Wet Neon

Things went real sideways at the jazz bar

I’m born right here with a throbbin’ in my noggin like I just took a clobberin’. I see light, and I hear a roar, then it’s all gone like a bad dream I’m not keen on keeping.

My thoughts are sideways, oblique. I talk a little funny when my thoughts go a little runny.

I’m in the cellar of an older building. I see a door, and doors are for only one thing: going through them.

Hop up the concrete stairwell, pop up through the cellar darkness. Nighttime, the right time for me. Buildings asphalt glisten as I walk through that parking lot; woman in red coat crying, not listening to my footstep scrapes. Smells like petrichor. Red neon sign bathes us: says “Wet Neon”.

I near her; she looks at me. Teary eyes match the post-rain; frown matches the ground I cover.

“Mark, you ok?” She peers at me.

I reach out, wipe a smudge of mascara, fix her mask. “Never been better, nice weather?”

She pulls away a smidge.

“Did you hit your head or something? Karl’s inside; I’m outside, like always.” She raises a lit cigarette to full lips, flares it up.

“Inside, outside. While you cry, he’s in that dive.” I jerk my head to the neon sign. “There’s a sad symmetry there, right?”

She shakes her head, looks away. “I don’t know about the poetry… well, actually, you’re right. This is a bit of bad poetry. That’s how our fucking relationship always is. Well, I call it a relationship. What does he call it, when I’m not around?”

“I’ll have to ask the guy who looks like a Karl.” Mission accepted, I slide away. Crooked door looms.

“Oh Mark, I think your head’s bleeding.” It might be.

I step through the creaking door into the warm fuzz. Ruddy red lights turned way down low, surrounded by way loose shoulders and tipsy smiles and a seriously cool cat on a seriously battered piano. No one pays me a mind but I’ll mind all of them.

Karl. I’ll guess he’s a real icicle, a blueberry of a man with cool tones, blonde hair, icy eyes, facial hair, glasses. Wears green to cool off those pink ears.

That’s him in the booth, a bear’s tooth alongside some gummy fellas. I can see why Lady Outside caught some tears on this guy; he’s a bit fly, could have a pick of his pick, real slick. He catches me catching him, waves me over like I’m Rover. Sure.

I approach. He shout whispers “Mark Mark, get over here, man. What you doing outside half the night with Lacy? Grab your drink.”

He flicks a cork coaster off a lowball swirling brown; I knock it down like whisky town. My guts heat up to match my skinside in the noir bar’s inside. The table gives me a small cheer. Guess I know ‘em.

“Lacy,” I note, hopping on their tipsy boat. I settle between Karl’s little team and lean in to talk over the soft din.

“You got a Lady Outside crying like you took her heart for a real rough ride from the start. Did I catch her part?”

The table hushes, looks at me like I went noneuclidean.

“Ah, let’s not talk about that right here, right now, man.” He glances at his friends all trying to pretend; one nods off, one stares off, one fucks right off. I peer at Karl over my glasses, not impressed. Hey, I have glasses. The hills have eyes.

With a pained expression, he sidles on next to me. “Ok, if we need to speak freely,” he says like he ain’t free at all.

“You know about our on-again, off-again thing. For her it’s mostly on and for me it’s mostly off, but sometimes we meet in the middle. It’s just a regular relationship; I didn’t think you minded. You don’t seem like those kinds of siblings. What’s going on?”

Siblings.

“I don’t like seeing my sister crying in the rain with a sad cigarette drooping from her mouth.”

His face shield is peeled. I squint; he squints back. Chewy blue melodies slink around the room amid laughing asses and clinking glasses.

“Didn’t you go down to check the cellar? But you came in the front door. That’s a roundabout way to talk to Lacy, if that’s what you were doing.”

“Why the cellar? Did you bury treasure there?”

He sucks his teeth, shakes his head like I just tried to teach him math.

“It’s the Wet Neon, so why would you be in our cellar?”

I jerk my head at the bartender, a lion of a man with an orange mane.

“Because that cat’s busy, you dig?”

“You said you’d get things ready for later tonight,” his words hush like we weren’t just serving drinks here. “If you’ll quit yakking and go finish that, I’ll talk to Lacy for you.”

Weird fixation on a basement but I’ll follow along since I came on strong. I stand up but before I puff out, I hand out a parting word rough loud: “Me downstairs, you outside,” and I flick a thumb to where he ought to run.

