No Cure for Love

by Peter Robinson

  Arvo nodded, wondering if there might be a good reason why getting fucked by Carl Buxton was so unmemorable. “Pretty crazy,” he agreed. “What was their relationship like?”

  Buxton frowned. “Hard to say. They were stoned most of the time. I mean, you can’t really have a relationship if you’re stoned all the time, can you? Your relationship’s with the drugs then, not with another human being. Toward the end, though, they just seemed to kind of drift apart. Know what I mean?”

  Arvo nodded. “Was there someone else?”

  Buxton laughed. It was a harsh, unpleasant sound, something like a bark. “There was always someone else for Gary, man. When he could get it up, that is.”

  “What about Sar—Sally?”

  “Nah. She was so spaced out by the time we hit the west coast anyone could just toss her on a mattress and fuck her like she was an inflatable doll or something, and she wouldn’t know the difference. She would give you about as much response, too. It’s funny, I watch her these days, you know, on television, and she looks like she’s got class. I find it hard to believe it’s the same person. She must have got her shit together, man. You’ve got to give her a lot of credit for that.”

  Nice of you, you arrogant, self-serving little prick, thought Arvo.

  “Yeah,” Buxton went on, “it’s kind of hard to pull yourself up by the bootstraps when you’re that far down. I know, man. I’ve been there.” He pointed his thumb at his chest.

  Arvo wasn’t in the least bit interested in sifting through the dregs of Buxton’s experience. “So things degenerated as the tour progressed?” he said.

  “You could say that.”

  “Any idea why?”

  Buxton lit another Camel and let the first lungful of smoke trickle out before speaking. “Gary was a weird motherfucker to start with,” he announced finally. “The drugs just made him weirder, more distant, more reckless. Have you ever seen that movie, The Doors?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “It was like that. You know, walking on ledges of high buildings waving his dick at the night and spouting poetry. Dylan Thomas. Walt Whitman. Allen Ginsberg.” He shook his head and took another drag on the cigarette. “I don’t know what his personal demons were, man, but they sure had him by the short-and-curlies by the time we got out to the coast.”

  “How did Sally react to all this?”

  “I’ve already told you, man. She was a fucking zombie by then. The tour mattress.”

  “She didn’t care that he had other women?”

  Buxton waved his cigarette in the air. “Women, men, it didn’t matter to Gary then. Maybe even children and small, furry animals, too, who knows? By the time we got to LA, we’d picked up so many hangers-on it was like London Zoo.”

  “What kind of people were they?”

  “What kind of people were they? I’ll tell you what kind of people they were. They were psychos, schizos, zombies, freaks, paranoids, pseuds, drunks, junkies, crazies of all descriptions. By the time we hit Fresno, we had two Napoleons and at least three Jesus Christs hanging around the fringes. Maybe I exaggerate a little, man, but you get my point? Gary attracted them. Shit, he even went out and picked them up off the streets and brought them back to the hotel and the concerts. Winos, street people. He was on a Jack Kerouac kick about the holiness of bums.”

  “Why?”

  “Who knows why? Because he was crazy himself and he felt right at home in their company. I don’t know.”

  Arvo was beginning to feel overwhelmed. He had suspected that things had been chaotic on the tour, but not this bad. “Look, I’m kind of interested in the cast of characters,” he said. “Could you describe some of them a bit for me? Maybe even give me a couple of names to follow up. Was there anyone in particular, anyone who really stands out in your memory, maybe as being a little creepy. Or someone who might even appear normal enough but still gave you an odd feeling?”

  Buxton frowned for a moment, opened his mouth, closed it again, frowned, then leaned over and stubbed out his cigarette. “Well,” he said, “now that you mention it, you know, there was one guy in particular.” Arvo sipped his iced tea and watched a little Oregon junco with its hangman’s hood and dapper gray breast flitting between the branches of a jacaranda tree.

  “This guy was really strange,” Buxton went on. “He gave me the willies, man. I know I told you there was a lot of craziness around the tour, but most of it wasn’t serious craziness. I mean, a guy who thinks he’s Jesus is crazy, sure, but he’s also pretty harmless. But the bloke I’m talking about was different.” Buxton shook his head slowly. “Scary.”

