Days later, I’m walking to the parking lot when a figure steps from behind a bush. Expecting to be mugged, I jump. It’s Wild Man, topless and tiger-striped with bleeding scratches from the belly up. ‘Now what happened?’ I ask, dismayed.
‘We had a fight and her dad locked me out. I’ve walked for miles. I didn’t want to come to your work because I’ve got no top and all these scratches. I’ve been behind this bush waiting for you for hours. Take me to my old house and I’ll see if I can get clothes from the Mexicans.’
‘And then what?’
‘I can’t live in the projects no more. The housing inspector is kicking me out for being a disturbance.’
‘The most dangerous neighbourhood in Phoenix and you’re getting kicked out for disturbing it. What on earth did you do?’
‘I told you they kept yelling jungle fever at me!’
‘That doesn’t explain why they’re kicking you out!’
‘All right, all right, la’. One of them pulled a deuce-deuce on me, the .22 I’d sold them, so I called G Dog. He brought me an AR-15 assault rifle and he had a MAC-11. We went round the garage, jumped out of his car with the guns and all the locals shit themselves and proceeded to run away, and—’
‘And the next thing you know, you’re getting kicked out!’ I yell, waving my arms in frustration. ‘Who’da thunk it, la’? Unbelievable. How do you manage to disrupt everywhere you go?’
‘I don’t know, la’.’
‘Well, I do!’ I say, exasperated. ‘Why don’t you try and behave yourself for once in your life? You’re running out of places to stay. Hammy was right: we should lock you in a cage and poke you with sticks!’
‘I think I should move into Acid Joey’s because he lost that money you gave him for that rave. I’m pretty certain he used it to pay a drug debt. If you let people owe you money like that and do nothing about it, you’re not going to have any left.’
‘Good point. But what about Acid Joey’s roommates?’
‘They’ll have to deal with it. I’d rather be back in a nice place in Tempe, where all the college girls are and everyone’s partying.’
‘OK. We’ll tell Joey you’re moving in. Anything to get you away from crack. I’m going to ask G Dog not to bring you any more guns.’
Within days of Wild Man’s arrival, Acid Joey and his roommates flee. I start hosting parties there and my Ecstasy sales soar. Within weeks, the apartment manager posts an eviction notice.
One Sunday afternoon, Acid Joey shows up, anxious.
‘What’s the matter, Joey?’ I ask, hugging him.
‘Some thug called Gangsta Dan threatened to rob your shit from me.’
On the sofa, Wild Man’s ears prick up and he extracts his tongue from Chantelle’s mouth.
‘Who?’ G Dog asks, rising from the sofa.
Wild Man gets up, grinning as if keen to harm someone. He hugs Acid Joey. ‘Gangsta fucking Dan!’ Wild Man’s belly-laugh resounds through the building. ‘I’ll handle this, la’. Take me to him, Joey.’
‘Hold on a minute,’ I say. ‘Let’s get some info, shall we?’
‘Yeah, Wild Man, slow down, homey!’ G Dog says.
‘Who’s Gangsta Dan, Joey?’ I ask.
‘Some thug from Philly. He’s been setting up fake drug deals with ravers and robbing their shit at gunpoint.’
‘What’s this fool look like?’ G Dog asks.
‘I don’t give a fuck what he looks like! Take me over there right now!’ Cracking his knuckles, Wild Man looms over Acid Joey as if he’s about to hurt him.
‘Goddam, Peter!’ G Dog says.
‘Chill, Wild Man,’ I say.
‘He’s a squat dude with a missing thumb,’ Acid Joey says. ‘He’s staying here, in the next building.’
‘Here! He’s my neighbour!’ Wild Man grins as if he’s won a prize.
‘Gangsta Dan robbed a load of vials of Special K,’ Acid Joey says. ‘He’s all K’d out right now and doesn’t know what’s going on. Now would be a good time for Wild Man to go over there.’
‘What’s his apartment number?’ Wild Man asks.
‘How armed is he?’ I say.
‘I don’t give a fuck if he’s got a gun, I’m going over there,’ Wild Man says.
‘How dangerous is he, Joey?’ I ask.
‘He has a box of pills from the doctor, separated into days of the week,’ Acid Joey says. ‘He has to take certain pills each day so he doesn’t kill anyone.’
‘I’d better come with you,’ G Dog says.
