Speculation. But then. I wasn’t there.”
Jay blinks.
“Done? No.” Magonis sucks his electric cigarette and shakes his head. “We’ve barely scratched the surface.”
He’s right.
And yes, Jay remembers the flower shop, corner of Melrose and Crescent Heights, cramped, dark, even in midday, fragrant, the special on a dozen roses from the refrigerated glass case, the pools of ceiling pin lights, the exotic tropicals, the potted palms.
He remembers the salesgirl writing, she was left-handed and had that weird lobster-claw way of holding the fountain pen to keep her hand out of the ink. Her letters were looped and forward-leaning.
“I have this second job,” she told him. “I work nights. But.” She looked up. “We close at two . . .”
She handed him a slip of paper with the address of a Glendale strip club where bright light strobed across Jay as he came in, pushing past the thick-waisted underage frat boys clotted around the bouncer at the door trying to convince him they were twenty-one.
When they had adjusted to the darkness, Jay’s eyes lasered to the luminous cylindrical water tank that dominated the middle of the club, glowing like a lava lamp, a naked mermaid curling, languid, swirling bubbles like free electrons and slowly stripping inside.
Not the flower girl.
No, Jay found his flower girl behind the bar in a tight black strip-club T-shirt, pouring drinks; she smiled when she saw him.
He remembers how, later, he and the girl spilled out, drunk, laughing, into an empty parking lot, pale colored lights of the bar slowly flickering and dying as the place closed down and Jay swung her up into his arms and ran with her, legs aching, across the empty street, to the entrance of an apartment building where the lobby was tile and carved moldings and Deco teardrop hanging lights and an elevator cage waiting, the rattle of its gate, the hand-lever control that rotated and the cables hummed and the car rose and ribbons of darkness looped across awkward groping, and the girl had her blouse open, some kind of lacy black bra, the red snake tattoo—and her fingers curled through the latticework of the rising car—
And now this unremarkable Zane Grey Building, office number 204, in which Jay looks at his hands. Magonis waits, his right eye wandering, aimless, as if losing interest.
“Look, it’s not what you think. I didn’t, we . . . nothing happened. Okay? It was one time, I told a lot of stories, they were bullshit. No sex, we just . . .”
—
They stopped, he remembers, outside apartment 3H. Didn’t they? Didn’t he lean back against the wall, drunk, blissful, the hallway and the whole world coruscating, and didn’t she smell faintly of jasmine, Maker’s Mark and vermouth, and didn’t he let the girl mold herself against him, warm and fecund; didn’t Jay brush tears from mascara-streaked eyes as she angled her head and kissed his hand, his neck, his—
“—I didn’t know her name. I never asked,” Jay admits, senseless.
Magonis quietly closes the planner. Switches his bogus cigarette off. No expression on his face except for those crazy eyes.
| 10 |
OR WAS THE HALLWAY
COMPLETELY DARK?
Or was the kiss just a brush of lips, chaste, regretful?
Or did she fumble for her keys? Sly-sliding wistfully out from the cage of his arms along the textured wall to the deadbolt, and then opened it, she slipped inside, click of a wall switch, light spilling out as she glanced one last time back at Jay as he turned to go. Dark figures swarmed her as the door closed—he never saw them—shadows and shapes, her swift startled intake of breath, the scuffling feet on the hardwood floor.
Or was everything under water?
Harsh overhead light of the bathroom, tub filled with pink, her wide, frightened eyes as she toppled backward toward the roiling surface, filling, and a gun, aimed at her chest, finger thick on the trigger—
—and the elevator’s byzantine prison.
Ascending out of darkness,
Jay blinks.
“Done? No.” Magonis sucks his electric cigarette and shakes his head. “We’ve barely scratched the surface.”
He’s right.
And yes, Jay remembers the flower shop, corner of Melrose and Crescent Heights, cramped, dark, even in midday, fragrant, the special on a dozen roses from the refrigerated glass case, the pools of ceiling pin lights, the exotic tropicals, the potted palms.
He remembers the salesgirl writing, she was left-handed and had that weird lobster-claw way of holding the fountain pen to keep her hand out of the ink. Her letters were looped and forward-leaning.
“I have this second job,” she told him. “I work nights. But.” She looked up. “We close at two . . .”
She handed him a slip of paper with the address of a Glendale strip club where bright light strobed across Jay as he came in, pushing past the thick-waisted underage frat boys clotted around the bouncer at the door trying to convince him they were twenty-one.
When they had adjusted to the darkness, Jay’s eyes lasered to the luminous cylindrical water tank that dominated the middle of the club, glowing like a lava lamp, a naked mermaid curling, languid, swirling bubbles like free electrons and slowly stripping inside.
Not the flower girl.
No, Jay found his flower girl behind the bar in a tight black strip-club T-shirt, pouring drinks; she smiled when she saw him.
He remembers how, later, he and the girl spilled out, drunk, laughing, into an empty parking lot, pale colored lights of the bar slowly flickering and dying as the place closed down and Jay swung her up into his arms and ran with her, legs aching, across the empty street, to the entrance of an apartment building where the lobby was tile and carved moldings and Deco teardrop hanging lights and an elevator cage waiting, the rattle of its gate, the hand-lever control that rotated and the cables hummed and the car rose and ribbons of darkness looped across awkward groping, and the girl had her blouse open, some kind of lacy black bra, the red snake tattoo—and her fingers curled through the latticework of the rising car—
And now this unremarkable Zane Grey Building, office number 204, in which Jay looks at his hands. Magonis waits, his right eye wandering, aimless, as if losing interest.
“Look, it’s not what you think. I didn’t, we . . . nothing happened. Okay? It was one time, I told a lot of stories, they were bullshit. No sex, we just . . .”
—
They stopped, he remembers, outside apartment 3H. Didn’t they? Didn’t he lean back against the wall, drunk, blissful, the hallway and the whole world coruscating, and didn’t she smell faintly of jasmine, Maker’s Mark and vermouth, and didn’t he let the girl mold herself against him, warm and fecund; didn’t Jay brush tears from mascara-streaked eyes as she angled her head and kissed his hand, his neck, his—
“—I didn’t know her name. I never asked,” Jay admits, senseless.
Magonis quietly closes the planner. Switches his bogus cigarette off. No expression on his face except for those crazy eyes.
| 10 |
OR WAS THE HALLWAY
COMPLETELY DARK?
Or was the kiss just a brush of lips, chaste, regretful?
Or did she fumble for her keys? Sly-sliding wistfully out from the cage of his arms along the textured wall to the deadbolt, and then opened it, she slipped inside, click of a wall switch, light spilling out as she glanced one last time back at Jay as he turned to go. Dark figures swarmed her as the door closed—he never saw them—shadows and shapes, her swift startled intake of breath, the scuffling feet on the hardwood floor.
Or was everything under water?
Harsh overhead light of the bathroom, tub filled with pink, her wide, frightened eyes as she toppled backward toward the roiling surface, filling, and a gun, aimed at her chest, finger thick on the trigger—
—and the elevator’s byzantine prison.
Ascending out of darkness,
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