*****Today steps from Gramercy Park a typically peaceful street was the site of a vicious, cold-blooded homicide. It was here where publishing czar Percy Featherton was found savagely murdered in his lavish townhouse. The pages from his most recent success A Greater Truth were found torn and scattered over his dead body. The book was a stylish mystery written by his wife and protégé Missy Featherton. Police have taken into custody Michele Giacomo Aurelio Faro who was discovered at the scene in a state of confusion. Bizarrely he seems to be attempting to take credit for a book he didn’t write*****
“That’s some long name you got.” The driver looked back at me instead of the road, bulldozing forward.
“Yeah. I’m surprised they didn’t butcher it. Did it sound like I was guilty?”
“I don’t know I just met you. In this country…”
“She made me sound guilty. Didn’t she?”
“Mr. Farrow it made you sound like a man who’s seen better days.”
“Why didn’t they say I wrote the book? Why did they give Missy credit as the author?”
“I suppose because her name is on the cover.”
“I wrote it.”
“No shit?”
“The cops believed me.”
“You believe that they believed you? You wouldn’t be the first killer to ride in this car… this planet’s outside its head. Just when you let your guard down…. WA-BAM!” Electric sky followed by a thunderous boom.
“I’m no killer. I’m just a… just a friend of the dead.” Construction cranes hung above us. The overseers were forcing futuristic change. A neighborhood famous for its anonymity in the past was transformed see-through. All the buildings going up were all windows. You could see the new neighbors cozying in. You could hear them pop their corks.
“Afraid somebody’s after you in particular or just all the writers they can find?”
“Somebody’s exterminating writers and I’m heading to a room full of them. What are your plans for the night?”
“What do you want to take me out on the town or use me for a shield?”
“A shield from the shield.”
“Gotta keep the meter moving. I suggest the same to you.” The driver shrugged me off, pulling over across the street from the club. I placed the twenty in the partition’s pay slot only to be refused.
“Nothing disgusts me more than a bum scheming to take credit for someone else’s work. I hope you finally get picked out of the crowd.” The cabbie grilled me with a lippy smile through the rearview. I lifted the bill high like a hypnotist. Gently laying the green on the back seat followed with a middle finger.
It was always raining on the Bowery. The door slammed. The cab’s spinning wheels showered me. I was alone for the first time since I stumbled upon Percy’s cold cadaver. I found a seat on the curb. The entire city was just a fucking puddle to make a mess in. I became fixated on a paper coffee cup overflowing water from the storm. The soiled cup wouldn’t fall over no matter how hard the rain came down. I put the cup to my lips and sipped. I was drinking the city itself. The familiar taste of millions of overflowing dreams. It tasted natural, like licking your own blood to stop the bleeding.
{VII}
IT WAS AN ILLUSION THAT I was drinking anything more than air. I watched the drops build at the bottom of the empty cup, but didn’t have the patience to allow them to grow into something substantial. Crushing the cup, I placed it in the gutter, and booted it into the middle of the street. A few cars ran it over. I waited for the avenue to open up, making a point to step on the dirty flat cardboard before slipping through the doors of the poetry club.
Some people are ghosts… able to float aimlessly without ever truly compromising their ideals to the world of flesh. It was no secret that Monika Gloom chose a spectral image to boost her circulation. Nonetheless, her fans were the authentic living dead, feasting on one of their own. I scanned the room for Detective Anderson and found him talking up a thin woman with huge glasses that made her look like the human fly. There was a buzz in the room and the conversations seemed to blend together into some foul concoction of spirit.
“….who could’ve done this?… it doesn’t make sense… writers feign suicide … musicians get drained by love…. painters turn into vegetables…” The auditory select herd had some interesting philosophies on the final days of an artist. A hovering impatience called for an orator to stand above us and make sense of it all.
“What a bore.” Distinguished and distant, Lars Wildman gave off an air of self-destructive royalty. I should have smelled him coming.
“What’s a bore Lars?”
“This fucking senselessness. The easy ending is death. For once I want to see a story that ends with life.” Lars seemed heavily medicated as always.
“I’m sorry about your father.” I could already picture Percy’s body in the ground, maggots eating his skin.
“You hated his guts like everyone else. It was just a matter of time that somebody dealt with him the way he dealt with others.” Lars was Percy’s son. His real name was Clayton Featherton. He probably picked his last name so the day somebody decided to shade in his past with typeset font and pleasant exaggerations there was no chance the title would get fucked up.
“Now Gloom’s gone too.”
“Last time I saw the dark sorceress she attacked me with a steak knife at Peter Lugers. I splashed her eyes with gravy, but she managed to take a piece off the corner of my ear.” Recounting the story, Lars pulled back his hair so I could see the slight deformity the slain scribe marked him with. A questionable tale to say the least. Waiting for my reaction, his eyes became orbs that turned the world into a giant shadow that only he could navigate aimlessly. It was at that moment that Hawaii appeared wearing tiny pink shorts. I hadn’t seen her in some time. She looked pretty much the same as the last time we bumped into each other, except she was wearing shorter shorts. Every time we crossed paths I noticed that her shorts would get shorter. Shorter every time. Hawaii was the bridge between Lars and Gloom. A couple years ago, she dated them both simultaneously and the discovery blossomed into the scuffle over red meat that Lars had just finished lamenting. It made the papers and I remembered lining my kitchen cabinets with the newsprint.
“Farrow the transient outcast and Lars my bitter love.” Hawaii put her arms around both Lars and I. Hawaii had the habit of laughing after everything she said. It might have come off as an obnoxious or an ignorantly stoned gesture if it came from somebody else, but something about her ways was subliminally seductive. It was a gentle orgasmic giggle that forced you to picture her in scenarios reserved only for her.
“How are the girls?” For some reason it made me relax to see Lars cringe. Despite his open-minded demeanor, he struggled with the fact that Hawaii’s main duty outside of spoken word throwdowns was to help chicks rid themselves of unwanted pregnancies.
“They’re fine Farrow. Thanks for asking.” Hawaii smiled, affectionately massaging both of our shoulders. “Truth is I’ve shifted roles at the hospital. I got a transfer to the neonatal intensive care unit about a year or so ago.”
“That’s nice.” Lars stayed suspicious as Monika Gloom’s latest pet got up on the stage.
Kiko seemed to hover above us all, forcing the entire crowd to start at the pointy toes of her stilted blue leather boots and follow floral black lace leggings to her lunar skin mid-thigh, tangling our minds deep in a short black and white anime maid’s dress, slices of fabric missing which allowed her tattoos to burst through bleeding color. Her hair dyed deep blue where it was not jet black, short where it was not spiked up in a fuck the world typhonic wave.