High Life

by Matthew Stokoe

  “Well, it’s about time. And who’s this young man?”

  He smiled at me and jerked his hand forward. His grip was way too tight.

  “Ron, this is Jack. I had car trouble and he gave me a ride. You get him too, no extra charge.”

  “Hello, Jack. You look like a healthy fellow. Do you like teaching people how to behave? Of course you do, of course you do. You wouldn’t be here otherwise, would you? Yes, I’m sure you know how to treat people who haven’t been quite as good as they should have been.”

  I looked at Rex and saw his left eye twitch.

  “You bet.”

  After that the three of us stood in a brittle silence. Ron shifted from foot to foot, like he’d forgotten what to do next.

  Rex cleared his throat. “Er, Ron …”

  “Oh, yes. Jesus. God, sorry. Money first, of course. Nothing extra for Jake, you say? I mean Jack. Sorry, Jack. Nothing extra?”

  “If you feel you’d like to, Ron. It’s entirely up to you. Don’t feel pressured.”

  “Well, maybe a little something, then.”

  Rex took the folded bills Ron held out and slipped them into his pocket without counting them. Everyone acted as though the money didn’t matter. I tried to check denominations, but it happened too fast.

  “So, let’s go through.”

  At the end of the entrance hall we went left through an arch into a high-ceilinged room that ran clear to the back of the building and ended in a glass wall that showed L.A. floating above a stretch of dark canyon.

  Harsh light, white stone walls, varnished blond-wood floor. Very little furniture—a bar in an alcove, a white leather couch against one wall, a low coffee table that held an oversize douche bag, fat with water. The room felt like an art gallery without paintings.

  Centered in the barren expanse of floor was something that looked like a customized gynecological examination table—three feet high, four feet long, surrounded by a chrome-steel framework that held a pair of stirrups.

  And on the table, a naked woman.

  From her body she looked to be mid-thirties, good condition. I couldn’t tell from her face because she was wearing a fitted black leather hood. It didn’t have any eyeholes, but it had a couple for her nose and a closed zipper over her mouth. Her feet were strapped into the stirrups and pulled so far back her knees almost touched her shoulders. Her anus was plainly visible. Handcuffs locked her arms to another part of the framework behind her head.

  Rex took off his jacket and sat on the couch.

  “Does she need the same as last time?”

  Ron was over at the bar picking up glasses and things.

  “I think she deserves it, don’t you?”

  “I certainly do.”

  Rex grinned at me while Ron’s back was turned.

  I stayed standing and looked at the woman on the table until Ron brought the booze over. Under the halogen she didn’t look real, it was hard to think of her as human.

  The drinks were strong—vodka, lime juice, ice. Rex watched me over his glass to see how I was taking it.

  “Do you hear us, my love? They’re here, two of them this time. That’ll teach you, won’t it? We’re all looking at you.”

  Ron’s voice rose as he spoke, he had to struggle to keep himself from shouting. He paused for a second to regain control.

  “In a little while I’ll let them start, but first we’re going to have a drink. Don’t worry, we won’t leave you alone.”

  The woman’s tits lifted rapidly with her breathing.

  “Okay, let’s get you fellows fired up.”

  From a drawer in the coffee table he took a bag of insulin syringes, a few vials of sterile water, and a couple of gram-wraps of coke.

  It was hot in the room—Californian nighttime balminess on top of under-floor heating. Outside, deep night silence ate away at our connection with the rest of the world.

  Ron watched the woman flinch at the small sounds he made opening the vials. Her tension seemed to please him. When the water was a quarter-inch deep in the bottom of a tumbler he opened one of the wraps and dumped it in, stirring with a syringe plunger until it was dissolved. The rubber end squeaked against the glass.

  I helped myself to the vodka bottle, chugged a couple of mouthfuls. It burned my throat and made my eyes water, but things were hotting up and I wanted to be loose. Ron handed out the works.

  “Don’t worry about a filter, this stuff’s pharmaceutical. Help yourselves.” Then, calling across the room: “These boys are going to be ripped, pussycat. I hope I can control them.”

