White Bird (A Mayan 2012 Thriller)

by Tom Rich

  “No-no. Talking about it has helped.”

  “There is a thought that occurs. You say these people are awaiting the return of a king who sacrificed his life for his people many centuries ago. There’s something very familiar about that. Though I suppose a guillotine is quite a bit different from the Grail.”

  “And a lot quicker than crucifixion. I guess civilization has made some improvements.”

  “Look how far the End of the World Café has come because of the work you’re doing. Would you care for another Apocalypse.”

  Aly grinned. “You just fed me the opening for the best line of my career as a smartass.”

  Clove raised an eyebrow.

  “But some lines are better left merely implied.”

  Clove waved to Trish as she slid off her barstool. She patted Aly’s knee. “I think you’re going to be all right. We’ll talk more as the evening progresses.” Clove moved into the crowd to chat with those not having their audience with Sylvie.

  The people closest to Sylvie were dancing with her in the narrow floor space. Pig, startlingly graceful for a man his girth, was trying to dominate her attention by singing loudly to the music.

  Trish set down another Apocalypse. She leaned over the bar. “This is the first time I ever saw Pig sucking in that big ol’ bread basket of his.”

  Aly turned away.

  “I’m not trying to suck up to you with drinks,” said Trish. “You know how Clove feels about you giving her the idea for her book.”

  Aly climbed off her stool and went into the crowd. After twenty minutes of attempting to schmooze, she felt more in the mood for watching. She made her way back to Eliot’s end of the bar. She took a seat next to the formerly silent composer of the Divine Tragedia. He was hard at work in his notebook. Aly sneaked a peek only to see dozens of poorly drawn hearts. Down at the other end of the room Pig fluttered tiny goodbye waves as Sylvie turned and made her way toward Aly. It took her ten minutes to finally squeeze through.

  “I haven’t forgot about you,” said Sylvie. She took a stool. “We’ll do more lines in a minute. Pig’s taking the stash outside for a quick blow.”

  “There goes your quantity.”

  “No woe there. Pig’s a real prince. He wouldn’t clean us out.” Sylvie looked across Aly to Eliot. “Hey, writer man, when do I get the second verse to my song?”

  Eliot blushed. He glued his eyes to his work.

  “This is kind of awkward,” Sylvie said to Aly, “but I never got your name.”

  “Oh. Well, in here I’m known as Allison.” It was an awkward moment. Aly attempted to smooth it over. “I haven’t seen Clove in a while.”

  Sylvie put fingertips to her temples. “I see…at this moment…the divine Clove… getting her…woman’s perspective on things.” Her hands formed a triangle above her head. “Madame Vouvray sees all, knows all.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  Sylvie nodded to the painting behind the bar. “The peepholes in the stairwell.”

  “Yeah?”

  “They’re not where the painting’s eyes are.”

  “No?”

  “Between her fingers.” Sylvie waited for this to sink in. “Of the lower hand.” Two beats passed. “The hand covering her hoo hoo.”

  “Oh? Ohhhhhhh. Hoo hoo?”

  “That’s what they call it in uh, uhh…whatever that place you found me in was.”

  “Indian-no-place?” said Trish from behind the bar. She set down fresh drinks.

  “Sinsinnasty is so much the better town,” said Sylvie.

  Sylvie-nati, on this night, Aly wanted to say.

  A tap-tap on the snare.

  The bass rolled in for two passes.

  Horns announced the theme.

  Deep-voiced Tony Joe mumbled something.

  Then sultry Lucinda got “Closing in on the Fire” started.

  “Omigod! Omigod! I love this song,” said Sylvie. She started to climb onto the bar top. She paused, one foot on her stool, one on the bar, looking back and forth between Aly and Trish. “Think Clove would mind?”

  Trish said, “Clove would say, ‘Dance like it’s the end of the world.’”

  Sylvie climbed up. She strutted to the center of the bar and spun. She clapped twice to light flames on each end.

  “Hot, hot, hot,” said Eliot.

  Facing front, Sylvie moved to the left until singed. She cooled her ass with a licked finger, then brought it all to the right, fire greeting her at that end.

  “Slow, slow, slow,” Eliot continued.

  Someone cranked the volume. “Closing in on the fire,” sang Lucinda and Tony Joe.

