Now there’s a buzz in the room. Victor Sparger, unshaven to just the fashionable degree, walks among us in a two thousand-dollar workman’s jumpsuit. He’s smiling and sleek. The way you look, I guess, after you’ve swallowed someone whole. And I don’t know how I’m going to cut open this particular beast.
See him one way and Louis Raphael was no innocent child. He’d come off the street and that part of his life never left him. Another way of looking at it, though, is that nobody is more trusting than a street person who puts his life in strangers’ hands again and again. Or than the artist who shows everybody in the world his riches. Almost asking to be eaten whole.
As I think about that, your hand moves, a wand flashes like a laser. Something moves behind Victor and I realize the eyes in the Raphael painting have shifted. They stare, haunted, trapped, at Victor Sparger. The graffiti now says, “In Prison There Is Nothing to Breathe.” And the face is Louis Raphael’s.
Everyone: Rinaldo and Edith, the murderers and the Chinese drag waitresses, the battle hardened Downtown circuit riders who you can bet have seen a lot, turn toward Sparger and say things like, “Oh Victor, what a big film you’ve got!”
Sparger smiles, false modesty and vindictive triumph on his face. And he replies, “All the better to eat you with.” Or words to that effect.
Then people see the staring face, read the words on the the picture above Victor’s head. You nod to me that this is the moment and I reach into my pocket. They say that a Swiss Army Knife can kill in a dozen ways. I’ve made it a point to learn none of them. But for this it’s perfect. I step forward and make a single cut across the front of the still. And, simple as magic, out leaps the one trapped inside.
Even in his cursed form, the man recognized New York as a city of the mad. Living there—thriving there—took a particular form of acceptable madness.
PAINTED BIRDS AND SHIVERED BONES
KAT HOWARD
The white bird flew through the clarion of the cathedral bells, winging its way through the rich music of their tolling to perch in the shelter of the church’s walls. The chiming continued, marking time into measured, holy hours.
Maeve had gone for a walk, to clear her head and give herself the perspective of something beyond the windows and walls of her apartment. She could feel the sensation at the back of her brain, that almost-itch that meant a new painting was ready to be worked on. Wandering the city, immersing herself in its chaos and beauty would help that back of the head feeling turn into a realized concept.
But New York had been more chaos than beauty that morning. Too much of everything and all excess without pause. Maeve felt like she was coming apart at the seams.
In an effort to hold herself together, Maeve had gone to the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. There, she could think, could sit quietly, could stop and breathe without people asking what was wrong.
Midwinter was cold enough to flush her cheeks as she walked to the cathedral, but Maeve couldn’t bear being inside—large as the church was, she could feel the walls pressing on her skin. Instead, she perched on a bench across from the fallen tower, and pulled her scarf higher around her neck.
Maeve sipped her latte, and leaned back against the bench, then sat up. She closed her eyes, then opened them again.
There was a naked man crouched on the side of the cathedral.
She dug in her purse for her phone, wondering how it was possible that such a relatively small space always turned into a black hole when she needed to find anything. Phone finally in hand, she sat up.
The naked man was gone.
In his place was a bird. Beautiful, white feathers trailing like half-re membered thoughts. Impressive, to be sure, especially when compared to the expected pigeons of the city. But bearing no resemblance to a man, naked or otherwise.
Maeve let her phone slip through her fingers, back into her bag, and sat up, shaking her head at herself. “You need to cut down on your caffeine.”
“You thought what?” Emilia laughed. “Oh, honey. The cure for thinking that you see a naked man at the cathedral isn’t giving up caffeine, it’s getting laid.”
“Meeting men isn’t really a priority for me.” Maeve believed dating to be a circle of Hell that Dante forgot.
“Maeve, you don’t need to meet them. Just pick one.” Emilia gestured at the bar.
Maeve looked around. “I don’t even know them.”
“That’s exactly my point.” Emilia laughed again. “Take one home, send him on his way in the morning, and I can guarantee your naked hallucinations will be gone.”
“Fine.” Maeve sipped her bourbon. “I’ll take it under advisement.”
Surprising precisely no one, least of all the woman who had been her best friend for a decade, Maeve went home alone, having not even attempted to take one of the men in the bar with her. She hung up her coat, and got out her paints.
Dawn was pinking the sky when she set the brush down and rolled the tension from her neck and shoulders.
The canvas was covered in birds.
Madness is easier to bear with the wind in your feathers. Sweeney flung himself into the currents of the air, through bands of star light that streaked the sky, and winged toward the cloud-coated moon.
Beneath Sweeney, the night fell on the acceptable madness of the city. Voices cried out to each other in greeting or curse. Tires squealed and horns blared. Canine throats raised the twilight bark, and it was made symphonic by feline yowls, skitterings of smaller creatures, and the songs of more usual birds.
Not Sweeney’s.
Silent Sweeney was borne on buffeting currents over the wild lights of the city. Over the scents of concrete and of rot, of grilling meat and decaying corners, of the blood and love and dreams and terrors of millions.
And of their madness as well.
Even in his bird form, Sweeney recognized New York as a city of the mad. Not that one needed to be crazy to be there, or that extended residency was a contributing factor to lunacy of some sort, but living there—thriving there—took a particular form of madness.
Or caused it. Sweeney had not yet decided which.
He had not chosen his immigration, but had been pulled over wind and salt and sea by the whim of a wizard. Exiled from his kingdom in truth, though there were no kings in Ireland anymore.
On he flew, through a forest of buildings built to assault the sky. Over bridges, and trains that hurtled from the earth as if they were loosed dragons. Over love and anger and countless anonymous mysteries.