Black Neon

by Tony O'Neill

  “I see. So when you say you are clean, you mean that you only avoid doing the things you truly enjoy.” Jacques smiled as he said it, but the comment still made Randal bristle with indignation.

  “No. That’s not it. I was an addict, Jacques. I didn’t enjoy meth. I hadn’t enjoyed it for many years. I just couldn’t stop doing it. Big fuckin’ difference.”

  Jacques continued to grin, but said nothing. Randal considered just letting it go but instead, already antagonized by the heat, and the traffic, and Jacques’ condescending tone of voice, he bit.

  “You find something about that statement… amusing?”

  “No. Not at all, Randal. You must forgive me. Maybe it is the language barrier, or just my sense of humor. I meant no offense.”

  “Yeah? Then what you smiling about?”

  “It’s just that you seem to be slightly…. How I say? Disingenuous when you speak.”

  Randal stared at Jacques long enough that he almost rear-ended an idling SUV in front of them before hitting the brakes.

  “You’re calling me a fucking liar?” he spat.

  Jacques shook his head. “Putain! Always you Americans think that you are starring in some dopey Dirty Harry type of a movie! Everybody is a tough guy in America, no? Randal, I do not say that you are a fucking liar. Okay? Just that I feel you are being a little dishonest with yourself.”

  “For example?”

  “Well, for example, your assertion that you did not enjoy using drugs for many years, but instead you were compelled to use them. I find this hard to believe.”

  “How so? If you knew the first thing about addiction…”

  “I have used drugs for literally decades Randal. If there is something about drugs I have yet to discover, then please enlighten me, Monsieur Americain…”

  Randal spluttered in indignation. “Are you telling me you are an addict, Jacques? Or just a drug user?”

  “This is the conundrum is it not? How do you make this distinction? I use drugs when I want them, and I want them most of the time. Some drugs I have become physically dependent on and I have even needed to visit the hospital to… how you say… clean out the blood, yes? But do I think of myself as some helpless slave to my compulsions? Not at all, Randal. No more than I consider myself a helpless slave to anything else I enjoy. So no, I do not think of myself as an addict. I suspect you feel the same way, yet you patronize me by using these generic recovery phrases. About how you are an addict, and you didn’t enjoy using that speed, and all this other shit. I’m sure you did enjoy using those drugs, Randal.” Jacques looked at Randal, who was gripping the steering wheel with white knuckles. “In fact, I’m sure you loved it. And now you have quit, which is an admirable feat, don’t get me wrong. But this revisionism, this rewriting of you own history. ‘Oh I hated it!’ I find it a little… strange, that is all.”

  They drove in silence as they headed east. It was a disconcerting experience for Randal to have the very same arguments he had once employed against zealous drug counselors and even his own family thrown back in his face by this drug-hungry director. The worst thing about it was that those arguments had not become any less persuasive over time. Randal gripped the steering wheel hard and found himself grinding his teeth. Jacques was cutting through the flimsy cocoon the pills had constructed around him, and he found himself getting agitated and anxious. They made the turn off at the Santa Monica exit toward Pico Boulevard. Once they were in Westlake Randal finally broke his silence. He looked at Jacques and muttered, in a barely audible voice, “Jesus Christ, Jacques. Can’t you at least consider the possibility that I might need to believe that bullshit to keep myself sane?”

  Jacques pondered this for a few minutes, stroking his chin thoughtfully. “Of course,” he conceded, “I can understand that.”

  Randal sniffed. “Anyway, fuck it, all I was saying was that I won’t be joining in this little bacchanal you have planned, so please don’t offer me any shit, okay? I’m operating on willpower here, and one fuck-up could royally screw things up for me. This isn’t a joke, Jacques. I’m doing this for one reason only – I really need the cash that Gibby promised. A year ago, twenty thousand dollars wouldn’t have been a big enough incentive to drag my ass out of bed. Now it’s a big fucking deal, and that’s all thanks to the mess I got into when I was using. You understand where I’m coming from?”

  “Oui, Randal. I do. And I promise, you will have full co-operation. There is nothing sadder to me than the idea of wasting perfectly good drugs on someone who will not appreciate them.”

