The Neon God

by Ben D'Alessio

  Heat pooled in Zibby’s cheeks. Although the comment wasn’t directed at her entirely, she felt responsible for the scolding and couldn’t get herself to look up at her classmates. A 2L had shimmied behind the row of swivel chairs and stood awkwardly behind her, clearly agitated that he’d now have less time to skim the reading he should’ve completed the night before.

  Zibby hurried her casebook and papers and laptop into her backpack and rushed out of the classroom and into the elevator. No one addressed her or even made eye contact, as if LaSalle had taken out a wet brush and painted a big red “U” for “unprepared” on her shirt.

  She burst through the twin glass doors and grabbed her bike from the rack, making the decision to skip her two other classes and go home—her first skips of the semester.

  While Zibby sat at the stop sign, waiting to cross over St. Charles Avenue, a white Porsche Carrera 4S with the top down pulled up beside her. LaSalle checked her left, across the streetcar tracks, for a driver pulling a U-turn, and then to the right, tilting down her oversized sunglasses to make eye contact with Zibby. Had LaSalle said anything, it would’ve blown Zibby off her bike. Instead, the professor pushed back up her sunglasses, turned up the radio—“a symphony” was the only way to describe the elevating music—and turned onto St. Charles.

  Zibby read the license plate as the hot-white convertible pulled away: ZOS177. Zosima, the saintly monk from The Brothers Karamazov, was the first thing that came to Zibby’s mind, as she had naturally begun to think in shorthand and pneumonic devices as a tool when it came time for the finals study crunch.

  She crossed over the streetcar tracks and tore down St. Charles, weaving into the street when friends and couples rode down the bike lane side by side. Road work caused Zibby to take a detour up Adams Street, and as she approached the Toole house at the corner of Adams and Hampson, she saw two cars parked in the driveway. The red cursive headlining the top of the white license plates assured Zibby they were locals, at least from Louisiana. Perhaps they were a pair of young writers moving out of the French Quarter and into more family-friendly Uptown, or fresh out of the MFA program at LSU. But as Zibby approached the cars, she realized that her eyes had deceived her, and they were, in fact, from California.

  The high-pitched screams of the rugrats chasing each other on the small front lawn made it impossible to understand what the couple was discussing on the porch, but from the look on the wife’s face, combined with her spastic, enthusiastic arm movements toward the porch ceiling, she appeared to be in the infantile stages of making big plans for her new home.

  Zibby’s dreams had been dashed. Perhaps it was irrational to believe that a writer—any writer nowadays—could afford a $1.1 million-dollar home in the first place (she would later find out it had sold for $950k, but still). New Orleans had recently been ranked a “Top 5 City for Startups” by some neoliberalist magazine, and Zibby was witnessing the effects.

  “Can we help you?!” the woman called in bubbly, carefree Californian. “Do you live around here?”

  But Zibby ignored the woman and continued up Adams Street to the Phams’ grocery store to pick up a cheap bottle of wine.

  Brian wasn’t at work, which made Zibby quickly check Facebook to make sure it wasn’t his birthday or some traditional Vietnamese holiday where the youngest son gets to stay home, because Brian’s father seldom gave him and his brothers the day off; perhaps he was just sick.

  Trang was in his usual chair-tilted-back, feet-up-on-the-counter position when Zibby went to pay for her three-dollar pinot grigio.

  “Hey Trang, where’s Brian?” Zibby looked back to see the middle brother, Minh, dunking a basket of shrimp into the fryer and checking an order stub. “He never gets a day off.”

  “I don’t know what that couillon does all day,” Trang said, bagging the wine without taking his eyes off the small TV screen. “He’s probably jerking off. Try texting him.”

  “…Always a pleasure, Trang.”

  When she got home, Zibby hopped in her bed, flipped open her laptop, and laid the final edits to her short story. Rereading it for the third time, she knew she was a shoe-in for that first-place prize.

  She was ready to submit and checked the website for submission guidelines.

