Cabaso's Hat: Part II

The thing about the market was, there weren’t many places to run but away, and away was a short trip across a dangerous gorge at regularly scheduled intervals. Not that Cabaso wanted to get away, but it was a good thing to keep in mind.

He had no intention of leaving his hat behind but his natural impulses were pushing him toward the dock where illegal rides across the gorge could be bought at outrageous prices. Outrageous for others. Cabaso was sure there was a ferryman or woman that owed him a favour, or two. Once man and hat were reunited, they would make their way across the gorge and into the rest of the tunnels and away from the market.

There was a bit to be done before then.

Something he had been warned about, by a former member of a squat party in a market on the other side of town, after helping the former member across the gorge with one of his favours and thus earning himself two more that would, unfortunately, never be collected (the market on the other side of town was vastly different from the market Cabaso currently enjoyed; denizens from one almost never experienced long life when shifted from one to the other), was the tendency for squat parties to adopt people from the market. Adoption was not a legal action, or even a trade. It was that they took all of your fears and reinforced them, then pushed them until you believed they were all something they were not. When they could manipulate your fear, it was easy to make you believe they were the only answer to it.

Cabaso was trying very hard to recall that he knew this, mostly because he could not stop being afraid in that moment.

The fear had come on him so suddenly that he did not know he was frightened until he saw someone who could relieve the fear. He was frightened of being alone, and here was someone, in a wrecked old vest and trousers, to alleviate his fear. He was surprised at how easily the man took his arm and led him toward the cellar door of the building next to Mr.Castle’s pawn shop. He was very glad not to be alone, and to see that there were other faces in the cellar.

“Another one!” someone said.

Another! Which meant there were several before him! Cabaso climbed down into the cellar. What was he doing here? What were they all going to do here? He hoped they were not going to leave the cellar. If they were to get lost, to lose one another- how horrible alone they would all be.

The squatters made a home for him in their nest of blankets. The blankets smelled old and damp, like dough that had been left to rise and do nothing else, and he sank into them with a happy sigh. “You know,” Cabaso said, “I did not even know what I was looking for until just now. I’ve only just found it.”

“That’s lovely,” said his neighbour, wrapped in another blanket. There was something strange about her eyes. They were colourless in a way Cabaso’s mind did not want to see. “I bet you don’t want to leave it, do you? Never leave this place, eh?”

“Never,” Cabaso agreed. It seemed the most basic of things, the simplest truth, that he should never want to leave. What help appeal outside the squat party? And, locked deep down inside of him, if there was a voice protesting or questioning, it was easily ignored.

Time passed, but Cabaso would not have sworn that it did. They did not sleep, just let more of the dough smell collect around them. Someone on his other side shifted occasionally and made small, unhappy noises as their skin changed. It was like dough rising, like the smell, smoothing out all the cracks in his face. Perhaps it was painful, but Cabaso would not know. He did not move in the swelter of blankets. Someone moved across the floor above him. Someone else left to wander through the tunnels that ran under the houses and shops of the ridge, then came back, empty handed. Which was disappointing. It would have been so good, Cabaso thought, to expand the party. There could never be too many squatters.

When he shifted again, after some time, someone else brushed his arm. They smelled distinctly human, and like heat, not like the damp that settled into the cellar and his bones. They were trying to attract his attention, shifting in the mass around them. How irritating, and rude, Cabaso thought. He frowned at the man.

“Don’t give me that look,” the man said. “You know why I’m here. Oh, this is a bit of a mess. I know you would have rather I left you alone. Know that circumstances forced my hand.”

Cabaso tried to recall what circumstances those were, and if he were in any circumstance that would force the man’s hand. He did not think so.

“We’ll get out of here through the tunnels,” the man said, “Once you’ve woken up. Oh, that better be soon. Come on, Cabaso. Please make it soon.”

But Cabaso was awake. He had been awake for a while now. Sometimes the scenery of the cellar changed, which was how he knew that time had passed. More faces had become mountainous and dough-like. The woman beside him was hardly recognizable anymore, except for the blue shawl tied under her shapeless chin. It was a sight. The strange man was distracting him from it, and he tried to put into words why he found it so irritating to move or be spoken to at length. “This is where I belong,” Cabaso said.

Something next to him that could have been a person nodded. It was like watching an unbaked loaf of bread bounce.

Cabaso tried to ignore the strange man, and not to move. These things both proved difficult, since the strange man was right in front of him. The strange man moved about the cellar, pushing aside Cabaso’s squat party as he reached for Cabaso. He tugged on Cabaso until he stood. Cabaso was put out to find himself travelling through the tunnels, away from his squatting territory and his party. He was sure he was meant to stay with them. This man was leading him toward a place he would be quite alone.

“This is not-” Cabaso broke off because the man had stuck something in his mouth. Cotton balls or cloth. It was in between Cabaso’s teeth and made his words into sloppy noises.

“You know me,” the man said. There was light shining down through the floorboards, on the man’s dark skin. “Algernon. Come now, Cabaso. The squatters got you. If Castle decides now’s the time to check for squatters in his shop, you’re caput.”

He tugged Cabaso along. They bumped into chairs and tables together. Cabaso turned around, to go back, but he was walking backward, because the strange man was still pulling him. When Cabaso glanced upward, he saw a knot in one of the floorboards, and through it, it looked like Mr.Castle had gone to meet his neighbour. Cabaso did hope Mr.Castle would not check for squatters, or disband or dismember their squatting party.

“Oh, dear,” the strange man said. He looked up through the knot. Mr.Castle was wearing lots of finery for his visit. Cabaso thought it was nice. He thought his party must be getting worried about now. The smell of dough was fading, and his head felt very large, a balloon about to pop, filled with helium. He wanted to take hold of it to make sure it didn’t fall off his shoulders.

The strange man dragged him a few more feet away from the squat party. Cabaso should have been infuriated by this. He should have turned around and reclaimed those feet.

“He is gone,” Mr.Castle said, agitated and hateful. “Just disappeared. Cuffs open. Well, he’s no thief, just a con artist. If you see him, though, you can still cut off his hands.”

Cabaso’s cranium swelled even more. He would have to poke it with something to deflate it, soon.

Mr.Castle moved again, into Cabaso’s full vision. Through the knot, he was an attractive shape, if a little large at the stomach. He looked exactly the Mr.Castle that had tried to drown him in a metal container a week (several days? A month?) ago, except for the addition of a remarkable piece of clothing that did not mean to sit on his head. The hat was like all the shadowed shades of colour.

Cabaso did touch his head, then, because he thought this thing in it might burst. He was only prodding his anger, he realized. Like prodding an animal only half-stuck in a trap. He looked fiercely at the hat on Mr.Castle’s head.

It was elegant. It was sophisticated and mysterious. It shone like a wet street. Something about Cabaso gave a little snap like a “twing”. 

“My hat,” he said.

It irritated Cabaso slightly that Algernon noticed the exact moment he woken up and did nothing about it. It would be a mistake for them both to run, right now. There was still a party of squatters in the bowels of these houses. They had no advantage except for being awake, and they were on vastly different pages. Algernon wanted to get away, only. What Cabaso wanted was on Mr.Castle’s head.

