Last Step In Little Aleppo

“I should have done more fucking.”

“Did you not do enough?”

“I did my share, but I should have been absurd about it. Just rubbed up against people. Maybe even tried a man.”

“You never?”

“God, no,” Steppy Alouette said. “Have you smelled them?”

Lower Montana laughed in the darkening shallows of the sunroom of the house on Pharaoh Lane. The light was all sliced up and low-angled and stumbling; it slammed into mites, smoke, particulates, all whirling and pirouetting and behaving as though they were still invisible. There’s no end to the foolishness the invisible will get up to.

“I’ve smelled them.”

“Well, there you go. Like spoiled dog meat, and it got worse when they got all sexed up. Did you ever go into the backroom at the Wayside?”

“Not when it was in use.”

“Horrific.”

The Wayside Inn used to be on Sylvester Street, and now it is again. In between, it burned down. The new building has picture windows, and a sign advertising that one can find the gayest Bingo game in the neighborhood every Monday night, and one flag that was red, white, and blue, and one flag that was all the other colors; they fluttered and whipped SNAP echoing up and down the street so no one could ignore the noise. The old building was a door. From the street, at least: just a door, black. Inside, the el-shaped bar was to the left and the tables were to the right and the dance floor was beyond that, and the backroom was beyond that, behind another black door that was not a door, but thick rubber curtains. One percent above pitch black; there was groping, stroking, sucking, fucking, and occasionally even soul kissing. By last call, the floor was an abomination. Women did not go in the backroom, just men. Social scientists drew numerous conclusions from this fact, and some even developed theories.

“Why were you in there?”

“It was just the once, but it’s burned into the nostrils of my mind. I had taken acid, and I simply had to see for myself what was going on back there. This was ’73. I was very late to acid. I avoided it. It turned people into poetic twits. But Manfred insisted and insisted and insisted, and finally I just wanted him to shut up.”

“What did you think?”

“I had a delicious time. Except for the backroom nonsense. Wonderful night, and then we went for pancakes. Grew rather fond of LSD, as long as we’re being honest, but it was a toss-up what you were getting. I ended up calling over to Harper for a chemistry professor. He’s still there. Gianno. Short with a massive beard.”

“Professor Gianno. He plays Santa at Christmas.”

“Many would thank him for his gifts.”

“He cooked you acid?”

“I don’t know if there’s so much cooking involved. There’s mixing and swirling. Possibly heating, but I don’t know if heating is the same thing as cooking. And oodles of custom glassware. Do you know what an Erlenmeyer flask is?”

“No.”

“It’s expensive, that’s what it is. But it was worth it. Perfectly pure. All killer, no filler. Ha! I love that. Manfred used to say it. ‘All killer, no filler.’ He had to tinker around with the recipe, I remember. First batch came out sideways. Made you believe you were a hot-air balloon for eight hours. It got old quick.”

“I’ll bet,”

“But he figured it out. Maybe too well. Became sort of an accidental kingpin.”

“He plays Santa at the Christmas party,” Lower said.

“Santa was a drug dealer, sweetheart. You can’t publish any of this until after he dies, too.”

“He’s in his fifties.”

“Learn patience.”

Steppy wore very little jewelry, just a necklace with a small, teardrop pearl hanging from it and earrings that matched. Her fingers had thinned between the knuckles and bore no rings. She had not worn a watch for 30 years, since her eyes got too weak to read the time without glasses. Lower had a Timex Ironman watch with a glowy-green face and a tactical band, and a wedding ring which was silver.

The watch lit up the corridor in the basement, which was larger than the house above; this was in keeping with tradition when it came to stately manors. Poor folks’ houses are set on top of land, but the wealthy dig deep. The wine cellar was the size of a suburban public library, and a gym with outdated but not dusty equipment: medicine ball, the strappy thing that goes around your waist and vibrates. Cold storage for furs and joints of meat. A room full of volleyball nets. Dry sauna, wet sauna, damp sauna. Game room with pinged pong, foosed ball, an Asteroids machine. Two-lane bowling alley. Panic room and the panic larder and the panic wine cellar.

Nooks, too, and the immortal companion of the nook: the cranny. The basement scared the shit out of Steppy when she was a child. Long passages, narrow and slanting off in three or more directions at once; perspective would shift on you down there like a rack focus; there were hidden staircases and doublebacks and at least several chambers. If you turned left, and shouted, your voice would echo; if you turned right, it would not. This was unnatural, Steppy felt, and so she stayed aboveground until she had need of a basement.

