by William Poe
“Put down the weapon, Simon!” the bartender said. “I’ve got your dog. Thad left him with me. Put down the knife before someone gets hurt.”
I barely comprehended what he was saying.
The bartender jumped over the counter and stood directly in front of my face. “Do you want your dog or not?”
“Where is he?” I demanded. “Hand him over!”
The bartender cautiously lowered his bat. “Give me the blade, and then we’ll talk.”
Suddenly, I recognized the bartender. It was Sweet Peter. I handed over the weapon. When I saw that the edge was bloody, I thought for a moment that I might have struck someone, but the blood was from my own hand.
Once he had possession of the meat cleaver, Peter turned me around and pushed me through the swinging doors. My car was still double-parked with the motor running.
“That yours?” Peter asked. He shoved me into the driver’s seat and shut the door. “Hang on, and I’ll get your dog from the back room.” Peter quickly returned with a confused and frightened Cicero. Peter stuffed him through the open window and said, “Go home.”
Cicero pressed his head against my leg, shivering uncontrollably.
“It’s okay,” I said. “You’re with me now.”
Heading home on the freeway, I kept veering onto the shoulder, and once nearly careened off an overpass. By the time I arrived at home, Charlotte had already heard the story from Sweet Peter. He had mentioned to her that I cut myself and was bleeding.
“Nothing serious,” I told Charlotte, but she led me to the kitchen and checked it out for herself.
“Are you kidding? It looks like you tried to hack off your fingers!”
“I don’t remember doing it,” I said.
Charlotte poured peroxide over the gaping wound. When I let out a yelp, Cicero began to howl.
“It’s okay, little one,” Charlotte said. “Daddy’s okay.”
Cicero wasn’t convinced. He jumped against my leg until I picked him up so he could lick my face. Satisfied, Cicero went to find his drinking bowl. He didn’t stop until all the water was gone.
While Charlotte wrapped my hand in gauze, Cicero climbed the spiral staircase. Before returning to the basement, I checked on him. He had collapsed on the couch and was snoring like an old man.
CHAPTER 27
“He just lies there and watches videos,” someone said. “He hasn’t left the house for weeks.”
“Should we call the police?”
Hearing such things being said about me, I would press my ear against the wall thinking that a neighbor had smelled the smoke from the crack pipe. I’d go about plugging every nook and cranny with bathroom tissue, hoping to contain the smell, and then tack blankets over the door to make sure no one could peer inside.
The narcotic tide would soon crest, and I’d drift back into consciousness, finding it hard to imagine what I’d just been doing, or why. Nevertheless, I would fire up the pipe again. The cycle of insanity would repeat itself.
Upstairs, beyond the basement, was a parallel universe that intersected mine only when sounds crept beneath the threshold, or when I cautiously ventured out during the night in search of food and water. My old routines had returned, but with a vengeance.
Val started bringing along hustlers with his delivery of drugs. He knew my preferences and made excellent choices. He even primed them to know what I wanted. They never asked for money, so I knew Val was compensating them from his own profits.
I was an easy trick. It was enough just to have a naked boy with me as I smoked crack. The most difficult part for the hustlers was staying patient as I doled out the drugs instead of letting them have their own stash.
Episodes of lucidity would grip me, generally following a week of total collapse. At those times, Charlotte would take charge.
“If you don’t start taking care of yourself,” she said, “you’re going to shrivel up and die. Look at you! Your belt is as tight as it will go, and still, your pants are barely hanging on your waist.”
It was true. I looked like an unwrapped mummy. I had lost thirty pounds and my eyes were sunk deep into their sockets. My skin had the texture of wax paper.
“What about my long-delayed vacation?” I suggested. “Remember when I was going to take Axl to the Ritz? No time like the present. But there’s no one to go with me. Val won’t be able to find a trick on short notice.”
“We’ll go to the Spotlight and find someone,” Charlotte said. “Go take a shower and put on some clean clothes.”
