Volume 4: Metaphase
Issue 3: Pink Alexander
Jannette Adrian Churchwell
By Nova
Ripple, or—rather—Linda, chose the place: a club downtown, just a block away from the MOMA. It was called ‘Pink Alexander,’ though I couldn’t really tell why. There weren’t any pink pictures of a guy named Alexander, and when I asked Linda, she just shrugged. “I’m not really sure… Maybe it just sounds cool?” she said.
Even if she didn’t know where the name came from, she still seemed pretty familiar with the place. The bouncer nodded at her and let us in without question, and she instantly led us to the bar. I didn’t have too much experience with clubs, but the Pink Alexander struck me as a nice place. It was hyper-modern, almost like one of those high-end tech stores—but with neon lights running the length of the wall. They bathed the otherwise white décor in a vibrant blue and pink light, almost giving the establishment an ethereal quality. The dance floor, or—rather—floors, were recessed into the ground, surrounded by plush couches and small, circular tables. The eyeline was broken up by a handful of pillars, which flashed a near rainbow of lights, bathing the dance floors in a kaleidoscope of color. Hundreds of people walked, danced, and drank around me, creating a cacophony of human sounds and smells that left me reeling. This, alongside a loud beat that I couldn’t place, threatened to overwhelm me. All I could do was follow behind Linda as she navigated the crowd; it was like she had been born in it.
It all left me feeling out of place, something which my clothes didn’t really help with. I didn’t have time to really pick out an outfit—not that I really had anything to wear anyways. So, I just threw on a beige sweater with some jeans that were a little too baggy on me. Linda, on the other hand, wore tight black shorts with a red wrap-top and strode through the crowd like she owned the place.
Once we arrived at the bar, Linda was quick to launch into action. “The usual, René,” she said to the bartender: a twenty-something woman my height, with short brown hair.
“You got it,” René said. Quicker than I expected, she filled a short glass with ice, then poured in a clear looking liquor. As a finishing touch, she sprinkled a reddish-brown powder onto it. “Vodka on the rocks,” René said, “with a dash of cinnamon.”
“You’re the best,” Linda said, as she—apparently against all reason—took a sip from the glass.
“I know it,” René said with a smirk. “Who’s your friend?” she asked, looking at me.
“This is Jannette,” Linda said. I gave a slight wave.
“First time, huh? What’ll it be?” René asked.
“I-I’ll have…” I trailed off. I didn’t really drink… at all, so I had no idea what was ‘good’ or not. “Uh… What’s good?”
“Well, we have our signature, the ‘Pink Alexander.’”
“Oh, is that what this place is named after? Or is the drink named after it?” Linda asked.
“First one’s right,” René said. “The founder came up with it like a decade ago or something. Wanna try it?”
“S-sure,” I said, trying to look as nonchalant as possible and hoping I hadn’t ordered something gross.
“Alright,” René said, “one Pink Alexander… coming right up.”She grabbed a bunch of different bottles and poured their contents into a cocktail glass, resulting in an opaque, light brown liquid. Then she pulled out a silver flask, squirted something yellow into the glass, and tapped its side with a spoon. Somehow—before my very eyes—the brownish liquid transformed into a pink, frothy drink. As a final touch, she sprinkled something on top, then pushed the glass toward me. “Enjoy,” René said.
I took a cautious sip. It tasted like nothing I expected… not that I really knew what to expect. It tasted like chocolate, but with a sharp, alcoholic edge to it. “I-it’s pretty good,” I said. “Thank you.”
“No problem,” René said. “Now, what brings the two of you down here? I know you, Lin, but bringing a friend… Something to celebrate?”
“Something like that,” Linda said.
“Well, I’m glad to hear that,” René said. She turned her gaze toward me. “So you’re Jannette, right? Lin’s a regular, so I’ve gotten to know her a bit, but how do you two know each other?”
“She’s a friend from work,” Linda said with a slight smile.
“Oh, you’re an accountant too?” René asked me.
