Lenders

by Johnson, John

  “Looking good Jon,” Rab said, “and yes, I gotta say, as nasty as this place is—” Reluctant to solidify any good words to the end of his sentence he looked around at the swelling crowd. With a wry smile he nodded in appreciation of the present moment.

  “True,” Jon replied, “but we sure had some good times in this old hole didn’t we?”

  “So, anyone from the old crew still venture down here?”

  “Here,” Jon said handing Rab a cold beer. “Well Matt surely doesn’t come anymore—” They both turned to see the Asian girls—lipstick smeared all over their faces and chests, reaching for each other like cry babies—get hauled away by bouncers. “—His wife has him on 24 hour lock down, a jealous one she turned out to be. Funny huh, considering she met him here, and you and I both know—” They both nodded once with a grin. “—And Alan, that crazy acid-tripping daredevil, long story there. Ended up breaking his neck, but he’s finally walking again. He got a set of implants—courtesy of our rivals. But you know, times change, people move on.”

  “Right about that, they sure do,” Rab said, catching Jon’s inference about the projects they’d abandoned. “Jon you know we would’ve outrun them with the coding for those neural implants, you know I had to cancel. This project we’re working on Jon—it’s gonna…” He moved his head side to side. “Well, we’ll talk more about that later.”

  “I had almost a year in that project Rab—just to toss it all the sudden,” Jon said. Rab didn’t respond just kept gazing out, three beauties dancing in a circle caught his eye. The skinny one facing his direction looked up, his way. “But you’re right. This is the big one. Hey, I’m hanging with a few friends over there.” He aimed his beer to a round booth near the end of the huge glass partition that overlooked most of the club and the dance floor below. Jodi waved, clearly surprising Rab by her presence. Two others Rab didn’t recognize were sitting at the table having some drinks. The man in the red plaid flannel was so large he couldn’t fit and had to sit on the outside in a separate chair. “And Rab, Jodi’s with me. We’ve been dating for a while now and I think—well I really like her.”

  “That’s great Jon,” Rab said putting a hand on his shoulder. “Cheers.” He held up his beer for a little congratulatory toast. They tapped their bottles and took a drink.

  “Come on, let’s head over.”

  “Hey Rab,” Jodi said with bright enthusiasm.

  “Jodi, hey. Nice to see you here, and together with my best friend. He’s a good man.”

  “Ah.” She tilted her head sending a smile up to Jon. The word was out and her white Idaho skin couldn’t hide even the smallest amount of blushing. She was happy Rab made it, but couldn’t help but feel it was a bit awkward: her boss, finally outside, knowing he had to sneak around to make it happen, a multi-millionaire in a raunchy Tijuana club. But, cool, she thought. He did bring cool to the table, his style was relaxed and chill. And although he looked thinner compared to when he’d first hired her, it was a pretty damn good change compared to his usual self: the ghost in the lab, the coding madman that never slept.

  “Rab this is Jerry.” Jon introduced the Goliath with a motion of his beer. “We met about—what was it, six months ago Jerry? Jerry owns the adult store.” Rab’s head moved with an aha moment. Jerry stood halfway up—if he’d stood up any more his head would’ve hit the ceiling—and reached to shake his hand. Rab realized his shirt wasn’t actually flannel material, much nicer; although it sure looked that way from a distance, and fit his initial thought: Paul Bunyan. Jerry had a chiseled face with curly well-managed brown hair. Several days worth of thick neatly trimmed stubble wrapped his powerful chin and jawline. Broad shoulders, thick neck; to say he was immense would be an understatement. He wore tight faded jeans that wrapped his tree trunk legs, and likely had the largest dark brown leather boots one could special order.

  “The man himself. A pleasure and nice to finally meet ya,” Jerry said with a smile and a thick southern accent. “Heard a lot of good things about you.” They shook. Rab was flabbergasted at the size of his hands.

  “Ah—right, you own Titan’s Pleasurables down the street. Thanks for the great stuff man. And that harness, damn,” Rab said, nearly whispering his last sentence. Jodi spit out a half-swig of beer mid swallow.

  “Right there. Dauntless,” Jon declared, lifting his beer then placing an arm around him. “Told you guys he’s cool. My bro.”

  “You’re surely one of my best customers,” Jerry said. “I thank you sir.” Rab thought it odd because he’d only bought a few items for the girls Jon had brought up. He figured it was just friendly chat.