  At this, Jacques’ cell phone rang. He picked it up and said, “Oui? Ah, yes. No problems, no not at all. Uh-huh, I am with Mr. Earnest as I speak….” Jacques looked over to Randal and rolled his eyes, “Oui. We are getting to know each other, yes. Yes… bonding… Right now? We are picking up… uh, souvenirs. Oui. Okay. Oui. Goodbye.”

  Jacques clicked the phone closed.

  “Gibby?”

  “Yes. Apparently I have my first meeting with Kenny Azura tomorrow evening. Tell me honestly, Randal – is he as despicable as I suspect he is?”

  Randal shrugged. “I don’t wanna prejudice you. You should see for yourself… But yeah, he ain’t my favourite person in the fuckin’ world. So look man, what you want? I know a place near here we can get you a room, and you’re gonna be right in the heart of all the drug shit. I can get you crack, heroin, speed, whatever... I mean, it’s pretty much all on offer in this neighbourhood if you know where to look. What do you want?”

  “Everything, Randal!” Jacques declared with a look of absolute certainty in his eyes, “I want everything.”

  Randal took them toward 7th Street and muttered, “Somehow I knew you were gonna say that.”

  THIRTEEN

  On Sunday morning the methadone clinic was closed. Jeffrey and Rachel woke leisurely around noon and shuffled over to the bathroom to prepare their first fix of the day. The brown medicine bottles containing their take-home doses of methadone were kept aside for later. After all, it would be a waste to start the morning with that shit when they had some actual honest-to-god dope to wake up on.

  Jeffrey smoked two Pall Malls down to the filter before he found a decent vein. His arms were swollen and smeared with blood by the time he finally got his hit. When it was done he sat back, ripped the tourniquet away from his arm, and sucked up some of the excess blood from his wrist with a dreamy expression on his face.

  “Goddamn,” he said, “my veins are a fuckin’ mess.”

  “Your veins ain’t the problem. It’s your blood pressure,” Rachel said in the sleepy voice of the satiated junkie, “It’s always lower in the morning. I told you before – soak your arms in hot water before you fix, it’ll help.”

  Rachel, who had good, thick veins and never had much of a problem fixing, was lounging around on the bed in her underwear.

  “I ain’t got time for running the hot water or soakin’ my fuckin’ arms,” Jeffrey muttered, allowing his head to flop back a little “I’m too impatient for that shit. I need to get my fix, y’know?”

  “It took you twenty minutes of poking around to get it, too. It’d jus’ take you five minutes to soak your arms.”

  “Suppose.”

  They sat like that for a while, silently regarding each other from across the room, suspended in that blissful netherworld between consciousness and death. Then Rachel said, “I had some crazy-ass dreams last night, baby.”

  Jeffrey opened his eyes to slits. “Oh yeah?”

  He lit his third cigarette and joined Rachel on the bed. Rachel was a vivid dreamer and often attached profound significance to the content of her dreams. Over the past six months they had developed a routine of discussing Rachel’s dreams on Sundays as they lazed around, happily stoned.

  “Well,” Rachel said, “The first one was another one of those crazy-ass things where I wake up but I c
an’t speak, or move, or blink or shit. Like I’m trapped in my own body. Only this time, in the dark, I can hear people moving around in the room. Cops. Whisperin’ in their radios an’ shit. My eyes are closed an’ I can’t open them but I can see the light from their torches… flashing like crazy against my eyelids as I’m laying there. An’ I can make out every word they’re sayin’… We got a burnt spoon here… used syringe… oh shit, check it out, here’s their dope stash… These junkie motherfuckers are goin’ away for a loooong time… I was freaking out.”

  “Jesus baby,” Jeffrey cooed lightly rubbing her taut belly, “I’m sorry. That’s some freaky shit.”

  “Uh-huh. It went on for… man… it felt like a long-ass time. Eventually I managed to, like, shake myself awake. Of course, the room is empty and I realize I was fucking dreaming. Still, I was too scared to go back to sleep for a while. Smoked a cigarette, watched a buncha shitty infomercials on the TV. You slept right through…”

  “You know me. I could sleep through a fuckin’ earthquake.”

  “Ain’t that the truth? I got back asleep around four, I guess. But as I was layin’ there, just driftin’ off… Something happened. I heard a voice. Calling me. Calling my name. It was as clear as day… calling my old name.”

