Short Story: The Black Tulip

At a house party in Brooklyn, there are no mushroom drinks left in the fridge, but plenty of hours in the night. Vivienne jumps on the back of someone's bike, whether it's a mess or meant to be.

All four of them only went to the party because a friend of Vivian’s told them you needed a password to get in. It must be an important party, they agreed, not verbally, but Vivian knew because they all reserved the time at little notice. And there’d be magic mushroom drinks there, so they should really go. If the party isn’t great, they could just drink the mushroom water. Maybe that’s why they supply them, Vivian thought. Because no one has faith in a party for a party’s sake. Maybe she was getting jaded of the city’s antics already. Or maybe thirty was old enough to be jaded of the antics of life. Give them a break, she thought. If she knew how to find mushrooms in the city, she’d probably do the same. And if throwing a party in her short-term sublet was allowed. And if she had more friends in the city. Too many ifs for it to be realisable enough to worry about. Especially since up until arriving in the city, all she did was worry. New York was a worry-distraction funfair. The only concern would be figuring out how to get on the rides with a ‘chill girl’ attitude.

Vivian was the only one who knew it was a group of housemates’ leaving party. She hadn’t needed to tell the others this before they agreed. ‘It’s chill’, she thought. They can just find out when they get there, she’d just have to fight away the smugness of already knowing to keep up the chill girl facade. She didn’t think the password thing was anything beyond a veil of exclusivity, until she got there and discovered it gave her access to a silent auction number she was expected to bid on items around the house with. She questioned the ethics of recruiting bidders on mushrooms. She was a detective of the city, cracking a case that seemed infinite. The lamps and paintings on offer were nice, but she imagined they’d look even nicer high. And seeing as now she knew the party was more of a clear-out operation, going around with the other three felt like window shopping. Sure, she’d go ahead and bid if she knew how much her rent was going to be beyond the couple of weeks she had left in her sublet. She’d soon be who knows where with who knows what in who knows whose space. Twenty minutes of window shopping in, she decided to make a low-ball offer on a bankers’ lamp.

Wherever she ended up next, she’d make space for the lamp, she romanticised. It’d be like the plant in Léon the Professional. Just like the plant, the lamp would offer silent companionship and she alone would be responsible for it. It wouldn’t be like everything else to her name which could be stuffed in a bag. Now that she’d placed a silent bid so low, it’d be a far away cough at a regular auction, she felt she’d been there long enough to warrant helping herself to a mushroom drink, only to be met by a completely empty fridge. She wished someone was there to laugh about it with but the three people she came with were in the courtyard smoking. What do New Yorkers do with their courtyards when no one is partying in them? Vivian thought, knowing every New Yorker she’d interacted with until then had been out in the city itself, or on an app.

When 3am rolls around, they mutually decide it’s time to leave. She realises she might have to make plans with the two people she met there whose Instagram handles she got. Partly because they were so nice to her but more because she wanted to know how different they were off mushrooms. Lucky them for making it to the fridge in time to drink some. At least the hosts would’ve made some good sales, Vivian thought. They all waited on the sidewalk, waving each other off, Lyfts charioting them away, one by one, until Vivian was the only one left. Being what some would call a stinge, and what Vivian herself would call ‘raised by an accountant’, she waited for the Lyft price to go down. Double digits: not worth it. I’ll take the subway, she thought. She took her typical brisk stride past the brownstones of Clinton Hill, the party becoming a whisper in the distance, the autumn air still.