There was the matter of getting from the bowels of this house, to the ground level of Mr.Castle’s house.

“Excuse me, Algernon,” Cabaso said blandly. “I’ve just remembered what it is I’m here for and that I’m in perfect control of the situation. I should be getting along with it, actually.”

Algernon said, “Cabaso. Oh, dear brother, you don’t seem to understand exactly what’s going on. It’s a little more complicated than all that, I’m afraid.”

Cabaso, understanding exactly how complicated it was and how complicated it was not, said, “I am sure that if you would rather stay here, behind, you are welcome to. There are some very nice people in the other room that will welcome you with open arms. I, however, had something of extremely important business to attend to.”

“I’ve got this,” Algernon said.

Cabaso, who believed Algernon had, at the moment, nothing, wandered past him, into the cellar of Mr.Castle’s room. It was much easier to see how the squatters were really one entity from outside the party. They were all so incredibly dough-like. Mr.Castle, it turned out, was very bad at pest control, because they were very close to growing between the cracks of the floor boards. Cabaso had to be very careful about edging around them, toward the stairs that led up the ladder. Algernon was a little less careful, on account of trying to reach Cabaso before he revealed them both, but he was too slow. And anyway, Cabaso was good at big reveals.

He made a very flashy one in Mr.Castle’s store. Perhaps not the best of places to reveal himself. His coat, flung open dramatically and devastatingly, knocked over a couple second-hand lamps. And his delicate, dark fingers, outstretched for show, scraped one of the shelves. A nail broke. Cabaso tried not to let it affect his entrance.

“Oh, that’s very rude,” Mr.Castle said. He was holding a gun in Cabaso’s direction and though the hammer was cocked, Cabaso still felt worried at its presence. He did not like barrels pointed at him. Having Algernon climb up after him did not help.

“Hello again,” Cabaso said. “I’m afraid I haven’t the time to be almost drowned again. I have to be getting on. And you are actually a primary function in my getting on. Don’t try anything with that gun, now. They’re permanent, you know.”

“I do know. Where exactly do you plan to go next?”

Cabaso lifted one shoulder. The hat was in the same room as him, just on a devastatingly wrong head. “I could show you. If I had a map. And time. But you can’t expect me to stay, really.”

“I can, really. There’s a map there, on the counter. I want you to tell me where it is you think you’ll be going before I actually do kill you. Pick it up and unfold it, carefully. There you go. Come on. Hurry up. You, behind him, stop leaning over. I want to see- ah.”

Mr.Castle came forward to look at the map. The gun was still pointed at Cabaso. Through the floorboards below them rose the scent of dough. Cabaso held the map open before Mr.Castle. “This is a shame. I’d rather hoped you would put down the gun when you came to look. I also hoped I would have a more interesting route to show you, but it’s looking more and more like we won’t be getting very far. Just out of this room, isn’t that right, Algernon?”

Mr.Castle opened the one flap of the map that Cabaso hadn’t unfolded. He stepped on a floorboard that should have creaked, but took a moment too long, because the creak was coming from the floorboard being pushed in the wrong direction. Dust was dislodged from the grooves of it. Cabaso felt a slight pressure beneath his boots.

“I am going to enjoy killing you,” Mr.Castle said, pressing the gun into the side of Cabaso’s head. “And this time I won’t wait for you to drown. Directly at my hand, you see.”

Cabaso did see. He was also edging slowly toward the door, so slowly he was nearly holding his breath. The barrel of the gun pressed lightly into the side of his head, then not at all. What he needed, was to not be in this room, very quickly. He hoped that Algernon had been listening and that he was also aiming to be out of the room very quickly. There was the hat, which didn’t need to listen, but needed to be out of the room with them, very quickly. He would soon have to actually grab it.

Cabaso took a full step backward. Mr.Castle pulled the hammer on the gun back, eyes narrowed. He was tilted, a little, because the floorboard beneath him was. He bared his teeth at Cabaso. Cabaso noticed that Algernon was matching his pace in going backward, except perhaps he was moving a little more quickly. Cabaso hesitated, made a decision, and stumbled back several paces as though he’d lost his balance. Mr.Castle raised the gun, but did not shoot. Cabaso heard Algernon breathe in, very quickly.

“What is happening?” Mr.Castle said. His mouth was stretching sideways in the shape of dismay. The floorboard beneath his feet appeared to be buckling. He took a step back as well. The hat followed him.

“Your squatters are getting bigger,” Cabaso said. “I thought they would, if you were not careful. And you never seem to be. Algernon, you’re quite ready?”

He saw Algernon nod in the corner of his eye.

Mr.Castle aimed his gun again. They were unfortunately very close, and his aim was very accurate. “You are going to die today,” he informed Cabaso.

“Oh goodness, darling,” Cabaso said, pressing a hand to his heart. “Lies do not become us.”

And it was at this moment that the first of the squatters burst up through the floorboards, and broke several of them in the process. Because the first of the squatters was atop the rest of the squat party, and had become the rest of the squat party. They were no more than a rough collection of fingers and an outline of limbs that was melded somewhat into the rest of the party. They ballooned upward, white and thick and squishy, throwing Mr.Castle back.

Cabaso leapt upon the heap. It was an unpleasant heap to be atop, even for a second. The sour smell of dough filled his nostrils and every crevice of his head. The only forgiving thing was the feel of the hat’s brim between his fingers, then the hat in his palm, then the hat on his head as he fell back and made for the door, Algernon on his heels.

It was not unusual for people to run from the squat party, so the squat party had realized that it could stretch itself out in an effort to catch the runners too. It stretched toward Algernon and Cabaso as they flung themselves through the door and onto the ridge. It stretched on the ground floor and in the tunnels, and so there was not quite enough of it to stretch. They stretches not-quite hands toward the both of them and came up empty. They pulled back together, lest they accidentally sever part of themselves. It was frightening to be alone, anyway.

No one noticed Algernon and Cabaso running into the market, away from the pawn shops, toward the main ferry docks of the gorge. They slowed to a jog between the stalls, and when the space grew cramped and crowded, they slowed to a leisurely stroll to catch their breath.

“That was quite the risk you just took,” Algernon said, as the ridge wall fell away behind them. “Are you entirely sure it was worth it?”

Cabaso heard him only partially. He was inspecting the hat for damage and finding none. There was a bit of dough on the brim but he flicked it off and stepped around it on the ground. Let the market deal with it when it began to grow. He would be long gone. “Entirely.”

They walked deeper into the market, both looking over their shoulders for Mr.Castle and unwilling to admit they were looking. Cabaso had dusted the hat off long enough; he put it on.

It fit as it had before. Which was to say that it fit perfectly. The man beneath it looked a little fantastic. He was all cast in colours of shade, like you could not see him properly, even looking head on. Like he was meant to be cloaked in shadow. The twinkle in his eyes was darker than the twinkle in others eyes. The hat was magnificent on him, shining like wet pavement.

Cabaso adjusted it, just so, to be able to see out from beneath the brim without making the curve of the brim look like an invitation. He turned around and found that Algernon had performed a trick of vanishing enigmatically and mysteriously away into the crowd, without a goodbye, without a hint of his leaving or having been there in the first place.

