Pops a blood vessel in his eye.
“Ow, FUCK!”
His left eye goes red; he bends over.
A waiter peeks in the bathroom door.
“You all right, sir?”
“I’m perfect, thanks.”
He’s far from perfect, but people don’t press things in this city, and the waiter disappears.
His sclera will clear up; he’ll still be younger when it does.
It gets harder every year, though; they all lose this battle.
He feels the bulge in his coat pocket, wonders if the waiter thought he had a gun.
It’s worse than a gun!
He goes by the zinc bar where a bartender with retro-lacquered hair cracks an egg, looks at Andrew, looks back at his work, finishes making the pre-Prohibition fizz for the rich young lady in the antique silk stockings. It could be a scene from 1935 until her cell phone buzzes and she looks down at it, smiles privately.
Now his phone is out, dialing Haint.
It rings five times, and then he hears the message.
“You know who this is if you got this number. Don’t fuck around.”
Now the sound of something small and squeaky getting killed by something hard and heavy, underscored by Haint’s gravelly laughter.
Beeep
“Andrew. Call me back. I’ll be at Lafitte’s. For a while.”
He’s there for longer than a while.
A bearded boy in a bowler hat tears up Zevon’s “Werewolves of London” in the back, fenced behind listeners perched directly at the piano, wobbly on their stools. The pianist’s buddy leans against the wall near him, accompanying him on harmonica. Everything is dim. Everyone is drunk. The steamy little building reeks of whiskey and sways with inebriation.
If Dionysus came back, this would be his temple.
No sooner has Andrew thought this than Dionysus walks in.
WTF?
Did I just think WTF instead of what the fuck?
Is that fucking Dionysus?
Andrew relaxes a bit when he realizes the grape-leaf-crowned figure moving through the crowd is wearing a papier-mâché mask. He tenses again when he notices that nobody else looks at it. It’s looking at him. No, correct that; it points its eyeholes at him, but those holes are black and eyeless. Sleeves hang past where the hands would be, but he is nauseatingly sure it has no hands. It floats rather than walks.
Andrew white-knuckles the table.
Now the piano man aborts the Doobie Brothers song he had just started, bangs his hands discordantly on the keys, looks at Andrew, and says, “May I sit?”
Nobody else notices.
They sway and drink and talk as if they’re still hearing the song.
The harmonica man plays on.
“Sure,” Andrew says.
The chair opposite him pulls out on its own and the empty Dionysus collapses into it, the grape leaf garland and mask landing on top, the eyeholes fixed on the ceiling.
The waitress, a depressive woman with a lazy eye and a Who Dat? T-shirt, plucks the crown of grape leaves from the chair and walks it over to the piano player, fitting it down over his hat.
“Thank you, Felicity. Your next period will be crampless.”
“Awesome,” she says, sounding upbeat for the first time tonight.
The piano player tickles the keys and speaks to Andrew again.
“I believe you’re the only person in this establishment drinking virgin soda water. You profane my temple, sir.”
“Ichabod?”
“At your service, as ever.”
“I called you hours ago.”
“You commanded me to appear before you. You did not specify a time.”
Everyone around the piano claps and cheers.
A man in a ridiculous toupee reaches past other celebrants to tuck a fiver in the well-stuffed tip pitcher.
The waitress points at the musician’s near-empty glass by way of asking him if he’d like another drink.
“Absinthe,” he calls to her.
Looks back at Andrew.
“What is your pleasure, O magus?”
“I have a question, but I’d like to ask it in private.”
“Ask away! Nobody’s listening.”
Now everyone in the bar turns and looks at Andrew.
“Ichabod.”
“I know. The manners in this city aren’t what they used to be. Friends, might we have a little privacy?”
The drinkers all put their fingers in their ears, still staring at Andrew.
Andrew’s fear grows, but then he remembers he’s in charge.
Sort of.
“That was good,” he tells it.
“They’re easier to control when they’re drunk. But you know about that.”
He plays a little piano riff.
“Make them stop.”
“MAKE THEM STOP!” they all say.
“I command you.”
“I COMMAND YOU!”
“Do you really?” the piano player says.
His buddy starts making a train noise with the harmonica.
“Yes,” Andrew says.
The harmonica choos like a train whistle.
The harmonica player now lowers his harmonica, looks at Andrew too.
Silence.
The piano man spins his garlanded hat, puts it back on his head at a more rakish angle.
“I choose to interpret ‘Make them stop’ as ‘Make them stop living.’ That’s a tall order. Forty souls in this room, including the piano man. I’ll have to tamper with a gas line.”
“That’s not…”
The waitress comes back with a glass of liquid that glows green like antifreeze. The piano man takes it.
Nods at her and says, “Forty-one!”
“My life sucks anyway!” she says.
“Forty-one dead in New Orleans gas explosion, America’s oldest bar destroyed. You and I will survive, of course. But this is going to be on CNN!” says the piano player.
“That’s not what I meant and you know it.”
“I don’t have to know what you meant. I only have to know what you said. Now either you insist and they all die, or I disobey. Your call entirely.”
Now everyone in the bar drops to both knees, bowing their heads, their hands extended palms up in supplication.
“No, that’s more classical, isn’t it? Let’s do something modern.”
Now they all look up, interlace their fingers, tears streaming down their cheeks as if they were all attached to the same irrigation system.
Andrew can’t speak.
“Just say ‘live’ or ‘die.’ I won’t insist on protocol.”
Andrew’s mind races. He can’t think of a way out of this.
“Friends,” it says. “I believe the wizard fears to slacken my leash, even just a little. If you have any last words, now would be a good time to say them.”
They speak in chorus.
All eyes rest on the magus.
The sound of gas hissing rises up.
One of the candles leaps.
“Live!” Andrew says.
The hissing stops.
The candle leaps again, throwing too much light, casting the piano man’s shadow against the brick wall behind him, but of course it isn’t a man—tentacles, a writhing squid, just a split second of that.
Now he bangs out “Happy Days Are Here Again” on the piano.
All the drinkers look at each other, reach out to each other. They kiss indiscriminately, with no regard to age or gender. They begin to reach down pants, up skirts, fish out breasts.
A wild-eyed Asian man on his knees begins to stroke Andrew’s thigh. Andrew moves away forcefully, stands up. The Asian man attaches himself to another couple, pets them, is petted in return.