by Tim Green
Double REVERSE
Tim Green
*
Chapter 1
Trane Jones Emerged From A Small Voodoo Shop At The Corner Of Crescent and strolled confidently down Bourbon Street with his back straight, his head high, and a spring in his gait. He was full-framed at six foot four, and the biker boots he wore made him taller and more imposing still. Despite the late hour he wore a dark pair of Oakley sunglasses, and a black leather cap, which he wore backward, matched his jacket but covered his trademark diagonal cornrows. It was a cool night in the Quarter. Before he could go ten steps people began to recognize him.
"Trane! Can I have your autograph?"
The boy was excited, a freckle-faced white kid about twelve years old. He looked like he came from a place like Nebraska.
"Fuck you," Trane said, scowling at the boy's parents and walking on without bothering to sign the kid's crummy piece of paper. Nothing pissed him off more than people grubbing for autographs.
Trane Jones wanted to forget about football. For any NFL player not involved in the Conference championship games, that weekend, like the Super Bowl, was an annoyance. All the hard work, the sweat, and the pain seemed futile when you realized that no one really cared about you quite as much unless you won a championship. Here he was, the NFL's best runner--the best ever, if you asked him--with records falling all around him like pigeon shit. But people still didn't give him the respect he deserved because he had yet to play for a championship team. He was a New Orleans Saint. It annoyed him to no end. It was the kind of mood that seemed to lead him to trouble, or trouble to him.
As he walked he spurned other autograph-seeking tourists with a deadly stare, refusing to stop or even slow his pace. He could have avoided the crowded street, but there was something satisfying about having the whole world point and stare and you just keep walking on by. Trane took a left on Conto and entered the dark bowels of the Quarter, leaving the crowded street behind. A handful of middle-aged drunks who'd just emerged from a bar followed him for a block but then thought better of it.
Trane snorted disdainfully as he passed the familiar signs that warned of high crime in the area, but all the same he caught himself absently touching the Glock strapped underneath his arm. Three blocks down he took a right between two battered redbrick buildings into a narrow, unmarked street. Halfway down the darkened street he came to a small storefront with a simple glossy black door and a large window painted entirely red except for the words etched carefully into the paint:
ELYSIUM: WHERE THE GODS PLAY.
Inside was a small anteroom lit by an orange lamp that suggested firelight. An elegantly dressed man in his mid-forties sat behind an important-looking antique desk. The man, Gaston, a half-breed, wore a thin European mustache and spoke with an accent.
"Mr. Jones," he said calmly.
"I want a banger," Trane said with a wicked white smile from behind the dark glasses.
"Of course," Gaston said, picking up a phone. "Please make yourself comfortable in the lounge, Mr. Jones."
Trane let himself through a dark wooden door into the smoky bar, where well-dressed men and beautiful women of every color mingled quietly together. Trane moved through the room and sat down at a small table in the corner. This was a club where unusual things were the norm, so it didn't seem to be any great surprise that Trane Jones had walked into it. Still, people couldn't keep from stealing a look his way. Trane let his tongue hang lazily out of his mouth so they could see the chrome ball he had pierced through it years ago as his trademark. Within seconds a perky redhead brought Trane a scotch. She ignored his tongue and he presumed she'd seen him there before. He returned her smile by wagging it at her and staring pointedly at her backside as she walked away.
Moments later a waif of a girl with snowy blond hair appeared from a door in the back and made her way to Trane's table. She was thin but adequately endowed. The skin about her neck and shoulders was a pale white, even against her simple white silk dress. She wore very little makeup, a touch of blush and a light pink lipstick. That and her big liquid brown eyes gave her face a childlike innocence that sent Trane's blood rushing.
"You my banger, baby?" he said.
The girl feigned timidity and brought her mouth to his. He held the back of her neck with his enormous hand and kissed her hard. She sat down.
"Drink?" he said.
Before she could answer, the redhead was back with a bottle of expensive champagne. "This is from Mr. Le Tousse," she said, displaying the bottle with dash.
