THE WALLS

by Jay Fox

  “You probably shouldn't be crawling around in broken glass, Mongo,” Patrick says stoically. “You're liable to end up in the hospital…again.”

  “I think it only got my foot,” he responds. He examines himself. “Nope, got me in the arm here, too,” he says as he presents a patch of blood near his elbow. “This one's not so bad.” He looks to his other arm. “And here, too.”

  Patrick and Boots nod. “Well, Maecenas,” Patrick begins to me, “You probably want to meet Daphne.”

  “Obviously,” I respond quickly. “The set's soon to be over?”

  “This should be the last song,” Boots confirms with a sideways glance to Tomas.

  “What?” he smiles for the first time in a while.

  “I'm just curious as to how you're taking all of this in,” she says on the sly.

  For once Tomas' response is silence; he merely shrugs his shoulders and begins to edge back into the main room, careful not to slip on the sludge slowly sprawling over the pale, tile floor.

  “No, I don’t need to go to the hospital, Pat. I’m fucking fine,” is heard as we walk away. There’s an odd sense of sarcasm in his voice that I can make little sense of.

  “What's the name of this act?” I ask Patrick.

  “Poot Moint.”

  Patrick and Boots begin talking to a little person or dwarf or whatever as we join the crowd. Daphne calls him Harry; Patrick calls him Einhard. I remain next to Tomas. The two of us scan over the party in an attempt to get a better idea of what the inhabitants look like. There is no one style that defines them besides the abundance of sunglasses. There are three people wearing zoot suits, one in mint green, one in baby or Carolina blue, and one in a darker blue of the cobalt variety. The first two each wear hats that match their respective suits; Cobalt's hat has found its way onto a transvestite necromancing with some of the darker elements of the crowd. The majority of this latter group is adorned in Rocky Horror garb or the more prurient fashions that the Goth world has to offer. Their pale, translucent skin gleans as the music and the energy of the crowd continues to crescendo towards heights ethereal, to a realm where self is surrendered to a transcendent and unreflective experience of sight and sound. Some of the men in this group seem to be oblivious to a rather large woman walking among them in nothing more than a girdle. She holds a ruler in one hand and, occasionally, someone's cock in the other.

  The fat suit Elvis has found his thinner, black leather counterpart. As they dance together, it becomes evident that they share more than a common love for the king. The women surrounding them are no less eccentric. A few have painted their dresses on. An older woman has done a particularly fantastic job, I must say, but she forgot to coat the underside of her…well, a less polite person would call them dugs. Excessive sweating has given away the secret of another woman like her. Some wear dresses with flower prints that would seem more appropriate on couches from the thirties, the kind that grandmothers ritualistically coat in plastic as if this gesture can counteract the ravaging hands of time. It's a curious perversion—something that seems more fitting in the pages of a Nabokov novel.

  Still, the majority of people look no different than anyone you might see on the street. And while most of the men are not clean-shaven, and most of the women wear no makeup, there does not seem to be any form of ill-will for those who do prefer to shave regularly or wear makeup. There is a distinct sense that the exclusive nature of the party is not due to a superficial identity that one is required to take on. If anything, the only prerequisite seems to be an appearance of confidence and the willingness to repel the forces of social friction. That, and sunglasses. No one wears much black, white, or gray, either. This is something of an oddity in New York, certainly in this part of Brooklyn. Everything here is drowned in vivid Technicolor—even the Goths favor deep scarlets and royal purples reminiscent of something out of Poe.

  The guitarist finishes up his solo as the kitchen crew stumbles out into the main concourse sopping wet, giggles—for some smoke, too—bouncing clumsily off of the lips, hands groping cans of beer, shoulders, sides, body parts with Latin and Greek names that have no English counterparts. Mongo has a can of Schlitz in one hand, a beer bong (“funnel,” in some dialects of American-English) in the other. He dons a mischievous, if not slightly demented, grin as he snaps the can open, drains it into the contraption, and throws the empty against the wall with an echoing and hollow ding. He places the hose to his mouth, kneels down, and lets the liquid undulate in the tube once or twice before it is drained—a disappearing act that may have intrigued Houdini had he not been busy revealing the Achilles' Heel of a set of modern handcuffs to the captious eyes of Les Poseuses (green socks and all). Mongo looks at his contraption for a while before he throws it at the wall. Because the funnel component hits first, the hose snaps up and horsewhips the wall with a sonorous crack that catches the attention of nearly everyone, even the Elvi, who are in the midst of what could be considered a form of masturbation.