  The woman shifted position slightly. The stirrups and the handcuffs clinked.

  Ron had to tie off, but Rex and I could find veins by making a fist.

  I slid the needle in, a slight sting in the crook of my elbow. Pulled back a little on the plunger to check I was connected—blood expanded in a thick con trail through the clear solution. I looked over at Rex before I let rip. He was waiting for me. We hit simultaneously, Rex giving me a smile like, here we go, dude, hang on.

  Bang. Head and chest expanding. A pleasant flash of nausea that fades as soon as it comes. Superman. Clarity and blurred reality at the same time. I wanted to do it. I wanted to fuck the woman right then, before the rush wore off, before my scrubbing organs robbed me of its insulation.

  Ron’s forehead shone. Eyes on stalks, no irises, bunched muscles at the corner of his jaw. We were all the same.

  “Get ready, darling, here they come.”

  The woman opened and closed her legs as much as the stirrups would allow. Rex nudged me, stood up, and stripped. He was half hard already. I dropped my clothes in a pile on the floor. Ron was still sitting and my dick swung in front of his face.

  “This first.”

  He handed Rex the douche bag.

  “Clean her out before you start.”

  All three of us stood around the woman. She knew we were close. Troughs appeared on her thighs and arms as she strained against her bonds and the different muscle groups separated. Ron hadn’t taken his clothes off and his hard-on stretched the material of his trousers.

  Rex was acting like he knew what to do and I wondered how often he’d worked his way through this scene. Ron’s apparent hatred of the woman looked real, but there was something calculated about the scene, something arranged. Fit and fighting, she would have been too much for our host to maneuver into bondage. She must have allowed it to happen.

  The booze and the coke were peaking, making things easy for me. Rex, all business now, moved in with the douche bag.

  “Hold her open, dude.”

  Her cunt was wet and my fingers slipped twice before I had her spread. The white plastic nozzle slid between my fingers and into her. Rex squeezed the bag.

  She took about half a pint before it started to come out, gushing around the edge of the nozzle and drooling off the table to spatter on the varnished floor with a sound like thick rain.

  “That’s right, Rex, wash the bitch out. How does it feel to be clean, bitch? She wants to be clean. Don’t you, my love? You want to be clean?”

  The woman made a noise that sounded like yes.

  When half the water was gone, Rex did the same thing to her ass. This time the water didn’t come out.

  Ron had a cigarette going and was smoking like someone unaccustomed to the habit. Short drags with his eyes screwed up. Puff, puff, puff. He handed it to me and nodded at the woman. I looked at Rex.

  “Her foot.”

  “With this?”

  “It’s what they want.”

  I hesitated, the cigarette’s tip glowed bright red through a gray dust of dead ash. I scanned the room for a sign to tell me whether or not I should go through with it. But nothing hinted one way or the other. And at that moment I was overwhelmed by the pointlessness of trying to choose right over wrong. Why bother? What possible difference could what happened to this woman make to me?

  “Do it, dude.”

  I felt like a puppet, somet
hing without choice.

  I pressed the cigarette against the tender skin on the arch of her foot. She convulsed, lifting herself into the air, blasting water from her ass in a stuttering, shitty gout that arced several feet beyond the table.

  “Yes! Goddamn, she needed that.”

  Ron hopped from foot to foot and actually clapped his hands. Inside her hood the woman shrieked. Rex raised an eyebrow at me.

  “Interesting, huh?”

  Ron produced a couple of novelty condoms, one with a head like an elephant, one like a chicken.

  “These boys are pumped, pussycat. You’re going to get reamed. You want the new one first?”

  She moved her head in an awkward nodding motion.

  “Yes, I thought so. In you go, Jake. Let me help you.”

  I stood at the end of the table, Ron took hold of my dick and guided it into her. His fingers lingered for the first few strokes.

  “That’s it, fella. Give it to her. Jam it in as hard as you can. That’s the way she likes it. Harder. Burn the shit out of her.”