It sounded like something a charismatic character would do in a story. Cabaso realized it was one of his pet peeves.

A lady in a stall beside him was giving him a look. He was not interested in the look right now, unless he could make its owner owe him a favour, but he wasn’t sure of the market’s future, and he definitely did not want to be a part of it, with Mr.Castle possibly still floating around somewhere, and a ball of dough squatters definitely floating about somewhere. So he tilted the hat to her and the hat took the gesture and turned it into something elegant, stately, regal, and charmed her with it, so that she would never forget the man in the shadowy hat with the charismatic smile. She did not know Cabaso, but she knew he was like no one else she had ever met.

Cabaso turned away, toward the gorge and his ride out of the market. There were some thoughts lingering around him, like the stray threads of a cobweb, about what was going to happen to the person under the hat and about whoever that might be, and about the people around him. Then he tilted the hat down and performed a trick of vanishing enigmatically and mysteriously away into the crowd, without a goodbye, without a hint of his leaving or having been there in the first place.

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Art by anonymous

Cabaso's Hat: Part I

Cabaso was not in the habit of getting himself into difficult situations. Not difficult situations that he could not easily talk himself out of. It was a bit more difficult to talk himself out a situation when there was no one around to talk to. Which meant there was also no one around to hear him complain of the circumstances that had led to him being here, and if there was a short list of the things he loved most dearly in this world, complaining was most certainly on it. Near the top. Somewhere after apple crumble and friend plantains and being a mysterious, charismatic, rakish enigma.

He would have complained, had anyone been around to hear it, that in the beginning it was only because he’d wanted his hat back. The hat was not just any old hat. It was not just any new hat. It’s magnificence transcended time and any notion of old or new. It was timeless, beautiful, elegant. A masterpiece of hattery. It had a hidden pocket, which was nearly unheard of, and every colour on it was like a colour seen in the shade, so it always gave the impression that he had just emerged from the shadows, or was a blink away from slipping back into them. He was, when he wore it, effortlessly unique. It was a hat he refused to give up.

Which was what made losing it so hard to stomach in the first place. He had not gambled it away. Not even drunkenly. Cabaso did many things drunkenly, but the consequences were never visited upon the hat. But he’d been doing someone a favour, and been happily doing it (for favours always had to be returned, and on the shortlist of things he loved dearly, being owed was present), and somewhere within the favour he’d been clubbed over the head, and the hat had not protected him. In fact, when he’d come to, the hat had been notably absent. This was disturbing for many reasons, not the least of them being that, hatless, Cabaso was also up to his thighs in water, and the water was slowly rising. We will return to that in a moment. For the moment, the hat.

The hat should have been in Cabaso’s possession partly because it had, once he’d procured it, never left his possession. And secondly, because there was no reason for anyone else to have the hat, unless someone was trying to hold it hostage, to make their way out of a debt they owed him. When he racked his mind quickly for the name of the soul malicious enough to attempt it, he came up empty. When his mind instead conjured up the image of his hat, his hat of midnight colours and the shine of wet cobblestones upon another’s head, circuitry in his brain suffered.

Some say that clothing does not reflect the person inside them as well as they could or should, and that they do not make the man. This is, to some extent, correct. But it is more correct to say that when Cabaso the boy put on the hat and glanced at himself in the mirror of the White Hart Inn’s tavern he saw Cabaso the man, and Cabaso the man stood straighter, tilted his chin up, unless he wanted to look menacing, and was no thief of a good hat, but had come to own it the same way he’d come to be conceive: because the universe had willed it. Cabaso the boy had not had the name yet, but Cabaso the man knew it as soon as he donned the hat and saw himself in it. The hat was big then, but no less resplendent and perfect. Its perfection had only aged with him, as it should. Cabaso. The name came with the hat. No other name could wear this hat.

Back to the water, which was climbing up his pelvis. There had certainly not been this much when he’d been put here, he thought, for he would have woken up to such a shock, rather than this gentle lapping of rising water. All he had wanted was to get his hat back. It had been harder demanding answers without the hat. People listened to the hat. The face beneath it was slightly harder to remember without the shadow of the brim cast on it. And people generally did not want to remember Cabaso. Remembering him often came with seeing him, and often that walked hand in hand with owing him.

Cabaso tested his throat and gave a very slight hollar. There was a rasp in his throat that told him his assailant with the club had either dunked water down his throat, which might explain the ugly feeling in his stomach, or had had their hands wrapped around his throat at some point in his black memory. Maybe there was an ache to his throat he could examine later, when the water was not mounting his hipbones and rising.

In the market, Cabaso had asked the local friers for their assistance. Friers were not much in the way of assistance when it came to intellectual matters, but they could use their eyes at least, and mostly they could use their memories. Cabaso needed some of both. “Did you see a fellow go by with a hat?” Cabaso asked them. “You would know the hat. Beautiful. Magnificent. Incredible. Belongs on a head of a similar kind. The fellow with it would have had to come by here to get anywhere.” The market headed off the honeycomb labyrinth of underground paths. The way he and the assailant had both come had been blocked off by the rising water levels. The tunnels were cut off.

A frier with a basket full of bok-choy shook his head. He dumped the bok-choy into a steaming pan and covered it with a net, to catch the spitting oil. His skin looked like he’d been frying things for years and leaning over his job. It also looked like he’d been eating fried things for years and had forgotten food existed outside his job. “Haven’t seen him. Did you check the pawn shops? All sorts come their way.” The bok-choy frier coughed. “We’s got bok-choy, if yer interested.”

“I am not interested,” said Cabaso. “I am interested in my hat, which none of you seem to recognize. When I find it, I shall return to broaden your sad horizons with it. Which pawn shops are in this district? Where would I be able to buy it back?”

The bok-choy frier shrugged. “Pawn shops along the ridge.”

“And who would have bought my hat?” asked Cabaso.

The bok-choy frier did not answer. When Cabaso repeated the question, he lifted a hand in a gesture that Cabaso felt was unsportsmanlike. Gentlemen were not to be found often in the market. It was followed by another gesture of the kind that looked, if they were playing charades, as though the frier were slitting his own throat. Cabaso was determined, but smart. He asked no more questions. He kept looking for answers.

Elsewhere, there were more answers to be found. Someone dealing in old trunks, who smelled like a cellar that had not been well taken care of, told him, “I know who you are. I know you’re looking for your hat. Saw it by the ridge. Near that old second hand- you know. What’s the place called? There’s a long-nosed man who runs it.”

He had the attention of the hair on the back of Cabaso’s neck. “Well. The Belfast Beacon?”

The trunk-dealer snapped his fingers in Cabaso’s direction. This was not much of an improvement, as far as gestures went. It was shaping up to be one of those days that was against Cabaso. But the trunk-dealer was of a friendly kind, so Cabaso was generously silent about the gesture. “That’s it. That’s the store. But I still can’t remember the bugger’s name…”

“You are quite close with bugger,” Cabaso said. He did not sigh. Sighing was particularly not in style. Or not of the kind of style Cabaso preferred. “It doesn’t matter anyway. I know his name.” There had been no cheer in him, but now the absence of cheer was instead filled with anti-cheer. He could feel that, without the hat, it looked petulant and resentful on him, instead of broody and misunderstood.

