Lestatic

The lights were low and the walls were decorated with flock wallpaper; stark black geometric patterns on an ivory background.  Shadows cast across the floor and tables wavered as though unsure of their welcome here, and people stepped in and out of them lithely like dancers.  The bar had a small number of people stood at it, stirring cocktails they looked uncertain of having ordered, or holding tumblers of brown and amber liquids with spherical ice cubes in and sipping them as though being forced to.  The tables were equally sparsely populated, mostly by single drinkers with more determination that the bar-huggers.  There was a low hubbub from disparate conversations, but a determined listener could have sat still in the middle and distinguished the words from each and every one.  There was a smell of liquorice in the air as well that might have been from a spilled bottle of cheap Absinthe, but then again might not have been.

A woman in a thin white dress walked through the door and was ignored by everyone.  She paused, clearly annoyed by this, and adjusted the front of her dress to expose a little more tanned cleavage, and still earned no reaction.  She shrugged, mostly to herself, and adjusted her shoulder bag; pale green leather with a gold leather strap intended to look like chain-link.  She looked around, then again, as though unable to believe that she couldn’t find who she was looking for.

He tapped her on the shoulder, having come in to the bar behind her.

“Toni,” he said, his voice a little husky.  She half-turned her head, saw him, and then flinched, several seconds too late.  His eyes recognised the slight but his face remained otherwise neutral.  “Shall we sit?”  He gestured to the tables.

She walked to one in the centre of them all and sat down, her bag swinging around to rest in her lap, and her hand cradling it protectively.  The man, Jarvis, raised his eyebrows in the direction of the bar, got an acknowledging nod from the barman, and then walked over and sat down opposite her.

“Why did it have to be here?” she said.  Her fingernails, long and painted papal purple tapped the table like a demented woodpecker.

“Because this is where we first met,” said Jarvis.  “It’s appropriate, we’re coming full circle.”

“We’re coming full circle.”  Her mimicry was snide but excellent.  The barman appeared at her elbow and ignored her, looking at Jarvis expectantly.  “Hey, bud!  Bud!  I want a drink!”

“Directions on a cold, dark night, please,” said Jarvis.  The barman nodded.  “And sure, I’ll buy her a drink.”  Only now did the barman look at her, and his dark eyes held hers for a moment, quieting her.

“Prosecco,” she said.  “Fizzy, too.  None of that funny flat stuff.”

When the barman left them she glared at Jarvis.  “What was up with him?  Is he a faggot?  Couldn’t take his eyes off you, could he!  And what was that… that thing you ordered?  Directions to a big gay fight?”

“Just a cocktail,” said Jarvis.  “I think he didn’t like you.”

“Hahahahaaaaa.”  Her laugh was too close to a shriek for comfort.  “Yeah right, he didn’t like me.  He didn’t like you.  No-one likes you.  All of my friends hated you.  You were always just this big lump in the corner, getting fat and staring at people like you’d never seen them before.  You never watched tv, and you never listened to any decent music.  You were just fat and useless.  I’m glad we split up.”

“I watched tv,” said Jarvis.  “We just watched different shows, we listened to different music. Your friends did seem to hate me though, even the ones who’d never met me.”  His words floated past her, unlistened to.

“You’re so fat.”

“Sure,” said Jarvis.  He was wearing a hoodie that she’d bought him a month after they’d met.  It was three sizes too large and looked it, but after she’d bought it she made a fuss every time he came out unless he was wearing it.  It smelled faintly of wet dog, even when it was fresh from the dryer.

“Everyone here’s weird, you know?  Like no-one’s looking at anyone.”

“They’re just hungry,” said Jarvis.  The barman appeared again and set a tumbler of blood-red liquid down in front of Jarvis and a champagne flute of pale yellow bubbles in front of Toni.  His eyes caught hers again, and she wondered for a moment why they seemed so blood-shot.

“Yeah, I get cranky when my blood-sugar’s low,” she said, picking the glass up.  She sipped it, wrinkled her nose against the prickle of the bubbles and then downed it.  She set the glass down on the table, and looked at Jarvis.

“Same again.” she said.

Jarvis picked his drink up, and brushed away a little frost that had formed on the table underneath it.

“I said I’d buy you one drink,” he said, and sipped his drink.

There was a moment of peace as the liquid swirled around his mouth, aromas of red fruit and old leather bubbling up into his nose and a hint of sweetness washed away by a sea of bitterness like the regret of old sins, and then, predictably, Toni erupted.

“You cheap bastard!” she yelled, standing up so she breathe deeper and scream louder.  Behind her several people at the bar looked round at last.  “All I want is one more fucking drink!  Is that so fucking much to ask of my ex-bloody boyfriend?”

“Ex,” said Jarvis quietly.  She reached across the table to slap him, but someone behind her caught her hand.  She tried to pull away, but their grip was like stone; cold and uncompromising.  She turned, torn between continuing to shout at Jarvis and wanting to scream at this interloper and found herself looking into another pair of bloodshot eyes.  She opened her mouth, but something inside her suggested that this would be a really bad idea, and she closed it again.

“The thing is,” said Jarvis.  “The thing is, you never knew what bar you’d walked in to, did you?”

“What?” she wanted to look at him but she couldn’t pull her gaze away.

“Exactly.  You were just looking for another mark, another stupid little fuck to take for a ride and bleed dry.  And you would have got just the opposite if I hadn’t seen you.”

“What?”  She felt incredibly distracted.  She didn’t normally listen to anything Jarvis said – well, anyone said, really, except maybe Bethany, but Bethany had been like a sister to her – but now it was like she was being told not to.  Only no-one else was talking.

