There wasn’t room in the narrow alley for two fire escapes, so the buildings on either side shared one, which I thought was nice of them. Below the fire escape was a chain link fence, which meant that the entire alley was blocked by metal up to a height of four stories. A fat man with a goatee and a red Waldo hat sat in a lawn chair under the street lamp and took people’s money. Twenty bucks got you through the gate. I made Irfan pay; she seemed very grateful. She led me under the fire escape and around a corner where someone had painted a road sign on the alley wall. It looked like something Wile E. Coyote would stick in the ground to tempt the Roadrunner, with a huge cartoon arrow and everything. It said ESCAPE THE GORILLA CITY, like everyone in New York was just a bunch of mindless apes living out their biology and we were treading the only way out. Concrete steps led down to a basement door, which was propped open with a cinder block. Beyond was a wide hall with carpet that had been worn flat everywhere and torn up in the middle. Bits of debris huddled in the corners from years of unmaintained use. The place seemed abandoned. Smelled like it, too, under the lingering haze of cigarettes and weed.
We walked a good two hundred meters down the subterranean passage in near-total dark, following the giggling college kids ahead of us. We turned right through a set of double doors, chained open, and heard music. Live music. Some crappy neo-industrial warm-up band. A group of punk kids milled near a wide, shallow-stepped staircase that rose to a large open hall.
I smiled as we walked in. “Is this an old theater?” I hurried up the steps.
It totally was—one of those fancy movie houses from the pre-war era with the balcony seating and the single giant screen. Only this place had clearly been abandoned ages ago. The screen was gone, leaving a stage-like gap. Box seats ran around the walls on two levels, where all the nooks and balustrades were lit with candles.
“Wow . . .”
The high, domed ceiling had once been painted midnight blue, but the paint had chipped and fallen in spots, revealing the white plaster underneath. In the dim light, it looked exactly like stars, as if the ceiling itself were a shadowy portal to a real night sky. At the apex of the dome, where I’m sure a chandelier once hung, lines of neon letters seemed to be floating in space:
THERE WAS NEITHER NON-EXISTENCE NOR EXISTENCE:
THERE WAS NO REALM OF AIR, NO SKY BEYOND IT.
THERE WAS NEITHER DEATH NOR IMMORTALITY.
THERE WAS ONLY ONE, BREATHED BY ITSELF:
AND APART FROM IT WAS NAUGHT.
AND THEN CAME DESIRE,
THE PRIMAL SEED.
-RIG VEDA
Graffiti filled the walls, and not just the usual tags and colorful street slang. There was some genuine street art, some of it quite good. A small crowd was hanging in clusters, as people do. I walked up the sloping side walkway to get a better view of the place, of the art and rows of candles, and caught Bastien behind the bar. I think it had been the coat check originally, or something like that, but someone had taken parts from an old carousel, gold and mirrors, and turned it into a long hutch and filled it with bottles. He was one of three bartenders. The others were girls.
Near us, a group of three punks turned to stare as we walked in. I admit, I was looking pretty tame in my flower-print Keds and lavender purse, but then I’m sure it was the black eye that did it. The woman nearest us had a Mohawk and some kind of reflective contact lenses that made her eyes glow blue-white—or so it seemed. A zigzagging tattoo ran over the heavy scar that circled her neck, making it look like her head had been completely severed and then sewed back on unevenly with a dark cord. She smiled at me and I saw fangs.
“I knew a girl in high school who did that,” I said, referring to her teeth.
I caught motion and looked up. Sitting with a handful of people on the upper level, like a royal family above the throng, was the Kingfish and a few others I didn’t recognize. He was dressed all in black, including a long trench coat, and he rose to greet a man who looked even more out of place than I did—a banker or Wall Street type. His hair was slicked back and he wore an expensive suit. Whoever he was, he was pissed. He was shouting at Fish and shoving his finger in his face. And Fish was taking it.
Irfan took out a phone and started scrolling. “This is gonna be fun.”
“Where’d you get that?”
“You’re not gonna survive this,” she said as she stepped away. “You know that, right?”
“So you said.”
“No matter which one of them you choose, you’re still going to die. It is written.”
“Everyone’s going to die.”
“Not me,” she said as she flickered like flame into the crowd and disappeared.
I looked back up to the mezzanine. The banker-type had finished and Fish was explaining something to him with his large hands. I couldn’t hear anything over the band. I tried walking up the stairs to the upper level, but an arm was looped under mine and I was pulled back.
