I follow one and study the coils around it, and the valves, and the faucets and pressure releases.
… increasingly covered with sludge and algae …
and there are bricks—dull and chipped—
Now, I am being wheeled through corridors on a cold metal gurney—and there is only the pipe to lead the way, to hold on to, the only thing that’s constant, as darkness settles and the corner turns become sharper as we make our way deeper into the labyrinth.
There is sound—a hiss, a drip—then metal scraping, loudly, and then there is only noise and nothing to see, although there must be hundreds of pipes converging, coming together, all of them tangled and hissing.
I can’t scream. I can’t see.
I’m strapped down and I panic, I struggle, but the more I struggle, the tighter I’m bound.
I don’t understand.
I don’t know where I am.
I don’t know who I am.
And then.
Someone else.
A breath on my face—cold—and close, it must be very close. Almost on top of me.
And again I can’t scream.
There isn’t movement.
There isn’t sound.
Just a steady breathing in and out, cold on my face.
And I know who it is, but my mind won’t take it in, won’t absorb it. And this moment lasts forever.
I am still there.
For even after the K-hole breaks and I come back to the surface and I am safe at home with all that’s familiar, I know that he’s still with me.
I was THERE
and I will return
and it will be just the same
and I will have never left.
He comes to me now at night, when I sleep. I don’t need the K anymore—he knows how to find me without it.
And so he comes to me, in the dark, always, and I feel his breath, uninterrupted, on my cheek.
I can scream, and quite frequently do, but I can also lie still and accept that I have been chosen. A reason is forming.
The fear is a gift.
He has brought fear to me. It stays with me, even in the daylight, even when I think that I’m happy.
Night after night.
Until I begin to crack. He’s in every shadow, in every corner, in every thought.
And then, suddenly, one night, the breath stops short, is interrupted, and then is gone. And it hits me. The magnitude, the enormity of this interrupted breath.
He’s gone.
And his absence is much worse than his presence.
By now it is June and I cry quite openly, most days—but I don’t dare explain.
And then there were times when I was bad, or the times were bad, and I was punished by God. There would be a drought of K, and I would panic, of course, and I couldn’t cope.
Tiny beads of blood rained red on my face.
And my stigmata would start acting up.
If days went by without a bottle, or a bag, or a bit of a bump—the veil wouldn’t lift, clarity didn’t return, and there was no cold slap in the face….
Reality was no longer the opposite of K.
Instead, things got murkier, muddier. I had bouts of paranoia.
Now—in the past—when I felt plucked and pulled and put upon, I could always escape, and hide in the bathroom. It was my Valhalla. My safety zone. My worry buff. I would crouch in the corner for hours, days, until the bad feelings went away and I was myself again.
Not anymore.
Lately, the eyes in the bathroom walls glared at me from their oak-knot slots. And the shapes there in the wooden patterns were not for my understanding anymore. Even the toilet frightened me— a face appeared, there, in the bowl … a watery, old biddy … who MADE IT VERY CLEAR that she didn’t want my butt in her face.
I wasn’t welcome there anymore. I had nowhere to hide.
Worse: the far-off murmurs I always heard, and usually lulled me to an even keel, weren’t voices at all, but computer squelches speaking in a bitchy binary code meant to exclude me! It made me all googly-eyed and wobble-dee-blagged. My head hurt and I couldn’t think straight.
Needless to say: I needed my K. My lightly toasted animal tranquilizer. My own personalized Prozac, if you will. (I’d have tried the actual stuff, but Prozac is SO, like, ’91.) Oh, I needed that K, badly, no doubt about it.
And nothing could be right until I got it. And God help the poor roommate or friend who didn’t move heaven and earth on my behalf. I made Nancy Reagan seem positively CUDDLY in comparison.
“SOMEBODY FIND SOME GODDAMN K FOR ME! I DON’T CARE IF YOU HAVE TO SUCK IT OUT OF A SICK CAT’S ASS AND PUT IT THROUGH A DISTILLERY! Just … do it.”
