By Nexus standards, The Zodiac Club is a predictable place. On any given night, the crowd wants its whiskey straight, its coffee black and its absinthe served the way nature and the distiller intended.
The Zodiac is Beat. Not beat like "beaten." Not like some crazy whipped cream stuff or stomped-on thing. Beat like Beatific. Like "Cool, man. Way cool." And though conversation is always intense, it is conducted at a murmur with only the occasional oratorical outburst of "Yes!" addressed to the universe at large. By common agreement, dress is black. Black for the mourning of a lost innocence, or maybe because the act of breathing, the very fact of existence is so all-consuming that the wearer has no time for the lesser fineries of fashionable dress.
Tonight of all nights, The Zodiac suits Malody. When she steps up to perform she melts into the blackness. Head down, her dark hair hides her face. Hands behind her back, a black sweater and black tights conceal every glimmer of flesh. At the first stroke of an arrhythmic bongo, she flings back her head and shouts, "Broken!" To the jangled notes of discordant piano, her limbs jerk like those of a tangled marionette. She recites.
"Broken steps on broken stones
Broken words on broken phones
Broke connections fill with static
Broken syntax fill the attic
Blood from broken time and space
Spatters a clock with a broken face
Broken cries for help past hopin'
Lord, I'm chokin'
Broken"
Having fallen to the floor, Malody rises. She exits to the sound of polite applause. Patrons cry in hissing whispers, "Yes!" and "Say it, sister!"
And they all snap their fingers, popping to the rhythm of the Beat.
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