by Tony O'Neill
These days Dr Titov was his main drug connection. Randal shook his head in disgust.
After a few good blasts on the horn, Randal saw Jeffrey come out of the front entrance, looking like some bedraggled ghost of Christmas past. He looked to be rendered in black and white against the stark brightness of the early afternoon sun: tall and skinny, thick greasy hair sticking out from his skull at all angles, eyes hidden behind a pair of plastic sunglasses, skin so translucent that it looked almost blue. He was wearing a pair of bone-hugging black jeans and a filthy T Rex T-shirt, possibly the same T-shirt he remembered Jeffrey wearing back when they’d been roommates at the Clean and Serene treatment centre.
Jeffrey pulled open the door and slid into the air-conditioned cool of Randal’s car. He slammed the door closed and then coughed violently, letting loose a series of chest-rattling blasts. When he was done he stuck his head out the window and spat up what looked like a sizeable portion of his lung onto the street. The smell of unwashed clothes and stale cigarette smoke filled the car. Jeffrey’s dry, cracked lips formed a crooked smile and he said, “Randal… Long time no see. What’s going down?”
“Very little, man. It’s good to see you. You doing okay?”
A pained look came over Jeffrey’s face. “Don’t gimmie the fake concerned shit, man. You can see I’m doing lousy. But it’s okay. I’m still breathing, that’s all that matters.”
“I guess.”
Randal stuck the car into drive and they took off, heading towards Sunset.
“Six months clean,” Jeffrey was saying as they headed toward Chinatown, where Gibby had set up a noon meeting with Jacques. “That’s really great man. I’m happy for you. How does it feel?”
“Honestly?”
“Yeah, honestly.”
Randal was silent for a long while. Finally he said, “Tell you the truth it feels shit. I don’t feel any different. In fact, in a lotta ways, I feel worse. When I was in rehab they told me that a lot of my hatred for the world was a kinda… you know, a self-fulfilling prophecy. They told me I was miserable because I was taking meth, and I used that self-inflicted misery to justify taking more meth. They said that a lot of my hatred and my unhappiness was generated by my addiction. That my addiction had… uh… twisted my worldview to make the drugs seem like a necessity, you know?”
“You gotta love that about AA.”
“What?”
“Your addiction.” Jeffrey snorted. “The way they talk about it you would think it was a fuckin’ sentient being that you gotta outsmart, or something. I guess I take a less complicated view. It’s just about getting high, isn’t it?”
“Oh yeah, I hear ya. Still, I’ve been trying Jeffrey. I really decided this time that I was gonna surrender and I was gonna listen. Do it their way.”
“You let go and let God, huh? I’m sure Dr. Mike would be very proud.”
“Maybe. But it worked. I haven’t used meth since my last trip to rehab. The problem is, when I quit, nothin’ really changed. I still turn on CNN and I feel fucking murderous. I still drive down the street and when I look around at the cars filled with assholes it just gives me the creeps. I get out of bed in the morning, and I change my underwear every day, and I show up at my brother’s office, and I wear clean clothes, and buy the fucking LA Times every morning… I eat breakfast, give Christmas presents, take vitamins, go on dates for fucking coffee and conversation, I don’t fuck whores, I don’t get high, none of that all shit.”
Randal gripped the steering wheel, his knuckles turning white. “Nothing seems any more bearable. I do everything that they do, I do everything they tell me to do, and the only difference between now and back then is that I don’t even have crank to make me forget how dull and dismal and shitty it all is. I tell my therapist this, and my therapist wants to give me Xanax, and Wellbutrin, and fucking Zoloft or whatever. So I take those and then it feels like I’m sleepwalking through my fucking life. I can’t get a hard-on and I can’t take a shit, and my mouth feels like it’s wadded fulla cotton the whole time. On the antidepressents it’s not that I don’t hate my life any more, it’s just that the pills have zonked me out so much that I don’t have the fuckin’ energy to feel that strong about anything. And when I take that shit all the guys in AA are cool with it, it’s fine and dandy because my fuckin’ doctor gave it to me so I must need it, right? But now I’m a fucking zombie with a limp dick who just wants to sleep all fucking day! So I come off of all that shit, I feel like I’m going insane for a few weeks, and I’m back to square one. I know that with one fucking phone call I can get some shit that will straighten me right out. One fucking hit on the pipe and suddenly life is gonna seem like it’s worth living again, and I’m gonna be able to fuck like a normal human being, I’m gonna feel like me again instead of some half-insane spastic-freak. But if I smoke some meth that would be bad, because I’m an addict and I can’t get high any more.” Randal wiped his sweaty brow. “I started drinking. You know, to ease the pressure a little. It only works when I’m drunk though. The rest of the time I still feel like shit.”
