The Gandy Dancer

Chapter 5 – The Gandy Dancer

Carson was slightly winded from the climb up the stairs. The muffled cries, the shouts, the sudden thuds and bumps that spilled out from the closed passages to the cubicles of the guests unsettled him. He was unaccustomed to the daily transactions of the human moles who inhabited the hotel or the surrounding neighborhood. He frequented establishments that employed security details. He associated with a better class of people, even if those people were not above breaking rules in the name of self-interest. But all his sources were gone, his credit dried up. The usual games, the circles in which he’d borrowed and put up collateral, like the equity on his house, the folks who knew him as a reliable stake, all these had turned him away, knowing that he had no other assets. His bankroll was gone. He’d had a good run. He’d kept and fed a family, a nice home and all the trappings. And no one had asked questions, as long as his luck held up. He knew Fortune would circle around again. She always did. Until then, until he found Giambone, he had to associate with scum, like now, tailing a junkie in a skid row flophouse, having to touch him just to get a piece of information. If he wasn’t so desperate, he might have exercised enough self-disgust to change his strategy, to change his life. But he figured that he hadn’t sunk that low. Not yet. He still was not one of them, the scab people, the grubs and insects that struggled around him now down here, fighting for a reason to crawl one more filthy day – a bottle, a needle full of forgetfulness; people who had lost the will to taste the good life, who had never known the taste of Camembert or fresh raw squid; never known the supple luxury of a king size bed in a 5 star hotel, the soft leather ride of a Lexus sedan, or the sleek nasty favors of a thousand dollar whore. He would have these things again. And maybe he would get his family back, too. That would take some doing. But this was not who he was, down here, among the dross and profane. He was meant for a better life. He had been prepared for greater things. This was temporary. It was like a bad run in a long game of Hold’em. Sooner or later the cards he needed would come around again.

“How do you live in this shit hole?” said Carson.

He squinted like someone seized by a foul odor.

“Hey, even if you hate the taste of shit,” replied Mickey, “you gonna eat it anyway if it keeps you alive. Besides, least I got some shit to call my own. What the fuck you got?”

Carson thought this was a hostile question, but a good one. He said nothing, and Mickey appeared content that his point was uncontested. Even at this level, Carson understood that one measured success by appearances. And by this measure Mickey was right. What did Carson have? A past? So did every other low-life loser downtown. An education? Book knowledge never stood a chance against the thing on the inside that drives a man; the hunger that propels him to go after the things, no matter how ephemeral, that bring him satisfaction, even at his own peril, in reckless disregard for his safety or the ones who depend on him to ignore his appetite, to control it. Carson was very disciplined, very concentrated and focused when it came to making himself feel good. It was with the things that disrupted his pleasure voyages, the intermittent weather of family and job responsibilities, that became the irritants with which he’d had to cope and dodge, maneuver around, control and deceive, in order to sustain the things that meant the most – winning at cards and having his dick sucked by beautiful women. He loved his kids. Once, he believed, he loved his wife. Even his job, he admitted, gave him occasional satisfaction. He had set out in the beginning thinking those were the things in life where meaning was found. And they did offer some solace, some sense of his identity and the feeling of accomplishment. But eventually they became a routine. He pretended that there was nothing serious going on beneath the conventional picture; the deepening impulse for gambling and sex that drove him to fabricate two selves, keeping one life hidden from the other. And it was to the dark one he gravitated; the self that was most what he considered himself to be. The self he would have fully promoted and indulged if he were given total freedom, the freedom from guilt, the independence he longed for and which, with each passing year, beckoned to him more forcefully while seeming more distantly beyond his grasp.

“This is my place,” said Mickey, nodding at the next room on the right.

Mickey opened the door. No light spilled into the hall. Carson could see nothing in the dark room. He heard movement, a rustling of fabric, the clank of metal. It felt like he was being set up. He’d been downtown less than two hours and this was it? Mickey could tell he was afraid.

“Don’t worry, man. It’s okay. Look.”

Mickey walked inside and flicked the light switch. Carson saw a table, a couple of hard metal chairs, a wash basin, a window with a blanket hung over it to keep out the light, and an austere metal framed bed and mattress. Extending along the top of the mattress was a pair of human legs. Two bare feet poked out from the bottom of pant cuffs. The legs lay still. The ankles were tied with a dog leash to the bed frame.

“See, man. Nothin’ to worry about. There’s no one here ‘cept my girlfriend. Say hello to our new friend, baby cakes.”

Carson remained standing in the hallway. He watched the room and he listened. The pair of legs on the bed stirred and pulled on the chain.

“Turn off the goddamned light,” a female voice groaned.

“Don’t fuckin’ talk to me that way,” said Mickey. “What’d I tell you about that?”

Mickey walked out of view toward the head of the bed. Carson heard him strike the woman sharply. Heard the slap of skin struck hard. Then Mickey reappeared in the doorway.

“I don’t have fuckin’ all day, dude. Let’s get on with it. Are you comin’ in or what the fuck? Not up to your standards? Sorry about that. Room service’s got the day off.” He laughed.

“Not a problem, man,” said Carson, as though Mickey’s assurances were the relief he sought. He walked in the room. Mickey slammed the door behind him.

“Welcome to my humble abode,” said Mickey. “It ain’t much, in fact it’s pretty fuckin’ miserable. But it’s the place I come to feel real, to feel good. To forget the bullshit. And today you’re gonna help me forget. You the man, dude. A righteous fella, with a big heart, enlisted to do a little community service for the pissed-upon in the world. You oughta feel special. There’s a little place in heaven reserved especially for you because of your large social conscience. You oughta thank me for the opportunity. I guarantee you’ll feel better about yourself, for helping the helpless. Even thieving junkies like me need to be loved, need to be counted. We’re human too, you know.”

“Cut the crap, man. Let’s get on with it. This is strictly business. I ain’t here for your health or my soul. You can rot.”