Sometimes, you need a basement.

“Chair was in the middle of the room. Very important. If you put the detainee against a wall, this bolsters the confidence. You want them to feel adrift at sea. Middle of the room.”

“How many were there?”

“Chairs? Just one,” Steppy said.

“Torture victims.”

“They weren’t victims, Lo. They were spies.”

“Whom you tortured.”

“Nazi spies. They don’t get sympathetic titles.”

Boxes now. Full of old slacks and civic awards. Several exercise machines purchased late at night off of the teevee. Single lightbulb plumped from the ceiling. No chair, and no Nazis, and no blood at all.

“Sink over there,” Steppy continued. “And the table was against this wall. Very unpleasant table. You’d rather not have anything to do with it.”

“What was on it?”

“Sharp things and blunt things. It was war, Lo.”

“How many?”

“Oh, I don’t know. A couple hammers, some scalpels–”

“How many people were tortured?”

“Not too many. More than we anticipated, though. One interrogation led to another, that sort of thing.”

“Do you still have the records?”

At age 30, Steppy had been 5’4″, but that was a long time ago and now she was just barely taller than Lower, who had been five feet even at age 30 and was now 35.

“Records?”

“Yes.”

“Of war crimes? Are you asking me if I kept records of war crimes and, if so, can I give them to you so that you might publish them?”

“Yes.”

“They got misplaced during the last Spring Cleaning. I’ll ask the White Russian to look for them.”

The women had returned from the basement an hour ago, and maid had been in and out of the sunroom twice, but Steppy had not brought up the matter.

“After the torture, of course, came rock and roll.”

“The Snug’s album. Tell me about that.”

“Same room. I think they set the drums up in there, or maybe vomited on each other.”

“How did you even meet them?”

“Gianno brought them over. Sell enough drugs and you’re bound to befriend some musicians. The singer was charming. Johnny or Jimmy or something. Called himself something absurd, but I threatened to throw him out of the house if he didn’t tell me his proper name.”

“Holiday Rhodes,” Lower smiled.

“The other three were dimmer than dirt, but he had a bit of a spark. They showed up at a party and someone brought a guitar and there’s a piano or two down there, so a hootenanny broke out. They liked the sound, apparently, and so they tried to talk me into letting them record down there. And like I said: I was taking too much acid at the time, so I said yes.”

“They made a good record.”

“What was it called?”

“Daytime Villains. It’s a good record.”

Lower Montana had purchased Daytime Villains the week it came out on vinyl in 1973, and then several years later on cassette, and now owned the compact disc (which was remastered and included three bonus tracks). It was The Snug album that sounded the Snuggest; the boys were iterating as hard as they could, boosting all their favorite tunes and smashing them together with caterwauling harmonies overlaid. The lyrics were murky and buried and brilliant, and so was the bass (except the brilliant part), just guitar and drums going shlanga-lang THWACK like Jesus owed them twenty bucks; it was music to punch a cop to, it was maximum rockyroll. It was a record so good that the band who made it could coast the rest of its career, and The Snug did.

“I liked Motown. Born in ’07, don’t forget. Heard it all. The big bands and bebop and country and all of it. Always stayed up on music. Went to the Absalom and the Davidian, saw the new acts. Listened to the deejay at the Wayside. I used to go to the loft party on Good Jones Street. Nothing worse than an old woman still listening to the same music she did when she was 17. I heard it all. But I liked Motown the best.”

“Manfred, too. He used to put a big stack of Motown 45’s on his record player when we cleaned the house.”

Lower Montana was a historian, and thus given to evidence, facts, figures, and she had been trying to pin down the precise number of teens, cast out of their parents’ homes for the crime of faggotry, that Manfred had housed over the years. It was at least 30, and she had been one of them, and she could hear the cheeeeyikuhSHACK of the singles replacing one another on the spindle as she and Manfred tidied the already-immaculate bungalow on Fantic Street.

“The man kept a tidy home.”

“Indeed.”

“There wasn’t too much of it. Not like this,” Steppy vaguely gestured about. “This needs staff to deal with. Ludicrous place. There’s ten bedrooms, did you know that?”

“No.”

“Ten. Daddy had it built when I was a baby. Overestimated his virility, I think. Ten bedrooms. That’s a dormitory, not a house. Hide-and-seek would go on for hours. But there were other men to impress. All men do is try to impress one another. So there’s ten bedrooms.”