“Word is,” Bastien said as he dragged me stiffly toward the bar, “some Asian smed is poking around in Fish’s business. And asking about me.”
“Smed?”
“Yeah. Smed. Someone who doesn’t know shit.” He deposited me at the end such that my back was to the mezzanine and walked around to the other side.
“Bet you didn’t think you’d see me again,” I told him.
His face said I was right. “He’s a dangerous man. And the people he works for even more so.”
I glanced back, but the suited man was gone, as was Fish.
“Who was that guy?”
“I’m serious. You’re not gonna get a warning, okay? They’re not gonna come make polite threats or whatever. That’s not how it works. If they think you’re a problem, one day, you just won’t be around anymo—” He must have got a better look at me in the dim light because he recoiled a little and wrapped his lips around his teeth to choke back a laugh.
I made a “yeah, yeah, very funny” face.
“Damn. You look like shit.”
I touched my ear. “Naw, it’s the newest thing. You’ll see. I’d tell you more but the first rule is we’re not supposed to talk about it.”
“Jesus. Fish was right. You don’t give up, do you?”
I shrugged.
A guy came and gave and order for something called a Tasmanian Moon and Bastien poured it while I picked at a divot in the counter. I tried to catch my nail in the wood but it was too smooth and kept coming out.
“Take your purse?” Bastien held out a hand.
“It’s a handbag,” I said, holding onto it.
He shrugged. “Suit yourself. But it’s gonna get stolen here. Or picked. I’m not the enemy, Cerise. I just want Lily to be safe. That’s all.”
As before, he seemed genuine. But somebody was lying.
“If you saw me at The Couch,” I said, “how come you never talked to me?”
“Let’s see.” He looked up like the answer was written in neon on the ceiling.
I looked, too. Just to make sure.
“The first time you were wearing a T-shirt that said Please Don’t.”
“I don’t have a have shirt like that.” But I had to admit, it sounded like me.
“That’s because you took it off some guy. Before that, you were dancing topless on an old school desk.”
My face flushed. “I was a different person then.”
“How come?”
I shrugged. “You don’t know how it is back home.”
“China?”
“Hong Kong. There are rules for everything.”
“Same here.”
“No. You guys have laws. That’s different. I’m talking about customs. Ways you’re supposed to act that are really, really old. Especially for girls.”
“Oh, trust me,” he said with a smirk. “I get it.”
“There was this whole life that had been laid out for me, I thought by my parents, but I think they were just encouraging me. Back then, I couldn’t tell the difference and I kinda rejected it all.”
“And came to America?”
“You can be whatever you want here. I dunno. I guess I went a little crazy.”
“So who are you then, if you’re not her?”
I thought for a moment. “Good question.”
He leaned close. “I’d like to know.”
I pushed off. “Whatever, man. Your magic charms don’t work on me, remember?”
He laughed. “I’ll just have to use something more powerful then.”
“Like what?”
“The truth.” He stood straight. “The second and last time I saw you, until the other day, you were wearing a Captain Caveman shirt. How ’bout that?”
He had me there. I loved that shirt. I used to sit in Uncle Wen’s shop after school, where he had an old CRT television, maybe ten inches across, that played nothing but Hanna-Barbera cartoons, like it was tuned in to the 1970s.
“I remember it,” he said, “because I was strangely aroused.”
“That’s because it’s overtly sexual.”
He snorted. “Captain Caveman?”
“Yeah! Think about it, a short, brutish guy covered in curly hair who travels around with three beautiful teenage girls? And whenever they into trouble, he swells up and brandishes a club? It’s like Wonder Woman and the whole dominatrix thing.”
He smiled that dashing smile at me and I looked down.
Was I flirting?
I saw his tarot cards in a stack on the shelf behind him.
“You really believe all that?”
He choked back a laugh. “Don’t they tell fortunes in China?”
I shrugged again.
“Everybody thinks they got it right and everyone else is completely wrong,” he said, leaning on the bar. “If you’re conservative, you think the liberals are nuts. If you’re Muslim, you think the Hindus are wrong. The whole world’s that way. Everybody thinks there’s no way they could be wrong, despite that they believe just about every single person on the planet is.”
He moved down as he cleaned the bar and our faces were close then.
“What can I get you?” he asked. “On the house.”
I looked at the back shelves to decide. Next to all the clear vodka and neon blue gin were odd-shaped jars and bottles, some stopped with frayed cork and labeled in handwriting: Dried Mockweed, Anthemum, Malefoil Extract. The latter was a tiny vial no larger than my thumb. I had to lean across the bar to read it.
