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He once was king. Heralded and loved. His rule was fair.
Then came the fall from grace.
A legend. Sacred creation. A story passed down to inspire.
He held the world upon his shoulders.
He relinquished love and fed their desires.
Dark matter was coiled in his heart.
The World was left behind. End to a hallowed start.
Fifteen minutes. Nine hundred seconds.
Sacred moments. “You should invoke.”
No guarantees. In being well known.
If you're remembered? “You can only hope.”
He once was king. Heralded and loved.
Hallelujah! O Lord, the fall from grace!
We all must fall from grace! We all must fall from grace!
We all must fall from grace! We all shall fall from grace!
There’s no light in the world more revealing, more demystifying, or more intoxicating than stage lights. Tonight, for some reason, I told the house to make mine blue.
Blue, I specified, like curacao, blue like depression, like the back end of the rainbow, or the night sky in the dead of winter. I’d worn a black three-piece suit, and I knew that the way the light reflected on the expensive fabric, my dark skin, and the smoke in the air would echo the lackadaisical way I’d felt before I started to play. No one was dancing, but that was okay because the smoke was moving enough.
Blue was the atmosphere, the vibe. The Mood.
I knew that the noise coming out of my mouth was in key with the rest of the music. But I wasn’t listening to it in the contemplative, intentional sense. Musicians, you see, we bullshit anyone who will listen. We spout nonsense about feeling the music, but we know that you can’t explain that to someone who's just hearing it with their ears. It’s a groove, the groove, the heat, the funk, that thing that overtakes you even when a packed bar is staring at you as if you were in a room full of mannequins. The people out there in the house are wide-eyed and motionless as if they’re waiting to see everything you’re doing or might do. We musicians say that we’re feeling it, but we don’t mean that we’re feeling it the way regular people think we do, because that’s a kumbaya-ass way to explain something that you can’t explain until you’ve been in that moment, and I was in it.
I was saturated in the groove. Completely covered in it. I was blue.
My eyes were closed, tight, and for a few fleeting minutes, I was safe. Safe from the quarter century of life I’d lived up until then, safe from my secrets and safe in a way that made me happy but didn’t make me smile. Instead, words for talking became noises for fucking, cries, squeaks, and utterances that God probably hated because it was too close to sounding like the real thing. The hallelujah I sang in the chorus wasn’t Gospel; it was an affront to a prudish God who thought that the color Red was in this season.
I didn’t care if it was. I was blue, damn it, and the song was almost over.
The crescendo hit, and I heard them holler as I harmonized with the choir of voices on the backing track. Altogether, the audience and I were breathing in that smoke and the blue that came with it like it was the last breath we’d ever take. And when I actually took my last breath for the chorus and belted out my chiding against avarice, when I cried out like I was cumming a thousand times at once, and they practically blew the roof off that motherfucker like their lives depended on it, I opened my eyes and looked for the first time in twenty-five or so minutes.
The show was over. I was Blue and covered in whatever that meant. I needed a towel.
I said good night. The lights went dark. They were applauding, clapping, hollering still. I felt like this was just another victory on another night, but the attention felt good. It gave me a high like it did every night I got on stage. I was already floating backstage by the time the stage lights came on. I knew the high was going to go away, and soon, and I didn’t want to be regular yet. So, like always, I retreated.
Mama saw me before I could sneak into the dressing room. She didn’t just see me. She flagged me down and then sauntered towards me with a drink in hand.
“Merci, Dylan motherfucking Jabari,” she said, a smile forging at her lips. Her tone was low, intended only for me. “You showed your ass tonight and I know you know you did. Where the hell did that song come from?”
I looked up. I always looked up to catch her eyes, partially on her unspoken insistence but mostly on my preference to make eye contact. She, a man of years past mine (of an exact number no one knew), was a foot and a half taller than me. I had to crane my neck to catch her gaze, and I knew she liked it when I did. I was one of the kids, after all, even though I hated being called that.
“I’ve had it for a while,” I said as I was opening the dressing room door. She glided in behind me, feathers seemingly floating in her wake from the coat she was wearing. I call her Mama but this was Eleganza the Divine, and she was on stage next after the intermission. She often talked and killed time right until the host announced her entrance. You can do that when you can run through your set with no notice, perfectly, every time and Eleganza often did that regardless of whether or not a stage was underneath her. Her life was a performance. I’d heard that a million times from her own mouth. If you stay ready, then you don’t have to get ready, she’d say, especially if you were slacking off or running behind. The seven-foot-tall feather-clad monster before me was ready, at any moment, to “make you look” and laugh about how easy it was to do it. I admired her for that.
