Black Neon

by Tony O'Neill

  Lupita took a sip of her drink and looked at Genesis. “I ain’t decided yet,” she said finally, “Okay?”

  “Not good enough. You promised me, Lupe. No more…” she dropped her voice again, “no more killing. You swore.”

  Lupita slammed her fist down on the bar. All around the bar, eyes darted in their direction. Lupita looked round the room with a murderous glint in her eye, and one by one the population of this dark, lonely place looked away again.

  “This is about my religious freedoms!” Lupita whispered. “How dare you try and interfere with my cultural practices!”

  “This ain’t about your culture, Lupe, don’t gimmie that. It’s about whether or not you plan on killing someone else. You’re hiding behind this whole black magic thing as a fucking excuse. Ah, what’s the point?”

  Genesis turned away, raising her shaking hands to her face.

  “All right, fuck it!” Lupita hissed, grabbing Genesis by the shoulder. “You wanna break my fucking balls over this, fine! We can leave right now if you want. Take our fucking chances. But I’m telling you, Genesis hun, I dunno if we’ll even make it as far as San Francisco with this bad mojo hanging over us. I don’t wanna hear it from you when that fuckin’ tsunami of bad luck comes crashing down on us all sudden-like, because I warned you girl. I told you what we gotta do, but if you don’t trust me, then what the hell…”

  “It’s not about trust,” Genesis said. “That’s not fair.”

  “Of course it’s about trust. Well fuck it, anyway. Finish up your drink. You wanna get out of here, let’s do it before fatso gets back. Here I am with the woman I love, and she don’t even trust me.”

  Genesis’s eyes were brimming over. “Forget it,” she croaked.

  “Forget what?”

  “Forget leaving. If you wanna see what we can get out of this guy, then fine. I trust you, Lupe. Okay?”

  Sensing she had an advantage, Lupita pressed on. “No, no…. it’s fine Genesis. Drink up. Let’s go.”

  “I don’t wanna,” Genesis offered weakly.

  They both lapsed into silence for a moment.

  “Okay, then let’s do it this way. If he ain’t back by the time we finish these drinks, then we split. Otherwise we go with him. Let fate decide.”

  Genesis nodded, ever so slightly. She looked at Lupita’s drink, which was almost finished. She looked at her own, which was three-quarters full. She picked it up and started to gulp it down, greedily. By the time Genesis had finished, Lupita’s glass was drained also. Genesis looked at her expectantly.

  “Okay, you win,” Lupita said with an exasperated sigh, “Let’s go.”

  As they walked toward the door, it opened. Jacques Seltzer stumbled inside, glistening with sweat.

  “Ladies!” He laughed, “Leaving so soon?”

  Lupita shook her head. “No way, Jack. We was just looking to see where you were. Ain’t that right, Genesis hun?”

  “Yeah,” Genesis said weakly.

  “Good! Let us get out of here, I have the stuff, I have a room. The night is young…”

  Jacques turned and headed out into the evening sunlight. It was the golden hour, and everything outside this cave-like bar glowed with the vague tint of unreality. Lupita looked at Genesis, who seemed lost in her own thoughts. She nudged her and said, “Come on, Genesis hun. Shake a tail feather. You can’t argue with fate, and besides… this fucking mooch ain’t gonna rip himself off…”

  iv

  Randal was outside of The Gilbert fiddling with the radio, finally settling on a classic rock station. He tapped the wheel with his fingers and whistled tunelessly along with Manfred Mann’s Earth Band’s version of Blinded By The Light. A cop car crawled past him and Randal reflexively checked his reflection in the rear view mirror. He patted his glistening forehead with a Jack in The Box napkin, and took a sip of his melted ice water. He jumped when Jeffrey opened the door unexpectedly and slid into the passenger seat.

  “Calm down,” Jeffrey laughed, “It’s just me. Why so tense?”

  “I’m fine. So no luck, huh?”

  “Nope. They told me he cleared out. Packed up his shit, dropped off his key and split. They ain’t seen him since.”

  “Shit. Any other ideas?”

  Jeffrey shrugged. “He could be anywhere. He’s got a fucking gorilla on his back and unlimited resources to feed it. I mean, I guess we could take a look around… But unless he wants to be found I dunno what good it’s gonna do.”

