I reached in my pocket for my phone, but it wasn’t there, only a handful of tiny tequila one-shots. Fuck, I must have stopped and shitface-shopped at some point. Bet I left my phone there too. I rummaged around the Saturn. Nothing. Just round-edged jewels of glass and blood. I was lucky to be alive. Of course lucky was a relative term at this point. No car, no phone, not a soul around, no shelter from the storm, pain in my forehead, in my back and ribs, lost…Well, when in doubt, start walking. At least that’s what my feet said, so I listened, hoping that actually moving might warm me a little. Alas, that’s when the sleet turned into heavy, blinding flurries, and the lights up and down the block began flickering, then went out entirely.
I trudged ahead, spelunking my way through snow, through the cavern labyrinth made of brick and steel, neon and chrome, wondering what sort of mammoth might roam this technotundra. I wondered what my ancient ancestors might have thought, lost between one multinational glacier and another. Ancestors, parents, father…With nothing tangible to hold onto — the street ahead of me was gone, the buildings themselves might as well have been cliff faces — all my mind had to cling to was a drunken sense of loss I didn’t want to think about, but couldn’t let go.
I’d been awakened this morning — no, yesterday morning by now — by the sound of wind howling its way under our longsuffering, rotting window casings. That, and a sad call from my sister. Later, after I’d hung up and headed in to work, lines from the upcoming production kept running through my head. They ripped back and forth like a wood file through particle board. Like building a set. Like tearing one down.
But, you must know, your father lost a father;
That father lost, lost his…
It had been a short call. But right in the middle of rehearsals? Right in the thick of trying to recreate the ghosts that haunt us all? Most of Hamlet’s father’s speeches are short too…at least in the beginning. Revenge. Remember. Swear. Everything that makes us human. Some scholars believe Shakespeare invented the human. Maybe. But maybe he just had a dad. And his dad got old. And his dad got sick. And fate demanded action.
My situation right now demanded action. It demanded I do fucking something or freeze to death in the middle of downtown. Still woozy, entering a kind of extremis fugue, I imagined myself being found years from now by anthropologists. He must have been a slave of some sort. Look how he’s branded with letters. Not wealthy…or smart. The sediment between the macadam and the new graphene city substructure suggests there was snow, and all he’s wearing is flimsy polyurethane. Tattoo of tragedy and comedy on his left shoulder. Small notebook in left pocket. Scribbled notes regarding Shakes — Ah, theater guy. Actor or director. So, yes, slave.
I tried, I really tried to keep my mind on the danger at hand. I swiveled my head side to side, looking for someplace, anyplace that might show signs of life, but it was the weekend, in the middle of a town with no nightlife, precious little foot traffic on a busy day. They used to have a world class theater down here. Also shut down in the Eighties. I kept walking, barely able to see the street, let alone the looming cave walls…buildings. I feared I might be losing it. I’d heard about frostbite victims. I’d read that terrible little story by Hans Christian Anderson, another by Jack London. I didn’t have any matches to warm me. I didn’t have a dog to disdain me.
Finally, up ahead, I saw a faint light that seemed to come from between two of the larger office buildings. The warm glow lit the mirror cladding like fire plumes leading me to a box canyon cave, like offstage torches guiding me to the castle perilous. I thought of Bernardo and Marcellus and Horatio following the ghost light toward Elsinore’s horrible secret, the dead father that could kill them all. My mind was everywhere and nowhere. I didn’t know how long I’d walked or how much longer I could hold out. I wished I had some matches, or a dog, or a dead father to guide me.
I turned the corner into an alley labeled Angell, and there it was.
Some sort of shop lit up like Candlemas.
Stepping into the deep corridor between the two monoliths on either side, I noticed both the snow and sleet had stopped. Or perhaps it just didn’t fall here. The store had no name, no specific sign, but I could just make out comics gleaming their three-color glory from the plate glass storefront. Also, intricately blown-glass vials with long tubes flickering like jewels in the night, like genie bottles of every color. As I got closer, I saw that the storefront, the brick façade itself might not sport a name, but it showcased two large murals. On one side of the windows, airbrushed onto the brick, loomed an image of Force Commander from the Micronauts. He stood just behind his much cooler, more clearly rendered horse, Oberon. The halfbiological, half-mechanical steed reared up on its hind legs, its geometric curves and white eyes making it look like an art nouveau sculpture drawn by Michael Golden.
On the other side of the windows, facing the horse rampant like a lover, was an image I knew almost as well as the comic book characters. Oberon, I knew from all those days collecting comics beside my father. This image, I knew from all those days collecting unemployment after I left his house. Here, a perfect recreation of the woman from JOB rolling papers stared across both window and entryway, head tilted back, hair wild as a stallion’s mane, eyes half-closed, hand half-raised to lips awaiting either her equine lover or the approaching, smoldering joint. She reminded me of a noble nymph captured in tapestry, a fairy queen. This design was even more nouveau than the other.
Shivering and footsore, shaken and lost, all I could think of as I approached the door was: I am passing now between two gods, between two forces, Titania and Oberon. I am stepping into the conflux of their power. I fished one of the mini-bar tequila bottles from my pocket and hammered it whole.
My dad always wanted me to be a comic book artist. As a carpenter and plumber and would-be architect, what folks in his home town called a mule skinner, Dad himself once harbored dreams of the arts. He encouraged me from the start, but when my designs led to stage sets and costume design, when that gift led to the boards and eventually directing, he always seemed disappointed. He loved comics. Loved the idea that maybe, someday, his son could succeed where he had wavered. His own father always thought him a failure, tried to talk him into the military, but Dad held on to as much art as he could and fed that love with the designs he realized for other people’s dreams, if never his own.
Here, in this store that couldn’t exist on a night that couldn’t exist, I stood — a car wreck survivor who shouldn’t exist — in the middle of a store that reminded me of all the old shops Dad and I once haunted. Once upon a time, comic shops weren’t just about comics. They were about comics and pot. Before that, they were straight-on head shops, retailers in the realm of Reggae and righteous bush, but at some point, all the paraphernalia peddlers realized stoners liked looking at shit when they were baked out of their gourds. Soon, black light posters and lava lamps, kinetic toys and wave machines, all the wild mandalas of a ’70s culture steeped in mood alteration made their way into the stores. Then, eventually, underground comics.