Black Neon

by Tony O'Neill

  “I dunno why you antagonize that bitch, baby…” Rachel said, as they made their way back downstairs. “You know she can have you kicked out of the program.”

  “Fuck her,” Jeffrey said. “Would it fucking hurt to smile? To ask me how I’m doin’? I’ve been coming to her window for a fuckin’ year now and that bitch ain’t so much as acknowledged my existence.”

  “Maybe she don’t like dope-fiends. Most people don’t, honey.”

  “That’s my point! Then why work with ‘em? Go be a cop or some shit if you wanna fuck with me. But don’t be giving me the stink eye at my own methadone clinic! That bitch is real lucky there’s a couple inches of plastic between us.”

  “Shhh, honey. You’re just sick. Be chill... You’ll be feelin’ better soon…”

  Outside Jeffrey and Rachel found Pop Gun Eddie standing alone outside of the Check Cash place basking in the sunlight, eyes closed, face serene and immobile. Jeffrey slapped him playfully on the shoulder. “Eddie, what’s happening man?”

  Eddie opened one eye, looked at Jeffrey for a moment, and then closed it again.

  “Very little, Jeffrey. Very little.”

  Pop Gun Eddie was an old-timer on the methadone maintenance program. He claimed to be a nephew of John Agar – the one-time co-star of several John Wayne movies who ended up playing the lead in drive-in junk like The Brain from Planet Arous and Curse of the Swamp People. He wore a crumpled and cheap navy pinstripe blue suit, white shirt turned brown at the collar, and a pair of ancient white leather boots that had stained a dissolute charcoal colour over the years. His salt-and-pepper hair was cropped close to his skull, his nose broken and re-broken so many times over the years that it whistled softly every time he breathed. Eddie could be found on this corner most mornings trying to raise the cash for his first drink of the day.

  “Whatcha doin’, Pop Gun?”

  “Meditating.”

  “Meditating?” Jeffrey looked around the busy street corner. “Here?”

  “Yeah.”

  Jeffrey had known Pop Gun Eddie for a while, and the meditating thing was no shtick. Eddie could go to his happy place any time, without the need for downers. This, along with the whole John Agar thing, gave him something of an aura of mystique among his circle. After all, to survive in the dope game as long as Eddie had, you surely had some kind of secret knowledge.

  “So everyone split already huh?” Jeffrey asked. With a sigh Eddie straightened up and rolled his head around, eliciting a series of sickening pops. He yawned.

  “Yeah. The Doctor sold his shit and split to score rock with Chickenhawk Al. Suzy’s off on the mooch down by Mann’s Chinese. Busy morning. You showed pretty late, missed all the action…”

  “Yeah, had a rough night. You holdin’ anything?”

  “Coupla Xanax bars, Lortabs, and a few Ambien.”

  Jeffrey took some of the Xanax, and motioned for Rachel to get the bread from out of her pockets. She handed him the money. Eddie pocketed the bills.

  Jeffrey said, “I’m fucking starvin’. You wanna come grab a bite with us?”

  “Nah. By the way, a fella came by here looking for you the other day. Fat sonvabitch, black as coal. He was givin’ off some funky vibes. You know him?”

  Jeffrey shrugged, trying to look non-committal. “Don’t think so. What he want?”

  “Just asking if I knew a Paddy junkie who comes by here. Figured he musta meant you.”

  “What you tell him?”

  “Nuthin’.”

  “Good.”

  Eddie nodded. He closed his eyes again and resumed his previous position. Jeffrey waved a hand in front of Eddie’s face, eliciting no response. Rachel giggled. The methadone was sitting easy in Jeffrey’s stomach now, sending a warm, benevolent glow throughout his aching skeleton. Without dope to wrap him up in its velvet embrace, even the soft warm breeze that rattled the palm trees’ dried out leaves had carried with it the taint of something ominous and ghastly. As the methadone warmed over his chill blood, all that was good and beautiful in the universe was slowly making itself apparent again, like some strange optical illusion hidden in plain sight all along. He grabbed Rachel by her hip, pulling her toward him. He kissed her.

  “Oh, I get kisses now?” Rachel teased, “I take it you’re feelin’ better, huh baby?”

  “Like a million bucks.”

  “Who you think Eddie was talkin’ about? You owe money?”

