This is the part where you lie

Once upon a time, if you were looking for me, odds are I was either at school, at The Corn Cob Couch, or on my way to Sour Candy, a head shop and music store, among other things, with everything you always wanted but knew you’d never use crammed into about a thousand square feet. They had an amazing collection of art books that I loved, all deviant and transgressive stuff. Kell liked the scented candles in glassware printed with “The Saints of Rock” — Jimi Hendrix and Kurt Cobain done up like they were Catholic saints with robes and raised palms and serene faces. There were wind-up toys, ball gags, flavored condoms, plastic models from Japan, posters, bongs and hookahs, vintage ash trays, boxed magic tricks, and a wall of used cassettes and LPs. But I’m not sure how much money they made from all of that. I knew it as the safest place on Long Island to get rave drugs. It was where I got my first hit of 2C-B, back when I had student loan money and plenty of time for that kind of thing.

Actually, it’s not the doing of the drugs so much as the hours of headache and nausea the next day. I have limited time off and better things to do — like sleeping, or art — than lie moaning on the bathroom floor swearing to myself that I’ll never do it again.

But it’s not like I made a decision to stop. It just kind of happened. That’s how it works, I guess. When you’re in school, of course, life changes are scheduled for you well in advance. This is when the school year ends. This is when you’re braces come off. This is when your cousin is getting married. This is when you graduate. You get older and they take off the training wheels and no one tells you when things are going to change. They just do, completely on their own, and you hardly have any say in it, and even when you do, you don’t even realize until it’s too late.

I looked up at the hand-painted plywood sign over the door. Sour Candy hadn’t changed. I wasn’t if that was good or bad. I pushed through the front door, which jingled weakly, like even the bells were stoned.

“Well, shit. Lookit dis.”

I walked around a rack of colorful luchadore masks and saw Abel Rawley lean forward in his chair behind the counter. It squeaked loudly. The man had to weigh 250 pounds at least. He was Haitian by birth and had a bald head and a black beard that ambled unevenly across a heavy face.

“Foley!” he called to someone in the back. “Get your mick ass out here and check this out.”

Abel was known as Kingfish around town, or just Fish if you knew him. He had a fat, pinkish scar one millimeter over his right eye which he hid with dark sunglasses, even at night. If you ever saw the scar, you knew you were in trouble. He was sitting behind the counter in a brass-studded, high-backed maroon leather office chair, like something you would’ve seen at a bank in 1975. One of the wheels was busted, so it wobbled oddly as it rocked. The leather was torn at the corners and worn and cracked on the arms.

A tall, skinny white guy with bad teeth and slicked-back hair stepped through the curtain of beads.

“What’s that?”

He was in a white T-shirt. His eyes were totally bloodshot.

“This is Spence, man, the chick I was telling you about. The one with the sick tatt.” Fish turned to me. “Mick here thinks this weak shit on his arms is gonna get his scrawny ass laid.”

Mick showed me his arms. He was in the process of getting sleeves done. The usual motifs — snakes and flowers and skulls and shit.

“It’s nice,” I said noncommittally.

“Thanks,” Mick said.

Fish slapped his hands together and laughed like I’d just told the best joke he’d heard that year. “She don’t mean it, you fool.” Fish motioned to my side. “Show him.”

“Come on, Fish,” I whined.

He made mocking noises. “Woman, I ain’t ask you to show him your snatch.”

I sighed. Kingfish wasn’t the type of man you said no to. Especially if you were about to ask him for a favor. I lifted my T-shirt on my right side and showed them my tattoo. Most of it anyway. It ran from my upper thigh to the back of my shoulder in one fluid piece.

A piece of hard candy fell out of Mick’s mouth and stuck to the counter.

“See?” Fish said. “That’s what I’m sayin’. Now that’s a masterpiece. Not your dumbass — ”

“Can we talk?” I asked, shirt raised.

“Hold on, I gotta get a picture.” He started for the back, as if he’d left his phone there despite that I could clearly see it on the counter. “Pull them jeans down a bit so he can see the rest.”

“Fish!” I objected.

“What is it?” Mick asked, leaning closer. “Like a peacock or something?”

“Naw!” Fish seemed more offended than I was. “Ya dumb mick. It’s a phoenix.”

“Phoenix?” He got even closer. “Where’s the fire?”

“Actually, it’s a fenghuang,” I explained. “A Chinese phoenix. Lots of feathers. No fire.”

