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There’s value in a distanced friendship.
For one, time is never wasted. Alastor will see Mimzy when the time is according, no more and no less. She’d hardly taken to New Orleans, visiting seldom, while Alastor remained true to his home from cradle to grave. He was fixed in his position and she asked nothing more of him; the approach was always on his terms, and in light, happy spirits that could be courted over a couple half-filled glasses and some news on the way the world outside turns. Most of what he’d known about un-Louisiana-like affairs came from Mimzy.
In Hell, the glasses on the bar switch. Mimzy prattles on about the sins she’s chased on a whim, while Alastor informs her of the strings he’s created in the hellfire web. Overtime, idle chatter becomes idle listening, and Mimzy quiets down to sneak her hands behind her ears and push them open. Whimsical sins are taken to Alastor’s doorstep, and— it feels good?
Mimzy pulls on his coat lapels, bending him down and kissing him on the cheek with a deafening pop. “No one handles these things like you do, Alastor! Always such a gentleman.”
Alastor rubs away the stain it leaves on his skin. “Always a pleasure for you to bring dinner to my doorstep.”
The roads run a red, soggy carpet. Whoever didn’t succumb to a radio’s lunch is surely one with the concrete now, a constructive death. This corner of the Pentagram, closeby the history-swayed Cannibal Town, is rugged and split. The cafes serve overcooked food, made hastily at any Overlord’s decree, and Alastor vaguely recalls rumours of a failed fighting ring taking place here. It’s a lowly place for anyone with acceptable class to lie, and he’d not entertain it more than once without Mimzy’s insistence.
She rocks on one heel like she’s charming an audience. “What can I do for ya in return?”
“What would you give me?” Alastor straightens out his coat and rests his palms over the point of his cane. “Your company is quite enough. Shall we go out to eat? This rabble was hardly enough for an appetite as voracious as mine.”
“As long as it’s not at that creepy town of yours. I almost lost an arm last time I was over there!”
Alastor’s grip on his cane tightens. “Right, of course! Cannibal Town is an acquired taste, but I’m sure with a few more visits, you’ll grow to love it as I do!” He holds the string of a single, low jazz note while a click of his fingers scrubs them both clean and proper. “However, you may take the reins this time.”
“Attaboy!” Mimzy says with a brush down his shoulder, pinching his cuffs between her fingers and pulling him to match her shuffled stride, until he readjusts and swoops his arm into a link with hers. “I know a place that could be fun. You love piano, right?”
“As much as you love to dance,” he says, one eye closed.
The concrete laps at their shoes until their travels uncover churned, dry sand and dry stick shrubbery. The imprints of heavy, hell-horse guided wheels tag them all the way to a collection of comically book-like buildings, as if ripped from the pages of an imaginative Western play-writer’s script. Tumbleweeds roll by, winking at them both, and departing at the entrance. The wood of every doorframe is fit to be chopped from trees above, and no wall is left without paint chipped out of it, or slabs of glass gathered below wide, open windows.
The women on corners wear long skirts, while men on the porches tuck their fingers under heavy leather suspenders. Mimzy waves to them all, gassing about Johnny’s girl and Paul’s stallion, and she leans heavier into Alastor the deeper the sandy ground goes. He’s met with the reception of a cougar wandering out of the wilds, causing hats to shade skittish eyes and boot-tips to meet together as their legs stand close together, prim and wary.
Alastor smiles more.
Mimzy stops them both at the longest building in town, centerpoint of the main narrow road, and waves off a passing wagon before she pats him on the shoulder. “Come on, cowboy. Don’t be shy!”
Alastor presses his hand to his heart and puts his teeth on full display. “If you think I’m afraid of country, then you didn’t visit Louisiana often enough, my dear.”
He glides inside on a single tip-toe step, parting shutter square doors that reach his midriff, and narrows his eyes first at the amateur fingers on piano keys; second, when they stop under his shadow, and the jovial song of the tended bar halts entirely. The streets should regard him in silence, but a gentleman’s event should always be ongoing. He hides his annoyance under his eyelids, then opens them up to greet the room with a showman’s elation.
“Please, don’t stop on my account,” His hand cuts the light when he curves into a graceful bow, sending a whip across the crowd. His voice is fit for broadcast. “I’m here for a good time, just like you all!”
