City of Rose

by Rob Hart

  “Are you a chef now?”

  “The trick is you’ll never make a good vegan cupcake because all the structural stuff you need, like butter and eggs, is not vegan. Why try to make something into something it’s not?”

  “I’d still like to give it a shot,” she says. “Who knows, maybe we’ll figure it out.”

  There’s a sound from the front and Crystal comes in. Everyone nods and waves at her and she sits next to me. Tommi pours her a glass of red and goes back to whatever she’s futzing with.

  I run Crystal through what happened. I tell her I left the cell phone at the coffee bar, completely omit the part where I got into a little rumble with Ellen’s friend. Then I go through the phone call with Bombay.

  “So…” Crystal says. “What does this mean?”

  “It means it’s a dummy account or something,” I tell her. “I don’t know. But I know Dirk hasn’t been calling that particular phone and I wouldn’t be surprised if she has no idea who he is. So tomorrow we to go the address that’s listed with the phone. Much better chance of the address being correct. The bill has to go somewhere.”

  “Why not now?”

  “I told Tommi I’d stay here tonight. With the threats and stuff, we just want to play it safe.”

  “Okay. I’ll stay with you.”

  I shake my head, take a sip of tequila. “Better if you go back to my place. No one’s showed up there yet. I don’t have any roots here so I figure I’m harder to track. Let’s use that to our advantage. I don’t want to have to worry about you and the bar.”

  “I’ll hang out for a little bit. How about that?”

  “Fine. For a bit.”

  With everyone gone and Crystal in the back straightening up her station, I can’t think of anything to do but busy myself cleaning. It’s silent in Naturals, the disco ball still twirling and throwing shards of light around. There’s something about an empty strip club that feels vaguely apocalyptic. Like something’s not right with the rest of the world. I like it.

  By the bathroom there’s a piece of mint-green gum stuck to the wall so I grab a putty knife from the toolbox under the bar and think about all the things I’d like to do to the asshole who stuck it there while I try to pry it off.

  The lights dim further. The speakers come to life.

  “Jane Says” by Jane’s Addiction.

  I turn and Crystal is standing by the door to the kitchen, outlined so I can see her silhouette. She lets the door close and now I can make her out better. She’s wearing a sheer black shirt and a pair of boy’s cartoon underwear. Ninja Turtles, I think. White with red trim. Her feet are crammed into high heels, her hair pulled back into a tight ponytail.

  I put the putty knife down as she walks toward me, my heart beating like a hummingbird, so hard I’m nearly floating off the floor. She reaches her hand and pushes me down onto a red leather seat where white cushioning spills out of the gashes like it’s bleeding.

  “What is this?” I ask.

  She stands over me, her legs spread, and she begins to shake her hips in time to the song, slowly to the right, slowly to the left, jerking a little at each ascension, like there are invisible threads pulling on her. She puts her hand on my shoulder and dips toward me. Her ponytail whips around and brushes across my face.

  I ask again. “What is this?”

  My voice is so low I’m not sure she could even make it out over the song. If she’s even listening. Her blue-green tempered glass eyes are far away gone.

  She lowers herself onto my lap and she grinds into me a little. Her body is so warm, like she just got out of a hot shower. My hands graze the smooth skin of her thigh. Her eyes come into focus and she says, “No one touches. Don’t you know that?”

  I drop my hands and lower my head to the side, close to her neck, her rocking her hips, take a huge breath of that smell of citrus.

  “We’re all made of atoms,” she says. “Electrons on the outside. And electrons repel. So what you’re feeling right now isn’t touch.”

  She straightens up and reaches her arms behind her, shoulders twisting at odd angles, and the sheer thing billows and falls away, and she’s naked from the waist up. She presses herself into me and I can feel her nipples through my shirt.

  “What you’re feeling is resistance,” she says. “That space in between.”

  She straddles me tighter and lowers her mouth to my neck and kisses it and my body lights up like a firework. My instincts tell me to sit on my hands, to be good, to abide by the rules.

