“Haven’t you asked your dad about it?”
“My dad’s rich,” said Sissy. Not only was this apropos of nothing, but she’d already told him this shortly after they’d negotiated his fee. “Do you want to know why?” asked Sissy. Mason figured it had something to do with him being a famous poet. “Lattack,” she said.
“Excuse me?”
“It’s for getting rid of lice.”
“And what? Your dad invented it?”
“Nope. He just wrote them an ad.”
“And …”
“You don’t remember.”
Mason shrugged.
Sissy seemed excited. “Oh, this is good,” she said. “He came up with dozens of slogans and catchphrases—but it was all too confusing, or self-aware or just plain creepy. Lice is a tough sell.”
“I guess so.”
“So, finally, at like meeting number six with the guys from the company, he threw up his hands and said, ‘I don’t know! Lattack. It kills the buggers dead!’”
“Holy shit!”
“Yeah. Yeah! You remember it now?”
“It kills the buggers dead!”
“It kills the buggers dead!” It was nice, in a strange way, to see Sissy engaged in something. Mason wanted to keep it going.
“That was huge!” he said. “It was like I’ve fallen and I can’t get up! Your dad made all his money just from that?”
“That, then Chase. It cleans teeth white … AmiCard. It makes your money rich….”
“Yeah, I get it.”
“I figure I could take over the business. I’ve got a bunch of them. Check it out: Gin. It gets you good drunk fast.”
Mason laughed and took a sip of his coffee.
“Coffee!” she said. “It fills you full of beans.”
“That’s pretty good.”
“You try one!”
“I dunno … Okay, how about this: Ex-Lax. It gets rid of all the shit.”
Sissy held up her hand and tilted it—like it was almost good, but not. “The trick is not to just be super obvious. It’s got to be redundant, too. Like Ex-Lax: You can shit out all the shit.”
“Yeah. I see what you mean.”
Sissy beamed. “I got another one. Trojan. It keeps the unborn out.”
“Or should it be in?” said Mason.
“What?”
“Depending who you’re marketing to …”
“Oh yeah!” said Sissy. She blushed then started to giggle.
“Trojan. It keeps the unborn right where you want’ ’em!”
Sissy laughed so hard she almost fell off the bench and Mason had to grab her, then he was laughing, too.
“Sissy …,” he said, as they regained their breath.
“What.”
“Are you sure you want to do this?”
She looked down for a moment at her large round knees. When she lifted her head the joy was nowhere to be seen—just anger flooding from her eyes.
“Fuck you, man,” she said. “You already took the fucking money!”
“No, I know …”
“I swear: if you get stupid like this, I’ll fuck you up. I will fuck you up!”
“I’m sorry.”
“Just fuck off, man … I mean it.”
Mason put down the coffee. Sissy got to her feet, then turned and began to climb the hill, staggering up like she was bearing the weight of a wounded comrade.
13. Sometimes I feel like more than one person.
14. Given the choice, I would buy a dress with patterns on it.
Sissy’s Letter—Take Two
There are too many of you.
Hundreds of pretty girls who started giggling once they’d passed me by.
Two thousand peers who called me “‘Circle.”
A half-dozen skinny equestrians who fell into the sawdust laughing when I couldn’t mount a horse.
Bus drivers, doctors, store clerks, pot dealers and people walking on the beach, who looked at me then looked away.
But for God’s sake, you’re thinking, not everyone is such an asshole!
And that’s true. But also this: in almost twenty-five years, the instances of kindness, fun and caring have been so rare that I can’t wait for any more of them—or rather, I refuse to fucking wait. And this too: I can’t help noticing that those nicest to me are always the beaten-down buggers with nothing left to lose. I guess ugly is more acceptable when you’re surrounded by it.
Mason felt bad for having upset Sissy. He wanted to make it up to her with a decent letter but it wasn’t coming, and now he was almost out of blow. He flipped open his cellphone and gave Chaz a call.
