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birdmad
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Taking the cab downtown to the movie theatre, Alex popped down the seven dollars to see a strange action movie set for the same day as today.
New Year's Eve, 1999.
He patted at the little glassine packet in the pocket of his black silk shirt and the tablet contained within as he sat in the theatre with his large Coke and his large popcorn.
Had she not left him, he imagined he might be starting an evening with Amber a little differently than with the ridiculous movie unspooling on the screen before him, though th endpoint of the night was the same goal. The big New Year's rave at The Icehouse or maybe the underplanned overwrought party in the city square which promised only the Gin_Blossoms as credible entertainment downtown while Mill Avenue would have at least a few more current acts playing out existing tour stops.
"All the same," he thought - musing bitterly before focusing back in on the movie at hand, "Amber's not here, didn't think i was worth the time or the effort, let's just deal with trying to go out, mingle a little when we get where we're going and try to have a good time, after all, tonight could be the end of the world if the crazies are right about anything."
Pondering the clock on the wall of the theater lobby, ALex muses that, while ridiculous in and of itself, the film was a fairly fun waste of time and a good popcorn flick. He also notices that the Center is filling up with people who plan on ringing in the New year in one of the clubs around here.
A slightly jealous pang fills him as he sees all the couples milling about enjoying the crisp night.
Forty degrees Fahrenheit, ten minutes after ten p.m. a short stroll past the Hooters restaurant, pondering the drunken sports fans and Fiesta Bowl attendees who will be out in force all through the weekend.
Alex walks down toward the Icehouse, thinking that this walk at this hour reminds him of the night he walked to the rave at the old, long-gone Silver_Dollar_Club that night after seeing The_Cure in concert.
His jaw drops slightly at the intricacy of the lasers and other images projected on one building and the big digital countdown clock projected just above the gate, and more pronouncedly at the length of the line trying to get in.
Some of the die-hards will be here until the party officially ends at Noon tomorrow.
With the music loud enough, people are dancing in the line and Alex joins in when moved as to feel like doing so. By sheer luck, Alex and most of the crowd make it in with fifteen minutes to spare.
Walking through the collection of separate dance floors, there's some trance going on in one room, dimly lit and funky and in another room that looks, in the oddly lit darkness, more like an abandoned and crumbling cathedral than the warehouse it once was.
Alex finds himself wandering repeatedly back to this room and its eerie blue glow, but first out to the center courtyard where the hardcore beats are thumping and the crowd, in spite of the cold, is looking sweaty and nearly orgiastic in thrall to the rhythm as everyone begins to count in unison.
From outside, where the city is holding its official party, Alex and the dancing crowd are treated to stimuli in all directions as an array of fireworks begins, small at first, but as Alex can hear the couple of thousand people around him, he can also here fifteen thousand more a block away counting in unison as the main monitor counts the time.
At ten seconds, the smaller monitors cut to ravers in other cities who are linked by teleconference to this one. Alex smiles inside at the thought of people somewhere who already experienced the moment reaching back by way of the cameras to re-live it with the crowd here and how it will repeat the cycle again from Los Angeles, San Franscisco, Vancouver and one last time in Honolulu.
The London crowd, which was greeted by Ibiza, Rome, Tel Aviv, Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Sydney is still partying into the morning, and will still be on their monitor after the Phildelphia, Detroit and Chicago Crowds have died down. Miami and New York, though two hours in are barely getting warmed up and a friend of Alex's will tell him later, in a Chatroom that he saw him via the video feed at the club he was in on South Beach
"TEN!"
He hears them count along.
"NINE!"
A pretty, Brazillian looking woman in Miami flashes a breast and smiles at the camera
"EIGHT!"
Fireworks picking up intensity
"SEVEN!"
The crowd in the courtyard becomes more ecstatic
"SIX"
Time seemingly compresses then expands into slow motion.
"FIVE!"
Popping the little pale green pill, Alex knows it will take a few minutes.
"FOUR!"
Sensory overload from the sight, sound and scent of the crowd, all perfume, sweat and barely contained sex-drive
"THREE!"
The fireworks sound almost like a war zone or an artillery range
"TWO!"
"The city is so chared with electricity, the world COULD end," Alex thinks.
"ONE!"
A_heartbeat's_worth_of_silence as the revelers on all the screens pause and the fireworks pause and everything pauses as the fractions of seconds on the digital stopwatch wind down to zero.
"HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!"
Alex is surprises when a woman, drink in hand, kisses him briefly on the lips and vanishes into the crowd.
Going to the bar, he asks for a screwdriver, flashing ID to the bartender, a pretty blonde with short, blue and black streaked hair whose nipples and the accompanying rings are showing prominently through her old-school softball T-shirt with blue coloured sleeves
She compliments him on his long, shaped black fingernails and flashes a winking smile at him as she brings his drink and he tips her five dollars for the four dollar drink as he yields the spot at the bar to one of the crush of drinkers piling in.