The piano resumes in fear of his rumbling static and his treble steps that take him between a large, rattlesnake-tailed man and a smaller, quill-covered man with a lounging farmer’s hat. They hold their drinks tighter, but Alastor weasels away the one belonging to the biggest, pressing his back to the counter edge and holding it out for Mimzy. She takes it from him as the two grumble off, hands rubbing along their arms.
“I did mention being hungry, Mimzy.” He smiles distantly to the tender, who’s filling an almond tray on the opposite end of the bar.
“And I brought you to a buffet, didn’t I?” She pulls up a stool beside him, reaching his shoulder once she’s comfy. The bar clears out. The drink goes unattended on the counter, more trophy than treat. She cups her mouth and cackles to his hair. “Half the people in this joint are here ‘cause they fucked up on their tabs. Or they’re just plain broke and spendin’ what they can on hooch. Either way, a buffet.”
The upper points of Alastor’s ears touch together. He picks out the men best fitting the bill, weighing their worth on the end of a chain or filling the dip of a plate. “Is that what you take me for? Feasting on the downtrodden?” He pushes her hand away with the back of his and leans close to speak to her curls. “There must be an owner.”
Mimzy tucks her fingers under her chin and wiggles her shoulders. “Look at you, punching up!”
Alastor laughs. “Here? Hardly.”
“Mhm. He’s a big guy. I’d be surprised you haven’t heard of him, but he doesn’t like the rest of Pride.” Her eyebrows dart up to the ceiling. “Top floor, doesn’t come down unless something loud’s going on. Well, louder than usual. I’ve talked with some of the other girls. They don’t like him much.”
Having counted each and every almond, the bartender finally makes their way to the pair. They fair keen, straight-shot horns and a long, bowing face with watery brown eyes. Their hair’s hugged by elastic into a puffy braid that politely dusts off their collarbone.
“What kind of manager wouldn’t drink with their patrons?” Alastor’s back crunches as he flattens his upper half against the bar counter, peeking up at the bartender. “A whisky and Bloody Mary, my friend.”
They cut out of the scene, stare still latched onto his display, to pull two bottles from the shelves and slip out a backdoor.
“A lousy one,” Mimzy says, eyes elsewhere. She pats him on the shoulder when he sits back up. “I’ll be back in a sec. Keep my drink cold, would ya?”
Alastor glues his teeth together when she leaves faster than he can respond. In the further left corner, a group of five hog a table swamped by cards and chips, crooked teeth and crooked fingers sorting through grease-covered squares. Mimzy feeds into them with hiked up shoulders and her hands to her hips, asserting herself a free seat and marking her residence with her elbows on the table.
Clink. “Your drink.”
“Ah, yes.” He twists around, cupping the cool glass. The Bloody Mary sidles up close to his hard whisky, a cruel colour, and his eyebrow twitches. He pays the bartender a smaller smile. “Say, why don’t you enjoy the Mary for yourself? You look positively beat…”
Their eyes retreat to the counter. They begin to wipe it down. “...Starling.”
“Ah, Starling! Lovely name, and no coincidence that it rhymes with ‘darling’, yes?” The whisky oozes down his throat and burns his innards. He licks the remnants of his greedy gulp away and swings his head down at an angle his neck struggles to maintain, until Starling’s shying stare catches the top of his chin and the bottoms of his eyes. “I’ll refrain from correcting you on your lack of politesse, since I’d like to ask a favor.”
Starling’s pupils shrink, desperate to take in less of the offending sight. “I don’t know much, mister. I’m not that kind of tend.”
Their eyes thoroughly trapped, Alastor amends his head back in place and guides them both into a more civil confrontation. He leans closer, resting his claws on the counter. “I’m not asking for gossip, tempting as it is. I’m only after a little information! You do keep the tabs of your patrons, don’t you?”
Starling steps back and nods.
“Perfect,” Alastor purrs.
Ten minutes goad on, and Alastor’s crossed the saloon to take up Mimzy’s seat and dispose her onto his lap, arms reaching around her to trap vivid poker chips. The confidence at the table recedes like a skinny dog in a kennel, drawn back out by the rotten bone he casts in the form of gleaming gold and a noticeably twitching smile. He’s an honest man, betting finer money than the table’s counterfeit coins, increasing the bet with each round.
