by john | Jun 7, 2009 | Fiction, The Chosen
My heart stopped when she stepped out on that runway, and not just because I had seen the first love of my life again after innumerable years. But not to put too fine a point on it, Eve was hot. The years had left us largely untouched, and when she walked out from behind the silver lame shimmery curtain, I went back to the first day I ever saw her. The sun was always shining in the Garden, even when it had to rain, and it was sunny afternoon when she stepped out from behind a tree and said “Adam, I presume?”
“Huh?” I’m always eloquent when surprised.
“You must be Adam.”
“Huh?”
“Well, obviously I’m intended to be the brains of this operation. I’m Eve, and Father sent me here to be your partner.”
“Huh?” This was taking a minute or two to sink in, obviously. It’s not like Eve was the first woman I’d ever seen, or the first woman that had ever been. That would be Lillith, and that didn’t go well. It’s not that Lillith wasn’t perfectly pleasant, but we were never partners in any real sense of the word. We occupied the same space, but we weren’t ever what you could call together.
“Father made me from one of your ribs, working under the assumption that we’d be closer that way if I were more a part of you. We’ll see. So far it looks like he took a fair chunk of your brains with the rib, even though I’m pretty sure they don’t share the same geography, as it were.”
“Look, um…Eve?”
“Yes. Eve.”
“Ok. Look, Eve. I’m sure you’re nice enough, and ‘m sure Father thinks that he knows best, but I just got out of a thing with this woman named Lillith, and I’m not really feeling the whole ‘man and woman thing’ right now. It’s nothing personal, but…” I trailed off when I saw the look in her eyes. It was the look you get when you drop your kid off at kindergarten for the first time. There was hurt mixed with shock and loss all wrapped up in a big bundle of betrayal, like the whole world has suddenly turned topsy-turvy, and not in the good kind of roller-coaster that goes through a loop kid of way.
“You don’t love me?” And those eyes brimmed with tears, and a lock of her blonde hair trailed out from behind her left ear, and she started to turn away from me, shoulders slumped like she’d just lost her only friend. Which I suppose he had, even though we’d just met.
“Wait.” I stopped her more with words than with any touch, although I did reach for her arm. “Why don’t we just sit here and get to know each other a little bit. Tell me something about yourself.”
“Well, there’s not a lot to tell since I’m about seven hours old, but I’ll sit with you and you can tell me about yourself, and this place, and all these creatures that are all around.” So we did. We sat on a rock on top of a hill and I pointed to the giraffe, and the lion, and the dog and horse and kiwi (she found the kiwi and playpus particularly amusing, and used to always giggle when the kiwi would waddle past).
We sat there for the rest of the day as I taught her the names of things, and she laughed at my silliness when I tried to ride a hippopotamus or climb a tree after a squirrel, and I found her to be witty, and open and completely giving of herself. She laughed whenever she felt like laughing, and was so moved at the beauty of the sunset that she wept, big tears rolling down her cheeks to nestle in the hollow of her throat and collarbone while she grinned a grin that kept the sun up a couple extra minutes just to bask in her light.
So yeah, we fell in love. I guess we invented it, at least among mortals. The seraphim had a whole different level of love working, what with their nigh-infinite intellect and capacity for emotion and all. But we fell in love, and we had babies, and then we had an unfortunate interaction with a certain seraphim with ambition who had managed to lose a celestial corporate takeover bid and develop a reputation as the most disgruntled of employees. You all know how that turned out. Then there was the whole Cain inventing murder episode, and things spiraled out of control between Eve and I, and that all culminated in a certain level of butterflies in my stomach as I sat in a relatively disgusting bar in New Orleans watching my ultimate first wife take her top off for dollar bills.
I should have known that there was going to be trouble. I mean, really, nothing had gone well for me since I sat down at the blackjack table in Vegas, and since I’d gone a whopping 48 hours without hitting anyone I should have known that it was too good to last. But I’m really not that smart, so I was somewhat blindsided when everything went all pear-shaped on me.
