Zoe’s pale yellow dress shouted
"purity!" but she wore it anyway because she liked the way it
fluttered around her knees when she danced.
It made her smile. Having been
instructed by her wiser friends to look older than she actually was, she double-checked
her heavier-than-usual makeup and tucked her new ID in her bra before she
stepped into the cab. She grinned nervously at her friends as she felt
the counterfeit plastic warm against her skin.
Annie greeted her from inside, saying, “God, Zoe, didn’t you have
anything else to wear?”
Her friends instructed the driver to head south so the clown car twisted along some rainy streets she had never crossed— the drive becoming increasingly blurry due to the water bottle she had been instructed to drink from, but the cab soon slowed into an industrialized area loaded with semi-trucks and cargo trains. Zoe and her six friends spilled out in front of an abandoned warehouse. She crossed herself before getting out of the taxi because the blinking red lights in the warehouse’s top windows indicated that this was surely the kind of place her mother warned would send her straight to hell.
The rain had stopped, so she unzipped her raincoat and took in her surroundings. It was clear that she was unlike the rest of the queue; their unwashed hair, torn t-shirts, exposed underwear and furry leg warmers made her stick out like their antonym. One girl’s tattoos were laced thigh-high from her ankles. Zoe recited the date of birth she had memorized as the broad-shouldered security guard questioned her and patted her down. “Female, male? I’ll assume female. And exactly how many piercings had she on her face?” Before Zoe could count them all, she had passed the test, and was swept into a corner where her friends together swallowed a series of little round pills. Zoe politely declined, since the vodka had already inundated her with novel sensations, and she wasn’t quite sure how adding hallucinogens would benefit her on this particular night, or any night.
Her friends instructed the driver to head south so the clown car twisted along some rainy streets she had never crossed— the drive becoming increasingly blurry due to the water bottle she had been instructed to drink from, but the cab soon slowed into an industrialized area loaded with semi-trucks and cargo trains. Zoe and her six friends spilled out in front of an abandoned warehouse. She crossed herself before getting out of the taxi because the blinking red lights in the warehouse’s top windows indicated that this was surely the kind of place her mother warned would send her straight to hell.
The rain had stopped, so she unzipped her raincoat and took in her surroundings. It was clear that she was unlike the rest of the queue; their unwashed hair, torn t-shirts, exposed underwear and furry leg warmers made her stick out like their antonym. One girl’s tattoos were laced thigh-high from her ankles. Zoe recited the date of birth she had memorized as the broad-shouldered security guard questioned her and patted her down. “Female, male? I’ll assume female. And exactly how many piercings had she on her face?” Before Zoe could count them all, she had passed the test, and was swept into a corner where her friends together swallowed a series of little round pills. Zoe politely declined, since the vodka had already inundated her with novel sensations, and she wasn’t quite sure how adding hallucinogens would benefit her on this particular night, or any night.
But the music was so loud, it was palpable and the lights blinked so vigorously that it wasn’t hard to feel like she had participated anyway. She was smiling and swaying, closing her eyes, and before long an hour had passed. When she looked up, she caught the DJ looking at her. This gaze, too, was intensely palpable. It was then she realized that he had been seizing and regurgitating sound waves that had pulsated from her body. He ended the song as soon as was acceptable, began another one and slipped back into the general, crazed expression he wore during the first half hour of his set.
He was skinny. Well dressed, donned in a black polo and tie. His hair was neatly kept, and his pants were pants. Excepting the soul he wore on his fingertips, he looked ordinary on all bodily accounts. Yet his soul was mad. The creation that came from his fingertips reverberated violently through his fragile body and made him wildly ecstatic at a periodic release of electric-gold bands that reached outward in flickering shades and sounds, carried by a vast, slow undercurrent laid tensely in the deep. This, Zoe decided as she rifled through her classical repertoire, was true music.
She stopped dancing and stood in the middle of the sea, watching him. This was the way life ought to be, she thought. Everyone around her had been freed by the conductor’s fingertips, to be simultaneously fully present and fully elsewhere. His set ended, and the next DJ that stepped on stage was less impressive, so Zoe and her friends escaped outside for a few minutes.
Everyone began smoking and Zoe had come outside for some actual air, so she decided to walk around a bit to explore this new world. She kicked the gravel as she rounded a corner of the warehouse; and partially hidden behind a cargo train, she saw him sitting on a cinder block looking like the thinker— holding a joint in the hand that did not hold up his face. "Ah, jackpot," she thought. He generally refrained from speaking with teenage girls, but she was determined to approach him. It was a night of courage, of doing things she had never done before and liking it, of feeling like an adult. So she said too loudly,
“Hey, I’m
Zoe. Your set was beautiful.”
“Beautiful?” He smirked as he shook her hand, noting its
youth and elasticity.
“Yeah,
beautiful, hasn't anyone said that before? Are you busy?”
He looked
at her, decided she was attractive enough to allow the intrusion, and so
replied, "No." She took it as a signal to press forward.
"What
should I call you?"
"Jasper."
“Oh, I
thought I should call you by your stage name.”
“Yes. No, uh—I mean, now I’m just Jasper.” Zoe nodded as she took a seat on an adjacent
cinder block.
“Why are
you here?” He asked.
“My friends
brought me... they said I should come. Why are you here?”
“What?”
“Why are
you out here?”
“I wanted
to be alone for a minute.”
They sat in silence for almost half an hour. Zoe wasn’t exactly comfortable, but she felt safe. She didn’t know what to say, but could tell that he couldn’t care less. So when she finally broke the silence, it was a question that came from the inside of her universe.
They sat in silence for almost half an hour. Zoe wasn’t exactly comfortable, but she felt safe. She didn’t know what to say, but could tell that he couldn’t care less. So when she finally broke the silence, it was a question that came from the inside of her universe.
“Do you
believe in God?”
“…the fuck?
No. I don’t know.”
“Why
not?” There was more silence.
“You
believe that a person, a human being, lived inside a fish for three days and
three nights?”
“It was a
big fish.”
“Well,
aren't you refreshing.”
But
the truth streamed out from Jasper’s lower gut through his eyes: Zoe was the
material of fantasy. He saw her in the
light of the highway, a silky brunette with grey-green eyes and full red lips
attached to a budding, untouched figure that shifted underneath her raincoat as
she spoke. Even through the fog of
cocktails, he was arrested by a small thread of morality that held him perpetually
on the edge of total self-destruction. Zoe could think of nothing further
to say so she stood up and left him sitting on his cold, concrete square, irritation
cutting through half his face. He’d just
wanted a smoke.
 |
| Female Figure with Head of Flowers, Dali |
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
