Mysto

Mysto grew up out of phase, in a family of the night — mother a nurse on call, father a four-a.m. baker. At their house, dinner was at dawn and everyone whispered at noon. The daytime world always worried him: too much noise, too much light, too many people looking at you. He tried office hours; they found him asleep in the supply room three times.

Then he pushed open the door of an afterhours club in the Industrial Zone, one Thursday around three, and everything clicked into place: the tempo, the half-light, the tired, honest faces. The school of the dancefloor adopted him on the spot. He never looked a morning in the eye again.

Past ten p.m., Mysto changes state. The silhouette unfolds, the eyes come on, and the whole room starts leaning toward him without realizing it. He barely speaks — on the mic, never; to customers, three words; the body does the talking, and it has plenty to say.

His take does the splits between the hours: put him on the floor in daylight and you get a polite young man watching the door; give him the deep of night and you get the number the whole neighborhood is talking about by morning. His worry doesn’t go away, either: it becomes an instrument. Mysto has checked the exits, counted the room, memorized the new faces — before he ever steps onto the floor. He dances easy because he has planned for everything, including you.

What keeps him standing at four in the morning is that four in the morning is his noon. While the others struggle, Mysto hits his best form and runs his lists: the register, the emergency exit, the tide forecast. His catastrophes never happen — he has canceled them all in advance. Off the clock, he drifts through other people’s establishments, never noticed, always informed: who’s hiring, who’s cheating, who keeps their people unhappy. He reports back, in a low voice. What he wants: an afterhours place of his own, no windows, where morning would have no legal right of entry.