He walked away and toward the ridge, which was covered with second hand shops and pawn shops. He held his hand over his eyes when he passed under a lamp meant to imitate the sun’s glare. It was doing a fabulous job of pointing out Cabaso’s lack of a hat. Gold is never wrapped in more gold, said a voice in his head, in the exact tone of his brother’s voice. Precious things are never wrapped in precious things. Cabaso made an effort to pretend his brother’s voice had not spoken in his head.

Instead he pondered as he neared the ridge. This was a risk, because Cabaso had few friends here and many people owed him favours, and because The Belfast Beacon was home to one of the very few men in the world that Cabaso owed. He liked to make calculations and the way he understood it was that there were only a handful of deals in the world worth making. He had made one that was not among that handful, and the month he’d spent with the girl enthralled by a love potion was not enough to owe another human being. But he’d done it.

Here, he would have not to trust anyone. Cabaso had good practice with this. Without the hat, he did not even trust himself.

He should not even have trusted the paths on the edge of the ridge, because no one was watching closely enough to stop his assailant. He remembered looking toward The Belfast Beacon and the one Turkish lantern shining in the window and thinking, something is off. Then correcting himself, because it was not something. Many things are off here. He turned. Wrong, wrong, wrong. That was about the time that the club struck the back of his head and flashpapers ignited behind his eyes. They settled again as he tumbled into the dark.

Which brings us back to the water. It was the third thing he’d noticed upon waking because the first thing he noticed was that his hands were cuffed to the wall. And secondly, he was still without hat.

He had been unconscious. And now that he was conscious, there was no one around him to determine that he was in any condition other than the one in which they’d delivered him to the cellar filling with water. It was a compartment in a sewer that he was cuffed into, filling rapidly. It was not watertight, but the leak around the locked door on the other side of the compartment was slight enough that it did not matter how much water drained from it. On this side, water would continue to rise and to make his circumstances increasingly lethal.

He knew exactly who it was that had put him here in the first place. He knew who it was that owned the Belfast Beacon, which was not the first store of its name. But the last store had been burned down. An incident that could have been viewed, unfortunately, as Cabaso’s fault. It really depended on who one asked. If they asked Cabaso, he would tell them that it had only happened in his presence, and near him, and that he was not in control of all of his limbs all the time. If they asked an eye witness, they would tell you that the Cabaso had, basely and clumsily, knocked over a candle and set the place ablaze, thus putting him in the poor graces of the Beacon’s owner, Mr.Castle. And also in Mr.Castle’s debt. Cabaso could see Mr.Castle’s awful, spider smile now, unhappy to watch his shop burn to the ground, glad to have caught Cabaso and to be owed something for the mess Cabaso had put him in. He had never wanted to see the smile again, but he was seeing it now, namely because Mr.Castle was leaning out of a hutch in the compartment several feet above his head, and looking down upon Cabaso with glee.

“An honour, surely,” Cabaso said. He made as much of a bow as a man can make with his hands cuffed to the wall, and without an elegant hat. “I had not anticipated seeing you, Mr.Castle, or I would have dressed more appropriately. The cuffs are a bit excessive in your presence, I think. If you rid me of them, I think you’ll find I’m in a manner more befitting a chat with you. We can talk, you and I.”

To Mr.Castle, it was obvious that ‘you and I’ was a concept he had no interest in. “I think not,” he said. His voice was smooth, like the smoke rising from a lit cigarette. “Do you have any idea how hard it was to get you in that position? You are slippery. I am giving you no slack at all until I know for certain that you are dead. Then you can have all the slack you want.”

“Again, how honourable of you,” Cabaso said.

“I really want to hear you beg and scream. I want to hear you pleading for mercy. Have you ever cried, Cabaso? Of course you have. I meant outside of infancy. You will today. For me.”

“That sounds like an unlikely thing,” Cabaso said, “but we’ll see. You did not follow me to the market on the off chance that I would lose my hat, be drawn toward the ridge looking for it, and then receive instructions to go looking for The Belfast Beacon to retrieve it, and thereby put myself in the position to be thwarted and stuffed into this hell hole, did you?”

Mr.Castle smiled.

“Well, that is devotion,” Cabaso observed. “Or overreaction.”

“Devotion,” Mr.Castle agreed. “I had other plans as well, to find you and make you pay for what you did. This was, infact, the simplest of them.”

Cabaso did not doubt that it was. Mr.Castle seemed the type to use simplicity so long as it was efficiency. He liked to look clever, and though scheming looked very clever, winning looked the cleverest. And he did look suspiciously like he was winning right now. He stood up straight and pressed his back to the wall. The water was above his belly button now. The sensation did something unpleasant to Cabaso’s body, and to his panic.

“Well?” Mr.Castle said. “Beg for my forgiveness.”

“Ah! Oh, I see. Well, here goes: please! I’m begging you! I have much to look forward to. I have my whole life! Mercy! Please! You looked best with a bit of compassion on your face, Mr.Castle, and I know I deserve not to even be lifted from this tank and onto the dirt beneath your feet, but if you were feeling so forgiving-”

“I think you are aware,” Mr.Castle said, “that it is a factor of the cadence of your voice that everything that comes out of your mouth sounds sarcastic.”

“I am aware now. Shall I change my voice for you? I am afraid my accent is strong. And my voice won’t matter much longer. Underwater and all that.”

“Be quiet,” Mr.Castle suggested. “You will be on your own very soon. In some time, the room will fill with more water, and you’ll drown. You’ll be dead the next time I come in. There will be laughing on my part. I’ll get someone to chuck your body into the river or something.” He turned his head a fraction toward the window he was poking out of. “Ah. Hang on. Here is something…”

He left. And he returned wearing an insult. He wore it not nearly as well as Cabaso wore it. The rim was too tight around his head, and the shadow that fell across his eyes was sleazy and unkind to his features. The hat itself was a magnificent thing, shining like wet cobblestones, in dark shades, like it was permanently in a shadow. It was mysterious. Charismatic. Enigmatic. Everything about the angle of the rim said elegance and beauty.

Cabaso’s head swelled with rage. Blackness pushed on the inside of his cranium and carried his temper on it, buoyed and darkening the rest of the world. He was really only a few feet below the hat, and the head wearing it, unjustly. The hat was doing its best to turn Mr.Castle the bastard into Mr.Castle the handsome rake. Because it was nto just any old hat. It was his hat.

Then Mr.Castle went back inside the window, and this time he shut it behind him. There was a bang as it swung all the way closed. The darkness was absolute. It did not rid him of the water, which was counting his ribs upward. He writhed against the wall, but the cuffs were firm and tight around his wrists. His legs were free, but they could only go so far without his hands. And he did not want to try walking away and slip into the water with his hands snagged above him. It sounded uncomfortable on several levels.

