THE YELLOW DOOR

SILVIA MORENO-GARCIA

 

 

Silvia’s story plays on the theme of gaming as an addiction, and for some this is certainly a reality. However, as you will see this is a weird tale, an otherworldly piece. It’s not so much the game that should give you pause for thought here, as the soup.

 

 

IN CHINATOWN, WHEN Chinatown was vibrant, lit bright with electric signs and buzzing with neon. A garish, delightful urban haven for the night moths. The Bamboo Palace and Ming’s and the Terrace are gone. And of course, The Yellow Door is gone, too.

It wasn’t much of anything, The Yellow Door. At least, from the outside. You couldn’t even get to it without very specific directions. Which was, of course, part of the allure. Part of the reason why we ventured there in the first place.

It was located in the middle of a long, narrow alleyway, tucked around the corner from a busy street, far from the vendors who hawked dried fish and shrimp in the daytime; away from the late-night restaurants with their fake golden pagodas or the shops with geese hanging at the window. That first time we walked there we couldn’t find it.

“Maybe you got it wrong,” Carrie told Jean Baptiste and Jean Baptiste shook his head.

“No. I don’t have it wrong,” he said.

“Who told you about this place again?” Carrie asked.

“James Winters. The law students like to come here.”

“Winters is a candyass,” Carrie said, frowning.

“Maybe he is,” Kendall said, “But I want to play.”

“We should go home,” Carrie replied. “I’m tired.”

He was very handsome, Roger Kendall. Tall and thin, with a practiced air of mockery always upon his face. His hands were those of a pianist, though he played poorly; the fingers long and elegant. On his right hand he always wore a simple little silver ring with an onyx stone that had belonged to his grandfather and was reckoned lucky. I admired Kendall’s taste and I’d spent two months trying to find a similar stone for a modest price, but everything was out of my range. Unlike Kendall I did not come from a wealthy family. My clothes were not fashionable, my shoes a tad worn.

“Go then,” Kendall said.

“It’s a bad area,” Carrie muttered, as if that might deter Kendall. He was fearless, stubborn, magnificent, wild. He knew every joint and every eatery and every club in town, and he was a bit offended that someone had not bothered to tell him about this game parlour. The Yellow Door. He came here because he was a completist and he could not abide that someone knew of a den he hadn’t tried; because he had to taste everything there was.

“What do I care?” he said. “Run back and hail a cab if you want.”

As he spoke he took out a cigarette and his lighter. It was then that some piece of glass or metal reflected the blooming flame, catching our attention so that we turned our heads and found the yellow door.

It was not quite yellow, though. Dirt and grime had streaked it, the paint had peeled off in parts, making it hard to distinguish its original colour, though here and there was a patch of jaundiced wood. We could make out no name above the door, just as we’d been warned. No wonder that in the dark people might pass it by.

“Well, it doesn’t look like much,” Carrie said. “We ought to have gone to Pussycat tonight, this whole evening has been a bust.”

“Knock,” Kendall told Jean Baptiste.

Jean Baptiste knocked and the door opened a crack. Jean Baptiste took out a tiny piece of yellow paper – the invitation Winters had given us – and then the door swung open and we were let in. We walked down some steps, pushed aside a yellow curtain, and emerged into a large room with intricate woodwork and detailed red and gold wallpaper. Showy, with great chandeliers. Not your usual cheap dim sum joint with bare walls and a sad, lonely calendar in the corner.

It was crowded, everyone smoking, drinking, playing mahjong around little tables. Some players had grim faces while others sipped tea and smiled.

We paused by a great tank that was so clouded with algae and muck it was impossible to glimpse any fish, though there was the vague suggestion of movement in its dark waters. We moved aside to let a few people pass and then the fellow leading us, the one who had opened the door and had not spoken until then, raised his voice.

“A private room?”

“Why not?” Kendall said.

