I was eating in a basement on Felt Street. The café was hot, and terrifically humid - one of the pipes in the back had burst, and the brick walls were covered in a faint sheen of condensation. The two men working the grill were drenched in sweat, uniform, white t-shirts clinging to their chests and their pale faces flushed a vibrant shade of pink. Every so often one of them would pause what he was doing to pound back a pint of water in a beer mug.
I didn't mind the heat; sweat doesn't bother me and the food was cheap and good. Besides, I was writing, and for once the words were coming easily. I sat with my head down and burned through a few pages in less than an hour, only very dimly aware of the stream of customers coming in and out, salaried workers for the most part, younger guys in business suits and girls in pencil skirts with mid-priced haircuts.
By the time I was finished it had started to rain, a fine, slight drizzle that dampened the pavement until it resembled a stretch of sodden bread. Thanks to the rain and the sweat I'd worked up sitting in the cafe, I was soaked by the time I reached a bus stop. The number 17 brought me as far as 5th Bridge, and I walked the last few blocks with my head down and my hair plastered to my forehead and the side of my face, feeling that it would have been better if I'd gone home.
The share house is just off Cove Street, a large, brick building with a small lawn that never gets mowed. It has rooms for nine people, but there are always more than that staying there, girlfriends or boyfriends, and a revolving door of assorted hangers-on, friends and well-wishers, one-night-stands or those failed attempts who inevitably wind up sleeping on the couches. Weekends are reserved for parties, but that doesn't preclude one being held on any other day; the tenants don't need much of an excuse to party. If more than five of them wind up drinking at the same time, that's usually enough.
On this night, I found a small group of people on the porch, two guys lounging in deck chairs and a tall brunette sitting with her back to one of the wooden post beams. Maybe she'd just come in from the rain, because her legs were wet and glistening in the half-light under the porch roof. She nodded to me as I came up the stairs.
"No umbrella?" she asked. I noticed that she had a bong cradled between her thighs, her slim hands draped loosely around the glass neck.
"It's raining?"
"Yeah man," replied one of the guys. He was young, with a thick shock of blond hair above a pinched, startled-looking face. "Look." He pointed to the fall of mist I'd just spent the last 5 minutes walking through.
"Damn, you're right."
The girl offered a nearly soundless laugh.
"Richard around?" I asked.
"Probably," said the other guy, a thin black man with an accent I couldn't place.
"You want a hit of this?" the girl asked me, holding up the bong.
"Kind of you," I said, taking it from her. She shrugged.
"You got a lighter?"
The blond passed me one, and I put the flame to what was left in the bowl and cleared the chamber, exhaling a cloud of dirty gray smoke into the rain. I handed the bong back to the girl.
"You live here?" she asked.
"No. You?"
She shrugged again. It seemed to be a motion she was comfortable with, and it suited her, the gentle fall of her shoulders, and the slight look of boredom in her dark eyes.
"Richard invited me," she told me.
The blond motioned for the bong. He set a good amount of weed into the bowl, and then retrieved a plastic bag half-full of some kind of powder from the table next to him.
"You mind if I add some of this?"
The girl craned her neck to look.
"What is it?"
"Powder."
She nodded then, and went back to gazing at the street.
"You mind?" he asked again. Maybe he hadn't seen her nod.
"No," she said. "I like it."
The black guy laughed.
"What do you mean you like it?" he said. "It doesn't do anything. Waste of fuckin money."
"One of them comes around here though," said the blond.
"Who does?"
"An outsider."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah man, sometimes."
The girl was looking at them.
"I never met any outsiders, but I still like it. Whenever I take that stuff it feels like someone's watching me. Like someone's hovering over my shoulder."
"You like being watched?" asked the blond; he'd finished sprinkling the bowl with powder and he put it to his mouth and inhaled deeply.
"No," answered the girl. "It sounds creepy when you put it like that, but it isn't. I don't know, it just feels like I'm important or something. Like there's someone out there who cares about me."
She was smiling faintly, and I wondered how much of what she was saying she believed. Maybe all of it, I decided, and the smile was only a result of not wanting to sound vain.
