Nightlife

by Brian Hodge

  And after Erik had bid him goodnight, well, old habits die hard.

  Crocodile Dundee ended happily, lovers affirmed, and credits rolled. End of film, but not end of tape. Gentle white static pulsed as it wound itself out, and Justin lingered pleasantly on that brink that was neither sleep nor wakefulness. When strange trapdoors spring open in the imagination and shortcuts develop between unrelated thoughts. When the self-censorship of rationality is repealed as unconstitutional.

  When, if you were lucky, entire worlds could be unlocked.

  Just like the poster on the wall near Erik’s bookshelf. A shirtless Jim Morrison, before his own obsessions did him in. With his springboard William Blake quotation printed beside him: When the doors of perception are cleansed man will see things as they truly are, infinite.

  He lingered, trying to remain poised there. Such a narrow ledge, really.

  Justin thought of April, letting her drift through the layers of his mind. Weaving her into the fabric of his being. Emotionally, intellectually, sexually. It was the most satisfying sort of fantasy he knew of. If only she could knowingly participate in the process.

  When his thoughts veered wildly off course, he didn’t know where the new ones came from. But he went with them anyway. The expanding of consciousness is not something to impose barriers upon.

  Even when it feels to be dragging you through a waking nightmare.

  Justin knew something was different about this when the edges of his field of vision seemed to go green. Fuzzy green, pale green. He knew immediately where he’d seen that hue before, that it had mostly disappeared up Trent Pollard’s nostrils.

  And his own, as well.

  It’s still in my system…

  He echoed a memory of Trent at the club, on the dance floor. Wildly exultant, savagely so.

  Transcendent.

  Breaking through between known and unknown.

  Justin felt as if he were leaving his body behind him on the couch, abandoning it while his mind soared to commingle with another. Linked, perhaps. But not perfectly. It was like forcing two gears to work together that meshed only on every fifth or sixth revolution. Windows of passage to glimpse through, doors of perception to traverse.

  Infinity.

  It was sensation, snippets of emotion, fragments of thought.

  …pain…

  …betrayal…

  …fingers sliding down wet filmy wall, brick…

  …Help me, somebody nobody will…

  It felt as if he were being pulled against his will. He knew he could sever contact if he wanted; it wasn’t that strong. Whoever it was — she, it was a she — was likely unaware of what she was doing. Just as he too was an innocent, receiving, as it were, via an open channel in his consciousness.

  He knew her pain. Her fear. As only one who had already experienced them was able. Only she was going so much farther in. And he was along for the ride, with no safety bar.

  …freely running nose…

  …burning in the muscles, liquid flames…

  …silhouette of a man in a white suit…

  …with a familiar face…

  … “What did you give me?” …

  …high-tensile bones rearranging…

  He clung to the roller coaster of her being, slung this way, then that. She was turmoil, and together they tumbled, toward the darkness at the center of the past, aeons hurtled in moments.

  Walls of confinement loomed in, the prisons of flesh and brick maddening. He hung with it as long as he could, even when her thoughts dwindled to mere lightspecks of rationality and coherence, displaced by impulses that could only be described as instinctive.

  To run.

  To howl.

  To mate.

  To feed.

  And then he was ready to lift his voice with hers, when all at once the unrecorded tape in the VCR ran out. The machine kicked off play and onto automatic rewind, and the overridden channel beneath roared through screen and speaker alike. Jarring. It blew him right out of the spectator’s seat, leaving him to fall away while the ride went on, and on, and on…

  Without him.

  Justin sat up, rubbed a mild headache at his temples into submission. Checked his peripheral vision. No green.

  There was relief, though. And at the same time, sorrow.

  Who had she been? Despite the oppressive feeling that bad news was befalling someone, somewhere, and that he knew precisely whom to blame for it, it was still the most exhilarating high he had ever known.

  PART II

  POWDERKEG

  Chapter 8

  THE DARK CONTINENT

  The next day, Justin and Erik heeded the call of the tourist wild and went to Busch Gardens in northeastern Tampa. Three hundred acres of theme park, Disney World meets Africa. An interesting experiment in transworld hybrid capitalism.