  Even though I think that maybe I don’t have to.

  I know it’s wrong of me to ask, but I do it again. “What is this?”

  Crystal leans back from me, the weight of her shifting away from me but still connected to me, and says, “Shut the fuck up.”

  The song changes over to “Thank You Boys” as she presses her mouth onto mine and I can taste red wine.

  The water takes a couple of seconds to get warm. When it does I wash my hands and splash some of it on my face. Look into the mirror. I usually hate what I see in the mirror.

  Tonight I don’t hate what I see.

  I finish washing up and step back into the bar, go hunting for my shirt, which is not easy, because it’s a black shirt and it’s still dark in here. I can still taste red wine in my mouth, Crystal having planted a deep kiss on me after she had dressed and left, me still lounging on the corner of the stage, because I figured I earned a couple of minutes of lying around and basking in the moment.

  The shirt is balled up in a pile underneath the chair. I pull it back on and step outside, light up a smoke, look around at the empty street.

  This fucking town, man.

  It’s a little goofy. Weird people doing weird things. Nothing’s open late and the pizza sucks. I can’t get around anywhere and I get lost so easy. No one knows how to drive and everything I know how a city is supposed to work, I can’t find here.

  But some of the food is really good. The quiet can be nice. I like the way things smell. That smell like it’s always just about to rain. Petrichor.

  Some of the people are nice, too.

  There’s a sound at the front door. I jerk into a sitting position and use the stripper pole as leverage to get to my feet.

  It’s nearly pitch black inside because the only source of light is coming from under the kitchen door, and a little bit from the street coming around an edge of the plywood over the window. It’s enough that I can make out shapes, but not much more than that.

  There’s a small red LED clock on the bar. It’s a little after six a.m.

  The front door creaks open.

  It might be Tommi. It might be Crystal. I consider saying something and realize it might be neither of them, so best to use surprise to my advantage, just in case. I slide down behind the stage where I set up Tommi’s sleeping bag, so whoever’s by the door can’t see me. Good thing I was too lazy to set up the cot.

  The curtain up front that separates the club from views on the street is moving. Whoever’s there is standing and looking around, probably letting their eyes adjust to the darkness before moving inside.

  Yeah. This isn’t right. If it were Tommi or Crystal they would have said something by now.

  I’m a step ahead here, so I move over to the bar, toward the light switch, and the gun with the blanks that’s under the bar.

  Not ideal, but better than nothing.

  The curtains part before I can get over to the gun, but I’m close enough to the light switch that I can hit that, and whoever it is will be momentarily blinded. So will I, but at least I’ll be expecting it. I throw the switch and harsh light fills the room and my eyes sting. I have to force them to stay open.

  Standing inside the curtain is Chicken Man, a handgun hanging down at his side.

  Fuck.

  He throws his hands up toward the glare. I squint through it and dive for the kitchen. There’s no way out in the back so I pull up the grate that leads to the basement and I don’t have enou
gh time to climb down the ladder so I drop through and land hard, roll to the side.

  There’s a clattering sound somewhere above me, Chicken Man trying to navigate the ladder with that mask probably impeding his vision.

  Only one place to go.

  I run into the enveloping darkness at the mouth of the Shanghai tunnel.

  The light that streams in behind me gets crushed to nothing ahead of me. I can’t even see the end of the tunnel. I pull out my cell, click the top button to light up the screen, and it shows a tight, slightly curved corridor of aged, brown brick. There’s a wall ahead and another pool of darkness to the left. I head for it and turn around the corner, hold my breath, listen hard.

  There’s a shuffling sound, grunting. A flash and an explosion at the same time, followed by a bit of the wall exploding, spraying brick and mortar at my feet. Chicken Man is firing blindly from the mouth of the tunnel.

  “Missed me, motherfucker!” I yell.

  I’m pretty sure my voice doesn’t shake when I say this. Probably the adrenaline. Truth is, I just peed a bit.