The hat would have been able to solve this. There was a hat pin in there was had many more uses than most hat pins did have. There were buttons on the hat that had more capabilities than other people’s buttons. There were picklocks and tiny useful instruments in the concealed pocket of the hat. There was also a bandage that would have been perfect for sliding between the cuff and the knob of his wrist. The water did not help his hands slick and come out of the cuffs. It only made it a little harder to concentrate when it was almost up to his underarms.

Cabaso did a quick calculation and realized he was on his way to a quick death. Not necessarily a pleasant death; he’d heard many things about drowning and most of them pointed toward agony. All he had to do was un-cuff himself, and then he would be free to find the source of the water and shut it off, or get out of the room, or both options in alternative order, and then avoid Mr.Castle but not avoid the hat. He would complete it with the most perfect getaway Mr.Castle or anyone in the market had every seen.

He tugged on his wrists. The cuffs bit them hungrily. He tugged harder. He lost a little more of the skin on his wrists to the cuffs. He considered when he’d last updated his will and then whether or not he had actually told anyone where it was. He had many fine possessions he was proud of, but the one that he would be most worried about in whatever afterlife existed sat on Mr.Castle’s head. He thought about his death, and the agony, and the after, and his hat.

“Oh, stop that. Now’s not the time.”

The voice had spoken in his ear, so Cabaso turned his head, automatically, toward the speaker. There was something metallic and finicky happening around his wrists. The pressure around one of them was gone. His hand came back to life as he lifted it out of the water, out of the unlocked cuff.

Cabaso turned to the voice. “Pardon?”

In the darkness, Cabaso should not have been at all able to make out the smile. But he could, because the darkness parted for that kind of handsomeness. The smile was roguish and inviting; the eyes invited swooning.

“Other wrist, now,” said the man. He smiled and the eyes did not invite swooning so much as encourage it.

Cabaso did not swoon. He shifted his shoulder slightly so the man could reach around him without moving through the water too much. The water was up to Cabaso’s shoulders, and not quite up to the man’s. The couple inches of difference were annoyingly infuriating. The man did something else metallic and the cuff around his other hand opened.

“That’s better, isn’t it? I hoped you weren’t in trouble, but it sounded like you were,” the man said. He looked at Cabaso from a dark and handsome face. Cabaso looked back from his own dark face. His eyes sparkled. He was not much taller than the average man, but his posture told everyone he was ever likely to meet that they would look up to him in some way or other so they may as well begin by looking up to him physically.

“Trouble? What trouble? I am perfectly all right,” Cabaso said.

“All right does not require rescuing. I just did that.”

Cabaso would allow him to hold this opinion, however wrong it was. “Mr.Castle does not know you’re here, does he?”

“Absolutely not. He’s still waiting on the other side for you to drown. If you were cuffed, that would only have taken another, foot, but I think he wants to be sure. See? The water is already up to your chin. The water’s coming from the floor. But give it a minute and it will buoy us up to a door in the wall.”

“You planned this?”

The man with Cabaso’s skin and the roguish smile said, “Of course.” He made a face that might have made some people, when looking at Cabaso and the man side by side, think, for a horribly misguided second, that he was a tad more handsome than Cabaso. “Did you really think I was going to stand by and let someone drown my little brother?”

The water touched Cabaso’s bottom lip. He did not tilt his head back. He had his pride. “No one was drowning me. I told you, I’m all right.”

The man began to float on top of the water. His limbs helped him. He didn’t look toward the window where Mr.Castle and the hat had disappeared. He looked toward the opposite side of the compartment and pushed himself slowly to it. Cabaso floated on the water too, and watched him reach for a latch. A part of the wall that did not look like a door swung open, like a door. “This is it,” the man said. “I recommend going quickly, before it fills with water.”

Then he did not give Cabaso the chance to ignore his advice, because he seized Cabaso and hauled him through the door, which was actually the entrance to a tunnel, which was actually like a long water slide.

The water slide went on for a bit. In the dark, Cabaso had the time to reflect that he was going down and away, and getting farther and farther from the hat, and that he did not know what was at the bottom of this, and also, that he was not enjoying himself.

At the bottom, he nearly twisted his ankle in a metal grate. He hit his face on it instead. The hat’s brim would have saved him. He dragged himself off the grate and onto a concrete floor where he shivered and was miserable and wet.

From the tunnel came a sort of enjoying-himself noise. It preceded his brother, who shot out of the tunnel and only his feet like he’d finished performing a very good trick. “Ha!” he said. “Brilliant, huh?”

“To some,” Cabaso conceded. And, not that he was particularly curious, but, “were you holding your hands above your head as you came down?”

“Of course I was. Why wouldn’t I?”

Cabaso got to his feet. His feet didn’t like it. Well, his feet would have to just take it. “You name? Is it still Algernon?”

“Absolutely. No reason to change it. Don’t fix what isn’t broken and all that. And you, Cabaso? Still calling yourself by that name?”

“Don’t fix, and all that,” Cabaso said, though it could be argued that changing his name might actually aid him. He sounded uncertain. He looked drowned and conviction-less. He felt very young and stupid.

“Well, whatever works. Look, I’ve got to go. You know, things to do. Just don’t get into any more messy situations. And don’t worry about it. I know you would have done it for me.” Algernon meant every word he said, which did not make Cabaso feel better about it. It made him, in fact, feel much, much worse.

This really was an awful day. Because now it just had to be said. “Thank you, brother.”

“You don’t have to. But! Your hat, right?” Algernon smiled, like the way he said it did not make Cabaso feel ten inches tall. “Mr.Castle still has it, as you know. And I know you don’t want to hear any advice, but here it is: forget the hat. Really. You’ll be better off without it. Get another one.”

“Hm,” Cabaso said.

“Hm.” Algernon inclined his head, and it was as elegant a gesture as though he were wearing a hat. He shook his head once, spraying water, turning his hair into a devastating mess. He was elusive as he left, leaving in a direction that Cabaso did not notice entirely. This was Algernon’s talent. Leaving through indeterminate routes. People were always left with the feeling that they’d just witnessed a magic trick, but a very high end one.

He could forget the hat. He could lie low or pay someone else to retrieve it for him. He could change his name and plan out a route too complicated for Mr.Castle to chase him. He could get a new hat. Not his hat. It would not be his hat at all.

He came very close to another sigh. He was still going to get his hat back. And part of it was this: sometime, when he was young, he’d decided who he wanted to be. And because he had human imagination, what he created could only get as far as an amalgamation of things that already existed, and it was a variation on a model he’d already seen.

He had known many things about who he wanted to be, and what he wanted not to be, and even as a boy he had decided to become or not become all of them. He had wanted to be entirely different from his brother. He had not wanted to be like anyone that already existed. He wanted to be clever and enigmatic and slippery and devastating. He wanted to be one of a kind.

So, essentially, like his brother.  

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Art by anonymous

Because I Was Loyal

All of the princesses were barbarians. There was no way around the fact: the king would marry a savage.

