The Knight by Zak Salih
Forever errant, he agreed to the date. What else was there to do but plunge back into battle, to meet and meet and meet? So he hammered fresh armor to defend himself from blows and scrapes and wounds, from all the anticipated defeat. He oiled the steel, the hinges at his knees and elbows and neck. He made gleaming the greaves, the gauntlets, the fan plates fashioned like shark fins. Then he lumbered out the door, down the stairs, and up three blocks of busy late-night streets to the bar.
No one paid him any mind as he clanked through the early September chill, his breath a surf inside his helmet. No one gasped at the beautiful pink plume bobbing above his head as he passed. When he stepped into the half-empty bar, no trumpets sounded. When he moved toward a pair of stools, no one swooned or trembled or made way. When he ordered a drink, the gin and tonic was set before him as if he were any other peasant.
The knight had no sword to sheath, no flintlock to holster, no shield to set down, so he clung to his drink instead. He slipped the red plastic stirrer through the grate over the lower half of his face and took small sips. He watched, through two horizontal eye holes, the gleaming teeth of liquor bottles on their shelves, The Golden Girls reruns playing on mute over a pool table, the dim white walls and ragged green carpet, the strings of rainbow lights. The patrons in their Saturday-evening dress: sneakers and skinny jeans, long-sleeved shirts rolled up to elbows, torn shorts and unbuttoned collars, crop-top t-shirts. All that flesh allowed to breathe.
When his date finally slipped through the door, the knight set down his glass.
It can’t be, he thought.
But it was.
The swain he’d courted on his phone an hour earlier had revealed himself, had torn away whatever magical cloak he’d worn to conceal the frightful troll that approached him in a hissing green windbreaker and wrinkled khakis. He grinned, the fish-lipped trickster, as if to say, fresh meat. The knight shrank inside his steel and gripped his drink tighter. Spellbound, he watched the troll squat on the stool next to him.
The troll said his name.
The knight confirmed it, then said he’d started a tab.
The troll asked for a rum and coke, without ice, and when the drink arrived, he mindlessly slurped as if slaking some great thirst. He refused to look the knight in the eyes. Frightened, perhaps, of that gleaming armor? Ashamed of his own villainous trickery?
Dutifully, the knight lunged at the troll with the familiar questions, and between slurps, the troll parried with simple answers.
How was your day?
Busy.
How long have you lived here?
Born and raised.
Going to the drag show next Thursday?
Likely not.
Forced from the safety of his online cave, the troll appeared disinterested in the give and take of a normal conversation. Chivalry, courtly rules, were nonexistent in his realm. Between extended periods of silence, the knight found himself trapped by the face that hadn’t revealed itself on his phone. There’d been nothing then of this haphazardly shaved chin, the hairline with its wisps of blond hair like fish whiskers, the perplexing white crust at the corners of the troll’s mouth, as if he’d just feasted on a glazed donut and had forgotten to wipe his mouth. And then, another startling thought: Was this how the knight appeared to him? Was he the troll hungry for consumption, and the troll simply thirsting for companionship? Was it all just a matter of armor?
The troll barked down the bar for a second drink, and when he set a hand on the knight’s gleaming cuisse, the knight suddenly excused himself to the restroom. He stood at the urinal and held his empty penis in gauntleted fingers. He caught the distorted curve of flesh reflected in his tasset and chastised himself for this ill fortune, for feeling like he couldn’t exist without someone by his side. How susceptible he was to the quest! Oh, what a fool he was!
He returned to his bar to find the troll leaning into his second drink. What, the knight wondered, did the liar see in that amber liquid? For what did he search? The knight eased onto his stool with a few embarrassing squeaks. The troll flashed a frightful smile at the knight and said, My turn. He hobbled to the bathroom trailing the sound of serpents.
The knight grew hot and sweaty inside his armor. He knew, when he returned home and took this laborious protection off, plate by plate, there’d be the same rash in the usual places: his armpits and elbows, his penis and balls. It always chafed, the armor, but it was necessary. He didn’t dare venture out naked and defenseless, couldn’t suffer any more violence though all he could do—at work, at the gym, on the subway, in his dreams—was think of this endless combat and the hopes it would one day cease. The knight heard once more his breath, thick inside his armor. He began to panic. Through the holes in his helmet, he saw two things at once: the closed bathroom door, inside which the troll lurked, and his gin and tonic, now nothing but ice. A second drink, the knight knew, would lead to a nervous third, a reckless fourth, a resigned fifth, and then the troll would have him.
