Sub Rosa, page 14
I heard a car idle in Advent Alley and perked up. I imagined the driver entering Sub Rosa for, perhaps, the first time. I could almost feel his uncertainty. Where will this grimy, narrow alley lead me, he would wonder. By all appearances, a place like Advent Alley should be avoided. The driver entered it out of blind faith that something crucial lay ahead, as if the Alley had spoken his name, pulled him in. When he saw the first glint of Sub Rosa light, all his doubts would be washed away. I wanted to see his face the moment he saw that light. The car’s windows rattled as it pulled onto Sub Rosa. A warm arid whoosh of early autumn air tailgated the car for a moment. City heat; I pictured cars baking on hot tarmac during Indian summer, heat-warped air haloing their hoods and front windows. The driver was wiping his brow with a handkerchief. He stopped in front of the House of Man track patch. Dearest popped out of the bakery and went to the car. She didn’t go to the passenger door. Instead, the driver picked her up as if she’d been an infant left on the side of the road. They drove back through the alley again with Dearest sitting in his lap.
Sub Rosa can’t be seen from the threshold of Advent Alley, but from behind No’s, I was able to catch the tiniest peek at the city. All I saw was the abandoned building across from the Smoke Shoppe. I kicked a pebble down the alley; it stopped rolling well before it made it to the other side. Just as I was about kick a second stone, the pay phone started ringing. Arsen’s mini-rose was long gone, and the slot for change was filled in with chewing gum. The numbers were scratched off of the buttons. “Hello,” I said, breathy, as if my secret lover was calling.
“Treasure? My treasure?” a man said.
“Hello,” I said again. Sure I was a treasure, I played along.
“Tell me you can see me.”
I thought maybe he wanted to play the guess-what-I’m-wearing game. I should have been paid for a game like that, but I was bored. “Oh, I can see you,” I said.
“I waited for you for the last two nights and you never showed. I can’t handle it much longer, treasure. Swear to me that you’ll see me.”
“I swear.” I guess I was already used to telling the live ones whatever they wanted to hear.
“I’m taking you with me this time. I’m going to take you away.”
“Oh, take me,” I said with a giggle.
“Saturday. Just like we planned before. Our time. Our place.” The man hung up. I didn’t even get to describe my panties. I let the phone receiver hang. It looked as restless as I was, swinging at the end of its cord. I decided to go inside; Second could screw herself.
Advent Alley grew hotter and stuffier the closer I got to the city side. I noticed a couple of my invitations spinning a whirlwind on the street. After only two steps out of the alley, I was caught up in that same current. It was fiercer than the dancing invitations made it look. The wind was dirty; it made my eyes water immediately. Through the blur I saw dozens of invitations blown flat against the front of No’s; several more blew at me as I stumbled toward the entrance. I crossed my arms in front of my face to protect my eyes from the maddened invitations. I felt my skirt blow up around my waist. For a moment, I swear my feet almost lifted off the ground. I stumbled up the front stoop to No’s and reached for the door handle. The door opened inward, luckily for me, and I flung myself inside, stumbling across the rubber welcome mat. A doorbell rang wildly above my head. Paper cuts stung my cheeks. The young store clerk struggled to close the door; as soon as it clicked, everything was dead quiet.
The girls and Eddie Junior didn’t offer any help as I straightened my clothes. I dabbed the speck of blood from my cheek with my sleeve; it looked like maraschino cherry syrup. “What are you doing?” Second asked.
“What am I doing? What are you doing? I’ve been waiting forever.” She looked scared. They all looked scared. I wondered if the sight of blood unnerved them, but what was more likely is that they’d been up to something. I gave the place a once-over: a wall of cigarette cartons behind the counter; cigars in a locked display; pipe tobacco in glass decanters on the counter top; Boston baked beans and licorice and lollipops in the candy aisle. Nothing out of the ordinary. Ling’s Second was tucked behind a magazine rack. I rushed over, determined to find what they were hiding. She was gluing my invitations to the covers of automotive and porn mags, a glue stick in her pale, freckled hand. I lifted a girly magazine out of the rack. An invitation was stuck over the model’s face. “That’s a good idea,” I said.