It started in the middle of Eve’s second song, by which time she had shed her top and was teasing the removal of her oh-so-brief bottoms and writhing on the edge of the stage for a passel of thick-necked fratboys in cutoff Dockers and backwards LSU caps. Eve’s first song had been some mind-numbingly fast rave thing that left her half-naked and the audience whipped into a frenzy, so when the music shifted to Chris Isaak’s Baby Did a Bad, Bad Thing they were at a fever pitch.
It was about halfway through the song when the first fratboy made his move. Eve was on her knees at the edge of the stage shaking her boobs in his face while he stuck a dollar in his garter when he reached up and grabbed a handful of breast. Eve slapped his hand, waved a playful “no-no” finger in his face, and spun away to work the other side of the runway. Unfortunately for so many of us, the fratboy decided that he wasn’t done with Eve, and he grabbed the back of her thong and yanked her backwards toward him. Eve whirled on the fratboy ready to knock him senseless, but one of his buddies grabbed her first in mid-swing.
The mood of the crowd turned ugly then, and I looked over at Cain. “Keep Emily out of this,” I yelled at him as I flung myself into the fast-developing fray. One of the bouncers had a fratboy in a headlock, but two of them were still pawing at Eve, and she couldn’t get free enough to get a good swing at them. I caught one of them by the shoulder and spun him around, dropping under his roundhouse elbow and coming up with a shot to the groin. What can I say, I’m a lover, not a fighter. So I cheat.
The first fratboy went down like 250 lbs. of dead weight, which at that moment he was, and I clocked the other one behind one ear with a beer bottle. Eve’s back was to me as his grip loosened, and I went for the dramatic pose, taking the beer I’d just clobbered the kid with and turning it up, bringing it down with a grin just as Eve made it back up on the stage and to her feet. She looked down at me as I lowered the bottle and her eyes went wide. I smiled my best saucy smile up at her (and my best saucy smile is pretty good these days) and said nonchalantly, “Hi Eve. Nice thong.”
I’m not sure what reaction I was expecting, but a crazed shriek wasn’t anywhere on the list. I saw a light in her eyes that I was not in any was happy about, and was just bringing my hands up when one of her 4” platform shoes caught me square on the tip of my jaw, lifting me off my feet and depositing me, unconscious, in the center of a table occupied by three cloud storage salesmen from Toledo. The last thing I saw before I went completely out was a convention badge reading “Stewart” in 18-point font, and a pocket protector.
by john | Jun 5, 2009 | Fiction, The Chosen
So I sat around my son’s apartment in the Quarter for the afternoon and we danced around each other like so many fathers and so many sons have done since almost the dawn of time. Or, I guess since we were now doing it, since the literal dawn of time. Myra slept most of the afternoon, Michael wandered through New Orleans numerous churches, and Emily looked through Cain’s photographs until well into the night. I guess it was about 11:30 when Cain stood up, looked at me, and headed towards the door. Myra met me at the door.
“Do you want me to go with you?” she asked.
“No. It’s probably going to be a scene of biblical proportions, if you’ll pardon the pun, and I don’t think the most presence of the most recent mother of my child will help soothe the savage breasts of the first mother of my children.”
“You know the quote only has singular breast, right?”
“Yeah, but given the establishments where we’re looking for her, I figured the more the merrier.” I tried to keep it light, but she could see in my eyes that I wasn’t looking forward to this.
“She’ll forgive you. I did.”
“Yeah, but I had only left you for a couple of decades. Multiply that times a hundred or so and that’s the kind of grudge Eve’s toting.”
“It’ll be okay.” she lied.
“I know.” I lied right back, and we shared that rueful smile that people share when they know they’re selling a great big steaming pile, and they know the other one isn’t buying, but it’s what they’re expected to say and do, so they do it anyway.
“Wow. You guys are cute. Aren’t they cute, Cain? Was he this cute with your Mom?” I turned and saw Emily standing next to Cain at the door, a tank top that verged on the obscene stretched across her chest and a tattered pair of jeans tapering down to a pair of bright red cowboy boots.