‘Nah,’ Wild Man says. ‘I wanna talk to him on my own.’
G Dog looks hurt to be excluded.
Wild Man marches off. I sit and wait, expecting to hear gunshots and police sirens.
Fifteen minutes later, Wild Man returns. ‘I’ve solved the housing situation. Chantelle, pack your shit up, we’re moving in with Gangsta Dan. He’s cooking up some Special K for us right now.’
‘How did you manage that?’ I ask.
‘I basically told him, “I respect what you’re doing, but not when you’re shitting on me. You’re stepping on my toes, so I want all the money back you ganked from the K dealers, and I’m moving in.”’
‘And he didn’t pull a gun on you, la’?’ I say.
‘He invited me in, gave me a hug, said he’d heard a lot about me. He said he’d give me the money back he robbed from the K dealers, that I’m welcome to stay there as a guest of his, and he gave me a gun. I said, “I don’t need no gun.” He gave me another hug, said, “I know we’re gonna be friends,” and told me what he does.’
‘What he does?’ I say.
‘He has people spotting dealers and what houses they’re at. He jumps on the roof. He has this gas, puts it in the air con on the roof and all the people come running out. His homeboys put masks on, go in and rob the place.’
A month later, they get evicted from Gangsta Dan’s. With a criminal record for property damage, Wild Man is unhousable. He ends up in Tempe Beach Park sleeping under a tree next to Chantelle, a Rambo knife and a baseball bat. After Wild Man smashes an extortionist – a man who was beating up homeless people – in the neck with the bat, the gutter punks hail him as their king.
Chapter 24
Driving home from a rave, I arrive at a junction, squinting at the sun rising behind a traffic light. Half blind, convinced it’s green, I keep going.
The car I hit I don’t see. Bang! Screech …
The airbag detonates, punching my face. I see stars. My eyes water. Spinning out of control, the RX7 swerves towards a second car. Fired up on adrenalin, I drop my head, curl my shoulders in, brace for impact. Bang! Crunch!
The crash jolts my body. The RX7 stops in the intersection. My ears fill with a ringing sound. The heat and fumes from smouldering oil smart my eyes. My car’s wrecked. I must be hurt. In a panic, I check my body. Nothing wrong. Struggling with the door, I manage to open it. Afraid another car might slam into mine, I bounce out as if my sneakers have springs.
Around the cars I hit, men are yelling at me. I pull my phone out and dial 911.
‘What is your emergency?’
‘I’m in a traffic accident on Thomas and 7th Street …’
Police arrive. One interviews me about the accident and issues a ticket for running a red light. He says it happens a lot when the sun is rising.
I hitch a ride on the tow truck taking the RX7 to its graveyard. How can I be alive? Uninjured? Kelly’s gonna be mad. I enter the house, sit on the bed, wake Kelly up and explain what happened.
We hug. ‘Shaun, I’m glad you’re alive. Let’s go to the doctor’s to make sure you’re OK.’
I lie down on the bed. ‘Resting my back feels good. I’m disorientated. Got a headache. Other than that, I’m fine.’
Kelly rubs my back. ‘Shaun, if you keep going like this, you’re gonna kill yourself. And where would that leave me? I’d have to call your family and tell them you’re dead. And then they’d find out you were high on drugs. How’s
your mom gonna feel? You need to think about them.’
‘You’re right, but my parents are so far away, they don’t need to know about this. It would just cause them unnecessary stress.’
‘This is a smack in the face. Wake up, dude! Wake up!’
Shaken up by the accident, I stop taking meth. But every day, I crave it, and grow depressed. My thoughts slow down until my brain feels as if it’s barely operating. At work, I have no energy. A few weeks later, I sneak into the restroom and snort meth with Carson. I immediately feel superhuman. But each withdrawal from meth wreaks havoc on me. I barely eat. Below my cheekbones, my face caves in.
My behaviour gets more erratic. In three months, I crash two rental vehicles. Enterprise Rent-A-Car bans me for life. I go out and buy an identical RX7 to the one I lost. Driving to work, I fall asleep, come off the road and crash, but only suffer wheel damage. I selfishly keep choosing drugs over Kelly, and my love for her disappears in a haze of partying. I accept that our relationship is on borrowed time.
