deadly nightshade | fever in, fever out

chapter 32: spreading the disease

Upon their arrival at the rehearsal space, Marla and Zelda both came up with a way to discern Dan Lilker from Dan Spitz, while lumped together they were the Dans. Spitz was Little Blue Eyes while Lilker was The Fuzzy One; those bright eyes shone within the bright, end of summer sun and the crown of feathery hair upon his head waved in the light afternoon breeze. That long wavy dark hair was rich and even darker against the sunshine. Dan "Little Blue Eyes" Spitz and Dan "The Fuzzy One" Lilker, and together they were the Dans. Scott made a joke about Dave and his bassist both being named Dave.
"So the Dans and the Daves," Zelda joked as Scott picked a piece of pizza for himself.
Meanwhile, Sam picked her journal out from her bag and rested it upon her lap, but she never did anything further beyond that. She kept her hands upon the hard surface of the journal and she never took out one of her pens or pencils. She leaned her back onto the wall behind her and sighed through her nose.
She was alone on that side of the room, alone with a bit of privacy before she needed to walk on back to school for her final class of the day, at least until Belinda took her seat next to her. Those long blonde waves drifted behind her head all the while.
"Let me see him," Belinda begged her, but Sam was reticent. The Dans congregated next to the table together and they talked about something in a low voice.
"May I see him?" she corrected herself, but it was for a different reason. The drawing she had mentioned to her didn't exactly exist in full form, but rather as the start of a doodle.
"Like I said," Sam spoke in a low voice, "it's just a simple little doodle, though. It's not really much of anything."
"I still wanna see it, though," Belinda insisted as she tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. "Like, I wanna see what you're about to make for yourself. And I also want a shot at redemption, too. I think we got off on the wrong foot."
"I don't think we did, personally," Sam pointed out. "But—" She fetched up a sigh. "—here."
Sam opened the hard cover of the journal and she turned to that page. The beginnings of Joey's black curls as well as his lanky shoulders; she took out her pencil from her purse as if she was about to get to work on it.
"Ooh. Oh, I see him now." Belinda held her doll-like face close to the page, and she moved her finger along the grain of the paper, right next to the pencil marks. But she didn't touch the graphite so as to keep the integrity of it.
"Yeah—I was trying to do it from memory," Sam confessed as she held onto the edge of the journal. "It's harder than you think especially with him. Joey and his thick black hair and his dark skin."
Belinda turned her head and she gazed on at the rest of the room. The Dans stayed by the table with Scott and Charlie; Marla and Zelda had gone off to another room; Aurora was checking over her notes; Frank and Billy had gone outside for something. Neither of them saw Joey walk into the building at any given time, but they knew he was there. Sam brought her attention to Belinda again and her pool like eyes pointed towards something.
"He's over there right now," she told Sam with a gesture to the other side of the room.
"Where?"
"There—" Sam brought her face closer to Belinda's hand as she pointed beyond Scott, Charlie, and the Dans. Indeed, she looked past them and she spotted Joey tucked in the far corner of the room, near the side door. He had leaned his back towards the wall and he brought his knees close to his chest. His thick jet black curls blanketed the side of his face so they could only make sight of his Roman nose and his dark lips. Every so often, he lifted his gaze and he watched the four men congregated next to the table. And then he looked away from them.
Sam looked over at Belinda, who locked eyes with her.
"I think that's the only view you've got," she told Sam in a low voice, and she brought the tip of her pencil to the page.
"At the moment anyways."
"Can you do it quickly?" Belinda asked her.
"I'll try."
"I should tell you—when you get into second tier drawing, Miss Estes makes you do warm ups at the start of class where you draw a photograph as quickly as you can in five minutes. I think it's five minutes. I caught her saying to another aide where she bumped it down to four minutes, but I could've just been mishearing her."
Sam locked her gaze on Joey's side profile, even from a distance, and she sketched his black curls a bit better that time around. She ran the graphite over those first bits of the curls and she moved in closer to his face. She moved her hand towards what would be his face, that Roman nose in particular. Even though she looked at him from a distance, she managed to do a straight rendition of him. But how she wished to draw him at a much closer angle, especially when he lifted his gaze again.
"Damn it," she muttered.
"What?" Belinda asked her.
"He moved," she replied.
"It's okay—can you draw his body, though?"
"As long as he doesn't get up..." Sam ran the graphite down his shoulders and his upper arms, and then his lower arms. She kept her gaze fixed on his hands, on those long lanky fingers and those big palms. His legs were slender and almost delicate in shape, and his feet reminded her of the feet on a little teddy bear. She managed to sketch out a little bit of his thin body in time for Frank to come right inside.
