New York City, Present Day
In the end it was a typical Braxton show, big and gaudy, Manhattan fare for the socially overfed, but dull, uninspired. Passionless. Sexless. Twenty-five pieces filled the gallery, every one of them a toothache. And the guests no better, there not to see but to be seen. What had he expected? It was no longer 1957 and in the world of painters there were no more explosions of passion. Chagall and Picasso had taken it all. Bauhaus was dead, Impressionism commercialized.
Awash in an ocean of rosy mortals he moved, sipping from a sauterne, nodding at the witty comments and praises, the theoretical center of attraction. He saw crones garroted by Bette Davis boas, men in penguin suits. The diamonds hurt his eyes. He had thought of canceling the show, but, Jesus, you just didn't cancel a show with Braxton, a show you'd had scheduled for over two years, not unless you were ready to admit your life was over.
Hot in here. Someone murmured the damning word Bosch on looking into his only favorite and it was enough. It was over. He went out into the night.
Cold, but he liked it, breathed it in deeply. Snow tonight, maybe tomorrow. It would make the city look almost clean. He walked, enjoying his great escape. He let his coat fall open, undid his hair to float behind him in his wake like a veil. Better. Mmm. The air was almost sweet. Who would notice the void he'd made?
He was in sight of the East Village now. It stretched away beneath him, the last bit of purple evening clinging to the street and the sloping roofs of the shops. He heard the rush of battlerap in passing, the hydroplaning of too many expensive cars piloted by uptown hoods. Italian and Middle Eastern cooking vied for independence over the street. He passed Oriental and Armenian green grocers closing up shops, and most or all looked up at him, offered him a customary Village nod or an Evenin' Meesta' Knight if he'd shopped recently. He nodded in return and moved on, his tall narrow fame reflected in distortions in the shop windows.
Crossing Madison to his studio, he glanced up the hill at Sam's Place where it teetered on the Upper Westside and was almost a cafe, thought of stopping in for a nightcap, then moved on. Not tonight. It was that time of the month again and he needed to make a pilgrimage to Amadeus House, unburden himself, and it wouldn't do for him to have his mind all muddied up by a wallbanger that had no immediate intention of letting him go.
He let himself into the studio, shed his greatcoat, and let it fall to the hardwood floor in a heap. Next came the black Nehru jacket and the blood-drop brooch at the throat of his shirt. Vincent greeted him in the dark with his green jewel-glowing eyes. He scooped the cat up and carried it with him to the ass-wide galley kitchen at the back of the renovated space. Vincent meowed, his one orphan ear twitching toward the fridge like a signal. He poured the cat a platter of milk. A glass for himself. Touch of Vermouth. He took one sip and sent the rest down the drain. No. Not tonight, damnit, he reminded himself. He sighed. Do it.
The studio lights still out and only a weak filtering of peachy phosphorescence from the sodium lights on the street to cast Vincent's shadow as big as a tiger on the wall, he stepped up to his bedroom on the undivided upper level and pulled open the closet door. He spent a moment picking at the newest bloodstain on the battered and creased greatcoat, then slid it off the hanger and shrugged into the creaking ten-pound mass of leather. From the space below the floorboards he exhumed the leaden gunny sack and affixed it to his belt. He pulled forth the katana last, pausing briefly to stroke the intricacies of the pommel's engravings.
He frowned. Something wrong somewhere...
He knelt down on the floor, the sword between his knees, the tip grooving yet another hole in the naked oaken floorboards. He balanced his mind, sharpening it. The wood was warm and solid under him, the sweat cold on his brow, the silence heady and unbroken. Acrylics and lead-kohl and the presence of those many who had lived and worked and died here clung like phantomlike incense to the walls. He shrugged off the ghosts and the silence, the studio, everything.
He felt his mind drift like a nightbird with its two black absorbing eyes. He felt it pierce the distance. He felt it see. He rose up and up like a spire, and then he was high above the city and floating, flying, bodiless, a thrill cold like death in his heart and throat.
It was going on a little after midnight and the lights of the Chrysler Building and its old adversary the Empire State had already been turned off, but the rest of New York City glowed like a rare collection of jewels. He saw dark, star-shot towers corkscrewed to sword-points; he saw cabs, cars and limousines moving up and down the glittering canyons of the streets and avenues; he saw, beneath those streets, subways rolling and rumbling like a whole subterranean city; he saw clubs, restaurants, cafes and hotels open and cramped wet and warm with life; he saw people strolling along sidewalks or staggering drunkenly or drugged; he saw fencers and hustlers and prostitutes plying their trades; a voyeur like all of his kind, he saw behind the curtained windows of a million apartments, and there he saw people staring bovinely at the gospel of their flickering television sets, he saw them read and fight and mate and despair in what they perceived as their safe and private hostels; he saw that, in the duration of a minute, someone died, someone was born, and someone else murdered; he saw and was witness to the whole of this filthy, beautiful, unkempt city throbbing with human life laid so open and naked to his special vision. But though he saw so much so completely as if with a minor god's limited omnipotence, he found with time that his attention was inescapably drawn to a triviality--a new snowfall gathering like sapphire on the backs of carriage horses and on the battered tarpaulin of the children's carousel in the center of Central Park.
He lingered a moment there, but only that. Addictions came in all forms. With a last long look at the almost full, dirty red moon hanging low in the sky over Queens, his mind dipped, settling like a pigeon that knows its roost well. He opened his eyes. He was warm and calm now and all the knots were loose. He stretched, letting that stretch take him to his feet.
Slipping the katana into the lining of his coat, he moved to the web-frosted window which looked east out over the clogged arteries of the city. In it was blue February and the filth and the evening and the cold beauty of a modern city built on ancient bedrock. The misty tops of skyscrapers jabbed like a collection of glittering weapons into the soft underbelly of a stormy night sky. The snow fell ceaselessly as it was wont to do now, with a ferocity that made one wonder if some deity were not trying to grout out all the filthy alleys and byways of the city by night.
Vincent jumped to the windowsill, startling him. Silly animal. He set the cat down and slid the window open. Then he himself leapt catlike to the narrow ledge outside, not teetering, balancing himself expertly between the empty, frozen flowerpots. He crouched low, the snow slashing his face like swords, numb to the cold, his mind and eye as sharp as a bird of prey. Glancing sidelong, he saw Vincent looking out at him with bitter insult as if to say, You are not cat, why can you do what I can?.
He shook himself, breathed in the white cold and the spicy fumes of the city and the filth and the blood and the life and the death of the night. Then he, Alek Knight, artist and slayer, creator and destroyer, dropped--primly, silently--to the alley floor forty feet below his window.