by Lisa Mason
Susan gags.
Chi covers his mouth and nose. “Something’s dead in here.”
Suddenly Dirty David bursts out of a back room, waving a sawed-off shotgun. He is shaking so badly, the barrel swings around. “Who’s there?” he calls out in hoarse voice.
“Dirty David,” Susan cries. “It’s just me and my guy.”
Dirty David earned his nickname due to his taste for pornography, not his personal hygiene, but now his meticulous mod clothes are ragged and stained with grime and what looks like dried blood. He was always a fine-featured, delicate man. Now he looks emaciated, his eyes underscored with dark circles. He narrows those eyes. “Who the hell are you?”
“It’s me, Starbright, Dirty David. Don’t you remember me? And this is Chi. Don’t worry, he’s cool.”
Dirty David stares, a glimmer of recognition flickering. “What are you doing here? What do you want?”
“Dirty David, I’ve got to see Penny Lane.”
“There’s no Penny Lane here.” A spasm courses through him.
“Let’s go,” Chi whispers.
“No! I’ve got to find her!” She turns back to the twitching man. “You know, my friend from back East. Short dark hair, dark eyes, skinny. Actually, her hair was white the last time I saw her. Stan the Man told me she’s here with Professor Zoom.”
“Oh, you mean Crinky. They’re upstairs. They’re all upstairs.” He squints at them. “Got any reds or yellow jackets? I’m dyin’ here.”
Chi pops a blue bead off one of his necklaces, holds it up between his thumb and forefinger. “Break it in half like this, see? And sniff.” He tosses the bead on the coffee table.
Dirty David scrambles for it. He seizes the bead with trembling hands, breaks and sniffs it. “Ooh,” he groans and collapses on the floor, spilling the shotgun, which fires with a soul-splitting bang. Plaster flies off the wall.
Susan ducks. God!
Chi takes out a prophylak, retrieves the gun, and stashes it behind the swaybacked sofa. “It’s just a knockerblocker,” he says to her questioning glance. “It won’t harm him.”
“Oh, wow. Isn’t that against one of your Tenets?”
“Yeah, but he’ll calm down and get some rest. He won’t remember a thing, except that it was good shit and where can he get some more.”
“Right. We always want to know where we can get some more.”
He shoots her a grin. “Human nature strikes again.” He edges his boot toe against the husk of the bead on the floor. “Vegetable plastic. It’ll decompose in five years. In this pigsty, no one will notice.”
“Gosh, you’re becoming a revolutionary, Chi.”
“Thanks to you, my first star of the evening.”
They hurry up the stairs. Deep silence on the second floor. Clothes and sleeping bags are strewn all over. That ominous feeling deepens. They climb cautiously to the third floor.
“Hey,” Susan calls out. “P-Penny Lane? Are you here? Where are you?”
A door bursts open, and a skull with a pink boa clipped to its hair peers out.
Susan jumps. “God! L-Lady May?”
Lady May stares with burning, uncomprehending eyes.
“It’s St-Starbright. This is my guy, Chi. You met him on the Panhandle, remember? We’re cool, okay? We’re cool. Lady May, where’s my friend? Where’s Penny Lane?”
Like a phantom receding into ghostly realms, Lady May slips back in the room.
A pounding rises in Susan’s head. She’s finding it hard to swallow. She touches her forefinger to the door and pushes.
The door swings open.
They’re sprawled on a mattress on the littered floor. Lady May wearily lowers herself next to Nance. They wear nothing but bikini briefs, including Professor Zoom. The flickering light comes from all the candles. Candles everywhere, on the floor, on the windowsill, all over the top of a battered chest of drawers.
In the smoky candlelight, they look like corpses. Refugees from life. The room is stifling, the air thick with the stench of molten wax, struck matches, Kool Menthols, rancid sweat. And a strange decay.
“Well, if it isn’t Trixie,” Professor Zoom drawls. “Hey Trixie, hey Trixie. Which way, Trixie?”
Chi whips out a handful of prophylaks and carefully arranges a seat for Susan on the floor, then another for himself. He doesn’t bother concealing his movements or the plastic wraps floating down.
Nance watches with cavernous eyes. Then she bursts into a cackle. “What the hell?”
“Protection,” Chi says grimly, staring back at her. He takes Susan’s hand, helping her to sit, then seats himself.
