WATCHMEN
by Aaron Sterns
The illuminated advertisement on the front of the cigarette-machine is a slivered beacon of blue sky and clouds amongst the smoke and strobe lights; a slice of heaven obscured by a couple deep in conversation: the guy all pained mouth and gesturing arms; the woman silent, staring. They are oblivious to the throng around as if enclosed in a vacuum. I stare at them from my post, trying to work out what they’re saying—their voices drowned out by the brain-regressing bass pounding up through my feet—but an image of Lisa arguing with me kicks in and I have to flick my eyes away across the dancefloor. I try to suppress a surge of anger.
The straining flux of dancing bodies moves in waves of artfully-ripped faded clothing, bleached hair and pale flesh made gaunt and alien-blue by the overhead fluoros. The sunken dancefloor—the Pit—is huge, nearly fifty feet across, and it’s hard to survey its entire length. I glance over at the other black-clad figures on their raised podiums: impassive dark statues almost lost in the belching haze of smoke machines and cigarette smoke, legs spread and hands clasped over their groins as if cupping themselves. They seem like ciphers to me, unsmiling names; protective of their cohesion. I’m still the interloper.
Two girls walk past below, staring up. One is breathtakingly beautiful: tight tan in red lycra, angry auburn hair and clear eyes. She smiles and I reflexively smile back, feeling instantly guilty. She pauses, tracing the neckline of her dress as if considering approaching my podium to stand at uncomfortable groin height and flash her hungry smile up at me, then runs a finger down her perfect cleavage. Unsettled, I’m about to look away when she flicks down the right side of her top to reveal a dusky nipple. She teases it to quick stiffness then disappears into the crowd, hungry eyes melting into the crush of bodies. Her friend follows.
The two-way almost slips from my sweaty hand as I try to track their passage towards the front of the club. I lose them amongst the squawking, impatient drinkers clamoring at the huge main bar for the attention of the bargirls. Disappointed, I glance up at the semi-circular balcony and its darkened tiered couches overlooking the main bar, the figures standing at its edge separated from death only by a thin brass railing. But the massive scale of this cavern has lost its novelty value by now and my gaze drops.
An angry voice pierces the oppressive techno music and I search again through the disorienting sweeping lasers. The man by the cigarette machine throws his hands in the air and stalks off. The girl stares transfixed, tears on cheeks. Just broken up, presumably. I shake my head and start to look away.
But the man can’t let this go. He whirls and punches his girlfriend. Hard.
She crumples to the ground. The guy looks at her without expression, then reaches down and grabs her by the back of the neck and the waistband, lifting her off the ground to swing like a battering ram into the illuminated blue cigarette-machine. The crack sounds even above the deafening techno bass. The machine short-circuits and spits flame.
I slam into him too late and we skid through the crowd. His nose smacks into someone’s shin in a spray of blood, and when he struggles against me I snap him in the nose again with the two-way, pinning him around onto his front so I can cradle his throat in the crook of my arm and lace the other arm behind his head. He tries to claw up at my arms, my eyes, but I put him out with a vicious tensing of my biceps, cutting off the circulation in his neck. I rest his deadweight on its side and bring the cracked and blood-flecked radio up to my mouth to call the others.
A group of middle-class yuppies ring me, too scared to help but perversely rooted in place by the bloody spectacle. I stare back from my crouch, wondering if the guy has friends here, if someone will launch from the crowd to kick at my face. I can’t see the girl past the gathering designer jeans but don’t want to risk leaving him alone: sleeper-holds aren’t debilitating enough; when they wake they wake instantly, mad and in control—
—and then splitting the crowd like huge black-clad figures of death, smooth-shaven and short-haired, barely contained. They push the crowd back, striking one guy who won’t move with an open hand to the face, sending him beneath their feet. A fury of movement around and then Lucs over me, omnipotent Lucs, always uncannily first on the scene, grabbing the unconscious boyfriend from me, eyes almost gleaming red in the searching light. Raph beside him, staring past me. I follow his gaze to the prone of the girl: her head split like a melon, open and weeping, curled brains nestled within.
