Night, Neon

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Get into position. Sight your target. Quick then, before your dad sights you.

  One-two-three, spray the crowd with bullets. What’s it you have in your hands—AK-47. Kalashnikov rifle—cool! No one will figure out that one person in the crowd was the designated target. If you can mow down, like, thirty people—Benjamin Fowler, forty-seven, Roslyn Park CPA is just one of the fatalities.

  Assuming you don’t get caught, identified. No connection between mass shooter and victims. Quick-spray the scene with a “fusillade of bullets,” rapid retreat, follow your designated escape route, discard incriminating evidence, disappear.

  Perfect high: disappear.

  No more you. Just—fruity chemical smell, moist cloud

  e-vap-or-at-ing

  before your eyes.

  Where can I buy a gun (legally)?

  Internet guns for sale. ArmsList, Craig’s List, GunsAmerica, Cheaper Than Dirt. Got to figure that undercover cops are trolling these sites like they do, looking for pedophiles. So, maybe not a great idea.

  Asking the guys, did they know where I could get a gun?—I mean, like, legally.

  And the guys kind of shaking their heads, not looking at me. Like, they know about my dad leaving my mom and me, and (maybe) they’ve been hearing me say things about what I’d like to do to that asshole. So they kind of say they don’t know—Unless online? eBay?

  Like hell. Easy way to get caught. State requirement is you’re eighteen years old or more. If you have no record. Type in AK-47 and you’re fucked. Like typing in kiddie porn. Which is why I’ve given up asking. If I’m high, I feel like tearing out their fucking teeth, laughing in their faces, but if I’m not high, if I’m crashing, feel so shitty-low strung out, the wish is somebody would tear out my throat with his teeth and put me out of my misery.

  Would you live with your dad, then?—the guys ask. Meaning, if something happens to your mom.

  Yeh. Guess so.

  Where’s he living now?

  Shrug your shoulders, like fuck you want to talk about it. Fuck!

  Why vaping is cool. Assholes ask you questions, you don’t give a shit, just roll with it like Sure, okay, any kind of shit you say. Sure.

  Problem is, the highs don’t last like they did. Just a few weeks ago. Slow, deflating like a balloon, almost you can hear the fucking hissing.

  Yeh it’s kind of expensive. E-cigs and apparatus, not cheap.

  One pod is equal to one pack of cigarettes. Or is it one hundred cigarettes. But how long would it take you to smoke one hundred cigarettes? Like, e-cigs go much faster.

  Nicotine is much concentrated. Fantastic!

  One of the guys, his dad is also moved out of their house, so you can talk to him, kind of. Saying My father doesn’t give fuck-all about me. Got to face it. He’s married again, he has a young kid, my stepbrother, his wife has two kids of her own. I’m out.

  He says Yeh. I guess.

  What I’d like is, to kill him. Just—wipe him away.

  Yeh. Me, too.

  But he doesn’t sound interested. Like, he’d like to wipe away his old man if it wasn’t too much fucking effort.

  The single time I visited them in Bay Ridge, the hot new wife complained that I “smelled”—my underarms, crotch. Didn’t like the way I dressed, including my running shoes that she said were “rotted.”

  Just that I was trolling her. (Joke!)

  Didn’t get all the soap out of my hair in the shower (I guess), so I looked like a “banshee.”

  (Fuck the bitch knows what a banshee looks like.)

  (Maybe kill all of them, including piss-pot Tyler. Collateral damage.)

  Hid in the fucking bathroom getting high on spearmint e-juice. Like, my eyes were crossed by the time I was finished, and fuck eating with them, no appetite for anything to be shared with them and anyway too excited to sit still.

  Well—maybe some things got broken. Maybe precious little a-hole Tyler got scared and started crying. By the time I got home (via Dad’s Uber account) my mouth was so dry, couldn’t swallow. Chest weird-feeling, like something was inside clawing its way out.

  Next time, you will know what to do. Bring the AK-47 with you, asshole.

  One morning returning to Mom’s room to discover autumn leaves posted outside the door.

  Ask a nurse what’s it mean and she tells you—Patient is in danger of falling.

  Meaning, patient cannot be trusted to get out of bed unassisted. Patient should not try to get out of bed unassisted.