“I’ve done the whole rack,” she told me weakly.
“You just walked through Advent Alley?” Second, unlike Ling’s Second, was terrible at hiding the evidence. Her voice was trembling, and I saw the clerk had lipstick smeared in the corner of his mouth— the same colour that Second wore. That was what she was worked up about? I couldn’t have cared less about her pathetic romance. The triplets had already spilled her secret.
“I can go anywhere I want,” I told her.
“Go out that door, then,” Second challenged.
“You go,” I told her. Second shook her head, but slowly went to the door anyway. She made a big production of rooting her feet on the welcome mat, running her finger along the seam of the door, touching the knob. It wouldn’t open for her. At first, I thought it was because she was pushing, the idiot, when she should have been pulling. But she was pulling, yanking more like it, and getting herself all worked up doing so. When she gave up, the scrawny Eddie Junior put a tentative hand on her back.
“Glories aren’t supposed to leave,” she said. “Unless a live one or a Daddy takes them.”
“I could take you,” said Eddy Junior. Second swatted his arm away.
“Glories aren’t allowed through the alley, either, not alone,” Ling’s Second added quietly from behind the magazine rack.
“We’re prisoners here,” said Second.
“I guess I’m not actually standing here, then. Except I am standing here, so I guess that means you’re making shit up.”
“Don’t cuss,” said Eddie Junior, only to have Second and I shush him in unison.
“What was it like out there?” Second asked. “How far did you go? Did you see the downtown skyline? Did you see any city people?” Second’s voice was grave again, like it was in the Spa lobby when she told me her name. I wasn’t about to soften up with her again.
“Oh, Second, quit your tricks. I’m not stupid,” I snapped. I suspected I was the butt of one of her jokes; her friends were in on it, too. I headed for the door. Second stepped back to let me through. They were going to lock me out as soon as I was out the door, I bet. I didn’t care. It was almost time to go to work, and besides there wasn’t anything so great about the Smoke Shoppe. The clerk and Ling’s Second watched me pull the knob.
“Wind’s gone,” I said, stepping only halfway outside. “It smells like some guy took a piss nearby. You should come get a whiff, Second.” I kept a firm grip on the doorknob, letting the city smells in. There were sticky spots on the pavement outside where a soda must have been spilled; there were bug nests up in the Smoke Shoppe awning. A black convertible was pulling up out front. I hiked my skirt up an inch and the convertible stopped right beside me, his front wheel practically drove up onto the store’s front stoop. “You know where the Mayflower ballroom is?” the driver asked me. One of my invitations sat on his dashboard. I got into his car, leaving Second to her nonsense. I turned my attention to the driver; he was saying something worth hearing. “To be honest, this invitation flew into my car. I don’t even know who Little is. But I have this gut feeling I’m supposed to go to her party on Saturday. I must be out of my mind.”
“I’m Little,” I said. “You’ve come to the right place.” He clapped his hand to his heart as if I was the queen of somewhere good. “Why don’t you come for a visit right now; then, by Saturday, you’ll know me very well. I just live through this alley.”
XIII
“You danced the line!” First gasped. “You lured a live one from outside of Sub Rosa!”
Second swore it wasn’t her, but how else would First have found out I had met the black convertible man out front of the Smoke Shoppe? I didn’t see any cause for alarm; the convertible man was a good live one, paid well enough, and he said he’d come back for my party. First gave me quite the lecture on not doing what she called “dancing the line” or trolling around the city side of Advent Alley looking for live ones. Abduction and being arrested were the serious consequences she described at length. She went on to include having my photo taken, my shoes stolen, and having teen hoodlums throw raw eggs at me.
