Black Neon

by Tony O'Neill

  Randal flushed, and splashed cold water on his face. He looked at himself in the bathroom mirror. In a corner of it he saw a splash of something dry and brown that looked suspiciously like a blood splatter.

  “You are not going to relapse, motherfucker,” he told himself. His voice sounded weak and unsure. He popped another Adderall, chewed up the extended release beads, and swallowed the resulting goop.

  He walked out and found Jacques lying on the bed transfixed by some Latin soap opera with a dumb grin on his face.

  “Okay man, I’m gonna make the call. You want speed. What else?”

  “Heroin.”

  “Okay.”

  “Hashish?”

  “Hash?” Randal looked thoughtful. “That shit is practically legal in California. The gangs don’t bother with it. Anyone who wants it can just get a legit script from a doctor. There’s no black market for that shit anymore.”

  Jacques screwed up his face. “Disgusting,” he muttered, “Who the fuck wants to use legal drugs? Where is the excitement in that? Soon this city will be as dull and uninspired as Amsterdam…”

  “You want cocaine?”

  “Oui, of course.”

  “The best I’ll be able to do is rock. Not powder. There’s not much powder coke in this neighbourhood.”

  “That’s okay.”

  “Good.”

  Randal made the call, his fingers instinctively punching out the correct pattern on the keypad. Carlos was one of the last dealers he knew to still use a pager. He punched in his number, and waited. A minute later, the cell buzzed into life. Randal, although he was not intending on getting high, felt his guts lurch in Pavlovian anticipation as soon as the phone rang. There was no small talk when Randal picked up.

  “I thought you wuz dead, homie!”

  “Nah,” Randal said, “Worse. I’ve been clean.”

  He hated it, but this admission made him feel a prickle of shame. As if he had sold out.

  “Whatchoo need?”

  “I need to go uptown and downtown. Actually, I’ll take whatever you got, and bring quantity. I got a friend here from out of town and he’s stocking up.”

  “Okay, homie. Beep me 555 when you close by. Peace.”

  Randal clicked the phone closed. Jacques was already on his feet, stretching like a cat.

  “Come on, big guy,” Randal said, “Time for you to get acquainted with the city…”

  *

  They drove slowly down Bonnie Brae, looking out for Carlos. A couple of shadowy figures regarded their car, occasionally calling out for rock or heroin as they crawled down the street, but Randal did not stop until he saw Carlos’ familiar figure step out of the shadows on the corner of 5th Street. They pulled over and Randal cranked the window down. Carlos, a young smooth-skinned Mexican with a goatee and a Lakers cap pulled low over his face, stuck his head inside.

  “’Sup, homie?”

  “Carlos, long time no see, man! This is my friend, Jacques…”

  Carlos looked at Jacques blankly, and nodded. “’Sup, Jack?”

  “Hello.”

  Jacques looked stiff, a little intimidated by the young drug dealer. Although Carlos was basically harmless, Randal had painted him as a gun-toting psychopath with a hair-trigger temper in an attempt to scare the Frenchman into behaving. The last thing he needed was Jacques embarrassing him in front of the only man who had ever called him “homie”, a title that Randal was oddly proud of. Jacques stared hard at the young gang-banger, as if trying to commit every detail of him to memory. Randal had already warned him to keep his damn camera hidden, unless he wanted to get his ass shot.

  “So whatchoo need? Go fast?”

  “Uh huh. Give us an 8-ball of chiva, a G-rock, and an 8-ball of go-fast.”

  Carlos put his hand to his mouth, and started spitting out bundles of drugs. The heroin was wrapped in black balloons, the crack – which was pressed flat in neat rectangles – wrapped in aluminum foil. The speed was in blue balloons. The amount of drugs Carlos could hold in his mouth almost defied physics. Randal handed over the bills, and Carlos glanced cautiously over his shoulder as he counted them.

  “Yo, I got some pills, too. Xanax, Oxy, benzos, and a coupla Es if you want ’em.”

  Randal looked over to Jacques, who was already nodding eagerly.

  “You want that shit?”

  “Of course!”

  “We’ll take it,” Randal said, turning back to Carlos. “All of it.”

