Sunlight

The evening of the masquerade arrived in a salient dusk. The sky itself was masked by the glare of city light. Yet a pink residue of sunshine managed an image along the borders. Sly figures of cars evaded the square where the masquerade was to occur; a wooden floor had been built for dancing. Tables for sitting and for holding food speckled the park around the floor, and over everything, starry strings of lights issued romance and life in the trees.

"Can you guess?" Vincent said as he looked down on the spectacle from his apartment, tightening a tie around his neck.

"Guess what?"

"If he'll be there tonight."

"Who's he?" Susie walked into the room, adjusting a dress that Vincent particularly liked. He turned to her and forgot his question for a moment, aiding her in the adjustment and resting his hands on her bare shoulders.

"You are overcome with desire already?" she murmured, disinterestedly.

"Yes."

"Who's he?"

Vincent recollected himself and approached his bourbon besides the window. "Moby told me that the Prince would be there tonight."

"Prince who?"

"I don't know. I assume some high ranking person."

"How exciting. And no one will know who he is."

"You don't sound excited, darling." He pummeled the bourbon dry and remarked, "People are showing up. Let's go, shall we?"

"Damn this dress!"

"Don't curse it. Let me." Vincent thought he would be commanded to tighten an insubordinate lace, but instead Susie drew herself up against his body and repeated the curse. "Doesn't matter though," she said. "You like it the way it is, don't you?"

"You," Vincent affirmed. "You the way you are."

"Hmm."

They didn't put on their own visors yet. They wanted to locate their friends, and did so at a fountain some distance from the venue. Jeb, a forty year old who owned Vincent's favorite bourbon company and who Vincent viewed as an asset for getting cheap liquor as well as a dear friend, came up with a mask already on. It was red and fringed with yellow and the man's small eyes glittered behind its slits. "Vincent, dear fellow!" Jeb said cordially. His wife Cecilia commented first on Vincent's tie, stealing an envious glance at its end, and then paid her respects to Susie's by-standing extravagance.

"Are we early?" Cecilia asked.

"We are precisely on time!" Jeb declared, adjusting his visor and giving Vincent an invisible wink. "We've arrived  before the Porters. That's saying something," said Cecilia.

"Indeed. Old Jack Porter will probably show up halfway through the concluding dance."

"We triumph through comparison," Vincent said, smiling. Then he added, "But it looks like other people are arriving. Shall we get ourselves a table?"

The quartet moved away from the fountain in silence and claimed a table just under the spacious underarm of the oak tree, surrounded by the soft aura from the stringed lights. They had a clear view of the dance floor in all its waiting wooden emptiness. Vincent leaned over and whispered to Jeb, "Have you heard anything about some "prince" paying us a visitation tonight?"

"Damn right," Jeb replied. "But what does it matter? I thought you and I were here for the bourbon I catered."

"Well, perhaps we can expect an assassination."

“It’s supposed to get windy later on. Maybe it’ll blow his mask off.”

"What are you two whispering about?" demanded Susie. She and Cecilia tended to avoid conversations between just the two of them. They needed their husbands to banter.

"Yes, Vincent, it's no secret," Jeb laughed, withdrawing from Vincent's ear and spinning an empty glass in his hand. "He's talking about the prince who's supposed to drop by this evening."

"Oh, that again!" Susie laughed. "I bet he doesn't wear a mask if he does come. He'll want to be recognized, I should think."

"You never know," Cecilia intervened. "Could be the fellow needs a few hours without everybody staring at him. Could be his night off, you know?"

The couples and the parties and the bourgeois companies made up of bankers and duchesses and dukes started to trickle into view. Some of them were members of the clergy but had dared to step out of their regalia for the occasion.

"Speaking of masks," said Vincent, withdrawing his own from his coat pocket, "we should put ours on."

“All I’ve heard that’s out of the ordinary for tonight is the weather,” said Jeb. “Supposed to be a storm in a couple hours. Maybe it’ll blow over.”