She closed the door behind her. I was on the other side of the room. I was looking for that towel. I was still covered and saturated in whatever the hell that blue metaphor was supposed to be.
“Well, you ain't never done it,” she said with a scoff. “See, that’s the shit I’m talking about, Dyl’. You’re holding out on me.” She sang the latter sentence, dragging out the ‘me’ with earnest sincerity and playful disdain. “You write these songs and do all this practicing when I’m not looking. We could have been on tour by now. Hell. You’ve been killin’ it every show from jump street.”
I laughed so quickly that I scared myself. I thought it was internalized.
“Elly, quit playing. You know you love Phoenix too much to go on tour,” I said.
“I love this bar too much,” she quipped in return. She motioned to the walls around us, emphasizing “this bar” as if we weren’t currently sitting in it. She towered behind me as I sat at the vanity. I started drying myself off with the towel I’d left on the vanity before my set. The stage high had worn off.
Elly was Mama to me and Eleganza the Divine to just about everybody else. She typically insisted that you say the whole thing, all seven damn syllables, but I got away with two. Elly. She was a man, by “clinical definition”, she’d say. But she preferred “she”, saying that it was only appropriate for a queen, and just about everyone who met her was inclined to agree without question. As long as I’d known this queen, I’d never once seen anyone who came close to putting on the kind of rapturous show she could in the middle of the night. Many times, since I’d started opening as part of her residency at this, the “biggest show bar in the West Valley” as Boss rightfully claimed, she’d take her retinue of dancers and put on a show that left us sweaty, anxious, joyous and most of all horny like I thought I was trying to do on stage. It was better when she did it. Even now, as she was poised to headline the night, she stood there on display in the center of the dressing room floor, balancing flawlessly in heels that were six inches high, draped under a coat made of white and pink feathers. I never understood the allure of feathers as almost anything with the things attached seem to fall apart if you thought too hard about it, but this coat was one I knew had stood the test of relevance and time. I also knew the coat was a clever ruse at best and a cheap prop at worst. I have seen the show plenty of times, after all. That coat would come off, eventually, and there’d be little underneath to support any fair separation between the gaze of the people in the audience and her mostly bare, lean, long body. Any variety of revealing get-ups aside, she was in phenomenal shape. We all knew it, and some people were seduced by it. But to me, that was incestuous. This was Mama. A genderless showgirl, a living deity, a spectacle, and “The Moment”, as she’d say, but still Mama.
“I’m not going back out there while everybody’s here,” I said in a tone that was just loud enough to be heard over the commotion coming from the showroom. She’d have to leave in a minute or two.
“Fuck you mean you not going back out there?” She retorted, loudly. I watched her face in the vanity mirror. She was unamused. “You killed it out there tonight. Did you not hear the peoples? Your ear would have had to have been in ya’ damn foot if you couldn’t hear them calling for you. Boy, you best get yo’ ass back out there in that damn bar and make a damn friend, damn it. Shit. Dylan…”
Her tone changed. She was going to level with me. I sighed. She heard me and playfully shoved me at the back of my neck.
“I’m not nagging but I’m serious, okay? You do this every night. We’ve been at this for weeks.” She sauntered closer to me. “You go out there, you get ‘em all, you know, wet and moist and wild, and then! You throw them motherfuckers at me! Which is fine because there’s plenty of me to go around…”
She paused to sip her drink. I didn’t have to ask what it was. I knew it was her signature drink before going on stage; a Jungle Bird. She’d only let the bar manager, the Boss, make it, and he hated making most mixed drinks, but by the time she’d get to the bar to ask for it, it’d be there and waiting. Boss eventually got my drink down too, though he hated making it for different reasons. The A.M.F., the “Adios, Motherfucker”. It was blue. He called it common, indelicate, brutish, all kinds of shit. I’d had two before going on tonight. I was planning for another, despite the name and the implications of all that curacao, rum, vodka, tequila, and gin. I was like Mama that way. I knew what I liked in my drinks if nothing else. I didn’t let her pick up from the pause. I’d redirect her while she drank.
“Look, Ma, I’m just, you know. Shy. Everybody wants to be your friend when you’re singing a song they wanna hear. I’d honestly go to the hotel right now if I could drive.”
“None of that, now, hush,” She leaned down and gripped my shoulders, shaking me with the sway of her long, articulate fingers. “You’ve got something special. You’ve got actual, real talent. Not the bottled stuff, not something you had to go to school for. You’re built for what we do, and you know you are, and I been knew you knew ‘cause I knew, and they know it too. And I know you know, once again, that you showed your ass tonight out there, Mr. Dylan Jabari, and that should motivate you! Let them people see your face and give you your flowers. Shit, let ‘em do it now because they might not be able to later. Ya’ hear me?”
