Deviant Behavior

by Mike Sager

  Seede doused the flame and looked up. “Technically, it’s freebase.”

  “Why are you doing the lighter like that?”

  “It primes the hit, melts it into the screen so it won’t fall out.” He clicked the lighter, put the pipe to his mouth …

  “Can I try it?”

  Seede doused the flame again. It had been nine weeks and six days since he had last touched a woman. Sojii’s innocent emerald eyes sparkled.

  “I think maybe it’s time you went back downstairs,” he said firmly.

  40

  Lightning struck the top of his head.

  Coursed through his body, lit up his sex: Ding!

  Seede’s pelvis strained upward. He became aware of pleasure. Specific and localized. Tight, warm, wet. The electric tingle of nerve endings, each one singular and phosphorescent. His eyelids sprung open like window shades.

  He noticed his right hand, abandoned, hovering midair, still holding the lighter. He returned it to the pocket of his sweatshirt, alongside a three-pack of Trojans, yet unopened, and then he placed the hand tentatively on her crown, the long blonde strands clingy with static, gripping as one might grip a basketball, fingertips spread, wishing he could slow the pace, not sure of the protocol, wishing she knew better the kind of thing he liked, more of a slow pushing down motion, as opposed to the frenetic pulling up. Her head felt lumpy in spots where the hair extensions had been attached with hot glue, cheaper than hand-sewn, though less permanent.

  They were parked in a residential alley off Seventh Street, deep in heroin country, behind what appeared to be an abandoned house. The alley was strewn with trash and tires and old appliances. Around a charred steel drum was a circle of broken chairs and upended milk crates. Two abandoned vehicles seemed to be serving as residences. The place had the feel of a homeless encampment; in his haste to find a spot to park, Seede hadn’t paid it much mind. A weed tree grew tall overhead. Its branches hung down like those of a weeping willow, dappling the amber light from the remaining streetlamp. The other, to the east, appeared to have been shot out.

  He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to concentrate, to give himself over, to experience fully what he’d heretofore denied himself, a monumental feat of will given the proximity of the Strip and all its offerings. Sometimes, when he was at a bar, or at the movies, or out to dinner, or playing coed touch football, or standing in line at the post office, or walking around the newsroom (well, maybe not walking around the newsroom), he felt like he must be the only man on the planet who wasn’t getting laid. What was wrong with him anyway? Why didn’t his wife love him? Why couldn’t she just break down once in a while and throw him a bone? He’d been a good husband—until recently, that is. Didn’t he deserve better? In six years of marriage he had never strayed—not even during this long drought of physical affection that had slowly eaten away at his happiness and self-confidence, eaten away at the fabric of his being like a wasting disease, killing the very cells of himself, leaving instead this malignant need.

  His pulse thumped behind his temples. His jaw was clenched; he forced it open. He took a deep breath through his nose: wood smoke and leaf rot, must and mold, auto exhaust, the cigarette smoldering in the ashtray, the medicinal smell of crack, her powdery sweet perfume, his body odor—sixty-some hours at this point without a shower or sleep. He leaned his head back against the cold surface of the window, his left shoulder wedged against the door, an awkward position that afforded this woman—street name Savannah, a friend of Jamal’s he had interviewed once for a story—a better angle on her business, given the obstacles of stick shift and emergency brake between the bucket seats of his four-door Dodge Colt.

  After seeing Sojii safely down the steps to his basement apartment—desperate though he might be, Seede was not about to feed crack to a minor, no matter how beautiful and willing—he’d found the car parked in its usual place in the garage, a brick suffix to the house, complete with remote-controlled door, an architecturally grandfathered setup much coveted in the neighborhood. The car was an ’85 model, a zippy little econobox made for Dodge by Mitsubishi, painted an effervescent pinky yellow color called champagne, emblematic of the era of its manufacture, a time of junk bonds, expense-account caviar, and powder cocaine. That Dulcy did not take the car led Seede to conclude that she and Jake left by taxi. Surely they hadn’t walked to the subway at Dupont Circle, six blocks across the frozen landscape. Maybe they’d been given a ride—he couldn’t imagine where or by whom. Dulcy had no relatives in town, no friends. She always said, somewhat lamentably, that her closest girlfriend in DC was Jim Freeman. She was always a man’s woman, Seede told himself. At which point another thought occurred: Could she be having an affair?