“Always room for company.”

“Mm. Always company. Artists. Lots of artists. Some painted, others lied. A few political refugees. I had a ballerina the Soviet Union was trying to assassinate once. Very glamorous. Always company. I knew so many different types, you see. It was fun to bounce them off each other. There were disasters, though. Sprout Samperand.”

“The bank heiress.”

“Entirely my fault she blew up.”

Sprout Samperand owned the Fourth First Bank of Little Aleppo until it exploded, after which she no longer owned it because it did not exist and she was dead. Her body was found in the ruins along with three others corpses quickly id’ed as members of a local anarchist’s collective called the Bringers. Raiding their squat soon thereafter, the LAPD (No, Not That One) found an arsenal large enough to be called “Texan;” the rest of the group was rounded up viciously and violently and two Bringers accidentally beat themselves to death in the holding cell. Residents approved heartily of the polices’ methods; you can’t have bank owners being kablewied up willy-nilly. Bad for the local economy.

Not so long after, the Cenotaph ran a series documenting that Sprout Samperand was not blown up by the Bringers, but instead blown up with them, as she had been the group’s benefactor for years. The report included documents, receipts, minutes from meetings, legal filings, medical findings, and hundreds of hours of first-hand testimony; the neighborhood read the story and went immediately back to blaming the anarchists.

“How.”

“I introduced them. You must understand that Sprout was dreadful. She was an animal-lover, and she’d take in these wretched creatures and then she’d corner you at functions and describe how the animals were falling apart. I remember she had a collie with no muzzle one time, and the dog’s sinus prolapsed and she had to wedge it back in with her fingers while the thing howled in agony. She imitated the howls. This was at a charity luncheon, Lo. This is what kind of person we’re talking about.”

“A bit socially awkward.”

“She was a social disease, that’s what she was. But, you know, I couldn’t avoid her. There’s only so many wealthy people in the neighborhood. When Sprout was around, one had to make one’s own fun. So I would introduce her to the wrong people at parties. Con artists, regular artists, charismatic drug addicts, you know the type. And then she’d call me the next day asking me if her car was over here. Oh, I’d laugh.”

“She never caught on?”

“She did not. But then one night in ’66 or early ’67 I had a party and got her and the Bringers together. All she wrote. Next time I saw her, she was wearing a beret and raving about The People. For the first time in my life, I wanted her to talk about dogs. She talked me into going down to their little clubhouse, an abandoned duplex all the way on the Downside. I don’t remember exactly what street it was, but the sidewalks were littered with dead squirrels. Seemed like a bad sign, but I went in anyway.”

Lower took a sip of her cold coffee and asked,

“And?”

“And what? It was what you’d expect. Dirty young people and brown rice. They were having what they called a Teaching Session. One of them started in about how we should dynamite all the dams and shit in the yard. “Let’s shit in the yard, comrades.’ And the rest of them sat there nodding. ‘Yes, let’s shit in the yard.’ I was appalled.”

“Well, they were anarchists.”

“Anarchists. Pssh. Most of them were middle-class kids slumming. None of them had done the reading. Couldn’t tell Bakunin from Bokonon. Anarchists. Pssh. They had their little meeting about destroying authority, then the girls went into the kitchen to start cooking and the boys sat around scratching their balls. Same thing happened at a Communist meeting I went to once. Funniest thing.”

“So how did it progress to bombs and guns?”

“I suppose incrementally. I wouldn’t know anything that you couldn’t read in the paper, if you trust the paper. Never went over there again, obviously. Didn’t see Sprout for six months or so; enjoyed it thoroughly. Then: boom. At least she went fast. Much better. Never linger.”

Twilight was near and the blue sky had become inky and severe and romantic, and there were clouds shaped like finger low by the horizon, and the last birds were becoming the first bats. Steppy had a blanket over her legs and he hands were folded in her lap. She did not fidget. She had never fidgeted.

“Tell me more about the Wayside.”

“Well, people needed someplace to go, didn’t they?”

Lower fidgeted. She had always fidgeted. But she said nothing. Humans detest silence, especially American humans, and will fill it with chatter if you sit there and say nothing. Lower said nothing.