I sighed and looked up. Mama looked down and smiled. Our eyes met. She wasn’t wrong. I smiled back, even though I didn’t want to. I patted her hand on my shoulder and decided to make use of the last few seconds we had together to talk about her. The M.C. could only stall the crowd so long.
“What are you doing on stage tonight? I’m serious about staying back here.”
“Well, since you’re giving ‘em blue, I figure I’d go the other route and go loud and in color. Hence...” She held up the hem of her coat. “That and I’m feeling dancey tonight. Kidd choreographed a new number. Do you remember me telling you about it? The Sex Siren number I was talking about?”
“Yes, ma’am. I remember. That’ll be cute.”
“I’m mad that you’re not going to watch us do it in front of everybody. You’re gonna break Kidd’s heart and I hate to see it.”
Kidd Valentino was one of her dancers. A kid, who we all knew was too young to be in the bar but who nobody cared to clock on it. He was talented. A gifted dancer, if not rambunctious and smart-mouthed when Mama couldn’t pop him in the back of the head for it. He was the favorite of all of her kids, at least all of them besides me.
With a chuckle, I said, “You’re going to do what choreography, exactly, in those street walking heels, madam?” I asked with a smirk. I saw how I said it in the mirror. It was smug.
“I just do a little two-step and a twirl,” she said with a flourish of her hand. “I told you before, good stage work isn’t about sweating. It’s about the sale.”
“And you’re selling what, lady? Salmon? Halibut?” My smirk grew.
She popped me on the back of my head, this time less playfully than the earlier shove. I flinched but still laughed.
“Boy, shut up,” she quipped past a quivering smile. She did that when she let me get a read in. I probably wouldn’t get another without her getting me back. “Look, all I want your little black ass to do is stop being Ingrid the Introvert and go mingle for once. They like you. Give ‘em a reason to want to come see you again.”
“They’re here to see you, Mama.”
“They’re here to see. I told you, it’s about the sale, and part of that is the hands we shake and the connections we make.”
“I don’t want to shake hands. I want to smoke and go lay down somewhere. ”
“Well, you wanna play music and-and…” She put her hand on her hip. “...and fucking, you know, be a star, or whatever? Then, Miss Thing, I suggest you get out there and pretend you like somebody.”
“Not tonight, Ma. I think I’ve earned a night to vibe by myself. I’ll shake hands later. The next show is the big one, right?”
“Yes, yes, and a-yes again,” she said as she clapped her hands giddily. “This is our first show on a Red. We’re sold out. And I need you to be on your A game. Hell, A, B, C, D, all the letters, ya’ hear me?”
“Yes, ma’am. I know.” I rolled my eyes. She didn’t catch it, thankfully. She was heading towards the door.
“Try and do stuff that you already know works.” She was talking about songs. “They come to see. Give them a show.”
I forced my biggest smile in the mirror to myself even though she was placing a trillion tons of weight on my shoulders with what I thought was supposed to be a pep talk. I turned in the chair and looked up again at her, to show her my complacent smile.
“I know this is a big deal,” I said. “I’ll make nice.”
“Yes, yes, and a-yes again,” She opened the dressing room door. “Also, do clean up. You need a shave.”
“I’m doing a thing here, Ma. C’mon!”
“Do the right thing and SHAVE. Face looking pubic.” That was a read. She got me back.
I chuckled and waved her out of the room. “Fine. Smooth. Fresh. Okay? I’ll look twelve, but I’ll do it for you.”
“Do it for yourself.”
I rubbed my face. There was a light stubble. “It’s not that bad.”
“You bring dishonor on us all,” she sang as she flitted out of the room. “Trim that shit!”
She shut the door. I laughed, this time to myself, before turning back to the mirror. I didn’t think that it looked that bad. But she was probably right. This was going to be an important show for a lot of people who needed to be entertained and distracted from reality. I knew it better than anyone, having seen my fair share of nights where the sky was red as blood, where demons crept in the shadows, and where Witches insisted on ceding the natural order with rituals and swears against the church.
