The Virgin of Flames

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The Virgin of Flames Page 18

by Chris Abani


  thirty

  Warm soap.

  Maybe detergent. The smell left him pining for home. Familiar yet full of delicious warmth, like a stranger’s leg pressing against his in a bus sometime, somewhere. Turning around in a circle, he tried to determine its source. He set off on foot down the rail tracks heading east. Crossed Santa Fe, crossed San Pedro and stopped there, behind the junkyard abutting the River. After a while, he realized the smell was coming from the wedding dress he carried. A second later, he realized he was still naked. Ducking into an abandoned warehouse, he pulled the dress and wig on. Wandering around, he decided to rest, perched in an empty window frame.

  He didn’t know how long he’d been there, having lost all track of time, but he became aware that a small group of people had gathered below the window. They were holding candles and reciting their Hail Marys. Everywhere, there was the smell of soap. He felt both an old and inexplicable terror, and something akin to the sublime, and he searched for meaning in the folds of the dress; the way light between hills reveals valleys, or maybe rivers: or some such truth.

  And something else.

  There was sadness. But this sadness wasn’t a turning, wasn’t a leaning into healing. There was no tight-lipped hope in the face of it. This sadness was like a dandelion blown into the wind. Not the prelude to a new beginning, but a dispersal into parts so small that there was nothing to hold on to, no way to find them all.

  Yet somehow, they filled the world.

  THE ANOINTING

  Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her,

  Alone, shall come fulfillment to our dreams

  And our desires . . .

  —Wallace Stevens

  thirty-one

  ray-Ray was stuck.

  Black stood next to Iggy as the paramedics tried to get his heart started, but the “wet” had taken its toll. The lead paramedic looked up at Iggy and shook his head.

  “His lungs are completely atrophied, ma’am. There’s nothing we can do,” he said.

  Iggy nodded. She held on to Black’s hand as Ray-Ray was wheeled out on the gurney, face covered by a white sheet. The paramedic was talking into his radio: “Ten-four, ten-four. One male, African-American, DOA.”

  When the room was clear, Iggy collapsed into a chair. Black said nothing, but stood by the window a shadow away from the supplicants outside. Watching a woman writhing in ecstasy, he wondered how death and the miraculous could coexist so easily. The lights in The Ugly Store were dim, and the moa cast a dark ugly shadow across the floor. Black turned away from the window, crossing to the bar where he began to make two cups of hot, sweet tea. He didn’t know what else to do.

  “He was going to die anyway,” Iggy said. “I told him. Tried to help. You know?”

  “You more than any of us,” Black said, bringing two steaming mugs over. He sat down opposite her and took her hand in his. She squeezed it. Smiled.

  “You are a good man, Black.”

  “No,” he said, shaking his head. “No, I’m not.”

  “Hush, Black,” she said. “Let me believe it.”

  He smiled uncomfortably and took a sip of tea. God, it tastes so good, he thought as its warmth spread through him.

  “What happened exactly?” Black asked.

  “I’m not sure myself. I mean, one minute he was fine, you know? Going about on his stilts, serving customers, trying to get the regulars to play that game with him.”

  “The Chandler game?”

  “Uh-huh. Anyway he took a tray with coffee and muffins to that table,” she pointed, “when he just collapsed. I thought he was goofing at first, but then I saw blood from a small cut on his forehead and I realized that he must have tripped.” As she spoke, her finger was turning in the air. Tracing an arc, then returning to begin again, as though she were dialing an invisible rotary telephone, as though it was containing the words. As though it could. Black couldn’t take his eyes away from her hand. “I called out several times, but he didn’t get up,” she continued. “I walked over to him. I thought he would say something funny, like a quote from Chandler, but he just lay there, struggling to breathe. Not gasping, just this horrible wheezing sound and something that sounded like a whistle, like something was caught in his chest. I called 911. I wasn’t afraid. I was just confused. Anyway, he opened his mouth and I thought, Ok this is it, the moment of final wisdom, or the spitting up of the things stuck in his throat. But he just closed his mouth and that was it.”

  “What was?”

  “His death. One moment he was trying to breathe and the next he was dead. I guess the holy books are right, death does come unannounced.”

  Her voice was no more than a whisper. Black took her hand and squeezed it. He wasn’t sure why. Maybe he saw someone else do it, though he couldn’t think when. And in all honesty he probably did it more for himself than her. The mention of holy books had reminded him of being a pastor. Putting it out of his mind, he said:

  “Are you going to be okay?”

  She nodded.

  “Yeah.”

  Pause.

  “It’s just that the look on his face, his eyes, like he was begging for help. For it to stop. Ray-Ray died like that, eyes wide open in fear.”

  “Ssssh,” he said. “I never know how to act in the face of death. It’s like a desert or an ocean. Any emotion seems like an attempt to reduce it,” he added.

  Pause.

  “More tea?” she asked him.

  “Yes, please,” he said, passing his cup to her.