  “If you wanna take everything I got…” Carlos whistled and did some instantaneous calculations in his head, “I can do the pills for an even two-hundred. An’ that’s a good fuckin’ deal, homie.”

  Randal counted out more bills from Jacques’ roll. Carlos handed over a battered pack of Camels, filled with black-market medication.

  “Yo,” Carlos whispered to Randal as Jacques checked out the merchandise, “Check it. I gotta bindle of angel dust. Good shit, if that’s your bag. You about cleaned me out, so you might as well take this as well. On the house.”

  Carlos reached into the vehicle and slipped the bindle in the breast pocket of Randal’s jacket. Although the powerful hallucinogenic had never really been his bag, Randal nodded his thanks.

  “I’ll be seeing you around man. My friend over here, Jacques, he’s a good guy. Is it okay if I pass on your digits to him?”

  “So long as the nigga ain’t a cop.” Carlos peered a little closer at Jacques. Jacques smiled at Carlos ingratiatingly. “Motherfucka looks a little too fat, even for the LAPD. Sure, tell him to call me, whatever. Peace.”

  With that, Carlos was gone, cutting back into the shadows of 5th Street, heading toward Bonnie Brae. Randal said, “Stash that shit until we get back to the hotel. Cops are all over this damn scene. If you see flashing lights, dump it out the window…”

  FIFTEEN

  “Okay, check this shit out. Homie of mine got all hopped up on Angel Dust two weeks ago, went on a fuckin’ rampage. Dude went straight up loco. Wuz running around the streets naked and shit, terrorizing people. I hear all of this screaming and yelling out the front of the apartments and there’s Mike buck-naked tryin’ to hold off the cops with a fuckin’ pool cue. Man, half the fuckin’ neighbourhood was out watching. Mike has bugged the fuck out. He’s waving the pool cue around screaming STAND BACK THIS MOTHERFUCKA IS LOADED! Fool thought he was holding a shotgun, or some shit. I mean, even the cops are busting up at this stupid bastard. So the pigs try and calm him down for a while, but Mike ain’t giving the shit up, so they decide fuck it. They fucking tazered the shit outta him. They musta zapped him, like, twelve, thirteen times. He wuz just down there on the concrete flopping around like a big, dumb fuckin’ fish.

  “Best part is I filmed that shit. On my iPhone, yeah? That fucking shit went viral. Got over ten thousand views on YouTube already. Someone even did their own version of it, added some beats, fed his voice through some kinda computer an’ called it the “This Motherfucker Is Loaded Song”. Funny shit. I told Mike that when he gets out he’s gonna freak, ’cos he’s kinda famous now…” D-Low sniffed, looked around, and then whispered, “I’ve got a hook up for some dope-ass crystal right now, but I’m having trouble moving it. Still, I don’t mind having it sittin’ around, ya know? Nice to know it’s there when I want it.”

  Without waiting for anyone else to speak, D-Low carried on, warming to his new theme.

  “I’m tellin’ ya it’s the weirdest thing. I can have the fuckin’ best meth in the world and it don’t matter. When those little college niggas are buying off of me, all they want is this pharmacy goop – Adderall, Ritalin, all of that shit. They fuckin’ look down on speedfreaks, like they’re the real dope-fiends or some shit, but all the while these little bastards are gobbling up this milk-sugar pharmacy speed like it’s fuckin candy.”

  D-Low, although you wouldn’t k
now it from listening to him, was a skinny white drug dealer who dealt mostly in speed and pharmaceuticals. He was severely tweaked out, talking fast, his eyes popping out of his skull. His blond hair was braided into tight cornrows, and his platinum grills twinkled in the dim light as he spoke. “I’m tellin’ ya,” he continued, taking a gulp of his Incredible Hulk, a bright green cocktail made of Hennessy and Hpnotiq, “I’m fucked if I understand young niggas these days. They all seem whack as shit, yo.”

  “The poor bastards were raised on it,” Lupita said, “They don’t know any better. I can’t believe this stuff has a higher street value than the real deal.”