He notices a migration toward one of the rooms as the word spreads that even though they weren't planned for the evening, Sasha and Digweed are here and playing in the crumbling blue room.
Alex migrates in with the interested parties and grooves for awhile before moving to the funky, living-room like space where the DJ is spinning a fat-bottomed house mix
When the X kicks in, Alex is back in the dance floor nearest to the Bar where a decent crop of trance is going on and dances in and out of the trance and hardcore floors until he is out of breath and nearly falls off one of the old loading docks into the crowd about four feet below him.
Pausing, he walks over to a series of computers where some of the othe parties are still visibla and a cordial, almost surreally pretty gay man in a grey suit tells him that the terminals are open.
Going to his email address, he sends a greeting to Lara Jane in Hawaii and then leaves a message for other acquaintances on another website.
With that done, he returns to the dance floors, making a circuit of the different mixes before resigning himself to some rest in the blue room, chilling out with the others now that Sasha and Digweed have moved on to The World for a not-quite-after-party.
Alex has made friendly small-talk with about two dozen women, but none of it has proven terribly productive and right now, in spite of the inspiring scent coming off of the crowd, he does not seem to care.
Having already been awake for thirty six hours, when five a.m. rolls around, Alex shares a joint in the back corner of the blue-room with an oddly androgynous trio consisting of two guys and a girl, all as dark-skinned as himself, but smaller and comparatively much more slender.
He chats and laughs while they smoke but is certain through the haze that nobody really knows what they are talking about just this second, himself included.
walking toward the bar, which is now only serving smoothies, sodas and bottled water, Alex buys a bottled water and a bottle of mountain_Dew from an almost sinister looking but genial bald man with flames tattoed on his head.
downing them both, Alex heads toward the Circle K on First and Fillmore to call a cab home. "Where did the time go," Alex ponders, looking at the clock where the countdown was, "suddenly, it's six-fifteen...Hah!"
Before making it very far down the street towards First avenue, Alex spots a youg woman in an expensive, if somewhat skimpy dress wandering around lost and showing signs of having cried.
The thermometer on a nearby billboard says that it is 6:25 AM and the temperature is 38°F, but Alex knows that the thermometer on the board is always five degrees high and this girl seems to be in trouble.
Walking over to her, Alex asks her if she needs help and she tells him that her friends left without her because they were so high they forgot she came with.
"I tried calling then, but i don't know if i got the number right and I'm so goddamn high too that i could have forgotten it."
She tells Alex the number and he recognize it for being in the same part of Mesa as Eric's old apartment.
"Hey, did you dial 480 first?" He asks her
"Awww shit, that's why."
Alex walks her over to the mostly abandoned train depot and dials the phone number, explaining to the girl who answers the phone that they left their friend here.
"Daaaamn, that's where she is, I was wondering. Shit, I'll come get her real quick. Thanks, my mom would kill us if anything happened to her."
In the background, he hears the girl on the other end of the line berate someone in english, spanish and "spanglish" about leaving her behind and how could they fuck up her little sister's 19th birthday by ditching her on the other side of town
Alex recognizes the accent as pure "chola" and is surprised that this one doesn't sound like her older sister. In fact, she seems to have that lack of a discernably hispanic accent that he thought was unique to himself.
She is wrapped in Alex's trenchcoat but is still shivering and nervous as a wet cat until Alex lights a Djarum Black from the pack in his shirt pocket.
Unperturbed by the cold, he smokes, first sharing the clove with her and then giving her one outright and smoking one himself alongside her.
"By the way," she says, "here you're being so nice to me and i don't even know your name."
"Alex," he says, extending his hand.
"Marisela," she says, extending hers, giving a surprised laugh when he clasps her hand gently and approximates a sort of half-curtsy
While Marisela and Alex wait they make small talk, and as the morning temperature drops a little further just before sunrise, sitting on the bench in front of the depot, she scoots in closer to him and shivers.
Tentatively putting his arm around her he holds her close to him, still radiating heat from the X he took and from the sense of attraction overtaking him.
He fights it, knowing that anything he might do or ask in that particular situation could be construed as taking unfair advantage.
The payphone rings and the sister is on the other end, asking where exactly they are and Alex directs her the rest of the way until they pull up right in front.
Giving Alex back his coat, she gives hims a forceful hug which, as delicately as she is built surprises him and kisses him on the cheek
"Thank you." she says, closing the door and receding first north and then eastward into the distance heading along Jefferson.
Starting back toward the Circle K as the sun begins to crest over the eastern horizon, Alex thinks to himself, "Damn, Dude...why didn't you manage to remember that phone number, you idiot"
By the time he gets home, it is eight a.m. and thirty one degrees. When sleep finally comes down, it lands like a ton of bricks.
Oh well.
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040107
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