The jazz band clicked their heels as the percussionist stroked his batons against the edge of his drums. Each band member wore the same pair of square black frames. He wished he had a pair so he too could stare into the crowd of swaying bodies without having to look at them, swaying bodies that seemed to be pushing through a doorway, if not to a better life, then to a better moment. He wanted to cross through them, to part a live curtain, and meet her, dying against the wall. But she was no longer there. She had dissolved into the party like a pill and he wouldn't feel her again for an hour.
So he went to the bar counter: candles and soft floor lights shimmered through clinking bottles of colored liquors, stemmed glasses, barreled glasses, melting ice. He asked for a sidecar and watched as the bartender poured one and a half ounces of brandy, three quarters of an ounce of Cointreau and half a lemon into a steel shaker. He shook it to death, just as the jazz band riled up in a fit of beats. The bartender placed a glass on the counter, wetted the rim with lemon juice and dipped the cusp into a saucer of sugar. He strained the drink into the glass, handed it to him with a nod, then took up a white towel to rub off his hands.
He took the glass, scanning for bare knees in the carpeted sea of curving legs. She was gone.
Upstairs, at the bathroom sink, she dipped her painted
fingers into the running faucet, threw back her head, and inhaled
water into her nose. Snapping open a cigarette from her silver case,
she bumped her way along the bedroom walls, padded by her fur
coat. She walked out onto the wooden balcony where the stars and
the lanterns mingled like intimate friends and the laughter of hash
lifted into the cold. Some guy in a black turtleneck offered her a
light. The nickel lighter caught the ivory porch lamp above her
head. She accepted and turned away, leaning all her weight onto the
ledge. Her eyes closed:
There is a side show carnival traveling through the countryside
in horse drawn carriages. She is ten-years old and she sneaks
away one night and braids her hair in the barn and puts on her
white stockings. She runs into the town to peak at the show from a
loose board behind the stage. There, she sees her for the first time,
a small contortionist, young like her, with black raven hair running
to the back of her knees. She wears diamonds on her costume and
floats upon the hands of men. The contortionist sails above them
like a long necked crane in the green spotlights of the theater. Her
lips are painted so deep a red they catch the footlights with a blood
glow.
She waits for the dancer in the shadows of the caravans.
She spots her from a distance, just as she leaves the lighted
doorframe. When the young contortionist walks, her feet turn out
and her toes point. She jumps out at grabs her by the shoulders and
stares into her eyes -- they have the same eyes. They do not scream;
neither utters a word. Each is looking into a mirror. She touches
the contortionist's raven hair. They smile. Then the contortionist
whispers to her and promises her that she will take her away from
this place. She will teach her. They will dance together over the
world and they will never be separated again,
He finished his sidecar and stashed the glass beside a plant in the
corner. He passed some shadowy pair where a tangle of blond
bobbed up and down against a lap. He stepped over two chatting
girls at the top of the stairs, apologizing when he stepped on one's
pashmina shawl. She scowled anyway; he shrugged. The hallway
was violet and filled with winter. The glass doors had been parted
and open to the cold and his face chilled the second he entered the
room. There, he recognized the back of her knees.
He crossed to her and leaned on the railing beside her elbow. She turned to him without enough time to form an opinion, then turned away. "The one from downstairs," she said.
"Want to get out of here?"
She paused. "This is my house."
"Want to get out of here?" he repeated. She rolled onto her side. Her coat fell off her shoulder, letting the green sequins of her gown rest on her breast. She stared a moment at his eyes, putting him off guard. She wanted to see if he was her mirror, if they were twins. They weren't. "Why not," she answered. "What were you going to do for the countdown?" she asked him.
"Look for you. Yourself?"
"Hide."
"Then why did you throw this party?"
"I love crowds. I just can't stand people. I don't know, I thought I'd want to celebrate with my friends in a familiar place."
"And?"
"Look around you. I know less than ten people here. Industry types, agents, star-fuckers. How'd you find out about it?"
He smiled crookedly. "My agent told me."
"So where are you taking me?"
"Nowhere."
"Good. Let's go."
They rushed precociously over the sheet of freeways, letting whispers and tequila direct the wheel. His name was Carter, hers was Astrid; but neither ever inquired. She would kiss him blind as he tried to watch the road. He liked her tongue in his mouth. She felt her fingers beneath his shirt and crawled them below his belt. She tickled his skin tightly, letting him shiver a while before she climbed over the gearshift and pulled her leg around his waist. When she clicked off his seat belt, it whipped him at his temple with a sting. "Sorry," she smiled.