I caught myself frowning in the mirror. Seeking distraction, I reached to my left side beside the chair and wrapped my fingers around the body of the sword I’d placed there when I sat down. It didn’t register with most people that it even was a sword even though I was never without it, what with the obelisk sheen of the sheath and the singular, mountless design making it appear as one long, uninterrupted piece. I was never far from it, even on stage, because I was compelled in such a way that I physically couldn’t be, and when Mama found me a year ago it was all I had left. At least, that’s what I was told. That day, I was black-out drunk off moonshine and lab weed. I didn’t feel like thinking of that night anyway. I never liked to talk about my past because I didn’t like thinking about it. Mama knew that. That’s why I had taken to calling her Mama after only three years of living then working with her. She didn’t ask questions about where I came from, just about where I was going, and always in an understanding way. But she also knew, because there was no way that she couldn’t, that this thing, this weapon I couldn’t put down, meant that I was discluded from ever being normal. Yet she took me in, because “normal is overrated”, she’d say, and I haven’t had to unsheath this thing in as long as it took to pretend that I forgot that I could. I’d just leave the damn thing behind or sell it, but this sword was an extension of who I was. The music was just something I could do, to try and forget what I’d done. Or could do. The audience would never know, and it became part of my gimmick. It was the other reason why I didn’t want to mingle. You can only be asked about the same thing so many times and I’d been asked enough.
I cradled it in my lap, lengthwise, staring down at it quietly for a moment. It was unassuming and unadorned. I suppose, just like me. The hilt did have enough grip to be held tightly, if I ever did want to unsheath it, even with sweaty or bloody hands.
I thought about that, blood, as I let the light bounce on and off of the scabbard. How much blood had this tool shed? How many times, back in those days, had I cut down the enemy? How many times had I played judge and jury to someone else’s life with this as my only license?
This was why I hated to think too much about the past. I gracefully flipped the sword in my fingers and then leaned against the wall beside the vanity. Elly was on stage. I could hear them cheer. The crowd was being served generously by whatever over-the-top thing she was doing, singing, or saying. They were expressive because they were tense, afraid, and uncertain, of course. After all, the tension, fear, and uncertainty were life. If it wasn’t the threat of physical or spiritual assault by Demons then it was the Witches that consorted with them. If it wasn’t Witches then it was the Vatican who hunted them and stepped over anyone stupid or protestant enough to get in the way. If it wasn’t the Vatican then it was the government fumbling the bag on the economy or whatever busywork the Vatican delegated for it to do. Thankfully, entertainment, drugs, and liquor were easy enough to wrangle for those who needed to cope. Like me.
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I opened the vanity drawer. I had rolled a blunt before I went on stage tonight; it was still there in the plastic sandwich bag I’d left it in, next to the cheap plastic lighter I had been using for the last few days. I slipped the filter end into my mouth and lit the other. Deep breath. Exhale. The smoke filled the room, and I was grateful that this was rolled from my good stash. The A-side weed, I called it. Leaning back, I continued to smoke, every once in a while flicking ash onto the floor because Boss hated it and I low-key liked it when he bitched.
Boss. Mitsuo. He came to mind. He’d known me as long as Mama did. We’d grown from a mean glare and a grunt whenever I talked to him to a surprisingly kind word while sharing a drink with me and Mama at the end of the night. He smoked weed more than I did but he never smoked with me. I was working on getting that familiar, in my own distant, careful way.
The last call for alcohol was two in the morning on a normal, non-Red Night like it was tonight, but I knew he’d be serving me and Mama after everyone else left and the place cleared out by two thirty. I was so intent on waiting until then that by the time I’d smoked the blunt down to a stubborn little roach, I was fading.
Sleep was weird for me because I hated to dream. I dreamed in vivid technicolor, lucky me. Memories took up shop where rainbows and absurdities and creative things should have been. As Mama played on in the showroom, I was stuck re-living the first night I’d come to Phoenix.
I had nothing, just the sword, ten bucks, and the cassock on my back. I’d eaten at a diner across the street from the city limit sign - pancakes, which were miraculously terrible - and I’d washed my face in the bathroom sink. I was looking at my face in that dingy bathroom mirror, trying to find light in my own eyes. That’s the last thing I remember before the liquor hit.
Darkness.
I was still in the dressing room, still sitting at the vanity and still staring at the mirror when the darkness faded. I’d woken up, and the building was quiet. I must have passed out. The show was over. That weed was worthy of being called A-Side.
I took inventory of my surroundings quickly - no one had seemed to come into the room since I’d sat down and smoked. Mama was probably still here with Boss. I wanted that end-of-the-night drink, so I groaned and stood up, taking the sword and the rest of the blunt I’d let burn to a nub hours before with me.
I walked out into the hall. The house music was on but low. The show was over and had been for a while. Boss always kept the speaker going, which I appreciated. No one wants to hear their thoughts in a place like this. I walked back into the bar-at-large, expecting to see Boss and Mama at the bar. They weren’t there, but the lights over the back wall where most of the liquor was kept were on. They were probably in her dressing room. That was nothing new. I’d sat there plenty of times while they were talking shit, doing lines, smoking, drinking, and, most frequently, fighting. I was the only one of Mama’s kids who stuck around during this ritual after a show. Four nights a week for the last two months, that was the routine. I planned to go in the back to join them soon enough.
