Sick City

by Tony O'Neill

  No, Randal wanted to be on a beach somewhere far, far away from here, somewhere where the cocktail in his hand would not fill him with a kind of uneasy guilt and shame. He wanted to start over as the person that he vaguely remembered from the time before the meth had taken him. He had come to understand, in an unspoken way, that his problem wasn’t drink or drugs. His problem was Hollywood itself.

  But ever since Jeffrey had vanished, a fear that the whole episode was over began to grow. There is no tape! his mind insisted. And you’re an idiot for even believing that there was! Every futile, unanswered call to Jeffrey’s cell made the voice louder and more insistent. Finally, in desperation, Randal decided to track down Jeffrey himself at the hotel he was supposedly staying at.

  Randal was cursing to himself and sweating under the unforgiving desert sun when he showed up at the hotel, a crumbling, toxic hole called the Mark Twain on Wilcox, just below Hollywood Boulevard. Seeing the building, he got an ominous feeling about Jeffrey. The hotel had been standing there for as long as anybody could remember, yet had gathered none of the iconic status that certain bars, coffee shops, or diners that had stood in this city for much less time had earned. Nobody stayed at the Mark Twain unless they had no other option. At the end of many Los Angelenos’ slow slide into destitution, the Mark Twain was waiting at the bottom like an open pair of alligator jaws. The building itself was an unappetizing salmon pink, and inside, the cool lobby smelled of decades of mustiness and degradation. He looked over to the front desk and it was empty. Despite a sign over the entrance that warned that visitors were not permitted inside, nobody stopped him. There was an old Indian snoring softly on a couch in the office beyond, while a daytime talk show softly bleated out of a black-and-white television.

  Jeffrey was supposedly up on the third floor. The stairwell was dark and foreboding, the lime green carpeting and puke-colored walls oppressive and dreary. As he passed by door after identical door, he heard noises—sobs, laughter, thumps, groans, gasps, and retching—that hinted at the unfathomable horrors within.

  Room 317. He knocked on the door. No reply. He waited a beat, and then knocked again a little harder. The flimsy door shook under his knuckles. Beyond there was a frantic shuffling, the scattering of feet.

  “Who is it?” said a voice.

  “Randal.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “I’m a friend of Jeffrey’s. Is he here?”

  A moment passed. Then a coughing fit. The person spat something up and said: “He ain’t here.”

  “But he lives here, right?”

  The person went away. There was more frenzied movement in the room. Whispered voices bled through the paper-thin plywood door. Then steps cautiously approached the other side of the door.

  “He ain’t here. There’s no one here.”

  The voice had an unnerving, nasal quality to it. It didn’t so much come through the door as seep through the keyhole. Just who the fuck was this?

  “Can you give him a message?”

  “Look, man,” the voice said, “I’m busy. Why don’t you write him a fucking e-mail or something?”

  Randal punched the door in frustration and waited to see if there would be any retaliation. There was nothing. Randal pictured the person, standing on the other side of the door, waiting silently for the sound of Randal’s retreating footsteps. He waited for a moment before dejectedly trudging away. So that was it. The game was up. As he walked down the stairs, he passed a young woman with a busted lip and a newborn in her arms, two sad-eyed children following behind her. The smell of rot here was stronger. Randal did not know what exactly had brought Jeffrey to this place, or who it was he was with, but he did know one thing without a doubt: he could forget about the Sharon Tate movie once and for all. Even if Jeffrey had been sincere inside of rehab, now he was lost, and there wasn’t a goddamned thing Randal could do about it.

  Downstairs, he knocked on the desk, rousing the old Indian from his stupor. He staggered over, his wife-beater exposing beads of sweat glistening on a graying mop of chest hair.

  “Whatchoo want?”

  “I’m looking for a friend of mine. Jeffrey. Does he live here?”

  “Room is fifty-one dollars.”

  “I don’t want a room. I’m trying to find a friend. Jeffrey. He’s a tall guy. Skinny, tattoos. Black hair. I heard he was living here.”

  “Lotta people live here. Call your friend. Don’t ask me. People like privacy. I dunno what or who. You want room?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Then go.”

