by James Newman
His death was my fault.
She said no more.
Instead, she raised her finger to my lips and spun on her junk shop plastic heels, spinning in the dirt, the rain, and the death, spinning to Jimmy’s memory... No one loved the downtrodden like the downtrodden and I had to make it to the Star Bar where the ghost of a friend waited. Most of those trapped in Fun City fell for the battered and the bruised. That soiled doll, scratched and humped by strangers, as it journeyed through the avenues of disappointment, cul-de-sacs of hopeless faith, damaged souls held onto each other in the Red Zone. They squeezed each other at night dreaming of a different time and a different place, both wishing they were somehow unique, uncomfortable with themselves or the person they were with at that given time. Their dreams were rarely the same dreams, but were dreams all the same. Disgusted by others who were like them, knew them, relied on them, owned them; they kept on walking through the magic and the loss...Sad still footsteps at dawn...Some had a lover waiting in their cheap cold-water apartment; we, the lonely, usually had nothing spare a nasty divorce and a container of resentments. Sure, we knew that devils had the sweetest of voices and by far the finest of tunes. Here they were everywhere, yes, a symphony of demons screaming magically doomed melodies up and down and out to the polluted starless sky city at night.
The Night Market.
Le Marche Noir.
Malingering frotteurists crept through crowds of bikinied women rubbing their hideous wandering hands together before groping a breast here, slapping a thigh there, a cheek over there. Like octopi, hands were everywhere turning the water into wine, the crabsticks into steak salmon and the croissants into buns. Forever and ever more the miracles were abundant...The Frotteurists - these public gropers took advantage of the rush hour, of every hour, positioning their trembling bodies against office-worker and shamelessly rubbing their erections against her puzzlement while she, or he, the frottee, stood rigid, unable to move in the packed carriages - the shuttle trains that ferried commuters to the CBD. The women in the Red Zone were at least paid most of the time to be touched and a few, emboldened by their mistreatment, sick with the city’s women being continually man-handled in this way, turned to revengeful counter-frottage themselves. They targeted the perverts, and with cat-like precision, squeezed and twisted their quarry in the most public and private of places. Some wore knuckle-dusters to sharpen the intent of their cause. A number of perverts expired thus this way – death by commuter rage.
The Gamers played on. The addiction to cyber technology in Fun City was only one addiction in a city of multiple addictions. Light and heavy, all feeding from a timeless spent desire, a sludge of primeval humanity, humming, rattling, vibrating along that small stretch of road where those men and women walked like insects, bugs, reptiles, creatures marching forward in strange patterns. Bizarre formations hungry for the poison that would eventually consume them like the sugar ant dies in sugar bowls they would die too of their own consumption. Smart drugs were fashionable for the brief period it took for the users to realize that they didn’t work as well as the traditional narcotics peddled on Main and Happy Street.
On past the go-go girls and the Gamers, the chancers, the funereal strippers, the sliders, the outsiders, the green, the ripe, the ready for picking, for plucking, skinning. Cooking, chewing up and spitting out.
A stranded Trustafarian leaned against a brick wall smoking a Death Cloud Blue and drinking from a bottle of Tiger Sweat with the ingrate assurance of the terminally rich. For a fee, oversea parents were permitted access to behavior reports, assisting their calculations in determining credit allowances for their sprung off. Trust kids were multiplying in the City. Those with artistic leanings hung out at the Theater Bizarre and organized slam poetry competitions just outside the zone on the Street of Dead Artists. Most were morally sound thus not to be subject to the interests of The Eye.
However, most of The City’s residents were here on the last throw of the dice. Most came here before the credit scheme and the lockdown with dreams of freedom. Most saw the trap slowly closing but were helpless to escape it. They had their chance and missed it, and now watch their pensions eaten up by currency exchange rates and credit transfer fees. It cost more and more to do less and less in Fun City.
