Sick City

by Tony O'Neill

  As they were being herded out of the cafeteria, Randal nudged Jeffrey and said, “I guess that fucked up their reunion special.”

  “I guess.”

  “You think they’ll really kick the Chief out? I mean, that fucking camera guy overreacted. He started it.”

  “Tough break. Some people don’t have any luck, you know?”

  “I can’t wait to get the fuck outta here. This place is bullshit, man. Total fucking bullshit. I wish I was splitting when you are. A week! You lucky bastard.”

  “I don’t feel lucky. I feel anxious, man. Tense.”

  Randal put his arm around Jeffrey’s shoulders.

  “You’ll be cool. Just don’t fuck up, and it will be fine. I’ll be out in two weeks. If we keep it together we can make our own luck for a change. No more bullshit cures. We can get as far away from here as we like. . . .”

  Jeffrey smiled. “I like that. I like that a whole lot.”

  Chapter Twenty

  When she first landed in Los Angeles from Reno fifteen years ago, Trina didn’t have much. Just seven hundred dollars from a stolen credit card and a bag with everything she owned stuffed in it. It was mostly clothes that barely fit her anymore, unwashed and shoved in there in a hurry. The only sentimental item that she had was a Rainbow Brite doll whose face had worn away because of her habit of rubbing her nose against it at night to get to sleep. When she stepped off the bus a handsome young boy who went by the name of Ugly John stared at her so hard that she asked him what the fucking idea was. Trina had learned over the years that you had to be tough and that you couldn’t let anybody give you any shit. Otherwise people would eat you alive.

  He was standing there casual, eyeing her up and down, sucking a soda pop through a straw. Ugly John didn’t take her abuse badly, though, and he asked what her name was. After they’d talked for a while he took her to McDonald’s for lunch. He bought her a Happy Meal and wrote down a list of addresses for her. Mostly hotels that had cheap rooms and a few phone numbers in case she wanted to score drugs. When he saw the look on her face when he brought up drugs, he offered her some blow. Trina was fifteen and she had only ever drank booze or huffed industrial solvents before. Cocaine seemed to be impossibly glamorous, something rock stars and actors did. They went into the bathroom, and Ugly John cut out a generous line for her. He handed her a fifty-dollar bill, and she rolled it up and inhaled. The coke tasted clean and sparkly, like winter frost. The first time that she snorted cocaine, Trina realized that she wanted to feel this way always. Her brain seemed to finally catch up with her mouth. For the first time in her life, Trina felt comfortable in her own skin.

  Trina ended up sleeping with Ugly John. He rented a room for them in a dilapidated hotel downtown called the Cecil. For someone so young, Ugly John seemed to have a lot of money, and Trina liked that. There was a bar next door to the Cecil that smelled of damp and rat poison. It had an unlit neon Santa Claus off in the corner next to the cigarette machine. It was April. The barmaid was from Juarez and did not ask for IDs. The only other customers were barflies silently drinking from dirty glasses and watching a Lakers game. Trina had never drank in a bar before. She suddenly had the impression that she was no longer a kid. She had made it from awkward adolescent to adulthood in the space of seven hours. She knew that she had done the right thing when she snuck out of the house last night.

  · · ·

  After drinks and more coke they went upstairs together. Trina had had sex many times but she had never had sex on cocaine before. Trina decided that sex was a lot better on cocaine. Instead of the anxious, fleeting couplings that she’d had with other kids at school, or with the nervous married men who arrived at the house with heavy brown paper bags from liquor stores, this lasted for at least ten minutes, and it felt real good while it was happening. Ugly John put his mouth to her pussy and did something that made her feel amazing and self-conscious at the same time. When Ugly John told her that she had a sweet pussy, Trina’s heart fluttered, and she fought back the urge to say, “You really mean it?” in a voice dripping with childlike wonder.

  She stayed in that room at the Cecil for two months. After the first forty-eight hours of drinking, screwing, and snorting, Ugly John told her that she had to pay him for the cocaine and the room. He said she owed him a thousand dollars. When she refused to give him money, Ugly John pulled a knife on her and took her bag away. He found the seven hundred dollars and took it. “Down payment,” he said. He told her that she was going to work off the rest of the debt, otherwise he’d kill her.

