The beast swallowed before speaking. “I see little has changed with you, my son.” The rhino’s blue eyes followed the flock as it moved like locusts down the path of the zoo. “Hermes tells me that your uncle has visited you. Hades will tell you anything to…”
“Why don’t you show yourself?” Dio snapped, cutting him off.
“You of all gods know the detriment my true form can bring. Besides, look at my horn. It’s the largest horn in this city,” Zeus said, slicing it through the air.
“My following grows with each day that comes to pass. I am stronger than ever.”
“It is time to come home, Dionysus.” The rhino approached the riverbank.
“New Orleans is my home now.” He turned and regarded the dancing flock. “I like it here.”
“Here?! New Orleans?!” He laughed. “This city is backwater filth! No self-respecting god would patronize such a place. I figured Silenus would have talked some sense into you. You are the God of the Vine! You belong on Olympus.”
“I am the god of man. It is here, for man, that I will build my kingdom.”
“Oh, my son, your naivety disappoints me.”
Dio turned to walk away, but Zeus called after him, stopping him in his tracks. “I will destroy it!”
Dio turned and rushed the fence. “You wouldn’t dare! These mortals have done nothing wrong. They are merely reveling in my glory.”
“You lie to yourself. We both know they are under your control.” Dio turned again, this time unflinching when Zeus called after him. “Return to Olympus, or we will show New Orleans no mercy! Poseidon will send the seas, and I, the sky, Dionysus!”
The God of the Vine stormed past pockets of his flock that had broken off into groups, some reciting poems of his glory, others praising him in song. In a blind fury, Dio cracked open the exhibit cages and mesh fences with his thyrsus, permitting the animals to exit their habitats and roam the earth. The flock, finally taking notice of the god’s actions, joined him by tossing tables, benches, and debris into the moat barriers of habitats, creating bridges for the large animals of the African savannah to break free. Eventually, even the zookeepers who had joined the following opened the remaining exhibits, giving all of Audubon Zoo access to the city.
Dio walked through the mayhem; both the mortals of the flock and the newly freed animals parted for their savior and bowed as he passed. He looked back at the rhinoceros enclosure—it was completely empty. Zeus had made similar threats before—when Aphrodite fell in love with a strapping young conquistador and refused to return to Olympus from the “New World,” Zeus and Poseidon annihilated the entire Spanish fleet, retrieving Aphrodite from the Mexican shores. And when Hera had grown tired of fetching her own wine and drawing her own bath and called on Zeus to retrieve Hebe from the island of Borneo—where Athena adroitly surmised that the goddess had reveled in never having to serve a single chalice—Zeus pounded the island with thunderbolts for thirty days and thirty nights, until, finally, the goddess couldn’t watch the natives suffer any longer, and she returned home.
But Dio had also seen Zeus’s threats go unfulfilled. Oftentimes the God of the Sky simply descended back down to the mortal world in the form of a king, sultan, or czar. Dio wouldn’t be surprised if, at that very moment, Zeus had made his way to that stretch of filth and concrete referred to as Bourbon Street, bouncing from strip club to strip club like a bee in the hive. No, the god wasn’t concerned with Zeus or his uncle Poseidon. And as he walked back out of the zoo’s gates, a black panther flanking him on either side, Dio decided that a triumph would be in order, so New Orleans could be properly introduced to its new patriarch and laud his glory.
Zibby
LaSalle didn’t even show up to administer the final exam. No words of encouragement, not even an obligatory “it’s been a pleasure” to send the class off into the fray. Instead, her square-jawed, chestnut-coifed, 2L teaching assistant handed out the exam and wrote the start and end times on the whiteboard, and it was probably all for the better. This way, Zibby could indulge in her fantasies of clawing the professor’s eyes out and not get kicked out of school and arrested.
She swiveled around in her chair and gave Tara, seated a few rows back, a thumbs-up—Tara answered with a head nod. In three frantic hours that defied the laws of physics—Zibby was convinced that if scientists were to prove alternate time travel, they would do so during a law school exam—she would be finished with her first semester and one-sixth of law school.
