Borderline

Borderline

The sky above was a starless obsidian. The only source of light emanated from the quivering glow of the fluorescent neon that hung over the doorway and a lonesome, beat up streetlight across the road, briefly illuminating the drunken faces who walked past it. The line had begun to grow, extending down past the dark plastered walls and around the corner where colorful pills were swallowed and thick lines of chemicals would be discreetly snorted off metro-cards. The air was heavy with the thumping of the bass and sickly sweet fumes, courtesy of the neighboring assembly plant that never seemed to fully dissipate.

Daemon glanced up, scanning through the contents of those queuing before doors opened. Tonight was teaming with a balanced mixture of college students and regulars alike. The college students were easily discernible, dressed in collared shirts and tight dresses in spite of the late November chill, all of whom chattering loudly and reeking of cheap liquor. He rolled his eyes at a pair of wiry boys attempting to hit on a bachelorette party, resorting to promises of free drinks to keep a one-sided conversation going. Unsurprisingly, the majority of the line took an approach more commonly worn at the club, opting for vibrant outfits with mesmerizing patterns. Armed with platform boots for stomping and flamboyant sunglasses to hide their pupils, they waited in an impatient quietness, eyes glued towards the doors of The Void. Daemon spotted Jax in line, talking in hushed tones with a fraternity group towards the edge of the building. He narrowed his eyes as he witnessed the subtle exchange, presumably the usual gram for a couple bills. Jax had a talent for sniffing out newbies to the area, preying on their indiscretion by supplying a baggie of questionable quality for a premium. He shook hands and finished with his transaction. Evidentially thrilled by the gloating smile he wore and strode toward the front of the line, arm supporting the waist of his hooker of the week.

The dealer pulled up next to Daemon while propping his date against the doorframe.“This rate I’ll retire by 40, poor chumps bought a gram for the price of an eighth.” he said, leering while the girl clutched onto the wall next to him. Her hazy blue eyes were wild and her arms were wedged into the brick, determined to hold her body upright while gravity tried to say otherwise.

Daemon looked away and nodded, disinterested in starting a conversation with the man before what promised to be a long night. “If your clients don’t retire you first, the way you rip them off”. Jax threw his head back and snorted a spasming whole-body laugh that made the first few in line snicker at the unattractive display. His whore regained her consciousness for a moment to feign a laugh, no doubt in feeble efforts towards a tip that wouldn’t come.

“What, this crowd?”, he gestured to the line, “They couldn’t walk in a straight line let alone try something with me”.

“Yeah right”, he thought to himself while it took everything in his power to avoid rolling his eyes, he distinctly remembered Jax getting the shit kicked out of him behind the dumpsters in the back for selling joints filled with catnip to a group of German out-of-towners. Five ten and as lanky as they come, Jax didn’t possess what one might call an intimidation factor, however, in his mid thirties and equipped with the speech of a used car salesman, the man had a way of talking out of his ass that could put any other con artist to shame. That on top of the swath of connections he possessed made him a very useful associate, especially as Daemon had known him for quite a few years now and bailed him out of plenty of hostile interactions with the other bouncers.

“Anyways can you get me in a couple early, the lovely Cleo here has to hit the pisser and I gotta pick up forty bucks from your DJ before his set starts”, Jax asked as the girl nodded dreamily. “Can’t do it” Daemon replied, feeling a bemused sense of satisfaction in denying his request “Manager mentioned you by name since you used that excuse last time to fuck in the handicap stalls”. Jax smiled broadly again, clearly trying to show off a new set of teeth as the old one had started to rot away from excessive cocaine use and a frightening lack of care. “Fair enough, when are Nero and Ced gettin’ here? They still owe me a fiver a piece for the fights last night”. Among his many avenues of business and for a steep interest percentage, Jax would provide the role of an illegal bookie, no money upfront. System worked great for gambling addicts until the Russian ex-special forces he’d contract out kneecap you for late payments. “Nero and Ana should be getting here soon, Cedric is already inside behind the bar” he said while picking at the scabs across his knuckles, anxious to wrap up the conversation.

