The Neon God

by Ben D'Alessio

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  © 2019 Ben D’Alessio All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. eBook ISBN 978-1-54397-495-9

  Also by Ben D’Alessio

  NOVELS

  Binge Until Tragedy

  Lunchmeat

  SHORT STORIES

  Pigmalion

  FREEDOMWORLD

  Hallucinogenic Jimmy

  All BENNYs Must Die

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I’d like to thank my editors, Samantha Gordon and Leah Wohl-Pollack of Invisible Ink Editing, for the labor they put into the manuscript and for answering questions like “which pronoun do I use when a male spirit possesses a female body?” and “should I use ‘more photos of Bushes on the walls’ or just ‘more Bushes on the walls than a vintage pornography store’?” Truly, I appreciate your service.

  A huge thank you to Jenny Zemanek of Seedlings Design Studio for creating my electric cover.

  Again, thank you to my parents who support my writing and beg me to write something they can actually read—not this one either.

  And lastly, I’d like to thank the late Edith Hamilton. I found her book, Mythology, in a little free library on Dominican Street, and it made me ask myself, “What if Dionysus came to New Orleans?”

  “There are a lot of places I like, but I like New Orleans better.”

  – Bob Dylan

  “Everything in New Orleans is a good idea.”

  – Also Bob Dylan

  Oh, sweet upon the mountain

  The dancing and the singing,

  The maddening rushing flight.

  Oh, sweet to sink to earth outworn

  When the wild goat has been hunted and caught.

  Oh, the joy of the blood and the raw red flesh!

  For New Orleans, my soul city.

  Contents

  AUGUST

  SEPTEMBER

  NOVEMBER

  DECEMBER

  JULY

  AUGUST

  Dio

  In the corner of New Orleans where South Carrollton connects with St. Charles Avenue, the Greek God of Revelry and Wine, Dionysus, appeared in front of a classic daiquiri shop. Trudging through New Orleans this deep in August was like trying to swim through a cream-based soup. But Dionysus had not left his home on Mt. Olympus for quite some time and was so excited to embark on a new adventure that he pushed onward through the thick air and forgot to thank Hermes for delivering him safely to Louisiana.

  His siblings, aunts and uncles, cousins, and any other godly offspring Zeus had hauled up to Mt. Olympus had pestered him and bickered amongst each other over where he should go, and whether the God of Thunder would even permit his son to travel to such a backwater cesspool as New Orleans.

  “When Zeus gets back from Stockholm and finds out that Dionysus is in New Orleans, he’ll throw a fit!” shouted Athena. “It will make that storm in Indonesia look like a drizzle!”

  “When Zeus gets back,” mocked Ares. “Zeus has been in Scandinavia for years. We should start calling him Odin!”

  “Shouldn’t you be in Syria? Or Yemen?”

  “Oh, I’m bored with it now. They don’t need me anymore to cause destruction and chaos,” said the God of War, resting his arm on a column and letting out a sigh.

  “Hermes, please, you can’t take him,” Athena insisted. “Just bring him back to Amsterdam. He loves it there.”

  “He refused Amsterdam. He has frequented that aquatic city too many times.”

  “What about Copenhagen? Christiana is supposed to be a nice anarchy, not like what they’re doing down there in Athens, ruining my own city…And that way he can be close to Zeus.”

  “He brought up Dubai,” said Hermes.

  “Oh, he can’t go to Dubai!” cried Narcissus as he pushed along a lily pad that had drifted over his face in the reflecting pool. “It will dry out his beautiful skin.”

  “I can bring him to Nigeria with me. I have some work to do there,” said Ares.

  “Yes, how about Nigeria? Can you ask him, Hermes? Please. Anywhere, anywhere but New Orleans.”

  “Oh, just let him go,” said Apollo, revealing himself from the darkness, glowing gold from hair to sandal. “It will be good for him.”

  “Oh, yes, sure you would say that, Apollo. This is all your doing after all,” Athena snapped.

  “Listen, if Dionysus desires to go to that blighted, infested excuse for a city,” started Hermes, “and Zeus is not here to tell me otherwise, I have to take him.”