But LaSalle’s exam was more of a self-esteem-shattering coup de grâce than an ultimate test on the material covered during the semester. And when Zibby finished—three minutes before her time was up—she shared looks of despair with the other occupants of the elevator as they descended to the first floor; wet sobs from the back broke the silence.
She walked through the glass doors and met Tara on the sidewalk, the cigarette shaking in her hand as if she had just stumbled upon a dead body.
“Hey, you ah…want to start that bar crawl, like, now?” Tara asked.
“I mean, I could drink, but I need a nap or coffee or something after that beast. Let’s meet at seven, eight? You want to start at Daiquiri’s instead?”
“Honey, I’ve got 190 Octane on the brain.”
“Bless your heart.”
Zibby retrieved her bike, walking it around a group of classmates engaged in a circular argument concerning the legitimacy of “B’s” self-defense argument against “E’s” assault, and pedaled toward St. Charles. And as Zibby was herself attempting to remember how she had reasoned B’s claim, a yellow blur whizzed across the tracks, causing a pickup truck to veer across the neutral ground and the roaring streetcar to T-bone its bed—a domino effect of fender-benders and busted bumpers ensued. Zibby clamped on her breaks, the bike’s back wheel lifting off the ground, and gazed upon the wreckage.
“Holy shit! Did you see that?! A jaguar just ran across the street!” a 1L called out from the street corner like a newsy.
“I believe it was a leopard!” a different 1L shouted, jogging to the very same corner. “And it caused the driver of the pickup to swerve into the streetcar!”
“Somebody help! Please!” an elderly woman called out from the middle of the road, standing over a gray-haired man in a tan cardigan. “He’s having a stroke!”
“Did you see the speed at which the streetcar was traveling? It is definitely liable,” the 1L who had been standing on the corner started.
“Well, the RTA would be vicariously liable, but the streetcar was traveling at a reasonable speed.”
An ambulance tore down Broadway and swerved onto St. Charles. Two first responders hopped out of the back.
“I disagree.”
“Moreover, the leopard would be an intervening cause, severing causation.”
A man stumbled out of his sedan, blood running from his nose, and fell onto the sidewalk.
“You mean superseding cause, and that’s for which driver? This one?” The first 1L pointed to the man lying on the sidewalk. “Or that one?” He nodded toward the driver of the T-boned truck, standing outside of his car, his hands atop his head.
“Well, it doesn’t appear as if he’s suffered any damages. So the whole issue may be moot!”
“What about emotional distress?”
“Excellent point.” He called from the corner, “Sir! Are you currently experiencing severe emotional distress?!”
The elderly man was lifted into the back of the ambulance.
“If he dies, she may have a claim for wrongful death.”
“Unless he was outside the scope of the risk, at least in the majority of jurisdictions.”
They watched as the ambulance headed down Lowerline toward the Mississippi River.
“Maybe, but we would still need to find out what happened with that jaguar.”
“Leopard. Ya think we should’ve done something?”
“Whoa, we didn’t have a duty to act. Unless you’re related to him?”
“You know my ma and dem are in Thibodaux.”
“Well, then, I’d say it could only hurt us to help. Wherein, if we began to render aid and stopped or worsened his condition, we could be held liable.”
“Right. And we don’t fall under a ‘special relationship’ exception.”
“No, no, we don’t. Did you see the streetcar driver render any aid to passengers? As a common carrier, he has a duty to do so.”
“Hmm, and what about her?” he pointed to the elderly woman crying on her cell phone.
“Should we even analyze a loss of consortium claim?”
“No, of course not. It wasn’t on the final.”
“Right.”
And they walked downriver without looking back.
Zibby broke from her daze and rode her bike onto the neutral ground to see if anyone on the streetcar had been injured. A few mothers rubbed the backs and heads of their children, shaken from the collision, but the passengers were unscathed—if New Orleans were ever threatened with invasion, tank tread should be welded onto the streetcars to defend the city.
