A child smiled at him and waved; the god waved back, then looked down upon the crawling young man, the panthers emitting a guttural growl as he drew close and looked back to the women—all of whom, he could no longer deny, had completed their Maenadic transformation—and with the slightest nod, signaled them to finish their execution.
As two Maenads grabbed an ankle each and dragged him back into the circle of teeth and claws, the young man called out, “My god! My god! Why have you forsaken me?” until his throat was torn out of his neck and he fell silent.
With the street cleared, the chariot once again continued down the avenue to cheers and shouts, as if the public executions had already been forgotten, hidden away in an unspeakable period of a dark past.
The skyline peeked over the horizon as the procession approached Downtown. And up ahead, at the base of a gargantuan column, more revelry awaited the god. Clans that only a day earlier had been clashing like the Spartans and Athenians during the Peloponnesian War—some in white robes and pointed hats or shields and helmets, all waving the Confederate flag, others sweating in their black shirts that read Black Lives Matter or End White Supremacy, donning black bandanas across their necks—were now wrapped in each other’s arms, singing Dio’s praises, sucking down the vine. Puddles and blood-red splats lined the street—his vintage had made its way to the front of the procession, where it had already been consumed by those waiting for him to arrive.
The roars rolled down the procession as the god drew close, and Dio could make out the calls of “Hail Dionysus! Hail Dionysus!” Emerging out from under an overpass, the god shielded his eyes as the chariot churned beneath the sun. High atop the column, where only the previous day a general for this nation’s Civil War had stood, a white statue had taken its place, with one arm holding a thyrsus at its side, the other holding a bushel of grapes outstretched toward Uptown, as if offering a gift to the neighborhood that had delivered Dionysus to this city. He had visited all of his best-known sculptures—in Athens, Rome, Paris, Naples, Florence, and Saint Petersburg—and had been content with all of them, even laughing at one titled “Old Bacchus,” as he found the very thought of aging amusing. But Dio had come to learn the significance of that column, and heard about the slaying of a local musician whose blood still stained the steps leading up to the base. Where only hours earlier, candles for the late musician burned in commemoration, the flickering flames had gone out, doused in wine in jubilee. New Orleans, this center of revelry and celebration and extreme violence, would serve as the fulcrum of his new empire.
Breaking his stoicism, Dio stood in the chariot and waved and blew kisses to his mortals. As the panthers neared the base of the column, the crowd—shirtless men and naked women, fathers and children, neo-Nazis and anti-fascists and everyone in between—like the Muslims in Mecca, dropped to their knees and prostrated before their god. And left standing, out in the sea of stumps, was the most gorgeous creature Dio had ever laid eyes on in the entirety of his existence. Adonis.
Zibby
Zibby lay in bed, Quiet in the Alley open and resting on her stomach, scrolling through her phone. On her nightstand, a to-go cup sat, half filled with the Vito’s Special—a sweet green concoction more akin to something one would find in a trite Bourbon Street establishment than in an Uptown sports bar. Zibby secretly loved the stuff, but only ordered it “ironically,” late at night, when she was already stumbling from barstool to jukebox, drunk.
She’d managed to avoid texting Ben or Ryan—Zibby double-checked her phone to make sure one didn’t sneak out late-night— and drank just enough to melt away her stress without vomiting or waking up with a head-splitting hangover. On the whole, it was a great success as far as bar crawls went. Tara had, as promised, played Mz. Champagne at each bar on the route—the only one putting up any resistance was Pints.
Zibby had expected the works for Mz. Champagne, all the bells and whistles included in a classic New Orleans funeral procession—drums, brass, umbrellas—but sat up on her elbows in bed as she scrolled through coverage on Facebook of a full-blown parade making its way down St. Charles the day after the shooting. When a well-respected New Orleans Saint had been killed by a drunk driver a few years back, you would’ve thought the entire NFL had marched through the French Quarter. When Antoine Devereux, the original chef (and inventor of the savory shrimp beignet) at the original Devereux’s Café, passed away, it seemed like there were more Michelin stars selling their food on the street than in the restaurants of Kyoto or New York City. And when the trumpeter and pioneer of the “Jazz Renaissance,” Ulysses Bergeron’s, heart gave out on stage at the Howlin’ Wolf, you would’ve thought the city was made of music itself, as it didn’t sleep for three days and nights. But she had never seen, in all her years of celebrating in a city renowned for its conviviality, hippopotamuses, followed by giraffes, marching in a row down St. Charles Avenue.