“No, EMT…” I said without thinking; EMT was my old standby for this question.
“EMT?” René looked troubled. “Did something… happen where Lin works? Like, that’s how you met?”
“Uh…” I didn’t know what to say, but fortunately Linda jumped in.
“I’m not sure she’s allowed to talk about it… but yeah, there was a small emergency, that’s how me and Jan met,” Linda said.
“I hope it wasn’t serious…” René said, looking at me.
“Ah, uh, yeah it turned out alright,” I said, “Don’t worry.”
“Well I’m glad to hear that,” René said. “Emergencies can be, uh, pretty scary. Even if everything turns out alright. My brother, actually, was once on I-80, just got off the Bay Bridge, when a powerfight rolled through the highway.”
“Oh no, really?” Linda asked.
René nodded. “I think it was the big fight between Sukeban and… I want to say Seraph? The one back in 2018.” My eyebrows raised at this. I remembered that fight very well; I was there for it. It was during the Yakuza’s expansion phase, right after Sukeban took over and put all the lieutenants and enforcers in line. She tried to reclaim lost turf and started one of the largest powerfights of my career. Me, Seraph, half the Titans, and a few others went toe-to-toe with seven villains—Sukeban not included. I could still, vividly, remember buildings collapsing around me as Sukeban warped the asphalt underfoot, blasting huge chunks of concrete at us to keep us on our toes…
“They got these inflatable slides in place to get them down, but it was still pretty scary,” René said. I realized I had zoned out, and tried to focus back on what she was saying. “We’d heard that the foundations were unstable, and that the highway could collapse at any moment, so the whole family was on edge… just waiting to see what would happen.”
“I’m glad he got out safe though,” Linda said, nodding as she sipped from her drink.
“Oh, me too,” René said. “It’s just… Well, it just goes to show you know…” She shook her head. “Hah, sorry about the bummer.”
“Don’t worry!” Linda said. “It’s all right.” She lifted her—now empty—glass. “Especially if I can get a refill?”
René laughed and quickly refilled the glass. The two began talking about Linda’s life, or, rather, what I was beginning to suspect was a heavily fictionalized account of Linda’s past week as an accountant. They talked, seemingly endlessly, about people—with detailed lives and personalities—that I was positive that Linda didn’t have time for given her actual job. With each passing story Linda downed one drink, then another, and another. By the time her stories had caught up with the present day, she had clearly passed buzzed and was well on her way to drunk. We sat next to each other and, while my powers traced weakly through the air into her, I could tell her BAC was hovering around .08%… and she was well on her way past that, too.
“And then,” Linda said, pausing to gather her thoughts, “Steve fucking dropped the entire filing-thing.” She took another sip from her glass. “It just… rolled down the fucking stairs, banging its way all the down to the first floor.”
“Oh my God, really?” René asked, laughing. “Why were you guys even moving it on the stairs?”
“I know right?” Linda asked, apparently just as bewildered as René. “But nooooo, management scheduled the elevator repairs just when the office move was happening.” She took another drink. “Long story short we survived but Steve… Well, Steve had a lot to learn from the janitor that night.” Her story, while ridiculous, was delivered with such conviction—even while drunk—that I would have thought she was feigning drunkenness… if it wasn’t for my powers telling me otherwise.
René shook her head. “I don’t know how you do it, Lin.”
“Me neither,” Linda said. She glanced over at me, at the collection of cocktail glasses in front of me. “How you feeling, Jan?”
I nodded. “Fine,” I said. While the two of them talked I passed the time by trying every cocktail on the menu.
“Do I need to cut you off?” René asked, a note of caution in her voice.
I shook my head. “I’m a… heavyweight.” I said. “Takes a lot more than that…” I trailed off. To be fair, I had no idea if there was enough alcohol in the world to make me drunk any more. My powers destroyed toxins the second they entered my body—alcohol included.
It was something I was painfully aware of at times like these.