  “Oh yeah. Same with junk. These niggas’ll turn their nose up if ya offer ’em some smack, but if you got Vicodin or any of that other crap they’re all over it…”

  They were drinking in Casanova’s, a run-down down little hole in the wall across from the Starlight Motel, where D-Low and his crew operated out of. The bar was dark and cool, with wood panelled walls and a sticky black floor. The only light was coming from the neon Budweiser and Pabst signs on the walls, and the cathode glow of the TV set. Maury was on, with the sound turned down. On the jukebox James Brown was singing Living In America. A fat man wearing denim overalls and a cowboy hat was the only other customer, sitting at the bar nursing a beer and reading the newspaper. The barmaid, an elderly American Indian woman, was sitting behind the bar, breathing softly with her eyes closed.

  “The game’s changing man. It’s all fucked up. But you gotta adapt or die, right?”

  “You got that right, D-Low. Adapt or die. Well, I guess we’d better get down to business.”

  Lupita nudged Genesis. Genesis slid a McDonalds bag across the table to D-Low. The bag contained a couple of hundred pills, mostly amphetamine-based ADD medication, and some milder painkillers like Norco and Tylenol 3s. Without peeking inside, D-Low took the bag and placed it on his lap. He reached into his racing jacket, which was emblazoned with an image of Al Pacino as Tony Montana, and took out a sealed envelope. The envelope was fat with cash. He slid it over to Lupita, who pocketed it. They sat there for a few moments, contemplating their drinks.

  Genesis looked at Lupita, and then at D-Low. D-Low was tall and skinny. Besides the Scarface jacket, he wore a pristine white wife-beater and a thick rope-like gold chain. On one wrist was a watch encrusted with diamantes. D-Low caught Genesis’s gaze on him and smiled at her. When he exposed his teeth, he looked like a shark.

  “So, uh, how you ladies meet?”

  Genesis shrugged. “We had a friend in common.”

  D-Low sucked his teeth thoughtfully and nodded. “You gonna stay in town for a while?”

  Lupita shook her head. “We’re just moving around. Been thinking of heading to San Francisco. Got some buddies out there I’ve been meaning to look up.”

  “Hear it’s a nice place. Lotta faggots, though.”

  Noticing the dark look that came over Lupita’s face, D-Low smiled apologetically and said, “Not that there’s nuthin’ wrong with that, yo…” He held up his palms. “I mean I don’t got nuthin’ against it. ’Specially when it comes to chicks. I mean, yeah the idea of a guy, you know, putting his dick in another guys ass… it kinda skeeves me out, yo, but chicks? That’s a different story… yuh know what I mean?”

  Lupita looked at D-Low and imagined putting her gun against his forehead and blowing a hole clean through his skull. She imagined the surprised look that would cross his ridiculous face the moment he realized he’d just talked himself into an early grave. Her hand fluttered, ready to appear above the table again holding the piece… but somehow she controlled herself. After staring through D-Low for a couple of beats, Lupita smiled coldly and said in a low, dangerous voice, “Stop stuttering, buttercup. You don’t gotta convince us.”

  Genesis laughed, and the situation was – for the moment at least – defused. The fear in D-Low’s eyes was perfectly obvious. Genesis had intended to ask Lupita why the fuck she hadn’t checked the envelope to make sure that D-Low hadn’t burned them. After all, he looked like the type who’d pull the morphine suppository out of his dying mother’s ass if he thought he could make a buck off of it. But when Lupita called him “buttercup” D-Low didn’t do shit. He just laughed awkwardly along with Genesis, and pretty soon after he went back to jabbering nonsense again. Now he was being careful to avoid saying anything that might set Lupita off. Genesis saw that D-Low was scared of Lupita, so scared that he wouldn’t dare try to fuck her on the deal.

  On the jukebox, Juicy, by Notorious BIG came up. “Oh shit!” D-Low laughed, “That’s my fuckin’ jam!” He looked to be pleased to have an opportunity to change the subject.

  “You like rap?” he asked Genesis.

  Genesis shrugged. “Some.”

  “You know a rapper called Trina? She did one of my favourite tracks – Nann Nigga with Trick Daddy. You know it?”

  “No.” Genesis did not crack a smile or feign interest. D-Low didn’t seem to notice.