  “No sirs here. Just call me Rab please.” Jerry acknowledged tipping his beer and replanting himself. His metal chair buckled and disappeared from sight. “Dauntless Jon? Blunt maybe, so I’ve been told. I like to skip nonsense, say it straightforward, to the point. But as you know, my mouth has gotten me into trouble a few times.”

  “Has it ever,” Jon joked. “And Rab, this is Leti, we just met. She doesn’t speak English very well.” Leti had long wavy black hair that was tinted orange near the tips, perfectly redrawn eyebrows, and a tight red dress that forced her small breasts upward further enhancing her hourglass figure. Her legs had crisscrossing black straps that ended into her shiny red leather boots. To Rab she looked typical, hot and sexy, like many girls he’d met in the clubs down south: they desperately waited all week for the weekend, nothing else mattered, getting every detail perfect. She had her manicured petite hand on Jerry’s right tree trunk. Rab’s thoughts wandered. He couldn’t help but guess: her original brows might just look better, many times the case. In his mind her clothes disappeared—for a moment.

  “Hola, mucho gusto.” She arched her back, revealingly leaning forward, smiling and looking him square in the eye then held her hand out making Rab reach for it. Rab shook it with a worthy glance at her body—not a man in the world would neglect that view—then scooted into the booth after Jon snuggled next to Jodi. He got a feeling about Leti: she wanted him to pull her hand, kiss it, then her lips, then drag her across the table, then take her into the bathroom, then home. He mentally shook his head to clear his wandering imagery.

  “So, how’d you get so fucking big,” Rab said as he looked up trying to see the head atop the tower sitting only ten inches from him. They all laughed, including Jerry himself. Jodi nearly burped up more beer. And the conversation began with a friendly open vibe; apparent from the start, they were in good company. A waiter gestured from across the bar with a bucket of beers; Jerry sprung instantly, like a thirsty horse, and motioned him over.

  “Hola Jon,” the waiter greeted, noticing him right off the bat. Jon returned the greeting with a wave. It was the same old: a bucket of green, probably watered-down bottled beers, but there were also a couple clear ones. Rab recognized the short waiter instantly.

  “Julian,” Rab elated. And the waiter recognized him as well, eyes wide leaning back to get a better look. From the seated position their eyes almost paralleled.

  “Raahb eres tu! Paso muuucho tiempo! Donde andabas, como estas compa?” Rab stood up and they man-hugged briefly. The waiter was wearing tall shoes but still very short, Rab had to hunch.

  “Been good. Bien Julian. Y tu?” Rab replied.

  “Yo he visto a Jon unas veces, y supe que ivas a regressar. Pues quieren algo ustedes?”

  “Si Julian. Let’s go with cinco shots de whiskey, cinco slammers for the ladies, and cinco de tequila. Anything else guys, Leti?” All were fine at the moment, and with what he was ordering declined to add anything.

  “Es todo, Gracias Julian,” Rab replied. He knew Julian would hook him up; he’d always been good to him. And Julian headed happily toward the bar; this time Rab hooked him up, with a huge tip.

  Everyone grabbed a beer from the metal pail except Leti; Jerry handed her one of the clear bottles, attempting to read the label as he did so.

  “Here’s the, Mod—elo. A model for a model,” h
e said. They laughed hearing him struggle to read the Spanish label, and attempt a joke with it. “Ah, forget it.” He laughed at himself too.

  “Hablas español?” Leti asked Rab. Her eyes had widened upon hearing him speak Spanish.

  “Muy poquito,” Rab replied showing closely pinched fingers, and she took an innocent sip. Rab grinned. He knew how it worked. By night’s end sips would be chugs, and inhibitions would take a hike. Their eyes met again, and a tease of a smile escaped her shiny luscious bright-red lips. One bucket turned to two, two to four. Jerry vaporized the beer.

  Rab caught himself staring across the table at Leti. Really he wasn’t attracted to her, at least not on an intellectual level. He didn’t want to be, yet felt her sensuous presence prime his instincts. He was smart enough, and lucid enough, to see himself objectively: it was the draw, magnified by his current state of imbalance, fault of a ludicrous schedule; like the primitive survival instincts of a bear, reactivating after a long winter of hibernation.

  “So Rab,” Jerry said. “I gotta say it—since you like it blunt. Jon says you’re some kind of genius. Read about ya in the news too.” Rab turned to Jon with a sort of pissed-off look, although he wasn’t. Jon shrugged.

