| I wish words were three-dimensional. I think they are. Yeah? Why do you say that? Because the heavy ones really hurt when they hit you.  mirror When he finally sees her, the moment is cathartically serendipitous. A thin sheen of sweat covers her skin, and her face is slightly flushed with color. She is dressed simply in a braided beanie, a white cotton tank top and a multi-pocketed pair of khaki pants. Her eyes are indistinct behind a pair of bluish-tinted sunglasses, and her neck is hung with a delicate choker chain and a teardrop of black glass. It might be that the onset of the second pill is changing the way that he experiences things, but her appearance in front of him feels less like a random meeting in the courtyard than an inevitable event. Assuming so, it becomes something over which he has no control, and immediately makes him feel uncomfortable. "Hey, Katie," he says. "Hi, Renzo," she says. "I heard you were going to be here." "I'd heard the same thing about you." Neither one of them initiates an embrace, but there is a moment of silent awkwardness that reveals that they both were wondering whether or not the other would do so. He busies himself with lighting a cigarette, and she refuses one when he offers. They are standing in the make-shift patio behind the club, which is little more than an empty lot paved with asphalt and surrounded by a cinder block wall. Strewn about are old plastic chairs and dilapidated couches, and people are sprawled upon them in a manner that indicates physical contact is not a concern. Conversations are punctuated with the smooth and lubricated speech of the culturally aware, providing a monotone buzz that insulates the space between them. "How long have you been here?" she asks. "A couple of hours," he says. "You come alone?" "Yeah. You?" "No," she says. "I came with Chloe." Renzo had heard a story about Chloe's behavior on the previous evening, the kind of you-wouldn't-believe-how-fucked-up-she-was story that was pretty standard fare in their extended circle of friends. Everyone had been the story's protagonist at one time or another; it was an unremarkable distinction akin to being made Employee of the Month. "She feeling alright after last night?" "You were there?" "No. But I heard about it. From Ollie." Katie shakes her head resignedly. "It's always the same with her. This morning it was never again, but as soon as we get here she makes a beeline straight for Jones." From her tone, Renzo decides not to say anything about the gift he'd received earlier from Kimmie. "The man's definitely got a fan club," he says. They both laugh; if such a club existed, they had both been members for a long time. Renzo finds that he has already finished his cigarette and lights another. Katie takes a surreptitious glance about the lot, seeming to study the cut and consistency of the crowd. "Jesus. Who are these people?" she asks. "It's like I don't even know anyone here anymore." Renzo gives her an appreciative nod. It is the nature of the party, endlessly shedding music, fashion and human beings like the scales of a vividly colored reptile. Turn over is high; only the most committed survive the shift in cultural seasons. "Yeah. Got some new recruits," he says. "Looks like it." "Bunch of fucking greenhorns," he says. She gives him the look, comically incredulous. "Greenhorns? Who the hell says greenhorns anymore?" On cue. "I guess I do," he says. It is an old joke between them, and they both start laughing, a liquidly familiar sound that seems geo-socially out of place. Everything comes back to him in a rush; the lone girl at the top of the stairway, the days and months that had followed, the varied colors and textures of the things they have shared over the years. He is suddenly aware of it, a solid, lump sum feeling, and he knows that she inhabits the same cerebral space because of the familiar way that she smiles at him. "It's good to see you, kid," he says. The smile disappears, and she looks away from him. She is obviously uncomfortable with the reality of what he has just said. "I haven't talked to you in a while," she says. The second pill is starting to come on, but the shadow that passes across her face mirrors an unfamiliar taint that darkens the growing luminance within him. He looks down at his feet, taking a drag on his cigarette. "A while being that party last weekend," she clarifies. They are temporarily interrupted by a cabal of jittery friends that Renzo might designate as peripheral, and they both participate in the expected number of protracted hugs. More than one of them is lethally armed with a pair of glowsticks. After five minutes of forgettable conversation, the group disengages and leaves them alone. "Tell me about your