Sister Midnight's Calling: 1
Hampton Bays, NY, 1986
Christopher shakes out a cigarette with his right hand, lights it with his left, and doesn't takes his eyes off the small TV sitting on the counter behind the bar. The Knicks aren't going to make the playoffs, but they are giving the Cavaliers a good run, and when the home team decides to show up to play, you take what you can get and are grateful you get that much. He picks up the shot glass next to the bottle in front of him, brings it to his lips and realizes it's empty.
"Hey Charlie, hit me again, would ya?"
Charlie who is leaning on the bar a few feet to Chris's right, eyes fixed on the screen, grunts, slides over, pulls the whiskey from the rail, turns and pours. Both men groan as Louis Orr gets called on a foul. "Fuckin' refs."
Charlie grunts his agreement, slides to the right, turns and folds his arms on his chest. For a second, Chris thinks, as he's thought many times before, of asking Charlie how old he is. Charlie's has been behind this bar since Chris' father had been sitting in these stools, before he'd fucked off to Florida with that tramp. His father never failed to mention Charlie's long standing service during their annual compulsory visits.
This made Chris think of his mother. Those last months, in their little two bedroom house. The house had been the smarted thing his father'd ever done, and he'd at least not been so big a shitbag to try and fight for it in the divorce. It had, at least, meant his mother had been able to spend the last years of her life in her own home.
The picture of her, frail, sunken cheeks and eyes, wrapped in that ratty ass robe she wouldn’t let him replace, feet in those ridiculous pink slippers with the fake fur, staring at the television. The dynamic woman he’d grown up with, who spent every minute she could in summer with a rod in her hand or in the water, relegated to a being a prisoner in her own living room, chained to an oxygen tank. He could see the mask on her chin while she took a break to regale him the doings of the days “stories,” as she liked to call the cheap soaps she retreated into during the day.
He could feel that familiar weight sinking into his chest as he tried to reconcile the picture of her in those last months with the memory of her on the beach that day, the day his mind had returned to over the last three years as he’d watched her wither. He always wished he could remember what he’d said, but it was lost, replaced by some other piece of memory his mind deemed more important at some point. She had a hat on, one of those big straw beach hats, with a band around it, printed with a riot of intermixed flowers of different colors. In the hand connected to the elbow she was leaning on as she looked at him, one of those mystery novels she devoured voraciously.
The memory always began with her looking at him, listening, and whatever he’d said had made that crooked smile on her face burst into her full throated laugh, and he could practically hear it. It was without self consciousness. She wasn’t the kind of woman who covered her mouth and giggled. She laughed, like she was releasing something that couldn’t and shouldn’t be controlled. He was probably ten that day, but he’d always loved making her laugh. It was one of his favorite things in the world and it was that day he realized it. She threw her head back, letting that sound float out over the sand, and he’d realized how much he loved it, how much he loved her, that she wasn’t just the woman who made him brush his teeth or cleaned his skinned knee and made him clean up after himself, but that he loved her and she was beautiful. He knew men thought she was beautiful. He’d heard her dad tease her about some of the men from around town, finding excuses to talk to her at the grocery store or at the summer parties they'd sometimes had or attended. Chris had grown accustomed to them looking at her, in the way men do, as they stood in line or sat in waiting rooms or walked down the street. He was on the cusp of being old enough to understand all of that, but didn't yet. The fierceness of her love and her joy made her beautiful to him though, outside of and disconnected from him. At that moment, he realized his mother was beautiful to him in a way he hadn’t understood existed before that.
He didn’t know it at the time, but that was the summer his father met Jeannie, and the sound of his mother’s laughter had brought his father and his brother, Steven, back over to their blanket on their spot on the beach. They’d been tossing a football back and forth, trying to make each other dive into the shallows of the Bay. His father proposed going to dinner, for burgers and shakes or ice cream at the diner when they were done.
Dinner at the diner was a treat for Chris and Steven back then. At least the ice cream and shakes were. They weren’t exactly poor, but they didn’t live like most of their closest neighbors either. There were a few others not far from their house, living bayside, who were either old enough to have bought before the real money had bought up all the bayside property in West Hampton, Easthampton, Southampton and the rest of eastward townships or they’d inherited from parents or family who had. Chris father had bought their little house with the money from the settlement resulting from his father's death in a factory accident. It was the only way he'd ever have been able to afford a bayside house, even back in the sixties. His family really belonged north of Montauk highway, but luck, and one of the few acts of real forethought in his father's life had worked out. By the time Chris was ten, on their little dead end road and it's surrounding streets had been scooped up by the upwardly mobile who lived in the city, picking up houses in Hampton Bays, in hopes they’d end up with a combination of summer getaway and an investment which would one day help them afford to buy in the “real Hamptons.” It was a bayside property after all, not oceanside, and it was in Hampton Bays, where the cooks, waiters, shop workers, bartenders and so on all stayed when those summer businesses opened and were in need of a staff of a professional enough quality to handle the patrons who descended on the East End for three months each year . The city people, cave dwellers as the locals called them, bought in Hampton Bays as a stepping stone, hoping it would be part of the calculus to entering that stratus of “real money.”
Over time the memory of that day on the beach soured though. Later, he’d learn why his father disappeared the following winter, and Chris had begun to imagine the man had spent that day on the beach with them, and then taken them to the diner out of guilt. Had he known it was going to be the last of their good family memories? Did he want to put a fitting cap on all of it, make it all look good, one last time? If he wasn’t already sinking his dick in that home wrecker, he had been certainly trying to. Chris could remember him there, silhouetted with the sun behind him, tall, broad, dripping wet in his swim “trunks” (Chris always thought it a stupid word for bathing suit, and his father only used it to sound like some forties movie star). It was all part of what made him such an effective con artist, to be able to fool everyone they knew into thinking he was a good guy.
And who wouldn’t want to believe it? His parents had been the picture of the American Dream, hadn’t they? The tall, broad shouldered, blue eyed charmer with the Kirk Douglas chin. As perfect an example of the northern Italian stock he came from as one would find. His mother, the petite, hazel eyed beauty with the kind of full, thick, wavy hair, a color red Hollywood ingenues paid good money to imitate. She was even possibly more affable and charming than him. Chris had seen an old picture of a young Lucille Ball in Time or Life or one of those magazines as a teen, and thought his mother shared more than a passing resemblance, and might have been almost as funny, in her dry, sarcastic way.