No lookbacks. I wink at the bartender as I walk past. He’s busy pouring drinks.

I step through the next door like I own the place. I guess I do. Through the kitchen door with glinting pans and the sizzle of grilled cheese. I take the stairs between shelves of knicknacks and whichwhats with the rhythm I feel: one, two, four-and-a-seven. Each step drops the temp a degree so I shrug up the coat I happen to have on. Got my imaginary detective hat on.

Left, dry goods storage and maybe a teensy break room. Right, the freezer—that’s the teaser. A quick glance sinister yields flat like a minister, so droit we go. Knit caps hang next to the ice box. Seems a little extreme for the scene but I slap one on my bean. Smear of red on my palm.

And wow, it’s cold. Is this what it’s like to get old, feel the damp in the joints, like they’re chiseled into points? Shiver, a shudder. OK, out of my head, boat back with the rudder. Let’s take a gander—oh my goodness!

Marinating in my lonesome, I almost skip over chopped liver, no, a blue rock sliver. I pick it up like a gemstone in a mine: it’s long, pretty, cerulean, but I won’t start drooling. It’s oblong but not too long: exactly like my thoughts.

Now I cracked my cranium and forgot a lot, but I didn’t forget our Earth-rock, and what’s on it, and something like this just ain’t that.

Could make sense; this could be.

A slip off a shelf and onto my dome: this heavy stone. Sheesh. Maybe these things are highly desirable.

That’s my noggin throbbin’; that’s the secret there. But I gotta play it as cool as the tunes floating upstairs.

I run back up, catch lion-man watching close. Drink queue died down. He turns to me and says, “Y’OK, Mark? Is that blood?”

My fingers fly up, the hat’s fabric is damp. I forgot to take it off. His name pops into my head.

“It’s not mine, Leon. Meats in the cellar, you know?” He nods like he really needs the job. I catch a look on his face like someone forgot to flush.

“And what’s wrong with you?” The old Mark would have asked that, and I’m blending in real nice.

“Nah, nothing, just not a fan of meat. I grew up on a farm, that’s all. I actually, don’t hold it against me or anything but, I just hate farms. Cows, pigs, especially goats. Just noisy, feather-brained sticks of meat on legs.”

Karl. Lacy. Right.

I pat Leon on a haunchy shoulder and go to the front door, kick it open, stride out. It’s one of those doors that doesn’t close properly.

Body language ain’t speakin’—it’s leakin’. Lacy’s got her arms crossed, head cocked, facing him head on. Karl’s got his shoulders blocked, leg pointing off-angle, like he’s halfway gone back inside the bar. Both smoking.

They look at me and speak at the same time, like they choreographed.

Lacy: “You didn’t have to send him out here like a child, Mark.”

Karl: “You know the situation is complicated between us, Mark.”

“I can definitely see that,” I said to them both.

“What’s so complicated, Karl? Why am I chasing you around?”

“It’s just,” he paused, “a little fast.”

“You like fast when we’re alone.”

“And I’m with other people right now; it’s not just us.”

“Right, other people? Other girls? Or your stupid side business?”

“I don’t know—both?”

“You fucking asshole!”

Occasionally a tired jazz cat would meander in or out the Wet Neon, trying not to break their necks at us.

Karl exhaled like he stepped on a big nail. Looked like we were playing all accidentals that night. He glanced back at me with suffering on his sleeve.

“Mark, things finally ready? Omar is still coming in a bit.”

“Oh interesting, that dirtbag?” Lacy said, chewing the word at Karl like she was quoting him. “Is that why you keep mentioning him? Making these arrangements? You promised me next time I could come along.”

“Very nice arrangements.” Karl straightens the lapel on his jacket. It does look like a pretty penny.

“About that, actually.” He turns to me. “She can’t come. Not this time; not with Omar.”

Maybe this Omar was a dangerous dude.

“You promised me you’d let me join this time. Now you’re blowing me off again after all that talk.”

I shrug. I gotta side with a sister if I’m feeling my way around in the dark. “Blood’s blood, let her in. It’s just a private art sale, right?”

“What the fuck, man? Are you candy-flipping or something—what is this?” Karl snaps.

“Mark, what’s wrong with you? You’re acting really weird.” Even Lacy has to chime in on my acute case of odd human.

