Sniff Out

“Sniff Out”

by Mark Burr

I was holed in a bathroom in the Archstone 101 on the Upper West Side on the island our fathers bought with beads. I watched her slip the rolled up, taped up hundred dollar bill up her left nostril. In the time it took the second hand to go around the clock twice, everything she had taken out of the little, blue, plastic bag—small enough to hold a key—and dropped onto the jeweled hand mirror was gone and she reached a manicured hand out to mine.

“A little taste of the dark side, my dark marauder?” She smiled when she asked me this, her teeth were a startling: sparkling, straight, and white. So perfect and beautiful. I hated my teeth then. I fell in love with her bones—especially her skull. I pulled my own little, blue, plastic bag out of my black tuxedo jacket. It was Armani but I’m sure it was stolen—that was really all I could think about tonight, whether or not I was wearing a stolen tuxedo jacket.

“Sure.” She beamed up again and infuriated me with her perfection. She was so white and ghostly but also golden like the curls of her hair that draped over one of her shoulders. Perfect. I watched her carefully again in the ritual—it had become a certain kind of magic to me, cocaine magic. She pulled her golden hair back again, and draped it over the other shoulder before lowering her face carefully to the silver surface of the mirror, like

a doe drinking water. My face flushed a little, she made me nervous and embarrassed. But she was blonde, with perfect skin, dark eyes and so, so damaged—my favorite.

She finished her liens and dragged her fingers across her nose—when I saw the bridge of her nose and the lines of her mouth I thought of the golden ratio. She dragged me down to the cold marble floor, ancient as dirt. We sat against a crushed velvet vanity chair that was black, soft, and muted. She wanted one of my cigarettes.

“They’re strong.” I warned her while I pulled out an etched metal case, shiny as a gun from my coat pocket.

“I know.” She ran her fingers across the gold band of the filters of each cigarette before carefully choosing one, like how I’m sure she chooses her men, and gripped one that had passed her fingers’ invisible tests.

The bathroom was lined in mirrors with recessed edges. Everything glowed softly in the refracted and reflected light. The room was the epitome of crushed black velvet, this was the best room in the world right now—dark and so, so damaged—my favorite.

“Some party, huh?” she said as she lit the gold banded cigarette from my metal case. She sat on the corner of the vanity chair and fanned herself with her hands and took drags. It felt like when she moved that time didn’t. Her hands were weird and twisted like she had a story. They were covered in rings on almost every finger—a skull, a jewel, an

amethyst. They glittered like the skin on her face, glistening from sweat and the blood rushing in her head. She was high.

I picked up the rolled-up Ben Franklin bill and quickly inhaled a line like I had been drowning underwater for half my life. I did the last line and fucked with my nose before looking at her huge pupils. They were wide as quarters. “You know what, it doesn’t even burn,” I said.

She burst out laughing and chocked smoke into my face and dead ashes all over my coat. I laughed too. It turned out she was human and not some angel.

I had just bought this stolen jacket off a guy named Larry on the street. They were all probably stolen from some dry cleaners or warehouses or fell of a truck somewhere. Larry hung out around the courthouse selling Rolexes and stolen sports coats to the lawyers that were fresh out of law school that looked like shit in their cheap Sunday suits for church back in their hometowns. It was a tuxedo jacket though, not a sport coat, and made me look like I was in a high school band or conducting some silent, invisible, orchestra. Larry knew where to get some good cocaine though, not that cheap shit cut with laxatives, baby powder, or flour—and that was better than a real Armani suit. I really didn’t care where it came from.

“You’re gonna want to take that off,” she said. It was getting too hot and I was high. I lied down on the marble floor and felt the coldness of the old stone against my

ruddy skin. It reminded me of a bank I went to one time with these colossal, ornate, gilded clocks counting down every second of the workday. Tick tock tick tock tick tock.

“I hate these parties. I hate his writing and I hate his book,” I said while I twisted around on the cold, marble floor.

She looked me straight in the eye with her brilliant teeth. Smiling, “I hate him.”

I took off my shirt. It was blue, gold striped, and from Brooks Brothers. I found it at a Goodwill Store and it didn’t even look like anyone had ever worn it before. It was the color of wheat and confined me in my skin, while I tried not to speak and just listen.

“The Flower of the Moon is an absurd title for a book. What the fuck is a flower of the moon anyway?” she choked out over smoke and sweat.

“It’s a metaphor. A poetic construct, X of Y.” She interrupted me then; her eyes looked fevered and wild, feral.

She free-lanced for The Voice, an independent paper usually found shoved under benches and between couches at coffee shops. “I know that, I’m not stupid.”

God, I was so in love with her right then, hook, line, and sinker. Cupid shot me straight in my cocaine heart—it pounded hard and I could hear it in my ears. The beat was a double time dissonant timpani beat. “You probably should have gone to law school.” I

hated my life too, I wrote for an even shittier paper than her. “What the point?” I clicked my teeth together and heard the bones grind. “Like this party—a book party? What a joke. Everyone here is just kissing his ass.”

“No shit, my dark marauder. You have a degree in realization?” She dragged on her cigarette and blew out perfumed plumes. They smelled sweet, but pungent, and burning.

“No, do you?” I smiled, my own inferior teeth showed and were numb from the cocaine drip that lined and coated my mouth with every passing second.

“No. I’m really a model,” she joked. She smiled and I hated my own teeth even more and closed my mouth with shame. I decided I’d probably die for her—that she would be the death of me and it still wouldn’t be enough. She deserved more than I could ever give her. I heard my teeth grind together again.

She finished breaking up some more parallel lines on the mirrored vanity table in the bathroom. I sprayed some of the cologne and perfume, set out for guests, in the air. This was the sort of place where other people went through the trouble of making sure you didn’t stink up the place. I could smell bergamot, patchouli, and musk. It drowned out the scent of smoke. She snuffed out her cigarette on the vanity chair, burning, ruining it, and looked even more perfect in my eyes. Oh God, how I wanted to cry then. She was so imperfectly perfect and so, so damaged—my favorite.

“Maybe we should kill him?” I smiled, close mouthed, when I suggested the notion.

“We should.”

“How, though?”

She paused and arched her back into the chair—her eyes were fierce and on fire again. “We could convince him to kill himself.”

“And how do we do that?” I asked.

“Just write ‘Your words are trite garbage,’” she said. I licked my lips. I couldn’t feel my mouth anymore and words flew out like bats flying out of an ancient cave. I couldn’t feel the words—they had no meaning, they were only numbness, only the feeling of not burning. They felt like oil.

“Your characters are flat and unnervingly annoying,” I said.

“You should kill yourself.” We both let out obnoxious hyena laughs. The delivery of every sentence and word we said was dry and serious. She was just as quick and clever—my favorite.

“We’re both going to rot in Hell, you know” I let her know.

But she just smiled. I don’t really know if she could even hear me over the sound of

her own heartbeat. All she did was start taking off her dress.