They entered the nightlife zones hoping for salvation and time worn hustlers who played the long game picked them up. The long game is a confidence trick that can last twenty years or more. The Fun City hustler or Gamer fakes emotions and lays on the sex until a car just builds itself around them and a house is erected in the suburbs in their honor. Once the hustler is set up, it is good night Vienna to the sponsor, who often finds themselves back in the very place where the games begun.
No one loves the downtrodden like the downtrodden. Here, they were everywhere, yes, a symphony of demons screaming magically doomed melodies up and down and out to the polluted starless sky in the City at night.
The Devil’s Breath had brushed us all.
FIFTEEN
INSIDE THE Star Bar, Rose’s band played a tranquilized nu-gaze sound to the audience, about thirty strong, who were nodding out in unison. Rose leaned into the microphone caressing the stand as strobe lights broke up the crowd into white lines and nuggets of color and smoke.
Rose and Jimmy had been inseparable, but Fun City had a habit of separating the inseparable. Rose had followed Jimmy to the city and only one of them had remained in it. Jimmy had lost his shit the night of the Push leaving Rose to fend for herself, and fend she did well. Painted eyelids fluttered like butterflies as tattooed arms worked the microphone. Rose, once a stripper, owned the stage. A ballerina dress two sizes too big hung from her cigarette-thin frame above a pair of Israeli-issue military boots. Spit and sawdust on the floor, sweat dripping from the ceiling, a family-sized German drank from an oversized metal beer mug and watching the singer with the kind of interest a Siamese reserves for a house sparrow, said, “It is good, ya?”
Told him it was and ordered a Mexican beer. Played with the label and thought about Kurt, the latest addition to the Fun City Skydiver’s club. Wondered what warped version of reality had led to the jump and what I’d be able to get from the hospital, figuring to make a visit in the morning along with the Immigration Department and the cigar-smoking American’s kid, Hugh.
What did the arachnid mean?
The drums galloped as the bass player journeyed along a familiar spidery line up and down the neck of his Fender Jazz. The guitar was building up, a teasing line played from an antique Jaguar. He broke into a power chord before scattering a series of notes and as Rose’s voice grew stronger, the guitarist put his foot flat to his stomp pedal. She sang something about a highway on the Pacific Coast. A driving song, yet Rose had been a passenger most of her life; the kind of woman who’d ride shotgun and screw up the directions but make up for it at the stopovers.
What did I have on the kid? Kurt had grown up in a small town, a child with perfect pitch, he wrote school poetry to rival Rimbaud. Swooped up by a Parisian record producer Kurt was thrown into the studio to record his first album. He sang, strummed guitar, played the keys, slapped the bass, plucked the strings, sang backing vocals, recorded the vacuum cleaner, the rain against the window, played the sounds back through the mix, before being photographed, branded, packaged and placed on a grueling tour of Europe. This was four or five years back and the burning question was without doubt, ‘What was a French pop superstar doing in Fun City?’
The band, on their break, was hugging the bar. Walked up and flashed the photograph of Kurt to Rose who looked at the image and then lazily lifted her gaze before raising a hand and slapping it across my cheek. It wasn’t an invitation for violence, no it was more like an angry gesture and it wasn’t the first time I’d received one of those.
“Joe Dylan. Superstar Private Eye,” she said.
“Look, there was nothing...”
Like anyone could have stopped him from joining The Resistance. She gently
toyed with the brim of my fedora using her thumb and forefinger. “Didn’t know they still made these. How much, Dylan?”
“Not for sale, Rose. Still like playing with old wounds, huh?”
“Maybe I do. Maybe I don’t,” Rose said, licking her vermillion painted lips and staring at something that may have been behind and above my left shoulder.
“Maybe I couldn’t care one way or the other.”
“Ah, but I think you do, Mr. Detective. You do remember Jimmy?”
“Hurts ,” I said. “Look, Rose, not a moment goes by when I’m not thinking about it.”
