Archive for the ‘Rudi Dornemann’ Category
Passage
Wednesday, March 4th, 2009
Lanterns on a line, dipping low enough to the water that we have to either hug the warehouse wall (with its windows of deeper night where the moon can’t get) or the crumbled concrete shore of the plaza (with its scorched memorials that remind us of too much). Rena tells me to choose which side tonight.
I can’t decide in time; we wind up in the middle. Rena lifts the electric line with the oar while Powell and I paddle with our hands. Slow passage while heat lightning vibrates behind the clouds. Powell doesn’t look at me. He hasn’t hesitated when he got to choose.
Goosebumps up the back of my arms, a chill like a pinch on the back of my neck: we’re in. We don’t paddle, just let the current tug us on. It might not work, might be another wasted night. Only two nights left of the week we paid Rena for.
She clatters around under the woodslat seat, comes up with a cassette tape, plastic case yellow as antique ivory. Clicks it into the openface player, slaps play. “Bohemian Rhapsody,” echoes tiny off the ranks of basalt going up on either side of the water like steps or arena rows. All the tapes in Rena’s shoebox squeak and warble; all are singers who knew what death would take them. We hope to ride some echo of their courage.
We wait.
We wait.
Scaramouche.
Scaramouche.
And the fog does part, and we do go through, into open water, where the moon is like a low ceiling, its reflection like a shivering floor. Night inverts to day and we’re back where we started, but we’re back years before the end.
We climb up uncrumbled stairs to an unruined plaza. Within six hours, one of us will melt like fog back into our future, our life after all this is gone. The other will just melt to nothing, to nowhere.
I look at the stranger crowd, the stores, the shining cars. It’s been twenty years since ice cream.
Behind me a splash, shouts.
Rena drags herself out of the water. Powell oars away.
“I’ll get the boat back,” she says. “I’ll wait for him. If I’m not here, you wait.”
She pulls a soaked roll of old money from her pocket. “Meanwhile, I’m going shopping. Want anything?”
I try to remember which flavor was my favorite.
On Not Giving Back the Devil’s Hat
Wednesday, February 18th, 2009
In Monday’s story, Susannah brought us a cutting from Goodwife Python’s Bestiary of Wonderful Flowers that contained the line, “Do not give [the devil] back his hat.”
I second this exhortation because, from firsthand experience, I know how true it is.
A few years ago, I worked as coat check clerk at a Nephelim bar in the theater district, back when it was still more of a semi-abandoned warehouse district. We had a list of rules, written by the owner in red Sharpie on pizza box cardboard, and not giving the devil his hat was number 5.
It was like a practical joke or a running gag between the boss and the fallen one. We had a whole lead-lined room in the basement full of hats, each on its own Styrofoam head, all under a continual mist of holy water. Each — cowboy hat, bowler, knit black watch cap, velvet beret — had two little holes for the horns, but even without that, you would have known. The heaviness in the pit of your stomach would have told you.
The thing about the hats is that they concealed something even more powerfully troubling: the devil’s haircut. That’s right, like the Beck song — where other cultures have proverbs, we distill wisdom for future generations in pop culture. It was different every time, sculpted hair-by-hair with some infernal product, each ‘do an unforgettable, mind-burning sigil, like crop circles or mandalas whose meaning you never wanted to know. But I digress.
It all went well enough until the day the devil didn’t just roll his eyes at the excuse du jour.
“Yeah. Fine. Never mind about the hat,” he said. “I know better than to wear anything decent here. But,” he dropped his voice to a conspiratorial pitch Eve might have recognized, “there’s a feather in the brim, and I’d like that back.”
There wasn’t anything on the cardboard about feathers, and the boss said to treat him like anyone else (except the hat thing), so I headed downstairs. The foam heads howled; the sprinklers misted what looked and smelled like blood. The only hat with a feather was the fedora I grabbed.
“Thanks,” said the devil. “Last one.” He twitched his shoulders. “Souvenir of the wings that were.”
A tip smoldered on the counter, generous enough — once the gold congealed again — but I quit. When the devil starts noticing you, however positively, it’s time to look for more anonymous work. Please, forget you heard any of this. Just remember the hats.