  “Thanks. And fuck you.”

  After that, Randal returned to his brother’s house and brooded for a while. That motherfucker! Randal wasn’t sure who he was angrier at—Jeffrey, for sucking him in with that ridiculous story about the sex tape, or himself for falling for it. Randal sadly came to the conclusion that he had wanted a way out so badly that he had actually willed himself into believing Jeffrey’s fairy tale.

  Days went by and turned into weeks, and Randal attended meetings, and had stilted dinner conversations full of long pauses with his family. The idea of escape started to seem abstract and hopeless. At first there was sadness, then a flare of anger, but like everything it turned into a dull, sad resignation over time. Sometimes, hating himself for doing it, Randal would dial the number from pay phones, hoping to catch Jeffrey unawares, but the phone either rang and rang or it went straight to voice mail. Jeffrey didn’t want to be found. Maybe the bastard was dead. Maybe the whole thing was a fantasy, a joke, the ravings of a detoxing junkie desperate to pass the time. But the fucked-up thing was that something about Jeffrey’s story had resonated deeply with Randal. It had seemed solid, three-dimensional. It had carried with it the promise of a new life, a new beginning, like the scent of long-ago perfume on a spring breeze. He wasn’t ready to accept that it was a fantasy. He wasn’t ready to accept that he had fallen for a confidence trick, especially not one that was so outlandish. If the tape didn’t exist, then in some strange way, neither did Jeffrey. If the tape was a fraud, then so was the story about Bill, the escape to Los Angeles, all of it a carefully constructed confidence trick . . . and Randal had swallowed it. But what Randal couldn’t figure out was why Jeffrey would have done it in the first place. Just to fuck with a complete stranger? To take hope away from someone who was all out of that commodity already?

  None of it made any sense. All that was certain was that until the day that the call from Jeffrey finally came, Randal had begun to accept that the scheme was dead before it had even begun, and had even started to try to understand all of the talk at the meetings. He took the term “fake it till you make it” to heart. He faked it for all he was worth. He faked smiles, he faked epiphanies, and he faked happiness. He collected chips of various colors and hung them on his keychain—talismans and testaments to his misery. And instead of waking up one morning somehow sane by osmosis, he woke up one morning and realized that he had become a fiction himself. He had faked his way into a pantomime of existence. He had become the ultimate fake, and he hated himself for it.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  In the bathroom of a fast-food noodle joint called Yoshinoya, right across the street from MacArthur Park, Spider locked the door behind him. Inside the air was heavy with the smell of shit, and the floor was swimming in a vile mixture of urine and sopping paper towels. Flies buzzed around the flickering fluorescent light. Spider fumbled with the baggie of meth, opening it, shoving his knife in there, and scooping up a pile of powder on the tip of the blade. He placed the tip under his nose and inhaled the rocky white substance. It burned his nostril, but Spider immediately sensed that something was wrong. It was a different kind of burn, not the intense, eye-watering, chemical heat of meth. This stuff was different from that. He noted a strange taste as the residue dripped down the back of his throat. Swallowing his doubts, Spider repeated the procedure in the other nostril.

  He looked at himself in the mirror, managing to see some of his fac
e through the tapestry of gang tags on the tiny square of scarred glass. He splashed water on his face. Waited. Nothing. He looked at the baggie again as he held it up to the light. When he saw the odd consistency of the powder up close for the first time, Spider cursed to himself. The shit was bunk. As soon as the thought surfaced Spider flew into a rage. “Fucking motherFUCKER!” he bellowed. It had been a week since he’d shown up at Tyler’s house to score, only to find police tape covering the front door. Some motherfucker had offed his main meth connection. The first few times he’d had to resort to buying from the dealers who hung out in MacArthur Park, the stuff had been shitty but serviceable. But today he had just laid out fifty dollars for some shit that was weaker than Sudafed. He stormed out of the bathroom, nearly knocking over a Mexican girl with a tray of food, who cursed at him in Spanish as he made his way outside again.

