Isaac

I heard a saying once, that the Chinese have a curse that goes something like this: “May you live in interesting times.” My brother and I always thought it was funny. Who would want a boring life?

But interesting isn’t always a good thing. And as I rise from my kneeling position in front of my brother’s tombstone, I read the inscription for the thousandth time, the letters filled in with moss and spider’s eggs. Requiescat in pace, Keenan Thomas. Devoted father, beloved brother. 1979-2002.

I’ve always wanted to carve another line beneath those three, to separate his marker from the rest of the identical stones in West Lake cemetery. He lived in interesting times. Sometimes I dream of going to the cemetery at night and chiseling those words into the granite slab, the only reminder I have of my brother. He deserves more than a mass produced tombstone for how he lived.

“Isaac.” I turn, and realize that Miranda is still waiting by the car. She taps her watch, reminding me we’re on a schedule. She has no time for my ‘sentimental attachments,’ and simply wants to get on our way as soon as possible, we have a date with my mother in Seattle tomorrow. I leave the white rose at the foot of Keenan’s grave, like I do every year on his birthday, and on the day he died. And as I trudge back to the car, I say a quiet prayer for him.

“Can we go now?” Miranda is a beautiful woman, the kind that inspires poets to write long, meandering prose, and there are lots of men who would kill to have a wife like her. Her exquisite shoulder length black hair is maintained with a weekly hundred dollar trip to the salon, and her impeccable make-up hides the small beauty spot that I know lies two inches from her nose. She is a proper sort of girl, from a good family, and has a reliable husband to support her.

I remember I loved her, once.



Spider

My body jars as the huge motherfucker with the crewcut slams his fist into my gut, and I go down on my knees. Jesus, the brute’s strong. I throw myself down in time to avoid the kick he aims at my head, and while he’s carried through by his own momentum I bring my leg across in a sweep that takes his balancing leg out from under him. As he falls backwards, I swing the leg back around in an axe-kick to the face that smashes his nose and drives the back of his head into the sidewalk. He stays down.

Fucking ow. I prod the spot where his fist connected, make sure the ribs are intact. Once I’m sure that I’m still in one piece, I stand up, and crack my neck.

Crewcut is out cold, with enough blood coming from his nose to reassure me that I broke it. Serves him right, attacking people in alleyways. Never mind that I called his wife a whore and spat on his car in the first place.

I kneel over him, and start going through his pockets. He’s got about two hundred bucks in cash, an old mob style switchblade knife, and a shiny new cell phone, all of which I appropriate for myself.

I snap the phone in halves, dial and screen, as I walk away. He’ll wake up in couple of hours with a splitting headache and probably a concussion, and I wouldn’t want him calling the police prematurely.

My own cell phone rings, the monophonic rendition of Taps piercing the frosty night air. I pull it out, read the name ‘Chandra’ on the caller ID, and click the silence button before returning the phone to my pocket.

As I round the corner, out of the alley and into the busy flow of a Downtown Seattle street on a November night, I flip through the cash I pulled out of Crewcut’s wallet and imagine the possibilities an extra two hundred bucks opens for the night. I can almost guarantee it‘ll be gone by morning.



Shenzi

I guess it’s worth mentioning that Shenzi’s not my real name. It’s from the Lion King, if you really want to know. The girl Hyena, the one who’s played by Whoopi Goldberg? That’s where I got it. It means ‘unclean’ in some African language, but who knows that besides me? Besides, that’s part of why I chose it.

I roll off the bed, catch a glimpse of the man lying there. He’s passed out cold, the bedsheet obscuring most of his legs, but baring his lean, muscular torso, close-cropped blond hair and the stylized tattoo of a spider on the back of his shoulder. Never did catch his name, not that it matters. He wasn’t terrible though. And at two hundred bucks he wasn’t stingy either.

In a week he’ll be just another faceless fuck in a long line that stretches back to my sixteenth birthday. It’s almost too bad, I kind of liked this one.

He groans and shifts, still fast asleep while I slip back into my clothes and tuck my payment into my bra, and then I’m out the door and into the hotel hallway. A maid gives me a sneering look as I pass her in the hall, the once over and automatic demonization when my 80% pleather outfit clearly demonstrates what I do for a living. I flip her the finger and slip into the elevator.

I touch up my makeup in the elevator, using the reflective faux-copper paneling as a mirror. Wipe the lipstick away, reapply; retouch the penciled on eyebrows. When I’m done I take in the whole thing. It’s a practiced art, one that I’ve carried through to perfection, and a sure way to bring in customers in the nicer nightclubs in town. It’s beautiful, evocative, alluring, and two hundred percent false.

I haven’t recognized myself in a mirror in years. I see Shenzi, and I almost feel like two people. Sometimes I wish I were two people.

The elevator dings open, and I pass an upper-middle class suburban couple on the way out. The woman looks at me disapprovingly, even though she’s as contrived as I am. The man’s either so whipped or so in love that he doesn’t even notice me when I stepped out of the elevator. Oh well, his loss.

Two hundred dollars richer, I step out into the chilly night. I’d love a coat, but in my job the less actual clothing I wear, the better. The night’s early, and I’m hoping to snag another client or two before I head home.