  Dionysus dodged the waves of lime green and tan anoles, some as tiny as olives, that seemed to wait until the last possible moment to dart across the sidewalk along South Carrollton Avenue. Giant oak trees, like guardians of the city, provided pools of shade on an otherwise merciless afternoon. Dionysus, unaccustomed to tropical humidity atop Mt. Olympus, sought refuge before making it a single block.

  Up ahead, the familiar ivory of Doric columns supported the façade of a building that appeared out of place nestled on the American sidewalk. A sign for the Camellia Grill, lit up in neon-pink cursive, greeted the flocking entrants that moved as if summoned by a magnetic pull spooling out from the restaurant. So as not to get trampled, Dionysus followed through the pair of doors and was greeted by a skinny Nubian behind the counter who proffered a most thought-provoking inquiry: “Do you know what it means to miss New Orleeeeeanz?”

  “Pardon?” the god responded.

  “How ’bout chu have a seat right chyea?” asked a broad, similarly dressed Nubian in a matching white shirt covered in stains of browns and yellows as if it were a pattern.

  Dionysus sat down on a stool at the counter and stared back at the slender man on the other side, whose arm and fist had remained extended and taut since his initial inquiry, as if waiting for reciprocation. In fact, the entire establishment appeared to be operated by Nubians. Perhaps attracted to the banks of the Mississippi River, similar to their ancestors’ attraction to the Nile, Dionysus thought.

  He reminisced about a spontaneous trip he took to that once-flourishing civilization, where he and the Queen of Sheba spent their days listening to the greatest musicians in Africa and drinking carafes of succulent honeywine—a delicious potable, sure, but after three weeks of merriment and mirth, Dionysus longed for his ruby agiorgitiko. Actually, it was not far from the sable queen’s palace that Dionysus had learned the mysteries of the vine as a child.

  It was the first time Zeus had Hermes whisk Dionysus away from Olympus to hide him from Hera, Zeus’s third wife—chronologically, not polygamously. Hermes brought the young god to Mt. Nysa, where he would be raised by the Nymphs until it was safe to return home to Olympus. It was there that Dionysus fermented his first batch of grape juice. He had yet to go a day without a couple stiff liters of the elixir since—except for that stint with the Queen of Sheba, of course.

  Dionysus looked at the extended fist and then back up at the toothy grin, which had yet to lose its luster, and made his own fist, lining up his knuckles to fit like cogs of a gear, but the Nubian jumped the gun and gave the god’s fist a stern tap.

  “O-kay, all right, chyeah. Oh, I think I felt a something sorta special wit’chu. What’d you like to drink?”

  Befuddled—and accustomed to beautiful young boys and girls simply bringing him the tastiest beverages available—Dionys
us was unsure of how to answer. He had heard the rumors of the wanton revelry spilling out onto the streets in New Orleans, everyone drunk off spirits and wine, and wearing colorful beads and crowns as if all were kings and kings were all; a city perpetually serenaded in song as if his dear friend Orpheus sat on the balcony of every bar strumming his lyre.

  Finally, after remembering his observance of a fine Englishman ordering in a Parisian bar, he pronounced, “I shall enjoy a liter of your finest local vintage, my Nubian brother.” The thin server and the rotund server, the cook dunking the fries, the cook cracking the eggs, the busser running back the dirty glassware, and even the only white server, all stopped and looked at each other as if Dionysus had spoken in a foreign language. “Of course, I would not hesitate to indulge in something Peloponnesian. Oh, my mouth waters just thinking about the fruit!”

  “We, ah…” started the thin server. “We don’t sell alcohol here, mah brother.”

  “Don’t sell…I’m not asking for alcohol, I’m asking for wine!”

  “Ey, baby,” started a large white woman, whose ass enveloped the diner stool like quicksand, “why you dressed like dat? You look like you ready for the Bacchus festival. Dat ain’t til Febrary.”