  Spider looked around MacArthur Park. A gaggle of mangy-looking pigeons congregated around his feet like crackheads looking for change. Across the lake, where flies buzzed around the garbage that floated on an oily surface of scum, he saw a familiar group of men standing in the shade of a palm tree. He stormed over to them, nearly upending a shaved ice cart. As he got closer he spotted the kid who had sold him the drugs earlier. He was tall and skinny, wearing an oversize Lakers shirt and a fake Rolex. Spider took a quick glance over his shoulder for cops, and then approached.

  “Hey, homie!”

  The kid turned. He was standing with several other ominous types—young gangbangers with low-slung jeans and baseball caps pulled down over insolent faces. They looked young. Sixteen, seventeen, maybe.

  “ ’Sup?”

  “We got a problem. Remember me?”

  The kid shrugged.

  “The stuff you sold me was bunk,” Spider said. “I want my money back.”

  The others looked at Spider and laughed. The kid who had sold him the fake meth looked pensive for a moment.

  “I no understand,” he said.

  Spider held out his hand. In his palm was the baggie of powder.

  “Your shit,” Spider said, “is muy malo. You hear me? Muy fucking malo. I want my dinero. Here!”

  Spider started shoving the baggie toward the kid. When Spider’s hand got too close to him, the kid slapped it out of the way, knocking the baggie to the ground. The others straightened up, ready for trouble.

  “Fuckin’ puto!” the kid spat. “Don’ put jour fucking hand near me!”

  “That is bunk fucking shit, man. I want my money!”

  One of the others stepped forward. A fat bastard, wearing a Virgen de Guadalupe T-shirt. “Get the fuck out of here, homie. Nothin’ doin’.”

  “Hey, FUCK YOU. I ain’t talking to you.” Spider turned back to the kid and said, “Seriously. I want my money back. No fucking around.”

  “Jou gotta receipt for that?” the kid asked.

  “Huh?”

  “I said, jou gotta receipt for that? No receipt, no fucking returns, homeboy!”

  The others cracked up. Spider stood there under the relentless afternoon sun, sweating toxic withdrawal sweat. He considered the walk back to the Metro, without his fifty dollars and without his drugs.

  “You motherfucking beaners are gonna regret this,” Spider said.

  The kid looked to his friends. They shook their heads in disbelief. The kid took a bill out of his pocket and dangled it in front of Spider.

  “Why don’ jou take the money if you wan’ it so bad? Crazy fucking white boy. Why don’ jou try an TAKE it?”

  As he said this the others were gathering around Spider, cutting out the sunlight. Two options. Run or fight. Spider held his ground.

  Later that day, Spider ambled across the parking lot of Crazy Girls. His face felt numb, puffy, like he had just had a shot of novocaine. He breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that Juan was working the door.

  “Shit, Spider,” Juan laughed, “what the fuck happened to you?”

  “I had a little trouble. Got mugged.”

  “No shit! They done fucked you up good. You seen a doctor?”

  “Nah.”

  “Your nose looks broken, dude. You should see a doctor!”

  “Is Trina here?”

  “Who?”

  “Trina.”

  “Nah, bitch don’t work here no more. She ain’t been around in weeks.”

  Spider put his hand to his battered face and said, “Shit. Fucking shit!”

  “Why you want her?”

  “She used to score off a friend of mine. I’m trying to make a connect for ice but my regular guy got fucking wiped out, man. Someone came along, cleaned out his shit, and killed him.”

  Juan whistled. “Tough profession, man. You know, if you’re looking for a connect I can put you in touch with my guy. . . .”

  “He got good stuff?”

  “It’s great, man. He’s reliable, too. Here—write your number down. I gotta call him and vouch for you, but you’re good people. It’ll be cool.”

  “I’m hurting, man. How quick can you speak to him?”

  “I’ll do it today. Give me your number and I’ll call you.”

  Spider wrote his number on the back of an old receipt and handed it to Juan. He smiled painfully at the doorman and said, “Call me, bro. Seriously, call me.”

  “Will do. Stay lucky, Spider.”