Michael had only been gone a couple of days when I started hearing certain discrepancies in his version of what happened.
The sun was shining rather rudely into the cab, and traffic on Avenue B was at a Pinteresque standstill.
There was a continual gag in the back of my throat, like I’d been swallowing a ball of string all night (we were on our way to Save the Robots, and goddamnit, getting there was not half the fun). Nobody had much to say, as visions of ice-cold screwdrivers danced in our heads. We waited and timed the traffic lights and stole secret glances at each other’s greasy, blotchy, pimple-ridden faces. It was all very nerve-wracking, until Peter-Peter Boyfriend Stealer broke the silence with something nobody expected:
“Of course Michael and Freeze didn’t do it … I mean, of course they didn’t … but I was over at their house the day before the argument and Michael was all cracked out of his mind, and all he kept saying was, ‘Let’s kill Angel … Let’s kill Angel … How can we kill Angel and take his money? …’ Isn’t that a weird coincidence? I mean … of course they didn’t do it … but the VERY NEXT DAY ANGEL DISAPPEARED.”
Oh … my … yes … that is an odd coincidence …
There was a total eclipse of the sun just then, I think, and the cab started rotating in breakneck concentric circles. Or maybe the earth fell off its axis. SOMETHING odd happened, that’s for sure, and it was many hours before I could focus and find the wherewithal to perform my many how-do-you-dos and perfunctory curtsies to the denizens of Save the Robots.
Peter’s passing remark had planted quite a bee in my bonnet, and its buzz drowned out any fun I might have had.
EVERY LITTLE BREEZE SEEMS TO WHISPER: “MICHAEL AND FREEZE.”
Another day. Another cab. When we pulled up to the light, a blind leper in a wheelchair squeegeed the window. It wasn’t a first-rate squeegee, as far as I was concerned—and it certainly didn’t merit the whole dollar my driver surrendered. I’m very particular about these things, and I so dislike getting into discussions about the right and wrong way to clean a cab window. That’s why I cringed when he wheeled over to me and tapped, ever so sincerely, on my window.
I rolled it down and half-heartedly began explaining that a simple back and forth motion always works much better than a random round and round.
“No. No. I don’t want your advice or your money, man,” he rasped, “I … want … you … to … DO THE RIGHT THING.
The light changed and the cab peeled off.
Now what do you suppose that was all about?
I pondered it for a moment or two, then went back to wondering if perhaps the reason for my depression was a lack of niacin in my diet That would certainly explain my crying fits. I couldn’t even make it through those commercials for cotton anymore without…. Hey.
The cab had stopped.
Just stopped in the middle of the street.
The cabdriver was looking neither here nor there, at nothing in particular. He had just decided to drift off into dreamland.
“I do it all the time,” he said presently. “It’s hard enough out there, isn’t it? I never know the right way to go. Sometimes, when it gets too rough—I just switch gears. I turn off everything and just sit.” Pause. “But you can’t do that forever, James. People suffer from indecisiv
eness. You have to do something. You have to do the right thing.”
I thanked him profusely, then gave him his money and a healthy tip. How he knew my name baffled me—but I guess I just look like a James.
Were these two incidents mere coincidence?
A benevolent leper bent on reforming me, and a dreamy cabdriver who only wanted what was right?
I thought so. At first. I was at the Christopher Street pier, and so I sat at its edge and stared deep into the murky water of the Hudson River.
That’s when a pair of lips floated by and gurgled what sounded like “Yo, James, help the Brother Man. He’s down here and he needs your help.”
Before I could scream, one eyeball surfaced and glared at me accusingly.
Yes, something was afoot. And it wasn’t just that lone foot bobbing in the waves. Someone was trying to tell me something.
It’s true.
Later, my alphabet soup spelled out: “WHAT? YOU’RE WAITING FOR SOME SORT OF DIVINE INTERVENTION? YOU SPINELESS WORM—GET OFF YOUR SORRY ASS AND DO SOMETHING!”