It was Saturday night. The Spotlight was packed. I had hoped to see Rudy, but Charlotte said he didn’t come around much anymore. The Oban had been busted by the police a couple of times, and the owner wanted Rudy to stay in the hotel office in the evenings to watch out for trouble.
Don was in his usual spot, playing liar’s poker, intently studying the numbers on his folded dollar bill.
Twiggy couldn’t believe his eyes. “Now I know I’m seeing ghosts,” he said, happily turning to get a bottle of Boodles from inside a cabinet. “I’ve been guarding this for you. No one else drinks it, and Don stopped buying supplies.”
I knocked back a shot. Twiggy kept them coming. As thin as I was, the gin hit me hard. Within thirty minutes, I was whooping and hollering, singing along with every tune that roared from the jukebox.
“Cabaret!” I shouted as Liza Minnelli’s voice filled the smoky room.
A hustler turned toward me and winked. I returned the come-on with a sneer. Disappointed, he tossed back the last of his Budweiser and bounded toward the door. I was the last rejection he was willing to endure.
“Now you,” I said to a hustler who caught my eye, “you’re a cutie-pie. Want to join me for a trip to Laguna?”
The kid, a shirtless ruffian with a gallery of tattoos, glared fiercely and said, “Fuck off, faggot.”
“Goddamn hustlers!” I screamed. I slammed my glass on the bar and rushed toward the door. As I pulled back the curtain, I turned and slurred, “I’ve had enough of this rotten place!”
Delirious with unfocused rage, I chased the passing cars and screamed, “Goddamn it! I deserve better!”
I stumbled down the middle of the road. Cars zoomed by, missing me by a hair’s breath, as I ran toward Hollywood Boulevard.
Charlotte had been in the back, hanging on the arm of a cowboy fresh from Nebraska, whom I had also rejected. She found me at Hollywood and Vine about to crash through the doors of the Derby restaurant.
“Simon, get your ass back to the bar,” she said. “I’ve found someone for you, and I reserved a room at the Ritz.”
I praised her. “What a girl!”
Charlotte led me back down Cahuenga, holding my hand as she steered me from the street. She sat me down across a table from a guy named Kevin. I’d almost taken him home once before but decided against it when I realized there were track marks on his arm.
When I started to protest, Charlotte bent close to my ear and said, “I know Kevin. You’ll enjoy yourself. Now relax.”
We drove by the house so I could get some clothes. Without letting Charlotte know, since she was so intent that I take the vacation to chill out, I swiped a box of baking soda from the kitchen and made an emergency call to Val. This trip he came to the downstairs door to deliver the goods.
Cicero cried so pitifully when I appeared upstairs with my travel bag in tow that I didn’t have the heart to leave him behind. “Okay, boy,” I said, “you can go with us.” He went straight for the car and jumped in the second I unlocked the door. He had ignored Kevin inside the house. Now that we were in the car, he eyed him suspiciously.
On the way to Laguna-Niguel, Kevin and I passed out. Cicero went to sleep on the floor under my feet. When we arrived at the hotel, Charlotte went inside to settle the arrangements. She returned after a few minutes, mad as a kite.
“They gave your room to another guest, because we weren’t here by midnight!”
“How dare they!” I growled.
Charlotte decided not to take the defeat lying down. She stormed back inside, returning moments later with the night manager. The man remained calm in the face of my verbal assaults, patiently explaining the hotel’s policy concerning reservations. I hurled obscenities, getting out of the car and standing with him eye to eye.
Charlotte pleaded for a room. “You have no idea who you’re dealing with,” she said. “Mr. Powell is in the motion picture business.”
The night manager was unmoved, determined to follow the rules.
Cicero shot out of the car just then, barking furiously and running circles around the manager. Charlotte tried to restrain him, but I egged him on.
“Piss on him, Cicero. Hike your leg.”
The night manager took a walkie-talkie from under his suit coat and pressed it to his lips, then to his ear. After receiving a message, he said politely, “Will you and your dog wait in the car? I’ll make arrangements with your secretary.”
I picked up Cicero and got back into the car, half expecting to start hearing police sirens.
