Platform heels strike out a slow, steady beat on a city sidewalk. Gold chains and platinum jewelry glow in the streetlights adorning a savage Aphrodite. Her face wears an inscrutable expression as enigmatic as divining her heritage. In the full glow of the yellow light, she is a strong-featured brunette. In the intervening shadows, she is a lighter-black woman.
Ava moves fast, out of the Grove, always out of the Grove but never escaping its vortex. She is on course for Chestnut Street in yuppieland.
I need. I need to be in a place where the pretty people are. A place where everyone around me doesn’t put on a hard nigger act like it changes the hopeless shit of their lives. Where I’m not just what I can make with my fucking body.
The boulevard is empty for a moment. Ava stops at a decrepit, abandoned bus stop, the Plexiglas cracked and missing in places and the canopy light long burned out. A memory comes to Ava.
This is the one: 30th street. Mom, Dwayne, and me waiting for the bus; we were so excited to go to the zoo. A nice day during summer break, away from that hellhole school. Dwayne, before he grew up and left us. Left us because Momma’s drinking got worse, as soon as he could leave. At least she wasn’t a slut and a whore like me. She was just weak, weak for booze and pills. But Dwayne, do you remember going hungry, or cold? I don’t. Why’d you leave? When she died, you didn’t respond to my Facebook message. Were we that bad? Were you ashamed of your light-skinned sister? You seemed happy enough that day we went to the zoo.
A feeling passes through Ava, and just as quickly, she discards it. The only way she could survive in life was to become hard and unfeeling. The question of survival is pointless to her.
Traffic on the boulevard picks up as Ava nears Morningside. A Camero slows down as it catches up to her; two college-age men scope her out.
Ava gives a wry half-smile as the pointed canines and snap of her teeth pull their attention in closer.
They take off when a flicker of light brings out her eye shine.
Ava laughs deep and long.
Poor boys! College dudes, always the best customers in the club. Good tips, not too jaded. I could almost pretend they were boyfriends.
The lights of Morningside and downtown beyond glow before her eyes, attuned to the darkness, like the pre-dawn sun.
***
Bathed now in overpowered streetlights, Ava feels almost at one with the crowd.
No one here fears the death stalking the streets of this city. The cooling of the day’s heat draws out crowds.
Since Peary’s performance three nights ago, some cast wary glances upwards. A few extra patrol cars with bored looking patrolmen puts minds at ease.
She looks in on a Victoria’s Secret at the office girls, nurses, and co-eds on their hunt for accouterments to “feel cute.”
Look at this; funny. Peary dumps the mayor’s fat fuck white-ass corpse a few blocks away and it’s back to business as usual. Funnier; even “legit” hoes have to hustle their asses. Maybe not always. I get the same money from the same dirty old men, I just have to put up with their shit for a few hours. Night after night…nevermind. No. I needed the big bucks as fast and as easy as possible. Safer that way, to not rely on chance. The chance of office politics, long-term strategies. I should have been a nurse.
Ava watches another young woman come out of the store with a dopey boyfriend in tow, a carefree bounce in the woman’s step.
That is something I never had. Every man I was with was tough. Money: they had the money. That fucking soyboy could be fired tomorrow; he gets no respect. Pure bitch-made punk.
The bounce bothers her.
People move out of Ava’s way as she saunters down Chestnut Street.
That’s right, bitches, coming through.
Every step carries her in a straight line. Sometimes the hard mask drops for a moment as she marvels at something.
Like a coffee shop that specializes in having cats to play with, Cup of Cheshire. A big tom tabby lounging in the front glass notices her, ears pricked up, eyes wide. He shadows her path through the glass then is joined by a tuxedo cat, then a calico, then a midnight black Persian.
Ava leans towards the glass and whispers to her feline admirers, “Do you little guys wish you were out here? Do you wish you were hunting the night too?”
Tom Tabby cocks his head and flicks his tail.
I remember the big cats at the zoo. I was convinced that Mister Tiger was my friend. For weeks afterwards, I imagined all the adventures we would go on: in dark colorful Indian jungles, on high mountain plateaus, even in New York City. What a dumb kid I was.
She goes inside.
The assembled pride follows her up to the counter where she orders an Americano.
Cherise would laugh at me when I would sometimes get espresso drinks to power through long nights stripping instead of bumping coke. Why’d I give in? Snort some blow, shake my ass all night, and ride dick until the morning. The life: I wasn’t living it, it was living me.
The barista disturbs her reverie, “…do you want room for cream and sugar?”
“Umm, yeah, thanks.”