  So, Mom is getting weaker? Fuck them.

  Anything I can do for you, Jacey. Let me know.

  Please! Your mother is such a lovely person.

  Their mouths are sad. Their eyes are pitying.

  First you just thank them—Yah. Okay. Like you’re embarrassed they know about your mom and (you think) they care about her, and you.

  Anything I can do for Lilian, Jacey. Let me know.

  Then one day outside school, where she’s come to pick Billy up after practice, you ask Billy’s mother could she drive you to the hospital tomorrow morning—and she hesitates and says she will summon an Uber for you, because she has an appointment in the morning, on the farther side of town.

  Let me know what I can do, Jacey—Len’s mother says, so you tell her that your mother would appreciate a visit from her sometime, and Len’s mother says quickly yes, she would love to visit Lilian, she will try to get to the hospital tomorrow or the following day, but so much is happening in her life right now—It’s kind of crazy. Frankly.

  Still, your mom receives cards, flowers. Potted wax begonias from the ex-husband.

  On the card—Hope you will have a speedy recovery. Yours, Ben.

  Speedy recovery!—like, is this a joke?

  Yours. That is a joke.

  So furious, pulses are strumming in my head. Dying for a hit!

  But shit, I’m short of cash. Like somebody is turning me upside down by my ankles, shaking out money from my fucking pockets.

  Bad dream: a vampire bat is sucking my throat. Carotid artery.

  Except, suck-suck-sucking my blood, the bat is also regurgitating into my blood sweet fruity-chemical taste and releasing a chill cloud to conceal us.

  Funny sensation in my chest. Lungs? (Bubble lung? Sounds like a scare tactic/fake news spread by the tobacco industry.)

  (Whatever I spend on vaping isn’t as much as you’d spend on cigarettes. And there’s no tobacco. No cancer.)

  Dad would be furious with me if he knew about the vaping. If he knew my track performance isn’t so great. Fuck Dad, what does he know.

  Calling and asking How’s it going, Jacey?—in this guilty-sounding voice, and I say, kind of mumbling, Okay. (Not calling him Dad. Not calling him anything.) And there’s silence, so he says in the fake-Dad voice You okay, Jacey? And I say Yeh sure. And he says How is your mother, Jacey?—which is a trick question, so all I say is Mom’s okay. Like rolling my eyes. The asshole hasn’t got a clue what he sounds like, but this time I’m still high, still feeling good and not like shit, which is what Dad makes you feel like, except not now, now I am inside the Spider-Man costume, laughing in his face—What the fuck do you care? And Dad’s so shocked, he can’t even answer at first, then finally sputtering—Don’t talk to me like that, goddamn you. Who the hell do you think you are! I am serious. I care about your mother, and I care about you.

  Laughing at him, saying Fuck all we care about you. And Mom too says—Fuck him.

  So Dad is shocked. Like he couldn’t believe that his wife/my mother would say such words aloud is ridiculous, but he will talk himself into it, and the new wife will believe him. Sure.

  Turn it all inside out to justify his behavior.

  Sure. I know.

  Why, you are gonna die, asshole. Spider-Man is closing in on you!

  Prowling the hospital. Gliding like Spider-Man on invisible threads. No one does more than glance at the ID on your shirtfront. Not a glance at your bloodshot eyes, your zombie grin like a
crack in concrete.

  Running out of cash. Restless sensation, like you’re crazy hungry—but not for food.

  Floor below, take the stairs. Easy access. Carrying a tray, like from the cafeteria downstairs. Bustling hallways, staff change, seven p.m. Mingle with visitors, enter a room, and if there’re people inside back out, honest mistake, easy to make in the hospital. (“Hey sorry—I guess I’m on the wrong floor!”), but if there’s nobody in the room except a sleeping/comatose patient, go to the bedside table, see if there’s a wallet in a drawer, glasses, hearing aid, quick remove the wallet, quick remove the cash, replace the wallet, nobody knows.

  Heart pounding like an e-shot to the chest: cool.

  Scored seventy-three dollars, first time.

  Vaping gives me the courage. Brain rush. Running up the stairs two, three at a time—then flying. Spider-Man!