Poker’s a fool’s game that ends with more tears and shame than rewards, but play it smart and it can yield more submission than any pointed gun. Alastor would partake habitually in New Orleans, and if not participating then he’d host live play-by-plays over the radio; celebrities were thankful for the exposure, and audiences were thankful for something that wasn’t a report on another local killing.
Soon, the bet’s surpassed fifty. One man, snug in a mane and wearing a bowler hat branded Johnny, cowers on his turn.
Alastor presses his cheek against Mimzy’s and flutters his eyes. “With how much you spend on the regular, I doubt a bet of this calibre would make a single dent in your wallet!” He taps his cards. “Try a raise, good friend, I insist.”
All eyes are cast onto Johnny, who swallows his blunder and raises the bet by ten.
The circle goes on, until another simpleton reveals their folly; a man with guns on his hips for nothing at all, given how easily he folds under Alastor’s pretty eyes and curt comment, “You would call there? Interesting choice.”
Call averted, another raise placed. They’re up to a hundred.
“Don’t leave them broke, Alastor!” Mimzy says, twirling the ends of his hair through her fingers.
“I wouldn’t dream of it, my dear. A man who wears a ring as fine as that,” Alastor juts a finger at the man closest to him, whose flinching eyes drop down to his hand, “Must have the cash to spare!”
Every raise on Alastor’s part goes up by double the last, and his smile is no worse for wear. He eats their bluffs readily with their faces in his teeth, the largest set of gold at the table, daring them to take a step back from their pride and fold their cards. Here, for the whole saloon to see, and dare not step foot in this town again, says one confident tap on Alastor’s cards, while another gloats, I’ll match every boast you make tenfold.
Eventually, it boils over. Alastor is on the verge of toppling them all and ravaging the last of their lost wealth— (which will be a saving grace for their booze-addled minds, he’s sure) —when Johnny slams his hands down on the table, shaking the pot and sending the chips in a flurry. He flicks his tufted tail in a whiplash arc behind him. “Show us your cards, pretty boy.”
Alastor keeps his head raised. He shoos Mimzy elsewhere with a hasty black tendril. “I will at the appropriate time. Do you know the rules?”
“I know your M.O, Radio Demon.” Johnny’s claws creak the table and tear up a Joker. “Show ‘em to us.”
The table’s haunted by a dim, howling bugle. Johnny shrinks under a gleeful shadow when Alastor stands up in his seat and cocks his head to the side, darkening the chips. He closes his grin to hum and let them stew in the lack of true gold. “I suppose I will. Here you go.”
He waves his hand, revealing a hand of blank cards.
The next few seconds bring back the grin on Alastor’s face. What wounded pride can do, and how weak one must be to be consumed by anger! He steps aside, avoiding a missile of fur and brandished claws, to direct it onto a target behind; an elderly buffalo with arms the size of pillars, finding himself on the receiving end of a manic rush of wounded ego. Meat squelches around the thick points and heavy bases of two curled horns, and the smell of the blood is a green light for the true entertainment: an open arena.
Hyenas cackle. Snakes rattle. The chips on the table are cracked and worthless now, crunched and defiled beneath boots, hooves and dome-like feet, and a lesser tailor would despair at the sight of all these poor clothes being frayed and torn with so little regard. Alastor ducks and weaves through it all, returning to the bar and spilling over the counter, where Mimzy and Starling are huddled with the rest of the goers too smart to join in.
“What’re you doin’ here?” Mimzy bats at his nose. “Go eat!”
Alastor rolls his eyes. “Bigger fish, Mimzy.”
Speak of your meal and it shall come. Loud thumps have his ears twitch, and his lips curl up to the gums. He leaves the rabble to their rousing and parses the curtains of inebriated violence to catch his delectable fish. Coming down the stairs, frilly hair wobbling and webbed fingers squealing over the railing, is what he can boldly assume is the pot-bellied owner of the saloon. He has a voice that rolls like crashing waves over foolish rocks, but even that thunderous roar can’t quell the tides of an ongoing bar fight.
Alastor looks back down to the ladies and pitiful men. “Close your eyes and hum your favorite song.”
The fighting stops when his jazzy tune booms loud enough to burst heads. Oh, how he delights in the beat of silence before carnage.