  Sylvie fanned the flames with a shimmy, chased them back with a kick and a spin. She coaxed a single lick with a roll of her hips, then knocked it into sparks that flew to smolder elsewhere.

  “Burn, burn, burning got to move for the yearning,” said Eliot. “The girl can dance.”

  “Of course she can,” said Aly. “Anything is possible when your life has a soundtrack.”

  Now the barroom crowd was moving to their left when Sylvie moved to her right. Anyone out of step got a sharp glance from Sylvie and a head snap to bring them back in line. Pig came into the room. He pushed his way directly in front of Sylvie. Now the moving line looked like a giant bird being blown side to side; Pig as body, everyone else as wings.

  “Closing in on the fire.”

  The heat intensified. Gaslights on the wall flickered. Lucinda and Tony Joe exchanged riffs. Sylvie went down low, coaxed a flame with rolling shoulders. She chased the flame back with a turn and glare.

  The crowd reached up as Sylvie reached down. Pig took her hand for one turn. She twisted out of his grip.

  The fuzz bass stoked the core of Sylvie’s heat. Her arms twisted above her head, the room growing hotter.

  “She’s getting them in over their heads,” said Eliot.

  Sylvie drew it all together with shorter trips to the left, shorter trips to the right. Her shoulders moved to a different part of the music than hips, head different than legs, each body part coaxing, then chasing away fire.

  The chasing stopped.

  Now Sylvie only coaxed.

  “She can’t let go of the fire,” said Eliot.

  The flame of the guitar engulfed her.

  “There’s no escape.”

  The lights in the room dimmed.

  Nothing but shimmying to the pounding drums: Sylvie became the fire.

  “Angry hips grinding,” said Eliot as he wrote in his book. “Angry for being made to want fire. Angry being made of want and desire. She wants the fire out of control. But knows the price is losing her soul.” He chanted, “Yielding burning fanning. Looking for escape, ’scape, ’scaping. Pull, pull, pulling. Pull in the Maker. Show Him desire. Show Him the result of dealing in fire. Need the heat, fan the flames, get too close and pay the price for know know knowing fire.”

  “Isn’t this one for the tabloids?” Trish said to Aly. “Sylvie Averling dancing on a Northside bar top. I’ve seen some good times in here, but this is the kind of night where everybody loves everybody.” She had Aly’s ear. “What say?”

  Aly looked Trish in the eye for the first time since the flare up over Blue. She couldn’t hold out any longer. “It is the kind of night where even Pete might give Black Bart a kiss.”

  Trish brightened. “With ta-ungue! Did you hear Sylvie proposition Clove?”

  Aly felt relieved. “I wonder what category that tryst would come under?”

  “I believe Northside Nookie covers just about every possible gender crossing.”

  Aly watched Pig eyeing Sylvie as they moved with the music. “Does that term cover trans-species?”

  The song ended.

  Sylvie yelled, “Yo, Pig! Ever walk like a Mayan?” Within seconds she had everyone trying her new walk.

  Then Sylvie was back on the stool next to Aly. “Told you Pig wouldn’t wipe us out.” She showed Aly the package. “Plenty left. Take it to the p
owder room. Clue Trish in. Oh, and there’s certainly plenty enough Pig to go around.”

  “And me sitting here without applesauce,” said Aly.

  Sylvie chuckled. “D’oh!”

  The music changed to a horn-sliding, badda-boomping loin call straight from the dawn of human sexuality.

  Before Aly could decide about the cocaine a loud commotion rose up from down the bar.

  “Growls and hoots,” said Eliot as he wrote in his book. “Cat whistles that could make the Sphinx jump up and come running.” He put his pen to his lips. “Even the women howl like construction workers perched on girders the day the mini-skirt debuted.” The din grew louder. “Here comes the bikini.” He covered his ears. “And it just…went…topless.”

  A closed, off-white parasol poked its way, shoulder high, from the passageway behind the bar.

  The howling and whistling increased.

  The parasol thrust to the music, then disappeared.

  A moment later the parasol reappeared. Deeper thrusts now revealed a hand clad in a long, off-white glove.

  Back and forth, in and out.

  The parasol swirled in tiny circles. The tip pierced the circles’ center with one last thrust, then planted itself on the floor.

