Steve Erickson - Arc d'X

They laughed at the ludicrousness of how black he was and how white she was, how pale she’d be to his penetration, as dark as the deepest passages of the Arboretum or the ashen Vog that circulated its hallways. Wade gazed on her vacancy in wonder at how it was big enough to receive the white rage of his heart, the white pain of his having arrested the previous afternoon a woman whose file was white, whose past was black, whose whiteness or blackness was blank. The vacancy of Mona’s soul could receive Wade’s rage and pain without either of them making the slightest impression on her except for the way their sensations pleased her or interrupted her boredom; Wade believed if he could just ravish this blond child in the wide-open spaces of her vacant soul he would not only free himself of the way Sally Hemings’ captivity revolted his conscience, but celebrate it. Mona was the refutation of everything Sally stirred in Wade, including the sound of chains that followed him all day and night. If Wade could have opened up Sally and split her in two, he believed the opposite who would have stepped out of Sally’s dark voluptuous rubble was Mona; at this moment he saw and felt all this even as he couldn’t identify it in the dark. Perhaps all he saw was his anticipation of the time to come when he would wish he’d never laid eyes on Mona. It was, however, Mona’s job to be laid eyes on. She liked the men at her feet; more than anything else it may have been why she danced at the Fleurs d’X, for the way men had to look up at her, leaning their heads so far back it was difficult for them to breathe. They had to gasp for air just to catch the merest glimpse of what she showed them, and it seemed to her an entirely reasonable price for them to pay.

When he passed out, he heard her laughing in his ear. From down in his unconsciousness, as his bulk slid from the chair to the floor, there bubbled up to his mouth a gurgle of laughter in return.

He woke in the dark, the lights of the stage above his head gone dead. He pulled himself up on the chair and looked around at the club, which was empty but for a single dancer on one of the far stages, dancing to a single customer while several other men lay sprawled on the floor to the side. One of the dancers worked the bar; Dee was gone. Mona was gone. Walking out of the Fleurs d’X, Wade held his hands before him as though the doorway wasn’t real but an artist’s rendering. He was almost disappointed when it allowed him to leave.

Sliding around the corner of the passage he continued blindly ahead. He’d gone some way, turning several corners and moving the length of several passageways, before he vaguely realized nothing was familiar. The light and air were dank and the walls close, and suddenly the whiskey inside him lurched to his throat and he vomited on the floor. “How do I get out,” he whispered. He turned another corner to find himself back at the Fleurs d’X, two naked girls in the doorway watching him approach. “Oh,” he said, when he slammed the palm of his hand into one of their faces and it was nothing but a flat wall. He continued to barrel down hallways that became tighter and tighter, becoming more and more lost until he stepped through a doorway and found himself almost tumbling down a hole, catching himself on the rail of the stairwell that had originally brought him from the surface.

Outside the Arboretum, in the Vog of dawn, he lay across the front seat of his car. Before he dozed off he promised he would never see her again. It wasn’t a prayer; Wade didn’t pray, one of the few acts of subversion he allowed himself. I’ll never see her again, he repeated, and then asked, Her? wondering to whom he made the promise, and which of two women he meant. At police headquarters no one said anything to him. No one asked where he’d been all the day before, or why he looked the way he did. After a while he felt almost clean and unscathed, as though nothing had happened. Throughout the day he got up and walked over to the window to look out and see what time of day it was and feel therefore that his life was real after all. Sometimes he caught Mallory glancing over at him, but decided today he wouldn’t worry about political intrigues; at any moment he might get a call from Central to explain why he’d released Sally Hurley, but this had the potential for being just a bit more overwhelming than he could deal with, so he dismissed it. He wanted to go home and sleep, and late in the afternoon he did.

He lived at Circle Four in Humiliation. He arrived during an altar-room alert, from which he was exempt; he drew the curtains of the windows and lay on his bed in his darkened unit listening to the radio before drifting off.

He woke in the middle of the night and looked out the window. The Vog enveloped the blue obelisk at the center of the circle. He wanted to have Mona in the Vog against the white of the circle in the middle of the night. Against the white where no one would see her and against the night where no one would see him and they would be invisible this way, all that would be seen was the drama of their loins, the black of his rod and the pale red of her rose. The next day he had the distinct feeling of things slipping away. Over and over he read Sally Hurley aka Hemings’ file. What would he say if they asked why he let her go? He kept feeling Mallory watching him. In the afternoon he left headquarters, driving through the city across Downtown and the Market. He pulled the car over at the corner of Desolate and Unrequited and walked down the alley to the day’s graffiti.

It said, I DREAMED THAT LOVE WAS A CRIME.

He got back in the car and drove out of Downtown. He was back on the road that ran between the city and the lava fields; driving through the merciless black shadow of the volcano. The shadow went on and on, it didn’t seem to end. Shouldn’t there be an end to this shadow? he asked himself. He parked for a while, perplexed by the endlessness of the shadow; but he wasn’t in the shadow of the volcano anymore, he was in the shadow of something else. Last night he just sort of lost his head, he told himself. Took a wrong turn somewhere and got confused. Drank too much whiskey, for one thing. Too much damned whiskey and not keeping his head straight: he wouldn’t make that mistake again.

Her breasts were so round. Not so large, not so small: round and perfect like her little baby teeth. The thrilling vacancy of her laugh when she took his money.

Three stages were open in the Fleurs d’X, three dancers. One was the girl who had brought him his whiskey the night before; now, writhing across the stage, she was well served by the extravagance of her breasts. He knew it was hours before Mona came on. He sat at the side of the room and signaled one of the other girls for a drink. Not too many whiskeys today, he assured himself. Maybe he wouldn’t even wait for Mona, maybe he’d leave before she came. From over behind the bar Dee brought Wade’s drink herself and sat down beside him. Wade put some money on the table and threw the drink back, just to get things started. Not too many today.

“You like one of my girls?” Dee said.

“I’ve reevaluated the matter of her tits,” Wade answered, still watching the dancer on the stage.

“Mona has an early shift tonight,” said Dee, “your lucky night. Mine too, because it means she’s on before most of the sailors get here and that means fewer customers you’ll be tossing around the room. Let’s not let things get out of hand this time.”

“I’ll decide when things are out of hand,” Wade said. “That’s my job, to decide when things are out of hand.”

“Is that what you’re doing, your job?”

“I want another of these,” he said to the shot glass. “Not too many today, but I’ll have another. When does she come?”