by Simon Logan
Nikolai sighs, relaxes. Nods. “Yeah, Nikolai.”
And the woman’s expression changes instantly. “He’s busy, Nikolai. Now fuck off, I have customers waiting.”
Nikolai looked behind him. “There’s nobody . . .”
“Fuck. Off.”
“I have money.”
“That’ll be a first.”
And he reaches into his coat and takes out the plastic bag just far enough that she can see the thick wad of notes inside. He leaves it there hopefully, tilting it from side to side as if that will somehow entice her further.
Finally the woman pops a final bubble. “Let me see if he’s around,” she says.
Nikolai grins and lets the woman chatter into her headset for a few moments.
“He says he’ll send someone down for you in a minute. Go wait for him out back.”
Nikolai shoves the baggy back into his coat, locks his arms around it once more, and shuffles off. He is quickly consumed by the Atari blitz, the stench of sugary drinks, and the metallic odour of the hot machinery. He rolls across to the back door, shadowed and hidden by the glow of the games, and leans against the nearest cabinet.
A young girl is playing, two fists wrapped around the little joysticks, snapping them back and forth in unison, her face still and expressionless. Flickers of hope or frustration every now and again. She is lost in the electronica and he knows the feeling well.
The world is shed. It crumbles and falls away like damaged brickwork. It is fake and surreal and once it is all gone there is only a pure blackness and you are floating in amongst it. Nothing touches you.
You are safe.
A hand snaps onto Nikolai’s shoulder, the fingers long and thin, seeming to have more joints than they should.
And it is a woman and she bulges with steroid musculature. She is wearing loose gym trousers and a triangular bikini top, her body like polished amber glass. She looks Nikolai up and down as if he is something that has just been coughed up by a pneumonia-ridden old man.
“Nikolai,” she says, half question, half statement.
He feels her hand sinking into the soft flesh of his shoulder as if she is seeking out the weakened tissue beneath, trying to determine his body fat ratio by touch alone. She sneers almost imperceptibly and turns.
“Come with me.”
And they go through the door and up a set of steps that shine as eagerly as her follicle-free skin, and Nikolai watches her muscles moving like little creatures trapped inside her. His tongue feels swollen. It is eager for the sparkling grains that Kohl will bring it in the next few minutes.
The muscled woman leads him to a door at the end of the corridor, though he already knows where to go since he has been there many times before. She crosses her thick arms and stands to one side.
Nikolai grins nervously as he slips past her and into the room beyond. The door closes.
The place is like a graveyard for games machines with gutted cabinets lining each wall and their cracked and burnt innards spilling out of them. There are several windows but they are all blacked out with a thick, dark plastic. In the middle of the room is a large workbench, and the man leaning against the workbench looks like a human-bug hybrid because of the globular wraparound goggles he wears.
They have a dark red tint that reflects the errant flashes of light coming from the games still struggling to survive.
This is Kohl.
“Nikolai.” Again — half question, half statement.
Nikolai remains by the door, taking comfort in the exit it offers him, trying not to think about the woman that still guards it on the other side.
“I need some . . . new . . . stuff,” he says to Kohl.
Kohl is holding a circuit board in one hand. Next to him a handheld blowtorch kisses the air with a blue-white flame. “Your type always do.”
Nikolai puts a nail between his teeth. “I have money.”
He offers the bag to Kohl, who considers it for a few moments. Then he holds out his hand and Nikolai lets him touch it but won’t let it go. Kohl snatches it from him, tears away the plastic and counts the notes.
“Where does someone like you get this sort of money?”
Nikolai licks his lips. His tongue is fat and cumbersome in his mouth. His spine itches with chemical need.
Where indeed.
DJ Nazarian hasn’t left this place for close-on six months so it is entirely fitting that he should die here.