But wait!
What was this?
A strip of paper—a ticket set before him! The knight followed the gift up a large, hairy arm, over the slope of a rolled-up shirt sleeve, until it arrived at the face of a man next to him, the beard like frost around his cheeks and chin.
Oh honey, the wizard said to the knight, we’ve got to get you out of here. Now, before it’s too late.
The knight couldn’t move.
Take it, the wizard said, and nodded at the ticket. You need to go dancing more than I do. I’ll hang back, have another glass of red, then go feed my cats.
The wizard turned to the bartender and said, I’ve got his tab.
He slipped the ticket between the knight’s articulated steel fingers.
Don’t pity me, darling, the wizard said. I’m the happiest man in the world, honest to God.
The knight still couldn’t move.
Go, the wizard cried, and as if blown by a gust of wind, the knight was suddenly up and clanging out of the bar and onto the street. He turned the ticket over in his hands.
FO(A)MO PARTY!
FEAT. DJ GRIPHIN.
THE LAIR.
DOORS OPEN 11PM.
ADMIT ONE.
Fearing what would happen should the troll spy him through the bar windows, the knight hailed the first car that passed and asked to be driven thirteen blocks east. He arrived at The Lair to find the line curled like a dragon’s tail around the block. The knight took his spot at the end and found himself surprisingly warmed by the anticipatory excitement, the drunken merriment, the cigarettes and plastic water bottles and suspicious paper sacks, the arms and legs eager to dance. The men, the men, the men.
How grateful the knight was, in the midst of all those strangers, for his armor. The people in front of him kept a generous distance, as if they sensed the thorny points of his sabatons. He thought of going home, but his armor took so much effort to put on, and the line crept forward, and before he could commit to a course of action the knight was in front of the bouncer, broad as a mountain, who took the ticket from his hands, scanned it, and handed it back. He taped an orange band around the knight’s left vambrace and showed the knight where everyone else was headed: through a corridor and down three flights of stairs into the dark.
The journey was tight, the staircase narrow. People bumped into the knight and apologized. Careful, the knight wanted to say, I’m rather sharp, but he knew they’d have no idea what he was talking about. This armor was for him, and him alone.
They traveled down the stairs, snug and smiling, until suddenly the world opened up again, eyelids of darkness drawn back to reveal bright light, booming noise, the dance floor unfurled before him like a grand court on coronation day. The knight kept to the walls and side-stepped to the nearest bar. He raised a gauntlet to hail the bartender, and when the steel caught the swerving strobe lights, it sent radiant waves of color over the people around him. The knight felt the pulse of all that music through his armor, saw through the lozenges of his vision all that sweaty, shining, hopping, dancing, drinking flesh. He held fast to a gin and tonic in its plastic cup and envied the freedom of all that movement. How easy it seemed, to roll pant legs into shorts! How simple, to tuck a shirt inside one’s belt loops! But the knight was too terrified to do any of these things, so he drank, and stood, and watched. He glanced at the staircase for any sight of the troll—and lo, instead of that foul beast, here came another knight lumbering down, led by the barrel of his fluted breastplate, his battered gray helmet cupped between the blades of his curved pauldrons. The second knight made his awkward way to a spot on the wall opposite the first knight and stood there.
Both knights faced each other through gaps in the fervent dancing between them. After a time, the knight set down his drink and raised a gauntlet in greeting. When his opponent reluctantly did the same, the knight made his way, cautiously, along the concrete wall, and the second knight did the same, cautiously, until they met by a stretch of battered red couches.
Hello sir, the knight said.
Hi, the second knight said.
They turned and faced the dancefloor in regimented arrangement, as if displayed in the cavernous hall of some museum armory. The knight tapped a sabaton against the floor to the beat of the music. The second knight struggled to decide what to do with his hands.
After a time, the knight offered to buy the second knight a drink.
I don’t really drink, the second knight said. Would you like to dance?
The knight gestured to their armor, and the second knight nodded, so they stood there and watched the others. The knight, mustering all his bravery, turned and strained to peer through the gills of the second knight’s visor at the face inside. He thought he caught a flash of green, so he leaned closer (but only just), and recoiled when he caught the distorted reflection of the troll in his green windbreaker stomping down the club staircase. The knight slipped into the shadows. Without thinking, he reached for the second knight’s gauntlet and drew him there as well.
He’s after me, the knight said, and aimed a sharp steel finger at the descending troll.
