He gets into a taxi outside the Sunny Two-way Diner. The driver asks, “Where to?” He shrugs, checks his ID, today he’s Frank Jebson, lives in the suburbs. Same as yesterday, but somehow it feels worse at the moment. He tells the address, and feels his stomach churn. Tommy promised a smooth trip. Doesn’t feel like it so far, but Tommy’s always been a good guy. Sure, he’s been known to sell rat poison to cokeheads for a laugh; however, Frank and Tommy go too far back for fatal pranks.
The driver says, “That’s not a real place.”
“Sure it is. Just drive.”
“I’m not driving you somewhere isn’t real.” The cab pulls over to the curb. The driver glares from the rearview, “Get out.”
Frank considers the gun in his pocket. Fingers tickling the handle make Frank think the pistol is turning into a snake, a sense of scales on his fingertips. Maybe Tommy told the truth after all. His faith restored Frank whips out a handful of twenties.
“I’ll pay double the fair whatever it comes out, wherever you drop me.”
The cabbie shakes his head, “Fine. It’s yo dime.”
“Yes it is.”
Into the inner city wormhole flashing the street lights blur into lines turning thirty miles an hour into lightspeed. Pedestrians smear into a Pollack painting decorating the outside of the wormhole. Frank glances at his watch. Time is slowing down just like Einstein predicted. Maybe he won’t be late after all.
Alice said the party starts at nine. It’s ten to. Trips home from the city usually take 35 minutes sizzling down Lake Shore Drive. The cab swerves to hit an Uber in the quarter panel, thumping the competitor into a spin. Six car pileup in the rearview sends the cabbie into a sinister chuckle.
“Mind if I smoke?” he asks.
Frank replies, “Only if I can too.”
“Knock yourself out. No weed though. The smell wards off some, ya feel me?”
“Yeah.” Frank sparks a stick to life. Tracers spill off the glowing end as Frank writes in the air. Meaningless squiggles evolve into scribbles then words. He pens a new version of W, but can’t see it catching on, so he waves the image away.
Glancing out the window turns into staring. Chop on the lake is making the black glass seem covered in shifting cracks. Alice told him to bring home some party favors. So Frank stopped off at the Chinese restaurant Tommy practically lives in. The two sucked down wanton soup, while chatting around the topic.
Tommy with his usual juvenile bluntness, “Y’all need some booger sugar? What’s up?”
Frank eye rolling sly, “Alice likes to see the sunrise.”
They exchange cash a bit more deftly. Frank slips the pay into the black folder holding the check, so when Tommy feigns calculating his share of the bill he can surreptitiously remove the money. Then Tommy nods to the waiter who fills a to-go container with the stash. Enough coke to kill a rockstar, but Alice is always generous. She doesn’t like to leave her friends out.
On the way to the door Frank pocketed the snow, and tossed the container. That’s when Tommy caught him out front:
“Hey man, I know how you like to get slippery eyes, so here’s for the party.” He hands over a foil wrapped sugar lump the size of a kid’s thumb. The claim is it’s dipped in a new high octane acid burning the lids off eyes – motherfuckers staring into ten dimensions. Frank never could resist liquid sensory delusions.
Back in the cab Frank realizes he’s been watching the flashback replay as if in real time. The cabbie left LSD a long time back, and now the trip is smack in the middle of suburbia. Frank shakes his head, chuckling delight. The view is full of neon cowboys stop motion flickering waving hello. Frank shifts to solidify his skin before the meat melts into a puddle on the floor. The cabbie turns up the radio. Notes spill out of the speakers, some shivering to the bass beat.
“A friendly touch and I erupt.
The desire abrupt
To eat out every night
At that delicious sight.
Drown me in musty meat
Smothered en route to complete.
Tongue in the barrel.
Lust gone feral.
Lick an alphabet;
You can bet
I plunge in
For the win
When the river runs wild.
Shit, this heat isn’t mild.
Face melting
I’m fucking smelting
A golden memory…”
An Asian girl from Hawaii echoing the last line. Her voice is some kind of mercury honey hybrid, flowing sweet into the ear and sure to incite lusty madness. Frank checks his phone. Three text messages from Alice. She wants an eta. He texts her back:
“I’ll be there when I show up.”
Up in the sky he glimpses winged beings darting behind the clouds. Some carry spears. Others wield bolts of lightning. Rain drops start pattering on the windshield. Seeing some blood mixed in, Frank wonders what’s going on in the sky.
The driver remarks, “Bad weather tonight.”
“That’s what I heard,” Frank lies. He heard nothing about the forecast. Yet, he doesn’t want to seem ignorant of trivialities.
