Spectacles

Jason sits next to me in the cab, complaining that he hasn’t had a drink in four days.
We’re driving en route to a night on the town and he’s as impatient as ever to get things going. Personally, I’m enjoying the evening ride, watching the world blur by.
The midnight sky is dark and there is an electric blue moon arching high, reflecting off the flowing river next to us. It makes for a spectacular effect, glittering like champagne, lovely under the neon light.
We drive with the windows down and the breeze blowing through the car.
“This wind messes up my hair,” Jason complains to no one, then repeats to the taxi driver. The windows now closed, he slides his fingers through his gelled hair, realigning strands.
“How does it look?”
I fix my glasses.
“Fantastic. You’re a lady killer.”
He’s wearing a red and white striped shirt and blue jeans, at least I think they’re jeans, and I have to adjust my glasses in the glare of the moon to see them clearly.
I hate wearing glasses. The bridge keeps slipping from my nose. The arms chafe my ears. Normally it’s contacts I wear, but I ran out yesterday.
“Where are you from?” Jason asks the driver.
“Senegal.”
“How’s the winter there?”
“What?”
“Where is that? Is it warm?”
Jason makes you feel like you’re a good person, a better person, someone who gets the world. And that’s a reassuring thought. Not to say Jason is a bad person. He’s a bit crazy, lives too hard, and only tolerable in small doses. But his conversation is good and his philosophies make sense and, with certain friends, that's really all you can ask for.
The cab races down the road with an urgency to get this fare over with and move on. As we pull into the city the electric blue of the moon is replaced by the sickly electric orange cones of street lights. Jason mumbles that he’ll have a something and coke.
We stop at a bar called the Desert, or Dessert, I don't get a good look at the name, but it makes me remember a place I went to called The Oasis. The Oasis was in the middle of a forest in Germany, and you went there to get drunk. I stopped by a few times while on assignment covering the military in the area. It was nothing more than a watering hole for soldiers on R&R, back from down-range, who hadn't drank for some time. Typically things got out of hand. I remember that, when I left the Oasis, someone was on the verge of beating another's head in with a bar stool.
The Desert isn't that kind of place.
There's a pool table in the middle and a blonde and a brunette playing when we walk in.
They stare at us like vampires.
Jason is already at the bar and he walks back with two drinks.
“This is for you,” and he toasts. “To America.”
I lift my glass.
“I think Marie is here,” I say, unsure if he hears me.
Jason drinks hard, stares at the vampires, and they stare back.
I stare, too. Behind my lenses my eyes scan their curves like a Terminator. The blonde whispers in the other's ear, their chests rubbing close together, the brunette with a shirt too small for her upper body that's more angled than the corners of the billiard table, the blonde with eyes that make you wonder if you're already under the influence as she looks away and leans over to expose her already exposed back in her tank top, a strap sagging as she aims, positioning to get a stripe in the center pocket, arching for the perfect balance to avoid a scratch.
The Desert is a bad place to be when you're thirsty. And I sip.
Purple cigarette smoke spirals from an ash tray beside me, and Jason asks if I want one.
“I don't think I'll go to church tomorrow,” he says with a smile.
We meet Edison a little later. Edison is back from Iraq, on R&R from the Army’s 101st Airborne, and toasting to the occasion. Therefore Jason is toasting to the occasion.
“To America,” We all say.
Edison is built like he should belong in the ranks of an ancient army, the kind that would just bash the enemy’s head in. Still, he smiles constantly. He is friendly and begins talking about his time as a linebacker for a college team out west. He had so many tackles in so many seasons, and normally the numbers would make sense, but I’m not really focused as I study the pool game in front of us, and the players.
Edison says he considered the NFL.
“Country first,” he adds, and I don’t think he’s boasting; only stating facts.
“Where’s a journalist when you need one?” Jason says, looking at me with a wide smile. “What a fantastic story.”
“Are you a journalist?” Edison asks.
I nod and he proceeds to explain why he hates the mass media, citing that some newspaper somewhere at someone point attempted to libel his father. I quickly change the course of the conversation, intimidated. I’m hesitant to ask Edison about the military, though he touches on good stories, including his participating in the sacking of one of Saddam Hussein’s presidential palaces. I’m afraid if I push too hard the wrong stories would come out. Probably dark stories. Not stories for tonight.
