But as far as Dylan was concerned, that kind of danger was just the cost of doing business; the way he looked at it, it was like driving a car: If you wanted to get where you needed to go, do what you needed to do, then you had to roll the dice and accept the possibility some fuckhead would have 10 too many, get behind the wheel, and T-bone you in the middle of an intersection. Generally, the only people who got picked off by the Jungle district’s resident speed freaks were the ones who either looked like they just stepped off of the country club patio or who decided to take a detour into one of the dozens of abandoned buildings that now served as meth labs, shooting galleries, or both. Fortunately, Dylan didn’t fit into either category so he just kept his head down, moving quickly but not too quickly, trying to focus on his destination and shake the images of his father, that hotel room before dawn.
Taking advantage of the sudden break in the rain, vendors hawking all kinds of wares were scurrying back out on to the street corners—offers for porn, sunglasses, fake designer bags filling the empty streets in a chorus that was about a quarter English, the rest something else: Chinese, Spanish, Russian, even Arabic. Dylan was hardly surprised by the Arabic; it had been a long time coming: Iraq had dissolved a few years ago, the country’s artificial boundaries torn apart as the new iron curtain of Sharia law descended across the Middle East. Following a three-year regional struggle that culminated in a low-yield nuclear exchange between Israel, Turkey, and Iran, a new state known as Neo-Persia rose from the shattered borders and radioactive sand dunes of the Iranian desert. Civil war and genocide followed, ripping nations apart and forcing thousands of Iraqi, Turkish, and Syrian Christians to flee into the West—or face life under the hard-line Mullahs who had seized power. Many of these refugees were repatriated across Europe, but a few thousand wound up in tiny enclaves scattered throughout North America. One such enclave stretched across several blocks of Tiber City’s Jungle district.
Didn’t take them very long to adjust to life in the Jungle, Dylan considered, as a man with a thick Middle-Eastern accent thrust a DVD in front of his face, the cover showing a girl with a red ball gag in her mouth and genuine terror in her eyes.
“Hot shit,” the man kept repeating, followed by a stream of Arabic. “Hot my main man. Very hot.”
But Dylan waved him away, moving north along 104th, watching the heat shimmer over the top of the road as he passed a street preacher standing on top of a porta-potty laid horizontal on the sidewalk, an artifact from a construction project abandoned sometime last century. Crude oil paintings depicting apocalyptic imagery—locusts with human heads, the battle of Armageddon, the latest tween pop sensation lashed to a spit and apparently being disemboweled, or maybe sodomized, or possibility even a combination of the two in what Dylan assumed was hell—surrounded the preacher’s makeshift pulpit, propped up on easels that were little more than pieces of rotting wood bound together by barbwire.
Dressed in a tattered, old patchwork suit and bowler hat with a chunk ripped out of the side, the guy must have been out there for a while—he was soaked from the earlier rainstorm—but his sermon was still going strong: Woe to the merchants of the earth for a great famine was coming. Usually these street prophets had three or four acolytes passing out pamphlets, shaking pedestrians down for donations, but this guy was alone, standing on his makeshift pulpit in front of a crumbling old hotel—the kind with the neon lettering running vertically down the side, but this place had been shuttered for years and only the letter “T” was still intact—preaching the apocalypse to the shadows heralding the sun’s departure from the earth.
“You,” the man cried, extending a long arm toward Dylan, the tattered sleeve of a too-small jacket sliding up to expose a bony forearm rotten with collapsed veins. “I know you. I’ve seen you before.”
Dylan kept walking, careful not to make eye contact—this was attention he didn’t need, and sure as hell didn’t want. He should have taken an alternate route—ducked down one of the alleyways lining the main strip—but then again, such a deviation could have been equally dangerous: The back alleys of the Jungle were always changing; routes and pathways opening and then vanishing as new syndicates and subcultures rose and fell and rose again.
“This man is dead; yet he walks among us,” the preacher continued, his voice echoing off the steel and concrete, rising hysterical above the din of the vendors and hustlers. “Look at his eyes, look at them. Those are the eyes of a dead man!”
Stepping off his stained, filth-caked pulpit, the street prophet swiped at Dylan, his gnawed, jagged nails raking the back of Dylan’s jacket. Dylan spun away from the man’s grasp, but several of the vendors and dealers had already paused in mid-hustle, their interest in the situation growing.
“I know this man,” the preacher howled, shuffling back and forth atop his plastic pulpit. “We all know him. We have seen him staring down upon our city, upon this tomb of steel and titanium and cracked concrete. Look upon the dead man and know him!”
It was funny, Dylan thought, because of all the dangers inherent to an excursion through the Jungle, the street seers were at the bottom of the list. And yet this one was about to create a huge problem because whether the guy recognized him or whether he was just waxing very-fucking-crazy, the end result would be the same: Someone would notice him and start asking why Dylan Fitzgerald, son of Senator Robert Fitzgerald, was strolling through the Jungle district. And that would mean a lot more than some bad press coverage.
