The Neon God

by Ben D'Alessio

  “You do not understand…”

  “They place me atop columns and recite poetry in my name.”

  “There will not…”

  “Look around you! They worship the streets on which I walk and consume my vintage as if it were the air they breathe! Here, I am the vine once again. In New Orleans, I am reborn!”

  “This city…” Adonis grabbed Dio by the wrists and pulled him in close. Leaning into his ear, Adonis whispered, “This city will be gone by tomorrow.”

  Dio pulled back and, peering into those almond eyes that turned his insides gooey, began to laugh. At first a subdued, polite laugh, as if trying not to offend, but eventually he could no longer control himself and doubled over, finding it difficult to catch his breath.

  “Zeus is not…”

  “Zeus? Ha! Zeus cares not for me, nor the mortals. Sure, he appeared here and delivered the typical threats. But I promise you, my love, my father wishes to see me happy, whether it be atop Olympus or in the capital of my future empire. This city will become the center of our unified adoration. Their houses of worship will come down and temples to our glory will be erected in their place.”

  Adonis grabbed hold of Dio’s jaw, but instead of pulling it in for a kiss, he turned the god’s head toward the Mississippi River, where black clouds clogged the distant sky.

  “Poseidon has already begun. These are not threats. By tomorrow, New Orleans will be an Atlantis.” Adonis released his hand from Dio’s face and stepped back. “Just…come home with me, Dionysus.”

  Dio’s eyes shined in the sunlight. “In all our years together, since we first made love on the banks of that river”—his voice cracked, and a single tear dropped down his cheek—“you have never called me by my name.”

  Adonis didn’t speak.

  “You came for me, but…but you have not left him, have you?”

  He remained silent, still.

  “I can give you worshippers and wine.” Dio embraced his muse. “Entire nations will bow before us. I…I cannot understand.

  Why don’t you love me? Anything you can imagine, anything you ask for will be yours. I can give you anything and everything on Earth.”

  “Yes, I believe you,” Adonis said, stepping toward Dio and taking his hands in his own, “but, Dionysus, I want the sun.”

  Adonis let go of Dio’s hands. The god didn’t raise his head as Adonis stepped back. Before vanishing back to Olympus, he said, “Your glory will be their demise. Come home and spare them their suffering.” By the time Dio looked up, he was gone.

  Peter rose from the ground and approached the god—crying with him, sharing in his pain, and placed his hand upon the holy shoulder. “My god…” But before he could finish, vines shot out of the dirt with grape bunches already intact, causing the priest—and the prostrate worshippers nearest the god, to dive for cover and out of harm’s way. Vines continued to spring out of Dio’s steps as the god turned back to take his seat atop his chariot and, running his hands along the panthers’ heads and spines, he stepped up into his throne.

  Maenads and men rushed the vines, some crawling on all fours, eating the plump bunches of grapes from the ground like quadrupeds.

  Letting the mortals enjoy his vintage, Dio watched from the chariot, drinking the vine from his own chalice—a three-gallon Hurricane glass from Pat O’Brien’s. The image reminded him of the festivals and feasts he threw on the Greek islands, in the Thracian hills, on Olympus. And each one, over thousands of years, still provided Dio with the reason for his being—to live without a Dionysian celebration was not living at all.

  From across the river, out in the Gulf of Mexico, Poseidon’s black clouds drew near. But the God of the Vine did not come to New Orleans to save the souls of men, but to give those men souls worth saving.

  He stood in the chariot and the followers silenced at once, turning toward him in unison, and he wept as he shouted out to them, arms raised, chin to the sky. “I did not come to bring peace on Earth, but the vine!”

  The roar of the wave echoed through the masses. But caught in the random general shouts of gaiety and glee, Dio could make out, at first, only the slightest bit of an old song. “Oh, sweet upon the mountain, the dancing and the singing. The maddening, rushing flight…”

  With each passing moment the singing grew louder, and the lyrics, now rolling through downtown New Orleans, could be heard over the rush of helicopters chopping overheard. “Oh, sweet to sink to earth outworn, when the wild goat has been hunted and caught. Oh, the joy of the blood and the raw, red flesh!”