Jason has gone to get drinks and is now talking with a man at the bar that looks Middle Eastern, dressed in a Western suit. The man is smiling and nodding and I can tell, even from afar, that Jason is talking about nothing in particular, probably himself. I wonder if Americans realize they’re the center of the world, the center of the universe for that matter, and that attention isn’t hard to come by.
I fix my glasses.
The two walk back to our table and the man says he is from Dubai, here on business. He comments that he enjoys this country and is happy his own country can help continue supplying our energy needs. I consider the comment odd, as Jason laughs and gulps hard.
Edison stares at the man, a certain fire in his eyes. I’m unsure if the man sees it and keeps laughing with Jason. They talk, then, about oil, as Jason is a businessman with an eye on investments. Oil, he says is what this country needs to continue functioning: “Cheap and easy, what the nation is built on,” he says. “Besides, alternatives are nothing more than pipe dreams.”
The man from Dubai commends Jason on his astute observations and reinforces his views, adding that it would cost billions to switch from the “Oil Age” to the “Tree Age.”
Still, you can’t help but wonder when the Oil Age will end, I say.
“There is enough for another 100 years,” the man from Dubai says. “We just need to make sure it’s in the right hands. Maybe 200 years. As long as more men lay down their lives to make oil a possibility.”
It seems like the man from Dubai was attempting to make a joke, but nobody laughed.
“Why don’t you go somewhere else?” Edison says.
I stare, and Jason stares, and the man stares, and Edison stares back.
The man from Dubai leaves. It seems like his exit is overdue.
“That was kind of unnecessary, don’t you think?” Jason asks.
“What do you expect, we’re children of 9/11,” Edison says. “And they’re the enemy.”
I laugh a laugh you laugh when you’re not sure what else to do. But it all makes sense. Sons of 9/11 in the Oil Age have a natural, ideological enemy in the Arabs. Or is it vice versa? The name too, works well, has a certain ring, and I wonder what history will write about the sons of 9/11, and of the Oil Age, and if it’ll be a good enough story kids will want to read about.
I adjust my glasses.
“Is Marie here?” Jason says.
“Who’s Marie?” Edison says.
“They were together,” Jason points to me. “And he’s still in love.”
“Let’s get a drink,” I say.
Cassidy is a vampire. She tells us her name perched atop the bar, swaying her hips to the music, dancing somehow gracefully in high heels.
Jason asks if he can buy her a drink.
“Absolutely.” And he helps her down.
As we wait, we talk, and talking to Cassidy I find out she’s 20 and she snuck into the Dessert with a friend. She’s wearing a low-cut shirt and she doesn’t look 20. The combination probably worked in her favor. She tells me not to tell anyone, and I promise not to. She slides the blonde hair from her eyes and tells me I’m cute. I don’t say another word to her. She turns her attention to Jason, who is interested in what she has to say in so much as a means-to-an-end objective can be. Cassidy is still swaying, her smooth skin and bracelets shimmering in the light. She seems unnaturally down to Earth in the bar, no excitement, like she’s done this a thousand times and isn’t impressed. It looks like the only pulse she has is with her rhythm. She allows only short smirks as Jason talks about himself. Her eyes constantly stay on his, though she seems weary. She herself doesn’t say much, and when she does her small talk is like chloroform.
The other vampire, the brunette, is bent over with the cue stick. Her earrings sparkle in the pale light, a tag the reads “Victoria’s Secret” clearly visible through her shirt. My glasses fog up in the humid Desert and I order a glass of ice water to come to my senses.
Jason, Cassidy and Edison head outside, to the patio. It’s gotten later and the night above has grown out of control. Staring up, my eyes adjust and focus. The moon is almost full – empty at the top and the sides – and has taken a bright, pale blue hue, the craters like pock marks on its face. The stars gleam like milky white pimples soaking through a black blanket; the smaller, more distant pin pricks barely visible, drowned out in the growing portrait. They are the most distant of distances, light years away, where time is tomorrow, or yesterday, or another matter entirely. The world comes into perspective as galaxies fill my view, tentacles swaying, swinging, grabbing, wine-red and deep blue, vibrant yokes, turning like cogs in the machine of the evening; the arms reaching out to grab me, pull my gaze, twist and turn my vision. I become lost in the evening’s vortex, like sweet Charybdis.