  A breeze ruffled the rose bushes. A starling hopped over the lawn looking for crumbs. The music had stopped, and it was quiet in the garden apart from the birds and the hiss of a distant sprinkler. Occasionally Arvo heard a car passing or a siren in the distance.

  “Where did you meet this guy?” he asked.

  “Frisco. We had three concerts there in four days. The second night, a group of us went out on the town. I’d had a couple of drinks in the hotel bar, the others had done a few lines of coke, and we were in a mood for some fun. It was one of those nights when everything seemed fine. One of the good nights. Do you know what I mean?”

  Arvo nodded. “Go on.”

  “We went to North Beach because Gary had this thing about the Beats. Like I said, he used to quote poetry when he was really flying. So he had this idea he had to go to City Lights Bookstore and meet Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Apparently this is the geezer who owns the place. He’s a poet and he’s been around for years.

  “As it turned out, this Ferlinghetti wasn’t there—which is probably just as well, because we were getting a few funny looks by then—so we cruised some of the strip bars and topless joints around Columbus and Broadway. We had a few more drinks, then we ended up back in this bar called Vesuvio’s, where the Beats used to hang out, so Gary told us, right next to the bookshop. Needless to say, Gary really liked it and managed to calm down enough not to get us all thrown out. And then we met him.

  “He was with a group of about three or four others. I can’t remember all the details clearly because by this time I’d had a few beers myself. He’s medium height, about five-eight, pretty muscular but nothing special—I mean, not like Schwarzenegger or anything—tattoos on his arms, likes to dress in black, and he has a dyed blond brush-cut and these really piercing light blue eyes.”

  “Do you remember anything about the tattoos?”

  “I don’t know much about tattooing. It’s just one of those things I never got into. But they looked quite intricate, you know, really professional. I think there was an eagle, or some kind of bird of prey, on one arm, and the other was a red flower, maybe a rose.”

  “Any names on them?”

  “No. Not that I recall.”

  “What was his name?”

  “Mitch.”

  “His second name?”

  “Dunno. It never came up.”

  “Know where he lived?”

  “No, but someone said he used to work in one of the North Beach strip-joints as a bouncer and he’d just got fired. I don’t know which joint.”

  “Okay. Go on with your story.”

  “Anyway, he recognizes Gary and comes over, says he’s a poet and a singer-songwriter and asks if he and his friends can join us. Gary says he can if he recites one of his poems. Like, that’s the price of admission to our little clique. Typical fucking Gary. So he does. I don’t know if it was any good or not, but Gary said he liked it and invited him and his group to join us. Mitch was with his brother, this other guy called Ivan, and a couple of girls. One thing led to another and we went back to the hotel. Gary fucked one of the girls and somehow they just didn’t go away, they became part of the entourage.”

  At this point, Bella appeared in the French windows looking bored silly. Her body seemed to be vibrating rhythmically, as if it had a motor inside. She was holding a long strand of hair, pulling it forward from the ponytail a
nd sucking on it with one corner of her mouth. “You guys need anything else?” she asked in a baby-doll voice.

  Buxton glanced at Arvo and raised his eyebrows in question.

  “Sure,” said Arvo. “I’ll have another iced tea, please.”

  “And another beer for me, sweetheart,” Buxton said.

  Now she had a purpose in life, Bella swayed back inside. Buxton gave Arvo a look as if to say, “Women.” The fridge door rattled when it opened, then banged shut. Bella delivered the drinks and stood around for a moment, as if unsure what to do. Buxton patted her rear. “Leave it for a while, love. Man talk.”

  “Sure, honey.” She smiled and gave a little wave as she left. “You won’t be too long?”

  “Course not, sweetie.”

  Bella sashayed back through the French windows. Buxton pulled the tab on his beer, then Arvo asked what Mitch was like.

