Wildflowers

The low clouds of cigarette smoke hung below the chandeliers in the darkness of the lounge as Douglas entered. He had taken his last Xanax an hour ago, and flushed the rest down the off-white toilet in his single-bed hotel room. His head spun. A small woman sat at the bar with a vodka and a sad, curved face. He passed her and she glanced up at him beneath his hat, and he saw that she was dressed as a flapper from the Jazz Age. She smiled—he tried to return it, but he suddenly couldn’t feel his face, so he kept walking without looking back to watch her face lose its trace of that second’s happiness lingering below her soft eyes.

He had left the wildflower back in the room, in the cup of water below the lamp. It was safe enough there. But his fingers still itched to touch the petals as they did in the rain and as he dreamed of doing in the smoke of the Lounge. He walked to the corner and stood there facing outward into the Lounge and the few people who had gathered around the tables drinking exotic drinks of different colors and smoking cigarettes whose red sparks hung in the poor-lighting like the multitudinous eyes of some beast of the darkness.

Douglas saw DuPont at a table. He was gathered around three others, two women in Victorian corsets and a man in a three-piece suit and top hat and golden pocket watch on a chain. DuPont was dressed in a leather shirt that was buttoned up his left side, with leather gloves and goggles, as if he were the pilot of some marvelous steam vehicle concocted in the bowels of the dying technologies of the previous centuries. He was laughing and drinking scotch, and the other three laughed as well at something he had said and they all took drinks of their respective spirits and the laughter faded into the larger and less decipherable sounds of the others in the lounge. Douglas considered going over, but could never find a moment when their conversation simmered enough for him to insert himself into the table with ease and smile and have DuPont introduce him to his new friends.

Eventually, he saw from a side glance that the bartender was looking in his direction, almost in a glare that informed him there was a two-drink minimum in this lounge and this asshole’s attempt to mimic Humphrey Bogart wasn’t going to get him out of paying his dues.

“Do you have anything single-malt?” he asked.

“What’s that?”

Douglas cleared his throat. “How about just a rum and coke?”

The bartender nodded and retreated to the row of glass bottles and taps below a mirror whose reflection was tinted by the poor lighting. In lieu of his reflection Douglas only saw a tall shadow in a brown and tan haze. The bartender returned with his drink.

“Thanks. What do I owe you?”

“Room number?”

“Hmmm, uh, 327.”

“They’ll put it on your bill when you check out.”

“Oh, that’s cool. Uh, do I owe you a tip?”

The bartender waved his hands and went over to a younger woman dressed as a tie-dyed hippie leaning over the far side of the bar.

He had befriended Dupont on Facebook, at some point back in college in the first year or so when Facebook was even a thing. Back then, it had seemed like the perfect means of breaking out of his lonely freshman shell and starting his life anew.

Flash forward to a week ago. Dupont, never having cleared his friend list, flashed across his timeline RSVPing to the “Anachronistic Convention.” Douglas, in the loneliness and drunkenness of the night and his tiny flat, gave in to the temptation to message him.

“Hey asshole, you coulda come over so I didn’t have to look for you.”

He turned in a start and found DuPont standing behind him with a cheesy grin emerging from beneath his outdated aviator’s goggles.

“…you were talking, I didn’t think…”

“Why don’t you get over here and I can introduce you around.” DuPont grabbed his arm and pulled him in the direction of his table. Douglas sat down in front of a flower centerpiece and set his drink down next to a small, red candle near some bread in a basket. The two Victorian women smiled at him with eyes that suggested they had already had more than one drink apiece. Like himself, they were younger than they seemed to be from a glance at their outfits alone—both somewhere in their early twenties. One was blonde and the other brunette. Along with their corsets and antique umbrellas they sparkling makeup on their faces, only visible when the candles on the table flared in their direction. The man in the top hat bore cooler eyes and a glitter-less face. He was a bit older, possibly early thirties. From his eyes Douglas could decipher nothing about his level of drunkenness.

DuPont sat down to his left. “Alright everyone, this here’s a friend…uh…introduce yourself, why don’t you?”

Douglas cleared his throat. “Douglas Minor.”

“Speak up there, we can’t hear you.”

“Uh, Douglas Minor.”

“Yeah, Doug,” DuPont said while taking another sip of his scotch. “Me and him are gonna be here for the next coupla days.”

The man with the top hat lifted a hand in a brief wave. “Nice to me you. I’m Silas.”

The two Victorian women waved in unison.

“Alexandra.”

“Matilda.”

He hadn’t noticed which name corresponded to which hair color.

“Doug here’s kinda the silent type—he tries for a sort of tortured artist vibe. But hey, let’s just see what’ll happen once we get some booze in him, why don’t we?”