  Reaching with his left hand into his other sweatshirt pocket, he pinched out a menthol cigarette, placed it between his lips, searched the confines of the driver’s door pocket for his lighter, remembered the right sweatshirt pocket, located the lighter beside the condoms, lit the cigarette, careful to avoid Savannah’s hair, no doubt flammable. The smoke loitered along the cheaply upholstered ceiling of the car, danced around the dome light. Seede tried to recall the last time he’d felt a woman’s mouth on his penis. He thought of his wedding night and felt a twinge of guilt, followed by a flash of anger. She’s the one who fuckin left, he told himself. He thought about all the times over the last year that he’d considered leaving. Did I fuckin leave? He thought about all the blow jobs he’d had over the course of his lifetime.

  The brunette with braces at the rifle range at Camp Green Mountain. The redhead on the Spanish Club trip to Barcelona. The blonde in the front seat of the car at seventy miles per hour on the George Washington Parkway. Dulcy on their wedding night, looking up at him so lovingly, her lips full and slick, a gleam of contentment in her honey brown eyes, a goddamn sparkle. This is what happens when you give them what they want. Sadness rained down upon him, a cloudburst, a sudden squall. He felt lonely and misunderstood. He took another hit off his cigarette.

  The head bobbed more slowly now; Seede’s hips rose contrapuntally, a moist smacking sound, like someone chewing food with their mouth open. His breathing was shallow and effortful, like someone lifting weights. Seconds passed … one minute … two. His mind began to settle. The running internal commentary, the slide show of images, the dancing fountain of grandiose ideas—all of it began to subside, as if a hand somewhere was turning a series of dials, lowering the volume, dimming the lights … until stillness began to descend upon him, warm and syrupy, like the first faint tuggings of oncoming sleep, only instead of sleep it was pleasure. He gave himself over to her strong lips and muscular, swirling tongue, the excruciatingly luxuriant stretch of dermis, the electric tingle of nerve endings, her left hand squeezing, her right now cupping his balls.

  Just then, outside the car, a fat orange alley cat—spotting a rat or a rival or a female in heat—jumped from a nearby garage roof … to a rickety fence rail … to a rusty metal trash can, landing a tad off balance, causing the lid to slip and fall, taking with it the fat orange cat, which shrieked, Yeoooooooooow!— the lid clattering on the cobblestones like thunder.

  Seede sat bolt upright. He swiveled his head around, birdlike, herky-jerky, checking his perimeter. With the sleeve of his sweatshirt, he wiped away the condensation from the window.

  And there she was. Standing in the dappled shadows beneath the weed tree.

  Her face was arranged into a hideous mask of hurt and anger and betrayal. Her toe was tapping, like Flo in Andy Capp. She held the boy on her hip, bundled in his snowsuit. The hood came to an elfin point at the top of his head. They had argued bitterly about purchasing the thing, which was stuffed with goose down and rated to negative ten degrees, another entry on a seemingly endless list of critical aftermarket add-ons: the safety locks on all the kitchen drawers and toilet seats; the plastic plugs in the electric sockets; the security gates on every landing of the carefully restored stairwell, the hinges of which needed to be secured to t
he antique hardwood with maiming metal screws. How much time had been devoted, over the last twenty-seven months, to researching and discussing and arguing and procuring and installing these and other must-have accessories? To schlepping them from place to place around the neighborhood, around the globe: strollers and car seats (different models for different age ranges); a portable high chair (the gay-owned restaurants in their neighborhood declined to keep them on hand); a portable playpen; the bulging backpack full of ointments and salves and diapers and bottles and emergency supplies; and, on one memorable trip into Heathrow Airport, a gallon-size ziplock freezer bag full of a crystalline white powder which happened to be infant formula. Lucky for Seede, the customs detectives assigned to strip-search and interrogate him were themselves beleaguered fathers of young children—were there any other kind?

  Savannah looked up quizzically at Seede. She consulted the watch on her left wrist, in which hand she held his soft penis. “You think you can finish, baby?” There was a dubious tone in her voice.