  The highly agitated crowd grew louder when a shoulder clad in off-white lace leaned out, shimmied, pulled back out of sight.

  The shoulder came out a little further, accompanied by the fringed edge of an off-white hat.

  “An Easter bonnet,” said Eliot. He put pen to paper. “But an Easter as celebrated by the bunny doing that other thing he’s famous for.”

  The next taste of shoulder and bonnet lingered. Then the full meal came out.

  The roar grew deafening.

  “A sound loud enough to wake the dead, which it seems to have done, because standing behind the bar, hands firmly planted on the handle of her parasol, diamond bracelets, earrings, brooch and choker sparkling like a nighttime stadium exploding with flashbulbs, and with every bit of skin other than face and two inches of arm between gloves and gown covered like Queen Victoria—yet oozing more sex than a satyr tossed into a nest of eighth grade cheerleaders—stands Diamond Lil.”

  “Goll,” said Sylvie.

  Eliot licked the tip of his pen. “If God is still angry with Eve for the apple, here’s the makeup pie steaming on His windowsill. And too bad His punishment put them into clothing, because hiding beneath that dress is one great big dangling joke on Him!”

  “Clove doing Mae West doing Diamond Lil as Mae West doing Diamond Lil,” said Sylvie. “And when you factor in who’s behind Clove? She’s got more layers going on than the swing shift at Tyson.”

  Aly had an entirely different take on this Westian History of Civilization. She remembered a lecture from a Classics class about how poor old Oedipus kicked off the entire “Who am I?” saga after being abandoned by his parents as an infant, then sealing the West’s fate when he killed his father in history’s first road rage incident. “Forget the whole motherfucker part of it,” Professor Pauli had lectured. “That was just sensationalism to put Classic Greek butts into the seats. The people so clamoring for the new idea of self identity had to be shown that the result of the individual separated from the collective actually results in loss of identity. We’ve been screaming the question, ‘Who am I,’ ever since.”

  Now, nearly twenty-five centuries later, and with time rapidly running out, here was the answer stripped of all doubt—here was artifice no longer hiding a lack of soul but, finally, the celebration of image as projected by soul. Here, at long last, was, “This is who I am all you motherfuckers!”

  Diamond Lil pivoted around the planted parasol. She faced different parts of the room to slay with her all-knowing smile. And wherever the smile killed, diamonds flashed to bestow the spark of divine life.

  “Michelangelo four more years on his back couldn’t raise a limp appendage like this demonstration,” said Eliot.

  “I just got my first boner,” agreed Sylvie.

  Every fourth badda-boomp caught one of Lil’s hips and thrust it high. She continued around the parasol until gracing everyone in the room with her smile and diamonds, then closed her stance. The parasol went to a shoulder and popped open.

  Lil moved into the crowd.

  Diamond Lil’s lips were moving, but Aly couldn’t hear. And maybe it was too loud for others to hear because only those closest to Lil reacted to her with laughter.

  Not Trish, though. She was laughing hysterically. Probably flying high on her own stash, thought Aly. No need for any of Sylvie’s candy.

  And how Pig had sucked in his gut for Sylvie? He now had the mass entirely hidden as he lightly floated Lil’s elbow in his fingertips. Which caused Aly to wonder: Earlier she’d been concerned that Pig might cause trouble if he weren’t allowed to have Sylvie all to himself. Now she thought Sylvie might cause a scene by tearing Pig away from Diamond Lil.

  Or tearing Clove away from Pig?

  And what about Sylvie? Was the professional entertainer upset about having her spotlight stolen? Aly stole a glance. Apparently not. In fact, Sylvie looked about to reach over and grab Eliot’s notebook for a bit of her own note taking.

  And poor Eliot. His world was suddenly bereft of tragedy.

  Diamond Lil, slowly—very slowly—made her way towards Aly’s end of the bar.

  Sylvie leaned against Aly. “It’s like she knows the one thing that will make each person laugh that no one else gets. Watch. See? Every time she says something, only one person laughs. Meanwhile everyone else looks kind of confused. I think she knows the one joke that will make each person laugh alone in a crowd.”

  “Clove managed to get everyone in the room to document their deepest fears,” said Aly. “Maybe Diamond Lil knows how to shame those fears.”

  “The fear of what’s coming to get you,” said Sylvie.

