Friends and Traitors

by Jarett Kobek

  The drugs ate away the weight and her youth. I’d heard stories about how she made her money. They were unpleasant.

  —I’ve been looking for Michael, I said.

  —I haven’t seen him for a few days, she said. He’s staying with Brooke at the Chelsea.

  —Too bad he got fired.

  —It’s so unfair, she said. How could Peter do that?

  —It happens to everyone, I said. Employment is the socially acceptable term we employ to describe the state of waiting for the axe.

  —Are you looking to score? she asked.

  —What do you have?

  —I’ve got diesel, she said. I’ll sell you two bags for forty dollars.

  I had no particular moral objection to the drug, but heroin always seemed so scummy. Buying it from a nineteen-year-old with visible track marks did not lessen this impression. Still, why not? It wasn’t like I’d shoot it.

  Twenty dollars a bag was criminal, but I always was an easy mark.

  Back at my apartment, The King of France had eaten all of his gourmet food. He’d been put on a special diet after developing an allergy to store-bought brands. Anything with too much grain and he’d vomit. Before we found a prescription brand that he could digest, the cat lost two pounds. The vet said this amount was significant.

  I scooped the wild thing into my arms and flipped him on his back. He purred and put his paws on my mouth.

  For all of the moments in my life that I’d watched people doing heroin, my strongest impression was from the film Bad Lieutenant. Harvey Keitel empties his heroin onto strips of tinfoil. A prostitute lights the bottom. Keitel, using a straw, sucks the smoke into his mouth.

  He’s a really bad lieutenant.

  I went across the hall. I rarely talked with my neighbor, but whenever we did speak, she seemed more than pleasant. Her name was Deborah. I think she’d said that she worked for David Letterman.

  —Do you have any tinfoil? I asked.

  —How much do you need?

  —Two or three sheets.

  —What are you cooking?

  —I’ve got my grandmother’s recipe for garlic brown sugar chicken.

  She closed her apartment door and came back with three sheets.

  —When’s the next book coming out? she asked.

  —A few months, I said. You’ll have to come to the release party.

  —I’ll definitely go for sure, she said. Let me know.

  —Thanks again, I said.

  I balanced a sheet across my knees and poured out the powder. I bent over the tinfoil, straw hanging out of my mouth, and flicked my lighter. The smoke tasted like the odor of street vendors selling cashew nuts. Burning tinfoil.

  The drug bubbled and turned a tarry black. I smoked the first bag.

  An immediate rush at the back of my temples. Unlike any other that I’d experienced, like a warm hug from the inside. I returned to the familiar place of doing a drug and liking the first five minutes and then realizing that I’d be like this for hours. Unsure what to do with myself, I decided to watch a film that I’d rented at Kim’s. Blow-Up by Michelangelo Antonioni.

  Motor control issues getting the tape into my VCR. My quest was not aided by The King of France, who rubbed against my ankles and mewled, drawing my attention from the task at hand.

  I was outside and inside myself. I’d always presumed that nodding off was the result of a loss of will, that being on the nod was a weakness. Now I couldn’t keep my eyes open. I caught glimpses of the film, flashing in and out. A fashion model on the floor. Other fashion models. A man in a car. Mimes. Very white pants. Cubist paintings. Stoners in an overly ornate house. A junk shop. Black-and-white photography. Jimmy Page. Silent tennis. Wind in trees.

  Each time that I’d catch a glimpse, I’d go back on the nod. I could see everything, perfectly. Me on the couch. The King of France beside me. The television playing, but the scenarios would shift. David Hemmings stared at me from inside the television, saying, Oi, Baby, you poof, where’s your poodle? Then I saw black dogs, running through the apartment, stomping on my body, tormenting my cat.

  I couldn’t make it to the bathroom. I leaned over the side of my couch and projectile vomited. It landed in a spot where The King of France had previously thrown up. My expulsion was consciously congruent to the shape of his mess.

  I woke around eleven in the morning. The phone was ringing. My head was killing me. I answered the phone. It was Parker Brickley, my literary agent.

  —Lazarus rises from the tomb, he said. I’ve been calling all morning.

  —I went to Disco 2000, I said. This girl sold me heroin.