He took us to the back of the parlour and pulled open a door that looked more like a filigree screen and we went into a little room decked in the same gold and red wallpaper that covered the rest of the venue, a table and four chairs at its centre. There was a mahjong box on the table. It was heavily carved; the handle, sides, front and back, all decorated with a sinuous pattern. The tiles were all neatly stacked inside little drawers.

We sat down and Jean Baptiste, who had played the game before, began explaining the rules and showed us the tiles. A server in a yellow dress walked in and nodded at us.

“What will you be having?” she asked.

“Beers all around,” I said.

“Oh, please no, what a bore,” Carrie said petulantly. “A Martini for me.”

“And to eat?”

“Shoggoth soup,” Kendall said.

“Didn’t James say he got sick with that?” I asked.

“James would get sick from eating anything other than potatoes and rice,” Kendall said.

“We don’t always serve the soup,” the server said, making a face.

“Come now,” Kendall said taking out a few bills and flicking them on the table. “I can pay.”

So that was that. Jean Baptiste explained how we would draw tiles and make different melds. I looked at my tiles, the bamboos and flowers and circles, and then at Kendall, who was smirking and tapping his foot to the rhythm of some music that was piping in through a concealed speaker. He already knew how to play and he wasn’t paying attention to Jean Baptiste, instead staring at the wallpaper with that distant, careless look he sometimes got. And I wasn’t paying too much attention to Jean Baptiste either, already too drunk to bother much with the rules and the kongs.

The result was I lost miserably the first round and had scarcely any points. Kendall won and we all clapped, and then Carrie – who was perhaps drunker than me at this point – declared she was going to bet her shirt in the next round.

That’s when they brought the shoggoth soup. It arrived in a covered silver dish and when the server placed it on a little table next to the bigger play table he removed the lid. Smoke curled up, a pungent smell invading our nostrils. It was… it smelled… like the seaweed you find strewn along the beach when the tide has pulled back. Brine. And something else. Something meaty. But I thought of truffles, too. I did not like it.

Kendall picked into the silver bowl, stirring it with a ladle and took a sip.

“It’s not awful,” he declared, and then he ordered another round of beers.

A couple of hours later we staggered out into the street. Kendall vomited just a few steps from the game parlour, staining his shoes with yellow bile. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and then he laughed loudly. We found a cab willing to drive us to our respective homes and called it a night.

 

 

A WEEK LATER Kendall knocked on my door and announced we were going out, which was the usual way things went with Kendall. He did not give you fair warning. You had to simply comply with his demands and go wherever and whenever he wanted; it had been this way since we’d met. But everyone loved Kendall, everyone followed Kendall, and none of us resented him for it because Kendall was fun and Kendall was generous. Last summer he’d bought me a new coat, the one I wore almost every day now, because he knew I couldn’t afford it. He treated me, us, to meals, drinks, outings. Plus, I liked him. He offered me a view of a different world than the one I’d lived in all my life, the little kid on a scholarship with the bad teeth and the awkward face. With Kendall, you felt like royalty and were treated as such.

“It’s Reading Week and I’ve got a whole book to go through,” I said.

“Bullshit,” Kendall replied. “No one reads during Reading Week. I certainly am not reading a single line.”

“That is because you’ve dropped out of all your classes and you don’t need an education when you have that much money.”

“Well, that’s the beauty of money, isn’t it? It allows you the chance to throw your life away on idle pursuits. Come on, I do need a fourth.”

“For what?”

“We are heading to play mahjong. Jean Baptiste and a friend of his, David Wong, another law school kid.”

“It’s not my thing.”

But he’d already grabbed my keys, which had been dangling by the door, and was walking down the stairs. I fetched my coat and followed him to his car, a Corvette Stingray – his latest purchase, only two months old – and nodded at Jean Baptiste and David Wong.

“Hey,” I said as I sat up front.

“Hey,” said David.