The woman on the bed started to laugh. Carson looked at her. She was no more than fifteen, sixteen years old, a white girl, rather plain, with a hard defiant look that couldn’t conceal an obvious middle class background and a trace of the girlishness she’d either given up or had seized from her. Her wrists were also tied to the bed frame. She wore a grey T-shirt and jeans. Her arms were heavily bruised. Her cheek burned red where Mickey had slapped her. Carson had a daughter aged 11. This girl was somebody’s daughter. Because of her age, and because she was white, that’s how he thought of her. Somebody’s daughter. Someone living in Encino or Malibu. Some father who thought he had given everything to his family, made every sacrifice, enrolled them in all the right schools and private clubs; enlisted all the qualified coaches and tutors and specialists and therapists and doctors; vacationed with them every summer in Europe; gave them everything they wanted or desired. And yet, something went wrong. Despite all this father had given her, his daughter hated him, loathed him, resented him for everything. What he had done was either too much or not enough. He was the enemy, and she would make him pay for her suffering. Somewhere he had failed, and he would never know where, or he would refuse to believe it. And his little girl was lost to him. Gone from Encino. Gone from the Marlborough School for Girls. Gone from the Jonathan Club Sunday brunches. She’s down on skid row now, daddy. She’s chained to a bed by a junkie who beats her and she loves it. This is what she wanted from you, daddy, and you couldn’t give it to her. You provided everything. You made everything safe. You made it so nothing was given to chance. Nothing was given to chance. There was no mystery in Encino. She had it all. You gave her a risk-free life, and she hates your fuckin’ guts for it.

“Who’s this, Mickey,” the girl asked. “The fuckin’ FBI?”

She yanked on the chains and jerked her body. Carson could see she was wearing no bra. Her small breasts pushed at the fabric of her shirt as she squirmed on the bed.

“This is your Good Samaritan, baby. The man that’s gonna get you and me straight for the day.”

“Get these fuckin’ things off me, Mickey. You’re back now.”

“I got to tie her up,” Mickey explained to Carson. “When I’m sittin’ on a pile I don’t trust her to be here when I get back. Besides, I need her right now. She’s part of the works, just like you, my friend. It’s all part of the grand design.”

“Daddy, please, cut me loose, please.”

The girl tried the kittenish approach. It seemed to work. Mickey untied her.

“Hi, FBI man,” she said, sitting up and moving to the edge of the bed. She looked at Carson with a mocking smile.

“Are you gonna suck Uncle Mickey’s dick today? Do I get a day off?”

She laughed. Mickey darted to the side of the bed and grabbed her by the hair.

“Ouch,” she cried.

“Knock it off, cunt,” he whispered. “This nice gentleman is here to help me get off. And when I get right, then you do. So shut the fuck up and behave. Young bitches,” he said, turning toward Carson. “Tight pussy’s a lot of fuckin’ aggravation, you know?”

“Asshole,” the girl mouthed back. “If it wasn’t for me, you’d be on Hollywood Boulevard, beggin’ the drag queens to do you.”

“What the fuck did I just say to you,” he shouted in a loud whisper. He struck the girl in the mouth with the back of his hand. In one deft motion he unbuckled his belt, yanked it from around his waist, and cracked it down hard on the bed, inches from her feet. The girl didn’t answer. She held her hand against her mouth. Her eyes were red. She looked both angry and helpless. Some blood trickled from her lip.

“Hey, man,” said Carson, uneasy. “I can’t go for this. Some other time,” and he made to leave.

“Whoa, brother man,” pleaded Mickey, smiling awkwardly. “You don’t understand, man. It ain’t nothin’. She’ll be quiet. She’s young. She don’t know. See. Look at her.”

Carson looked at the girl. She had moved to the head of the bed. Her knees were drawn up to her chest. She held her hand against her mouth. Her face was a pale, oval beacon, the filament of which was an amorphic stew of tainted proteins, amino acids – garbled transmissions of tangled genetic code, wispy, mercenary, fouled and compromised, descended from generations upon generations of half starts, secret crimes, conspiracies of cultures, tribes and nations; the alliances, wars and betrayals between church and state; imperialist arrogance, racial impunity, moneyed sanctions, puny ambitions, sexless marriages, class appropriations, patricides, fratricides, fickle fashions, the gluttonous halls of sumptuous vomitoriums, rampant and indiscriminately spewing penises, covetous and conniving wombs, base greed and a modicum of half-hearted good intentions. Here was their result. The unnerving thing was that she looked so familiar to Carson. He found the girl pitiable, revolting, and seductive. He was confused about which of these he had to choose to define her. He wanted to condemn, save and fuck her all at the same time. Her eyes were hollow holes in which fiery embers of hate were encrypted. Her knotted long brown hair cradled her cheeks like hoary hands of a predator pressing upon the flesh of newborn piglet, rosy and supple. Beneath her tears he saw that she smiled through her suffering, just like prey as it surrenders to the beast that’s pursued it across a famished plain, wearing it down from the torrid chase. It was a smile hinting at her own deep comprehension of the law – that a spirit attains true certainty in death; that by its extinction it will contribute to the great chain of being, the necessary sacrifice designed for the survival of another, for the continuation of life. Every creature had a time and a place to exercise both roles. This girl was both the unwitting and willing designer of her experience. Why she was doing it now, and for whom, was opaque. Carson didn’t know for whom, to whom, she would offer herself like a mendicant on a cross, a supplicant expiating her crimes for shame, forgiveness or love. Her father in Encino? Was it this Neanderthal Mickey? Why he? What impregnable, imperceptible pact had been enjoined by these two? And what was he doing there? What had Carson agreed to do for them, for himself, that transcended his own conscious knowledge, laying hidden in past or future dreams, or selected as randomly as a shot fired after spinning a chamber holding only one bullet?

The girl wiped her mouth on the sleeve of her T-shirt. She left a streak of red on it, then reached to the nightstand next to the bed for a cigarette and lit it. She stared at Mickey with insolent, watery eyes. Whatever sorrow she had momentarily experienced, whether authentic or manufactured for her by Carson, had quickly transited, leaving her face a composition of indignant boredom, like the scowl of an upbraided school girl, or the look Carson’s wife or daughter used to give him, a look that told him they would shut up for now but they would bide their time, and sooner or later they would have their revenge. It was an expression that made him uneasy with the momentary concession or advantage he may have just won at their expense. Long after he had gone on to be occupied with new matters, the women he had known would not forget their defeats. Their vengefulness was more dangerous than a man’s. A man would make it known, sooner rather than later, that the actions he was taking were clearly in retaliation for a stated injury. A woman was different. She could wait longer than a man to savor the moment of her vindication. And when the time came, she felt herself to be under no compunction to announce the reason for her cruel counterattack. She was satisfied solely in the act of inflicting pain. She cared nothing for whether her intended victim knew the source of her grievance, the incidents and occasions of which he had largely forgotten.

“See,” said Mickey. “She understands. Sometimes they gotta be coaxed. Know what I’m saying, my man? Don’t worry about it. She ain’t hurt. Don’t let them tears fool ya’. It’s for effect. I gotta put my foot down, every now and again. I treat her good. She knows it. She depends on me. If it wasn’t for me, they’d eat her up down here. Know what I’m sayin’?”

