If inconstancy is the heart’s neighbor, the soul will not fail to find it—
“Better. Good God almighty, I feel better.” He drank the rest of the Narragansett in one good long draught, ordered another.
Courtney watched him, uncertain.
“No cautionary tales tonight,” she said
“No. Upon my word as a knight, no night of sorry prospect. It’s gonna be a movie.”
The Ritz, syncopated and dark like an erdstall while the sun was up, had turned the lights on, begun to show signs of life, expanded suddenly. All kinds were coming out of the cold and into the light, shaking off the snow from their boots in that quirked up animatronic way that doesn’t really get rid any snow at all, is just a polite way of looking kind of ridiculous, is just a polite way of saying, “This is a dive, the floor is filthy and cracked with the sputum of hordes of errant mariners and prodigal drunks, what’s a little more melted ice?” Which was true.
Courtney was talking about her latest wreck, the son of a shipwright who, having gone overboard headfirst into a 7-day riptide at Gosnold, was working as a line cook at Black Dog.
“I told you.” he said. “And not just because of the sober thing. The Black Dog only hires demonic familiars and sword-swallowers.”
“Yeah…his conduct was not becoming of—oh my God,” she started, laughing, turning and laying hold of his arm. “Do you remember when he was waiting outside my window?”
“That was dreadful. What a retard.” He was laughing too. Poor guy! He had waited out there for hours, ran across fields and hurdled stone walls in a frenzy of relapse and remorse, just stood out there wailing and gnashing his teeth until his tears froze and he had come to trundle his ass into the backseat of his car. Back on the wagon.
And the truth was that he did feel bad in a way. None of these guys ever had a chance with Courtney; and for the magic ritual to come off right, none of them could realize it, be the least bit aware. Dupes for the fire as she waited on the black widow’s walk for that lone tattered vermilion sail to appear over the void and waste…for the return of that pure fucking fool, that debauched yurodivy, that dissipated Myshkin that actually he missed very much, that he hoped would come to his senses and stop with the madness—but who was he to talk.
“Be right back,” he said. “Momentito. Exeunt.”
He made his way through the burgeoning crowd to the bathroom. To the right, on the slightly raised platform that took up the back half of the barroom, the local leitmotifs Johnny Coy & the Whofish were setting up. Or, no, not playing tonight—? Not several scraggled men but a single man, slender and with beautiful hands, sitting astride a clavichord (or was that a fortepiano?) and sipping from a tankard of Massachusetts’ finest.
Good grief. Cloacina protect me. He slipped into a bathroom stall as if it were a secret hideout. From his pocket he took out a slim cigarette case, a cheap silver one adorned with a horse and its rider. The rider was poised with a bloody lance, ready to strike; his shield, though, was disproportionately tiny.
Don’t need it when the helmet’s adamant, he thought. He removed two 10mg Adderall from the case, along with four 100mg johnnies. Flushing the toilet (“for the pigeons aerial and stool”), he emerged from the stall and, stepping in front of the grimy sink, cupped his left hand beneath the running water as he popped the pills with his right.
—mirror mirror…hahaha. Tee-hee! This isn’t the night I take one look at myself & swear off the stuff for good no no no chivalric oath for me tonight I have the grail & the grail behind the grail….Lo! AYE. & I will steal through the night like a chimera I will hold court with the brigands & the impostors I will conjure tricks like a Mephistopheles in heat I will I will I will—
Back to the bar. Courtney had moved (with their drinks, he noted) to a table by the window, joined now by Arthur and Genevieve. They were yapping along happily about something. They didn’t see him.
He ordered five shots of vodka. He knocked one back posthaste, chasing it quick with a slice of orange. He then brought the other four to the table.
“I’ve returned. Hi, Arthur. Genevieve.” He passed the glasses around.
“From the River Styx, no doubt,” Arthur said. Arthur was British, and an asshole.
Courtney gave him a look, but said nothing.