  Randal ran his hand through his hair. “Makes sense. Fuck it. Let’s find a parking space. I could murder a fucking drink. Let’s get some booze and we can figure out our next move from there…”

  “Sounds good…I think I got the perfect place for us. Pal of mine from the methadone clinic was hanging out with Jacques the night before he split. They were getting real buddy-buddy, I think he ended up going over to his place. Guy claims he’s old Hollywood. He was telling stories about his famous uncle, and old Jacques was just eating that shit up. He’s a drunk, has a place near here. Maybe he has an idea of where Jacques is. At the very least, he should have a bottle or some pills on him.”

  *

  Pop Gun Eddie was halfway down on a bottle of Brass Monkey when they showed up to his place. Brass Monkey was a favourite pre-lunch cocktail of Eddie’s – a bottle of Olde English drunk down to the label, and then topped off with orange juice. Eddie held a firm belief that his regular intake of vitamin C in this concoction was the secret to his health and longevity.

  Eddie’s place was a tiny, dark apartment in a rundown complex near Selma. The door that led to the street had been busted for more than a year, and the landlord – a senile old red-head who claimed to have starred in several ‘Our Gang’ shorts – didn’t fix shit anymore as the building was in foreclosure anyway. As a result the hallway had become a favourite place for drug dealers to make sales and the homeless to congregate after dark. Eddie didn’t mind this at all: it meant he often he didn’t even have to leave his own building to cop dope.

  After he and Randal had picked their way around two eye-watering bums passed out near the mailboxes, Jeffrey rapped on the door.

  “Hey Eddie – you there?”

  Eddie let them in. He was wearing a pair of dingy, once-white boxer shorts and a stained wife-beater. In the dim light of Eddie’s apartment it looked like the old guy suffered from elephantiasis of the balls: the ratty looking underwear hung heavy down to just above the knees. Jeffrey had never seen the old man not wearing his pinstripe suit, and was taken aback by how pale and skinny his legs were. They peeked out of the saggy underpants, brittle and bony, the fluorescent white flesh dotted with oddly placed patches of dark hair. There was a pumpkin-shaped belly that – like the balls – seemed weirdly at odds with how skinny the rest of his frame was.

  “Pull up a pew, boys…” Eddie gurgled, motioning to the couch. The couch was covered in a dusty collection of junk – ancient magazines with stickers on them bearing the address of various doctors’ surgeries, shoplifted DVDs still in the shiny packaging, a few ratty looking paperback novels, and some funky-smelling socks and undershirts. “Just shove that stuff outta your way,” Eddie said, “it’s the cleaning lady’s day off.”

  They sat. On the way over to Pop Gun’s place, Randal had bought a bottle of Rebel Yell and a six-pack of coke. Brushing away a copy of Time magazine with Stephen King on the cover and a DVD of Mighty Joe Young, Jeffrey said, “You wanna drink, Pop Gun?”

  “Why not? I’m just about done with breakfast. There’s some clean glasses in the sink.”

  Randal picked his way through the piles of junk – old fax machines, 1980s IBMs, boxes of dusty dining sets, and bundles of yellowing newspapers – that piled up around Eddie’s filthy apartment, to get to the kitchen. As well as dark – the dusty shades were still drawn – the apartment was hot. The heat, coupled with the stink of u
nwashed bodies and stale cigarette smoke, gave the apartment an almost unbearably oppressive atmosphere. Watching Randal go, Eddie said, “So what brings you boys around these parts?”

  “Looking for someone. You remember that French guy who was hanging out with us the other night?”

  Pop Gun Eddie laughed a long, wheezy laugh. “Do I? Motherfucker paid me three hundred dollars to come over and take some pictures of me…” Catching himself mid-sentence, he frowned at Jeffrey. “And no, not those kinda pictures thank you very much. The pecker stayed in the pants, you filthy-minded bastard. He just wanted pictures of me, y’know, hanging out here. Doing my usual shit. He shot some video of us fixing dope together and he asked me a bunch of bullshit questions. Then he nodded out and pissed in his pants, right where you’re sitting. He’s kind of a crank, right? Told me he was a filmmaker or some kinda shit.”