  I made it pretty energetic, but it wasn’t good enough for Ron. He shouted and waved his arms like he was rooting for a football team until I was slamming it in so hard my thighs made a slapping sound against her ass and the table rocked. At each impact the woman grunted. By the time I’d finished her gash looked raw and slack.

  “Feel cleaner, my love? Did it scrape away some of that pus in there? Here comes number two.”

  Same thing, with Ron jigging about and the woman making animal noises, except Rex was in her ass. After a while she started to fart with each of his thrusts.

  We broke for booze and another shot of coke, then swapped holes and did it all over again.

  At the end, Rex and I stood like drooping matadors over an exhausted bull. Ron lit another cigarette. He had his dick out and looked slightly ludicrous wanking and jetting smoke at the same time.

  “Don’t keep me waiting, man.”

  He held the cigarette out to me. I felt drained and jittery from the coke, stale from the booze. I wanted to be gone. I started to take it but Rex pushed me aside.

  “I’ll do it, Ron.”

  “Whatever. Just do it, for godsake.”

  Ron stood by the woman’s head, up on his toes, putting all of himself behind his dick. Rex blew on the end of the cigarette, then, avoiding my eyes, spread her labia and pushed it against her clit. I heard a small hiss as the coal hit pussy juice.

  She pissed herself and jerked around on the table like she’d been electrocuted. The sounds she made behind her mask were really quite frightening. Ron groaned and spurted white come over the black leather of her face.

  Out in the night again.

  “I’ll drive.”

  “Sure.”

  I wasn’t going to argue. My body ached and my head hummed with post-coke emptiness. I could do without the hassle of driving.

  “Got any Valium?”

  “Jacket pocket.”

  Rex pulled out onto Mulholland and headed in the opposite direction to home.

  “Wrong way.”

  “Helps me unwind. Just for a while, okay?”

  I tapped out two yellow pills from a brown plastic tube and swallowed them with some of the vodka Ron had let us take when we left. Two didn’t seem much, so I did two more. Rex took the same and finished the booze. I chucked the bottle out the window and watched it explode against the side of the road like something heavy thrown into a lake. There was a long hour till dawn and the sky was a sick gray lid. Around us the hillsides were developing like some scene in a retarded Polaroid photo. We drove in silence for a couple of miles, letting the pills take hold.

  “What did you think?”

  “Was she really into it?”

  “Of course. Easy money, huh?”

  “Are they all like that?”

  “Some are, some are different. You did good.”

  “What’s she look like under the mask?”

  “I’ve never seen her.”

  “They must have an interesting relationship.”

  “I guess it’s one way to keep a marriage alive.”

  “Sure, as long as you’ve got the money to feel safe doing it.”

  “What safe? They’re not killing each other.”

  “Yeah, but to be okay with it you’ve got to be able to step outside the usual morality. And that’s not something everyone can afford.”

  “You’re saying money buys them out of right and wrong?”

  “Out of other people’s ideas of it.”

  “Man, you romanticize it too much. When it comes down to it, they’re just people, same as everyone else.”

  “Bullshit. Can you see some guy, like some sanitation guy or something, coming home and his wife, who’s been scrubbing floors all day, letting him tie her up and burn her cunt with a cigarette? Fuck, there’d be all kinds of shit to pay. Police, domestic violence, sexual abuse … That one act would change everything for them. But rich people aren’t affected the same way. They can segment. They can indulge without fucking up the rest of their lives. Tomorrow Ron and his wife will wake up and she’ll be sore as hell, but I bet they’ll be having breakfast in some chichi nook off Melrose as though nothing ever happened.”

  “Well, I won’t be out looking for them. Jesus, I’m wrecked.”

  He U-turned and we tried for home. Pilled out, it didn’t matter to either of us that our speed was below twenty-five. Five minutes later Rex nodded off at the wheel and it became obvious we weren’t going to make the distance. I elbowed him awake.

  “Pull over.”

