Page 42 of Disco Witches of Fire Island

Joe stopped laughing. “Are you serious?”

“Yeah,” she said, still giggling until she registered Joe wasn’t laughing too. “I mean no, Joe, it didn’t really happen. It was just a weird window reflection, my mind playing tricks on me. That summer I just needed to believe in something magical, like Dory did. If magic was real, than maybe my mother’s death wasn’t an ending. You know what I mean?”

Joe thought about it, and there he was, like always: Elliot. If Gladiator Man was a ghost, then Elliot might be able to return as well. If a dying man’s photograph could talk, then maybe Elliot could send him a message. If there was such a thing as Disco Witches, then maybe there would be some meaning to the awfulness of the world and the AIDS epidemic. “I think I get it now,” he said. He lowered his voice even more. “I need to tell you something else.” He took a breath, ready, finally, to talk. “About two years ago the only guy I ever loved died, and I’ve been struggling to get over it. That’s one of the reasons I had to get out of Philly.

“I didn’t know,” Elena said. “I’m so sorry. Was it …?”

She didn’t finish the sentence, but instead looked down at the ground, worried. Joe wondered if she was assuming he was infected too.

He nodded. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m not positive. I got tested nine months ago. And I never have unsafe sex, so I should be okay.”

“Well, that’s good,” Elena said, looking up.

“Elliot and I were always safe too. Sometimes I wish we weren’t. I know I shouldn’t say that, but that’s how I feel. I loved him so much. Watching him at the end … I just wished I could leave too.” Joe swallowed hard. The alcohol was making it even harder not to break down into tears when he told her about Elliot.

“It’s good he cared enough to be careful for you,” Elena said. “Not everyone is that lucky.” Something had shifted inside her. The closeness Joe had felt toward Elena just moments before had fallen away. Her warmness had chilled.

But he kept going. For the first time he thought he might be able to tell someone the complete truth. “What really happened was …” He scooted a little closer, lowering his voice. “We weren’t exactly …togetherwhen he died. I mean, I wasn’t there, because—” His voice caught in his throat.

Elena gently touched his leg as she bit her lower lip and scrunched her eyes sympathetically. The warmth was back. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “Was it his family? They tried to stop you from seeing him, didn’t they?”

“No, you don’t understand,” Joe snapped, annoyed she couldn’t read his mind. He took a deep breath, hoping to stem the tears, but the Jäger shots were making it impossible to control himself. “I wasn’t there because—” He gasped for air as his shoulders shook and the tears began to fall. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t tell her.

Elena pulled him to her shoulder and stroked his hair. “Oh, baby,” she said. “It’s okay. It makes total sense you’d think your roommates were witches. We all need magic to heal this shit.”

Joe wiped his face with the bottom of his T-shirt and sat up. “I am so not gonna get laid looking like a fucking crybaby,” he said. “I definitely need more cocktails.”

Elena smiled, keeping her hand on his knee. “What about just heading to bed and trying again tomorrow? You’ll have your pick of this island with those gorgeous eyebrows.”

“Not so much. Also, if I don’t try tonight, it might be weeks before I get the time off again.” Joe stood up and swayed a little.

“But you’ll be okay, right?” Elena sounded like a stern but caring field hockey coach.

Joe nodded. “Hey, you’ll keep all that stuff secret, right?”

“Sure,” Elena said. “You have my word. We’ll keep each other’s secrets.”

Joe nodded in agreement. After he hugged her goodbye, he headed toward the Promethean, feeling her eyes follow him the whole way.

25.Sentinels

“Disco Witches must stay open to the wisdom of the Great Goddess Mother from wherever and whomever it comes.”

—Disco Witch Manifesto #56

The line forming outside the Promethean vibrated with a primordial energy. The staid and sober had gone to bed hours before. At oneAMthe hard-core partiers had only just awakened from their disco naps. Howie Fishbein sat on a nearby bench, his eyes fixed so intently on the club that it appeared as if he were waiting for it to lift off its foundation and fly across the bay.

His mind, however, drifted back to thoughts of poor Lucho and the tragedy that had befallen him. Despite Max’s assurance to Lenny that what had happened wasn’t his fault, he’d never fully forgiven himself. Howie knew Lucho’s death had contributed to Lenny’s periodic agnosticism. Couldn’t he remember how they’d had far more successes than failures over the years? How they had guided so many innocent lives—both the chosen and unchosen—to safety through danger-filled summers?

There was that beautiful young Spaniard, Alberto, whom they had saved just in time before his motorbike drove off the end of the Provincetown pier. It was in the middle of the night, and Alberto, drugged-out on horse tranquilizer, had been told by a devastatinglyhandsome egregore that it was a special motorbike that could ride across the waves. “We shall escape together, and you no longer will be in pain,” the egregore had whispered. “If you love me, you’ll trust me.”

If it hadn’t been for the Disco Witches’ sacred boogie, they never would have been able to control the tides that evening, causing them to ebb nearly thirty minutes early, and fast enough that Alberto’s motorbike landed safely in the wet sand, and at the perfect spot for the Disco Witches to find him and guide him through the rest of his summer. How strange were their Goddess-given powers. The Disco Witches didn’t always know how or why their dances worked to save these young men’s lives, but Max always said when faced with a new challenge, “Just direct your mind toward the heart of the holy lover as you dance, and the Great Goddess Mother will take care of the way.” When things worked, he’d write it down in the spell book. When it didn’t, they’d try something else.

Alberto went on to great success as a fine artist, as well as founding a wonderful pet adoption service for animals left behind by those who had died from AIDS. And what about all the others they had helped in big and small ways? Had Lenny forgotten them? Of course, when the plague years began, it had made their work harder in identifying those under mortal threat. So many young people with hearts full of sadness, living on the brink.

But what of Joe? Was he in some other kind of mortal danger? Howie couldn’t stop thinking of how Joe first described seeing the Gladiator Man. Was there any way, despite the rubric, that they could be missing something? Would they fail Joe like they’d failed Lucho? Or was there another chosen one they had totally overlooked? And if there was, what power would the witches have to help anyway? With barely a quorum of their kind left alive, what would the remaining Disco Witches become? Simply a useless handful of nostalgic costume queens weighed down by mourning and false magic?

“Oh, please, Great Goddess Mother,” Howie whispered to the stars, “please, give us some clarity—”

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