  “That bitch was pure fire on that track,” D-Low rambled on, “That bitch could spit like crazy…”

  Lupita leaned across the table and said in a low, clear voice: “Motherfucker. I think you must be feeling a bit too comfortable around me these days or something, because you’re dropping the B-word a hell of a lot, and to be perfectly honest you’re starting to piss me off. You got me? I don’t dig rap. I don’t dig all this fuckin’ talk about faggots. And I sure as hell don’t dig all of this bitch talk. You got your fuckin’ pills, so why don’t you go take your fake-ass honky self back to that fuckin’ motel you live at before I shoot off your little Caucasian cock? Okay homie?”

  They watched D-Low scurry out of there moments later. Genesis leaned over and kissed Lupita on the neck.

  “I love you, baby,” she said.

  Lupita turned to Genesis, and raised an eyebrow.

  “Now what on god’s earth brought that on? That’s a pretty heavy thing to say to someone, Genesis hun. I don’t take that shit lightly.”

  “Me neither,” Genesis whispered, kissing Lupita on the neck again. “Thanks for keeping your cool around that big mouth motherfucker. I thought for a moment you was gonna blow that little prick away right here at the table.”

  Lupita grabbed her drink and finished it with a flourish. She looked around the bar one last time and said, “Honey, what do you think I am? As much of an asshole as D-Low is… I mean, killing someone in a bar full of witnesses over an insult? Genesis hun, you’d have to be crazy to even consider doing some shit like that.”

  Genesis laughed a little, “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

  “I know I’m right. D-Low may be a little prick but his money’s still green. Come on, let’s get the fuck outta this dump. I feel like blowin’ off some steam. You up for dancing?”

  “Always.”

  “Ok sweetie. Come on. Let’s go see if we can find some fun in this shit-hole town.”

  SIXTEEN

  Back at his apartment, Randal was planning a quiet night in. Cocktail in hand he examined his bookshelves, browsing through his collection of porno DVDs. He was reading the blurb of Raiders of the Lost Ass (Winner of the 2003 AVN Award for best group anal scene) when the phone went off. He checked the caller ID – Gibby. He had been putting off a call to Gibby all day after enduring a particularly difficult evening with Jacques. With a sigh he decided to get it over with now.

  “Gibby, man,” Randal said, “What’s up?”

  Across town Gibby was in the back of a taxi with the windows rolled down. Next to him Jacques was passed out cold, a long trail of drool hanging from his chin.

  “Oh nothing, Randal.” Gibby said coldly. “I just managed to crawl out from underneath a three-hundred-pound naked Frenchman, but apart from that things are just dandy. What’s new with you?”

  “Gibby, what the fuck are you talking about? Didn’t you have a me
eting with Kenny tonight?”

  “Oh sure. The meeting was over at Le Poisson Cru. You know it?”

  “Nah.”

  “It’s this hot-shit new French-Sushi fusion joint in Beverly Hills. Been getting all kind of rave reviews. I guess Kenny was trying to impress Jacques.”

  “Was it any good?”

  “I dunno. If paying a hundred and fifty bucks for two thin slices of raw yellowtail garnished with peppercorn sauce is your idea of good then sure, I guess it was. You seriously never been to that place? It was like eating in a fucking operating room – white on white. All that was missing was waiters in scrubs. I guess they were going for that whole ultra-minimalist thing, you know? Lindsay Lohan was having dinner with some chick at the table behind us.”

  “Musta been her lawyer.”

  “Maybe. But apart from the fact the place was pretentious as fuck, dinner went pretty good. In fact up until a certain point I’d say it went better than good. It went great. Kenny was putty in our fucking hands, Randal. I didn’t realize just how in awe of Jacques he is. He wasn’t kidding when he said that Dead Flowers was his favourite movie. He acted like a fucking pre-pubescent girl at a Justin Beiber concert.”

  Randal took a slug of his drink, clanking the ice cubes together. “Who the fuck is Justin Bieber?”

  “Ah, never mind. I forget, you don’t got teenage kids, do you?”

  Randal looked at the DVD in his hand. Co-Ed Contortionists. “Not exactly,” he said.