Sick City

by Tony O'Neill

  ——————

  The kid was fifteen, but looked younger. That’s why he worked so much. He’d told Tyler that he had been in LA for six months now. He would be well on his way to a small fortune if every dollar that he’d made hooking didn’t go into funding his crack habit. Still, he was a pretty kid, and Tyler figured he probably had another year or two left in him before his face gave out altogether.

  “So, you know, I’m really an actor. This isn’t my full-time gig or anything; I’m, like, in between jobs right now,” the kid said, wincing as he hoovered up the last line of meth.

  Tyler was wearing a bathrobe and Speedos. The kid said his name was Maestro. Maestro had been hanging out on Santa Monica Boulevard at two in the morning when Tyler was buying tacos and looking for trade. That was last night. Now that he had got what he needed Tyler was agitated by Maestro’s presence. It was time to move on. Tyler watched the kid with bored eyes. “You planning on sticking around much longer?” he asked.

  The buzzer interrupted them. Tyler peeked through the blinds, nervously, and then sighed when he saw who it was. He buzzed Spider in.

  Bad luck emanated from Spider. If you had the right kind of eyes you could spot it straightaway. He was short and stocky with an ugly, scrunched-up face. He had a variety of unsuccessful hustles going, none of which seemed to bring in very much money. Spider was a professional moocher. He was dressed in a baseball cap, dark jacket, and jeans. Today, he had a smoothed-over, anonymous look about him. He dragged a black suitcase behind him. He looked around the room, with his small burned-out eyes screwed up a little. “What’s up?” he said, to no one in particular.

  “Hey, Spider. Back so soon? This is Maestro. . . .”

  Maestro held out his hand, but Spider just looked at it, seemingly unwilling to touch the boy’s hand.

  “You been on vacation?” Maestro asked, awkwardly withdrawing it.

  “Nope.”

  “Spider’s never been out of LA. Right, Spider?” Tyler laughed. He was rolling a spliff.

  Spider shrugged. “I got all I need right here.”

  He sat down next to Maestro, putting the case at his feet. He looked over to the kid sourly. Maestro thought there was something rotten about this guy’s face, something degenerate and nauseating behind those eyes. He’d dealt with enough freaks in his life to know one when he saw one. Maestro smiled at him a little, cool and noncommittal.

  “So what’s with the case?” he asked.

  “Stole it.”

  He bent over and opened the case, pulling out clothes and toiletries. He was hurriedly checking the clothes for designer labels.

  Tyler sighed, and then looked over to Maestro, delivering his explanation in the neutral tones of the narrator of a nature documentary.

  “Spider hangs out at LAX. By the luggage carousel. He takes cases. Then he usually shows up here trying to trade whatever motley collection of junk he has scored for drugs. It’s all getting rather boring, to be honest.”

  “Shut up, faggot!” Spider spat, examining a blouse and then tossing it in a heap on the floor. “Goddamnit. It’s garbage, man. Forever 21! Fucking shit. There was a nice Louis Vuitton suitcase that went around three times, but it was too obvious, man. They could have been staking the place out, you know?”

  Maestro took a drag off his cigarette. “You ever been caught?”

  “Yeah. A couple of times. You mind putting that thing out? I’m trying to breathe here.”

  · · ·

  “This motherfucker’s been caught, what—six, seven times?” Tyler clarified.

  Spider shrugged, and then went back to work. “I’ve been banned from LAX. That’s why I grew the mustache. And dyed the hair platinum. Switching my look up.”

  “Yeah,” Tyler sneered, “I don’t know where he gets off calling me a faggot when he looks like a reject from the Village People. Nothing more disquieting than a self-hating homo.”

  “I ain’t a homo.”

  “You fuck guys.”

  “For money.”

  “You fuck guys, though.”

  “So?” Spider said, stopping what he was doing and staring at Tyler. “If I cut someone’s lawn for ten bucks, it don’t make me a landscaper.”

  Maestro looked over at Tyler and smirked. Tyler made a face and mouthed “closet queen” at him silently. Maestro laughed a little, getting into the game, blowing more smoke in Spider’s direction. Spider ignored them, rummaging through the side pockets now in desperation. Triumphantly he produced a wad of alien-looking notes and started counting them frantically.