The doorbell rang. Still holding his phone, Mason walked to the window, pulled it open. He looked down into the street. “Now that’s fast!” said the voice on the phone. He could see Chaz on the sidewalk, mouthing the words into his handset. Mason hung up. A minute later, Chaz was in his apartment.
“’Bout time you dropped a dime. Started to worry you weren’t a drug addict any more.”
“Nice to see you, too.” He was curious as to why Chaz had been standing outside his apartment, but wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of asking.
Chaz sat down and started shuffling cards. “Oh yeah,” he said, as if in afterthought, and pulled out a dime bag of coke. Mason handed him two hundred dollars. Chaz arched an eyebrow. “What’s up, Marlowe? Sell another story?”
Mason nodded, then peeled off eight more hundreds. “Square?” he said.
“Like Steven.”
Mason dumped some powder on the table and reached for a card.
“Before you get all sniffy,” said Chaz, “there’s something I want to show you.”
“All right.”
He waved for Mason to follow him: out of the apartment, down the stairs and out onto the sidewalk. He took a few steps to the right and stopped in front of Harvey’s, closed since 11 p.m. He pulled out a ring of keys, and unlocked the door. “I didn’t know you were in the burger business,” said Mason. They stepped into the vestibule. To their left was the entrance to the restaurant, presumably still locked. Right in front of them, however, stood a steel-grey door. “After you,” said Chaz.
Mason pulled the handle. A bulb flashed on and he was descending a staircase, turning, down into darkness. The door clicked closed above. The flip of a switch. “Holy shit!” Mason looked into the soft yellow light. “What is this place?”
“I call it the Cave.”
25
The Cave was everything a rogue could want: a long, fully stocked bar, a billiard and a poker table (both with brand new felt), a rounded stage, a DJ booth and plenty of dark corners. The colour scheme was classic dingy brothel—walls painted black and burgundy, the shadows of burgundy drapes. There were hovering spots of yellow light—over the poker table, the pool table, the bar.
They walked together, boot heels clicking, across the floor.
“What can I poison you with?” said Chaz.
Mason, still in awe, reached for a stool and sat down.
The bar was fairly high, like in a saloon. Chaz ducked down and came up with a bottle. He rolled out two tumblers, three ice cubes, three fingers of whisky in each. Then, next to Mason’s glass, he placed a disc like a coaster, but stainless steel—a straight line of coke, and a straw.
“I like this place,” said Mason.
“I thought you would.”
“Is it just for me? Or you thinking of inviting other people?”
Chaz took a drink. “Wouldn’t be fair to keep it to ourselves.” He looked around, grinning. “This place is too good—don’t you think?”
“How you going to do it?”
“Nice and simple: cards, coke and booze. Two a.m. till noon, seven days a week. No daylight, no bullshit—just safe, dark fun. We open on Friday.”
“Who’s we?”
“Could be you and me—if you weren’t such a snowbird.”
Mason inhaled through his nose, put down the straw.
&nb
sp; Chaz laughed. “So really just me. But you know how it is.”
Mason didn’t, in fact, know how it was. He would have said so, if he thought Chaz would clarify things. But every time he tried to learn about the urban drug trade it proved too complicated and too simple at the same time. Mason had been in enough dens of iniquity to know how much he didn’t know. You either grew up understanding how it all worked, like Chaz or Tenner, or you got popped early, then learned it in jail.
“Your place, though?” said Mason.
“My place, all the way.”
There’d be other people connected to this and that—taking a cut, making things smoother—not friends, necessarily, or even partners, still a part of it nonetheless. But if it was Chaz’s place, then he was the boss. That much Mason knew.
“Why didn’t you tell me about this?”
Chaz shrugged. “Surprise!” he said.
“What about the cops?”
“The cops’ll love this place. You know how it is: people gotta go somewhere when the bars close—keep ’em off the streets. Maybe a visit or two, but I doubt they’d shut us down. Not unless somebody dies. Here—check this out.”