  Buxton wiped foam from his lips. “He was a cool customer,” he said. “I mean cool in the sense of being cold. You got no real sense of warmth from him, no feeling. He was pretty quiet at first. You know, the kind who sits back and observes, tries to figure out all the angles. I got the impression that he was trying to learn how to behave in order to be accepted by us, to please Gary in particular. It was a spooky feeling, as if all his behavior was planned. They say psychos are like that, don’t they?”

  “Can you give me an example?” Arvo asked.

  “Let me think . . . Yeah . . . Like I don’t think he had a sense of humor, but he figured out pretty sharpish that people wouldn’t like him if he didn’t, so he created one to order. If he laughed, you sensed that he wasn’t really amused, that he just thought it was appropriate to laugh or people would think he was odd and wouldn’t like him. Do you know what I mean? Never trust anyone without a sense of humor, man. That’s my philosophy.”

  “Absolutely. Can you tell me anything else about him?”

  “He was really good at finding drugs. We hit a new town, he’d score whatever you wanted—whatever Gary wanted—in minutes, man. And he liked to play headgames.”

  “What kind of headgames?”

  “He liked to try and scare people, fuck with their minds. He had that look, for a start, with the eyes and all—you know, like Charlie Manson—and he also had an aura about him that made me feel someone had stepped on my grave every time he walked in the room. He carried a flick-knife, too. What do you guys over here call it? A switchblade, that’s it. Not that I ever saw him use it except to clean his fingernails, mind you. But he made sure you knew he had it.

  “Anyway, he was obsessive, man. If he got into something with you, he just wouldn’t let go. If he got you to tell him something about your past, some little incident you were maybe ashamed of, he’d just keep digging and poking until he’d squeezed every detail out of you, every ounce of shame. He liked to humiliate people. Once he made eye contact, he wouldn’t let go until he’d got what he wanted. We got to calling him Gary’s pet pitbull. A pitbull of the mind. Once he got his teeth in your psyche . . .” Buxton gave a theatrical shudder.

  “What about his friends, his brother?”

  “They seemed normal enough, though God knows what they were doing hanging around with him. Ivan and Mitch’s brother were both very quiet. I don’t remember getting a word out of either of them. The brother used to follow him around like a pet dog. The girls liked to fuck a lot.” He lowered his voice again. “One of them gave great head. Candi, I think. The other was called Aspen. I ask you, what kind of a name is that? Who in their right mind would name their kid after a fucking ski resort? Anyway, they were all, like, around, you know, but Mitch was clearly the leader. He was the one people remembered.”

  Rock music started playing from inside again. Louder, this time, and a little more rebellious: Guns N’ Roses. Buxton didn’t react to it at all. Arvo sipped some iced tea, then asked, “What other kind of games did Mitch play?”

  “He liked to tell elaborate lies. He used to talk about how he wasted someone out in the desert once, or how he’d played in a rock ’n’ roll band, even made a record once. He even said he’d seen the President coming out of a brothel in Reno. Lies. Gary loved that sort of shit, lapped it up. You’d never think such a miserable cynic as him could be so gullible, but he was.”

  “Could any of the stories have been true?”

  “I suppose it’s possible, but I don’t think so. Whenever you asked him to elaborate, he got all vague about the details. You know, like the record had been deleted and you couldn’t find a copy anywhere. That kind of bullshit. To be honest, man, I didn’t really care whether they were true or not. Mostly I just tried to avoid being around him, but that wasn’t always possible.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because he was always there, always on the fringes. Because Gary liked him.”

  “He didn’t scare Gary?”

  “Not at all. But then Gary didn’t always see things the way normal people do, if you catch my drift. Nobody scared Gary. He could fuck minds with the best of them.”

  “Was Mitch ever violent in your presence?”

  “Yeah. It could come on all of a sudden. Like, it would just erupt. He ended up being a sort of unofficial bodyguard for Gary and Sal. For all of us, really, whether we wanted him or not.”

  “What sort of violent things did he do?”

  Buxton thought for a moment. “I saw him hit a few people, usually people who were being obnoxious or pushy. He generally did it very quickly, and they didn’t get a chance to hit back. He was strong and he seemed to have a kind of quick reaction speed . . . I don’t know . . . it’s as if he’d studied unarmed combat or some of that martial arts stuff, or maybe been in the Marines.”

