Concerning The Pier

  The pier was a yellow brick road flanked by the gaudy, the garish, the gauche. Huts, trailers, flashing colors, shameless hucksters and empty promises racing amid tin ear ragtime, diesel exhaust muddying the smells of fry oil. Hoell shuffled through the pieces and people of the night, brain assembling the notes from each standard bleating anemically over the jeers and cajoles. Like sectors on a map, navigating by Hoagy Carmicheal here, Scott Joplin there, Stephan Foster by the Coney Dog stand.

 Occasionally the Houngan haunted this decrepit piece of the city as well, turning hand at shadowy tarot reading to hustle up a handful of dollar bills. Sometimes he did it just because. Hoell knew at times a man has to grift just to keep a hand in.

 The closer to the waterfront, to the tip of the pier, the hubris faded back, as though nervous of the darkness murmuring moonless below. Soft noises and shadows swallowed the gurgle of generators and safety. Even Hoell was reluctant to be there after dark. The pier was run by someone Hoell had no desire to bump into tonight. But he needed answers; things were changing, shifting with the wind and fog.

  He dodged the blind advance of a pink giraffe carted by teenage lovers, past the gunfire of a dart throwing booth, and then spied a figure lurking just off the coruscating lights and a vagabond trumpet. Pale, dusty white skin showing hard against dark ambiguous clothing from an earlier century. Eyes were black and empty, glittering in the light. It could have been the ghost boy from the club, or another fallen creature equally afflicted and employed. It hadn’t appeared to have seen him, but you couldn’t tell. Hoell ducked around a photo op cut out and a manic clown juggling drunkenly. It wasn’t paranoia. They knew he would be here tonight.

  He tried to slip behind the trailers, camouflaging himself behind towers of balloon animals, keeping an eye on the specter lurking in the shadow. Confident he remained unseen, he rounded the warm strobe of a love tester and walked into the corrugated face of Mephistopheles.