Friends and Traitors

by Jarett Kobek

  When I started to come down, I snorted cocaine. When I came down from the cocaine, I snorted more cocaine. When I came down from that cocaine, I snorted more cocaine. When I came down from that cocaine, I smoked pot.

  Michael treated me like a king. Regina’d told him about the book. I also suspect that he noticed the quality of my suit. Michael was a truffle hog about money. I became popular with the new club kids.

  Most of the old faces were gone. Replaced by the young, the fresh, the dumb. They’d’ve followed Michael into burning ovens if he’d said there was a party inside.

  He pulled me aside, eyes bleary with drugs, and he said: —Tell me, honey, what’s the book about?

  What was the book about?

  I’d titled it Trapped Between Jupiter and a Bottle, after this time when Erik and I were lying around naked listening to a Bob Dylan album called Street Legal.

  —I’ve never understood what he meant, said Erik, when he sings that she was trapped between Jupiter and a bottle.

  —You’ve got it wrong, I said. She’s torn between Jupiter and Apollo.

  —I’ve listened to the song for nearly ten years. I know the lyrics.

  —Start it again.

  On the third rotation, Erik admitted that I was right. So, yes, I’d titled my novel after my boyfriend’s charming error. Because I loved him.

  The action is set in the year 2043, in New York City. The novel’s protagonist is an ex-cop turned private gumshoe named Lucy Lucatto. For an unexplained reason, the 2010s began a vogue in which parents bestowed their male children with typically feminine names. And their female children with typically masculine names. Anyhoo, Lucy is hired by a femme fatale named Bruce to follow her husband through the New York underworld.

  I borrowed heavily from my own life, making almost verbatim transcripts of my experience in clubland. I’d even based a character on Michael. Michelle Gila. The only significant difference between Michael and Michelle was that Michelle had injected his genetic code with an elephant’s DNA. As a result of this back-alley procedure, the king of clubland grew a great fleshy gray head and an enormous trunk for a nose. Imagine the boatloads and mountains of drugs which might be snorted by an elephant’s trunk.

  The book was based on a flash of inspiration. I’d started to tire of science fiction, having exhausted the genre’s possibilities not only as a writer but also as a fan. There weren’t many good books left unread. I turned on to the crime novel, to the noir, to that detective subgenre, and spent months hunting down old paperbacks. My favorite writer was Horace McCoy, author of They Shoot Horses Don’t They? and Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye. The prose of the latter went through my brain like a hook through the scales of a fish. I couldn’t escape. I moved to Hammett and Chandler. Then I discovered Ross MacDonald and the late-period Archer books.

  After Sleeping Beauty, I decided I’d never write straight science fiction again. In my epiphany, I saw that the bitter flavor of noir, its midnight lightning, could be married with an outrageous science fiction context, and that the push and pull of two ridiculous genres would mask the flaws of both.

  And I assumed that the juxtaposition would allow its writer to be funny. I was too insecure to not build in humor. I needed to be funny.

  What was the book about?

  —It’s about you, Michael, I said. I’ve written an entire book about you.

  —How fabulous! I’ve been waiting all my life for someone to write about me! It’s about fucking time! But I always thought it’d be someone good like Dominick Dunne or Kitty Kelley! But a girl can’t be choosy!

  AUGUST 1992

  Baby’s Birthday

  On my birthday, I invited Adeline to Limelight, knowing that she would refuse but asking anyway. She said no. I said fine. I made other arrangements, inviting Regina and Parker Brickley.

  The sacred anniversary of my advent fell on a night when Limelight was hosting Lord Michael’s Future Shock. A techno extravaganza with a bridge-and-tunnel crowd. Lots of people stayed far away, but I dug it. I thought it was beautiful how a bunch of fucked-up Staten Island Italians could come together, eat Ecstasy, and lose their machismo. Countless young men without their shirts, sweating and dancing and hugging, approximating love through the chemically mandated release of serotonin into their synapses.

  Parker stared at the drugged-up women, laser focused on their thick asses and even thicker accents, watching the girls strut in obscene clothing.