The master of ceremony turned out to be the Secretary of the Chamber of Commerce, Herald Gladbody, and nobody knew what he did with his life other than visit the gentlemen's club on Tilton Street on Saturday nights, going composed and leaving in a rush. It was a popular club. Vincent visited it with Jeb when their souls were fed up with bourbon, which happened about three times a month, give or take. He was an enormous man of fifty five with a shining palate for a head and a robust beard of grey to compensate the loss. He stood at the helm of the floor on a raised platform next to an adjusting band of string musicians and declared through a megaphone: "Ladies and Gents! Welcome, welcome, to the annual Masquerade hosted by our very own Town Chamber, for the benefit of poor people in Australia and other heathen regions which our Empire is attempting to civilize, Christianize, and materialize!" Scattered clapping but mostly a silence of indifference to the formality. Dusk had finally concluded and all was an electric blaze. Secretary Gladbody wished everyone a happy evening, a stimulating evening, an enrapturing evening. With a motion of the hand the stringed instruments started to swoon and couples shyly started to populate the outskirts of the floor.

"Time for food and wine," announced Cecilia, rising from her chair.

"Bourbon," said Jeb. "But not too much! We've got to save some vitality for the actual dancing, if there's going to be any from us."

The two couples attended the buffet on the other side of the festival and collided with Jack and Stacy Porter. Jack operated a bank but declared himself a philanthropist. Banking was his hobby. His true affections lay with the missions of the chamber of commerce. And with bourbon. Bourbon is always a unifying theme. "I'll be jackknifed," said Jack, slapping Vincent on the back.

"Evening, Jack," Vincent and Jeb replied. "Almost didn't recognize you."

"Is it the extra weight?" he said, with maybe some genuine concern. Vincent stared and smiled then said, "You're wearing a mask. We all are."

"I'll be damned. I keep forgetting."

"He has been gaining weight, though," Stacy adjoined. Stacy herself was a plump woman but in Vincent's opinion compensated for it with a shapely form, a silly womanish disposition in the face, and the tendency to talk emphatically about other people's problems. Besides Susie she was perhaps the most entertaining woman he'd ever met.

"That makes two of us--don't spare the truth my dove," Jack rebutted. "Anyway, how are sales Vincent? You still wasting your time on advertising those confounded gadgets of yours?"

"They're called radios," Stacy interjected again.

"Thank you Stacy," Vincent said. "Yes Jack, and sales are up! The more radios the more people can listen about your bank and all your philanthropic goodness to the African cause."

Jack had been grinning, but the expression vanished into a knitted brow and he whispered, "Really?"

Vincent laughed. "You're constantly on the air, dear chap."

"Well..." This was a terrible exaggeration. Jack had been mentioned once on the radio and by someone who thought his banking ethics corrupt. Vincent was simply a deft salesman.

"Oh look!" Susie remarked. "Someone has arrived!" Vincent turned to look, and then laughed when he saw that all is only a panhandler, hair unkempt and no mask at all, a ragged jacket with stains running up and down the front and sleeves. He seemed to be trying to make his way to the finger food table, and it was a wonder he had made it past security, which was posted in the form of austere bald men in blue uniform all around the block.

"Poor fellow," sighed Cecilia. "But honestly, look. He's getting his hands all over the cheeses. Jeb, or Vincent, or somebody, go tell him to scat." Jeb downed another shot of bourbon and belched and prepared to obey, taking a gallant step forward, but Vincent hesitated. The tramp had turned his head, chewing cheese while he did, and settled a pair of curious eyes upon his own, which even through the mask must have shown to widen for an unknown reason.

"Aw, let him alone," he said, placing a hand on Jeb's arm. "He'll probably leave once he's had his fill."

Cecilia noticeably huffed but Jeb nodded and said, "That's right, Vincent. Wouldn't be charitable to toss the man. Not Christian at all!"

The tramp gave a small smile that may not have been kind, and then straightened and thinned into the crowd.

“Don’t forget to keep an eye for your Prince,” Susie said. But Vincent hadn’t heard. A throb of the heart gave him to the impulse to follow the man, but this was corrected when Susie positioned herself in front of him and drew his scrutiny to her open cleavage.

“Time to dance,” she commanded. She wrapped her arms around his neck and drew the scent of perfume all around him so he was enraptured by the time they stepped on the floor. He rested his head near the orb of her shoulder, her girlish curls existing in his peripheral, and there for a moment, away from her eyes, he was reminded the first time they’d met each other. The memory came through the expression of his senses. The form, the smell--nothing else mattered.