  “Did he ever say anything about being in the armed forces?”

  “Nope. And if you were too young for Vietnam, Mitch certainly was. I’d say he was about thirty, tops.”

  He could still have been in the forces, Arvo thought, and if he had been, he might be easier to track down. True, there was no longer a draft, but anyone could sign up. There had certainly been more than enough wars since Vietnam. The Gulf, for example. On the other hand, you could learn martial arts just about anywhere these days. “Are there any specific incidents you can tell me about?” he asked.

  Buxton thought for a moment, then said, “Yeah. Yeah, there was one time. And it tells you a lot about the guy, now I come to think about it. But why are you so interested in him? You haven’t really told me what this is all about.”

  “There’s been some threats of violence, that’s all, and we think it might be connected to someone who was on the tour.”

  Buxton snorted. “Well if it’s threats of violence you’re interested in, Mitch is your man. Who’s he been threatening? Can’t be Gary. He’s dead.”

  “I can’t really say any more than that. Will you tell me about the incident?”

  Buxton sulked for a moment, then sipped some beer, lit another Camel and recrossed his legs, ankles resting on the table. “Yeah. Okay. We were in this hotel bar in Santa Barbara, a few of us sitting around shooting the shit before a concert. Out of the blue, Mitch asks if anyone has a postage stamp and Jim—that’s Jim Lasardi, the bass player I mentioned before—says, “Why, Mitch, do you want to write your autobiography?” It was just a meaningless sort of joke, really, because we don’t know anything about the guy, right? Well, everyone laughs but Mitch. His face sort of twitches in a cold smile, which is definitely not sincere by any stretch of the imagination, and he changes the subject, or someone else does.

  “Then Mitch gets all sulky. He says he doesn’t want to go to the concert that night, so we go and play, and when we come back to the hotel after the show for a few drinks, all a bit wired, he’s, like, still sitting there in the same chair in the bar. It’s the only time I ever saw him close to being drunk. He must have drunk a whole bottle of bourbon and he was still in control.

  “Anyway, he starts going on about all the things he’s done in his life, like ho
w he’s worked down the mines, picked grapes with the wetbacks in Napa and Sonoma, written songs for a famous band whose name he can’t remember, driven a cab in Frisco, published his poems, traveled around South America with nothing but a few dollars in his pocket . . . You get the message? He goes on and on and on, and nobody really knows why he’s telling us all this, or even whether he’s putting us on. But there’s something in his tone that makes us keep quiet and listen till he’s finished.

  “Then he says something about people making a joke out of his life, belittling what he’s done, and suddenly we all know what this is about. Uh-oh. This guy has been sitting brooding about Jim’s stupid joke all night. All fucking night. Can you believe it? So Jim says something to ease the tension, like he didn’t mean anything by it, but Mitch isn’t hearing by now, and he just reaches over, really fast, pulls Jim by the collar and hits him right on the bridge of the nose. Blood everywhere. Jim’s nose is broken. Next thing, the hotel manager comes over and throws a fit and Mitch decks him as well. One punch to the side of the jaw and he’s out.”

  “What happened?”

  “Gary smoothed things over.”

  “And did Gary let him stay around after that?”

  “Gary said he had a word with him and, to be fair, Mitch never did anything like that again. But things didn’t feel the same any more. We all gave him an even wider berth. You have to understand, though, that Mitch would do anything for Gary. Anything. He loved the guy, hero-worshipped him. And Gary’s ego was never so well stroked it couldn’t do with a bit more.”

  “What about Sally?”

  “He was very protective about her. Very courteous. A real gentleman. Funny that, isn’t it?”

  “Did he ever come on to her?”

  “Not that I know of. It wasn’t like that. Everyone else treated her like a tart, but Mitch treated her like gold. He opened doors for her, that kind of shit. He even used to have pet nicknames for her.”

  The hairs on the back of Arvo’s neck prickled. “Like what?”