Trane could see a balding middle-aged man in the background staring his way and puffing up like a peacock in his expensive suit. He was flanked by two striking black women.
"Tell him to fuck himself," Trane said casually, "and bring my little girl here a . .."
"Manhattan," the blonde said in a heavy Russian accent.
"A Man-hat-tan, and another a this shit for me."
The redhead fought back a frown and returned to the bar with the bottle in hand. Trane gave the arrogant white man the finger and turned his attention to the girl. She was just what he liked. He'd have to remember to tip Gaston nicely.
After their drinks the girl asked in halting English. "Would you like go?"
Trane shook his head slowly and with a shameless grin told her, "I wanna just sit here and look and think about how I'm gonna tear you up . . ."
The girl managed a crooked smile and took another drink. Trane just stared. He could make even a girl like this squirm, and that somehow made him feel good.
Another drink, long and slow, and he said, "Now."
Without a word she stood and took him by the hand, leading him into the back and up a wide set of spiral stairs and down a long dim carpeted hallway to a room at the end. The room was Gothic, with high wood-carved ceilings and heavily draped windows that led to two separate wrought-iron balconies. Between the two windows stood a large sculpted four-poster bed draped with a diaphanous canopy. When the door was shut behind them, Trane hit the girl hard on the back of the head with his open hand, knocking her to the floor and sprawling her pale thin limbs onto the thick blue oriental rug. She got up slowly and turned to look at him. His eyes were lit with a strange glow, and her limbs began to shake.
"This for you," she offered.
Beside the bed on a dresser top was a Turkish water pipe. The girl lit it and inhaled long and hard before presenting it to Trane. The scent of opium filled the room, and the girl's dark brown eyes were soon glazed with indifference.
Trane beat her, then took her, then beat her again.
In the dead hours of the night Trane awoke to find the girl sitting on the edge of the bed with a needle in her arm. Half asleep, he watched her shoot her junk, and then took her hard one more time before collapsing for the rest of the night.
When the first beam of sunlight dropped across his face, Trane began to stir. The bed felt wet, wet and sticky. He bolted upright and rubbed his eyes furiously. A guttural moan clawed its way up his throat and escaped into the musty room. The bed was soaked in blood. The girl beside him was blue, stone cold.
Chapter 2
More than seventy thousand people felt the bite of the cold while a handful below shed steam under the blue lights that cut into the coming winter night. Clark Cromwell spit a gob of bloody phlegm between the bars of his mask into the frozen grass and sniffed with a wince. In the first quarter he had smashed the first knuckle of his left hand, dislocating the finger, and now it was starting to throb. The situation was desperate. They were seventeen points behind and there was less than eight minutes left in the game. It was the NFC championship. The winner would go on to the Super Bowl. The loser would go home.
The cold didn't bother Clark. He'd been raised in Alaska, and to him a ch
ill wind seemed as much a part of football as a pair of shoulder pads. And while most people thought the game of football was tough, Clark had grown up hunting large game for food and cutting wood for heat. So to him, the toughness required to play the game of football seemed something less than it might to a kid who came from a comfortable suburb in middle-class America.
The play came into Mitch Faulkner's helmet from the sideline and the quarterback looked up desperately at Clark as he called it out. Everyone knew it was going to be a pass. Everyone knew Green Bay would blitz. They'd been blitzing all game, and the Los Angeles offensive line hadn't been able to do much about it. Faulkner had taken a beating. When the blitz came it would be Clark's job to take out the most dangerous man to the quarterback. That's what a fullback did.
"See if you can get two of them, Clark," Faulkner said under his breath as the offense broke the huddle and headed for the line of scrimmage. "They'll be coming."
"I got it," Clark said with quiet certainty. He might not be the best runner or receiver in the league, but at six foot one, two hundred fifty pounds, he was stout and powerful and possessed an unusual quickness that made him one of the best, if not the best, blocking backs in the NFL.