“$6.25, please.”
Ava hands him a twenty.
“They really like you. I’ve never seen anything like it. Are you a kitty whisperer?”
“Nah. Catnip, shit’s like kitty crack. Keep the change.” Ava winks.
“Thanks, miss.”
By the window, she lets the coffee’s warmth seep into her cold hands.
The cats surround her, regarding Ava with Sphinx-like admiration.
Can the dead be saved? Is there praise and worship after dark? Where old ladies cry out to Jesus under the moonlight? Is that what would have happened to me? Too old to ride the bad boomslang, a litter of little bastards who duck out when I need them, their fathers in the pen or the ground, my old fat ass hollerin’ to heaven and guilt tripping the “young’uns.”
***
Chestnut Street teems with more evening-goers. Some of the yupsters and DINKs give her sideways glances. Ava returns acid stares.
Especially the women.
A blonde chick with her preppy-just-a-little-punk gym rat boyfriend catches Ava staring.
That’s right, Becky, you worried your man is eyeing up my goodies? Bet you worried I’m not a completely off-putting chickenhead. Worried I might wreck your perfect little plans, bitch? I should’ve while I was alive, I should’ve popped out a kinky-haired version of the brats you’re planning on having, come a’ knocking for court-ordered child support. That’s right, Becky: you and your perfect little white bread plans, no vacation to Paris this year, his ghetto bastard needs math lessons, needs a better apartment in a better neighborhood. Have fun explaining that shit to the in-laws over holiday dinner: “Well, see, Dad, Chuck creamed some dark meat cunt and now he has an 18-year obligation.”
The blonde woman screams, followed by a group of college co-eds on a street corner.
“Oh God, Chuck, fucking rats!”
Three furry scavengers scurry along where the buildings meet the sidewalk.
More debouch from the storm grating.
The cats in the Cheshire go crazy swatting at the front glass.
A large, daring sewer rat drags a slice of New York style pizza from a garbage can.
“You go, Splinter!” a high school boy shouts as his girlfriend buries her face in his chest. “Omigod, omigod,” She squeals.
A young mother snatches up her toddler and dashes inside an Apple store as two rats fight over the child’s sippy cup.
One grizzled sewer warrior rears up on his hunches and squeaks at Ava.
“Ze children of the night own these streets now,” she says with a chuckle.
People clear the streets in a panic.
Two patrolmen rush onto the scene. They look at the cavalcade of rodents.
A skinny hipster dude whines, “Why aren’t you doing something!”
A muscled, bald patrolman says, “What? Fucking shoot them? This is an animal control and health department issue.”
“Yeah, pal, we’re paid to keep out hood rats, not sewer rats,” the other says.
More rats pop up. The sidewalks clear of people.
The two patrolmen go into the Cheshire as the bald patrolman calls over the radio, “Dispatch, this is patrol 16 on Chestnut and Wood Streets, get animal control down here on the double. We’ve got a swarm of rats terrorizing the street.”
“16, come again?”
“Rats, and a shit ton of them. We’re in the Cup of Cheshire.”
Dispatch laughs over the radio. “Alright, calling now, say ‘hi’ to Garfield for me.”
“He’s a little busy flipping his shit over our rodent problem.”
Tom Tabby rubs against the patrolman’s legs and yowls to be let out, pawing at the door.
***
A minute later, as the patrolmen watch the rats hang out and raid the garbage cans, a black van pulls up. A man in khaki 511 pants, tactical boots, baseball cap, and sunglasses gets out of the front passenger side with a camera and snaps a quick succession of photos.
He pauses when he notices the bald patrolman filming with his phone.
The cop flips him the bird.
The man in sunglasses hops back in the van and they take off.
The cop keys his mic. “All units responding to Chestnut, be advised: we have some rats of the Northern Virginia variety running around.”
***
With her bare feet on grass, Ava has finished her long walk. The destination: a flat expanse of grass in the middle of the city, stones jut from the earth in row upon row.
The cemetery.
Here she is, in the corner where there are no markers but those of simple brass and stone set low in the earth provided at no cost for the poor.
The potter’s field where her mother is buried.
Ava walks to the very center and lays a bouquet of flowers she bought at 7Eleven.
Mom, I’m sorry I wasn’t a better daughter in life.
And for the first time since she was a child, Ava sheds tears.
Wisps and shades drift around her, unaware of her presence.
Proteus Juvenalis, of the Lost Generation, is a cynic and misanthrope orbiting Neptune and contemplating his former home. His stream of consciousness broadcasts can be found on Telegram.
