Star Harbor Nights

Not at Juniper.

Now you couldn't get in without showing plastic no matter who you were, and the jukebox had been replaced by a DJ pumping out shitty, incomprehensible techno music and sped-up remakes of old disco songs. The old crowd was completely gone. There were a lot more unattached women, though they mostly went around in intimidating, impenetrable packs. He'd never had a hard time talking to girls before, but he'd also had a certain amount of help in the form of chemical confidence. Having a few noteworthy connections to brag about didn't hurt, either… but he was past all that.

Hopefully, he would also soon be past having to hit on the snobby, cliquish bitches that hung out at the bar or on the edge of the dance floor, dissecting the whole room with their gazes and wheedling drinks out of poor saps they'd never accept anything more personal from. He would be past that, just as soon as he found her, saw her again. He kept his eye on the dance floor, looking in the dark spaces for a single glimpse, a flash of blue...

"Hey there, slugger," said a voice behind him, and he turned to see a woman with red hair and blue eyes, wearing a black Juniper Hill cap and a t-shirt that said "Look at my chest when you're talking to me."

Orlena Adams had grown up in the same neighborhood as him, and had always hung around with him. When he'd moved to Star Harbor after high school, she'd followed... probably because he was the only friend she'd had, back then. She'd lost weight since then, but kept the curves from her fuller-figured self. Sometime when Joe wasn't paying attention, her acne had cleared up, too. Her social circle had also expanded while Joe was serving two years out of a five year sentence. By the time he got out, she was working as a bartender in his old haunt, now a hot dance club. He kept coming back to Juniper out of habit... but with Lena there, he felt weird.

It wasn't just the shock of seeing her slinging booze, either. It was like she was part of his old life, his childhood... and while he liked her well enough, he felt he was ready to move on.

Not that Joe would have been able to put any of that into words if he‘d tried, but it's what his thoughts and feelings boiled down to. Still, when he saw Lena, he put on his best smile.

"Hey, aren't you s'posed to be on the other side of the bar?" he said.

"Not on tonight... just came to get my paycheck... and my purse," Lena said, holding up a fashionably tacky silver sequined handbag. "I leave this thing everywhere I go, I swear. But since you're here, I guess I can hang a while."

"Sure, whatever," Joe said. "You know, I got paid today, too."

"You told me you got paid on Thursday," Lena said. "But you were here Thursday, Friday, and now you're here again tonight. Before now you haven’t come around much except on pay day. I hope you're managing your money better than... better than you used to."

"Yeah, I am, 'Mom'," Joe said. "Jesus, you'd think not going out drinking every night would get me some slack."

"I'm sorry," Lena said. "I just... I don't want to see you getting in trouble again."

"Hey, don't even give it another thought... I'm clean and straight now. 'Joey Diamonds' is dead and buried," Joe said. "I made a promise to myself that I'm not going to be anybody's delivery boy anymore."

"So how's the job at the Pizza Shack?" Lena asked.

"Hey, fuck you."

"Sorry, that was a bit low," Lena said. "Anyway, if you're all clean now, have you given any thought to... you know, your future?"

"Yeah, I have, actually," Joe said. He felt weird talking about this with anybody, but if not Lena, then who? Besides, she worked at Juniper Hill. If anybody would know what he was talking about, it was the bartenders. "When I was here on Thursday, I saw this chick... tall, kind of, you know, lanky, but with a great set... uh, I mean, well... she had this really intense blue hair, and she was on the dance floor really getting into it. At first I thought she had some of those, you know, glow sticks… but then I realized it was like there was this blue glow around her, that pulsed with the music... but when I looked right at her, I couldn't see it. I know that sounds weird, but... what?” He noticed the look on her face.. “You think I‘m crazy?"

"No," Lena said, smiling slightly strangely. "So you've seen her, too. Is that what brought you back here three nights in a row?” The smile faded. “For a minute there, I dared to hope it was for me."

"So what's her story?" Joe asked.

"Story? More like legend," Lena said. "She just started showing up a couple weeks ago, showing up at at least one club every night... apparently she just appears, stays a few hours... drinks, dances, leaves. Never seems to pay for anything."

"Well, that's not so weird.... she's hot," Joe said. "What's her name?"

"Nobody knows," Lena said.

"The bouncers do," Joe countered.

"No, they don't," Lena said. "When I said she appears, I mean she appears... the first time anybody notices her, she's already inside the club. Nobody remembers seeing her arrive, nobody remembers checking her ID. If anybody tries to hassle her about it, she's just gone."