  “Raquel?”

  “No! My name before that. The name I was borned with. Reggie. I knew the minute I heard it, it was Nay Nay speaking. My grandmother. She passed back in ninety-two.”

  “Did you see her?”

  “No. But as I lay there, the room got kinda… bathed with light. Twinkling light, like when a spotlight hits a mirror ball, you know? It was shimmerin’ all around the room. It wasn’t scary, though. I felt very calm, and peaceful. Jeff, I felt her here. She was in the room; it was my Nay Nay all right, as real as you are. She… she came to warn me, honey.”

  “Warn you?” Jeffrey laughed, “Warn you about what?”

  He kissed Rachel lightly on the cheek. Rachel’s face was sombre, her eyes somewhere far away.

  “She told me that I gotta stop tricking. She told me that if I didn’t stop tricking and living my life this way that something bad was gonna happen. Something real bad. She told me that she had come from the other side to try and save me.”

  Jeffrey sighed softly and said, “It was just a dream, Rachel. That’s all.”

  “No,” she said firmly, “It wasn’t a dream. Nay Nay was here, Jeffrey. She was warning me.”

  “You’re just freaked out ’cos of the papers. Remember we were reading the paper in Greco’s pizza the other day? And there was that story, the one about the Marine who picked up the transgender prostitute in Hollywood, and after she blew him he shot her like ten times and stuffed the body in a dumpster on Melrose? Told his friends that he did it because he didn’t realize she was a guy? And then the cops ended up shooting the crazy bastard to death in a McDonalds’ parking lot?”

  “Yeah. Of course I remember, Jeff.”

  “Well, there you go. It was probably just some kinda… subconscious recollection….”

  Rachel shook her head firmly. “No, Jeff. It wasn’t no damn subconscious anythin’. It was real. It was Nay Nay. She really spoke to me. You know, I’m not tellin’ you this shit so you can start psychoanalysing me, motherfucker…”

  Rachel’s voice was getting louder, more strident. It seemed like the prelude to screaming fit. Backing off, Jeffrey said, “Shhh. Okay, I’m sorry. It was your grandmother. I believe you. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  They lay there for a while, nodding quietly. Time seemed to slow down to the pace of the specks of dust that floated lazily in the humid air. Eventually Jeffrey said, “So what do you think it all means? The warning, I mean?”

  “It means I can’t turn tricks no more,” Rachel said quietly and determinedly. “I’m sorry, honey. But I can’t. Not after Nay Nay came to me. Something bad’ll happen, I can feel it.”

  Jeffrey face was frozen. “For how long?”

  “Until Nay Nay tells me otherwise.”

  “Shit. Okay. Shit.”

  Jeffrey blinked his eyes open and stared at the cracked plaster ceiling.

  “Well, this is the situation. We got maybe three hundred bucks left. We’re paid up until Wednesday here. Rent is one eighty for the week. Plus seven dollars each per day for the methadone clinic. We gotta figure at least eighty a day for dope. And that’s if we cut back. Plus food, cigarettes…”

  He fell into a pensive silence.

  “Don’t forget my hormones. I ain’t plannin’ on growing no damn beard or losin’ my titties, Jeff.”

  “Shit. Forgot about that.”

  “So what you sayin’, Jeffrey?”

  “Well, I’m sayin’ that we’d better figure a way to make some decent scratch, and do it soon. I can only make so much from boosting. If we don’t figure out another revenue stream, we’re gonna be some homeless, dope-sick, hungry bitches, you know?”

  “I know. But I’m telling you I just can’t do it no more. I guess this is the time for you to step up and be the man, Jeffrey. Pass me a cigarette.”

  “We’re out.”

  “Shit.”

  “I know. Look, I hear you, and it’s gonna be okay Rachel. I gotta think is all.” Jeffrey stared at the ceiling.

  “I just gotta think.”