This place is a space like the engine room on a large tugboat except that it is perched atop a high rise in the middle of the city and, while it still worked, operated the lifts that ferried those who used to live there up and down the thirty-nine floors. That machinery is now cold and dead, just like Nazarian, but the machinery that he brought with him, that which allowed him to ride the airwaves for so long, is sparkling and new.
Apart from squats in the few apartments that were still livable, the high rise is long-deserted. It has been marked for demolition and had all the windows and floorboards removed in preparation but it seems as if the day will never come that it will be put out of its misery.
When Nikolai first walks in he notices some of the equipment is still set to broadcast mode, and he wonders if it is even now feeding the sound of his tentative footsteps, of his voice calling for the pirate DJ, out across the city. Nazarian is sprawled on the floor, blood-stained vomit having erupted from his mouth and down his neck. He is still holding the baggy of whatever it was he took, though there is nothing but a few particles left over.
Nikolai bends down beside him and this isn’t something new to him, finding one of his friends dead on the floor next to the cause of their death — be it powder, pill, or blade. He knows that one day he will end up the same. He is kneeling next to himself.
He looks around at the shelves full of hi-fi equipment, the cables that snake across the ground like the lights of automobiles in a time-delayed photograph, the miniature satellites that aim toward the glassless windows, toward the city outside. Nazarian had been a friend, a welcome voice filtered through static and bad air. He surely wouldn’t have wanted all the equipment to go to waste.
And there would be other pirates willing to make use of it, of course.
Nikolai decides he would be doing the pirate DJ a favour.
“A friend,” Nikolai tells Kohl, looking down at the money.
“You must have some good friends,” Kohl says. “This’ll do nicely.”
And a smile breaks on Nikolai’s face.
He watches Kohl take the money and stuff it in his back pocket.
The two stare at each other for a few moments, Kohl stock still, Nikolai twitching nervously.
“Ermmm . . . ?”
“Was there something else?” Kohl.
“I . . . what about . . . ?”
“What? Speak up. Can’t hear you.”
“The stuff,” Nikolai says. The hairs are standing up on the back of his neck, his palms sweating. Each tiny beep echoing from the speakers of the games cabinets pierces him like a bullet.
“What stuff would that be? Look, I’m busy here. Could you see yourself out?”
Nikolai almost started toward the door automatically then caught himself. “I . . . don’t understand. I gave you the money . . .”
Like everyone, he’s had deals go bad on him before and that was why he had given the money away reluctantly, as if it were some sort of afterthought or minor gesture. But Kohl isn’t some street punk, some piece of shit selling fickle grams at a time. He is one of those you go to when you have enough money to mean you don’t have to worry about being double-crossed.
But now this.
“And I’ve taken your money and it covers some of what you already owe me,” Kohl tells him. “Thanks for the payment. Now get the fuck out.”
The man goes back to the circuit board in his hands, tilts the blowtorch at it. The flame bursts forth bright and harsh and threatening.
“Kohl, please. I’ll pay you what I owe you
, I will. But I need something for now.”
“You don’t have any money for now.”
Nikolai thinks quickly, desperately. “I can get some more money. Please.”
“It’s taken you four weeks to come up with this, Nikolai, where the hell are you going to get even more money before the end of tonight? Rob another one of your junkie friends?”
“I can get the money,” Nikolai lies. If he can just get enough to see him through the next few days, he’ll be able to figure out what to do next, but there’s no way he can come up with a decent plan while still so spun.
“You’re not getting a thing until I get the rest of what you already owe me.” Kohl flames the circuit board. The smell of hot metal pirouettes into the air, pure energy.
“Kohl.”
And Nikolai has a hold of Kohl’s arm and immediately knows he’s done the wrong thing, but before he can take it back the other man swings around, drops the circuit board and the hand now wraps around Nikolai’s skinny throat, squeezes. Kohl lifts him clean off the ground and drives him across the room and into a wall, pins him there. The blowtorch wavers before Nikolai’s face. Kohl’s eyes are swollen by the curving plastic of his glasses, and the story goes that he almost burned them out while high on one of his varied concoctions playing Space Invaders for seventeen straight hours and now needs the bubble-like protection to stop him going completely blind.