“You’re not going to believe this,” Charlotte said, getting into the driver’s seat. “They have a file on you from past visits. When that idiot realized how much money you’ve spent, a room miraculously appeared. They’re giving you a luxury suite for as many days as you want to stay. And get this—you’ll be charged at the regular room rate.”
My scowl didn’t go away.
“You’re going to take this and like it,” Charlotte commanded.
“Did I say anything?”
Charlotte wanted to get us safely behind closed doors before Kevin did something stupid like pull out a syringe. Meth heads rarely thought about appearances. The bellhop came with a cart but left when he saw that we only had shoulder bags.
“Everything all right?” Charlotte asked quietly as we approached the elevator.
“I’m fine,” I said. All I wanted was to get settled so I could rock up the coke and do a blast.
The manager escorted Kevin and me to the suite, with Charlotte following close behind. I apologized for my rash behavior and thanked the man for his patience. “The film industry is rough,” I said, “and, well, I just couldn’t stand the idea of driving all the way back to Hollywood.”
The manager assured me that I would have no more trouble. “You’ll be given the royal treatment,” he said. “Call me personally if there is anything that doesn’t meet your standards.” The man couldn’t help but cast a suspicious eye toward Kevin as he said the word standards.
When he was gone, Charlotte opened the french doors and walked onto the balcony. The suite was on a corner of the building, and the balcony stretched the entire length on both sides. Every angle provided a view of the Pacific Ocean. The flecks of starlight highlighting the waves close to shore disappeared into the immense blanket of darkness that reached to a dim horizon marked only by the lights of commercial ships and the occasional buoy.
“Amazing!” Charlotte said. “I’ve only seen rooms like this in the movies.” With a sigh, she said she’d better go. “No telling what trouble Cicero has gotten himself into by now.”
The suite had several rooms, including a formal dining area and living room with a fireplace. The bedroom was as large as most suites in expensive hotels. Kevin was fascinated by the bed, which was fit for a seventeenth-century monarch. The walk-in closet had more space than my bedroom at the Sibley mansion.
After putting four logs in the fireplace and igniting them with an electric starter, we put on flannel bathrobes that we found hanging in the closet. I ordered a bottle of Dom Pérignon from room service and offered a toast to good times. After two unsatisfying glasses, I went into the kitchen and cooked up the powder I had gotten from Val. Kevin came to life when I returned with two crack pipes and a load of rock.
Until then, I hadn’t paid much attention to Kevin’s body. I lowered his robe and kissed him on the neck, expecting to continue exploring his muscular body, but he shook me off and scurried toward a small bathroom near the front door. Frustrated, I pounded on the door, but Kevin didn’t respond. I went to the couch in front of the fireplace and loaded my pipe.
Paranoia like I had never known soon gripped me. I was sure that searchlights were sweeping the room, and that any minute, the police would break through the door. I crawled across the carpet and pulled the drawstrings on all the curtains.
When the moment passed, I couldn’t quite fathom what I was doing on my hands and knees. I went to the couch and stared at the fireplace. The glass pipe reflected the fire’s glow as I did another blast. This time, my brain turned inward toward the comfort of past rituals. In the church, it was customary to set up a shrine whenever moving into a new place. Wasn’t cocaine my new god? I left drugs on the coffee table for Kevin and locked myself in the bedroom, fashioning an altar on the nightstand with obsessive precision. I measured the spaces between the pipe, the Cub butane torch, and the pellets of rock. In the middle of it all, I set a pornographic magazine opened to its centerfold.
I turned the bed into a nest, piling covers on either side of my body. The levees of bedding made a wall where I placed other magazines I had brought with me. With the next hit off the pipe, I intended to focus on the delectable male models. Instead, voices outside the window began whispering my name. It was a choral fugue.
“Simon, come forth,” the voices summoned. I went the balcony. The ocean was barely perceptible under a covering of dark mist.
For two days, I rode the chemical roller coaster, rising to sanity one moment and descending upon fantastic horrors the next. Kevin knocked on the third day. Only then did I remember that I had left him alone.