His forearm swings down to the floor, claws gritting between the cracks of the uneven boards. He doubles, then triples in size across the span of a mad and ravenous dash. The wood splinters and performs dreadful dust clouds behind him, in glamorous triangular arcs that screw into the eyes of anyone who wasn’t quick enough to close them. The rips along the ends of his coat deepen and curve as it splays out like a rudder tail, and the lights bemoan their seating as sleek antlers crack them open and go rigid through the ceiling, invading the second floor. He leaves behind a gutted trail, like an eldritch vehicle with the points of his hooves and his monstrous claws raking the floor raw. He collapses the right edge of the stairs with the weight of his hand and clouds the owner in a gust of hot, rancid breath.
If he was to be a policeman in the woods, this would be his sight— a man being thrown about like a chew-toy, his entrails like squishy party streamers, and the riveting piano humbled by the terror of screams and chest-rattling of impending death. An arm breaks through the glass of a right window, while a leg rests its knee over the bar counter and goes pale. Black rope holds fast the most precious parts of Alastor’s feast as he digs in.
The tune settles when he licks up the remnants of an oozing heart. He picks skin and bone fragments from his teeth, shoes together by the heels and free arm holding his cane against his back. The saloon’s empty. A tumbleweed rolls along the road outside.
Mimzy claps her hands together and rushes over to him. “Fantastic work, Alastor! Feelin’ full, or do you want me to show ya to another place?”
He flicks away a strand of grit and half-lids his eyes. “I’m satisfied. Country meat is chewier than the city kind, but far more filling.” A plank drops between them, and the sun forces him to shield his eyes with a tight bend of his ear. “I seem to have made quite the mess.”
Mimzy waves off the remark. “It’s no fault of ours, sweetie. Let’s get goin’!”
“Now, Mimzy, I expect better etiquette from you.” Alastor holds up a finger to silence her, cracking the others to light a small flame at their toes. A single, dilated eye opens up from the depths of it. “It’s impolite to leave your dishes astray at the diner!”
Mimzy’s eyebrows furrow as the flame becomes soot, and out springs a head of hair with a cheek-bending, buzzing grin. “Oh, it’s your… little friend.”
“Niffty!” Alastor holds his arms out. A hearty giggle jumps up and hides itself against the lapels of his coat, his palms supporting the smaller demon like a small pup.
“Alastor, really, we don’t—“
Alastor’s ears sit at an askew angle. Mimzy quiets.
Niffty hops down from her deer perch, landing with a small one-two click on the floor. Her finger taps her bottom lip as she undresses the building, stare moving from inch to inch. “Wow, it’s a huge mess in here! Worse than last time! It must’ve been a really bad boy, I wish I’d gotten to meet him!”
Alastor cruises back to the bar, plucking an almond from the remaining dish and cracking it in half on the point of one tooth. The crisp crunch brings his ears back up to standard, and he tosses the results to the ground, tempting dark vultures down through the holes in the ceiling.
“Alastor!” Niffty frowns at him from where she’s already wiping down a bloody windowsill. “I’m trying to clean!”
Alastor shrugs his shoulders. “The scavengers deserve their spoils too, do they not?”
Mimzy’s stroppy, arms crossed and thighs together, chin staring down at the saloon’s new resident. She turns to him, one brow lowered, “Really?”
He tilts his head and opens his eyes wider. “Whatever do you mean?”
“Her.” She points a thumb at Niffty, now sweeping up stray teeth into a red dustpan. “She’s gonna be at it for hours! Who knows who’ll rock up to this place in the meantime?”
“It entertains her.” He cracks another almond, then places it back into the dish. “Is this boring for you, perhaps, now that I’ve done your second errand run?”
“What?” Mimzy’s heels storm over. The vultures scatter. “What’s your problem?”
“Twenty thousand on the tab.” Alastor scrapes her skin with his eyes. “Far more than I know is in your pockets. And here I thought we’d be here for fun…”
“And it was! I know you love fuckin’ up men down on their luck. So, maybe I got somethin’ extra out of it. It’s not a big deal.”
“I’m far from gullible, Mimzy. I obliged your original request for help, then asked for your company. Nothing more. In return, you lured me into this tasteless gin mill, wandered off to some…” His eyes close momentarily to reconcile the growing tension on his face, preening his smile down from its glorified snarl. His voice trickles through his refined speaker, hushed yet frightfully clear. “...brutish, money-hungry buffoons, and twiddled your thumbs while I took care of your debt for you.”