  I pull out my phone, do a quick check, and it seems that the tunnel extends for a while. I put my hand along the wall to keep braced and inch away from the main corridor.

  “You’re making this harder on yourself,” Chicken Man calls out.

  “Put down the gun and fight me like a man,” I tell him. “We’ll get this settled straight away.”

  “This is getting out of hand,” he says. “So I’m going to kill you, and I’m going to go back and kill the girl, and that’s when this will be settled. I warned you to keep to yourself, asshole.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m not that smart.”

  After a few seconds there’s the sound of scrambling, and the crunch of dirt. I’m far enough in now that the sound is echoing, so it’s tough to pinpoint the origin. I keep going, into black like I didn’t know black could be, so dark it seems to be pulling me forward. I try to move quickly, keep my hand out so if there’s an impediment my hand will feel it before I run into it.

  It smells like dank and wet. Mildew. The sounds are getting softer behind me. I have to hope he’s taking it slow, worried this might be an ambush. Like I actually have any idea what the fuck I’m doing. My hand hits something cold and metal. I move my hand around and feel it get caught between something. It takes a moment to figure out that there are iron bars blocking my path.

  Okay. Getting him to follow me may have been the worst idea I’ve ever had. I try to squeeze between the bars but they’re too close together. I’ll get stuck before I get through.

  There’s a breath of air to my right. I reach over and feel a hole, give it a quick blast of light with my phone to check, and find a gaping maw in the brick, like something pushed itself out, bricks tilted toward me like shark teeth. There’s enough room that I can squeeze into the gap. I push myself through as the footsteps draw closer.

  It’s tight. Bricks come loose and fall and threaten to trip me, but I get to the other side and step into an open space. Wetness in the air so thick I can feel it on my skin. There’s a steady drip of water in here somewhere. I flash my cell phone. It’s a small room, with a half-broken chair in one corner, and the way the light plays off the walls and the low ceiling and the wooden beam in the middle of the room, it looks like there might be someone sitting in that chair. I know it’s not true but I can’t scratch that image from my head when the cell phone light clicks off, and suddenly I need to be out of there.

  I can’t remember the last time I was this afraid. And not afraid like how you’re scared of dying or letting someone down. Not afraid like there’s some asshole chasing you with a gun and maybe this plan wasn’t a great one. I mean that childlike fear of there being monsters in the dark. Like a razor-nailed hand is hovering at your neck, barely brushing your skin. My heart is pounding so hard my chest hurts.

  There are two options: I can stay and fight. In a tight corridor I stand a chance. I could get close enough to him before he sees me that I could get the drop on him before he gets a shot off. Unless he has a flashlight or is using his cell phone like mine. I’ll be a giant target that’s easy to hit, either straight on or by ricochet. He’s even got the added bonus of body disposal. He could leave me down here and it’d be a long damn time before I’m found, probably.

  So it’s that, or keep going.

  There was a door across the room, I think. One more shot of light from the cell phone. There’s a wooden door on the far end. It looks more like a piece of plywood on metal hinges. Tan and weak, and even if there’s a lock on it, I bet I could bash clean through it.

  A beam of light dances somewhere in the darkness, flitting on the edge of my vision, and disappears. He must be using something for light, and if he’s close enough that I can see it, I better decide now. I head for the door, picturing it in my head, dance around where I think the beam is, and lead with my shoulder.

  The door isn’t locked. It doesn’t even really stay closed on its own. It swings and I stumble forward into the darkness, and I hit the ground and my hand gets caught in something wet and slimy, and I want to cry out but I stop myself, get up, keep moving forward, my hand on the wall, trailing my fingers through decades-old grout that brushes off at my fingertips. Desperate to find some kind of exit.

  Another flash of my cell phone. I think I see a figure ahead of me, the vague outline of a person in the distance. I jump a little and the cell phone goes dark.

  I think that before it went dark, the figure moved.

  I’m scared and my mind is fucking with me. That’s all this is.

