by James Newman
“And you?”
“Questions, questions, Dylan, I feel you may be trying to take advantage of a drunken woman.”
“It happens,” I tell her.
Trixie held the bar with both hands and rocked her stool backwards and forward, smiling like a child on a swing. “Do you think I’m pretty?” she said as the barstool leant backwards. “Do you, do you think I’m good looking? And I can tap dance, WATCH.”
“Be careful there, now, look.”
It was too late. The stool rocked back too far. The legs slipped on the tiles and crashed back onto the floor. The floor caught her. Her dress spilled over her knees, patrons got up to gawk at the flash of black panties. Her glasses had fallen off. I picked them up and put them back on her.
“WHAT are you freaks LOOKING at?” she screamed at the freaks.
A few freaks frowned, one, a hunchback said, “Time to take that dumb drunk bitch home.”
Best advice I’d had all night.
NINE
“5000 CREDITS for a live one,” The Gamer said.
“Yes,” Jack laughed cold and dry like a cobra shedding its skin.
“Maybe, we‘ll get more for the Dylan association.”
“What will they do to him?” The blond kid asked.
“They have this program in beta mode right now. A few teething problems, I understand. They call it the Punch. You may have heard of it, Jimmy. Uncle just got back from processing. A behavioral reconstruction program, hundreds of minds and thousands of hours have been put together to develop this, the most groundbreaking psychological program ever to be tested. We take the most difficult, disturbed, beings and we shock them into becoming upstanding citizens. The Punch is revolutionary. It tackles drug addictions, antiestablishment ideologies, and it reconditions those who are non-responsive to tribalism. Want to become part of the team? Join the Punch. We take a square peg and make it round, you understand? Society requires those that fit not those who are unfit and the Punch facilitates the changes required.”
“Yep,” Jimmy said. “Keep buying the soap and drinking the beer. Keep working the nine to five and worshipping parking meters. Screw you and your Punch, old man.”
“Cynical,” Jack replied. “Just like your surrogate father. How would society work without those that toe the line?”
“Freely and creatively,” Jimmy looked up at the elder man. “To your mind that would be an injustice, right? To have free thinkers hinders the greater goal?”
“Jimmy, Jimmy, you can think as free as you like. Doesn’t mean you have to say or act freely. The city cannot tell you how to think.”
“Not yet, maybe.”
“Degenerates are ill on three levels. Genetically, they are predisposed to anti-social behavior. Secondly, they have brain functions that hinge on the treat and award systems. They do bad things because it makes them feel good, no? Then thirdly, we have nurture, Jimmy, nurture. Wolves raise you, you will bark like a wolf. Does any of this sound familiar? Did Dylan teach you to bark?”
“Only at assholes.”
“Am I really that bad?”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe your father is the reason this city is heading down the sewers. The City needs authority, the City needs citizens who are good people. You aren’t a good person, Jimmy. You are troubled. I want to help you, Jimmy, I really do.”
“Listen to the man,” the blond haired kid said. “He’s a genius.”
“There will be nobody calling anybody else genius between these four walls. Nobody is a genius. You see, the ancient Greeks understood that each and every one of us has a daemon inside of us, or above us, who is there to look after our development. These entities were later developed into guardian angels for the purposes of Christianity. If you create a work of art or science that is spectacular in its beauty and scope the Greeks would say, ‘Your daemon did a good job there.’”
“You have a demon inside of you?” Jimmy asked.
“A daemon is a natural spirit, a benevolent spirit, you understand? He guides us sometimes, and sometimes he simply doesn’t guide us at all. Most are unguided. The gods decide who gets to achieve brilliance. There was a time and a place when Dylan was guided, he got results and he didn’t know where he got them. This was the daemon shaking the tree for him, but he got sloppy, he lost it. I, however, kept it. So no, I am not a genius, but visitations by the daemon are frequent and comprehensive. It keeps me strong. Does any of this make any sense to you, Jimmy?”
Jimmy looked down at the floor.
The floor didn’t look good.
TEN
SEVENTEENTH FLOOR.
