BY LAURA WILLIAMS
Copyright is held by the author.
YOU CAN’T believe you’re standing outside of Arcana, holding a legit invitation. Typically, reservations are booked nine months in advance and even then, it helps to know someone. It’s a place of legend, spoken of in superlatives and hyperbole by anyone lucky enough to get in. Waivers had to be signed to try Arcana’s signature sauce, rumored to cause euphoria, mild hallucinations, even enlightenment.
The idea Arcana can change lives is something you believe, based on what happened to Trey, a loser from high school. Senior year, he’d gotten a job at Arcana — a personal connection, nephew to the sous chef or something, and after one weekend bussing tables his cowlick corrected itself, his pants found the perfect sag, his arm was sleeved by tattoos, his cheek studded with a diamond. What’s more, his eyes were laden with some newfound understanding and confidence of his place and purpose in the world. He made intelligent people laugh. There was swagger in his step.
“Next.”
You hand your invitation to the bouncer.
“Ralph plus one,” he reads aloud. “Where’s Ralph?”
You explain how your co-worker, Martha, came down with a last-minute migraine, sending you to meet her blind date at his boss’s retirement party, a strange situation, for sure, but who’d pass up the chance to go to Arcana?
“TMI,” he says.
Embarrassment spreads across your face. At a fancy place like Arcana, you’d have to do better. Be better.
He opens the door just wide enough for you to step through. Your eyes widen. Painted angels smile down from archways. Flames leaping from medieval torches. A saltwater aquarium with translucent jellyfish, purple sting rays, and baby sharks. A stuffed grizzly bear rearing up on its hind legs. And the people! Men like a Roman Gods. Women, perfect in symmetry, impossible in proportion.
Insecurity hits you like panic. You are the exception in your white summer frock and strappy sandals. You are supposed to meet Ralph on the back patio, but the bar beckons you.
“One house red, please,” you say, approaching the bartender. He’s trim in his three-piece suit and has a triangle of hair on his chin, a soul patch.
“Are you with the retirement party?”
You nod. It feels like a lie, given the number of separations between yourself and the retiree, some guy named Ambrose Cerrone — your blind date’s boss.
The bartender sets a silver chalice on the bar and selects a wine bottle, the label faded and peeling. He pours generously.
“A shortcut to the deck,” he says, directing you behind the bar to a door.
You step through, careful not to spill your wine. The hallway is cold and bright, composed entirely of mirrors, your reflection growing smaller, receding to infinity. When you look down you catch a glimpse of your yellow underwear. At the end of the hallway, you nudge the mirrored door open with the toe of your sandal.
You are greeted by a cacophony of voices. Floral fragrance gathers in your lungs, thick, like incense. The deck is dark and humid. Climbing branches, thorns, leaves, and flowers cluster around a pergola’s wooden beams in such abundance only pinpricks of light can seep through, a cave of burgundy roses.
You weave through strangers, looking at their shoes — you were told Ralph would be wearing golden Adidas. Everyone wears Oxfords or heels. You cross the deck to where it juts out like a lower lip, open to the sky. Below, twenty feet down, a maze of shapely hedges and colourful trellises. Ornate fountains releasing clouds of mist. On the lawn, adults in animal masks play a game involving clashing sticks.
You take your first sip of wine and your tongue flutters with pleasure. You are no sommelier, but words like earthy and elegant come to mind.
The sun bleeds out on the horizon. Down below, a man in a zebra mask hits a gong. The other animals drop their sticks and run into the maze. Shadows dart between the hedges, through the mist.
You go to take another sip but find the chalice suddenly empty. Despite your confusion, you’re distinctly calm. The queue of anxious thoughts normally streaming through your mind has somehow been turned off. You set the chalice on the railing.
“Hors d’oeuvre?” A server, also donning a soul patch, removes a domed lid from a silver tray, revealing a single piece of liver on a curly bed of kale.
“No, thank you,” you respond.
“Shame, shame.” A man approaches. The youthfulness of his green eyes contradicts the grooves in his pale skin. He carries a spicy scent, a manly musk. His linen shirt is cuffed, revealing muscled, inked forearms. A purple ribbon holds his steel hair in a loose ponytail. “Try it. It’ll change your life.”
Your hand moves on its own accord, picking up the liver, bringing it to your mouth. It tastes metallic and practically disintegrates between your molars. So tender. So rich. You swallow. Lick the blood off your fingers. Then you remembered yourself. A vegetarian.