Finishing another cigarette, unsure when he finished the first, Frank flicks it out the window. He sees the smoldering butt freeze in the air. He wonders who will pluck and toss it in the gutter.
The taxi hits a hard bump in the road. Glancing back Frank spies a cupid dead in the road. He frowns. It’ll take more than that to lose all hope, but his confidence fractured Frank feels tonight isn’t the night to find fresh feelings; tie new heartstrings. Maybe next time.
“Holy shit,” the cabbie says, “The street’s real.”
“Course it is,” Frank smiles. The cab parks. Frank pays. He exits. The rain is just starting to come down yet he walks casually towards the front door. The sounds of the party cause the air to tremor like heat waves. Chinese lanterns on the porch shake wildly in the rising wind. There’s a dragon nearby, Frank is sure, but doesn’t feel a need to worry. He slips between the raindrops, now like static in the air, and knocks on the door.
Alice flings it open, “It’s about time.”
“It’s been five minutes.”
“You’re an hour late.”
Frank smacks himself in the forehead, “Time only slowed for me.”
“Are you high?” She cocks a grin, “Started without me?”
The glimmer of her eyes causes a rockhard erection. Thank Nyx for the cover of night. Alice waves for him to hurry inside. Frank makes his way through a gauntlet of familiar ghouls. Every friendly greeting belied by eyes scanning for powdered treats, he grins back unaware he’s flashing a Joker grin.
In the dining room a table is laid out with an assortment of booze. Frank plops the large bag of cocaine in the middle. Smacking lips can be heard. He steps aside to avoid the stampede, and heads for the kitchen. He’s seen the show before, so has no desire to watch a rerun: the dope fiends’ strained politeness as they tensely await the chance to powder their noses.
In the kitchen he pauses to light a cigarette on the stovetop. He snaps off the light to watch the small blue burning halo. It reminds him of someone; burns up five minutes inspiring poetry:
“Now that the sunset of hope for my life
Has sand and colourless come,
Towards my dim dwelling, dismantled and chill,
Let us turn step by step:
For the white light of the day
With its gladness does not embitter me more.”
“You know Rosalia de Castro?”
Frank turns, “Hm?”
The lights return. Frank turns to find an angel in the doorway. She brushes a strand of blue hair out of her eyes, “You were reciting one of her poems. I think.”
“I didn’t even know I was talking.”
“Then I want whatever you’re on.” She goes to the fridge, and pulls out a bottle of beer. She pops it open using a lighter, “I’m Wendy.”
“Frank. I brought the cocaine,” pronouncing it co-key-ain.
“You don’t sound proud of that.”
“Bringing good pizza is harder. Coke is coke. No matter how shitty if it gets you high – job well done.”
Wendy slides in, “Yeah, yeah, I follow. But like with pizza you gotta figure on toppings, and thickness, and quality – everyone has their own idea of what’s good. Bringing pizza that pleases the whole room, that’s a rare accomplishment.”
“Have we met before?” Frank asks, seems like he should remember a woman radiating cobalt.
Wendy says, “Nope. I just moved here.”
“From?”
And so it goes. Predictable back and forth exchange of back stories. The beauty of strangers is that the old stories play like new. Hours vanish. The party winds down. The other partiers steadily turn from bright eyed revelers into greasy gargoyles, blood red cracks in their gazers. Unable to drift far from the tiny island of cocaine, however, they leave those in the kitchen alone. And whenever the celebration does spill over Wendy and Frank simply exit to the patio, huddled under the small awning out back to smoke and enjoy the rain. It’s the start of a romance Frank will remember the rest of his life – the one night that changed everything for...
A nudge.
Frank shudders.
Alice smirking, “Welcome back buddy.”
She turns out the burning halo. He glances around. She rummages in the fridge for a chocolate cheesecake.
Frank bewildered, “Where’s Wendy?”
Alice sighs, “Oh no sugar, not again. That was like two years ago. Remember?”
Frowning, “Yeah.”
“Whatever Tommy gave you must be amazing.”
Frank tucks his hands in his pockets. He feels the snake coil around his hand, twisting into the shape of a gun. His thumb rubs the warm scaly grip. It could sink fangs in his brain.
He says, “Yeah. I think he called it… something. I dunno.”
Alice dons her most motherly expression. She pats him on the shoulder. He sees himself smile. A silhouette out on the porch out the corner of his eye Frank ignores. He doesn’t want to be lured by another Siren hallucination. The past is calling him back, but he can’t live there anymore.
A chubby cupid covered in bruises, skin red from road rash, saunters by the kitchen door. He nods at Frank, implying no hard feelings.
“It was the cabbie’s fault,” Frank tells him.