"You mean she disappears?" Joe said, his voice cracking with excitement. He‘d suspected something like this. "She teleports? Turns invisible?"

"I mean she's gone," Lena said. "Nothing flashy. Bruce--Manager Bruce, you know, not Owner Bruce--he went to 'talk' to her one night and somehow he just lost track of her. That's the way he said it... he lost track of her. She didn't show up here at all for the rest of the week, and Owner Bruce said as long as she doesn't make trouble, she's okay."

"So she's a mutant," Joe said.

"I didn't say that," Lena said.

"No, I think it's cool," Joe said. "My cousin Ollie said he made it with a teleporter once. He said the only problem was that every time he started to come, she'd go."

"You're awful," Lena said. "But I don't think she's a mutant."

"How do you explain the hair?" Joe said.

"Lots of people come in here with blue hair," Lena said. "Anyway, when she first showed up, it was black, so it's probably just a dye job."

"Or… she's a shapeshifter, too," Joe said. "Damn, that's awesome. Does she do the Houdini act whenever anybody talks to her, or just when it looks like someone's going to kick her out?"

"No, people have talked to her," Lena said. "If you believe the rumors, she can get pretty friendly."

"What rumors?"

"Some people say she, you know... went down on... six guys in the bathroom at the Standpipe one night," Lena said. "But Tiffany, my friend who dances there, says that's bullshit... and I also heard she smacked a guy through that chain link fence they have around the dance floor there."

"Seriously?" Joe said.

"That's what I heard."

"Six guys?"

"Did you listen to the other part?" Lena said. "Not into the fence... through it. Anyway, I never saw anything like that when she's here... though I did see her leaving with a leather girl one night, so maybe she's not into guys at all."

"Or maybe she's bi," Joe said. "This just gets better."

"Hey," Lena said, reaching for his hands. "Why don't you forget about her, okay? What do you need some mystery woman for when you've got me?"

"You?" Joe said, taken aback. He didn’t mean to laugh, it just slipped out.

"Laugh a little bit louder when you say that, okay?" Lena said. "I might still have some ego left."

"Lena, I'm sorry... it's just, you're like a little sister to me," Joe said. "I don't think of you like that."

"You could try," Lena said. "I grew up a lot while you were away. I got guys hitting on me every night, you know."

"You work in a bar," Joe said. "Besides, you're not exactly much fun, you know?"

"What do you mean, fun?" Lena said. "We had some good times."

"Yeah, good times hanging out in your parents' basement smoking and stuff, but... you're not exactly the type to give a blowjob in the bathroom," Joe said.

"Yeah, well, I'm not the type to give six of them, neither," Lena said, a Bronx accent coming out along with her anger. "Is that really the type of person you want to mess around with, Joey? Just when you're starting to get your life together?"

"Life? You call hauling pizzas all over town for just past minimum wage a life?" Joe said. "I'm the kind of guy that needs a little excitement every once in a while, you know. This could be it... not just a weird lay, but the start of something big for me."

"You know what? I meant what I said earlier," Lena said. "I did grow up while you were away... I grew up enough to see that you haven't. I hope you and the blue girl have a good time and are very happy together and have lots of shapeshifting bisexual mutant babies together."

"When did you get to be such a bitch?" Joe asked.

"When I noticed you were such a dick," she said, and stormed off towards the door.

"Hey, whatever,..‘Whorlena‘," Joe called after her, but only after she was safely away. Using the cruel childhood nickname was low, even for him, and while it made him feel a little bit better to say it, he couldn't quite bring himself to say it where she could hear it. After all, she was Lena... and she had given him some useful informaton. The blue girl didn't go to the same place every night... he wondered if he'd have better luck going around to all the clubs, or just staying at one. After thinking it over, he decided on the latter. If they were both jumping around, they might never find each other, but if she went to every club she'd come back to the one he was at eventually.

Maybe he’d try the Standpipe, though. It might be a whole week before she came back to Juniper Hill, and he didn't want a week of seeing Lena mad at him.

3 Weeks Later

Before he went to Deadlights, Joe DiMato had always thought goth just meant wearing black and acting all mopey. He'd started asking around about it so he'd be prepared before setting foot inside the local hangout. The stories he'd heard about the place had made it sound like some seriously kinked out place... people suspended from hooks through their nipples and shit like that.

