Sub Rosa, page 19
“Unending”—this was the stark description First offered of her Dark Days. The only other detail she knew or was willing to share was the precise bill count she brought back: twenty-seven twenty-dollar bills, thirty-six ten-dollar bills, and 220 five-dollar bills. The number of blue bills alone told me what an utterly grim time she had had out there. “This is why I now insist Arsen drive me to find new Glories when they go into the Dark. To break up their time there with some rest and encouragement. He never did them Dark Days, so he don’t think up these things on his own.”
After being so long in the darkness, First had severe duckling syndrome: The first person her eyes could focus on became mother, became home. This was Arsen. He met her at the twilight spot where the Dark and Sub Rosa overlapped. That evening the sun had set strangely. It hovered above the horizon line much longer than usual, oozing pink light for hours like it had sprung a leak. Arsen said the sun lingered because it knew she was on her way. When the sun was too weary to stay lit, he took over. He waited with a candle in a wax paper cup in his hand. His tiny flame was the whole world to her.
Arsen’s world, however, was already occupied. Jellyfish was a living shaft of cold light; luminescence without a hot spark, like the unusual shimmer of meat left to rot. First could barely look at her. Jellyfish was difficult to pinpoint. She had obsidian skin: dark and hard and so beautiful that light constantly crowded her, trying to get inside her impermeable flesh, until she glowed with it. Her glow was brighter and more mysterious than a full moon, then she’d almost vanish altogether like a new moon on a foggy December night. First could make no sense of her. She watched Jellyfish wrap her arm around Arsen’s and First’s already strange world turned upside down.
“I thought a piece of the Dark had snuck ahead of me and stolen my man,” said First. “She wasn’t too keen on me, neither. I remember her asking Arsen, ‘Is she broken?’ as they helped me stumble to the living room sofa.”
The more Arsen’s House began to take shape, the more First realized what she was up against. Not only had she unknowingly become a second wife, she had joined a mutineer family. “Before I showed up, Glories were a few elite members of the Dowager’s inner circle,” said First. “And there weren’t any Daddies.”
The original Glories were Diamond, Ling, Jellyfish, Sadie orphan, and Arsen. They had all lived and worked together in the Diamond mansion. Live ones were scarce and diligently screened by Diamond before being permitted entrance. She insisted that the live ones’ reasons for seeing the Glories were decent, or met her standards of decency; lonely widowers, closeted homosexuals, crippled veterans, and so on. Pleasure alone was not a good enough reason.
Arsen had set himself apart from the other Glories. Even in First’s fresh eyes he was different. He had a car and would take himself on trips to the city. He and Jellyfish had moved out of the Mansion together to be independent, to start “their own life,” as Arsen put it. But wanting independence didn’t automatically give them independence. All the live ones were gate-kept by the Dowager. Jellyfish and Arsen needed their own regulars, their own money.
First caught on quickly that Arsen had brought her in for this reason. Even back then, she was a champion of silver linings, of pick-yourself-up-and-start-again, of when-life-gives-you-lemons—take any old adage, chances are First had to live by it. And Arsen knew it; he didn’t hand pick her for her exaggerated hourglass figure. He knew that while most women would feel defeated by these very circumstances, First would hike up her skirt and go to work.
There was no model for training a new Glory. First began standing outside, on what was now the House of Arsen track patch, and attempting to intercept live ones as they drove toward Diamond’s. The very best ones, wearing cashmere coats and secret passions behind their gentlemanly smiles, continued to go across the street to the Mansion. First took the odd and overzealous leftover up to the Wifey Wing.
”You ought to stand with me,” First had persuaded Jellyfish. “They’ll notice you.” It was strategic, First’s suggestion. Jellyfish did attract live ones. First had her stand in the threshold of Advent Alley after sunset and beam like a beacon. Live ones arrived convinced that they’d been called by the divine. Business aside, First preferred having Jellyfish outside with her, rather than upstairs and alone with Arsen. She was damned if she was going to hustle the track patch all night while Jellyfish and Arsen snuggled up together and waited for First to bring them live ones.