  Zibby

  On the third try, Zibby found the group for the New Orleans Literary History Tour—considerably smaller than the tours for vampires, voodoo, and all-encompassing haunted history, given by tour guides in dangling chains, top hats, and full-sleeve tattoos. The handful of tour-goers waiting for the author each had a drink in one hand and a copy of one of Ruiz’s novels in the other, hiding in a sliver of shade on the Orleans Street side of the Voodoo Lounge.

  Zibby checked her phone—it was twelve minutes past when the tour was scheduled to start.

  “Has anyone heard anything?” she asked, catching the frantic tone in her voice by the end of the question.

  “Nope,” answered a skinny girl with blue streaks in her hair. “If I had Clemmons Ruiz’s personal number, I wouldn’t need this tour. Like, I’m sorry, I know New Orleans is all about its history, but I’m from Portland, and our writers and beer are, like, way better.”

  “When do they even have time to read here?” a stout man with a brown leather satchel added. “They’re always partying and getting drunk!” he shouted before downing the rest of his knock-off Hurricane.

  Zibby bit her lip, unwilling to be the token New Orleanian and defend her city. Throughout college at Loyola, she would be thrust into the role of hometown champion while students from neighboring Jefferson Parish or across the lake from posh St. Tammany Parish, or from outside of the Pelican State, would degrade her city for its crime and vice and overall lack of cohesion.

  “This entire city is run by high-functioning alcoholics,” a classmate from quaint Covington once quipped.

  “But functioning, nevertheless,” Zibby responded.

  And tourists, much like the one sucking the sugary alcohol off his ice cubes in the tour group, would then go on to have another Hurricane, and then a Hand Grenade, and then a Shark Attack, and then another Hand Grenade, and then puke it all up in the middle of Bourbon Street while attempting to “slow down” with a Huge Ass Beer, and would stuff his face with fried chicken that had been baking in the heat lamps since lunch, pay his hotel bill, and leave for Fort Worth, all the while questioning how someone could ever—in their right mind—actually live in New Orleans.

  But Zibby was exhausted, so when the small group introduced themselves, sharing their favorite Clemmons Ruiz book, she committed the cardinal sin and told them she was from Baton Rouge.

  Then, over the blue-haired girl’s shoulder, she saw him striding down Orleans Street with a plastic cup in hand.

  “He’s here!” she shouted, pulling her shirt collar up to her mouth to mask her excitement. He was taller than she had imagined, and although the headshots he supplied on his novels were clearly dated—for Sirens of the Mississippi, he’d finally made the irreversible plunge into the black-and-white pic—he was older than she had anticipated, with a neglected, patchy five o’clock shadow and graying black hair that spilled out from under a beige trilby. And as he drew closer, the enigma of her fantasies took shape into a ruggedly handsome man, more akin to Javier Bardem than Damien Rogers.

  “You hit that Downtown traffic?” asked the fat tourist, his lips faded red like ill-applied lipstick. “I saw it on the way in.”

  “Oh, no, I live right here in the Quarter. You must not be from New Orleans. When we say one, we mean one-fifteen, one-thirty.”

  Zibby despised this logic and the effect it had of perpetuating New Orleans as a dysfunctional, lazy city, and
she imagined a tardy 1L dropping the line to LaSalle on the first day of class. But to say something to the contrary would blow her cover, and besides, she was there to meet her favorite author—whom she was slowly falling in love with as she regarded his bright-blue eyes and thick forearms that had the cut muscle definition of an oyster shucker. Her three-part plan, which she had written down and outlined as if it were the crime and proceeding elements to a criminal statute, was to get the hunk to sign her books, read her short story (which she would have to print out at his apartment), hopefully in person, ideally on his balcony, and share a bottle of wine. Oh, and perhaps learn something about New Orleans literary history she had not already known.

  The writer finished the last of his drink and swirled the leftover ice in the plastic cup. “We say we’ve got four seasons down here: oyster, crawfish, hurricane, and football. But as far as I’m concerned, there are two seasons: gin-and-tonic season and not-gin-and-tonic season. And gin-and-tonic season lasts just a little longer in New Orleans,” he said, before sauntering inside the Voodoo Lounge to grab another before commencing the tour.