“Tell him about the ink,” Fish said as he pushed through the chains of beads dangling in the doorway. He walked with a pronounced limp.

“What about the ink?” Mick asked.

“It’s nothing. He’s making a big deal of it.”

“Does it like glow in the dark or something?”

“Umm. No?”

I started to pull my shirt down, but then I remembered Fish wanted a picture, so I stood there awkwardly, half-disrobed, as Mick leaned over the bar to get a closer look at my side.

“It’s just, they mix it themselves,” I explained. “In the shop. It’s like a really old recipe.”

“I didn’t know inks had recipes.”

I could feel the air from his breath on my skin.

“In the East, it usually comes in a powder that you mix with water in a bowl to do calligraphy and stuff.”

There was a loud noise in the back.

“You’re from the east side?” he asked, standing straight again. “You look more Asian to me.”

I was starting to think Mick was tripping balls. I was also pretty sure Mick wasn’t his real name.

“Used on pirates and shit,” Fish said as he emerged from the back, as if we were still stuck on his last comment. “Goes back like five hundred years ago, man. I’m telling you, this thing is legit. I mean, look at that. It’s like it could come to life or some shit.”

He held up a Polaroid that I would’ve bet all ten grand he took off a hipster on the street. As in stole.

“I been telling everyone about that thang. Now I can show,” he said with a satisfied sigh. He was breathing like he’d just run up three flights of stairs.

“Seriously?” I said. “You’re gonna put it on the wall?”

Behind the counter to my left, near the hall to the bathroom that said “For Employees Only,” the wall was full of photos, handwritten notes, stickers, magazine cutouts, ticket stubs, and one very important yellowed condom that the original owner insisted had been inside Sophia Lauren “when she was hot,” or so the handwritten note informed us.

There was a click and a snap and whine as the paper ejected.

“What you worried about?” His voice went up two octaves. “That’s the greatest fucking tattoo in the city, woman.” He shook the print. “Alright. Come on back, Spence. Let’s get you straightened out.”

That’s what Fish said when he was going to sell you drugs.

“I’m not here for that,” I objected.

I followed him through the beads and down the short hall to the office. The walls were stained and scuffed. Someone had punched through the dry wall in one spot. The flattened red-pattern carpet looked like it hadn’t been vacuumed in an ice age, and there was all kinds of random crap stacked at the sides and corners, leaving only a single narrow walkway. The musty smell of rot was strong enough even to overpower the mix of hash smoke and incense.

He plopped into a different office chair, equally old, which groaned under his weight. The back of the room was stacked nearly to the ceiling with all kinds of odds and ends. It would’ve taken months to sort though it all.

“I need to talk to him.”

“Who dat?” he joked.

He reached for a bottle and poured himself a glass. I’m pretty sure it was straight rum. I could smell it from where I was standing.

I made a face. “You know who.”

“So talk. Man ain’t no slave.”

“Come on, Fish. You know what I mean. I need to know where he’s flopping.”

“See, now that’s different. Man goes lookin’ for trouble, it ain’t for me to say. But you asking me to ship it.”

The photo was slowly developing. I reached over and picked it up to look.

“You think I’m trouble?”

You could totally see my sideboob. I tossed it back.

“Took my boy Ringo six months to get straight. You ain’t seen what he went through.”

“I can guess.”

“Look at this.” He reached to a box on the floor, one of several, and removed a small glass vial, colored midnight blue. He handed it to me.

“What is it?”

“The man’s latest. Potions. Good for what ails you, know what I’m saying?”

“Potions?” I ran my fingers over the vial. “Jesus. Microbrews and beard oil weren’t enough? What’s next? Carrier pigeons and whale oil lamps?”

He laughed. “Try it. Might set you right. How long since you got high?”

“No comment.”

“You tighter than a church lady’s ass, Spence.”

“No, thanks.” I set the vial down. “I just wanna talk.”

“About what?”

“Cut me some slack, man. I just got half naked in front of a total stranger.”

I lifted the photo as if it were Exhibit A.

“It was very nice to meet you,” Mick called from the front.

I think he put same wet candy back in his mouth. That’s how Fish sold a lot of his drugs — mixed in the candy just before it went into the cooling pan, then smashed with a hammer and sold by weight. Kids could take it to raves without their parents suspecting.

“I’m not asking you to set anything up,” I said. “I just wanna know where he’s staying.”

Fish sighed. “Upstairs.”

“What?” I scowled. “Like, here?”

