It was after three rounds of a beer called Slake and after the numbers at the top of our phones proclaimed one day had become another that we hit upon the idea that one of the two of us wouldn’t live to see the morning. It was the kind of idea that gets tossed out late at night in a bar, but as soon as the idea emerges, it takes form. Like another drinker you hadn’t noticed all night but who now sits down beside you and joins in. A future notion that has already happened.
I asked Penny what she would do if she survived. She said she’d get another tattoo. I told her I’d fall in love.
“You always say that.”
“Yeah, but this time, I mean for good. For life. Again.”
We ordered a fourth round and promised it would be our last. We made that same promise after the second round. We looked at the men in the room and debated what they did or did not have to keep us from taking full advantage of their maleness with our femaleness. Taking advantage of men in bars was fun once. Now, looking and debating was as far as we were willing to go. Especially with this crop. Besides, the point of a one-night stand was to come out of it still standing, and we had decided that one of us wouldn’t.
We were dew-soaked, but not drunk. So maybe it was that now-certain-write-off for one of us that added a thrill to the boredom and the slackening interest in any of the choices inside the bar that let our inhibitions rip. We left that fourth round sitting on the bar, went out into the past-midnight, and told the Lyft driver who came to collect us to drive us to The End.
Technically that part of the city was called the West End, but “West” got dropped long ago. The End was the place that when the world tilts, as it frequently does, the people not tied down to mundane things like jobs and relationships and sanity roll into and pile up.
Arlond, the Lyft driver, dropped us off on the civil side of Frobisher Avenue, and we strode across the street like we had a purpose in The End, but we also eyed the doorway to each empty building, skirted the shadows stretching out from the uncleared demolition sites, and gave any group larger than three a wide berth, especially if they were gathered around a fire. This being August and the night still in the low eighties.
We both kissed the guy in the cat outfit consisting of a plush, yesterday-white hood with orange tinted ears in the shape of carets, mascara-drawn whiskers, and a length of jump-rope, ending in the handle, sticking out of the back of his pants. He followed us for a while, but we didn’t mind. We stopped to sing along with a lady strumming a guitar that only had three strings. Next, we arrived at what I named “the beach.” Really, it was just an old blanket covered with sand that a floppy-haired boy, about eighteen, was raking and doodling with a plastic fork. None of that got our attention. What did was his sense of solitude. Maybe he was mentally ill or orphaned or had some other tragic story that brought him to The End, but he emanated solitude the way other people emanate creepiness or contentment. He felt like solitude incarnate.
I looked at Penny, who was looking at me.
“Hear that?” she asked.
“Hear what?”
As soon as I asked the question, I knew what Penny was referring to. There was a hush around this kid. If snow could fall on a hot, sandy beach, this is what it would be like.
“It’s a good place to die,” said Penny.
“And a good day for it.”
“Speaking of which, it’s gotta happen before dawn, and it’s 2:09.”
“We got hours.”
“And minutes”
“And seconds”
“But not days.”
“No, not days.”
“And yet—”
Neither of us saw the Hairy Man. He just appeared behind us, grabbing Penny and pressing a jagged piece of metal to her cheek, demanding we give him all the fucking money we got, or he was going to cut out her eye and drink every drop of blood she could bleed.
As we pulled a few small bills and two credit cards each from our pockets, we told him that we were sorry to disappoint him if his goal was to rob us. He couldn’t do that, we explained, as we were happy to give him all we had. He didn’t need the metal or the threats. All he needed to do was to ask. We told him we had no more use for money. Or at least one of us didn’t.
The man looked confused. He took the metal away from Penny’s face as soon as the money and cards hit the concrete behind us, but he waved it around, going on about rich bitches trying to get their thrills in The End, well they were going to pay for it, and that’s the God’s honest fucking truth (he actually did say “God’s honest” which I thought was cute). And we better not say anything to the cops because cops never bothered him before, and he didn’t give a good goddamn about them now.
Penny assured him no cops would be needed. I said no crime was being committed but stopped talking and threw Penny an apologetic, questioning look because maybe she thought a wicked piece of metal being pressed against her cheek near her eye constituted a crime. But Penny smiled that sweet smile of hers, shaking her head. We both pointed to the money and cards on the sidewalk.
The man looked back and forth at us. I think he was a little bit crazy. I think he thought we were a little bit crazy. So, I quickly pointed out that everyone’s a little bit crazy and it’s best not to judge. He stared. Then, he opened his zipper and we thought he was going to show us his penis, but instead he pulled out an empty, eight-ounce glass jar. He made it rise and fall in front of him, quickly, like it was a holy object and he was blessing us with it. I asked him if he was a Christian because, if so, he was forgetting to do the side-to-side part to complete the cross for a formal blessing. In response, he gave the jar one solid shake in each of our directions and nodded once with definitive certainty (we both liked that) before pushing the jar back inside and re-zipping. He nabbed the only ten in the pile and sauntered away. We called after him, but he disappeared into the shadows, never having looked back.
We reclaimed the credit cards but pushed the three one-dollar bills onto the beach. We stayed another minute to watch the boy rake them into his sand.
“We have become art,” Penny said.
“Imitating life,” I replied.
“Mimics.”
“Here and not.”
We stared at each other with our most serious academic expressions, which sent us off into a fit of giggles. Linking arms, we left the beach.
The last hour, minutes, and seconds for one of us were, I admit it, spent around one of those fires with a group of five other people. We knew we were taking a great chance – out-of-place young women are targets and objects in the respectable parts of the city at night. But logic told us that the fact that one of us was going to die meant one of us was going to live, and so maybe those fires would be where the action began. The people around the fire had bottles of something whose taste I couldn’t identify, but we sipped it anyway, which was an even bigger, beyond-stupid risk. But we thought, “Hey, Fates, it’s getting late so bring it on.” Penny drank more than I did, and after a bit, she said she was going blind, but I told her that some guy’s knit cap was pulled down over her eyes.
We stayed with that group until the sky began to shift from black to a subtle gray, the way it does when you’ve been outside all night in the darkest of places. We both agreed time was short and we were near the end, so we turned about, and using the taller buildings in the center of the city as a reference point, we started walking back toward that part of the city where we spent our lives. Penny managed to contact Lyft again. Frobisher Avenue. A new driver (Greg). Back to the world. And the coup de grace.
We got out together and went our individual ways after a hug, some slurred sentimentality, and a promise to haunt.
I got home feeling too tired for bed and less certain that I’d be the one to die than the one getting sick if I lived. I put my head down on the breakfast bar sticky with the remains of yesterday’s orange juice. It’s that stickiness I’m thinking about as the gray goes in the other direction, giving way to black. The stupid, trivial thoughts and games we play in a shared space. The people we meet. The friends we make. The things we spill and the things we give away. How all of it, just everything, sticks.
–
Joseph Kenyon is the author of one novel, All the Living and the Dead, as well as short stories and poetry. He teaches writing at the Community College of Philadelphia. In his free time, he likes to observe how words and light shift and change moment to moment.
© 2023, Joseph Kenyon
Halfway Down the Stairs 