The truth was both a relief and a disappointment. In his simple black jeans and t-shirt, he felt seriously underdressed compared to the lacy stuff a lot of people were wearing... and overdressed compared to the guys in mesh shirts that he kept almost bumping into. A lot of them had metal shit through their nipples, but none were hanging from anything.

He knew bars and night clubs tended to be dark anyway, but this was downright gloomy. He felt like an asshole, stumbling around and trying to avoid the tight knots of people. He decided that one visit to Deadlights would have to be enough for a lifetime... if she didn't show up, he'd go back to staking out the Standpipe, or move on to one of the other Star Harbor night spots, like Club Kitchener. He didn't need to spend night after night being gawked at by a bunch of freaks in black eyeliner.

As soon the thought crossed his mind, he knew it was bullshit. Everybody he'd talked to who was even halfway in the know about her said that this was the place she came too most often. She'd almost given up on the other clubs… which mean that he had, too. The gawkers were only gawking because he was a new face. If he came back, they'd recognize him and maybe start to warm up to him. He might even get past "Hi." before getting the brush-off, and learn something new. He might have let the weirdness of the place intimidate him, but in the end it was just another bar with a lame theme... and in every bar, there was at least one person who'd talk to a new face.

With that in mind, he headed towards the bar. He wondered if it would be hard to grab a bartender's attention... and then his attention was grabbed by a bartender. There were a lot of pale faces in the room, but she was borderline albino, with wavy platinum hair that didn't look like it had come from a bottle. She was also very short. Not midget-short, but still ridiculously undersized for someone who had to reach across a bar to work. She just managed, somehow. She was also deathly pale... but so, Joe thought, were most of the freaks in the club. Even with her weird slitted pupil contact lenses, the bartender was hardly the weirdest one present. In fact, now that he was looking at her, the thought filled him that there was nothing unusual about her; she wouldn’t stand out in a crowd.

Belatedly, Joe realized he had been staring, though the woman took it in stride.

"You look lost," she said, smiling. It was a broad smile, but a tight-lipped one.

"This ain't exactly my regular crowd," Joe admitted. "But I thought I was blending pretty well. I mean, the bouncer let me in."

"You look like you're over twenty-one," the bartender said, shrugging. "That's really all it takes."

"I thought this place had kind of a reputation..."

"It does," the woman said. "A reputation for exclusivity brings people out... but there's no money in actually turning people away at the door. Anyway, if the regulars didn't have any 'poseurs' and 'wannabes' to complain about, most of them wouldn't know what to do with themselves."

"And you're just telling this to me?" Joe asked. "Aren't you afraid I'm going to to repeat it?"

"What are you, a reporter for The Astronomer?" she chuckled. "Come to blow the lid off the seamy underside of the Star Harbor goth scene?"

"No, actually, I'm between j... projects," Joe said. He was actually a pizza delivery boy... or man, but as far as he was concerned, he hadn't lied. The pizza thing was just a side line, something to pay the bills while he kept his eye open for the next big thing. He wasn't sure what exactly that was yet, of course, but he was working on it. "My name's Joe."

"Sherry," the bartender said. "Sherry Glass. So what brings you to Deadlights? I know it's not just curiosity."

"Yeah, well, kinda," he said. "The truth is, I'm looking for a girl."

"You and half the people here," Sherry said. "But I think you're thinking about somebody in particular, aren't you?"

"Yeah... yeah, I am," Joe admitted. "How did you know that?"

"You don't get far in my line of work if you can't read people," Sherry said. She leaned forward across the bar--an action which almost certainly took her feet off the floor--and whispered conspiratorially to Joe. "You're looking for her, aren't you?"

"I don't know what you mean."

"Yeah, you do," she said, swinging her legs up onto the bar. "Her... the blue girl. The mysterious one, who appears and disappears at will. The one they tell the stories about. You've seen her, what... three times now?"

"Twice," Joe said. "At Juniper Hill and at the Standpipe. I thought I saw her again at the Standpipe, but I'm not sure..."

"Yes, you are... you know exactly what you saw," Sherry all but cooed. There was a strange, not unpleasant sibilance to her s-sounds. "You saw her at the Standpipe, and you had a clear shot at her, but you lost your nerve. You've been so focused on finding her that you don't know what to do after... and so the next time you saw her, you pretended that you didn't, so you could keep looking. But she never came back to the Standpipe, did she?"

"No," Joe said, forcing the syllable out through a suddenly constricted throat. "You... you really are good at this reading people shit."