Nance laughs again, but a throb steals into her cold mirth.
Susan is struck dumb. She doesn’t know where to begin. She sees the glint of glass, the gleam of steel. Hypodermic syringes lie everywhere, scattered everywhere. At last she says to Professor Zoom, “Which way, Harold? You’re going nowhere. You and Penny Lane and Lady May, you’ve got to get out of here.”
“There’s no way out, Trixie.” He picks up a kit lying on the floor next to the mattress. “No exit, and I don’t mean Sartre.”
White powder everywhere. Bags of it. Piles of it.
Susan says to Nance, “Penny Lane, what are you doing to yourself?”
“Drop that Penny Lane crap, Starbright.” She sings to the Beatles’ tune, “Crystal meth is up my nose and up my ass.” She cackles again, an awful sound. “My name is Crinky, sweetheart.”
“I don’t like Crinky. It’s stupid.”
“Oh, and Starbright knows what’s stupid,” Nance says to Lady May. “That Starbright, she’s the smart one.”
“What does ‘Crinky’ mean?” Susan asks angrily.
“Splash, grease, meth, crystal, speed, crank,” Professor Zoom intones. “Splash, speed, crank, crink. Crink, Trixie.” He dangles a hypodermic needle in his fingers. “Crank is crink. Crinky loves crank. You dig?”
Susan’s heart thunders so hard in her chest, she wonders if she’s having a cardiac arrest.
With slow deliberation, Nance takes the needle, leans into the candlelight. She extends her rail-thin arm. Needle punctures tatter her skin. An abscess the size of a walnut bulges from the inner aspect of her elbow. No, the arm’s no good. She stretches out her bony leg. A blood vessel is visible from her knee to her crotch, tattooed dark in her skin. She plunges the works behind her ankle. A little shriek pops from her lips. Then she grins at Susan, gleaming and demonic.
“You’ve got septicemia, Penny Lane,” Chi says matter-of-factly. “Blood poisoning. If you don’t go to a hospital right away, you’re going to die.”
“Oh, no,” Nance says like a child disappointed by a birthday gift.
“Baby, we’re all gonna die,” Lady May says reasonably.
Nance smiles slyly. “Look at how Starbright is freaked out.”
“No.” Susan shakes her head. “I’m not freaked out.”
“Then come on over, sweetheart.” Nance offers the works. “I’d love to turn you on.”
Professor Zoom blurts out, “Alackaday and anon, Trixie! I have found the Final Expression to my Equation. Not in the clouds. Not in the stars. I have found the Final Expression here, right here in this room. Do you want to know what the Final Expression is?”
“Tell me,” Susan says and reaches for Chi’s hand.
“LSD is a hoax, that’s the Final Expression. There is no Illumination. No New Consciousness. There is no God! Only the Great Rotor Motor, grinding, grinding, grinding your soul away. The Great Rotor Motor.” He bursts into tears. “No one will be saved.”
Lady May pries the kit from Nance’s fingers, rigs it up, and tenderly fixes Professor Zoom in the back of his thigh.
“Shut up, Zoom,” Nance says him. To Susan, “Man, he’s really lost it. Sweetheart, we saw you on TV. Last week, wasn’t it?” She tussles playfully with Lady May for the needle.
Susan trades looks with Chi. “You did?”
“Well, yeah. The CBS News Spe
cial. Man, that Harry Reasoner is so square. He doesn’t know the first thing about the Haight.” Nance aims one of her mock surprise looks. “Don’t tell me you didn’t see it.”
“I don’t watch TV so much anymore.”
Nance sniggers. “Listen to this. Starbright doesn’t shoot shit, doesn’t smoke doo, doesn’t watch TV. I bet she doesn’t ball anymore, either.”
“Neither do we, little love of my valley,” says Professor Zoom. “We just jack off the spike.”
Nance ignores him. “We figured it was the CBS News Special that brought that pig rooting around in here. Looking for you, Starbright.”
“What pig?” Chi says.
“Some private investigator sent by her parents. What a drag. Freaked us out.” Nance flicks her graceful hand at Lady May, gesturing with irritation for the pack of Kools lying on the mattress. “Isn’t that just like Starbright. Mom and Daddy want her back home so bad, they’re paying for it.” Nance lights a Kool, tossing the match in an overflowing ashtray. “Isn’t that sweet? Why, that’s so sweet, I forgot to puke.”
