists. “This will relax your blood vessels.” He loosens his fingers before tightening them back up into fists. “If you know what I mean,” he says, looking past me to Aimee. Howard punches the air. “This one’s on me,” he says.
Aimee sits in the back room filled with tiny tables, ours with a nice wobble that causes us to almost spill our drinks when we shift our weight from elbow to elbow.
“What did you order?” she asks.
“You know, I don’t know what it’s called, but it’s supposed to be really good for you.” I pour the tea into my mug and blow on the surface. “It’s way too hot right now, otherwise I’d let you have a sip.” I am one God-awful actor.
Aimee takes the mug from my hands and takes a sip. She looks back at the barista. “Howard made this for you, didn’t he?”
“Are we going to miss the art exhibit?” I take my mug back from her. I too take a sip and it tastes like boiled tree bark.
“Did he give it some crazy name?” She locks her eyes onto me and I am weak. I give in and tell her.
“Howard’s Hawthorn Horny Heroin. Something about circulation. And relaxing blood vessels. I’m not entirely sure.”
Aimee cups her hands over her mouth and shouts Howard’s name and he looks up from behind the cappuccino machine, whipping foam or whatever, to see Aimee flip him off with two middle fingers. Howard salutes her.
“Howard likes to play practical jokes. I come in here a lot and he’s always trying to trick me into trying some crazy new tea. I’m sure your blood vessels will be fine.”
“Okay.” Jesus my Christ, what kind of response is okay? I try and recover the conversation. “I like the cobblestone floors in here. Feels like olden days.” I really wish I hadn’t said olden days. God. I want to punch myself in the face.
“There used to be an amazing cinema upstairs called The Orpheum.” Aimee dabs her lips with a napkin. “Everything changes, except maybe Howard.”
“I’ve got to give it to him, Howard’s crazy fake tea is good,” I say. “It has a rich, earthy flavor to it.”
“You hate tea,” she says. “I can tell you hate tea. You hate it, but you’d never say you hate it, because you’re too sweet.”
“I need to confess something,” I say.
“I love confessions,” she says, leaning forward, ready for a secret. “Is it dangerous?”
“There is the potential for danger,” I say.
“Will there be an adventure?” she asks.
“I’ve been nervous that I won’t have anything to say to you,” I say. “I feel like I’m talking underwater.”
“With me?”
“With everyone, but you’re the only one who makes me self-conscious about it. I’m tired of trying to get people to listen to me.”
“I think your Howard’s Hawthorn Horny Heroin is giving you strength of voice and power of soul.” She touches my hand.
“You’re making fun of me,” I say.
“I am,” she says. “But only because you are so serious.”
“I don’t know anything about tea,” I say.
“Sadly, the movie theater upstairs closed down a couple years ago, so we can’t see a movie and go to dinner after to talk about it.”
“You like to tease me,” I say.
“Love to tease you,” she says.
“Everything changes,” I say.
“Nothing stays the same. Huge high-rises,” she says. “Faux classic architecture. Condominiums.”
“My mom designed one of those buildings,” I say. “She says she did. I don’t believe much of what she says anymore.”
“She and your Dad divorced?” she asks.
“Not technically, but practically.”
Aimee blows on the surface of her tea.
“I remember when my Dad used to take me to this place called Wonderland out in Howard County,” I say. “It was this kiddy park with rides and cotton candy and castles. I think it’s a tiered parking lot and an insurance company now.”
“For five dollars you could go upstairs, get a huge bucket of popcorn, and see a double feature,” Aimee says. “Every night, a new double feature. Two movies and a bucket of popcorn for five bucks. Now it’s a space for rent. To the highest bidder. Tonight, it’s Mykel’s art exhibit. Tomorrow, who knows? Next week it’ll be an H&R Block.”
“What movies did you see there?”