“Let’s get this over with,” said Carson. “I’ve gotta see a man about a horse.”

Mickey laughed. He relaxed again. He saw Carson wasn’t going to abandon him.

“Very funny,” he said to Carson. “You come to the right place. But seein’ how you don’t ride, I can’t help you with none of that. I thought you was a hitter when I first seen you. You know, a white-collar skin prick. They roll through here all the time, but never on foot like you. They glide by slow in their BMW’s, with the tinted windows rolled up and the doors locked, until they make contact with a touter. Then you see nothin’ but their soft white hands poppin’ out the cracks long enough for a quick exchange. I wonder what those manicured pussies would do’f they had to hustle like the rest of us. Boostin’ shit from Macy’s and makin’ the next sequel to Halloween ain’t exactly the same thing, though they’re sure as hell related. When the bomb drops those fancy hundred-dollar-haircut dudes are gonna be one bunch of sick motherfuckers. They’ll be forced to swipe cases of prosciutto from the Culver City Meat truck so they can keep up their habits. But I shoulda figured you was up to somethin’ else. Either that or you got separated from your walking tour of landmark L. A.”

“Like I said, I’m lookin’ for a friend.”

Carson was using the word loosely. It was the way he liked to think of Giambone, before Giambone dropped out of society for good – society being that place where one tries to live by following the rules, where a man cares about the generally accepted measures of what is thought to be a functioning approximation of a human being. Carson considered himself to be that kind of man, one who not only takes what’s due him, but contributes to the welfare of the group. He was no model citizen, but neither was he a social bloodsucker. Giambone made the decision to become a leech, to abandon the mainstream and cast his lot with the people who run skid row missions and throw himself upon the mercy of the do-gooders, the righteous folks. Before all of that, Carson was prepared to say that he and Giambone were friends. But it was an association that had come to exist mostly out of custom, from a long habit, one that had outlived many of its early pleasures.

“Ah, yes. Friendship. A man can’t live without friends,” said Mickey with sarcasm. He sat down at the small table. He pulled out a package of Drum tobacco and rolling papers. He rolled a cigarette and lit it.

“Care for one,” he asked Carson, motioning with the tobacco packet.

“No, thanks. I don’t smoke.”

“Course not. Not healthy. I understand.”

Mickey paused to exhale. Carson watched him. He wondered how long he had to endure this bottom feeder. What kind of game was he playing? The sight of his leather, skeletal face and soft flabby nose provoked in Carson a depth of loathing that he hadn’t experienced since he was a child, when he had been forced to accompany his mother on visits to the state mental institution in Camarillo, where she did community service for her church. Mickey’s bald cranium, peppered with sun spots and sporadic blue tributaries of broken capillaries, rose above his club-shaped forehead and the greasy black tonsure of his mullet haircut, just like the soft membrane of a dinosaur egg sprouting fur. He seemed to be toying with Carson, fucking with him, feeling emboldened by the obvious – that Carson wasn’t privy to the special knowledge of his downtown world, his heroin sense of the secrets revealed only to true initiates. It gave the junkie leverage, a certain power over Carson in their transaction. Carson wasn’t threatened by this, but he felt uncomfortable having to listen to Mickey’s bullshit until the junkie decided it was time to give up the information Carson needed.

“You see,” Mickey went on, “I don’t believe in friendship. That’s somethin’ cooked up by Hallmark and AT&T. There ain’t nothin’ about friendship in the Constitution. It says life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Where the fuck does it say a goddamned thing about friends? There ain’t nobody out there who calls himself your fuckin’ friend that don’t want somethin’ that you got and he don’t. Anybody tells you different is either a lyin’ sack o’ shit or got his head wedged so far up his ass he’s trippin’ on the fumes. And don’t tell me about religion. Where the fuck do it say ‘Thou Shalt Be a Fucking Friend?”

The girl on the bed laughed out loud. Mickey nodded his head at her as though he appreciated her good sense in agreeing with his wisdom on the subject.

“That’s right,” he went on. “Nothin’ in the Ten Commandments about fuckin’ friends. Now, okay, Jesus said ‘love your neighbor as yourself.’ Well, first of all, who the fuck was Jesus anyway? Nothin’ but a P.R. phenomenon. Ain’t nobody who can prove he was even real. Even if he was. Love your neighbor as yourself. Okay. Well I love myself when I’m happy. After the pursuit part, when I’ve got it. And I’m happy when, A: I’m noddin’ on some kick ass black tape, or B: when I got a pocket full of dead P’s. Now if I don’t have them things and my neighbor does, the one I’m supposed to love, well it just ain’t right that he’s happy and I’m not. So if I have to love him like myself, the only way I can do that is to get some of his money and his powder, then I’ll be happy. Then I’ll love myself again and be in a position to love him, too. See what I’m sayin’? That’s how it works. He’s only my friend when we both have what we want.”

“I don’t know about any of that shit,” answered Carson.

He didn’t feel like getting into a debate. In conversation he usually stuck to what was most expedient. He didn’t place much value on the words that came out of his mouth or the mouths of others, especially when his situation was desperate. He didn’t know what he believed at the moment, other than what was necessary. Language for him was just one more tool to manipulate reality, like a man in a poker game holding a pair of deuces and betting like he’s got a full house.

“Think about it, my friend.” Mickey paused and laughed, exhaling staccato bursts of smoke from his lungs. “You don’t have friends for no reason.”

“I bet FBI man’s got no friends, do you, J. Edgar,” cracked the girl.

She had recovered from Mickey’s swift form of justice. Carson could see she was a resilient recidivist. She flicked the ash from her cigarette on the floor and leered at Carson, mocking him. He noticed that her jeans were faded, except for a dark navy blue spot surrounding the area covering her pussy. With her cigarette between her fingers, she rested her hand on one drawn-up knee, which she rocked in a soft motion, in and out, alternately concealing and revealing the dark patch between her thighs. She smiled like she wanted to hurt him. Carson tried not to look at the blue stain. He thought she might be unclean, infected. Even so, he still felt aroused by the thought of her genitals pressed against the fabric of her jeans.

Mickey broke in.

“He’s got two new friends today, baby cakes, whether he wants to admit it or not. And we’re fuckin’ glad to make his acquaintance.”

“The pleasure’s all mine, I’m sure,” replied Carson.

“And we can’t forget the reason our guest is here, aside from his humanitarian impulse to do good. He does have a friend after all. That dago philosopher, Carpalone, or whatever the fuck his name is. You know who I’m talkin’ bout, baby?”