  “Ain’t nobody gonna come looking for you, bitch. Nobody. You better start acting right, girl, otherwise you’re gonna see what a son of a bitch I can be when I need to be. . . .”

  Trina was sure he was right. With no money and no bag, she decided she’d better do what he told her. Ugly John would leave in the early afternoon and start rounding up men. They were mostly Mexicans who didn’t speak much English, or the occasional drunk in a crumpled business suit. On a busy day, he’d show up with two or three at once, and they’d have to queue up in the hallway for their turn. Once or twice they’d ask to do her at the same time, and Ugly John would charge extra. Mostly they were drunk and useless and would sweat and breathe whiskey smells all over her, pumping furiously, calling her names, and pulling her hair.

  Once she had started doing as she was told, Ugly John would act nice with her. He would give her some of the money she’d earned. All the money went through Ugly John, and she wasn’t even sure of how much she charged for sex. “Go buy yourself something,” he’d say. He started letting her leave the hotel, and she’d wander through the cheap trinket stores on Broadway spending her earnings on stuff that she didn’t need: “I LOVE LA” stickers that she thought she might send to her kid sister back at home, dolls from Mexican TV shows she’d never seen, costume jewelry, malt liquor, candy bars, that kind of stuff. Ugly John returned her Rainbow Brite, but the doll seemed stupid and childish now, so she handed it to a little Mexican girl she saw loitering in front of the hotel one afternoon. In the evenings, before things would get busy, Ugly John would show up with tacos, and they’d eat. Mostly, though, they did cocaine. She didn’t like to fuck unless she had coke, and the more coke she snorted, the more money Ugly John kept to pay for the drugs. If she complained about Ugly John taking too much of her money, he’d beat her. This was not the first time she had been beaten by a man. In fact, since she had come to LA the only new things she had experienced were the cocaine and the Mexican food.

  · · ·

  One day she told Ugly John that she wanted to go to Beverly Hills. Ugly John laughed at her. “I came all the way to Los Angeles and all I see is this hotel room and your little dick! You never take me anywhere!” Ugly John told her to shut the fuck up. She called him a dirty nigger. He called her a cunt, and a whore, and beat the living shit out of her. He bloodied her up and knocked one of her teeth out. The men didn’t seem to mind that she looked that way. When things went back to the way they were, she started saving the money that Ugly John gave her. When she had two hundred dollars in her pocket she left and never came back.

  One thing that Ugly John taught her was that a girl had to choose her man carefully if she wanted to get by in this world. A good man was hard to find, and Trina had the scars to prove it.

  They were in Pat’s hotel room. Pat was staying in a place called the Motor Home Lodge, on Sunset Boulevard. There were ten apartments on their floor, and the interiors were a murky brown color. The television was black and white, and one channel showed a continuous porn loop with a wavy, grainy picture. They had been here for a day now. She didn’t like this place as much as the place where Pat had brought her originally, but she knew that it wouldn’t be forever. Pat told her that every month or so he liked to switch hotels.

  “I don’t like it if too many people know where I live,” he had told Trina when they had boxed up and moved out of the Deville Motel. “It’s bad for business.”

  ·
· ·

  Pat was preparing a pipe for them. He was wearing his grease-stained Levi’s and a once-white undershirt. He looked over to Trina and said, “What you thinking about?”

  Trina jerked out of her thoughts. “Hm?”

  “I said, ‘What you thinking about?’ ”

  Trina smiled a little and looked coy.

  “I was just thinking,” she said, “about how a good man is hard to find.”

  Pat flicked on the lighter. The flame was strong and blue. He smiled to himself a little, maybe about what Trina had said, maybe because of the drugs he was about to smoke.

  “You look after me, Daddy,” she said, “and I like that.”

  In the closet hung almost a thousand dollars’ worth of clothes that Pat had bought for her at the mall at Holly-wood and Highland. He’d put the cash in an envelope and waited in the car for her. “Buy something sexy,” he’d instructed. After the incident with her apartment, Pat told her it would be better for her to keep a low profile for now, so he called the club and told them that she would not be in for a while. Just like that, Pat and Trina were living together, and Pat was supporting her. It was the happiest that Trina could remember feeling.