Susan’s heart isn’t just thundering, it’s exploding. “Listen to me, Penny Lane. Your mom and your stepfather came to my parents’ house. They wanted to know where you’d gone. They were worried! They cared!”
“But you didn’t tell them, did you, sweetheart.”
“No, I didn’t. I thought that was the right thing to do. I thought that was what you wanted. But they were looking for you. They were, and you can go back home.” Susan pulls out the money Stan gave her. “Go home, Nance. You can work things out. I’ll help you, I swear. I’ll never let you down again. Please, Nance. You don’t need this.”
“Nance? Who’s Nance? You still don’t get it, do you, Starbright?” She snorts. Professor Zoom starts to weep again. Lady May looks as if she’s about to weep, too. But Nance is hard and glittering. “I called Handy Andy and my mom. I called them. I called them.”
Susan shakes her head at Chi. Nance is over-amping. She’s making no sense.
Chi glances behind him, alarmed. Boot heels are clattering up the stairs to the third floor.
“I thought you were the smart one, Starbright,” Nance says, her voice ragged with sorrow. “They told me they have no daughter.”
She is an elf, a daredevil, a rebel, a whirling dervish. She is a junkie, a needle freak, a speed freak. She is a child leaping from the old oak tree, shouting, “I want to die!”
The Summer of Love did not corrupt this child.
You did, Mr. and Mrs. Payne.
Stovepipe and the Lizard burst into the room.
“God!” Susan cries. Chi pulls her to her feet.
“You Stan the Man?” Stovepipe shouts. He seizes Professor Zoom by his flimsy hair, yanks him to his feet “We want our freakin’ bread, and we want it now!”
“I’m Zoom!” Professor Zoom cries. “Stan’s with the band. He’s over in the park!”
The Lizard kicks at discarded kits and plastic baggies, ashtrays and candles. Crystal meth billows in the air, worthless dust.
“Stan ain’t here, so knock it off, man!” Lady May cries. She hoists herself to her feet and totters across the room.
The Lizard flashes his switchblade.
Lady May screams. “He cut me!” She brandishes the bright gash across her forearm. “He cut me!”
Susan swings her handbag at the Lizard, connecting with his shoulder. He spins, lunges at her.
Chi plants his bootheel in the Lizard’s crotch and kicks him away. He seizes her, hustles her out. She tries to twist away, but he won’t let go. She forgot how strong he is when he means to be. He forces her down the stairs and out the front door to the street gray with drizzle.
A window on the third floor suddenly flares with light. Glass shatters.
Nance thrusts her head out. “Starbright! Theyre kicking over the candles! Fire! Fire! There’s a fire!”
Stovepipe seizes Nance’s shoulder, yanks her inside.
Susan hears her scream.
“Fire!” Susan takes up the cry. Neighbors rush to their windows. “Fire, there’s a fire! And a guy’s assaulting a girl! Call the cops!”
Black smoke pours out the window. Susan glimpses leaping flames.
She tries to climb the front stairs but Chi grips her shoulders, restraining her.
“Chi,” she cries, “she was my best friend!”
“I can’t let you go in there, Starbright.” His face is anguished, but unrelenting. “It’s too dangerous!”
“Then you go! Help her!”
He shakes his head. “I can’t leave you.”
“I’ll wait right here, I promise. Wait no matter what. You’ve got to go, get her out of there. Please! Please! I’m begging you!”
“All right.” He clatters up the stairs and darts inside as firetrucks speed up in a blaze of lights and wailing sirens. Cop cars careen down the block.
A crowd gathers. Cyn walks up, arm in arm with a handsome young black dude in a beret and a leather jacket. There’s the dude with the skull and the guy with the eyes and the elderbeard. The crowd swells. Smoke thickens the air. Susan chokes, cupping her hand to her nose and mouth. Ashes spark, bits of fire whirling in the rain.
The green Digger truck pulls up. Susan spies Leo Gorgon’s sharp profile. Hells Angels rumble up on their hogs, cutting through the crowd. Firemen dash up and down the stairs, hoisting hoses inside. A ladder angles up, and firemen aim hoses in the third floor windows. Police are barking, “Get back! Get back!” More sirens wail as flames burst through the roof of the Double Barrel house in an evil, flaring crown.