  “Not me. My old man used to say neither a lender nor a borrower be. Words to live by.”

  “Yeah right. Well, I hope it’s nothing, Jeff.”

  “Don’t worry. Come on, let’s go enjoy the morning.”

  “That’s my beautiful Irish boy. So, where you takin’ me for breakfast?”

  “How does a Denny’s grand slam, followed by some strong-ass Mexican tar for dessert, sound?”

  “Like heaven…”

  Laughing, loose-limbed and free, they took off down Hollywood Boulevard, heading east. Jeffrey sang The Days of Wine and Roses in a joyful, tuneless voice. The morning was young and their spirits high; the smoggy air was tainted with the mildest threat of optimism.

  FOUR

  Lupita and Genesis had been laid up in room three-seventeen of the Double Down Motel, somewhere in the arid outskirts of Reno for close to 72 hours now. They were both naked, except for the rosary beads Lupita wore around her neck. Their skin was hot and beaded with sweat; Genesis’ black hair plastered to her forehead, a ceiling fan futilely slicing through the sex-infused fug that hung above their bed. The sun was setting and the light in the room was growing dim. Genesis could taste Lupita in her mouth: an earthy, animal taste, blood and heat. On Lupita’s small, battered boombox a cassette tape of old rhythm-and-blues songs was playing. Sonny Boy Williamson II was singing Your Funeral and My Trial. They lay in silence on the bed, naked, passing a crack-laced joint between them. Sonny Boy sang to his woman, warning her to knock off “that off the wall jive” before he put her in the ground. Lupita laughed, softly.

  “You know, Genesis honey, if a man ever told me that he was gonna kill me if I cheated… straight up, I would cut that motherfucker’s balls clean off. I wouldn’t wait to see if he was joking or serious. Fuck that shit. To me, his even thinking about it is just as bad as if he actually tried it.”

  Genesis let her head flop against Lupita’s shoulder. She passed the joint over to her.

  “I don’t doubt it, sweet thing. I mean, look what happened to... well, you know.”

  “Shit, it’s okay. You can say his name; I ain’t ashamed of what I did. Not one bit. The thing is, most of ‘em are dumb, honey. That’s their problem. That’s why I dig chicks, mostly.” When she said this, she rubbed Genesis’ hair affectionately.

  Lupita had been prepared to dump this chick’s corpse if necessary; in fact, up until they’d finished breakfast the other morning she’d been planning on it. But since they’d made it back to the Lupita’s room Genesis had been acting like getting kidnapped by the woman who killed her meth connection was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to her. Thing was, her enthusiasm was oddly endearing.

  “The point is though… this guy singing about killin’ his woman, old Sonny Boy Williamson. When he sings it turns my fuckin’ spine to jelly. What I can’t figure is how come when Sonny Boy sings it I get hot, but if Joe Schmo who worked at the car wash said it his nuts’d be rollin’ around on the floor?”

  Lupita took a long drag of the joint and balanced it on the ashtray. She blew the smoke up into the ceiling fan in great billowing clouds, dreamily watching the strange patterns it made before dissipating in the air.

  “Music…” Lupita said dreamily, “I dunno, it just moves me in a way that other stuff… y’know, stuff like books an’ paintings an’ the movies don’t. I know for sure that if I’d have been around back when old Sonny Boy was alive and s
inging, I’d have probably fucked his brains out if I got the chance. So long as he sang like that to me, he could say whatever he damn well wanted.”

  Genesis stretched, and placed a protective arm across Lupita’s chest.

  “I guess I should be glad he’s dead then,” she pouted.

  “Guess you should. But you know, if we’re talkin’ about doin’ some time travelling for a lay, then we can’t forget about Miss Billie Holiday. I hear she got down with females back in the day. Least before they killed her.” Lupita sighed. “I guess I just love those fucked up, tragic types.”

  “Is that why you got the Elvis tattoo?”

  “Elvis? I don’t got no damn Elvis tattoo!”

  “Right there!”

  The tattoos that covered Lupita’s body fascinated Genesis. When they’d first got back to the motel room, Lupita had been obsessively checking the blinds as if expecting some of Paco’s boys to storm in there guns blazing. Instead of being afraid, Genesis had felt a weird kind of excitement, an excitement she had never known before. She wondered to herself if this was what being alive was meant to feel like. She’d eventually convinced Lupita to stop worrying. She did this by opening up a baggie of Paco’s stolen meth and loading a pipe for her. “Come on,” she’d said, “It’ll take the edge off.”