  The place was doing boffo business, and they were just two more splotches of roaming color amid the rest of the gawkers, rubberneckers, and sandals-with-black-socks crowd. Erik fixated on a parrot perched amiably near a palmetto. The bird’s colors were almost too bright to be real, red merging to yellow to blue to draping red tail feathers. Erik tried to teach it dirty words, and when a blue-haired woman chastised him, he tried to teach it to say, “Geritol causes cancer.”

  They watched a snake charmer along a stretch simulating a Moroccan street bazaar, nestled in between low blocky buildings the color of desert earth. Shortly thereafter, they were treated to a quartet of belly dancers and got to fantasize about what wonders those undulating tummy muscles could perform under more intimate circumstances. Then they strolled onward.

  “Do you think Morocco really looks like this?” Justin asked.

  “Maybe if you squint,” Erik said. “Somehow I doubt Morocco has janitors patrolling with those lever-action pans to sweep up the cigarette butts.”

  “Point,” said Justin, and then an enormously obese behemoth passed before them, sunburned and greased with sunscreen and wearing plaid Bermudas. He was sucking down an ice-cream cone, and all remaining Moroccan integrity died in his wake.

  They boarded the Trans-Veldt Railroad, and it took them across a fake Serengeti Plain. Watch the wild animals roaming freely in their natural habitat. Somehow Justin doubted that their natural habitat was within view of Skyride cable cars and a monorail. Zebras, giraffes, gazelles, camels. He liked the white tigers best, though, lazing about their island in a pit in the park’s northwestern corner. They looked otherworldly, as if despite captivity in these bizarre surroundings, they were still in charge.

  Late afternoon saw them at the Hospitality House. Seven sides, almost an octagon. They got beers — no shortage of Anheuser-Busch products here — and settled onto the outer patio. The enormous peaked eaves on this side made the house look like a huge origami sculpture. They lucked into grabbing a small table along the railing overlooking the pond. The best of both worlds: They could watch waterfowl or halter-topped girls passing by on the patio, alternating at their leisure.

  “What do you know about that Tony Mendoza guy?” Justin asked out of the blue.

  Erik looked momentarily taken aback. “I don’t know. Not much. Why him?”

  Good question. Justin didn’t really know why. Just a strange compulsion to get a handle on the guy, for whatever elusive reasons it seemed important. He tried to explain that the best he could,

  “I don’t think I could tell you much more than what you could figure out just by looking at him.” Erik stretched in his seat and let his gaze get sidetracked by a well-modeled pair of cutoffs. “Just some midlevel coke distributor. From what I hear, he’s decently connected around here.” Erik pulled his eyes back, let his face wilt into concern. “Man, you’re not thinking about getting back into things like you were in St. Louis…?”

  “Noooo. No way.” Justin frowned. “But something’s been bugging me about him. If he’s midlevel, what’s he doing piddling around with tiny individual portions in bathroom-stall deals?”

 
“I didn’t know he was.”

  “Sure. Two nights ago, at Apocalips. Right there in the john he was quoting Trent a price on some of that stuff we sampled. By the ounce. The gram, even. A guy like that shouldn’t be dorking with penny-ante bathroom deals. If he passes out a little for party dust, I can understand that, but—”

  “Maybe he does it as a favor to some people. ‘Cause he used to be lower level, selling on a more one-to-one basis. He’s not a stupid guy, he’s pretty sharp, I think. I guess he parlayed his way on up into bigger time. I used to buy every now and then from him, like, four years ago or so. That’s when most all of us know him from.” Erik drank some more, wet his mouth. “From what I hear, he was trying to diversify his interests a while back, couple years, maybe. Porno’s pretty profitable. And fun, if you don’t mind AIDS roulette. I hear he sunk some money into that. If you want my views on the guy, I think he just likes to play big shot and spread some dust here and there to have his fun. You know, meet someone with more boobs than brains and lead her around by the nose for the night, have his fun, then cut her loose in the morning. If he’s paid wholesale on the stuff, his cost is negligible.”