“No.”

“What ya mean ‘No’? Course you do. Everybody seen that asshole around down here. We just saw him together the other day. He’s the one who cleans up for Bailey, when he’s not too shit-faced to push a broom. You know who I’m talkin’ about.”

“I’m not sure who the hell he is. What the fuck’s the difference? Jesus. What the fuck do I care anyway? What the fuck’s he got to do with you or me?”

Mickey ignored her invective and turned toward Carson.

“She knows who the fuck he is, stupid bitch. You get a drink in him and you can’t shut him up. I spent some time with him when he first came around. Don’t know what he’s doin’ here in the first place. Must’ve run through all the rehab money his family had. You can tell. He ain’t like most of the dry rot shittin’ on the streets on Skid Row. You can tell he came from somethin’ better than all this. It’s the way he talks, how he talks. You can tell he’s had some education, college or whatever. But the bottle don’t care what you is – what color you are, or how much money you had. You drink to stay alive. Then, sooner or later, you wash up here. This is the place that welcomes you when you wore out your welcome everywhere else. This place’ll take you in when your own mother won’t spit on you even if you was on fire. We’ll give you a big welcome, then kill you like all the folks you knew should have before you got here and saved the rest of us the goddamned trouble. This is the place where pity holds its nose, then shows you its ass in high-tail retreat.”

“I don’t know,” said Carson. “Seems to me you got a lot of people down here wantin’ to help – you know, soup kitchens, shelters and all that. I think if someone was trying to get help, they could.”

“Don’t fuckin’ make me laugh, dude.”

A big smile spread across Mickey’s bony face, as though he’d just heard a good joke, or he was amazed because he thought he’d seen it all by now. But here was someone come along who made him realize that the things he took for granted, the things that were most obvious in life were, to other people, a source of illusion. They saw a waterfall where he saw an open sewer.

“Tell him, baby,” he said to the girl. “Tell him ‘bout gettin’ help.”

“You tell him. What the fuck do I care? Fuck him. Let him find out himself. He’s a dick, ain’t he? A private fuckin’ dick.”

She blew air out between her teeth to show her disgust and exasperation with their guest. She stamped out one cigarette and lit another. One of her bare feet tapped the air in quick time, like she was in a hurry. Carson waited for Mickey to hit her. There was a part of him that wanted the junkie to hit her. Mickey ignored her. He was enjoying himself, instructing the neophyte Carson on the way it is. Carson thought to himself that, in a strange way, if it weren’t for his host’s debilitating attraction to the dream state offered by heroin, Mickey would have made a fairly engaging schoolmaster. He had an irrepressible, if vulgar, didactic strain, wound up with a bitterness that ideally suited him to the teaching profession.

“These assholes,” Mickey resumed, “that minister to us broken wheels and crippled meat are nothing but opportunists. You hear me?”

His voice grew louder. He no longer seemed amused by the thoughts he was entertaining. He became increasingly furious.

“The only thing they care about is making progress, either in the organizations they work in, or in the divine meritocracy that exists in the fantasy world they’ve established in their minds, some Shangri La where their god looks just the way they want him to and they are the star players on the holy hockey team for souls. It’s all vanity, I tell you. There’s not a one authentic bastard in the whole lot of ‘em. How could there be? They’re fuckin’ human beings, like the rest of us. Altruism, you say? What a load of crap. When was the last time you met a saint? It’s nothing but a scheme. All of it. The largest scam ever perpetrated in the history of mankind. And it’s so fuckin’ basic, man. It’s a huge confidence racket. Even the ones who run it are taken in by their own hype. That’s how fuckin’ insidious it is, my friend. None of those blessed minions of the great world religions, neither the grunts on the front lines, or the purple-robed, silk-knickered fairies in the cathedral counting houses, none of ‘em cares about nothin’ other than how’s he doin’. How’s he progressin’. How many points has he racked up on the big snooker line in the fuckin’ sky. Every time he hands out a free lunch, each time he says ‘God bless you,’ with every fuckin’ ‘amen’ and ‘I forgive you’ and ‘I’ll pray for your damned soul,’ he’s calculating the effect, the net result, the net profit of his actions, hoping that his status in this life or the next is improved. Sound familiar? You bet it fuckin’ does. He’s doing nothin’ but survivin’, just like you and me, brother. No different. And I’m glad we got these fuckin’ religious assholes. Let ‘em kill one another to see who’s gonna dominate who; to see who’s gonna win the most souls, the most contributions, who can build the biggest churches, who can influence the most politicians, who can control the world to their best advantage. I say god fuckin’ bless ‘em, because, as much as I’m tired of their rancid soup and stale bread, I have to admit, it keeps my scrawny ass in the game when I’m hungry. Why the hell do I give a fuck if they’re ‘authentic’ or not, as long as they give me my little scrap of food? I’ll take food, or whatever else they’re handin’ out free, just as quick from a hypocrite as from the mother of God. Makes no difference to me. Quicker from a hypocrite. Least I have no hesitation about kickin’ him in the balls if he tries any of that holier than thou crap, or tries to give me what, really, he’s stolen from somebody else, duped them out of their money by tryin’ to sell ‘em empty promises.”

“So what does Giambone have to do with all this,” asked Carson. He saw an opening for obtaining information from Mickey while the junkie was riffing on religion. Obviously the man was a product of a Catholic upbringing. He doubted anything else could account for his virulent apostasy. Giambone was a Catholic, too. Italian Catholic. Next to the Irish, the worst kind. Both peoples had an incurable need to fetishize their devotional impulses. With rare exceptions, the collective psyches of each colonized race were so intractably bound to superstition and prejudice that Carson felt sure their faculties for rational thought and action had been inexorably hobbled since ancient times. 

“Giambone? The philosopher,” asked Mickey.

“Yeah. Is he part of this racket you’re talkin’ about?”