  “I guess.”

  After they’d smoked for a while the conversation was flowing free and easy, and Genesis had asked for a closer look at Lupita’s tattoos. Without a word of prompting, Lupita started pulling her clothes off. When her underwear had been discarded Lupita placed her hand on her hip and said, “Knock yourself out, Genesis hun,” with a crooked smile. She stood in front of Genesis, naked and brazen. Lupita’s body was covered in ink. Fascinated, Genesis had carefully examined each tattoo in turn going from image to image like a starry-eyed visitor to the Louvre. Stoned and horny from the meth they’d been smoking, it wasn’t long before Genesis’ clothes joined Lupita’s in a pile on the floor.

  The portrait on the upper right arm that Genesis was referring to – with the lip-curling sneer and rockabilly haircut – was rendered in a religious, iconic style with the legend Race With The Devil underneath. When Lupita realized what Genesis was referring to, those weird hazel eyes with the blood-red flecks widened in mock outrage.

  “Ay Dios Mio! Elvis, she says! Girl, you may be pretty good in the sack, but you got a ways to go when it comes to music. This,” Lupita said proudly, “is Gene Vincent!”

  Lupita got off the bed and started rummaging around in her pile of cassette tapes. She pulled the correct one out and swapped it with the blues cassette. Genesis watched her right hand as it went about this task with practiced dexterity. She found watching Lupita perform simple tasks like these fascinating. Instead of being impeded by her missing limb, the fingers of her right hand danced with the agility and grace of a concert pianist. She rewound the tape and said to Genesis, “Just check this shit out. This is Gene motherfuckin’ Vincent.”

  When she said his name, Lupita stopped and closed her eyes, bowing her head as if in prayer. She turned the volume all the way up, the ambient hiss of the tape filling the room. She clambered back on the bed with Genesis and knelt down. She wrapped the rosary beads around her fist. She crossed herself, kissed the beads, then let them fall between her bare breasts again. The song began. Lupita closed her eyes. She performed along with it reverently. With a deadly serious expression on her face she mimed the words:

  “Blue jean baby… with your big blue eyes… Don’t wantcha looking at other guys…”

  Her painted eyebrows were bunched together in concentration. She interpreted the song with the solemnity of a hymn. She performed the opening verse with her incomplete arms thrown out in a cruciform. Genesis watched her, studying the contours of her face and body in the dim evening light.

  “Honey wontcha give me just one more chance…”

  The song paused and Lupita leapt to her feet in one fluid movement. She clicked her fingers and her eyes snapped open as she sang along, “I CANT KEEP STILL SO BABY LET’S DANCE!”

  She grabbed Genesis, and dragged her to her feet. They danced naked on the bed as Lupita serenaded Genesis with a frenzied rendition of Blue Jean Bop. When the song was done the bed was on fire. It was almost as if one of those strange red sparks had leapt from Lupita’s eyes and ignited against the bed sheets.

  In fact the joint had rolled off the ashtray in all of the commotion, and the cheap polyester duvet caught fire immediately. Little orange flames danced at their feet. Genesis let out a yell and jumped from the bed. Standing among the flames like some defiant amputee Joan of Arc, Lupita reached calmly for her bottle of Crazy Horse Malt Liquor and doused the fire with beer, extinguishing it with a loud hiss. In seconds, it was over.

  Lupita hopped off the bed, grabbed Genesis by the hair, and pulled her face toward her roughly.

  “Gene Vincent was the greatest rock’n’roll singer of all time,” she hissed. “Santo Vincent! He was a cripple, a drunk, and a baaad motherfucker!”

  She crushed her lips violently against Genesis’. When she let go, Genesis was gasping for air.

  “So get it straight,” Lupita sneered, “That ain’t Elvis. You gonna remember that next time, sweetheart?”

  “Sure, I’ll remember…” Genesis answered, slightly breathless.