"Hey, Frankie," Joey called out to him and he moved his arms and placed his hands down on the floor, on either side of him.
"Damn it," Sam grumbled, although she had enough of an outline of his thin lanky body upon the paper.
"You got him good, though," Belinda encouraged her.
"John's here," Frank announced.
"Big John!" Charlie declared, and he turned to Scott and the Dans. "This is that guy I was telling you guys about, John Tempesta."
"What're these characters doing here?" a strange voice called through the front door. Sam returned her attention to Belinda, who was still fixated on the paper.
"I have an idea," she told her in a low voice.
"What's that?"
"You should make a whole bunch of dark drawings for Halloween and for their new album," she suggested.
"Like—black ink?" Sam glanced down at the journal again.
"Yeah. Miss Estes does something like that for the drawing classes, I think for you guys in particular. I think, anyways. Like, if I remember correctly—Marla and I did some ink drawings for Halloween, but Miss Estes had cancelled some classes so our schedules got fucked."
"I should make a drawing for each day of the month," Sam built on it. "I'd have to do it in a mad dash, though."
"Do you have ink pens?"
"I do, yes. They are black ink, indeed."
"Do you have thirty one pages in that journal?"
Sam kept one finger on that page with the drawing of Joey and she flipped through the rest of those smooth blank white pages. The journal pages were in fact big enough for a series of drawings, and she counted out thirty after that one of him.
"Just short of it," she replied.
Belinda ran her tongue along her lips and she brought her gaze back up to Sam.
"You should make this one ink," she suggested to her in a low voice.
"This one?"
"Yeah. I mean, you have the pieces for it with the simple pencil—your pen is mightier after all. And—don't think now, but I believe your next class is gonna start soon."
"Do you have the time?" Sam asked her and she knitted her eyebrows together in concern.
"No, but there's a clock right there."
She turned her head and sure enough, there on the wall stood a little clock.
"Oh, shit, I gotta go," she quipped, and she closed the journal and put the pencil back into her bag. "Where's Marla?"
"I think she went outside with Zelda. I haven't seen either of them in a while."
"Tell her about the time, Belinda," Sam advised her as she slung her bag over her shoulder. "We're both gonna be late."
"Oh, and call me Bel, by the way. I still wanna make it up to you from earlier. So call me Bel."
"Okay," said Sam as she gave her hair a slight toss back, "little Bel."
Belinda climbed to her feet and she hurried across the floor to fetch Marla and Zelda. Meanwhile, Sam ducked past the Dans and the new man, John Tempesta, a tall black haired gentleman with the first sprigs of a new mustache over his upper lip, and she returned outside to the bright street. She put on her sunglasses with her free hand and she hurried up the sidewalk.
The sun hung at an angle and she knew it was going to be dark soon. It was an odd thing to consider, given she was so acquainted with the summertime, but she knew it was going to be dark by the time she caught the next subway train back up to the Bronx.
Indeed, her writing class lasted the full hour and the whole entire time there in that tiny brightly lit classroom, she thought about Belinda's suggestion to do thirty one ink drawings for the month of October, and in particular a rendition of that sketch of Joey. She thought about it so much that she couldn't hardly focus on the peer workshop that afternoon and she decided to take it all back home with her. But on the other hand, if she did that, there would be no time to plan the drawings she could potentially make for the upcoming month.
Perhaps something Halloween related, or something that pertained to Spreading the Disease.
Then, as she packed in her things and stood to her feet, it hit her like a bolt of lightning. Of course!
She was eager to board the subway and return home to the Bronx. It would prove to be a challenge of sorts, given she had school interspersed between the drawings, but she had to take Belinda's word for it. That time on the ride home, she took a seat next to the window and she opened her binder, to the part with the notebook paper, and she took out her pencil. She knew it would be tentative, but she wrote down the numbers first and proceeded to fill in the blanks from there on out. Whatever came to mind that pertained to the last several months of which she lived there in New York City, she wrote it down.
Diseased.
Madhouse.
Kids!
Soup.
White stripe. Black stripe?
Books. Boots.
Glasses.
Cowboy. Classical.
Rehearsal. Sleeping. Road trip.
Washing. Trees.
She only had sixteen written down by the time she reached the halfway point between school and home. She glanced up to the pale yellow lights upon the ceiling and she struggled to think about what could fill in the rest of the month.