“How the fuck do I know? He probably don’t know hisself. It’s two kinds of sickness. There’s the one that afflicts people who seem normal and there’s the one that afflicts the lunatics. The normal ones, the ones that follow the rules, that hold down jobs and pay taxes and vote and own homes, all the things that look like everything is okay on the outside, those sons of bitches think they’re doing the Lord’s work when they come down here once a week from the Westside and do their community service. In reality, the only service they’re doing is to their own egos. The other ones, ones like your friend, the ones who have flipped big time, they really do think they’re the messiah, or the chosen one, or whatever. Know what I’m sayin’? They’re more real than the soccer moms who feel good about themselves because they hand out bag lunches to people like me once a week. Assholes like your Giambone? They’re just as fucked up, but less dangerous. Even though they spout the same shit as the soccer moms, every one knows they’re crazy, so they stay away. The soccer moms fool themselves and the gullible with all their earnest bullshit. That’s how they win converts and that’s how the same shit keeps bubblin’ up, generation after generation, and that’s why we’re all perpetually doomed, man. Until we all fuckin’ wise up for good, it’s nothin but bloodshed and mayhem. Those soccer moms from Brentwood: nothin’ but cold-blooded killers. And the pathetic, the tragic thing about it is, they don’t know it. They don’t have a fuckin’ clue. With all their money, all their education, all their worldly sophistication, they’re nothin more than serial killers in a fuckin’ pair of Gucci shoes. Fuck ‘em. Just give me my fuckin’ bag lunch, Bitch! Go ahead and tear at each other’s perfumed ass. It’s what makes life interesting. Don’t you think so?”

The girl began stirring restlessly on the bed. She twitched and scratched herself, looking bored and impatient.

“It’s time, daddy, and I’m hungry. Can we chill on this bullshit and get to it already?”

“Gotta go through the formalities, sugar. Can’t be rude to our guest.”

The smoke was bothering Carson.

“Can we get some air in here? Some light.”

“Sorry, chief. This is the inner sanctum. Can’t get neither. This is the chill chamber. No outside interference in here. What’s out there stays out and never do the two worlds collide. Take my word for it. Don’t worry. We’ll have you outta here in no time. Sugar, put out the smoke and let our guest breathe. Let’s get ready here now.”

Outside the room the hallway echoed with loud, angry voices, a man and a woman’s, shouting in Spanish. A crash of an aluminum container on the hard floor reverberated against the cinder block walls, followed by more shouting and the slamming of a door. Only the man’s voice was heard after that, entreating the woman through the barricaded door, knocking repeatedly, and pleading, “Lupe, por favor. Lupe.”

“Fuckin’ Mexicans,” grumbled Mickey as he took a small cellophane package from a coffee can on the table. “I don’t know how those fuckin’ beaners can afford to stay here.”

“It’s cuz she’s fucking the night clerk,” said the girl. “Right next to her shrine to the Virgin of Guadalupe. I saw him leaving her room one night late when I was walking from the bathroom. I don’t know how she can stomach doin’ that fucker. He’s nasty.”

“Yeah, well, she ain’t no prize herself, unless you like ‘em the size of a state fair Jersey milker. You like big women, dude?”

“Depends,” said Carson.

Mickey laughed. “I hear ya. Depends on how many beers you had, right?”

“Depends on how old they are, don’t it, J. Edgar,” said the girl, taunting Carson. “I bet you like ‘em young, don’t ya?”

She stopped rocking her leg and kept her crotch openly displayed for Carson. He glanced at the blue spot that hadn’t been washed out.

Mickey carefully finished unwrapping the cellophane bag. He laid it in the center of the table and took pains to smooth out the edges of the plastic that surrounded a thimble size amount of powder. The girl turned her gaze from Carson and became fully concentrated on Mickey’s preparations.

“That’s not that shit you got from Low Boy, is it,” she asked him.

“What the fuck’s the matter with you anyway? Huh? We went through this already. It’s the gigabyte from Mack Daddy. Same shit, alright? How many times I got to tell you? Just shut up and get ready. This is at least point o seven, o eight. From my man.”

He licked his baby finger and carefully blotted it on a couple grains of the powder, then brought it to his mouth and pressed it on his tongue. He nodded his head.

“This is lac low, baby. Don’t be talkin’ that Low Boy nonsense.”

Carson studied Mickey as he went about his work, scooping a tiny plastic spoonful from the little heap of white powder and placing it in a bottle cap cooker. His devotion to detail was Jesuitical; his concentration methodical, almost profound. In a careful, ritualized manner, he prepared his sacrament of transformation. Before, Carson saw a man ravaged and made mean from the living incarceration of his base condition; from the raw and chafing subsistence on streets with panoramic views of decay. Now he witnessed a person undertaken with passionate industry, with the zeal necessary to go on living, artfully using his entire capacity to flourish in his own way with calculated, practiced, even stately motion.  His single-mindedness reminded Carson of a hungry dog tearing into a piece of meat that had been bloodily contested and torn from the jaws of other dogs equally starved.

Where Mickey demonstrated the clean and arching line of intense purpose, in which no energy was wasted in obtaining his end, his survival, the girl betrayed a subtle, nervous fear. There was a fundamental distraction and timorous core of uncertainty that leeched through her mask of spleen. She was too young to have developed the illusion of having mastery over her own life. Accompanying this glimpse of a nature still unformed, Carson saw a childlike impatience for satiety from all the things that confer pleasure; the tricks her mind played to dull the sensation of helplessness and the debilitating effect of her basic impotence. Her fear forced her to take refuge in her own degradation, toward dependence upon more powerful personalities. There was in her hollow eyes the voiceless shame of her indentured nature, a humiliation so far unrelieved by the succor of some notion of grace or redemption, or any forestalled yet promised reward. Her reward was the great forgetfulness she urgently craved. The self that she knew, the self that was and had always been a burden, a sore, was to be, with her mentor’s aid, quickly and quietly obliterated in a brilliant effulgence of colorful stars, wrapping her up like a sparkling new embryo in a warm cobalt night, swaddling her with the tactile heat of its dark properties. For a brief moment, one that had the quality of an eternity, the idea of her self would be liberated, until it became great and illimitable, eloquent but speechless, absorbing worlds and space like small tablets of transcendence, until she was at the center, enlarged, enormous in her containment of truths, vouchsafed a pre-eminence in the universe, content in her regal aloneness, independent and free from reliance upon others’ ideas of who she was, wholly separate, glittering, unmoored from the tethers of associations, from human communities. She alone would be uniquely infallible, untouchable, in a soft realm where she might contemplate her magnificence. And this was enough. Pure self-regard was enough. The eyes of others – condemning, judging, appraising – all were erased. She was supreme. Everything was possible and nothing more need be done. Pain ceased to exist. In its place, descending like a tongue of fire, came a giddy, soaring, rushing omnipotence that required nothing but its own contemplation.