Just before the corner to reach Clinton-Washington station, she sees a guy she remembers as a blur in the entranceway of the party, she can’t remember which part of the night, or who he’d been talking to. He’d just been amidst the colourful background noise. Now here he is, a fully-fledged form caught in the moment of unlocking his bike outside the church. He wears a red cheetah print sweater, skinny jeans, and is as tall as the longest French fry. Beneath the glow of city’s pollution-lit sky, Vivian makes out his strong brow and cheekbones. He’s the kind of guy her Grandmother would call ‘handsome’, because his masculine bone structure is defined enough to hold up in a black and white film. But with Vivian’s stronger vision and color film stars for reference, she’d call him ‘weathered’. His hair is a buzzcut, a few weeks past its last buzz, she couldn’t tell you if it was hazelnut brown or mousy brown, mostly because she doesn’t know if you could use ‘mousy brown’ for a tall strong man, and she won’t have time to ponder that more until she gets on the subway.

One to make the most of being past the age of ‘Don’t talk to strangers’, Vivian calls out ‘Hey I saw you at the party.’ ‘Oh, hey’, he yells back from behind his bike lock, barely taking a moment to see who he was replying to. All they know about each other in this moment is where they had spent the last couple of hours of their lives. Before that, he could’ve been anywhere and anything. ‘Want a Modello?’ he says, grabbing one out of the kind of bag Vivian usually associates with veggies at the farmers market. ‘Yeah, thanks’, she says, as he passes it to her with his long wingspan. The beer is crisp, easy to drink, like an Asahi. ‘This is good beer’, she says. ‘You’ve never had a Modello?’, he replies. ‘I’m new to most beer here, only been here six weeks’. ‘Here in New York? Woah, yeah I thought you sounded Australian.’ The tall man says in an accent that’s either goofy or cool. ‘Yeah, around there. New Zealand.’, Vivian says. ‘Oh, woah. Yeah, that’s far. What do you think of New York so far?’ He asks, showing interest in both her and the city all in one go. ‘It’s a buzz, yeah’, she says, looking at his hair, ‘People say yes to everything’ she continues, realizing she is one of those people. Yes to the password party. Yes to the Modello.

‘How’d you find the party?’ Vivian asks. ‘Not really my crowd.’ He says.

As they chat, they build a rhythm, free flowing as Jazz, and she finds out his accent is from New Jersey. ‘Like Bruce Springsteen’ she says, clutching at her mental purse of Americana references. ‘Yeah, Jersey’s king. But I’ve been in this city 12 years now.’ There’s a pregnant pause, kicking with Vivian nodding, before giving birth to her wondering out loud ‘Yeah, I’m not sure what age I’ll stay in the city until.’ It’s not like her to relax enough to wonder aloud with strangers. It crosses her mind she doesn’t know his age, and, as if reading her mind, he said, ‘I’m thirty-seven, but I worked out I’m forty-four in awake years because I’ve stayed awake going to so many parties.’ She understands, any more explaining and it will shatter the validity of a calculation that makes just the right amount of sense. They lean on each other through conversation.

A comfortable lean, like one of those team building exercises where someone falls back, knowing the other person will catch them. But instead of falling into hands, with him she falls into pillowy of clouds of laughter for what could’ve been ten minutes or an hour, Vivian’s not sure. With him, she feels so silly and smart at the same time. Every laugh bubbling from a place of honesty. Then, against the breeze of conversation, he takes out a sharpie from the veggie bag and says, ‘Shall I tag on this window?’ Vivian checks and sees it’s a Christian church and decides that means it’s not a hate crime. Depending on what he tags. He could have been anything, anyone in New Jersey. Snickering she asks, ‘What are you going to tag?’. ‘One of my classics’, he says. Before telling her what it is, he starts writing, reading as he goes, ‘Definitely Maybe Tonight’. She thinks it’s funny, but she can’t figure out why. Could be because Tonight is when she saw him at the party, talking to him was a Maybe, she thought, and now here he is, Definitely. Then she laughs harder, wondering if all laughs were meant to be understood.