“Me too,” Rose replied, “but the show must go on. Look, follow me,” she glanced towards the entrance. “Those Eyes make me nervous.” She ducked past a group of drinkers and I followed her through the crowds and behind the PA system, through a curtain and into a backstage room no larger than a well-sized closet. She sat on a bass amplifier and brushed a hand through her hair. “He came here a few times. You could tell that he once had it, and had lost it. Sad really. Kurt, his name was. I just thought he was another drunk until he showed me some links. Guess he was a big shot who lost it all down the toilet. He wasn’t the first,” Rose loosened her boot laces, “and won’t be the last.”
“Was he using?”
“Scopolamine mainly. He couldn’t afford much else.”
“Who was he with and where did he hang out?”
“Who knows? What’s the interest?”
“He committed suicide this morning.”
“Really? I guess he was the type. Hit rock bottom pretty bad. Sitting around on the street shouting down into the drains isn’t normal.”
“The drains?”
“Yes, he was obsessed with the sewers.”
“Was he drinking at this time?”
“I never got close enough to tell.”
“Where did he hang out? Before the sewers, I mean?”
“I honestly couldn’t tell you, Dylan, although everyone seems to go to the Very Special People Bar or the bar next to it, forget the name, The Shaking Test? Don’t know what the big deal with freaks is. Maybe it’s a fad. Next year, the Goths and the Punks will be the flavor of the month again. This year, it’s all freaks, freaks, freaks... normal fit dudes are getting themselves mutilated to get in on the scene. It’s pretty sick. Maybe next year it’ll be something else.” Rose looked up at me. Her face was pretty, or at least, it once was before the piercings came to town. Now she was beautiful the same way a waterfall viewpoint is pretty, after the railings and the DANGER signs have gone up. She had straightened herself out pretty well after Jimmy died. She could have fallen apart but like most strong creative people in a crisis, she turned to art when the chips were down. She had guts and determination, and that was half the battle on the rock circuit. Getting paid was often a bonus.
“Hope springs eternal, Rose,” I said not knowing if Rose was now a punk or a Goth, but knowing she was from some subset of one of the disenfranchised. I tipped my hat and figured the next call was the freak bars. I paid the bill and was just about to walk back out onto the street when a gravelly voice that sounded like it had been pulled up and out of Kurt’s sewers broke the vibe.
“Time to pay the fiddler.” Frankie-the-Rat tipped his hat and I did likewise. The Transylvanian scopolamine dealer had a stiletto blade in his mitt, just for show, perhaps. He needs me fresh and paying. The Rat smiled exhibiting a gold tooth that reflected a shard of disco light from the mirror ball above.
“I got a new job, Frankie. Should be in pay soon.”
“I don’t want to have you tailed, Joe. But guess what? I think someone beat me to it.” Frankie nodded over to an empty booth. I liked the way the Rat used the word tailed. “A man-with-no-hands was sitting there watching you with interest, Joe. What you been doing? Looks like he had you all sewn up for something real nasty.”
“Nothing out of the ordinary, Frankie, I’ll have your money. Have a gig with the Ukraine.”
“The only good thing to come out of the Ukraine is violence and vodka, Dylan. I’ll be here waiting. Good band this evening. And be careful of the man-with-no-hands. Rumor has it he is a transhumanist.”
“A what?”
“Trouble for me, and for you is what it means.”
The blade disappeared.
A yell broke out and a bottle flew above the band. A leather jacket was ripping up the joint and heading towards the stage, towards Rose.
The band played on as the leather jacket took hold of a monitor amp and rocked it back and forth. Rose dropped the microphone showering the leather jacket in feedback. He made it up onto the stage. I followed. The jacket grabbed at her ballerina dress. I rose to the stage, took the jacket by the shoulders, and spun him around. He had the face of a black-market undertaker, about as trustworthy as a python, hit him square on the jaw and he took it, rode it, and swung back at me landing it on the head. I took a step back and picked up the fallen microphone, swung it, the band played on, swung it and cracked him on the temple followed up with an uppercut, blood, kicked the leather jacket where it stung and he limped back out through the door and onto Happy Street. A patrol of Fun Police caught the tail end of the action, charging in and beating the black leather jacket with batons.