  Aly thought she saw…

  thought she saw…

  wondered…

  wondered…

  Diamond Lil shifted and—there and gone in a flash—Aly caught a second glimpse over Lil’s shoulder. Which confirmed her first sighting.

  “Oh, God,” said Aly. “Oh, God. No, no, no, no, no.”

  Sylvie looked where Aly looked. Her spine stiffened. “What the fuck are they doing here?” She looked at Aly. “You know those guys?”

  Aly spoke with a suddenly dry mouth. “They cut up a friend of mine.”

  Now past Lil, and pushing his way slowly through the packed room, came the man with the scar that looped down from the corner of his mouth and ran up to his temple: Fishhook!

  Sylvie looked at Aly, amazed, impressed. “No shit? Your friend must have been pretty high up on the pyramid for the Gomez brothers to do the job themselves.”

  “Something like that.” Aly looked again. Sure enough, Hernandez was right behind Fishhook. “You know those guys?”

  “Fu-uh-uck. I thought for sure they were in jail. Or dead. I mean, the way they disappeared.”

  “Apparently they don’t stay dead.”

  Sylvie scanned the room. “They used to finance projects for Kenneth Fabritzi when no one else would. They backed his pictures, Breeze introduced them to high end clients for their import business.”

  “God, things were bad enough when I thought they were poor.”

  “Hey. Hey-hey. Relax. I can handle these guys. I know how to push their Hollywood buttons.”

  A minute later Fishhook and Hernandez pressed themselves against Sylvie and Aly.

  “Well, well, well,” said Sylvie. “If it isn’t the Gomez Brothers. Guess you heard about Breeze’s latest project. Looking to be extras again?”

  “You have never concerned yourself that disregard for my name is a form of disrespect,” said Fishhook.

  “Sorry, Felix. Why don’t you and—Nomar—relax and have a drink with us.”

  Nomar pressed in close to Aly. Even if she could push him away and run there was a knot of people against a table bloc
king the rear emergency exit. Not exactly the fire marshal’s wet dream.

  “We would like both of you to come with us,” said Felix.

  “Look, Felix,” said Sylvie, “whatever came down on you guys, I had nothing to do with it. I would never… Remember the fun we had back in those days?” She held out the packet. “Here, have some. Just like old times.”

  Felix looked upon the cocaine with disdain. “You were always too blinded by vanity to see that I never used this drug.”

  Pig, who had made himself Diamond Lil’s escort on her slow journey through the barroom, waved his arms and yelled to get everyone’s attention. “Quiet! Hey! The lady… SHUT! THE FUCK! UP!” Pin-drop silence. “Thank you. Now, the lady has an announcement to make.”

  Diamond Lil twirled her parasol. “Well, thank you, Big Boy.” She bestowed upon Pig her deadliest smile, then looked into the crowd. “Lucky for us you didn’t resort to your former method of crowd control.”

  Nervous laughter tittered from the few in the room who caught the reference.

  Pig blushed.

  Lil pursed her lips. Diamonds sparkled. “You know, they say three’s a crowd. But Big Boy, here, can whittle down a crowd faster than you can say ‘Jumping Jack Flash.’”

  Pig’s eyes bugged.

  Those in the know whispered to others about Pig’s role as a Hell’s Angel at Altamont.

  “Myself, now, I prefer the parry and thrust method over whittling. It may be a more roundabout way of getting to the point, but once the point gets there, it sticks.”

  Pig trembled. Much like the irrepressible class clown who can’t quite hide the latest prank that’s his sure ticket to the principal’s office, his face reddened to the point of bursting.

  “But I’ll keep your talents in mind next time last call rolls around, Big Boy. You could put a whole new slant on the horizontals we carry out. Oh, did I say slant? What I meant to say was slash.”

  “Nnnn-eeesh,” hissed Pig like an overtaxed boiler finding a tiny crack. “Nnnn nnnn neeeeeesh!” His enormous belly fell out of its hiding place and shook like the fifty-cent bed at the Bide a Wee Motel.

  Aly wanted to cry out. But Nomar had his eyes inches from hers. She managed a glance at Sylvie. Sylvie’s quietly moving lips suggested diplomacy might be the way to deal with Felix. But Felix either couldn’t hear, or didn’t care, what Sylvie had to say.