She thought about the tulips Cliff had given her. Yes! She wrote that down, as well as "cherries" and "roses" in honor of the Cherry Suicides.
She also thought about Joey and his black curls, and she wrote that down as well. Twenty now.
She flashed back on that night in the restaurant when Lars and Rosita danced together. Dancing! She scribbled it down, followed by "darkness" given she thought of the mysterious man in her dreams.
Just ten more. Sam glanced about the subway car when the word "ride" fell into her mind.
She flashed on Belinda's serpent pendant and wrote down the word "snake."
She looked down at the spare pens and pencils tucked in her binder and wrote down just that as a single prompt.
She thought about all the guitar players she had met and wrote down the word "guitars."
Six more now. Something Halloween related, and thus she wrote down the words "ghost" and "gourd", as well as "machine." Just three more.
She wrote down the word "friend" in the thirty first spot and the word "muse" in the thirtieth. Something for that twenty ninth spot however. She sat there in her seat with the binder sprawled open across her lap and she gazed on out the pitch dark window with a blank look on her face. She stared on at her own reflection, at the young woman with the head of dark hair and the matching dark eyes with the blank expression upon her face. So much had happened to her in the past nine months that it felt as though a whole five years had elapsed. But there was one thing that kept on returning to mind and that was the mysterious man in her dreams. She thought about what Marla had said to her about it, but it continued to nag at her, especially since she hadn't had a dream about him in recent days.
Was it Cliff? Or was it someone else? Was Marla right and he just served as a mere figment to assure her that things were going her way? Or was he the literal man of her dreams?
She gazed down to that blank spot on the page, that wide open spot next to the hastily scribbled down number twenty nine. She nibbled on her bottom lip as she wrote down the words "dream boy." It felt so awkward to write down those words but she had it out before her, down upon a sheet of paper to see for herself.
Sam straightened her spine a bit and she looked over the list of prompts. She would have to do them all on the spot after school, or whenever she snatched a moment given the next day was the first. She set her journal right next to the list. That sketch of Joey was in there and she began to wonder just how exactly she could fit that into the prompt list given he seemed so extraneous.
A challenge indeed.
Within time, the subway rolled into the Bronx and she almost ran back to her apartment: she didn't even greet Emile when she ascended the stairs to her place.
She had hardly any focus on the trio of essays she had to look over for her writing class, but the whole thought of it didn't perturb her in the least, especially since that next day, the first was her day off.
That sketch of Joey served as a guide of sorts and, without a moment's hesitation, she began on thirty one sketches for herself. It was a simple goal: to draw and ink up all thirty one prompts for the month of October in honor of the new record she got to take a taste of when she was new to the Northeast. She focused on getting her characters all sketched down to honor the prompts.
It was much more difficult than she originally assumed to be, given she only reached a drawing of Cliff and his cowboy boots by the time she felt the first tinges of hunger and she realized the apartment was rather stuffy from being locked up all day long. Tomorrow was her day off, as was Thursday. She could resume the sketching as well as ink in the first drawing tomorrow following her review of those essays in her binder, just so long as nothing or no one interrupted her from doing so.
Sam made two more sketches and then she turned in for the night, and she wondered if the mysterious man would visit her again. She lay her head down on the pillow and closed her eyes when he appeared to her in the darkness of her mind. She swore for a second that it was Cliff, but he took off his hat and showed her his solemn, deep set eyes.
Alex? No. No way. He lacked that prominent aquiline nose and that genuinely stoic look, the latter of which came from what she knew about him through her memory. He was also much thinner and lankier, whereas Alex still had a little bit of baby fat on his body.
But he had that big, prominent streak in his hair, one as cold and white as bone china, and one extended all the way back to the base of his head. His deep eyes stared into her soul and she swore she had fallen asleep when the feeling of cold on her feet pushed her awake. She stared up at the ceiling with her own eyes wide open and she realized she had cracked her window open a little bit to let in some fresh air.
The sole light came from the lights on the street outside and she thought about the rest of the sketches she had to make.
The next day was her day off after all.
Sam sighed through her nose and pushed off the blankets. She strode over to her desk and switched on the light.
Twelve done, nineteen more to go.
If she had to go at it all night, then she was willing to do it. She took her seat and bowed over her desk. The late hours of the night proved to give her a bit more inspiration than usual, and yet she fought against the urge to return to the safety of her bed. The number thirty one felt so far away to her by the time she drew a cartoon of Belinda with a snake around her neck and shoulders and she glimpsed up at her clock.