One night, I’m on the sofa next to Kelly, watching TV, when she says, ‘You’ve got Burnt-Out Broker Syndrome ’cause of all the drugs you do. You’ve got yourself too involved. Everyone idolises you. Everyone worships you. Remember how the brokers used to call you “Sir Shaun” and “Lord Attwood”? You’ve gotta get back on track! You’re making money illegally from Ecstasy now. Are you seriously gonna throw your entire stockbroking career away for drugs, dude? You’ve got a pretty good life if you think about it. People bust their asses to make in a year what a stockbroker makes in a month, a bad month, and you wanna fuck all that off to party. You think it’s so much fun and so cool and so this and so that, but you’re gonna wind up either dead or in jail. I ain’t prepared to stand by and watch you do that to yourself. You’re gonna lose everything. Your house, your reputation, your work, me and everything else. I thought I used to mean something to you.’
‘You do. I just don’t give a shit about stockbroking anymore. I think I’m gonna quit work and live off the money I’ve put in Hammy’s name.’
‘Well, you know, you do that, but how long do you think that’s gonna last? With no job, you’re gonna be too busy getting high, wasting your money on getting all your friends high, and pretty soon there won’t be any left. What’re you gonna do then? To you? To me? To us?’
‘I’ve got money in the stock market, and I can make money selling fun to ravers!’
‘Right! That’s real good. You can make money selling Ecstasy. You make quite a bit of money now legally without having to worry about getting busted. Ecstasy and Ecstasy people will fuck you up. Whatever, dude! If you think you can make a living outta that, you’re in for a rude awakening. Your shit’s gonna get fucked up and I ain’t going down with you.’
‘I’m sick of putting all these hours in, getting up at 5 a.m., going to the office, having a boss, being part of the rat race.’
‘Being in the rat race! Oh, so you’re just gonna swim in the sewer instead, all because you wanna get high and sell Ecstasy. It was one thing when we were partying when we first met, but you’re taking it to a whole new level. You’re becoming the people we used to look at as pieces of shit. It’s gonna hurt everybody. If you only wanna think about you, that’s fine and dandy, you go ahead and see in a couple of years from now who’s there to pick you up. This is not like a rave, where you go out on the weekend. If you wanna live that way full time, it will destroy you!’
‘Well, it’s a chance I’m prepared to take.’
‘Then you fucking take that chance and see where it takes you! And what’re you gonna do later? You won’t ever be a broker again, and that’s something you have a natural gift for, a natural talent for from when you were a fucking kid. You’re gonna lose all that. If you choose that, you’re not the guy I thought you were.’
I work fewer hours. My numbers on the board collapse. I let my secretary go. I try to boost my energy by taking more meth but end up paranoid and sick.
Coming down off meth, I spend hours shivering in bed. I pull extra sheets over one minute but sweat the next and have to toss them off. My joints ache as if cancer is gnawing at my bones. My body is so tired, I want to sleep for ever, but my accelerated heartbeat and thoughts prevent it. When I do finally drift off, I dream a murderous invisible devil is coming to my bed. I wake up, thankful the dream is over, but the devil comes again and again … I try to force my eyes open, unsure whether I’m dreaming or not, but they’re glued shut. I can’t move my body either. My eyelids open slowly as if tearing apart.
I’m awake, with double vision, coated in sweat, my head hot and heavy, my heart beating like machine-gun fire. It takes a few seconds before I can move and see clearly. The stomach fluid in my mouth from dry-puking in my sleep must be laced with meth chemicals because it’s burning my tonsils. Stabbing pain from ulcers on my stomach lining forces me to rub my belly. I rush to the bathroom and spit the fluid out, followed by endless amounts of phlegm, my body shuddering each time the mucous makes its journey through my throat. Snot-green phlegm clots with yellow tentacles stick to the sink, resisting the water, quivering like jellyfish. Attempting to prise one off the basin, I poke it, but it grips and clings to my finger like a living thing. I try to rub it off with toilet paper, but the paper sticks to my finger, too. Jesus, what is this stuff? It looks more like brain matter than phlegm. It takes soap and hot water to scrub it off.
Pain pierces my heart in a variety of places. Scared I’m on the verge of a heart attack, I hunch my shoulders, bow my head and clutch my chest. I breathe deeply in the hope of stopping the pain and stabilising my heart’s erratic rhythm. I’ll never take meth again, I tell myself, even though I know it’s a lie.