  —If I couldn’t agent, said Parker, I’d like to be a modern-day Victor fucking Frankenstein. I’d take the legs from that one and the tits from that one and the face from a third and sew them all together. I’d make the perfect mate.

  —Isn’t that a little Rocky Horror Picture Show? asked Queen Rex.

  —I’ve never bothered watching that fruit shit, said Parker. Hey now, but what do I see over there? The most beautiful creature. Look at that ass. I’m going to see if she wants to sin on my face.

  Leviathan sank into the human ocean. There came no screams, no signs of obvious violence. Maybe Parker got what, or whom, he wanted. Maybe a girl really did sin on his face.

  When Parker didn’t return, I converted to the nouveau theology of birthday intoxication. Regina rummaged in her purse, taking out a clear glass vial of ketamine, her compact mirror, a dollar bill, and an expired credit card.

  I’d gotten worried that ketamine’s dissociative states had spilled into my waking life. Away from the club, in my daily existence, I was attuned to the unreality of human experience.

  I’d lost the ability to comprehend and could no longer believe my eyes. The street corridors of Manhattan were haunted. The Empire State Building was a monolith of confusion. A veil of gossamer web draped each hour. Nothing was real. Life felt thin. I felt thin.

  It might have been depression. I missed Erik.

  The ketamine went up my nose. I snorted it right on the dance floor, in a jangle of limbs and bodies. There wasn’t much effect, so I headed toward the chapel.

  I never arrived. I submerged into a world of spectral light.

  An enhanced universe of rainbow gradation. There was no boundary between my body and the light, the pleasure of colors. I could go like that forever, and it went for hours and days and months and years before the shadow people arrived. Their bodies were ill defined, like compounded smoke, and they were talking to me, but they couldn’t speak. They were aliens with no capacity for sound, who had developed modes of communication through the mechanism of high-frequency light manipulation. It took a few weeks, but I learned their language.

  I could see what they said: —I find you obscene, unclean, and, most of all, ordinary. Your money can buy you just about anything. From what we know, Judas was the victim. He had earned more money than Christ. Twenty gets you laid, ten gets you high, three gives you death for a whole weekend.

  When I reemerged into the mundane universe, I was in Limelight’s bathroom, staring at a toilet. People were screwing each other’s brains out in the next stall. The grunts, the moaning, the thrusting. Sounds from the predawn of history. Words on the toilet blazed: AMERICAN STANDARD.

  James St. James told me that he’d seen Andy Warhol’s ghost on 47th Street.

  —You believe me, don’t you honey? I knew Andy. I’d recognize that walk anywhere!

  Regina and I left early, around 2:15 am. We both had headaches. She asked if she could stay in my apartment. Ordinarily, I’d’ve refused, but brain chemistry prevented any resistance. She could’ve asked me to hit my face against the colonnade of the Manhattan Bridge, and I’d’ve been there, mashing my skull against Neoclassical granite.

  We walked on Broadway.

  —On my very first day in the city, I said, I did this route. Times Square to the East Village via Broadway.

  —You’ve told me before, said Regina. Let me ask you something. Do you really think that Dinkins can’t beat Giuliani?

  —I can’t stand politics, I said. Why would you ask me about politics?

  —T
hirty minutes ago you were in the VIP room, screaming about how New York would be the staging ground of a Fourth Reich. You told a guy from Tompkinsville and his bleach-blonde girlfriend that Giuliani would be their new Führer.

  Other people got high and screwed like a rampaging Minotaur and woke up in a gutter.

  —Get out, I said. I did not.

  —Even if you’re super fucked up on ketamine, said Regina, you probably shouldn’t talk about politics. Especially not with club people.

  —Let’s not talk about it now, I said.

  I told her about the world of spectral light. I told her about the shadow people. I told her about their method of communication. I told her their language.

  —Did I ever say anything about Begotten? she asked.

  —No, I said.