All that was before though. The early years when things were good. Before they’d suddenly begun to grow cold to each other. Before Chris and Steve had heard short bursts of raised voices behind closed doors. They tried to hide it in those months between that day on the beach and the winter night his father disappeared, but Chris and Steve understood something was up, something was bubbling beneath the surface. Something in the house had changed, like barometric pressure, but different. For the months after that day, into the winter, it was in the way his parents moved around each other, the tone of their voices. It was some years before Chris had realized he hadn’t been hearing that laugh much during those months, maybe not at all. Then, one cold winter night, their father was gone. He just didn't come home.
Their mother had never bad mouthed him to Chris or his brother. She didn’t go out of her way to sugar coat things either, instead trying her best to be as straightforward as possible. He had learned there was ice and steel in her though, when his father called on birthdays or came by to pick them up for what were compulsory week long visits in the summer. She was always polite, Chris would come to learn the nuns had drilled manners and politeness into her with rulers and paddles, but she would become someone else when she spoke of or to their father after it became clear this wasn’t some mid-life crisis. He really wasn’t coming back with his tale between his legs, like some of the men in Chris’s friends houses had. When she saw him or spoke of him, all of that easy flow of who she was would recede into a stillness, behind the pitch in her voice that was impossible to read. He sat there, on the stool at Bub’s, Knicks game playing and realized for the first time, it was the same pitch and stillness she’d used to tell him she was dying, the miracle wasn’t coming and the cancer was going to take her.
The weight on his chest increased, and that empty void that had replaced the security of relying on her existence on the planet opened up. He realized she’d been protecting him and his brother all those years. She’d been protecting them from all of the pain, the feelings of betrayal, the anxiety of abandonment with two boys to raise, and the rage he saw the rarest flash of later. Usually, it was when her sisters were visiting, after they’d had a few beers, and his father came up in conversation. It was always one of her sisters who brought him up, and only when she was just drunk enough to not realize he or Steve could hear or see. The curled lip, the scrape that would appear in her voice, but she would quickly realize he or Steve were watching or listening, she’d snatch it all back in. A raised eyebrow, that crooked smile, and she’d change the subject, her subtle sign that it wasn’t the time.
Sitting there, on that barstool, head swimming with memories, Chris wondered if it would ever stop. It was just over three months. She’d spent her last week in the hospital, when it was clear he could do nothing more to comfort her and the cancer had bloomed in her brain sufficiently that she couldn’t care for herself.. He understood now, he probably should have done something sooner, at least a few weeks before, but at the time, thinking of her dying in a hospital room, when all she’d wanted was to be at home, felt like a betrayal, the idea itself producing shame in him. She’d brought him into the world, wiped his ass, fed him, made sure he was dressed for the cold winter winds off the ocean, the hot, humid summer sun. She'd listened to him babble about Star Trek, Frodo and Sam, Winston Smith and Big Brother through the years. She’d come to as many baseball games as she could, when she wasn’t working. His father might have bagged some silver spoon slut, but the child support was spotty for some years. He was willing to take that woman's money to buy a boat and to get a charter business off the ground, but not to take care of his own kids. He’d gotten her pregnant in short order too, then came the shotgun wedding and the baby that was just an extension of the annoyance of those compulsory visits every summer. “I wish I could see you boys more,” he’d always say, “but, I have to make hay while the sun shines.” He’d take that damn boat back and forth from Florida to New York to catch the summer season, but he couldn’t spare more than a week for the sons he’d abandoned.
Chris could feel it. He was falling into that void. It was going to swallow him if he didn’t stop indulging it, and he says, “Charlie, another please,” noting the edge he hadn’t meant to put in his voice.
Chris isn’t the only one to notice. Charlie’s head whips around, eye brows lifting, then just nodding, repeating that ritual he must’ve practiced a few million times. Chris slugs back shot back and taps the edge of the glass with his finger again, as he takes a swallow from the Bud bottle in front of him, watching with one eye as Charlie repeats the ritual again.
“Thanks Charlie,” Chris says.
“My pleasure, mah boy,” Charlie says. He gives Chris that smile, as practiced as the pull and the pour.
“Charlie, how long…” Chris starts to say, but is interrupted by a bray of laughter and cheers from Kevin Mcpherson and the crew he’s been playing darts with. Before he knows he's even doing it, Chris is barking, “What the fuck? I’m trying to have a conversation over here!”
Mcpherson, Pete Cross, and Mallory Simms turn quickly to look at him. Mal’s mouth opens momentarily, as if to speak, but she thinks better of it. Mcpherson looks at cross, who just shakes his head. When Mcpherson looks back to Chris, he says, “No offense meant. Kat just nailed her first bullseye.”
Kay is the other woman with them, Chris realizes. He doesn’t know her. She’s either new around or maybe someone from one of the other small towns in the surrounding area. He knew everyone who grew up on Hampton Bays or Westhampton. Neither town had a large enough year round population to have their own district, so they all went to school together. Chris thinks this Kay person is probably from up west a bit. Maybe Eastport or something.
He caught the look between Mcpherson and Cross though. Chris was tall like his father, but Steven has inherited the barrel chest and square build. Construction work kept Chris in good shape, but Mcpherson was still three inches taller and had been a linebacker in high school. Cross he could handle. Mcpherson? He’d be a problem. The two of them together could tune him up good if they decided to.
In the middle of contemplating a fist fight with two guys he’d known since childhood and never had more than a playground argument with, Chris realizes he’d also just hollered at Mal Simms, who might just be the most plainly nice person he grew up with. "One of the most inoffensive people I've ever met," he thinks. He notes it isn’t the first time recently he’s snapped at someone without much (or any, if he’s being honest with himself) reason.
Chris picks up his beer, holds it aloft and says, “To you, Miss Kay. Let me buy you guys a round. I apologize, didn’t mean to yell like that. Long day out in this shitty cold.”
A smile spreads across Mal Simms face and Pete Cross says, “Thanks Chris. No worries. We all have our bad days.”
Chris turns to Charlie. “You mind brining them a round on me?”
Charlie says, “If you’re paying, I’ll bring ‘em the keys to Gracie Mansion.”