  —Nail me to the cross, said Parker. I didn’t bet the farm for you to overdose. Are you one of those assholes who can’t handle the godawful stress of an audience that loves their writing? Heroin? Holy fucking shit.

  —I only smoked it, I said. I’m afraid of needles. Can you be a little less loud? Why are you calling anyway?

  —Slake my thirst, gorgeous, and tell me of Infinite Jest.

  —I vomited last night in the same spot that my cat vomited, I said. I’m not of the proper caliber to write about David Foster Wallace.

  —Thank fucking god, said Parker. My balls have been retracting with the fear. You can’t be trusted. Knowing you, you’d go and give it a bad review. Remember that you’re a professional. The days of truth are long over. Welcome to the big leagues. Every professional writer learns to be a fucking liar. That illusion of writers who tell the truth at all costs? It’s a child’s dream. I’m a fucking liar, too. Do you think I enjoy the work that I represent? Only you and Jane Smiley. One day, Parker Brickley will write an autobiography and call it A List of Things and People That I Pretended to Like. Each chapter will be about some hack whose book I said that I loved. The first chapter will be about Mona Simpson.

  APRIL 1996

  Baby and Adeline Go to the Mars Bar

  After the reconciliation between Adeline and her mother, Suzanne became an increased presence in our lives, a happenstance once as likely as a return of Caesar’s Comet.

  With the focus of madness transferred to Emil, the sudden slackening of attention gave Adeline a newfound tolerance for her dear old mère. She didn’t even object when Suzanne flooded Emil with plastic toys. The only downside was the elder woman’s increasingly regular residencies at the Plaza Hotel.

  Adeline made hay while the sun shined, playing off Suzanne’s love for the grandchild and making her mother babysit whenever she was in town. The Grande Dame would decamp on 7th Street for hours, while Adeline ventured outside and experienced, for the first time in years, an adult life.

  Within limits. Adeline wouldn’t travel too far from home, so we settled on routines and outings contained within the East Village’s borders. Typically this meant dinner at Around the Clock followed by drinks at the Mars Bar.

  Of the establishments in old scumbag New York, it was the Mars Bar that best weathered the waves of gentrification. They only demolished the thing in 2011, when its walls were so covered in graffiti and filth that I wondered if any plaster remained. The toilets were works of art, little closets filled with broken bowls, every centimeter covered in ink, spray paint, and human effluvia. I once met a woman who said that she’d had sex on the pinball machine. I have no idea if it’s true. It seems credible. I pray for her soul.

  Anyhoo, back in ’96, the bar was not quite the mess of its later years. The exterior was surprisingly clean, and its glass brick windows were intact. The name was painted in white letters above the entrance: MARZ. Above the name: CHECK YOUR MIND AT DOOR.

  Which is exactly what Adeline and I did, coming in after dinner. Part of the appeal was the clientele, rock ’n’ roll relics from the punk scene passed over by circumstance and time. It only took about ten minutes before some hapless Mad Tom started screaming about how Richard Hell was a cocksucker or Bobby Steele was a prick or Patti Smith was a fucking stuck-up fucking bitch who needed to be fucked.

  Adeline
and I ordered gin-and-tonics. The bartender was a young punk girl. Every bartender at the Mars Bar was a young punk girl. She gave us our rotten drinks. We sat on stools, attempting to ignore the taste and the assault on our stomachs.

  —Baby, said Adeline, tell me, do you know of the band The Gits?

  —Don’t talk about bands, I whispered. You don’t know who is listening.

  —Are you still worried about that dreadful man?

  The previous time that we were in the Mars Bar, I’d gotten drunk enough that I shouted about how much I hate Led Zeppelin. Every time there’s a song on a radio that’s playing too fucking low, I screamed, I always mishear it as fucking “Good Times, Bad Times.” It’s such a shitty song! Led Zeppelin is such a fucking shitty band!

  My outburst attracted the man sitting beside me, a middle-aged guy with unfortunately long hair. He told me how much he hated Led Zeppelin too, and then told me about his idea for a screenplay, a film about vampires that lacked any plot. All he had was the opening scene. The camera is focused on a puddle. Pedestrians step around the water, keeping their feet from getting wet. We see their reflections as well as their feet. Finally, a foot stomps into the puddle. There is no reflection. The camera pans up and reveals THE VAMPIRE, wearing reflective sunglasses and a black leather trench coat.

