nuanced. I need a blunter instrument. Some Ambien, that quick-absorption knockout drop favored by intercontinental flyers? The heavyweight gut punch of Lorazepam? I don’t want to put my feelings in a coma, I want to vanquish them. Blast the vampire with sunlight.
Dexedrine. I took it for a few months after my narcolepsy diagnosis; it’s as potent as street speed but without the lockjaw and much easier to calibrate. In low doses it gave me confidence, pizzazz. At higher doses I was fairly sure that the King James Bible could be improved upon and that I was just the fellow to do it. Then my tolerance grew and I felt nothing. If I damp the high notes with Xanax and Johnny Walker, I’ll be in the flow, the center of the chute, not suppressing my horror at
The bottle overflows with orange tablets and a drawdown of twenty percent shouldn’t be noticeable. If Alex is such a junkie that she counts them, I won’t respect her opinion of me anyway. I gulp three tabs, stash seven in my pocket, and lay in a gorilla dose of Ambien for a sound night’s sleep before my talk. Two Vicodin in case I fall and break something and have to haul myself to the ER.
I douse Mr. Hugs in sterilizing scotch—why am I suddenly certain he has fleas?—and kick him behind the waste can under the sink, then pick up the phone that’s mounted beside the toilet. You never see this placement in private homes but it’s become de rigueur in nice hotels. I associate it with invalids’ cries for help, but I know that’s not why they do it. It’s a puzzle right up there with ice cubes in the urinal.
“Art Krusk’s room, please.” I need time with a man’s man. Someone who’s been slapped around a little.
“Bingham?”
“I’m going downstairs to play some cards.”
“I just went to bed from yesterday,” Art says.
“I’ve got stuff to fix that. I’m at Mount O.”
“That Marlowe kicked my everlasting butt. You didn’t tell me there’d be role playing. Thanks, though. I feel sharp. I’ve got my fangs back. He gave me this first one as a favor to you, but what’s it going to cost when he starts charging me?”
“All depends on how deep you want to go.”
“It’s exciting the way you say that. Things in store for me.”
“You’ve entered the dragon, Art. Blackjack pit in ten. Wear your medallions. Pour on the Vitalis.”
“You have a girl for tonight?”
“A teddy bear.”
“Right. Me, too. That dancer we saw in Reno doing the old guy. I flew her down, but I think she’s gone out freelancing. I guess she’s just part of the general hoo-ha now. She carries a beeper, but I can’t get through. Marlowe says let it go. I’m like his zombie now.”
Art’s a moron, pathetic, but we click. I should slip him a ticket to Schwarzkopf. He’d be wowed and the favor might win me some leeway in my next life. Don’t you think so, Mr. Hugs? He does. Whatever you feel, your squashable feels too.
There is so much they want from us here besides our money. Art disagrees. He thinks their greed is pure. I direct his attention to our dealer’s eyes, her flat black tiddlywink pupils, the scaly lids, then ask Art if he’s ever visited Disneyland, because if he has, then he knows we have before us an animatronic biomorphic puppet whose battery cells—they’re sewn into her scalp, and if we shaved her head we’d find round ridges—have been charging themselves off our body heat for an hour now, robbing us of the strength to leave a game in which we’re losing four of every five hands and try our luck at the flashing-dollar slots arranged in a horseshoe around that red Dodge Viper, which is actually an elaborate chocolate cake formed around earth’s most perfect natural emerald.
“Sorry, can’t keep up with you,” Art says. “Pills haven’t hit yet.”
“Just swing.”
“I need a six, Shawn.”
Art reads all their name tags, not realizing that they’re aliases, although the hometowns engraved on them are accurate. Whoever she is, this latex-sheathed destroyer, she was really built in Troy, New York, where they also make rototillers and small gas engines that I’m told are the best on the market. One hears this everywhere.
“You keep looking around,” Art says, “like you’re expecting someone.”
It must be Alex. I left her a note that was legible but cramped—there was so much information to squeeze in. My allergies, both proven and suspected. My turn-ons and turn-offs. My feelings about war. Oh, that first rush of Dexedrine on an empty stomach.
“Over there, Art. Check it out,” I say. “Hillary Clinton, trying for the Viper. It’s nothing but gods and legends in this place.”
“You know who actually is in town,” Art says. “Thatcher.”
“Former leader of the British Tories? She lives here, Art. This is her home now.”
“For a speech. I met a busboy smoking behind the Hard Rock who says he can get me in for fifty bucks. Might be worth it. I’m kicking it around.”
“You know what I want, Art? My family in one place. A place even farther away than they are now but where they won’t miss me, because they’ll have the ocean. Tomorrow night I’ll have a million miles, and though I’ve assumed I’d want most of them myself, they’re all, as of now, one-way tickets to coastal Ireland for anyone who can prove that they’re my kin.”
“You shouldn’t kid around about blood relatives.”
“For those twenty seconds, just those, I wasn’t kidding. I was daring myself to be a better man. Three hundred thousand, that’s all I’m going to keep.”
