The Crescent's entrance was a few steps below street level, buried under a mammoth cluster of storefronts and apartments on the corner of 62nd and Columbus. The image of a severely arched ballet slipper, bright red and encrusted with shellacked glitter, was painted above the heavy door.
It was the first suitable place they'd come to; not at all busy, with music just loud enough to drown out conversation. Mainly, a place where they wouldn't draw attention to themselves. The dusk-dim dining room had thick wooden floorboards and unsanitary-looking velvet walls, their color that of raw liver. Close to the door sat a man whose styled, highlighted hair stood in clear defiance of middle age. He paused over his sandwich when they entered, and winked as they passed.
"Nice fanny pack."
"Thanks," Corin muttered. It's a runner's pack, he reminded himself with some dignity.
He and Ghi headed for a secluded booth in the far corner, half hidden by a shoddy wooden piano which had quite obviously seen better days. As soon as they scooted into their seats, a tall, reed-thin young woman emerged from a door behind the bar and made her way over.
"Didn't finish, huh?" She smiled and pointed one long, graceful finger at the number pinned to Corin's running shirt.
Corin shook his head. The charm practically tumbled off of him. "No. I'm afraid I just got too thirsty."
"I can help with that." The waitress placed her hands on her hips, which didn't seem to be more than a foot apart. "What'll it be?"
"I don't suppose you have any Glenlivet in the house?" he asked, and the note of hope in his voice was met with a blank stare.
"Any what?"
"Right." Corin sighed. It had been worth a try. "Just a scotch, please, rocks. And my friend here will have―?"
Ghi blinked. "Dr. Pepper?"
"―a Dr. Pepper."
The waitress nodded, turned, circumvented the sorry piano, and was gone.
Which meant that, for the first time since exiting the alley, the two of them were alone―and there still seemed to be nothing sensible to say. This was getting old fast.
"So." Corin shifted, trying to get comfortable in the high-backed, somewhat sticky seating. Clearly, it was up to him to get any kind of conversation rolling, since Ghi was presently drumming his hands on the table's edge and staring intently at his lap. "You're a Red Socks fan, then?"
Ghi stopped drumming and looked back at him in complete puzzlement, until it occurred to him what sweatshirt he was wearing. He shrugged, his shoulders lost somewhere inside it.
"It was a gift," he said. "I live in Boston."
"Boston," Corin said pleasantly. "Great town. Always wanted to do that marathon, but something seems to get in the way every year."
Ghi nodded, searching desperately for some kind of normal thing to say. All he could come up with was:"So ... are you a professional runner?"
"Heavens, no. Just a hobby, I'm afraid," Corin said. "I'm in the philanthropy business. You'd think I was in the bloody mafia, though, the way some people run things."
The arrival of drinks rescued Ghi from having to come up with something to say in reply. The waitress retreated, and he poked at his Dr. Pepper with a straw, watching the tiny brown bubbles intently.
Corin took a test swill of the scotch. Rather bad scotch, it was. He grimaced. "So what do you do then? In Boston."
Ghi sat straight up and drew both hands away from the glass.
"I do dry cleaning," he proclaimed. "I am here legally."
"Whoa, friend." Corin put his palms up in a peaceful gesture. "Never said you weren't. Ghi, is it?"
Ghi nodded and took a fierce, sullen drink through his straw.
What an odd, jumpy person, Corin thought. Understandable. He was a nervous wreck himself. And small talk wasn't going to ease either of their minds. He took a moment to scan the room again; not a soul was close to their table. The waitress sat at the bar, chatting with an equally tall, slender girl who had just walked in. The man with highlighted hair was getting up to pay his check.
Time to get to the point already. Corin refocused his attention on Ghi until they were holding eye contact.
"Well, Ghi. I think we've seen some of the same things, you and I."
Ghi froze. He freed his lips from the straw and then nodded. In the thick, dark air of the Crescent, his eyes looked as yellow as the eyes of an owl.
"The statue," he said softly, making the words a kind of question. "Many times."
"Too many," Corin confirmed. "And that history lesson, my god ...."
"The desert?"
"The diviners."
"Those women."
"Those things."
Ghi leaned forward. "You're―?"
They stopped. The waitress was approaching. Corin slid his glass slowly from one hand to the other, watching the ice cubes slip against one another.
"You two need anything else? Lunch?"
"Water," Corin replied, purposefully lifting his sea-gray eyes to Ghi again before looking up at her. "Just water, please."
Ghi swallowed reflexively. His throat felt dry and tasted of sweet syrup and carbonation. He was not comfortable. This Corin person seemed alright, but he suddenly wasn't sure that he wanted to be talking to another Vessel. He had pretty much decided already that he didn't want to be a Vessel.