Floor to ceiling windows.
Boats bobbing in the harbor, the pier stretched out, lights shining inland, reds, blues, greens, floating gin palaces, after-hours drinking joints, gambling ships, bright neon lights, tropical night... insects...buzzing, humming... Canvases stood, abstract incompletion: seascapes, sunsets, sunrises, pastel balconies, cool blues and yellows, oils reds and green, markets, squares, boulevards, erratic self-studies, musings on the mundane and the ordinary. Paint covered the floor, the walls, and the ceiling. Artist’s studio had grown like the butterfly in her story, yet it had yet to metamorphose wings and fly above the City, or maybe her wings, her ideas were to be clipped by somebody like me. She would fall and shatter on the streets below. Crash like a penniless tourists from a fifth floor balcony.
“The Punch stole something from you,” I said.
“On the contrary, The Punch gave me something. The Punch gave me art. A great artist must suffer, no?”
“Perhaps, but for what? How much of treatment can you remember?”
“Nightmares weaken some,” Trixie said, “but for me the nightmare made me stronger.”
“Take a child,” I said “as young as possible. Remove him from the family and bring him up in something like the Punch. He knows not love. He only knows authority. You keep him isolated from other children. No name, no family. For his diet, give him only what he needs to survive, water, breadcrumbs. You need him to grow up cold, hungry, and unloved. Now, you need to make sure that he witnesses crimes of hatred and pure evil. He should be encouraged to join in with these crimes to become part of the evil. Feed his mind with propaganda, images of hate and seperation, award the understanding of an evil manifesto and punish questioning of the manifesto. Do all these things for the child’s first fifteen years and I guarantee you will have yourself a monster, a killing machine, a psychopath.”
“Have you heard of those awful human experiments where it was proved that humans born who don’t get physical touch will die. They have food and water but starved of human contact, without that contact they perish, they die from loneliness, abandonment.”
“Yes, I read something about it in Metropolitan.”
“So sad, those children left to die. But, the thing is, after the Punch, I feel freer.”
“Free enough for what?”
“Enough to know that this is where I want to be. I didn’t know about the present moment until sitting there when the walls came down and the lights went out. I thought it would be my last moment. Do you see?”
“It gave you what you needed to leave your husband? Do you think non-artists do not suffer too?”
“Well, I suffered like hell.” Trixie picked up a pastel study and rubbed her forefinger on it. “This is real life, right now. We are two people. There is no past and no future, all that we have is the NOW. The Eyes cannot see us inside here. We’re free to relax. I take it you liked the scopolamine? This frees us. I was never fit to be a banker’s wife the same way you were never fit to be a detective. Do you see it? Do you see life is there for the taking for both of us? Right now, it’s here, so close, we can touch it.”
I remained quiet and studied the edgy impressionist acrylics hung from the wall. Rich in texture so that one could swim among and between them: Fun City streets vibrate in toxic reds and blues; a Moroccan market flashes eloquent tangerine. Trixie blew some o
f the powder at me, and I lost myself in her art.
I find myself in a jungle at dawn, the chattering of monkeys in the trees, smell of jungle after rain. A lazy native girl once rode a bicycle but now that bike is gradually rusting into the jungle. Dissolving into the temple grounds, above a gecko lizard barks. Louis Armstrong plays from somewhere, an invisible sound source, concealed speakers, the sound escapes like the glimmer in a tree frog’s eye. Perhaps she was in the jungle too. Perhaps she is the jungle? Or is the song simply in my mind? Be careful of any being that mimics music, anger, or love, especially music. Eyes closed, the scene drifts towards a scopolamine house on the hill, games of tennis, and a baby grand piano. A child plays the white baby grand, notes drift out of a window and down, down, down like music down a windy street into the Red Zone where a hideous lesbian snarls to the sound of the 9th. A benevolent smile as she proffers a red and white striped lollipop, snaps it away and it be gone with the click of her manly reliable fingers. The music is gone too now, broken down, snubbed out, and extinguished as we travel down through the tunnel to a dark teenage room. A buck-toothed girl plays Russian roulette with her family. She is alone, for now, perhaps forever, alone. Tunnel opens, a dusty courtyard where two aquatic centipedes wrestle with grey huntsman, twisting, turning, and wrapping our bodies around one another in the dust and the blood and the venom we awake almost.