mom," she says. He feels and immediate twinge of guilt at the question; echoes of their conversation earlier in the evening ring hollowly in his ears. "I talked to her a little while ago. She told me she's been feeling sad." "What? Why?" "The summer. She said the summer always does it to her." "She's lonely." "Yeah. More than that, though. She says it's the sound of the wind and the color of the sunsets." "Your father?" "Yeah. I guess. That's always part of it." "Is she painting?" "Of course." Katie had spent a week of the previous summer with Renzo in the town where he had grown up, and, as expected, she and his mother had become intimate friends. Sharing a love of both painting and photography, they write letters and emails to each other, trade prints and canvases, and often speak to one another on the phone. "I'll call her. I swear. Tomorrow." "She'd like that. She always asks about you." "I'll write her a letter, too. A card. Something cute and adorable." "Don't overdo it. She already loves you way too much." "I'll paint her a watercolor orchid on the inside flap." "Jesus." "And a field with a thousand fireflies." "There aren't any fireflies out there." "Alright. Butterflies then. A million little butterflies with black and yellow wings." There were butterflies, thousands of them in the field behind their house. Katie had noticed them one evening as they had watched the sunset, sitting with their backs against the old tree in the back yard. She had said something ridiculously artistic about the transient beauty of sunsets and butterflies, and a moment later his mother's laughter had fallen over them from her usual seat on the porch. The desert, she had told them, made everyone a poet. "My landlord gave me notice last week," Katie says. "He's selling the house." "Shit. How long have you got?" "A month from last Tuesday." "Found another place?" "Not yet. I really need to find some studio space. Maybe somewhere downtown." "Good luck. Call me if you need a place to crash." "The Hollywood Safe House is still open for business?" she asks. He laughs at the reference and the memories the name carries with it. "You know it. Twenty-four seven." "I promise to leave the duct tape at home." "Deal," he says, laughing. "Still got the key?" "Yeah, I do. Thanks, Renz. I appreciate the offer." A level of familiarity is growing between them the longer they stand there on the patio. For the first time all night he feels the traces of that comfortable connection. He is also aware that the ecstasy might be disproportionately amplifying his emotions, and he does his best to avoid sentimentalities that might give him away. "Have you been working?" he asks. "Around the clock. My show starts tomorrow, remember?" "Of course," he lies. "Wait. What the fuck are you doing here?" "I won't be able to sleep, anyway. I told Chloe I'd give her a ride and hang out for a while." Katie's reticence to speak about her art before a show is legendary. He doesn't really expect an answer, but decides to ask her the question anyway. "Want to tell me about what you've been doing?" She thinks about it for a moment. "I've been trying to make art," she says. He smiles; the remark is quintessential Katie. "Give me a cigarette," she says. He extracts one from his pack, then lights it for her. She is silent for the space of two drags, and he imagines he can hear her trying to find the right words to explain what she has been doing. Her head lowers, almost imperceptibly, and then turns slightly as if trying to hear something far away. The cigarette burns between her fingers, the smoke trailing up and around her head like the tendrils of a phantom vine. Renzo leaves Katie to her thoughts, while his own drift back to another time, with a brush in his hand and the tip of it just millimeters from the surface of the canvas. The rich smell of his oils waft up from the palette, making him just a little light headed, and he revels in the endless potentiality in that moment, when the canvas is still white and unblemished as porcelain. That was the love of it, that quiet moment just before things begin to happen, when the whole world opens up and everything takes on an otherworldly kind of symbolism, waiting to be represented in a million different ways. His body tenses with the thought of it, and he craves the feel of a brush in the space between his fingers. "I'm trying to find that place where art, music, history and technology all come together to make something else, something greater," she says. "Easy there," he says. "You don't want to give away too much." She smiles, sheepishly. "Come on, Renz," she says. "You can't tell me anything else?" She thinks for another moment. "The pieces are all about reflection," she says. "I want them