And when I sat in the park and looked at the clouds … they formed their usual little ducklings and piles of cocaine— but then I saw an Asphyxiated Colombian drift by, and then an Apathetic Judicial System rolling past in a tumble of cumulus clouds.
What did all of this mean?
I went to the Gypsy fortune-teller on Avenue B and Fifth Street, and she looked long and hard at the palm of my hand, she peered into the darkest regions of my soul, she searched the many hallways of my heart, and finally uttered the words:
“NOBODY REALLY LIKES GIRL SCOUT COOKIES.”
That … was … my … last … K-entry …
It was one of those Celestine Prophecy moments.
When it came—when it finally came—the moment of clarity, when my fragile little mind grasped the whole ugly truth, and really saw it for what it was, it was like being awakened with a punch in the nose.
I was stunned.
I leapt up from the floor: “Where am I? What happened?”
Then I noticed the blood on my hands (metaphorically speaking), and the pain that seeped through my every pore. I was wet and angry and scared all at once.
But it felt good. It felt real. And facing reality gave me a sense of purpose … and more energy than a week’s worth of Mavis.
I had spent months slumbering in the poppy fields, AND NOW I WAS AWAKE AGAIN—battered and bruised, but AWAKE—and ready to do something.
First thing first:
I had to connect to people again. I had to talk about it. I had to dissect it and figure out where I stood and how I was going to deal with it.
No more hiding my head in the sand.
So, I spoke freely and held nothing back.
To my landlady: “Judy, I’m sorry the rent is so late, but my best friend chopped up his roommate and I chose denial through drugs as an escape from responsibility.”
To the deli man: “Turkey on a roll, with provolone and just a little bit of mayonnaise—by the way, did I mention my friend Michael murdered Angel Melendez?”
To a random stranger on the street, walking his schnauzer: “My what a sweet doggie! Yes! Yes, you are! Aren’t you just the sweetest little thing! I bet you’d never inject anyone with Drano, would you? No siree! Not a cute little doggie like yourself!”
Clumsy attempts by anyone’s standards, to be sure. But, still, it was a beginning.
I tried telling someone with a closer connection—my roommate—a nervous fellow named Tim Twin.
“Whatever you do, DON’T TELL ANYONE.”
But I don’t think he took it very well.
When I left the apartment, he was a light blue color, and vibrating in an unhealthy way.
Jenny, of course, was no help at all. Her standard reaction to any situation—be it the dismemberment of a friend or that she was out of Blueberry Pop-Tarts—was a free-flowing series of nonwords.
When I tactfully suggested my suspicions to her, that maybe there was more to Michael’s story than he was letting on, well, she chewed on her carrot stick long and hard. This was her well-thought-out response:
“Oh, I know, my God, I am, like, just freaking out.” This, in a D. deadened drawl. “And, I’ve got this paper due …”
She was with her standard coterie of wastrel junkies and disillusioned youth, all of whom already knew the score. (Jenny gathered these gentle junkies in the park and clutched them to her bosom—swell bunch of kids, don’t get me wrong, but I’ll be damned if any of them could conjugate either …)
“Yea, it’s. Like, so fucked up,” they slurrily concurred.
“I was, like, ‘Oh My God.’”
We all sat and looked mutely at each other, until Roger, the Heroin Dealer showed up. When he left, we each did a bag and that gave us the confidence to talk about it some more. We vigorously debated the issue between naps.
When the strand of drool from Jenny’s mouth threatened to extinguish her cigarette, I knew we had taken this exciting conversation as far as it could go.
“Well, this is going nowhere,” I said.
Ten unfocused eyeballs turned away in shame.
“What are we going to do? This is really upsetting me! Jenny? …”
“I know …,” she tried, “I’ve just got like so much homework to do, you know?”
“Jenny,” I pleaded. “Face the facts! We have to deal with this! Hiding your head in the sand won’t cut the mustard anymore!”