That’s the story.
Or one of them.
A whine escapes Nikolai’s nose and he’s too afraid to say anything.
The blowtorch flame roars across his neck.
“If you ever want me to even consider selling you or any of your junkie friends anything ever again then you’ll do what’s good for you and get the fuck out of my joint right now.”
He says it softly, soothingly, and it confuses Nikolai’s soggy comprehension further, takes him a few moments to recognize the threat. Another wave of the blowtorch confirms this.
“Misha!” Kohl shouts through the door and the muscled woman barges her way in just as Kohl shoves Nikolai toward her. Without a moment’s hesitation she lashes out and hooks Nikolai heavily and cleanly across the chin, dropping him to the ground like he’d been shot in the head.
Little blossoms of light fill his vision and they bloom into great bright explosions as he is lifted onto his feet once more and then there is a second, greater impact in his stomach that doubles him up. The only thing that stops him collapsing to the ground once more is the fact that the woman has a hold of his hair.
His head is pulled upward abruptly and his neck makes an uncomfortable snapping sound. He squints through the pain and sees Kohl’s bug-eyes looming before him.
“You bring me the rest of what you owe me by tomorrow night, Nikolai. Then we can talk further.”
Nikolai starts to speak, feels the metallic taste of blood roll across his tongue and dribble down his chin. “I . . .”
And that’s all he can manage before he is being dragged down the stairs then through the electron massacre of the arcade before being dumped onto the wet street.
He lies there for some time, vaguely aware of those that are passing him, of the deals being done and bodies bought and sold. Finally he opens his eyes and the ground beside him is awash in garish, reflected neon. His mind catches up with what has just happened and he sits up.
“Fuck.”
CHAPTER FOUR
So Nikolai is fucked, good and proper, robbed of the one piece of good luck that he has had lately, robbed of the spoils of his dead friend’s equipment and so he’s doing what he always does when he doesn’t have drugs to lose himself in and that is to lose himself in games instead.
He’s already sold all of the cabinets that he once had and so all he has left is a stripped-down cocktail cabinet, the sort that you sit down and lean over to play. The protective glass that once topped the device is gone, as are the original legs, which have been replaced by concrete blocks stolen from a nearby building site. The hatch that allows access to the circuit board within is also gone and he can feel the heat from the machine emanating against his knees.
His left eye has swollen slightly from the impact of Mischa’s punch and he takes comfort in the fact that the pain from his stomach is at its least powerful when he bends over as he does when he plays the game.
In the background, a TV is playing an old black-and-white Soviet propaganda cartoon from which he takes a strange comfort.
He’s mumbling curses to himself as he jams the control buttons and joystick, dictating the elaborate revenges he will commit upon the dealer Kohl.
“. . . shove that blowtorch up his . . .”
Slaps the two control buttons one after another.
“. . . fucking motherfucking blind motherfucker . . .”
Grits his teeth and just avoids dropping another credit as a pixilated laser beam shoots past the ill-shapen spacecraft he is controlling.
“. . . show him how to . . .”
And there is a knock at his door.
He doesn’t hear it at first but then it repeats and he stops playing.
A tiny explosion erupts below him as his spaceship is destroyed and the funeral march sounds, midi-style.
“Open up, Nikolai.”
“Oh fuck.”
Kohl.
Nikolai jumps back from the machine as if he has just received a shock from it and his neurons start firing randomly once again.
“Nikolai!”
And he’s looking around for an exit; the window that opens out onto the stairs that are stapled to the side of the building and lead down to the dumpsters below, the aged garbage chute that has been blocked since before Nikolai moved in a year before and whatever it is that blocks it, it stinks.
He’s going round and round in circles, a dog chasing its tail.