  FOURTEEN

  They checked into the Motel De Ville on 7th Street in downtown Los Angeles, a run-down dump that Randal had often haunted when he was desperately in need of a place to hide from the world. He thought of the last time he had stayed there, furiously smoking meth with a beautiful seventeen-year-old Ukrainian whore called Rani. He’d spent three or four days in there with her, huddled away with the blinds drawn, supposing in some overheated part of his brain that maybe he’d fallen in love. He remembered how it ended too: an ice-pick wielding Russian pimp kicking the door in while they were lying naked in bed, taking hits off the pipe and watching coverage of the Phil Spector trial on CNN. The furious pimp was only pacified when Randal offered him two and half thousand dollars cash for Rani’s time. The last time he saw Rani that greasy-haired Russian bastard was beating the shit out of her in the parking lot, before she was shoved into a beaten-up Toyota Corolla and driven away forever.

  The Motel De Ville was a magnet for the broke and the desperate. 63 rooms in all, the most expensive of them running at 50 dollars a night. For a motel in walking distance from the Los Angeles Convention Center, these kinds of rates were almost totally unheard of. Occasionally the odd optimistic tourist would show up there, lured in by the price and the kitschy 1950s signage that had all but disintegrated over the years, assuming they had found some quaint hidden gem. Often those same tourists would be seen hustling out of there under cover of darkness, dragging their cases behind them. It was usually right around the time a meth-crazed whore had started loudly threatening her pimp with a stiletto heel in the next room, or some washed-up alcoholic screenwriter had collapsed on the walkway outside their door having some kind of awful benzo-induced seizure.

  When they entered the room, Jacques looked around disdainfully and said, “It is a dump, Randal. You have exceeded yourself. I feel like I’m walking into a Diane Arbus photograph.”

  “No worries Jacques. I aim to please. And we’re a stone’s throw from Macarthur Park, where the boys of 18th Street will be happy to serve all of your narcotic needs. In other words aesthetics and convenience.”

  “Good. I will always take aesthetics over convenience, Randal, but both together is tres bon.”

  Although Randal made the effort to delete all of his drug connections’ numbers from his cell phone when he went into rehab, it really didn’t matter. Each dealer’s number was ingrained upon his psyche as indelibly as his birth date, social security number, or the name of the first girl he ever laid. He decided to try Carlos first, who was one of his more reliable downtown con
nections. Although most of what Carlos sold was of negligible quality, he at least dealt in a variety of drugs. Most dealers stuck to a narrow selection. That’s why the whole “gateway theory” of drug addiction always amused Randal. The very idea that someone who bought pot on the black market would be unwittingly exposed to harder drugs was totally unrealistic. A pot dealer would never fuck with heroin, as they tended to be slightly superior, self-righteous types who looked down on straights, drinkers and users of all other drugs with equal distaste. Heroin and crack were usually sold together, since they were as natural a pairing as coffee and cream, but the typical heroin dealer would not deign to deal with speed freaks, for example. In a way, drug users and dealers were not so different from the rest of society: all of them bunched together in their own exclusive cliques, looking down their noses at everybody else. During free time in rehab, Randal would often notice that the crackheads would invariably sit off on one table, the speed freaks at another, and the junkies somewhere else. In fact, the only thing that united them was a near-universal distaste for the alcoholics who – they all agreed – were fat, slow, red-nosed motherfuckers who didn’t even have the good sense to get hooked on decent drugs. Randal’s recent embrace of the bottle caused him more secret embarrassment than a lifetime of humiliations brought about by his meth use. Since Carlos was one of those rare cats who dealt in a variety of substances, low quality though they were, Randal hoped they could at least be in and out of Macarthur Park without having to see too many old faces.

  As he pulled his cell phone out to make the call, an unexpected stomach cramp hit him. He needed to use the bathroom right away. He locked himself in there while Jacques flicked on the TV. He doubled over and took a long, watery shit. As he wiped himself he shook his head in wonder at this powerful psychological reaction to the very idea of scoring drugs. No sooner had he held the phone in his hand and considered dialing Carlos’s number, than his body had thrown itself into paroxysms of psychosomatic drug-need. His intention was to introduce Jacques to Carlos so that Randal could remove himself from any more direct interaction with his old drug connections. He knew that even this one encounter was a big risk. This was exactly what his brother had referred to – in his typically lecturing tone – as “slippery places and slippery faces”. “A relapse is like the flu, Randal,” Harvey would often warn him. “It doesn’t matter whether or not you intend on using drugs. If you’re in those places long enough, if you are around those people long enough, you’ll catch their sickness as sure as night follows day.”