“Percy,” Genevieve began, clearing her throat of ether, “I was just telling Court and Art about an adventure I went on. On The Lady of the Lake.”
“I hope you didn’t take Arthur along.”
Laughter. He felt good. The Adderall, if not already taking effect, was making its way upward through his electrical system with such hubbabalo and fanfare (three cheers! He should have taken three—) that his dopamine receptors, as if running to embrace a beloved along an endless amphetamine coast, were stretching out with an elasticity & an ardor that (at long last!) can allow itself to anticipate fulfillment. Rest.
The Lady of the Lake, it turned out, was a catamaran. Its prow had never seen a lake, but was instead moored in the lagoon the next town over. Nor was there any lady, the ship being owned by her boss, a wannabe Bluebeard and libertine in his late 50s.
“I thought he only chose J1s for his Persephone fantasies,” Arthur said, waving down a waitress to order another round of drinks.
“I’m lucky, I guess,” Genevieve said.
She paused, looked out the window, from which could be seen, behind the courageously wasted ones willing to endure the bone-chilling cold for a cigarette, the Graal Theatre, condemned and closed down years ago.
“But it’s funny,” she went on. “We didn’t fuck. We didn’t even take up anchor. We just stayed there, floating. Like yeah we did coke, a dolorous or I mean a delirious amount of coke, enough lines to emblazon a coat of arms or warp and weft a silk shroud, and I was dizzy, so so dizzy…but he was sad. I could tell he was sad. And after a while he asked me something—.”
Another round of drinks arrived. The poet-pianist had vanished, had maybe never been there. Instead, a DJ was setting up. Playing that song he heard remixes of all the time without ever knowing the original. You’re my destiny…I’m in ecstasy 24/7…
He scanned the crowded hall. It was at full tilt now. Cup runneth over.
Suddenly he met eyes with a girl standing against the wall opposite. Who was that? She had been staring at him, arrows straight through him…or maybe he had imagined it. Too tight to know for sure. Or care. He turned back to the group.
“So, what was the question?” Courtney asked. She sounded sad too.
“Well…he asked me to tell him a story. A romance. A ‘healing’ romance, whatever that meant for me.”
“…”
A pause. Turning again, he saw that the girl, far from being a figment of his imagination, was walking towards him.
It was Courtney who broke the silence. She leaned forward.
“Tell us.”
“Oh yes, you must!” Arthur, drunk now and not at all aware of the gravity of the situation, chimed in.
Genevieve took the shot that had been sitting, untouched, since she began.
“Okay…but you can’t laugh! It goes like this—”
The girl tapped Percy on the shoulder; turning towards her, she leaned down and kissed him. Long, cold, sweet. He was sure he’d never seen her before in his life, never—
“One day, there was this girl, the most beautiful in the village. Her father, she never knew. No idea what he was like, what happened, nothing. But she knew something happened. Something terrible. Because her mother dressed in mourning all her life; and as far back as she can remember, she dressed in mourning too. All black.”
She whispered in his ear, “Come with me. I need you.” She took his hand. He asked no questions. Better not. As they pushed through the door into the cold night he looked back as if he had forgotten something—
“One day, the elders of the village summoned her and told her she must deliver a parcel to a city she’d never heard of, far to the west. Only she could do it, they said. They advised her on how to keep the package hidden, not to speak a word of it to anyone, and most important of all to NEVER open it herself.
They would send outriders to guard her approach. She would be drawn in a carriage, sturdy but unassuming, black as the clothes she wore….
It was all the same to her. She had never ridden in a carriage before, spoken to a knight, or travelled beyond the walls of her village.
She left the next day. Her mother looked on without emotion—”
A black car was already waiting. The sky was starless, but the moon was a scythe. And whether it was the cold, the drinks, the drugs, everything was pierced into clarity in a way that made everything even more surreal, made everything luminous but too close, too close—
“What should I call you?” he said.