And yet she was almost there. She could feel the end, and she could feel the sunrise on the horizon. She only had the final three left by the time the apartment buildings outside lit up with the soft orange glow of the brand new day. She peered out the window pane at the dark clouds as they formed a blanket across the sky. Autumn was official with the arrival of October, and Spreading the Disease the day before Halloween.
And her day off would begin with the first scratches of the ink as she took off the cap. The little black tip carried with it a touch of that ink smell.
Sam ran her fingers through her dark hair and then she fetched up another sigh.
Her ink drawings began right then at sunrise. Careful not to run the tip over the pencil markings, she gave the first drawing, a cartoon of a man who somewhat resembled to Joey himself with his scratchy curled hair all about his head, and he lay down on his side with leaves and flowers sprouted out of his body, a healthy dose of that rich black ink. She filled in the petals of the flowers and the parts of the leaves with a bit of scratchy hatching to give it all some depth; she used her thinnest tip given the small amount of detail work. The flowers, however, were missing something.
She opened the drawer next to her right knee and she spotted her markers. A bit of blue and some blue green for those big flowers that resembled to the flowers she used to see on cacti back in California.
The fine pen work on his head and his fingers, as well as a series of little markings all about his hands. Leaves nestled in his hair. A big fat rose in his left hip and another one in his thigh. Given it was black ink, she could run the blue marker over the petals and the ink added to the original black.
By the time the sun had risen over the Bronx, she had her first full ink drawing right before her. She let out a long low whistle and signed her initials at the bottom: right next to it, she wrote down "day one", followed by "October 1, 1985."
All throughout the day, even though she got right to work on the peer review of her essays, she continuously worked on the ink drawings. At one point, before dinner time, she figured to keep it all under wraps from the others, at least until the record's release date. Every so often, she still looked on at that sketch of Joey and she came up short as to how to fit him into the whole collection. She only did it because Belinda suggested it to her and she had to tell her about it in turn.
She walked right into it and the means out of it was to not share it with anyone other than Belinda herself. She knew she would have to improvise those final three prompts by the time came to turn in for the night once again.
For the next week and a half, she put down the black ink for the drawings whenever she found the chance to do so. During her breaks, she kept the journal tucked away from Marla's gaze and she even told Belinda the whole thing would be a surprise for the ages as well.
"I can't wait to see what you made for all of us, though, Sam," she declared with a twinkle in her eye.
"Promise to keep it a secret from Marla and Charlie, though?" Sam asked her. "I want it to be a complete surprise, especially for them and Frankie. They were the first friends I made when I moved here earlier this year."
And just so long as she need not have to write something up for her art history class then she could make it all work out in the end. The times she had to write up something for her writing class, she had to go to the library and use the ramshackle typewriters in there. It took time away from time which could be used to put down more ink. But she kept her eyes on the paper and the keystrokes before her.
A couple of pages and she would have that time again to create until her writing class reconvened that afternoon. She came to the end of the last sentence and she took the page out of the rack and nodded her head.
"Perfect," she said under her breath. She waved the page a bit to make the ink dry and then she stapled them together at the corner. Out of the corner of her eye, she recognized Marla's head of violet hair as it emerged from the front door. She carried a small glass of what appeared to be mere water.
"Miss, no drinks in the library," one of the aides called out to her.
"It's just water," she assured him; Sam turned around in time to find her walking towards her and she knew right away it wasn't water.
"Hey, what's up?" Sam asked her as she tucked her assignment into her binder.
"Just here to tell you that we're all gonna have dinner together again this weekend," Marla replied as she held the glass close to her body.
"Oh, yeah? What for?"
"Happy birthday, Joey," she declared as she raised up her glass, and then Sam gasped.
"Aw, happy birthday, darling Joey," she echoed, and she thought about the drawing of Joey himself in her journal. She had no idea as to how to fit him into those final three ink drawings. "No, wait, isn't today the eleventh? I thought it was the thirteenth."
"Oh, yeah, his birthday's on Sunday. But, you know. It's the weekend and everything."
"Right, right, right... so are we all going out upstate or doing something else?"
"Yeah, Charlie, Bel, and I are gonna be driving up to Syracuse later tonight. I think Aurora will, too? I have to ask her. I would totally tell you sooner but the date snuck up on us, though. Neither Charlie nor I realized that until just this morning, and I was like, 'Char, isn't Sunday Joey's birthday?' and he goes, 'oh my god, it is! We gotta do something!' So he told Jon and Marsha about it right after he took me to school this morning." She took another sip of her drink when the aide scoffed at her.