A tall, slim man with long red hair and a brown leather jacket steps out of the crowd and gazes up at the awful spectacle.
“Chi!” Susan cries and pushes past people, rushing to him. How did he get out of there so quickly? She’s as glad to see him as she’s scared for Nance. “Oh, Chi, where is she? Did you get her out?”
The man turns toward her, his hair swinging like ropes of raw skin. She recoils from his bitter cold. His pale face is alive, crawling with fleshy bits and pieces that wriggle like maggots. His eyes are two burning pools of sapphire flames.
It’s a demon! A demon of Chi!
God, she’s sick!
Stomach churning, she presses her fingers to her throat and stumbles away. She backs into the crowd, groping, confused. She staggers into the arms of the gray beggar woman. The beggar embraces her, clutching her to a moist breast stinking of rot. Susan strikes out with her fists. It’s like punching the scum at the bottom of a pond.
But she breaks free. The demon can’t hold her!
“Yes!” she shouts. Demons that aren’t her double can’t hold her! Can’t kill her with their touch!
A icy wind stinking of sulfur strikes her. She whirls and stares eye to eye at the girl with her face. The demon looms a handsbreadth away.
Susan struggles against the force pulling her closer.
Black, they’re both in black, she and the demon, black rippling all around them. The demon’s face shifts, splintering into a thousand leers and scowls. Susan’s head spins. No one should ever have to see such dreadful expressions on your own face. The demon raises her hand, extending the knob of her staff.
The force seizes her, tears at her.
Susan ducks. Duck and cover! Isn’t that what they tell you to do if someone drops an atomic bomb on your house? Ducking, she breaks loose of the terrible force.
She runs, she runs, she runs.
17
Light My Fire
Inferno! The room is engulfed by the time Chi sprints back upstairs. Sheets of flame leap from the walls, and black smoke billows. The Vision of the Other Now rears up in his memory, the stench of forests burning and charred flesh. Dread beats in his chest. Heat bludgeons his face. His eyes sting and tear. He coughs and chokes. An awful crackling and popping deafens his ears.
Damn! This is a wood-frame house, maybe fifty years old, with a shake-shingled roof. No smoke detector, no
miniframe monitor, no sprinklers autohooked to a local reservoir. He can’t believe it. These people live in a tinderbox!
Chi pulls out a filter, clamps the square of SemiPerm over his nose and mouth. The filter instantly adheres to his skin, leaving his hands free. He inhales lightly, experimenting. Sooty and thick, but he can breathe as long as the fire doesn’t eat up all the oxygen.
The skinny fellow Starbright calls Professor Zoom sprawls at the top of the stairs, a naked bundle of bones, holding his throat, hacking, tears streaming down his face.
“Starbright’s friend!” Chi shouts. “Did she get out? Where is she?”
Professor Zoom clamps his hands to his scalp and claws at his limp hair, digs at his cheeks. He’s got crank bugs, a shivering of nerves and muscles under the skin creating the sensation of crawling insects. It’s a common symptom, Chi knows, of heavy methamphetamine abuse. Zoom’s fingernails draw blood.
Chi shakes the man’s shoulder, but he claws at himself and moans.
Chi dashes to the door. Flames dart at him like living things, devouring and ruthless. He can’t see a thing. He jerks back, pulls out his scope, peers through the macro end, clicks on the infrared lens. Nothing.
He shouldn’t be here. He shouldn’t be doing this!
He realizes with another part of his mind—how well the LISA techs have indoctrinated him—that this is a violation of Tenet Three. Starbright’s love for Penny Lane cannot matter. He cannot—should not—try to save her. He’s a t-porter, and Penny Lane is on her own.
And he’s left Starbright on her own, down on the street.
Get out of here, Chi!
He shakes off a queasy feeling. For a moment, in the terrible heat, he feels as if insects are crawling just beneath his skin. His very own crank bugs. Disgusted and confused, he brushes his hand over his face, dislodging the filter. He chokes and stumbles back to the stairs.
“Did she get out?” he shouts again, seizing Professor Zoom’s wrist. “Is Penny Lane okay?”
“The bed,” Professor Zoom says, staring helplessly up at him. “The bed, oh my God.”