As Chris watches Charlie pour a pitcher of Bud, carry it over to his former classmates, he thinks about the time a few rich kids stumbled onto a beach party they’d all been at. It was the summer right after graduation, and he was ready to make his big move to The City for NYU. He was sitting on a towel in the sand, a bit away from the fire, talking to Shelly Klein, hoping she might want to fool around. They’d made out a few times that summer, but they both knew it was nothing serious. Shelley was headed to SUNY New Paltz at summer’s end. They’d always gotten along though, been friendly, if not friends, and it was nice to have someone he was comfortable with to pass the wait, expend some of the nervous, anxious energy buzzing under the surface of every second that summer. He figured she felt the same.
He'd watched them come up into the light of the bonfire. Three of them. There was no doubt these were rich kids from the city. The clothes, the boat shoes, the hair cuts. Somebodies Daddy must have had a beach house nearby. He watched as everyone around the fire stopped talking and looked at them. This little gathering was at one of their “local’s spots,” a bit down from the county beach, just past where the occasional patrols by park police ventured. There were a handful of places like this that they used to get away from the cave dwellers during the summer.
These three, college kids a few years older than Chris and his classmates around the fire, looked around at the faces staring at them. He couldn’t hear what was being said, but when Isaac Klein (Shelley’s twin brother) pointed toward the cooler and the cave dwellers all nodded and raised a hand in thanks, Chris figured his classmates accepted there was no guarantee of escape, and decided to obey the oft spoken rule not to scare the rich folks.
For a while, he couldn’t remember how long, he was sitting, talking, giggling and laughing with Shelley, occasionally retrieving them cans from the cooler near the fire, while watching the goings on around the fire. He and Shelley were reminiscing or talking about their hopes and plans for the coming spring and first year away from home. Shelley kept leaning over, bumping him with her shoulder or putting her hand on his arm when she laughed. Chris was feeling good about the probabilities of making out before the night was over. It had felt good to feel Shelley seemed to be feeling good about the probability too. As they were talking, they shared a chuckle when Chris pointed out one of the cave dwellers had zeroing in on Missy Cartwright.
Missy had been the object of attention from every boy in school since sophomore year. Back then, she’d started dating Bill Atkins, who was a senior and captain of the baseball team. She dated Bill into junior year, even after he’d gone all the way up to Le Moyne for college. When word got around they’d broken up because Missy was tired of the seven hour drive back and forth, the half the boys in the junior and senior classes who'd worked up the courage to ask her out had been shot down. Chris had known better. Missy was gorgeous and smart. Fortunately, she wasn't an asshole like Kelly Bremmer. Kelly was the girl in school who’d gotten almost as much attention from the boys as Missy, and she loved few things as much as trying to see how many feuds or fist fights she could inspire. She was also a bully, and she knew her looks helped her get away with it. Missy, on the other hand, was uninterested in the status wars of high school, and had seemed to have decided she was in no hurry to find someone else to monopolize her time and attention. As they watched the cave dwellers make their way over to Missy, and her two closest confidants, Jamie and Elena, Chris and Shelley shared a chuckle about their chances.
It took a few more minutes before raised voices near the fire got their attention. Chris looked up just in time to see Missy push both hands into the chest of one the cave dwellers, whose hands then dropped from her upper arms. After pushing herself back, Missy’s arms went straight down, and in the light of the fire, Chris could see her jaw jutting toward his face, six inches above hers.
Shelley said, “Oh, this isn’t going to go well,” which clued Chris into Kevin Mcpherson’s trunk like figure barely visible as he moved around the fire toward Missy and the cave dweller. Missy and the guy were exchanging words as everyone else looked on. The cave dweller reached up, as if to grab her arms again, and when Missy stepped back it couldn’t have been more perfectly timed for Mcpherson to step between them. He’d been dating Elena, one of Missy’s closest friends, since junior year. He understood what was expected of him.
Whether he was stupid or brave (and who can tell the difference with young men), the cave dweller tried to make himself as tall and big as possible, standing his ground, shoulders back and chest out. Mcpherson was a good five inches taller, and his shadow would have swallowed the guy, had he had his back to the fire. Shelley said, “Bad move buddy,” as they could see words were being exchanged.
Mcpherson leaned forward, looming over the guy, and threw a thumb over his right shoulder. “Ope. Time to fuck off,” Chris said.
The city kid’s fists were already balled up, but he must have been looking at that right hand and its thumb at Mcpherson’s right shoulder, because whatever came out of his mouth next was met with a wide, sweeping left handed slap that he clearly didn’t see coming. Chris heard the impact from where he sat.
To his credit, the rich kid stayed on his feet, but the sheer force caused him to stumble, and by the time he was recovering, Mcpherson, who’d spent the last four years perfecting his ability to maneuver his bulk with speed, was shooting a straight right fist into the guy's face. Chris could tell rich kid was out from the moment the punch landed. His head snapped back, and he went over like a tree whose roots were torn from wet ground in a Cat 5 hurricane. He never even attempted to put his hands out before he hit the sand.
“Oh, shit,” Chris had said.
Shelley stood up beside him. “Time to go, I guess.”
Chris and his classmates had cleared out, leaving the two other cave dwellers to figure out how to deal with their unconscious friend. As Chris passed the unconscious figure, he saw the guy looked to have a broken nose and had pissed himself.
Of course, the cops had made the rounds to a few houses the next evening, but one of the unspoken rules was that locals didn’t rat if a city kid got pasted for being an asshole. With no witnesses, and only a few first names to go on (Chris pictures Missy batting her eyes at the officers and saying, “Golly gee officers, I don’t know anything about that”), it all blew over. Chris, like many of the locals who’d grown up there, had always figured the cops felt it best, unless someone decided to rob one of the Richie Rich’s, because they also wanted it to blow over. The general belief was the police believed it wouldn’t hurt the future of keeping the peace if the next generation of cave dwellers had to think twice about trying to physically push the locals around. The city took over their hometown for three months out of the year already, letting them push the locals around would have been a recipe for a boiling cauldron of resentment, instead of a steady, dependable simmer.
Chris smiles as he steps through the memory, watching Charlie pour beer from the pitcher to top off Mcpherson, Cross, Mal and that other girl’s glasses, before he sets the pitcher on one of the tall tables around the nook set up for darts. He starts to congratulate himself for coming to his senses where Kevin Mcpherson is concerned, enjoying his moment of nostalgia when he realizes he’s a little more drunk than he’d thought. He picks up on Mal Simms eyes popping out of her head and he feels a cold gust hitting his back, as he hears a gale of giggles coming from behind him in the other direction. He hadn't heard the door open and should have picked up on that breeze sooner.