I opened the door just enough to see him. “I’m out of drugs,” Kevin said, his face gaunt and desperate. “What are you doing in there?”
“Never mind, just leave me alone.” I closed the door and went to get some drugs for him. When I handed them through the door, I said, “Don’t bother me again.”
Kevin’s intrusion had brought back memories of my grandmother pecking at my bedroom door with the persistence of Poe’s raven, Nevermore. Why wouldn’t people just leave me alone?
“I’m sorry about the other night,” Kevin said. “I got stomach cramps. It was the speed, man. I was coming down.”
I barely remembered the incident. “Just go away,” I said.
Another three days passed. I became so weak from not eating that it took all my strength to load the pipe. The vivid fantasies had faded into shadow plays. Barely audible voices told me that my life was over. “This is the end,” they said.
Kevin’s voice penetrated the fog.
“I banged on the door, but you didn’t answer,” he said. “I got into the bedroom through the balcony.”
“I must have passed out,” I said, trying to focus my eyes.
“Yeah, I think so. You looked like the Statue of Liberty holding that torch the way you were when I found you. I’m surprised you didn’t set the bed on fire.”
Kevin sat on the bed. “About a year ago,” he began, “I was living with a guy named Bob. He survived off an inheritance from his mother. We shot up meth together. We didn’t realize how weak we were getting. One morning, I woke up and found Bob’s arm locked across my chest. When I picked it up, his whole body moved. He was dead. It scared the hell out of me.”
Kevin took my head in his hands and looked me in the eyes.
“You’re one blast from taking Bob’s place.”
“I don’t want to die,” I said.
Kevin rested my head in his lap and stroked my hair. “Go to sleep, Simon. I’ll watch over you.”
CHAPTER 28
In a variation of a recurring dream, I thought that Reverend Moon had released me from my vows to Masako and matched me to a beautiful young man. I asked him, “Are you willing to have my children?” The youth began laughing. His body morphed into a giant lizard. I froze as the creature fixed its mesmerizing gaze and plunged a slimy tongue down my thro
at. I gasped for breath, waking facedown in Kevin’s lap.
“Guess that was worth cradling you all night,” Kevin said, pulling away from me and going into the bathroom to take a shower.
I picked up the pipe and was about to ignite a piece of rock, but realized I better get something to eat. I propped myself against the headboard and called room service. Kevin finished his shower and went onto the balcony to dry off in the sunlight. He leaned back in the patio chair, propped his feet on the railing, and placed an arm over his forehead to shade his eyes.
It seemed an eternity before the doorbell rang and a cute server rolled in a cart of fruits and cheeses, along with the pitcher of bloody marys I had ordered. Kevin and I gorged ourselves as we sat on the Olympian perch while watching the surfers, each one a beauty to make Ganymede envious. Off in another direction, white-haired men played golf on a lawn that stretched as far as the eye could see. The retired gods of mythology, I mused.
Nourishment brought sensation back to our bodies. It seemed safe to get high again.
I motioned Kevin to follow me inside.
Throughout the meal, Kevin had been clasping and unclasping his fist. The glasses of weak bloody mary, following days of smoking crack, had not helped his withdrawal from speed. I order a bottle of Chateau Margaux, thinking the rich red wine might soothe his nerves. We got naked and took hits off the pipes. The combination of drugs and alcohol made us horny rather than paranoid. Kevin gave me a coy look as he drank straight from the bottle and dove onto me. I squirmed against the erotic sting of the alcohol he held in his mouth.
“I want to marry you,” Kevin said.
The proclamation took me by surprise, and I almost laughed, but stopped myself as I recalled the dream. I took a hit from the crack pipe. Deafened by the ringing in my ears, I read on Kevin’s lips: Let’s marry.
Kevin guided me into the bathroom and had me stoop in the tub. Ripe yellow fluid trickled down my face. Pagan magic, like the rituals Ernie and I used to perform when we swore to be blood brothers for life, joined my spirit to Kevin’s. I led him to the bed and positioned him in the manner of Leonardo’s diagram of the Vitruvian Man, the measure of all things.