Poppy Z. Brite - 1992 - Lost Souls (10 page)

 
          
He
poured himself another shot and tried to sip it. It stung his eyes and went up
his nose, and he threw it back and swallowed hard to keep from coughing. He
laughed quietly at himself.

 
          
He
was a good bartender, an excellent bartender, but he certainly did not know how
to drink.

 
          
After
the next shot he dispensed with the glass altogether, swigging out of the
bottle as he had seen the others do on that Mardi Gras night.

 
          
When
the first noise floated up from the alley, Christian was drunk enough to ignore
it. It was only a bump. But then there was another bump and a scraping clatter
that hurt to hear, as if someone were dragging one of the metal garbage cans
across the concrete. A stray dog? A bum?

 
          
Christian
crept to his window, which gave him a clear view of the alley and a slice of
Royal Street beyond it. He cupped his hands to the glass and looked out.

 
          
Apparently
Wallace Creech was still drunk too. Nothing else could account for the
clumsiness with which he was going through Christian’s garbage, mostly empties
from the bar.

 
          
As
Christian watched, Wallace let a
Taaka
vodka bottle
slip from his hands. It shattered on the concrete, and Wallace went down on his
hands and knees, trying futilely to scoop the glass up, to dump it back into
the torn garbage bag.

 
          
This
was too much. Wallace Creech would have to be dealt with more harshly. The
alley was already strewn with broken glass, wrinkled paper bags, and other
trash, but what was Wallace looking for? His daughter’s bones, picked clean and
wrapped in a Times-Picayune fifteen years out of date?

 
          
Christian
straightened and turned away from the window. He would go down and slip into
the alley; he would bend that dry old neck back, let flow the old man’s
tasteless blood— The first spasm hit him as he was opening the door to the
landing. It bent him nearly double. He leaned against the jamb, clutching
himself, trying to hold in the blaze of green agony that was burning its way
through his belly. This was worse than the other times, so much worse; surely
the pain must be ripping him apart inside, webbing his innards with tiny bloody
holes. His eyes squeezed shut, and a long shudder ran through him.

 
          
Christian
moaned and twisted his head, clenching his teeth, trying not to scream.

 
          
He
had to get to the bathroom: it was out on the landing, shared by the other
apartments on the top floor of the building. He pushed at the door. It swung
fully open, and Christian fell onto the landing, clumsy and agonized, his
throat bitter, his eyes hot and streaming.

 
          
“Jesus,
man, Jesus. Are you all right?” His neighbor, David, was just going out.

 
          
Christian
rolled onto his back and looked helplessly up at David, the drop-dead suit, the
hair kept pathologically short, the sunglasses he always wore, even at night.
Another spasm of pain washed over him, incredibly worse than the last, and he
curled around himself and whined deep in his throat. Surely the tissues of his
body were burning away, dissolving inside.

 
          
Then
he was aware of David’s hands under his arms, David helping him up, half
dragging him to the bathroom where he bent Christian over the toilet. Something
deep in Christian loosened, and all the Chartreuse came up—green, hot, churned
into a foamy mass now. Christian sobbed at the sight of it and turned his head
away. Thick strings of saliva webbed his lips.

 
          
“Jesus,
barkeep, are you going to live? Have to close up early tonight?”

 
          
Christian
managed to nod. He leaned against David. The warm pressure of David’s hand on
his shoulder kept him from collapsing. He vomited again, having to force it
this time. After that, he felt almost good. “I’m going out,” he told David.

 
          
“Jesus
wept, are you sure? How about I help you to your room? Don’t you even want to
brush your teeth?”

 
          
“No.
I need a drink to kill the taste. I must have eaten something bad.”

 
          
“I’m
meeting a girl. Why don’t you come and have a drink with us?”

 
          
At
the mention of alcohol, Christian had to suppress a moan. The idea of having a
drink with David and his girl made him feel terribly lonely. He could never do
such a thing. And besides, now he was ravenous.

 
          
They
walked downstairs together, and David headed up Conti toward the lights of
Bourbon Street. Christian checked the alley, but of course by now Wallace was
gone. All that lingered was a breath of whiskey and fear. He would meet Wallace
Creech again, though, with his old tired eyes and his silver cross. Christian
knew it, and he smiled, feeling the night gather around him. He slipped away
toward the river.

 
          
Nothing
sat on his bed, naked and cross-legged, the quilt pooled around his waist and a
candle before him. He cupped his hands around the flame and kept them there
until his palms began to sweat. Then he raised his hands to his face and rubbed
the heat onto his cheeks. He had his music turned up loud—Tom Waits, loud and
splendidly drunk tonight, wishing he were in New Orleans. Nothing wished he
were too.

 
          
He
looked toward the window. Outside, he could see a few lights: other windows in
other houses, more houses beyond; houses with well-kept lawns and shade trees,
like the one he lived in; houses with swing sets and poured concrete driveways
and half-baths and redwood sundecks; streets travelled by Volvos and Toyotas
picking the kids up from day care, going to the supermarket the health club,
the mall, or, if they were bored enough, the liquor store. Suburbs, stretching
forever or until the end of Maryland, whichever came first. Nothing shivered,
then swigged from the White Horse bottle next to his bed.

 
          
He
had refilled it from the supply in his parents’ liquor cabinet, watering down
their bottle, but now it was nearly empty again.