Carson watched the girl as Mickey went about his preparations. She fidgeted on the bed. She bit her nails. She coiled her hair as though it were strands of Moroccan worry beads. With one foot she scratched the other, then beat a furious time with it in the air. Her tongue moved around the outside of her lips as though there was a blemish there she was attempting to remove. Her eyes caromed around their sockets in response to all of Mickey’s movements at the table. Carson saw now that she was quite unstable. She was possessed of all the nervous tics that accompany an addict’s craving for her dope. He wondered if Mickey had been the one to accomplish this; his way to keep her dependent on him. At one point the girl left off nibbling at her fingernails and put her thumb in her mouth, sucking it like a teething infant. This calmed her slightly except for the furious beating of her foot, which never stopped its movement. It was like this – unguarded and unselfconscious, when she had most relinquished her acerbic persona – that Carson found the girl most alluring and familiar. She exhibited a helpless childlike quality that provoked his desire to console her like a father and penetrate her like a transgressive beast.

Mickey was nearly ready. He stood up from his chair and walked to the side of the bed where the girl sat. Next to the bed was a box. Out of it he took a bottle of hydrogen peroxide and some cotton balls. He went back to the table and sat down. He looked at Carson and smiled.

“Okay, my man; listen up. This is a delicate operation, so you gotta pay close attention and not fuck it up. I’ll draw the junk into the syringe myself and hand it off to you. There’s not a lot to it. Just listen to what I say.”

He picked up the empty syringe and waved it in the air, so Carson could see it.

“When I give it to you, you gotta maintain pressure on the plunger here. Not much. Just enough so the plunger don’t move. When you hit the vein, you let up a little bit until you see blood come into the tube and cloud it up red some. Then, you slowly squeeze down on the plunger. But not all at once. A little bit at a time, then stop, then a little more, until you hit me up with about two thirds. Then, with your finger on the plunger so it don’t move, pull the needle out of the rope and hand it over to my girl here. She’ll take care of the rest.”

“Two thirds,” complained the girl. “You’re gonna save me half, Mickey. What’s up with that? Huh?”

“This is rock hard shit, woman. I don’ wanna hear none of your crap. This is to get us right now. You’ll get more later, if you behave.”

“Jesus fuckin’ Christ, Mickey. I need more than that.”

“You’ll get as much as I say you do, no more. I’m workin’ for two here and you’ll get your piece. Who’s keepin’ your ass off the street? You got nothin’ to say. Now shut the fuck up or you won’t get none. Get ready. Find that tape and take off your goddamned top, so we can get this monkey swingin’.”

She cursed him and flung open the drawer of the nightstand. Inside was an audiotape, which she put into a cassette player.

“Now, dude,” said Mickey, beginning to laugh, “don’t wig out ‘bout how we get this done. It’s the only way I can do it anymore. Just remember what I said and everything will be fine. You may even enjoy it.”

“I wanna know where I can find Giambone,” said Carson. “What the hell good are you once I run that shit in you?”

“No worry man. I’ll nod a bit, but after a few minutes I’ll come around. I’ll tell you then. Fair enough?”

Carson shook his head. It felt all wrong. The room, Mickey and the girl; everything was oppressive and sinister. He’d prick the fucker with his goddamned needle. Then, in a couple of minutes, he’d have something to go on. Otherwise he was back to nothing. Back to the street and empty pockets.

Mickey stood up and unbuckled his belt. He undid his zipper and let his pants fall to his ankles. Then he lowered his underwear, white boxers with tiny red hearts. He had a small penis and a thick crop of hair, like a gerbil poking its head from an earthy mass of peat roots. He shook it with his fingers and sat back down.

“What the fuck is going on, man,” asked Carson, getting angry.

“Look it, dude,” said Mickey, slightly embarrassed, “don’t wig out on me. I know it looks fucked up, but it’s all I got left anymore. I ain’t fuckin’ queer, if that’s what yer thinkin’.”

The girl laughed.

“Don’t get all queasy and shit,” Mickey told him. “You don’t gotta do nothin’ ‘cept jab and squeeze the trigger. Don’t gotta hold it or nothin’. That’s what I got my little sweetheart here for. That’s her job.”

“Let her fuckin’ do it, man. What the hell you need me for? What the fuck is this?”

“She can’t do two jobs at once, dude. I can’t see what the fuck I’m doin. I can’t get at it. That’s where you come in. It ain’t no big deal.”

 “Let’s get this fuckin’ thing over,” Carson said. “Then you tell me where I can find Giambone. If you don’t, I’ll hammer your fuckin’ face.”

“Cool, cool. No problemo, dude. Via con Dio, hermano.”

Mickey turned to his works on the table. He wetted a cotton ball with rubbing alcohol and used it to clean the needle. He unscrewed an eyedropper and squeezed a little water into the cooker. He lit a candle and put the cooker cap on top of a makeshift tripod, letting the mixture heat briefly before snuffing the candlewick with his fingers.

“Anytime you’re ready, baby,” he said to the girl.

She got up from the bed, shot Carson a glance that said ‘what the fuck are you lookin’ at’, and pressed the play button on the portable tape player. An industrial techno beat thumped from the two tiny speakers, a repetitious, sensual bass line. The girl lit a cigarette, took several long hits from it, and blew the smoke at Carson. Slowly she rocked from side to side. With some exaggeration in the motion of her hips, she moved past Carson toward Mickey. She stood facing him and made awkward shimmying movements with her shoulders.

Carson watched Mickey take a rubber tourniquet from the table and tie it around his scrotum.

“Take off your top, baby, so I can see those stand-up little titties,” Mickey told the girl in a voice that almost sounded endearing.

Saying nothing, she snuffed out her cigarette and removed her shirt. She put both hands in her back pockets and shook her head, letting her hair whip around before it settled again straight down her back. Carson watched. The girl was slight. She had a narrow, slim form. Her skin was pale and tight. Her jeans hung loosely on her slender hips. Carson found her seductive. Despite her life, she had a body in full flower.

There was not much enthusiasm in her dance for Mickey. She looked at the ceiling most of the time. Mickey made sure the tourniquet was tight and fondled himself, occasionally looking at the girl. Then he carefully drew the warm liquid from the cooker into the syringe.

