place, but The Spaz is out of control, causing the kind of scene that’s bad for business. If I don’t deal with him, the cops will. That will get very ugly very fast. Nothing causes a scene like when cops start putting bullets in a guy and the guy refuses to go down. Sure, Gears and the law and the press may just chalk it up to a PCP freakout, but there are other people who will hear about it. And some of those people will want to check it out. And I don’t want those people around. Not down here. Not in my neighborhood. So I jump on the guy’s back. Figure I’ll get him to the floor, put a sleeper hold on him and drag him out of here. Make up some story for the crowd about how I know him and I’ll take care of it. Get him out before the cops come; get him someplace private and get rid of him before he can make another scene like this one. That’s the thing to do. Except he shrugs me right off his back, picks me up off the floor and throws me at the window. And when I bounce off the glass instead of going through it the way he wanted me to, he grabs me by the hair and tries to shove my face through the glass. Lucky for me, strong and fast as he is right now, he’s a lousy fighter.
Once he’s on the sidewalk I handle it pretty much like I wanted to inside. Knees in the middle of his back, pin him to the scummy pavement, arm around his windpipe and cut off the O2 until he goes asleep. He does a fair amount of thrashing around, and I have to hold on good and tight to keep from getting bucked clear, but once I’m locked on to him I’m not going anywhere. When he’s nice and sleepy I toss him over my shoulder and point at one of the bartenders who’s come out to watch how the story ends.
– Get me a cab, will ya?
– Ambulance is on its way.
– Let ’em deal with Gears. This guy, I know him. I’m gonna take him back to his halfway house. See if I can keep him out of the shit.
– What about the cops? What about the window?
– Hey, come on. I got the guy out of the place. Give me a fucking break.
– Yeah, sure.
She flags a cab.
The cabbie’s none too happy about me piling in with blood-drippy guy, but he sees I’m in no mood for debate and just gives me a dirty rag to put over The Spaz’s face. Before we pull away, Evie runs up and passes my pack of smokes and my Zippo through the window.
– Want me to come?
– Nah, I got it covered.
– Meet you back at your place?
– Yeah. Maybe a half hour at the most. You gonna be OK?
– Don’t start.
– Right. Sorry ’bout this.
– ’S OK. Nobody can say you don’t know how to show a girl a good time, Joe.
The Spaz tries to come to in the cab. I pinch his esophagus and he goes back under before he can cause me any more trouble. I have the cabbie take me down to the Baruch housing project just below Houston. It’s a couple blocks outside what I’d usually call safe turf, but no one really has a claim on it, so it seems like a good place for an impromptu dump. I manhandle The Spaz up the steps to the pedestrian bridge that spans the FDR to the East River Park. It’s nearly two in the morning on a Tuesday. Cars whiz by below, but the lights on the park playing fields were shut off hours ago. My eyes penetrate that darkness just fine. Too cold for any homeless people to be camping out. I do see what looks like a couple junkies sitting on a bench at the far end of the park, but they’re facing the river. I pause at the top of the concrete stairs that lead down to the park.
The Spaz is still alive, alive and reeking of blood. I think about that blood; how I’d like to tap a couple pints of it and stick them in my fridge at home to replenish my rapidly shrinking supply. But his blood won’t do me any good, won’t do anything but make me hellishly sick and kill me. I know that because of what I smelled back at Doc Holiday’s; the smell of the Vyrus, the same smell I carry with me. Nonetheless, I’m just hard up enough to give him another good sniff. Hell, maybe I was wrong, maybe it was some other Vampyre’s scent I picked up in there, maybe this guy really is just whacked on PCP. I inhale. No, no such luck. He’s another sad fuck like me. But there is something about him, something about his scent that’s a little off. Must be whatever he was taking in the bathroom. No surprise I guess. Whatever he’s on would have to be some mean shit not to be neutralized by the Vyrus the moment it entered his bloodstream. Sure would like to know what it was. Be nice to try something like that sometime, something for a distraction. Christ, I drank over a fifth of bourbon tonight and it barely gave me a buzz. The Spaz stirs in my arms. Time to deal with the problem at hand.
I snap The Spaz’s neck and shove him hard down the steps and watch him tumble to the bottom. The broken neck won’t kill him outright, not like it would a normal person. A normal person, you break their neck, the medulla oblongata stops communicating with the body and all those autonomic functions like your lungs inflating and your heart pumping just stop. But the Vyrus reprograms your body, hyperoxygenates your blood and does a bunch of other stuff I can’t really follow. The Spaz won’t be getting up or anything, but there’s enough O2 in his brain to keep him lucid for the next several minutes. Probably a good thing for him that he’s high.
I pop a smoke in my mouth, light it and head back across the bridge. I have to walk all the way to Avenue B before I can find a cab, but I still make it back to my place just a few minutes later than I wanted.
We don’t get to sleep in.
Evie’s a bartender. She’s used to crawling into bed around dawn. Even on a night off she has a hard time falling asleep before the sun hits the horizon. Me, I got my own reasons for being a night owl. But we’re up early the next day. Early for us, anyway, say just after noon. Evie’s got an appointment.
I reach for a smoke as she crawls out from under the covers.
– What’s the deal today?
– Viral load results.
– Right.
I sit on the edge of the bed, smoking and watching Evie through the open bathroom door. She rinses her mouth and spits toothpaste into the sink, then walks back into the bedroom.
– You been feeling any different?
– Nope. Nausea, vomiting. The usual.
– Yeah.
She squats next to her big black leather bag on the floor. Her back is to me. She’s wearing panties and one of my old wifebeaters. I look at her ass while she digs in the bag.
– How much did you drink last night?
She keeps looking through the bag.
– A lot less than you.
– It’s different.
– I know.
She finds a pill bottle in the bag and fishes out a capsule. Then she goes back in the bag until she finds another bottle and takes two capsules from that one. She tosses all three pills in her mouth and holds her hand out to me. I pick up the water glass from the bedside table, hand it to her, and she washes the pills down.
– Aren’t you supposed to take the Kaletra with food?
She’s squeezing herself back into last night’s leather pants.
– I’m not hungry.
– Not hungry how?
She peels off the wifebeater. I stare at her pale, freckled tits until she covers them with the Jack Daniel’s shirt.
– Just not hungry.
– Not hungry like you’re not hungry, or not hungry like a side effect?
She stands in front of the mirror on the back of the closet door and starts raking a brush through her hair.
– Not hungry like I don’t want to fucking eat anything, OK?
– Sure. OK.