When he turns to look, as the door to Bub’s closes with a slam, there are four young women wiping and shaking the drizzle off. He immediately understands Mal’s expression. There’s “not from ‘round here,” and then there’s these four young women. The people who made their way “Out East” for the summer might flirt with the whole punk rock thing that had become popular in some circles, but these are genuine devotees.
Two of them have a rainbow of color in their hair, which stands in different direction. Not spikes really, but it looks like it would take as long to do. Their makeup and matching mini dresses, as bright, day glow colors. Chris thinks they look like twins from a German impressionist art film. Beside them, closest to the door is a tall Black woman, head shaved into a perfectly neat mohawk, with a surprising amount of metal adorning her ears and face, wearing a black leather jacket as heavily shot through with zippers, spikes and studs, black leather pants and boots.
The fourth woman he notices last, because she’s not as ornately decked out. As he does see her, he realizes why. She wears a simple black leather motorcycle jacket, a CBGB tee shirt, knotted in front, black jeans and bright red Chuck Taylor’s, slightly dulled by the melting snow and drizzle. She has perfectly smudged black makeup surrounding and accentuating the most brilliant blue eyes he’s ever seen. Her ink black hair is slicked down and back, and he notices her lips are painted in a deep, dark red, the color of autumn leaves. As he sees the color on those lips, a big, broad, welcoming smile spreads across them, and it takes him a second to realize she’s smiling at him. Chris thinks she is very likely the prettiest woman who has ever stepped foot in Bub’s.
As he recognizes this, the weight that’s been sitting on his chest to different degrees over the last three months starts to lift, and the yawning void in his center shrinks considerably. The fact of his drunkenness comes back to mind as he realizes he’s already smiling back at her, and staring, but she keeps smiling back, until the four of them slide into a booth near the door and start talking quietly.
Chris turns, almost feeling the palm and fingers of his mother's hand turning it for him, and Charlie is leaning on the counter on the other side of the bar, arms crossed on his chest. He shakes his head, smiling at Chris, as he steps over and puts his elbows on the other side of the bar directly in front of Chris. Quietly, he says, “Son, that is one kind of trouble you do not need. Any of those girls will eat you alive.”
Chris taps his finger on the shot glass, and says, “Charlie, if Snow White over there decided she wanted to take a few bites, I wouldn’t mind right now. As a matter of fact, I’d lay down and let all four of ‘em eat me alive if they wanted.”
Charlie just keeps smiling. “It’s your funeral. Just keep the crying to a minimum when you come back in here licking your wounds.”
As Charlie fills the shot glass again, Chris tries to steal another glance over his shoulder. He’s surprised. She’s smiling at him again. The prettiest punk rock Snow White he’s ever seen, and she’s smiling at him.
In the two years he’d been at NYU, he’d seen plenty of kids come along and morph into punk rockers. He liked the music just fine, but the scene felt a little much for him. He’d told himself they were all trying too hard, but he had to admit some of the people in that scene had lived lives he couldn’t begin to imagine. They didn’t all wear spikes and edges and points and studs, wild ass colors and crazy makeup just to look cool. He understood that for some of them, it was both armor and a warning for a world that had taught them they needed both. Polite society had been just polite enough for their lives to be too impolite for polite conversation, but not polite enough to care about. It was armor against, and a warning to scare the squares. It had been through learning this, Chris had come to understand his little small town had indeed made him a square, because he was scared away. In his small enough brushes with the scene, as they called it, he’d picked up on the fact that some of the kids in it had been failed so thoroughly, they spent their lives so afraid, they were ready to strike first at the slightest sign of the next blow they knew life was sure to deal.
These four looked like they were in it all the way, but as he considered them, he could see they were a more comfortable variety, not like those who’d taken to the punk scene as that kind of refuge. The shine of the leather was too new. Those Chuck’s were still too bright a red, and those boots had none of the scuffs of trudging city streets or stepping through the mayhem of packed bars enveloped in the sound of guitars for years. The jeans too, still dark, not yet faded from black to begin flirting with gray from wear and wash. Still, they didn’t have the stink of the wealthy who’d discovered the punk scene as latest in the never ending parade aesthetics, treating it like a costume they’d abandon when its season had passed, the next sub culture they could colonize to project a sense of relevance in their boredom. The dedication was too thorough. You didn’t pierce your face, and you sure didn’t take the time to assemble so authentic a costume just to visit some shitty local bar two hours from the city, if you weren’t all in.
He realized he was staring again, because she noticed and began smiling at him. For a second, he was thinking that smile made him feel the way Robert Plant must feel when he stepped out on stage in a stadium full of screaming fans, and then the embarrassment set in. Again, he thought of the fact that his mother had taught him better than to stare at pretty girls.
The last three years of doing little other than getting up, picking the crew, hammering nails, cutting lumber, and coming home to care for his mother had meant basically no time for dating. He’d felt that occasional pang of loneliness, the wish for someone in his life he could share the looming certainty of his mother’s death with, but who was also outside of it, not so consumed with it. On the occasional night he was up late, he’d wished he could find respite in the heat and sweat of sex, the way hormones pushed out everything other than that moment in time, that feel of each others flesh, the now, an evolutionary imperative thousands of years old making nothing but two warm bodies and the electrochemical heat between them matter. He’d learned not long after moving home that jerking off in the bedroom he’d shared with his brother throughout childhood wasn’t an escape or respite either. At first, it was just a new, different sense of shame to the already heavy knot of emotions he sought respite from. After a year or so, he’d learned to block that out long enough, so it wasn't automatically handing his sense of loneliness a bullhorn to amplify all the reasons it told him he was alone.
At the moment, looking through the small television screen behind the bar, no longer hearing the announcers, what he missed, what he felt in that smile, what those incredible blue eyes made him yearn for, wasn’t so much sex or even security of being known that comes from long term companionship. It was simply the desire to be touched and to be allowed to touch. The last three years had been a famine of human contact, other than helping his mother to the bathroom or the bedroom, and the guys on the crew clapping him on the shoulder or the round of high fives when a project was finished. There had been the occasional hug from his mother, but those were an exercise in self discipline. Each one was new confirmation of how much weight she’d lost since the last hug. He’d have to swallow the sorrow, the fear, the anger, not let on to how helpless and small it made him feel watching the cancer slowly, inevitably dim that brilliant light she’d thrown on the world. She’d stop, when he helped her to her bedroom, thank him, tell him she loved him, and he’d accept her hug, concentrating on not falling into the pit of anger and grief as it yawned in his chest and stomach. He’d feel it reaching for him, scratching and pulling, searching for everything that told him all of this was useless, that his brother and father were worse than useless, perfectly happy to see him turn his life, his plans, upside down, while they went on living and chasing their dreams.
