Black Neon

by Tony O'Neill

  Then, during a late night meeting to discuss the possibility of a hip-hop remake of Xanadu starring Beyonce in the Olivia Newton John role, he had spotted Kenny Azura’s new PA popping a pill. When he pulled the kid aside later to question him, the assistant admitted that it was Adderall. A hushed conversation later, and Randal P. Earnest found himself in the office of Dr Titov, the newest member of the estimated 4.4% of American adults who are diagnosed with ADD each year.

  The doctor prescribed Randal thirty 20mg Adderall, and set an appointment for two weeks time to have his dose adjusted.

  “We will start you off small,” Dr Titov had said, “and then after a few weeks, once the body has adjusted to the medication, we can start to move the dosage upwards.”

  Randal did not tell Dr Titov that as a lifelong user of crystal meth, his body was already well used to the effects of amphetamines. It was crystal meth that had landed him in the treatment centre again, after a near-fatal speed and sex bender in Las Vegas. The Vegas debacle had culminated in a drug-fuelled robbery where he and his accomplice Jeffrey ended up getting ripped off by their co-conspirator. Jeffrey was an Irish dope-fiend he had roomed with in a treatment centre called Clean and Serene. He’d roped Randal into this scheme as a last, desperate throw of the dice. Their partner – a self-proclaimed “artist” named Damien – had provided the target and the pass codes for the safe, but fled for Europe with the loot in the aftermath of the heist, leaving them both up shit creek. The last he heard, Jeffrey was heavily strung out and living in a motel somewhere in the shitty end of Hollywood. Out of drugs, and cut out of his family’s money by his pissed-off older brother, Randal had checked into drug rehab for the twelfth time. He promised Harvey and himself to take the programme seriously this time around.

  As he watched Titov hastily scribble out the prescription, Randal felt relief flood him. Life without amphetamines had proved to be almost impossible. It was as if he could only truly be himself when he was on uppers. It had been so long since he had existed without meth in his system, that he no longer recognized himself without it. This dull, tired, slow, self-hating lump he saw in the mirror disgusted him. His mind felt weak, as if his skull was wadded full of cotton wool. He was suddenly aware of how charmless and awkward he was, as if he had regressed into some dreadful, tongue-tied pubescent boy. His wit had left without so much as a note. Without speed, Randal found himself to be at the mercy of several other vices, mainly booze, food, and masturbation. He had halfheartedly hoped that his frantic masturbation schedule – four times a day if he had things to do, up to seven if not, would at least help to keep some weight off of him, but even jerking his bloody penis like a deranged monkey to his sizeable collection of porno DVDs could not ward off the fattening effects of the sugary drinks, pastries, booze and heavy Mexican food that Randal now craved as much as he had once craved crank. He felt like some foul, lumpen Igor, a weak-brained moron who did not even have the decency to just die.

  His brother, of course, had been less than sympathetic to his plight. He’d advised him to visit the gym when Randal had complained that sobriety was turning him into a blimp. He’d reluctantly showed up there once, pale and uncomfortable in a brand new gym outfit. He took a long look at the rows of exercise equipment and the ludicrous, sweaty dudes hopping around on running machines to the relentless beat of Lady Gaga and Rihanna. Was this his only other option? He immediately bolted. His head was spinning and a lump formed in his throat. He found himself in a nearby Pocito Mas, inhaling four chorizo tacos with a side order of yellow rice and black beans, all topped off with a litre bottle of Coca-Cola that he slugged down in his car, hands shaking like a desperate alcoholic. Then he burst into tears of frustration. He felt bloated, ragged and pathetic. As Dr Titov handed him the prescription Randal felt certain that things were about to change for the better.

  “Thank you doctor.”

  “See me in two weeks,” the Doctor said, “We can discuss your progress and make any adjustments then. Now, listen to me. Take one pill a day to start with. Have a hearty breakfast before taking your medication. This drug will reduce your appetite dramatically. You will also feel more focused, and alert. Do not take it in the evenings, as it will certainly disrupt your sleep. If you have any questions or concerns… any at all – you call me. Yes?”