  “Charming guy,” Justin said.

  “Oh yeah. Real old-world gentlemanly sort, isn’t he?” Erik shook his head. “I meant what I said Tuesday night. Just stay clear of him. I have the feeling he wouldn’t be healthy for your future.”

  “Hey. Don’t have to club me in the head twice.” Justin drained his first beer, looked sorrowfully at the empty. “Wish I knew what it was he gave us in the bathroom. That was weird stuff.”

  “Just let it go.”

  “I think I had a flashback from it last night.”

  This one grabbed Erik’s attention. Forgotten was a busty girl with a clinging damp T-shirt, probably fresh from the rapids on one of the river rides.

  “Flashback? You’re sounding like sixties vintage now.”

  “Don’t I, though? You’d think I’d dropped acid. Don’t know why I’d get a flashback out of this stuff.”

  Erik hunched closer to the table, lowered his voice. “You ever hear what causes flashbacks?”

  “No.”

  “I learned this from a guy who used to work at the Trib. You want to talk sixties vintage, now this guy was a relic. We used to call him Quivering Bob. I think the sixties frazzled his nerves for good. But he told me that hallucinogens get dissolved into your system, and some gets absorbed into body fats. It can lie there dormant for a long, long time. And then, bam, if a little bit of the fat gets broken down by the body, the stuff gets squirted right back into your system. Instant trip on the leftovers.”

  “Just like a time-release cold capsule.”

  Erik nodded. “But scarier. So what happened to you last night?”

  Justin puffed a sigh. Trying to bring it all back as clearly as possible. Sensations. Thoughts. Emotions. Was it live or Memorex? He was no longer sure. He ran it by Erik. A second opinion was always valued…

  “Hell, I don’t know what to make of that.”

  …Sometimes.

  “A lot of help you are.”

  “Sorry. But it just doesn’t sound like a typical flashback. I never heard of a flashback ending because a noise startled you.” Erik cocked an eyebrow, playful skepticism. “Sounds more like you got awakened from a dream. Are you sure that’s not what happened?”

  “Positive.” Justin steepled his fingers together, watched them for inspiration. Flex, back and forth. “I sleep so little anymore, you can bet I know when I do and when I don’t.” Watched his fingers until he grew bored by them. Didn’t take long. “Of course, there’s another option, but it sounds really out to lunch.”

  “Yeah? Try me.”

  “Say Mendoza gave some to somebody else, and somehow it linked us. A shared-consciousness kind of thing. But a really shaky one.”

  “My my. We are talking Twilight Zone here, aren’t we.”

  “But do you think it’s possible?”

  “Anything’s possible.” Erik scratched his head, classic heavy-thought poise. “It’s just when you start looking at probable that a lot of things break down.”

  Justin kept reaching for his empty beer cup, then having to remind himself it was empty. Hope springs eternal for the spontaneous refill.

  “Look at it this way,” Justin said quietly. “It was a drug, a hallucinogen, I think we’re safe in saying. And hallucinogens do some freaky things to the mind and the consciousness. Now, suppose whatever skullflush is, it’s natural. Not synthetic. A lot of natural hallucinogens provoke a similar reaction in people.” He gave a big smile, he was on a roll. “Like mescaline. A lot of people who take that report seeing a vision of the same figure: Mescalito, the demon of mescaline. They give the same description of the ugly spud and everything. It’s a time-honored vision, man. And it stays consistent.”

  “Okay, okay.” Erik lifted his hands in surrender. “You’ve overwhelmed me with your superior intellect and powers of persuasion.” He looked askance for a moment, got a dreamy cast to his face. “Wow.”

  “What?”

  “A shared consciousness. I’m just trying to think of all the sexual applications of this.”

  “Degenerate.”