 
          
He
kept looking toward the window. Most of the lights had gone out. He shivered
again.

 
          
Christian
still wore a cloak, long and black and lined with silk, whenever he went out.

 
          
Old
habits
died
hard, if they ever died at all. The night
had cooled. A black iron railing under Christian’s hand was warm, still
saturated with the heat of the day, but a dark-smelling breeze wound its way up
from the river, brushing Christian’s face, reviving him. Now he had nearly
forgotten the burning in his stomach and the vomiting that had made his throat
bloody and raw.

 
          
His
step quickened. His boot heels clocked along the sidewalk. He fell to wondering
how many times he had walked along these ways, how infinitesimally his steps
had worn down the sidewalks of these old streets, these exotically named,
haunted streets—
Ursulines
, Bienville, Decatur. He
wondered how much of his substance he had left here, how much of his substance
was made up of the dust of these streets.

 
          
There
had always been New Orleans. Christian had lived in other places, far away
across sunless seas, places older and darker and just as strange, with ghosts
aplenty.

 
          
But
where else did slave spirits still lament in the Royal Street house of sadistic
Madame
Lalaurie
, where else could one still smell the
lingering sweat of a slave woman chained to a stove all the years of her life?
Where else did crows flap over the crumbling ruins of St. Louis Cemetery and
settle, inky and baleful of eye, on a tomb slashed with hundreds of red X’s—X’s
in faded crimson chalk, X’s still flesh and glistening, X’s for voodoo curses,
X’s to invoke the wrath of Marie
Laveau
, the voodoo
queen who had stayed young forever?

 
          
Christian
passed a dark doorway. Inside, pale shapes moved through dull blue light. He
remembered when this hole-in-the-wail had been a jazz club, when bright brassy
music floated out late at night and
spiralled
up to
the sky, when smoky-skinned women with ripe lips and red dresses stood outside
smiling dark smiles at passersby. Once he had seen Louis Armstrong standing
there on the sidewalk with his shirtsleeves
roiled
up, talking to a crowd of friends.

 
          
Christian
remembered the slow laughter, the white eyes that shone out of faces blue-black
with sweat, the flasks of illicit liquor raw enough to burn a hole in the guts
of even Molochai, Twig, or Zillah. Now the figures that waited uneasily on the
sidewalk were as white as white could be, with eyes smudged black and ripped
black clothes, little ghosts, like photonegatives of the dusky dancers who had
once swirled all night to bright jazz. Now the music that drifted out of the
doorway and up toward the moon was sparse and dark and strange, the anthem of
all the lost children who began their lives at night, when the bars opened and
the music began to play.

 
          
Right
now it was sainted Bauhaus, the pale long-boned gods of this crowd, doing

 
          
“
Bela
Lugosi’s Dead.” The eyeliner eyes glazed and the black
lipstick lips moved in time with the words, and the children danced slowly, for
their blood was thin, and they were under the spell of the DJ and the music and
the night.

 
          
Christian
went in. As he passed the bar, he heard a girl say, “God, how tall is that
guy?”

 
          
He
turned but could not search out her eyes. He rose like a narrow, pale beacon
above most of the children in the club, and he could look down on leather-clad,
studded shoulders, on earlobes hung heavy with chains and crucifixes and tiny
silver skulls, on heads of hair dyed every unnatural color Possible—blue-black,
orange, red, white. The club smelled of sweat and melting hair mousse and hot
leather, all
underlaid
with the sweet, spicy smell of
clove cigarettes. A veil of smoke twisted gently around Christian’s shoulders.

 
          
He
stood against the back wall, not smoking, not drinking, just watching the
children move, watching their faces lift and their hands flicker in the blue
light. A boy came up to him and said, “Will you watch my leather?” When
Christian nodded, the boy dumped the jacket on a chair near Christian and
danced back into the crowd, lithe and T-shirred, his thin arms raised above his
head. These children trusted one another; the adult world was obtuse and
threatening, but in one another they had absolute faith.

 
          
Still,
a leather jacket was nothing to be left unattended. Each one was an individual
masterpiece marked by its owner with intricate arrangements of studs and safety
pins, arcane band logos, patches and chains.

 
          
Bela
Lugosi was still dead. The singer’s voice was low and
smooth and insidious as throat cancer. Christian imagined him gaunt and
bone-white, writhing onstage. When the song was over, the boy danced back and
slung his jacket over his shoulders. He offered Christian a cigarette and lit
it for him. Christian inhaled once: a clove, tasting of the Orient and ash, its
paper sugared. Then he held it between two long fingers and let it burn,
raising it to his lips occasionally, pretending to smoke. The taste nauseated
him; all tastes nauseated him save one.

 
          
And
now he was so hungry, so thirsty.

 
          
When
the boy cupped his hand around his mouth and went on tiptoe to shout something
in Christian’s ear—his name, perhaps, though Christian never caught
it-Christian laid his hand flat against the small of the boy’s back. Through
the T-shirt damp with sweat, the boy’s skin was hot, alive. Christian felt the
little ridges of the spine through the thin cloth. The boy looked at Christian
for a moment, his eyes darker than before. Then he smiled and moved so that his
hip was touching Christian’s. Their hipbones met and spoke to each other in a
secret bone language.