  “Sure.”

  “Do you have any questions?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  The prescription cost fifty dollars to fill at a nearby CVS. On his way over there it was as if his peripheral vision had disappeared altogether. He stalked down the street with a sense of purpose he had forgotten he possessed. Even before he handed the slip to the pharmacist, in a strange way Randal realized he was already high. When he paid for the pills, he momentarily thought about how much meth he could buy with fifty dollars. He pushed the idea out of his head. If he started up on meth again, everything would fall apart. He was sure of that. However, with a steady prescription from a legit doctor, and with careful monitoring of his dose, he figured that he could definitely keep his use of these pills to a manageable level. He had another six months to endure before Harvey would be forced to back off and let Randal live his life without interference. Six more months of dealing with that snot-nosed little weasel Kenny Azura. In six months he would walk out of there and never look back, but until then a little prescription to help him through the bad days was just what the doctor ordered.

  When the pharmacist handed him the pills, Randal smiled broadly and thanked her. Then, noting the time, he cursed under his breath. He was late for his AA meeting.

  SEVEN

  Jeffrey was hustling down Hollywood Boulevard, trying to make it to the Frolic Room by two. His gym bag was slung over his shoulder. The bag, which was lined with aluminum foil, contained around twenty books all stolen from the Borders at Hollywood and Vine. The selection weighed heavily toward the drunks and the junkies: Kerouac, Burroughs, Thompson, Bukowski, Fante, those kinds of guys. Jeffrey’s fence, a Chinese Cuban called Doug, had told him those authors had the highest resale value. The rest of the haul was graphic novels and a handful of CDs.

  The first time Jeffrey had stolen for Doug he’d shown up with a bunch of shit from the bestseller lists: vampire novels, ghost written celebrity memoirs, bloodless Serious Novels about The Way We Live Now with endorsement stickers from Oprah Winfrey, the latest tract by Jeffrey’s one-time mentor and reality television star Dr Mike, addiction memoirs by New York Times journalists, and three-hundred-page rants by Fox News pundits. Thinking he had a good score, Jeffrey was dismayed when Doug threw out three quarters of the books and declared them to be unsaleable.

  “I can’t move these types of books,” Doug had whined, “There’s three types of books I can really sell. Books about getting loaded, books about fucking, and comic books. The rest of it… nobody gives a shit, Jeffrey, hate to break it to you.”

  “All these books are on the bestseller list, Doug! How the fuck can they not sell, man?”

  Doug shrugged. “Well, that’s the conundrum. I guess maybe the kind of person who buys stolen books off the street is just more interested in the raunchy shit than whatever crap is in the bestseller lists. Alls I know is that I’ll have a bitch of a time tryin’ to unload some crapola by Tori Spelling. It don’t got shelf life! Next week some other piece-of-shit celebrity book is gonna be out, and nobody is gonna care about this one no more.”

  Security had been a little heavier than usual and Jeffrey had not had enough dope this morning to thoroughly coat his nerves against the strain of having to go on a stealing spree, so the score was lighter than usual. Jeffrey liked to think that his shoplifting was keeping him and Rachel afloat, but he knew deep down that it amounted to no more than pocket change. With habits like theirs to feed and the cost of Rachel’s black market hormones, they needed a constant inflow of cash. The lion’s share of their money came from Rachel’s prostitution.

  He was
meant to meet Rachel at two and he was already running late. Rachel was due to return from a date with one of her regular johns, a music video director who worked out of an office on near Sunset and La Brea. His deal was that he’d pick her up on his weekday lunch breaks for a suck-job in his SUV. She’d blow him as he’d drive around Hollywood, the guy gulping his Starbucks and talking frantically the whole time. He would regale her with stories about his clients and their on-set antics. Listening to Rachel talk about this guy, Jeffrey started to suspect that he was really paying for someone to listen to his crap without interrupting. The blowjob seemed like an afterthought.

  He was a block away when Jeffrey heard a car door open next to him and before he knew what was happening he had been grabbed by the collar and dragged into the backseat of a filthy-smelling Dodge Charger. The door slammed shut.