  “I remember the first time I ever heard Gene sing. This was out in LA. I was with a guy then. Adolpho.” When Lupita said his name, she crossed herself quickly. “We were on our first job together, we was sitting in his car about to hit the place. This song came on. Cat Man. Adolpho was a big Gene Vincent fan, played his shit all the time, but it wasn’t until I heard that song that I really… got it. That fuckin’ voice… it made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. It was a powerful feeling. I was sixteen years old. First time I’d ever pulled a job like that. It went real smooth, good haul, nobody tried to get stupid with us. I always kinda thought of Gene Vincent as good luck after that. A kind of patron saint, you know?”

  Genesis laughed. “When you say job, I’m guessing you aren’t talking about bagging groceries at K-Mart.”

  “You guess right. It was a pharmacy. Good haul too. You choose the right place and you can live off the proceeds of a pharmacy job for a good few months.”

  Genesis laughed. “Shit Lupe, aren’t you fulla surprises? You robbed a pharmacy?”

  “Not just A pharmacy. Pharmacies, plural. It beats flipping burgers, that’s for damn sure. Cuts out the middleman, too. I mean, those places are packed full of money and drugs. Most of those pills get wasted on a bunch of assholes that don’t even appreciate ’em. When you put a gun in someone’s face and tell ’em you’re willing to blow their fuckin’ head off if they don’t hand the shit over, they don’t tend to argue, hun. If you ask me, I’d be crazy not to take what I want from those places…”

  “I guess it sounds logical…”

  Lupita sighed heavily as she looked at the still-steaming duvet.

  “Fuck. Thing’s ruined. We’re gonna have to pay for that, and they’ll probably want us to leave when they see what happened.”

  “Where will we go?”

  “Who said anything about we?”

  Genesis looked up at Lupita, down to the burnt duvet, and then back at Lupita with eyes starting to brim over.

  “I don’t understand,” she said quietly.

  “You know the deal, hun. I gotta get out of Reno, head on to new pastures. I just needed to make sure you didn’t talk to no-one in the meantime, but I sure as hell ain’t staying…”

  Genesis looked around the small motel room and made a snap decision.

  “Then take me with you,” she said.

  “You’re crazy. You can’t just up and leave with me. I gotta split. Paco’s boys will be out for my skin. And anyway, I don’t like to stay in one place for too long. I like to drift, you kn
ow?”

  Genesis smiled, and grabbed Lupita’s hand. “That sounds great. I’ve been dreaming about getting out of this place… forever, you know?”

  Lupita looked away. “Thinking it and doing it are two different thing, hun. What about your family? What about your friends?”

  “I don’t got none,” Genesis said quietly, “None to speak of at least.”

  Lupita came closer to Genesis and whispered to her, “This has been fun, Genesis hun. It really has. But it’s not reality. You know how I make my living. I don’t think you’re cut out to live your life that way. You need to go home.”

  “I don’t got a home,” Genesis hissed, “And yeah, I know how you make your living. I dunno. It sounds better than making your living by having to fuck old men. Maybe I could help you.”

  Lupita kissed Genesis on the cheek. “You’re sweet hun, you really are. But think about what you’re saying. We’re low on funds, first thing I gotta do before I hit the road is bring in some bread. You’re honestly ready for that? It’s a dangerous lifestyle, Genesis hun, you could get hurt.”

  “The night I met you three kids beat the shit out of me and raped me. That same night, Paco was about to pistol whip my face to a pulp when you showed up. That don’t count as a dangerous lifestyle? Anyway, staying around here seems like it would be just as dangerous. There’s at least one chick who knows I was the last person to see Paco alive.”

  Lupita’s eyes narrowed to slits. “Whozat?”

  “Bitch called Lilly. She was at Paco’s place when I showed up.”

  Lupita cursed. “You sure?”

  “Positive.”

  “Then that’s a problem. They’re gonna be looking for you, girl.”

  “So take me with you.”

  “Shit, I dunno.”

  “Look, if I slow you down, or it ain’t working out, you can just leave me wherever I am. Go drift by yourself if you have to. All I’m asking for is a ride out of town, and a bit of company for as long as you want me. I can help out. Be a lookout, hell I don’t mind handling a gun. My daddy taught me how to shoot when I was still in high school… Shit Lupe, when you showed up it was like… God talking to me, you know? ‘Cos I’d been promising myself for years that this was the night I was gonna leave town and start over. Only I never had the nerve to do it before. Then you came along and…”