  “Bacchus! That misappropriated Roman fabrication. The ‘Roman Embezzlers,’ as they should be remembered. Roman Gods, what a jape! Who would believe such a thing? And to think, this city celebrates such fraudulence. I am the vine!”

  “I’ll bring ya ova a glass o’ wahda.”

  “I had been told wine flowed from the fountains…”

  “There’s a wine bar up der on Oak Street, darlin’. A little snooty for my likin’, but you’ll get your fill.”

  Dionysus swiveled on his stool, flung around his toga, and darted out the door, heading up South Carrollton in the direction the fat diner had pointed—the servers, cooks, and other customers watching him ramble up the avenue.

  His sandals clacked on the crackling sidewalk, which was pushed up here and there by oak tree roots like waves on the Aegean.

  As he approached Oak Street, a car with shining silver rims hovered from the ground and practically jumped up and down as deep bass and a deeper voice emanated from the speakers. “Ha ha, bitch, pleeeaaasseeee, I bleeeeed Louis Thirteeeeeen!” rounded out the chorus.

  Dionysus fell back and took refuge behind one of the oak trees as the car sped through the intersection; the singer repeated the chorus in a sonorous voice as if it were Zeus himself. He peeked out from around the tree trunk and read “Tchoupitoulas is my safe word” from the car’s bumper.

  “I see. Nothing more than a loud public service announcement,” the god said to himself, continuing on to Oak Street.

  He turned left—a complete guess—and trotted with his head on a swivel until he found a bar named Oak. But unlike the brightly lit grill teaming with diners and Nubians, the bar was dark, without a soul in sight.

  Dionysus peeked in the window and pushed and pulled at the door in frantic, spastic motions as if there were a fire and a child were locked inside. Through the window, the god could see bottles resting on their sides, lining the back wall in a mountainous symmetry. Dionysus dropped to his knees, emitting a cry so beautiful and so mellifluous that an onlooker in the distance took off his hat and placed it over his heart, and a woman put down her iced coffee and wiped away a tear.

  Zibby

  Zibby leaned back against the shelf of fiction, hands scrambling against the hardcover books as if searching for something to grab on to so she wouldn’t fall from the face of the earth. One L, a book by Scott Turow showcasing his harrowing law school experience, haunted Zibby for the third day in a row of unbearable heat that kept customers away from Oak Street Books. It was so hot, she questioned why they had even opened. She had imagined putting a sign up on the front door: Stay Inside with the Books You Already Have. Be Back When It Cools Down. But Liv had a mountain range of used novels that needed to be checked and priced and placed on the shelves, so Zibby had to get to work.

  After taking a few deep breaths and returning to Uptown New Orleans from the frigid halls of Harvard Law, Zibby put down the horror story and dove into the stacks of unalphabetized Dead White Men.

  The door opened, the bell jingled, and Zibby stopped herself from telling the customer that they were closed. Margaret Atwood, the calico who could usually be found curled up under the self-help shelf, came trotting out from her dwelling and headed toward the door.

  “Where can I find the fountains of agiorgitiko? Pardon? Is anyone here? I need to find…”

  “Excuse me?” she said, the crown of her head poking out above a copy of Heart of Darkness. Zibby rose to her feet with a furrowed brow, not breaking eye contact with the toga-clad customer. He had a thick black beard and black hair that curled around his ears and eyebrows. His olive skin glowed like a corporeal halo. Under the beard, she could make out a face that belonged on a boy-band poster, accentuated by eyes the color of toasted almonds.

  “Sorry? Fountains of Agi…Agior…just…who’s the author?”

  “Author? I didn’t come here in search of a scribe! I came for wine!”

  “But this is a bookstore.”

  Zibby thought she had seen it all growing up in New Orleans— “home to every shade of crazy,” as her father would say. She had grown accustomed to the Tulane kids who blew daddy’s money at the numerous bars that dotted Uptown and the regular characters who sold them their drugs. But she had never witnessed a frat boy so coked out of his mind that he had his toga on at noon and had mistaken a bookstore for a bar and was shouting that he was some sort of god of vines.

  “Excuse me…excuse…Hey! You have to leave.”