He’d been trying journalism and wanted to join the covert rebellion against the regime; they’d met at a house meeting and she was drinking something hot, maybe coffee, and sitting alone in the dimmest part of the room. It felt like the early church, he’d thought. Maybe it wasn’t focused on Christlike love in a Roman Empire of hatred and bloodshed, but it was pretty close. Her legs were curled underneath her, showing the curvature of her hips and her arms posed above them, fingers interlocked around the mug and eyes fixed on the floor.

“You’re not here for the women,” a friend had leaned over and said to him, noticing his transfiguration.

“Who said I was?” Vincent muttered, but he made his way around the skirts of the room and managed to stand next to the Victorian sofa where she was enthroned.

“Hello,” she said, surprising him.

“Hello,” he returned. “I have seen you across the room.”

She looked up, expressing a face notably carved by some kind of solemn tidings, but smiled without showing teeth and set the mug aside, folding her arms. “Your name would be appreciated,” he added, reddening. She gave it to him and proceeded to ask how he planned to contribute to the cause of independence.

“I want to write,” he declared, stupidly.

“About what? What’s that do for anybody?”

“Raise awareness. Mobilize sentiments. Express the need for unity. My name’s Vincent, by the way.”

“Vincent. I’ve never met anybody named Vincent. Is it French?” He couldn’t reply before she added, “It’s all propaganda, Vincent. They lie to us now, and if this ever works, we’ll lie to whoever’s below us.” She grinned playfully, raising her drink to her lips again and making him assume the remark was sarcastic.

“So why are you here?” She shrugged.

“For the gain of that moment in between,” she said. “If there’s going to be a second of hope, then I’ll take it. Otherwise we’d work ourselves to death or bore ourselves to death. We might as well do something.”

“Then I’m with you,” said Vincent. “We won’t be hiding down here forever.”

“That’s what they said, too, when they wanted things to change.”

The conversation altered into weather and music and then to where Susie was living, a flat a half mile away, which is where they fled after the meeting concluded around three a.m. The flat facing the blank face of an alley, but Susie was still careful to peer through the blinds and examine the narrow street below. She illuminated the room with a candle and then opened a bottle of terrible wine and set it on a table. It had begun to snow.

“Make yourself at home.”

“Are you alone here?” Vincent asked, pouring himself a glass and then assuming a seat on a stool.

“Recently, yes,” she replied, taking a position on the floor and hugging her knees to her chest.

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry for.”

“I suppose you’re looking for a replacement, now?”

“Do you mean a romantic partner?”

“I mean a flatmate.”

“No. I intend to live alone for a long time.”

“Is it for an experiment?”

“You could say that. I finally figured that no one becomes a real individual before they live at least a year by themselves. Until then you’re always feeding off of someone else.”

“Did you grow up with parents?”

“A father,” she said, quietly. “He died.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry too much. Did you have a nice childhood?”

“I don’t know if I’d call it ‘nice.’ It was bearable.”

“That’s all it has to be.” Then they were silent for a while. Wind whistled in some obscure cracks in the flat, bringing scents of chill into the room. Vincent smiled in the dark and asked, “If you wanted to be alone, why’d you let me come over?”

For a few uncertain seconds she gave no answer. His heart began to beat in his ears and he rose from the chair only to join her on the floor.

“You don’t really want to be alone,” he guessed.

“I don’t want to be afraid,” she replied. “The two kind of go together for me.”

“Yes. I know what you mean.”

“Then you’re the only one.”

He walked away that night having kissed her until morning, and the dawn found him in stupor. He lacked a hat and felt the cold burn his ears, and his mind was in a flurry. Through blurred eyes he saw the figure of a tramp pawing through a garbage bin in the opening of an alley. Vincent slowed down, blinking, and watched the man unearth a half drunken bottle of beer which he spilled over the front of his jacket.

“You’re just like me, ya?” the fellow said, turning to Vincent and laughing. “Want some? You look tired.”

What induced Vincent to join a stranger to drink a bottle of beer from a garbage can, he never did fully understand. But he did. He rubbed his eyes and walked over and took a brief swig, handing the bottle back to the tramp and smiling empathetically.

“That’s all we can afford these days,” muttered the tramp, looking at him with a pair of curious eyes.

“Not for long,” Vincent promised. “We won’t live in hell forever.”

“Maybe I will.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just what I said!” The tramp finished off his bottle and then gave Vincent a penetrating look that made him more than uncomfortable.

“How was Susie? Pretty good? My name’s Prince Edward by the way.”

Vincent frowned, taking a step back. He wasn’t quite oriented and still slightly drunk to comprehend the question. “Excuse me?”