Instead Jax snapped his fingers, as though suddenly remembering something of great importance “You want and I can get it out of their cut from that business last weekend, got the cash right here” as he took a fat crumpled envelope out of his faux leather jacket pocket and thumbed through hundred dollar bills. “Not here!” Daemon hissed through clenched teeth, instinctively cracking both of his thumbs and forefingers, a habit he had since childhood, “Not the time, thought I told you that last time”. Jax placed the envelope back into his pocket and raised both hands up in sarcastic defense, “Musta’ forgot kid, well I’m goin’ to get a bite for now, we’ll talk tomorrow at your place if we don’t see ya again tonight”′ as he and his tranced escort disappeared into the night, stepping past bands of homeless panhandling and carts selling food only capable of being stomached by the exceptionally intoxicated.

Daemon sat back on his uneven stool and swept back his overgrown mop of dark hair, relieved to have another moment to himself and mentally scheduling a haircut appointment at the earliest convenience. He took a look at the beat up Casio he’d received from Nero several Christmases ago. What his younger brother lacked in good decision-making he tried to compensate with a shoplifted Christmas gift every other year. “Guess it’s that time”, he concluded with displeasure as the dial read that it was just seven minutes shy of midnight. As he went to drop the black velvet rope from its scuffed bronze clasp he looked up impulsively, gauging last minute crowd numbers and was met with intense eye contact coming from a figure in the middle of the line before they quickly flitted towards the street. They belonged to a petite woman, probably early to mid thirties, wearing dark trousers ripped at both knees and an oversized black band crewneck.

He took her in, an odd mixture of amusement and irritation spreading throughout his body. Practiced as he was by now, she may as well have been wearing her badge on a chain around her neck for him to see. When he was first hired at the club, his predecessor Jaimie, a stocky hispanic man, taught him how to spot narcs with an impressive success rate, the club being a hotbed for both drug dealing and consuming activities. In his rich Spanish accent which Daemon often had to fill in the blank for, he’d tell him “Man just watch for a couple seconds, the cops always give themselves away the more you watch”. It took Daemon many nights and several snarky comments to what evidently were simply socially awkward patrons to figure out what Jaimie had actually meant. There was a predictable science to human behavior and no matter how hard someone tried, there were always signs when a person was trying too hard to blend in. Jaimie had cracked the code and now he paid his power forward. Between the billowing sweatshirt, likely concealing a gun and cuffs in combination with the body language; the constant touching of her hair, the seemingly casual looks canvassing the area, this had to be one of her first times undercover.

He’d made a mental note to chat with Jax about talking to him during club hours. Daemon had gotten word from a reliable source a year back that he’d been assigned rotating police tails due to a burglary ring he was “allegedly” associated. This group had “supposedly” pulled a B&E downtown, ripping off a wealthy financial analyst who’d been embezzling hundreds of thousands from his firm. How could they be blamed when the dipshit hid most of it in a compartment under the tiled bathroom floor of his lavish highrise, almost begging to be snatched. It most definitely wasn’t their fault they’d beaten the detectives to him, their tip off about the secret niche courtesy of the property manager gravely indebted to Jax for a series of poorly placed boxing bets. As for the one Jax mentioned, a raid pulled on the home of some real estate titan while he and his family vacationed in Europe. He studied the face of the woman in line who had suddenly become deeply fascinated in the yellow tipped dreads of the metalhead in front of her. She was at least a prettier detective to look at than the absurdly dressed man with the hooked nose from a few months prior. Built as solid as a linebacker and stuffed into a skin tight magenta button down and green parachute pants, regulars and college students joined forces to laugh him out line and sulking off to wherever his unmarked van was nearby.