Apart from their nightly work, First stayed away from Jellyfish. But Jellyfish’s story was a Sub Rosa favourite, one that First couldn’t dodge. The local fable was that Arsen had burned the Jellyfish up with the truest love and that’s how she got her colour. When the other Glories bothered to speak to First, it was only to ask about how Jellyfish and Arsen were doing.
Many of her days were spent by herself in the Wifey Wing library. It was the one room Arsen and Jellyfish didn’t occupy. The Wifey Wing was stark then—before First filled it with her own objects and decorations. Every room acted as a bare stage for Arsen and Jellyfish to put on their ten shows a day of fucking and fighting. First’s anguish filled her ears like cotton. She buried her head in books—geography, anatomy, geology. She avoided fiction altogether. Imagination had already gotten her into enough trouble.
First found a large, illustrated children’s science book, The ABCs of Nature, and began the process of putting facts behind every tender, childlike question she could think of: Why is the sky blue? What are clouds made of? How deep is the ocean?
First kept stumbling upon passages that reminded her of Jellyfish, and facts that might answer the riddle of Jellyfish’s glow—her bioluminescence— could be found in the pages of her books. But most marine creatures’ light emissions, she read, are blue or green, and are used to attract prey. First thought Jellyfish’s glow was more like a metallic silver, and she seldom used it to attract live ones. First eventually gave up on finding an explanation for Jellyfish; as long she and Jellyfish shared a house and a lover, not a heck of a lot would make sense.
Arsen encouraged First’s sudden thirst for science. He brought her school textbooks from his trips to the city. “Same stuff they study at top schools,” he’d tell her. Although the books were a consolation prize for his lack of time or affection, she read them anyway. But the most valuable thing First learned was not among the tables or figures or maps. It was only a few months into her stay at Wifey Wing when she heard something that lifted her head from her books.
“I got an apartment in the city,” First had heard him tell Jellyfish. The vent was blocked up behind a pile of Homemaker magazines to cut the noise from the rest of the house, but when she heard him say it again, she toppled the stack of magazines and crouched to hear more. “I’m doing it to help us.” He had been studying the city pimps, how they pushed their girls, selling them through tantalizing descriptions and offers, and had begun to copy them. Arsen whispered “Glory, Glory” all over the city.
“If you need to take the credit for our recent luck, then go ahead,” said Jellyfish. “Spread your advertisement around the city all you wish. But I can’t say I’m not surprised. You of all people should know it’s not the uttering of dull words that leads live ones to Sub Rosa.”
“You’re thinking like her,” said Arsen, referring to the Dowager. “To draw them in, we’ve got to be able to think like them—think like the live ones. I’m figuring them out. All their needs and desires. They’re more interesting than you’d think, city people. And they’ll spend big money on what interests them.”
First felt sick as she listened to Arsen describe the street he would soon be living on. It was “wide” with “rows of sky-high condos,” with hundreds of people living there. “There’s enough live ones living on my street alone to keep us in business for years.” What all of this meant for First is that she’d be left alone in the Wifey Wing with Jellyfish, a living arrangement far worse then tip-toeing around a tumultuous couple.
“I left the Dowager’s house for you,” Jellyfish pleaded. She was anxious too.
“You left the Dowager’s house to go independent,” Arsen argued. His decision had been made.
Arsen broke the news to First next, and First feigned surprise. She closed her heavy textbook and paddled meekly across the library floor to him. She bit her tongue purposely to make her eyes water a little. “That must be a hard choice to make, Arsen. You must really be devoted to this Sub Rosa of yours, of ours.” First had her own charms, city charms that were unknown to Arsen. She knew how to delicately bend truths, how to play dumb. And she had a good hunch that Arsen wasn’t going to the city solely for business. The city held some special attraction for him. She could tell by the way he fixated on her crocodile tears as she spoke that as a Glory, Arsen had never had a woman use her feminine wiles on him, he had never been conned or guilt-tripped. He was both enchanted and unprepared. “It takes a courageous man to make a big change. And change is comin’, I feel it myself. Like you said, Sub Rosa is going to be big. Pretty soon we’ll need some more girls ’round here. ’Course, you already thought of that. I’m only sayin’ because maybe I could help you; me bein’ a city girl, I know how to turn them out right. I know city men too, and from what I seen there are hundreds of ’em who would pay through the teeth to visit this place. It may not be much, but I’ll tell you everythin’ I know. Maybe with my city experience and your charms, we can go bigger than we ever dreamed?”
