consolidated themselves into one overly gigantic monkey: heroin. It was the apex predator of the whole wild kingdom of drugs. Black tar took over Satan’s body and soul to a degree that put all the previous controlled substances to shame. Pretty soon smack was more important to him than oxygen or food. This was a town of burned bridges for him-no friends left, no doors opened to Satan. Homeless again, he got by on petty thefts and robbery. His habit ate away any scum of humanity that still clung to him. Everything went into the spoon.
Satan ended up delivering heroin to street buyers. In exchange for a hit he worked as a gofer, a mule transporting black tar from pushers to loyal customers. Satan’s monkey was so big that his arms were covered with abscesses and staph infections. And that monkey got greedy, started dipping into the stashes it was carrying. Sometimes Hal Satan didn’t show up at all and shot up every bit of what he was supposed to deliver. Other times he just took the junkie’s money and ran. Any dealer will tell you: Angry customers aren’t good for business. Whenever he hit rock bottom, Satan displayed a rare talent for finding a trap door that led even lower.
Over time he had burned a lot of dealers, and eventually his junkie karma caught up with him. Couple of heavies cornered him in an alley and shot him up with a combination of battery acid and PCP. That foul mix got Satan so delirious he wandered around Mission Street completely naked and smeared with his own excrement. Was totally out of it for over forty-eight hours. Had no idea of where he was. Eventually he crawled into a dumpster for shelter, passed out, and almost died. By the time some kids found him and brought him to the hospital, Satan’s arms were so gangrenous that the doctors had to amputate them.
When he woke up in the hospital, it took him awhile to figure out what had happened. Fresh amputees experience ghost sensations of their lost limbs, feels like they’re still there, so he didn’t immediately notice that his arms were gone. What tipped him off was when he went to scratch himself. Couldn’t get his hand to reach the itch. First he thought they had restrained him. Maybe when the paramedics brought him in, he had been delirious and thrashing around so they’d strapped him to the bed. But when repeated attempts failed to eliminate the itch, Satan finally looked down and saw his gaping absence. His arms were history.
He’d been in the hospital a long time and the with-drawal and junk sickness was already coming on. In a junkie, the hunger for heroin can bring about feats of strength and determination not often seen in mortal men. Less than three hours after regaining consciousness, Satan managed to escape from the hospital.
He ran straight down to Sixteenth and Mission and scored a fat bag of junk on credit and his last few dollars. The dealer looked like a pickpocket as he reached the crumpled bills out of the junkie’s pants, then Hal Satan ran off with the baggie clenched in his teeth.
He made a beeline to a flophouse hotel about a half-block away and looked up Vampire Annie. They called her that because she could find a vein even in a pitch-black night. Knew how to locate the elusive opening in old junkie arms that were nothing but scar tissue. Annie had given more shots than a nurse, and for a little fee she cooked and shot up the disabled junkies and the ones whose hands shook too much to fix themselves.
Vampire Annie did it right there in the gloomy second-floor hallway which stank of dirty underwear. Cooked that tar and shot up Satan in the neck. As soon as the rush came on, the amputee knew she’d given him way too much. That was Annie’s plan. Why bother to share a bag when you could have it all to yourself? All it took was a simple O.D. Who’d miss a broken-down scumbag like Satan? Some of the dealers he’d burned would probably even reward her. Give her free hits of black tar or a line of credit. Besides, Satan had asked for it. He wanted a fix, so she fixed him. Fixed him good.
Euphoria burned out the crippled man’s head like a matchstick. Satan collapsed, and since he had no arms to break his fall, his head smashed into the hard floor with the full force of gravity, breaking his jaw and knocking out three teeth.
Five minutes later he was dead. Vampire Annie had closed and locked her door and was already shooting up the rest of his bag. And it was a big bag. She knew the cops wouldn’t even bother to ask any questions. Things like that happened all the time around there. The junkies had a saying: “If you overdose at Sixteenth and Mission, they don’t call an ambulance, they call a garbage truck.”
Satan’s corpse was as blue as a healthy vein. But he died with a smile on his face. Because Vampire Annie had fixed him. Right in the jugular. He’d gotten that shot he wanted, needed, so bad. It’s the only thing that gives even a dead junkie peace. Satan may have been fixed, but now he was permanently broken.
PART IV.
BRILEY BOY BY ROBERT MAILER ANDERSON
The first time Briley had his nose broken, he just laughed. And then, bracing himself for another surge of blood, dizziness, and memory, he let the skuzzy little bitch hit him again. Why not? He had been dodging his old man’s blows since he was old enough to see them coming, developed a tic as a toddler, twitched at birth, flinched in the womb. “That’s why the scrape doctor missed you,” Pop said, catching the flesh of his cheek, chin, side of neck, or temple. “Stand still and take it like a man!” But Briley never did. Bobbing and weaving. Skit. He had learned to become elusive, especially to himself. He didn’t stand in front of a mirror long enough to see his own reflection. It helped when he was stealing cars, scouting houses for a B &E, scoring drugs. Living with women who had only heard the word
He was happy she was the one. God knows she deserved the honor. He had hit her too many times to count, cuffings and jabs, sometimes straight on, knuckles tingling up the length of his arm into his teeth a metal taste that told him
Her eyes were like tunnels. No train coming. They had been blue once, but the beatings had darkened them as if they really were windows of the soul. And the speed they shot together sunk them into her head like a couple of billiard balls in the side pockets of a worn and tattered table. He didn’t enjoy looking at her. Nobody did. But when they had met, anonymous men at the Market Street Cinema stuffed money into her garter hoping to get a glimpse. She’d purse her lips and lean forward, bump and grind, making them feel special until the meter in her mind ran to zero, then it was onto the next toupee, leering Chinaman, aluminum-siding salesman. Twenty bought a Polaroid with her on your lap spreading herself, c-note for a nuzzle and a handjob, two and she flatbacked on a Murphy bed in her dressing room. Lately, there were no cash transactions.
Briley’s neck snapped back and his head hit the wall a double blow. Just like her to get something for nothing. Vision blurred. But he could see a flash of brass pulling away. She had loaded up for her Briley Boy-something more than a fistful of fingers. Fine. Let her have her fun. He was enjoying himself too. He spit a piece of his tongue onto the carpet in front of her like a cat offering up a gift from the garden. He continued laughing. Nothing was funnier. Not even their wedding.
She had said “I do” so many times nobody doubted her, regardless of the question. Saint Monica’s on