"Someone here cares about you too," the blond remarked.
"You're sweet."
"Legs like that, why not?"
The black man laughed. The girl closed her eyes and shook her head, but she was still smiling.
The door to the house opened and Richard stepped onto the porch. He nodded to me and sat on the railing by the girl's feet. Casually, he rested a hand on her calf. She didn't open her eyes.
"Hey," he said. I nodded. The blond passed me the bong and I nudged the girl's shoulder. She took it from me and hit it, and when she exhaled I thought I could see a hint of orange in the smoke. Richard went next, taking a small hit before handing it back to the blond.
"This is Carol," he said to me. The girl gave a slight wave. Her eyes were open now, and there was still a trace of a smile on her lips.
"Or C," she added.
"Isaac," I told her, and then, turning to Richard. "You got anything to drink?"
"Yeah." He got to his feet. "Come on."
Carol looked up then, her eyes widening.
"It's totally here," she said.
"What is?"
"Whatever's watching us."
She looked away. Richard shrugged, as if to say he had nothing to do with it, and led me inside the house.
"Nice girl," I said.
"Met her at the gallery tonight. She was there with someone but he was too busy talking with the beautiful people, and I guess I'm more interesting."
"The benefit of being an artist."
"That's right."
"So the opening went well?"
"Pretty well. Sold almost half the prints."
"People know quality when they see it."
"They do."
"If there's one thing I've learned it's that."
Richard was a photographer. He specialized in architecture, but if he really wanted to make a living at it he would have been better off in the capital, working for a magazine or possibly an ad agency. Unfortunately, he had no interest in being told what to shoot, so he made what he could from the few exhibitions he managed to put together and the rest of his money came from working part-time in a bookstore, which is just another way of saying that he was usually broke; lack of funds was the main reason he was living in the share house, which for the most part catered to students, especially those on exchange from the capital.
We found two of them in the kitchen when we arrived, guys in their mid-twenties with forgettable faces and average builds who were busy mixing elaborate-looking drinks that involved several types of rice alcohol, crushed ice, and a pulpy mash of raw fruit.
"You need one of these?" one of the guys asked me.
"No thanks," I said, and then to Richard: "You have any beer?"
"Must have somewhere."
He opened the massive, stainless-steel fridge and rooted through the shelves for a couple of cans.
"Thanks."
"Anytime."
I opened the beer.
"They tell me you have an outsider here." I mentioned this casually, as if it was something I was used to saying at parties.
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"He comes and goes."
"He here tonight?"
"Not tonight."
"How long has he been showing up?"
"Hard to say. First time I took powder he was already here, just chilling on the couch. Said he'd been coming round for a while."
"Fucked up isn't it?"
"No, he's alright."
After that, one of the guys drew Richard back into a discussion about photography, and rather than standing there and trying to fake an interest, I left them and went into the living room.
A dozen or so people were sprawled on the house's collection of mismatching couches, and the low table in the center of the room was littered with empty beer cans and half-empty bottles of wine. A large TV had been placed in the far corner, flanked by a couple of lap tops and two large speakers. The air was dense with shouted conversation and an aggressive brand of electronic music. A slight man with brown hair was sitting on his knees in front of the screens, a pair of over-sized headphones strapped to his ears. His hands flashed from one computer to the other, and the image on the TV screen, of a crowded city street, began to change, disintegrating into a numbing static of monochrome pixels.
I found a free space on the couch. The girl next to me offered me a joint, but I was intent on getting drunk and I passed it on. In short order I'd finished my beer and helped myself to one of the bottles of wine.
A blond girl sat down across the table.
"That's my wine," she said mildly, bringing her knees up to her chest. The skin of her bare shins was visible, and there were scrape marks and small bruises on her left knee. Her face was unique rather than pretty, with a prominent nose and a wide, knowing mouth, but her eyes were worth looking at; blue-grey and almond-shaped, they were perfectly, almost unbearably, clear.
"It's good," I said.
"It's cheap," she returned.
"You're new here?"