He nodded.

“He’s living at the Sour Candy?”

“Got a mattress in the storage room. Third floor. Top of the stairs. Can’t miss it. Whole top floor smells like leather and honey.”

Yeah, I thought. That’s what he smells like.

“Thanks, Fish.” I headed for the side hallway.

“Spence!” he called. “Don’t give me regrets.” He said it like regrets were the clap.

The rest of the narrow building looked — and smelled — pretty much like the shop. I walked to the very top of the stairs, which had the same flattened and worn carpet as the hall. There were two doors on either side of a short hall that ended at a window. The left door was open. I saw another window at the back, in between more stacks of boxes and quite a few plastic-wrapped hookahs. There was a mattress on the floor, stacked high with blankets, next to a hot plate whose cord snaked to the wall. The second room was much smaller, judging by the location of the far wall, but the door was shut.

Staying with a friend, she said.

A “friend.”

Okay, so, technically, I met him first. Not that it matters, I guess. It was at The Corn Cob Couch, this underground venue out in Flushing. He was in a vintage formal dinner jacket over a colorful 70s cartoon T-shirt almost identical to the one I was wearing. We passed in the crowd and approved of each other’s choice of garment with a silent nod. He got up on stage and introduced one of the bands. I made sure I stayed in sight and he found me after and invited me to a party. I took my best friend. It’s not like I was gonna go alone.

In hindsight, I think it was also a test. I mean, I could’ve asked someone else. But if he was gonna be around, which I’d hoped, then he’d meet her sooner or later, and I’d learned it was better to just get it out of the way — before I got my hopes up.

“Here’s my super-gorgeous friend. Are you sure you’re still interested in me?”

As it happened, it wasn’t him I needed to worry about. Kell’s whole demeanor changed when she saw him. She walked right up and started flirting. She asked later if it was okay — like a million times. I’m pretty sure they hooked up that night. They went out again and she came home in a rapture. She had their whole future planned: wedding at the drive-in with a slasher flick playing in the background, honeymoon in some Mexican border town sharing hookers and doing every kind of drug known to man, home to a loft with a view of the river, maybe a kid or two down the line. Adopted, of course. She’d talk to me for hours about everything that happened on their dates, usually longer than the date itself. It was unnatural — the worst kind of fatal obsession — and when the inevitable happened, she cratered.

That was right around when Rey died. I went over to her place and found her strung out on God-knew-what. Nearly catatonic. She’d hung all her stuffed animals. She had a collection of fuzzy monsters with neon fur, and she’d strung them from the ceiling with tiny nooses wound out of toilet paper. So I made her puke in the toilet and stayed with her a few days to get her straight. I took her out. We went shopping for dinner dresses and crashed this big gala at The Met, just for shits and giggles. Lyman was there. He didn’t need much encouragement. Kell was a knockout in that dress, boobs saluting like sailors. She swore the whole thing with him wasn’t serious, that she wasn’t even sleeping with him, that she had her own room and he was gone most of the time and she had full use of the mansion, so why not? It was just to get her mind off the rest of it, she said.

Thing is, I believed her.

Now she was pregnant.

I peered into sleeping area. I saw a lidless cardboard box full of leaning LPs. I stepped to them as a toilet flushed on the other side of the door across the hall.

“Love Like Blood,” he said, standing right behind me, looking at the record in my hand.

I smiled without turning. He knew that was my favorite track on the album. The Killing Joke. 1985. It was a first press and unopened.

I replaced it. “Why do you have these when you don’t even have a record player?”

“You don’t collect something like that to play it. Except once in a blue moon maybe.”

“Says who?”

I turned to glance at him. He was in sweatpants. Other than that, he was barefoot and shirtless. I could see the tattoo of the church that covered his abdomen. Kell always said it had a Russian prison vibe. I think she was right. The spire rose between his pects, which sported a sun on one side and a crescent moon on the other. His shoulders and forearms were spotted with various objects and icons: a leaping dolphin, a dripping flask, an eye, a tree, a five-pointed star, a snake in flames, and so on.

“The needle wears down the grooves, slowly but surely.”

He lifted another album from the set. Neil Diamond. Touching You, Touching Me.

“Nice,” I said with a laugh.

I looked at his hands. All ten of his fingers sported a different ring. I saw a turquoise band and a silver skull and yellow plastic with a green gem. I’m sure he got that one out of a cereal box or something.

“Each play is a tiny act of destruction,” he said. “That’s why people like vinyl.”