Despite Daemon making her, she stayed in line, determined to leave with more than her misguided predecessor. “Good luck”, he thought, they hadn’t been able to trace anything back to them at this point and the only reason he was a person of interest was because of the property manager who decided to squeal immediately after realizing he wouldn’t receive a cut for his information. Luckily, it was only he who was mentioned to the police as he met with the manager in the prep for the job and as always, he planned for all eventualities. He dutifully provided CCTV footage of him taking inventory of the kegs in the walk-in (conveniently void of a time-stamp) and a sworn testimony from several of his coworkers stating his presence at the time of the robbery. It was unspoken at this point amongst the club employees to provide a vague recollection of one’s presence if any law enforcement came asking questions. This had already happened several times to the various sketchy characters who’ve come and gone over the past two years he’d worked there and by now, the staff had the routine down pat. Daemon recollected himself and breathed in a deep sigh as he finally dropped the rope and leaned forward for the crowd to hear, saying curtly, “Alright IDs out, if you can’t stand on your own then don’t bother trying to get in”. The line booed him in response.

The Void had been an institution in the heart of the garment district since the 80s, offering a place of refuge to those who got pleasure from mixing large amounts of uppers with bass so loud your ears would almost definitely suffer long term damage. The building itself was an abandoned textile factory, sturdily constructed from soot-tinged brick and now covered in sharpie signatures, graffiti, and a copious amount of phallic drawings. On the inside, a black that rivaled deep space covered every surface, earning the club its name. Splatters of bioluminescent paint had been carelessly tossed across the ceiling with pale blue LED light strips that coated the vast dance floor. The DJ nook, nestled in the remnants of a long-abandoned office space, lay perched at the summit of a precarious, rust-ridden metal staircase that would make any inspector’s head spin. From here their resident DJ, DJ Ryot (or otherwise known as Eric) would preside over the crowd below. A mass of writhing bodies hypnotized by the beat, the mob would crash against itself like ocean waves against a jetty. With lights strobing fiercely and the acrid smell of sweat and marijuana filling the air, regulars would open up the pit, clashing with fists and elbows to work off the excess rage from everyday life.

College students and out-of-towners would take shelter near the bar and fork over the twenty dollars for a vodka redbull while ducking and weaving through the mass of limbs thrown. Daemon would watch all of this action unfold almost every night of the week, frequently breaking up brawls from moshing gone too far and busting couples who would blow each other in the bathrooms. Occasionally when a frat kid or a wook would get too mouthy, he’d have to take a more hands on approach. This usually involved tossing them out onto the sidewalk or, in some particularly raucous cases, knocking out a couple teeth or slamming a head or two against the bar counter. For the most part though, the job was pretty straightforward and tolerable. For one he enjoyed the people watching, seeing a person at every stage in life and how they’d cope with the miserable hands they’d be dealt, constantly reminding him how much worse life could be. Maybe it was a group of newly divorced men in the corner nailing lines of Jax’s shitty coke cut with vitamin B or a pair of college girls who’d had one too many tequila shots, clawing and kicking each other until they’d get pulled apart. Everyone who’d end up at The Void seemed to have the same end goal, which was always escaping reality in progressively inventive and fucked up ways.

Daemon also liked the people he worked with enough; the manager, a round Persian man named Amir, would often boast a button down shirt minus the buttons, pair it with tall heeled, snake-skin boots to give the impression of something over five foot five, and apply an ungodly amount of cologne to attract the college girls he could often be seen harassing. A favorite game of Amir’s would be to pick a fight, usually with the largest, most aggressive person he could find, and then when it was time to dispense with words, have Daemon throw him out of the club. On one occasion, walking up to a tattooed behemoth who evidently had thrown a smirking glance upon his entrance, Daemon swore Amir winked at him as he stalked forward to confront his alleged assailant. But on the upside, Amir never bounced a paycheck and didn’t seem to care about any rumors concerning the extracurriculars of his employees, or at least never mentioned it.