Both men stare—the waiter blankly, the older gentleman, with apparent interest. Back in the maw of thorns, you catch others watching, too. You’re a stranger in this strange place.
Bestial noises erupt from the garden below, like predator meeting prey. Mate meeting mate. Shadows move against each other in one of the maze’s dead ends.
“Excuse me,” you say to the man with the green eyes.
“Of course.” He smiles, his upper incisors filed to sharp points.
You feel a weak throb of fear in your chest and the ticker in your mind flashes Go, Go, Go, but your body moves with a disparate lack of haste, like an actress told to play it cool. You make your way back the way you came in. Each breath brings the lovely perfume of the roses. Conversation rises and falls in measured waves. In the far corner of the deck, a small stage where a woman plays harmonica cast in blue from a single hanging bulb above her head. Your resolve to leave has waned substantially.
The brightness of the mirrored hallway assaults. The air elicits goose bumps. Infinite reflections fence you in, all with flushed cheeks and dark, wine-stained tongues. Halfway down the corridor, in through the outdoor—an infinite man, a silver chalice in each infinite hand. Infinite Adidas step toward you. Gold.
“You must be Ralph,” you say. “Martha told me to look for your shoes.”
“She told me to look for your yellow underwear.” He grins.
You pull your legs together like a wooden soldier, but you have three older brothers and are used to being the butt of a joke, so the underwear icebreaker works in Ralph’s favor.
“There’s a guy out there with teeth like a vampire,” you say. “And people are either killing each other or fornicating in the garden.”
“Sounds like a great party.” He grins again.
Your stomach growls audibly.
“I hope you weren’t leaving. It would be malfeasance to leave Arcana on an empty stomach,” he says. “And I’m not sure what’s going on in the garden, but it sounds like you met the guest of honor. For fancy occasions, Ambrose Cerrone likes to put on his party teeth.” Ralph extends one of the chalices. “Come on, let’s get a bite to eat.”
“I wouldn’t want to be found guilty of malfeasance.” Witty banter with Ralph comes easily. You accept the wine, telling yourself: Baby sips. Teeny, tiny, baby sips. At the same time, you enjoy being so loose, so open, so free.
You return to the deck. The roses smell slightly off now, almost musty. The lightbulb over the stage glows red. In place of the woman stands a man with an eyepatch and an accordion, producing a sad, ominous sound with each fold. His fingers fumble along the keyboard as if he’s just learning.
You and Ralph set your chalices down to claim empty seats at a table. He motions toward the buffet.
“Should I sign a waiver?” you ask.
“Don’t worry. I signed everything for you.” He winks.
You follow him through the buffet line, dazzled by each lifted lid, veggie-centric dishes, doubling as culinary art. Freshly prepared, untouched, perfectly garnished. Ralph served in tandem, first you, then himself, which strikes you as both domineering and kind of sweet. You see no reason to decline his offerings, no evidence of meat in the dollops placed on your plate. At the end of the buffet Ralph picks up a gravy boat filled with thick, maroon liquid.
“Arcana’s signature sauce,” he says. “139 ingredients. Made over the course of eight days of ritual and prayer.” He fills a ramekin and places it on the side of your plate. “If I had to warn you off anything, it would be this stuff. Ignorance is bliss.”
“What about you?” He has not prepared a ramekin for himself.
“I’m already enlightened.”
Once seated, you poke around your plate, inspecting for morsels of flesh.
“It’s all vegetarian,” says Ralph. “Ambrose would have insisted.”
You stab a mushroom and dip it into the sauce. As you bring your fork to your mouth, the accordion stops, the chatter in the room hushes, you catch side-eyed glances. When you swallow everything goes back to normal, so fast you wonder if the pause and the cumulated interest happened.
The man with the green eyes sits nearby.
“Is that Ambrose Cerrone?” you say.
Ralph nods.
“You know what’s weird? You said he insisted on the food being vegetarian, but earlier he encouraged me to eat liver. And I don’t know what came over me…”
“Wait, you ate Ambrose’s liver?” Ralph’s fork clangs to his plate.
“I don’t think it was his liver.” You laugh, trying to dilute the tension.
“What the fuck?!” Ralph pushes his plate away. He snaps his fingers at a server with a soul patch, who promptly removes his food.
“Ralph.” Ambrose Cerrone stands over him like a stern father ready to reprimand.
Ralph pouts like a bratty child. “I’m not going to pretend to eat grass and charm her if she’s yours. This is bullshit!” He gulps his wine. When he pulls the chalice away, a long, red, congealed string stretches from his lip to the rim. It breaks off and he slurps it up like spaghetti.