Douglas smiled as best he could and took a sip of his rum and coke. It was sweet, but still burned his esophagus.

“So guys,” DuPont said. “I can’t really remember what we were talking about before.”

“The resort.”

“The headwaters in the mountains.”

“The trees at higher altitude.”

DuPont nodded. “Yeah, I think it was some combination of all that. You can, after all, go and see the headwaters and the mountain trees when you’re up at the resort. Hey, uh, Douglas…Doug, you ever been to the resort up in the mountains?”

Douglas shook his head and mouthed the word no, then took another sip of his drink. More bitter now than sweet, really.

“Well, you gotta get up there sometime this week. It’s fucking beautiful up there. All the convention attendees get a free pass. We were all planning to make a day trip sometime, if you’d want to join us. Weren’t we looking at all of our schedules, or something?”

Silas looked up from the piece of bread he had been eating. “We weren’t positive we’d be able to make it work. I can’t off the top of my head recall if I have any free time this week that would coincide with anyone else’s.”

One of the women nodded. “I still would love to get up there, though. I kinda want to get away from the city for a while. I like the convention and all, but it’s just too dirty down here to go outside much.”

“But don’t forget the rain,” the other woman said. “I hear the rain is even worse in the highlands. If this system doesn’t let up we won’t be able to do much up there.”

“Actually,” DuPont said. “The rainy season’s the best time to see the mountains. The streams are bigger, the mists are fuller. Some damp clothes are a small price to pay for such things.”

Douglas’s rum and coke had definitely gone bitter. He managed another gulp, and closed his eyes while a wave of dizziness passed his head. He realized, though, that he could see the mute flames of the candles through his eyelids. They danced red with his jade and purple phantasmagoria in the darkness.

“They have a restaurant up there that overlooks a gorge,” Dupont said. “You can eat elk that was hunted that morning.”

“I’m a vegetarian,” one of the women said.

“Oh, well, they have great salad bars, I’m sure. And they have brooks where you can go trout fishing, and…well, if you’re a vegetarian, you might not like that that much either. But…up there they have one of the few temperate rainforests in the world—And, what else? It’s been a while since I been up there. I remember…I remember that they might have had a cave, I don’t know if it’s still open to the public, but they do have a lake, and…”

Wildflowers? Douglas thought. But he said nothing.

“I need to get another drink.” Dupont said. “I’m clearly far too articulate, still.” Douglas heard Dupont get up and slouch towards the bar. He opened his eyes to meet the faces of the other three at the table.

“So, uh, Doug, right? Doug, how long have you known Soren?”

Douglas tried to speak and his voice broke. “A couple of years now,” he managed. “I’m not sure how many. He’s kept pestering me about coming to these kinds of things for a while now. Uh, definitely a fun guy to do stuff with, if you were wondering if you should go off to the mountains with him.” He paused. “We were, uh, friends in college.”

“So, what do you do?” This was one of the women. Douglas grunted in what he hoped sounded like a cough.

“I’m—a student.”

“Oh really? Where?’

No names of any schools came to him.

“…New York.”

“You mean, NYU?”

“Yes.”

The other woman turned her head. “I had a cousin who went there. Said it was a great school, but the cost of living was fucked up. Is that true?”

He shrugged. “It’s Manhattan. But I get by.”

“What are you studying?” This was Silas. His smile had neither diminished nor enhanced.

“…Philosophy.”

“Oh, that’s interesting. Why did you choose that field?”

His back was tensing up and his fingers were caressing the air under the table in search of the flower that wasn’t there. “Because…well, I’m addicted to poverty, I guess.”

The others laughed. One of the women said, “You think that’s bad. I studied Art History for two years at a community college. Fortunately I dropped out before graduation and got a job at a Victoria’s Secret. I guess that’s ironic.”

Douglas didn’t think she understood what ironic meant, but said nothing.

Awkward silence held until DuPont returned with a red drink that was on fire.

“Oh boy, they weren’t kidding with that whole Sherry-ettes of Fire thing.” He blew on the drink until the fire went out and then took a sip. “It’s a bit sour, but it’ll do, I guess.” He turned to the table. “So girls, I gotta ask you, are those corsets uncomfortable? It looks like your ribs have been taken in a few notches.”

The women giggled. “I think our bodies are pretty malleable,” the brunette said. “People wore these things for hundreds of years.”

“Well,” the blonde one said. “There were occasional punctured lungs and ruptured livers, and stuff.”

“I gotta tell you, though,” the brunette said. She clutched and shook her bust. “This thing is pinching the hell out of my tits.”

DuPont raised his glass. “Small price to pay for beauty. And, if I may be so bold, madam, yours do look rather splendid this evening, pinched or not.”

The women giggled again.