“It’s a Saturday, Lacy. He’s just on drugs.” Karl puts his hand on my shoulder, partner-to-partner.

“Mark, not with Omar! He’s too h—” I hear through gritted teeth, but Lacy’s already stomping out her butt and prancing back inside.

“Let’s see this Thing,” she calls back.

Karl flicks his spent cigarette into a puddle and slaps me on the back—half comradery and half ‘I’m pissed’. We follow.

“I gotta help with closing the bar since you’re all scrambled apparently. Give her a peek of the meteorite, I guess.”

We split with Karl helping Leon as I follow my sister downstairs. Her footstep drumbeats are so clean, tripple tripple tripple. I sashay down in my swing rhythm; still feeling tritones in my spine.

“It’s a mess down here. Thought you were getting things ready?” Lacy looks around the cellar, peeks through the freezer window. It does look like I invited down an anti-gravity Cossack dancer.

“Maybe I started to but priorities overtook, you know,” I offer.

She steps into the freezer, retrieves the Thing.

Shaped like a football on a diet, way textured like those pieces of wood with the worm markings, but more organized. The lighting hit it differently here than in the fluorescent freezer.

I decide I’m real yin and yang with that Thing. I want to hold it; I also want to throw it.

Bumps and cheers and other noise upstairs—the drunk crowd being herded out the door. Must be 2am then.

“Did you just drop this on the floor? Looks OK though. I’d ask why you kept it in the freezer at all but I doubt you remember.” Her breath is like dragon smoke.

“Is this where you scraped your head?” She fingers the edge of a table leg in the freezer. She peers under my hat. “Not a big lump, more of a cut. Let’s get it checked out tomorrow first thing once things cool off.”

I blow a vapor breath into the air. “Way chill.”

We step out of the cold room; she examines the rock or artwork or ancient artifact more. “I know Karl mentioned these etchings… I’ve seen every hieroglyph and cuneiform that’s existed, and… this isn’t it, Mark.” Her tone was real jazz, straight Mixolydian. Weird but I was really following it.

“You sound like a real museum lady, talking about your glyphs and cryoforms.”

“Yeah, my degree in ancient civilizations got me so far…”

Karl hops down the steps three at a time. “Ok, Leon’s almost locked up, we let Omar in the back, do the deal, figure out what to do with our cool ten grand. And none for you just for tagging along.” He eyes Lacy.

“Where did you get this again?” She skips Karl’s blue barbs.

“I don’t ask too many questions. An importer-exporter ships little things inside of larger things. Maybe this came in a vintage car or a cabinet. The object itself supposedly came from that big meteorite strike on the Saudi peninsula earlier this year.”

“Like I said to myself earlier,” I say, “I don’t think this came from here.”

Humorless, she shakes her head and eyes Karl. She sniffs the object, puts it to her ear, looks at me. Creaks upstairs ceased—Leon skidaddled. Just us.

“You didn’t really hit your head that bad, Mark. I think this thing did something to you. It’s humming, can you hear that? No? Are you deaf from all that jazz music?”

Quick-decision Karl gets decisive. “Whatever, Mark already got scrambled. Let him give it to Omar. Don’t touch it.”

Lacy drops it in my hands, strangely heavy again. Even as she was safe, she asks: “Is this why you’re so sideways now?”

Karl checks his phone. “He’s here, put that in a bag or something.” Lacy tosses me a dusty crimson polyester bag forgotten on a shelf and I drop it in. Karl opens the external cellar door to let in two monumental men.

Now our jazz trio is Mixolydian tonight, but I can say with utter certainty that Omar and his buddy Garth are pure Phrygian. Olive, mysterious, a little ominous. More importantly, the man of the hour was peak handsome—he was as big as Leon, regal, a model for the Sphinx maybe three thousand years ago. Lacy can probably opine there given her talk of hieroglyphics.

Intros were curt, confident; Omar wasn’t looking to screw around, just a quick pickup of illegal duty-free maybe-alien artifacts. That’s Saturday at the Wet Neon.

The break room off the cellar was tight, possibly a fatal flaw for Karl. Five adults all huddling like penguins in a stiff wind until Omar and Garth take the worn-out couch. I lean on the desk and Karl takes the swivel chair—mistake number two. Lacy gives him a high-heavens stink-eye and plops her derriere right in Omar’s lap. Garth chokes back an ogre chuckle. Wowee, tensions are high and not just about the Forbidden Object.