  Jeffrey felt something cold and sharp pressing against his cheek.

  Carefully he allowed his eyes to travel to the right. A young, light skinned black kid was holding a switchblade to his face. The kid was trembling, and snot was running down his nose. He sniffed it back in, making an awful bubbling sound.

  “I’ll cut you the fuck open,” the kid warned in a high-pitched voice that betrayed his tender years. “No sudden movements.”

  “Okay.” Jeffrey breathed.

  He looked toward the front seat. The back of the head was fat and bald. In the rear view mirror he saw a pair of puffy, beady eyes staring at him.

  Jeffrey felt his bowels churn.

  Smooth, the coke dealer he’d recently burnt for two hundred bucks, smiled coldly at his reflection.

  “Jeffrey,” Smooth gloated, rummaging around in his nose with an enormous pinky finger. Smooth’s smell filled the car – unwashed skin and pungent sweat. “Jeffrey, Jeffrey, Jeffrey.”

  “Smooth man, I’m –”

  Smooth removed his pinky from his nostril and held it to his mushy lips. “Shhh,” he cooed. “It’s my turn to talk now. I wuz jus’ sayin’ to youngblood here, how junkies and dogs is a lot alike. Ain’t that right, youngblood?”

  “That’s right,” the kid said.

  “They’re both dumb as fuck. They both stink. They’re both… uh… what the phrase I’m looking for?”

  “Creatures of habit,” the kid said.

  “That’s right. They both creatures of habit. It’s like… a dog takes a piss, you know, and for the next three months that fucking dog will go right back to where he pissed and take a good sniff of that shit.” Smooth inhaled deeply through his nose. “Woo-eee. He can’t get enough of that stale ol’ piss. You can fuckin’ grab that dog off the streets, drive it someplace else, dump it out in some fuckin’ strange alleyway, and that mutt’ll find his way back to that stale patch of piss so he can go stick his fuckin’ nose in it again. Ain’t that right, youngblood?”

  “That’s right.”

  Smooth’s eyes narrowed to dangerous slits. “And look at you, you stupid Irish cocksucker. You fuckin’ burnt me for an 8-ball of coke, and you’re fucking stupid enough to be wandering around Hollywood Boulevard like you own the fuckin’ place. Jeffrey, king of the dope-fiends. You didn’t even bother to change your routine, not even a little bit. Coulda give me a modicum of challenge, or some shit.”

  Smooth enunciated the word modicum like a man speaking in an unfamiliar language. He reached into a Del Taco bag in the passenger seat, removed a paper napkin, and patted his glistening dome dry with it. “Lemmie ask you something,” Smooth said. “You think all niggers are lazy or somethin’?”

  Jeffrey gulped.

  “Youngblood,” Smooth said, addressing the kid with the knife, “If I ask this fuckin’ faggot a question and he don’t answer me, you feel free to cut him, okay?”

  “Can I cut his eye?” the kid asked.

  “You can cut anywhere you like so long as you don’t kill him. Not yet. We’re not killing him unless I don’t get my money. If I know this broke-ass motherfucker the way I think I do, then he won’t be carrying the bread on him. He’s gotta stay alive so he can settle his debt. But as far as you hurtin’ him, or disfiguring him… blinding him, shit like that? You can get creative.”

  Jeffrey stiffened as the kid brought the tip of the blade up to his right eye-socket. The blade began to press against the bottom lid. With one application of pressure Jeffrey knew the kid could easily gouge the eye right out of his head.

  “Now wait a second, youngblood…” Smooth said, his voice dripping with honey. He smiled, exposing a row of filmy yellow teeth. “Now, you can call me a lot of fuckin’ things. But one thing you can’t call Smooth is unfair. Let’s hit the reset, ’cos this fruit didn’t know the consequences of his actions yet.”

  The kid looked visibly disappointed, but kept the knife against Jeffrey’s eye. “Now I think of it, you know, that’s another reason why junkies remind me of dogs. They’ll go right on pissing on your couch until you fuckin’ discipline them. I mean, you can ask a dog not to piss on your couch, for sure. I mean, you can do that shit till you blue in the fuckin’ face. But it seems to me you always gotta kick a fucking mutt a few times before it really gets the message.”

