The Deification by Jack Remick

Author:Jack Remick
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: san francisco, magical realism, comingofage, jack kerouac, beat poet
Publisher: Coffeetown Press

Four

The taxi stopped on the driveway in front of twenty stories of glass and concrete, a tower with the solid feel of palaces built with blood and sweat a long time ago. Across the street, stairs led down to a little park with shrubs carved to look like animals. Eddie got out, held the door, handled the cello case, followed Terri to the door where she tapped in the code and the lobby door sprang open. The lobby was rosewood trimmed in brass. The luster of the wood gave the metal the deep color of money. Plants lived against the walls in the white footed pots, the kind you see in grand hotels. A rose and gray carpet on the marble floor muted a pathway to the elevator.

The elevator was embossed copper and mirrors and wood. Eddie expected to see tall women with good strong white teeth riding to the penthouse on the arms of lumber barons in buffalo hide coats and beaver skin top hats. In the closeness of the elevator, Eddie tasted Terri’s perfume. He smelled her cigarette-scented hair, her perfume her fingernail polish her lipstick her deodorant her hair spray and nothing had ever smelled so good. Even with the scent of men on her, she smelled pure. The elevator stopped. Eddie said,

You make a lot of money taking off your clothes.

It’s only a two bedroom.

At the door, he took Terri’s arm. Her eyes said What?

This isn’t going to work.

And you know that how, Mr. Poet-Gonna-Write-Me-In? Just how do you know that?

She punched more code into the electronic lock on her door. The door swung open into a long, straight flat with the living room bulging out at the end of a hallway like a mushroom. Separating the living room from the corridor was a set of open French doors. Beyond the French doors, three doors opened off the hall—one on each side, the third was a bathroom. The apartment had the warm glow of a moon-lit room on a starry night. Lots of glass.

Soft carpets, furniture like gray ghosts in shadows. White floor-length drapes filled one wall. The place smelled clean and fresh.

Terri touched a lamp, a mood light came on. Pressure pad lamps. Modern. A dozen masks hung on one wall. Some of the masks had long, black hair, others had their eye sockets painted red or black. Fanged and streaked with paint, they were half-animal, half-human. In the shadows, they could have been faces pressing through the wall from the other side or hanging in limbo waiting for bodies to rescue them.

That’s a Huichol devil head mask, Terri said.

She draped her blue coat over the arm of a chair in floral fabric—iris, blue iris and white iris. The pillow in the hollow of the chair was a yellow iris popped open in full bloom.

She picked the mask off its hook and handed it to Eddie. She said,

I got it in Mexico.

You spend a lot of time in Mexico?

Are you asking if I was alone?

Were you alone?

No I wasn’t alone.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.