It had nothing to do with the fact that, in the early days, several of the princesses that came for his hand were from neighbouring kingdoms that King Agrememnon (known to the royal family and to myself as King Aggie) had managed to offend or deliver the cold shoulder to, and the most logical solution at the time was to propose marriage. The marriage was not a guarantee, no, there was still the test, because these things have to be done right if they’re done at all. But a marriage assuaged the burn, stroked the abrasion, pulled the royal foot from the royal mouth. The sort of girls sent to King Aggie from these kingdoms were harsh at best, and simpering cut-throats at worst. Really, if I had been given reign in this department, I would have made much better selections. But the Chancellor had high hopes those days for peace. When he began to run out of eligible candidates, he dropped his hopes so low that they could not even bounce. They made a gruesome shape on the floor.

This is the story out out of order. To tell you the story in order, I have to tell you that my family has no place in a royal household, but has had a place for generations in the royal household. For a king who respects the workers of the land, whoever is chosen to train the beasts belonging in the royal barn and stables should be chosen very, very carefully. It is not that the animals are particularly hard to take care of, though they are prone to melancholy due to the perpetually grey skies and the rain, and it is not because they make uneven dips and crests in the bushes on the far side of the property that is visible from the road, though not from the gardens, and it is not because it happens at least once every two years that a storm spooks most of the sheep badly enough that the rams and ewes begin to trample their own young. It is because animals are cunning enough to wait until you trust them before turning on you. I am cunning enough to see through it, and cunning enough to turn false loyalty into true. Loyalty, King Aggie would say, is everything.

Which is one of the reasons it has been a daughter or son from my family plucked every generation to tend the king’s beasts. I have only been at it for most of my life, and the earliest part of my life was spent in learning how to tend the king’s beast. Our family was chosen by past kings and continues to be chosen by the current head of the crown because of parallelism. While our family is contstantly progressing, acquiring and passing down new knowledge with the old (so long as the new does not contradict the old), the royal family is constantly looking for progression. As our family makes advancements, the royal family values them. I myself was chosen from five sisters and three brothers because I am the least fearful (important as some of the horses have been born with the devil’s temper), the least ill (fortuitous as the animals do not have days off, and I, therefore, never have either), the most proactive (ideal as many of the animals are clever enough to know when would be the worst time to start a ruckus, and it takes only a stern word or action to convince them, before appointed time, that their life means much more than biting the king’s hand), and, as I mentioned, loyal.

It does not do any harm that I am more savage than any of the princesses that came to see him. It takes a certain dislocation of the mind and the spirit to look a beast in the eye, see oneself and ones’ emotion, and to break that neck very tidily in one’s hands. King Aggie does not always want me around, in the way that one does not always want a flu-patient around. As though brutality is a disease he is frightened of catching. His mother was a savage woman as well, and the family was constantly inspecting DNA for signs of brute force in himself or his sister (married and exported to her husband’s kingdom across the channel). But if the king occupies his territory, I am happy to occupy mine.

I am called on, rarely, but for good reason. When I am needed.

King Aggie’s previous wife died of a mysterious illness. An asp had mysteriously been clasped to her breast in her bed. There had been no signs of a break in to her room, mysteriously. She had been very unhappy to be wed to the king, mysteriously. But like King Aggie’s father before him, and his father before him, and all fathers before them back to the first father that had worn a crown, he had to be wed. Not to take the crown, but because there had always been a wife. Except for those that died mysteriously or in childbirth, and then there had to be a quick replacement made. King Aggie sought his chancellor’s help in procuring candidates, and my help in procuring a wife from them. There may be no wife at all, as it had happened before that he had lost interest in all of the girls, suddenly and completely. The entire palace scurried, but warily, without much aplomb. We had gone through the motions several times. Table cloths were cleaned and laid out. The bottoms of curtains and tapestries were dusted. The sheep were shooed from the castle grounds and locked in a pen. The horses were polished, then their saddles were polished. All doorknobs were polished as well, and servants despaired at their inability to get a good grip on any of the knobs. Black piglets were dragged from the wooden pen to the painted pen. There was enough space around them to get in a few elevated benches. A coliseum of sorts. This was the puzzle the king had chosen for the princesses: out of the black pigs, of which there would be one per princess, one of the picks would have a golden coin in his mouth. Their mouths were all closed with an easily broken adhesive. The coin had yet to fall out, but it could not be swallowed, lest the pig choke and give itself away. If there were twenty girls, there were twenty pigs, and the twenty girls stood in the pen with the pigs and descended on them like a murderous frenzy. The rightful princess for the crown was the one who plucks a pig from the ground and pulled the gold coin from its mouth. Only one pig could be plucked by each princess. If in the end there were three princesses of twenty with not the skill or determination or wherewithal to pluck a pig from the ground, and the remaining pigs ran free in the pen, and the gold coin was not in the mouth of any chosen pig, then no one had won and the king’s search continued. The losers were killed, their bodies strung before the gates to warn subjects and enemies of the punishment for imposters.

This last bit did not happen. But there were some girls that made me wish it did.

The girls caused enough pain as it was, housing them and feeding them and washing their clothing. Some of them saw fit to bring their own stallions or mares. IF that was not bad enough, they were prepared to marry King Aggie, and let a pig’s disgusting eating habits determine whether or not they were right for the crown. No more random than the birthplace lottery that chooses our kings. But, still.

Our kingdom gets into arguments easily, you see.

Aggie was agitated, as usual, when he was to choose his bride to be this time. He ad been suggested find a wife in the summer. And find a wife in the summer he attempted. All of the childish joy had vanished from his eyes. He was attached to frivolity, and what was more frivolous than being with bank and without wife?

The king saw to the pen and I. I told him he should be resting, not watching the pigs. His experience with horses would not teach him which was the best bet, which was the most likely, or least, to be caught. Which mouth was most likely to swallow the coin before someone else could grab it. I have more sympathy for him than I should, for a woman in a family that had not gotten a raise in four years. “This fretting will change nothing,” I told King Aggie. “You will just be tired and short with the princesses that do come. Do you not trust the hands behind this?”

“The pigs? Oh, goodness, Margaret, no,” King Aggie said. “Getting sleep will change nothing. I supposed when I am with wife and absent of others I will know what it is to sleep. To never leave the bed. The room. The house. Has God forsaken my life?”

My life had been, until now, entirely to make sure he could say nothing of this ilk on the subject of his life. Graciously, I said nothing about God. God was not the one about to strangle a black pig with a gold coin. Instead, I said, “You are not forsaken. Greet them. Be curtious and polite.”

There is something deeply embedded in the heads of many children. When they speak to someone they have known all their life, who is bigger, that they have known to be bigger all their life, they find it difficult not to be polite about it. So King Aggie went to greet the princesses. I gave him specific instructions, about greeting them and holding their elbows or touching their wrists.

Princesses are an entirely different breed of human. They are especiall ugly, and especially beautiful, in the way that pearls and rosewater masks can make one beautiful. Especially ugly in the way that they have a knack for ugly expressions. You will notice in many stories that princesses are demure and good-looking. They are not always good-looking, that is simply luck, and they are not always demurring, that is simply bad luck. It was not the type that King Aggie preferred. But what to do? No one liked a savage princess, but the strongest girls grew in the roughest soil.   

That made eighteen black piglets in the pen. Not many, but their squealing would cause quite the racket.