“What are you wearing? And where do you think you’re going? If you think you’re going with us, particularly dressed like that, you’ve got another think coming young lady.” I only get all Ward Cleaver when I have daughters of a particular age range. Namely from about 6 months to 65 years old.
“They’re called clothes, Dad, and they took the place of fig leaves a while back. And I’m going with you.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Yes I am.” she said simply, as though there was no argument even conceivable.
“Emily. How should I best put this? Oh hell no you’re not. I am not taking my youngest child into a strip bar on Bourbon Street at 1:30 in the morning.”
“One: why not? It’s not like it’s the first pair of tits I’ve ever seen. In case you didn’t notice, I have a pair of my own, so they’re less than impressive to me. And Two: you are my father, and the father of the human race, and for that I respect you, but you don’t get to play dad after missing 23 birthdays and then randomly showing up on a stolen Harley in the middle of the afternoon. So pick your jaw up off the floor and let’s roll. I’ve got a feeling you’re going to need me tonight, for moral support if nothing else.” I closed my mouth with an audible snap, and walked over to the door where she stood with Cain.
I looked back at Myra and Michael. Myra was leaning on Cain’s fridge smirking at her precocious daughter, and Michael was sitting in an armchair with an inscrutable expression on his face. I hate inscrutable angels. “You two going to suddenly decide to come along, too?” I asked.
“No thank you, I’ve still got some recovering to do. I’m not as young as some people that were drinking with you two degenerates.”
“I’ll pass. I can happily avoid delving into the absolute gutter of humanity.” With Michael’s endorsement ringing in my ears, we headed out. It was a nice enough night, and Cain and I were big enough to make ourselves not look like prey for anyone with less-than-honorable intentions between his apartment and the ongoing party of Bourbon Street. Big Daddy’s wasn’t the sleaziest place in the Bayou, but it wasn’t exactly a champagne room, either. With a huge sign on the street advertising “LIVE SEX SHOW” and proclaiming it “TOO EXTREME TO SHOW – COME INSIDE” it wasn’t making much happen on the subtle side of life. I downed the last of the mega-beer I had bought from one of the street stalls and followed Cain and Emily inside.
It was decorated in typical strip club chic, dark so you wouldn’t notice the stretch marks and the ocassional needle track, with mutli-colored dark carpet to hide the presence of blood and other fluids. There were a couple of small side stages and one long runway that dominated most of the center of the room. A bouncer who looked like he ate small children with hummus for breakfast stood by the door and checked IDs. I don’t know where Cain got his, but my fake IDs have always been immaculate, and ridiculously expensive. Emily was the only one of us with a real government-issued ID that had her actual birthdate on it, and Bluto spent a lot more time trying to look down her shirt than he did checking her age. We took a table in a corner, and I noticed that Cain made it a point to check for escape routes and sit with his back to a wall when we all sat.
“Paranoid, son?”
“Sometimes it’s a good idea to know where your exits are. Check that – it’s always a good idea to know where your exits are. And a guy I used to play cards with taught me not to sit with my back to a door.”
“Really? You were there? Then?”
“Yeah. It wasn’t pretty. Got Hickock droppings all over my favorite jacket. Some things just don’t come out of suede, Pop.”
“What are you boys talking about?” said a voice in my ear. Not a particularly euphonious voice, but obviously female. I looked up to a flat-chested stripped with a face like a horse. Before I could tell her to buzz off, she had wormed her lace teddy-wearing way onto my lap where her bony ass immediatelystarting to dig deep into my left quadricep.
“We were just having a little conversation, honey. A private conversation.” I replied, hoping she’d get the hint and find a drunker target. But she was either desperate or brutally dense, and she didn’t budge.