Clark eyed the formation and listened as Faulkner howled the offensive linemen's protection responsibilities through the mad din of the hostile crowd. Defenders inched toward the line like a bunch of kids trying to cheat at the start of a race. Faulkner barked out his last desperate adjustments, changing the pass pattern as well, then took the snap just before the play clock ran out. They came in a swarm, big and fast. Faulkner dropped back and Clark stepped up. He hit the strong safety squarely in the chest with his hands, stopping him better than a bullet. The pain from his finger shot into his brain, but the middle linebacker was coming fast. On instinct, Clark dove to his left and put his helmet into the bigger man's chest. He saw lightning bolts and felt an electric shock. Then everything went black.
When he came to, Clark was looking up at a circle of faces set against the black night sky. The pain in his neck was excruciating, like a buried knife. The rest of his body tingled but remained inert. He had no other feeling. He couldn't lift his head. His eyes filled with panic.
"Dear God," he said to himself. "Dear God, dear God, let me be well. In Jesus' name let me live. Let me not be .. . Let me move . . ."
"Don't try to move," someone said sternly.
"I--I can't move," he blurted out in a voice that he didn't recognize as his own.
After some time the doctors from the team and the paramedics tilted him carefully and slipped a board under his back. They pinned his head between two blocks of bright orange foam and tied him down with thick Velcro straps. Teammates and opponents looked on in horror. Grown men held hands and prayed. The seventy thousand fans, once raving, were eerily silent. A gentle rain of quiet applause broke out as he was wheeled off the field on the back of a golf cart. A rumbling ambulance waited in the concrete tunnel. Clark gagged quietly on the fumes as they loaded him in. He was crying and he didn't care. He prayed hard.
As they whipped through the wet, sleepy streets of Green Bay, Clark realized that the harder he prayed, the more he was beginning to feel.
"To glorify you, God," he said desperately under his breath. "My healing is your glory."
By the time they unloaded him at the hospital he could move his toes and his hands. Incredibly, the pain in his neck continued to grow, and little moans escaped from his throat when he didn't concentrate on staying quiet. By the time he was on the X-ray table, only his right arm, shoulder, and chest were still tingling. They hurt, too, but the rest of his body felt almost normal.
The doctors came.
"Your neck isn't fractured," one said, "but from your symptoms we know there is some nerve damage. We're going to take an MRI and have a specialist look at it."
"I can move" Clark said, wiggling his fingers and flopping his feet to prove it.
"We'll get this equipment off you, but try to stay as still as you can for now."
Carefully, with the help of some nurses, the doctor removed Clark's helmet and his shoulder-length blond hair spilled out onto the table. With razor-sharp shears they removed the rest of his equipment, cutting through straps and laces. They covered him with a sheet, then wheeled him into a dimly lit room and unloaded him onto a narrow table that protruded from the fat cylindrical MRI machine like a tongue.
"Would you like a Valium?" a young nurse asked.
Clark scowled. "For what?"
"You'll be in there for a while. You won't be able to move and it's tight. Valium will help you relax."
"I don't need it," Clark said resolutely. He didn't use drugs.
Twenty minutes after being encased in the MRI machine he regretted his decision. The walls of the huge machine were inches from his face and pressed against his chest, shoulders, hips, and ass. He couldn't move more than half an inch in any direction. The machine banged on with a terrible noise as they spoke to him through a headset that had been placed over his ears.
"How much longer?" he demanded after another twenty minutes.
"It could be a while," the nurse's voice said sympathetically. "Do you want that Valium?"
Silence.
"Just get me out," Clark said finally. "I need to get out."
Nothing happened. Then, without warning and with a whirr of mechanical wheels, Clark emerged into the glorious space of the open room.
The nurse appeared. "Take these, sweetheart," she said. "You're going to be in there a while and it will help."
Clark silently asked forgiveness and swallowed the Valium.
"It'll take a few minutes to work. Are you okay to go back in?"
"Yes," Clark said stoically. This time he knew what to expect, and by the time the claustrophobia began to creep into his mind the drugs had kicked in and washed away his worry.