Mason followed him into the dark recesses. A light switched on, illuminating a large garage door. “The scatterhouse exit for when the raids come. There’s a ramp up to the loading dock.”
“Cool.”
“That’s nothing.”
They walked back to the bar, and Chaz went round behind. “You want to see cool?” he said, pouring two more drinks. He raised his glass. “To the Cave.”
“To the Cave,” said Mason. He raised his tumbler and took a gulp. Then, lowering his drink, he stopped, cocked his head …, “Chaz?”
Standing up on the midrail of the stool, he leaned over the bar. Nothing but floor. He got off the stool and walked around to the other side, bent down. There were bottles, some blow, a baseball bat … but Chaz had disappeared.
26
“Chaz?” Mason was crouched down, looking for what, he didn’t know. Suddenly there was a noise behind him and he swivelled and fell on his ass against the bar, bottles clanking.
“Holy shit!”
Where a moment before the wall had been, there was Chaz. He was leaning back in a chair like he was waiting for the cows to come home—one of his feet sticking out through the opening in the wall.
“Holy fucking shit!”
“Yeah, you said that already.”
“What the hell?”
“Come on in.”
The easiest way to get through was just to roll, like in that scene when Indiana Jones almost loses his hat. So that’s what Mason did. As soon as he was clear of the entrance the wall slid back into place—quiet but with a heavy click at the end. It sounded final. “Reinforced steel,” said Chaz. They stood up and he flipped a switch. “Holy shit!” said Mason, yet again. “What the hell is this?”
“The cave within the Cave,” said Chaz.
The room was the size of an average jail cell, with many of the same attributes: a bunk bed against one wall, a small table and chair, a latrine and a small sink in the corner. On one wall, a few books and an old tape deck. The shelving on the opposite wall, however, contained things not found in your average pokey: twenty gallons of water, a hundred cans of food, three handguns and eight large bricks of Peruvian cocaine.
“I call it the QT room,” said Chaz. He sat back down in one of the chairs.
“Why’s that?”
“Because it’s on the QT.”
Mason nodded. On the fourth wall, the one they’d come through, was a window. It was large—about the same dimension and shape as the horizontal door—at eye level. He stepped towards it as Chaz dimmed the light again. Through the glass they could see everything: the bar, poker table, dance floor—the Cave outside the cave.
“It’s one-way,” said Chaz, tapping on the window. “That’s two inches of bulletproof glass, and the same again on the other side. Bash it with a baseball bat and you wouldn’t hear a pat out there—not a pitter. These walls are a foot thick. Doesn’t it feel like a space pod or something—like out there is the universe? Ground control to Major Tom …” He pulled out his cellphone. “Look, no reception.”
Mason walked over to the shelves. “How about radio?”
“Nope.”
He flipped open the tape deck. “Gowan? So if you got trapped in here you’d have to listen to Gowan for the rest of your life?”
“Only for a few months. Eventually you’d run out of food and water.”
Mason shuddered. He sat down in one of the chairs and gazed out the bulletproof window. “How’d you do this?”
“That safecracker I went to find. Montana, remember? Old crony of my dad’s—he owed us a favour. He’s the only one knows about this, and he’ll be dead any day now. Cancer of the eye.”
“And why, exactly …?”
“You kidding? It’s perfect. One whiff of the bulls and I’m through the rabbit hole. We get busted, I only lose what’s on the floor. Plus, it’s just plain cool.”
“No, I know that. But why are you showing me? If it’s on the QT, I mean.”
“That’s the problem with a secret room: you got to let someone in on it—or else it’s no fun. And let’s say they bust me. I’d need you to come get the stuff out of here, right?”
“If you say so.” He looked at Chaz. “So how do I get in?”