  Seede’s chest vibrated as it heaved and fell. His eyes were twitchy. His pulse was racing, a timpani inside his skull. He ventured another glance out the window. Dulcy and the boy had dematerialized.

  “You want another hit?” he croaked.

  “Ten mo minutes,” Savannah said, workmanlike, a bit annoyed. She took a drag off her cigarette, returned to her ministrations.

  Seede took a long last drag from his own cigarette, pushed it through the slivered-open driver’s window, leaned his head against the cold and soothing glass. He fished inside the door pocket for a film canister and his aluminum foil pipe, placed the pipe between his lips, let it dangle to one side like Bogart.

  Working in the airspace above Savannah’s head, he opened the film can and teased out a dove, a twenty dollar rock about the size of a molar—three days into this binge, large dosages were required to achieve a significant rush. He refit the lid, returned the canister to the door pocket, switched the pipe to his left hand, trembling, screen end up, recessed inside his fist for stability. Placed the rock on the Chore Boy screen, itself recessed inside the foil tube. Retrieved the lighter once more from his sweatshirt pocket. Melted the rock into the screen …

  A long hit, impossibly long: chin uptilted, flame bright, a whooshing like a tiny jet engine, the rock crackling and popping, soot and sparks raining down upon his hands and cheeks. The molecules of cocaine alkaloid, rendered gaseous by the flame, traveled down his trachea and into his lungs, passing through vast fields of capillary-rich air sacs called alveoli, into the hot tributaries of his type O-positive blood—an invading force riding a commandeered fleet of protein particles, sailing full tilt into the gathering headwaters of his pulmonary vein and into his heart, to his brain, to his limbic system, buried deep within the two gray outer hemispheres of the cerebral cortex: the dark, moist realm of pain, pleasure, learning, and emotion.

  (All in less than three seconds, according to a researcher Seede had consulted, who likened the process to “pounding a ten-penny nail made of pure cocaine directly into the pleasure center of your brain.”)

  Whereupon …

  Lightning struck the top of his head.

  His ears opened. His thoughts shattered into a million shards. His brain buzzed, a loud metallic hum that turned him inside out. He was a sparkler on the Fourth of July—shimmering flakes of magnesium fire shooting in all directions.

  His pelvis strained upward, driven by its own powerful engine. A moist smacking sound, the luxuriant stretch of skin, the tingle of nerve endings. He thought about Salem: her long legs, the way her tight shorts molded to the outline of her crotch. Bo Franklin—I killed a bitch with an orgasm. China Doll and Sana and Crazy Michelle, skittering like water bugs in and out of traffic beneath the pink neon cross, everything a size too small. The brunette at the rifle range at Camp Green Mountain, the blonde behind the sand dune, a solitary bead of sweat dripping between her breasts. Sojii, so young and choice and willing, sleeping now in his basement apartment. Dulcy on their wedding night, the goddamn sparkle.

  He raised the lighter again and hit the pipe. A long, slow, steady hit, not too hard, the flame whooshing, the smoke filling his lungs, the tension building, her strong lips and muscular swirling tongue …

  And then the driver’s door, against which he was leaning, suddenly gave way, and he was flying backward through space, yanked forcefully by the scruff of his sweatshirt all the way clear of the car, clear of Savannah, his black button-fly jeans bunched around his ankles, his glistening stiff penis wobbling on its root …

  And then the landing, a violent skidding thud upon the wet and dirty antique cobblestone, the force of which literally knocked the breath from his lungs—twenty to thirty cubic feet of pristine white smoke issuing now through his ravaged nose and blistered lips.

  Hands clutched and pulled and tugged at him, punching and gouging, kicking and pawing, riffling his pockets, grappling for his wedding ring, so many faces and arms and legs, set upon him like hyenas upon prey, wild-eyed, gap-toothed, the smell of shit and piss and vomit, shouting and grunting and laughing, yanking his dick, twisting sadistically …

  And then a strong kick to his side, and then another, oooff, and then another, the branch-break sound of cracking ribs, and Seede crying out, a tone of utter helplessness and defeat: “Stop. Please.”

  And then somebody yelled, “Hit em in the head!”

