man
catches me watching, winks.
Are they a couple? I ask.
The man smiles.
“Sure. Met her five minutes ago, when I sat down here. You’re
invited to the wedding.”
Recipients and donors. Donors and recipients. Variations of this
couple's exchange are happening with a hothouse spontaneity up
and down the bar: people with equal but opposite afflictions,
propping each other up.
This is my beautifully stable impression of Night World culture
for maybe two more minutes; then something explodes near my head.
Blue medicine leaks in an Arctic smear down the cabinet door.
Whatever it is smells faintly of garlic. So much for romance. Near
the tent flaps, a fight has broken out: two gizzardy
LD-ers are haggling over their bar tab. It seems they
have goaded each other into consuming two thousand dollars’ worth
of some placebo-slush. They dispute the bill in hoarse screams:
“That was
your round
, Leonard!” Napkins wag from their
hands, covered in scrawl, two rival accounts of their debts to one
another —a bar tab that seems to
stretch back to the Big Bang.
Mr. Harkonnen returns with our drinks. To avoid the brawl, we
retreat farther into the tent, choose stools next to a dark oak
cabinet.
“Got us the cheap stuff,” he says.
“Okay. Thank you.”
Shooting Stars is the name of my medicinal cocktail.
I don’t ask what it does. Three sips in, my expectations go
colorless. Then I find myself leaning against Mr. Harkonnen’s left
shoulder. Mr. Harkonnen smells like nothing unexpected: generic
deodorant, Old Spice aftershave. These odors are like flung
harpoons —they sail out of the Night
World and back across the highway, wrenching whole continents of
normalcy into this dark tent: malls and supermarkets, non-lethal
sunsets, jarred tomatoes, orderly hedgerows, carpet cleaner, kitty
litter, everybody’s junk mail piling up on tables, geese flapping
across meridians on their winter-spring cycle . . . and soon I’m
having to close my eyes to fight a supreme dizziness, as many times
and seasons collide inside my chest. I take another long gulp of
the cocktail. This time, the effect is immediate. Heat radiates
outward until my skin feels ready to burst, until my skeleton is
both holding me upright on the barstool and also dissolving, inside
me, into melting vertebrae, a million memories unstoppered in my
brain, rising up my spine, flowing down, my body too small to
contain them, shrinking even as the dizzy light expands in all
directions, and no way to protect myself against the assault, this
onslaught of sound and light, and nowhere to release it, all the
aggregating echoes, Dori’s voice, our father’s, a thousand other
whisperers . . .
I blink twice, rub my eyes: incredibly, the Night World tent is
still here. I study my watch, relieved that I can read the numbers:
three minutes have elapsed since we sat down. Beside me, Mr.
Harkonnen is eating green pistachios out of an ashtray. He smiles
at me. His face looks placid, in the illegible and alien way that
stingrays’ bellies look placid as they smooth along glass
walls.
“That was an intense drink,” I say, frowning down at my lap.
“Still is.”
“Was it supposed to wake us up?”
“You bet.”
I rub my tingling ears.
“Are you, ah, feeling it?”
“I’m drinking a virgin medicinal cocktail, actually.”
“Oh. So . . .”
“Just gin.”
Mr. Harkonnen leans back against the side of the medicine
cabinet. His arms are flung gregariously behind his head. I blink
down at our shoes, my head still spinning.
“I thought we should have a private talk,” he says. “Away from
the house.”
I gaze up at him from behind my glass. Some disturbed dreamer
has scratched
Screams from the raven-lunged
in a vitreous
green ink onto the wooden bar. The tent’s droning moonlamps make it
feel as though we’re all boozing inside a tremendous bug
zapper.
“Things have become tense,” he adds. “Around the household.”
“You’re fighting
catches me watching, winks.
Are they a couple? I ask.
The man smiles.
“Sure. Met her five minutes ago, when I sat down here. You’re
invited to the wedding.”
Recipients and donors. Donors and recipients. Variations of this
couple's exchange are happening with a hothouse spontaneity up
and down the bar: people with equal but opposite afflictions,
propping each other up.
This is my beautifully stable impression of Night World culture
for maybe two more minutes; then something explodes near my head.
Blue medicine leaks in an Arctic smear down the cabinet door.
Whatever it is smells faintly of garlic. So much for romance. Near
the tent flaps, a fight has broken out: two gizzardy
LD-ers are haggling over their bar tab. It seems they
have goaded each other into consuming two thousand dollars’ worth
of some placebo-slush. They dispute the bill in hoarse screams:
“That was
your round
, Leonard!” Napkins wag from their
hands, covered in scrawl, two rival accounts of their debts to one
another —a bar tab that seems to
stretch back to the Big Bang.
Mr. Harkonnen returns with our drinks. To avoid the brawl, we
retreat farther into the tent, choose stools next to a dark oak
cabinet.
“Got us the cheap stuff,” he says.
“Okay. Thank you.”
Shooting Stars is the name of my medicinal cocktail.
I don’t ask what it does. Three sips in, my expectations go
colorless. Then I find myself leaning against Mr. Harkonnen’s left
shoulder. Mr. Harkonnen smells like nothing unexpected: generic
deodorant, Old Spice aftershave. These odors are like flung
harpoons —they sail out of the Night
World and back across the highway, wrenching whole continents of
normalcy into this dark tent: malls and supermarkets, non-lethal
sunsets, jarred tomatoes, orderly hedgerows, carpet cleaner, kitty
litter, everybody’s junk mail piling up on tables, geese flapping
across meridians on their winter-spring cycle . . . and soon I’m
having to close my eyes to fight a supreme dizziness, as many times
and seasons collide inside my chest. I take another long gulp of
the cocktail. This time, the effect is immediate. Heat radiates
outward until my skin feels ready to burst, until my skeleton is
both holding me upright on the barstool and also dissolving, inside
me, into melting vertebrae, a million memories unstoppered in my
brain, rising up my spine, flowing down, my body too small to
contain them, shrinking even as the dizzy light expands in all
directions, and no way to protect myself against the assault, this
onslaught of sound and light, and nowhere to release it, all the
aggregating echoes, Dori’s voice, our father’s, a thousand other
whisperers . . .
I blink twice, rub my eyes: incredibly, the Night World tent is
still here. I study my watch, relieved that I can read the numbers:
three minutes have elapsed since we sat down. Beside me, Mr.
Harkonnen is eating green pistachios out of an ashtray. He smiles
at me. His face looks placid, in the illegible and alien way that
stingrays’ bellies look placid as they smooth along glass
walls.
“That was an intense drink,” I say, frowning down at my lap.
“Still is.”
“Was it supposed to wake us up?”
“You bet.”
I rub my tingling ears.
“Are you, ah, feeling it?”
“I’m drinking a virgin medicinal cocktail, actually.”
“Oh. So . . .”
“Just gin.”
Mr. Harkonnen leans back against the side of the medicine
cabinet. His arms are flung gregariously behind his head. I blink
down at our shoes, my head still spinning.
“I thought we should have a private talk,” he says. “Away from
the house.”
I gaze up at him from behind my glass. Some disturbed dreamer
has scratched
Screams from the raven-lunged
in a vitreous
green ink onto the wooden bar. The tent’s droning moonlamps make it
feel as though we’re all boozing inside a tremendous bug
zapper.
“Things have become tense,” he adds. “Around the household.”
“You’re fighting
Similar Books