David Wong was a thin, well-dressed young man who smiled a lot during the ride to The Yellow Door. His good humour evaporated when we sat down in the private room and a server came by.

“Shoggoth soup,” Kendall ordered.

“You better be careful. That stuff will kill you, you know?” David said, sounding earnest and serious.

“So will alcohol and I’m further ahead on that score,” Kendall said and grinned.

“What’s so bad about the soup?” I asked.

“I just wouldn’t recommend it,” David said.

I played without interest, pausing a few times to stare at the gold and red wallpaper, the pretty spiral patterns catching my fancy. David talked about mahjong superstitions. Wear red for luck, if you have a losing streak wash your hands to get rid of bad luck, do not eat pau when you play.

I was distracted, tired, and at the first opportunity excused myself and hurried back home.

 

 

ONE NEVER LEFT without Kendall’s express permission. Parties did not end until he said so, neither did excursions nor drinks. I’d sinned against him and knew to expect a short period of silence followed by a random invitation to participate in the night’s revelries.

A month later Carrie called and I thought she was going to invite me to one of Kendall’s parties. I’d have to show contrition, but I’d done that before. Instead, she told me Kendall had broken it off with her and she needed a favour. She’d left some important books at his place and needed them back.

I was to be an intermediary.

I asked her if she couldn’t just pick them up herself, but Carrie didn’t want to run into Kendall.

“He’s behaving like a perfect ass,” she told me. “I never want to speak to him again.”

How melodramatic, I thought, but I owed Carrie a favour and she wanted it repaid.

I told her I hadn’t spoken to Kendall for several weeks and that I’d see about it. After she hung up I decided I’d better go to Kendall’s place that same day. There was no need to put it off.

Kendall’s apartment was huge, very elegant and refined. Kendall had installed three great mirrors in the living room which spanned from the floor to the ceiling and when he threw parties and invited me over I saw myself reflected in them and felt my drab appearance was not so drab after all. Reflected in the beauty of that room, duplicated, I was almost fascinating. Though never as interesting as Kendall, who burned in the middle of the room, a glass of wine in his hands, his head thrown back in laughter. Sometimes, when you walked by, Kendall would tap you on the shoulder for a second and smile, a benign god holding court. At his right was Jean Baptiste, his roommate, but I was at his left.

Kendall didn’t need a roommate, but he didn’t like being alone, so he’d convinced Jean Baptiste to go live with him. Jean Baptiste had the temperament for it. He could also cook omelettes or pancakes or some other little breakfast for Kendall on the weekends, and kept the liquor cabinet stocked.

It was noon by the time I walked into Kendall’s building, which was the perfect time to visit Kendall because he’d be getting up right now, ready and eager for brunch, happy for a chat, perhaps even willing to forget that I’d ditched him four weeks before.

“Hey,” Jean Baptiste said when he opened the door, rubbing his eyes, and I could tell he’d been on a bender the night before just by the way he was standing up. “You are here. Are we supposed to go somewhere? Did Kendall ask you to organize something?”

“No. I’ve come for Carrie’s books. She said Kendall was going to put them in a box,” I said.

“He didn’t tell me anything about that.”

“He probably forgot. Is he awake yet?”

“No. We were at the Yellow Door two nights ago. He’s still there.”

“Still there?” I said panicking. “Jean Baptiste, he probably tried to stumble home hours ago, fell asleep in an alley. We should go find him and bring him home.”

“No. He’s done it before. You have no idea. We’ve been going to The Yellow Door almost every other night. Well, every night this week. I wasn’t drinking last night. I’m just exhausted from this week and trying to recover, but Kendall wouldn’t come back and it was three a.m. so I split.”

“Two nights ago?”

“Yes. Friday at 3 a.m., I told you so.”

I turned around, ready to head back down the stairs.

“I don’t know if you should go. He’s really weird lately.”

“He’s in one of his moody phases. Give him a week. He’ll pick up painting or collecting porcelain tea cups or something else to keep himself distracted,” I said. Kendall was not exactly constant.