We take the boyfriend up the stage stairs, a warning procession past groping couples on low-slung seating, and shoulder through the milling dancers to a door reading STAFF ONLY. Lucs bursts through the swinging door using the boyfriend’s head and dumps him on the corridor floor. The doors close after us like a dampening field. An overhead light glares above and my vision swims as I adjust from the dimness outside, getting a brief glimpse down a corridor extending away in progressive darkness. Raph barks something into his two-way.
Lucs in my face: “What happened?” Angry goatee and sharp slicked crewcut: I’m bigger, nearly six-four, but step back anyway.
“They were arguing—just a domestic—right near me, and he snapped her and … and before I could get to him he rammed her into the smoke machine. The sound … fuck—”
He grabs my shirt-front, silencing me: “This is what we do.”
I shrug him off and nod, straightening my shirt. “I know.”
He looks down at the sprawled body; the guy waking now, eyes flitting open and straining at the light. A kick to the side of the head and he is out again. “Take his foot” and we drag him down the corridor and the stairs at the end, the soft thud of his skull on each concrete step keeping beat with the muted, somehow-threatening music through the walls next to us. His head leaves a soft trail of blood. Raph walks ahead and unlocks the door at the bottom of the stairwell. I hear a car pulling up outside, then voices through the wood. A few steps from the bottom my boss pushes me away and reaches down to grasp the shuddering body, standing up with a hand on either side of the guy’s head, a raggedy-doll in his grasp. Lucs holds my gaze and then snaps his wrists, sending the guy’s arms and legs flailing to flap against the huge chest. A moist crack from the guy’s neck and Lucs lets the slide to the floor. I feel like I’m going to vomit.
Raph opens the door to waiting uniforms and a huge white van. Silent revolving lights on its roof spark blue and red eerily around the alley. One of the uniforms walks up, a cop: “This the fucker?” Lucs drags the to the van’s back-doors and throws it inside. A soft thud. The back hadn’t been empty. His partner closes the doors and they drive off, still without the siren, faces swiveling at me as they turn onto the street.
Lucs waits in the doorway, shirt flecked with blood. I look at the empty street and the fading ghostly lights and then back at him, my head spinning. The reek of the alley is like a cocoon. Nausea floods my stomach.
On the way to my post I stop at the staff toilets to scrub the blood off my face. I grip the sink and stare at the mess of flyers pasted above the mirror: amongst them are missing persons photos, a mix of male and female faces, mostly young. Someone has mockingly drawn moustaches on a few. The door opens behind me. Raph’s hulking brother Gabe. “We know you get this, David. We wouldn’t have let you in otherwise. You think this is any different from what you’ve done?” He stares at me for a moment then leaves.
The dark figures across from me now seem ominous, always on the periphery of my vision as I scan the Pit. The feeling that they’re all watching me, silent, unnerving, is greater than ever and my heart quickens. As much as I want to drop the two-way and rip off my shirt and leave, I can’t. The warning in Lucs’ eyes as he broke the guy’s neck is enough to stop that.
Old Max from the Terminal, where I first started bouncing, had warned me the security at the Metropolis were “hard cunts”; a tight-knit, dangerous crew. When I was still at the ratty Village sports bar I’d see them come in for a quiet drink, these huge refugees from the Meatpacking District dressed in black talking amongst themselves at the bar. I’d tense up, expecting them to cause trouble, but they never did, just stared at any patron stupid enough to come near. They were there the night I lost it, beat the fuck out of this asshole guido: some drunk gangster wannabe who told me he didn’t take shit from steroid meatheads telling him when to leave and then tried to pull a piece when I didn’t back down. All the shit I’d put up with, all the abuse and violence and threats working as a bouncer, all the shit from my father against Mom and me, became too much and I dropped him with a sharp left—the first time I’d ever hit anyone on the job, the punch feeling like it’d been pent up forever—then grabbed him by the throat and dragged him out to the back alley, and the guy had tried to fight back and I took the hit then splayed his nose across his face—actually