He felt satin rub against his zipper. The massage of satin, as her legs moved closer to his belly, nearly made him pull over to the shoulder. "Keep driving," she whispered, letting the strap of her gown fall to her waist. His hands grabbed the wheel and he thrust down on the accelerator, hearing the wind whip around the steel of the car, imagining a crash, a mangle of steel and limbs and blood at the side of the road, imagining that the crash would feel just as good as the speed. She unzipped his jeans and slid her panties to one side and took one of his hands off the wheel and guided it between her legs.
Every now and again, she caught a blur of the skyline of the city, the vertical avenue of lights that filled the electric monoliths in the marine night. The city seemed to grow smaller in the rear view mirror. She nudged him. He looked around. They passed a white neon crucifix flickering on the side of a brick building. "Where are we?" she asked.
"I don't know." She climbed off him, slipping on her straps as they exited the off ramp. It soon became apparent that they were lost. Struggling to re-find the freeway, he steered down one long alley after another. Just like that, all seduction had emptied from the atmosphere and had been replaced with misgiving.
New Year's Eve left the industrial streets deserted. Newspapers clung to the gutters and swept along the building faces, skittering in the wind. Neither of them could find a clear street sign. The roads were dark. "Seems like the garment district," he said. "By the docks." Both could feel the same sense of urgency. Carter cut into an alley to back track again, it was dark. Crack! Something popped. The rear right of the car dropped. Air seeped out with a long painful hiss. The car wheels rolled over few times then came to a halt.
Carter got out to inspect the damage, flipping up the collar to his overcoat in the wind. He crossed to the passenger window. Astrid pressed the electronic button and rolled the window down a crack to listen to him tell her what she already knew. "We ran over a nail. I think I damaged the axle against this broken post in the road. This isn't a good part of town to break down in."
"I noticed," she quipped back.
Carter climbed back in his car and fetched his mobile from his coat pocket. "This is New Year's Eve, how am I gonna get someone out here now?" He fetched his Triple-A card from his money clip and dialed the red numbers on the back of the card. "Busy," he moaned.
"Try again," she reassured him. After nine attempts, the line picked up. Carter nodded along with the words from the other end. "That's a good sign," Astrid told herself.
"And how long will it take to get someone out here?" He halted; his face soured. "An hourÉat least...maybe two...come on! ...Okay, okay,I understand....a police escort? No, we'll be fineÉJust hurry." He hung up the cell and turned to her, putting his arm around Astrid's shoulders. His voice softened. "We'll have to wait."
When he moved in to touch her lips, the edging gloom of the area and the cold weighed on both their minds heavier than the pleasure of a warm body. She was the first to move away.
In the distance, at the foot of the alley, a storefront cast white light onto the dark pavement. A red haze from a neon sign circled above the door.
"Look, over there," she pointed, tapping the window glass. "There's a convenient store. It's open."
"Are you hungry?" he asked her.
"No, but maybe we could get something to drink. A bottle of cheap wine, something with a twist off cap. To take the edge off." She nuzzled her nose against the faint stubble on his neck. "We could turn on the heater, listen to music, and make the best of it."
Apprehensive about braving the alley, but imagining the
prospects, Carter agreed with her plan. "You wait
here." He stepped out of the vehicle, once again flipping his
collar to his ears. He stepped slowly down the wet concrete.
Traces of red light vibrated in misty hints on the sidewalk. She
watched him open the sullied door and go in, the white light
flickering around him. Once gone from view, Astrid fished in her
satin purse for the vial, unscrewed the cap and dug out powder
from the miniature spoon attached to the cap. She checked herself
in the passenger mirror, flashing her eyes. She shook her neck.
Then she closed her eyes:
Both girls have raven hair. Raven hair floats behind them in
their swing. She wears black silk swan wings. The tails drip off and
flutter with her black gown. Both girls wear rings on their toes.
Their swing hangs from the crown of the tent, the ropes twisted in
silver streamers. She lets her twin go with a rise in her heart and
watches the specter of her long black body flip in the air. Her wings
spread out in a bow. They reconnect their ankles as her swing arcs
low again. She can hear a gasp from the dusky crowd as she
flickers among the gold spotlights. Then a soar of cheers. She feels
the weight of her sister at her ankles and their hearts beat in
rhythm.
When Astrid opened her eyes again, he had not come out. His
multiple disk player seemed ostentatiously complicated. She
flipped through the radio stations but there was nothing good on
the radio. Most stations were recounting the most popular songs of
the year, Limp Biskit and such. She turned off the car engine and
opened the door to go after him.
The night clung to the alley like cat claws. She envisioned a flock of small bats taking wing from behind the dumpster and congregating around the moon. Astrid hurried to the convenient store.