Spider smiles, fangs dripping, down, into the Night Market, cut to a close-up of the spider’s eye, thousands of lenses all flashing, reflecting beams of hope; spider motionless smiling arachnid benevolence.
Out of the dream, sweating, delirious and back to four walls, a sofa, tangerine Moroccan markets, and Fun City streets; electricity hummed and rattled. Box of Death Cloud Blue elaborately open, lid flipped, cigarette tap dances across the table, lighting, inhaling, toxic, toxic. Trixie’s face tilted back, toxic eyes open. Like the river, she decides to flow. Awake now, her hand holding back my head as she explores my mouth with hers, tongue flicking, teeth biting gently like an excited animal takes off her blouse, and then a bra to reveal her shame, a small tattoo on her shoulder. It is an image of a predatory moth against her white skin. She wrestles me free of my shirt, lifts the hat, flinging it across the room. She continues to explore, stands, drops her shorts, her panties clutched briefly by gravity, and thus I realized she had fooled me, but I had passed the test. Perhaps a lesser man would have chosen not to commit to the challenge. Perhaps she wasn’t interested in lesser men, perhaps all is meant to be. The client’s wife, the floor, the rug, switch around, an active role, gently mounting and finding a rhythm as strange animal tongue spoke not words yet somehow words, what were words anyhow? This primal universal language understood by all and it rose up, the sound of her voice that is, it rose, and it fell in rhythm with our movements on that Oriental rug in the apartment. Overlooking the sea, time ran away, escaped us, a knock at the door we both ignored, shooting for the moon as the night chased morning into dawn and we were both exactly where we needed to be for that one unique moment.
The knocking continued. “Who the hell is that?”
“My landlord, he kinda has a thing for me.”
“Well, is there a way out of here? Let’s move to my hotel for the night, get dressed.”
She did that as did I. Splashed cold water on my face. Opened the door. The landlord was forty, Asian, possibly Philippines, with a crescent wrench in his mitt and a breezeblock for a face. He had the jaws of the wrench-clasped shut as tight as his own jaw. He was shouting in a language I couldn’t understand. I simply put my hands up and smiled. When the wrench loosened in his grip, I went for it, twisting the metal out of his hand and onto the floor. He caught me with a right with his free hand, I rode it and got him a good kidney punch and then another, he went down probably too fast and I guessed this was a matter of lustful pride. Perhaps Trixie was behind on the rent and she was playing with him for time and shelter.
The mind works cynical even in a fistfight.
The Asian man lay there yelping on the floor.
Whatever the score was we had to get out of there and fast. “Take what you need, lock up, and let’s go.”
We took a taxi to the Penny Black Hotel.
As soon as my head hit the pillow, the show was over on the count of
One.
Two.
Three.
ELEVEN
THE CEILING fan rattled and hummed overhead. Jimmy felt the brush of cold metal on his cheek. Outside the citizens screamed and shouted as night drew into the second act. He could smell the woman’s cheap junkshop perfume to his left and the pressure on his right side by the French youth with blond hair, it wasn’t the greatest pressure he’d felt.
He remembered Dylan’s advice - surprise is everything. There are three ways to deal with an enemy. One - meet their expectations. Two - exceed expectations or three - confound expectations.
Jimmy ran with the third option.
“How old are you, Jack?”
“Huh?”
“Most people are dead by the age of twenty-five. How many years you been dead and how much longer does it take for you to rot yourself in the ground, old man?”
“Spirit! He has spirit!” Jack danced a little and walked back towards the door before closing it. “I do love it when they have spirit. Five thousand credits for a resistance member. That is a lot of free time, right there, Jimmy. Use that spirit boy, for you won’t have it for much longer.”
