twenty minutes later she came out as a different girl. Her curls were now cut to shoulder length and honey blonde. I was stunned by the transformation, she looked like Marilyn’s twin sister.
“What, you don’t like?” she said pouting her lips.
“No, you did fine, nobody will recognize you,” I said turning for the car. She caught my shoulder turning me to look at her.
“Do you like it?” she said, a twinkle in her eye.
“I said you did fine, now let’s roll.” After that we drove for a while in silence. She was still putting on the pout. We purred down Highway 80, through the Sierras. We crossed the state line without any problems, no we didn’t have any fruit or vegetables, did I forget to mention we left some corpses in Nevada? Well they didn’t ask, so I didn’t tell.
“Were you one of her lovers?” Cass asked, breaking the silence as we pasted Truckee.
“No, I thought I was her friend.” I kept my eyes on the road. But she saw through me anyway.
“You were in love with her. You still are, I’ve seen the way you look at me. But trust me, I’m not her. She always had the way with men, it was like she could sense who they wanted her to be and that’s who she’d become. In high school she could have had any boy she wanted, but she wound up screwing the gym teacher. He was a burly bear. Yeah, you were her type,” she said with a wry smile. “Big, strong, a bit too old and a lot too dangerous. I’m just surprised you weren’t lovers. Maybe she saw you needed a friend more than sex.” I flinched, forcing my face into neutral. “That’s it, isn’t it?” I didn’t answer. I couldn’t believe Kelly had played me like that. Was I that transparent? As I thought about it I realized I was kin to these sisters. We were all children of the battle zone. Growing up in violence you learned to duck and weave, you learned how to read the signs and become whoever you needed to be to keep from getting whacked. At Donner Pass I pulled into a rest area to make a fresh drink; Cass arched an eyebrow, but I didn’t care. I needed the whiskey to take the edge off the speed I was popping like Altoids, and I needed the speed because it had been too many days without sleep. Crunching a few whites I sipped the drink.
“Boy you have more bad habits than a convent.” She said with a grin.
Pulling out onto the highway I noticed a stone pillar commemorating the Donner Party. They were a true testament to the American spirit, push forward at all costs and eat the dead when necessary. Wasn’t that the American dream in a nutshell.
CHAPTER 9
At midnight we crossed the Golden Gate Bridge, Cass was asleep and I was in a drug driven haze. Somewhere around the Sacramento delta the lines between real and surreal had blurred. Fog swirled dancing in the beams of the headlights. Orange cables and girders dripped and bent at impossible angles, like a giant braided steel spider web it waited to catch low flying dreams. The bridge under our tires beat out a steady tip tapping rhythm counter punching to Iggy’s Afro Idiot CD. Where would I be without music? It had been my one true friend. From my first Stones LP, music always filled the empty void I swam in.
Through the fog and steel, jewels sparkled calling our names. The city lights drawing us in like so many sailors before us. Calling us to crash on their rocks, this city of sirens. San Francisco, with its historic promise of magic and wonder. Built to fleece the gold miners coming and going to the fields up north, back then it had more brothels than churches and more saloons than schools. Destroyed by earthquake and fire it rose from the ashes, bigger and grander than before. In the sixties it called the youth of America to crash on its rocks, what started in peace, love, and LSD ended with heroin and STD’s. In the sixties the kids took to the streets and said fuck you to the government. In the seventies the government took the belt to them, and we’ve been paying the price ever since. War on drugs, war on music content, war on all that was strange and different. The tragic truth is, start a war with your kids and you wind up with drive-bys and Columbine. Just like two plus two equals four, it’s simple old school math.
