I took my vodka tonic and downed most of it in a gulp. “Yeah.”
“Huh.” He stared admiringly at Angelica, then flashed me a grin. “Well, you’re shitting in some high cotton, sister. Have another.” I traded my empty glass for a full one and stepped away. Angelica had floated toward the center of the room, deep in conversation with a white-haired man who could have been her grandfather. I turned and walked to the tapestried wall.
“Hi,” I said. José Malabar looked startled. “You’re José. You’re in Warnick’s class with me, right?”
He took a long drag of his cigarette and regarded me warily. He was my own age, heavyset and olive-skinned, with dark straight hair falling unevenly about his ears and small, almond-shaped eyes. He wore an ancient black suit over an open white shirt, flocked with burn holes and a dusting of ash.
“Joe,” he said at last, in a low voice. He had an accent that I couldn’t place. “Baby Joe.”
“Baby Joe.” I nodded and raised my drink to him. “I’m Sweeney Cassidy.”
He stared at me through a halo of grey smoke. “Yeah,” he said at last. “Sweeney. I know you. You’re the one got tagged by Beauty and the Beast this morning.” He began to laugh, a childlike wheezing giggle, and reached for my glass. I smiled uneasily and gave it to him. He took a sip, raising it in mock salute. “What’re you doing here?”
“I came with Angelica.”
“Huh.” Baby Joe frowned, then finished my drink. He handed me the empty glass and shook his head. “Yeah, I know her too. She’s okay. But you’re not one of them.”
“Who’s ‘them’?”
Baby Joe’s voice was derisive. “You know. The Benandanti. Brujos.”
“No.” I looked around uncomfortably, then set my empty glass on the floor. “I mean, I guess not. I never even heard of them until today.”
“That’s good.” He dropped his cigarette. “Because I hate them.”
He stared at the floor, waiting till his cigarette had burned a tiny black hole in the wood; then ground it out with a filthy high-top sneaker bound with electrical tape. The sneakers matched his shapeless suit, which was baggy even on his ungainly form. On the lapel was a small red button. I squinted as I read the tiny letters.
I laughed, but Baby Joe’s expression remained enigmatic. He tapped another cigarette from a pack of Pall Malls, then began to speak with exaggerated slowness.
“Let me tell you something, Sweeney Cassidy.” He spoke so loudly that several people turned to frown in our direction. “You shouldn’t be here. This scholar shit is dangerous, di ba?”
I grew hot with embarrassment and stared at the tips of my boots, but Baby Joe seemed to enjoy the glares we were getting.
“You think you’re getting in for some nice schoolgirl fun, you and Barbie Doll over there, but you’re gonna get fucked.”
He paused and turned an insolent stare upon two elderly women who regarded us with tight frowns. “YOU—ARE GOING—TO GET—FUCKED.”
The women moved off in disgust. Baby Joe smiled, then looked at me and added, “And your friend Oliver? Talagang sirang ulo—fucking crazy bitch! He’ll be pushing a shopping cart down Fourteenth Street one of these days. He’s crazy, that whole family is crazy. My brother was here with his brother, Walter—”
“Waldo.”
“Whatever. He was nuts, fucking nuts, di ba? Tried to poison some teacher that failed him. With rat poison. Once he shot at my brother with a bow and arrow.”
“He’s a Buddhist monk now.”
“Figures. These guys—” He gestured disdainfully at the well-dressed crowd surrounding us. “—these guys tapped my brother years ago, di ba? When we were in Manila my mother was a bruja, you know, a—a midwife and—well, some other shit—but then she had a run-in with President Marcos’s chauffeur and they made things tough for us. My father died of bangungot—you know what that is? Bad juju, Schoolgirl, very bad stuff—and we had to leave Manila, leave the whole fucking country. My uncle lives in D.C. so we came here, but then he’s got like some weird connection with this place and my mom gets plugged into all that shit. And my brother Nestor, they think he’s brujo like my mother, they give him some tests and finally he gets a scholarship.”
He shook his head and giggled softly. ‘“Religious Studies.’ But, like, this is the only way we get to go to college, di ba, so who’s going to say no?”
I nodded as though this was all perfectly normal. “What’s your brother doing now?”
“He’s got this band, Euthanasia. They play at the Atlantis sometimes.” He sighed. “Me, I’m only here ’cause they gave me a full scholarship. Nobody gives scholarships to poets.”
He raised his eyes thoughtfully. “But what are you doing here, hija? How’d you hook up with those two?”
I shrugged, stabbed at the floor with the metal toe of one boot. “I don’t know. They just started talking to me in Warnick’s class.”
“Huh. Talking.”
Baby Joe looked disgusted, as though this was an obvious setup. But he said nothing more, only gazed through hooded eyes at the room in front of us.
I fell silent. I stared at my feet and wondered if I should cut my losses and just sneak out now. It seemed clear to everyone I met that I didn’t belong at this reception; didn’t belong with Angelica, and probably didn’t belong at the Divine. The three vodka tonics made me feel weepy and hopeless. I thought of my parents and how much it was costing them to send me here, how much they’d save if I returned home and commuted to SUNY Purchase. I thought of the classes I’d skipped, and the copy of The Golden Ass I wasn’t reading.
“Shit,” I said under my breath. I glanced up, hoping I might see Angelica, or maybe even Oliver. But there was only Baby Joe, smoking and brooding like an extra in a bad French movie. Angelica seemed to have disappeared, and Oliver, I was starting to suspect, wasn’t going to show at all.
So I turned back to the party going on without me; and who I saw was Professor Warnick. Amidst all that extravagant finery he looked absurdly small and demure in a pearl grey morning suit and striped ascot, his dark hair swept back from his face. He was watching the crowd with a bland expression, his blue eyes guarded but calm.
It was the figure standing behind him that made my neck prickle: the same extraordinarily tall figure I’d glimpsed outside of Reardon Hall that morning. Only now, instead of a simple cape, he wore robes that evoked some bizarre liturgy. Cloth of a purple so deep and rich it was almost black, but with a sheen that picked up the light and shot forth a phosphorescent glow. They swept about his emaciated form, cuffs and hem trimmed with golden ropes and cords and tassels. The effect should have been ludicrous, Duchess of Malfi meets Star Trek; but it wasn’t. It was terrifying.
“Hey, Baby Joe,” I said hoarsely.
My voice died in my throat as the figure turned. Its hooded face bobbed, like a blind hound trying to pick up a scent, and I shrank against the wall. I was ridiculously certain that he was looking for me. I recalled the figures in my room last night. This could have been one of them, only even more frightening, because no one else took any notice of him at all. He towered a good three heads above Professor Warnick—cadaverously thin, head weaving from side to side, the robes looped about his frame like winding sheets.