THE POLITICS OF PLEASURE

by Mark Russell

  "... I'm all choked up cause the devil's got my hide, don't cast me loose, baby, cause it's one helluva slide ..."

  Rising decibel levels and the surging crowd proved too much for Michelle. She signalled to Goldman that she'd had enough. He nodded and escorted her to the back of the crowd. Onlookers at the edge of the throng were smoking and drinking, and because of the distance from the stage were able to hear each other without having to crane their necks or cup their ears.

  Goldman and Michelle stopped near a makeshift bar at the back of the venue. Beer, spirits and alcohol-induced chatter flowed freely about them. Nearby was a stall for Subway Slaves cassettes, T-shirts, buttons and stickers. By the look of it fans had already bought much of the trademarked merchandise.

  Michelle lit up a Salem menthol and nodded approvingly to the band's energetic beat. She was having a good time, Goldman could tell, which only made it easier for him to endure the concert, the music of which he found pretentious and banal. All the while he wanted to dash outside for a lungful of fresh air, conscious of the secondhand smoke soiling his skin and clothes.

  The all-female band stopped with uncanny precision for the last break of the night.

  'Hey dude.'

  Goldman felt a hand on his shoulder and spun round.

  Rick Sorenson. The fugitive chemist breathed a sigh of relief. Sorenson was arm in arm with a homely Puerto Rican woman who would have looked more in place at Sunday Mass than at a tour launch for a band that had recently supported The Damned on their west coast tour.

  'Rick.'

  'Scott, this is Pamela.'

  'Hi.'

  'Hi.'

  'Pamela, this is Michelle.'

  'Hi.'

  'Hi.'

  From out of the crowd, Thirteen and his girlfriend materialized beside Sorenson. For the most part they looked like a young celebrity couple riding their faces about town. Up-and-coming hipsters who'd readily give themselves to the bulb-flashing attention of the paparazzi. Thirteen wore silver-capped alligator skin boots, scalloped leather pants and a Celia Perry skull and barbed-wire print shirt. Again his hair was pulled back in a ponytail. Holly was attired in glossy white pumps and red and white cha cha pants. Her unstrapped breasts jutted beneath a sleeveless V-neck, which depicted a garish print of Christ looking skyward. KILL YOUR IDOL captioned underneath. An Eldorado Spanish belt encircled her emaciated waist, while a clutter of gold and silver chains, sporting metal crucifixes and dollar signs, hung from around her swanlike neck. A wool/silk jacket was draped across her arm and a diamond stud sparkled like a minuscule star on one side of her nose.

  'We're ready to do business, dude.' Rick Sorenson could only smile at the prospect. 'You did bring it with you?' he asked with sudden concern.

  Goldman nodded.

  Sorenson brightened with enthusiasm. 'Honestly dude, the market potential of your product is mind-boggling. Why just warehouse dance parties alone ...' He checked his runaway exclamation as Frank and Sandy joined the group. With two SLR cameras about her neck, Sandy clasped Frank's hand and swayed to a Lou Reed song playing through the sound system.

  Goldman began with his side of introductions, followed by Sorenson with his side. Thirteen eyeballed ex-model Sandy with unmasked interest. Holly lit a cigarette and stared at the yellow flame of her Cartier lighter, her mind trampled by a cocktail mix of drugs. She soon snapped back and noticed the object of Thirteen's attention.

  'Come on, let's go.' She tugged petulantly at her boyfriend's sleeve.

  'Yeah, let's split,' Sorenson agreed. 'There's only the last set which will be more of the same.' He grabbed his Puerto Rican girlfriend's hand. 'We're leaving, Scott.' He patted Goldman reverently on the shoulder. 'I'll see you at Thirteen's, right?'

  Goldman nodded with feigned enthusiasm. 'Sure, no problem.'

  A hesitant smile flitted across Pamela's honey brown face as she pressed against Sorenson's shoulder.

  'Do you remember how to get there?' Sorenson asked.

  'We've got your telephone number in any case,' Michelle said. Thirteen stared at her, as if not liking her having his number. However his attention snapped back to Sandy, taking in her delicate features and figure-hugging clothes.

  Frank bristled and stepped forward as Holly yanked the arm of her dawdling boyfriend. Thirteen ripped his arm free. After giving Sandy one last look over, he marched off into the bustling crowd.

  'What a creep.' Sandy curled her lip in disgust.