And then the door bursts open and he stumbles backward, into the games machine and over it, tumbling to the floor with an almighty thud. He tries scrambling to his feet but Kohl has grabbed him already and Nikolai raises his hands to his face defensively.
“Don’t! Don’t!”
He is pulled upright into a sitting position, his back against the apartment’s rear wall.
“Shut up, shut up,” Kohl snaps.
And Nikolai struggles but Kohl has a firm grip of him and he can go nowhere, do nothing.
“What the fuck?! It’s only been a few hours! I don’t have . . .”
And Kohl slaps him, lightly, just to quieten him. Nikolai bites down on the rest of the sentence and it becomes a senseless gargle.
“Listen.”
In the background is the sound of the cartoon, the comically exaggerated noises of a fight between a cat and some other indistinguishable creature. Perhaps an American.
“This place is a shithole,” Kohl says as he looks around. He lets go of Nikolai and stands, walks amongst the trash that litters the room. “Haven’t you ever heard of drawers? Clothes hangers? For fuck’s sake.”
And Nikolai watches, still reeling from the dealer’s sudden entrance, as Kohl starts picking up random pieces of clothing that have been left lying about.
“Where are these meant to go?”
And Nikolai doesn’t understand at first, holds his cheek where it still stings from the man’s slap. “I . . .”
“A closet? A rail? Anything?”
“I . . . in the bedroom.”
And he watches as Kohl takes the pile he has collected and disappears into the bedroom. A moment passes.
“Jesus Christ!” Shouted through the open doorway. “This is disgusting!”
And Nikolai is still too confused to feel ashamed and he thinks that this must be what it is like to have a mother when you are growing up. “I’m . . . sorry . . . ?” he mumbles weakly.
He gets to his feet and tentatively looks into the bedroom. Kohl is shoving hangers from the bare wardrobe into the grotty, stained clothing he has picked up. He’s wearing a pair of black rubber gloves that he’s produced from
somewhere.
“You know you get bugs growing in these things if you leave them lying around like this? They lay their eggs in your sweat and they hatch and it’s a fucking infestation. Did you know that?”
“I . . . but . . .”
“No, of course you didn’t. People don’t care what’s growing on them or in them. Order, Nikolai, it’s important to have order, you understand?”
“Uh huh.”
And Nikolai glances at the still-open front door, pictures the stairwell beyond and then . . . then what?
“Nikolai?! Are you listening to me?”
“Yes. I . . . Yes. What?”
“You see?” And Kohl steps to one side, presents the half-filled wardrobe. “That’s all it takes, just a little bit of time and everything is in its place. You see?”
“Okay. I mean, yes. I see.”
“Good. I certainly hope so.”
And Kohl wipes his gloved hands on his trousers, grimacing as he does so.
“Now. As to why I’m here.”
“I don’t have it!” Nikolai yelps and he’s leaning back through the bedroom door again. “You said tomorrow night!”
And then he stops and he thinks.
Shit. Is it tomorrow night?
How long has he been playing for?
“What day is it?”
But Kohl is shaking his head and smiling like a child who has been caught stealing. “I’m not here for the money, Nikolai. Not exactly.”
Nikolai shoves a finger into his mouth, chews the top of the nail clean off. “So . . . ?”
“So I’m here to make a proposition. To provide you with an alternative.”
“Uh.”
The TV crackles into static as the cartoon ends.
“There’s something I need, something I need you to bring me. Something I want.”
“Okay.”
“And if you can bring me it, then I’ll perhaps be willing to disregard what you still owe me. And as an added thank you, give you this.”
He holds up a small baggy of powder that sparkles white one moment and then the next moment a purple the colour of a fresh bruise, of a clean twilight.
A little line of perspiration raises on Nikolai’s darkly stubbled upper lip. His body almost physically lurches at the sight of the drug and he has to stop himself from just grabbing it out of Kohl’s hand, consequences be damned.