She got on her bike, and instead of riding home, headed back toward the school. In the fury of the exam and its cranial-depleting effects, she had forgotten to print out a copy of “Neverhome” to—after gauging the situation, perhaps after a Sazerac or even a syrupy Hurricane—give to Clemmons Ruiz tomorrow at the end of the tour.
While she stood at the printer, hypnotized by the warm paper forming a neat pile on the machine, she fantasized about him reading it, barefoot, on his balcony overlooking the picturesque rooftops of the nineteenth-century French Quarter cottages, coffee mug in hand if it was the morning (whiskey neat if it was night), his cat, Orwell, sitting underneath his chair or on his lap. He would write encouraging notes in the margins for her use and draft a literary review for the world. He’d use words like “Prodigy. Sensation. Wunderkind,” ending with a label like “the most talented writer under twenty-five,” “the best writer you’ve never heard of,” or “THE NEXT BIG THING.”
Her fantasy was cut short—right at the best part, when she’d be reading the email from a “big five” publisher lauding her style, voice, and overall prose, and ultimately offering her a six-figure book deal—when Ben walked into the computer lab.
Instinctively, she lowered her eyes. A red light blinked, signifying a paper jam.
“Of fucking course,” she said, smacking the side of the industrial printer, a remedy that had yet to be effective.
Her breathing grew heavy, and another fantasy creeped into her psyche—one that included tying Ben’s limbs to two separate Jeeps and driving them in opposite directions.
He sat down, wiggled the mouse of a sleeping computer, and typed in his password, messing up twice before getting signed in.
Zibby opened the Instagram app, finding her way to Clemmons’s page and scrolling down through pictures of bookshelves and quotes and excerpts from his books, aligned neatly in typewriter font on crackling, yellowing “paper”.
“Is that one not working?” he asked, breaking the silence.
“Does it look like it’s working?” she snapped. “Also, there are two other printers you could use.”
“I’ll ah…I’ll go get the girl at the circulation desk.”
Zibby opened Facebook on her phone and was immediately inundated by LIVE, BREAKING, and THIS-JUST-IN news: New Orleans musician shot dead at statue protest. Suspect in custody. Member of Confederate rights group.
She wobbled from side to side, gripping the blinking printer to steady herself. She didn’t need to check the articles to know it was Mz. Champagne, but she clicked anyway.
Leon Monroe, better known by her stage name, Mz. Champagne, was shot dead at point-blank range during the Lee monument protest Wednesday afternoon. The suspect’s identification has yet to be revealed, but witnesses say he was belligerent and showing off a gun tucked into his pants. Witnesses also say that this fact was brought to the police’s attention, but nothing was done. Mz. Champagne was rushed to University Hospital, but was pronounced DOA. She was 27.
Ben’s muffled voice, like a parent from Peanuts, instructed the girl from the desk about which printer was jammed before rushing to Zibby’s side. He read the headline off her outstretched phone and tried to console her, but she smacked his hand away, grabbed “Neverhome”—or what had already printed of it before the jam— and left the computer lab.
In her mind, she had canceled the bar crawl and planned to lie in bed all night and listen to Mz. Champagne’s anthology, even the grungy B-sides she recorded in a Hollygrove shotgun living room before fully adopting her famous persona. But Tara, in need of a drink since the end of the exam, bombarded Zibby with texts before showing up to Dublin Street and pulling her out of her bed.
“Every drink will be in her honor.” Tara was still in lawyering mode as the screen door slammed behind them. “We’ll put her on in every bar.”
“Brian said he saw the guy who shot her. He was wearing a Confederate flag as a cape.”
“Sounds about right.”
“Did the statue actually come down? I knew they should’ve done it at night. Why did they even announce it?”
“Honey, when did this city ever make sense? Don’t even think about it. You’ll feel much better once we get a daiquiri in you.”
“Nectar of the gods.”
Dio
The crowds lined the street four rows deep as Dionysus sat in his chariot pulled by a team of black panthers. Children, sitting atop dads’ shoulders, smiled and pointed and shouted at the rows of animals, musicians, fire eaters, jugglers, sword swallowers, acrobats, and frenzied dancers marching downriver on St. Charles Avenue.