  'Damn right,' Frank said in an Australian accent more pronounced than Goldman's.

  'Hey Scott, what are you doing with someone like that?'

  'It's all right, mate. He's just a strung-out friend of Sorenson's. He's not normally like that ... he must be high or something.' Goldman turned to Michelle. He was embarrassed and didn't want to get drawn into an awkward conversation about Sorenson and his associates.

  'Okay Scott.' Michelle tapped her finger playfully against his nose. 'I know you want to see Rick about that job offer with a sports nutrition company.'

  Goldman lifted his eyebrows and nodded, as if this were indeed the reason for him associating with Sorenson and his questionable friends. How he loved Michelle and the way she covered for him. He wanted to lace her cheek with a bouquet of short kisses. They worked well together. They were a natural team. There didn't seem anything they couldn't overcome; though he sensed this special quality could be sorely tested in coming weeks. But maybe not. Maybe things would work out much as planned. With Michelle Eastman by his side, he was becoming an incurable optimist. Their electrifying romance seemed above worldly concerns, above the snarl and grind of the human jungle.

  'You're getting so staid in your old age,' Sandy joshed.

  Michelle poked out her tongue and looked at her ex-model friend with a clowning visage.

  'Well, I gotta snap more pics for Rockaway magazine,' Sandy said. 'So Frank and I are entrenched till the bitter end.' She pinched Frank's ass. 'Right champ?' Frank winked and held up his thumb, his eyes glassy from straight shots of liquor.

  'You do remember how to get back in?' Sandy adjusted the weighty cameras about her neck.

  Scott and Michelle nodded in unison, grateful to have her hillside home at their disposal.

  'Well don't bring back that creep with you, or any of his kind, okay?' Sandy said, putting a firm boundary in place.

  'No, no ...' Michelle shook her head and rolled her eyes. 'No way, babe.'

  Sandy looked intently at her friend, before saying: 'All right then, adios darlings.' She blew a kiss and skipped off into the crowd, Frank in tow.

  'Hey curly, can you light me up?'

  Goldman turned and was presented with an attractive Anglo-Asian girl in razor-slashed jeans and a Day Glo bikini top. A pink scorpion tattooed on one of her breasts. She jabbed a cigarette lighter at the chemist. 'I can't do it ... I'm too out of it.' She giggled and nodded toward the unlit cigarette between her fingers. She stumbled to one side, verifying her purport as one with temporarily impaired motor-nerve function. Splashings of Chanel, as cloying as Scottish mist, assailed Goldman's nostrils. The girl was a long way from sober, anyone could see that.

  'Yeah, sure.' He grabbed the proffered lighter, flicked it alight and held it towards her dumb child face. With considerable effort, she brought the cigarette to her lips. Clinking metal bracelets slid down her wrists. She tottered as if on a swaying ship deck. Finally, she ignited her cherished cigarette.

  'Thanks curly.' Without further word, she staggered off toward a girl with spiked hair and tattooed arms. The back pockets of her jeans were made of clear plastic and the white skin of her butt showed freely. 'Hey, you're lighter,' Goldman called after her, all the while admiring the view. But the girl was oblivious to much as she meandered back to her biker-chic mate, who stood manlike by the subdued lighting of the mixing desk.

  Goldman read what was captioned on the side of the disposable lighter: I'VE GOT AN ABOVE AVERAGE QI. What a head case, he thought, taking a last look at the g
irl and pocketing her lighter.

  'Come on, babe,' Michelle said. 'Let's see Rick and be done with it.'

  Goldman nodded and they headed for the stairs. He glanced back at the screen above the stage: a naked girl in a leather cap stroked another woman’s breast with a feather.

  A card game was underway in Thirteen's house. Fresh and stale beers stood about the table as card players studied and arranged newly dealt cards. Cigarette smoke hung over the table like smog. The air was thick with tension. There'd been an organized meet the day before with an up and coming Chicano gang, the Black Scorpions. Threats against Fast Cash Boys hadn't been taken lightly. A drug turf war seemed in the making.

  Goldman and Sorenson sat about the living room coffee table. Sorenson was studying the formula Goldman wanted to sell him.

  'So what's this 7-21 in step six?' he asked.

  '7-21 is a classified reactive agent,' Goldman said from his side of the table. 'A precursor that can bond atoms of differing descriptors to an amphetamine molecule. It was made at Silverwood Centre in the late sixties and is used in a lot of amphetamine-based formulas developed there.'