King Aggie made polite conversation; it was killing him. He restrained himself at dinner; it was killing him. He asked about history and politics in neighbouring kingdoms and was treated to blank stares; it was killing him. He was not intrigued by the princess who seemed to think she could make herself useful singing old ballads.

One of the princesses brought him a present of a kitten. He was charmed. I took the kitten to the kitchen, where the King would not be made ill by it, and the kitten would thrive. During this time, whilst also feeding the black piglets, stuffing coins down their throats, chopping the heads off chicken, wiping down horses with blood-splattered hands, the King was quiet in his preferences of the girls. I still found time to participate in the bet. I know already who would win the king’s hand, and that it would happen this time. The other staff were betting, making a game of it, but I was not there for the game. It was clear who everyone would have preferred to win. Equally clear who everyone thought would win. They were never the same person. It was hard to imagine a cream-complectioned face capped with gold hair reaching a hand into the stinking gullet of a pig and pulling out a golden coin. It was hard to imagine beauty of any sort having the stomach for potentially activating a pig’s gag reflex.

There was a feast, which made use of the boar I’d been keeping since King Aggie last caught one, and a powerful ale that put several of the dukes nearly to sleep at the table. One of the princesses nearly knocked over her goblet, then stopped, quickly, and snatched it up before a drop spilled. King Aggie left the feast early and resigned himself to his private chamber to confront his worries in private. I was part of the private. I stood at the door of his private chamber, the chancellor on one side, the earl on the other. King Aggie handed to me the gold coin for the pig’s throat. On the other side of the door, the princesses were holding themselves up against the wall. Tomorrow, they would have to be ready to wrangle pigs. Tonight, they proved to the servants which of them could handle our strong ale. Again, it was hard to imagine a beauty who was also a good drinker. There was one beauty among them and she had been wilting against the wall when I entered the great hall. Each princess was given a key with a boar’s head, made of a different metal, to correspond to the metal boar’s head plate on the door of their respective rooms. Beyond bronze and gold and silver, one had to have an eye for the metals, but there were also servants for the job. There was a princess with a brass key, and another with bronze. One with copper, and one long-legged princess with copper that had turned green. One with a shade of gold that was too white, and another with no metal at all, but a crystal boar’s head. I had known them for the space of hours, and it was enough to know my own choice. King Aggie said nothing. He had also been through this ritual too often. But he was right, to have that hunted look beneath his wariness.

I accepted King Aggie’s gold coin. We pretended there was ceremony. I passed the girls in the hallway and went toward the door that led to the pig pen, to stuff a coin down a throat. I made a detour to the kitchen on the way. It does not do good to look like a drinker when carrying out royal business, but it was in the business of royalty that I carried a mug of ale with me.

I went past the servants in the garden, the servants in the stables, to the pig pen, where eighteen piglets slept and digested their own dinner. I was alone, hidden, as I climbed into the pen and seized one of them. Down his throat went the beer. Into the centre of the frenzy went the pig. He would not soon sleep off this alcohol. A princess would have to be quick in her reflexes to notice him sleeping, and quick in her reflexes to jump to him in the middle of the pen. Then, because I was savage, and valuable in carrying out the king’s business, I put the coin down the pig’s drunk throat. I nudged him into the centre of the pen. For good measure, I slit each of his legs, enough to paralyze him. King Aggie was in for a resilient bride.

Because I was savage, I’d given him the chance. Because I was loyal, I had guaranteed it. 

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Art by Adam S. Doyle

City of Angels

Somehow the party lit up the entire street, even though it was held in a single apartment. It was a large apartment, the kind found only in the canyons in Los Angeles. It had a pool in the back, and several polished cars in the front. A girl in a leather dress lounged against one, posed with one high-heeled foot crossed over the other, shoulder tilted down, eyelids heavy with shadow.

Isabel had been to her fair share of parties. But she’d never understood what lured people to these sorts of parties, to places that boasted liquor, music that violated the law, and making out with someone you would likely regret in the morning.

Someone had once called it “chaos without consequence”. That someone obviously never read the papers and saw the endless stories about pretty, glamorous boys OD-ing on the pavement, or rock stars who got behind the wheel with beer on their breath.

But she wanted to see the appeal; she wanted to see how far she could push herself.

The interior of the apartment was a riot of people with drinks in hand swaying to slow EDM. It was absolutely full of people, some who abandoned the music to follow others out to the pool. She looked at them all. How could she ever fit in? Why would she- anyone – want to?

Ultra violet lights flashed. Someone was going around with scissors, cutting everyone’s glow sticks in half. Dancers waved them frantically. The entire apartment looked like a scene from Avatar.

There was an indoor pool as well. A girl lounged on the edge, in a bikini, wearing enough makeup that it was clear she had no intention of actually swimming. She was leaning against a boy in the pool, a hand on his wet shoulder, smiling and nodding. Isabel wondered what kind of person she would have been if she hadn’t left California for Minnesota.

Someone offered her a drink and a glow stick on her way to the patio. She shook her head, hesitated, and then took the proffered cup. It smelled rank and tasted it too. She handed it back after the first sip. The boy holding it looked abashed and slid back into the mass of dancers. She wasn’t sure if she was disappointed or glad. Someone had told her that alcohol could either make you very sad, very happy, or very angry. The world needed her to be absolutely none of those things.

Something blocked the doors to the patio. It took Isabel a moment to realize that it was a group of girls, rather than an art installation. They had taken their glow sticks and deliberately swiped neon paint onto their lips and eyes. A couple had gone so far as to paint every single nail with the stuff. They looked like the fairies in a child’s fantasy brought to life. Beneath the paint nearly every girl had a mouth as shiny as glass. She hated it-

Why couldn’t she just forget it and be as neon-bright as them?

One of the girls looked up at Isabel and made such a high-pitched noise that it could have attracted attentive dogs. Isabel was not a dog, but beneath the phosphorescence and the makeup she recognized Clementine. Celementine leapt from the group of girls – there went the perfect composition of the art piece – and grabbed Isabel’s arm. “Isabel, sweetie! I’m so glad you came. Isn’t this party a dream?”

Isabel made her mouth perform an approximation of a smile. She knew from experience that it made her look a little amused, a little cynical, and sometimes drew men’s attentions to her lips. 

Clementine only beamed back. She pulled Isabel into the group and rattled off several names. Isabel only assumed that they were almost all the same thing, since the girls they belonged to looked like different versions of the same Barbie.

When she was done she held up a glow stick. Isabel didn’t take it, but Clementine only wiped her finger across its tip and ordered Isabel to part her lips. Isabel let her pat the glowing paint onto them.

Isabel caught her reflection in Clementine’s eyes. With her lips painted she almost looked like one of them. It was the biggest lie.

Clementine acted as though they had all been waiting for her. They absorbed her into their conversation as though she wasn’t made of Teflon, as though the words wouldn’t just bounce off her. When the patio door opened she smelled oranges and chlorine and the dusty perfume of the canyon.