  Juan leaned back against the door and watched as Spider trudged back toward Sunset Boulevard. Juan laughed to himself a little. He was always weirdly happy to see Spider walking away from him. Juan firmly believed that bad luck was contagious, like the flu or the clap or something. If you stayed around people like Spider too long, then their shitty fucking luck started to rub off on you. Juan clicked open his cell and found Pat’s number. Well, he thought, I guess Spider’s luck is about to change.

  Chapter Thirty

  When the call came, he was drinking coffee with his brother at a pseudo-beatnik coffee shop called Bourgeois Pig, which looked out over the ludicrous splendor of the Scientology Celebrity Center. Harvey was slurping his second double espresso and talking a mile a minute about the intricacies of getting a project with Adam Sandler off the ground. There were mentions of bloodsuckers, cocksuckers, shit suckers, and plain old suckers. Harvey radiated toxic hatred. When the phone buzzed into life, Randal looked at it, and seeing Jeffrey’s name, froze for a moment. He was paralyzed with something like fear. He had filed Jeffrey away and had been making a conscious decision not to think of the Sharon Tate tape any longer. This call threatened to disrupt this hard-earned yet wholly unsatisfactory cease-fire.

  Harvey barely acknowledged the phone call, but Randal stopped him talking with the wave of a hand, and then picked up the phone and answered it, standing and walking out toward the sidewalk.

  “Jeffrey?”

  The voice on the other end was hoarse and weak, like someone who had spent a month wandering lost through a desert.

  “Heeey, man . . . hey, Randal . . . shit, man, I’m so fucking sorry . . . I’ve been meaning to call, and . . . ah, shit, you know, I’m just sorry, man. I’m sorry.”

  “Where the fuck have you been? I thought, fuck, I don’t know what I thought. . . . Man . . . how are you?”

  Jeffrey laughed, a sad, weak noise.

  “I’m fucked, man. I’m totally fucked. I just called . . . I just called to say sorry. I fucked everything up.”

  “What? Just tell me what’s going on.”

  Randal looked back into the dim coffee shop. He could feel Harvey’s dead, insect eyes on him, watching him like the fucking sobriety mafia. Goddamn. He dropped his voice to a whisper.

  “Where are you?”

  “Downtown. I’m with Damian, this guy I know, in his loft . . . what day is it?”

  “Uh, it’s Tuesday.”

  “Fuck. It’s been a long week, man.”

  “So where are you exactly? I can come get you. . . . Do you need me to come get you?”

  Randal listened to Jeffrey breathing sadly for a moment.


  “Yeah,” he said, “I need you to come get me. The place is downtown, near Pershing Square on Broadway. It’s a loft, above some Chinese-Mexican place called Nuevo Taco de China. You know it?”

  “No, but I’ll find it. I’m on my way. Hang in there.”

  Randal clicked off the phone. He took a deep breath and walked back inside.

  “I gotta go,” he said to Harvey, picking up his coffee and slugging the last of it back.

  Harvey looked at his brother and wrinkled his nose.

  “Got a date with destiny, huh?” he growled.

  “Something like that.”

  “Listen, shitpants. You’re gonna use. It’s all over your fucking face. I know that face. You’re gonna get high.”

  Randal shook his head.

  “Don’t fuckin’ bullshit me, man. You’re gonna get high. Look at yourself, man! You’re shaking.”

  Harvey tapped his head.

  “Up here—you’re already high. I can see it!”

  Randal sighed. “Bro. Knock it off with the fucking recovery clichés, okay? If I was gonna get high, I’d fucking tell you. A friend of mine is in trouble, okay? I need to go help him.”

  Harvey snorted.

  “Some fucking junkie, right? He’ll take you out with him, bro. Junkies don’t give a shit about anything except themselves. Your old friends, they ain’t your friends. The only friends you have are your sober friends. The rest of ’em are dead, they just haven’t realized it yet. They walk around this fucking city like something out of a George Romero flick, and you’re too fucking stupid to see it. Sit down, dickweed.”

  Randal looked his brother in the eyes. His fists were shaking a little.

  “Harvey,” he said, “sincerely. Go. Fuck. Yourself. Okay?”

  “If you go, you don’t come back. You have been made aware of the consequences if you fuck up this time. I’m telling you now, bro, if you aren’t willing to do this my way then you’re on your own.”