Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me Read online

  Another drag, maybe flee, steal someone’s car.

  “Good shit, ain’t it?” asked the vampire.

  “Dynamite, baby, but get your paws out of my pocket.”

  The monkey uncoiled and leered at them.

  What in my hand?

  He looked down at his side and found his fingers entwined with others. They belonged to the girl in the green knee-socks, who was looking not at him but at the monkey.

  She was actually holding his hand.

  Finally she looked at Gnossos and asked in a gentle, but preoccupied tone, “Could you get me out of here a little?”

  At the far end of the loft an anonymous couple had just stepped over the body of the hairy little man with the narghile and entered the chamber with the metal door. Again there was the sound of a clacking bolt.

  The quarter tones of the sitar rose and fell across the drone of conversation. The spider monkey emitted a sharp, shattering squeal and urinated on the wall.

  Judy Lumpers had the joint in her mouth, drawing. She looked up at him, shaking her head to indicate that just yet, nothing much was happening. He touched her brow with a thumb and zipped up his parka.

  “If you have a moment—” Youngblood began.

  “Maybe later, man.”

  The editor looked at the South American, who nodded and said, “We wait.”

  “Don’t hold your breath,” he told them. Then to the girl: “C’mon, man,” taking her by the hand, bringing her out into the night.

  Mustn’t ever let a chance go by.

  8

  At the Black Elks downtown there was nobody else white.

  They went there directly from the loft in a stolen Anglia, pausing only for traffic lights and every other stop sign. Test the odds, keep your hand in play. Gnossos had been away for over a year, but they remembered him at the door and made a show of his return. Everybody gave some skin all around and the menace went out of the night like bad-egg fumes through a bleeder valve in a gale-force sea breeze. He gave a little of the Mojo mixture to Fat Fred Faun, who took care of the peephole; a little to Spider Washington, who blew vibes; and a little to Southside, who checked hats whether or not you wore one. Saint Nicholas feeding the pussycats.

  “Groovy chic,” he explained in a whisper, “keeps a razor in her brassière.”

  “What about you?”

  “She digs me, baby, I’m all right.”

  And the Elks who didn’t know him knew him soon enough. They came over, saying, “We heard about you, man” and “What’s happening?” And he’d say, “This is Kristin McCleod; she hasn’t been around here before,” giving out the grass as he spoke; and they’d look over her green knee-socks and say it was all right, everything was cool, have a sweet time with Sophocles, their name for Gnossos. But Pooh Bear was what she called him, just the same, ignoring his uneasy protests, not going for the keeper-of-the-flame business, saying no, she wouldn’t have it, vestal virgins fed the fire, and he didn’t get the part. Fat Fred Faun at the peephole, who had once listened to an eighty-minute monologue on membranes, giggled and told her, “You talkin’ to the right head all right, if you talkin’ flame-keepin’ an’ like that to Sophocles.” Gnossos trying to cover it up by asking Spider Washington for Night in Tunisia, being careful how he put it, since Spider had cut the lip off a blonde Deke in a white seersucker suit three years before and still wanted the club black.

  “He doesn’t look mean,” Kristin whispered.

  “Baby, there’s just no such thing as a bad boy.”

  So Spider played it for them and they danced, Gnossos showing her how but coming on no stronger than he had to.

  “Not a bad fit,” she said, pressing cautiously against him.

  “That’s right,” he answered, trying to do something with his maniacal, toothy grin, feeling better every minute.

  And Kristin, who was also grinning, said, “I like your friends. Better than the crowd at the barn, I mean.” She was smoking a straight Philip Morris, keeping her arm around his neck, having to bring her mouth over his shoulder, close to his throat, whenever she wanted a puff. Gnossos had stopped smoking anything but was still high enough for a rolling buzz. “Bad-ass scene, that loft. Monkeys, baby, monkeys and wolves, I’ll tell you all about it sometime.” The clapboard room was dark except for a single neon tube that glowed against the purple ceiling, angular chromatic designs splayed over the fissured surface, reflected there from the crumpled yard of aluminum foil that served as indirect-exposure motif. Twice a train rumbled by the downstairs window, not six feet from the building, Lehigh Valley going nowhere, whistle blasting its ominous discord with the alto sax. The Elks and their women were dressed in narrow suits and pug bowties and high heels and chukka boots and Mother Hubbards and short skirts, and little hats like Fat Fred’s, brims down against the ears, everybody dancing or sitting around taking it easy.