DuPont turned to him. “So, Doug. What you been up to since college? It’s been like, god, 15 years, or something?”

Douglas managed a half-smile. “Something like that.” He coughed and tried to gather the worsening slur in his voice.

“He’s in grad school,” one of the Victorian women said. “Studying philosophy.”

“Uh, yes,” Douglas managed. “That’s right.”

“Ah!” Dupont said. “Yes, Sartre and all that.”

Douglas nodded. “And all that.”

The conversation rose and fell and Douglas passed in and out of comprehending it. With DuPont back and with introductions out of the way, he didn’t say much. He kept sipping his drink, masking the bitter contortions of his mouth, until his glass was empty and his head was swimming in a haze of the darkness and the low film of cigarette smoke that had never left the room.

An hour or so later they out of the lounge and walking through the nighttime streets of the city. DuPont had both women on either shoulder. They caressed his face and rubbed his thighs and buttocks, while he shouted drunken nonsense at passerby. Silas walked behind them, never muting or enhancing his singular, placid smile, not appearing to be in any way disturbed that DuPont had taken both of the women for himself. Douglas followed behind him, stumbling in the darkness and the sudden, irradiating colors of the neon and fluorescent signs on the storefronts near the hotel. He watched his feet as he walked, and listened for DuPont’s loud drunken sounds to guide him where to go.

The rain had muted to a drizzle, but mist was rising off of the uneven streets. Cars wandered here and there across the streets. Most of them were older with dysfunctional mufflers that sputtered and roared into the night as they passed. One of the women was licking DuPont’s face. Silas walked with a cane and a slight limp. One of the women rubbed her hair against DuPont’s neck. DuPont continued to lead them around misty corners and down streets on which the remaining puddles reflected in abstract shimmers the colors and impressions of the neon signs from the pawn shops and liquor stores around them.

“So, friends.” DuPont called. “Guess where we’re going.”

“Disneyland,” one of the women slurred.

“Better. There’s a club down this road right here. Planet Anarchy. One of the original grounds for Punk Rock out around this area. Spawned some of the greatest bands of all time.”

“Like who?” One of the women said.

“Well, The Hollow Points, for one.”

The same women lifted her head. “Who?”

DuPont turned his head in her direction. “You’ve never heard of them?” She shook her head. He turned to his other side. “How about you?”

The other women thought as best she could for a second, then said “Can’t say I have.”

DuPont looked behind him. “How about you Silas? You’ve been around a while. Must’ve heard of The Hollow Points at some point or another, right?”

Silas rubbed his chin with the hand not holding the cane. “No, nothing comes to mind. Not really into rock music, though, to be honest.”

DuPont sighed. “Jesus, I’m surrounded by Philistines. At least I know my man…Doug knows what I’m talking about. Back in college I turned him on to great bands like the Points. Isn’t that right Doug?”

Douglas was still looking at his feet and concentrating on the conversation more as a means to determine his path than as something to be responded to. DuPont needed no response and pulled the girls by the waist down a street marked by cafes and independent bookstores. “Let me tell you all, it’s been something of my hobby to map out all the areas of musical importance in a particular city. Give me the dirty street-corner where some old busker sat for years with a guitar missing two strings and garbage cans for percussion and sang from the depth of his pain and isolation and angst. I can trace them all, if you give me the right map and the right ear.”

Up ahead lights flickered on and off on a converted storefront, and the puddles lying in the potholes of the street flashed on and off in response. The sign on the storefront read Planet Anarchy.

“They should have called it Planarchy,” Silas said.

Dupont pulled the two women into the small doorway marked by multicolored fliers for bands that Douglas had never heard of. Inside he could already hear the pounding of a bass and drums in a tempo that seemed faster than humans were capable of producing. The rhythm hammered through his drunkenness and he felt the ground spinning on its axis. His fingers ached from the rhythm and he felt them reaching out into the darkness through the door in front of him for the flower that they could hold and still the pounding of the rhythm and his own heart, which had become one and the same at that point.

Inside a multitude of people grouped together in flashing strobe lights. They danced quickly and violently against each other. They were painted with glowing things and shined out in the darkness and in the artificial fog that rose in torrents from the stage. Douglas struggled on his feet, and in the crowd he almost lost his group. Only Silas’s top hat drew his drunken brain through the writhing and twisting human shapes near some tables by the left side of the stage. DuPont sat both of the women in a booth and then motioned to the bar to inform them that he was going to make them even drunker. The girls nodded in ecstasy and began pounding their heads back and forth in time with the music from the stage.

On stage the band was illuminated by spiraling and flashing lights of different colors. They all wore dirty jeans and equally dirty t-shirts. The singer wore a black short-sleeve with torn off arms, spiked arm bands and arms covered in tattoos. His hair was green and spiked. He screamed incomprehensible syllables into a microphone while thrashing his head back and forth.