The slack on her face is beyond insulting, as if she’d never considered an outing without coins tossed her way. “Come on, Al. You ain’t really upset about that, are ya? You’re a deal-maker. You know how these parties go. Didn’t ya have a good time?”
He pauses.
About that— about the fact that his company hadn’t been at the forefront of her mind. That she’d exploit him, and then lull him into a second bout of it without a shred of shame on her face. It makes him want to laugh and applaud her for their shared state of being, at the same time that it makes him want to throw her across the room for being more interested in money than their shared company.
“Um, sir?” Niffty appears on the counter, having dropped down from a crawl on the disorganised joists. Sawdust silhouettes her.
Mimzy clicks her tongue. “Can’t you see we’re havin’ a conversation? Go chase bugs or somethin’.”
Something, embedded deep within the rotted oak of his chest, snaps.
Alastor takes in a breath like a boiling kettle and rests his hand on Mimzy’s shoulder, halving his waist to look her in the eye. “You will mind your manners towards her.” He snaps his head to regard Niffty and waters down his vicious grin. “What is it, sweetheart?”
Niffty discards a soggy washcloth while squirming on her toes. “There’s shiny stuff on the second floor. Can I have it?”
“Anything you can find is yours.” Alastor twirls to fruition a leather bag between his free fingers, handing it off to her. It’s as wide as she is tall. “This may assist you.”
“Oh, thank you, sir!” And off she goes.
Mimzy shoves off his hand. “‘Mind your manners?’ What are ya, my dad?”
Such a blatant show of disrespect is fit to be punished with his jaws, but it’s Mimzy, so Alastor bites his tongue and manages his posture until the burning in his chest chokes itself into dull coals. He nods towards the saloon doors, waggling his claws and saying, “Off you trot.”
Mimzy scoffs, waits, then bites her lip. “Fine. Whatever. My pleasure, Overlord.”
The doors announce her departure with a petulant swing and a huff of air. Alastor summons a cushioned stool and drapes his arms and head over the counter, heaving out a sigh. Mimzy tempts out his youth, even at the worst of times.
Frantic footsteps scurry up ahead, followed by a mouse-like thump. A symphony of metal rustles all the way to his fingertips. Niffty crouches down, the rounded hem of her dress blooming outwards. “You okay, Alastor?”
He mumbles, “Scathingly sentimental, Niffty.”
She pouts, then shows her teeth. “Can I show you what I found?”
He collects his sorry state until he’s resting on his elbows, teeth holstered behind a clammed smile few see. “You can.”
“Yay!” She looks like a small bird arranging a nest with the way that she makes herself comfortable on her knees and draws loose the leather bag. Rings, coins and assorted jewellery flow out from its crinkled mouth, each meticulously shined in a way that’s difficult not to squint at. “Most of it is junk, but pretty junk, but this one—“ She shoves her head inside the bag, followed by her torso, and comes back out with a wood-carved animal the size of her skull, glamoured with markings of copper paint. “—isn’t it so cute?”
He holds out two claws, letting her place it between the points. Pulling it closer to the eye, there aren’t any signatures hiding on its body. Unclaimed, but smelling of decades of booze. He doesn’t bother with a grimace, saying, “A fine rendition of a wolf. Are you going to keep it?”
Niffty polishes a silver ring with a large lump of purple on the peak. “Only if you don’t want it! You don’t really like dogs, do you?”
“A wolf is not a dog.” Alastor places it beside the glowing pile. “Man made dogs, but wolves made themselves. You wouldn’t call a lion a cat, would you?”
She’s wiping down a copper bracelet now. “I’ve never seen a lion!”
“I did today. They’re quite ugly, and wear bad hats.” He pats Niffty on the head, mindful not to catch his fingers in the tangles of her hair. “Lend it to me. I’ll carve you one of your own.”
Niffty drops her polish and her eye lights up. She could bring to life a garden of dying flowers. Her eye fills his. “Really? You can make stuff like that?”
He pushes her back with a finger-tip and laughs in a way the saloon can barely hear. “I can do anything. You’d rather one made by me than some bumbling oaf, hm?”
“Yes!”
“It’s set in stone then. Now, how about I help you clean up?”
It could be fixed in seconds, yet it takes hours. The town revives itself, cautious travellers respectful of the saloon but comfortable to watch from the porch. Some speak with Niffty, indulge her impish predictions of what transpired, and Alastor leaves the saloon feeling better from some valuable time spent with a friend. It feels good.