The Detroit beast cut through the fog, rising up over the near vertical streets, then swooping down past neat rows of meticulously painted Victorians. San Francisco was the closest thing to a European style city we had in the states, but its underbelly wasn’t elegant or quaint, it was pocked with strip clubs and junkies, pimps and sailors, drug dealers and dot com fast money artists. God I loved this city. The new media money may have caused the property values to skyrocket and driven out the artists, but it fed the world I swam in. The more money they got, the more sex, drugs and rock-n-roll they bought. And when the bubble burst my people bought their shit at five cents on the dollar, cash these soulless geeks needed just to keep the party going one more day.
Floating across Market Street I saw a skinny hooker stumbling up the sidewalk. Her blonde wig had slipped sideways showing the stubble of her shaved head, her arm was possessively wrapped around a drunk business guy sporting a goatee and a badly rumpled suit. Watching them, I knew I was home. Like Tom Joad said, “Wherever there’s a young girl selling herself to a fat old man, wherever there’s a bad drug deal going down twisted look for me and I’ll be there.”
I found us a room at a flophouse on O’Farrell, across the street from the Barbary Coast and several other strip clubs. If you were in town on shore leave and wanted to see some tits, O’Farrell was your street. Unlike in LA where strip clubs dot the map and piss off the neighborhood improvement folks, up here they concentrate them all on one strip and turn it into a tourist destination. The night manager was a pimply kid with the bone thin body of a long time friend of Sister Morphine. He barely glanced up when I carried the sleeping Cass into the elevator. I tried to wake her in the car but she was out cold, in the small room I put her into the bed. I knew I should sleep but my heart was still hammering away from the speed. Objects in the room seemed to glow with their own interior light source. Through the cheap woven curtains the neon called to me with its candy land colors and its promise of a good time. Oh yeah, this was a town that would love you long time G.I.
Ten minutes later I was seated in the Barbary Coast, slamming down shots of Jack with a beer back. It was bigger, older, and classier looking than Uncle Manny’s club but the game was just the same. A tall Black girl was strutting her rather wonderful stuff on a large stage. She pressed her breasts together creating a soft brown valley of cleavage. Legs spread, ass stuck out, hips rocking to the beat, she sucked on her finger in mime fellatio. She used her moist fingertip to stiffen her half dollar sized nipples. A brass rail surrounded the footlights at the base of the stage, where businessmen sat waving dollars, hoping to get an up close and personal look at her titties. Change the location, change the player, the moves remain the same.
I sat at the bar, next to an old fisherman and a fat cat who was being hustled by a redhead in a short neon blue lycra dress that might as well have been spray painted onto her plump frame. As the room swam around me, I told myself I was looking for traces of Kelly, the truth was…when I was lost, I returned to what I knew, or some psych bullshit like that. Maybe the speed and booze and death had made me horny, who the fuck knows how this fucked up brain worked, not me that’s for damn sure…. A skinny Asian gal swirled out of the haze, her small naturally proportioned breasts were a real turn on in this sea of monster ta-tas. She aimed toward me, dancing up swaying her hips. From a distance she looked like a lithe wood nymph, all legs and arms and the promise of unbridled sensuality, just the ticket for these weary bones. But the closer she got the younger she got, a baby at best, but her eyes were old and cold. She was the walking wounded, one more victim of the life. Sliding up, she latched herself onto my thigh. “Want a nasty, grab-your-cock-suck-on-my-tits lap dance? Come on, big guy?” Behind her smile lurked those dead eyes. “Don’t worry ‘bout the bouncer,” she leaned in whispering into my ear, I could smell cheap perfume. “I know a dark corner in the lap room, I will rock you so hard, baby, I really want to make you come. I want to feel your cock in my hand, between my legs. Come on, baby.” Her tongue licked my ear to show she really meant it, I guess. I decided this was one lonely ride I didn’t need to take. Handing her a twenty I walked out.
I could feel the speed crashing out of my system as I stumbled across the boulevard. I made it to the room before I puked into the toilet, I washed my face and fell into the bed beside Cass. She stirred once then went back to softly snoring. With neon lights blinking on the ceiling I drifted in the deep warm blackness of sleep.