  “How’d you come up with some of that stuff anyway?” Jerry continued, his alcohol barely kicking in. “Like the InstaRest. Genius man, I have one actually; and the software for phones too. They say you’re some kind a prodigy. I read an article a few weeks ago that called you a freak of nature.”

  “I don’t follow that shit Jerry. None of it,” Rab said; with tamed impatience his eyebrows angled. Quickly he shrugged it off, returning quickly to a relaxed state of pre-intoxication. “I don’t even watch TV. I simply work and do what I like to do. They can say whatever they want, true or false, baiting people for the next hot story. An utter waste of time if you ask me.” He looked around at the club as the talk went quiet following his reply. But Jerry agreed with that, and took a big swig. The stage was nearly full now, mostly women; a few dudes were making fools of themselves on the side steps.

  The buzz massaged his head, a feeling he’d almost forgot. Two beers and a whiskey shot later Rab felt composed, back on planet Earth; with a deaf ear to gossip and small-minded chatter—he felt like spilling some guts. Jerry was a bit of a blurter but he could relate, and he couldn’t seem to help himself; he liked the guy. And in that moment, looking at the gigantic man, he’d decided something—something for later.

  “I’m just a regular dude Jerry, just like anyone else,” Rab explained. “It started early I guess. My dad bought me a fat puzzle book, and I solved every single one. I was always good at math too, which quickly led me to coding, which in turn landed me a programming job when I was fifteen. I was just—” He raised his beer. “—fucking good at it, my thing I suppose.” Jerry happily toasted. “I was so good they even let me take my pet rabbit to work—inside their clean and fancy building.”

  “Pet rabbit?” Jodi said. “Cool.”

  “Yeah, had too, my mom said she’d fuckin’ kill it. But he was my bud, Radar Rabbit. He was huge.” The idea of his mom killing it smacked the group as odd, but he just continued on. “Anyway, after high school I started experimenting with drugs, acid, shrooms—anything you could think of, mixing it all together. Still worked though, coded everyday for years, did good, really good, made a big pile of money. Then one day I ate this plant called Angel’s Trumpet—long story in itself really—but mixing that with some other stuff. Well let’s just say, I way overdid it. The drugs eventually caught up to me. Yeah. I’d say I was pretty fucking normal before that—the bad trip; it fucked me up. Royally.”

  “Whoa, shit Rab,” Jodi said, leaning in not wanting to miss a word.

  “And when I say bad trip, I mean out of this world mind-fuck from hell. It was weird, really weird—can’t exactly put it into words.” He wobbled a bit, slurring, feeling the buzz.

  “What was it like Rab?” Jodi said, now deeply interested. From her own experiences she liked how—when she occasionally coded while smoking marijuana—it would open her mind allowing her to come up with great ideas and solutions to her programs. The main problem was being able to bring the ideas back from that zone before they got lost forever, recording them quickly, before they got obscured by others—maybe returning to the ether, or wherever the fuck, forever. She had also been using the Pro-Con solution, occasionally, and found it solved that problem completely. The opportunity she had working for Rab allowed her the freedom to unleash her potential; she liked pushing the boundaries of her own creativity, and was desperate to hear more.

  “Imagine if your brain was completely rewired. I mean—” He downed a shot. “—you guys don’t wanna hear this shit.”

  “Yeah man, it’s good stuff,” Jerry said. “Did coke with my ex-wife, but always needed too much to feel anything. No surprise there I guess. She ended up going overboard and stashing it from me, so I just gave it up. Glad I did actually. But it was nothing like your shit.”

  “It’s early Rab,” Jon said, “sure, let’s hear it.”

  “Well, I did go overboard, way fucking… Let’s just say I saw sounds, and the sounds got scary, freaky, really fucked up. Later I could see my own emotions, just spinning around my head like galaxy. I could literally reach out and grab one, and when I did so I would feel it instantly. I reached with my hand, this hand, and grabbed—SAD, and I started crying. I grabbed—HAPPY, and started laughing; they were all right there spinning, like a halo above my head. And things looked beautiful—that’s an understatement. Bright colors, changing shapes, flowing, weaving—then churning bending twisting and contorting. I forgot what planet I was on. But it wasn’t just the acid that day. I combined it all, every fucking thing, and it took me right down the rabbit hole like a boat plunging toward its doom in a whirlpool. It got weirder, scarier, and more horrifying with every second. Then time stopped and—” He hesitated with a sigh. “—I remember every single detail of it. Most I want to forget, but can’t, ever.”