“Daddy! Daddy! Look!” a rosy-cheeked little tike shouted. “Elephants! Tigers! Look, Dad, giraffes!”
But Dad couldn’t focus on the animals, because squeezed between the marching Purple Knights of St. Augustine High School and the bumbling hippos, a squadron of topless women—the kind Dad had only seen at Rick’s Cabaret when his buddies were in town— frolicked and smiled and blew kisses into the crowd.
Dad searched for the police. Of course, women had been known to lift their shirts in exchange for plastic beads on Bourbon Street, but it was still illegal, and even during the raunchy, adult-themed parades that snaked through the Marigny, the police made sure no human nakedness was exposed. Dad watched as three topless female police officers—their navy NOPD-issued pants still on— danced and gyrated and held snakes above their heads.
High in his chariot, Dio only saw the crowd in his peripheral vision, his chin raised as if posing for his profile to appear on a drachma. When bold parade-goers summoned up the courage to encroach on the chariot to recite a poem they had written or a verse from a song they’d composed—plenty of them had attempted—they were repelled by the god’s personal guard of shirtless young men. One such attendant, overcome with gusto, rushed the chariot in the hope of reciting just one line of his poem. He had scribbled it down as he saw the god approaching, stricken with a moment of enlightenment, and slipped on the slick oiled skin of one of the guards. He crashed into the chariot, running his hand along the god’s ankle as he fell to the concrete. The panthers roared and the procession came to a halt. The guards, each armed with their own thyrsus, took turns beating the man until the sound of cracking bones had put a damper on Dio’s jovial spirit, and he commanded them to yield.
Although the man had been beaten to a pulp, his ribs broken, his forearms shattered, he had lain a finger upon his god, and had died smiling.
Dio had just returned to his austere state, chin up, laurels affixed, when his guards thwacked another desperate worshipper— this time the man, unarmed and overweight, ran in front of the chariot midsong, stopping the panthers in their tracks. One guard launched his thyrsus like a spear and stuck the man right above the eye. Another wound up his weapon and clocked the man across the chin—the reveler sang until his final breath.
Moments afte
r the fat body had been dragged to the neutral side of St. Charles Avenue and the chariot wheels began to turn, high-pitched screeches flowed like waves down the procession, forcing the god and his guard to cover their ears.
The topless women—a few now completely naked—threw a skinny man into the street, where he tripped and skidded on the pavement. As the women tore off his clothing and pulled at his limbs, singing and screeching in layered intervals, the man reached out his arm toward the god and sang a song of his own, seemingly unfazed as their nails dug in and ripped at his cheeks and pectorals.
The god stood in the chariot and the crowd gasped as the women ceased their attack. The joyous frenzy that typically accompanied one of his parades had grown too violent, and the glassy nothingness shielded the women’s eyes as they transitioned from mortal to Maenad. Dio had only created enough wine for the mass baptisms that took place in the park after he had brought Peter back from the dead, barely bottling enough for him to enjoy during the procession. But the god had underestimated his vintage’s potency, the immortality of his vines, still producing plump bunches back in Washington Park, and the denizens of New Orleans’s indefatigable ardor to indulge in even the pulpiest, least-refined alcohol available to them. Dio turned around to see men carrying buckets of the red elixir, slung across their backs like peasants fetching water, women balancing similar buckets atop their heads, the drink making a slapping sound as it fell onto the avenue—parade-goers hopped the barricades and sucked the wine off the concrete.
Dio turned back to the panting women. “What crime has this man committed?”
The skinny young man, tears welling in his eyes because the glowing god had acknowledged his very existence, began to crawl toward the chariot.
A woman with blood spatter covering her naked chest stepped forward. “He called your spectacle the ‘Parade of Bacchus’!” she shouted, more to the gathering than to the god. The crowd gasped, the flock murmured, and a hissing began to bubble about the parade.
Dio collapsed and sunk back into his seat. He could not permit such a transgression, for the worship of false gods—especially the effigies of Rome—must be punished.
The Neon God Page 19