“I thought it was the superior sound quality.”

“Whatever, man.” He scowled and gripped the record. “This is a living thing. It gets born, grows old, and dies.”

Kai and I hardly shared a single musical interests, but Bastien and I liked all the same old bands. We used to have competitions, usually while he was waiting for Kell to get ready, where we’d try to stump each other with lyrics. I usually won.

He usually let me.

He put the vinyl back carefully. He smiled at down at me, genuinely. “It’s good to see you, Cerise.” His voice was soft and warm.

God, he was so gorgeous.

Okay, let’s be honest. Women are at least as hung up on appearance as guys. And he had it. All of it. The stylishly messy hair that hung in front of his smoky eyes. The chiseled jaw. The lean abs with the line of thin hairs in between that led your eyes straight down. He was tall but not so tall I’d need a stepladder to kiss him, stylish but not obsessed with it, confident without being completely and utterly cocky. He was the guy every girl in the room wished would notice her, if not for a night of carnal desire then at least for the selfish pleasure of shooting him down.

“This is the part where you ask how I’ve been,” he said within inches of my face. “And I lie and ask you the same thing. And you lie and we both pretend not to know the other is lying.”

He was sporting the faintest beginnings of a Tony Stark ’stouche. I wasn’t sure about that. He was also close enough that I could tell there was nothing under his sweatpants but his naked body.

I stepped away. “So be a rebel. Tell the truth.”

“I’m great. And you? Let’s see.”

He smiled and picked up the tarot deck that rested on a stack of old magazines. He plopped down on the seat cushion on the floor, next to the hot plate, and jerked his head to move his hair out of his eyes.

I saw a brass oil lamp on the floor in the corner. I though it was a hookah at first because it had a similar shape, with a long fluted neck, but up close I could see the reservoir and the wick poking from the lip at the top. It looked like a giraffe sticking out its tongue. I put my hand on it so I could tilt it and see the crisscrossed carvings, but Bastien raised a hand.

“Ehh. Better not touch that.”

But it was too late. I already had my hand on it. I pulled it away and I rolled my eyes where he couldn’t see.

“Oil lamps and carrier pigeons . . .” I muttered.

He cut the deck in two, and with one deft move, he spread the entire deck out on the floor. He motioned to it.

“Pick a card.”

I crouched and looked.

“Nononono.”

He swiped the cards up and started shuffling again.

“What?”

“That’s not how you do it.”

“What do you mean?”

“You don’t use your head. Close your eyes.”

I did, and I heard him spread the cards on the floor again.

“Now, relax. And when you open your eyes, listen to the little voice. It’ll take you right to a card.”

“Oka — ”

“Wait.” He put his ringed fingers to my eyes. “I’m serious. Don’t think about it. Just go right for the first one.”

“I got it,” I objected with a smile.

He took his hand away. I took a breath. I opened my eyes and went right for the first card I noticed.

“Okay?” I asked him, my hand resting on it.

He nodded and I turned it and set it down.

“The Seven of Pentacles,” he said. “Reversed.”

“Am I supposed to know what that means?”

He held it up to explain it to me. “A man with a hoe is admiring the harvest he’s just reaped. He’s tired, but months of hard work have paid off. If the card was drawn upright, it would mean success through perseverance and long-term planning. But reversed . . .” He made “tsk-tsk” noises and put the card back.

“Whatever. That card would apply to, like, 99% of the population.”

“Very Occupy of you.”

He studied me while his ring-covered fingers deftly maneuvered the tarot deck like a stage magician. That’s why Fish called him Ringo. Because of the rings. Fish had a name for everyone. Kell was Vicky. I was Spence. We got them at the same time. Fish said Kell was all Victoria’s Secret — you know, the classic voluptuous look — whereas he said I looked like I bought my clothes at the corporate novelty shop in the mall. It was not a compliment.

“Hang out at the Couch much these days?” he asked as he shuffled the deck with his ringed fingers.

“The Couch? Dude. They totally shut it down. Last year. They’re turning it into condos or a theme park or something. It’s really sad. I cried.”

“Cried?” He snorted derisively.

“Hey! It’s like the death nail of my youth. We spent so much time there. As long as it was running — I dunno. It was like I could go back, you know? After it closed . . . that’s it. Youth over. Exit here for adulthood.”