  She went behind the bar and soon the room was full of the hiss of steam and the desperate gurgle of heating milk. Conversation was impossible so he contented himself with watching her and listening to the warm sounds. When she came back to the table, she put a steaming mug before him. He drank gratefully, but carefully. They didn’t speak. She returned to the counter, slid the glass door open on the display case and helped herself to a slice of chocolate cake.

  “God,” she said, stuffing her mouth. “Death always makes me hungry. Want some?”

  He nodded. She cut two thick slices of cake and came back to the table, passing one to him.

  “Didn’t you just have a piece of cake?” he asked, digging into his own.

  “What? Are you my personal trainer?”

  They ate quickly, almost furtively. Was it embarrassment or fear?

  “Do you know why you began wearing my wedding dress?” she asked finally.

  “No.”

  “It’s symptomatic of a deeper illness, Black. The not knowing, I mean. The blindness of it.”

  “Yeah? Maybe you’re right. But you’re ill too.”

  She smiled.

  “That’s why we eat chocolate cake.”

  “Well, then, here’s to chocolate cake.”

  thirty-two

  insatiable.

  The hunger of fires ravaging hillsides. Just that.

  “How do you know which is which?” Bomboy asked Black, as he watched him mix up several batches of his special paint remover.

  “I line them up in order as I mix them,” Black replied.

  There were five batches.

  “Skeleton, muscles, flesh, skin and clothes,” Bomboy said, counting them off.

  “Yes,” Black agreed. “Except in the reverse order.”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  There was a police car parked on the bridge, lights flashing. Two policemen lounged against it, watching Black.

  “Who are they?” Bomboy asked, pointing.

  “Cop One and Cop Two? Oh, they’re just there to make sure I take Fatima down,” Black said, following Bomboy’s finger. He waved at the policemen. They ignored him. He had been served with an order to remove the painting by his usual nemesis, the LA City Council. At least the Army Corps of Engineers had laid off this time, he thought. The policemen were there to ensure his compliance. Black went back to mixing. He opened a tin of turpentine and stirred some into the last mix.

  “Hey, man! Are you supposed to be s
moking near that stuff?” Bomboy asked, as Black bent over the mix, cigarette dangling from his lips. “I thought it was flammable.”

  “So’s your fart. Never stopped you,” Black said, giving the mixture one last twirl before emptying it into an insecticide spray unit. Agilely he rappelled up the wall and began to squirt the painting, smiling unaccountably as paint began to run down the wall in black tears. As the sun began to set, Black finished and began to pack up his equipment. The policemen came down from the bridge.

  “Hey! What are you doing?” Cop One demanded.

  “Packing up. It’ll be dark soon.”

  “But the woman is still up. All you’ve done is take her clothes off and remove the dove and the gun.”

  “I know. This stuff takes time. It has to be taken down layer by layer. Probably take a week,” Black said cheerfully.

  “No, no, no!” Cop Two said. “The order was to take it down before the kids came back to school. That’s tomorrow.”

  “Really? I don’t remember that. All I remember is that I had to take it down. I went to City Hall and they said I could do it layer by layer.”

  “Did you tell them it would take a week?” Cop One asked.

  “I might have forgotten that detail.”

  “I should arrest you now,” Cop Two said.

  “Why? I am doing my best to comply with the order,” Black said, sounding as obsequious as possible, and yet smirking at the same time.

  Bomboy laughed so hard he began to choke on his cigarette smoke.

  “And who are you, sir?” Cop One asked him, as Cop Two stepped away to talk into his radio.

  “He’s nobody,” Black said.

  Cop Two joined them again.

  “They say we should let him go,” he said to Cop One. “They’ll send a sandblasting team over tomorrow. This painting will be off the wall in a matter of minutes.”

  “Before the kids come to school?” Cop One asked.

  Cop Two shrugged.

  “I don’t know. It’s not my business. We’re done here.”

  “I’ve got kids,” Cop One grumbled.

  “Yeah, me too,” Cop Two said.

  They began to walk away.

  “Good night, Tweedledee and Tweedledum,” Black said.

  “What did you just call us?” Cop One asked, turning and walking back toward them. Bomboy stepped away from Black. Before Black could answer, Cop One punched him hard in the stomach. Black collapsed with a loud grunt and threw up, just missing Cop One’s shoes by a fraction of an inch. Both cops laughed.

  “Did you see anything?” Cop One asked Bomboy.

  “Like what? Where?”

  “Good man.”

  Still laughing, both cops left, heading for the bridge and their car.

  “Are you okay?” Bomboy asked, bending to help Black up, but Black shrugged him away.

  “Thank you so much for helping me!”

  “What was I supposed to do? These are the men in blue.”

  “You weren’t such a coward when you chopped up those women and children back home.”

  “I’m leaving,” Bomboy said. “Fuck you and your shit!”

  Left alone, Black collapsed face first into the dirt before the wall. He rolled over onto his back and wiped his mouth, breathing raggedly. After a long time, his breathing settled down to an even rhythm. It was dark now and the only light came from the streetlights across the River, by the school. They reflected off the white screen of the wall, lighting Fatima in a ghostly, otherworldly glow. Still he lay there, staring up at the naked Fatima. She smiled at him. He smiled back. He got up and walked over to the wall and kissed her feet. Smiling he stepped back. He didn’t know how long he stood there just staring up at her, losing time. Then he heard her call his name, talk to him.