  She went over to Pat, and while he started smoking, she tugged at his jeans and started working his cock with her mouth. From a boom box on the nightstand “Thru These Walls” by Phil Collins played quietly.

  As she was sucking him, her cell phone went off. She stopped, walked over, glanced at the number, and put the phone down again.

  “Who was that?” Pat asked, handing her the pipe.

  “Tyler. He’s calling about that money again.”

  “How much you owe him?”

  “Two hundred.”

  Pat nodded over to a pile of cash on the nightstand.

  “Pay him. Seems like every time I’m about to bust a nut, that motherfucker calls and ruins the moment.”

  Trina made a face. “Fuck that. I don’t wanna give that bastard the money. He hung me up, made me beg for credit. If I was a fucking boy, he’d be handing pills out like they’re fucking candy. He’s a faggot. He hates women.”

  “You want me to talk to him? Straighten homeboy out?”

  Trina laughed at the thought. “He’d about shit a brick. I dunno how he fucking keeps in business. That’s why he only sells to women and faggots! He sits in that apartment of his with fucking suitcases of money and fucking pills, and he don’t even got a gun.”

  Now Pat was interested. He leaned forward.

  “You serious?”

  “Yeah! People are walking in and out all day and night, and half the time he’s so out of it on his own shit he doesn’t know who’s there. One day somebody is gonna take that boy for everything he has, then he’ll have bigger problems than my two hundred fucking dollars!”

  Taking her hit, Trina got back down between Pat’s legs. White clouds billowed from her nose and she said, “Sorry, Daddy, where were we . . . ?”

  Pat pushed her head away from his cock. Now it was his turn to look thoughtful.

  “You know . . . I’m thinking that maybe we should be the ones to benefit from this motherfucker’s stupidity.”

  Trina looked up at Pat. “What, you mean . . . ?”

  “Let’s rob this faggot. Why not? He ain’t a friend of yours, is he?”

  “No. He’s a real cocksucker.”

  “And he don’t even know who I am.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “So if I was to pay him a little visit, maybe persuade him to hand over the money and the drugs . . .”

  Trina smiled. The idea seemed thrilling, adventurous. Like a movie.

  “Seems like a no-brainer to me. We could get out of town for a little while. Live it up. You ever been to San Francisco?”

  Trina shook her head.

  “Beautiful city, girl. Here . . .”

  Pat got up and grabbed a bunch of bank notes. He counted out three hundred and handed them to Trina.

  “Pay him,” he said, “buy some more. Get in his good books. And let’s try to figure out when he gets his bulk delivered. Where he keeps the money. I wanna know exactly what weapons he has in there and who his supplier is.”

  Trina took the money.

  “Sounds complicated.”

  “All I need you to do right now is pay off that two hundred and get some more shit. You said he has pills?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Try’n get some Dilaudid. I haven’t had Dilaudid in a dog’s age.”

  “Okay, Daddy.”

  · · ·

  Trina didn’t need to be asked twice to go and buy drugs. She was already pulling her clothes on, slipping her cell phone in her pocket. She gave Pat a long, hard kiss on the lips. Pat slapped her on the ass.

  “I’ll be back soon . . . ,” she said.

  “Sure thing, sweet cheeks.”

  Trina smiled as the door closed behind her and walked toward her car. She clicked on the cell and found Tyler’s number.

  “T, it’s me. Cool to stop by? Okay. See you in fifteen.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “I’m stiff,” Tyler complained, stretching like a cat. “I’ve been on the couch forever.”

  “I’ve been trying to get his ass to Chico’s house all afternoon,” Spider grumbled. Spider was tweaked as usual, edgy and sweaty, his eyes darting around the room as if he were hearing noises all over that nobody else could perceive. Trina rolled her eyes.

  “Fuck that shit,” said Tyler to the monstrous pile of blow on the coffee table, “I’ve been busy. Can’t you see how busy I am?”