  “That’s right,” Jeffrey said, sliding over to the other side of the couch. “My friend here…” Jeffrey nodded at Randal as he returned with the cocktails, “He needs to get hold of him. Except nobody knows where he is. You seen him since then?”

  Before he took his glass, Eddie polished off the Brass Monkey with a long pull. He burped, tossed the empty bottle aside and started in on the whisky. “Can’t say I have. He did tell me that he was, uh, goin’ somewhere. Wanted to pick up some whores, he said. Even asked me if I wanted to come along, which was nice of the fellar. I told that motherfucker that I ain’t got any use outta my pecker since I had my accident, ya know. Fucked up the ol’ equipment when I got a bad hit shooting a speedball in my groin, back in ninety-three.”

  Randal and Jeffrey winced in unison.

  “What happened?”

  “Fuckin’ gangrene.” Eddie placed a protective hand over his filthy underpants. “These puppies swelled up like a pair of fuckin’ cantaloupes. Never really gone back to their proper dimensions. Doctors had to stick a big syringe in there – like something you’d see a vet use on a fuckin’ horse – right in the old fun sack, ya know? And they musta drained two pints of the evilest smelling yellow goo I ever saw right outta them. Since then, nuthin’s been right down there. The fuckers are three times the size they useta be, but I couldn’t get hard if Farrah Fawcett herself stood right here in front of me, bent over and shoved a crucifix up her asshole. It even hurts to piss mosta the time. Still…” Eddie looked reflective for a moment, “S’pose it saved me a lot of trouble in the long run. The bitches were an even harder habit to keep up than the dope, truth be told. And a hell of a lot more expensive, too.”

  v

  Jacques was driving like a madman, weaving in and out of traffic, one hand on the wheel and his face intermittently buried between Genesis’s breasts. Genesis was pouring out the contents of a coke baggie between her tits and Jacques was snorting and sniffing wildly. He made a disgusting noise as he hoovered up the cocaine, somewhere between an asthmatic warthog and a broken vacuum cleaner. Once she had seen the size of Jacques’ coke stash Genesis had loosened up a little about the whole deal. As he buried his face in her cleavage, Genesis was squealing, “Oh shit! You are fucking crazy, Jack!”

  On the car stereo Jacques had the Rolling Stones’ Miss You blasting at an almost unbearable volume. In the backseat, Lupita watched all of this go down with an unreadable expression on her face. Her bag was next to her with their clothes, the guns, and the shit Mama Z had given her all tucked away for later. Every so often she would glance up to make sure that they weren’t weaving into ongoing traffic, or to look around for cops. So far it seemed that Jacques’ luck was holding. When he finally dislodged his head from Genesis’s tits his face was red and sweaty, cocaine smeared around his mouth and nose. He looked like a fat kid who had just sneezed into a bag of powdered sugar.

  “Watch the road, Jack,” Lupita intoned.

  “Real cocaine and fake tits!” Jacques screamed, “My favourite combination!”

  “Honey, who said these titties were fake?” Genesis pouted, adjusting her top.

  She flirted with the practiced efficiency of the seasoned whore. Jacques wiped his face with a sweaty hand and then licked the coke residue off his palm with a fat, pink tongue. “They are real?” he asked incredulously.

  “Sure honey… I’m just working with what my momma gave me.”

  Jacques bellowed with laughter and stepped on the accelerator. Lupita fought to keep her face neutral, but the sight of this disgusting, red-faced pig slobbering all over her lover was almost more than she could bear. She could feel the rage rising in her chest, threatening to force her hand into the bag and onto the gun. She imagined drawing the gun, pressing it against the back of Jacques’ head, and blowing a hole clean through his skull as they careened down the street. No doubt they would be all killed or at least maimed in the ensuing crash, but the more that Jacques pawed Genesis the less Lupita cared about the consequences. Jacques looked into the rear view mirror and caught Lupita’s steely gaze on him.

  “I think she is having fun with me, yes?”

  “What – about the tits? Could be…” Lupita glanced coldly at her lover. “Genesis here’s a real laugh riot. Ain’t that right, hun?”