I watch Shenzi dispassionately as I walk past a reflective jewelry store window. I find myself wondering what she’s thinking.



Isaac

“I said, can you believe they let people like that in here?” Miranda’s pointing at theprostitute that steps out of the elevator we’ve been waiting for. She’s a pretty thing, dressed in gold pleather fromneck to ankles, with bare shoulders and cleavage that threatens to leap from her shirt if she walks too fast. I roll my eyes.

“Miranda, it’s a hotel. These things happen here.” I can feel her look of disgust that I don’t share her outrage, but I’m too tired to care. We’ve driventhree hours to get to a city I hate, and I just want to fall asleep.

When we reach the room I more or less immediately lock myself into the bathroom, and stare into the depths of the mirror. The man looking back at me is haggard, run down, old at twenty-eight. I’ve lived the same week, over and over again, for the last five years; wake up, work, come home, eat dinner, sleep, repeat as need. Church every Sunday, Miranda’s.

This has become a nightly ritual, the search in the mirror for redemption, for a sign that I haven’t wasted my life, that I’m worth something.

I never find it.

After a few minutes I hear muffled voices from the next room over, loud enough to be an argument of some kind, and out of courtesy I leave the bathroom and return to the main hotel room. Miranda is already changed and in the bed, laptop computer perched on her legs on top of the covers. As I slide under the covers on the far side of the bed, she tilts the screen away so that I can’t see what she’s working on.

My own wife doesn’t trust me.



Spider

I’m dreaming, I know that much. Unless the hotel room usually transforms into a green-tinted, deserted nightclub at night. Must have been the absinthe. I’ve got to remember not to drink that shit before I go to sleep.

The club is pretty ordinary, aside from the coloring, and the fact that everything is wavy, and kind of feels like it’s made of smoke. There’s no one here, and I don’t recognize the club itself, so this is probably going to be a pretty boring dream. Some people say lucid dreaming is a gift, I call it lame.

Just watch.

I turn, looking around, and realize I can see shadows streaming through the building. They’re concentrated up at the bar, and on the dance floor. If I look at the more stationery ones closely, they almost look like…

People.

This time I know it wasn’t in my imagination. “Who…”

I trail off as the club’s door opens silently, and a woman, shining red and solid in this intangible world, walks between the shadows to the bar and orders a drink from an intangible cloud.

“Is that…yeah. Hey! That’s her, the hooker!” What was her name? Shelly? Kelly?

Meanwhile the woman’s received her drink, something in a martini glass. She traces a finger around the rim and seems to be talking to a shadow next to her. I hear nothing. I cross the bar to get to her, passing through shadows as I go with a weird resistance, like walking underwater. Finally I get to her, and lay a hand on her shoulder.

Fool.

My hand passes through her, and a burning sensation lingers where I touched her. looking down, I realize in horror that I am just a shadow, like everyone else in this place. The only real person here is the whore.

But he learns quickly.

I spin around, searching for the voice, but no one else is here. Only the flitting shadows, and the voice that I don’t think I’m even hearing with my ears. The burning in my hand suddenly intensifies, and I feel I’ll go insane if I don’t wake up soon.

Are you so sure that you are sane now?

And then I see him…her? It? I think it’s a he. He walks through the wall, a dazzling gold obscuring definite features, in contrast to the girl’s red and the eerie green of the environment. Wings fan out behind him, shining with a radiance that burns my eyes to look at.

“Who are you?” I need to know. I need to know what’s happening to my mind.

Does it matter?

It fucking well does matter! “Hey! I asked you a question, dipstick.” I take a step towards him, I’ll make him tell me.

A laugh with the force of a hurricane tears through my mind, and I fall to my knees before I can take another step.

I told them you were perfect.

I want to ask who, but I can’t speak. I can hardly breath, my mind is reeling from the pain.

You can call me The Angel. I trust that’s simple enough for you to remember.

He sits in a booth seat, and his glow fades back a little. His wings disappear, and I can see a tall, powerfully built naked man, maybe forty years old, with curly black hair that falls to his shoulders. He must be at least seven feet tall, and his face looks like something from a renaissance sculpture.

I force the words through my mouth. “The Angel, huh? The fuck kind of wussy-ass name is that?”

The Angel smiles, and opens his mouth to reveal perfect teeth. “Spider.” His voice is indescribably beautiful, and I can almost see the sound waves. “I have a job for you.” He points, across the bar, to the woman. She has gotten up, and she’s headed for the door, with her arm crooked around a shadow person. “Find her, Spider. Find her and bring her home.”

I watch as she leaves the bar, and turn back to The Angel. The burning sensation begins to return. “Home? Where’s home?”

The Angel smiles even wider. “You’ll know when the time is right.”

My arm feels like it’s on fire, and I hiss from the pain. The Angel kneels in front of me, at eye level. “It’s time to go to work now, Spider.”

I roll, screaming, off the bed and onto the hotel floor. I check the skin of my arm, see that it’s an angry red color. What…where…

It comes back to me. Shenzi! That’s her name. She’s gone, of course. Still got a few stops to make tonight. Probably back to the neighborhood I found her in before, back to her stomping grounds for more customers. Just got to find that bar…

I’ve just got to find her.