“I thought you went to her place after the meeting last night and you’re just getting out after an entire night of making love to her, or do I exaggerate?”

“How the hell do you know that?”

“Because I’m in hell and hell occupies every corner of the world.” The words lacked dialect although the efforts given seemed to be in a Nordic direction.

“You were at the meeting, maybe. There were lots of us there. I could have easily missed you.” For only a second, Vincent was convinced of this. But then he doubted it. The tramp didn’t have the decor of a meeting attendee, no pin, no slang, no intentional look of pain and longing and resolve in his eyes, which were black and almost lidless, like puddles of old coffee brimmed with residue. And there was no way anyone knew where he’d gone afterward.

“You weren’t at the meeting.”

“Did you know, it’s funny,” the stranger chuckled, looking down. “I remember when you were a kid and you had that neighbor. Tessa was her name?” Vincent’s throat uncontrollably throbbed and tightened. The name plunged like a dagger and was attended by memories he’d very much prefer not to exist. “She was such a sweet little girl. Had hair that smelled naturally of daisies. Right out of Wordsworth poem.”

“Who the hell are you.”

“Your oldest friend.”

“Get out of my way and go to hell.”

“I’m already in hell! And sorry mate, but I’ll always be in your way.” Vincent threw a punch that the stranger avoided with an agility that wasn’t tainted in the least by drunkenness. A fluidity that seemed bone bending. Like a snake dodging a cat’s paw.

“You can’t stop thinking about what you did to her.”

“I said shut up!!” Vincent drew out his knife and blindly went overhead with it, intending to plunge the blade into the stranger’s eye socket if he could. Instead he ended up stabbing snow and concrete, the knife collapsing and slicing into the leathery portion of his thumb so blood spurted hotly. Vincent cursed and clutched the hand, spinning in place and spewing ice, eyes wide like a rabid dog’s, but the stranger was gone, slipped out of view as if dissolving into atmosphere. “Where are you?” he bellowed. “I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you!”

It took Vincent a year to convince himself that it had only been the wine and the paramour that had induced such a hallucination. Even then he wasn’t so convinced.

Returning now to the fateful present….

“You look like you’re in a daze, darling,” Susie whispered.

Another song had started playing. Vincent hadn’t accommodated his feet to the tune. He blinked and faced her, conjugating his memories of her, of that night, of the stranger, to the eyes glittering so brilliantly through the mask.

“Are you alright?” she asked.

“I don’t know.”

“What’s the matter? Are you worried about this Prince you keep going on about?”

Vincent altered his gaze across the dance floor and caught a glimpse of the tramp pouring himself a glass, not of beer, but of bourbon. It couldn’t have been the same person...if it was, then coincidences were aligning themselves with miracles. Or curses. The tramp raised a glass and smiled. Vincent swallowed and paled. “God, no,” he murmured.

“Vincent,” Susie begged. “What is it? You look sick.”

“That homeless man,” he gulped.

“What about him?”

“I’ve met him before. The night we met actually, before the revolution. We met. He said his name was Prince Edward. That’s where I remember him from.” She gave the tramp a glance, her swaying body stilling in bewilderment. “I never told you about him.”

“That’s odd,” she said. “I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about.”

“He hasn’t got a mask. How did he get in?” Vincent muttered fiercely. “The Chamber is so damned particular about these parties as to who gets in. And nobody’s escorted him out.”

“Vincent.” The tramp, or Prince Edward as it now registered with Vincent, let some of the bourbon drip on his jacket and then threw his head up and laughed.

“Vincent!”

“Who the hell is this guy…”

He tried to tear away from Susie but she held on to his wrist. “Baby don’t….it’s nothing. Let’s just keep dancing.”

“He shouldn’t be here. He’ll kill somebody….he’ll kill me.”

“This is ridiculous...why would he kill you?”

Vincent departed from her grip and slipped through the sea of slow moving couples until he nearly tripped off the stage and found himself once again beside the bourbon counter. The tramp addressed him by name, immediately.

“I remember you,” stammered Vincent, gasping.

“I remember you,” came the cool reply. “Bourbon?”

“No, I’ve had too much.” Vincent tried to get a look at Susie behind his shoulder but she wasn’t in view. The fear that had mingled in his mind had taken breadth and urged him to blurt out, “How did you get in? Who are you? And if you say Prince Edward I’ll hit you.”