First’s appearance had marked change on Sub Rosa. It was First who accompanied Arsen to the city for business. She was the one to bark and barter with the rush of new live ones passing her track patch. The floor-to-ceiling mirrors, the marbleized-glass wall lamps, the white sweetheart-shaped beds in the working room—all First’s idea. “If the live ones want New Orleans bordello, they can go to the Mansion. Our workin’ room will be as bright and pure as heaven,” First advised Arsen. She started entertaining two or even three live ones at a time, and the mirrors helped her keep track of them all. Money was coming in, all of it smudged with First’s chubby fingerprints.
Jellyfish didn’t fare as well with the new regulars. There were the live ones she could enchant and those men left the Wifey Wing looking like they had seen God. Those men returned to the city whole and good. After Jellyfish, they probably kissed their elderly mothers, donated an entire pantry of canned goods to their company’s food drive, and finally quit smoking.
Then there were the men so distanced from the idea of pure goodness that even a Glory couldn’t convince them of it. These men came and left with scraps of shame clinging to their hearts. But they paid. Oh, how they paid to be distracted from the city and themselves. Jellyfish began to turn bitter toward these live ones. They dug too deeply at her seemingly endless dimensions. First had heard her hiss at some. First had heard her snarl.
“If I’d only tried to turn her out right back then, maybe Jellyfish would still be our First. But she woulda refused to learn anythin’ from me,” First told me. “And I was still vexed, and besides, I didn’t have the skills with turning other girls like I got now.”
Instead, First took herself out for lunches, or to No’s for a game or two of pinball. It was a great time to be on Sub Rosa; it was First’s time. Shop owners came out of their shops to wave; they knew First was making money. It was then that the Mayflower Diner hung the ship’s figurehead carved in First’s likeness over the door—an extravagant welcome sign made specifically for First and her new breed of live ones.
Ling was the first to seek First’s advice. It started with a series of hellos. Next came the courtesy questions: “And how are you today?” First was so grateful just to be spoken to by another Glory that she stumbled through elaborate details about the meal she’d just eaten or the book she’d just read, hoping to prolong the conversation. So when Ling began to ask about what it would take to run a successful track patch, she had First gushing with tips and hints.
But when she returned to the Wifey Wing, there was nothing to say. Jellyfish had become a living sculpture posed beside the window. First would leave her in a thinker’s pose as she left for lunch, then come home to find her imitating a marble Saint Cecilia in her Roman tomb. At sunset, First picked out a dress from Jellyfish’s closet and timidly laid it out for her. “Maybe just a few tonight? Only what you can manage.” On nights when Arsen didn’t show up to share a bed with Jellyfish, she’d weep and speak nonsense until morning. First slept in the working room, often opting to service the graveyard shift regulars rather than trying to sleep anywhere near Jellyfish.
One night Arsen didn’t come at all. For twenty-four hours he stayed in the city. Jellyfish stripped down to an iridescent-beaded fishnet dress and stormed the track patch. First had to look in the opposite direction to keep herself from staring at Jellyfish’s ostentatiously reddish nipples bleeding out through her flimsy outfit. “Trouble-free rapture. Instant elation. On special tonight,” Jellyfish barked at passing cars. First stopped counting Jellyfish’s live ones after she ran out of fingers and toes to count them on. Men fell back down the Wifey Wing stairs shaken, with twisted trousers and sweat-soaked hair.
“I shoulda known.” First whispered her confession in the dark. Her hair tickled my forehead as she paused telling her story, and I guessed she was turning her head to see if anyone was nearby. “I shoulda kept my eye on the shifty two she took up with her. They patted each other’s shoulders as they followed Jellyfish to the workin’ room, and they chuckled like drunks. But I was spineless when it came to Jellyfish. Too afraid to nose up on her business.”