“Stanley Kubrick’s Lolita and Martin Scorcese’s Taxi Driver. An Akira Kurasawa double feature—Rashomon and Seventh Samurai. White Heat and Chinatown. Real quirky combos. One time I saw Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly’s Singing in the Rain and it was supposed to be followed by Oliver Stone’s Platoon. There was a problem with the projector. Everyone left except for me. I waited. One of the employees turned off the lights in the theater and pumped the recording of a thunderstorm through the sound system. To this day, it’s one of the most memorable moments of my life.”
“Did they ever fix the projector?”
“Platoon never looked better.”
“It makes sense that you like directing,” I say. “Working on A Doll’s House must be amazing.”
“I like a good story and A Doll’s House absolutely has a good story,” she says. “What I like about theater and film is breaking down characters over a few hours into their most important emotional parts.”
“Like the thunderstorm in the movie theater,” I say.
“Exactly.” She clinks her teacup against mine.
“Do you think miracles belong in drama?”
“You’ve been speaking to Father Vincent Gibbs.” She strangles the air. “He’s already been arguing how we should interpret the ending of A Doll’s House and we haven’t even cast our play yet.”
“What do you believe?” I ask.
“They exist in real life, then they exist in drama, because drama is an authentic representation of real life.”
“I want to believe in miracles,” I say.
“You are a little Torvald, aren’t you?” Aimee folds her paper napkin and soaks up condensation on our table. “In the final moments of A Doll’s House, right before his wife leaves him for good, Nora says, Oh, Torvald, I don’t believe in miracles anymore, and she leaves. The stage direction for Torvald says a glimmer of hope flashes across his face, and he says: the greatest miracle of all—?”
“My dad played Torvald once. Before he was drafted. I never knew my Dad acted until recently. My mom told me. I wish I never knew.”
Aimee reaches across the table and holds my hands. “No more miracles,” she says.
“I have another confession to make,” I say.
“Lucky me—I’m learning all of your dirty little secrets tonight,” she says.
“I haven’t heard of most of those movies you mentioned. I pretty much only know zombie films.” I sip my tea and feel douchey. “I should know more.”
She smacks my cheek with her open palm. Not hard, but hard enough. It hurts, but in a way that I like and appreciate. She folds her hands in her lap.
“I hardly know anything about zombie movies,” she says. “Teach me something. What are your top five favorite zombie movies?”
Without even thinking about i
t: “Night of the Living Dead, Planet Terror, 28 Days Later, Zombieland, and Dawn of the Dead, the 2004 remake.”
“I am not a huge fan of gore. I like violence when it’s appropriate, when it builds to a crescendo, like in Taxi Driver. But zombie movies seem to splash around in it. Like in 28 Days Later. Now I thought that was a political film about infection, not zombies.”
“Nope. Zombies,” I say. “I’d bet my hand. Total Zombie Apocalypse.”
“I’ve seen it a few times and had no idea it was a zombie film,” she says. “No one ever resurfaces as a zombie. They get infected with bad blood. That’s not a zombie.”
“Necroinfectious Pandemic is the appropriate terminology, if you want to get technical.”
“You are such a little zombie snob. You’re a Snombie. If the word pandemic didn’t make you a Snombie, then the word necroinfectious most certainly did.”
“I like zombie movies,” I say.
“It’s your thing,” she says.
“Is this a date?” I ask.
“Isn’t it?” she asks.
“There’re so many rules,” I say. “I don’t know what this is.”
“First dates usually end with a kiss,” she says.
“Did I get a green light?” I ask.
“You’re funny,” she says.
“In a bad way?” I ask.
“I like funny.”
“I like you, Aimee, and guess what? No nosebleeds.” I drink the rest of my Howard’s Hawthorn Horny Heroin. Howard gives me thumbs up from behind the counter and I give him the double middle finger, just like Aimee.
“Where do you go when you have nothing to say?” Aimee asks, crossing her arms.
“I listen, mostly.”
“Don’t bullshit me.”