She asks him where he’s going on the bike, knowing full well this is an interruption in both their tracks. Expecting at this hour, he’d say ‘Home’, instead he says, ‘I’m going to a party in Queens, wanna come?’ She pictures herself in bed with a cup of tea by 4am, the only time drinking a cup of tea feels decadent. ‘Sure.’ She says, remembering she’s in the place where people say ‘yes’ to everything. It dawns on her she might have to meet him there, but talking about the logistics of how will spoil the moment and end up with her deciding halfway through to just go home. Without even telling him, just never showing up. If it wasn’t her who’d make the decision, he would, because he’d see she’s the kind of person who needs addresses, subway stops, the name of the person whose party it is, just to feel ready to show up. She was thirty, but twenty-five in awake years. She adopts a different strategy: ‘Chill girl’. ‘I guess I’ll see you there’, she says, opening it up to him to decide how the details will be exchanged. ‘I could just take you.’ He says. On his bike? How would that work? She’d seen it on a poster or something, but how did it work in motion? Should she be looking at a tandem? She looks at his bike and sees he’s modified it so two poles stick out of his back wheel, just wide enough for a person’s feet to perch on. ‘Oh, yeah. That works.’ She says, chill girl activated. Her heeled boot slides off the first pole and he takes this as an opportunity to come and put his arms around her waist to help her get on. She laughs and says, ‘I think I got it.’

On the bike, the autumn air doesn’t feel so still. She’s been on the back of someone’s motorbike before, but never a bicycle. It’s kind of the same, but she can understand the mechanics better, and they can hear each other talk. ‘What do you think of Queens?’ he says, ‘I’ve never been’, she says. ‘You’re in it.’ What a power move, she thinks right before chill girl attitude naturally kicked in and on the back of the bike, she feels his power rubbing off on her. ‘I guess it’s like Brooklyn but more highways, it’s what I imagine LA to be like, but this is more condensed and taller.’ He breathes out a laugh.

She knows she’s wrong to compare it to a city she’s never been to, but she often believes in her imagination more than reality.

When they arrive at the next party, everyone knows him, but Vivian can tell he doesn’t know them back. He greets them with the same energy he greeted her. The main room in the party is filled with Persian rugs coating the floor and walls, lit with a square disco ball and people who look like moving statues. ‘Vivian, meet my friend, Lucas. He’s one of my oldest friends in the city.’ She wonders if he means in actual years or awake years and then realises he means length of time. ‘This is Vivian, she’s one of my newest friends in the city.’ ‘Hey’, Vivian says. She talks to his friend while he goes off to work the room, talking to the dancing statues.

The friend is an art detective. Ah, she thinks, maybe he could teach her a thing or two. ‘What does that mean?’ Vivian asks. ‘It means I investigate to make sure an artwork is real.’ ‘Can you give me an example’, she says. He says that means when the owner of the deli Basquiat lived under needed to check that the painting on the deli door was done by Basquiat, Lucas was asked to investigate. ‘And was it a Basquiat?’ Vivian asks. The first question that night she really meant. ‘Yes.’ ‘How were you sure?’ ‘It was a door. And if you’re painting a door, you get tired sometimes and need to lean on something. So I checked the door for prints and his fingerprint was in the paint.’ She looks around at the moving statues and her gaze lands on the man she met on the sidewalk. He is to her what Basquiat had been to Lucas. Enigmatic at first, but with a little work to know the background, the things he did made sense. After another hour talking to Lucas and seeing what it was like to be a dancing statue herself, she says to the guy from the sidewalk she’s going to go home. He looks at his phone. ‘It’s only 5am. I thought it was going to be like, 10. You’re going home already?’ Vivian thought she was pro-aging, but not like this. This guy was on a mission to age himself, pickle himself, like it was going out of fashion. ‘I’ll get you a ride home.’ he says. Would that mean she would owe him something? The walk home would be 45 minutes and leave the balance sheet at zero. ‘I’d rather walk, it’s not that far.’ she says. He follows her outside. He reaches into his mesh bag and hands her something. ‘Take this’ he says. She looks down and sees a black switchblade. ‘I get them through work, but they’re not easy to get in this state.’ he says, smiling like he’d picked her a rare flower.