“Lessee it,” Omar mumbled like he was too cool to work hard at enunciation. He was right.

“Here it is, imported duty-free, no inspections, no paper trail, straight from the Golgotha Crater.” Karl says like he’s reading the bible in church.

The Sphinx reaches out past Lacy, and I solemnly hand him the crimson bag. He snatches it away and settles back with Lacy. She giggles, staring intently at Karl who is halfway to exploding or shitting himself. A lot of greenbacks will bottle up a temper though.

“Easy there on the man-handling,” I caution, hands up, palms at him, harmless-like. “It gave my egg a bit of scrambling, supposedly. I’m lucky yolk’s still here.”

Omar’s head recoils; he screws up his eyes and barks a short, sharp laugh at me. “I think you’s just fucked up, isn’t ya?” He chews on the words.

“That I am.”

Going jazz drum musician on us, Karl’s leg is shaking and his hand is tapping. “So of course, like I said, no paperwork, but you can see it’s the real deal. We landed on ten grand for your, uh, collector.”

We all ignore the iron irony that Omar and Garth could probably take the item for free if they really, really wanted to.

Omar slides the oblong object out of the bag; Lacy slightly leans away from it, but still nestles against his great body. Karl’s knuckles are white on the edge of the desk. I think I should be mad too, maybe, the way my sister is loving on this guy. Garth’s eyes dare us to do something.

Omar sizes it up, gives it a good deep eye-fuck, traces his blunt fingers around the intricate art all around it.

“You hear that?”

Humming.

“Yea, we can do ten. Dis is,” he frowns, “what he wants—for some reason. I’ll let my guy know ‘bout the magic, heh.”

His thumb traces over an especially good and deep groove in the middle, and the ends glow blue. A second later, it emits a deep bass tone like a subwoofer ten times its size, and in another second, the frequency zips up to mosquito high.

FLASH.

Rumble.

Hm. That’s familiar.

The artifact clatters to the floor. Omar and Lacy go limp; the man falling back in the seat and she sliding to the floor. Garth and Karl cry out “Fuck!” and reach for their respective partners.

I shrug; we did warn him.

Karl and I gently shake Ms. Collateral Damage rolling off Big O. Was she going to be more like me, brain free-associating real freely? Could be worse; I’ll be there for her.

The pair comes to, in the arms of me and Karl and Garth.

Like a pasta doing the boiling pot dance, Omar spasms, grabbing his face and body, swearing up and down.

“Yuck, get the fuck off me, you goon,” he shouts at Garth, strangely coherent.

“Boss, boss, what you mean?” Garth is on the verge of tears.

I’m thinking this is the last time I let Karl arrange the deals.

Much quieter, oblivious to the shaking storm of a man nearly atop of her, Lacy runs her fingers across her face too, grabs her breasts, explores lower, a look of divine revelation on her face. Uh oh, this is looking like quite a brain-scramble.

“Lacy, are you with us in the land of the living?” I try to say with authority.

Omar freezes and stares at me. “Mark, what the fuck’s going on? What am I … doing…” he points at Lacy, “there? Stop grabbing me.”

Omar grabs Lacy’s wrists and pulls her upright. Garth is hyperventilating.

Realization dawns.

“Omar!” I shout, and Lacy’s head snaps at me like a lockjaw patient trying the pop’n’lock. It was getting mighty toasty in that tight roast room.

“You’re in my body,” Lacy-in-Omar thunders at Omar-in-Lacy.

“I got tits n shit; I can’t breathe,” he-in-she shoots back.

What a split-screen. Lacy-in-Omar spazzing out like a delinquent princess and Omar-in-Lacy, well, let’s just say he’s all brawn and little brain the way he doesn’t seem to fill out that skull. I open the door to air-out the tension.

“Let’s all keep our caps cool and work out this sideways-switcharoo—”

“Boss, boss!” Garth falls to the ground, fishing out the rolling brain scrambler between the frantic legs jockeying for space.

“Don’t—” Karl starts, but Garth already has it in his meaty hands, thumbs mashing every groove and symbol like a desperate kid with a broken remote.

The thing hums again, different this time. Lower, angrier.

Flash.

No rumble though. Weird.