The girl turned and faced Carson, as though she needed someone watching her, anyone, if not Mickey. Her own eyes were closed, out of some residue of modesty, thought Carson. With her face tilted partially toward the ceiling and her hands remaining in her back pockets, she rocked her head softly to the strong beat, while letting her hips move in a soft circle, occasionally throwing her pelvis forward in quick jabs in Carson’s direction. Her small breasts vibrated slightly to these little thrusts. They were delicate specimens of equal size, hardly large enough to fill a boy’s hand. The area surrounding her nipples was dark and swollen, as though the breasts themselves had not quite grown enough to overtake the dusky ovals in reaching their natural proportion. And at the center of each tit was a nipple that, again, was enlarged beyond normal symmetry and, being so, had the effect of drawing attention to its size, as if it were a strangely large and moist raisin at the summit of a tantalizing hot fudge sundae. Carson loved her tits. They were perfect. He liked them small enough to be able to take most of one in his mouth. Small enough to give him trouble if he were attempting to draw a noose around it, for heightened emphasis. His wife Beth had lost hers to cancer, and since then Carson had become obsessed with a finding a pair to replace them in his affection, sampling as many as he could. He wanted to taste this girl’s twin orbs. Then he wanted to defile her; to use her as nothing but a cunt for his own indulgence. The thought of having complete sexual mastery over another human being exhilarated Carson. He fabricated the pictures in his mind and they offered him further incitement to relax into a state of lawless animal gluttony. But the mind’s frenzy, its relinquishment of control, this unrestrained fantasy of the sexual plunder of cocks and cunts, mouths and assholes, never lasted long. It had always been accompanied by a subsequent mental detachment, by which he reflexively observed his body’s capacity to seduce its master into permitting its satiety, and he couldn’t help but marvel and recoil at the close proximity of his base nature to mundane consciousness, with its observance and adherence to custom and propriety. Never far behind this urge to devour a female as so much warm meat, a wet palliative to slake a constant thirst, was his comprehension of the act’s social depravity, and the fear that, were he to give it license over a prolonged period of time, it would ultimately issue in violence and someone’s death, and even to his own gradual physical wasting from an eviscerated moral capacity or will. It was the fear of pain that checked him more than anything else. It was a superstition, he thought. As far as he could tell, it had nothing to do with an afterlife in any religious sense. It was more a sense that the world had a way of correcting, as a compass is corrected, or an orbit, bodies that exceeded a moderate course. What he didn’t understand, what he had been unable to determine, was whether this fear of going too far was a result of the way he had been raised, the way he had been socialized, or that it was really the property of a moral consciousness that operated in the world, through men, but outside their direct intervention. He didn’t know who controlled it, or why some were more cognizant of it than others. Or why some people even went so far as to allow themselves to be used, to be degraded by others, when it was clear that they didn’t have to; that they had something like a choice. Like this girl. All her tough talk and petulance aside, Carson didn’t really believe that she was an involuntary prisoner of Mickey. Despite her expressed contempt for Carson, too, he was sure that if Mickey weren’t around, he, Carson, could also dominate the girl without too much resistance. He believed she wanted this from him. Whether it was “good” for her or not, was something she was unable or not ready to know, or she saw her subjugation as the only means to obtain what she thought was in her best interest. There were plenty of people like this girl, Carson believed, who coaxed others to act upon them in extreme ways, just as he was tempted right now to possess her like a fuck doll.

            The girl removed her hands from her back pockets. She opened her eyes and looked directly at Carson. Her face wore no expression, neither of kindness nor disdain, nor even fear. It was as though whatever animating force it is that enlivens and resides in human eyes was absent. She let her hands rest on her rocking hips for a moment, then lowered them to her crotch. She unfastened the first two buttons at the top of her jeans. She bent over, leaning toward Carson and, for the first time, smiled at him without rancor. She brought the fingers of both hands up to her nipples, plucking them several times before rising up again and swiveling on the balls of her feet to face Mickey.

            “That’s right, baby,” he said, “shake that ass. Ain’t she hot?”

He used one hand to stroke his genitals. He held the other aloft with the loaded syringe.

“If it wasn’t for her,” he said to Carson, “I don’t know what I’d do. Probably have to get me one of those toothless old bitches down on Main. Fuck,” he said, shaking his head. “But you know what they say about no teeth.”

Mickey broke up laughing at his own joke. He saw that Carson didn’t share his amusement.

            “Okay, man,” he started to say, then nudged the girl to the side with his foot.

“Get out of the way for a second, so I can see our guest, dammit. And start working on my dick now.”

            The girl knelt down at the side of Mickey’s chair without a word. She began stroking his cock, not once taking her eyes off the syringe full of smack that he held in his hand.

            “Remember, what I said now, dude. Keep a little pressure on the plunger, not too much, just so she don’t move. And you don’t have to stab the fuck out of me. Nice and gentle on the way in; a little pin prick. Then let up some until you see the chamber cloud up with a little blood. Then down on the boot a little at a time. Got it?”

            “I got it,” said Carson.

            “Come over here and get it then.”

            Carson got up and took the syringe out of Mickey’s hand, being careful to keep pressure on the plunger. Like a cat about to be fed, the girl watched Carson take the syringe. Carson returned to his chair and sat down gripping the needle, wishing he could unload it and get out of the El Rio Hotel, leaving all its inhabitants damned to hell. But Mickey wasn’t ready. He wasn’t hard. Carson had to watch the scumbag get hard.

            “Suck it, baby,” the addict told the girl as he rolled her nipple between his thumb and forefinger like it was a ball of wax.

“Hope you’re not offended by oral sex,” he said to Carson. “You’re not a Baptist or nothin’ are you,” he added, laughing.

            “I’m sure you wouldn’t care if I was your own mother right now, would you,” Carson answered him.

            “My mother,” Mickey said, “was an outstanding cocksucker from way back. Why, if she was here right now, I’d let you sample her myself.”

            “You’re a sick shit.”

            “That’s right, dude. You’re lookin’ at one fucked up son of a bitch. Livin’ proof of this country’s failure to control people’s behavior. You ought to be in awe.”

            “I am. I’m amazed that a sick fuck like you is not dead.”

            “Oh, but I am, brother, I am. I’m as dead as they come. What you’re holdin’ there is my life support machine; my daily bread. Fuck! What’d I tell you about them teeth, baby? Goddammit. That ain’t some fuckin’ Dodger Dog.”

He yanked the girl’s hair, pulling her mouth away from his cock. She seemed unperturbed. Her lips were moist with her own saliva. She kept her eyes trained on the syringe in Carson’s hand.

            “Now, get back on there, baby, and do it right.”