Jeffrey raised an eyebrow. “So what you saying?”
“I dunno, Jeffrey. All I know for sure is that this fucking stinks.”
“It sounds like you’re already made your decision. You wanna go back on.”
“Maybe I should. I don’t know if could be any worse than this.”
Jeffrey’s heavy eyelids drooped and he stretched contentedly. He looked like a cat that had been thoroughly sated by a bowl of warm milk, and was about to curl up and take a solid four-hour nap.
“Well,” Jeffrey said in a sleepy voice, “all I’m sayin’ is that things ain’t so much better where I’m sitting. And you got a hell of a lot more to lose than I do.”
“It can’t be all bad. You look liked you’re feeling pretty good right now.”
A wan smile crossed Jeffrey’s lips. “Give it few hours, man. Then I gotta figure out how the fuck I’m gonna get high again. I’m broke and unless something changes I’m gonna be dope-sick and homeless soon.”
“Yeah, well maybe this whole Jacques deal can help you out with that.”
“I hope so. Look Randal, all I’m saying is that it’s real easy for you to start over-romanticizing this shit now you’re not doing it. I remember the day you showed up for Stevie’s funeral. You didn’t look like you were having such a great time then, you know?”
“Yeah, I remember.”
“Look man, I’m not here to give you fucking life advice. I made my choice, you know, you gotta make yours. The way I see it is this. Life’s a bitch any way you slice it. For me, I’ll take the trade-off of knowing that I’m gonna feel incredible when I put a needle in my arm, over the uncertainty of having to wait and see if fate is gonna throw me a bone today. I know I’m never gonna be a CEO or whatever, but fuck man, I never had those kinda ambitions in the first place. Me? At this point, my view on life is this: I just wanna pay for my groceries and get out of the supermarket without incident, you know?”
Randal laughed and nodded. “That’s pretty profound, man.”
Jeffrey shrugged, rested his head against the glass, and a couple of red lights later he had drifted into a peaceful nod.
TWENTY-NINE
Genesis and Lupita were in Gold Diggers, a skuzzy little strip club on Santa Monica Boulevard, watching a heavily pregnant Thai girl preparing to perform. The tiny stage was little more than a raised portion on the floor furnished with a rusty brass pole. An uncomfortable silence descended upon the room as she fiddled for a few clumsy minutes with a boom box CD player to line up her music. It was early afternoon, and the place was all but deserted: a few tired-looking Latin men in stained overalls drinking beers with a couple of skinny junkie whores, and a fat transvestite sitting alone at a table drinking shots of tequila.
“Reminds me of some of the crummy places I used to strip at,” Genesis remark
ed as the music – “Love in an Elevator” by Aerosmith – finally started up, “’cept we used to at least have a DJ.”
“You know somethin’ hun,” Lupita said, “I think I’d have liked to have seen you dance. I bet you were pretty good at it.”
“Well I’d have maybe got up to show you after this chick gets off the stage, but I doubt there’s many tips to be made in this fucking dump. Shit, look at that waterbug.”
Lupita swept the bug off the table and said, “True that.”
The girl started dancing, if you could call it that. As the music played she just bent over and wiggled her acne-ridden ass in time with the beat, pulling her thong up into her pussy so the lips peeked out of either side. The lighting was unpleasantly bright, and made every blemish and imperfection on the girl’s skin stand out. Genesis supposed that if this chick pulled that thong any further into her cooch then the baby might wind up throttled before it even made it out of the womb. As she considered this, one of the men wearing overalls ran up to the stage and dropped a couple of bucks by her feet, earning a smile and a seductive lick of the lips from the mother-to-be.