  The kid reluctantly lowered the knife and put it against Jeffrey’s throat. Jeffrey opened his eyes fully again.

  “So now you know that’s up, lemmie ask you again. Do you think all niggers is lazy or some shit?”

  Aware of the blade that pressed against his skin, Jeffrey carefully shook his head. “No,” he whispered, “No I don’t think all niggers are lazy.”

  “Hm. I was thinking that’s what it must be. You know, like you figured I’d be too busy eating some fucking watermelon or playing basketball to come looking for you. Especially since you know damn well that I know where you hang out. I mean, are seriously telling me you was just too fucking stupid to even run? I mean, is all that shit they say about you Irish motherfuckers being stupid actually true? ’Cos I just figured that was just some racist bullshit, you know? Like how they say all niggers can dance, or all Jews are good with money, or whatever.”

  “Or how the chinks can’t drive,” the kid interjected.

  Smooth shrugged. “Tell you the fuckin’ truth that one got more than a ring of truth to it. I never met a chink that could drive worth a shit, as God is my witness. Funny, isn’t it? I mean the motherfuckers are so good at math and shit, but when it comes to drivin’ a car…”

  Smooth drifted off, seemingly lost in thought for a moment. Then, as if remembering where he was, he turned his enormous head and glared at Jeffrey. “All I know is if I owed a crazy nigger like me money, you bet your white ass I woulda left town with the fear of God in me. I’d be workin’ in some diner in the fuckin’ Midwest under an assumed name, cooking up home fries an’ shit and lookin’ over my goddamn shoulder every time the door opened. But you? I watched you the past week, wandering up and down around here, not a care in the fuckin’ world. I watched you come and go at that fuckin’ methadone clinic. All I had to do was wait until you didn’t have that fucking shim in tow so I could pick your dumb ass up.” Smooth looked at the kid holding the knife and said in a conspiratorial tone, “I been to prison, youngblood. Those fucking tranny bitches can be crazy and I ain’t fucking with that. Don’t need one of those freaks takin’ my eye out with a fuckin’ stiletto heel or somethin’.”

  Smooth returned his gaze to Jeffrey. “Shit. You truly are a dumb motherfucking Irish cocksucker.”

  Jeffrey blinked the sweat out of his eyes. It was hot in here. No A/C, just the steamy heat rising from Smooth’s massive, stinking bulk.

  “So what was it, dummy? How the fuck you think you was gonna get away with that shit? You think I was gonna forget? I told you – I don’t mind fronting a little stuff if you one of my regulars. But if you don’t have that fuckin’ money for me when you say you’re gonna have it, you got a big fucking problem. Ignoring my calls. Wasting my time. I d
on’t got patience for your trifling shit, homeboy. Where is it? Where’s my money, bitch?”

  “The bag,” Jeffrey croaked.

  Smooth looked at the gym bag at Jeffrey’s feet.

  “She-it. You got a bag fulla money? An’ there’s me thinking you just got done workin’ out. Pass that shit over, blood.”

  Without taking the blade from Jeffrey’s throat, the kid reached down and passed the bag to Smooth. Smooth dropped the bag on the passenger seat and unzipped it. He rummaged around inside for a moment.

  “The fuck is this shit?”

  “Books.”

  “Nigga, I can SEE it’s fucking books. What I mean, faggot, is where is the fucking money?”

  “I – I’m on my way to see my fence. He’s gonna pay me for these…”

  Smooth sucked the air through his teeth. The kid raised the blade slightly, and pressed it against Jeffrey’s eye again.

  “Can I cut this fuckin’ cracker now?”

  Smooth sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose, dejectedly. “I guess you gonna have to. Motherfucker owes me money. Instead of coming to me like a man, he fuckin’ tries to avoid me. Then, when I’m finally forced to snatch his stupid ass off the sidewalk he tries to pass off a bag of fuckin’ books to me? Jeffrey, do I look like the kind of motherfucker who takes books in exchange for coke?”