“She could escape,” Second added. First slapped her forehead for saying it, then she gave one to me for causing the trouble in the first place. First can’t punch. I doubt she would punch us though, even if she wanted to; she couldn’t on account of her fingernails being too long to make a proper fist. Her slaps didn’t hurt much, but Second and I were both left with red foreheads, the mark of First’s frustration. I hated having the same mark as Second. I lowered my head and waited for First’s hand to fall gently upon my crown, or the back of my neck, for a pat. How did Second do it, I wondered, how did she go through her days with so little love? She didn’t have my sympathy. I was just pissed that she had smeared me with her sour luck. I was pissed at First, too. If she didn’t want me to dance the damn line, she should have told me when she trained me. “No’s Smoke Shoppe is a landmark for finding Advent Alley. It’s not a display window. We don’t go advertising our wares at No’s, do you understand?” First only huffed as I nodded in agreement. “Arsen is coming to get you. He’ll deal with you,” she said with her arms folded tight behind her.
Arsen dealt with me by putting his hand up my skirt as he drove me to his place. “Don’t touch me,” he said when I reached for his pant leg.
His game still thrilled me, though I played it like I was bored. I held a grudge against him for gambling on my Dark Days, for thinking I didn’t have any magic, and for making my party invitation cards so girlish and plain. The chance for a quick brush against his chest or brief bump with his lips hadn’t lost its appeal, however. I could brew all I wanted to, my body still twitched at his touch. I wanted to be big like First and smother him. I wanted my limbs to bend like Fauxnique’s; I would have wrapped my arms around him and squeezed like a snake. I wanted to force my finger into his mouth—the mouth he rarely kissed me with—past the closed gate of his faultless teeth, down his tongue’s easy runway, and retch the fleshy hole of his throat. I mulled this fantasy over for so long that I got a sympathetic gag reflex. I turned to the passenger window so Arsen wouldn’t see, choking a bit. “All right there, Little?” he asked.
“City smog,” I lied. There was a strange and queasy lump in my throat. I thought about cock. Not live one cock, the kind that that I’d lovingly milked for money. No, this was tangled-up-in-polyester-sheets cock, drunk-in-the-backseat-of-a-moving-car cock, can-I-please-sleep-on-your-couch-tonight-mister cock. City cock. Or, more accurately, city me, fumbling my way around the crude wants of city men. I tried to spit up the memory. I didn’t want it associated with Arsen. I guess it served me right. I should never have thought violent thoughts about him. Glories should never want to force another. We’re above it.
My guts were still punishing me when we got to his place. I skipped petting Toro and lingering around his photos and CD collection. I took off my own panties and let him arrange me on the kitchen table. It went down routinely, our fuck. He hitched my legs in the air, my arms were tangled in the dress that never fully made it over my head. A coffee cup danced across the tabletop, splashing a creamy brown trail behind it until it fell. Neither of us cared if it was broken or not. He said, “Never worry me like that again. I don’t want to lose you.” I promised him and promised him and promised.
And I meant it. I meant to do almost everything he told me. Then he had to start chattering about magic. Still hard inside me, he says, “Let me hear you say, ‘I can take away your pain.’”
“Why?”
“Plan B. I’m going to bill you as a healer. Live ones want healers; city life is more painful than ever. I have it all planned out. You’ll be a hit as a healer. But you’ll need to practise to be convincing.”
“Now?”
“Right now.” I felt him pulse inside me like a second heartbeat and it made me dizzy. His idea of a healer was characterized by divine touch and long sermons full of lulls and crescendos, by intuitive buzz words like “energy” and “transformative” and dumb faith.
We rehearsed his lines together, shouting them in our leg-locked position. I couldn’t get his voice to rise quite like that during sex ever before. His passions were marching orders, instructions for the body:
“Who here wants to be free from pain?”
“Who is ready to say goodbye to misery?”
“Let me hear you say it.”
“Louder now!”
“Little,” said Arsen. “You have to believe what you say. You have to move your audience. I don’t feel moved yet.”
