Yale, the Aztecs and the Illuminated night

“You ready?”

“Huh? No. For what?”

“C’mon, we gotta go before the others catch up.”

“I still have some beer left.”

“So drink it!”

“What’s the rush?”

“C’mon, you know.”

“All right. Huh? Watch this.”

The glass is emptied and I follow him (let’s call him Yale, seeing as at some point of the drinking I’m pretty sure there’d been talk of ‘skull and bones’ tattoos) quickly through the front bar, around the woodcutters and the Aztecs posing near the DJ booth and the pooling lost marbles near the door, Yale looking back frequently with giddy thrill and tipsy paranoia in his eyes. I make mental calculations of the cash in my wallet as the ATM, like a roadside pokie machine, is seen, halted at in blind confusion and bypassed: I think I had a 20, but then I bought that pint – no, two , or was it three? – and there were definitely a few dollar coins, so I have a dollar, or I might be out completely. “The calculations of a lost cause,” I think. “Leave it to the gods.” But the Aztecs are long gone as we dive, hand in hand, past the grisly-looking doorman into the street and the rain. 

“Hate to run into him in the dark,” Yale calls from in front.

“That would be now.”

 “Hate to run into him in the light, then.”

With a hood on and a hand to guide you, it all becomes about the split-second decisions made about the placement of your feet: road, road, road, puddle skip, cobblestone gutter leap, road, stranger foot sideways step and hope for the best. There are other things, though, too, in fairness: the merry-go-round of reflections on the ground that make your brain want to play ‘Name Your Location’ and the whir of sound you think is air but realise is traffic once you get into the backstreets. 

“Traffic is air,” he once said. “At least, it is if you grow up in the city.”

“Then how do you breath?” I’d asked.

“Like this,” he’d said, and screamed into the night.

Yale lets go as the bugs of wetness on my back slow and disappear and we walk under the shelter of ragged orphan trees squeezed into square-foot patches of dirt. 

“If more people stay home than go out, then why are the backstreets always so quiet?” 

That’s the kind of thing she’d say. There she is. Away from the illuminated lives of others, the voice you didn’t even notice had been hushed returns, which is not always good when you’ve taken the hand of a guy you’ve decided to call Yale and have made the commitment to an unrecognisable night. 

“Away from the illuminated and into the Illuminati,” I think and picture her laughing and let out a loud burst of my own. 

“You gone crazy, mate?” Yale eyes me.

“Maybe,” I laugh.

“Well, save it. You’ll need it soon.”

We stop at a gate with two gargoyle-like girls huddled together on the other side, cigarettes dripping fizzling fireworks onto the damp cement, and one of them lets out a wolf howl as Yale puts one hand to his lips and the other theatrically into his pocket like a mime and produces a key. He grins and steps inside.

“Poisons?” he curls.

 “Something fast.”

“Something big.”

“They’ll all be big,” he laughs.

The speaker backfires and starts up and the howling girl makes movements those Aztecs couldn’t imagine: wide and wild and wireless. Yale’s kept his promise. We’ll stay here and dance until the others call and we’re illuminated again.