"Been here a couple days. I think this is supposed to be my welcome party or something."
"Welcome," I said, and handed her the bottle. She took it and refilled her glass.
"What's your name?" I asked her.
"Kelly."
"What brings you out here Kelly?"
"I'm on exchange."
"What do you study?"
"I'm a painter."
Abruptly she turned to the guy kneeling in front of the laptops.
"What is this sample?" she asked. He didn't respond. Probably he hadn't heard her through the headphones. She tapped him on the shoulder and he uncovered his right ear. She repeated the question.
"Oh," he said. His voice was surprisingly deep for such a thin man. "Nothing. From an Emi Foulliou song."
"Who?"
"Just this singer."
He was wearing a pair of large, square-framed sunglasses, and a leather chin-strap with a circular voice modulator in place over his mouth. The modulator was a custom job, and it looked like a cross between a SCUBA apparatus and a fetish mask. It also explained the man's voice: wearing one of those he could sound like anyone, or anything, he wanted. It was hard to tell because of all the shit on his face, but I got the impression that behind it all he was a very good-looking man.
"It's nice," said the girl across from me, meaning the song.
"It works with the images," he said.
"He's on exchange too," the girl explained.
"Your boyfriend?"
They both laughed.
"No," she said. "My boyfriend's back in the capital."
"How long are you here for?"
Her friend replaced the headphone at his ear and turned back to the computers.
"4 months," she said, and leaned forward to top off my wine.
"What do you think of the town so far?" I asked her.
"Not sure yet," she said. "At least it's safer."
"Things are that bad in the capital?"
She shrugged.
"They're pretty bad. Are you a student?"
I shook my head.
"I'm a writer."
"I see."
"Is that bad?"
"It can be. What do you write?"
"Mostly novels."
"You publish anything I'd know?"
"Never published anything. Any money I make comes from freelance work."
She nodded.
"Well," she said, standing up. "I think I'm gonna go see about smoking something."
"Mind if I come?"
"No," she said simply, already on her way out of the room.
I followed her to the patio. The rain had stopped, but the pavement was still slick with moisture. The light from the street lamps spread over the ground in diffuse, orange pools.
Carol was gone and so was Richard, but the two guys were still there, smoking contentedly in their chairs. Kelly took Carol's place on the ledge and I stood with my back to the post beam. She asked for the bong and the blond handed it to her. When she was done she passed it to me. It was thick with the metallic rot of powder.
"First time I smoked with the powder," she said.
"You're not missing anything," I told her. It was something I said by reflex, a conditioned response, and just as meaningless.
"Hey," the blond piped-up. "You ever hear of a guy named Anson Peters?"
"No," I answered. I thought I saw him shrug, and then he reached out for the bong.
"Friend of a friend," he explained. "Did a lot of fucked up shit with powder, back when it first started making the rounds. Put it in anything. Used to lace his coke with it."
"Sounds like a good guy."
"Great fucking guy. One of the best, but who cares right? Thing is, after a while he went a bit off. Started talking to himself. Said there was more than just outsiders out there, and that sometimes they talked to him."
"Yeah? What'd they say?" asked Kelly. I couldn't tell if she was actually interested or if she was just humouring him. Her voice was flat, and she gazed at the space by her feet, the fingers of one hand moving idly over the railing.
"Like for example the universe is only five years old."
"That doesn't make any sense," I said.
"Of course it doesn't. It's not supposed to. It's crazy. But he said he saw it for himself. Said he could see into things, straight to the heart. And he was convinced of this, that creation happened five years ago. Everything we remember from before that, everything that was ever written down, all the events throughout history are just an illusion."
"So if I understand correctly," Kelly said. "What you're telling me is not to mix powder and coke."
He nodded.
"That's one thing," he said, and then he looked at me. "But you know what it means if he's right?"
"What's that?"
"That any girl you've ever been with was underage."
I laughed. I was pretty high by that point. We all were. Beside me, Kelly had her eyes closed, and I watched her, the rise and fall of her chest as she breathed. Underage or not, she looked good.