"I really am," she agreed, latching onto his eyes with her own as if they had claws. "Why don't you have a drink, and I'll tell you some more?"

"Yeah, okay," Joe said hollowly. "Sure thing."

She handed him a tumbler full of a vibrant blue liquid served over ice, though he only noted the color when he brought it up to his lips to take a sip. The taste was tart and putridly fruity. His gaze remained locked unblinkingly with Sherry's.

"In the past few weeks, she's been here more nights than she hasn't," Sherry said. "I think this club must be her favorite. She shows up alone, and she leaves with different people all the time... usually more than one, and the things that they do... you wouldn't believe, so I won't tell you."

"So, you think she’ll come back here?"

"She already has," Sherry said. Joe's head jerked a fraction of an inch with the impulse to look around the dark room for the telltale blue glow. "While you were talking to me, she appeared in one of the corner seats, and she hasn't moved... she's just looking around. Do you know what I think?“

“What?“

“I think she's getting bored with the club scene, honestly... the endless cycle of drugs, drinking, fighting... fucking. I think it would be a perfect time for somebody to approach her and make her an offer of some kind. She looks... receptive."

"Receptive, yeah," Joe echoed dully. He gave his head a little shake, then said with a bit more inflection, "But I can't just go up to her... I don't know what to say. I don't even know what the hell I'd be offering."

"Well, think about it this way," Sherry said. Both her voice and the intensity of her gaze seemed to shift down a gear closer to normal. "If you had only a minute left to live, and in front of you was a beautiful girl who represented all your unspoken hopes and dreams, what would you do?"

"I'd... I guess I'd go up and kiss her," Joe said. "But I can't just... she wouldn't..."

"Receptive," Sherry repeated.

"Receptive," Joe echoed. "Right. Here goes."

He tore his gaze from the bartender and turned to face out through the hazy gloom. He didn't have to search... his eyes found her instantly. She was sitting, as Sherry had said, on one of the cushioned benches that hugged the corners of the room. In the darkness, away from any dance floor lightshow, the subtle glow that surrounded her like a halo was easier to make out. She wore a jumpsuit that was either black tinged slightly blue by the strange aura, or a blue so dark as to seem mostly black. Her pale, heart-shaped face was framed by twin falls of shoulder-length hair, dark as the suit. Her bangs were the riveting electric blue that her whole head of hair had been the first time Joe had spied her. Her face was lit up like there was a spotlight on it, but it was unreadable.

Joe was reminded of two things, both of which uncomfortably involved Lena, whose friendship he'd spit on so very recently.

The first was some movie he'd watched part of with her, about Hamlet. He'd only watched part of it, because the whole thing was four hours long. But the fruit who'd played Hamlet (he assumed it was a fruit, because you wouldn't catch a real man playing Shakespeare) had gone around the whole time in a black outfit that looked a lot like what she was wearing. The look on her face also made him think, in some way he couldn't put into words, about Hamlet.

The other thing it reminded him of was a word he'd heard Lena use once, to describe her own life back in the day. She'd said it like "on-whee", and when he asked her what it meant, she'd given him a long, confusing explanation that sounded to Joe like she was just bored. He'd said so, and been treated to an even longer and more confusing explanation, after which Lena threw up her hands and said he just didn't get it. Looking at the girl's face now, he realized that she'd been right, he had no idea what the hell "on-whee" was all about... but neither did Lena, and he had a fair idea he was looking at somebody who could tell him.

He almost froze, until Sherry's soft, cooing voice clicked in the back of his head, whispering one word: "Receptive." He started moving.

She got to her feet as he approached, seeming confused or startled by his single-minded forward stride. Panic shot through Joe's center at the thought that he might be shot down before he even made contact.

"You are the most beautiful woman I've ever seen," he said breathlessly, leaning in towards her. He saw something on her face, in the weird blue half-light, that looked like wonder, and he wondered if the same look showed on his face. Her chest rose and fell seemingly in time with the beating of his own heart. He leaned closer. The girl stood perfectly still, a perfect moment frozen in time.

His lips brushed hers.

The blue glow intensified in Joe's view. His lips went numb. Hot ice ran through his veins, and then all he knew was blue. The girl shrieked as he tumbled down at her feet. The blue light flared up, then faded completely from sight. She faded with it.

"Goodnight, sweet prince," Sherry said, lifting Joe's forgotten tumbler up as if in a toast before downing the remaining liquid in one gulp. "Flights of angels sing thee to thy rest."