Zibby scrolled to the comments section of a nola.com article, that nook of the internet where logic, reason, and human decency went to die.
GreenWaveDad973: I see New Orleans is spending their money wisely. ANOTHER parade as the city rises in the murder rankings? Is it just one big party down there? DISGRACE!
MzChampagneFan504: Hail Dionysus!
WhoDat09: Hail Dionysus!
RebelRun88: Bet he some Yankee DEMONcrat spreading lies for the city AGAIN. Probably a refugee with a name like that.
PugLuvver: My son is there! Has anyone heard from him???
LSUAlum92: Hail Dionysus!
Scrolling back up to the substance of the article, Zibby tapped on a clip that, after taking ten…eleven…twelve seconds to load, showed a field reporter chugging a bottle of wine and then tearing open her shirt. “Dionysus, God of the Vine!” shouted the long-haired Viet-Fabio, raising an overflowing chalice to the sky and knocking into the topless reporter.
The articles were difficult to understand—some completely incoherent. Scrolling had made the meat behind her eyes hurt, and when she sat up, everything in her stomach sloshed against everything else.
She checked her email one last time before getting ready for the tour, making sure that she hadn’t received a notification saying the tour had been canceled in light of the murder and subsequent procession—but there were no new messages. She threw on the outfit she had picked out before finals—black jeans that accentuated her high and tight butt, a black shirt that fell off her shoulder, and a lightweight purple scarf (more for style than keeping her neck warm, as it was still seventy degrees in December)—and even though she planned to be as close to Clemmons Ruiz as possible throughout the entire tour, she even skipped the contacts and wore her black-rimmed glasses she only needed for distance. Although her wedges would’ve gone well with her jeans—and bolstered her already accentuated butt—thirty minutes in she wouldn’t be able to keep up with the group, so she opted instead for her classic black Chuck Taylors.
After the mascara and concealer, the highlights and contour, and after she chiseled her cheekbones so they popped in the mirror, and after she curled her hair, she then took off the tight jeans, causing her to hop around the room and fall onto the bed—face up, so as not to ruin her makeup—so she could change her underwear into this black, lacy thing she had forgotten about in the bottom of her drawer and had only worn once. Worn for Ryan, on their one-year anniversary. And after she pulled the black jeans back up, swiped on some deodorant, and sprayed and walked through a cloud of perfume that reminded her of getting ready to “go out” on Thursday nights in college, Zibby called for an Uber: Samir will be there in 6 minutes. Be on the lookout for Samir’s car.
In the living room, Zibby’s father sat in the darkness, illuminated by the blue glow of the television, a bottle of wine resting in his crotch.
“Dad? Dad, what are you doing?” Zibby approached him but shot back when he snapped his head to the side, grinning with purple-stained teeth, and shouted, “Hail Dionysus!”
“Jesus! What the fuck, Dad? How much h
ave you had to drink?”
“Praise be unto him! Hail! Hail!”
The WGNO anchors shouted over each other in incoherent rants, peppered with “Hail Dionysus!” and “Within me grows the vine!”, their teeth and lips as purple as her father’s. The same grainy, jumbled clips replayed from the street like they were out of a “found footage” horror movie, which made Zibby nauseous, reminding her that she had, in fact, spent the night before roaming the Uptown fringes like a lush.
“Dad, do not go down there.” Zibby stepped toward him on the couch, gaining access to the wine-bottle graveyard that had formed underneath the coffee table. “How much…Dad! Listen, you cannot drive or…or even be in public. You’re wasted. You’ll…”
“Within me grows the vine!”
Her phone vibrated: Samir is arriving now. Please be outside to meet Samir.