  They were largely boilerplate for literary submissions—must be own work, right to publish, word count, cover letter, yada yada yada—until she reached the bottom: The author must not have any work appear in any form of publication before the submission to the festival (this includes self-published, independent, e-magazines…)

  She read it a couple times over. Any?…Ever?…It didn’t make sense. Zibby had often seen the stipulation that the work being submitted would be original and never have appeared in a prior publication, but to bar a new piece because the author had published something previously was nonsensical. Zibby reasoned that the condition must’ve been a typo and checked the contact information for the fiction submissions.

  She emailed her inquiry and reread the story for a fourth time—truly a brilliant work. She drifted back off into her writerhood fantasy. She didn’t need a mentor with work like this. When the archivists would look back on her lengthy canon, they would recall this short story of under seven thousand words and dignify it as the sparkplug that catalyzed Élisabeth “Zibby” Dufossat’s prolific career.

  Her inbox had a notification—the festival had already responded.

  Dear Ms. Dufossat,

  No, the guidelines do not contain any errors. Submissions are reserved for unestablished writers only. Sorry for any confusion. Sincerely, The Tennessee Williams Festival Fiction Editing Team.

  “Hey, Stella!”

  Zibby jumped in her bed and looked out her window— Randall was on his back porch, tearing away at a tight white t-shirt and dropping to his knees.

  “Hey, Stellaaa!”

  She got up and knocked on the window. The overweight Georgian launched to his feet and rushed inside his cottage as if he had been caught masturbating.

  Zibby flung her desk chair out of the way, snagged her laptop from the desk, and began to type a response to the email, which was laden with so many typos the entire reply box was underlined in red.

  She took a deep breath to compose herself, reached over to her desk, and pulled the bottle of wine out of the brown paper bag. The snap of the cap made that crackling sound—it was a twist-off—that Zibby associated with the cheap bottles of vodka she would buy back in college.

  She took a pull from the bottle and immediately spit it out; a little splatter landed on her laptop screen. The pinot grigio wasn’t chilled when she bought it, and it had become a warm bottle of three-dollar piss sitting on her desk.

  She put down the bottle and read over her email, correcting each and every grammatical error and typo.

  Dear Editors,

  At best, the reasoning for your submission guidelines is foolish, and at worst it is disingenuous. As an employee of a local bookstore, I can tell you that just because someone has self-published a novel or had their short story appear in a university literary magazine does not signify that they are “established.” The fact that you collect submission fees from legions of aspiring writers just to be able to select a few that could pay off down the line—to be able to place in your letterhead “Where NYT

  Best-Seller Blankety Blank First Appeared”—is shameful. Your deviation from the industry standard should serve as a warning to all writers of your ulterior motives. There are scores of writers in this very city that are thereby disqualified because of these rules. Perhaps your team are not truly New Orleanians, so let me explain, as someone who was born and bred here: we celebrate art in this city, we don’t reject it. I have a neighbor who, during the construction of this very email, stood on his back porch and shouted “Stella!” in preparation for your contest. Should he be barred from entering if he once shouted “Selina!” to a second-story window to get his girlfriend’s attention? I believe the entire city would be disqualified if th
is were the case.

  However, if your reasoning for your fiction submissions criteria is actually the product of foolishness, then perhaps this email is all y’all need to join us here in the 2019.

  Best,

  Zibby Dufossat

  Dio

  The wine was low and Dio refused to drink vodka. “I have not indulged in the clear poison since Orpheus and I ventured into the Slavic tundra far north and east of the Black Sea.”

  “Your friends all have some crazy names,” said the King as he squeezed a lime wedge into a vodka cranberry. “If ya put enough juice in, ya won’t taste the vodka.”

  “Our contract guaranteed unlimited wine. You are breaching our agreement.”

  “Well shit, I didn’t expect you to drink the stuff like a camel! Your legs ain’t broke. Run to the store and grab a few bottles. You can afford it with all the cash you’re bringin’ in.”