“Haha!” the tramp exclaimed. “Don’t you recognize me? We had a beer once.”

“Yes I know, confound it. I said I remembered you.”

“It was very early. I was doing my morning rummaging. The revolution was boiling but not yet successful. Change was in the air.” He gestured to himself. “Do I look changed to you?”

Vincent shook his head. “This feels like a dream. It feels like a dream. Stop messing with my head and just tell me who you are and how you got in here. You don’t even have a mask.”

“That’s how I got in,” the tramp said, pouring himself another drink. “I don’t need a mask. They know me without it.”

“I don’t understand. Who are you?”

“I’m the only real person here,” he replied, taking a stance and squinting at the crowd.
“People are going to recognize me little by little. I know them by the look in their eyes. Like I did you.”

“You’re torturing me.”

“I torture all men for all their lives. Revolutions do not stop me.”

Vincent’s poor heart was beating uncontrollably. “Are you human?” he whispered. “You don’t seem human. Are you a ghost? Did I know you once? Have you come back to haunt us?”

“I am a tramp and I am Prince Edward. I am you and I am Susie. I stretch all the way.”

“God damn you.”

“He already has.”

“How did you recognize me? It’s been ten years...no, more….and I have the mask on.”

“I could tell you everybody’s name here,” the stranger replied, smirking and spilling more drink on his coat. Vincent began to notice the stink coming from the fabric. “Like Susie. And Jeb. And Gladbody. What a sleazy old man. He falls into my arms like a puppy.”

“I have half a mind to report you,” Vincent murmured.

“It won’t be the first time. Usually I’m the one doing the reporting though. I report everybody’s files to them on the daily basis. Gladbody enjoys copulating with women half his age. He’s a shamed man because of it and I’m very happy to keep reminding him that he’s utterly disgusting. Funny how people seem to automatically embrace the worst things about them. You plotted hatred in your heart against your siblings when you were younger, and let’s not forget about the incident with the neighbor.” The stranger’s eyes glimmered and Vincent’s shuttered.  

“And Susie? She does well to wear a mask. She wears dozens of them, layers on layers. She’s having three affairs as we speak. One of them is with Jeb. And Cecelia longs for an affair with you. Can’t you tell?” Vincent let out a scream and thrust his hands around the stranger’s neck, trying, amid a flux of gurgling and retching, to wrestle him to the ground. To his horror and rage, the stranger lowered himself but kept on talking as if his throat wasn’t being constricted in the slightest. “She waits for you to go to the office. Then she picks up the phone. She has the affairs on a routine. Like clockwork. She’s got the whole house reeking with lust and then tidies it all up at five to compensate.”

“Enough!” Vincent’s fingernails began to lift from his skin. His eyes threatened to redden over with bulging vessels.

“You should investigate the clergy,” the stranger continued. “All of them purchase pornography. All of them stash it in their ‘cells.’ And the mayor? The man lobbies to the top business folk in the city. He’s a master of blackmail. Some revolution you pulled off.”

“I said enough!!”

Suddenly Susie’s arms enfolded him and he heard her voice entreating him to stop and stand up.

Throwing up his hands, Vincent backed off, realizing the skirmish had attracted the attention of the majority of the masquerade. The music had cessated and only the traffic and some birdsong lifted out of the quiet. But they were not looking at Vincent. Everyone stared at the stranger as he righted himself and corrected his coat. They recognized him.

“You know me, ya?” he laughed, spreading his arms out wide. “I’m at your bed in the morning and in your cubicles in the afternoon. You thought you wouldn’t be living in hell forever. You thought heaven was on the other side of revolution. But I’m still here. Worse still, YOU’RE still here.” He snatched the whole flask of bourbon and let it flow grossly over his face and beard. He dropped it when it was empty and the smash was somehow deafening. The crowd took an instinctive step back and those who were in pairs began to hold hands. He then began walking through the crowd with his hands joined behind his back, like he was conducting an inspection. Vincent looked at his own hands, registering the pain and the blood seeping from underneath his fingernails. The fear had turned into dread, like leaven that had taken years to foment and rise but had always been there.