“No. He’s weird,” Jean Baptiste said and paused. He looked suddenly afraid. “He’s not well at all.”

 

 

KENDALL DID NOT look at me when I walked into the private room. He was alone, moving tiles around with an index finger. There was a faint, unpleasant smell in the room and the soft piping of music through the concealed speaker.

He looked thinner. Hunched over the table, I could make out the outline of his spine against his shirt. The tips of his fingers seemed jaundiced and I thought, dear God, his liver has failed him. But no. That couldn’t be it.

“Do these tiles look yellow to you?” he asked all of a sudden, raising his head.

They were ivory tiles painted red or blue or green. No yellow on them. I shook my head.

“No. We should get you back home.”

He had dark circles under his eyes and he was very pale, like laundry that’s been bleached out in the sun.

“You should have come earlier. I finished the soup.”

He gestured towards the silver bowl sitting in a corner.

“Time to go, Kendall,” I said.

I thought he’d refuse to come with me.

He agreed and I was thankful.

Kendall managed to make it to the doorway of his apartment, but he almost collapsed once we crossed the threshold. Jean Baptiste had to help him to his bed.

“Phone the doctor,” I told him.

Jean Baptiste babbled a little because Kendall hated doctors and when he came back to his senses he’d be pissed, but I prevailed. The doctor came and declared Kendall malnourished.

“What has he been taking?” he asked. “This is not a little bender and a puff of weed.”

I said I did not know.

Truly, I did not. I intended to find out.

 

 

JEAN BAPTISTE GAVE me David Wong’s address and I paid him a visit, but David Wong didn’t have much information about the shoggoth soup, except that they’d always warned him about it in his family. But there were dire warnings about almost everything in his family and David had not thought to ask. He did know someone who could tell me about it: his aunt Bai, who smiled a toothless smile when David introduced me to her.

“I need to know about shoggoth soup,” I told her. “Is it a narcotic? Does it have a toxin?”

“You’ve been to The Yellow Door,” the woman replied and her eyes fixed on me, searching for something.

“Yes. With my friend. And now he’s hooked on that – shoggoth – I think it is. I want to find out…”

“You drink alcohol, don’t you?”

“I do,” I said.

“You drink it and most of the time you are fine. A light buzz in your head and a feeling of effervescence. But simple people drink alcohol and they don’t feel so well. They get sick.”

“It’s a drug, then.”

“It can do things… it can change you,” the woman said.

Kendall certainly looked changed, but what I wanted to know was exactly what kind of drug we were dealing with. Was this some opium derivative? Something else?

“I have to –”

“Poor child. You have to keep your friend away from The Yellow Door,” the woman said, patting my cheek.

She would not say anything else. I was floundering and exhausted. I phoned Jean Baptiste and told him under no circumstances was he to let Kendall out of the apartment, though judging by his condition it was doubtful Kendall would be able to walk to his car, much less drive himself to The Yellow Door.

 

 

TWO WEEKS PASSED. I went to see Kendall, even helped him into some of his clothes. He had ugly welts and marks over his torso. Circular bruises that were turning from purple to yellow as they healed. Ugly abrasions on the neck. He’d lost a whole nail and chewed the rest. Aside from gambling and indulging in drugs, had he also been in fights? It was likely, judging by the state of his poor body.

But each day seemed to bring back his strength, his smile fluttering for a moment. He didn’t have the stomach for solids yet and was stuck eating mush, chuckling.

“Like a baby,” he said and despite his thinness there was much of the old Kendall there, that smug, lofty grin.

He talked about the summer trip we were going to take. To the Charlottes, where we’d have to camp in a tent and be wary of bears, but it would be fun.

Carrie even came to visit Kendall, bringing some daisies to cheer him up. Later, when she stepped out of his room she spent a good amount of time telling me how all this was her fault. The breakup had driven poor Kendall into a deep depression. Kendall was too self-centered to behave in such a way, but Carrie had already built herself her own version of events and I wasn’t very interested in correcting her. I was relieved when she did not return for a second visit.

