Page 20 of Disco Witches of Fire Island

“We’re in our first Saturn Returns, mi amor,” Max had told him during that metamorphic night of dancing, his beautiful brown skin gleaming with sweat, his eyes lit up from magic mushrooms. “The significance of us is limitless!”

Howie was so desperately in love with him, but by the end of August, despite a summer of discovering and increasing their magical collaboration, Max told Howie the actual limits of their limitlessness. “Come come, don’t cry, mi corazón,” he said. “Neither of us is made for just one love. We are amantes sagrados, the children of Dionysius and Diana—we are fire! We must burn, mi amor! We must burn and love and burn and love! We will change the world!”

Young Howie’s heart broke for the first time that day. But he knew he would rather be proximate to Max’s brilliant light than to search for some lesser, consistent affection. From that point on, he and Max maintained their non-romantic, but passionate, mentor–mentee relationship and eventually, as with the other members of their coven, became family. Howie couldn’t (didn’t want to) imagine his life without Max.

More mental fireflies of Max flashed across Howie’s brain: the night they cast that first spell on the dance floor of the A-House, the discovering of the other blessed ones in their midst, the foundation of their dance coven, their inaugural sacred gathering in the salt marsh at the end of Commercial Street, Max’s nine tortured nights in the dunes composing the sacred Disco Witch Manifesto, all their struggles and triumphs in the wild sixties, and the move to Fire Island in the seventies, where they became island protectors, moving into 44 and¼Picketty Ruff. So many years of love, sex, and magic until that darkest of days seven years prior when Max brokedown sobbing as he showed Howie the crimson lesion on his stomach.

“I have so much yet to do, mi amor, so much,” he’d said. “How will the earth ever forgive me for leaving it too soon?”

Max had been holding on, but how different he looked from the photo the last time Howie had seen him at the autumn equinox. The bittersweet irony of their chosen dance track: “I Will Survive.” But would he? Would anyone? Howie felt those prescient eels of impending doom slither around his gut again. Did the omens indeed foretell something devastating was in the works? If Max could not rally and get out to the island, then they would have an impossible task ahead of them.Without Max we are nothing.

Howie kissed the photo and returned it to the shelf. He then went into the bathroom, flipped on the light, and began to stare at his all-too-human face in the mirror. There they still were, the sagging jowls, those thinning lips, and the eye bags bulging like little worn-out pocketbooks. That he would still be vain at such a moment made him shake his head.The young heart thinks youth will last forever. They believe old farts just appear out of thin air full of wrinkles and regret.

Was that why Joe’s friend Ronnie resented Howie so much? Did he blame their generation for this plague? Did he mistake them for the Darkness? Or was Howie just an awful reminder of the winters yet to come?

Didn’t Ronnie understand? The more one fights the inevitable, the more painful it is. Howie knew that all too well.

“Are we just wasting our time,” he asked his reflection in the mirror, “pretending we will ever be able to make magic again?”

After one long, deep sigh, he switched off the light.

11.Opening Night

“Disco Witches always have their dancing shoes ready—just in case.”

—Disco Witch Manifesto #5

“We got just two hours until this bar opens,” Vince said, stepping out of the liquor closet with two bottles of Johnny Walker Black. “I need to run over to Mulligan’s Grocery to pay our tab and grab more limes. Elena, darlin’, would it bother your decorating if I borrowed wee Joe for a bit?”

Elena’s eyebrows raised in amused disbelief as they often did around Vince. “Aye-aye, Captain … darlin’.”

“Much thanks. Now, Joseph, I hope you’re clear on the order of the speed rack like I taught you. Left to right: rum, vodka, gin, brandy, whiskey, bourbon, tequila, triple sec, vermouth! Got it?”

“Yeah, Vince,” Joe muttered.

“You better. I’m testing you when I’m back.”

As soon as Vince had left, Joe’s body slid down the wall into a head-buried crouch. “He’s going to kill me.”

“No he’s not,” Elena said as she affixed a large, desiccated starfish to the old-fashioned fishnet on the back wall.

“He will,” Joe said. “I was gonna stay up all night cramming theMr. Boston, but I fell asleep in the middle of the Gin Rickey.Nothing stuck. The only cocktails I have memorized are the martini and Sex on the Beach. That takes rum, right?”

“Vodka with peach schnapps,” she corrected.

“Figures I’d screw up anything to do with sex. He’s going to fire me.”

Elena offered Joe a sympathetic pouty face. “It’s okay, hon. It’ll work out fine. Dory loves you, and that’s the only important thing.”

“Thanks for saying that.” Joe took in Elena’s decorations. The plain walls were now draped with old netting, green glass balls, and artificial fish. Vintage photos of whales and naked sailors hung under each fixture. “By the way, you did a kick-ass job with this place. You’ve got a great eye.”

Elena sighed and readjusted the space between a plastic lobster and a giant seahorse. “This bar is immune to a makeover. It’s like trying to make Anita Bryant look like Cyndi Lauper.”

“That’s not true. It really looks great.” Joe thought how much Elena had changed in only a few days. Her hardness had been replaced with a sweetness and vulnerability. Every so often he’d see her stop what she was doing and stare into the air with a melancholy look on her face. Did Elena have an Elliot somewhere too? Or some other kind of heartbreak? He was about to broach the topic, when Vince burst through the door with the small crate of limes.

“Have you been practicing,” Vince shouted, “or yabbering like a lazy gobshite?”

Before Joe could respond, Elena interrupted. “You lucked out with this one, Vince. He’s like the Boris Becker of bartending.” She winked at Joe. “I will let you twogobshites—whatever the hell that means—get to whatever you’re doing next.”

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