For now, I decided on fresh air (which was French for a smoke, if you spoke the language). Regardless of potency, weed doesn’t usually knock me out like that, so I figured that this is what I’d earned myself from burning the candle at both ends, what with practicing and writing songs every day while actively keeping out of public view to Mama’s disapproval. I beelined for the front door, checked that it was unlocked, which it was, and then pushed my way outside. I hadn’t bothered checking the time, but the parking lot was empty so it was probably three or four AM which meant that I’d been asleep since I walked off stage at around midnight. Elly would probably be in my ear later about that, something about smoking less and mingling more. I brushed aside the thought and headed towards the fenced off patch of desert across the road.
There was no traffic, and this far out west in the valley meant that you were liable to hear Arizona, the great Southwestern wide open, rather than the Restored City of Phoenix, the great Southwestern up and re-rising urban industrial complex. I liked it out here by the club for that reason. You didn’t have to go far to stand out in the dirt, to feel actual Earth beneath you rather than asphalt, to watch a coyote carry a rabbit or some unlucky house pet off into the night, which I’d seen plenty of times, or to sing and sing and sing by yourself, loudly, and not have anyone bother you. Even on Red Nights, it stayed remote out here. The bar, “Dragon-Layer”, was a world unto itself for a lot of people who were willing to make the trip from one end of the valley to the other. That was the pursuit of happiness around here; a show, a fuck, a drink, a smoke, a roof over your head, a burrito right before the sun comes up and anywhere that’s air-conditioned.
The dirt on the road across the street was comfortable enough for me, so I headed there. There were no cars at the moment, which meant I got to that flat, lifeless place with little effort. I crouched down to a gopnik squat, suit slacks be damned, to be closer to the ground. The blunt roach went into my mouth.. I was looking for contentment and my lighter like I had in this spot many, many nights before. From here, I couldn’t see out into the desert past the darkness, and I think that’s the closest to falling into the ocean and not being able to see the bottom that I’d ever be willing to go. Tonight, however, I wasn’t swimming alone.
Something stirred in the dead center of my body. I was vulnerable out here in the open but I was never unaware of what was around me. I could tell you in approximate yards how far away the freeway was and the type of cars on it at this time of night. There was no way I wouldn’t be able to tell that something was different tonight. It wasn’t a noise, or maybe it was. He must have known that I was calculating what this stirring could have been because he swung down with a grunt before I could have considered standing up.
My left wrist and arm, and likewise the sheathed sword I was carrying, acted before the rest of me needed to. The sword was twisted then held lengthwise and perpendicular to the ground between me and him. His swords hit the scabbard. Blocked. I flexed the muscles in my forearm. My arm held steady. I sighed without looking at my assailant.
Sneaking up behind me and getting this close took care on gravel and dirt but the amount of force behind the botched attack was considerable; this was an act of stealth and intent. I wouldn’t bother calculating. Instead, my wrist twisted my sword in an arc through the air forcing him to give me space rather than risk a blow to the body. I stood. He was on the attack again; by the time I was standing, he was off the ground and coming down into a cleave from a jump.
I swung my sheathed sword to meet the blow, deflecting it and tossing him back on his heels. It was awkward to defend myself against someone using both hands while I was using one, but my weapon, a katana, was longer than his two tantos. I’d naturally play to distance. He knew that too, and he’d compensate. He lunged and swung again, this time with the blade in his other hand. I stepped back. He missed me. He kept going. We danced with dust rising around us in hoops. His swipes became thrusts, causing me to step and shift away from him. His thrusts twisted into spins, which were harder to read and came with added frequency. I deflected. I was still half-high, which was fine for a fight, and I was certainly not overwhelmed with whatever this was. I already knew who the young, lean man in the black hoodie and Muay Thai shorts was; I was just surprised that he’d try me, years separated be damned.
A spinning roundhouse broke our dance as I ducked then separated us with a leap backwards. An interlude. I wanted to smoke, so I reached into my breast pocket. With a flick of my Zippo, the blunt was relit. Inhale. Exhale. My smoke surrounded me. He threw the swords out to his side. They dissipated. Equipment Compression. From the dissipation came mist, then smoke. It surrounded him. My sight was obscured. I got another drag of the roach in, probably the last, before he swung down from overhead with a roar, severing the smoke in two directions. I knew not to deflect, so I shifted and followed the smoke to the right with careful, tentative steps. He had attacked with a towering greatsword that was easily as long as he was tall. The clang of metal and hard ground colliding echoed through the empty night.