            The girl obeyed him without comment. Mickey closed his eyes. He tightened the tourniquet, then clutched both sides of the girl’s head, using it, thought Carson, like a large soft melon carved out for his greedy pleasure. The girl crossed her hands behind her back, as though they were bound and she’d lost their use. Her spine was taut and her tits thrust out. She used liberal amounts of saliva on the junkie’s cock. Gradually it began to rise from the thatch of pubic hair and assume a recognizable shape. She let her mouth glide over it easily and deep. It wasn’t large and she took most of it inside. With her lips locked firmly around the swelling flesh, she drew them slowly up the length of it. Carson was aroused by the sucking noise the girl made as she inhaled air through her mouth, just as her lips neared the end of the tapering head. A thwip, thwip sound. In Carson’s mind the dick no longer belonged to Mickey. It was a separate entity, detached from its owner and entirely conjoined to the face and the lips of the young girl, a coupling that embellished the girl’s face, enlarging its character and deepening its features, as though, without the cock in her mouth, she had been incomplete, an inchoate being, a nascent organism that required some augmentation. An erect phallus surrounded by her lips, issuing from her mouth, completed her. The girl’s life was animated by it, brought into new focus for Carson. Her erotic function was what resonated for him. And he knew it was false. Or, if not completely untrue, a distortion, one that kept him rapt and made him weak. He adjusted himself in his chair, and the hand that held the syringe made a short lateral motion through the air. He watched the girl’s eyes follow the motion of the drug. Carson waved the thing slightly in the air. The girl made a noise in her throat, increasing the rate of the sucking motion she made along Mickey’s erection, never letting the syringe out of her sight.

            “Good job, baby,” said Mickey with his eyes still closed. “Almost ready. Don’t stop. Keep suckin’. Yeah. Slap it some.”

            The girl kept her mouth locked over his sex and used one hand to slap the underside, where the main flow of blood was, helping the vein to swell closer to the surface. The underside of Mickey’s penis showed several purplish bruise marks where he’d hit up before. Even so, the bulge of the vein was visible and Carson knew he would have a target for the needle.

Never having taken anything stronger than pot and cocaine, Carson couldn’t see how Mickey would have the discipline to leave off such an exceptional blowjob in favor of a heroin injection in his penis. But he wasn’t there to argue the merits of drugs versus sex, and Mickey appeared to be ready. The junkie opened his eyes and looked at Carson.

“Okay, dude, this is it. Let’s move on it. Just like I told you. Baby,” he said to the girl, “don’t you fuckin’ stop suckin’ now, hear me?”

            “Omkay,” she answered, the dick locked in her mouth and her gaze on the needle Carson held.

            Carson knelt in front of the cock and the face that held it. At such close range, the sex organ, with its black and blue marks, looked like a diseased, wet slug. The pungent smell of old urine from Mickey’s crotch filled Carson’s nose, making him wince. The girl’s face lost all the erotic charge it had given Carson earlier. Now she was ridiculous and pathetic, with spittle at the corners of her mouth, traces of acne on her cheeks, and her eyes open so wide that Carson saw the desperation in them, mixed there with the anticipation of oblivion’s pleasure, as though she were playing Russian roulette for a million dollar pot and owed her creditors a million five.

            Carson pressed the needle against the turgid vein on the underside of Mickey’s erection, but the girl’s mouth lock on the prick wasn’t enough to keep it still.

            “Go on man,” said Mickey. “What are you waitin’ for? Go in.”

            “It won’t stay still,” said Carson. There’s no leverage.”

            “Well, grab hold of it then. Keep it still, for Chrissakes.”

            “Shit. I don’t fuckin’ believe this.”

Cursing himself, Carson reached two fingers behind the base of the erection. He pressed his thumb against the protruding vein, squeezing the muscle between his fingers as if the man’s meat were some toxic pustule. The flesh was slick and wet. Saliva from the girl’s mouth dripped down the sides and collected on the tops of Carson’s fingers.           

            “Don’t stop suckin’, baby,” Mickey said. “Do it, dude. Do it now.”

            Carson gently pressed the needle tip into the vein, with just enough pressure to pierce the skin and bury it in the bloodstream. He let up slightly on the boot and watched the first drops of blood release into the placid chamber like an infusion of ruby colored gas. Then he worked the plunger down in short bursts, pushing the liquid into the man’s cock.

            “Oh, yes,” said Mickey. “Keep it coming. Keep it coming. Oh, yes.”

            The girl’s head jerked slightly. She opened her mouth and let Mickey’s ejaculate spill out. Her lips were glossy and wet. Particles of semen trailed down the side of Mickey’s penis. The girl smiled oddly. Her mouth remained open and her tongue slack and Carson pushed harder on the plunger and forced the full chamber of junk into the man’s vein.

            “Oh, oh,” shouted Mickey.

            “Fuck,” said Carson pulling the needle out. Blood trickled from the wound. It mingled with the semen and saliva on the ends of the man’s pubic hair.

            Mickey’s body jerked forward and his head fell back. He slumped slightly in his chair and his body jerked again.

            “What the fuck did you do,” shouted the girl, alarmed by the convulsions. “You fuck. You fuck.”

            “I don’t know,” said Carson, not certain what happened.

            “Did you unload that whole fuckin’ thing? You fucker! Give me that.”

She took the syringe from Carson and inspected it.

            “That much’ll kill him,” she screamed.

            “I’m sorry.”

He was frightened now, like the girl.

“I don’t know what I did. I couldn’t control it. It all just slipped in.”

            “Mickey,” she said. Her skin turned ashen. Terror pinched her face.

“Mickey. Oh, Jesus. Oh, Jesus. I think his heart’s stopped. He’s got no pulse,” she cried. “Get some ice,” she screamed at Carson. “Get some ice. Hurry. Hurry. You gotta help me. Please. You gotta help me. I need ice, quick.”

            Carson jumped up and went for the door. He was panicked. He had to flee, to escape this horrible girl, the awful dark box of the room, its noxious odors and secretions, its contagion of mean living and broken spirit. He looked back at the girl standing over Mickey, the man’s limp cock now retracted, his pants bunched around his ankles, his body slack and lifeless. The girl had his face in her hands, whispering to him, as though she might have some compassion for her tormentor, as if he were her beloved. She turned her face toward Carson in the doorway.

            “Hurry,” she pleaded like a battlefield casualty. “Hurry.”

Carson ran down the stairwell to the lobby. The clerk was awake now. He looked up from his copy of The Tender Trap and eyed Carson with suspicion. Carson aimed for the door and kept walking. Hurrying past the clerk’s desk, he said, “You gotta an OD on the 5^th floor. Better call an ambulance.”

            He walked out the door onto the street. The sun’s bald heat lunged at him, causing him to stop and fight with his brain through the light, past the sound of accelerating busses and the disjointed voices of the hostile and unhinged. He felt disoriented and sick. He forced himself to walk, to get beyond the El Rio. This was as far into the future he could imagine. His past, his losing streak, trailed him down the sidewalk like a persistent beggar he couldn’t shake. All day he had made no progress.