  They took a table finally, letting their knees touch beneath it, ordering drinks. Kristin clasped her hand around his forearm, the same hand she had used at the loft when the vampire had had her hand in his pocket, then tried bringing him closer so she could whisper again. But he went over too quickly and they bumped heads, crashing against the space between each other’s eyes. Fat Fred looked as if he would roll on the floor and Spider Washington lost so much control he had to give away his solo.

  “Ouch, man,” came the chuckle.

  “Oh, I’m sorry—”

  “It’s like an anvil, wow—”

  “I didn’t mean—”

  Rubbing the spot, “That’s okay, only our heads.”

  “Really, are you sure?”

  “It’s all right. Dry your tears, can’t bear to see women weep.”

  She laughed, and wiped her eyes with a sleeve. “I’m glad they thought it was funny, anyway.”

  Gnossos watching her carefully, listening for a hint, an echo of something insipid in the inflection, hoping in fact to find it, wanting the flaw. But there was nothing. Sow a seed of cynic, pocket full of lye. Her eyes were marble-brown and confounded his attempts at metaphor. Pictures instead, animated in gilded baroque frames. In bed, wearing a flowered muslin nightdress that buttoned to her throat, her loafers tumbled sideways on the floor. Satin sheets, a monster of a goosedown quilt for snuggling; her grandmother’s patches looking like the loamy fields out the window. Old pennies tossed under the pillow for luck, features rubbed smooth, good for finding in the morning, copper warm from her body. Mustn’t let them fall on the rug, luck would run out, perish in a vacuum cleaner.

  “You like it here okay? No menace?”

  “With you, no. I mean yes, no menace.”

  “It’s all in front, man, they have a heart thing going for them, comes from having the Man around all the time, too many enemies. Heffalump’s the cat to talk to, not me. C’mon, let’s dance some more, I like the way you move around.”

  “We fit,” she told him again.

  And without unreasonable effort they slid into Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting, Spider playing it in lazy three-four time, Gnossos’ particular preference in tempos, keeping the blue chords under the whole while, letting Murtagh on cornet tease the melody into what sounded like the southeast end of Nashville and all the way home again. They danced throughout the entire trip, their heads describing syncopated arcs.

  Drinks were waiting at the table, and recognizing them Gnossos said: “Man I don’t believe it. Rye and mother ginger, too splendid.” He sat down satisfied, slapping his leg; Kristin not seeming to understand but seeing his pleasure, coming around to him, putting her arms over his shoulders, and appreciating the finger he dunked into one of the glasses. He tested the drink with his tongue, remembered the taste from his childhood in Brooklyn, shrugged away the memory, and took a sip. She flicked his hair back from over his ears, and Southside came over with a card that read Compliments of the House. He could see from her eyes where she’d been.

  “Some powerful grass,” she told him.

  “It’s a mixtur
e, honey, you won’t believe it, they call it Mixture—”

  “Sixty-nine,” she cackled, then repeated it, “Sixty-nine,” pointing at him with a long, bangled finger, shaking it, making them all laugh together. (At different things, he tried to remind Kristin with a glance, all at different things. Her hands were still on his neck and she squeezed, perhaps reading his meaning. Too good, it’s all too good.) “Southside,” he said, “you know who this is?”

  “No, man,” she said, looking lazily at Kristin, who was still not sitting down.

  “This is Piglet, honey, you know who Piglet is?”

  “Piglet?” she asked. “What’s Piglet?”

  “Right here,” using his thumb to show.

  “That there?”

  “That’s Piglet.”

  “What’s happening, man?”

  “You want to know?”

  “Give me the word.”

  “I’ll tell you true.”

  “Lay it right down.”

  “She turns me on.”

  “Yeah?”

  “She turns me on, man.”

  “Yeah,” said Southside, “you know what’s happening, all right. This boy here,” talking to Kristin, “he lay it down, we pick it up. He got the mixture—”

  “Sixty-nine,” said Kristin, still standing behind Gnossos at the table, pressing her stomach against his back through the slats in the chair.

  It came up like a periscope. “Let’s dance again,” she said.