René shrugged. “Alright,” she said, “just be careful, I once had a customer that seemed fine, but once he hit blackout,” she made a noise like a bomb falling, “we pretty much had to close down the dance floor after what he did to it.”
I awkwardly chuckled. “Yeah… That’s crazy…” I said.
Linda grabbed my arm and went to stand, nearly losing her balance in the process. “Whoah,” she said, steadying herself. She turned to me. “Wanna head to a booth?”
I shrugged. “Sure.”
“Another for the road!” Linda said to René, who chuckled and filled up a glass. Linda grabbed the drink, and led me to a cushy seat that sat right next to the dance floor. A throng of people was moving in front of us, close enough that my power was reaching out to touch them from where we sat. “Best seat in the house!” Linda said, having to shout over the beat of the music.
“Sure,” I responded, trying to push the extra data my power fed me out of my mind. Normally it wasn’t so bad, especially when I had a chance to move, to keep it from settling. But too many of the people in front of us were dancing in place, giving my power just enough time to feed me data on them. “S-so what’s all this about an accountant?” I asked, trying to keep my mind off the horde of bodies. “And ‘Steve’?”
Linda laughed. “That!” She took a sip from her drink. “That is a funny story. I came up with a boring cover story like, a billion years ago, to keep people from asking me about my job, but René… She’s tenacious. So what I do with her is that I play The Sims and tell her stories about my Sims!” Linda laughed again, slightly sloshing her drink on her legs.
I laughed, despite myself. “That’s… just crazy.”
“So yeah, ‘Steve’ is just one of my fuck-up Si-” Linda suddenly stopped. “Hey, Jan, look at that guy. Do you think that guy’s checking me out?” She motioned at a man sitting at a booth a few rows down. He seemed to be with a few friends, but kept looking away from them to stare at Linda.
“Yes.”
“Oh my God,” Linda said. “He’s cute.”
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I looked back at him; he was fine. Out of my league, but definitely not Linda’s. “Sure,” I said.
“I’m getting him over here.” Linda motioned to the guy, who gave a big, goofy smile to friends and stumbled over our way.
“S-seriously?” I asked, too late to do anything. “He’s probably a creep.”
“Oh my God, we’re literally bulletproof,” Linda said. “You want one of his friends?”
“What? N-no!” I nearly screamed. Panicking, I glanced over and saw that none of the guy’s friends had joined him. He had arrived alone at our booth and stood awkwardly between us and the dance floor. I sighed, relieved I was left out of whatever Linda had planned.
Relieved… right?
“Hey cutie,” Linda said to the guy.
I raised an eyebrow at that remark, but he didn’t seem to care. “Hey baby, how’s it hangin’?” he said, swaying slightly back-and-forth. My power traced through him and discovered that he had a higher BAC than Linda did. I halfway considered giving him a small heart attack to get out of this situation, but thought better of it.
“Sit down,” Linda said, scooting over to make room for the guy. Somewhat sloppily, he took the seat next to her. After a quick and confusing round of introductions, which I was left out of, the two instantly fell into a mess of a conversation.
“Sho the empire was pretty great,” the guy—who I quickly learned was named Greg—said, entirely unprompted, “but, honeshtly, it’s all a wash after Hadrian.”
“Oh yeah?” Linda said, grinning widely. She threw an arm around his neck and stroked his chest. “Why’s that?”
“Well, it all comes down to bears,” ‘Greg’ said, “I mean beards.”
“Oh my God, that’s so cool,” Linda said, draining her drink.
I rolled my eyes.
“Yeah, it’s all because Ro-Romangs, they didn’t like beards.” He made an aggressive motion with his hand, which spilled some of his drink on the table. “They didn’t go for it, beargds were a Greek thing.”
I shifted in my seat. No one had said a word to me in at least fifteen minutes.
Though maybe that was a good thing.
“You just like, know so much,” Linda said. She leaned in close to him, almost conspiratorially, and said, “Just sho much about this stuff, way way more than my ex, all he talked about were these dorky bones.”