  “Two thousand Jamaican dollars,” he said triumphantly. “What can I get for this?”

  Tyler shook his head. “Don’t you have any real money?”

  “This IS real money.”

  “Don’t let the palm trees fool ya, Spider. This ain’t fucking Jamaica.”

  “Come on. Don’t give me any shit, man.”

  “Will you do me a favor? You got your car?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m supposed to pick up Jeffrey. Like, half an hour ago. And Maestro needs a ride back to his place.”

  “All right,” Spider scowled, stuffing the money into his pockets, “but I’m keeping the bread. And fuck me! Bitch, put that cigarette out!”

  “Fuck you, faggot,” Maestro enunciated, slowly and clearly.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  It was rent day in the Hotel Barbarossa, and as usual Atef was left chasing up money from the scum and the deadbeats who had run this place into the dirt over the years. When his father had come from Pakistan in the ’60s, they had decent clients then. Poor, but honest. Wannabe actresses, musicians, screenwriters, all drawn to the West Coast by the lure of the film industry.

  Atef’s memories of growing up here were mostly positive: at least, up until the ’70s. That was when his father had started drinking, and the neighborhood’s slow decline had started to become the hotel’s decline. As Mexicans and Guatemalans replaced the Filipinos and Jews, gang activity around the park had turned the hotel into a haven for drug dealers, prostitutes, and addicts. His father was too old, drunk, and tired to try to maintain the place, and by the time the old man died of a heart attack in the early ’80s, Atef found himself inheriting a notorious flophouse.

  · · ·

  The place barely survived year to year, and Atef treated his residents with as much disdain as they treated the building. One of his regular Thursday rituals was the rent collection. Walking the floors, hammering on the doors, warning the clients that they would be thrown out if they didn’t pay up today. Sometimes they would try to ignore his warnings, and at least once a month he had to chase someone out with a baseball bat. Mostly, though, they paid, albeit reluctantly.

  “Hello? Rent day!” Atef screamed through the door again, beating against it with his fist. He repeated his yell and placed an ear to the door. Nothing. Sighing, he slid his key into the lock and let himself in.

  He half expected the room to be empty. Most of them just took off in the middle of the night, off to other hotels, maybe to a period of sleeping on the streets. But not today. As he opened the door, he saw her lying in the bed, naked, the sheets bunched up around her belly. He took in the peaceful look on her face, and then the breasts, which just sat there pointing upward, tying his tongue for a moment.

  “Hello? Miss, hello?”

  There was no reply. Outside he could hear the drilling of concrete, the screams of people driven insane by the heat already, but in this room everything was still, quiet. He crept forward.

  Her mouth was hanging open slightly, giving her a slightly mongoloid look. He stared at her breasts and noted that her chest was not rising and falling. As his eyes lingered on them, he felt himself getting hard. He’d had a hard-on for this bitch for a while now. Always hoping somewhere in the back of his mind that she would come to him with money problems, looking for some kind of arrangement to keep her room. It never happened, though, not with this one. There were a few
of the girls who paid with furtive blowjobs and hurried fucks in the dreary front office, but this one always had the money at the end of the week. Atef wasn’t surprised. She was by far the most beautiful whore in the place.

  He reached out, touched her throat. The skin was icy to the touch, and there was no pulse. He allowed his hand to travel down her body, coming to rest on her breast. Even cool like this, it was still firm. He ran his thumb over her nipple. Then clearing his throat, he straightened up and went back to the door. He closed it and clicked the lock in place.

  He looked around the room. On the bedside cabinet were several prescription bottles. One for diazepam, one for Xanax, one for something called Dilaudid, and another for Ambien. Large bottles. The only one with any remaining pills was the Ambien. He pocketed the remainder, and noticed her purse on the floor next to the bed. He went through it, removing eighty dollars and some Trojans. Then he returned his attention to the woman. Another fucking OD. Well used to this routine by now, Atef took his time. Glancing at the door one more time, he unzipped himself and started playing with his aching cock.