Back behind the bar, usually fueled on psychedelics and moving furiously to fulfill the influx of drink orders was Cedric. He and Cedric had met back in middle school, both wild and unruly, terrorizing each teacher until eventually placed in a remedial course separate from the rest of the school. A course they’d often sneak out of courtesy of their supervisor Mr. Richards, an aging, toad-faced gym teacher who was prone to long naps and lingering trips to the front office to flirt with the unsightly nurse. Outside of school and havoc to wreak, the two would take up near the train tracks nearly a mile from the school, breaking glass bottles against storage buildings and mooning alarmed train conductors. It was here they ran into Jax for the first time, a small-time marijuana dealer and occasional community college student. The two had found a half smoked cigarette and were trying to use a school magnifying glass they’d borrowed to light it when the man approached them.

“Ain’t y’all supposed to be in school” he called over to them from across the tracks as they tried to repurpose the afternoon daylight.

Cedric hollered back to him “School holiday” he lied without skipping a beat, “They decided to give us off for some shit with teacher appreciation”. Jax had chuckled with appreciation at their obvious truancy,

“Course they did kid, anyways, I’m running late for some errands but I have to meet someone here in ten minutes to drop off this bag, y’all mind doin’ it for me. I’ll pay ya five bucks each?”.

They put their heads together to discuss, “Ten and you have a deal”. He stepped across the tracks and tossed them the bag and a wadded up twenty dollar bill,

“Pleasure doing business, I see y’all around and I might have more errands I’d pay ya for”. This led the two of them to start running product for Jax on the weekends, trolling for unlocked cars on the way back from their deliveries and howling with laughter when they’d be chased away by cursing business men. Cedric had been a part of both he and Nero’s life for well over a decade and was essentially the third brother among them. He hadn’t seemed to be himself of late though, between the near daily acid drops and the underground boxing matches he’d participated in between bar shifts, he seemed a far more tense and paranoid individual . Regardless he was still Daemon’s best friend and provided much needed support when one of their jobs required muscle. At six foot five and two hundred and twenty pounds, his physical presence alone had proven vital in several operations, namely when the group had been cornered by several security guards on the loading docks of a midtown hotel. Coming up the rear from the employee staircase and out onto the docks, his colossal frame, furnished in brass knuckles and a ski mask, the guards had suddenly decided they weren’t paid enough to deal with the threat he posed.

The club tonight was trembling, scared by its own hedonism. The bass was pumping so hard the sound waves were visible and the crowd thrashing in a rare form only known to the rare Friday night. Daemon rotated off the door and now patrolled near the dance floor by the corner of the bar, scouring for any transgressions worthy of his attention. A girl with a shaved head and tribal tattoos up both sides of her neck threw her elbows from side to side accidentally bashing a college boy in the side of the head. Daemon chuckled under his breath and turned to the left and spotted a man in his fifties who had a burmese python around his neck, its natural yellow pattern lit up to a brilliant purple hue as the lasers began contributing to the chaos breaking out in the ancient facility. To his chagrin, the undercover woman from the line was still there and had taken up with a group of regulars dancing, flailing their limbs across the room in a sort of ritualistic possession. He appreciated the commitment to the guise and almost pitied the effort that’d go in vain. “Maybe she’s not here for me”, he mused internally though unconvinced. However there were quite a few shady characters that show up here on a weekly basis and he wouldn’t put it past the police to be investigating something totally separate. Possible but still unlikely.