Overall, it was going well. In a year, I thought, we’d look back and laugh at this incident. Remember that time… and we’d descend into hilarity. Kendall’s wild antics. Kendall’s follies.

And then Jean Baptiste phoned late at night, waking me up.

“Kendall’s gone,” he said in one breathless sentence.

“What do you mean Kendall is gone?” I asked, already putting on my shoes, which I’d left by the bed.

“Gone! I walked by his room and he’s not there and the car is not downstairs.”

“Christ. You stay there. I’ll go grab him.”

“I’m afraid.”

“God damn it!” I yelled into the receiver.

I took my coat and rushed out. It was starting to rain and by the time I’d made it to The Yellow Door it was definitely pouring. The taxi driver wouldn’t drop me off in the alley. I had to walk it and was soaked in two seconds flat.

I went all the way to the back, to Kendall’s usual room. He was there, of course. Where else would he be? He had spread the mahjong tiles all over the table. There was a steaming dish of shoggoth soup waiting for him, on a little side table. He stirred the tiles with his index fingers, rearranging them.

“I had a dream about an ocean with no stars,” he said.

He held a tile up, towards the light.

“Did you dream?” he asked me.

“I didn’t have any dreams last night.”

“No, just now. There was an ocean made of sequins. Made of tiles, each one nestled against the next. And the sequins that are tiles, they are gold. Sequins, tiles, embroidered, glistening, below the velvet night. Do you hear me now?”

I thought Kendall’s health had been improving but he seemed worse off now that I looked at him. There was a nasty pustule on his hand and the way he sat, you’d have thought he was an 80 year-old man, his spine bent by the weight of time.

“Sit down,” he said. “If we get two more players we can have a game.”

“We are not going to play.”

“I’ll ask some others.”

“I doubt anyone else will want to play with you in your state.”

“But they are already here.”

I flinched at that though truly it was just the two of us in the tiny private room with the rich wallpaper and the speaker.

“Kendall, it’s time to leave,” I muttered.

He glanced at me, his eyes very dark, though… there seemed to be a film across them. He rubbed them, absentmindedly and the film – a trick of the light, perhaps – was gone. But he still looked like hell. Stooped over the table, his hands shaking just a tiny bit.

“If you look at the tiles carefully you can see things,” he told me.

“What things?”

“The lines. The colours move.” He turned his head, looking at the wallpaper. “The patterns move. Strange moons. An oracle. I am an oracle. I will be. Can you hear it? See. This tile is yellow.”

He muttered something intelligible, all sharp consonants, and I lost my composure. I could not take any more of this.

“Listen to yourself, Kendall. You are so fucked out of your skull that you can barely speak full words. Come on.”

He’d taken off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves, so when I grabbed his arm and tried to pull him up I touched his skin, which seemed feverish to the touch. And also seemed… rubbery. Not skin at all, but something slick and moist and sick. He shivered, and that was the worst part. The shiver seemed to rack his whole body, from the top of his head to the soles of his feet, rippling through his flesh.

“Let go of me,” he said. “I hate you. Let go of me.”

I released him and could not help my disgust. He must have noticed my revulsion. He stood up, his hands resting on the table, and threw me a look of such venomous contempt I took a step back.

“You are pathetic. Always following me around, like a dog nipping at my heels. Always paying attention to every word I say and everything I do, and wanting to be me. Oh, I know how you envy me. It’s not my fault, though, not my fault I am who I am and you are… that.”

He smirked, brushing his shaggy hair from his face. It was sweaty; the filthy pelt of a beast. His clothes were dirty and there were specks of mud, something dark – perhaps oil – on his trousers. The awful smell had returned. As though Kendall had rolled in one of the dumpsters in the alley and walked right into the gambling den. Perhaps he had. I could picture him scrabbling in the alleys, muttering gibberish to himself.