The door had a slight kick when she opened it, as though stuck on a bad hinge. Inside, dismal metal stacks of old chips and strange food labeled in Spanish rowed up in meager aisles. Streaked glass in the wall of refrigerators housed milk and soda and microwavable burritos. No one was stationed behind the counter. Astrid scanned each aisle, pacing up and down the half empty shelves. Carter was not there.
She pushed open the entrance door again and scanned the alley. Not there either. She would have called out his name if she'd known it. Inside the mart, Astrid noticed strips of black rubber flaps corralling off a doorway to a back room. She peeked her head through the black flaps. A naked bulb dangled off loose wires in the splintered ceiling above the restroom door.
Making her way towards the light, she sidestepped crates of old stock. She noticed a trickle of dark spots that beaded towards the door marked "RESTROOM." Astrid froze. She bent slowly toward the stains, knowing before she dipped her finger into a pool and brought it to the light that the tint on her finger would be blood. She did not scream. Astrid wiped the blood onto a tissue in the pocket of her fur coat.
The trickles led to the closed door that she now stood in front of, the dangled bulb directly above her. She could turn around and leave; she could call the police; she could do a lot of things. She decided to open the door.
The knob was loose. When she tugged it, she found no bathroom sink, no toilet, no slashed throat in a dirty pool on the floor, only a set of wooden stairs leading to a basement. She could detect faint noises beneath her. Astrid ventured onto the steps and placed her stiletto on each board with the lightest possible touch. She tried not to breathe. The third step creaked. When Astrid turned, her coat rustled against the wall. "This is not a good idea," she told herself, ignoring her own advice.
She put her heels down on concrete. Crates and boxes stacked in mountains on all sides. With only a cursory inspection, she spotted digital cameras, flat bed scanners, an assortment of Gucci bags, what looked like a crate of watches. Other miscellaneous packages littered the floor.
She stuck to the back wall and made her way towards the voices. Tables were lined with a series of computers back to back. There must have been over thirty in all, tied into the Internet at various auction sights.
Two green and yellow lawn chairs were unfolded on the floor beside the computer bay. A floor lamp with a knotted cord was plugged into the wall at the right. A crate had been overturned to accommodate two beers and an ashtray. One body sat in each chair, both with their backs to Astrid. One wore a gray skullcap.
"So, have you heard this one?" The skullcap asked the other as they smoked. "Little Tim was in the garden filling in a hole when his neighbor looked over the fence, right? And he was interested in what the chubby-cheeked bugger was up to. So he asks the kid, 'What're you up to there, Tim?' Tim looks up at the guy, with big tears in his eyes, and answers, 'My goldfish died. I've just buried him.'
"So the neighbor looks real concerned and he scratches his head a bit. 'That's an awfully big hole for a goldfish, isn't it?' Tim pats down the last heap of earth and answers, 'That's because he's inside your fucking cat.'"
The other one grabbed his beer as he laughed. The laugh echoed off the cold cement walls. "He's inside the cat. trés bien." He spoke with a serpentine French accent.
Carter was to the left of the lawn chairs, his arms and legs tied, duct tape on his mouth. A small gash issued from his forehead and ran into his right eye. Carter spotted her in the shadows. He tried not to give her away with his eyes, but the skullcap glanced to Carter and flicked his head around his chair. "What you looking at?"
His partner followed suit and cocked his head around. Both surveyed the shadows just as Astrid scuttled behind a bin.
"Someone else with you?" the skullcap asked Carter.
"Of course there is," the other answered for him. "You don't think a guy like this, dressed up to the nines, would be wandering out here from boredom. So what happened, drink too much and lost track of the road?"
Carter did not budge. The skullcap hoisted himself up to investigate. Astrid could see his boots clip down on the concrete as he maneuvered to the shadows. She had to act quickly. Astrid grabbed for the first thing her hand could find. The weight felt significant in her grasp as she curled herself deeper behind the crate.
The skullcap moved low around the boxes. At the lounge, the partner scanned the shadows for movement. "See anything?" he asked.
"Nope." The skullcap motioned near the bin, then turned and squatted, pushing aside packing materials and loose papers with his hands. Astrid rose behind him. The shape of her body grew like a phantom over his back and up the wall. She lifted her weapon above her head and rammed it on his skullcap. The sound of glass shattering, warm liquid pouring all over her hands and onto the floor. The body slumped over and collapsed to the concrete.
The Frenchman sprung up. "Qu'est-ce que s'est passé?" he called out. No answer. Astrid darted behind the crate and watched while the other man stepped his way into the darkness. When he had been absorbed by the shadows, Astrid crawled to Carter. She ripped off the tape and he scooted himself around so that she could get to the knots at his hands.