“Well my name’s Sandy. What’s yours?” Horse-faced girl replied, without any inclination to move. I glared daggers at Cain, who was leaning back in his chair quietly smirking at me, and Emily, who was smothering her giggles in a Cosmopolitan. This night was not going well, and it started to spiral absolutely out of control when I heard the DJ announce “AAAANNNNNDDDD NNNNOOOOOOOOWWWWWW, ON OUR MAIN STAGE, PLEEEEEAAAASSSSSEE WELCOME…EEEEEEEEVVVVVVEEEEE!” And with that, the woman I first gave my heart to, the woman I’ve loved since the beginninng of the world, the woman I helped create the human race with, stepped out onto a runway to shake her mostly naked body for an audience of drunken rednecks, swamp rats and frat boy douchebags.
by john | Jun 3, 2009 | Fiction, The Chosen
Chapter 3
It’s not a long ride from Tyler, Texas to New Orleans, but when you have to make a couple of pit stops and more than a couple of puke stops because of a two-day bender, it can be a seriously unpleasant trip. Michael and I drove, and Cain followed on his bike as Emily and Myra did their best impersonations of plague victims in the back seat. Cain and I had consumed nearly twice as much as they had, but we weren’t precisely normal, if you’ll recall. We only get about as drunk as we want to, and we can shake it off pretty quickly when we need to. I figured we needed to. The girls didn’t have quite our level of resilience, so it was a tough trip for them.
Finally, about nine hours into a seven-hour trip we rolled into the Crescent City. I’d never spent a whole lot of time in New Orleans, but I’d been there once or twice. I had nothing against the town, it just felt like too much old for me, and I had enough memories of old running around in my head without shaking them loose walking through the French Quarter. Cain pulled even with my window as we rolled off the interstate, and yelled “Follow me.”
We meandered through the Quarter until we pulled up to a small house on Royal Street, just off Jackson Square. Cain pulled his bike into a narrow alley and gestured for me to park on the street in front of the house. He motioned for me to follow, and we all trooped up a rickety flight of stairs into a second-floor apartment.
“Welcome, dear pater, to my humble abode.” He said grandly as we entered his slightly shabby yet somehow chic living room. There was a sofa that somehow managed to be threadbare and classy all at the same time, a feat I’d never managed personally, and a couple of mismatched lamps that nonetheless tied the whole room together somehow. The walls were decorated with back and white photographs of people in various ages, all taken in and around New Orleans. Emily wandered the walls as if in a museum, while her mother made a beeline for the sofa and curled up into a little, sweaty, exceedingly hung over ball.
“Cain, these are amazing,” Emily murmured as she looked at the photos. “It’s like you took a picture right into their souls and hung them up on the wall. Like this one here, I can almost see this woman crying for her lost little boy even though she’s smiling at a street musician.”
“You know, baby sister, there are some culture that still believe that a camera can steal your soul and trap it in the photograph. I think it’s the opposite, really. I think that the camera can set free a part of your soul that’s trapped in the everyday and let it loose to be miraculous. Turn around.” She did, and Cain was holding an expensive-looking digital camera. He snapped her picture before she could even vamp, and said “Gotcha! Now I’ve got a little piece of Emily-soul to carry around with me and stick on my wall.”
“You ass, you could at least have given me some warning.” She went over to him and punched him on the arm. “Well? You’ve gotta at least me see it so I can tell you to delete it.”
“Oh no, baby sister. You can see it, but I’m not deleting it. This is the most time I’ve spent with a sibling in a long time, and I want something to commemorate the moment.” He was smiling, but there was a heaviness to his eyes, and the moment, that gave us all pause. Myra broke the silence by getting up off the couch, bolting down a dark hallway into the tiny bathroom and being noisily sick.
“That’s Mom. She always knows just what to say.” And just like that, all the tension flowed out of the room. Emily slid her head under Cain’s arm just like they’d been raised brother and sister and snatched the camera out of his hands. She thumbed the controls expertly until her photo came onto the tiny screen.
“wow.” Her voice was very small, and she looked suddenly nervous as she looked up at Cain. “Is that what I really look like?”
“The camera doesn’t lie, baby sister. You’re beautiful.”
“But, I’ve never been pretty.”
“You’re right. You’re beautiful. I might have mentioned that. Have I developed a stutter after all these centuries?”
“But, it’s not right, I’m not like that, I don’t take good pictures, that’s not me.” By now my curiosity had gotten the better of me and I wandered over to look at the image over her shoulder. Cain had caught her just as she turned around, hair flying slightly, with a touch of backlight making it look even more golden than normal. Her mouth was open a little, teeth just barely showing in a pixie grin, and her eyes twinkled in light I never saw in that apartment. She was, in a word, beautiful.