First heard shouting from inside the working room and did what she always did when Jellyfish threw a tantrum—tuned it out. The shouting was joined by banging. It was the silence afterward that First couldn’t ignore. She pressed her ear to the other side of the working room door and heard men whispering. When she tried the door, it refused to move. There was, and never has been, a lock on the working room door. Something was barricading it. First, accustomed to being able to push her weight through any kind of blockade, knew something was very wrong. “Open this goddamn door,” she threatened but got no response. The only thing she could think of to do was run straight across the street to the Dowager’s house. “Help!” she called out as she stormed inside.
First could still picture the Dowager’s stone face as she attempted to describe what she had seen and heard at the Wifey Wing. When she finished, the Dowager poured First a cup of tea and patted her on the cheek. She gathered the other Glories in the house, Ling and Sadie, and led them toward the Wifey Wing. “Stay put,” she ordered First. First was too anxious to do anything but sip the Dowager’s brew. She told herself it wasn’t as bad as it sounded. Arsen had promised First that Sub Rosa was safe. What was the worst that could happen?
First remained alone in the Dowager’s armchair for a long while, a half-cup of cold tea in her hand. Then the Dowager returned with the Glories, their eyes bloodshot. First had forgotten what distress looked like as their long faces crowded around her.
The Dowager spoke slowly and flatly as she explained that Jellyfish was gone when the Glories had got there. The Wifey Wing was deserted. The Dowager dryly listed off the places they had searched: “Under the bed, between the mattress and the box spring, behind the drapes.” After a few minutes, First heard only monosyllabic nonsense. Her vision blurred. “Those men took her?” slurred First. No one answered.
When Arsen arrived later that night he was given a similar report, except that the Dowager’s voice had a heavy tone of blame when she spoke to him.
Rumours of what happened went around the Rosa for several months afterward. First kept her ears perked to them, just as she had to the library vent. She heard a version that claimed Jellyfish and one of the men were secret lovers—the banging was Jellyfish packing before they ran away together. She heard that the Dowager banished the bad men to the Dark, and Jellyfish, in a state of rage, stalked after them, never to be seen again. The reigning story, the one retold again and again, was that Jellyfish staged the whole thing so that she could leave Sub Rosa and go live with Arsen in the city.
One final story didn’t hold much weight on Sub Rosa, but it was the one that bothered First the most. She heard that she herself had lied about the entire incident. It was First who attacked Jellyfish and ran her from her home. After hearing this rendition, First lost all taste for gossip and storytelling.
What was worse than the gossip was what never got said about Jellyfish. First had witnessed things the other Glories had not. It was First who had returned to the Wifey Wing after Jellyfish’s disappearance. She was the one who had seen how the end tables and lamps and pillows had been put back in the wrong places, like the room had been cleaned up in a hurry. She was left alone with truths like the dent in the doorframe and the clump of shimmering black hair caught under the leg of a work bed. And all alone, First practised the Glory art of forgetting.
“We’ve based our lives on forgettin’ about her. Most new Glories don’t even know who she was. Only one to mention her is Diamond, and she does it to just to smart Arsen. Jellyfish’s story don’t get told because it isn’t a love story.”
“So this means Sub Rosa is as fucked up as any other place?”
“Little, don’t say such a thing,” First said.
But I had already said it, and by saying it, I plainly understood that Sub Rosa wasn’t merely the land of soda pop and ponytails. It was the last stop for girls like me. If I fell on Sub Rosa, there would be no getting up. I heard the Dark groan unnervingly in the distance. Growing pains? It was getting bigger. Who knew how far away it really was without the lamps to mark the border? The Dark was unfolding its catch-all arms. Its voice grew louder, calling a name that seemed to beg me to claim it as my own. I wondered what else was lost in there.
“She is missing … and everyone goes about their merry way. Sorry to sound like a city girl, but that is fucked up. I mean, aside from all the gossip, did anyone even bother to feel sad that she was gone? What if it was me, First? If I was lost tomorrow, you’d forget about me?”