  Jesus, impossible to stand, getting longer. “Have some highball, relax a little.” Southside, in a white linen dress, belted out a sudden, high-pitched laugh, the squeal soaring right over the threshold of hearing, then stood and pranced around them both. “Daynce?” she asked finally, “daynce? Man, that Sophocles ain’ gonna be able to walk.” She pranced right back to her chair and sat down, sipping once from each of their glasses.

  Change the subject, think of Santa Claus, baseball, someone will see. “Sixty-nine,” he began but as soon as he spoke the name, Southside shrieked again and fell over backward in her chair. She lay on the floor, giggling, her high-heeled shoes sticking up in the air, her hands on her stomach. Spider was playing Lonesome Avenue and couples were dancing. Gnossos picked her up with the assistance of Fat Fred, whose huge, oil-barrel belly was hanging over his belt. “No, honey,” he tried again, laughing with her, “I only wanted to know how you knew the name.”

  “Name, man?”

  “Of the mixture, baby.”

  She fell over again, screaming with delight, and this time they all left her there because she looked as if she wanted it that way.

  At the peephole, when they were putting on their coats to leave, Fat Fred wrapped his heavy arms around them and asked, “Gnossos man, this is some powerful shit you got goin’ here. You mean to tell me,” lowering his voice, pulling them closer, “that this here’s the article?” His little maroon hat was pushed over on his eyebrows.

  “Like I said, Fred.”

  “Man, you’re the lily of the valley.”

  “Amen,” said Kristin, surprising both of them.

  “You’ve had it before?” from Gnossos, fishing.

  “Man, ain’t nobody round here ever got none of this since Spider’s baby brother made it in Cuba. They got a cat, man, you wouldn’t believe, call him the Buddha, somethin’ like that.”

  “That right?”

  “Ain’t nobody ever seen that one. He got the opal in his forehead. He wear the robes, he has the gold chain on his neck from the Masai, man. An’ he big. Come on like King Kong, they talk about him. But ain’t nobody seen him is the thing. He cruises in the night, man, he got secrets, he never out of the shadows. Some say that what he does, he meditates.”

  “He’s the rosebud,” said Gnossos.

  “That’s right,” said Fat Fred, “maybe the last one of the bunch too. An’ this here’s his shit you laid on us tonight, don’t tell me no different. All’s I know is who’s the lily of the valley. Little skin, man.”

  They shook hands again, Gnossos holding a flap of the parka in front of him with an elbow, the erection having only slightly wilted. Fred checked the peephole and opened the door, everyone waving a lazy so-long except for Southside, whose feet were still sticking straight up into the neon-colored air. Once again they stepped through the night, feeling their way.

  The only light in the burnished room came from a damp, sizzling fire. It shone just brightly enough to throw their shadows over the Navajo rug, across the floor, past the plywood table, and up against the door. But still he hadn’t touched her. Now and again a coal hissed out of the fire with a crackling pop, arched through the air, and bounced on the rug. Whenever it happened, they took turns scooping it up with spoons and tossing it back. Their faces flickered in the warm coral, yellow, white, violet, blue, and black. Gnossos lay on his spine for temptation, hands folded under his head, nose not eight inches from Kristin’s knees. She sat on her heels, and the length of firm, nearly hairless skin between the top of her socks and the hem of her skirt drove him to quiet distraction. He bent a leg to cool the old scope. Ambivalent ploy, he’d never hidden it before. The Radcliffe muse bringing his coffee to the magenta motel room the morning after the bomb, wearing her flowered muu-muu, padding in barefoot, long black hair brushing the tray. Zoom, up it had gone, propping the sheet like a mizzenmast: Ship ahoy, she had said, what’s that? her guess entirely correct.

  “What are you thinking?” asked Kristin.

  “Who, me?”

  He looked at the fire just as a coal popped onto the rug. Kristin leaned over his chest to get it. He could have held her there but he hesitated. Then she was out of reach and it was too late. “That wolf I mentioned once, that’s all.”

  “The fantasy kind?”

  “No, baby, the Adirondacks.”

  She smiled. “Judy mentioned something about that. All your friends thought you were dead.”

  “Who’s Judy?”

  Kristin making a sign of huge breasts, blanking her face to look like the Lumpers girl.

  “Oh yeah. Trying to will me out of the picture.” Maniac Greek safer as a legend.

  “Will you?”