Dylan knew he had to make a decision and make it soon: He could feel the Jungle’s collective attention shifting toward him. But then something happened that yanked that attention in another direction entirely.
Watching over the preacher’s shoulder as he continued to step backward, Dylan saw another homeless guy surge out of a darkened alley, foaming at the mouth and screaming. The homeless guy—his face a mess of sores and boils—charged the porta-potty-cum-pulpit, knocking the thing over and sending the old man careening into one of the dealers who had drifted over during the commotion. The collision caught the dealer off-guard, knocking the White Owl blunt out of his mouth, and the preacher was trying to turn away, his attention still fixed on his desecrated altar, but it was too late: The dealer grabbed him by the shoulder, spinning the old man around before driving a fat, tattooed fist into the preacher’s face. The punch connected and the preacher went down in a blur of crimson, his final remaining teeth skittering across the concrete and puddles of sewage leaking out of the porta-potty.
The Jungle’s attention diverted, Dylan slipped away from the commotion, moving back up the street, the preacher’s words dead man still bouncing around inside his skull. One block later, he turned down 106th and broke into a jog. By the time he reached his destination—a dive bar off Hazor—night had begun to fall.
The sign above the entrance to the bar said Lazarus, which, all things considered, struck Dylan as pretty fucking ironic; it was the last place his father went before committing suicide. And so, once a year, on the anniversary of his old man’s death, Dylan sat at the bar, drinking Jameson and thinking about his father.
He picked the bar because he wasn’t interested in mourning; that was what cemeteries were for. Instead, each year he went down to Lazarus to perform a resurrection, to drag his father’s ghost out of the shadows and hammer it with questions that never got answered.
The first shot finished off the hangover from the previous evening; the second one was for his old man—it slithered through Dylan’s system, warm and familiar and sad, and Dylan was aware of how much he missed his father, of how little he understood the world around him.
Dylan signaled to the bartender for shot number three; it was the same guy every year—probably late 40s but thick with sleeves rolled up to reveal a bunch of tattoos, the most prominent of which looked like an asterisk in a circle. Somewhere in the background Johnny Cash played on an old jukebox, the sound ancient and unsettling.
“Next one is on her,” the bartender said, t
ilting his head toward the end of the bar.
Dylan looked up and almost fell off his stool: Meghan Morrison was walking toward him, a beer in her right hand.
Meghan raised her bottle and tapped the side of Dylan’s shot glass, taking a long swig from the bottle as Dylan did the only thing he could think to do: throw back shot number three; the sound of pool balls cracking together and Cash singing about atomic skies and capitals of tin were the only noise in the bar.
“I know tonight’s not the best night,” she began, breaking the silence. “But I’ve been trying to get in touch. I even came by your party the other night, had to practically beg that scumbag Russian to let me in.”
“I thought that was you,” Dylan replied. “I was trying to come over, trying to reach you…But then all that shit went down and frankly, I was so fucked up I started to doubt whether I had really seen you or was just… hallucinating.”
Dylan just shook his head, embarrassed, but Megan moved closer to him, the smell of her perfume—subtle but unmistakable—cutting through the stench of stale beer and vomit and cigarette smoke, reminding him of the last time he felt something—anything—that wasn’t selfish or chemically induced; of a time when things had been less complicated; of the summer he fell in love with Meghan Morrison.
They first met at a fundraiser for his father. He did boarding school in New England; she had spent the year in Switzerland.
She drank champagne straight from the bottle and smoked Winston 100s.
Who the fuck smokes Winston 100s, Dylan asked later that first night.
She just smiled at him and finished her drink.
I do, she said.
He fell in lust. He fell in love. They were 16. Life was good. Or as good as life would ever get. It was the beginning of summer, 2008.
Some nights, when there were no parties or maybe there were parties but the city was hot—too hot—and the buildings and neighborhoods seemed too narrow—seemed to press inward—those were the nights they would leave Tiber. She would climb on the back of his motorcycle and they would hit the highway and just go; blasting through the darkness and leaving everything behind, gobbling speed when they started to fade, then driving some more until they hit the coast and picked a random motel, making love until dawn before crashing in each other’s arms, the comedown from the speed warded off by the smell of her skin, by the steadiness of his hand on her back.
In the morning, he’d slip out while she was still sleeping, returning an hour later with breakfast—the most unhealthy, delicious stuff he could find: pastries and pancakes and mountains of French toast from whatever diner was nearest to the motel. He’d bring flowers, coffee, and a fresh pack of cigarettes and they’d sit on the floor of the motel, half-dressed, picking at the breakfast spread out in front of them, no cell phones, no laptops, just an old map or two, and talk about places in the world they wanted to go, about the different places they wanted to see. Dylan always argued for Tokyo; Meghan pushed for Jerusalem. Everything and anything seemed possible and sitting there on the beat-up carpet, they talked about the future—running a dive bar in Tangier, teaching private school in Wellington, skydiving in Ghent. The fantasies were indulgent and wild and naïve but they were 16 and in love and did anything else matter?