I fix my glasses.
Torches are set up around the patio, the metal kind which look like a mix between umbrellas and a car muffler.
We sit. Cassidy has her upper body sprawled across her arms which are crossed along her chest. A shoulder strap sags and she readjusts it. Her legs are crossed and her foot is bobbing as she smiles slightly. We make eye contact, but it seems frosty. She points over my shoulder and says, “Look at this guy.”
I turn around, and recognize the man. Lane Tammer is at the far end of the patio bar making a fool of himself. He’s speaking to the man from Dubai, raising his arms and half jumping to grab onto a beam that is exposed a foot above. Lane will periodically do five or so pull-ups on the beam. Women stroll over to watch. The man from Dubai is smiling, enjoying the attention his new friend generates. Cassidy is up from her seat now and walking over to be part of the flock. Jason doesn’t seem to mind, but his eyes follow every step she takes. In the dim light, with the people all around, Lane looks like a carnival attraction, like the body builder with a mustache who holds a woman up in his palm. Then again he always has been nothing more than an unfamiliar attraction, fleeting as the glamour slowly wares off. I turn around.
After some time Lane sees me, breaks off his antics and strolls to the table.
“You never call anymore,” he says with a slap on the shoulder.
“I don’t really bother.”
“Met someone over there,” he points to the man from Dubai. “He doesn’t have a lot of nice things to say about you guys.”
“Yeah?”
“Marie is here.”
She walks by just as he says it and I look the other way, trying to draw as little attention as possible. I glance back as she passes. Marie is wearing a white blouse, crisp, and white skirt that lands right above her knees, flowing, and wears her long dark hair across her shoulders. Lane grins as he sees her, and then turns his grin to me.
“What is she Spanish or French, or something foreign, right?” Lane asks.
I don’t answer, consumed in watching her.
She meets someone, her boy friend, and he walks over and leans in for a kiss. I tighten. It’s sweet, it really is, but I don’t have the stomach to look and instead look away. Suddenly he’s gone and she’s searching the bar for a friendly face. Our eyes lock.
She sits in the chair vacated by the vampire, and smiles.
“I didn’t recognize you in glasses.”
“Normally it’s contacts I wear. But I ran out yesterday.”
“They make you look like Clark Kent.” She says, her Portuguese accent faint.
“Can I get you a drink?”
“Not tonight.”
“Everyone else is,” I say. “Wouldn’t want to be the only one out.”
“Get me water.”
I come back with two waters. We talk and she smiles at me, twisting the straw of her drink between her fingers, brown eyes focused and bright. I realize that I’m tangled in them, her eyes, lost, my mind drifting in the night above. We talk about a thousand things seemingly forever.
Her boyfriend returns, talking loudly, drunkenly, running his hand up her thigh, cutting me out of the picture. Suddenly they’re kissing wildly. I feel like I shouldn’t be here, like I’m on the outside looking in.
I adjust my glasses.
They stand up. The wind blows and the breeze runs through my fingers, sliding through them, empty.
“We need to be going,” Marie says. I nod. Maybe I smile. Maybe she sees I don’t. Maybe it’s obvious. I wish it were more obvious.
I watch her walk away, disappearing in the smog of cigarette smoke, the flood of people. Lane walks back with the man from Dubai.
“She looks good.”
“Yeah.” I say.
“Always had.”
“What do you want?”
He takes a swig. “I bet I could have had a shot with her.”
I hesitate. “You’re confident.” A pause, then, “Really, you do know you’re talking to the wrong person about this. I mean, I’m still in love with her.” The last part comes out almost as a gasp, and to no one in particular.
“I’m not sure she ever loved you.”
I don’t hesitate. At that point I'd had enough and I let loose, let fly, fists pounding, knocking him to the ground. Someone pulls me away. I readjust my shirt and glasses and he gets up, sniffs, blood running down his lip, stares at me, reels back and then it's my turn to go down.
My glasses are broken. The bartender is dragging me out and I land on the curb, get up, readjust my shirt and collar.
“The police will be here in a minute,” he says.
“That's fine,” I dust off my pants. “I'm satisfied.”