“How so?” Alice asks.
Frank shakes his head, “No, I was talking to that guy.” Before Alice can ask who he means Frank says, “Let’s get back to the party. I feel like being around people.”
“That’s a change,” Alice says.
“For the better, I hope.”
The driver says, “That’s not a real place.”
“Sure it is. Just drive.”
“I’m not driving you somewhere isn’t real.” The cab pulls over to the curb. The driver glares from the rearview, “Get out.”
Frank considers the gun in his pocket. Fingers tickling the handle make Frank think the pistol is turning into a snake, a sense of scales on his fingertips. Maybe Tommy told the truth after all. His faith restored Frank whips out a handful of twenties.
“I’ll pay double the fair whatever it comes out, wherever you drop me.”
The cabbie shakes his head, “Fine. It’s yo dime.”
“Yes it is.”
Into the inner city wormhole flashing the street lights blur into lines turning thirty miles an hour into lightspeed. Pedestrians smear into a Pollack painting decorating the outside of the wormhole. Frank glances at his watch. Time is slowing down just like Einstein predicted. Maybe he won’t be late after all.
Alice said the party starts at nine. It’s ten to. Trips home from the city usually take 35 minutes sizzling down Lake Shore Drive. The cab swerves to hit an Uber in the quarter panel, thumping the competitor into a spin. Six car pileup in the rearview sends the cabbie into a sinister chuckle.
“Mind if I smoke?” he asks.
Frank replies, “Only if I can too.”
“Knock yourself out. No weed though. The smell wards off some, ya feel me?”
“Yeah.” Frank sparks a stick to life. Tracers spill off the glowing end as Frank writes in the air. Meaningless squiggles evolve into scribbles then words. He pens a new version of W, but can’t see it catching on, so he waves the image away.
Glancing out the window turns into staring. Chop on the lake is making the black glass seem covered in shifting cracks. Alice told him to bring home some party favors. So Frank stopped off at the Chinese restaurant Tommy practically lives in. The two sucked down wanton soup, while chatting around the topic.
Tommy with his usual juvenile bluntness, “Y’all need some booger sugar? What’s up?”
Frank eye rolling sly, “Alice likes to see the sunrise.”
They exchange cash a bit more deftly. Frank slips the pay into the black folder holding the check, so when Tommy feigns calculating his share of the bill he can surreptitiously remove the money. Then Tommy nods to the waiter who fills a to-go container with the stash. Enough coke to kill a rockstar, but Alice is always generous. She doesn’t like to leave her friends out.
On the way to the door Frank pocketed the snow, and tossed the container. That’s when Tommy caught him out front:
“Hey man, I know how you like to get slippery eyes, so here’s for the party.” He hands over a foil wrapped sugar lump the size of a kid’s thumb. The claim is it’s dipped in a new high octane acid burning the lids off eyes – motherfuckers staring into ten dimensions. Frank never could resist liquid sensory delusions.
Back in the cab Frank realizes he’s been watching the flashback replay as if in real time. The cabbie left LSD a long time back, and now the trip is smack in the middle of suburbia. Frank shakes his head, chuckling delight. The view is full of neon cowboys stop motion flickering waving hello. Frank shifts to solidify his skin before the meat melts into a puddle on the floor. The cabbie turns up the radio. Notes spill out of the speakers, some shivering to the bass beat.
“A friendly touch and I erupt.
The desire abrupt
To eat out every night
At that delicious sight.
Drown me in musty meat
Smothered en route to complete.
Tongue in the barrel.
Lust gone feral.
Lick an alphabet;
You can bet
I plunge in
For the win
When the river runs wild.
Shit, this heat isn’t mild.
Face melting
I’m fucking smelting
A golden memory…”
An Asian girl from Hawaii echoing the last line. Her voice is some kind of mercury honey hybrid, flowing sweet into the ear and sure to incite lusty madness. Frank checks his phone. Three text messages from Alice. She wants an eta. He texts her back:
“I’ll be there when I show up.”
Up in the sky he glimpses winged beings darting behind the clouds. Some carry spears. Others wield bolts of lightning. Rain drops start pattering on the windshield. Seeing some blood mixed in, Frank wonders what’s going on in the sky.
The driver remarks, “Bad weather tonight.”
“That’s what I heard,” Frank lies. He heard nothing about the forecast. Yet, he doesn’t want to seem ignorant of trivialities.
Finishing another cigarette, unsure when he finished the first, Frank flicks it out the window. He sees the smoldering butt freeze in the air. He wonders who will pluck and toss it in the gutter.