Now don’t get me wrong, Emily was a pretty girl, and in the right setting maybe even men who aren’t her father would consider her beautiful. But after a drinking binge, nine hours on the road in the Texas-Louisiana summer and a total of maybe three hours sleep in as many days, she wasn’t at her best. But in Cain’s photo, she was everything she could ever be on her best day. He captured the absolute essence of Emily and distilled it into a single digital image. It was both breathtaking and a little scary.
“Damn, Cain. That’s an amazing picture. That’s the kind of thing photographers wait their whole life to capture, and you did it without even thinking or trying twice. You’ve got a gift, son.” I said.
“Well, Dad, I’ve had a lot longer to practice than most artists.”
“Good point.”
“So, other than to admire your skill in photography, which is considerable, and to allow Myra to vomit in your toilet, which is admirable, why are we here?”
“Well, I thought we could rest up here and then you and I could go looking for Mom later tonight when the clubs open.”
“You don’t think they’re open now?”
“They are. She’s not there yet.”
“How do you know? Never mind. You know. More to the point, does she know you’re here?”
“We’ve talked from time to time.”
“Is she alright?” This time it was my voice that was small, and I couldn’t look at my son’s eyes. I walked across the living room and out onto his tiny balcony. It was just big enough to hold two wrought-iron chairs and a tiny round table. I bypassed the chairs and leaned on my elbows on the railing instead.
“She’s okay, Dad. At least, she’s okay for Mom. You know how she is.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“She’s bitter, and angry all the time and she gets into fights with clients and gets guys so mad they punch her and throw her into the street half-naked sometimes and she runs through jobs like I go through clean socks, and I don’t think she’s happy unless she’s miserable.”
“Yeah, I know.” I did, too. She’d been like that ever since I brought Abel’s body back from the shallow grave where Cain buried him and laid him to rest under the Tree. Yeah, that Tree. It wasn’t the Garden anymore, and it wasn’t really the Tree anymore, since our Father had withdrawn his presence from us, but it was still the oldest Tree we had ever known, so it seemed somehow appropriate. I dug a deep hole and buried my eldest son there, and when I finished shoveling dirt back in on top of his lifeless form I turned around and saw that I was alone.
Eve stayed gone for several days, and when she came back she was different. The loss of our two sons in the same day had changed something fundamental in her, and it wasn’t long after that when we went our separate ways. We travelled the world for centuries, our paths sometimes crossing, but never for very long. And here I was after thousands of years ready to make nice and play happy family again. Oh, and here’s our long-lost son, the one that you kept in touch with and I said I’d never touch again except to strangle. Yeah, I could see this was gonna be a long night.
by john | Jun 2, 2009 | Fiction, The Chosen
After several hours, multiple bottles of whiskey, bourbon and by the end of things, tequila, we had gone through about twenty-five hundred dollars worth of booze, and Emily and Myra were looking a little the worse for wear. Cain and I may have had a slight edge on them in the tolerance department, and let’s face it, once you’ve drank mead with real Vikings, there’s not a whole lot of impressive rolling out of Milwaukee. There wasn’t a whole lot of conversation, just a lot of liquid group therapy and some gentle dancing around the big topics. Cain and I talked through Emily a lot, asking her what she was interested in, what she wanted to be when she grew up, that kind of stuff. We very studiously didn’t discuss any abandonment issues, empty feelings because of being an only child or anything else that might have ripped off scabs that were just starting to form.
I figure we sat in that bar for the better part of a day and a half digesting a steady diet of Emmylou Harris, Reckless Kelly and Townes Van Zant before Michael finally came strolling in, looking for all the world like he was on a pleasure cruise rather than rolling cross-country with a couple of immortals who’d broken his nose twice in twenty-four hours and their indefinable mortal relations.