  “Now you’re fucking dead, you bitch . . . ,” he said to her. “Now I can do anything I want to you, huh? You like this, don’t you? You like watching me jerk off. . . .”

  With his free hand he touched the dead girl’s breasts. Then, frowning, he put his finger to her jaw and forced the mouth shut. That was better.

  As he started to beat faster and faster, he pulled the sheet away, to further expose her naked body. As the sheet fluttered to the ground, he froze. He immediately felt a shudder run through his body. He muttered, “Jesus CHRIST!” and pulled his hand away from the sheet as if he had received an electric shock. He felt his dick go limp in his hand. He scurried to the bathroom and splashed cold water on his face, stuffing his penis back in his pants guiltily. He ran his hands through his wet hair and looked at himself in the mirror. He retched a little, barely believing what he had seen. He went back to the door and looked over at the bed. Jesus fucking Christ, he thought, when you think they can’t get any worse, they do!

  He looked again at the huge, out-of-place penis between the girl’s legs over there on the bed. He noted, a little ashamed, that it looked bigger than his. She was so beautiful, so feminine, and small, yet there was this thick, ugly penis sprouting out of her like some monstrous challenge to nature. Atef shuddered. People PAY for this? he thought, outraged. There are some real sick motherfuckers out there!

  Taking one last look around the room for valuables, he finally stormed out, locking the door behind him, so he could make that familiar 911 call. He knew that the cops would take their sweet goddamned time, as always. He poured a larger than usual finger of whiskey into his mid-morning coffee and waited. Champagne was a fucking MAN. He shuddered with disgust and raised the cracked cup to his lips.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  After almost two hours of waiting in the lobby of Clean and Serene, Jeffrey grabbed his case and stepped out onto the street. He couldn’t take the looks the receptionist was giving him anymore. Poor bastard, her face said, he’s doomed.

  Outside, there was nothing around, except for a two-lane highway and a McDonald’s. This was a neighborhood in name only, nothing more than a collection of anonymous buildings built to be observed through the unreal lens of a car’s windshield.

  Earlier that day, he had scribbled his cell number on a napkin and handed it to Randal. Randal had smiled and pocketed it. “Two weeks, man,” Randal had said, “I’ll catch up with you in two weeks. Don’t go fuckin’ OD’ing on me or something.”

  “I’ll be okay. I gotta find a place to live, and all of that bullshit. Call me when you get out, and we can take care of business.”

  “Got it.”

  Then Jeffrey had gone downstairs to start the process of checking out.

  He called Tyler’s cell again. There was no answer.

  The sun felt good against Jeffrey’s skin. It was nice to be away from the incessant air-conditioning. He looked to his left and noticed there was a liquor store. He wondered if the treatment center or the liquor store had come first. It seemed like a perfectly symbiotic relationship. Everybody wins if a drunk walks out of this place and buys a bottle of booze. Everybody except the drunk.

  A rusted 1980 AMC Pacer pulled up beside Jeffrey, belching fetid black smoke. The horn honked three good, long blasts. Jeffrey peered in and cursed under his breath. It was Spider. He pulled open the door.

  “Where’s Tyler?”

  “Home. He sent me. Jesus Christ, ya shoulda seen the fucking swish he had me drop off. Goddamn. Fruitier bastard I’ve never seen before. No offense, man. But the kid was a fag with a capital F, ya know?”

  Jeffrey shoved the case in the backseat and got in. Spider was manic and sweating up a storm. Tweaked out, as usual.

  “I’m going to kick Tyler’s ass,” Jeffrey said.

  “Huh?”

  “Nothing.”

  Spider stuck the car into Drive, and they squealed away. As they weaved in and out of traffic, Spider talked a machine-gun monologue, cutting through traffic and slamming his fist against the horn whenever anyone got in his way. At Jeffrey’s feet something that looked like meat lasagna was ground into the rubber slip mats and the inside of the car smelled of fried onions and toxic sweat. “So, uh, you’re clean now, huh?” Spider was saying. “Clean and serene. Goddamn. That’s a good thing. I’m proud of you, man. So what’s next? Uh, you got any plans?”