He knew what it was though, and he knew it could only get him in those night hours when he was trudging through the inevitable pain of living. In the daylight, when he had nails to hammer, blueprints and plans to read, lumber to measure and cut, a crew of other men’s chatter to chase it away, he knew the truth. His brother had tried to convince his mother to come stay in Queens. The more persistently he’d tried, the more angry and resentful their mother had become. When it had become clear she needed help, Chris’s niece had been about six months old, and their mother refused to add to her daughter in law’s burden. She wasn’t lying, but they all knew it wasn’t the whole truth either. There was no way she was going to leave the house she’d made her whole life in, the house she’d managed to keep when their father had left.
At the time, Chris didn’t even know how bad things had gotten. He was in his second year at NYU, and though he spoke to Steve and saw him occasionally, his brother had downplayed the degree to which their mother was deteriorating, and of course, she never told him the truth on the phone. Everyone was trying to protect him, give him the best chance to do his best, with an opportunity rarely given people like them. From the way it had all been related to him, he was happy to leave it between his mother and brother. She couldn’t very well come stay in his dorm, and he wasn’t yet able to conceive of leaving school to care for her. It was a trip home on summer break when reality had obliterated his plans for the future as if it were a semi hitting a raccoon at sixty miles per hour.
He’d taken the train home, stepped through the front door, what his few belongings in a big duffel bag and a plastic garbage bag, and been confronted with the condition of the house. He tried not to let his surprise show, but looking as he sat on that barstool, he was sure it did. The fatigue drilled into his mothers every cell by cancer and chemo was evidenced everywhere. She’d always kept a tidy house. As he put his bags down just inside the living room, he saw clutter had replaced that tidiness. Mail, magazines, last nights dishes on the coffee table, a coffee cup here, a drinking glass there. It was the first of the hugs that would alert him to the disease and the treatment withering her away, and after their greetings and dropping his bags in his room, he’d discovered the cupboards were almost bare. Cans of Campbell’s, a loaf of white bread, some milk in the fridge, butter… not much else. It took him a month to realize there was no going back to NYU, and then another month to tell her. He tried to tell himself he was going to, but he knew it would just mean spending the semester trying to escape the thought of what she was going through, how was she was being forced to live, and all that would really do would insure his grades would slip and he’d be miserable anyway.
When he’d told her he wasn’t going back, she’d been angry, very angry. Between whatever reasons she kept coming up with for why it wasn’t necessary, she’d kept saying, “I won’t have it.” There had already been many small moments of role reversal that summer, him pestering her to eat despite the nausea, telling her to make sure she was drinking enough water, delivering boiled chicken and rice to her in her chair in the living room. This had been the big one though, when things changed. After yet another, “I won’t have it,” he’d quietly and firmly said, “Yeah, you will. Otherwise, you can throw me out on the street, but I’ll just find a place to stay in town. I’m not leaving you to go through this alone.”
He’d walked out as she started yelling behind him, knowing she needed to be left alone to think about it. He’d gone to the diner, forced down a cheeseburger and fries, decided against a shake, then come to this very bar, taking as long as he could to drink two beers before going back to the house. The entrance to Bub’s, being on a street that dead ended, after a steep enough hill to put its entrance under the nicer, vacationer friendly Irish pub that sat on Main, was a place the cave dwellers rarely found. It was a dive bar for locals and bikers, a watering hole, and that was exactly what Chris had needed that evening.
When he’d gone back to the house, she’d spent about twenty more minutes telling him why he needed to go back to school, throwing in a list of people she could ask favors from (which he knew she wouldn’t, because she hadn’t done so before he’d come back for the summer or while he was there). He’d listened, and then simply said, “I won’t be able to live with myself if I leave you high and dry.” She’d looked at him, for what felt like a long time, then got up and gone to her bedroom. When he heard her trying not to let him hear her cry, he went to his bedroom, shut the door and took down his worn, battered, taped up copy of Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes. He’d read the novel so many times a kid, it was falling apart, and he’d fallen asleep with it laying across his chest that night.
Sitting in Bub’s again, thinking about that night, the sound of her trying to stifle her sobs in the silence of the house, he looks over to Mal Simms sitting on a stool, as her eyes narrow. He sees Pete Crow put a hand on her thigh and lean in, whispering to her. Chris turns to look over his right shoulder again, following her gaze, in time to see Snow White dropping her hand. She'd waved to Mal. She notices him, smiles, holds her hands palms up and shrugs, as if to say, “I tried.” Chris returns the smile and shrugs back with one shoulder, before turning to the TV just in time to see the clock run out on the Knicks chances at a win. He starts to raise the bottle of Schlitz to his lips, realizes it’s empty, thinks for a second about leaving, but decides it might be a good long while before he gets another chance to see a girl that pretty smiling at him again. “Lemme got one more Charlie,” he says, holding the mouth of the bottle by his fingertips and wagging the rest in the air.
Charlie sets another in front of him just in time for David Bowie to exclaim, “THIS AIN’T ROCK AND ROLL! THIS IS GENOCIDE!” The opening riff of Diamond Dogs spreads through the tiny bar. Chris thinks it makes sense. Bub’s has very little in the jukebox released after 1978, as if the year had been magical and time had ceased its march, so Bowie would be one of the most acceptable options to the four visitors. Bowie was acceptable at Bub’s because he was also a staple of local rock radio. Who else would cross those barriers?
Chris looks over his left should toward the jukebox to see the two day-glow attired women he’d been thinking of as The Twins staring through the machine’s window, whispering as they punched in selections and drop in quarters. Chris knows the contents of that jukebox, backwards and forwards, having stared into it on many a Friday or Saturday night, just like they are. He’s sure The Ramones will make it into their selections, but not sure what else might.
He gets that indefinable feeling of someone standing next to him, and turns to find the tall Black woman, elbows on the bar as she says to Charlie, “Bottle of Beam, four shot glasses and four Buds, please.”