I’ll show him, I thought. Phantom hand followed the coffee trail off the table to the tile floor. I could feel everything it could: the difference between the smooth marble tiles and the grout that filled the gaps between them. I felt Arsen’s body heat as phantom hand dragged up his leg, the fine mist of sweat behind his knees. Arsen stopped to scratch at his thigh; I cried out a line from his healer’s address and he gave me a sideways smile and grabbed my ankles tighter. First might have forgot to warn me about dancing the line, but she’d told me everything about how men work. I knew just where to wriggle a finger, where to push. Phantom hand seized Arsen’s testicles like a throat. I’d learned this would make him last longer. I lay back and let him tire himself out on me. His throat dried out while I spoke on and on about redemption.
Years ago, long before I arrived on Sub Rosa, a leather-bound copy of the Holy Bible had been bought for the Wifey Wing library. It was shelved beside Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. In it, there were many mentions of both hands and ghosts. Almighty hands always reached through a hole in the sky, lifting hearts up to heaven, striking down the Egyptians, and so on. After a career of placing his hands on lepers and sinners, a dying Christ cried, “Father, into your hands I entrust my spirit.”
To prepare for the party, Arsen had me read this Bible, or at least the New Testament, and practise saying Christ’s lines. “You could read the paperbacks by Shirley MacLaine, too, if you like. But Jesus will always be more ‘in’ than any New Age babble,” he instructed.
I flipped through the Bible like the triplets flipped through their magazines, looking for images to add to their collage. From it, I daydreamed an explanation for phantom hand. Like the Holy Ghost, phantom hand was a part of a greater entity. Me. As Arsen instructed, I imitated Christ. I pretended phantom hand was the Holy Ghost. Sub Rosa was heaven. The Glories were angels. (Second was the fallen one.) Live ones were sinners come to repent. God was no one. I played divine house without a father. The more I tried to assign the role to someone— say, First or the Dowager—the less sense the game made. It felt silly; after all, I was too old to play house.
Instead, I readied phantom hand for our debut. I rehearsed by pushing the Bible across the library floor, in small bursts at first. Eventually, it slid from one end of the room to the other. It even rose off the floor an inch or two.
“Little! Speak to me, Little.” In my deep concentration I hadn’t noticed First quaking in the doorway. How the scene must have looked to her: a possessed Bible and me, trance-like, in the corner of the room. First ran in and scooped me up, knocking a potted daisy off the library desk as we fled.
She rushed from room to room, unable to locate a safe place for us to hide. She spat out clipped questions, unsure of what to ask. “What— evil? How are you?” She was losing her breath and her stride. Poor First, so used to having control, especially in her own home. She was painfully unequipped to deal with the unexplainable.
“It was me, First!” I had to kick and yell before she heard me. She held me at arm’s length, shaking her puzzled head. “It’s my magic,” I told her. “I can touch things without really touching them. I can move things around.”
“Your magic?”
“Yeah, I discovered my Glory magic.”
First put me down and took a step back. “None of us have magic like that.”
“Ling can attract stuff, like flowers. The Dowager has her wind.”
“Ling, that’s just parlour tricks. And the Dowager’s wind isn’t hers, it’s a ghost,” said First. “Royal’s ghost.” I explained that phantom hand was a kind of ghost too, one I could communicate with and command.
“How can your hand have a ghost if it’s not dead?”
The question startled me. I cradled my left hand in my right, felt the warmth of my palms pressed together. First cringed a little each time my hands moved. “You scared of me, First?” I asked her.
“No. No, baby girl.” Her lips stretched across her teeth in a forced smile. “I’d never be ’fraid of you. I just never seen a ghost hand, as you say, and I’m not sure that it’s normal, is the thing. No one has this kind of magic.”
Normal! I thought. Now we have to be concerned about being normal. “Trust me. Just for a minute,” I told her as I placed phantom hand gently on her stomach. First slapped her own hand over top of it.
“Where did it go?” she asked, feeling around her tummy.
“Well, I’m not going to do it to you if you’re scared,” I said.
