A Neon Darkness

by Lauren Shippen

  Not even a week has passed and I can feel myself getting restless. This is the problem with getting everything you want, with going to see some of the best bands for free, being seated at the front of the most famous comedy houses, having bottomless bottle service wherever you go. When I was first on my own, the novelty of it kept me busy for a while. The unfettered freedom, and then, the necessity of figuring out how to actually survive, was an activity. I guess most people my age are in school or have a job, but both of those options seem like a waste of time. So I read books and go to shows and spend an entire day in my villa watching TV and subsisting off of minibar food just because I can before I realize I haven’t gotten the bartender’s tattoos out of my head. I didn’t get a good look at them and I want to.

  So I do.

  “You came back,” Indah drawls, and I shrug sheepishly as I slide onto a bar stool.

  “I can’t find another good vodka bar in this city to save my life.” I grin and I see the moment she melts. No hostility, no revelation. Simple acceptance.

  Something inside me deflates, just a little.

  She should be pissed, she should be annoyed, she should be something. I barreled into her life, haven’t apologized for stealing her vodka and making her take me home, and she finds it adorable. My desire to be liked overcomes everything else and I try not to hate myself too much for it.

  “I don’t know what it is”—she shakes her head—“but you are some kind of charming. Especially for a kid,” she adds pointedly, and I just shrug again.

  She’s already pouring me a double. I don’t even really like vodka that much. But I drink it down as I examine her tattoos. On the back of one forearm is horizontal writing in a language I don’t recognize. The other arm is covered in delicate vines that wind from her wrist to her shoulder, snaking around her light brown skin. Small flowers bloom along the vines, the largest one in the center of her wrist.

  Suddenly feeling self-conscious about staring at her, my cheeks warming in a blush, I swivel my stool to take in the early evening crowd populating the bar. A few loners but mostly pairs. Couples on a first drinks date, work friends swapping stories, bespectacled hipsters no doubt discussing their nauseatingly basic screenplays. I don’t need to talk to any of them to know that Indah is the most interesting person in here.

  I turn back to tell her so, only to find her frowning at me, vodka bottle still in hand.

  “You shouldn’t have just up and left the other night,” she tells me, a crinkle in between her eyebrows.

  “What, were you worried?” I tease.

  “Yes,” she says humorlessly, and I stop smiling. “Look, this is a pretty safe neighborhood but you’re just a kid and you’re new in town and people get weird on Halloween. With what happened to Blaze … I just, I came back with the dustpan and you weren’t there and I panicked, okay?”

  “I’m not a kid,” I snap, a knee-jerk reaction. Her face softens, my unconscious need for her to not be mad at me doing its work.

  “Who’s Blaze?” I ask, knowing Indah won’t ever call me a kid again.

  “A friend,” she says, dropping the bottle back on the shelf. “He’s a year older than you and he … sort of went missing last week.”

  “Oh,” I breathe, not knowing what to say. “Sorry.”

  “No, I’m sorry.” Her big brown eyes stare earnestly into mine. “I didn’t mean to scold you. I just … I care.”

  The word is like honey rolling off her tongue and I want her to mean it so badly. That want twists in my gut, carving out ugly shapes of need that I know will be met regardless of what the other person truly feels. But does it matter? Does it matter if Indah really cares? Or is it enough that I want her to care? Either way, I can feel my restlessness settling, being replaced with a bubbling curiosity I haven’t felt in a long time.

  “So what is there to do in this town?” I ask, not wanting to linger too long on the question of if she means it when she says she cares.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, besides drinking at a kitsch Russian bar,” I clarify, and she glares at me, but there’s no heat to it.

  “Depends,” she says. “What kind of scene are you looking for?”

  “Something different,” I tell her. I want her to peel back the layers of shine over this city and show me the underbelly. There’s no reason to bet on her knowing where the underbelly is, but she’s the only source I have, and besides, if tattooed bartenders don’t know the more fringe scenes, who would?