“Well, look what the cat regurgitated onto the rug.” I said sweetly as he pulled up a chair and materialized a white wine spritzer. Lucinda Williams was on the jukebox singing Return of the Grievous Angel and I was pretty sure that he had either timed his entrance to fit the song, or more likely that he had changed the jukebox to make a better entrance.
“Really, Michael? That has to be the only wine glass within a hundred miles. Do you want to get punched in the face again that badly? I’m sure if you just asked, one of the boys here would be willing to oblige you. It’s not necessary to show all of Texas exactly what a fairy you angels can be.” Myra cracked herself up and went into a fit of drunken giggles at the whole fairy angels bit.
“I presume we have gotten all of our childishness out of our systems and are ready to proceed with the world-saving portion of our program?” Michael ignored Myra. Probably a good idea given her level of inebriation. I wouldn’t put it past her to knock the angel on his ass herself.
“Well, in the words of Jaws, we’re gonna need a bigger boat.” I said.
“Excuse me?” responded the confused angel. Pop culture references, even ones dated enough for me to follow, were apparently no good with the seraphim. All that harp music interfered with their television reception, I guessed.
“We came her in a Civic. I don’t think five of us are leaving that way.” I explained.
“Don’t sweat it, Dad. I didn’t exactly fly here, you know?” Oh yeah. Cain had to have some type of transportation. “My bike’s right outside.” I felt a little twinge when he said that. Like father, like son, I suppose. Maybe I could have a relationship with this son even after all the water under (and over) that bridge.
“Well, then, we should go. Cain, I believe you should take the lead on this leg. After all, you know where we’re going.” Michael said.
“Well, I don’t know exactly where we’re going, just a general idea.” Cain said, and he suddenly became very interested in the tops of his shoes.
“And where, roughly, does that general idea lead?” I started to have a really bad feeling about the answer as my thoughts flashed back to Cain’s initial re-entry into my life a couple of days back.
“Well, it’s kinda tough to say. You know how Mom is, she doesn’t like to stay in one place too long, and sometimes I get mixed signals when I’m trying to track her down, and…”
“Cain. Where. Is. Eve?” I used the Daddy Voice. It’s different from The Voice, but has a similar effect, if the audience is a little more limited. I was happy and more than a little surprised to see that it still worked even if your kid is a few thousand years old.
“Bourbon Street.”
“And what is she doing on Bourbon Street? As I recall, Eve is an excellent musician, so I have some slight hope that she’s playing music.”
“Not exactly, Michael.” Cain replied. I knew that whatever the answer was, I was not going to like it.
“So what, exactly, is she doing, son?” I asked as gently as I could muster.
“Dancing.”
“Where is she dancing, Cain?” I tried to keep my voice level.
“Well, she moves around a lot.”
“Cain. Talk.” I said. I was pretty sure I knew the answer, but it had been a long time since I’d been on Bourbon Street and had a modicum of hope that it had changed since the hurricane.
“Big Daddy’s.” Apparently neither Bourbon Street nor Eve had changed since the last time I saw them. Bourbon Street still housed as many strip clubs as jazz clubs, and Eve still worked hard to surround herself with as much of humanity’s filth as possible. Now don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against strip clubs, and some of my favorite conversations throughout the years have been with strippers and prostitutes. I’ve always appreciated their unvarnished view of the world. They have a level of honesty that you just don’t find in “legitimate” society, and every once in a while I’ve needed that type of honesty. But I knew instantly that Eve wouldn’t be working in the top-notch strip club, she’d be working the seediest dive on the street, and that at some point before we left New Orleans, I was going to end up hitting somebody again. And there was only about a 50/50 shot that it wouldn’t be Eve.
So I knocked back one last shot of Patron, looked over at the Jason (after a certain number of bottles, you move into a first-name relationship with your bartenders) and asked if we had any cash left. He looked over at the tab and brought me four twenties. I handed them back to him with a couple of unflattering pictures of Ben Franklin and headed toward the door into the sunlight just as Robert Earl Keen started to sing “Sherry was a waitress, at the only joint in town.” I chuckled to myself and thought about the truth is Keen’s song. The road really does go on forever, but I thought this party might be just getting started.