Charlie says, “We don’t sell by the bottle.”
She reaches into her skin tight leather pants, pulls out a roll of cash and says, “If you could gimme a tray to carry them, that would be great.”
Up close, Chris notices the skin of her head is immaculately shaved around her short, perfectly formed mohawk, her ear has a line of rings running along its edge and the chain connecting to the ring in her nose. Out of the corner of her eye, she takes note of Chris, smirks, subtly nods and says, “What’s up?”
“Just having a beer or two while I catch the game,” he says.
“Who won?”
“Not the Knicks. How about you? What brings you guys to this fine establishment tonight?”
She turns to face him and says, “Ah, my friend over there has some business to take care of, and she asked if we wanted to take a road trip for the weekend.”
They both look to Charlie as he sets a waiters tray on the bar, with the bottle of Beam, then four shot glasses. “Kinda figured you were from out of town,” Chris says.
Her head tilts to the side, as her shoulders slide back as she leans forward, and she says, “Hot damn genius. How could you tell?”
“Oh, sorry. I don’t mean to give the wrong impression. I’m glad you came along. New face liven things up in this old place, so I’m just curious. I’m Chris, by the way,” he says and holds out his hand.
“Nice to meet you Chris,” she says, shaking his hand in a firm grip, “Natalie.”
“What kind of business?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Your friend. She’s here on business, I was just wondering what kind.”
She smiles and says, “Right. Real estate.”
Charlie sets the four bottles of Bud on the tray and says, “I can take this over to the table if you like.”
“Nah. Thanks though. I think I can handle it,” Natalie answers. She peels a fifty off the roll of her cash in her hand and puts it on the bar before the rest back in her pocket.
Charlies says, “Gotchur change in a sec,” as he slides the bill off the bar.
“No need,” Natalie says.
Charlie’s eyes go wide, “Thank you kindly.”
She answers with a wink as she picks up the tray and turns to head back to the table. Chris says, “Tell your friend I hope her business goes well.”
Natalie stops, shoots a smile over her shoulder and says, “It always does.” She finishes her walk to the table, the twins arriving as she distributes the shot glasses and bottles on the table.
Chris is trying not to be too obvious as he keeps glancing over and sees them each down four consecutive shots before Diamond Dogs has even finished.
“Like I said, they’ll eat you alive,” Charlies says, chuckling.
“Well at least they tip well, right?” Chris says.
“Four young girls, looking like that, with that kinda money to throw around? I’m tellin’ you, nothing good comes of it.”
“Damn Charlie. Don’t go scaring off the most interesting thing to happen in this place in thirty years.”
“As long as they pay for their drinks and don’t give me any trouble, I don’t care. You on the other hand, I’m telling you, steer clear young man.”
The opening baseline is followed by the cascading organ of The Doors LA Woman. It slides through the place, as a hail of giggling comes from the table behind him. Chris steals another glance over his should to see Natalie, and The Twins, hand in hand, shoulders shimmying and hips swinging as the make their way over to the open space in front of the jukebox. As he starts to turn back, Snow White catches his eye again. She’s looking at him with those shining blue eyes and that big smile. He raises his beer and smiles back. She waves him over, pointing to the seat in the booth opposite her.
Chris looks toward Charlie as he starts to get up and the old man says, “Don’t look at me. I’ll still be here pouring the drinks when she breaks your heart.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Chris says.
“You’re young. You’ll learn.” Charlies says, then turns to walk into the backroom just off the bar.
That smile is shining on him has he steps to the table and holds out his hand, “I’m Chris.”
She takes it and says, “That’s an interesting coincidence.”
“How so?”
“My friends call me C, like the letter of my first name.”
“That is a coincidence. What’s it the first letter for?”
“Carmilla,” she says, waving her hand, indicating he should sit. “My dad was old fashioned. He insisted on it.”
Chris slides into the booth across from, leaning his back against the wall, left arm propped on top of it. “That’s a pretty name... Your dad was a Le Fanu fan?”
"Thanks. Yeah, you could say that, I guess. Sounds like an old woman to me though, so my friends just call me C.”
He takes a sip of his bottle. “C it is then, since I hope we can be friends.”
She leans forward, elbows on the table and says, “We’ll see. I bet you local boys love to tell stories about the spells you weave on innocent city girls, don’t you?”
Chris is struck dumb for a second. He realized she was pretty the moment he looked at her, but this close, she may be the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen. He looks toward her three friends, dancing in front of the jubebox and Jim Morrison's baritone spilling from it, and notices Mal Simms watching them with disdain. “Well, you’re only partially wrong,” he says over the music. “Growing up here, there was plenty of that. It didn’t take long for the smarter of us to figure out most of that was bullshit though. It was never my thing either way.”
He looks back to her and she has her chin in her hand, eyes fixed on him. “Well, I’ll take your word for it, for now. What is your thing then?”
“I guess that depends on what you mean, by ‘my thing.’”
“What do you do when you’re not in here, flirting with strangers?”
Chris smiles and can feel the temperature in his face rising. “I’m in construction. I run a crew for a local company framing houses and whatnot.”
Her eyes pop open, and Chris cannot believe how blue they are, “Ooooh! Have you built some of those houses on the beach?”
When he tells people what he does, they always want to know if he’s involved with the beach side behemoths that have replaced the cottages on Dune Road. “A few. We don’t get many of those though. Most of those contracts go through architecture firms who have construction companies they work with in the city. They send crews out here for those jobs. Once in a while, someone who’s already been coming out here for a while will bring my boss some plans. We mostly do more standard residential, sometimes a big renovation… that kind of thing.”
“And when you’re not working?”
He’s trying not to stare into her eyes like a weirdo, which then means he has to stop himself from staring at the shape of her deep red lips, so he starts to peel the label on his bottle. “I’m pretty boring really. I read a lot, rent movies, see some in the theater. Sometimes I go to the concerts over in Westhampton if I can afford tickets.”
She says, “Sounds pretty nice to me. What about summer? I’ve heard the beach clubs can be a lot of fun in the summer. Must be fun chasing bikinis.”
He can feel the blush in his cheeks again as she says, “Well, when I was a kid, yeah. I haven’t been to any of those places in a while. Now, it’s mostly reading on the beach when I can in the summer.”
“Huh,” she says with a frown. "I guess that means you have a girlfriend then?”
“What makes you say that?”
