by Garrett Mok

There's a man in here who keeps interrupting my thoughts. Soon, I would want to grab him by the neck and bash his head on the bar. Nice mahogany top, the color of old blood. Watch him slump by the barside, mouth foaming with warm blood and spittle. It's just the way he's staring at me, is all. Staring: an act of invasion. I feel like a woman when someone does that. I feel like I have breasts that ache, lips that beckon, coltish legs that bruise easily. And, if I were a beautiful woman, men like him would want me, would want to touch my skin and fuck me, beat me. Maybe. I feel mortal, cornered. The thought of being desired chills. The drunk turns his head and squints his beady eyes at Cynthia over by the pay phone.

"Hot piece of ass, that one."

There are framed black-and-white photographs, mostly portraits, mounted on the walls--the emulsion running from dark brown to faded yellow; the others show people drinking and playing pool. Portraits still fascinate me after all these years; how light plays on a subject's hair, how it fades when she feels dark, alone. Cynthia calls me, so I turn my head, and my neck feels all wrong. I'm having a problem keeping my spine straight, and almost fall off the stool. My sister is grinning. When she was very little, she had a long downy hair growing under her chin that she didn't know about for the longest time.

"The phone doesn't work," she says. "Buy me a drink."

I squint at her. "I'm broke."

"That's why you're back," she says. "You need a shave. A bath. And maybe an exorcist." "I need a beer."

She waves with her fingers at the tall crewcut boy behind the bar. He has a T-shirt that says: Maxi Gym. He comes over.

"Make me something, handsome." Cynthia taps her short nails on the bartop. "Something sweet." She turns her head and catches the drunk staring at her. She stares back, and he turns his head away.

"How about a sex-on-the-beach?" the bartender says.

Cynthia leans forward. "But we've only just met."

The bartender laughs aloud. The drunk gets up and leaves.

"How about a mudslide?"

"Perfect, and give this gruff-looking guy next to me another of whatever he's having."

The bartender plunks down a draft beer for me. Cynthia starts sipping her muddy concoction, and looks around the bar. Someone walks in through the front door, and Cynthia swivels on her hips.

"There she is, my roommate, Sarah. Be nice to her. You look scary." There is a reason for Sarah's being here. To meet me, and, maybe to approve.

We say hello. She has long dark hair and a haunted face, this Sarah, as though she lived in and out of college libraries and hasn't seen a drop of sun light. Huge dark eyes. She slides herself up onto a stool and lights a long thin cigarette. She peeks sideways and says, "Want one?"

"No thanks. I can't smoke women's cigarettes."

"That's sexist," she says quietly.

"Let's get a table," Cynthia says, "these stools are hostile to my buns."

We grab a table.

"This place is a dive," Cynthia says. "It suits you, Nick. It's your place."

"I haven't been here in eight months and it looks just the same."

"Welcome to the Dodge City, folks," was what the pilot announced over the PA after the plane landed. For a miserable second, I thought I had boarded a wrong plane, but there it was outside the oval window: the fuzzy New York skyline, and the same dreary rain I had left eight months ago. I had slept through the whole flight.

"Nothing ever happens in here and never will." Cynthia gets up.

"Why, were you expecting something?" Sarah says coyly.

"I'm getting us drinks." Cynthia leaves the table.

A tall guy bumps into our table with a beer in his hand. He apologizes in accented English. He asks us if he can sit down with us. Why not? Give people what they want, and you shall have peace for a while.

"This place, many young people." He grins. "Very good."

"Where are you from?," Sarah says.

"Belgium. I am, un, art student."

I sip my beer and think about a guy I knew briefly in Paris, who made sculptures out of the yellow Metro ticket stubs. He had his book bag, and went around picking them up from the platforms; glued them together and made dogs and cats and birds, and sold them. He was about fifty and had a laid-back boho attitude, a pad in the Latin Quarter and a mistress. This is the sad part. He believed in what he did, body and heart. Believed that gluing metro tickets together into the wee hours of the night would get him somewhere, that it was a cool thing to do. Living in Paris, I guess he could afford to believe, unlike over here. He will go on believing. He will go on believing until he drops dead of TB or rotgut or homelessness. That's art for you. A healthy dose of disillusionment was what the old dog needed. I liked him.

"What kind of art?"

"Photography. Before I paint, you know. Now I don't paint. I photograph. What do you do?"