  The kitchen contingent, still laughing over the antics of Mongo, readily retrieves the beer bong for him. Two people carry it as though a sacred vessel; another two bring with them a jar of grape jelly. The hand-off elicits an epiphanical grin from Mongo before the obvious occurs. And while Mongo's attempts are certainly valiant, the enterprise fails when the jelly clots right around the halfway point in the hose. Had he the lung-power of an Olympiad, Mongo may have been able to pull of the venture, but, with what seems to be a two pack a day cigarette addiction, the stubborn purple mass remains stationary despite his best efforts. Incensed, Mongo pulls his head way from the contraption and bitterly huffs and puffs in an effort to regain some stamina.

  He continues to alternate between reprieves and attempts to suck the jelly out of the hose for a while before this peculiar stunt begins to attract more attention than any of the troupe of culinary pranksters anticipated. When the band finishes, they receive a lengthy applause, as well as a seven shot salute from the citrus artillery. As the last of the applause beings to die down, another sound invites attention: a wet, almost loosely flatulent gurgle that would differ from the firing of the world's sloppiest spitball only to those types who can blindly tell the value of any coin you might drop on the table.

  All eyes follow the massive, purple globule as it begins its ascent. Its steady rise signifies something to these people, something almost sacred. When it not only hits the ceiling, but actually sticks, a cry of applause erupts.

  The band launches into “When You're Smiling”, which only augments the enthusiasm of the crowd. The clarinetist isn't playing because he's broken a reed. He is dressed like the Domesticon model that comes with the thick glasses and eyebrows. Boots look to Tomas and me with a rabid grin: “This is the third time they've played this tonight.”

  10.3

  “Oh yeah, he's great,” she says when I bring up Coprolalia. She leads Patrick and me into one of the deserted rooms accessible only from the balcony. Patrick hands her the pack of cigarettes he purchased earlier. She lights up.

  The room had apparently been used for storage in the past, but it now holds a few pieces of furniture, a phonograph within a large chest (I believe this is called a console), and a lot of books that give the impression that the room has become something of a makeshift study. Several volumes from the Chums of Chance series, perhaps first editions, take up an entire shelf. One of George Kennan's books instantly attracts Patrick's attention. “Tent Life In Siberia! I knew the title had the word 'tent' in it.” Most of the books are older than the combined age of me, Daphne and Patrick. They are the legacy of Dick Keens, apparently. The shelves that hold the volumes are made of plywood and span the entire length of two door- and windowless walls yellowed by a conjunction of poor ventilation and cigarette smoke. These shelves are not overloaded; still, the smell of mildew and leather and stale breath permeates the air as Daphne's cigarette pops and crinkles above the murmuring cacophony coming from the next room. The ceiling appears to have been spraye
d by a round of buckshot. Patrick looks beyond the door, maybe to see if anyone has followed, maybe to check on Tomas and Boots, who have begun a conversation on the balcony that concerns his book, Postlexiconism, and the likelihood of his penis finding its way into one of her orifices.

  Parallel to the door through which we entered are three windows that have been recently installed, as is obvious from their cleanliness and their make. I remain standing as Daphne walks over to the phonograph player and the attached unit, which houses several hundred albums. “Any requests?” as she examines the player and the disc already on the turntable. “Dick had such a great collection,” is added as a gratuity. She glides her hand across the oak veneer and smiles back to me as I hear the speakers begin to hiss and pop and crackle.