  “Yes?” he said, looking up at her face. “Take my clothes off? Now? Okay.”

  He stripped down until he was nude. He had a hard-on again. Hard to splitting. It hurt, but he ignored the pain and folded his clothes carefully. Using them for a pillow, he lay down and stared up at Fatima.

  “Now what?” he asked. “Must I?”

  He sighed and bent his dick back between his legs, forming a mock vagina. He touched himself. The way Sweet Girl had at the club, with a wet finger. He came in minutes. Spent, he lay there staring up at Fatima. She was smiling happily. Just then he heard the loud thud of Gabriel’s wings above and felt the blinding searchlight of his gaze.

  “Fuck you, Gabriel!” he shouted.

  “You down there,” a voice from a police helicopter called. “Put your clothes on.”

  Black sat upright, grabbed his clothes and ran for the shadows, chased by the determined halo of the spotlight.

  He thought he could hear Fatima laughing.

  thirty-three

  old; an upright piano.

  It was inclined against the concrete wall of the River, caught on the edge of a tire protruding from a drainage gate like a black rubber tongue. Black leaned on it, smoking a reefer, watching the contractor the city had brought in to sandblast his painting off the wall at work. Iggy sat on top of the piano, legs crossed. The contractor had drawn a grid over the painting to focus his efforts, making sure to start with the crotch. Iggy watched the fifty-foot woman disappearing in squares, like a Hershey bar eaten by a careful child.

  Still.

  The schoolkids and even their teachers pressed their faces against the chain-link fence of the schoolyard to watch. Those who had gotten to school early were rewarded with Fatima in all her nudity, not this fast vanishing figure. And for years after, those boys and girls, even when they grew old, would never be satisfied with any love they had, because they, like Black, became infected by the desire for Fatima. And even though they would never remember the name of it, this desire, it would fill every pore in their body and drive them crazy.

  Iggy was staring hard at Fatima’s face. Liberated as it was from the yashmak. It was her first good look at it.

  “Did you know that you gave her your face?” she said to Black.

  “What?” he said.

  “Yes, look. That’s your face.”

  He looked. Iggy was right. He had given Fatima his face. He wondered what it meant. Probably nothing.

  “Huh,” he said.

  “Come to think of it,” Iggy said. “With the exception of the vagina and the breasts, she looks exactly like you.”

  “Trick of the light,” he said, smiling.

  “How can you smile at a moment like this? They are obliterating your work,” she said.

  Black shook his head. “Everyone who saw that painting will always carry it with them. Do you think the Chumash are gone because the Mission settlers wiped them out? History is everywhere here; if it weren’t they wouldn’t be trying so hard to hide it. As for my painting? It will haunt that wall forever.”

  “The ghost of a painting?”

  “It’s like this piano, Iggy. See how it looks broken?” Black said, bashing the wooden and ivory keys down hard. Apart from the dull knock of wet wood, it made no sound. Iggy watched Black’s energetic display, thinking he looked stupid. In the distance, loud and annoying, was the hiss of high-pressured sand blasting against brick.

  “But see this, this is Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata,” Black said.

  His playing changed, if he was playing at all. Instead of the percussive bashing of his previous performance, Black was running his fingers over the cracks between the keys, skin barely touching wood. His eyes closed and his head rolled back and in that moment, Iggy felt she was in the presence of something important, though she would be hard-pressed to explain what—except to say, silence. The hiss of the sandblasting had stopped. Even the hovering helicopter seemed to have muted itself, hanging there in the clear blue sky with all the control of a dragonfly skirting a pond’s surface.

  It took Iggy a while to realize that Black had stopped whatever it was he had been doing. The sound of the sandblasting was back, as was the dull thump of the helicopt
er above them.

  Black laughed.

  Iggy stared off at the painting.

  The top half of it was gone, but the woman was still there, at least from just below her hips. Black followed her gaze, looking at what was left of Fatima, trying to figure out the importance of this enigmatic woman. He knew he would never solve the riddle, but for now, he thought he knew what part of it was.

  Iggy jumped down from the piano.

  The contractor had knocked off for the day. Hanging there, in the setting sun, were Fatima’s legs, from the knees down. Without the face or body, this wasn’t Fatima: just the legs of a once fifty-foot-tall woman. The image was a cipher too big for Iggy to solve. She turned back to speak to Black but stopped when she saw him staring at the painting, tears running unhindered down his face.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, putting an arm on Black’s shoulder. Black shook it off.

  “No,” he said, raising both arms up, palms out. “You don’t understand. She is still so beautiful.”

  There was such awe in his voice, Iggy felt she was intruding on something she couldn’t understand and wasn’t necessarily meant to see. So she left him there, thinking Black was like someone who hadn’t shown up and yet was looking for someone who was someplace else. Iggy paused on the bridge and looked back. Black was still facing the wall with the painting, swaying arms raised in worship.

  An iroko the wind could not uproot.

 

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