  —One night we were all at Michael and Keoki’s place, and Michael put on this movie called Begotten. I hate horror films, but I was too high. I couldn’t leave. I said, Michael, please, can’t you put on I Love Lucy? He screamed and said it was his apartment. We were going to watch whatever he wanted. The film started and it’s in black and white, and shit, Baby, I didn’t understand none of it, but at the beginning it’s this monster sitting in a chair, cutting open its stomach. The sound, oh mija, the sound. The monster reaches into itself and pulls out its intestines. I heard a voice in the sound, and I thought it was the voice of God, the great old man, the big one, speaking through this fucked-up film. On the screen, I swear, was the Holy Ghost.

  —What did he say?

  —He said stop pretending. I am the unbroken heart and the forgotten anvil. She whosoever striketh against me shall forge unbendable steel. I’m on mushrooms, the whole room is sparkling, all these queens are screeching about Vivienne Westwood, and here’s God talking through this movie.

  We arrived on 7th Street. It wasn’t even 3 am. Residual traces of ketamine and comedown cocaine. We climbed the stairs.

  Adeline was in her room, door open, hunched over her desk, drawing. I waved. She waved back. Regina waved too. Adeline waved back.

  Regina and I talked in the kitchen, not loudly, foraging the fridge. We decided that eating was impossible. Besides, it’d be much better at the Kiev, with all the other late-night freaks and vampires. A restaurant packed with people too high and too dissolute to do anything but inhale latkes, cheese blintzes, and challah.

  We sat on my bed. Regina said that she’d been watching Gene Kelly movies on Channel 13. She loved the psychological undertones of the dance numbers, how each scene contained an accidental revelation of Kelly’s mental state. Plus, Cyd Charisse had the best legs that Regina’d ever seen, legs like the ideal of legs, legs that would be in heaven, legs that would inspire heroism and villainy.

  The telephone rang.

  I walked into the kitchen, where we kept the answering machine, and waited. Adeline came out of her bedroom and stood beside me. I thought it’d be Parker, calling to report on his conquest or his failure. I wondered why Adeline cared about Parker.

  But Adeline didn’t know about Parker. She didn’t know about the book deal. It wasn’t like with Erik. It wasn’t shame. I wanted to wait. I wanted the drama, the finality, of putting the thing before her and saying, here. This is the measure of my life.

  I’d fantasized about the look on her face. The joy when she understood. The self-esteem boost when she approved. It would be like I’d become the person she had always seen, the New York intellectual hidden within the doughy flesh of a scared Middle West farm boy. It was all for her. She was the reason that I even thought of writing. The reason that I dreamt of being anything other than what I had been. Without her, I would’ve died within six months. I would’ve tricked for heroin and wasted away with AIDS on the Christopher Street pier. She would always be my best friend. I remembered when she was my only friend.

  The machine picked up and ran through the message. Then the beep.

  —Adeline, slurred the speaker, it’s your mother. I’m thinking about selling the house. I saw a place out in Pacific Palisades last weekend that’s too perfect. Dahlia saw it, too, and she loves it. Charles couldn’t come, but I’m sure he’d love it. But Adeline, I wouldn’t dream of selling our house without your permission. I know how attached you are. Call me when you get the chance, Adeline, because I have to make an offer soon. A house like that won’t wait. Just let me know.

  She hung up.

  —Mother is a true and genuine lunatic, said Adeline.

  The phone rang again. Suzanne loved leaving multiple messages.

  —This message isn’t for Adeline, said the machine. Go into your room. This message is for Baby. Baby, I expect abuse from Adeline. She’s never had manners. I thought that you and I had a special arrangement. You knew how much Adeline’s graduation meant to me, and you know that she skipped it out of spite, and then you did the same thing. Don’t you know how much I wanted to go? Why else would I pay for your degree? Dahlia is useless. Adeline’s always been a bitch. She’s always hated me. I thought with you I could attend a ceremony. But I’m so foolish. Nothing ever happens how you want it. Nothing good ever happens.

  The unsanded and paint-speckled floorboards. Couldn’t look at Adeline.

  —Get out, Adeline said. Get out of this apartment. Take your drug addict with you. Come back tomorrow and get your things.