  Trina clacked her heels on the bamboo floor as she uncrossed and recrossed her legs incredulously. “Yeah,” she said, looking at Spider, or through Spider, or what did it matter? “I don’t know how he fits it all in.”

  Tyler snuffled and wiped his nose with a shaking hand.

  “Always, with these fucking mooches in my apartment! Why are you here, man?”

  Spider immediately launched into a long, convoluted story about a guy named Chico who wanted to trade painkillers for meth. Tyler started to zone out, eyeing the cocaine again hungrily. Another one of Spider’s elaborate schemes to get something for nothing. The television was on. He looked over to it; something familiar was cutting through the chatter of the others, something familiar, something that interrupted his train of thought for a moment. He saw the eyes first. “You’ve followed their ups and downs, but how are they doing since completing the program?” Dr. Mike’s plastic face was burning with calculated sincerity from the plasma screen. The eyes fell upon Tyler like the eyes of God. An old god, one full of judgment and condemnation. A god who wore a starched blue shirt, who smelled faintly of soap and a delicate, feminine fragrance, a god who had facials and manicures. A god at once fearsome and strangely emasculated. “Turn that shit off!” Tyler barked at no one in particular.

  “Fuck this shit!” Spider hissed, getting to his feet, suddenly filled with indignation. “If you don’t want my custom I’ll take it elsewhere.”

  “Take your ass to Walgreens if you don’t like the way I do business!” Tyler said, and Spider stomped out, slamming the door.

  “So, uh, about that money I owe you . . . ,” Trina said.

  “Here we go. You spend it on ass implants?”

  “No. I got it right here.”

  Trina reached into her bra and counted out the bills. Tyler watched her, silently.

  “You got any Dilaudid?”

  “Sure. I got the crazy eights and the fives.”

  “I’ll take four of the eights.”

  Tyler shuffled off to his bedroom, and Trina cut herself a line. When Tyler returned, he counted out the money.

  “It’s all there,” she said coldly.

  “Just checking. This is a business, not a hobby, ya know?”

  “Yeah. I know.”

  Tyler sat down again. “I’m fucked,” he said.

  “You look burnt out, man. You need to slow down.”

/>   “Yeah. Fucking Jeffrey left a bag full of fucking drugs and shit here. When he went to rehab. Valuables, he told me. I ain’t kidding, he had a fucking envelope stuffed full of fucking China white. I took a little out. Sniffed it. Just a tiny bump. No shit, I nearly fucking died. Haven’t had dope that pure in a long time. I could feel my fucking lungs shutting down. Like someone was sitting on my chest. I put that shit back, but I ain’t felt right since.”

  “Jesus. What’s Jeffrey gonna say about that?”

  “Nothin’. He ain’t gonna know.” Tyler stared at Trina. “Right?”

  “Hey, it’s none of my fuckin’ business.”

  “And anyway, he knew I was gonna dip in. You don’t tell the fox to keep an eye on the chicken coop, right?”

  “I gotta split, T.”

  “Sure. What day is it?”

  “Thursday.”

  “Fuck. Jeffrey’s due home tomorrow. I haven’t had my dick sucked in a long time. Maybe he’ll be feeling horny.”

  “Why don’t you just go buy a boy?”

  “And leave the house? I dunno.”

  “You’re the laziest fucking crackhead I ever met.”

  · · ·

  Tyler looked at her, and smiled coldly.

  “You don’t wanna take care of me? I’ll give you a freebie.”

  “It ain’t a freebie if I have to suck dick for it. And I don’t know where that little thing has been, T. Anyways, I got a boyfriend now. I’m in a relationship.”

  “A stripper relationship. How does that work? If it lasts for more than a few days, does he get a weekly rate or something?”

  “I ain’t gonna strip no more. I moved in with him. He’s an entrepreneur. A businessman. He’s taking care of me.”

  “Yeah, right. A businessman. You’re funny, you know that?”

  Trina got up.

  “I’ll see you around, T.”

  “Peace.”

  Trina left, and Tyler looked around the house. Goddamnit, maybe he would have to go out and buy some ass. It was Thursday night in Hollywood. It wasn’t as if he were going to stay in and read a book.