He’s after me, too, the second knight said. Maybe if we stay here, he won’t find us.
Again, the knight gestured to their armor.
He’ll see us, he said.
And as the knight feared, the troll spotted them in the shadows by the sofas, and grinned, and approached. All this armor, the knight thought, and none of it of any use.
He realized there was no choice. Behind them, the wall; ahead of them, the dance floor. Emboldened by the presence of this second knight, he unsnapped the clasps of his gauntlets.
Wait, the second knight said. What are you doing?
The knight’s gauntlets hit the floor, and he struggled to unstrap his vambraces, his plackart, his breastplate. He beckoned the second knight to help, and soon all that armor clattered to the floor, piece by cumbersome piece, and then the knight stood over the heap of his armor, shivering as if he’d just emerged from a hot bath into a cold room, and when he lifted off his helmet he saw how perplexed the second knight was, as if going outside without armor could ever be a possibility. Quickly, the second knight worked at his armor, and then both knights stood in their soft and vulnerable bodies among all that beauty and energy.
The troll continued his approach.
I’ve been looking for you, he said. I didn’t know you two were friends.
Together, the knights turned and escaped into the warm, delirious pageantry.
Pressed against one another, they began, slowly, awkwardly, to dance. They tossed their arms and legs, rocked their hips, not because it came naturally to them but because it allowed them to disappear into the crowd. They danced, the knights, to defend themselves, and whatever spell had everyone on the floor under its command soon had the knights as well. In time, their arms were around each other’s waists, they were breathing each other’s breath, and it was too loud to say anything, to ask any questions or make any promises, so they just kept moving, amazed at having discovered one another, and when thick clouds of foam began to spill from the sky, they burst into laughter. They couldn’t see one another but held fast with their arms while the foam roiled and rose around them, while the other dancers squealed and slipped.
Time slipped, too, and when the knights finally kicked their way through the foam back toward the sofas, the knight looked at his phone to see two hours had passed. The troll was nowhere to be seen, or had perhaps gone back online in search of other prey.
The knights palmed foam off their faces. Each found the other’s radiating anticipation.
I just live a block east, the second knight said. If you want to go somewhere drier.
I do, the knight said.
The second knight took the knight’s hand.
Shall we?
We shall, the knight said.
They were at the bottom of the stairs when the knight suddenly remembered the armor they’d cast aside. He plunged his arms into the foam drifts at his feet until he felt the familiar armature of his helmet, but when he wiped it clear of foam the steel was spotted with rust, the plume a sopping wet rope. Gauntlets, gorget, rerebraces, poleyns emerged browned and brittle.
No, the knight said. He stared at streaks of rust on his fingers and palms. No, no, no.
A hand fell on his shoulder.
Leave it, the second knight said.
The knight cradled a rough gauntlet. It reminded him of the dead squirrel he’d set down in a backyard grave as a boy.
Come on, the second knight said.
As another round of foam fell from the sky, as the music rose and the dancing resumed, the warm hand on the knight’s shoulder felt more promising than the rusted one in his lap, so he left his armor and followed the second knight up the stairs and back out onto the street. They clung to one another, but it was only when they’d arrived at the second knight’s apartment tower that the knight felt warmth finally arrive.
Elevator’s busted, the second knight said, and I’m a top-floor girl.
The knights walked, side by side, up and up and up nine flights. Once inside the small studio apartment, the second knight put on a kettle for tea and handed the knight a bathroom towel to dry his plastered hair. The knight politely set aside a folded knit afghan and sat on the sofa. Presently, the second knight returned with two cups of steaming tea.
It’s made of mountain roses, he said.
They sat and drank in comfortable silence together, and the knight found himself thinking less and less of the rusted armor he’d left behind and more and more of the soft body next to him. Another adventure begins, the knight thought, and found himself already anticipating its possible end. Then the second knight set a palm on the knight’s bare thigh, and instead of retreating to the bathroom, the knight set down his tea and bent toward the second knight’s lips. Soon, with no noise whatsoever save soft laughter, their last remaining defenses fell: the damp shirts and shorts, the boat shoes and sneakers, the wrist watch and silver neck chain, the wallets and phones, the pale green and blue briefs—all of it flung aside until both knights lay on the sofa in nothing but their skin, all of it set free, all of it on fire.
Zak Salih is the author of the novel Let’s Get Back to the Party. His fiction has appeared in Fairy Tale Review, Epiphany, The Florida Review, Foglifter, and other publications. He lives in Washington, DC.
29 September 2023
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