  A skinny, tan teenager creaked open the door. His hair was in a tangled, black disarray, and he had trouble putting back an earring that left a gaping hole in his earlobe. “That was a…that was really…really, really good,” he stammered. When he spoke, Dio could see the boy’s tongue stud that sat like a black pearl in his mouth.

  “Jesus, man! You have a…”—the King searched for the proper word—“guest right now?”

  Dio didn’t break his gaze upon the King, “Where is the wine?”

  “Are you fucking kidding me?!”

  The sound of knocks caused all three men to turn and face the door.

  “Yo, god, you have another appointment tonight you didn’t tell me about?”

  “He is a god!” called the guest.

  Dio had no sense of the schedule. Throughout his entire stay, he would spend the day reading books and drinking wine, only to take an hour here and there to record a session with a guest or two. The King would take the camera afterward and upload the clip to his channel. Dio never bothered to watch. The King gave him a stack of fresh t-shirts with the I Party’d wit da God! slogan in gay-pride rainbow to give to paying guests at the end of the shoot—Dio kept them in a stack on a chair and, unless the guest already knew about them and inquired himself, they would remain untouched.

  The King picked his iPad up off the couch and scrolled. “I don’t have anyone scheduled for you tonight. You can’t just have guests over. I got to set up the cameras and…”

  Before the King could finish his sentence, the door swung open, and a radiant golden glow enveloped the room.

  The guest dropped to his knees; the King began to weep.

  “Hello, Dionysus,” said Apollo, God of the Sun. “It doesn’t surprise me to find you here.”

  Dio had been away from Olympus for so long that even he couldn’t look directly at his radiant half-brother, who stood several inches above the God of the Vine.

  “Hermes tells me you’ve already begun making a mess of things in this abhorrent city. A few young men were torn apart? Is that right?”

  “That didn’t happen,” Dio responded, but Apollo ignored him.

  “I thought…we all thought you would have learned after that poor French girl was burned alive for claiming she heard a calling from her god. Or after the Nazarene was nailed to that cross…”

  The pu-pump-pu-pump-pu-pump in Dio’s chest picked up while Apollo carried on with his list.

  “…that Spartan King, what was his…? Leonidas! The one who believed he could defeat the entire Persian army with a few hundred men. And what about Orpheus? Your dearest friend. Your own followers—Meanads, or whatever they call themselves—plucked poor Orpheus’s head from his neck like a dandelion. After that, we all thought you would have learned not to meddle in mortal affairs.”

  Dio grabbed an empty wine bottle by the neck and lunged at Apollo, as if to use it as a war hammer. Anticipating the assault, the Sun God whipped out his golden bow and parried Dio’s attack, sending the God of the Vine careening into furniture and smashing to the floor.

  “Oh, Dionysus. Don’t you remember what happened last time we meleed? Your head must be plagued by”—he picked up the bottle and took a hesitant sniff—“this unrefined juice. Truly, Dionysus, you might as well drink that clear Muscovite poison.”

  The King and the guest, both from their knees, had been speaking to themselves in an incoherent babble in meditative prayer.

  Dio rose from the floor, wincing in pain as he leaned against the couch.

  “Why are you here, Apollo? Have you not taken enough from me already?”

  “Excellent question! Of course, I would not venture to this foul-smelling city in the swamp had I not been coerced. So it appears our wise sister convinced me to retrieve you and haul you back to Olympus. Athena always has had a way with words.”

  “You know why I will not go back,” Dio said, having risen to his feet.

  “Oh, yes, that whole thing. Well, I won’t lie to you, brother, the boy is still madly in love with me.” Apollo moved a lock of blonde hair behind his ear. “But our dalliance has become rather stale.” Dio knew this to be true, as Apollo was so perfect, he couldn’t tell a lie.

  The God of the Sun took a few moments to regard the King and the guest, both frozen on their knees. “I see you have been indulging in mortal delights, but, then again, you are part mortal yourself. Perhaps you have more in common with the denizens of this putrid city than the rest of us on Olympus. Honestly, brother, if it were my decision, I’d let you rot down here with the rest of them. But you and I are merely pawns in the games they play up there.”