The MRJ took more than an hour, and it gave Clark time to think about what had happened and what might have happened. He knew that other NFL players had been paralyzed for life. Some recovered partial use of their limbs.
When they had the pictures they needed, the machine ejected him and he waited quietly for the doctor. Free from the restrictive machine, Clark found that his right arm, with some continuing pain and some weakness, was functional. The door suddenly opened and a new doctor, tall and gangly, smiled at him.
"Hello, Clark. I'm Doctor Devorsitz. I'm a neurologist. The good news first. Your spinal cord is not severed in any way. The bad news is that the cord was bruised and you've ruptured a disk between the fourth and fifth vertebrae. "Vbu'll need surgery to remove the damaged disk and fuse the two vertebrae."
"I . . . I'm going to be okay?" Clark asked.
The doctor pursed his lips and scowled before nodding. "The odds favor your full recovery, but I have to warn you that there are many things we don't know about the spinal cord. It can take some unusual turns."
"Will I be able to play?"
The doctor considered him as if he were a sideshow curiosity. "If the damage is no worse than it appears, and if your surgery is successful, then it's certainly a possibility. I believe people have suffered this kind of injury and played football again. Is that what you want?"
"Of course," Clark said. "That's what I am."
Chapter 3
Conrad Dobbins's phone woke him at a little after seven. He was in complete darkness.
"Hello?" he said, his voice scratchy and laced with annoyance.
"Conrad. I got trouble."
"What now?"
"Real trouble, man. I got a dead girl."
Conrad sat up and punched a button on the nightstand. A heavy set of curtains masking a massive semicircular set of windows opened to reveal the city of Los Angeles below.
"Goddamn! I told you, Trane. I told you and told you. Don't find trouble. Stay clean until I get this next contract signed. Two motherfuckin' months! That's all I asked you. Two mother- fuckin' months! Who is the bitch?"
"Just a girl."
"Just a girl? Who? Your goddamn girlfriend? Some bitch? A hooker? The goddamn owner's goddamn wife? Who?"
"A hooker."
"Well that's something anyway . . . What happened to her?"
"I think she OD'd, but there's motherfuckin' blood everywhere. Things got a little rough."
"Police?"
"No. I'm at Elysium. That club I took you to." "Goddamn, Trane," Dobbins complained. "Now I'm gonna have to call the goddamn Rocket and you know that ain't gonna be cheap."
Chapter 4
The chemical stink of a strong bromide disinfectant filled Clark's nostrils. For the past month that smell had punctuated the beginning of every day except Sundays. He was submerged in the hot tub up to his chin in the bubbling water. His arms floated languidly amid the bubbles, but he was in no way enjoying himself. The hot water still caused his neck to throb with a heightened intensity. He looked at the clock. Two minutes to go. He ground his teeth and tried not to watch the second hand.
When he emerged from the tub he was flushed pink like a boiled lobster. His long yellow hair was plastered in a dark web across his back and shoulders. He wrapped a white towel around his waist and lifted his weakened right arm over his head, stretching it out. By now, a handful of other seriously injured teammates were starting to straggle into the training room with sleep-rumpled heads of hair. They greeted one another with solemn nods. The trainers themselves had broken their huddle near the doctors' examination room and were waiting expectantly to begin a multitude of treatment regimens. Being first meant Clark got his treatment from the head trainer, Jerry Rhea. Not only was Jerry the best and most experienced of the staff, he was a good Christian man, and that gave Clark a certain amount of comfort. His treatment would stretch out over a three-hour period, much of it under the massaging hands of the trainer. The time went faster if you had something to talk about, and Clark always found conversation much more pleasant with someone who shared his fundamental ideas.
"Jerry," Clark said.
The older man looked up from the table where he'd just finished greasing up two electrodes. "Good morning, Mister Cromwell," Jerry said. The "mister" was Jerry's typically friendly sarcasm, but something about the trainer's smile struck Clark as being forced.