“Oh yeah?” Greg almost squeaked. He stared down at Linda’s chest, which she pressed against him. It looked like he stopped paying attention to… Well, anything else in the world.
But if Linda noticed she didn’t show it and just continued, saying “Bones, and… like other stuff… that’s all he talked about… spent all his time glueing these lame miantiatures.” Linda stopped, thought for a moment. “Minatiruass. Minitautruses. Miniatures. There, that’s its.”
“Uh huh.” Greg hadn’t looked up from her chest.
“Oh yeah. And he wasn’t… built like you.” She started stroking his leg with her hand.
“Alright!” I said, leaping to my feet. “I-I’m going to, uh, get a drink,” I said, as quickly as possible. Before Linda could say anything, I beat a hasty retreat away from the pair, heading in an entirely random direction. I pushed my way through the dancing horde of people, almost feeling suffocated as I did. The throng pressed against me, my power rushing through everyone who bumped into me, feeding me an incoherent cacophony of anatomical insight into the people around me. I felt the cavities of a dancing frat boy, a malunion fracture in a woman with a slight limp, the buzz of someone intoxicated on something stronger than mere alcohol… It all threatened to overwhelm me and I pushed, desperately, in one direction—trying to breathe, before finally coming out of the crowd near a far corner of the club.
I stumbled slightly into the closest booth, breathing heavily. I plopped myself down in it, and gazed back at the wall of bodies. I couldn’t see Linda from where I was—or the exit. I looked around, trying to get my bearings, but found myself coming short. I had no idea where I was.
“One, two, three!” A small group beside me shouted. I looked over, only now registering that they were there, just in time to see them all down a shot in unison. They slammed their glasses down in an uneven order, one of them breathless, another cheering.
“To the future!” a guy shouted. He had light brown skin and a short haircut. His features were… familiar somehow, I couldn’t quite place it.
“The future!” a girl said. She was pale, almost as pale as I was, but wore her outfit with more poise than I ever could.
Again, she looked familiar, though I couldn’t quite place it. The other two had their backs to me… but there was something I recognized in their drunken chatter.
“I still can’t believe it, the gang back together and with something to celebrate,” the first guy said.
There was a laugh from one of the guys with his back to me, who then said, “Come on, Al, we just have the right stuff.” Wait, Al? It couldn’t be that Al… right?
No, I couldn’t believe it. It really was Al. The girl was Amity, the two with their backs to me must have been… Bellard and Kathy!
I gulped. The old Stanford gang… sitting right next to me. Back in the day, four years ago, I was part of that crew, or—at least—hung out with them. Amity was my old roommate, which is how I got to know the rest of them. A few memories flickered through my mind of late nights around the commons’ table, talking nonsense, playing cards…
But it didn’t look like any of them had noticed me yet. “So Am,” Bellard said, “you’ve been sitting on your big news all night-”
“And it’s gotta be big, right?” Kathy interjected. “You wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t.”
Amity blushed. “All right, all right,” she said. “I… got the job in Oakland!”
“Shit, really?” Bellard said. The rest whooped and hollered. In unison, they downed another drink. Their chatter continued, entering into an almost incoherent jumble of congratulations and laughter.
And I just sat there, looking in.
I gazed across the dance floor, to see if I could see Linda and ‘Greg’ from where I was. I couldn’t, but I could only assume they were exactly where I left them. I looked back at the old Stanford crew, then up at the ceiling. I could leave now, head home, go to bed, then wake up bright and early for tomorrow’s briefing with the FBI.
Or…
Or I could try to salvage this crappy night.
I stood up and swung myself around to their booth. “O-oh my God,” I said, trying to cover my dread with excitement, “Amity?”
She looked up and locked me in a happy, sorta unfocused gaze. “Hey you,” she said. “What’re you up to?”
“Oh not much, just doing some odd jobs to make ends meet. Been a long time, what, four years since I’ve seen you?” I said. I put my hands in my pockets and bounced on the balls of my feet, trying to ignore the jostling of the dancers behind me.