“Young guy like you, good looking, good steady job, but you’re not out looking for a hot summer nights? Screams you’ve been with someone a while. No ring equals girlfriend.”
He takes a long swig of his beer as he considers what to say. “Actually, I spent the last few years taking care of my mom while she was sick. I’m not going to lie to you though. I was at NYU before that, and there might have been some chasing girls involved. No girlfriend though.”
“Oh, shit. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to…”
“No. No. It’s fine. Nothing to be sorry about. She passed a few months ago, and I’m honestly just trying to wait a bit before I decide what I’m going to do now. Try not to make any big decisions until things settle a bit, ya know?”
“That rough. I’m sorry to hear it,” she says, then lifts her bottle of Bud, “Here’s to delicious new beginnings after sour endings.”
The toast and take sips. “How about you? Is there some rich or talented city boy who’d be insanely jealous to see me talking to you?”
She bites her lip, looks to her friends as he watches her think about it. “I was with this older guy, for a good bit. The longer we were together, the more jealous and controlling he got. Then, I realized I was wasting my life. I wanted to do things. I want to have new experiences, see new places, meet new people… like you.”
She’s staring into his eyes and he realizes again, he needs to slow down the drinking, because he is starting to feel like he is weightless and could float into them. He reaches for his voice, “Natalie… she uh… She said you’re here on some kind of real estate business.”
“Yep,” she says, and sits back in the booth, smiling like the Cheshire Cat.
“I don’t mean to be rude, if it's too personal just say so, but you seem a little young, and… uh.. how do I put this? Not corporate or old money enough to be out here looking for real estate. Daddy’s new money, maybe?”
“Oh, no, and it’s not rude at all. My family had money, when I was very young, but then they lost it all, but that was a long time ago. That older guy I was with, that’s how I met him. He knew my family back then, when they had money. He had money, and if there was one good thing I learned while I was with him, it was how to use money, so that’s what I’m doing.”
“So, he didn’t turn out to be Prince Charming, I guess?”
“No. He was definitely not Prince Charming, but I’m no Cinderella either. I think, now, he saw me as vulnerable and thought he could take advantage of that, and honestly, I was young and naive, so for a while, he did. I didn’t understand men like him yet. I thought I did, but I was wrong. But… I survived and now I’ve been able to set myself up well enough to buy a place I want.”
He smiles, genuinely happy at the thought and says, “We’re going to be neighbors then.”
She throws her head back and laughs. It’s loud, and full, and is different in pitch and tone, but it reminds him of his mother’s laugh, the memory of the day on the beach. There's nothing self conscious in it. “Well, no. I don’t really think so. I’m really just looking for a place out of the way that I can use as a hideout if I feel like I need to get away for a while. Kinda like this place, I guess,” she says as she swings the mouth of her bottle, indicating Bub’s.
As the opening lines of T. Rex Bang a Gong (Get It on) slinks through the air of the bar, the volume suddenly jumps to an almost deafening level. Chris turns to see what’s going on as Natalie pulls her hand from behind the jukebox and he can just hear Charlie yelling, “Hey! Don’t do that!”
Natalie stares at him, with a widening smile as she yells, “We’re just having some fun. Can’t a girl shake her ass for a few minutes old timer?”
Charlie, leans back on the counter behind the bar, crossing his arms and shaking his head. Natalie steps away from the jukebox, and that's when Chris realizes The Twins looked like they are practically glued together. Their miniskirts slide up as their legs slide between each others, swaying, rising to the rhythm as their hands slide across each others clothing. One of them spins, back to the other, and Natalie steps up, pushing herself against the one in the back. They turn slowly as they danced, until they faced McPherson and the others playing darts.
The four of them, McPherson, Cross, Mal Simms and Kay the out of towner, are watching these three visitors as they sway, hands moving across each other. Cross stands, eyebrows raised, mouth slightly open.
Chris hears C say, “Oops. My girls are getting bored.”
As it comes out of her mouth, Mal Simms looks to Pete Cross to say something. She registers the expression on his face, and turns back, face reddening, lips curls, eyes squinting in a rage he’d never seen her exhibit. He wouldn’t have thought her capable of it ten minutes before. He's not up on the town gossip, so he doesn't know how long Pete and Mal had been together or dating or whatever it was they would call it, but it must have been long enough she was not about to let some cave dwellers try to lure her man away with these cheap theatrics.
He couldn’t hear what she was saying as she started toward them, but he thought he could read her lips, “Listen, you cheap fucking sl…”
The sentence freezes in the air, and her face goes to shock and fear as the Twin in front snatches her by the throat. Mallory is parallel to the floor as the Twin slammed her into it.
Pete Cross jumps forward, and as he starts to bend over Mal, the hand that slammed Mallory into the linoleum covered concrete of Bub’s floor, grabs a full fist of his hair. The other, now a fist, shoots into his face so quickly, it barely registers in Chris’s vision. Chris watches as Pete Cross’s eyes roll back and his body goes limp, still held up by that fistful of his hair.
Charlie is around the bar already, as Chris realizes Natalie’s eyes are fixed on him as he yells, “GET OUT! GET THE FUCK OUT YOU GOD…” Natalie extends her arm, and with what looks like the flick of her fingers, sends him sliding backwards across the floor, slamming his head into the door to the backroom.
Chris realizes he's trying to scramble over the back of the booth toward the people he’s known all of his life, when he feels a hand against his chest. C is on his side of the booth now, though he didn’t know she’d moved, and she pushes him back against the wall, almost knocking the wind out of him. He grabs her wrist and tries to twist, opening his mouth to scream at her, all the anger of the past few years erupting from its trapdoor he’d locked it behind, but when he looks up at her, her face is an inch from his and he is looking into those bottomless blue eyes as she says with complete calm, “It’s fine. Everything’s fine. Sit with me and watch the show. You want to sit with me, don’t you?”
And suddenly, everything is fine. Chris can't remember what had enraged him, and he can't find the will to search for it either. All he cares is the face and the eyes he is looking into. The deep red of the perfectly shaped lips, the perfectly smooth, ivory skin, and those eyes. He wants to stare into the blue of those eyes until everything that ever had been is gone.
He can hear something. There is loud music. He likes T. Rex. Someone is screaming. The music can stay, but he's wishing the screaming would stop. He doesn't want to think about it. He doesn't want to look toward it. He just wants to look into those eyes. She starts to look away from him, and his hand instinctively pulls at the sleeve of her jacket. She turns to him with a raised eyebrow and a frown, tutting him like a child reaching for candy before dinner.