Most afternoons were spent walking up and down the empty beaches, staring out into the gray-blue nothing, somehow relieved that they couldn’t go any further, both taking quiet comfort in the limitations imposed by the natural world. They would sit side by side in the sand, drinking from his flask, a massive blanket draped across their shoulders, and stare at the ocean for hours, pressed tight together against the wind, watching solitary freighters crawl across the gray horizon.
She had a beat-up cassette with a bunch of old punk songs on it and in one of those beach towns, at a pawnshop, she found a boombox—bulky and gray and covered in stickers from forgotten causes—and some nights they would blast the tape until dawn, rewinding it over and over as they sat in front of the small fire Dylan would make on the beach, drinking and talking about bands that had long since broken up, bands they would never see live, bands whose surviving members still went on tour but Meghan swore she’d never go see them.
That summer he made love to her on the beach a few times, a blanket underneath them, protecting them from the damp, shifting sand; another blanket draped over Meghan’s shoulders, blocking out the cool night air as she moved on top of him. And although beach sex was never what the movies promised—they never told you how much sand Deborah Kerr got stuck in her ass—afterward, lying side by side on the sand, watching the night sky, was paradise. They were far enough away from Tiber City that the sky was clear and bright and Dylan could see all the constellations and even though he had forgotten the names of the stars and their stories, he and Meghan made up new ones, tracing warriors and animals and gods in the sky, imagining new mythologies.
The world seemed to melt away with a totality that eclipsed any drug Dylan had ever used; when she whispered I love you in the dark his heart sang and any feelings of separation and boundary vanished. The universe felt electric and new and the boombox blasted all night long, Iggy Pop and Joe Strummer and Patti Smith shouting down eternity until the tape wore out. They buried it at sea before ingesting more speed, hitting the highway just as the sun poked over the horizon, the land glowing and alive.
There was an old amusement park on the coast and toward the end of that summer Meghan finally convinced Dylan to go.
But I hate amusement parks, he protested.
But this one is different, she assured him.
And she was right; it was nothing like the colossal theme parks littering the East Coast. There were no superheroes, no movie tie-ins, no rides named after aging rock stars—just an old wooden roller coaster, a Ferris wheel, and a few other “vintage” rides, most of which were broken-down and roped off from the public. They went at night, after the families were gone and the park was almost empty—there were some homeless guys and chubby Puerto Rican girls but no one hassled anyone—and there were no lines and even though the rides were older and simpler and looked like shit, they were happy.
They snuck in a bottle of wine and wandered the main concourse, stealing sips and playing the rigged carnival games—ring toss, water gun air, whac-a-mole, skee ball—laughing as they lost in impossible ways. When the attendant wasn’t looking, Dylan snatched a giant stuffed whale off the prize rack and, on bended knee, presented it to Meghan. They made out for a while behind the bandstand—just kissing and groping—and the night was electric and then some old woman was yelling at them, telling them to get a room, and Meghan’s mouth tasted like cheap red wine and gum and lip gloss and then they were running back through the park, toward the Blue Comet roller coaster—a rickety beast of wood and steel, one of the last of its kind in America.
And then they were aboard the roller coaster, her hand on his thigh, as the cars began to climb the wooden track, their ascent heralded by a series of mechanical creaks and groans, and as they rose higher and higher he could see the lights of Tiber glowing in the distance; he could see the stars overheard. A gentle breeze blew across the car as, having reached the top of the loop, the ride slowed to a crawl.
What if I asked you to marry me right now?
Well that depends, she answered. Are you asking me to marry you?
But before he could answer the roller coaster kicked back to life, plunging down the backside of the track, and she had her hands up, laughing and screaming as the ride whipped around the track at breakneck speed. The rest of that night was a blur of wine and cigarettes and when he woke up in the morning, she was already awake, sitting up in the bed, watching him.
You know, she whispered, I would have said yes.
But in the end, the strain of his father’s suicide had been too great, pulling their relationship down like a weight around the leg of a drowning man, and things had fallen apart, like they always did.
“You know,” Dylan said, “you�
�re the only person I ever told about tonight, about how I come down here.”
“Look,” Meghan started, leaning up against the side of the bar. “Say the word and I’m out the door. I just wanted to talk to you, make sure you’re OK.”
“What?” Dylan asked. “Why wouldn’t I be OK? What are you talking about?”
“People are talking. A friend of mine said she ran into you last week at Ruin; said you were in really bad shape. And I saw those pictures in the Post; you looked awful. Your eyes were so…off. It scared me.”
“That’s pretty vague,” Dylan shot back, the effects of three rapid-fire whiskey shots starting to take hold.
“It is,” Meghan agreed, nodding, “But I don’t know. I was surprised how concerned I was, actually. I can’t really explain it.”
“Fair enough,” Dylan replied, first looking into her eyes, and then away, across the room, at an old cigarette vending machine stocked with brands discontinued last decade.
“Well, here I am,” Dylan said. “Now what?”
Shaking her head, Meghan smiled sadly.
“I’ll go,” she said. “I guess maybe you are OK. I just needed to find out. I hope I didn’t ruin tonight—I just didn’t know how else to get in touch.”
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