"I'm an anthropology major at Barnard." Sarah looks down at the table for a moment, then turns her face. "And--you're a photographer too, aren't you, Nick?"

I nod.

The Belgian leans forward. "Really? Who you like? You like fashion?"

"He just got back from Italy," Sarah says, making up for my terseness.

"Did you get work there? It's hip?"

"Not really." I sip my beer. Sarah is looking at me, so I go on: "I was mostly in Milan and I had a couple of gigs there. Fashion with a black heart."

"Ah, the same story, no?"

"It was an experience," I say lamely.

"I like Bruce Ve-ber. You like his pictures?"

"I guess if you like tanned hunks in wet underwear."

"You don't like men models?"

"They don't turn me on as much."

Sarah grins and takes a puff of her cigarette.

"You like European photographers, no? Who you like?" The Belgian's getting into it, so I go along.

"Salgado. Josef Koudelka, a Czech. I like some of Sylvia Plachy's stuff too."

"Yes, yes. You like outré pictures. You have, un, folio? May I see?"

I shook my head.

"You have at home?"

"No." I sip my beer. "I threw it away."

Yesterday, at a pricy cafe near the Lincoln Center, I had a meeting with a photo editor, someone who can "make or break" a young photographer. She thumbed through my book and poked her nail down at one picture. "That's hot. A little bizarre, but definitely a looker." It was a shot I composed from a dream, not mine, but Mattina's, a model I worked with. A rose rests on her bare back in the stark black-and-white platinum print. Her wet hair sprawls into the frame, and a white sheet covers a part of her hips. A sharp line of dark liquid runs down her spine, and pointilistic dots alongside, amid shards of broken glass...

And in a run-down Milan pensione Mattina and I had rented together, she would pout and chain-smoke Ritz cigarettes. She would exclaim: "I'm out of work! Out of money! Out of love! I'm so upset I can't even cry!" She would bite down on her lip, and I would take a picture.

She would burst out crying, and I would take a picture.

Stop that, she would say.

Do you mean that?

She would shake her head, No.

The meeting had gone well. But getting work out of it in New York, is another thing. She asked did I have any tearsheets, and I showed them to her. A spread for Lei, and a boat shoot I did for Amica, all Italian trade rags.

"What's your style?" the Belgian guy says.

"I know I have style." Cynthia's back at the table. There are three shot glasses with slices of lime wedged on the rims, and a salt shaker. "Inimitable and eternally feminine."

"Ha!" Sarah giggles.

"Cuervos time." She hasn't even sat down yet.

We all pour salt on to our hands and lick it up, dump the tequila into our mouths and bite the lime. The Belgian guy swills his dark beer.

"Voile!" Cynthia slaps down her shot glass.

"Oh god." Sarah covers her mouth.

The Belgian guy offers me a cigarette and I take it. A cloud of cigarette smoke wafts in front of me--bluish white against the pool table light. There's music--some kind of astral hymn, all breathy vocals and synthesized instrumentals. The tequila hits me. I feel it spread out from the cellar of my stomach and up my spine, and to the garret of my brain. I fade just a little bit. Cynthia walks behind me and puts her arms around my neck. Her breasts press into the back of my head. She, being a good sister, is putting me up in her apartment for a week, until I find my own space, starting tonight.

After the meeting with the photo editor yesterday, I walked up to the Natural History Museum, about fifteen blocks away. I didn't know why at first. I realized later that I wanted to say hello to Cynthia, who works at Isabella's--another pricy restaurant--on Columbus, right next to the museum.

I remembered, I used to beat up Cynthia a lot as a kid. We have talked about it once, years later. I asked her if she remembered it and she said, Yes. We talked for a few minutes, not saying much, not really looking at each other. I asked her whether she ever forgave me for it. She said she didn't even think about it any more. But, from time to time, I would catch her brood. I would see her fingers quiver. She would become utterly quiet. My heart sank, and I booked out of town. I wanted to be where no one knew me. In a way, I still do.

I sat down on a bench behind the museum and took in some air. Smoked a few cigarettes. I unzipped my leather portfolio and began looking through my pictures. The models in the pictures strike weird poses; sometimes they don't even look at the camera, they fade, crumble. In one shot, wind bends the nearby tree branches, and Mattina, all in black, leans against a wrought-iron cemetery gate. Her face, hooded, is unseen, except for a sliver of her pale chin. In another shot, she lies in a heap on the ground by the tombstone of a known suicide. There’s mist all around--a dead ringer for martyred love and early death. A young woman--a spark of erotic fire--and her gray exit, total and retaliatory. Cold inanimate beings in cold inanimate prints. I took the prints out of their archival sleeves and ripped them up one by one. Not all of them, but a few, mostly of Mattina, the one I loved. I dropped them in a nearby trash bin. Then I walked over to the restaurant.