  To be able to afford vaping, you need to prowl and scavenge. But to be able to prowl and scavenge, you need to vape.

  Second time, one hundred ten. Plus some old guy’s fancy wristwatch in the bedside drawer along with dentures, hearing aids. (The patient’s in the bed, sprawled, with his mouth open, skin like yellow leather, IV fluids dripping into his bruised arms.)

  (Trying not to look at him. Turn your eyes away, quick.)

  Another time, on the fourth floor, no money in the drawer. (No wallet.) But a rosary you snatch up and stuff into the backpack.

  (Glance at the figure in the bed. Jesus!—a pixilated face you can’t tell is female or male.)

  No fear. Cool. Quick escape like Spider-Man.

  The trick is looking like you know where the hell you’re going. Nobody gives a shit about visitors.

  Except: Excuse me. Who are you, and where are you going?

  Female in dark blue uniform, must be a nurse. Middle-aged, hatchet-faced, no smile, and no bullshit. Staring at you suspiciously like with X-ray eyes penetrating your backpack, seeing exactly what you’ve scavenged tonight.

  Trying not to stammer. Saying you are visiting your mother in room 7771.

  Well, this isn’t the seventh floor. This is the eighth floor.

  Express surprise: eighth floor! You’d thought it was the seventh …

  Got off at the wrong floor, you guess.

  Smiling, not sweating. E-juice cool: tincture of lemon.

  But the nurse isn’t persuaded. Husky arms, taller than you. Looks like she could hoist you over her shoulder. No bullshit kind of (dark, almond-skinned) female squinting at your ID. Pretending she is memorizing your name, face. You are sure she’s bullshitting. If she wasn’t, she’d ask you what’s in the backpack, what’s in your pockets. Could summon security guards. But maybe, since it’s late, past eleven p.m., she doesn’t want to get involved. Might be she’d have to report you to the police, file an actual complaint, show up at a court hearing. Might be, it isn’t worth it for her. If you have stolen cash, cash isn’t traceable. A wristwatch, could be yours. There’d have to be a search of the hospital room by room to determine if the watch was missing from that room, plus isolated bills. Fuck, she’s thinking, just fuck, it isn’t worth it to burn this white boy’s privileged ass.

  So the nurse glares at you, disgusted, in a snotty voice saying she will have to escort you to your mother’s room.

  So you say okay, affable and unguilty. And the two of you take the elevator one flight down and she escorts you to your mother’s room (with the fucking autumn leaves posted outside the door), which is as dim-lit at this hour as a wake. And there’s your mother in her bed, IV fluids dripping into her battered arms. An attendant is checking her vital functions, heart, blood pressure, oxygen intake, so she’s awake, if slightly dazed, but a smile lights up her tired face when she sees you—Jacey! You didn’t go home, you’re here …

  First time since the infusion room, your Mom has smiled at you.

  In this way you escape detection. The nurse melts seeing how Mom reaches for you like a sleepwalker. Seeing how you take her hand, you don’t shrink away as another kid might do, embarrassed and scared.

  Yeah, okay. Though you’d been ready to strangle her, the nurse, not your mom. Stuff her lumpy body in the utility room with the sign SOILED LINEN.

  Alone in the room. With your mom. Blank black windows reflecting only the room as in a concave lens, subtly distorted. But safe!

  Clutching your mom’s (chilly, limp, thin) hand though she (still smiling, wanly) seems to have drifted off to sleep. Jesus!—the wild plan comes to you, you will activate the Juul in your pocket, bring the e-cig to your mom’s mouth, give the patient a jolt to the brain like an electric shock.

  Wake up, Mom! You’re too young to die, and I am the one to save you.

  Here’s the deal: Mom lives, Dad lives.

  Mom dies, Dad dies.

  Think I can’t do it? Watch me.

  Jesus!—the kid put together a perfect crime.

  Got to hand it to the kid, would’ve never thought he had the brains. Or the guts.

  Yes-s-s—I am impressed. Guess I never gave him credit …

  No. I don’t know how he did it. Had to be high, I guess.

  Goddamned vaping! These kids, today.

  All I can figure: he must’ve bought an assault rifle online, used a fake ID or—whatever …

  No, I wouldn’t be surprised, he’d used his mother’s credit card. (Wouldn’t be the first time, d’you think she’d discipline him? N-o.)