“Okay focus, hun,” Lupita said, ‘Cause we need to figure out our next move.”
That morning, Mama Z and her granddaughter Patty had performed a cleansing ritual on Lupita and Genesis. It was one of the strangest things that Genesis had ever experienced. Since Genesis had been a sex worker and a habitual user of crystal meth for many years this was really saying something. Patty was grotesquely overweight, and had a seemingly self-administered bowl haircut. She wore an Elton John and Billy Joel Face 2 Face tour T-shirt from 1994. She looked to be maybe twenty, but her eyes were those of a child’s still. When she spoke she refused to make eye contact with anybody but Mama Z, and her voice had the precise, clipped cadence of a computer. They’d both been instructed to strip and to lay face down on Mama Z’s bed. Feeling ridiculous, Genesis did as she was told. Patty positioned them head to toes, while Mama Z lit some frankincense, filling the room with a thick, pungent smoke. Then for twenty minutes or so Patty passed an egg – the regular kind, straight out of the carton – over their bodies, while Mama Z prayed and chanted in Spanish. At one point the old lady smoked a cigarette down to the filter, blowing the grey smoke all over them, chanting furiously in between each drag.
At first Genesis felt self-conscious lying there naked in the room in front of Mama Z and Patty, but pretty soon her embarrassment gave way to a kind of amusement and, eventually, boredom. In fact, she had just started drifting off into a light sleep when she felt Mama Z’s bony hand touching her back, and her raspy voice instructing her to “Wake up, girl, and put some clothes on...”
Genesis flicked on the TV and watched The Three Stooges in the next room while Patty, Mama Z and Lupita stayed in the bedroom. Mama Z cracked the egg and poured it out into a glass of water. They studied the form the yolk took in the water, talking in hushed Spanish among themselves. When Lupita eventually emerged she had a worried look on her face. Like something had upset her but she didn’t want Genesis to know. Genesis looked up from the TV. “Hey.”
“Hey yourself.”
“You wanna watch the Stooges?”
Lupita shook her head and peered at the TV. “Whozat? Shemp?”
“Nah, even worse. It’s fuckin’ Joe what’s-his-face. The guy who replaced Shemp.”
“Oh. Well look, we gotta go Genesis hun...”
“Go? Go where?”
Lupita shrugged. “Anywhere.”
“So it’s all fixed? Are we still, uh, cursed, or what?”
“We can talk about it later. For now… it’s time to move on. I think we’ve imposed on Mama Z’s hospitality enough, don’t you? Anyway, we’re almost broke. We’d better go find a cheap room and figure out our next move…”
Genesis sensed a change in Mama Z as they grabbed their stuff and prepared to leave. She seemed suddenly serious, anxiously lurking around them as they packed up their meagre belongings. She gave them a weak smile as Lupita thanked her for her hospitality and they headed out to the car. It didn’t matter too much to Genesis. She was so relieved that they were finally getting out of this weird old woman’s house that she didn’t dwell on the uncomfortable atmosphere too much. They said their goodbyes and headed toward Hollywood. Lupita was quiet and preoccupied. She didn’t even turn the radio on.
“So come on then,” Genesis asked, “What’s the deal?”
“Huh?”
“With this curse you’ve been obsessed with. The curse the old lady put on us.”
“The old lady didn’t curse us.”
“Really? So that’s good, then? We’re cool?”
“No. Not at all. I think this goes way deeper than that old bitch at the motel.”
“Goes deeper? What the fuck are you talkin’ about, Lupe?”
Lupita sighed. “Mama Z seems to think that we crossed paths with a Palero – someone who practices Palo Mayambe.”
“And what the fuck is that?”
“It’s a form of black magic. Some people call it the dark side of Santeria. It was brought over to the Americas via Congolese slaves, you know, back in the day. Look, Genesis, I’m sorry. I’m just kinda disturbed by the whole thing because when Mama Z cracked that egg…” Lupita drifted off. Her face looked ashen. “When she cracked that egg… there was blood inside, Genesis. The fuckin’ yolk was blood red.”