The man in the back scribbles in the margins of a book, before closing it.
“Right there—where are you?” Aimee asks, her voice calm and soothing like she’s rocking me to sleep.
“I go deeper in. I listen to myself. I try to hear myself how I want others to hear me.”
Aimee sits up, pulling her chair closer to the table’s edge. “I think you’re eccentric. Not crazy. But I think you move around like some kind of a God. Not the God. But like a God. Passing judgment. Soaking up information, a God-like, judgmental sponge, overseeing everything. Examining situations like chess pieces in play.”
“If I’m a God, then you should worship me.”
“I’m not finished,” she says. “You’re constantly starting over. You run in cycles of asserting yourself and being passive. No one listens when you tell them to stop because you don’t make them listen, because you don’t command it.”
She wants to know where I go, but if I take her there, it’s very possible she leaves and will never come back. Like everyone else. To a place with plaid jackets and sick men in fat neckties. Women’s magazines in board game boxes. Giant, donkey dicks. A place without sex where sex is a currency and I am broke. Short skirts. Tight tops. Big tits. Handguns. Homemade videos. James Dean. Polaroids. Rich kids. Faggots, queers, cocksuckers, rim jobbers and cumshooters. A place where no one has a face. This is the place and this place decays and eventually everything turns to black.
“Jeremy,” she says, “wherever you go, you’re allowed to go there. I just want you to know that it’s okay.”
83
A familiar voice cuts through our conversation. Mr. Rembrandt stands at our table, the eight-fingered freak smiling down on us.
“Aimee White and Jeremy Barker.” His soft voice makes the room feel dark blue and cold, the ocean floor. “What a small, little world we live in. My favorite student and assistant director, on a date together—what a small little world indeed.” He looks different outside of school—taller, more present. “I hope I’m not intruding. Father Vincent and I were on our way upstairs to see Mykel’s exhibit.” He holds a book dog-eared to hell in his hand—Notes from Underground.
Back at the counter, decked out in his priestly collar, Father Vincent is ordering drinks. He turns and waves.
“Super, small world,” I say.
“Mr. Rembrandt,” Aimee says.
“Please. Tonight, call me Richard,” he says. Rembrandt combs white hair over his bald spot with his fingers and adjusts his blue-rimmed glasses. “It’s nice to see that young men still get dressed up for dates.” He pinches my knot and centers it at my neck. “And that a necktie knot is treated with respect. Your Windsor. My word.” His eight normal fingers curl like spider legs. “I love its authenticity.”
Father Vincent approaches with two iced coffees and passes one off to Rembrandt. “Hey, hey, you guys.” His smile immediately draws one from me. “Great minds think alike,” he says. Father Vincent raises his to-go cup. “Salute.”
“Look, it’s miracle man,” Aimee says.
She’s so funny that I can’t help but laugh at him.
“Will you two be attending Mykel’s chopography exhibit?” Rembrandt asks.
“We will,” Aimee says. “Like you, Jeremy and I wanted to get some tea first.”
“Richard and I had dinner at that new Mexican restaurant down the way to discuss A Doll’s House.” Father looks at the front door. “Across from The Sound Garden.” He sips his iced coffee and snaps his fingers. “Important talks—casting, casting, casting.” Father Vincent runs his finger around his collar. “What the heck was the name of that restaurant?”
“Lista’s,” Rembrandt says.
“I’ll never remember that.” He pulls out a tiny pencil and a little booklet from his inside pocket, the same one from Reconciliation. It’s the size of his palm with unlined paper inside.
“How cute,” Aimee says.
“Oh, you like this?” He sounds equal parts embarrassed and genuinely surprised. He holds it out for Aimee and I to see. The front and back cover show a crude sunset over black water.
“What do you use it for?” I ask.
“I write down the things I know I’ll never remember.” He slides the booklet back.
“Where did you get it?” she asks.