“What the heck is malefoil?”
“An astringent. Opens the pores.”
“What does it do?”
“Nothing by itself. It helps other things get in.”
He pulled a clear jar down from the third shelf. It was full of dried caterpillars with strange spindly growths erupting from their heads, like oversized unicorn horns almost as long as the animal itself.
“This is ophiocordyceps. A parasite. Used to make love potions.”
“What is it with you and potions?”
“What can I say? They’re my forte. My oeuvre. My one true calling.”
“Yeah, but love potion? Really?”
“Is it really so strange? You ingest chemicals that alter your mind on a regular basis. Half the city takes pills to improve their mood or stop being anxious or get an erection. Why should love be any different than anxiety or grief? Shit, the beer does half the work by itself.”
“There’s beer in love potion?”
“There is in mine.” He pulled out one of the dried caterpillars and snipped off one of the long fungal polyps with a pair of vanity scissors. “The parasite hacks the nervous system of its host. Alters its mind. Makes it act against its own self-interest. Just like love.”
I peered skeptically into the glass.
“Google it,” he said, “if you don’t believe me.”
Someone bumped into me as they passed. The place was packed now.
“So what does a love potion taste like, then?” I scrunched my nose. “Please don’t say semen.”
He laughed again, genuinely, bending over slightly as he did so. Then he smiled at me warmly. He reached down and produced a long-necked, blue-green glass bottle from under the counter. It had a geometric pattern etched across its exterior.
“Share one with me?”
“No, thanks.”
“Why not?” He uncorked the bottle and handed it across the bar. “If we drink together, we’ll fall madly in love, like Romeo and Juliet.”
“Didn’t they both get killed?” I sniffed the bottle. It smelled like urine and beeswax, and I pushed it away. “Is that what you did to Lily?”
“No,” he said confusedly. He backed away to take more orders. “Why would I give my sister a love potion?”
“Sister?” I laughed once. “You’re really gonna try that one again?”
But he was serious.
“I told you. I just want her back.”
People raised their arms and I watched him fill two and three orders as a time with his ringed fingers. As the crowd deepened, I got pushed closer to the wall, and I lifted my purse over the bar for safe keeping.
“You wanna hear something funny?” he called to me over the heads of the people between us. He was shaking a drink. “It’s always the people who don’t believe in something that think they know everything about it.”
The mood shifted quickly when the live band finished and a DJ took over. The music was shit, but then that crowd didn’t want music. They wanted sonic rage. What they were raging against wasn’t clear. Very quickly, head-bobbing turned to pushing and a mosh pit opened directly in front of the stage. Those at the back ran up the sloped walkway and began smashing and tearing at anything they could break free: loose drywall, wood molding, seat cushions, whatever wasn’t so solidly attached that human limbs couldn’t kick or rip it free. They flung it around like beach balls at a concert, but eventually each piece made it into a metal-spike-lined pit on the stage. In minutes, I could see a good-sized pile poking from the gaps between the bars.
And then they lit it. It burned slow at first, but as the fire grew, it stirred the air, hot and dry like a dust devil turning in the desert. Bastien hopped back over the bar then, took my hand, and led me into the crowd. We went right to the pit, when the music stopped suddenly, as if he had planned it. There was a second of silence, but before anyone could speak, a discordant mix of overlapping audio clips burst through the speakers on the stage: political speeches, the explosions of war, sitcom laugh tracks, drilling, logging, traffic noise. It got louder and louder and louder until I actually had to squint. I was about to cover my ears when the sound collage broke and I heard the simple spoken words from the beginning of an old familiar song.
I am the god of hellfire and I bring you . . .
“Fire” by The Crazy World of Arthur Brown. 1968.
“Ahhhh!” I screamed.
I turned to him in shock. I loved that song.
“I thought you’d know it,” he said.
We started dancing, not so much together as with the rest of the crowd. His friends at the bar passed a dozen or so large metal goblets into the crowd. The revelers kept the cups high to keep from spilling, lowering them only to take sips as they passed. Bastien took one and put it to his lips. He grimaced as he swallowed and passed it to me.
“What’s this?” In the dim light, all I could see was dark liquid.
He closed his eyes and his head fell back like the high was hitting him. He lifted his hands in the air and let the jostling push him to and fro. I took a sip and coughed. It was thick like runny syrup and tasted sour-bitter, like vinegar and Sour Patch Kids. With the swallow, a prickly mash of ground peppercorns poked the back of my throat like tiny needles and made my eyes water.
“Shit . . .”
