"Jazz"
He could feel the slowing of the rhythm the way women could tell an infant’s cry of hunger from a cry of pain. He stroked a strand of hair back from her forehead, feeling the rhythm seep out of her, out of her chest, out of her throat until it stopped and the breath and heat would follow.
Three...
“Sorry.”
Two...
“It had to end.”
One...
“At least it was this way.” He squeezed her hand.
She gazed faintly up at him, and the light in her eyes faded, and she smiled.
He lowered her to the ground and rose up, dusting alley grime off his hands and the knees of his jeans.
Flickering shadows criss-crossed the sidewalk and turned his shirt into a checkerboard when he stepped into the city’s nightlife.
“Hey – watch it!”
Something slammed into his chest, knocking him out of his daze.
“Sorry.” He caught the assailant by the shoulders and balanced her. “I was sort of – daydreaming.”
“No, I’m sorry,” she answered. Her green eyes glimmered in the lamplight. “I’m just impatient tonight.”
He smiled at her and stuck his hand out. “’S all right. The name’s Jazz.”
Shaking the proffered hand, she returned the smile. “I’d say you’re name’s weird, but my name’s East, so who am I to judge?” She shifted her backpack higher on her shoulders. “I haven’t seen you around before. Just move here?”
“I’m nocturnal, I work nights, but I’ve been here a while. You’re diurnal, I’m guessing?”
Laughing, she began walking again, causing him to fall into step beside her. “Interesting way you have of putting it. Yes, during the day I usually work, at Mike’s.”
Jazz’s eyes lit up. “The ice cream place?” The white sign of the ice cream parlor illuminated the end of the block. “Is that where you’re headed now?”
“Mm-hm. A friend asked me to close for her – she’s got a hot date to catch.” East turned to face him, a twinkle in her eye as she walked backwards. “If you help me out, I’ll get you some ice cream, my treat, employee discount and all.”
“Sure!”
“Great. What’s your flavor?”
East handed Jazz a triple scoop of Black Forest ice cream just after he finished sweeping the floor in front of the counter, then perched herself beside the register with a cup of frozen yogurt.
“So...Jazz,” she commented after a few spoonfuls. “Big basketball fan?”
He shook his head, pushing copper-brown hair out of his eyes. “No, it’s really Jason Dullahan, but when I was a baby I cried a lot and my dad had to sing jazz to me to get me to sleep. What about you?” His tongue darted out to save a runaway drop of the melting treat. “Is ‘East’ a take off your last name or something?”
Blushing and avoiding his gaze, she said, “It’s short for Easter Lily. My grandma was a proud Catholic, my mom was a hippie and when I came along they...compromised.”
“Well, it’s a unique name,” he offered.
“A little too unique.” East stared down at her spoonful of rapidly unfreezing frozen yogurt. “My mom and grandma – ” Her hand trembled involuntarily, and drops of yogurt spattered on her shirt. “Oh! For heaven’s sake...”
Jazz reached into his back pocket and withdrew a foil packet as East scrambled for the napkin dispenser. “Oxi-clean wipes. Never leave home without them.”
Blinking, East reached out to accept it, and a bubble of laughter escaped her lips suddenly. “Wow! You’re pretty darn prepared.”
He winked. “I’m just a regular boy scout.”
“Really?” She tore open the packet with her teeth and began dabbing at her shirt with the white wipe.
“No.” He snorted. “Can’t stand the uniforms.”
East smiled triumphantly when the pink splotches disappeared, only slightly damp but clean white t-shirt left behind. “These are pretty good.” She looked up and caught Jazz staring fixedly – at her hands. They were still shaking. She crumpled the wipe and packet and hopped off the counter to throw it away.
“Stress?” Jazz asked, voice oddly neutral.
Silence hung on a shift in the air.
Jazz dusted cone crumbs off his fingertips. “It was nice meeting you, East.” She didn’t look at him. “Maybe I’ll see you again.” He slipped out of the ice cream parlor and into the haze of city lights.