In a last-ditch attempt to boost my sales and reduce my workload, I take Carson on as an assistant. I sign trade tickets authorising speculative investments in one of his accounts. The trades lose money and the client files a lawsuit. Sensing financial disaster, I move the last of my assets into Hammy’s name.
With nowhere to live, Seth moves into my house. A few weeks later, I move out, separating from Kelly on friendly terms. She uses her real-estate licence to rent me a luxury condo in Hammy’s name at Regency House, a high-security building fitted with laser tripwires and a guard station. No one will rob me here. I doubt the police could even take me by surprise. From now on, I’ll operate as Hammy to protect myself from anyone trying to turn me in.
Seth telephones: ‘Thanks for leaving me in the house with Kelly.’
‘I needed my own space,’ I say, standing on my balcony, admiring a view of Phoenix like that from the stockbrokerage.
‘And what else, guy?’
‘What do you mean?’ I ask.
‘Why didn’t you say something about this house being watched?’
‘That’s news to me. Have you seen anything suspicious up there?’
‘I’ve got equipment.’
‘Equipment?’
‘Spy stuff. You should let me go over your new pad with it. You never know who’s listening in on you.’
‘You’re welcome to stop by if you like. Why don’t you stay for a few days and try to chill out? I think you’re getting paranoid.’
‘I’ll be right over,’ Seth says.
About thirty minutes later, Kelly calls: ‘Seth freaked out, smashed the light in my truck and took my beeper apart because he said they had tracking devices in them.’
‘Oh no!’ I say.
‘You should see my beeper, he like destroyed that thing.’
‘Where is he?’
‘On his way to yours.’
Convinced he’s snapped on meth, I brace for his arrival. When I open the door, he charges in and pulls out an electronic wand. He waves it over the walls. ‘There’s a few areas of concern. And there’s definitely a listening device in the TV.’
‘But I only just moved in,’ I say, hoping my relaxed voice calms him down.
‘Look how long you’ve had the TV!’
&n
bsp; ‘What should I do?’
‘I’ll fix it.’
I spend hours trying to soothe his paranoia but get nowhere, so I go to bed.
The next morning, I find his pager in a bucket of water and a note: The cops are going to bust us all. I’m off to Michigan. I shake my head, stunned, sad to lose Seth to meth.
Getting deeper into drugs, my friend Kimberly starts strip dancing. I call her: ‘Let’s party in a hotel room.’
‘Come to my work and pick me up then.’
I soon arrive at Bourbon Street Circus. The sight of women in lingerie, high heels and thigh-high boots renders the stench of cigarettes, beer and cheap perfume tolerable.
In my car, I sniff her neck and we kiss. ‘You look as beautiful as ever. We should do X and speed now, so we’ll be wasted when we get to the hotel room.’
‘OK, you deviant. Give me some.’
After parking outside a hotel, I hide my eyes behind sunglasses. Stumbling to the check-in desk, I say, ‘I’d like a room,’ in my finest English tourist accent.
‘How many people?’ asks a bespectacled middle-aged lady.
‘Two.’
‘We only have rooms with two beds available.’
‘I’ll take one.’
‘How’d you like to pay?’
‘Cash.’
‘Fill this out and let me see your driver’s licence, please.’
‘No problem.’
‘Where you from?’
‘England.’
‘Just visiting?’
‘Yes.’
‘I love your accent.’
‘Thanks. Your’s isn’t too shoddy, either.’
She blushes. ‘Here’s your keys.’
‘OK. Goodnight.’
Kimberly’s legs lead me to the room. I throw our bags on one bed, Kimberly on the other. With her heels, she kicks off the blanket and wriggles around on a crisp white sheet. By the time it takes to put music on and disrobe, she is belly down and naked except for her heels. Straddling her torso, I spank her behind. I flip her over. I reach for my travel bag, remove a tie and bind her wrists to the bed head. As I kneel between her legs, a sense of her vulnerability unleashes my inner wolf. My jaw protrudes. I want to bite her breasts. Bowing towards her stomach, my nostrils dilate as I relish her scent. Hovering, I pause to soak up the I-dare-you look in her eyes. With ease, I flick her legs into the air, grasp her ankles and challenge her eyes. I lower myself onto her slowly, crushing her body into a U-shape. Her feet drum the bed head.
Party Time_Raving Arizona Page 13