  PART FOUR

  41

  Jim Freeman threw a hurried left turn across three lanes of Friday morning traffic and bounced into the rutted driveway of the Capitol City Motor Lodge, scraping the undercarriage of his Jaguar XJ6—a tax write-off, he was always quick to point out, used primarily to ferry clients.

  Ever mindful of his paint job, a flawless British racing green, he pulled into a space at the far corner of the parking lot. It was just after ten A.M. For his mission he had chosen a distressed leather and shearling bomber jacket and a pair of black buttonfly jeans, the same kind Seede always wore. He took the stairs two at a time, his Frye boots making a no-nonsense thunk on the metal risers. He knocked at room 215.

  After an interval, the door opened partway. Salem’s face could be seen in the space allowed by the chain. Her usually spiky hair, sans mousse, fell softly about her face, giving her the big-eyed, waifish look of a Keane painting.

  “I’m James Freeman,” he said, using his best Realtor voice, somewhat mismatched with his ensemble. “I’m good friends with Jonathan Seede—the reporter from the Herald?”

  “I remember you,” she said. “You was onea them protest guys on the corner the other night.”

  A nervous giggle, the boom restrained. “Is Jamal here?”

  Jamal’s head appeared above Salem’s. “Go on and let him in.”

  The door shut, then opened again. Freeman ventured several steps into the humid room. It had a king-size bed, a mini-fridge, a breakfast nook with a yellow Formica dinette table and mismatched chair. Jamal was shirtless, wearing a shower cap, his face lined with pillow wrinkles. He did not seem pleased to be awake. “How you know where we stay at?”

  Freeman smiled solicitously. “Like I said, I’m a good friend of Seede’s. I was the best man at his wedding.”

  Grimly: “And he tole you where we stay?”

  Another nervous giggle. “Let me explain. After your act of heroism the other night on the corner of Thirteenth and Corcoran—Lord knows what would have happened to our friend Wolfie had you not come along—we wanted to send you a basket, you know, some kind of thank-you gift. A token of our appreciation. I asked Jonathan for your address so we could have it delivered.”

  Jamal turned to Salem, annoyed. “Did you get a basket and not tell me about it?”

  “Actually, it’s in the car,” Freeman clarified, gesturing in the direction of the parking lot. “I didn’t know if it would be appropriate to leave it at the front desk, or if it would be better to—”

  “Happy to be of help,” Jamal said, pleased by the t
ribute, by Freeman’s bended-knee approach. “A friend of Seede’s is a friend of mine, know what I’m sayin? Go on now and get the basket and bring it here. And then we gotta excuse ourselves.” He yawned expansively.

  Freeman stood glued to the spot. He looked up at Jamal with a pregnant expression.

  “Is they somethin else?” Jamal asked.

  Freeman wasn’t sure where to start. “Have you seen Jonathan lately, by any chance?”

  Jamal thought for a moment. Living nights, sleeping days, it was hard to keep the calendar straight. He inserted a finger beneath the elastic band of his shower cap and scratched his head. “What day today?” he asked.

  “Friday,” Freeman said.

  “Yesterday morning, I think it was.” He inspected a piece of something he’d found in his hair. “Thursday. A little before noon. I hooked him up with an interview. After that, he said he was goin down to the jail. What’s up? Is he missin?”

  “I’m not sure,” Freeman said. “It’s kind of a long story. There’s this girl staying in his English Basement. She’s sixteen. Amazingly gorgeous. And she has this crystal skull—it’s very valuable. And now I can’t find her or Seede. The house is empty. I let myself in with my key. I have this feeling they might have been kidnapped or something—I don’t know what.”

  “You mean, like, a human skull made of crystal?” Salem asked.

  “You’ve seen it?”

  “I seen a whole collection.”

  “Where at?” Jamal asked, indignant.

  Of course Salem had not bothered to tell Jamal about the detective or the meeting with Metcalfe, and certainly not about the money, which was hidden above the acoustic tiles in the bathroom ceiling. Although Metcalfe hadn’t gotten around to telling her that he was her father, he had scheduled another meeting—having broken the ice, he was ready now to break the news. Salem was planning to leave for California sometime in the next few days. She figured she’d wait around long enough for Metcalfe’s next installment—by far the easiest money she’d ever made.