I could see Cynthia working inside, but she was too busy to notice me. I didn't walk in. I didn't want her to know that I was back in town yet. I wanted a picture of her. So I took out my Nikon F, metered quickly, and took a shot through the window. Cynthia putting plates of food on a table.

"Mon frere, mon frere." It's Cynthia's voice. "Are you all-right?"

"Mon frere mon frere! Hello, hello!" Someone else's voice. I look up: there are two women I've never seen before, dressed all in black. Long black hair, powder white skin, brown lipstick. Fashion nuns from an unholy church of the nocturnal chic. Or maybe too bored or too rich or plain insane, tripping on glum.

"Hello hello, may we join you? We won't bore you, promise. We're both housebroke, cuddly and oh wait--what are we, Liz?"

"We are the Vamp sisters. We leave trails of blood wherever we go. And tonight we are very thirsty. Mon frere mon frere, what's that mean?"

"Mon frere mon frere. Are you his lover? You have such a tight grip around his neck. Let the poor boy breath!"

"He's my brother," snaps Cynthia.

"Ooh. How very complex! You let your sister pet you like that? Speak up."

One of the Vamp sisters pulls up two chairs and sits down on one. The other one is still accosting me, waving a finger in the air. This is irregular.

"Speak up, shy one. Mon frere mon frere. Have you got a problem with us the ladies of the night?" She sits down and beams at me.

"Maybe." I see a flash of white thighs. I see that she sees that I see.

"Like what what what? Ooh--what've you been drinking? Tequila? Don't you feel hot hot hot?" She crosses her legs. Languidly.

"Definitely."

"How old are you, Mr. Definitely?"

"Twelve," I blurt.

"Ooh. Then you must look older for your age. I find that extremely attractive in a man. What do you think, Liz? Could he be the one? Could he be our victim No. 12?"

"Are you into death?" the other sister asks me. "Random killing, mutilation, sacrifice. That sort of thing. Death as a lifestyle."

"I've been trying to define my lifestyle." I'm in earnest.

"Are you into eternity and stuff? Immortality? We are starting a vampire club. It's gonna be a secret society and totally exclusive. We've got a real vampire coming over from England."

"Scotland," the other sister corrects. "The Highlands."

"Yeah, Scotland. That's what I meant." She bats her lashes. "We are looking for a few good vampires. We are recruiting."

"We are having a loft party. Free Bloody Marys. You wanna come? But if you get bitten by our doorman and lose blood, we are not responsible..."

"No thanks. I feel rather normal tonight."

"Well then, too bad. Mon frere mon frere. Good night, mortals!"

The two of them get up and leave. Sarah starts to giggle. The Belgian guy scratches his head and sips his beer. He lights another cigarette. Cynthia sits down on the chair next to mine.

"Sluts," Cynthia says. "Probably ovulating."

"Vampire. I wouldn't mind being one." Sarah has a woozy look on her face. Her eyes are half-mast.

"They--very veird, no?"

I get up. "I'll be right back."

I slip outside for a breath of air. It's chilly, and I welcome it. The row of traffic lights down Second Avenue is all red. A second or two later, the lights turn green one after the other, as if on cue. And cars--mostly yellow cabs--race down the street in full abandon. It's the after-hours, and the cabs rush to pick up what few passengers they can find. And the drivers--I suppose they want to get home too. To their wives and kids, their families. To their sources of happiness, or pain, the one and all.

"Hey, Nick."

I turn around.

"Hey, Tom."

"You going in?"

"In a minute."

"See you inside."

I haven't seen Tom in eight months. He still has his army jacket on, and the same jeans and the same Converse blacks. It's almost as if I saw him only yesterday. I fumble in my shirt pocket for a cigarette. I finger out the last Camel and light it, then crumple the empty pack and throw it away.

I look through the window into the bar. Cynthia waves at me to come in. I nod, but I don't move--an outsider, espying a life through thick glass. I should be drunk, but I feel sober. It's a moonless night, and I am without a camera. I am without pretense nor shield nor belief.