“This is a vampire bar, Toni.  Lestatic.  The name’s a clue.”

“What?”  It sounded pathetic this time, and she could barely hear herself speaking.  The room seemed to be darker than she remembered and she was feeling dizzy.  Only the bloodshot eyes in front of her were keeping her upright, she was sure.

“So here you are, back where we met, and this time I’m leaving you to your fate.  I gave you three months you didn’t deserve and don’t appreciate.  I think that’s enough.”

“Jar–?”  She had a feeling something important had just happened, but she wasn’t sure what.  She inclined her head, trying to hear the voice that had just been speaking, stretching her neck out as she turned and twisted.  The light in the bar fell on it, graceful as a swan’s, and for a moment everyone held their breath.

Directions on a cold dark night

Frost crunched underfoot and Jake’s breath condensed in front of him; nanosnow falling silently to the barren ground.  This was the edge of town, where the earth was dry and cracked.  It was as beige as his parent’s drawing room in the house they’d spent their entire married life in and as humourless.  Rocks lay scattered here and there, thrown aside and discarded by tyres from when the high-school kids came out here to burn rubber and turn donuts.  There were none here tonight, and that almost seemed prophetic.

Jake turned away from the distant lights of the town and looked out into the night.  The stars were out, white and pristine in the engulfing darkness, reminding him that the universe was once thought to be expanding, vast and effectively unending.  He looked up, noting the absence of the moon, and counted the constellations that he knew.  It shamed him that there were only four, and the rest were just stars spilled across the sky.

“You came.”

He jumped, his heart suddenly thumping hard in his chest and a cold sweat breaking out on his brow.  Even as he turned he could feel it freezing, prickling against his skin as his body heat melted it and broke it apart only for it to refreeze.  Behind him, wrapped in a torn and filthy stripy shirt, was a waif: a person whose gender he couldn’t identify, huge, manga eyes poking out of a lean, mud-streaked face.  A hand, on the end of a wrist so thin that he could see the outlines of the two bones of the forearm knobbling through the skin, stretched out.

“I’m not giving you anything,” he said reflexively.  All through his childhood he’d heard his parents dictum: don’t give to beggars.  Don’t give away money that you might need for yourself.  Think of what that money could be used for and then use it.  He wasn’t sure he’d agreed with it back then, but it was a litany now, inescapable.

“Thingth don’t come for free, mithter.”  She, or he, lisped a little.  Jake squinted, unsure that he’d seen a pointed tongue appearing between teeth for a minute, but the person had closed their mouth again.

“Yeah, that’s true,” he said, waiting for them to get his point.  The hand remained outstretched though, and he raised an eyebrow.

“Everyone’s a philosopher,” said the waif, the lisp disappearing momentarily, but the tongue flickered out between the lips with the effort of getting the sounds right, and it was dark coloured, thin, and too long.  It might have been pointed too, but the light was bad and Jake knew that the waif was watching him as much as he was watching it.  “You don’t get something for nothing says the guy who has nothing, and you tip your hat and repeat back to him because you think he’s offering you nothing in return.  But he’s offering you his gratitude for taking a moment to consider him and his situation, same as he considered yours before he asked you.  He’s giving you the chance to feel good about yourself for being the big man, for being generous, for being charitable.  All these things he offers you, including his shame at having to ask in the first place, and his humiliation at accepting what you’re willing to spare – what you have so much of that you can give it away because you don’t need it – and you tip your hat and tell him that he’s offering you nothing in exchange for your condescension.  That says nothing profound, Mister, that says only that you can’t be bothered to think.  And philosophy from a non-thinker?  That’s a non-starter.”

“You’re male then?” Jake couldn’t think of anything else to say.  He had no idea why it was bugging him so much that he couldn’t tell the gender of the waif, but it was niggling away at him that he was missing something.

The waif pulled the shirt open, revealing its nakedness underneath and Jake fell silent, unable to look away.  After a few seconds the waif wrapped themselves back up again and shivered.  Then the hand poked out once more, palm upwards, slightly cupped.

“I don’t pity you,” said Jake, but his voice wobbled slightly and the lie was apparent.  “Not like that, anyway.”  That was closer to the truth.  “I’ll pay you, but I want to know what I’m paying you for.”

“Directions,” said the waif.  “What you came for, even if you haven’t asked yourself that.  Directions on a cold, dark night to somewhere else, somewhere where questions can be asked and answers found.  It’s up to you if you want to follow them, but they’re worth what you pay for them.”

There was a soft rattle that disturbed the silence that followed, and it took Jake a couple of moments to realise he was listening to the waif breathing.  He tried not to think of what diseases might make someone sound like that.  Finally he put his hand in his pocket and made a fist, pulling out everything that was in there.

“This is everything I’ve got,” he said, holding the fist over the waif’s cupped hand and opening it, letting the objects fall.  Bright eyes watched him from a pale face framed by blonde hair, and then the hand retracted, the other hand appearing to sort through the litter.  “There’s no point asking for more, there isn’t any.”

Coins jingled as they moved around a hand, and a paperclip was lifted into the dim white light from the stars and examined.  Two pieces of paper were unfolded and folded back up again, and Jake suddenly realised that one of them had to be Alice’s phone number.  It seemed too late now to ask for it back.  A condom was pushed from one side to the other, and then suddenly both hands disappeared back inside the shirt.

“Accepted,” said the waif.  “Follow me.”

“Wait,” said Jake, reaching out a hand, but stopping as he got close, unable to bring himself to touch the waif now.  “You said I was getting directions.”

“I said you got what you paid for,” said waif.  “And you’ve paid for a guide.”