He twisted his body, stepped forward, and heaved the steel in an arc in front of him. I blocked by holding my sheath vertically so I wouldn’t have to surrender my vertical stance. The weight from the swing made me buckle but I stayed standing. He was deflected but he was on the move again, this time releasing his new sword so he could fling himself into a reverse roundhouse kick through the air. I had to duck. The tantos were back in both of his hands by the time he landed. He was in close range again. I cursed my choice to duck. It’d be awkward to reposition myself away from him like I’d been doing. I redirected his thrusts with the sides of my scabbard, each repeated advancing blow met with polished, nigh unbreakable wood. I was still being forced to take steps back. I was starting to sweat. The little shit was making me sweat. He was better, much better than he had been back then.
I spun wide and separated us by hopping back a second time. He shouted then lowered his body as he prepared to dash towards me and break the distance again. That was quite enough. My right hand, instinctively, slid to and rested on the tsuka, the handle, of my sword. He didn’t know that I wouldn’t draw it, but this was enough. I’d bluff. My body lowered too, only I would take up a combat stance and plant my feet. Instinctively, my muscles flexed. I wouldn’t do it, but he wouldn’t take the chance that I would.
“Nope!” He yelled before lifting both hands and stopping on his heels. Yeah, he remembered. I chuckled under my breath and spat out the ragged ends of my expired roach. When he was on his feet, I loosened the now taut fingers of my sword arm, just in time to risk shitting myself from the sound of the shotgun blast from the other side of the street.
We both looked over at the bar. There was Boss and Mama. Boss had fired his shotgun into the air. He was still in his bartending uniform, a personal if not wholly unnecessary quirk of his to do so long after the bar was closed, but never mind that - he was pissed. Mama, out of costume and in jeans with no shirt over her bare chest, spoke for both of them in a yell that threatened to wake everyone in the Valley.
“Al-RIGHT! You two ornery mother-FUCKERS! GET THE FUCK in here! Right now!”
I stood up straight and relaxed. My dance partner sucked his teeth in irritation but let the swords fall from his hand then dissipate from view as if they were never there. Now that we weren’t fighting, he finally looked to me like I remembered him; a skinny, short, swarthy pretty boy with a mischievous smirk that couldn’t go away and dark features that got him out of as much trouble as he got into.
“We better do what she says,” I warned. “I’m pretty sure she can unhinge her jaw and eat us both.”
“She? The guy yelling at us?”
“Yes. Her.”
He scoffed. We were walking towards the road and back to the bar. Elly and Boss were back inside waiting for us. I had a couple of inches on him in height. I felt him trying to find my eyes. “So is that your, um, you know, guyfriend or…?”
“No.”
“He seems nice. My bad. She. She seems nice.”
“I don’t think we’re each other’s type.”
“I mean, I don’t know. I haven’t seen you in a while and I thought you liked guys taller than you.”
“You showed up out of the ether to worry about who I’m fucking? I’m touched.”
“You would be touched if you hadn’t heard me coming. I still can’t believe how hard you are to sneak up on. What are you, clairvoyant? That’s witchcraft, my guy. What kind of padre are you?”
“I’m not a padre anymore and neither are you.”
“Once a padre, always a padre, fratello.”
I thought about that for a moment. We were at the door to the bar. I opened it and that brat practically knocked me over to get in first. I would have said something about him being too competitive and childish if Elly wasn’t right there by the door waiting for us. Ears were snatched. I winced. He yelped. I won that one. Maybe I was the childish one.
“I thought I told your ASS, Dylan!” She barked while we were dragged over to the bar. “No fighting! I don’t LIKE that shit!”
I didn’t answer. My yelping assailant pulled away and lightly smacked her arm.
“I’m not a kid!” He yelled past a voice crack that made him sound like what he claimed he wasn’t.
“Dylan Jabari, who is this little boy?” The three of us stood in front of the bar. Boss was there on the other side conjuring something with the bottles. We hadn’t asked him to but I figured he was making us our drinks. I was grateful, after the exercise.
“This little boy is…”
“Fuck you both, in the ear, first of all,” growled the shortest man among us. “I am not a kid or a damn little boy. I am a grown-ass man. Are we drinking? Nice. I want a drink.” He was grinning and seated. I could see that his lack of mood consistency was intact.
“Ma, Ranish Caium Benjamin. Ran, Eleganza the Divine.”
Ran looked up, way up at Eleganza who was still towering above both of us. She looked two feet down back at him from the top of her platform boots. He was still as short as I remembered, shorter than me by a couple of inches.
“Hello, Mr. Tall Lady.”
“Mister WHO?” Eleganza leaned down until her face was inches from his. He grinned so hard that his eyes closed. I was surprised that he wasn’t afraid. If I had a few inches in height, Eleganza the Divine had a foot and a half.