I sniffed. My stomach gurgled angrily. But I held it and passed the goblet along. It went around like that a few more times. I took a tiny sip on the next round, but when it came again, I passed. Bastien saw, stopped the cup, and tilted it to my lips so far it ran from the sides of my mouth and down my shirt between my breasts. Across the swaying crowd, I saw Mohawk-woman take a drink from a goblet and breathe green fire, like she was a dragon. People cheered. She took another swallow and did it again. Another man’s eyes glowed red. Not the whites. Just his irises. He stared at me in hunger.
Whatever I had drunk was working. A strange high came, like a dark hood pulled over my mind, and I felt the pang of uncertainty, that feeling I got every time I tried something new, unsure how my body would react or what would come next. I had the sensation first of floating in visible sound. A murmuring chant vibrated into my ribs and yanked my mind left and then right like a whiplash current—like it was literally trying to shake my last inhibitions out of me.
“Let’s go up to one of the booths.”
Bastien pointed to the old box seats that rimmed the floor.
I looked to him, eyes dulled from the high. I’d never felt like that. I swore to him I was lucid dreaming. The things I saw had no other explanation. A laughing head floated across the ceiling. An African man and woman—twins from the looks of it—made their tattoos come alive. A snake rose right out of her skin and slithered across her neck and down her arm. A hunting falcon flapped from her brother’s back.
Mesmerized, I felt Bastien kiss my neck from behind. My skin was dewy with sweat and I felt his lips slide over them.
“What about your girlfriend?” I breathed close to his cheek.
“I told you.” He kissed again. “Lily is my sister.”
He had his ringed fingers on my curves and was playing them like a violin. His erection was pressed hard to my ass and I leaned my head back as his hands slid up over my chest. I opened my eyes and saw symbols floating across the ceiling, moving but not moving, like how a room spins when you’ve had too much to drink. I hadn’t seen them before. They glowed, and I thought they must’ve been painted in some kind of reflective chemical that only caught firelight.
Bastien led me out of the crowd and up the sloped archway that ran along the far side of the old theater and from there to the box seats on the second level. There was another bouncer there keeping the very unimportant people from going up, but Bastien just nodded to him and the man let us pass.
“Irfan said my soul sparks,” I breathed, barely able to walk.
“Like a live wire,” he said, pulling me along.
We went to the first box, which had a close view of the stage and the pillar of fire that turned now like a dancing god. I could feel the heat. There was a fancy bench with a maroon cushion, like something you’d find in a hall or foyer. We dropped onto it and his hands ran up my body. I don’t think I even really wanted him, but I was so aroused by whatever I had drank, so completely horny, that I did nothing but bend sideways and stick out my ass. He slid closer until our pelvises touched. His hands went up my shirt and under my bra. My nipples were already erect and his fingers brushed back and forth over them. I moaned and he pulled my jeans down in hard tugs. His fingers fumbled between my thighs. And before I knew it, I felt the tip.
My body rebelled instantly. It was violent. I heaved and stumbled forward, leaving him sideways on the bench. I braced myself against the balustrade, jeans still down to me knees. I wanted to say “I feel sick,” but I was going to puke, and if I opened my mouth, I knew I wouldn’t be able to stop it.
I had only moments.
Out of the booth, down the hall, using the wall for balance as my hands alternated between fixing my jeans and holding back the inevitable. I took a wrong turn and stopped abruptly at a doorless nook that I imagine had once been a closet. There was a heavy curtain drawn across it, which promised exactly what I wanted: privacy. I ripped it open and saw a couple having sex. I lost it right there—it was the smell—and vomited over their legs. The woman shrieked and the dude pushed me. I stumbled backward until my bare butt hit the other wall. I laid my head against the crumbling plaster for a moment while I regained control of my stomach. Everything was spinning.
The couple ran off to clean themselves, and I was aware then that someone else was looking at me. I thought it might be Bastien at first, but whoever they were, they were on the wrong side of the hall. Bastien appeared just then, fixing his belt. He stopped when he saw the two of us. I caught a pair of smoldering eyes. They were watching us mischievously from just around the curve.
“What did you do?” Bastien yelled to Irfan.
I tried to stand, but my jeans were still halfway off my hips and I stumbled forward to the floor. Bastien made a fist and I grabbed his leg. He tripped and landed on his hands. I pulled my jeans up and jumped on his back. I think I was trying to fight him for threatening to hit Irfan, but my mind wasn’t rational.
He threw me off as a single scream broke loud over the crowd.
The music cut and for a moment there was silence. Then everyone started yelling and running.