East sank against the counter, staring down at her hands. Fine tremors ran through them; she could see dark veins beneath her already pale skin.
Pain lanced through her skull, and the shaking only got worse. None of it worked, she thought. All of the doctors and the tests, the operations and the treatments – all for nothing.
She roused herself enough to go through the routine of closing down the store, although she had to count the till twice. She scooped up her backpack and crossed the room. The jangling of the keys barely disturbed her thoughts as she locked the front door, and for a moment she stared into the busy night.
“That’s where they all go when there’s no hope left,” she whispered. “Where we go. Couldn’t hurt to find out.”
Jazz strode down the sidewalk, hands jammed into his pockets and curled into fists.
“I could feel it in her,” he whispered to himself in horror. “What was in the girl I left in the alley – I could feel in East what I felt in Hallie.”
It tugged in him, bringing a familiar quickening in his breath and step up in the metronome in his chest. He’d felt it exuding from East when they strode down the street, but it had assaulted him head on when her hands began to shake.
“Don’t let me meet her again,” he pleaded, turning his gaze to a clear patch in the sky. “I don’t know what I’ll have to do to her if I see her again...”
The neon sign blinked and buzzed loudly above the city’s din, a din unchanged even when the sun went down. The Blue Oyster, the sign said. This had to be the place.
She grasped the door handle and pushed open the door. She gasped, propping her shoulder against the door – it was heavy! She winced when the wooden splinters poked into her shoulder, but braced her feet against the ground and shoved. A glance down as she shoved revealed her white-knuckled grip on the door handle. She paused. It was antique brass, with fine metalwork...unease whispered through her blood. The door handle was cold.
The wooden door took advantage of East’s lapse in concentration and began to push back, slowly easing shut. She yelped and shoved. The door gave way and she stumbled into the club. It took a few moments before she collected herself. With a boom! the door slammed shut. East jumped, but immediately chastised herself when she looked up and found herself staring into a sea of faces staring right back at her, amused.
She blinked in the dim light and the faces became people seated around the square tables scattered across the wooden floor.
“So this is it,” she murmured to herself. A quick scan of the room located a red leather upholstered booth on one of the sidewalls, and East navigated the maze of tables quickly, plopping down onto a bench. Glass torches emitting a dim glow were bracketed to the walls on either side of the room, lighting up the booths. The tables in the center of the room were draped with shadows, save the jukebox by the door that twinkled and glittered, offering cheerful dance tunes.
East huddled on the bench in the booth, studying the other patrons of the bar. Her stomach dropped when she recognized one of the girls who’d been in her hospital ward only three months prior.
Not Jessie, no! She was in remission...
The other faces she didn’t know, but she recognized the madly glittering looks in their eyes, the plum-colored bruises on skin stretched taut over bones – they were there for the same reason she was.
East had always wondered about this club. All through high school the popular sheep ranted and raved about The Blue Oyster, what a fun place it was and about the wild parties that went down. Wrinkling her nose the memories of overheard conversations and the explicit descriptions contained therein, she decided that such escapades couldn’t have happened within these walls. She ran her gaze along the scarred wooden bar, barstools, over the men drinking pints of beer or ale; The Blue Oyster was like one of those TV Irish pubs minus the Irish name. No wild partying happened here.
The bartender leaned on his elbows and smiled at the man who’d just sat down, taking an order. The bartender was a younger man, probably a college student, mildly attractive. Gingery hair set off a pair of bright blue eyes set in what some would have called an aristocratic face, and his smile was charming, but he wasn’t anything the remember.
East sighed and set her chin on her knees.
I should just go home. All the other stories about this place are just urban legends. She scooted to the edge of the bench and began to push herself up when something cold crawled over her skin. The bartender was pinning her with a gaze.
Her breath caught.
His eyes were predatory, probing. She’d seen eyes like that before...
She looked up and caught Jazz staring fixedly at her hands... “Stress?” he asked, voice oddly neutral...
East sank back into the booth, gasping.
“East!”
She yelped and scrambled backwards.