  I can’t hear anything behind me so I risk the phone again and there’s no figure ahead of me.

  Breathe deep.

  Off in the distance I can see brick that indicates the termination of the tunnel. There’s another door to the right of me now, this one heavy and wooden and seemingly new, so I go over and push but it’s locked.

  I put my shoulder into it, not slamming up against it as much as bracing and pushing, trying not to make too much noise. It takes a couple of tries but finally the door groans and gives way. I push into another dark space and trip over something, and there’s a crashing noise as glass breaks on the floor around me. I put my hand down to break my fall, right onto something sharp that rips into the soft skin of my left palm.

  This time I do yell out, jumping to my feet. The room smells like beer. The light from my cell reveals stacks of beer crates, some of which I knocked down, the floor scattered with spent beer and brown shards of glass. That explains that.

  The basement of another bar. Okay, that’s workable. I head for the ladder and reach for the bars and grab a rung and a jolt rocks my body as I realize there’s still a piece of glass stuck in my hand.

  I shine the phone on the half-moon curve of brown glass sticking out of the fat pad under my thumb. I yank it out and searing hot pain rushes in to replace it as blood weeps out. My hand feels like a piece of meat sewn to my arm. I hide the pain in a box in the corner of my mind and climb the ladder, pray that this guy doesn’t suddenly appear behind me and open fire, pray harder that the grate won’t be locked.

  I have to assume it won’t be locked. I have to. It’s too easy for someone to get trapped in basements like these on accident. That’s why we don’t lock the grate at Naturals.

  Anyway, it’d be nice if something went my way.

  Since I’m climbing in the dark I don’t know how far I have to go, and so when my head hits the trap door I nearly fall off the ladder, but manage to maintain my grip. I push up and out and the door moves without too much trouble. Climb into a darkened kitchen, the stainless steel glistening in a dim nightlight plugged into the wall by the stove. I close the hatch quietly and lay on top of it for a minute. It’s heavy metal. It’s got to be bulletproof. I can take a second to rest.

  The more I rest, the more I breathe, the more the pain creeps up on me like a hungry animal.

  My hand is still bleeding at a nice clip. I climb
up and find a kitchen cart, roll that over the hatch, in case the guy is going to follow me. I root around in the kitchen and finally find a first-aid kit. Turn on the light and wash my hand in the sink, and it’s deep, probably deep enough that I need stitches, which is not great. I hold my breath and run a finger through it, to be sure it’s clean of glass. Without meaning to, I scream and double-over.

  I take a minute to recover, breathing through my nose, and turn to the counter. The kit is old. The rusted tin and the stenciling make me think of World War II. But I open it and there’s fresh gauze and bandages and even a tube of crazy glue. I check the wound again as thoroughly as I can, sucking in air through my teeth and thinking about puppies and Christmas as I pry the two halves of my skin apart. It looks clean. I give it a good rinse in the sink and dump some crazy glue into it, pinch the sides together, and wrap it tightly in gauze.

  My head is getting muddy from pain. I think of Crystal.

  The way her skin was warm. How it felt pressed against mine. The way she gripped the back of my neck, like holding on would keep her from drowning.

  That helps.

  My phone buzzes. My mom.

  Dammit. Gross.

  Her timing is pretty terrible, but I made her a promise when I left New York: I would always answer the phone when she called. Always. She encouraged me to go, could see that I needed it, but still I know it hurt. I’m all the family she has left in the world. And I’m way too guilty about it to break my promise.

  I put the images of Crystal’s naked body out of my head, grab the phone with my good hand, say, “Hey, Ma.”

  “Ashley? What’s wrong? You sound like you’re out of breath.”

  “Just out for a jog.”

  “If you’re busy or you’re just getting in…”

  “Ma, c’mon. I made a promise. Though it’s really early in the morning. I wish you would get a better sense of the time difference.”

  She laughs. “I don’t always think about that. And maybe if you called me every now and again, I wouldn’t feel the need.”