  “They all want me down, dig? Give them something to talk about at Guido’s.”

  “But you sound bitter. You’re supposed to like taking chances.”

  “That’s right. Makes the nights better. Like when nothing else is happening, you court the doom-beasties, you know?”

  “Not exactly. How could I?” she asked. Three fingers of her right hand went to his shoulder, then back to the rug. “How could anyone really, when you love talking in ciphers? Couldn’t you just tell me?”

  “Show you, maybe. Pooh leading Piglet through the Hundred Acre Wood, and all like that.”

  Her eyes reading the implication, letting only part of it in. “But tell me anyway, can’t you?”

  Gnossos looking down, being silent for a long while, what the hell, no time for anything else. Old teller of tales. He traced the pattern of the rug with his spoon. One direction, then the other. “There was a lake, for one. That’s where it’s really at, the lake. But you’ve got to have it out in front. You’re sure you want to get all involved?”

  “Probably. A little at a time.”

  “Yeah, okay. Close your eyes.”

  “My eyes?”

  “That’s right.” He checked and she had. “Now, it’s winter to start with, like Christmas cards, pine trees, everything gray-white and hazy-looking.”

  “Is it snowing?”

  “No, man, it’s too cold. Everything is quiet, kind of gloomy, nothing moving at all. You don’t even suspect motion, it’s so still. You know about still?”

  “I think so.”

  “Okay, the lake is frozen about four inches, maybe more, strong enough for a horse and cutter, if you dug that. You could make a run three miles, easy, to the north, and a mile, oh, three quarters of a mile, across. Now, right in the middle, very erect, like a natural fortress
of some kind, there’s this pine island. The trees are really spectacular, they go up ninety feet, and all the branches are on top, sagging from the weight of the snow.”

  “Yes, it’s getting easier.”

  “Only, don’t let the island idea throw you. You can walk out to it, right? The lake is frozen, you can step up on one shore and down off the other. In the mornings, this is providing you get up, you can watch the mink, sometimes ermine, run out and disappear. You have to keep your eyes closed now, no peeking, it’s all in the palpebral vision if you want a buzz.”

  “I promise.”

  “Think of the snow on the lake then. Powdery, light, high, good for snowshoes. Sometimes the wind dips in and spins it off in these giant swirls, like the runners on an alpine sleigh. Can you make the lake at all? There’s a cabin with wood smoke coming out of it, just on the shore there, smoked-up windows, tracks around it, a woodpile, and like that.”

  “Umm,” she answered, grinning, her hands holding her elbows. “What kind of sky is there?”

  “Gray, very low. If you have a nose for this kind of thing, you know there’s snow in the clouds. But it can’t come down because of all the cold out in front. You make the lake, for instance, to chop through the ice for drinking water, and the snow under your boots is squeaky. That’s where the cold is at. Below zero, but you don’t know how much. All right, for a long time you’re into rabbits, sometimes birds, partridge, they’re all in the trees, the partridge I mean, from the cold, it’s too frozen to find food on the ground and they have to eat buds, mostly spruce buds. When you cook them, unless you use a lot of salt, they taste like trees. And the deer are moving around, but they’re all still young, and anyway there’s plenty with the birds and rabbits, and you’ve got a pantry: creamed corn, hash, zucchini, codfish cakes. A lot of the time you read, or watch things out the window, or walk on top of the drifts with snowshoes.”

  “I can see it a little better now.”

  “Okay, you’re bundled up cozy one night, good fire, little bit of lush, Coltrane on the machine, and it’s getting darker, no twilight or sunset, because of the low overcast. But darker just the same, and something’s happening on the other side of the lake, a big dog poking around maybe. Then he’s gone, just as you take notice. So you forget it and have a little more lush and eat dinner and later mention how you saw this thing going on. Now, the person you’re with says it sounds unlikely. Unlikely, right? I mean, a dog would know about people staying in the cabin from the smell, and come to sniff around. There’s nobody else living in that part of the country, and he’d be hungry or lonely or something. So the next morning you check it all out and the tracks are way too big for a dog’s. But just the same, you don’t come out and say what you’re thinking because it would be too soap-opera and who knows, maybe it was a Saint Bernard. One other thing you notice though, and that’s the deer beds. Where the snow is pawed away and they lie down on the moss after nibbling for a while. It’s the only warm-looking place in the woods.”