  “Actually…” She smiles, leaning forward on her elbows. “There’s somebody you should meet.”

  * * *

  Later, Indah will wonder what compelled her to bring a boy she just met to meet her best friend/sometimes-more-than-friends friend. She doesn’t introduce Neon to a lot of people, too worried about revealing Neon’s secret, too selfish to want to share her with anyone else, and yet she gave both away so easily to the odd teenager who smiles so well she poured him an entire bottle of their finest vodka on the first night they met. She didn’t know a thing about him, she still doesn’t, and yet, it seemed like the thing to do. He sat there smiling, not at all contrite about ditching her a few nights before, making her worry, and she suddenly wanted desperately to show him the most interesting parts of her life.

  Later, Indah will wonder how she didn’t see it. How she, of all people, didn’t see him. She’ll wonder if it would have made any difference even if she had.

  Indah will wonder where she’d be if he hadn’t walked into Lubitsch that night. If she hadn’t introduced Robert and Neon. Maybe things would be different. Or maybe she, like Robert, was doomed from the start by something given to her at birth.

  * * *

  “Sup,” the woman says, extending her arm to me. I go to shake her hand, but she just slaps my hand, open palmed, twice, like we already have some kind of established handshake.

  “This is my friend Neon,” Indah laughs, rolling her eyes. I smile like I’m in on the joke, but I’m already distracted by the fact that Neon seems to be one of those effortlessly cool people who never feel self-conscious about doing anything. A small but built Black woman with long locs, she’s wearing an enormous leather jacket that doesn’t look ridiculous even though it’s clearly three sizes too big and heavy black combat boots to match. There’s something electric about her. Magnetic. I’m immediately pulled in.

  “Aw, come on, babe,” Neon purrs, curling herself around Indah, “‘friend’? I think we’re a little more than that.”

  Neon nuzzles Indah’s neck and Indah laughs some more, pushing her away.

  “Well, you say we’re not girlfriends, so if we’re not that, we must be friends,” Indah throws back.

  “There’s plenty of space between friends and girlfriends,” Neon says, stepping closer to Indah, putting her arm around her again.

  “Not to me.” Indah shakes her head, smiling, and playfully pushes Neon’s head away gently with the meat of her palm.

  I have no idea what to do with myself. I take the moment to look around the room. We’re back on Sunset, in one of the music clubs that speckle the strip, but one I haven’t gotten to yet. There’s booming bass coming from the main room, but we’re ensconced in a run-down, but oddly cozy, backstage room. In my nights out since I got here, it never occurred to me to come backstage, where there are fewer people and you can actually hear yourself think. My veins thrum in time with the distant music, so many wants rushing through me that nothing has a chance to come to the surface. I stick my hands in my pockets, uncertain about what else to do.

  “Aw, I think we’re scaring the poor choirboy,” Neon observes.

  “He’s from Kansas,” Indah teases, eyes sparkling at me, and I shrug in what I hope is a self-deprecating and charming move. The hope alone tells me it will be received as such.

  “Well, Kansas, nice to meet you.” Neon smirks, pulling away from Indah and lighting a cigarette. The flame of her lighter makes her dark skin glow, highlighting the bright
blue eyeliner and glitter that cover her eyelids. On anyone else it would look ridiculous. On her, it’s mesmerizing.

  She steps toward me as she exhales, her brown eyes peering up at me through the smoke. They rake up and down my body, scanning me like she’s looking for weak spots. I stand my ground, refusing to cower, and the ghost of a smile moves over her lips.

  “It’s Robert,” I say, “Robbie. That’s what—that’s what people call me.”

  I’m already mentally kicking myself for saying that—after leaving Nebraska, I swore I’d never go by Robbie again. It shouldn’t matter that I’ve given her that name—if I don’t want her to call me that, she won’t. But something compelled me to say it, so maybe—

  “Right … Robbie.” Neon nods before cocking her head to the side and giving me the once-over again. “You know, it’s funny, you don’t look like a Robbie.”