to be a kind of mirror. Do you know what I mean? The kind of art that makes people see a part of themselves." He nods. Katie's words resonate with a harmonious kind of truth. It was what had always amazed him about her, her ability to infuse her words with the same energy that materialized in whatever she chose as her mediums. She was an artist in the purest sense, with everything around her conforming to her own strange, undefined aesthetic. Renzo has always been envious of her passions. For Katie, art is like air or water, something elemental that it is impossible to live without. "Sounds dope," he says. "I don't know. We'll see." "Can I come by tomorrow?" "I already put you on the list," she says, smiling. Someone opens a door and the beat comes out to them, filling the air with an industrial, electric rush that hits him down deep. He only has a few minutes. Sounds and colors are becoming more vivid with each breath he takes, and the music from inside the club is a tantalizing come-on that promises the heat and sweat of the crowd. There is the rising light of a luminous inner glow, like a lover's languid caress that promises certain inevitable pleasures. "What about you?" she asks. "What about me?" "Your art. Painting. You told me a couple of months ago you really wanted to start again." "Yeah, I did." "You started?" He finishes the last of his cigarette and stubs it out on the ground with the heel of his shoe. "No. I really wanted to." "So? What's the problem?" The pack of cigarettes has found its way back into his hand. His lights another one, takes a drag, and lets the smoke out between them. "Work. It's been busy." Her eyes, reflecting the cigarette's ember, are two red-hot points burning in the shadows of her face. "That's a lame excuse. I don't have to tell you." An irrational anger rises in him, but he remembers the texture of his own passions, smooth with disuse but still distinguishable there beneath the surface. His anger turns to a sense of inadequacy; looking at Katie feels like staring into a mirror, but the sight of his own reflection is misshapen and dark. The image is mildly shocking, and he makes himself look away. "I know it is, Katie," he says. "But it's the only one I've got." She is quiet for a few seconds, and then responds in an uneasy, quiet retreat. "Sorry, Renz." His own is quick and instinctive. "Don't be. Not about that. Not ever." He can feel her eyes on him, searching for that familiar connection, and he can feel himself pulling away from her concern. There is an evasive movement deep inside of him, a palpable convulsing like the flight of something feral and blind. He begins to sweat, and moisture collects on the back of his neck and runs down between his shoulder blades. Katie looks away and takes the last drag of her cigarette. As it the tip of it flares, he reads a peculiar sadness in the shadows of her face, an emotional fatigue she wears like a pellucid mask over her features. "Look, Renz. I'll just say it," she says, looking him in the eye. "The last time I saw you. That party. I'm really sorry about the way it all turned out." Avoidance of the topic at this point seems impossible, and Renzo steels himself against the impending conversation. The event in question had taken place on the previous Saturday evening, a non-descript house party at the home of one of their friends. It had started out as little more than a standard afternoon barbecue; two or three guys spinning records, an iced-tub of PBL tallboys, and a pleasant mix of half-naked bodies sunning themselves by the pool. Late afternoon had eased into early evening. Phone calls were made, beers turned into cocktails, and the party officially shifted gears with the arrival of Kimmie and Mr. Jones. Having both partaken of his product, Renzo and Katie had slipped from poolside to a couch in the host's basement where they had spent almost five uninterrupted hours while the party raged outside. Everyone had left them alone for the duration for the evening, in seeming deference to what they presumed was a long-anticipated coupling. Something had happened on that couch in the basement. Exactly what had happened was a complicated issue, exacerbated by the fact that the intensity of the ecstasy made it hard to clearly ascertain a chronological order of events. The little that he can recall is strangely desaturated and out of focus, and he experiences a dull nausea in trying to look at it directly for too long. He remembers the warmth of her body upon him, the feel of her hands on his face, and a growing certainty that something very important had happened between them. "Renzo?" He attempts a closer look, moving deeper, trying to focus the more manageable pieces of the greater whole. Even