at her feet, the dog was gone.
“Fuck.” She retraced her steps, checking between every pillar and piece of machinery but finding no trace of the poor mutt. The singing increased in volume behind her, and now, as it moved into the room she was in, she could tell that it was a solitary voice, gravelly and tuneless. She wheeled around, prepared to give the intruder a piece of her mind, but as she drew the breath to launch a tirade, his sheer outlandish bulk silenced her.
Becca was face to face with a black-bearded giant in a green army trench coat. Several layers of frayed sweaters hung around his wrists and neck so that it was impossible to guess his true girth. He appeared to be the sort of homeless person who wears his entire wardrobe at all times. What little she could see of his skin looked African American, and the texture of his dense beard would have supported that assessment; but as with the clothes, it was impossible to tell how many layers of dirt and ashy grime the man was wearing. He might have even been white underneath. But at a glance, Becca found it difficult to focus on any one detail beyond his distracting headgear. His hair was mostly hidden beneath a golden cardboard Burger King Crown, his eyes behind a cheap pair of red-and-blue 3D glasses. In his left hand he held a smoldering bundle of burning sage tied with a red string, and in his right, a small laser pointer.
He bustled past her without acknowledgement, wreathed in smoke, still singing and waving the pungent bundle. Becca recoiled in the wake of the fumes and coughed out a lungful of the stuff before burying her nose in the crook of her arm. The man seemed to give her a shallow nod as he passed, but with his colored plastic lenses, she couldn’t tell if they’d made eye contact. She had begun to wonder if he was blind when he turned to her and said, “What up?”
Apparently a rhetorical question because he didn’t pause in his genuflections for her reply but spun on his heels in a kind of dance, the trench coat flaring out and swirling around his surprisingly graceful axis, the orange terminator line of the burning ember on the blackening leaves tracing a fiery circle in the air above his head.
He completed the revolution by landing, left leg in front, bent at the knee. From this position he pointed his right hand at the brick wall and traced a perfect pentagram with the ruby bead of the pointer. The chrome barrel poking out of his folded fingers looked like the type she’d seen at the checkout counter at pet stores for teasing cats, usually for less than three dollars.
Pointing the dot at the center of the now invisible pentagram, he broke from the Standells’ song and bellowed, “Apos pantos kakadaiminos!”
Becca backed away from the madman into the corridor of machinery and shadow where she’d last seen the dog.
The man came up from the weird martial arts stance, surprising her with his agility (she had guessed that he might get stuck there), and proceeded along the wall to the far end of the room, where he repeated the same spin, drop, and pentagram tracing, this time ending with the cry, “Hekas, hekas este bebeloi!” When he rose, he stared at the wall, head cocked as if trying to discern some hidden code in the cracks and graffiti. He whispered a word that might have been skidoo, and dropped the laser pointer into his pocket. He stubbed the sage bundle out in a cement seam on the brick wall, and, touching his cardboard crown to keep it from tumbling off his head, turned with a bow and flourish of his trench coat and addressed her: “Milady.”
Becca couldn’t help herself; she laughed into the back of her hand to release the nervous tension before remembering how pissed she was about losing Django. When she did, she set her hand on her hip and said, “You scared my dog away, asshat.”
“Your dog? You mean that shepherd with the split ear?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Shiiit. I din’t know he belonged to nobody. Been
“Fuck.” She retraced her steps, checking between every pillar and piece of machinery but finding no trace of the poor mutt. The singing increased in volume behind her, and now, as it moved into the room she was in, she could tell that it was a solitary voice, gravelly and tuneless. She wheeled around, prepared to give the intruder a piece of her mind, but as she drew the breath to launch a tirade, his sheer outlandish bulk silenced her.
Becca was face to face with a black-bearded giant in a green army trench coat. Several layers of frayed sweaters hung around his wrists and neck so that it was impossible to guess his true girth. He appeared to be the sort of homeless person who wears his entire wardrobe at all times. What little she could see of his skin looked African American, and the texture of his dense beard would have supported that assessment; but as with the clothes, it was impossible to tell how many layers of dirt and ashy grime the man was wearing. He might have even been white underneath. But at a glance, Becca found it difficult to focus on any one detail beyond his distracting headgear. His hair was mostly hidden beneath a golden cardboard Burger King Crown, his eyes behind a cheap pair of red-and-blue 3D glasses. In his left hand he held a smoldering bundle of burning sage tied with a red string, and in his right, a small laser pointer.
He bustled past her without acknowledgement, wreathed in smoke, still singing and waving the pungent bundle. Becca recoiled in the wake of the fumes and coughed out a lungful of the stuff before burying her nose in the crook of her arm. The man seemed to give her a shallow nod as he passed, but with his colored plastic lenses, she couldn’t tell if they’d made eye contact. She had begun to wonder if he was blind when he turned to her and said, “What up?”
Apparently a rhetorical question because he didn’t pause in his genuflections for her reply but spun on his heels in a kind of dance, the trench coat flaring out and swirling around his surprisingly graceful axis, the orange terminator line of the burning ember on the blackening leaves tracing a fiery circle in the air above his head.
He completed the revolution by landing, left leg in front, bent at the knee. From this position he pointed his right hand at the brick wall and traced a perfect pentagram with the ruby bead of the pointer. The chrome barrel poking out of his folded fingers looked like the type she’d seen at the checkout counter at pet stores for teasing cats, usually for less than three dollars.
Pointing the dot at the center of the now invisible pentagram, he broke from the Standells’ song and bellowed, “Apos pantos kakadaiminos!”
Becca backed away from the madman into the corridor of machinery and shadow where she’d last seen the dog.
The man came up from the weird martial arts stance, surprising her with his agility (she had guessed that he might get stuck there), and proceeded along the wall to the far end of the room, where he repeated the same spin, drop, and pentagram tracing, this time ending with the cry, “Hekas, hekas este bebeloi!” When he rose, he stared at the wall, head cocked as if trying to discern some hidden code in the cracks and graffiti. He whispered a word that might have been skidoo, and dropped the laser pointer into his pocket. He stubbed the sage bundle out in a cement seam on the brick wall, and, touching his cardboard crown to keep it from tumbling off his head, turned with a bow and flourish of his trench coat and addressed her: “Milady.”
Becca couldn’t help herself; she laughed into the back of her hand to release the nervous tension before remembering how pissed she was about losing Django. When she did, she set her hand on her hip and said, “You scared my dog away, asshat.”
“Your dog? You mean that shepherd with the split ear?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Shiiit. I din’t know he belonged to nobody. Been
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