  “What do I look like?” I flirt, feeling bold.

  “Trouble.” She smirks.

  “You have no idea, babe,” Indah says, huffing a laugh, from behind her.

  “Oh yeah?” Neon looks over at Indah, smoke curling between her lips. “He give you problems already?”

  “Mm-hm.” Indah nods, smiling. “He crashed on my couch, broke one of my glasses, and fled the scene.”

  “You took him home with you?” Neon’s eyebrows rise as she looks between us. I have the strangest urge to apologize for a nonexistent betrayal of a relationship that doesn’t seem exclusive in the first place.

  Eight years of being the way that I am and I’m pretty confident in the power I hold over people. It’s imperfect, intangible, but I know how to command attention. A single minute of being in Neon’s presence and she’s somehow overridden all of that. She has the same intangible quality. Except she’s not like me. She can’t be. There’s no one in the world like me, but Neon has bottled power in a way that makes even me want to do what she says. It sets my brain on fire in the best way and the thought flickers across my mind that maybe this is what people mean by love at first sight. But suddenly I’m thinking of Them, the only people to ever say that word to me, and Neon starts to fade away as I begin to sink into memory.

  “Poor kid needed a place to crash,” Indah says, her now familiar voice bringing me back to the present. “I don’t even know how he convinced me to let him stay over.”

  “I can be pretty persuasive.” I shrug, showing my teeth in a mockery of a smile. I brush off the strange new feelings of a moment ago, focusing on my need for Neon to know that I’m not going to fall at her feet like she expects. With her short but strong body, the ends of her hair dyed an electric blue, piercings on her nose and eyebrow and cascading down her ears, she cuts an intimidating figure next to my doughy, pale body. But looks can be deceiving.

  “So, Robbie—” Neon starts.

  “Robert,” I demand, making a decision. “Or Rob, if you really have to shorten it.”

  “Of course.” She smiles. “Robert.”

  Her acquiescence is like dopamine straight to the center of my brain and I smile a real smile. It’s one thing to have Indah or the hotel clerks do what I want. They’re easygoing. They’re in service, trained to believe that the customer is always right. But Neon … I know immediately that Neon is a hard sell and I just bought her respect. The thrill of my satisfaction at this is only slightly dampened by my desperation to keep it up.

  “What’re you doing in our glorious city, Robert?” Neon asks, collapsing back on the worn couch, and I take her cue, sitting on the even rattier couch opposite.

  “I don’t know yet,” I say honestly. “I’ve only been here a week.”

  Neon laughs, so different from Indah’s big, beautiful laugh. Neon’s laugh is sharp and demanding, like she is. The kind of laugh where you never know if you’re being laughed with or laughed at.

  “Wow, one week and you already have Indah wrapped around your little finger,” she teases. “I’m almost too impressed to be jealous.”

  “From the looks of things, you’ve got nothing to be jealous of.” I give a small nod toward where Indah has settled in at Neon’s side. “I get the impression I’m not Indah’s type.”

  “Wow, you really are from the middle of nowhere,” Neon quips.

  “What do you mean?” I ask, not liking the sensation of feeling a step behind.

  “You can like more than just one, you know,” Indah explains, and Neon grins and tightens her arms around Indah. I try to smile back like I know what she means.

  “But you’re right, emo white boys aren’t really my type,” she teases sweetly. “Especially ones who are eighteen.”

  “No shit?” Neon’s eyes widen. “You’re eighteen?”

  I shrug.

  “Eighteen and fresh off the bus from the Midwest,” she goes on. “Lemme guess: you’re an actor.”

  Now it’s my turn to laugh, though it’s not as big and unself-conscious as the laughs of the two women sitting across from me.

  “No way,” I scoff. “I’m a … a nomad.” I smile at Indah, borrowing her word from the first night we met.