  He snapped his head up and did his best to focus. When he spoke his voice sounded like mine—slurred.

  “Are you hungry, dude?”

  “I can’t tell.”

  “Me either.”

  “We did too much Valium.”

  “Nah, not after that coke.”

  “Let’s pull over.”

  “Yeah.”

  We drove for another half mile while Rex summoned the motivation to change from a mobile situation to a stationary one. By the time he managed it we were back at the Hollywood Bowl overlook. We parked up close to the fence.

  An angled vista of city dawn.

  Engine off. Systems shut down.

  “Holy fuck.”

  “These seats recline.”

  “Thank god.”

  The sun was high when I woke and the air in the car was stale. Through the windshield downtown L.A. was a dark ghost behind a curtain of smog.

  Rex was gone, but he’d left a business card and some money on the dash. I counted the money—three hundred dollars—and read what he’d written on the card: “Use the number. Getting a lift with tourists.” I flipped it over. Black on white, expensive letters. A phone number and the words “Bel Air Escorts.” The area code wasn’t Bel Air, though. I stuck it in my pocket with the money.

  The overlook gates were open now. I got out of the car, walked through a group of sleek Japanese in the parking lot, and climbed the steps to the top of the sandstone outcrop. Cicadas buzzed in the scrub around me and down in its dirty brown bowl the city hustled ten million people through another day.

  Despite the body mileage I’d clocked up last night I felt good. I ran scenes in my head and marveled at them—my cock, her cunt, my fingers holding the cigarette against her foot. I’d done it, I’d crossed the line between accepted behavior and behavior most of the population would consider a lynching offense, and that morning I felt as real as any of the men in the Escape commercials. It had been dirty and nasty but I wanted more.

  I looked over my shoulder to check the car, another coach-load of tourists was squeezing its way through the gate and I was worried about my paintwork. Reflected sun made bright ovals on the windows and heliographed memories of Karen at me. She would be underground by now, flapping chest and skinny limbs bundled into a county grave that I would never visit. But she’d bought me a car with money earned by selling her kidney and I couldn
’t forget her completely. Same as I couldn’t forget I’d forced her from the apartment that night—an action that almost certainly had its place in the chain of events that led to her murder.

  I realized then why yesterday evening I’d put together what I knew of her death. Karen to live with had been a nightmare, but Karen dead could be used as an escape. Tracking down her killer wasn’t something I expected to succeed at, but the simple doing of it, the attempt alone, had the potential to give me again what I’d experienced at Ron’s—life outside the mainstream. If I ever found the person responsible I wouldn’t know what to do with them, but that didn’t matter. What I wanted from her death was a reason to move in a world where the usual social obediences didn’t apply. An excuse to go places, to ask questions, to do something other than lie in bed all day.

  And to finance this withdrawal from all things good and clean and American? I had three hundred bucks in my pocket and the number for Bel Air Escorts. Rex had told me I’d be good at it. Man, I’d be a natural.

  Down from the lookout. The first cluster of Japanese had been replaced by another. I walked through them, half a foot taller and full of alien thoughts about the pointlessness of community.

  Inside the Prelude I felt protected.

  The seats were warm, they wrapped around.

  Chapter Eight

  A phone booth in West L.A. I’d stopped because the confidence I felt at the overlook had become infected with thoughts of Ryan. Maybe it was just chemical residue paranoia, but I couldn’t shake the feeling I should tie up the loose ends of my old life before embarking on a journey out of it. By now Ryan would have confirmed my alibi, and that my spunk wasn’t the same as the stuff they found in Karen. I knew I’d check out okay, but I wanted to hear it from him. I needed to be reassured he wasn’t going to be following me any further down the line.

  His ID badge had made him part of the Santa Monica Police Department. I dialed info and asked for the homicide section. And things got immediately weird. He didn’t work there. The guy I spoke to said the only Ryan at the station was a member of the minor vice team.

  “Would they be dealing with that girl who got killed in Palisades Park a couple of weeks ago? The one that was cut open?”