  In response, I made the mistake of talking about a club person only rumored to exist, this kid from Bombay. No one had seen him during the day. Supposedly he drank blood and slept in a coffin in the abandoned subway station on the 6 line, the one at 18th Street between Union Square and 23rd Street. Michael had dubbed him the Vindaloo Vampire.

  The guy in the Mars Bar loved it. He suggested that we go to a show at Coney Island High. I was preparing to leave before Adeline saved me from my own intoxication.

  —I’m still worried, I said. These rock ’n’ roll people are terrifying.

  —Cease your nancy boy prattling, said Adeline. Have you ever heard of The Gits?

  —Alas, no, I said. I’ve never heard of The Gits.

  —I purchased their debut at Sounds. Frenching the Bully. Baby, do you know, it’s absolutely brilliant? The production is rather crude, but the song-writing is strong and the vocalist is exceptional.

  —I’m glad you liked an album, Adeline, I said.

  —I went back to Sounds and asked the disagreeable employee if they had any other albums by The Gits. He said there was another album, but it was not in stock. Then he told me the most horrible story.

  I ordered another round. Adeline waited before continuing. A deaf mute named Felix came in through the entrance. He sat at the bar, a few stools down, pointed to his mouth, and emitted a squealing whimper. He was a regular.

  —The vocalist of The Gits, said Adeline, was this woman named Mia Zapata. One night, she was hanging around with what I gather were a group of other musicians. She said her goodbyes and headed home. She stepped out into the night and promptly disappeared. The next morning, a jogger discovered her body. She was raped and beaten and strangled. She was young and beautiful, but now she was battered and dead. Her murder remains unsolved. The mystery remains. The killer at large. Isn’t that simply the way things are, Baby? Imagine the web of her death, all the inflicted pain, spreading from person to person to person. I’m not one of those delusional fools who believes it’s ever so much sadder when a talented person dies rather than an ordinary plebe, yet there is something to be said for Mia Zapata working for years, playing shows, writing music, and recording only to have it stolen away before she reaped the rewards. Those are the moments that terrify yours truly, life’s irrevocable instances. What cannot be taken back. Most such moments are self-inflicted. Yet even in a life of repulsively clean rectitude, one can still be attacked in the street. Identity is porous. It isn’t simply who you are. It’s the damage that others inflict upon you.

  A woman raped and strangled and beaten. I knew where the evening would end.

  —I’m working on a new short story, I said. It’s called “White Walls.” I’m back to science fiction, to pure genre. The action takes place in the far future, in a Neo-Marxist Utopia. The human animal has rejected capitalism, but class and social distinctions prove persistent. A law is passed. People may not fuck each other other than in very specific, controlled circumstances. Sexual partners must have sex in white rooms, completely naked, wearing no makeup or accoutrement beyond bathing caps that disguise hairstyles. Only through sexual communication without the normal markers of class identity can the socialist revolution move forward.

  —That’s a concept, said Adeline. Where’s the story?

  —I don’t have it yet. I think it’ll be a love story. Who are the perverts in a society that regulates sex according to Neo-Marxist dogma? It’ll be people who break the sex laws of the white walls. People who dress like different social classes. Poor dress as rich, rich as poor, and they screw like animals. It’ll probably be a Romeo and Juliet thing. A poor man and a rich man who wear each other’s clothes.

  Felix slapped his hands against the bar. The bartender shouted, telling him to calm down or get out. He calmed down. I wondered how he understood.

  We left. Adeline rushed to the east side of Second Avenue, then north toward the Anthology Film Archives. I knew where we were headed. I followed anyway.

  As we moved closer to the address, I couldn’t remember a single time that Adeline and I had visited together. I’d seen her zine. I’d heard her talk about the Incident. I’d watched her nervous breakdown. I’d passed the address almost every day of my life. I could not remember a single time when we’d gone as a duo and peered up at the filthy tuxedo and that pathetic neon.