“Dad, seriously, you cannot leave the house.” She went to the window to see if Randall was home. Sometimes the two of them would watch football together, and even though he was a fair-weather Falcons fan, her father let him in the house. But when Zibby looked out the window, Randall was lying on his back porch, his white belly sneaking out of his undershirt, his hand resting on a bottle of wine.
She tapped on the glass to get his attention.
“Hey, Stella! Hey, Stella!!” he shouted. “Within me grows the vine! Hail Dionysus!”
Zibby poured her father a glass of water, set it on the coffee table, and headed for the door. Her phone vibrated with Uber alerts, letting her know that Samir had arrived and was waiting for her in front of the house.
It hadn’t hit Zibby after her final exam, nor during the bar crawl, nor even getting ready, but as she trotted down the four green steps of her porch and approached the front gate, the frisson of excitement spread throughout her body like an electric shock.
“Someone is happy today,” Samir said while Zibby hopped into the backseat.
“Ha! Yeah, yeah, you could say that.”
“Well, you are very beautiful. You should always smile.”
“Thank you.”
Zibby looked out the window as Samir turned onto South Carrollton and caught herself smiling again, but covered it up when she saw Samir checking on her through the rearview mirror.
“Yes, very beautiful,” he said, this time more to himself than as a compliment to his passenger.
She opened her laptop bag filled with copies of Clemmons’s books. Of course, she had Quiet in the Alley, and if she felt that it was only appropriate to ask him to sign one, that would be it, but she’d also packed fraying, earmarked, and underlined copies of Below Water, Sinister City, and Romeo Spikes, in case they really hit it off.
“Shit! Shit, Shit, Shit, Shiiiit,” she fired off, rummaging through the books.
“Is there a problem, Beautiful Smile?”
“I cannot believe this.” And she let out a groan while her neck curled around the headrest.
“Is it something I could help you? It would be a pleasure to help such a beautiful smile.”
Their eyes met in the rearview mirror. She was many expressions removed from smiling and pretended to continue looking through her bag, even though she knew the folder containing a printed copy of her short story, “Neverhome,” was still sitting on her bedroom desk.
“You can ask me, and I may help you. Do not worry. For a smile like you, I will be happy to help.”
They had merged onto I-10 and were about halfway to the Voodoo Lounge, the bar on the French Quarter fringes where the tour group would meet. Samir would have turned around so she could pick up her story, but the longer she spent in the car with him, the more guarded she became—she put the bag on her lap and jammed into the corner of the back seat—and she also didn’t want to be late.
Her phone vibrated and Text from Maybe: Ryan streaked across her lockscreen.
“What the fuck?”
“Do you need anything, Beautiful Smile?” said Samir, trying to catch her eyes in the rearview mirror.
Zibby slid open the message, hoping her phone had made a mistake, and heard Ryan’s voice as she read the text like a Civil War letter read by the soldier’s belle.
Hey Zibbs. I’ll be in NOLA for a bachelor prty this weeknd if u wanna meet up. I’m stayin in an Airbnb in the New Marigny. Would love to see u!
She dropped the phone on her lap to stop herself from flinging it out the window.
Samir’s glances became more frequent, and when they would accidentally meet eyes, he would lift his chin and smile into the mirror, exposing yellowing teeth and sore, red gums.
“How come you are not at the parade, Miss Beautiful Smile?”
Zibby didn’t answer. Instead, she opened Clemmons Ruiz’s Instagram page and scrolled through pics of extracted novel excerpts placed on weathered parchment, of opened books resting on the windowsill beside a cup of coffee or whiskey neat, or of his tuxedo cat, Orwell.
“I would go, but too much drinking. I do not drink. Sometimes I think this city is American Sodom.” He looked in the rearview but only caught Zibby’s profile. “Yes, American Sodom. Perhaps this storm will wipe us all out, inshallah.”
Zibby looked out the window and feigned interest in the fat black clouds taking up the horizon.
“You know, Beautiful Smile, I have a friend in the Emirates who would pay much for you.”
Zibby caught his eyes in the rearview mirror once again, where they remained until he moved them back to the road.
“Perhaps I will just take you and send you to him.”
Text to Tara: I’m about to call you. Don’t hang up.
Text to Tara: T answer the phone.