  “You never told me this Rab,” Jon said, mesmerized like the rest. Even Leti understood, vaguely; but the way he talked peaked her interests more, his cool, among other things. Those just getting to know him noticed his unique personality; it was always the first thing, highly magnetic. And there too, he became the center of the hub. He dove into his thoughts while the discotheque below raged. They watched him go away in his mind.

  “Drink break,” Jodi said trying to stir his state of repose. They all gulped away, without taking an eye off him. A moment of silence continued. Amid the massage of bass from the throbbing woofers and cigarette smoke stabbed by laser lights, the club was packed, the bar was packed, the stage was packed, and now, people were stage diving. But things went silent for him; Rab’s ears heard nothing—he remembered.

  “Rab,” Jon said nudging his friend, “you there?”

  “I’m here,” he said, blinking out of it. “You know I’m glad I came tonight, feels good talking to people, real people for a change.” Suddenly and oddly right back to where he was, he turned to Jon. “I kept a lot of this bottled up Jon. Anyway, since the big trip I’ve been able to see things differently. Everyday normal things appear to me—it’s as if everything is in coding. And my solutions to the code are lucid from start to finish, no matter the distance between.” Rab turned to Jodi. “When you get ripped, you dwell on an idea, digging deeper, and deeper. Sometimes you might find the secrets to the universe, or think you did. But now, for me, it’s all the time, with everything, like awareness on steroids, and everything is a puzzle, that I can solve. Some puzzles are simple, some take—a year. It took me about ten months to cope. Bad anxiety, panic attacks, flashbacks. The scary mind-twisting returned frequently, like a mower in my brain tossing wires around. My mind was in knots. Got to the point I could no longer control my thoughts. I couldn’t handle the new way in which my mind was joining ideas. I lost my job, about lost it all, even my marbles for a while. I was completely—and totall
y—mind fucked.”

  “That’s damn terrifying Rab,” Jerry said. “But you don’t have to warn me twice. Ain’t messing with that. I stick with beer. But glad you’re alright now man.” He raised his beer taking another swig (half of a beer for him).

  Leti pretended to know what they were talking about. She had been touching Rab under the table; one foot out of her heals. Rab was deep into his memories, and for the first time, letting it all spill out. He didn’t even notice. The words activated his memories unnerving him slightly but he knew he had to remain strong and unafraid.

  “True. You look fine now,” Jodi said. “Well, except for staying cooped up in your lab all the time—and lately—we haven’t seen ya in weeks. But how’d you come back, recover from that? It sounds terrifying.”

  “Well I was about to check in to a nut house—but then, right before I completely lost it—well, I had a dream and it changed everything.” He paused, looking out the glass to the dance floor below. Security was doing half of their best to break up cat fight; two girls were tearing at each other’s clothes. But the story was interesting enough, it held the attention of the group, although Jerry couldn't help himself but to rise and sneak a peek: breasts were bouncing out as their shirts were stretched to strips. The raucous cheering forced the DJ to turn it up, and the sounds more easily penetrated the glass. “Right before I fell asleep one evening I had a moment of extreme clarity,” he continued. They leaned in. “It was like no other time in my life—” He turned to Jon, thinking briefly of Day 1, the project, something he had to keep secret. “—I chose to look onto my thoughts, and did so from a distance so to speak. I could sense everything around them in ways I cannot describe to you. Like my thoughts were a mere shadow floating in a higher dimension and I could reach around them—like holding a beach ball. I felt connected to everything, at peace—finally. The more I focused, the more I could focus, and the clarity increased until I began to fall deep into—no other way to explain it really—the rabbit hole. Well, to make it short, I took my thoughts to a special place. What seemed to me at the time, and still does really—the real world, one of thought. Like the ideas themselves were a form of energy. And the farther I traveled the clearer things became. The focus and clarity compounded exponentially and I found myself in a tunnel of pure energy. I could think anything and know it, take my focus anywhere and feel it, through and through—my eyes opened—for the very first time. It was natural, it was as real to me as this world where we sit together now, and it changed my life.” Rab paused again as if reliving the experience. “To myself, because I never told anyone else about it, I named it Thought Energy. I believe it to be the real true world beyond this physical one. It has always been there and always will, while our temporary place here will eventually end—” He clapped his hands together. Everyone at the table blinked and jerked back. Rab laughed. But he realized that he needed the clap most of all, to reign in his thoughts; because he felt it again. Jodi, visibly taken aback by the story, was unable to speak. She obviously couldn’t get enough.