  'So this 7-21 isn't available from chemical supply houses?'

  'Correct.'

  'Great, Goldman, that's fucking great!' Sorenson's face flushed with anger. 'So what's the point of me trying to make this?'

  'Rick, please.' Goldman held up his hand and chuckled dryly. 'For God's sake, calm down. If you look at the appendage on the last page, you'll see I've listed the chemical composition of 7-21.You'll also see it's not hard to make.'

  Sorenson flicked impatiently to the back pages of the formula. Thirteen dropped into a nearby seat, wearing a suede Apache-style jacket and a concerned expression.

  'It's constituents are available from most chemical supply houses and drug stores,' Goldman said. 'However, the proper sequence of cooking them, as I've detailed, is paramount.'

  'Uh-huh,' Sorenson said with rising optimism.

  'As the sole manufacturer of 7-21, you'd have complete control of the MPA market. Volume. Price. Everything.'

  'Damn right.' Sorenson looked up sharply at Goldman. 'As long as you don't start making it, or worse still sell the formula to someone else.'

  'Hey, Rick, you have my word.' Goldman paused and held out his hand. 'Heck, you and I know each other. Consider it a gentleman's agreement. As far as I'm concerned once I've sold you the formula, it's yours.'

  'Sure, sure.' Sorenson stroked the two-day growth on his chin and reluctantly shook hands with Goldman. He glanced at Thirteen who nodded solemnly back. The leader of Fast Cash Boys smoked his Marlboro and seemed pleased to have Sorenson as a business partner. It wasn't hard to guess why. The money kept rolling in.

  From what Goldman had heard Thirteen was keen to move up the food chain, to lock Fast Cash Boys into more lucrative revenue streams. The Black Scorpions had recently declared all-out-war if Sorenson's speed kept turning up in the neighbourhoods the gun-toting gang claimed to control. Thirteen was never one to back down from a threat, but knew just the same the amphetamine market was growing increasingly more hostile and complex. And now a perfect exit strategy had presented itself. Thirteen was confident Goldman's new drug would prove popular in the nightclub and dance party circuits. Hefty profits were bound to accrue. Best of all, the stuff wasn't even illegal.

  Still Thirteen wasn’t treating the Black Scorpions' threat lightly. He had a handgun holstered under his suede jacket. His right-hand man Eighteen was similarly armed. The senior gang members didn't want to take any chances with feisty new punks out to prove themselves.

  Of course Goldman hoped the Chicano gang wouldn't make good of their threat any time soon, most particularly this night. He already had too much was on his plate without a turf war thrown into the mix. He watched Sorenson light a cigarette and study the part of the formula outlining the isomerization of Sassafras oil.

  He looked over at the L-shaped divan. A wide-eyed Holly sat with her knees drawn up to her chin, the most famous of Nazarenes a crumpled portrait on her top's front. She pressed her Cartier lighter on and off and half-heartedly watched a television game show. Beside her, Pamela also watched the show, but seemed from her comments to have a better grasp of the game show's rules. Goldman thought the homely Puerto Rican woman looked as much out of place in this rough and ready house as she did at the Subway Slaves concert.

  On the far end of the divan Michelle and Trinda girled it up as they looked through one of Trinda's photo albums. With an opened bottle of champagne at their feet, the girls were in high spirits.

  People playing cards. People watching television. People looking at photographs. Sorenson looking for a new way to make money. All normal enough, Goldman thought, but he felt uneasy. He put his disquiet down to the underlying criminality of the youths about him. And the ongoing tension with Eighteen who'd raised his hackles at Goldman from day one hardly helped matters, either. In any case, there seemed nothing for the renegade chemist to do but wait it out until Sorenson finished studying the formula, which knowing Sorenson's thoroughness could take an hour or more. Goldman exhaled heavily and sniffed his shirt sleeve.

  'Jeez,' he openly remarked. 'I really reek from the cigarette smoke at the Slaves gig. Rock concerts make you smell so stale afterwards, and that damn warehouse had no ventilation. Yeah, I've never been a great fan of live performances, you know, the crowds, the smoke ...'