  Genesis looked at Lupita uneasily. With a stiff smile Lupita quickly changed the subject. “Anyway, can I get some of that stuff or you just planning on pouring it all between my girlfriend’s tits?”

  “Oh, oui! There is enough for everybody my dear. Look under the passenger seat…”

  Lupita reached down and pulled a leather briefcase with a combination lock from under the seat. The first thing she noticed about it was the weight. It felt as though it might have several encyclopedias tucked away inside. It clicked open when Lupita pressed the release. When she saw what was inside her eyes widened in astonishment.

  “What the fuck is this?” she asked in a faltering voice, “I mean… this shit isn’t what I think it is, is it?”

  Inside the case were several large brick-shaped objects, wrapped tightly in wax paper, bound together with thick colour-coded rubber bands. Jacques grinned, his eyes darting between Lupita’s astonished face and the road ahead. “Well my dear, that would depend on what you think it is. It is the drugs, oui? Four bricks – cocaine, freebase, heroin and methamphetamine. Two point two pounds apiece, and the finest quality around.”

  “No – fuckin’ – way!” screamed Genesis, scrambling halfway into the backseat to gawp at the briefcase on Lupita’s lap, “Lemmie see.”

  Jacques looked over to his right, and found himself face-to-face with Genesis’s ass as she wiggled excitedly to get a better look at the drugs. He leaned into it and bit her lightly on the buttock. Genesis squealed.

  A dark look crossed her face as Lupita snapped the case shut. “And you’re just driving around with this kinda weight in your car? You could get us put away for years pulling a stunt like that. Not to mention killed.”

  Jacques sniffed loudly again, sending a gooey mixture of snot and cocaine gushing into his esophagus. “I am an artiste my dear. I do not fear death any more than I fear the police. In fact, I court death – it seems to be the least awful thing that could happen to someone, oui? You say this beautiful girl… is you girlfriend?”

  “That’s right.”

  Jacques turned his attention back to Genesis, who was sitting in the passenger seat again. “Does she fuck you well, my love?”

  Genesis leaned in and licked the white tip of Jacques’ nose. “She’s the best I ever had,” she said.

  “Magnifique,” Jacques breathed. “Young love… it is so … beautiful. I was in love once. A long time ago.” Jacques shook his head, and stared at Genesis again. “I want to watch the two of you… make love.”

  “Make love, fuck, whatever you say, Jack baby. It’s your dollar. Now lemmie have some more of that coke, baby.” Genesis pouted as she said it, shooting Jacques a little-girl-lost look that made his pants tighten.

  “Of
course!”

  Without taking his foot off the accelerator, Jacques reached down to his ankle and pulled a hunting knife from his snakeskin Chelsea boot. He tossed it, still folded up, to Lupita. She caught it with a fluid movement. “Dig in,” he laughed, “There is more than enough to go around…”

  Lupita was beginning to realize just what a prize catch Jacques really was. He was clueless, almost idiotically trusting. Probably the asshole figured that there was no way he could ever be in danger dealing with a couple of chicks. He seemed to be the type – not a woman hater exactly, but at the very least a casual misogynist. No, Jacques would pose no problem at all.

  She glared at Genesis as she ran her hands through Jacques’ greasy hair. Goddamn, she knew they were meant to be lulling him into a false sense of security, but did the bitch have to flirt with him quite so brazenly? She knew the girl liked dick, but still the sight of her allowing this fat, sweaty monster paw her body made Lupita’s flesh crawl. Shivering, she plunged the knife into one of the packages and ripped a hole in it, sending a small white cloud puffing up into the air. She had struck coke. She dug the blade around and slowly slid it out again with a heavy pile of white powder clumped on the tip. She held it to her nose and inhaled. She knew immediately that the stuff was high grade. It sent a frosty blast of pleasure tearing through her skull, numbing her palate as quickly as a shot of lidocaine. Jacques watched her as she did it, his eyes darting between her face, her lithe body, and the arm that ended at the elbow.

  “My dear,” he declared, “Your body is incredible. You are possessed of a rare beauty. If you don’t mind me saying, I find your missing arm incredibly… erotic.”