Genesis snorted. “Oh Jesus Christ, Lupe! Blood in the egg? That’s retarded. Save the ghost stories for someone who believes in that stuff.”
“I’m not kidding. There was blood in the egg.”
Genesis rolled her eyes. “Okay, so there was blood in the egg. So what does that mean? The fuckin’ chicken was on the rag?”
“That mean’s we got heavy spiritual shit to deal with, hun. When Mama Z and Patty saw that, they knew it was Palo Mayambe right away. The weird thing is, Mama Z said that as far as she could tell this thing had been brewing since the moment we got together.”
“Oh come on! The old lady says we’re cursed because we’re together? You know somethin’, I’m beginning to think that Mama Z told you this stuff because she doesn’t like me. I saw the looks she was throwing me when we were getting ready to leave. Is it because I laughed when she was doin’ that ridiculous performance with the egg? I was trying to keep a straight face, Lupe, I swear! I know you like that old lady, Lupe, but if you ask me she’s batshit crazy.”
Lupita’s nostrils flared in anger. “Don’t talk about Mama Z like that, Genesis! You can’t even begin to understand the kind of knowledge that Mama Z has. You can be all flippant and ignorant if you want, Genesis hun, but don’t you ever disrespect Mama Z to me.”
“Okay, Jesus Lupe I was kidding!” Genesis backed off immediately, suddenly terrified by the anger this comment had provoked in Lupita. “Why you so serious all of a sudden? It’s just when you tell me that this shit has something to do with us being together…”
“It’s not because we’re together. Nobody said that. All she said was that this luck has been following us ever since we got together. When she said that, it got me thinking about what happened the night we met. You know, what went down with Paco. You knew that motherfucker better that me – he was Puerto Rican, right? Did he have a basement in his place?”
“A basement? Sure, I guess. There was a door at least, but I never went down there. It was always locked. He told me it was fulla chemicals he needed to cook meth with, and if anything happened it could blow the whole place sky high. Why?”
“That makes sense... Palo Mayambe is big in Puerto Rico, for sure. And all Paleros keep a special room that they keep locked up good. It’s a “house of the dead” where they can go communicate with the spirits. I’m pretty fucking sure that Paco was Palo Mayambe. My guess is that when I killed Paco we unleashed some kind of unholy fucking vengeance against us.”
“Great, well this just keeps getting better and better. So Paco was a fucking meth-dealing wizard who’s out to get us from beyond the grave. That’s just… perfect.”
Genesis decided that so long as there was no way of talking sense into Lupita, it was probably prudent to play along for the time being. “So what do we do?”
“We got a ritual to perform. Mama Z gave me the all materials we need with instructions. She says it should do the trick. But first… I need a fucking drink. Let’s find a place…”
So they found themselves in Gold Diggers, contemplating their next move. Genesis had the feeling that there was something else on Lupita’s mind, but she’d already denied it enough times this morning that Genesis was compelled to drop the issue altogether. Maybe she was just paranoid, disturbed by all of this crazy talk about black magic, curses and rituals. Lupita’s eyes seemed far away, focused on something that was beyond Genesis’s comprehension. She took a gulp of her whisky and coke.
“You know,” said Lupita, “We need to make some money fast. We’re almost out of drugs, and we’re gonna need some funds in the short term. If you’re up for it, I think I got a plan to make some bread.”
Happy that they were at least no longer talking about black magic, Genesis said, “What you got in mind?”
Lupita nodded to their empty glasses. “I was thinking of pulling a little bait and switch. But let’s get a refill first. I think maybe we’re gonna need it, you know? To steady our nerves…”
THIRTY
When they arrived at Phillipe The Original Restaurant, it was unusually quiet for a weekday lunchtime. They crossed the sawdust-covered floor to the booth where Gibby was nervously checking his Blackberry, awaiting word from Jacques. Gibby looked up at Randal and Jeffrey with a pained expression on his face.