  Sorenson looked up from the formula and said perfunctorily, 'Yeah, right,' before returning his attention to the page in hand. Thirteen stared as if hypnotized at the glowing tip of his cigarette. Seeing Goldman as the goose that had laid the golden egg, he said with a halfway hospitable air: 'Well if you're that worked up about it, you can shower upstairs. The downstairs shower's got no hot water.' He took a hefty drag on his Marlboro. 'Feel free. There's bound to be a fresh towel up there someplace.'

  Goldman thought over the offer, and feeling bored (Sorenson was only quarter way through the formula), said with an awkward chuckle, 'Oddly enough, I just might take you up on the offer.'

  Thirteen raised an eyebrow, lackadaisically, as if to say, I really don't give a shit. He spun round and flicked his cigarette into the room's empty fireplace, before staring at the rowdy card players behind him. Young runaway Aaron was remonstrative over the way Eighteen had laid off his last card.

  Deuce stopped at the coffee table with the inquisitive look of a seasoned cop out on the beat. 'What the fuck do you want, Deuce?' Thirteen asked. Deuce looked over Sorenson's shoulder, trying to take in as much as he could of the chemical formula spread out on the coffee table.

  'Hmm ... nothing,' Deuce replied. The long-haired youth couldn't help but read down the Xeroxed page in Sorenson's hand.

  'Well, fuck off then,' Thirteen snarled. 'This is our business!'

  Eighteen looked up from the other end of the room while reshuffling a worn deck of playing cards, his hard brown eyes focused on the standoff between Thirteen and Deuce. The dark-haired gang member then fixed his gaze on Goldman. His dislike of the Australian chemist hadn’t waned, and he wasn’t backward in showing it.

  Yeah, and fuck you too, Goldman thought, staring back at him. The Fast Cash Boys lieutenant turned away with a contemptuous mumble and dealt a new round of cards at the table.

  Thirteen glared at Deuce. 'I thought I told you to piss off?' With a recalcitrant air, the lanky youth pushed his round glasses up along his nose. He took his time moving away from the table, all the while his gaze lingered on the Xeroxed formula. The tension in the room pressed in on Goldman. He wished he was faraway from these felonious youths. How was it that years of education and honest work had lead him to this desperate moment?

  Though his person and clothes were soiled from the smoky concert, underneath the epidermal layers of his skin he felt tainted in ways only a passage of seasons could cleanse (if indeed unhindered years stretched before him). Still a quick shower would invigorate him for the anticipated moment of grabbing a swag of
cash from Sorenson and disappearing into the night. He vowed never to return to this house with its labyrinth of rooms and corridors, with its pall of undefined menace seeping from the walls – especially as Thirteen had provided him with a reliable contact for fake ID.

  He got up from his seat. No one paid him attention as he headed for the staircase rising up behind Deuce's music and light system. He stopped behind Michelle and Trinda on the divan as they gossiped over a particular set of photographs, Trinda's Siamese cat, Scarlett, curled beside Michelle. The bottle of champagne at the girls' feet was empty, and Trinda's boisterous manner suggested she'd drunk more than her share of the bubbly beverage.

  'That's Eighteen hugging Eddie Van Halen backstage in Dallas,' Trinda gushed proudly. 'And that's me outside after being bounced for groping David Lee Roth. Yeah, I'm tellin' ya, babe, it was one helluva concert!' The two women giggled with the spontaneity of old friends, which they weren't. 'Too much Southern Comfort and pot,' Trinda said with sheepish embarrassment.

  'I'm going upstairs to take a shower.' Goldman dropped his hand on Michelle's shoulder. She looked up and smirked. 'A shower?' She looked at Trinda and snickered drunkenly. 'What a crazy Aussie!'

  'Yeah, mate, he sure is,' Trinda said, in mimicry of Goldman's accent. The two women giggled again and Trinda lifted her hand to give Michelle a high-five, but stopped just short of it. Goldman glanced at Trinda's attractive bronze features, at her braided and beaded hair, at her shapely legs branched beneath the photo album.

  He looked up. Eighteen was eyeballing him from across the room. Again no love was lost between them. None at all.

  'Well, babe, go for it then,' Michelle said, in high spirits. She winked at Goldman and slapped his forearm. Trinda gawked at Goldman in a clowning manner, arching her eyebrows in expectation, waiting for him to make good of her new friend's suggestion. Goldman turned to Michelle and a dark feeling they would soon be swept apart, possibly forever, washed over him and rooted him to the spot. Not sharing his ominous sentiment, Michelle blew him a kiss and returned to Trinda's photo album.