  “I think I’m gonna get out of LA.”

  “Really? Why?”

  Jeffrey shrugged. “I just need a change of scene.”

  “Well, whatever floats your boat, man. But you know, where are you gonna go? This is LA, man. The center of the universe. We got everything here. I’m so sick of people putting this place down, like we’re not cool or something. Like we’re not New York. Man, fuck New York. I never met anyone from New York I liked. They can keep it, you know? What, you wanna go to New York?”

  Jeffrey shrugged.

  “No. Maybe get out of the States for a while. I dunno.”

  At this, Spider slammed on the brakes. An SUV directly behind them swerved, and the wailing horn faded into the distance as it barreled past them, nearly mounting the sidewalk in the process. Spider looked over at Jeffrey, incredulous.

  “Leave the STATES?”

  “Sure, why not?”

  Spider sniffed and twitched a little. Then he took off again, muttering to himself. He seemed genuinely aggrieved by the idea that Jeffrey might leave the U.S.

  · · ·

  “Crazy shit, man. You know people are like riding on fucking rafts made out of banana crates right now, trying to get in here? Jumping over walls and shit. And you wanna leave? Where the fuck are you gonna go? Leave the States! Jesus Christ!”

  They rode for a while in silence. They took the 101 to Hollywood and Jeffrey instructed Spider to take the exit at Vine. Then Jeffrey said: “Stop the car.”

  “What? I thought we’re goin’ to Tyler’s place!”

  “No. I need to make a stop. Tell Tyler I’ll swing by tomorrow night.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah.”

  They pulled up by the Pantages Theater. Jeffrey grabbed his bag and said, “I’ll catch you soon, Spider.”

  “Take it easy.”

  Outside, the streets were balmy. He walked west, until he hit a favorite bar of his, Bob’s Frolic Room. He walked into the cool, dark space. On one wall, a colorful mural depicted various Hollywood legends who had surely never set foot in the place. At the bar were a handful of afternoon drinkers. On the television, The Young and the Restless was playing and the barmaid, an impossibly tiny Russian lady, was watching it, rapt as she polished a glass. Jeffrey took his seat at the bar. To his right was an old man with a gray beard reading LA Weekly. He was eating popcorn and drinking a beer.

  “Whattya have, hon?”

  “Corona.”

  “Sure thing.”

  �
� · ·

  He left a twenty on the bar, and she pushed the frosty bottle over to him. Jeffrey opened up his bag and there, sitting reproachfully on top of his clothes, was his copy of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. He took it out and placed it on the empty bar stool next to his. He looked at his own reflection in the mirror that lined the bar and the rows of bottles. Each one promising freedom, wit, good times. He thought about Dr. Mike’s smooth, airbrushed face, and the smooth, assured baritone of his voice. How sobriety had seemed so easy, so logical inside of the doctor’s office. He took a pull of the beer. The beer tasted good. The beer tasted better than good—it tasted wonderful.

  There were two weeks to wait before Randal finished his treatment. All he had to do was find a place to lay low until then, and they could work on making enough money to split LA forever. The idea of having to hold it together for even a couple of weeks was strangely terrifying. It seemed like an impossibly long time.

  No drugs, he told himself. Just booze. You can still make the meetings, but if you need to get fucked up stick to booze. You can hold it together. He thought momentarily about having to step foot in Tyler’s place, and the temptations that would entail. That’s why he couldn’t go tonight. He felt too fragile. It was too early. He needed to have a few drinks, unwind, find a place to stay for the night, and then in the morning he could make it to Tyler’s. No worries. No worries.

  Jeffrey closed his eyes, thankful to at last be back where he felt at home. He put the bottle to his lips and took a long slug. He slid the empty bottle away from him and signaled for another.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Pat sat behind the wheel of the rusted red Toyota, watching the apartment building. He had the patience of a crab. His eyes were milky white in the dim sun. Trina was filing her nails. She was hunched down in her seat, with her knees on the dash. Fine strands of her hair were plastered to her forehead with perspiration, and her brow was furrowed in concentration. She looked like an impatient, petulant child.