the lesser components exhibit an inherited fuzziness, as if there is a decay across the entire signal. It seems as if something is wrong with the machine. "Hello?" The whole process is disorienting, as if some kind of inconsistency in logic has propagated down through the lowest levels of the system. The result is a memory interlaced with static, colorless, or perhaps the product of too many colors, layer upon layer of supersaturated signal, blown out to a meaningless gray. "Renzo. Say something." He shakes himself, rubbing his eyes. The club, Katie, and the crowd come rushing back with an uncomfortable velocity. "No. Forget about it, Katie. Seriously. It was just one of those nights." He reaches out and touches her, and there is the slightest pulse that vibrates between his palm and the sweat on her shoulder. Chemical things happen with their physical contact, and something coats the inside of him like a second skin. It makes him want to pull her into his arms and envelop her, to feel the weight and warmth of her body against his own. "No, Renz. I don't want to forget about it. I want to talk about it, alright?" "There's nothing to talk to about." "You're telling me that everything is fine. With us, between us. With you." He knows she is right and senses the chasm as keenly as she does. He tries to put his head around it, but it has the feeling of something endless; there is a vertiginous pain in looking at it for too long. "It's nothing, Katie. Really." She takes a deep breath and closes her eyes against some internal conflict. Her features tighten, followed by subtle changes in the color of her skin. The battle only rages for a few seconds, and when she opens her eyes, the look on her face reflects the remnants of a joyless and bloody victory. "Maybe you're right," she whispers. Katie steps on the remainder of her cigarette, shoves both hands in her pockets, and rocks back on her heels like an impatient child. Regretfully, he senses that their conversation is coming to an end. He wants to do something to make her stay a little longer, but the only thing he can muster is an ambiguous raise of his eyebrows and a prolonged drag on his smoke. "I'm going home, Renz," she says. Things are quickly coming to an end. There is a part of him that fears her impending exodus, but the ecstasy is making it difficult to see or feel things in the usual ways. There is expansion, warmth and a heightened sense of motion; he breathes deeply, pressing inwardly against the glaze. "Are you rolling?" she asks. "Yeah," he says, unable to lie to her. "Jones hooked me up." A flat stare plants itself stonily on her features. "Chloe says it's good shit." He opens his mouth to say something, then realizes he has no idea how to respond. She turns, giving him a quick look back over her shoulder as she walks toward the door. "See you", she says. She turns and disappears through the door. Renzo takes a seat on one of the couches, sandwiched between a couple in the midst of full-contact foreplay and a group of French girls looking to score some blow. The wave is fast approaching, but the moment alone affords him an opportunity put things into perspective. There has been an alarming erosion of certain relationships over the last few days. Chronologically, he knows when the deterioration had begun, but the specific reasons behind it are still distant and frustratingly unclear. Something had happened at that party. The result had been like a disease that had spread like a virus to other parts of the organism, and, lacking an acceptable treatment, the organism had begun to defend itself by shutting certain parts of the system down. One of French girls leans over and asks him for a light, and he obliges her. In appreciation, she grabs the back of his neck and kisses him fully on the mouth in the tradition of her national namesake. Her lips are soft, and her tongue is tantalizingly smoky. "Merci, cheri," she says. She smiles and turns back to her friends without another word. He laughs. It's the kind of thing that transforms a standard Thursday evening into one of those nights. Looking up, he sees three girls walk by with wings of wire and summer lace, the last pale and bloodless, almost without sex but for the telltale curves in her hips and the insides of her thighs. Her lips are painted a deep shade of crimson, the color of oversized apples or day-old dried blood. The fever flares again as his eyes follow the triad of angels, a combustible reaction that results in a full remanifestation of the mercury glaze. The dj and the crowd await him. He puts his cigarette out on the ground and walks back into the club. The crowd is slick and viscous. He passes through and over it like a drop of oil on newly melted wax. |