“Hey, it’s me, Jessie. Did I scare you?”
The menacing shadows around the figure melted away to reveal a slightly worn-looking teenage girl.
East wilted in relief. “Oh, hey Jessie.”
Jessie stuck a hand into her pocket. “I didn’t think I’d ever see you here.” She laughed, the sound brittle. “I didn’t think I’d ever see me here.”
“I thought you were in remission,” East said.
“Were.”
East covered Jessie’s hand with hers. “I’m sorry.”
Jessie shrugged, pulling her hand away. “I am, too. I knew it’d end – I mean, it ends for everybody – but I’d always hoped it wouldn’t end so soon.”
East pulled her hand back and stuck it in a pocket; Jessie’s hand had been cold.
“It’s true, what they say about this place,” Jessie said, staring into the glow of one of the torches.
East nodded.
“I’ve been coming here for a week, and it’s exactly like Sharon described it. She was here, you know. The bartender told me. Others, too, those smug girls who were in and out of that dank ward in a week.” Jessie’s lip curled. “They were all so condescending, all sympathetic and fake. But they didn’t get what they deserved. They deserved worse.”
“Have you ever seen him?”
“No, no one but the intended does.”
Jazz jammed his fists deeper into his pockets, tension making his movements jerky as he stalked down the sidewalk. His heart hammered. He could still feel it crawling over his skin, silkily caressing but icy cold.
“No,” he whispered to himself. Her eyes, wide and green, blazed in his eyes. “Please don’t, please don’t make me.”
He froze mid-step, his muscles clenching all through his body. His chest constricted, and panic flared in his mind as he fought for breath. Sinking against the side of a building and struggling for control of his body, only one thought pervaded his mind: please don’t make me do this.
He cried out and fell to his knees as fire raced through his veins. “No, no...”
His heart ceased its beating.
“So it’s exactly like Sharon described it,” East whispered.
Five girls huddled in a circle on hospital cots, oblivious to their plainly patterned pajamas. Sharon picked at her ID bracelet.
“Tell us the story again,” Jessie said.
East hugged her knees to her chest in giddy anticipation.
“There’s a place where girls like us can go if we lose the fight, if the cancer doesn’t go away. The secret is passed from girl to girl because, well – ” she shrugged – “we don’t get to see the boys when we’re stuck in here.”
A collective wistful sigh.
“But you can only tell this to other girls,” Sharon warned. She paused and rearranged herself, basking in the other girls’ attention. “When you get out of here, don’t pay any heed to the other kids at school when they tell you that the Blue Oyster’s a wild party place. Only you will know its true secret.”
The other girls nodded solemnly. East glanced across the circle and caught Jessie’s gaze, hugging her knees tighter.
“Every night it goes like this: when you first get there, it seems really calm. Sit yourself down. Relax for a bit.”
East released the breath she’d been holding.
Jessie caught her eye and held it. “Remember how it goes?”
Even though the girls had heard it a dozen times before, they squirmed impatiently as Sharon let the tension hang in the air.
“Then a while group of wild teenagers will come in, a different group every time, ready to party.”
BANG!
Jessie’s head whipped round. Venturing to peer over Jessie’s shoulder, East saw the door being flung open, and a slew of boys and girls from the high school poured in. The noise in the room tripled.
“That’s when the people at the tables will clear off to the sides, and move the tables too.”
East sat up straight, eyes widening when the people enjoying their drinks stood up and began clearing off the wooden dance floor, the noisy teenagers moving in to help. They smiled and talked as if they were old friends. East could only stare.
“And then the band appears and sets up in the middle of the dance floor. The bar closes down...”
The young man behind the bar set down his rag and hopped over the bar. Another young man emerged from a back storeroom carrying a drum and a cymbal.
“See?” Jessie whispered. “Exactly like Sharon told it.”
Once again teenagers swarmed the bartender and his friends to help set up and bandstand and instruments. The bartender set down an amp and plugged in an electric guitar. He strummed a few riffs and grinned when cheers rose up from the crowd of teens. The Chinese boy behind the drums practiced a rapid roll, then fell into rhythm with the bartender’s riffs.