“I guess!” she shouted. “Come on, sit down.”
“Am?” Bellard asked.
“The more the merrier!” Al shouted. He wasn’t really looking at me, but instead gazed longingly into his drink.
Relieved that I was still ‘a part of the group,’ I took a seat next to Am. “Hey Al, Bellard, Kathy…” I said. “Been a while.”
Before anyone could say anything, Amity grabbed a drink and shoved it in front of me. I grabbed the glass and inspected it for a moment. It was a foggy, white liquid with a hint of green. I went to sip it cautiously but a chant arose from the others: “Chug, chug, chug!”
I sighed and downed it in one gulp. It stung my throat and tasted pretty awful, but, in the past few weeks alone, I had been shot (multiple times), thrown out of a moving vehicle, hit by a thrown vehicle, and had my brains splattered across the pavement.
I could take a strong drink.
“Wooo!” the others cheered.
“Alright, she’s cool,” Kathy said.
“Heh heh, yeah,” I said. I suspected after a shot like that baseliners like them probably would start to feel a buzz. Instead, I grew painfully aware of the ethanol in my stomach being torn apart. Six hydrogen atoms, two carbons, and an oxygen… and these were disassembled into protons, neutrons, and electrons. In an instant, the entire drink had been rendered safe to metabolize.
And entirely boring.
Things got crazier from there. My arrival seemed to ignite some sort of spirit in the crew that only hastened the flow of alcohol from their glasses to their mouths. Within a few moments we had moved to the dance floor, drinks in hand. I leapt away like a startled bunny as I felt alcohol spill over my shoes. “What’s up?” Kathy shouted at me over the music, completely unaware of her drink splashing over her.
I just shrugged and tried to dance with the others—not that I knew how. They didn’t either, by the looks of it. But where all I could do was awkwardly shift my arms and legs, they bounced around—arms flailing—caught in some sort of drunken ecstasy I could only imagine.
I felt someone grab me from behind and scoop me into the air. Out of instinct, I nearly took them down with my powers—targeting their central nervous system to deliver a crippling stroke—when I restrained myself. Squirming myself out of their grasp, I turned around and saw Bellard looking hazily confused. “Sorry dude,” he muttered.
I just nodded at him, glaring. Not wanting anything to do with him, I tried to find Amity. We had gotten separated during the last song. Pushing through the crowd, I found her laying on a table, her shirt off. A complete stranger was pouring what looked like jello into her belly-button. Al, Kathy, and a couple of strangers stood above her. “Jello shots!” Amity shouted. “Come get your jello shots!”
Kathy went first, then Al, then one of the strangers. Amity noticed me standing there, and said, “Hey, get in on this!” She shimmied back-and-forth on the table.
I backed away slowly… The thought of doing something like that… In front of all these strangers? Panicking, I hid amongst the crowd and pushed to the opposite side of the dance floor. I sat down for a moment… took a deep breath, and stared at the pulsating neon pillars.
I wished I could cut loose…
I wandered for… I wasn’t sure how long, passing mindlessly through the crowd, before I worked up the courage to return to the others. I found them sitting at that first booth. They were hot, sweaty, and wasted. Fortunately, however, they seem to have left the dance floor and opted for some quiet drinking.
This I could do.
I took a seat next to Amity again, who barely seemed to notice. “So Am,” Bellard said, “Whatsh with your job with Oakland?” He was slurring now.
“Oh, it’s not too great on its own,” Amity admitted. “It’s honestly more of what it could lead to.”
“What’s that?” Al asked. He downed another shot and swayed slightly in his seat.
“It’s kinda like a… like a continuation of the whole student internship-thing the med center did,” Amity said, sipping from a cocktail glass.
“That thing…” Al trailed off, seemingly lost in thought.