Garth blinks. His eyes go wild, real animal-like, electric even. That’s a bad sign for a human, I think.

“Maaaa,” Garth says, but it’s not a word anymore. His fingers curl. He hunches over, then bends completely to all fours.

“Oh Christ,” Karl breathes.

Goat-Garth is bleating now, full throttle. The artifact clatters down again as his hands mimic hooves. He wheels around, suffocating in that wee room, and Karl barely dodges the desk he kicks over.

“Give us some space.” Lacy-in-Omar presses flat against the wall, feet sinking into the cheap couch cushions.

I step out and beckon the Goat-Garth. He leaps out, bucking like a bronco full of blisters. Omar-in-Lacy’s half-comatose, gibbering like a Pentecostal, panting like a hot dog on a summer day.

I point down at the cause of this rumpus. “Let’s let that thing chill on the ground for a while.”

We hear a screech of chair against the floor upstairs; Karl’s eyes and mine collide.

“Keep them occupied,” I cry as I rush up the steps. Knees at ninety degrees, I sneak my head from the kitchen to the bar area. Who’s peeking around our shack? Cops? Brotato chips of Omar? At the top I slow, squat, let just my peepers out. Ready to tussle.

It’s Leon about to leave.

His lion’s senses are on that night; he spots me immediately.

“Hey Mark, sorry I bothered ya. Forgot my wallet and I’m off tomorrow. I’ll be seein’ ya.” He shakes a black floppy calfskin at me with a smile and turns.

I relax. He didn’t want any of that sketchy pandemonium we were brewing in the basement.

Pain explodes across my back. I feel like I got hit with a bus: the goat bus.

Goat-Garth bleats as he flies over me. Karl and Lacy-in-Omar follow, tripping over each other like they had five legs between them. I catch disoriented Omar-in-Lacy dawdling behind.

That overscrambled goat-man bolts for the door—right past Leon.

Lion and goat collide. Leon’s on his back, wrestling a manimal.

That wail of anguish I hear from Leon, well, it’s the kind of thing to give you shell shock. He thought he escaped the farm but it came back to kick him in the teeth.

Words explode out of me: “Don’t buy the farm, lion-man!” I yank Goat-Garth’s leg out of the tangle.

Bleating again, he makes a final lunge for the door, and I told you it never closes properly. It slaps against the outside bricks as that wild man vanishes into the night. The echos of bleating fade away like a long good-bye.

Leon’s OK but still in shock. I tell him we’d make it worth his while to keep this night on the downlow. He sits at the bar, pale as a halal moon, holding a bag of ice to the side of his money-maker.

Omar-in-Lacy is in worse shape: confused, babbling about tits and other lady parts like a twelve-year-old boy on a sugar high. We drag him-in-her to the main barroom to keep watch on everyone together. Karl and I need to wash down this night with something amber and aged anyways.

“Well,” Karl announces, gingerly offering a tapered end of the whole trouble-causing talisman to Lacy-in-Omar. The chiseled woman-in-man takes it, mouth ajar like the front door of the Wet Neon jazz bar we were sitting in.

“There’s only one possible way to fix this.” Karl says.

In a chair flipped back down table-to-floor, Lacy-in-Omar clutches Omar-in-Lacy. It’s like a sketch-from-memory of their relative positions on the couch downstairs earlier. Reaching around him-in-her, she-in-he clutches that Bad News with both hands, running tan fingers through the crevices like there might be gold there.

“Wait!” I cry. I jump to the piano and press my fingers into its teeth. Dissonance. I never played piano before. That’s just jazz, avant-garde style. I ditty up-and-down, really letting the mellow melody unfold.

Yeah, let it ride.

Yeah, let’s go.

“At least they brought the cash,” Karl says. His cool attitude then breaks, his stance softens. He looks at the sorry swappees.

“Lacy, I’m sorry I was an ass to you earlier.”

The alien artifact rumbles and flashes one last time.

I get a feeling Old Mark would have a wry observation, but I’m not him. I’d say Karl and Lacy would make a good pair if they straighten out. Omar and Lacy—not so much. I wonder where Garth went.

As for me and the Wet Neon? It’s the root note of this song-and-dance.

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Check out my epic science fiction novel, Six Stars.

Or read a deep cut—my first short story on Substack.

Image: https://unsplash.com/photos/water-droplets-on-black-surface-zLU0fIdJqd8