  “Do you think he's got Something/Anything??” Pat asks as he pulls out a large volume. This is followed by a roll of Daphne's eyes and a small tick from the record player, which occurs with shifting intervals. It is a nuisance, no doubt; but soon the first track on the album begins to encroach upon the static. Daphne stares to the rotating vinyl in silence. Patrick looks to me with a smile while holding up the book. “Mommsen!” I nod before turning back to Daphne with dithering eyes and a general orientation of confusion that seems more and more like a necessity today.

  Daphne begins to sway along with the music. Patrick stops examining the book in his hands. As she continues to rock to the beat of the song, Patrick's attention is diverted to the distant revving of an engine lacking a catalytic converter. He peers out the window, which grants him a view of several modernized row-homes with dark and barred windows (their facades bathed in strands of amethyst), and then down to a book with two words on it (“Polypnuematics” and “Gunnison”). Mommsen is placed down in the space this book previously occupied.

  Daphne continues to sway, her flowing skirt licking the portion of her calves just above her narrow ankles. When she finally turns back around, she looks directly at me. The ability to conjure an adjective to describe the glance gets lost in thoughts that are a bit more prurient than the occasion demands. She begins to stroll over to where I am sitting, and I can feel her eyes growing closer even if they are hidden behind sunglasses, allowed to see by virtue of the soft glow of an accountant's lamp, which sits upon a desk beneath a window.

  She takes a seat on a sofa that creaks with age as her weight bears down upon it; Patrick continues to stand as he peruses what may or may not be the book he had found so intriguing. I find a leather chair that burps out a plume of dust as I take my seat. The gray, almost translucent haze lazily floats in the air before commingling with the smoke from Daphne's cigarette. The unified particles languidly make their way for one of the open windows.

  “Do you like Bill Evans?” she asks.

  “Of course,” I respond.

  “Do you know this album?”

  “I may have heard it, but I don't recognize this track.”

  She nods. “The album is kind of odd. A lot of people overlook or dismiss it. Had it been released in the fifties, however, it would have probably been met with far more acclaim.”

  The track continues to play, suddenly with a very fluid bass accompanying Bill's solo. It sounds like Ron Carter or Paul Chambers. Maybe it's Sam Jones or Scott LaFaro. I always forget when the latter died. Daphne removes her shades to reveal eyes of indistinct color. She looks like Evelyn Mulwray.

  “Do you know him?” I ask as I remove my glasses, as well.

  “Who? Bill Evans? I think he died before I was out of elementary school.”

  “No. Coprolalia. Do you know him?”

  “Personally? No,” she laughs. “Nobody really knows him—therein lay the heart of the appeal: mystique.” I blink torpidly. “There are people who have dedicated their entire lives to learning about him. It's a shame that they still don't understand him any better than you or I. Even those who have met him barely know anything about him.” She looks to Patrick. “Pat, would you be a dear and get me a beer?”

  He puts down the book. “I can't get over how young he was.”

  “Who?”

  “Sorely. Absolutely brilliant. Killed at twenty.” He begins for the door. “Do you want anything, Maecenas?” he asks as he turns his head in my direction.

  “Whatever you get her will suit me just fine,” I respond. The door closes. Daphne lights another cigarette.

  Daphne's smile summons up a number of adjectives: mysterious, wry, absent. It's not a pronounced disingenuously; rather, she is merely calm and cautious with her words. It is as though she is creating an acrostic or reciting a tome once uttered by a sober oracle. Her speech habits are certainly a departure from the rantings of Tomas and Patrick, two extroverts capable of making conversation out of everything and nothing, very often at the same time. Daphne just continues to smile at me, perhaps content to know that she need not speak a word. She understands who will be directing the route the conversation takes.

  “Everybody loves an enigma, I guess.”

  “But you know Willis Faxo?”

  “Of course I know Willis. We fucked for a few weeks. Nothing all that serious ever came of it. He can be so immature sometimes, even if he is brilliant. I mean, he’s not eidetic like Patrick, but—”

  “Eidetic?”