  “Oh my god,” the blue-haired girl whispered over Zibby’s shoulder. “He’s freaking gorgeous.”

  Zibby stammered before anything came out, upset, at first with herself, for miscalculating—if not downright neglecting—that at least another would have a crush on the writer, and then with the Oregonian (or Mainer, Zibby didn’t clarify which beer-renowned Portland the girl had referred to) who, with her thin waist and blue pixie haircut, could easily slip her way into Clemmons’s apartment.

  “Yeah, yeah, I guess,” Zibby responded, peeking in the bar to see what the writer was ordering.

  “I think I’m gonna do something stupid,” the girl said, running her tongue over her lip ring. “That’s why we come here after all, am I right?” And she gave Zibby the familiar nudge with her elbow.

  Clemmons stepped out of the bar and shepherded the small group, giving a mini-preview of what they could expect on the tour. “And just like all of the fabulous writers, poets, and playwrights I’ll mention, I condone—no, encourage—each of you to imbibe on our journey as if you were Tennessee Williams himself, frolicking about this lovely neighborhood without a care in the world.”

  But before the tour even reached its first destination, Clemmons, Clemmons guided the group into a rustic bar on the corner of Dauphine Street and St. Peters called the Gold Mine Saloon.

  “What’s the literary significance of this place?” the tourist from Maryland asked, sneaking up behind Clemmons while the author leaned against the bar.

  “Oh, ah…hey, Maggie, a double bourbon club for me. Ah…Hemingway used to drink here every…” Clemmons checked his phone. “Thursday, every Thursday night.” Maggie the bartender rolled her eyes as she shot the clear fizz from the soda gun.

  “Oh, really?! Wow.” The tourist spun in a circle as if he were marveling at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

  Zibby knew that if the bar existed before 1961 and Papa Hemingway had stepped foot in that city, it was safe to say that the writer had enjoyed a drink in the establishment—essentially, it was a catchall. He turned around at the bar and shared this nugget with the rest of the tour, as if it were the planned first stop. “Anyone else need a drink? No, all good? Okay then, let’s head out.”

  The writer led the group to a tiny apartment at 722 Toulouse Street, where Tennessee Williams stayed during his first brief sojourn to the Crescent City, and to Antoine’s, the oldest restaurant in New Orleans, where Frances Parkinson Keyes set her aptly named murder mystery, Dinner at Antoine’s, and, of course, to the Hotel Monteleone, where any visitor can read the extensive—and extraordinary—list of authors who have stayed as guests at the esteemed hotel in a display case right inside the entrance.

  But none of this was new to Zibby. In fact, Clemmons had inaccurately told the tour that Truman Capote was born in the hotel—a falsity that Capote perpetuated himself—and that the Monteleone was the only hotel in the country given the status of a literary landmark, even though the Plaza and Algonquin Hotels in New York City also share the designation. Zibby chalked up these inaccuracies to feeding a harmless myth concerning Capote, and perhaps a slip of the tongue with the hotels, instead having meant to say “the city” instead of “the country.”

  It was in the Monteleone—after the author had tripped up the carpeted set of stairs to the carousel bar—that Zibby began to hear the slur in Clemmons’s voice and saw the glossy shine in his eyes.

  The writer, full of rehearsed one-liners the entirety of the tour, dropped another as he grabbed the only available seat at the famous spinning bar. “When good Americans die, they go to Paris. The rest of us come to New Orleans.”

  “Yeah, you right,” said the bartender as he poured a Dixie draft.

  The African safari–themed seats at the bar complete a full counterclockwise rotation about every fifteen minutes. This was just fast enough to require the tour group to take a tiny step to the right every thirty seconds to stay in line with their guide as he continued tossing out (not always accurate) literary knowledge darts.

  “The seat I’m in right now…” Clemmons leaned over the back of his seat to check the animal. “…the elephant, was the only seat Truman Capote would sit in to have a drink. If he didn’t get the elephant, he didn’t drink.” Was this possible? Perhaps. Was it probable? No. Zibby thought to herself. Was it verifiable? Absolutely not. She drank from her vodka cranberry she had yet to make a dent in since the last stop at the Old Absinthe House six minutes prior.