He snatches his hand back, but watches as she downs the remained of the bottle of Bud, turns in the booth, raises the bottle behind her head and throws it.
Like the punch into Pete Cross’s face, the bottle flies a little too fast for his eyes to fully keep up with, but he follows the trajectory to its destination just in time to see it exploded on impact. Glass and blood streak the air and the woman whose name he can't remember slumps into the corner.
Chris looks to see the Twin with Pete Cross hair still in her hand as she holds him aloft, face buried in his neck. Pete’s eyes stare over her shoulder into the ceiling as his limbs hang limp.
The other Twin had stepped out from behind her doppelgänger, and she has Kevin McPerson’s ham sized fist in her hand, with Pete on his knees in front of her. Chris can only barely hear it as the chorus screamed through the bar, but Pete is the source of the screaming. He sees the Twin squeeze, and Pete’s fist seems to crumble. Blood starts to stream from between her fingers, then she brings her knees up into his elbow, sending the arm into an angle a human arm should never exhibit. When she drops his hand, she draws her other arm across her body, and as Kevin screams to the heavens that either don't hear or don't care, she slaps the back of her hand across his exposed throat. He collapses to the floor coughing and trying to grasp at his crushed larynx with his good hand and the crushed pulp of the other leaving his neck streaked in blood.
Natalie crosses Chris's line of sight, heading in the direction of the bar, when three explosions render Chris’s hearing little more than ringing. He sees three bursts of blood out of Natalie’s back, hears the glass shatter on the jukebox though she walks forward, unimpeded and unbothered. He watches as she nimbly hops the bar to Charlie, one side of his face streaked with blood running from his scalp. He drops the .45 he's just fired, and when she rushes at him, they both disappear behind the bar.
He looks back to her, C, watching her friends. That radiant smile has spread across her face, and even in profile, Chris can't help but feel like it is finally his turn, finally his time, his luck has turned around. This was better than winning the lottery. He is there, with her and she wants to be there, next to him. How could this woman want anything to do with him?
There is an itch in the very back of his mind. If he was at work, it would have caused him to go over the plans again, check the blueprints, make sure he hadn’t missed something. He is forgetting something, he is supposed to be doing something, but he is trying to swat the feeling away. He’d spent the last three years consumed with what he was supposed to be doing, and it came to nothing. Here he is though, right now, with the most incredible woman he’s ever seen, and the first sense of peace since that day he walked through his front door and realized the predicament his mother was truly in. What could possibly be more necessary right now?
As if she can feel him looking at her, she looks back to him, but something has changed. The eyes, the same impossible blue, shine like someone had lit a lantern behind them. She is bathing him in that light and that smile, but there were fangs in it now, long, sharp, sparkling white. She leans toward him and whispers, “You want me to kiss you, don’t you?”
Chris had stopped praying when he was fourteen, but what comes out of his mouth is something between a prayer or a plea, “Please.”
She reaches up, grabbing a handful of his hair, that fanged smile opens wide as she yanks his head back. He is looking at the smoke and water stained ceiling of Bub’s and he feels an ecstasy he couldn’t have dreamt possible as her fangs pierce the skin of his throat. She slides onto him, straddling his lap, sliding her other arm around his back. As he dies, staring at that ceiling, sure that he has found where he wants to be for the rest of his life, where the luckiest night of his life has put him in her arms, his pants fill with semen and shit simultaneously.
The Bub’s Tavern Massacre became national news within a week. Initially, police would only confirm there’d been six bodies found. That had made news statewide. Someone had not only killed six people, five lifetime residents of Hampton Bays and a woman who’d recently moved from Massapequa. Someone had painted pentacles on the walls in the victim’s blood, as well as “Hail Satan” in huge letter where the dartboard and scoreboard had been torn down. With the Satanic Panic in full swing, the story had gone national when Suffolk Country Police were forced to confirm the rest of those details. The SFPD were swamped with false confessions and specious allegations of every variety. It seemed like every fourth or fifth person in the county was living next to, working for, even married to someone who was involved in the murderers.
The only physical evidence found at the scene was three bullets. Two were lodged in the concrete wall and one in the jukebox. Forensic analysis produced nothing but more confusion, as the blood residue on the bullets suggest four different blood types, on all three bullets, as if they’d passed through multiple people. The .45 Charlie kept behind the bar had been found where he’d dropped it, and police were able to match them to it.
Additionally four sets of fingerprints not belonging to any of the victims where found on glasses, bottles and a fifty dollar bill. One set matched to a woman who’d died of tuberculosis in 1923. The NYPD had picked her up multiple times for petty crimes before her death.
Chris’s brother, Steven, came into ownership of the house, being the only living relative left. With the deaths of both his mother and brother a few months apart, Steven could barely bring himself to be in the house, much less think about keeping it. He’d gone once to collect some things, one of which was his brother’s worn copy of Something Wicked This Way Comes. His mother had put her will together and left the little small collection of good jewelry she’d picked up through the years to her granddaughter. Steven’s wife, Carol, took care of insuring the house was ready to be sold and finding a realtor. Steven had come to sign the closing paperwork, and Carol couldn’t convince him to go back to the house one last time beforehand.
Ingrid Fineman, a local, and the real estate agent who’d brokered the sale had a strong sense of discretion, and all she’d said, and only to a few of her closest friends, was that the new owner was a very impressive young lawyer from the city. When one of them had commented that it would be nice to have a new “most eligible bachelor” in town, Ingrid had corrected her saying, “Bachelorette, and I have a hard time believing anyone here is will catch this one. Trust me.”
The house Chris DiResta was raised in, where his mother had chosen to make her last stand against death, was torn down within weeks.
A few months later, word started to spread about the new owner. By what was marked by some as a grim irony, the company Chris DiResta had worked for had been contracted to build a new house on the property, one more in keeping with the rest of the neighborhood. The new owner had apparently dropped in to check on the progress occasionally. The crew working on it, which Chris had lead before he died, didn’t have the sense of discretion Ingrid Fineman did. From the first time she had shown up, and for many years after, a number of those men would take any opportunity to tell other men about the woman who’d walked their job site. The adjectives they used varied, depending on their company, but all of them always came back to describing a variety of eyes so blue, they’d never seen anything like them before or since.