“The cops were bastards,” Steppy continued. “They still are, but not like back then. They were permitted every cruelty. Cops will be as cruel as society permits them to be. The raids. When the cops raided the casino or the brothels, they had the decency to call ahead. Not the Wayside. Boom, here they come again. Haul off the kids. Slap some of them around.”

“You?”

“Me what?”

“Were you ever arrested?”

“Once. Little fat boy named Honey snatched me off my chair. Handcuffed. Put me in the paddy wagon, can you believe that? Barked my shin getting into the thing. So they put us all in the holding pen or cell or whatever it’s called. It’s got the bars and the toilet and the metal benches. Just like in the movies. Must have been 35 of us. I’m sitting up front. Chief comes in to look at the night’s catch and sees me. Never seen a man go that white, and I’ve known several albinos.”

“He recognized you.”

“Mm. I was the signer of all those checks for the Orphans and Widows fund that he dipped into to buy a Cadillac. Easy to pick out of a crowd. Fowler. His name was Fowler. One of those men that needs to shave four times a day, just disgustingly hairy. His hands and knuckles, ugh. Anyway, he opens up the cell door and Oh, no, Miss Alouette; there must have been some mistake. Let’s get you away from these degenerates. So I told him Chief Fowler, I am one of the degenerates. Grand round of applause.”

“Good for you.”

“Yes. Doesn’t register on the lummox. There’s been a mistake, ma’am. Please let’s go. And I said If I leave, then everybody leaves. Fowler just stands there in the doorway. You can actually see him thinking. He may have been counting on his fingers. Finally, he steps back and says Have a nice night, ladies and gentlemen and whatever you are. He was pointing at the drag queens. He did that to be cruel.”

“And you all left?”

“All of us. Went right back to the Wayside and we had a tremendous party. And after that, when we got raided, the cops only snatched up the poor-looking kids. The weird-looking ones. You know, some people slip by in this life and others can’t help themselves. I’d see them, all these young kids, and they’d be dressed so outrageously. People would yell at them on the street, or chase them, or worse. But they couldn’t help themselves. I liked what you wrote about Orphic.”

“You’ve said.”

“That poor thing. Her funeral was the first time I cried since my sister’s death. Not for Daddy, I didn’t cry. I felt as though I should have, but I didn’t. But she was so sweet and so young. 19?”

“18 when she died.”

“18. Brains bashed in on the Main Drag. Just for walking down the street being herself. Parents wouldn’t claim the body. For the best. They would have buried her in the wrong clothes, under the wrong name. I paid for the tombstone. You’ve seen it.”

“It’s tough to miss.”

In Foole’s Yard, on the small rise near the entrance, 12 feet high and 15 across and carved from one piece of alabaster marble, is a tombstone that reads

ORPHIC MYSTERY
1950-1968
Dreamer, Dancer, Friend

and shines like a disco ball.

“I was advised to add more to it. And You Motherfuckers Killed Her was the consensus, but I was never one for democracy. Simple. Leave the blame implicit. What good are accusations in the graveyard? It just had to be big. Like she was. You never met her. You can’t imagine how big she was.”

Steppy started laughing, that turned into a cough, two shallow breaths, a knock TOKTOK on the low table separating her from Lower in her chair, here is the Belarussian maid, uniformed and unsmiling and bearing a silver tray with an assortment of pills (pink, blue, another blue, yellowish) and a glass of water. Steppy throws down the pills, sips, hands the glass back to the Belarussian, who refuses it.

“More vater,” she says.

“Don’t tell me how to drink. I know how to drink.”

“Doctor says more vater.”

“My doctors are idiots. Out.”

The Belarussian does not move.

“Leave it on the table and I’ll drink it.”

She does, exits.

“Dying is a chore,” Steppy said. “Never let anyone tell you differently. Death is fine. But dying? It’s just a plod. I was talking about Orphic.”

“Yes.”

“6’5″ in barefeet, and she never wore anything but the highest heels she could find. She was so glamorous. 18 years old. We buried her the right way. We buried her with her name.”

She reached for the glass, gave up, set her hand back on her lap.

“Tomorrow, Lo. Enough for today. Come back tomorrow and I’ll tell you different versions of the lies I told you today.”

The cops closed off the Main Drag for the procession to coast south, hearse followed by luxury cars followed by beaters followed by a fire truck. Past the museum and past the hospital and past the schools and eastward into the foothills where Foole’s Yard waited for Steppy Alouette to take her place among all the upstanding citizens of Little Aleppo, which is a neighborhood in America.