  Next thing, must’ve followed me in my car, Saturday morning. Headed for Otto’s Discount Electronics at the mall, and at the first escalator going up, jammed with people, there’s this explosion of sound—“fusillade of bullets”—“scene of terror”—people screaming, trying to get off the escalator, someone has fallen, another person has fallen, spurts of blood, jets of blood, crazy terrified wounded crawling over one another, I’m at the foot of the escalator on my knees, shielding my head, trying to crawl to safety behind a wall, but there’s other people cutting me off, disbelieving that this is happening to me, victim of a “mass shooter,” as bullets whip into my body, severing my spine in seconds, causing me to dance like a puppet cruelly jerked on strings, and then the back of my head explodes …

  Okay, something like that.

  Then the kid escapes.

  So high, maybe the kid just flies away. Dad below, drowning in his own blood and skull burst like a pumpkin leaking brains, how’d Dad have a clue what the kid does next?

  NIGHT, NEON

  1.

  Dusk, the heartbreak time. Slow-waning light falls upon the river like melting snow.

  The hour when neon begins. Sudden, subtle. Few notice except those who have been waiting through the long, glaring day.

  And of neon it is blue neon that most excites.

  Driving past the Blue Moon Café. No reason to be driving past the Blue Moon Café, for she is due home within the hour …

  Except: blue neon has entered her bloodstream like a powerful stimulant. Her senses have become alert, alive to the point of pain. She feels the quickening heartbeat, the pleasure of anticipation.

  A rush of sensation, a profound thirst. And the anticipation of quenching that thirst.

  “Just one. To celebrate.”

  Though (surely) it would be better to celebrate with Patrick, who is her coconspirator in this venture.

  Though (certainly) it would be wiser not to celebrate alone.

  “Just once.”

  Blue Moon, blue neon. Just the sight of it, a shot of adrenaline to the heart.

  She won’t stay long. She won’t make it complicated. No glancing up. No locking eyes.

  If asked Are you alone?—the reply is Yes. Until my husband joins me.

  Good to be a stranger at the Blue Moon Café. Always easier to navigate neon if you are not known.

  Always easier if you don’t make eye contact. Even in the mirror behind the bar, where (you’d be inclined to think) eye contact doesn’t count, exactly.

  In the funny, funky-glamorous sequined bag she car
ries into the café—oversize handbag signaling girl with a sense of play, doesn’t take herself overseriously—she has secreted an instrument of self-defense.

  Not offense. Never would she strike the first blow. Rather, self-defense, which would be, however, as swift, unerring, and lethal as if it were a calculated offense.

  In this sequined bag, in which her wallet, car keys, cell phone, iPad and ear buds, lipsticks, hairbrush, tissues, and much other miscellany have been crammed, at the very bottom, wrapped in gossamer-thin fabric, is an ice pick six inches in length, its point kept very sharp, sparkling clean, for though Juliana has been carrying it secretly with her for months, possibly years, it has yet to be used.

  And Juliana’s other secret: she is pregnant at last.

  A secret less than an hour old. A secret clamoring to be shared.

  At last—this is triumph, the fairy-tale ending. Juliana, who has been reluctant to be married to Patrick, who has been hurt, wounded, baffled that Juliana has been reluctant to marry him even as she has insisted that yes, she does love him, careful to keep (secret) the distinction between loving a man and being in love with a man—well, now Juliana will rush at Patrick with the good news, she will embrace him, giddy and careless with joy, not a drunken joy, but (perhaps) a drunken-seeming joy, the lanky-limbed, funny-funky Juliana, whom Patrick adores for her honesty, her frankness, her sunny good spirits that lift his when he is, as Patrick sometimes is, in winter months in particular, inclined toward depression.

  But no: not depression.

  Juliana insists: melancholy.

  For Patrick is, both agree, the more complicated, the more convoluted of the two of them.

  Kissing her lover hard on the mouth, she will laugh at his look of utter astonishment—Guess what! Fantastic news!—and Patrick will squint at her uncomprehending—What? What? What are you saying, Juliana?

  Maybe then whisper in his ear. Teasing words—Due date guess when?