“Zibbs?”
“Hey”—she turned into the window and covered her mouth— “just stay on the line.”
“What’s goin’ on?”
“Uber alert.”
“Ughhhh, I hate that shit. I had this driver before finals who, like, would not shut the fuck up about my outfit. Like, dude, I was in this ratty old Maple Leaf t-shirt I had in a bag I threw on after work on my way to F&Ms.” Zibby knew she could rely on Tara to waste time on the phone. “By the way, how are you functioning right now? I feel like death. I knew those late-night vodka crans at Snake’s were a terrible idea. I would be at the protest—parade thingy, whatever— but honestly, I almost puked just flipping over to answer the phone.”
“I’m too excited to be hungover. I’m going on the Ruiz tour, remember?”
“Oh, right, of course. You’re so gonna do him.”
Zibby met eyes with Samir in the rearview mirror and quickly looked away, not answering Tara.
“There is that smile!” shouted Samir.
“Oh my god, was that him?”
They finally wound onto North Rampart Street, the thoroughfare that separated the French Quarter from the Treme, and pulled into an empty spot in front of the bar.
Without ending the ride or turning off the engine, Samir looked at Zibby through the rearview mirror. “I can have you on a plane tonight.” The playfulness that had been in his voice vanished; it was a final offer, and he was serious.
“Unlock the door.”
Samir didn’t move. Zibby blindly searched for the lock, but refused to break eye contact with the driver.
“I said unlock the fucking door.” She dropped her phone.
“Zibbs? Z, you there?” Tara called from Zibby’s feet.
“I said…”
Samir snapped, “It’s rude to talk on the phone when someone is being nice to you.”
Typically, at this stage, the human brain would engage in fight or flight, but Zibby had just finished her first semester of law school, and in four short months, the pulverizing effects of her education had rewired her most primal instincts. Instead of selecting either of the two natural choices, Zibby began analyzing the situation through the lens of a false imprisonment (FI) tort.
“I am cognizant of your act that is restraining me to a bounded area,” Zibby was reciting the rule as
if she were laying it out on an exam. “There are no other reasonable means by which I can escape. Whereby you do not fall under an exception, you may be subject to compensatory and/or punitive damages, in accordance with Mallon v. Bruckner, if you don’t open the fucking door!”
Samir held his gaze for a moment longer, looked to his left, and unlocked the door.
She picked her phone up off the floor, got out of the car, and slammed the door shut. Silence overcame the buzzing groups of tourists waiting to begin their ghost or vampire tours.
“Hey, Zibbs?” Zibby put the phone to her ear, hand shaking with adrenaline. “The holding standard actually comes out of Morris v. Bloomdahl, but the rest was right.”
Dio
Tears pooled in the god’s eyes when Adonis smiled. Shirtless, hair resting on his shoulders, silky and chestnut, Adonis stood alone in the prostrate crowd, radiant, glowing like he had been the first time Dio laid eyes on him from the banks of that Phoenecian river.
The god stepped down from his chariot. The flock, the guards, even the Maenads did not flinch in their submission, and it was so quiet that Dio could hear pebbles crunch beneath his sandals as he approached his love.
He embraced Adonis, taking his hands and holding them in his own. Wrapping his arms around Adonis’s shoulders and neck and running his hands through his hair, the god fell against Adonis’s chest. He kissed his chest and wept, nuzzling his chin into his neck and kissing his shoulder, holding his hands and kissing them, running his hands along Adonis’s chin, and his hands—his soft, golden hands—Dio placed upon his own face. He kissed his fingers, his chin, his lips, and between the eyes and the bridge of his nose, and crying, laughing, kissing, he put his forehead to Adonis’s forehead and whispered, “I have missed you,” over and over into his ear.
“It’s time to come home,” Adonis said.
“Home?” Dio pulled his head away from his chest. “Look, my love, look all around you.” He wiped the tears from his cheeks. “The people of this city have embraced the vine. I am worshipped like the days we traveled the islands, the Levant and Anatolia. This will be our new home. There is love with the mortals. A more genuine love than anything atop Olympus, I assure you.”
The Neon God Page 20