“Are we drinking? I’m thirsty as shit,” Ran repeated to one in particular. Mama, frustrated, leaned back and then walked a few feet to sit down to his right. I sat to her right. Boss returned our patronage (or, more accurately, our freeloading) with a dry but judgmental glance. He was still working on those drinks.
“Yes. Yes, we are drinking,” she said with a sigh and a shake of her head. “After, of course, you explain why you were out there starting shit with one of my favorite sons.”
“Who, that bum?” Ran snorted as he pointed a thumb at me. “Because that’s what we do. That’s my brother. Gotta keep him fresh, on his toes, ready for the hunt, you know?”
“I don’t hunt anymore,” I said to anyone within earshot. Boss slid my AMF in front of me without a straw. I immediately took a sip. I needed to center myself and this nightcap would help even if it was technically morning.
“Nobody’s hunting anything up in here,” Mama said in an indignant tone. “Boss, honey, Get the kid a…”
“Midori Sour, please.” Ran ordered politely. Boss looked him in the eye for the first time. He was wearing glasses and it was rare to be able to read his feelings through his eyes, but he was glaring.
Boss was what we called him because that’s who he was, but his name was Tensei Mitsuo. Tensei being the family name, he’d explain, and Mitsuo being what we could call him if he liked us enough. We called him Boss so we didn’t have to gauge if we were allowed to be that personal that day. He owned the bar and he was Eleganza’s manager, which just meant that he did the business work while she got to focus entirely on performing. Performing, and being a socialite party girl, of course. I figured he liked me, even though we rarely spent 1 on 1 time together without Mama around, but he very rarely smiled or talked about himself and was notoriously difficult to read. I was getting better at picking up on his mannerisms, though, and it helped, at least, that we kept the same hours. Both of us wouldn’t be asleep until ten in the morning at the earliest, only to rise in enough time for him to open the bar at six in the evening and for me to make it to the bar right before my set a few hours later to perform. We were built for the night. He was the only Japanese person I knew out here in Arizona, and he was aware of how rare he was; he’d told me plenty of times how he preferred the wide open space of the desert as that meant he was stared at less. I thought about this as Ran insisted on talking to me. I was trying to enjoy my drink and pontificate. He was choosing not just attempted murder but agitation when it came to our seeing each other again.
“You were surprisingly hard to find, bro. Thank God for the Internet, am I right? One of your songs, and I think it’s a pretty good one, by the way, totally not gassing you up, stay humble, is making the rounds so I figured now was as good a time as any to…”
I declared, “You’re broke or in trouble and need somewhere to stay.”
He feigned a gasp. “Bro, I’m visiting family!”
“After doing what? It’s been five years. Not that I haven’t been keeping aware of what you’ve been up to, Ranish of the Seven Blade.” His eyes met mine. His smile wavered, just a little, but I hadn’t offended or surprised him by calling him by his alias. I wanted him to know that I had kept tabs on him. He had quite the reputation depending on who you asked.
“I mean, I was, you know, doing the school of hard knocks thing,” he said.
I decided to drop it, at least until I could get the brat alone.
“What do you want, Ranish?” I used his full first name for emphasis.
“Nothing, man.”
“Ranish.”
“Look, it’s better to be with family than out there with the, you know, the people.”
Mama had been quietly sipping her Jungle Bird like it was going to fly away if she didn’t. She patted the bar top. “No need to get into all that now. Family, see, I get that.” She cooed, then sang, “Lil’ Babushka” while lightly patting Ran’s slick black pompadour. He laughed.
“I’m big in all the ways that count, lady,” Ran quipped. His fancy green mixed drink was set down. He cooed, bounced in his seat, grabbed it, and downed it in a single gulp. A loud, satisfied “Aah” followed, as did my annoyance. “See? I drinks big,” He said to accompany his grin.
“You drink like a teenager. Why bother getting a mixed drink if you’re just going to down it like a shot? You could have saved Boss the work,” I said.
“Oh, let him be,” Mama reprimanded. “I like this one. He’s got moxy. And muscles! Look at you, little swim-boy body. All that pretty hair. And a cute widdle face!” She lightly tugged his cheek. He playfully pulled away. He was wearing a hoodie, but Mama had picked up that there was a very athletic, toned twenty-one-year-old under there. It was certainly a gift of perception I’d seen her use before. That was another thing we had in common.
“I stay busy,” he quipped happily. He flicked his head back, likewise flicking back the hairs Mama had so lovingly displaced. She laughed out loud. My eyes rolled.
“You stay busy, huh?” I teased.
“I’ll tell you all about it at your place, baby,” he joked. Oh, no. He was being honest; he was intending to stay with me. My agitation grew.