  The toga-clad man had lowered his flailing arms and bent down to pet Margaret Atwood, who had curled up next to his sandal and flipped onto her back, exposing a white belly.

  “She likes you. Shit, she doesn’t even do that for me. Hey, so, are you okay? If you really need a drink, there’s a bar on Magazine that’s open 24-7.”

  Zibby watched as he stopped petting the cat and gravitated to the shrinking Mythology section, sandwiched between religion and poetry. He picked up a picture book that Zibby remembered checking out of the library as a child. It told ancient tales of gods and heroes like Theseus and the Minotaur and Perseus and Medusa—Zibby especially liked the illustration of the chiseled blond Apollo who graced the cover, and would sometimes, as a hidden guilty pleasure, seek out the book into her late teens when she wandered away from YA fiction about vampires and werewolves and other fantastical creatures.

  Thunk!

  The book’s sudden drop onto the shelf woke Zibby from her memory of adolescent furtiveness.

  “Hey! Can you at least…Where are you going?!”

  The strange entrant had rushed out the door with such reckless abandon he almost launched Margaret Atwood onto the sidewalk like he was kicking a field goal.

  “Hey!” she shouted from the storefront, watching the stranger sprint down Oak Street and turn onto South Carrollton Ave.

  Zibby crouched to her knees, petted Margaret Atwood behind the ear, and picked up the picture that had fallen onto the floor—the toned god hadn’t lost his luster and appeared just as tasty as when she was thirteen.

  Dio

  An acute pinch of hunger had overtaken Dionysus’s lust for the vine. He hadn’t time to wander through the skinny Nubian’s labyrinth of riddles—what, in fact, does it mean to miss New Orleeeeeanz???—and instead settled for an opened bag of Zapp’s Spicy Cajun Crawtator chips that had blown past his ankles on a rare and much-needed breeze. He picked up the shining red- and white- striped bag and dumped the remaining contents into his mouth, most of the potato chips crumbling onto his toga.

  The Greek God of Wine let out a moan of pleasure so genuine that any onlooker with even the slightest ounce of wit would declare: “I’ll have what he’s having.”

  He finished off the bag by licking his fingers and running them along the silver po
lypropylene lining to savor the leftover salt and Cajun concoctions of the gratuitously seasoned snack.

  But as quickly as the sodium-induced pleasure had arrived, it fleeted, transforming into a debilitating thirst and rendering Dionysus to his knees. “I thirst!” he shouted, a fist to the sky.

  From all fours he looked ahead down South Carrollton to the corner where he had arrived earlier that day, and considered leaving the vile, wineless, confusing city. A city with air so wet but alimentations so dry that it left your mouth feeling as if you’d cupped and slurped down the water of the Dead Sea—each of its inhabitants rendered a perpetual Tantalus of the swamp.

  As Dionysus rose to his feet and click-clacked back down to the shop, he made his preparations to summon Hermes and return to Mt. Olympus. But before he could carry out his call of desperation, completing his quickest excursion to date—even quicker than his misguided voyage to Sarajevo in 1992—Dionysus watched as people of all sizes and colors came stumbling out of the little tawny shop, sucking on Styrofoam cups with red straws.

  “Daiquiris?” The god had never heard of the beverage advertised in the dingy storefront windows, and repeated it to himself, as it was Greek-sounding and euphonic. “Daiquiris. Daiquiris,” he said.

  He had come to New Orleans for its reputation of debauchery and zenith of alcoholic concoctions, so Dionysus figured he should at least taste one drink before being whisked away back to his mundane life on the Mount. And if these citizens, continuously exposed to a potpourri of potent potables, found this “daiquiri” sufficient, then he might as well give it a try.

  Dionysus had to shift and shimmy past the stumbling patrons overflowing into the parking lot. “Alright! Toga party! Toga! Toga! Toga!” shouted a slurring young man as Dionysus nudged past.

  Inside the establishment, an array of vats lined the back wall like rows of washing machines, each one with a circular window so customers could watch the various colors circulate in hypnotic perpetuity.