"Hurry," he whispered to her.
"They're stuck!" Her nails tripped off the taut tangle of ropes.
"Click." The small hairs on her neck stood at point. Her hands froze. Slowly, she turns her head. A silencer was pointed at her.
"Move back from there," the voice directed with a flick of the gun.
Astrid shuffled her arms along the floor into the pool of lamplight. She squinted. "Listen, I don't know what's going on here, or what anyone wants, I just want to go home." Astrid continued to shove herself away from the gun until she slammed up against the brick.
"Then why would you crack a bottle, a very expensive bottle of wine, I might add, over my partner's head? Do you want to pay for that bottle? I can get four-hundred dollars for that off some mid-western connoisseur that wants a taste of the good life. You got four-hundred dollars on you?"
"No, I don't think so."
"But you must pay for that lost revenue. How do you suppose you should you do that?"
"Come on," Carter blurted out, "leave her alone."
The gun turned towards Carter. "We put tape on you for a good fucking reason, to shut you up."
The skullcap emerged from behind the crate, wine splashed over his shirt. He held his head. Astrid clambered against the packing materials and the cardboard cartons. He charged strait for her, a bull with his horns down, and smacked her on the side of her head. She crashed against a pile of aluminum rods.
"I know what we can do to her. Go fetch a digital camera, we'll paste her across the world. Ring in the New Year with some candid camera."
Carter struggled wildly in his ropes, rolling over on his side to free himself. "Leave her alone!" he barked, squirming on the concrete. The skullcap cocked his head and watched him a while. Then he turned to his partner. "Like a bug in a jar." He kicked Carter in the abdomen and watched him twitch to a halt. "When I want your opinion on something, I'll give it to you."
The Frenchman grinned widely, taking a drag from his cigarette from his free hand. Then the Frenchman went to the computer terminal and plugged in a computer cam that he had ripped open from its box. He bent over to the mouse pad and clicked on various windows. He paused, glancing at the computer screen to the right. "Someone in Germany wants all two hundred Panasonic laser printers. Says he'll pay none-hundred dollars a piece. But he wants confirmation of authenticity."
"Fuck him then," the skullcap snapped back as he strode towards Astrid. Her face was streaked with the red outline of his hand. "Might be a mole. The Iranians always want the tech stuff anyway. Keep the bidding open."
The Frenchman leaned back. "Someone this morning cleared the secured access, he had the correct pass word."
"Did you tell Doc?"
"We were doing a credit check at the other office. An Egyptian."
"What does he want?"
"Sniper rifles, underwater surveillance, motion detection, and some HK G3's with scope and bi-pod."
"What for?"
"Claims personal security."
"Do we have the motion detection yet?"
"Jacked a shipment from Seattle yesterday. A Dairy truck."
"What happened to the frozen foods?"
"Tailed at the border past San Diego. We had to change."
"We know the driver?
"Same family."
"The Internet is a beautiful thing." The sadism returned to the Skullcap's face as he reached down for Astrid and grabbed the meat on the inside of her legs, pulling them up on either side of him as his nails dug into her thigh. He pulled down the strap of her gown and watched her white skin writhe in the cheap light of the lamp. "Bring the camera," he ordered. He pitched her onto her side as she tried to claw herself away.
The Frenchman slipped up against her. He pulled her hair, enjoying the look of the skin around her temples as he yanked. Then he placed his grimy hand against her white neck, pressing his soiled thumb into her larynx so she couldn't scream, rubbing dirt into her skin, watching it flower in red blotches where he pressed her. The Skullcap tore back the front of her dress, and brought the camera to his eye.
While they busied themselves with Astrid, Carter managed to slip off his shoes and work the rope over his ankles. The skin across his anklebone burned with the rope while blood bloomed through the grooves of the scrapes. Carter folded his thumb across his palm and bit his lip to suppress the wince from spraining his hand as he maneuvered himself free. No one was paying attention to him.
Carefully, Carter skidded back to the large bin, feeling the dust on his hands. He could hear Astrid whimper. He dipped his hand into the bin and felt around. He scavenged in the dark for something, anything. His hand fastened around a crowbar beside a wood crate. Carter breathed deep, feeling the painful white rush into his lungs. He had no choice.