“In addition to being priest, I also collect antique glass bottles. The real thick ones. I make landscapes with them. I break the bottles with a hammer and crazy glue the shards of glass to a sketch that I’ve etched onto a tiny sheet of plywood. When I finish, I take a picture and make these.” Father Vincent retrieves his booklet again from his coat pocket and opens it in full. “This was a blood moon sunset over the Inner Harbor I saw when I was a kid.”
“Unbelievable,” I say. “A zombie nerd, priest, and oddball artist all in one.”
“Speaking of nerd, what are you reading?” Aimee asks Rembrandt, reaching for his book.
“Nothing terribly special.”
Aimee turns it over in her hands and reads the back.
“What’s it about?” Father Vincent asks.
“Isolation. Corruption. Redemption. Would you like to borrow it?” Rembrandt asks Aimee. “They say Taxi Driver is based on it. I know that’s one of your favorite movies.”
“Aimee, I have a copy at home you can borrow,” I say. “I even have a video that goes with it.” I avoid Rembrandt’s stare, but I sure as shit know it’s there. He can go fuck himself.
“I had no idea Taxi Driver was based on a Dostoevsky novel,” Aimee says.
Mr. Rembrandt flips through Notes from Underground to a particular page. “Here, Vincent, this is for you.” Then he reads. “The long and the short of it is, gentlemen, that it is better to do nothing! Better conscious inertia! … Oh, but even now I am lying! I am lying because I know myself that it is not underground that is better, but something different, quite different, for which I am thirsting, but which I cannot find! Damn underground!”
He closes the book and slides it into his pocket.
“No idea what it means, but sounded great,” Father Vincent says. “We should go. Leave the kids alone.”
They walk to the door and disappear.
“How do you thin
k his hands got all jacked up?” I tuck my pinky fingers into my palms and wave my hands over my head, making a banshee noise.
Aimee laughs but knows she probably shouldn’t as she looks around to make sure Mr. Rembrandt is really gone. I carry the glassware to the counter, handing them back to Howard, while Aimee wipes down our table with a napkin, sweeping my crumbs into her hand, and then walks them over to a trash can. She couldn’t be cooler if she tried.
“He come in a lot?” I ask Howard.
“Dude with the messed-up paws?” Howard bends his little fingers. “Every now and then. Usually he’s with dudes who are all messed up like him.”
“Messed up like, a bone through their nose messed up?”
“No.” Howard smiles. “Like, missing body parts messed up.” He steps away from the counter, away from me. “Dude, the tea’s working.” He taps his nose.
I hold my palm under my chin as drops of blood drip down.
Aimee appears at my side like I hoped she would and runs her hand across my back, handing me another tissue. She’s extraordinary. I would do anything for her. She doesn’t know it, but I would fight off an entire army of undead for her like Shaun of the Dead. My romantic-comedy of the Zombie Apocalypse—Jeremy of the Dead. Instead of Sleepless in Seattle, Undead in Baltimore. Faith and love and miracles.
Aimee leads us out into the dark. Her hand laces with mine—click.
84
The art exhibit is not what I expected. A table near the entrance serves red juice in tiny paper cups and a silver tray of Berger cookies, a Baltimore tradition of thick, cakey cookies smeared with a soft chocolate fudge on top.
Strobe lights flicker from a light system in the corner. The DJ is a chick with bleached blonde dreadlocks under headphones. I’m happy it’s not DJ Doug spinning the ones and twos. She bobs her head and shakes her body like a snake moving through tall grass as trippy, mellow drum beats drop from speakers buried in the ceiling. Everyone in the room yells to the person next to them in order to be heard over the highly stylized music. It sounds like the exit song of a film score. Like in zombie movies when the entire movie has some way-too-obvious keyboard-heavy film score—all cheese and slashery and screaming DANGER! Then in the final scene of the movie a wildly different and entertaining and halfway decent song plays, carrying over into the credits. This is the soundtrack to chopography.
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