  “Well, nomad”—Neon leans back—“what brought your wandering feet our way?”

  “Seemed like as good a place as any,” I say.

  “Ha, yeah,” Neon laughs around her cigarette, “I guess worse has been said about LA. People never appreciate our fair city. But you give it a chance, and you’ll learn to love it.”

  * * *

  And she’s right. Two weeks here and I’m sold.

  There’s a thrumming in this city. The buzzing of neon. The desert heat in the air. The smell of exhaust mixed with the distant scent of salt water. The desperate, cloying sound of people trying to impress each other. Los Angeles isn’t relentless but it is demanding. It whispers promises in your ear, tells you sweet lies. It says, “You can have everything you’ve ever wanted, just sign here. Sign here and don’t look too closely at the fine print and all your dreams will come true.”

  Those are the whispers that everyone else hears. The sly seductions that the foolish and the ordinary fall for. I don’t pay those sweet nothings any mind.

  No, instead, I’m the one whispering to the city. “You’re mine. You’ll do what I want, be what I want. I’m here now. I’m where I should be and everything will be better.”

  * * *

  The porch light flickers above me. I’m looking out, out, out, over empty fields and big, black sky. Everything is empty. Emptiness everywhere.

  The house behind me is empty too. Empty and silent. The fields are louder than the house—the sound of the breeze through the corn, the crickets. There’s life there. The house stands behind me like an animal carcass. Only bones.

  They’ll come back, I tell myself. They have to.

  “They’ll come back,” I tell the fields. The fields don’t answer. There’s nothing but silence.

  * * *

  The music is loud and punishing. I went to some punk shows in Lincoln before I left Nebraska—trying to find my people in all the shouting and moshing—but I couldn’t stand how the blown-out speakers made my teeth rattle, how the press of sweaty bodies was impossible to predict, impossible to control. The sound here is a little better—a little more balanced, I guess, it being an actual music club as opposed to the bar basements where semitalented men my age would scream into cheap microphones. But the claustrophobic crowds and sticky floor are the same.

  Neon is somewhere in front of me, jumping up and down, slamming her tiny body into the mosh pit like she’s something that can’t be broken. Indah and I are leaned against the bar in the back, nodding our heads and watching Neon bob in the sea of people. I’m taking a break from dancing with Neon, out of shape and out of breath, while she seems to have an endless well of energy, but I can’t stop smiling while trying to suck in more air. Being in a huge crowd I can’t control isn’t as daunting with these two by my side.

  “You don’t want to get in there?” I shout to Indah over the noise.

  “Not real
ly my scene,” Indah calls back, her eyes and smile directed toward Neon the whole time.

  “Why are we here then?”

  I’ve only known them two weeks, hanging out at bars and going to shows, and they’ve already folded me nicely into their pairing. I never feel like a third wheel, never feel unwanted, and I’m genuinely uncertain if that’s due to my nature or to the fact that they’re not really a couple. Maybe they’re just good at making and having friends. I don’t know what that’s like, what making friends is even supposed to look like, so it’s a difficult thing to measure against my ability.

  “This is Blaze’s favorite spot,” she shouts, a complete sentence that doesn’t invite more questions. A closed door has never kept me out, so I’m about to prod when a particular loud clang of guitar and beating of drums signals the end of a song. There’s indiscernible talking from the stage, the cheer of the crowd, and then Neon is in front of us, blue and electric, the sweat glittering on her forehead and her smile big and open.

  “Set’s over,” she pants, smoothly swiping the drink from Indah’s hand and taking a large gulp before handing it back. “Come on.”

  She whips around, her hair thwacking me in the arm, and starts marching back toward the stage. Indah follows without question and I down my drink before trailing behind, curiosity thrumming in my bones as we skirt the edge of the stage and go through a black curtain to the side.

  On the other side of the curtain, things are muffled and calmer. An enormous bouncer, larger than the three of us combined, looms in the narrow hallway, peering down his crooked nose at us.