“It’s going to happen.” East gazed around the dim room and saw those unfamiliar but recognizable faces, the tired lines around dark, hollow eyes.
Jazz felt his skin go cold and lay against the wall, staring into the night. He felt drained, short of breath, but…he needed no air. With a grunt he shoved himself up off the ground and staggered for the door.
“Fine. I’ll do it.” He kicked the door open and stumbled into the building.
Another guitarist, a small blond boy, and the bassist, tall and lithe and cinnamon-haired, joined the bartender and drummer on the “stage”. A few more practice riffs rose in the air, eliciting another chorus of cheers.
East swallowed hard and looked up at Jessie. They whispered the last line, the one they knew by heart.
“You know it’s time when the band starts up.”
“Oh, no,” East breathed.
“It’s really not that bad,” Jessie told her. She held out a hand. “Get on up. The music’s pretty good.”
East allowed herself to be yanked to her feet.
“Let’s dance,” Jessie urged.
Suddenly the lights winked out.
East squeaked and grabbed for the seat.
“It’s normal,” Jessie drawled, her voice floating from somewhere beside East’s head. “He’s coming.”
A floodlight snapped on, backlighting five silhouettes.
East blinked. Five?
The fifth man gripped a microphone, head bowed, as a guitar started up.
East let go of the seat and felt herself sway forwards, into the surge of bodies. Five voices rose and twined in a smooth harmony, reminiscent of Gregorian monks.
All our times have come
Here, but now they’re gone
Seasons don’t fear the reaper
Nor do the wind, the sun and the rain
We can be like they are
Come on baby, don’t fear the reaper
Baby take my hand
Don’t fear the reaper
We’ll be able to fly
Don’t fear the reaper
Maybe I’m your man...
East shut her eyes and let the music move her. The beat throbbed through her, and it didn’t matter that her hands shook uncontrollably, only that she was alive.
The blood sang in her veins, twisting and pulled along by five voices. People pressed in on her from all sides, pushed and pressed and surged in on her, rocking to the hiss and tick of the beat. Her heart pounded, and her chest heaved as she gulped in breaths, but she was starkly aware of every fiber of her body, her muscles twisting and spinning her around the dance floor, the bones and blood vessels and cells that pulsed with life. A power chord and swift arpeggio swept her into someone’s arms, but she kept her eyes shut, the silhouette of the singer caressing her eyelids in velvet blackness. A firm body crushed itself to her, heat swirling around her head. The beat of another heard danced on her tongue, and she sank against the stranger, boneless in ecstasy. Her hands shook, fisting in a soft sweater, but she didn’t care, rocking to the music with the heat and a beat.
This is the night, a voice whispered. Tonight I’m your man.
She moaned when a hand cupped the back of her neck, fingers twining in the soft hairs at the nape of her neck, stroking.
Hot wet breath and a voice swirled in her ear.
Love of two is one
Here but now they’re gone.
She opened her eyes, but the man dancing with her was a shadow.
Came her last night of sadness
And it was clear she couldn’t go on.
Soft lips brushed her cheek before the crowd swallowed her up as the singer returned to the band, crooning into the microphone.
The door opened and the wind appeared.
The candles blew and then disappeared.
The curtains flew and then he appeared
Saying, ‘Don’t be afraid’.
The singer stretched out a hand to her. East gazed at him, fixed on the way the shadow became pale flesh and a human hand.
Come on baby...
And she had no fear...
And she ran to him
And they started to fly.
East reached out and grasped his hand, and his fingers wrapped around hers in a firm grip.
He pulled her into the light, and the burst of brightness blinded her momentarily.
They looked backwards and said goodbye.
She had become like they are.
She had taken his hand.
She had become like they are...
Come on, baby, don’t fear the reaper...
He wound an arm around her waist and stared into her eyes, swaying gently to the last of the guitar music.
“Jazz,” East breathed.
