Jay Fox - THE WALLS

“It's the streetlights. They bother my eyes.” He does not follow this up with an explanation, nor does he mention the context of the stanza he just recited. He is suddenly silent, driven. He walks into the first deli we come across, buys a pack of cigarettes, a large candy bar, and two pairs of sunglasses. He offers the pack to each of us after lighting up. I take one; Tomas declines. Patrick then hands each of us a pair of glasses. We accept, but don't say anything besides the obvious gratuity.

The three of us travel south. Patrick moves both swiftly and intrepidly. Tomas and I follow with apprehensive steps. No one says anything until we are walking under the Williamsburg Bridge. “I am a part of all that I have met,” Patrick begins with an odd rhythm, as he is more than likely reciting a poem; “Yet all experience is an arch where through gleams that untraveled world whose margin fades for ever and for ever when I move.”

We continue for another few blocks. I finally break the relative silence. “Where are we going?”

“It's on this street,” Patrick replies. “I think it's another four or five blocks south.” He opens the candy bar at this point and breaks off a rather sizable chunk. “Here,” he says to Tomas. “I received an extra twenty percent. It stands to reason that this additional portion of candy must be relinquished.” Tomas receives it with hesitance. I decline his, Tomas', subsequent offer.

As we approach a door leading to what appears a small factory, Patrick looks back to us. “Just smile,” he says. “That's the only thing you need to get in.” The street is silent, eerie, and heavily industrial. “Oh, and put on the sunglasses.” We do so. Patrick rings the buzzer.

The open door unleashes what sounds like a ragtime quartet — piano, bass, drums, clarinet. “Do you have business attending a festival of the A-R-E?” an elfish girl with perfect teeth asks. She wears sunglasses, a blue, conical party hat that reads “Everybody Wang Chung!” in golden script, and a yellow prom dress with large pink and purple flowers of satin that appear to have blossomed out of her left shoulder. She is wearing neither shoes nor socks. Beyond the glasses and the hat, she is without accessory.

“Yes, I am here to embrace the eidolons.”

“Are you an acolyte?”

“Indeed.” There is a sudden shrillness in his voice, a conservation of speech that is abnormal and almost patrician. She squints. “ Honi soit qui mal y pense .”

“Whatever you do,” Tomas whispers to me, “Don't drink the Kool-Aid.”

“French?” She shows her teeth again, begins to almost snicker. Avoided the obvious reference to pearls or words containing the prefix 'nacre-', I instead think of baby teeth and the way in which we are all clutching an aspect of youth that resonates too powerfully in some, of how our own recollections of self are projected upon others with vivid colors and glaring distortions, abstractions; sometimes these mutated forms even sidle behind the reflection in the mirror, translucent like ghosts.

“These men are outsiders, but they have come with me in search of Coprolalia,” Patrick responds with poorly contrived gallantly. (Had he been sober, he may have said the following: “Fair wench, we beseech thee but the modest proposal of sojourning for the evening, as we seek a man who hath inherited the blessing of the most august Muses.” The begs the question, of course, which Muse would have visited Mordecai?) She focuses her eyes upon Tomas and me as though studying faint images in the distance. “Shun not these gentlemen; their request to find an elusive artist leads them here only out of necessity.”

Her countenance is suddenly a conjunction of pensiveness and patience. Does she judge us? Of course she does; she is human. After a few moments of being confronted with Patrick's sturdy glare, however, she lets out an echoing laugh and abandons the charade of speaking in bastardized Victorian English. “Come on in,” as she pushes the door open a bit wider. “Daphne, Aaron, Lucas, Sam, and Andreas should be finishing up their set fairly soon. I don’t know the guys they're playing with, but they are really on a roll.” She embraces Patrick. “Why are you so late?”

“I had to meet up with these two,” he says before kissing her on the cheek. The kiss itself is polite, a platitude of physical contact. Tomas is intrigued.

“Hi,” she says as she turns to us. She then sticks out her hand to me. “Name's Boots.”

“Boots,” Tomas says with a matter-of-fact nod. Boots and Patrick walk ahead. “If she's Boots, then my name must be Foot,” Tomas whispers as he nudges me in the side.

The door closes behind us. Even without the sunglasses, I'm fairly sure that I would be blinded by the darkness, but I follow the sound of the music, which is occasionally interrupted by a dull, reverberating thud. It sounds like a tennis pro launching serves at a piece of drywall. We turn a corner; I can see a dim light outlining a door. The song comes to an end, a clamor of applause ensues, and the percussive exclamation point once again rattles the building. The door opens.

The band is comprised not only of upright bass, piano, drum kit, and clarinet, but of guitar, trumpet, and sax, too. A man dressed to look like Vincent Price, greased mustache and all, appears to be the singer. The inaugural notes of “Minnie the Moocher” accompany our entry. No one pays any attention to us, as almost everyone is focused on the band. Patrick and Boots abscond, leaving Thomas and I by the door.

The spacious venue is less a loft, perhaps more of a gutted factory — the main chamber of which is capable of holding well over one hundred people comfortably. This is the room in which we find ourselves, awkwardly hugging the wall and listening to an extended instrumental introduction, which features a terrific solo on muted horn.

The loud thuds heard from the hallway are projectiles — oranges, to be exact — launched from a massive slingshot. The bombardment does not seem to have a reason; it is just a thing the people on the balcony above have decided to do in order to occupy the time. A man wearing a diaper and a Pickelhaube leads them. He gives his command in what I’m fairly certain is German. The projectiles from the citrus artillery — coming from about thirty feet to our right — pass over the people crowding around the stage — which is directly in front of us — and then smash into a wall that stands about forty feet to our left. There is a bullseye painted about twenty-five feet above the floor, its center no bigger than a foot in diameter (the area of the entire design is roughly fifty times that of the center — i.e. seven feet in diameter). The center of this target is about twenty feet ahead of us, just about halfway between the wall against which we stand and the beginning of the stage. Regardless of how close they come to the target, each collision provokes an elated cheer from about a quarter of those on the floor, especially the few nudists trying to catch some of the raining pulp and rind in their mouths. The stairs that lead up to the second floor hug the wall opposite the bullseye. A few observers lean on the balustrade, each with stereotypically Russian appearances: squared facial features, men with beards, women with babushkas, the androgynous customers shopping distant looks more sinister than demure. There are two doors up there, as well as two beneath the balcony. The kitchen is directly to our right, an alcove between the wall against which Tomas and I stand and the wall that begins where the stairs do. The depth of the kitchen is probably fifteen feet or so; it contains an island topped by a pyramid of beer cans (a byramid) and features a lot of really fancy equipment that has never been used — this deduction comes from an abundance of shrink-wrap and a cleanliness that is more sterile than tidy. There are two doors on the wall being sieged by the onslaught of oranges, one that clearly leads to a bathroom as what seems to be a line has formed outside of it. The other door is closed and invites little interest. The only windows capable of ventilating the place are probably behind the stage. It is impossible to tell, however, because an array of calico curtains have been thrown up to keep the interior shielded from prying eyes. The kitchen has one small window, but it is made of thick glass blocks that distort the pale light coming from the street.