And I walk away.
Maybe that's the way it should happen. Maybe I win. Maybe I lose. Maybe Edison helps out. He’d ask what we we’re fighting for. I’d say a girl. It wouldn’t sound as stupid as it does. Edison seems like he’d enjoy fighting the battle of Troy. But Lane isn’t on the ground, only in front of me staring, grinning something ridiculous. And I can only drink.
I realize I’m drinking memories, one’s I’d just vomited up, and I’m disgusted with it.
I don’t hesitate. “Yeah, she never really loved me,” I say. “Why don’t you go somewhere else. I’m done talking.”
I stare and Lane stares back. Then he excuses himself.
A band starts to play. I pick up my blues drink and swallow hard, then lay it back on its soggy napkin. The music, the bass is loud in the room, people scurrying all around. The vampires dance. Slowly. Intoxicating. I wonder what it would be like if they bit my neck.
“Do you think I'm getting too old?” Jason says lighting up again, suddenly next to me. The flare of the match flashes along the features of his face. He takes a drag, smiles a smoke-ringed smile.
I see he's buzzed. “No. There's still some kid in you.”
“You know how old that one is?” He points to Cassidy.
“No,” I say.
“I don’t think I want to know.” He takes a drag. “Shame. She’s the only girl here that’s into me.”
Jason smashes the cigarette into an ash tray where he’s already crumbled one before, ash and debris exploding on his fingers, the remains of the two sticks leaning jagged in the plate.
“I’m done,” he says with melancholy.
“What about Cassidy?”
“Never mind her.”
It’s like we’re playing poker and he’s just won, and I’ve won before him, and somebody’s won before that, but the winning chips are too hot and nobody wants them.
The other vampire is another story. She comes close to me after the band is done playing and tells me her name, but I forget it immediately, under the suddenly thick blanket of the alcohol.
“What happened to that foreign girl?” She says, brushing her hair out of her brown eyes.
“She abandoned me.”
Tragic as it all is, it’s not hard to find someone sweet in the Dessert. Soon she’s whispering in my ear, rubbing her hand on mine, kissing my neck, and I laugh at the irony of the moment. She thinks I’m smiling at her, and smiles back. For whatever reason, we begin an in-depth conversation on art. Impressionist paintings were really good, I say. They made you think what you wanted to think, feel what you wanted to feel, see what you wanted to see. Art is her aphrodisiac. She asks to take me back.
I’m in her car, then. Rock and roll plays loud and her windows are down to de-fog the windshield. Streetlights are flashing green, orange and red and I can't hear what she said, what she's saying – not over the music. I catch a glimpse of myself in the side view mirror. My glasses, the lenses, shimmer in the street light and I can't see my eyes. I wonder if they’re even there. I think about Marie. I look at the girl next to me. She’s sweet, she has to be, but I still can’t get the thought of her as a monster out of my mind.
I check my phone to see if anyone has called. Then I realize I don't have signal. I'd been having a lot of service problems with my phone, people would cut in or out, calls wouldn't go through, signal would fade.
I feel like I’m fading, too, as she rips open the door of her apartment, and I collapse on a couch. My head is spinning. I lean back, get a grip, and stare at the girl as she makes her way through the room. Undressing, she asks if I want anything to drink. I say no.
She takes it off: the Tiffany’s, the Victoria’s Secret, the shimmer and shine, throws the Coach bag to the floor and stands bare in the shadows.
Without all the flash she looks different, less filled out, more empty.
I’m suddenly less attracted to her.
I take off my clothes and wonder if Americans realize they play Halloween for most of the day, until they undress. I wonder if it qualifies them as the loneliest people in the universe.
I stand, then fall back onto the couch and close my eyes in an attempt to make the world stop spinning. It seems such a hard thing to do, cosmically speaking.
She stands over me, her body half covered by shadows. Taking off my glasses, she tosses them to the far side of the couch. I’m blind as she leans in and kisses me deep. I think I kiss back.
“Wait right here,” and she smiles and I smile and she walks into the next room.
I close my eyes and start to fall asleep.
My phone buzzes with an incoming text message and when I open it, I see its contents are empty. I write back to the sender to say I didn't get a message and couldn't read the text, and then realize that there is no message. The emptiness was all there was.