By and by the stranger stopped in front of a shuddering young woman, stared at her although she couldn’t reciprocate the gaze, and then declared, “Jennifer Holliday. She’s married but wishes she had chosen someone else. She hates her father because he left when she was five years old. She hates God for the same reason. She has plotted hate in her heart until she’s become nothing but a walking coffin. That’s who this is. You’re welcome!” That being said, he tore off Jennifer’s visor and trampled it underfoot, proceeding on to his next culprit and leaving the woman with an outlandish sob, an ashen face a hue not unlike a patient going through a toxin extraction. A beautiful face nonetheless.

“Maxwell Lloyd. You killed a man who was against the revolution. He wanted peace and you stuck a pencil through his ribcage.” Another visor fell to the ground. Lloyd, who Vincent knew to be a quiet man who worked at the post office, visibly went pale and jerked his head every which way to see the sea of masks settled intently in his direction.

“Is it true, Max?” his wife leaned over and asked him in a whisper.

“Yes. God strike me dead. Yes it’s true.”

He went on to every single person in the masquerade and didn’t leave a single shame hidden. People who were philanthropists became pedophiles. Women who were devoted wives became harlots. Men who had achieved success became gross failures. Preachers became saturated bags of hypocrisy. Loving fathers became angry abusers. Lovers became murderers.

He left Susie and Vincent for last, and by that time the floor and the grass was littered with masks, like broken confetti. They might as well have been standing naked.

By the time Susie and Vincent themselves had been stripped they stood standing coldly side by side, breathing deeply and with eyes fixed on their fallen visors.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m really sorry.”

Vincent said, “You know me now. Now you have cause to leave me.”

“I’ve always felt afraid, darling.”

“I know. It’s because of him.”

“These are my favorite events to attend!” the stranger laughed to himself in benediction. “So much closure. So much justice! That’s what you people are so crazy about right? Justice. Well I’ve given it to you. I’ve shown you all who you really are. The solution? Divorce, certainly. You’ve already seen one suicide. More will follow I’m sure. Can I expect some dear friends to engage in choke holds later this evening? Or would you prefer an alternative?” The stranger pulled out a dagger and held it into the air for everyone to see. The weapon looked like it had been dug up from the dark ages, steel, cold, and stony. “If one of you bastards gives himself to me, I’ll let the rest of you go to what pitiful lives you’ve got left. Just one person.”

Silence, but the sound of terror animated the space and Vincent knew that every heart was pounding and every mind at a loss of thought or reason. No one had anything.

“Who will it be?” the stranger bellowed, spewing saliva. Silence. “Don’t make me pick. It’s a hard job, being the judge.”

“Somebody volunteer,” squeaked an invisible male voice. Heads averted. It was Secretary Gladbody, scuttling next to the finger food table and wrapping his arms around himself as if fending off the cold. A breeze had aroused the trees and began to whistle through the teacups. Grey clouds formed and blotted what was left of the dusk, omitting any opportunity for the stars to show themselves.

“Gladbody!” said the stranger, musingly. “You all might be better off if he was dead. Let’s raise our hands. Put it to a vote, since you’re so democratic these days. Who wants Gladbody dead?”

Not one hand emerged, putting the stranger into a sudden mode of frustration. “Damn you all to hell!” he seethed. “Fine then! I’ll start slitting throats at will. You’ve put me to it. You put me to it. I always try to negotiate and you humans make me do everything the hard way. Blood is always the solution. I’ll bathe in it tonight.” He took a step forward with the knife poised to strike, but Vincent found breath in his lungs to intervene and say with the greatest composure he’d ever mastered in his life: “Kill me instead.” The stranger hesitated, rotating his head and settling his glaring eyes upon Vincent’s. Every lung was held suspended. The city seemed to still, like a hand had settled on it and refused time’s passage. Still the clouds formed.

“Vincent? And why you?”

“I don’t deserve to live anyway,” he muttered. Susie’s face had gone white. “Darling,” she breathed.

“I’m not your darling,” he whispered in reply without looking at her. “We’ve betrayed each other so many times. We’ve betrayed everybody, even ourselves.”

“I can’t lose you.” The stranger inched forward, smiling to himself and chuckling.

“Because being alone and being afraid go together with you.”

“Yes. Because that.”

“Be it nobility or shame that’s making you do this, I’m glad the world still has some meat to offer,” the stranger said. He pressed the blade up against Vincent’s throat, compelling Susie to fall to her knees and beg. The wind suddenly increased and the streetlights were dimming for some reason. “Modern day sacrifice,” he continued. “You’ve got nothing against me. I’ve got everything against you.”