The taxi hits a hard bump in the road. Glancing back Frank spies a cupid dead in the road. He frowns. It’ll take more than that to lose all hope, but his confidence fractured Frank feels tonight isn’t the night to find fresh feelings; tie new heartstrings. Maybe next time.
“Holy shit,” the cabbie says, “The street’s real.”
“Course it is,” Frank smiles. The cab parks. Frank pays. He exits. The rain is just starting to come down yet he walks casually towards the front door. The sounds of the party cause the air to tremor like heat waves. Chinese lanterns on the porch shake wildly in the rising wind. There’s a dragon nearby, Frank is sure, but doesn’t feel a need to worry. He slips between the raindrops, now like static in the air, and knocks on the door.
Alice flings it open, “It’s about time.”
“It’s been five minutes.”
“You’re an hour late.”
Frank smacks himself in the forehead, “Time only slowed for me.”
“Are you high?” She cocks a grin, “Started without me?”
The glimmer of her eyes causes a rockhard erection. Thank Nyx for the cover of night. Alice waves for him to hurry inside. Frank makes his way through a gauntlet of familiar ghouls. Every friendly greeting belied by eyes scanning for powdered treats, he grins back unaware he’s flashing a Joker grin.
In the dining room a table is laid out with an assortment of booze. Frank plops the large bag of cocaine in the middle. Smacking lips can be heard. He steps aside to avoid the stampede, and heads for the kitchen. He’s seen the show before, so has no desire to watch a rerun: the dope fiends’ strained politeness as they tensely await the chance to powder their noses.
In the kitchen he pauses to light a cigarette on the stovetop. He snaps off the light to watch the small blue burning halo. It reminds him of someone; burns up five minutes inspiring poetry:
“Now that the sunset of hope for my life
Has sand and colourless come,
Towards my dim dwelling, dismantled and chill,
Let us turn step by step:
For the white light of the day
With its gladness does not embitter me more.”
“You know Rosalia de Castro?”
Frank turns, “Hm?”
The lights return. Frank turns to find an angel in the doorway. She brushes a strand of blue hair out of her eyes, “You were reciting one of her poems. I think.”
“I didn’t even know I was talking.”
“Then I want whatever you’re on.” She goes to the fridge, and pulls out a bottle of beer. She pops it open using a lighter, “I’m Wendy.”
“Frank. I brought the cocaine,” pronouncing it co-key-ain.
“You don’t sound proud of that.”
“Bringing good pizza is harder. Coke is coke. No matter how shitty if it gets you high – job well done.”
Wendy slides in, “Yeah, yeah, I follow. But like with pizza you gotta figure on toppings, and thickness, and quality – everyone has their own idea of what’s good. Bringing pizza that pleases the whole room, that’s a rare accomplishment.”
“Have we met before?” Frank asks, seems like he should remember a woman radiating cobalt.
Wendy says, “Nope. I just moved here.”
“From?”
And so it goes. Predictable back and forth exchange of back stories. The beauty of strangers is that the old stories play like new. Hours vanish. The party winds down. The other partiers steadily turn from bright eyed revelers into greasy gargoyles, blood red cracks in their gazers. Unable to drift far from the tiny island of cocaine, however, they leave those in the kitchen alone. And whenever the celebration does spill over Wendy and Frank simply exit to the patio, huddled under the small awning out back to smoke and enjoy the rain. It’s the start of a romance Frank will remember the rest of his life – the one night that changed everything for...
A nudge.
Frank shudders.
Alice smirking, “Welcome back buddy.”
She turns out the burning halo. He glances around. She rummages in the fridge for a chocolate cheesecake.
Frank bewildered, “Where’s Wendy?”
Alice sighs, “Oh no sugar, not again. That was like two years ago. Remember?”
Frowning, “Yeah.”
“Whatever Tommy gave you must be amazing.”
Frank tucks his hands in his pockets. He feels the snake coil around his hand, twisting into the shape of a gun. His thumb rubs the warm scaly grip. It could sink fangs in his brain.
He says, “Yeah. I think he called it… something. I dunno.”
Alice dons her most motherly expression. She pats him on the shoulder. He sees himself smile. A silhouette out on the porch out the corner of his eye Frank ignores. He doesn’t want to be lured by another Siren hallucination. The past is calling him back, but he can’t live there anymore.
A chubby cupid covered in bruises, skin red from road rash, saunters by the kitchen door. He nods at Frank, implying no hard feelings.
“It was the cabbie’s fault,” Frank tells him.
“How so?” Alice asks.
Frank shakes his head, “No, I was talking to that guy.” Before Alice can ask who he means Frank says, “Let’s get back to the party. I feel like being around people.”
“That’s a change,” Alice says.
“For the better, I hope.”
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