So Deep and Dark

Everyone is shouting in different languages and I can't see ten feet in front of me. The smell is off though, there's not much of it. Fog machine is the only thing I can think of, but it doesn't make much sense. I see the orange life of cigars.

Porter takes my arm. "I wanna show you something." He weaves me through the hazy crowd of olive skin and hoarse laughter. Clinking of coins, glasses, and every other person is shaking somebody's hand. How can so many people make footsteps so silent?

We are front of a door, so deep and dark a red it looks black. Porter smiles at me. "What?" I ask. "You'll see," he tells me. He knocks on the door.

Nothing happens. He knocks again. It's a code—knock knock knock... knock knock—and he waits for something to happen. Nothing does. So he tries again. And again. "I don't care," I say, and I turn, but he grabs my arm again in the same place and this time it hurts. "No," he insists. "No, it's not."

He's banging on the door now, one blood vessel away from kickin it down. The pounding is so fierce and close in my head that neither of us realize the room has quieted. The smoke has settled, the clinks have stopped, and everyone's hands are at their side. They give us a solemn, judgmental look. Nobody told him, I can hear them think, isn't he the pathetic one.

A dark man—dark in his skin, dark in his clothes, dark in his eyes and air—walks up to us. He places his hand gently on Porter's arm, where he had placed his on mine. "I'm sorry, sir," the man says. "I must ask you to leave."

"We just got here."

"I'm sorry, sir. I must ask you to leave."

"I need to show my friend—"

"I'm sorry, sir—"

"No!" Somehow it gets more quiet. Porter lowers his voice. "No, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, look. What, I don't understand what's happening? Why isn't it working? What's different?" The man looks at him, and then at me. I'm not sure if I should say anything. What is there to say?

"I'm sorry, sir," he says. "I must ask you to leave."

Porter, defeated, hangs his head and walks away. "Let's go," he says. I start to follow him but before my second step the man says, "You are allowed to stay." Porter is furious, red, out of breath, out of answers. He glares at me and I've never felt so tall. I don't say anything, I do not move. I simply wait for him to leave.

The man opens the door for me and I step inside.