“That’s the coolest part.” He got up, walked over to the window and put his left hand against the wall. A tiny green light, and the door slid open. “Right hand gets you in, left hand gets you out. Think you can remember that?”
Mason nodded, his mouth agape.
“We’ll have to scan your hands.”
“Naturally.”
“Oh, and here,” he said, moving to the other side of the glass. “An intercom—in case you want to talk to someone. But remember …”
“It’s on the QT,” said Mason.
Chaz just grinned.
Back on the other side of the wall, Chaz turned the scatterhouse lights on. Mason stood looking at the mirror. There was no hint, nothing to suggest that anything lay behind it. The glass appeared bolted to the wall. On this side, the intercom was in the ceiling, with the hand scanner—practically invisible—at knee level behind the bar.
“There’s a sensor,” said Chaz. “As soon as you’re through the door, it closes. That’s another reason I told you: something goes hinky and I get stuck in there, no one would ever know.”
“So you’re saying if that happens, the Cave is mine?”
“Very funny.” Chaz brought the lights back down. “If it’s been a while and you haven’t seen me, you know where to look. I figure that place could turn into hell pretty fast.”
“Most places can,” said Mason. “Let’s drink to it.”
“Right,” said Chaz and reached for a bottle. “Demons with demons.”
It was something Tenner used to say.
27
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: You’re an idiot
Even so, I’ll give you one more chance. But it’s back to Harvey’s, Mr. Fucking Hemingway.
Mason spent hours going over all the bad things Sissy had been through, most of them pertaining in one way or another to her body. He didn’t doubt she was clinically depressed and hated her life every single day, and so she was suicidal. Fine. He was supposed to do his job and write her a letter. That was the deal.
But he couldn’t see her doing it.
There were all sorts of people he could imagine killing themselves. He just had to look out the window to see madmen covered in scabs, limping hookers, junkies with half-shaved heads—all shouting out loud to die. It wasn’t hard to imagine them diving into traffic, ripping themselves to ribbons with a steak knife, jumping off whatever they could, shouting the whole way down.
But Sissy?
He pictured her at home, at night, in an apartment her f
ather paid for. Alone. In pain. Utterly alone. Sad beyond belief.
But then what …?
It had been one of his stipulations: I don’t want to know how. But now he did. He wanted to see it. Thought maybe it would help him write. What a strange fucking thing to think.
15. There never was a time I liked to play with guns.
16. My parents were too loving.
Sissy’s Letter—Take Three
There is no more hated creature in the world than a fat, ugly girl born to a beautiful woman and a beauty-obsessed poet.
You want to know why I’m getting out of here? For one, we’ve failed; we human beings have failed the simple fucking test of kindness.
Then for two, there’s my personal failure. My whole life I’ve read about people overcoming adversity—rape, blindness, amputation, fetal alcohol syndrome, etc.—to do great things (dig wells in Africa, open homeless shelters, write operas, raise beautiful children, etc.). I am merely fat and ugly, yet it takes all I’ve got to get out of bed in the afternoon. I’m sick of the effort. I don’t want to be me any more. In fact, I never did.
“How do you plan to do it?”
They were back under fluorescence, in clouds of fry oil and steam: Mason’s penance.
“Do what?”
“Kill yourself.”
“Oh my, Mr. Shakespeare! What if somebody hears?”
“What happened to Mr. Hemingway?”
“Slipped while cleaning his shotgun. And anyway, I thought you didn’t want to know about that.”
“You’re smart enough to write your own letter, Sissy.”
“But then you wouldn’t get paid.”
“I’ll give you back the money.”
“Hara-kiri.”
“What’s that …?”
“Ceremonial gutting of the self.”
“Are you serious? You really want to commit hara-kiri?”
“Commit is such a great word, don’t you think?”
“Look, Sissy. I’m at your service. I really am. I’m just trying to figure it out. You understand how that’s important, right?”
“Right. Okay. So I’m going to commit to committing hara-kiri. Have you read Shogun?”
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