A sudden gust of wind blew along Drew Street, flapping the crisp flyers snugged beneath the wipers of the illegally parked cars.
Aquinas stripped one of the sheets from off the windshield of the Moon-Pie Catering van and examined it distantly, on the qui vive for typos or private jokes.
-Thanatosis? he asked.
-Is that the band name or the club? Charlemagne asked, zipping and unzipping the twelfth of thirteen on his leather jacket.
-Band name is my guess, Mary said.
-Yeah, band name and not bad, Aquinas poked the flyer.
-says they’re playing this Tuesday, or last Tuesday, at 11:30, round it up to midnight …
-Tuesday? Mary grimaced.
-ooh, they must be virgins!
-At the MidTown Death House.
-What’s the name again? Charlemagne asked, now patting about for misplaced keys.
-something Osis?
-Thana …
-Shouldn’t it be Thanatop? Top?
Charlemagne’s interruptions were always of exquisite timing.
-You tell me, Aquinas said quietly, replacing the flyer and dusting his hands.
-halitosis, thanatosis, Death’s the hostess with the mostest.
-Speaking of Cocteau, Mary said suddenly and brightly so that even Charlemagne laughed, disarmed.
Or Colette, or Browning (Robbie or Lizbee) or Rabelais or Thin Lizzy or Mick Ronson or Jean Seberg or Gloria Swanson …
The wealth of influences (dropped or acknowledged, true or false, it was often the unanchored weight of the name itself, cut free of any actual notoriety or tangible achievement which counted as chits in the realm of who loves who) seemed to stretch from starstruck iris to the unhurried horizon.
It was not, perhaps, all that important that she be regarded as intelligent.
Two out of three she already had.
But ‘creative’, ‘artistic’, didn’t jilt with the same pleasing jingle, when tongued over in one’s mouth, thumb-and-fingered in the cozy pouch of one’s pocket.
She was creative in spades, yes.
And artistic because she saw beauty in the baffling ugliness of bad behavior, bad driving, bad clothes, bad sex.
But was she intelligent?
Did she have the sort of smarts that made grown men double check their references prior to setting forth on a mission to impress her?
At times it seemed unimportant.
Because at times it seemed that everyone was just the same as everyone else.
The most amazing erudition combined with a falling-down-the-stairs inability to cope with the cost of stamps, to remember how many cups of water per cup of rice.
Smart was the ceiling you cracked your head against.
The thin blue eggshell of the dome.
A truly intelligent thought ought to make one’s brain hurt, one’s eyes ache, one’s fingers gnarl, fists bunching against one’s pacific will.
Alcohol helped.
The thoughts like colorful metallic birds flew springing round the dome, their tinkling wings just shy of the eggshell’s smooth and vulnerable face.
Alcohol made them spin faster.
And made them lighter also.
The pressure was off and speeding trains went suddenly all sleepy delta, the rhythm of her heartbeat grooving with a slack puff and slap, a happy, sexy bump and grind.
It was, of course, much simpler to never hop aboard the merry-go-round in the first place, never spread one’s legs to the baby elephant’s broad pink back, never strangle the swan’s neck with tattooed and sweet ensaddling thighs.
Better to close one’s eyes, step off the spinning edge and come up for air in some barrio where respect was kind words and tone of voice rather than razor wire on the bedroom window, a decapitated gnome doorstopping the atticful of stolen goods.
Her thoughts had a way of running away with her, like the brooding border lovers of refried Scottish balladry.
She lit a cigarette and watched the powerlines tensing and bending in the wind.
The point was to be in the place you never suspected you were going to be and to look around slowly and note the things scattered or artfully arranged as though life was not a dream and as though the world might not last forever.