“Oh, I remember that…” I said. In fact, I remembered it well. My good grades got me on a fast-track program, placed me as a special intern that shadowed the doctors. I had a frontline perspective on, well, everything that went on at a hospital. Theoretically, all I was supposed to do was watch and sometimes help out with the simpler tasks. However, I ended up as the world’s lowest paid nurse. I mostly did the dirty work—from cleaning bed-pans, hauling stuff to laundry—but I was also lucky enough to be in the operating room every-so-often. I vividly remembered Dr. Calvin asking for tools during open-heart surgery, me placing them into his hands, trembling as I did. It was the most terrifying and exhilarating experience of my life, up to that point.
Until I got my powers there… Left the job, dropped out, left the old Stanford crew…
“Hey Am,” Kathy asked, cutting into my memory, “didn’t your old roommate, like, do that program?”
Her old roommate? I almost laughed, Kathy must be joking. “Uhm… yeah,” Amity said. My jaw almost dropped, did she not realize…
Did any of them remember?
“Oh yeah!” Al said, laughing. “I guess you musht have replaced her at the hospital,” Al said.
“Oh yeah, I remember, the dropout, right? What was her name again?” Bellard asked. No, no, no, no… This couldn’t be happening.
“Jaimy, right?” Kathy asked.
“Jannette, I think,” Amity said.
I opened my mouth to interject, to remind them I was there.
But I couldn’t… I bit my lip. Did they seriously not recognize me?
“What happened to her?”
“I don’t know,” Amity said. “Guess she just couldn’t take it, she washn’t really cut out for it anyways. Remember how she was always freaking out about, like, everything.”
I felt the heat rise in my face, but kept silent. “All I remember was that she tailed along, like a fuckin’ lost puppy or something,” Bellard interjected, which promoted laughter from the group.
“Ah whatever, just glad you got the job. Means the four of us are four-for-four!” Al cheered. “Graduates with jobs, take that America.”
Just as quick as they started talking about me, they forgot about me again. No one seemed to notice that I was there, or even looked at me funny… It was like I didn’t exist…
I didn’t say anything when I left, quietly slipping away onto the dance floor. Aimless, I plodded around the club, not sure what I was looking for. I’d always felt alone, especially over the past few months, but, for some reason, I had never felt more alone than I had here. Despite the throng of drunken revelers around me, none of them cared about me, or knew anything about me…
And worse, I couldn’t even join them.
I had a chance to… try something new with the old Stanford crew. Sure, they didn’t remember me, but I could have still had fun.
But no, I couldn’t cut loose. I couldn’t let my guard down. I couldn’t have fun. My powers made me pretty much unkillable, healed all wounds, and filtered toxins out of my system. But all of that…
It just made me even more alone.
I found an unoccupied seat at the corner of the club and plopped down in it. I sat there, trying not to cry, for what felt like forever. I wasn’t certain what I was waiting for—maybe for another chance to start again, when Linda somehow found me. She was pretty much wrapped around ‘Greg’ and the two were even more far gone than they were when I last saw them.
“O-oh my Godgsh,” Linda slurred, seeing me. “Hey Jnanan, babe, I’m headin’ out with…” She started giggling. “D-dyah need a ‘ride?’” winking at me when she said that.
Such a blatant reference to her powers nearly incited a panic attack in me, but fortunately, ‘Greg’ didn’t seem to notice and was instead preoccupied with feeling Linda’s body. I just sighed. “No, I’ll get home on my own.”
“Alrgiht!” Linda shouted. “See ya tomorrorow.” She headed off, Greg in tow.
I glared at them as they leaved, then rested my face in my hands. If they were leaving, it was probably pretty late. I should probably leave as well. Feeling like a weight was lifted off my shoulder, I headed out of the Pink Alexander. Passing through the dancing crowd, I emerged onto the street, the deafening music falling to silence as the doors closed behind me. Replacing it was the soft muzak of the city at night. Looking down the street, I could see Linda and Greg, stumbling toward a bus stop. I turned and walked the other direction, heading toward a BART station that I knew was nearby. It was, admittedly, a longer walk than hopping on the bus…
But it would get me home.