"It's just water! I assure you. Look, I'm drinking up the rest of it—" Indeed, she downed the rest of the drink in two gulps. The aide pursed his lips and then he strode away towards the card catalogue at the opposite end of the elongated table.
"Was that really water?" Sam asked her in a low voice.
"Club soda. I'm gonna be the designated driver between me and Charlie, and I just feel better without a drink in me, too."
"I think we all should be designated drivers," Sam suggested, and she thought of Joey's desire to give up booze for himself.
"What's the fun in that, though?" Marla chuckled.
"So you guys are leaving tonight," said Sam as she picked up her binder from the table before her.
"Yeah. We're leaving at six so we have time to pack up a couple of days worth of clothes."
"Well, I just have to hand in this paper to my writing class and then I'm out for the weekend."
"Oh, good! I can walk with you there..."
The two of them made their way over to Sam's writing class on the other side of campus and she dropped the two page packet into the plastic box next to the classroom door. Marla then led her to the parking lot, where Charlie awaited them at the curb. The sun hung over the horizon, such that it looked as though he had a golden yarmulke atop his head.
The three of them drove back to the Bronx: they dropped her off at her place so she could quickly pack in her things for the weekend. She had set down her journal on the couch so she could pick up her overnight bag and her purse, but she figured she need not have it with her given the weekend was all about Joey. Once she locked the front door, she bowed back outside to the early evening and the waning sunlight. She awaited there at the curb with both of her bags pressed close to her body.
They weren't too far from there. Add to this, the whole idea of a trip upstate made her heart pound in her chest. She didn't get anything for Joey for his birthday: surely there would be something she could pick from up there in Syracuse.
Within time, she spotted Charlie's car up the block, and she was quick to climb into the back seat, right next to Belinda.
"I assume we're gonna have a late night dinner," she said to him and Marla once they got on the freeway.
"I hope not," Charlie confessed.
A four hour drive and one where the night fell over the state so much sooner. Sam gazed out the window to the sky as it painted from orange to pink to rich dark violet. She wondered who else was going to be there for Joey's birthday. She pictured it being a big party, especially when she recalled the way in which he sat there in the rehearsal space two weeks before. She hoped they had a big party planned for him.
The four of them stopped over in Binghamton; Sam and Belinda awaited in the back seat for Charlie, Marla, and a drink for the each of them. She noticed something out of the corner of her eye: a man in a black overcoat and bell bottoms. He had grown side burns on his face, but she recognized him within mere seconds and even in the darkness. She rolled down the window and poked her head out to the chilly evening. Belinda opened her mouth as if to say something, but Sam beat her to it.
"Cliff!" she proclaimed, and he turned around and showed her a little Mona Lisa smile in return. She hurried over to him and he extended his arm out for her. It felt like an eternity since she last saw him or felt him: the coat felt cold to the touch, even though he might have been wearing it for a long time.
"Hey, there she is!" Kirk declared right behind them. Aurora emerged from the driver's seat of their car with a smile on her face.
"Hey, Aurora," Sam greeted her as Cliff kept his arm around her. "We were wondering if you were coming upstate for Joey's birthday."
"I'm bringing the boys home, actually," Aurora replied as she adjusted the lapels of her light purple jacket. Then her face lit up. "Oh, I completely forgot it was Joey's birthday!"
"We all gotta get him something," James called from the passenger seat.
"What do you think, Aurora?" Cliff asked her.
"I dunno—where's it gonna be?" Aurora tucked her hands into her jacket pockets.
"We're going to Syracuse to throw a party for him," Sam told her, "that's all according to Marla, anyways. Jon and Marsha are probably doing something, though." It was right then she wished she hadn't left her journal on the couch.
"And it's two weeks from now is the release of the new record," Aurora breathed out; Sam caught the sound of Charlie's voice and she knew they were about to leave.
"You guys wanna follow us?" she asked them.
"Yes, yes, yes!" Aurora replied, and Cliff let go of her.
"We'll catch you in a bit," he whispered to Sam, and she started to wonder how she could share the thirty one ink drawings by the time the date rolled around. She thought about the journal and she realized she was only ten drawings deep. Her journal was all the way back home, but she had to finish those drawings.
Marla had paper and pens with her, but she was reticent to use those for something Marla didn't know about. And then there was the whole prospect of having to repeat the sketches. The very thought of that didn't feel right as she doubled back to Charlie, Marla, and Belinda.
It was an itch she couldn't scratch. And yet she couldn't let it interfere with her enjoyment of Joey's birthday, especially once Charlie pointed out the Dans' cars at the stoplight before them.