  But there we were, standing on the pavement. After the emergence of Adeline’s fixation, I’d asked around. Several people said the place was haunted. People had witnessed ghosts moving behind the tailor’s dummy. I hoped that a specter would come upon us. At least then it’d be for something.

  —I’ve tried speaking with her family, Adeline said. The woman who was murdered. Every time that I start, I halt myself before getting out a word. I’m appalled by the idea that the pain inflicted upon them is something in which I feel a personal involvement. I’m appalled that I know the name of the woman. Why should I know anything about it? All the world’s murdered women. Helen Sopolsky. Mia Zapata. We must abandon our childish beliefs. There is no such thing as justice.

  APRIL 1996

  Michael Musto Breaks a Story

  The next Tuesday, I checked “La Dolce Musto.” There was more about Michael Alig. Word around town, wrote Musto, is that Michael was planning to move to Germany, to live with Rudolf, who used to run Tunnel. Musto implied that Rudolf had no idea that Michael was on his way.

  A week passed. I was in a celibate period. Adeline had convinced me. She’d gone through several phases herself, eschewing the arts of pleasure, and thought it might be interesting if I gave myself a break from screwing.

  Life became very boring, the pointlessness of existence driven home during the blank hours that I couldn’t fill with the chaos of human relationships. My brief heroin interlude excepted, I’d also stopped using drugs. I wasn’t seeing any club people, so how would I even score? Again, this de facto choice only made the boredom that much more palpable. At least I had my cat.

  The next week, the next Tuesday, the next “La Dolce Musto.” The world fell apart. April 30th. The column itself was ultranormal, Musto writing about John Waters and Billy Wilder and Madonna and Sid Caesar and Nathan Lane. What caught everyone’s notice was a sidebar on the right side of the page.

  NIGHT CLUBBING

  Here’s the latest story going around about what supposedly happened in that recent clubland scandal; Mr. Mess was fighting with Mr. Dealer about money Mr. Dealer was owed. It escalated to the point where Mr. Dealer was choking Mr. Mess. Just at the moment when Mr. Mess #2 happened to walk in. Mr. Mess #2, a quick thinker, promptly hit Mr. Dealer over the head with a hammer. Not happy with that, he and Mr. Mess decided to fin
ish Mr. Dealer off by shooting him up with Drano—a trick even the twisted twosome in Diabolique didn’t come up with. After Mr. Dealer died, the other two set to work chopping the body into pieces and throwing them into the river. “But I didn’t actually kill him,” Mr. More-of-a-Mess-Than-Ever has allegedly remarked (but he’s unavailable for comment).—M.M.

  There was no reason to assume that it was Michael. But of course it was Michael. No one else in clubland would warrant the space. Even murder has its hierarchy. If Gitsie had killed someone, it’d be a five-hundred-word story about her arrest and then a three-hundred-word story about her conviction. It wouldn’t be gossip. Everything with Michael Alig was gossip.

  Gitsie’d said Michael was staying at the Chelsea with Brooke. I went across town to the hotel. Entering the lobby, it came to me that I hadn’t been inside since Regina and I visited Christina. Another dead denizen of clubland. That was six or seven years earlier. It felt like twenty thousand. The steady pounding of time kept beating against me.

  When I told the desk attendant that I wanted to see Brooke, he went slightly pale but then examined my wardrobe. I was dressed like any other respectable young professional. He gave me her room number. I took the elevator up to the third floor. I knocked.

  I didn’t know Brooke very well. We’d only talked for a few minutes. I’m sure she knew me by sight and, I suspect, writerly reputation. Not that any of the club kids read my book. Only Michael and Franklin read books.

  Brooke was a mountain of a girl. She regularly dyed her hair a rainbow spectrum of color. There were a ton of piercings in her face.

  —Hi, Baby, she said.

  —Is Michael here?

  —No, she said.

  —Can I come in?

  —Okay, she said.

  Other than a chair and a little table, Brooke had no furniture. Eight mattresses lined the floor, covered with piles of clothes and the unconscious bodies of two drugged-up kids. They couldn’t have been more than seventeen years old. Ashtrays were everywhere, overflowing with cigarette butts. A few black trash bags were wedged between the mattresses. It was like being back in David’s squat.