  “Like, having a memory that's better than photographic. I mean, Pat can't remember entire pages of information like Hal Incadenza or anything, but it's still scary to see just how much information he can store. And he likes to let you know about it. Willis, on the other hand, is usually more reserved. He's the type of man who actually wants people to think he's less intelligent than he is. He's afraid of revealing his gift. He thinks it will make people feel alienated.” She looks to me with craned neck. “Why do you care about Willis?”

  “Didn't Patrick explain all of this to you?”

  “I could ask you the same question,” she says with a laugh.

  “I mean…”

  “That you want information about Willis because you believe he'll be able to lead you to your artist,” she finishes with a mischievous chuckle. “Well, I hate to play the part of the wet blanket, but the truth of the matter is that Willis didn't even know him all that well—that's one of those myths that Patrick created all by himself. True, the two did live together for a time, but they weren't particularly close. Willis was busy with his work at Cooper Union—before he dropped out, of course.”

  “Did Coprolalia—”

  “No,” she begins coolly, “He didn't go there. And please stop calling him that. His name is Mordecai.”

  “Mordecai,” I repeat. “So Esther and Patrick were right.”

  “Who's Esther?”

  “Don't worry about it.”

  “What did you expect?” she grins. “Were you anticipating some type of entity out of a science fiction movie? Or did you want some huge twist in the plot: a thought-to-be-dead artist, a celebrity, or even—God forbid!—a woman? He's only a man—a little weird, true, but no more so than your typical artist. At least that's what Willis always said.”

  “A guy named Mordecai from either Midwood or Bensonhurst.”

  “Midwood.” She smiles, distantly. “You already seem to know about as much as I do. He's just a man from Brooklyn who writes on bathroom walls. There's nothing more to it.”

  I can't explain why this bothers me. If I had to relate to anything, it is like the abolition of the cherished myth of immortality: the first association with the concept of maturity and the introduction to time as a progression, one as necessary as it is terrifying. Just as easily, it could be thought of as similar to the end of innocence, a bite into that bitter heirloom handed down through the generations; but, really, it is just information that falsifies a naïve assumption. Maybe it's so disappointing because it is too difficult sometimes to step outside of the framework that we create for ourselves, to abandon the belief that something is always looming on the horizon while something else is receding into oblivion. I don't know. This is all new to
me. I look to Daphne vacantly for far too long.

  “Do you want a cigarette?” she asks finally.

  “What?” The thought bubble bursts.

  “Do you smoke?” She grins. “You've been staring at mine for a great while.”

  I nod, walk over to her, and take one from the pack that she presents to me. Something about her phrase 'great while' seems a bit odd, archaic maybe. The cigarette she gives me is the brand without additives, the same brand that was purchased by a massive tobacco conglomerate back in the early aughts, a particularly busy period of buyouts—in terms of both companies and politicians—for the Oligarchy.

  As she lights the cigarette, she looks to me with what could almost be called pity. I notice that her irises are a luminescent shade of hazel speckled with flakes of gold. She blinks slowly as I stare down to her, her eyes: amygdalate, immaculate, serene. These are eyes with which one falls in love while in a lucubratory bistro or a really predictable Indie film. They are almost cliché, but I can't help myself. I've always been of the opinion that a woman is at the apex of her beauty when you stare into her eyes, that moment before the first kiss, the second kiss, the kiss that implores the advance of lips and hands and tongue, etc., etc. True, attention is commonly diverted from the eyes, especially when the first day of spring officially arrives and the number of fender-benders increases exponentially throughout the thawing latitudes; but this is just the work of neurotransmitters, a sort of infatuation that is more chemical than conscious. In reality, there is no nudity more erotic than vulnerability, vulnerability as the shedding of pretense, which can permit a connection with another person without so much as a semblance to anxiety. That's the odd thing about skin: it is both boundary and medium (and maybe when the latter ceases to operate as such, it becomes only the former; and maybe that's when love begins to fade, and sex becomes hollow, but you of course can't let on that you are simply going through motions; and so the skin becomes more calloused, thicker, and you find yourself staring at the ceiling as she pretends to sleep next to you; and you pretend, too, but what you are pretending tickles something in you, and she is left believing that—at the very least—you still find her attractive).