Oh, what a singularly unattractive quality denial was. Jenny looked like a retarded duck. I hope I never live to see the day when I am that out of touch with reality …
I took one last look at the lot of them, shifty drug addicts all, and spit on them (actually, I just sort of drooled heavily in their general direction … BUT THE FEELING WAS THERE).
Walking with Freeze, down Avenue A, because when I saw him he was so down, so out, so sad, so lost—like a pawn in a game he didn’t understand—and even though a simple “Hello” meant an automatic four-day stay … how could I turn away from him? Now?
We talked of meaningless things, of cabbages and kings. Our vapid ways and numbered days. I was too numbed by what I suspected to even question him at this time.
Though we didn’t talk of Michael and his departure, there was a sense of finality on Avenue A—you could see it in the way people like us carried ourselves in the heat, shoulders stooped, deflated, no longer willing to pretend, or try, or fluff our collective hair and put on some metaphorical lip gloss.
When we saw Brooke, it broke—the mood—it broke, and we collapsed into each other, like there might be hope after all.
But no.
“Did you hear?” she said. “Someone named Frank Something or Other is doing an article about Angel—front page!—for the Voice!—And apparently somebody has come forward with some kind of proof about Michael, and you, and something about … oh God … I don’t remember but it sounded major … Isn’t that scary?”
Freeze merely shrugged.
Past the point of nail biting, I suppose.
Past the point of worrying when the other shoe would fall … because falling shoes ruin everything, always. But Freeze didn’t care about falling shoes any more than he cared about the price of tea in China. It was all over for Freeze anyway. This was all a postscript.
But for me.
For me it was different.
I still cared and that changed everything.
If there was really some sort of irrefutable evidence of Michael’s wrongdoing floating around out there (A taped phone conversation? Possibly. Somewhere in the DEA wiretapping tapes?) … And if this person, whoever it is, was going to the press with it …
Well, that certainly upped the ante, didn’t it?
Now, legally, we were all implicated, weren’t we?
And some sort of action had to be done, to protect ourselves, not Michael.
Scrolling through my head was a blinking red-letter list of charges I might face: Ac
cessory to Murder, Aiding and Abetting, Collusion, Obstruction of Justice, Conspiracy, Failure to Report an Accident …
Would I be questioned, taken in, charged? I would need a lawyer and money. All this involved commitment and sacrifice. It meant coherency for once, and extended bouts of lucidity. I would be asked silly, useless, and forgotten things—like facts and details and dates.
It would be hell.
(But then, of course, there was a fleeting glimpse of a grand courtroom entrance … me, in a large veiled picture hat over a tastefully tailored navy dress. Stark. Sincere. Maybe a strand of pearls and an embroidered hanky … Breaking down on the stand as I tearfully confessed all. Then: Redemption. Public Approval. Diane Sawyer.)
But mostly it would be hell.
I looked at Freeze—I was with Freeze, you see, so I looked at him—and said:
“Knowledge is power. It’s important for everybody on all sides to know exactly what’s going on and where we all stand. Who knows what. Who is working for and against who. It would certainly benefit you to know what information is being passed around, and what this story is going to be about …”
(And privately, I was thinking that knowledge gave me the power to preempt any press I might get, and remove myself from the resulting “guilt-by-association” stigma that inevitably came from being involved in a scandal. Selfish and ugly, I know, but my Old School instincts still occasionally rear their manipulative heads.)
So we went to a pay phone and called Frank Owen at the Village Voice. I had known him forever, and had helped him out on a number of nightclub-related articles in the past.
When I said I was with Freeze and we wanted to talk, he whooped and realized “scoop” and said, “Come over now.”
By bringing Freeze in, I was first and foremost helping Freeze. I knew he wasn’t going to say anything damaging, and this gave him a chance to set his story up and to find out just how bad things were getting and if maybe it was time for him to get out of town as well.
And I was helping Frank, of course, by handing him the elusive “other factor” in the case—Freeze. Up until now, no one really knew anything about the mysterious hammer-swinger. Now Frank was definitely one up on the competition. Here was his big chance.
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