“My name’s Kay.”
Was that too much? He was trembling (why was he trembling?) but by the streetlights passing like stumbling angels he could see she was beautiful. What a hell of a night! He quietly mourned the gin and tonic he’d left at the bar. Well, she has to at least have a bottle of wine or something…Christ! None of this is really happening….
Reflexively, he felt for the edge of the cigarette case, now safely stowed away in the inner pocket of his coat.
“And on her journey, she had many marvelous adventures. Accompanied by the most gallant knights from her village, she learned how to carry herself like a lady-in-waiting of the court. They taught her how to drink—in no time at all, she had the boys under the table.
And besides the taverns, the countless innumerable taverns, she saw: the sylphs and fairies of the hidden forest vale, the phlegmatic dragon of the horned-rimmed spectacles that drew strange figures in the cavern deeps, the fire dance of the pagan tribes who drank ichor from green gourds & live on nothing but clouds, pearls, & spiced chocolate….
One night, the night before she was supposed to arrive, she reflected with good reason that she was much different than she was. So much had changed. She looked over at the package, still unwrapped. Slowly, carefully, she reached over across the bed—”
He lay there, smoking. She had brought him to a big house by the sea, owned apparently by an author he hated. Notable in his mind only for Delmore Schwartz’s crashout allegations against him. Drunkenly calling him a knave, a scoundrel, a blackguard, while all the while accusing him of cuckoldry, plagiarism. That was funny.
He didn’t know where she’d gone off to…he felt bad about the swan. They’d had sex in the dark, in perfect darkness, and at some point during it all there was a sudden crash. A swan, Lalique crystal, shattered in a hundred million pieces on the floor.
He offered to clean it up. Actually had started doing so, since the adderall made him more equipped for the task than he had been for that (he was in that subnormal, sidereal state in which any feeling of shame or humiliation is utterly unthinkable)…but she said not to bother, waved it off, withdrew somewhere…
He wouldn’t sleep tonight. Even after finishing off this bottle of red—no, not happening. Should he leave—? But he didn’t know where he was. He wasn’t from here, but somewhere deep in the woods…somewhere far away from here, somewhere he’d forgotten a long time ago—
In the hallway, just outside, gripping the blade, she waited for her chance.
“The carriage had been overturned. Outside there was shouting, gunfire. She tasted blood in her mouth, felt it cascading into her eyes, covering her completely.
‘Grab hold of me miss!…you’re all right. Stay low now.’
Two of the knights had helped her out of the wreckage. They gave her a damp cloth to wipe the debris from her face. She was all right, it was true. She then quickly felt for the package—that was intact, too.
The gunfire, she realized now, was farther away than she’d imagined. They weren’t overrun, not yet.
A third knight was passing guns, heavy caliber rifles, to the other two from a munitions crate she hadn’t known they had. He then took out a bundle of dynamite and closed the lid.
‘We’ll head them off here, miss. You’ll be catching a ride with Lohengrin & Isten over there. Be a bit bumpy, I’m afraid….’
Lohengrin had already mounted Isten. He beckoned toward her with one hand as the other held the reins. The surest rider, the swiftest horse. The package, at all costs, must be delivered. They were off as soon as she mounted up.
Soon they heard the inevitable blast from behind them, the reports of gunfire—and then, silence. She held fast to Lohengrin.
‘Did you all know, this whole time?’ she asked, above the galloping hooves, above the thrill of speed, as the vista of buildings and sunlight came into view from behind the desert rock.
Lohengrin was quiet for a moment. Then she heard him laughing. He turned back to look at her, lifting the visor of his helmet with a delicate, tender hand as he did so. He was smiling.
‘You know, when you’re next to me, I feel like I’m in heaven.’
She waited until they reached the gates of the City of God before she started the timing mechanism.”
— Billy Lambent is incurable. Writer by accidents. Has been published in Hobart, Spectra, and Dreck Lit.