Disco

Disco grew up in a Suburbs roller disco, behind the rental counter where his mother lined up the skates by size. He learned to roll before he could run, and above all he discovered the secret of center floor: in the facets of the big mirror ball you see the whole room at once — the register, the doors, the hands in other people’s pockets. At twelve he was flagging pickpockets with a jerk of his chin. At sixteen, they were paying him to go skate somewhere else.

When the rink closed — turned into a convenience store, an OPEN sign in neon over the ghosts — he took the mirror ball down himself, one night, with a borrowed ladder. The school of the dancefloor took him in over in the Industrial Zone, skates on his feet, the ball under his arm, and nobody asked questions: you recognize your own.

Between ten at night and six in the morning, Disco is a king in orbit: he skates through the room, sequins streaming, and everyone starts to shine — customers spend better when they sparkle, it’s a law of the trade. But while the room shines, he watches: in the facets, the reflections, the windows, he tracks who comes in, who goes out, who talks to whom near the register. The bosses debrief him at dawn, and his report is worth a camera’s — funnier, too.

His pranks roll with him: sequins stuck on the bouncer, a record swapped at just the right moment, a sleeping customer who wakes up glittered with a cardboard crown. On the other hand, when the house lights come up — end of the night, a breakdown, a curtain — the king stalls flat: nerve in free fall, skates catching on level floor, voice hunting for the exit. He needs the ball turning. Under convenience-store lighting, he says, he goes back to being a kid who lost his rink.

At four in the morning, Disco hands out the skates: the last hour is danced on wheels, that’s his rule, and nobody falls asleep on eight of them. His nights off he visits other people’s clubs to "check the ceilings" — he sizes up a House by its mirror ball, and reports back along the way everything the reflections showed him. Under his bed, wrapped in a sheet, is the big ball from the Suburbs rink. His dream hides no better than he does: reopen the room, rehang the ball, and charge the convenience store admission.