  Dio did not stand a chance against Apollo without his thyrsus. His knees began to shake, and part of him—all of him—wanted to sit back on the floor and wait it out. The buzz of Bourbon Street had grown, mostly comprising tourists finding their way to Frenchmen Street in the neighboring Marigny. It was only last week that men would line up beneath his balcony and wave to him from the sidewalk—smiles grew on their faces when they glimpsed the god. But in front of Apollo, the most famous Olympian—“The Romans could not even change my name,” he would boast—Dio could be mistaken for a timid plebeian.

  “I suppose this one is decent,” Apollo said, gesturing toward the King. Then he turned back to the guest. “Mmmmm, too skinny, even for my taste. Well, at least now I can tell Athena I tried. But”— he regarded the King again—“perhaps I will indulge myself before I leave. I will not take this one from you. You can thank me later.”

  A darkness fell over the room as Apollo walked out the door. The guest chased after him, his knees bumping against the steps as he wrapped his arms around the Sun God’s waist.

  The King rose from his feet, wiped a tear from his eye, and turned to Dio. “Wuh…why did he leave?”

  Dio marched into his room and slammed the door, but the King followed.

  “You know him? You know that? He was the most gorgeous thing I’ve ever seen. I’m not gay, but…” The King paused to compose himself. “Y’all run in the same crews, right? Ya think he’d be interested in working here?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Does he got a gig? Tell him I’ll double it. Whatever it is.”

  “Where’s the wine?” Dio rummaged through the room, tossing aside empty bottles and the pile of freshly minted t-shirts.

  “I’ve got this group coming tomorrow that would pay a premium for a shot with him,” the King said, paying no mind to Dio’s frenzy.

  “You plan to replace me?” Dio swung around to face the King.

  “I don’t think ‘replace’ is the right word, but…”

  “You plan to replace me?!” Dio stepped up to the King.

  “I mean…I only have the one extra room…”

  But before the King could finish his sentence, Dio grabbed him by the arms, pushed him out to the balcony, and flung him over the railing.

  The sound reminded Dio of the crackling of bones that came from Cerberus’s mouth when he snatched a mortal soul out of the River Styx.

  “OH MY GOD!”

  “JESUS CHRIST
!”

  Dio took a deep breath, cracked his neck, and peered over the railing. A shirtless man in a wreath of beads dropped to his knees. “The King is dead!” he shouted. “The King is dead!!!”

  I’m your king now. Dio looked upon the inebriated masses forming around the body.

  “There!” shouted the wailing man. “He fell from up there! He must’ve done it!”

  Dio snatched the cash from the coffee can, rumbled down the steps, and traversed the courtyard, where a tiny alleyway leant him safe passage to Governor Nicholls Street. He could hear the masses behind him storming the iron gate to the apartment like the Visigoths sacking Rome.

  Dio didn’t evade the riot out of fear for his own well-being, but for the mortals of the city. Had the mob attacked the deity—a justifiable assault for his wanton murder—he would have had no choice but to fight them back. For Dionysus, God of the Vine, did not share the fate of man, but he did share in man’s pain.

  He reached the downriver fringe of the French Quarter and bought three bottles of wine at a petite grocery store on Esplanade. He cut through the colorful Marigny—sucking down an entire bottle before reaching St. Claude Avenue—where he entered a Nubian hair salon for a coloring and a shave.

  NOVEMBER

  Zibby

  Zibby had accepted Ben’s invitation for a “study break,” which forced her to take a shower and put on something cute. She hadn’t left her room—except to use the bathroom and to microwave leftovers—for thirty-six hours, and the walls were closing in. She imagined her brain melting and reforming itself with the holdings from tort cases, the case names floating like butterflies she could snatch out of the air—“Palsgraf, Carroll Towing Co., where are you going, Tarasoff? Get back here, you little rascal!” After Zibby had sniffed the gallon of milk in the fridge and asked herself Is this the kind of milk a reasonable and prudent person would drink? she knew it was time for a break.

  Text from Ben 3L: What kind of wine do you like?