  Portland blue-hair had stationed her skinny ass between Clemmons and an older, Sazerac-swilling gentleman who didn’t seem to mind the view. Zibby pulled out her phone, contemplating, to her dismay, whether she should leave the tour altogether and join the festivities taking place in the CBD. Subconsciously, in an attempt to restore faith in her literary hero, she opened up Instagram and searched for Clemmons Ruiz’s page.

  Scrolls of her favorite quotes and excerpts from his novels, the very novels she had sitting in her laptop bag waiting to be signed, filled the screen, separated by filtered pictures of Orwell lying atop bookshelves and staring out the window. His writing was deep, layered, unencumbered by whimsical nothings, yet as beautiful as poetry. He must be having a bad day. The reviews for the tour were impeccable. But, then again, they were not left by New Orleanians but by tourists from Nashville, Asheville, Scottsdale. Perhaps that was his trick—the oldest trick in the book for performers—get ’em drunk, get ’em early, and everything that follows is hyperbolically alluring, awesome, hilarious.

  Or was it his brilliance? He was a judge and guest speaker at the Tennessee Williams Festival, he’d won the Flannery O’Conner award for short fiction, the PEN/Faulkner award for fiction, was shortlisted for the Man Booker and longlisted for the Pulitzer Prize. Did Clemmons, like many of the Dead White Men that came before him, simply require the catalyst of alcohol to ignite his creative juices and form his masterpieces?

  His novels were the cause of sleepless nights in her bedroom in eighth grade and in her dorm room in college, when she made excuses not to go out on a Thursday night so she could reread City of Modern Lovers. Romeo Spikes helped get her through her breakup with Ryan, and the protagonist in Below Water was a substitute for a therapist when her mother ran off to California. She read Quiet in the Alley three times while in Houston, as her home city recovered from Hurricane Katrina.

  Zibby watched the bar slowly turn away from her, Portland blue-hair putting her hand on Clemmons’s shoulder as she laughed.

  Although his upbringing remained a mystery, as far as Zibby was concerned, Clemmons Ruiz was a New Orleanian, and no girl from Oregon (or Maine) was going to discover before her whether the writer’s formula was to get loaded during the day and write his masterpieces in the evening underneath a thick coat of whiskey and gin.

  Zibby downed the rest of her drink and marched over to the group, who each ordered a Sazerac after Clem
mons insisted that, despite what they had previously heard, they were concocted the best at the Monteleone—the bartender reassured them that the writer spoke the truth.

  She worked her way through the group and was practically leaned up against the elephant painting on the chair.

  “Hey! Thought we lost ya,” Clemmons started. “This bar is deceptively fast. If you blink ya might…”

  But Zibby cut him off. “Are we going to stop at the Vieux Carré coffeehouse?”

  “There are a couple spots closer to here than that, if you need a little pick-me-up.”

  “Oh, no, no. I mean for the tour. Didn’t you finish the first draft of Sirens there? What was it, last October? This is a New Orleans literary tour, after all.” She smirked at Portland blue-hair, who crossed her arms and bit her lower lip, shaking her head.

  “Why yes, I did.” He smiled.

  She turned to Portland blue-hair. “Aren’t you a barista in Oregon?”

  “Maine.”

  “Oh, sorry. Well, we like it with chicory down here. I’ll make sure they show you how it’s done.”

  Zibby turned back to Clemmons, who took a sip of his drink as his eyes rolled up and down her body.

  A French 007 to-go in hand—the signature Hotel Monteleone drink with sparkling wine and Mathilde poire—Zibby led the tour down Royal Street to the epicenter of the French Quarter, unknowingly tossing out her own knowledge darts of art studios and restaurants that lined the fabled street.

  “Brennan’s there, also known as The Pink Lady, invented Bananas Foster in the early 1950s because the banana trade from Honduras…Oh! And Sutton Galleries, up there, is one of the oldest art galleries in New Orleans, at over a hundred years old.”

  “I thought you said you weren’t from here?” asked the paunched tourist from Fort Worth.