“Flux and natural order, Ralphie. Go take one of the staff.”
Ralph reaches into his mouth and removes a set of partial dentures, tossing them onto the table. He bares pointed teeth.
You know you should run, but you stay. It’s like you have two minds, one telling you how you should act. The other calling the shots, defying reason.
“I apologize for him,” says Ambrose, taking Ralph’s seat. “He’s very young. Brought into the fold just last year. Would you like more wine?”
Your chalice is empty again. “No, thank you.”
“More sauce?”
Your ramekin is licked clean. “No. I’m fine.”
A few seats away, a man eats voraciously. His female companion pushes food around her plate, eyes trained on his jugular. She takes a sip of plasma from her chalice and draws her tongue across her false teeth to clear a clot.
“The jig is up,” says Ambrose. “You see the truth.”
“What will become of him?” you ask, watching the man feed.
“He’s a lamb. Set for slaughter.”
“And me?”
“You will join the flock.” Ambrose pushes his chair back from the table and lifts his shirt, exposing stitches on the right side of his abdomen.
You glance at the door to the mirrored hallway.
“If you want to go, by all means. Go.”
You rise and walk away. At the door, you look back. He waves.
Once again, the hallway is bright and cold. The reflections in the mirrors, however, are no longer infinite.
To your right, the reflections recede, becoming younger, until you are a baby—wrinkled, bald, alien. Then nothing.
To your left, your reflections recede into old age, withering like old fruit. It takes longer to get there, but the result is the same — wrinkled, bald, alien. Then nothing.
Every one of your mortal reflections disappoints you. Deeply. They are the reflections of a person who prefers structured workdays to weekends. Who eats ice cream from the carton then suffers from symptoms of lactose intolerance for days. Who can’t remember to water plants. What if the part of yourself that reached for the liver was your strongest, most authentic self, dying to rise to the surface?
When you turn back, your reflections grow infinite again. A woman in her prime. More beautiful than you’ve ever given yourself credit for.
You return to the deck. Darkness, warmth, and fragrance embrace you. The one-eyed man with the accordion plays with newfound dexterity under a soft yellow light, accompanied by the woman with the harmonica.
Everyone has coupled off. In each case you can tell seducer from seduced. You can also tell who has tried Arcana’s signature sauce. The “enlightened” ones fight their captors. Those who’d chosen not to try the sauce are blissfully ignorant, sedate from wine, curled up in the laps of those who would soon be feeding upon them.
Ralph is plying a server with wine over by the buffet. And, there, on the lip of the deck, under a full moon, stands Ambrose Cerrone. You go to him.
“What happens next?” you say quietly.
“You accept immortality.”
A gong resonates from the garden below.
Ambrose turns you so your back is to him. He tilts your head, exposing your neck. From all around come screams, professing the highest order of pain.
“Don’t be afraid,” he whispers in your ear. “Adrenaline ruins the taste.”
You prepare for the bite, but instead, he kisses you, as if marking the spot with an X. His icy lips send a shock to your heart. That fear is all you have left of yourself, all that distinguishes you from the monsters. Determined to hold onto the feeling, you run.
The air under the canopy is thick with the stench of iron. You splash through blood puddles, your strappy sandals sticking and unsticking to the floor. On the stage, gone dark, the man with the eyepatch feasts on the woman. Ralph, busy sucking and gulping from the neck of a server, catches your eye. “Where are you going?” he says. Blood shoots into the air from the victim’s arterial hose.
Inside the mirrored hallway you slip and fall, lamb’s blood from your shoes smearing over your dress, your arms, your legs. You get back onto your feet. Your reflections take off in infinite directions.
You explode out of the hallway, past the bar, across the ballroom to a labelled exit. It spits you out onto a city sidewalk and you collide, full speed, with the bouncer.
“Chill, baby, where’s the fire?” he says.
A woman stands beside him, her cigarette tip glowing in the dark like a red-orange eye. Soft jazz plays from an outdoor speaker.
You look down at your dress. Arms. Legs. Shoes. All clean.
“Someone got into the sauce,” says the women.
Their laugher rolls off as you walk away.
If nothing else, you know the reflections in the mirror were real.
You would do better. Be better.
***
As a nurse, Laura Carnes Williams has seen people come into the world and leave it. As a writer, she tries to make sense of it all. Recent short story publications include Stone Coast Review, Catamaran, and Every Day Fiction. She lives in Central New York between the Finger Lakes and the Adirondack Mountains. For more information please visit: www.LauraCarnesWilliams.com