Carter rushed the men and randomly struck down on someone's back with the full force of the crowbar. The Frenchman dropped to the ground. The skullcap turned, his hands fastened to Astrid's arms. Carter raised the bar and tried to knock the man's arm. He swiped the air, struck nothing. The skullcap lunged forward, knocked Carter back against the computer tables. CRASH! With a spare inch, Astrid wriggled her torso out from beneath her captor. The delicate green foam of her dress ripped along her waist. She curled back her knee and elevated her heel like a dagger. Bam! The skullcap groaned in agony, the heel lodged into his side like the broken tip of an arrow. She twisted her foot to loosen her heel. A fine trickle of blood soaked his shirt.
Astrid clutched her torn gown and ran for Carter's extended hand. He closed his fingers onto hers and they ran back up the stairs, kicking through the boxes of the back room, through the rubber flaps, and out to the alleyway below the red light.
A shiny white Triple-A truck idled in the road. Carter ran for the front seat, opened the door, and shoved Astrid in before himself. The pudgy faced fellow at the wheel, no older than twenty-one, dropped his Snicker's bar and looked at them.
"Hey, hey, hey! You can't sit here."
"Just drive, Mister."
"This here ain't exactly a good part of town. I was about to leave, you know. Been circling twenty minutes. Saw the car you described, but no passengers. I've been having a little snack in the meantime. It looks real fishy to me."
"Drive!" Carter shouted, checking behind him at the alley.
The truck driver scratched his chin. "What about the car?"
"Leave it!" Carter assisted him by pressing his own foot on the gas and jolting the truck forward. The driver clapped his hands on the wheel and tried to minimize the skid of the tires over the wet road as the engine groaned into second gear. "All right," he shrugged and turned the car around.
As the truck U-turned, a murky figure crawled up through the stairs, holding his side, and shoved himself out the glass door. A streak of blood smeared onto the glass. The figure lifted an object in his hand. Astrid, gaining her wits, turned to watch the scene diminish from the truck's rear window. She flinched. A bang rung into the night.
"That what I think it was?" The driver asked.
"Keep going," Carter ordered. The driver wiped a trickle of sweat off his cheek.
Astrid held her breath when the truck hiked onto the freeway. "Ain't nothing quite like New Year's Eve, is there?" the driver commented.
"I should stop listening to my agent," Carter frowned.
Back at her house, remnants of the party were strewn about the sofas and the carpets: empty glasses, napkins, fizzling lights. A couple of casualties were splashing in the pool. Astrid flung herself onto an empty couch. Carter slid beside her and checked the bruise on her forehead. "If they want to, they can trace the car back to you," she said exhausted.
"But they can't trace it back here. Besides, It's not my car. I borrowed it from my agent."
She managed a grin. "You didn't leave your invitation in the car?"
"Gave it at the door."
"And if you suddenly disappear?"
"Don't worry, I'll make sure they take you with me."
She closed her eyes, trying to grin through the acute pain. "I wonder how we deal with this."
"I don't know. I've never been in a hostage situation before."
"Had you ever been to one of my parties before?"
"No. But I'd heard of them."
"They're rather infamous, aren't they?"
"Yeah. I guess."
"Do you wanna know why I throw these things?"
"Why?"
"I have a sister. Twin sister. With black hair. My mother gave both of us up. We went to different families. Her name's Catherine Baker."
"What does that have to do with your parties?"
"I send invitations every time, to every Catherine Baker in the city. But she never comes."
"How can you be sure she even gets them?"
"I tracked down the social worker who handled our case. She told me Catherine teaches in a preschool. That's all she knew. I've sent invitations to every preschool I can find. Every Catherine, every Baker, in case she's married or changed her name."
Astrid picks up a toppled champagne flute off the carpet, sented with smoke and stained with a smile of lipstick. She lets the glass drop again. "The more I think about I, why would she want to come to one of my parties? I don't even want to come to my parties."
"Get some sleep," he said, rubbing out the fine lines on her forehead.
She closed her eyes.
The faces blur in a wave of clapping hands amid crowds of
eyes; black forms rise from their seats like a roar at the ocean
floor. She smiles so wide that her cheeks are sore. Her twin, more
at ease with the adulation, seems at peace, the calm in the storm.
Her twin takes her hand with a soft squeeze, a squeeze that tells her
everything will be fine. They step together from the line of
performers whose heavy makeup drips in the hot stage lights. She
feels her feet on the cold planks of the wooden stage. Her twin,
breathing beside her, bows with a gracious swing of her waist,
letting her raven hair sweep the stage. The sound from motley
voices builds into a squall that rages only at the shoreline of the
ocean, splitting the waves over the cliffs. They bow again, their
black outlines, in a halo of golden light from the wings of the stage,
freeze forever in the soft glow above them.
© 2002 Carolyn Anderson Miller, all rights reserved
appears here by permission
Image Blood Glow Landing created by and © K.L.Storer, all rights reserved
appears here by permission
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