Stopped at the bar on the way out, ordered another tequila shot, threw it back, and paid up. What was this transhumanist talk from the rat? Had he finally lost the plot? It bothered me. Outside, the streets were almost underwater. Footsteps slow and purposeful navigated around a gang of bar girls, past a man with a monkey on his shoulder, between a set of Korean triplets wearing matching gym shorts and sports bras. Then beyond a clutch of missionaries, between a pair of Arabs, beside a mime with his face painted white, in front of a nun with a Polaroid camera. Women in tight bikinis crying out to the tide of tourists, Japanese, Korean, British, American, Australian, all drunk, lost, heading to the next drink, the comfort of puzzlements, the answer to the impossible riddle, the dreams, and nightmares. The lies, the lizards, the greed of money and the woman with the magic in her hair waiting for that special one who holds the answer inside a crocodile skin wallet with a cold brass buckle locked tight. The one with the money, the owner of a heart made of cream cheese. Dutch or German, she couldn’t be sure.
SIXTEEN
INSIDE THE Very Special people bar the conjoined twins both smiled across the table and lit cigarettes.
“We’re interested in the tunnel. How do we reach it and what do we find down there?” The smaller of the pair spoke. His movements cool and calculated as he lit a slim line Death Cloud.
“If I tell you, what do I get?”
“Time. Listen, Jimmy we can hear them out there. They will be banging down the door any moment, we don’t need to tell you that this is the only bar in the City that doesn’t have cameras inside. We can go to the door and tell them to come and get you, or we can say we never saw you tonight, it’s been busy, we’ll have a look around and tell you in five minutes. You removed the hands of a very important man. You took part in an attempt to overthrow the city. You work with us we get your ass back out on or under the street. How does that sound?”
“Got a paper and a pen?”
“A what?”
“Just hand me what I need and I’ll draw you a map, but promise me one thing?”
“Anything cupcake.”
“Don’t go down there. Don’t open the map unless you have to go down there. Don’t show anyone. Keep it to yourself. Can you promise that?”
“Sure, just draw the map.”
Jimmy pressed the pad of paper to the table and began to sketch where the overworld met with the underground.
A knock at the door.
Jimmy drew quickly.
The knocks on the bar door became a hammering.
The door opened. Shouting and arguing, a bottle broke.
A gunshot rang out as Jimmy hit the floor and crawled towards the bar.
More shots, a framed circus poster fell.
&nb
sp; Next shot sent a pulse through his chest as the bullet hit . Bright lights as a pair of hands grabbed him by the shoulders and hauled his body up from the ground. Memories of hot summer afternoons, the Gypsy camp, Rose, Byron flashed in front of his eyes.
Blackness.
SEVENTEEN
THROUGH THE neon circus, the Red Zone, an elderly man takes a stroll in a park. I must make it to the Very Special Bar, and the only way is on foot. It is never about the arrival, nor the destination, it is about the journey. The Morphologist knew this, Trixie knows this, Kurt probably knew it, and Jimmy and Rose knew it.
Jimmy knew it too well.
On through this wretched city.
A bleep on the life-enhancer device.
James Hale.
Propping up the Siamese twin’s bar.
I swung a left and onto a street where a Chinese tourist had a shot glass lodged in his rectum a month or two back. Chinese told the story to a cub reporter. A van pulled him over in the middle of the night, pulled him inside and shoved the glass right up there, then drove around and threw him out on the street. Later, it was discovered that the shot glass routine was all part of a stunt for a new Fun City reality television show.
Made it into the bar and Hale tapped the bar stool next to him. “News on our kid Kurt,” he smiled. “Creative kid was a big hit on the art scene but had recently vanished from his social circle. The Dead Artist scene missed him. He complained of being ill.”
“You think he was spiked?” I said. There had been rumors circulating for years about the deliberate spread of viruses through contaminated sources. Quite how close this brushed to conspiracy theory nobody seemed to know.
“Well, the body was taken from the hospital and claimed by the French.” Hale took a long pull on his beer.