“Yeah, I get it. But that’s a lame excuse.”
“No. It makes perfect sense. I’m not going to stress because-”
“Why a luchador mask?” Paige interrupts.
“Maybe he’s Latino? Maybe he just digs Santo?”
Paige looks very serious. “Could be that he’s a time traveler.”
I laugh. “No. Just supposed to look that way. Just supposed to look crazy.”
“How? I mean maybe there’s someone else out there jumping in on your visions? Your future? That is like so Star Trek it’s sick.”
“Nah. It’s just that I’m only seeing part of it.”
“Maybe it’s just that you don’t recognize him ’cause he’s young now. Or maybe under that mask he just looks like a total freak. Maybe like a cat-man or a Neanderthal. You know, something totally otherworldly?”
“Like you used to, Paige?” I laugh.
She elbows me hard. I wheeze.
“How about the old man calling you?”
“Irritating is all,” I say. “Super irritating. Sometimes these freaks find me. Remember me telling you about that one woman who called-” And I want to say more, but Jimi and Vauxhall come strolling out onto the patio and strike up a conversation with a dude with a Mohawk I feel like I’ve seen before.
I shoot Paige a look, mouth: I. Had. No idea. They’d. Be. Here. Seriously.
She just shakes her head and rolls her eyes. “Like boomerangs,” she says.
Vaux and Jimi don’t notice us, amazingly. They go over to the bar and somehow Jimi finagles them drinks, real drinks, and then they sit and talk and laugh with the Mohawk guy, who they also get drinks for, and then, when the Sisters of Mercy come on, they go out onto the dance floor. The way Jimi dances has me laughing in my soda. Actually, it’s so ridiculous I’ve got Coke bubbles coming out my nose.
He’s spinning around in his big black sweater. He’s got high-top sneakers on to boot and he’s wearing mascara. The scene could have been edited out of some goth teen movie. The worst is that he’s mouthing along with every song. Every. Song.
Paige, of course, reads his lips. “… sing this corrosion to me…”
And he whirls all dervishly.
“… you like an animal,” Paige says.
I tell her that, unlike before, I can actually hear the music. I tell her that I’m not deaf. I say, “Paige, it’s not like reading his lips when the song is actually playing really loud is impressive. If he were wearing headphones, then maybe.”
Paige grumbles a bit and then asks me why I’m not over there with them.
I watch Vauxhall dance. She moves like she’s in water. Her limbs and her hair in perfect motion, her face sliding in and out of the light and the expression, her eyes closed, is ethereal like a photo on an album cover.
“Aren’t you like the Three Mouseketeers now?”
I shake my head. “Just to be near her is all.”
“Nah, you’re having fun.”
“Maybe I am.”
“So?”
“So, that.” And I point over at the dance floor where under a steady throb of green and blue and yellow lights Jimi and Vauxhall are kissing. It’s more Jimi kissing Vaux. Her eyes are still closed and she doesn’t look that into it. But it’s happening regardless. They’re making out on the dance floor right in front of me.
Paige says, “How much does it suck that apparently there’s only a few places to go in this city? I mean, it’s like, I dunno, fate or something.”
I tell Paige that she isn’t helping. I tell her that maybe this would be a really great time for her to just shut up and go dance or get drunk or something. I say, getting out of my chair, “Ooh, look at the time. You know what I need to do.”
Paige gets super pissed. Yells something nasty.
I don’t want to hear it.
As I push my way through a crowd that’s pretty much materialized out of nowhere, up the stairs to the larger dance floor where two girls in neon with crazy dreads are dancing spastically on a stage, I run into Belle. She’s with some old dude and she waves to me and the old dude, this dude with a graying goatee and a shaved head, just nods over his super-thick-framed black glasses. What a dipshit.
Belle says, “What are the odds?”
I say, “I’m obviously in hell.”
“Life of a scryer, huh?” Belle retorts.
“What the fuck does that even mean?”
And I push past her and her beau.
I find two East football guys near the back of the club. Both of them wearing jerseys. Both of them big guys. I walk over to them, say, “You guys need to step outside with me.”
One of them, a black guy with a mustache, asks, “What is this?”
I say, “I need to talk to you both.”
The black guy laughs. “Fucker’s high.”
Paige finds me, pulls me aside, says, “Don’t. Really.”
She has this horrible depressed puppy look. “Seriously, let me just give you a ride home. I’ll just drop you off and that will be that. Cool?”
I shake my head and walk back over to the East dudes.
To the other guy, the white guy with two different-colored eyes, I say, “I’ve heard of women like your mom. Pretty rare, huh?”
“What’d you say?” He gets in my face.
Behind me, Paige shouts, “Don’t answer!”
Again, the big guy says, “What the fuck’d you say?”
The BPM of my pulse ratchets up.
I can taste the anger on this dude’s breath.
“Just ignore him!” Paige yells.
A circle of gawkers is forming around us.
“Yeah,” I say to the white guy, my eyes narrowing, face preparing. “Takes a lot of acrobatic skill to take two dudes at once. I mean, how else do you explain those jacked-up eyes, you-”
And he plugs me right there.
Fat fist slams into the left side of my face. Zygomatic bone. I hear something snap and then black. The resulting concussion is swift and furious. Precious black. The vision sweeps and I’m back spinning down the passageway to my future.
The Buzz is glorious.
I’m free.
Where I am is back on the sunny beach. The surfing beach in maybe California. Thing is, the sun isn’t shining now. I still have my surfboard and I’m still wearing a wet suit and my eyes are still crackly with sea salt, but now the sky is completely clouded over and the lightning is close. The boom of thunder even closer.
I feel the first drops of rain on my skin when the man in the Mexican wrestler mask lays a hand on my shoulder. He squeezes. I turn around to get a good look and he’s there in all his wrestler glory, his mask all purple and shiny.
“What is your deal?” I ask him, sounding much older.
This is surely the future.
“You’re still not ready, Ade. Wires are still crossed. Still foggy.”
“This is just a waste of my future.”
My hands curl into fists and I’m about to knock him on his back when he says, “Storm’s here, Ade. Right on top of us. You still haven’t woken up. Going to take a lot to turn this around. Only you can deny the past and stop the future.”
What happens next is crazy.
What happens next hasn’t ever happened before: I skip ahead, leap over decades, and see myself as I’ll be when I’m old enough to have a kid just about my age. I’m in front of a mirror and I look down and I see something really upsetting, something that makes me want to scream, but it’s hazy.
The image, it just gets all warped and dark.
Blacker than black.
THREE
I come to in an ambulance, just Paige at my side.
The EMTs have oxygen on me and one of them is prepping a saline IV and just about ready to put it in my arm. I hate needles and ask him not to. I mention to him that I’ve been in enough ambulances to know it’s not necessary, but he just tells me to lie back and does it anyway. The whole rest of the ride I’m puking my guts up. And I hear howling, but Paige doesn’t hear it. The EMTs don’t hear it.