“Only that you’re evil to the core, but other than that, yes,” Vincent said. “Go ahead and do it. You’ve made me lose everything in a single sentence.”

“So this shouldn’t be so hard you, then.”

“Please don’t do this,” Susie wept.

“Don’t look,” Vincent told her, and bowed his head so he felt the blade nestle between his throat and chin.

“Ladies and gents, your atonement!” The wind howled and thrashed the venue so women were clutching their dresses and the masks were picked up and rushed away with the current. Tables overturned, branches ripped from their roots, wigs were lost although those who lost them were already too ashamed to care, and Vincent thought to himself “this is death.” He didn’t feel any steel slice across his throat, no momentary spinning revulsion and gross connection with the ground. The world was screaming. His tie even joined the debris so he wondered if he wasn’t completely naked.

“All right, God,” he said, supposing he might as well believe in God now since it was clear that His adversary existed. “I deserve every inch of your hell. I do indeed. I guess this is the appetizer. I only wish to ask you to save Susie. Maybe there’s still a little hope for her. I don’t know. I don’t know.” His reply came in an unexpected warmth resting on his face and the repealing of the knife from his skin. It turned out upon opening his eyes that the clouds themselves had let in a corridor of light, landing right on everyone, who were no longer simply maskless but indeed completely naked, standing upright without covering themselves, looking into each other’s eyes and nowhere else, as if coming to a great understanding by grace of this strange daylight. The wind had blown everyone bare, including the stranger, who was writhing on the ground in a puddle of what might have once been flesh but looked to everyone else like some kind of ruined puddy, scarred and hairless and pathetic. The light looked like it was burning him, fiery and all consuming.  The men and women were almost godlike in their austerity, which seemed promised to turn into exultation, exposed in the warmth of twilight’s welcomed encore.

“Take it away!” the stranger wretched, sounding like a diseased muskrat and apparently referring to the sunlight. “Cover me! Cover me! Damn you all to hell, someone put me in a nice dark cool place with spiders and ghouls and cruel knife collections already! Augh, I chose night for a reason!” Everyone at that moment got a strong sense of who was and wasn’t their enemy. Jeb joined Vincent in hoisting the stranger up above their heads and toting him as he thrashed to the garbage bins at the edge of the gardens, courtesy of the Waste and Rotten Scum/Rodentry/Pest Control Corporation, Inc. Inc & Inc.

He landed with a bone crunching howl into what looked like an infinite abyss, and then it was apparent that the real party could start now, maybe, without masks and even without the sustaining aid of bourbon. And lo! the people were almost surprised by how shameless they’d become. It was like the presence of God had come down and not with a sword in hand.

Jeb dared to place a hand on Vincent’s shoulder, eyes adjoined, his hair boyishly dipping down in between his eyebrows.

“I forgive you,” Vincent said. “Will you forgive me?”

“A million times over, friend.”

A light that was impartial in its gleam renewed the party, and although the dance floor was still open and the cellists began to play their sweet tunes that could rip your soul out for beauty, Vincent carried Susie up the steps of their apartment, both of them weeping, both of them conceding to each other out of some kind of unworldly delight, “You know me. I know you. You know me. I know you. And yes, yes, yes, I love you!” A great light has shined through every night and every pretense, and its charity is too great to hold on to the things that used to cover us, that used to give us our momentary ease and prosperity. For the record, Vincent never again tasted bourbon and never remembered the “incidents” that had once bound him in the fear of exposure. They’d all been exposed. He also no longer saw much need for bourbon. He didn’t even really like bourbon. Something about the classy glass vials and brown swirl used to make him feel important and sophisticated. But all that, including clubs and shops and tonics and “high life” and walks through extravagant parks, and especially masquerades hosted by the Chamber of Commerce, employed intense nausea in his spiritual faculties. He dressed like he did when he lived as a young man in rurality, letting his hair fall into his natural kinks and cowlicks, even permitting some scruff that’s usually deemed disgusting in the inner city circles.  And Susie never felt any need to satiate her loneliness by experimenting with the comfort of other men. She was known, and thus completed, and the sunlight that had made her known was an affectionate kind of sunlight. The only kind that could pierce and love at the same time.

Vincent kissed her until morning, but didn’t go on any walks in that new, scintillating day. They stayed cocooned and enraptured and felt like they could basically stay there forever.