Daemon looked up towards the door and spotted Nero and Ana, both very tipsy and stumbling straight towards him. “What’s up you beautiful motherfucker” Ana half slurred and half yelled out as Nero planted a kiss on Amir’s forehead, the paunchy manger cursing him in Farsi as the college girls he’d been bringing drinks to laughed at his tantrum. “Just living out my dream of becoming a bouncer, nothing new”, he responded with loudly, attempting to talk over the music while Nero had now started giving Amir what looked like a noogie. Ana laughed as she pried Nero off of Amir who’s face had grown red as he hobbled after his unfortunate prey. While she might’ve looked delicate, as someone who’d been on the receiving end of her wrath more than once he knew she had a kind of inexplicable strength. Ana was olive-skinned, with a new hair color every month (this month was platinum), and eyes a shade of blue you could only find miles offshore. She was dressed in a leather Japanese moto jacket, dark ripped jeans, and expensive boots that Nero had lifted from a trendy store at the mall for her last birthday. He and Nero had met her back during their rave days; at an underground parking garage on the southside. She had attempted to steal Nero’s phone when he caught her and offered to remain quiet to the backpack full of phones she carried in exchange for her number. Two days later Daemon walked into the living room and saw the two of them desecrating the couch he’d take naps on after long shifts.

“Looks like it’s gonna be another slow night” Nero shouted as he gestured to the crammed floor, legs in a wide stance to keep balance, “Bummer, guess we’ll have to get drunk to liven up the place”.

“Another couple drinks and you’ll end up pissing yourself again and sleeping in the bathtub” Daemon replied coolly in his brother’s ear despite knowing that was probably imminent either way.

Nero grinned, “C’mon gimme some credit, the amount I had to drink that night I was just happy I didn’t end up at the drunk tank like you every other weekend in high school. Daemon suppressed a smile, and pulled Nero in closer to avoid being overheard “Get it together, you know we got something coming our way early tomorrow so make this drink your last then fuck off back to the apartment and sleep”.

Nero fake pouted “Take it down a couple notches big bro, do I not look like the picture of pure focus and athleticism” Ana smacked him on the shoulder, “ Don’t stress Dad, I’ll make sure Michael Jordan here sleeps on a mattress tonight”.

“Thank you for babysitting, by the way, eight o’clock by the bar, another narc showed up so stay alert” Daemon directed Ana with his eyes to the undercover cop who was now rubbing the arm of some poor college kid who must’ve thought this was the luckiest night of his life. Ana immediately snapped out of her breezy demeanor, replacing it with grim frown as she surveyed the scene. “Not sure she’s here for us but can’t hurt to be cautious” Daemon said skeptically, “Just do me a favor and steer clear of Jax until tomorrow”. Ana acknowledged with a short nod “No worries, I’ll corral Nero in fifteen and scoot” and scurried off after Nero who made a beeline for the pit that had just opened. Daemon watched as Nero entered the anarchic fray, shoving a couple of regulars who reciprocated with force.

Despite only being two years apart, Daemon often still felt the responsibility of guardian to Nero as he had when they were forced to live out of foster care. Nero more so took after their mother, with his near ink black hair and the slim, graceful build of a dancer, he moved through life with a careless ease that Daemon wished he himself could adopt. He also was by far the more social of the two, and more often than not, Nero took it upon himself to entertain a crowd while he brooded from behind. Daemon took after his father, with a square jaw and broad shoulders, he was frequently labeled as the ‘strong and silent type’ by college girls who’d pester him sometimes. He yearned for the days when the four of them were still a family, cramped together in a one bedroom apartment but happy nonetheless. He felt an intense surge of anger that would often shadow these thoughts. So much time wasted without them, and for what?

What had started as a city-wide civil protest against corruption and rising crime rates had inevitably turned violent when the police department were instructed to deploy tear gas and billy clubs to disperse the rabble. Their parents had gotten caught in the middle on their way home and were trampled in the crowd surge along with many others, leaving Daemon and Nero on their own. Crime since that day had only grown worse, the city a glorified warzone, only with more fast food options available, and the irony of committing felonies with relative frequency wasn’t lost on him. Life was survival, in the foster homes with so many cliques and bullies and in the real world with forces much worse. If circumstances dictated they steal from those who’ve hoarded money and power; those shielding themselves from the scum outside their ivory-tower, then so be it. Nothing would come between him and providing a better life for his new family, one he refused to see lost again.