  Her eyes spiraling, her flesh red. The mouth like a frown of daggers. I’d never seen her like this. Not even with Jon.

  —Please, can we talk about it? I asked.

  —Get the fuck out of my apartment.

  Something scuffled behind me. Regina. Standing there, I don’t know how long.

  —How could you not tell her? asked Regina.

  —It appears that I’m the only one who wasn’t informed of Mother’s charity, said Adeline. Get out of this apartment, Regina. Get your shoes and go outside and wait for him. The way that I’m currently feeling, I simply can’t guarantee your safety.

  Adeline never really understood New York’s indigenous peoples. She spent her life with emigrants from other locales. Regina was native. Regina was Queen Rex of Washington Heights. No matter Adeline’s infinite reserve of hurt and resentment, if she fucked with Regina, she’d end up with both arms in a sling.

  —Please, I said to Regina. Do as she asks. I’ll be out. Please.

  Regina got her shoes and her coat, stormed out of the kitchen, slamming the door, stomping down the stairs.

  —I don’t want to leave, I said.

  —You haven’t any choice, said Adeline. We are long beyond our expiration date. You’ve ruined everything.

  —We’ve known each other so long, I said. You’re my best friend.

  —You can’t repeat the past, she said.

  —What do you mean you can’t repeat the past? Of course you can.

  I packed several sets of clothes into my backpack, putting my unsold manuscripts at the bottom. I looked around my room. I always knew it would end like this.

  Adeline hadn’t left the kitchen.

  —I’ll call to set up a time, I said. I can’t carry everything.

  —Fine, she said. Do it this week. After next Sunday, I’m changing the number.

  —Does it have to be like this? I asked.

  —You know that it must, she said.

  Only when I was halfway down the stairs did I realize that I wasn’t only losing Adeline, but that I’d lost the Captain too. Adeline would never let me have him. I hadn’t even said good-bye.

  Regina was waiting.

  —I never liked that bitch, she said.

  —I don’t want to talk about it.

  —What now? she asked.

  —I’m going to go around the corner. I’ve always wanted to spend a night in the Sunshine Hotel.

  Regina knew the place, knew its reputation, knew that it was a disgusting fleabag SRO pit of scum. She wouldn’t let me stay. Refused, absolutely. I had money, she said, why didn’t I get a real hotel? I don’t deserve it, I said. I should suffer, shou
ld be punished. Because Adeline was right. That’s crazy, said Regina. She forced me to stay in her apartment. With her family.

  We took the L to Eighth Avenue and the A local up to the top of the island. We emerged from beneath the Earth. It was 5 am. The unhappiest hour of New York life. The bleak period between night and day. There was no life on the street, only the dead silence of my first encounter with the Fort Washington Collegiate Church, a single-story building from the turn of the century. I tried to comprehend how it could be here, in Manhattan, how it looked so alone surrounded by all the apartment buildings, how it looked like someone’s house, how it looked like a modest house from California. I tried but couldn’t.

  Like no one lived in the city. Like the apocalypse happened and only me and Regina had survived.

  FEBRUARY 1993

  Adeline Splits from the Big Shitty

  Let us be clear. I did not flee New York City because of my former roommate. Our unspeakable schism wreaked its terrible havoc, but your old pal Adeline stood her ground, resolute and knee deep in her even-eyed imbecility. I should have fled, howling like a wounded animal. Yet I indulged the great vice of stubbornness and suffered out a long chain reaction that manifested through my menstrual cycle.

  To wit, darlings, the arrival of my period. It was not merely a few days late, or even several weeks, but two solid months past its due date. Barring an actual and genuine miracle, pregnancy was beyond the realm of possibility. I’d practiced the deadly art of celibacy for almost the full annum.

  When the scarlet tide washed in, I spotted for days, followed by a deeply uneven flow, as if a poltergeist haunted my insides, playing with the tap of a faucet. On and off, on and off, on and off.

  Three weeks into this farce, when I presumed that the whole matter had come to its surcease, I simply overflowed, staining out every pair of underwear and most of my pants as I cried out for Jesus to make up my dying bed.