I figured they were both in the bathroom, which distressed me because I felt like maybe I was going to puke. The smoke, tar, and nicotine weren’t sitting right with the gin. I was a rank amateur when it came to drugs, booze, sex, cigarettes, and rock and roll. This was not to remain the case for much longer, I thought, as I started on the second gin and tonic of my life. I took a big slug. It went down smooth and easy and seemed to have a positive effect on the nausea. “Duke of Earl” began to take me back to my father’s black Cadillac speeding along the Westside Highway near the George Washington Bridge, on our way home from his uncle Otto’s house in Fort Lee, New Jersey. Me riding shotgun with no seat belt, the car reeking of Optimo Cigarillos and the lights of the city having just come up as the summer sun went down.
I wasn’t going to puke after all. I started to feel good and buzzed. Excited at the evening and the city, both open and unwritten before me. I was hoping Lou would emerge from the bathroom and take me to his next destination: another dive bar or some strange apartment where we’d continue our adventures together.
Mona came out of the bathroom, walking right past me and the drink I had waiting for her. Her head and limbs were moving like she was in a heated conversation with someone, but no words or sounds came out of her mouth. I watched her back as she walked out the front door and onto East 61st Street. “Duke of Earl” ended. I drained drink number two.
I think Frank Sinatra came on the juke next but I’m not positive. It could have been someone else. I don’t know much about Sinatra and his music. I started to drink Mona’s cocktail. Halfway into the song and still no sign of Lou. He had been gone long enough that it started to worry me, but I was afraid to go into the bathroom to look for him. I was pretty sure his long absence had something to do with the folded tinfoil that Mona gave him but I had no idea what that really meant or what I would find him doing in there.
I waited for Sinatra or whoever to finish and then the Allman Brothers started playing. A short, stout, redheaded guy with a beard started grooving to the music as he perched on his barstool. It was a long song and I finished Mona’s drink as the extended and boring instrumental break went on and on. That made three gin and tonics gone down my hatch. My body started to feel heavy. I became hyperaware of how I moved my arms and how the weight of my body would redistribute itself every time I shifted in my seat.
When the Allman song was finished there was a long silence in the bar. It was a menacing and unsettling quiet. No music, no talking, only the clinking of bottles as the bartender restocked beer. Creepy. Like the lights had come up at closing time and revealed the depths of all our misery and loneliness. I was hit with a big wave of sadness which lingered for a few minutes until I was hit with an even bigger wave of terror. I was convinced Lou would never come out of the bathroom. That he was dead; an overdose, and I was somehow responsible. I was an accessory to suicide which meant murder since another person was involved: me. I would never return home and would spend the next few decades in prison.
Elton John broke the silence with his “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.” This was unbearable. The Yellow Brick Road was my life as I had known it up until now, but it was time to say goodbye. Things would never be the same again. My life was over and maybe it would be better if I made sure of it by jumping off the 59th Street Bridge. Death was preferable to life in prison, and the bridge was only a few blocks away.
eighteen
Two weeks after the Barry Dogfucker incident, Veronica officially summoned me out of exile. There was a seldom-used back door near the southwest corner of our school. It opened onto a filthy alley where rats scurried and people pissed. I used it daily as a means of avoiding as many of my fellow students as possible.
Veronica was waiting for me in the alley wearing white-framed sunglasses. She was standing there with her arms folded, smirking like she knew the exact second I would be walking through the door.
“Do you have any desire to redeem yourself?”
It was the first sentence she had spoken to me in fifteen days. I didn’t miss a beat and immediately said yes. It would be one of the great mistakes of my life and something I’m sure I will regret till the grave.
We took the subway downtown to Astor Place and wound our way through the East Village streets. We finally came to a stop at a small storefront on East 4th, 5th, or 6th Street. Somewhere near First Avenue or Avenue A.
“This is just to prove to you that what I said before is true and to remove any doubts you may have about me. I want all of that cleared out of the way before we go any further.”
We entered the little store. It was a narrow strip of a shop that sold occult books and objects used for rituals, rites, and spells. A