“C’mon, man. I just cleaned the spot.”
“What spot? That hotel you’re staying at? I went by, you know. Left some things. Cleaned up. Man, you should really go shopping. The refrigerator situation? Hate crime towards yourself, my guy. Butter and a box of Pocky? My brother in Christ, who the hell keeps Pocky in the refrigerator? Who has butter and nothing to put with the butter? Are you eating the Pocky with the butter? Are you okay?”
“You broke into my apartment.”
“I entered your apartment using the means at my disposal, yes.”
I set down my drink, perhaps a little too fast since I caught Boss’s eyebrow riding high. I realized I wasn’t using the coaster. Whoops. I fixed my mistake.
“Have I no sanctuary? Have I no succor?” I groaned as I wiped up the glass ring I’d accidentally left with a napkin.
“Dylan, honey, you know, I think it’s nice that you’ll have someone staying with you for a while. You’re always so anti-social and alone,” Mama said.
Ran nodded sternly and shifted his glance from me to Mama. “I know, right? I’ve been saying that for years. Alone but never lonely, he used to say. I think my staying for a while should, you know, help him out that ol’ turt-turt shell. That’s what we used to call him. Turt-turt.”
Mama squealed. “Turt-turt?!”
Ran nodded. “Yes, ma’am. Turt-Turt the Turtle Boy. Me and the other brothers made up a theme song about him and everything. Quick wit! Smart! The guy can process a situation and a response in like, nanoseconds, right? But he’s slow as hell to keep up with the shit everybody else is doing. He was always doing his own thing. We’d be climbing trees and going on adventures. He’d be by himself. Not going anywhere. Have you ever seen a turtle upside down? That’s him. Swear to God.”
Ran was flailing his arms and legs on the bar stool, giving a visual performance to accompany his observation of my lived experiences. Mama was in hysterics. Boss was standing by me. He leaned in and whispered over the laughter:
“Turtle Boy. Right over the dressing room door. That’s how we’ll start booking you.”
I shot him a glare. “Don’t you fucking start.”
Mama caught her breath. “Babushka, honey, you’re sensational! Boss, honey, shots, c’mon!” She rhythmically patted the bar in front of all of us again. Polite, yet firm. They were already being poured. He knew that she’d ask, I figured.
I leaned in so I could catch Ran’s eyes. “Keep it up. You need MY couch to sleep on.”
“Our couch, comrade.”
The shot glasses were laid out, four in total. I didn’t catch the label but I knew he was pouring whiskey. Great. Whiskey in combination with the four liquors I was already drinking. Adios, motherfucker, indeed.
“A toast!” Mama said as she lifted her glass with such a proclamation that I was sure that she felt like she was still on a stage, never mind that there were only four people in the room.
“A toast to what?” I muttered as I tussled with my reflection staring back at me from the surface of the whiskey.
“To what we always toast to, my love. Peace. Salud!”
All four of us fired the shots down our gullets in unison followed by a ring of whatever noises our bodies could make to bridge the gap from sober to magnanimous. For me, the room was spinning. I was doing too much, too fast. I stood up.
“Be right back.”
“There he goes again. He drinks, he runs,” Boss teased. That surprised me because he usually kept to himself or at least let me keep to myself especially when Mama was doing her queen-of-the-ball schtick. But he was right. I never really enjoyed being too fucked up in front of other people, not to mention that less than five minutes ago I was threatening to slice Ran in half with a sword that hadn’t been drawn since I’d taken up the synthesizer and microphone. Not that I ever would, but he didn’t need to know that. I was doing too much, too fast, yes. I turned on my heels and made off towards the front door for reasonably fresher air.
Past the tables, past the chairs, past the archway that narrowed everyone in and out of the place and right towards the door. The door leading out had a mirror posted at eye level. It was a bar quirk, a choice from the Boss; Mama constantly gave him shit for it, because no drunk wants to look at themselves in the face when they’re two seconds from being disorderly, but that mirror had Latin words carved into it that stuck with me every time I was heading outside and especially when I was teetering on tilted like I was now.
Ite ut venisti. Go as you come. Don’t mind if I do.
I opened the door to step outside. I saw the sky. My reaction was so immediate, my confusion so jarring, and my panic so disarming that I had to shut the door again. I needed to process what I’d seen. Before I could, Ran spoke from the bar.
“Hey, um, Bro?”
His voice cracked. Mama hadn’t seen the sky but she heard the discomfort in Ran’s voice. He saw what I saw when I opened the door. She turned her head the other way and called to me.
“Dylan, sweetheart, you alright?”
“Mama, you wouldn’t so happen to know why the sky is red in the morning when it wasn’t red last night, would you?”