Jimmy sprang up, blondie and Gamer taken by surprise. Jack’s face tightened. Jimmy went for the bottle on the table and decided to administer a Fun City Kiss. Cracked it open over the edge of the table and decorated it around Jacks head. Glass and blood sprayed across the table. Machete loosened from Jack’s grip. Jimmy liberated it from his grip and Jack fell towards the table supporting his weight with both hands palms flat against it. Jimmy swung at the Gamer and the blond kid, they backed out of the door, hands held up. Jimmy approached Jack and looked at both his hands right there on the table like joints of meet on a butcher’s chopping board. He brought the blade down with the crash of metal on bone at the man’s wrists. Severed both from the hands with one slice, Jimmy had to wrench the blade up, bringing with it tendons and bone matter.
Jack stumbled backwards, blood pumping from the arteries. He turned and stumbled through the door and out into the night.
“Good show,” the conjoined twins said in unison.
TWELVE
THE TELEPHONE rang, sounding like a cat screaming in a bucket of blood..
Sat up and held it, pushed the green button.
“There’s been a jumper.”
James Hale. Hale, from London, was the closest thing to a friend that I had in the city. A wise man once said that a friend was just an enemy waiting for the right moment to reveal his or her true colors. Some may call him cynical, some may call him paranoid, but I have minutes and hours for those who say things like that. Listen. If someone is going to shoot or stab you in the back, your chances are it won’t be the bushy-haired man in the night. Hale, picked up cases from time to time and some of those cases were worth picking up.
“The city has a jumper every seventeen minutes. What’s new about this one?” I said. This was true. A number of foreigners flung their awkward burden from balconies, away from their shoe-box-in-the-sky apartments, down to the unforgiving concrete and they did so for many reasons.
Many of those reasons were solid.
Most were close to the Fun City Punch and approaching zero credits, the balcony looked good.
Hale spoke. “Of course we have accidents. Low railings, high intoxication, sure. Fun City, anything is possible. Wife or husband explains he or she just fell; these things happen, now where are that pesky will and that insurance policy?”
“This one’s different?”
“Joe, we all know the drill. Dude invests all his credits into a dream, dream turns into a nightmare, lover never really loved them, just rolled with the credits. Chump
spends the rest of the credits in one big bender and engages in an amateur base jump from the balcony in a final act of bloody defiance, the end of the dream, the nightmare, where does it stop? Some dudes just can’t see that they are in a theme park. There is nothing more decadent than a theme park. The clunk and the clink, the up and the down, the toing and froing, the end of the capalist dream, When does the disbelief end?”
“After the jump?”
“Reality is hard for some.”
“Reality. What is it?”
“Reality,” Hale said , “she’s a bitch. A temptress. Reality is a cat screaming at you as the dishes mount up. She stands up semi-naked sporting a ratty bra and knickers with an empty bottle of beer in her mitt. She smashes the bottle and brings it up close to you. Real close, you understand. She doesn’t gently introduce herself at the water cooler. No, she crashes, bish, bash, bosh. She presents herself with a ten-year-plan and all kinds of conditionals. Reality is a mortgage and a car on hired purchase with three kids screaming down the bleedin’ place night and day. Reality is fucking it all off and booking a flight to Fun City, marrying a Gamer and losing the lot again. Reality is that one last chance that just might save your soul. ‘Wanna buy?’ ‘No.’ So he jumps. Or was he pushed? Maybe the lift was broken and he was too lazy to take the bleedin’ stairs. So it happened. All the king’s soldiers and all the king’s men can’t put Lumpy back together again. Maybe the body lands next to a noodle cart and the head detaches, rolls across the street, tongue hanging out. There’s websites where you can see this stuff. Maybe some sicko immortalizes the moment with a new selfie stick and a pie-eating grin. Posts it on life-enhancer, revels in the likes. The problem with most losers is that they don’t get that they are one until they decorate the concrete. You see, Joe? Be successful and if you can’t be a success take it to the street. I’ve never lived above the second floor, geezer. Take my word for it, it’s safer.”
“The unethical live short brutish lives.”
“Kant,” said Hale.
“Hobbes,” I said. “The usual jumper?”