DuPont returned with blue drinks that seemed to glow in the strange lighting of the club. He handed one each to both of the women, who gulped them down immediately. DuPont was saying something, making motions with his hands, and the women nodded and moved their mouths in return, as if there were an actual conversation between them that could be deciphered over the music. Silas tapped him on the shoulder and began speaking to him, and Douglas nodded and moved his mouth and hoped that Silas wouldn’t ask him a question. Silas was satisfied after a few minutes of making whatever point he was trying to make and patted his shoulder again with a smile and went off to the bar.

DuPont began making out with one woman and then the other. Douglas’s vision swam in a murky deep pierced by the jarring and painful lights of the club. He abruptly got up from the booth and made his way through youths dressed as sparsely as they would have dared in the outside rain throbbing against one another, the multicolored hair flailing around in the atmosphere and framed in the smoke and strobe lighting. The smell of marijuana and booze and occasional vomit flowing here and there. Bodies grinded into his, and he twisted and contorted his torso to avoid them as best he could, maintaining a close proximity to the far wall where there were less people. He headed in the direction of the small sign for the men’s room in the back corner. He didn’t know what he was going to do there, if he might not just find an empty stall and sit there for a few minutes until his intuition informed him that DuPont was ready to leave. He muted the fears that he would walk into a field of vomit, or lines being snorted or hits being injected, all in too close proximity to allow him a few moment’s peace in whatever privacy the toilet stalls afforded him.

The bathroom was lit by an ultraviolet light. There was much fluorescent graffiti on the walls and on the mirrors, which glowed in the focused irradiance from the lights that hung vertical on the walls. At the sinks there were several men dressed in drag and exotic makeup, correcting mascara or lipstick in the foggy and altered mirror. He snuck into a free stall and locked the door and sat down. From the bathroom the music on the stage was still audible, with the bass more prominent in its vibrations through the walls and the ripples it sent through the water in the toilet bowl. In the stall to his right he heard distinct grunts and moans and two bodies rubbing against each other.

He sat there for a few moments, trying to follow the tempo and time signatures of each song that resounded from the main club. After a while, he heard the door open again and DuPont’s voice came into close focus. The drunken giggles of the two Victorian women were superimposed alongside his. Dupont’s voice went in and out against the music.

“Like I was saying, I can give you a whole history of this place. Back around ’81 or ’82… first wave of hardcore around here…first post-baby boom generation, the children of the hippies…their music got angrier. They started dressing like this, in the most appalling manner…around the early eighties this street was in the center of the boonies, urban wastelands …all the punks started hanging around, until someone realized…sort of like a microcosm of what they want their reality to be—fast, independent, and completely irrelevant…”

“That’s so fucking cool,” one of the girls slurred over the music. “How do you know all this shit?”

Douglas imagined DuPont tapping his head. “Hobby of mine, baby.”

The wildflower was dead, Douglas knew that. His drunken brain, sequestered in that dirty bathroom stall, wouldn’t let him avoid that truth. It had been dead for a while, in fact. Dead since the day he had found it so lonely—lonely like himself—perched in that clearing, by the ravine in the forest. The ravine he looked down onto, imagined the drop, the fall, the final embrace of the rocks and white current below. The wildflower he had picked instead, held its secrets, as if, in time, it could lend him its colors and its vibrancy in the loneliness of the cold wilderness.

And so he picked it. Carried it with him. Held it to his chest. But…

But…

The three bodies, by the sound, moved across the room and into the stall to Douglas’s left. He heard the door shut and lock and the rustling of clothing being removed and flesh being grinded against flesh. The moans from the three of them moved in counterpoint to the similar noises from the stall to his right, and Douglas wanted to leave the bathroom, leave the club and run back to the hotel and find the wildflower hold it against his skin. But the bass threaded a line into his body that he was afraid to break by getting up, and he didn’t want to flee into the writhing mass of bodies outside, dancing outside, fighting in the mist for their world, their world to be as they deem through their power cords and screams and bodily convulsions to the beat, afraid because he knew what it would impart to him, even in the twenty seconds it would take to find the door, afraid of what it would continue to whisper in the silence and the mists of the streets and through the walls of his hotel through the rest of the night, afraid of the dark light shadows building chimeras of what was lost, what he had lost, so long ago, in the mist of the mountains and the rivers who flowed unburdened, the mist in which the wildflowers and the alpine frosts coalesced in the early snows, and so he sat with his hands holding his knees, listening for the patterns to emerge from the pounding beat from the stage and the moans and sighs and cries of pleasure on all sides, in the anarchy and irradiance of the night and the rain that still fell somewhere and somehow from the long-purple sky.