She was glad not to be alone; L.A. was not a place to be alone. It was all about connections, a city of freeways that connected downtown and suburbs and beaches, and people who knew the cousin of this celebrity or this producer. People around her held her hand and did little shimmies, air kissed her cheek. It was something you did with strangers in L.A. If you did not do those things it had nothing to do with the fact that you were surrounded by strangers. The point was to not be alone.

After some indeterminable amount of time – how long ago had she arrived? How long ago had she had that drink? – a couple of the girls became genuinely curious about her.

“Where are you from?” Sierra asked.

“Minnesota,” she said.

Sierra’s eyes went as wide as the eyes of a cartoon animal.

A bevy of boys appeared. Most of them were fresh out of the pool. They shook their hair, sprinkling everyone with shining drops. One of them slid down Isabel’s dress. “Where have you been?” Clementine asked one, pulling one down by the shoulder to speak right in his ear.

“Looking for you,” he replied.

Clementine smiled. She kissed him and he let her. For a moment his eyes were closed. They blinked open and focused on Isabel before he pulled away from the kiss.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“Isabel,” she said. She didn’t ask who he was.

Apparently she didn’t have to. “Jasper,” he said. He was tanned, the sort of tanned that came from days on these beaches, or hours on ones in Costa Rica. He flashed pearly white teeth when she gave him an almost-smile.

“Darling.” Clementine was at her side again. “Enjoy yourself. I’m going to find Candace.” It was a dismissal, but Clementine was the one that left.

“Anything I can get you?” Jasper asked.

“Ross brought a couple mickey’s,” one of his friends offered. He scratched his buzz cut.

“Water,” Isabel said. She got a feeling from Jasper, almost like a challenge, or a chase. It left her stomach buzzing.

“Ha!” said Buzz Cut. “It’s too late for water.”

She aimed her cool gaze at him. She parted her lips slowly. “Does that mean you won’t get it for me?”

In an instant he’d disappeared to find a bottle of water. Jasper laughed and wiped at his hair with a towel. His eyes didn’t leave hers.

She didn’t know quite how to do this. There were only so many steps she could take before she needed someone else to lead. She tried to think of a signal. She parted her lips and nudged his calf with the toe of her enormous heels.

It was all he needed.

He led her up the stairs, where it was only marginally quieter. She’d never known the point of parties, so she’d never known when she had accomplished what she’d come to do: when did she leave?

Maybe this was the point. Everyone did it for a reason, didn’t they?

Jasper pulled her into a dark bedroom. It was full of mirrors, maybe made for someone who didn’t intend to have someone else in the room with them, or maybe it was entirely for that.

Jasper closed the door and spun. He grasped her around the waist, slid his hands down to her hips, and kissed her.

He was taller than her, but not by much in the heels. The heels had been an impulse buy. She bought them because that was apparently what you did in Mel Rose, though she couldn’t remember why.

They were still kissing. She didn’t try to keep track of his hands. She kept waiting to feel like this was wrong. It didn’t.

It was one of those stories that was neither particularly bad, nor good. Just a story of one’s youth that was almost chic in L.A.

His mouth was urgent. She’d been kissed like this, but not by a stranger. He pressed against her like she would only be here for a moment, like he needed to get all of her before she was gone. Ah, so this was what it was like. Passion without affection.

He pulled back, just far enough she saw the corner of his mouth, his dark eyes, his wet collarbone. He laughed, quietly.

She kissed him to keep him quiet. His fingers found the zipper of her dress. Nothing in her head told her to stop. Stopping was as pointless as continuing. But if she stopped he might ask her name. She wanted to objectify, to be objectified. If his name was Jasper or something else entirely, how did it change anything? Even his face didn’t matter. She could reduce him to his hands-

Which were on her bare back and pulling down the shoulders of her dress. This seemed like a very grown-up experience to have. Like saying Last night, in the canyon, I- and it was another story that blended into hundreds of almost identical stories in Los Angeles. It would be distinct and hardly memorable, because these stories hardly ever were.

He tugged the front of her dress down. The thrill of the chase – the one she assumed attracted everyone to this kind of action – was gone. There was no challenge now. His intent was clear. She was fine. Everything was fine.

He pulled her to the bed and leaned back for a second. “Shit,” he said, looking down.

She wasn’t sure if people said anything while they did this. What did they say? What could they possibly have to talk about? Whatever it was, she didn’t want him to say anything. It would only blur lines.

“Shut up,” she said, and kissed him.

In the second between kisses he said, “beautiful.”

She pulled away. Her lipstick had bled cherry across his mouth. “No,” she said. She said it like she said no to her parents when they asked if she’d been the one to break the glass in the sink. It tasted like a lie.

“No?” His voice didn’t sound different at all.

She wasn’t sure if, at the moment, she hated him, or herself, or the city for trying to show her what it had to offer and her attempt to see it and not being able to look at the drugs and the sex and the drinks without seeing past them to the unplanned pregnancies and heroin tracks and rehab stints. Why couldn’t she just turn her brain off?

“No.” She pushed his hands away and pulled up the straps of her dress. He stopped looking at her bra as she reached behind her for the zipper. She tasted the neon on her lips, smudged with her lipstick.

He chuckled under his breath. “You not drunk enough?”

Maybe this would be easier if she was drunk. But alcohol left a taste in her mouth almost as bad as this moment.

“Clementine is probably wondering where you are,” she said, voice like ice.

He looked at her. He clearly couldn’t see beyond her raccoon mask of eyeliner. She’d put it on heavily enough to discourage any emotional guesswork.

She wet to the room’s add-on bathroom and fixed the wrinkles in her dress. She ran a hand through her hair and wiped the lipstick off the side of her mouth. She did not look like a more grown-up version of herself. She did not look like the girls that loitered in boutiques, talking about their surfer boyfriends while they tried on large sunglasses. She looked like those people who had come into the city with screenplays or demo CDs and wound up in bars. No- she didn’t even look like them. She looked like a girl with so many sins that if you took them all away she’d be nothing but her eyeliner and a pair of heels. Everyone in L.A. was nothing but sins.

How stupid she had been to reduce L.A. to the stories of those on the decline, when it was the collection of those who were already fallen.

She emerged from the bathroom. Jasper had disappeared; when she went down the stairs she couldn’t see him or Clementine. Someone offered her a hit of something. There was sweat at his temples. The veins in his arm were dark as bruises. He smiled the smile of someone who was so low he didn’t see there wasn’t anywhere else to go.

None of the people in this party would ever drive through Los Angeles and see more than the grey pavement in front of them. They may not all have been born here, but they were made out of – into – this imaginary kingdom, this hipster nirvana. This place where dreams came true if you made them come true, and destiny was for the wealthy and luck was for the poor. This dry, dustbowl. This glowing, glittering metropolis. This city. This city.

Isabel left the party. She did know it had ended. It had ended and there was nothing accomplished. That was the appeal, she decided. They had nothing to accomplish, and therefore nothing to distract them from the non-reality that was all of Los Angeles.

It didn’t matter if you’d come here to make it big in the industry. It didn’t matter if you’d come here to surf. It didn’t matter if you’d come here to forget an ex boyfriend, or to find one. The moment you entered the city, you were dead.

Art by Cara Delevingne

Text by Lucie MacAulay