Not that it was going to change anything.
"Light," he said.
They stared at one another in silence for some time, until the girl returned and set two glasses of ice water between them.
"Are we crazy?" Ghi asked, when she was gone again. "Is this real?"
"Oh, I think we both know it's real." Corin released a brief, despairing laugh. "And I think that makes us both crazy. Cheers to that."
"Cheers."
They clinked glasses.
The room became lighter momentarily when the door to the street opened, admitting two women. They joined the waitress and her friend at the bar, each of them as tall as the last. Dancers maybe, thought Corin. The Juilliard School wasn't far from here. He settled further into the booth and lifted the horrible scotch to his lips again.
"So I guess this means we're visiting Miss Liberty in the morning, yeah?" he said, bracing for another sip.
Ghi's eyebrows dropped into a nervous line. He stared resolutely at the table. "I don't know if I'm going ...."
Corin coughed and thumped the glass down.
"What do you mean you don't know?"
"I'm supposed to be somewhere else."
"Somewhere else?" Corin leaned forward. "Do you know how many people are counting on me to be in a boardroom tomorrow morning? I'm sick just thinking about it. But I ... I have to go. To meet the others, and then―well, who knows what, but I know that I have to go. Don't you feel the same way?"
"I do. And that's what I'm worried about." Ghi continued staring at the table. "If I go, it will cause trouble. They'll look for me."
Clearly, Corin shouldn't have skipped the small talk.
"They?"
Ghi sighed. When he did look up, it was with a guilty, worrisome expression. "I'm here with my doctor. I'm only in the States because he wanted to treat me. I'm not supposed to go anywhere without telling him. I shouldn't even be here ...."
Yes. Definitely should've covered more small talk.
Corin proceeded with appropriate caution. "If I may … Treat you for what, exactly?"
One slightly awful pop song ended, and another one began. Two more had played by the time Ghi finished describing the basic details of both his medical condition and his resident status to an increasingly thunderstruck Corin. When he was done, he took an especially forceful drink of Dr. Pepper.
Corin did likewise with his scotch. "Christ, man," he croaked through the aftertaste. His wheels started turning. Ghi's unique circumstances presented a challenge, of course, but it was nothing that two grown men couldn't overcome over another round of drinks. Not if the fate of humankind depended on it, or something like that. "Look, we'll figure something out. All we need to―"
Corin froze. His ears were demanding his full attention, and it took him a moment to hone in on the song that had just begun. A familiar and recent hit, heavily over-played in Europe. Piano acrobatics over a driving dance beat. And the voice.
Jesse Cannon.
"Christ, not this guy," Corin groaned, before the true recognition hit him all over again. He slapped his hands abruptly on the table, coming very close to spilling both glasses of water. "Wait! This guy!" He pointed a finger upward, as if to some omnipotent being. "He's one of us."
"He is," Ghi gasped. Half of him seemed grateful for the subject change, while the other half of him was strangely enthused. He began bobbing with helpless, earnest energy to the music. "I recognized him from the dreams right away. I'm a little nervous about meeting him, aren't you?"
Corin frowned. "In a way."
"He used to be a regular here, you know." The waitress startled them both, coming to lean against the piano. "Before he dropped out of Juilliard. One of my ballet instructors had him in class. Interdisciplinary."
"No way!" Ghi practically squealed.
Corin, though not as vocally, was equally interested. "Jesse Cannon used to come here?"
"Yes. And he made this old thing sound like a Fazioli. No one else even plays it anymore." She shrugged her narrow shoulders and touched the piano's keys lightly. "But people often pay their respects."
Corin and Ghi immediately stood for a closer look at the decrepit piano, and saw that the yellowed keys were covered in a reverent festoon of lipstick marks.
"Lovely," Corin remarked, recoiling. He then noticed the framed photo propped up on the piano's splintering mantle. It was an enlarged snapshot of the statuesque blonde seated at this very same instrument, mouth photogenically open in mid-song, a suffocating number of people around him. Flashy strokes of permanent ink along the bottom corner proclaimed:
There will never be another Crescent. Jesse Loves You! XOXOXO!!!
"Too bad I didn't work here back then," said the waitress wistfully. "Isn't he amazing?"
Ghi nodded vigorously.
Corin fished a fifty-dollar bill out of his runner's pack and placed it on the table.
"Thanks, miss," he said, and began to steer Ghi away for fear that he would linger to touch the piano and thereby acquire some disease. "We'll give Mr. Cannon your regards."
Vessel, Book I: The Advent Page 24