“You did this!” he yelled to Irfan and raised his hands to hit her.
“Hey!” I shoved him back hard as the crowd wailed.
A kid in a Nirvana T-shirt darted past.
“You don’t know,” he yelled at me. “You have no idea what her kind used to do to people. You have no idea how long it took to bind them or how many people sacrificed everything to see it done. You’re going back in the lamp,” he told her. “Tonight. She let you out and I felt sorry for you. That’s on me. But now you’re going back.”
Irfan looked like she wanted to rip his eyes out. She hissed at him then. Like an angry cat.
Bastien grabbed her wrist and pulled her toward the exit, but I stepped in front of him.
“No!” I said. “How stupid do you think I am. I’m not falling for the same trick twice.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
He pushed me as he pulled Irfan, limp, into the main hall. Then he froze, wide-eyed, and I turned. Six dark figures had emerged from the opposite hall and stood before the dissipating crowd, who quickly ran around them or away. They were tall and darkly robed with pure white, featureless masks over their faces. I had no idea how they could see or breathe.
“It wasn’t me!” Irfan objected “They’re following her.” She pointed at me.
“What?”
I watched as one of the things grabbed a punk from the crowd. It had too-long fingers at the end of its too-long arms. It stared into the kid’s terrified face like it was reading it. There was a faint movement of color across the white mask, as if it were using the kid’s eyes like a movie projector, seeing what he saw.
It turned right toward me, as if it knew exactly where I stood amid hundreds of others.
“Run,” Bastien said.
“Where?”
“Run!”
I did and hit a wall. Technically, it was man, but he was as big as a wall. I felt myself being lifted as if I weighed nothing. I was slung over a shoulder and carried away in quick, bouncing steps. The motion put up-and-down pressure on my stomach and I vomited again, all down the back of the man’s plus-sized track suit. He cursed at me, over and over, with a raw talent that would’ve made any sailor proud, but he didn’t let me go and he didn’t slow down. He took me to a stairwell. He started panting heavy on the way up. I wanted to hit him, but his back was now oozing red-purple slime from my stomach.
My next distinct memory is of looking down at my flower-print Keds planted on the lip of the roof. I remember wanting to make very sure they had a good grip because the rest of my body was leaning backward over the side. The very large black man who had carried me now had hold of the front of my shirt. Half a square yard of cotton was all that was keeping me from falling.
It was dark on the roof, so it took me a moment to see Kingfish walking toward me. He didn’t look happy. But then, he was still wearing his sunglasses, so it was kinda hard to tell.
He stopped near me and took them off. I could see the scar. I could also see he had no eyes.
No. Eyes.
He wasn’t blind. His eyelids were open. But his sockets were empty.
“You know how much money this place makes?” he asked, knowing full well I was too shocked and petrified to deliver a good, solid comeback. “No fire code. No liquor license. No liability insurance. No minimum wage. If it weren’t for the payoffs, this would be the best business I got.”
I smelled smoke. Like, a lot of smoke. Like maybe the building was on fire. And there were sirens approaching. Not cops. Fire department maybe. Or ambulance.
“We gotta go, boss,” the big man urged.
“It’s not my fault,” I stammered, both unable to look at or away from the gaps where his eyes should be.
“Woman, do I look like some kinda fool? First night you show up and we’re burned out. That ain’t no effin’ coincidence.” He held up a heavy finger. “I told you, Spence. I told you I ain’t wanna see you. I told you not to give me regrets. I want you to contemplate that. On your way down. With some luck, you’ll survive and get a chance to make it right.”
“Make it right?“ The patent terror of plunging to my death suddenly outweighed the terror of talking to a man with no eyes. “Fuck, man. Falling four stories isn’t enough?”
Just then I noticed someone else on the roof—not as tall as the guy who held me but tall enough, and stocky. He was in a short leather jacket. He was walking toward us, expressionless, as if he were taking a stroll in the park and not across the roof of a condemned and burning building. Fish and his guy had their backs to him, and with all the noise, they didn’t notice at first. Not until he was just steps away. I recognized him. It was the cop-looking guy who’d been following me. There was a very large revolver in his very large hand. Fish’s man heard the scuff of boots on gravel and turned. Feeling spry, I took that moment of distraction to bust out a little wing chun—not that I really know any. I twisted free, ready to kick some ass—or at least to kick Fish in the balls—but I was still a little wobbly and not thinking terribly clearly and when I pivoted, my foot landed awkwardly on the lip of the roof and I tumbled over the side, just as Fish had wanted.