He surprised me when he spoke. His voice was so loud and strong; quite at odds with his present condition.

“Do you know what they say of you?” he asked me and pointed a finger at me. “They say you are a pathetic social climber and that I should just get rid of you. Carrie said it, you know. And Jean Baptiste. And James, too.

“You think you are smart and capable, but you are never going to amount to anything at all. That is why you hate me. And the only reason why I keep you around is because you amuse me. Because you are such a clown!”

“Don’t, Kendall,” I said. “I’ll take you home.”

“I don’t want to go home and I certainly don’t want you to take me there. You’re not fit to wipe my shoes, much less drive my car. Who do you think you are?”

“Kendall.”

“You were good for a laugh! In your mended trousers and your used jackets. But I’m tired of you. You bore me.”

It would have been better if we’d come to blows. It would have stung less. Because it was true. All of it was true. Suddenly I could picture them, the lot of them – Carrie, Jean Baptiste, James, even David Wong – chuckling in a corner. Why’d you invite this one again? It was good once for a lark, but now… I could hear Carrie’s bird-like laughter and Jean Baptiste’s deep guffaw.

He turned his back towards me. I took off my coat, the one he’d bought me with a smile, and tossed it on the floor. I didn’t want his crumbs. Then I walked outside. It was still raining, but it didn’t matter. As I walked down the streets the neon lights of Chinatown were reflected in black puddles.

 

 

THE COPS CAME knocking soon after that. I was expecting them. The only surprise was when they said the name “Jean Baptiste.” They had to repeat the whole story twice and still I didn’t quite believe it.

Jean Baptiste had been found dead in the apartment he shared with Kendall. It had been an ugly, miserable death. He’d been stabbed nearly twenty times. The apartment was torn apart, the great mirrors smashed to pieces and shards of glass strewn all over the floor. Books had been pulled from the shelves, their pages torn and smeared with a dark, foul liquid. Kendall’s expensive clothes had been shredded wildly. Kendall himself was missing and they were looking for him. I told them Kendall and I had fought and were not on speaking terms.

I didn’t tell them about The Yellow Door. I guess a part of me thought Kendall might be there and I didn’t want them to find him, despite everything. I returned to The Yellow Door a few days later, but he was nowhere to be seen. I kept coming back every few weeks. But he was never there.

They cleaned Kendall’s apartment. Jean Baptiste’s body was sent back to Montreal for burial. The crime did not take much space in the newspapers. It was a robbery gone wrong. Kendall’s family hushed the whole affair as much as they could: money was good for more than idle pursuits. I thought perhaps they’d aided Kendall’s escape and pictured the rich boy, off in some tropical island, walking by the seashore. If they had, they wouldn’t have told me, so I didn’t bother them and I didn’t talk to the police about my suspicions.

Still, I paused by The Yellow Door once in a while.

The last time I went into the gambling parlour it was October. It had been a long summer, but now the rains returned. I did not play the previous times when I visited the parlour, and this time it was no different. I just stood by the fish tank, adrift, awash in melancholy.

I listened to the incessant click-clack of tiles against wood and watched the smoke of cigarettes curl up in the air.

There was a light tap and I glanced at the murky glass of the fish tank. It still had not been cleaned. It was dark and filthy with algae and slime. I did not think any fish could survive in there but clearly some did because there was movement in the darkness and I squinted, peering closer.

It darted out of the shadows for a few seconds. A brief glimpse was all I got. But it was unmistakable. Kendall’s silver ring with the onyx. The beautiful antique ring. His lucky charm which he never took off, even when he went swimming. There, floating in the tank.

I opened my mouth.

Something dark, which could not have been a hand; which was the vague, fuzzy memory of a hand retracted, slipped back, and the ring was gone.

I closed my mouth and I walked out.

I didn’t scream until a long time later.