The Couch was really an abandoned factory. There was a huge fence lined lot out back that was crisscrossed in weeds. Facing it was a high loading dock which served as a wonderful stage. There was even large overhang to keep off the rain. It was perfect. Some guys starting hanging out there to smoke weed, not least because there was no way the cops could sneak up on the place, and no way they could stop anyone from running even if they did. It was just too big. Someone had left a ratty old brown couch in the lot, which was the only furniture, so that became their meeting spot. One day, someone brought a corncob pipe in lieu of a bong, as a kind of joke, and the name stuck. By the time I’d heard about it, there was a big eclectic mix of old furniture people had brought, including a wood student’s desk from some old grade school.

I studied him. “How did you not know it shut down?”

He shrugged. “Been busy. That’s too bad. That place was great.”

“Best. Venue. Ever.”

“Eh . . .” He made a face. “I could take you someplace.”

“Oh? Is that what you’ve been up?”

I can’t tell you how he did it, but he drew a card from the middle of the deck with one hand. He had cut it and he had half propped between the fingers of his right hand and he twisted them around the deck such that his thumb pushed a single random card free, which he snatched with his left.

The Seven of Wands, upright. A man on a ridge held up a staff with two hands as six others jabbed up at him from below. He braced himself, legs wide, and there was a look of anger on his face, as if he were defending his high position from many enemies. Interestingly, his shoes didn’t match.

“Both sevens,” I said.

“That significant?” he asked coyly.

I looked up from the card and met his eyes — all smoky and gorgeous.

“I dunno. Seemed like a funny coincidence, I guess.”

“They always are, aren’t they?” He took the card back and began shuffling the deck again in that fancy one-handed way, giving me that look. “It’s good to see you, Cerise.”

“You said that already.”

Things were quiet for a moment. I looked down and noticed a short stack of books in the corner. Not just books but old books. Hardbound. I walked over to them and lifted the first. It had a velvet cover with blunted edges and nothing on it except the title.

“Ogrosticon Orduum?” I asked.

He just watched me, smirking.

I picked up the next one, which was blue.

“The Long Vacant Cupboard?”

He nodded to the stack as he leaned to lay sideways on the floor. It stretched his abs.

“Go on,” he urged. “There’s also Smales’s Compendium of Lesser Travesties. And The Key of Solomon. And volume six of ‘The Reign’ of Massius Crane. The one on the start of the war.”

I bent to pick up the third book to get at the fourth, which I could tell had an ornate cover, but the Ogrosticon fell from my arms and hit the floor. That’s when she woke — the sleeping girl under the covers. She pulled the blanket off her and squinted in confusion.

“Bastien?”

She had a British accent and dark African skin with a single black star tattoo on her chest, right between her perfectly symmetrical C cups, the ones with playfully perky nipples. Her head was shaved and she wore absolutely nothing but a dog collar around her neck.

“Who’re you?” the girl asked. She wasn’t upset. She was just curious.

I gave him a look, replaced the books, and stepped toward the door. I stopped when I saw the sketch on the wall. It was one of mine. He’d hung it. It was the only thing he’d hung, in fact — a fuzzy pencil sketch I’d done of him and Leindre-with-the-big-hair. The funny thing was I remembered crumpling it and throwing it in the trash. And yet here it was, hanging from an exposed stud without a crease.

“Cerise.” Bastien hopped up and trotted over to block the door. “Come on. That’s just Irfan,” he whispered. “She’s just a friend. I promise. You’d like her. You have a lot in common. You both hate me.”

He looked down at me for another second, pleading. I could smell leather and honey.

“I don’t hate you.”

“You hungry?” he whispered. “We could grab something.”

I laughed once and pushed past his shirtless, tattooed chest.

“If you see her, tell her that her douche billionaire play toy offered me a million dollars to bring her pregnant ass in. I’m pretty sure he thinks she’s gonna do a Johnny Rotten on his kid and is trying to head her off at the pass.”

“Pregnant?” he asked, surprised.

“I’ll cover for her as long as I can.” I walked down the stairs. “But I figure she’s got maybe a day before he sicks the dogs on her for realsies. If he hasn’t already.”

“Wait. Are you serious?”

I kept walking down. “About which part?”

“Cerise!” he called.

But I left.

 

I’m posting the chapters of my forthcoming urban paranormal mystery in order until the book is released in early 2018. You can start here: I saw my first dead body the summer we moved to Atlanta.

Sign up here to be notified when the book is released.

The next chapter is: (not yet posted)

cover image by Raul Urias

[image error]