“This way, Easter Lily.” He guided her through the musicians and into the darkness behind the bar.
“Jazz...it’s you.” East gazed up at him. “How can it be?”
Soft fingers stroked the back of her neck; he avoided her gaze. “I’m not Jazz, not tonight, not for you.”
She began to tremble. “It’s my time, isn’t it?”
“I’m sorry, Easter Lily.”
“Is it always like this?” She pulled away and folded her arms around herself.
“Like what?”
With a muted voice, she lashed out at him. “Do you meet them beforehand, sweet teenage girls, and smile at them, charm them, lure them into false security before you kill them?”
He shook his head. “There is no security against us, Easter Lily. Tonight, as you walked down the street, a drunk driver could’ve swerved up onto the pavement and mowed you down.” He crossed the small, dark room, watching her trembles turn from hear to fury out of the corner of his eye. “When you crashed into me at the alley I could’ve been someone else, someone more vicious, and snuffed out your life with the slash of a knife. There is no such thing as security.”
“What right do you have to just take lives?” she hissed.
He turned to face her, eyes smoldering with the tiny flame that threatens a forest fire. “The right to do my job.”
“Your job?” She snatched his wrist and caught it in a steely grip. “Killing is just a job?”
“A place for everything and everything in its place.” He twisted in her grip until he had a hold on her wrist. He stroked the smooth skin there, feeling the fluttering pulse. “In death as it is in life.”
East felt her hands begin to shake and pulled away from him. He remained in the center of the room, a silhouette of a statue.
“Fine. Fine then. Kill me.”
“I won’t kill you, Easter Lily,” he said in a low voice. “That’s not what I do. I end lives at the appointed time.”
“There’s no difference.”
“Yes, there is.”
East glanced back at the dark form and bit her lip. “You would know better than I. Will... will it hurt?”
The clear peals of laughter shattered the tension in the air. East squeaked and jumped.
He sank against the wall, clutching his stomach and choking for breath between guffaws.
She stomped over to him. “It’s not funny. It was a legitimate question!”
His laughter stopped abruptly, and he straightened up. Something glittered in his eyes like the light playing on the edge of a knife.
“No, no, it doesn’t hurt,” he whispered. He caught her wrist and tugged her in closer. “Why do you think the French call it a ‘little death’?” His mouth closed over hers.
East made a startle noise and tried to shove him back, but he was strong, unbelievably so.
No. No! She struggled. He’s trying to distract me while he does it!
A warm thumb slid up the hollow of her throat, testing the butterfly pulse there. The mouth on hers was soft, and she went pliant against him.
He held her flush against him, reveling in her human warmth as he deepened the kiss. Her heart pounded, but she wouldn’t be able to feel it, her senses under tender assault.
The drum in her chest sped up, beating faster.
His mouth over hers was hot and wet, his breath against her skin warmly damp.
It beat faster.
She clung to him, yielding.
Her heart beat faster and faster and faster and faster and –
Stopped.
He broke the kiss and just held her, feeling the warmth slowly fade from her. The silence from the war drum that was her heart echoed, deafening, around the room.
“I’m sorry, East.”
He knelt, lowering her gently to the ground.
She lay on the cold cement, pale and ethereal, asleep but not dead to his eyes. He tilted his head back to stare up at the ceiling.
“Are you satisfied? Is it done?”
An icy breath swept down his throat and his chest heaved as he took a first breath.
“Fine.” He pushed himself to his feet, breath rattling hollowly in his lungs.
Jazz stumbled out the back door and clung to the wall, panting. Every cold breath stung, like a gale-force wind coercing aged bellows to expand.
“Are you happy now?” he demanded of the night sky.
A thump against his ribcage was his reply. Again, his heart was –
Beating.
It was beating. A steady thump-thump, easing into the simple tick-tock of the metronome rhythm for a melancholy song.
East opened her eyes.
She was lying on the floor.
Running her tongue over her lips, she tried to sort through the fuzzy memories in her mind. A kiss...
Well, I’m alive.
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©2004 Carlotta except for song lyrics