  “It’s a way of life.” Erik stood, motioned Justin to do likewise. “Come on, let’s bail. Look for more parrots we can corrupt.”

  It sounded good. Appalling a blue-hair now and then was good for the soul, kept you young.

  But questions remained, unanswered, uneasy. Who had been last night’s damsel in distress? How did she figure in with Mendoza? He tried to tell himself he was better off not knowing.

  Curiosity killed a lot more than cats.

  Chapter 9

  CARETAKER

  After a night of baby-sitting Sasha and her brand-new look, Tony had started to wonder if it hadn’t actually been boredom that did in Marlin Perkins. All that waiting for something to happen in the Wild Kingdom. After she’d hit the door, as if to eat through the peep-slot, she had backed off. Paced around the room a bit. Settled into a corner. Bayed mournfully at the naked light bulb every now and then. Mostly just whimpered softly. Incredible. OD on some powder, and instead of going permanent schizo or keeling over from heart failure, the mythical beast within takes over. Just incredible.

  Tony was dressed for waiting now. He’d had Lupo swing by the penthouse to grab him a change of clothes, back to combat pants and black mesh. This leaky basement was no place for a two-grand suit. Slimy stinkhole, the more he stayed down here, the more he disliked the place.

  It reminded him of a sewer-level sub-basement he’d once been in in New Orleans. Just your basic business trip mixed with enough pleasure to make it look legit. Some guys were developing a trans-Gulf of Mexico conduit from Florida’s west coast — Tampa, natch — to the Big Easy. The guys had also turned up someone in their ranks who’d been into profit-skimming.

  They had taken him to the catacombs beneath a French Quarter nightclub, a veritable dungeon down there, and let their displeasure be known. Turned the guy’s balls into a pincushion for a packet of four-inch needles, then used a .22 automatic to widen his nasal cavities. Then dumped his body into an underground stream that carried it into the Mississippi, and from there it could sail all the way to the Gulf and beyond. A very efficient system.

  Tony was thinking about that place when Lupo came back in midmorning. Always had to keep the business rolling, no matter what, keep those runners trotting and get those connections made.

  “What are we going to do with her?” Lupo asked.

  “Not sure yet.” Tony was kicked back into a chair scrounged from upstairs. Better than sitting on the damp floor.

  Sasha had come back to herself, as it were, a bit over an hour before. No snout, no fur, no claws. No she-wolf, just a frightened little mussed-up death groupie sleeping the experience off like a bad hangover.

  Lupo reached beneath an untucked shirt, big and loose and all the better to conceal behind, and pul
led out his MAC-10. Nice little submachine gun not much bigger than the average pistol. A real favorite among the players. Accuracy wasn’t for shit at long ranges, but you didn’t need marksmanship quality to blow apart some bozo trying to jack with you on a face-to-face deal.

  “Want me to do her?” Lupo asked quietly. “She has served her purpose.”

  “Put it away,” he muttered, and Lupo did as asked. “That’s too messy for here anyway. Same for your straight razor.”

  “I could just break her neck.”

  Tony shook his head. “Nah. ‘Cause sure, I got a few questions answered, but for every one, seems like ten more have popped up.” He grinned. “Lupo, man, you should’ve seen that shit work! I couldn’t believe it — just like a horror movie, I swear. You know? We got a gold mine here if we figure out what to do with the stuff.”

  Lupo nodded, strolled a bit closer, hunkered down on his haunches. “You can’t just turn it loose like coke.”

  “Huh, don’t I know that. Do that, we end up with a lot of scenes like what happened at the Apocalips. Which means patterns. Which means the police’ll have something concrete to dig for. Which means somebody’ll eventually point their finger right back at me.” He shook his head. “Fuck a duck, man. I’m sitting on six keys of blow that I can’t move. Nearly a hundred grand that I’m not gonna get dime one back on. I could shoot that fucking Escobar if I didn’t have a feeling there’s some way to get a return on this.”

  He slumped in the chair, pursed his lips in thought. Time to run through a few facts and speculations. Look at this rationally.