He didn’t care what she was bleating on and on about. He unzipped his greasy jeans. Showed that pounder to her. Ready to go. Leaking a clear stream of lube. And Libby, screaming like they all did—with delight. One problem: someone else screaming, too. From outside. What in the actual fuck?
The concert experience and been profound, Billy lapsing into a state of complete and open perception, the world on fire, stage lights a pulsing blob of color, the music, whether improvised or otherwise, loud and incomprehensible. Staggering epiphanies with each passing moment, sensations like what he mused a Star Trek transporter experience felt like, every molecule broken apart, accounted for, analyzed, scanned, assessed, put back together. A quivering mass of manmeat, aware, alive, sentient, whole frickin’ bit. Aware of Libby, of Devin, but beyond his two friends only a writhing colorful glob of humanity manipulated by the two maleficent drummers, their flailing limbs attached to gossamer strings extending out into the crowd like spiderwebs, puppet masters to the gathered throng, their movements tied to the anarchic loose-limbed dancing of the hippies.
The hippies; the tribe, as Billy’d begun to think of them. His people. Yes.
And they, too, he realized, were thinking of him, Billy Steeple, standing at the center of the great circle; no, astride the arena like the Colossus of Columbia, all of it occurring not only at his discretion and pleasure, but by and for said satisfaction.
Next, however, the band, played a lilting, mournful encore, disappeared with a wretched suddenness and reality again descended. Billy sat stunned after the lights came up and the world begin to again play out on a more prosaic level.
Now? No Ruck, only Libby. Now, saying to himself, time to act.
Slipstreaming back to the block of flats, the idea to take her in Ruck’s room had gelled. He prayed the old boy was off somewhere drinking away his hallucinations.
Prayers, answered. Each unfolded moment had been so perfect, like one of the screenplays they’d write together—starting tomorrow. As soon as she’d gotten her fill. The acid gave him perfect clarity of purpose—no accidents possible. You was cured, all right, Billy heard an exaggerated voice like a black vaudevillian whisper in his ear.
But Libby, pissed and flopping around on Ruck’s bed. Kicking at him.
Awesome.
The way he liked it.
It was all working out!
His tongue, thick, eyes crossing, getting the spins, pulling at the button of her jeans, his dick hurting, hurting with incipient pleasure. Smothering her with his Billyness.
Falling forward into the pools of her angry eyes. Pleading, his voice cracking. “Hush. It’ll be different with me. I’m special. Look—”
Tugging at the bulging button-fly of his 501s, his Attribute flopped out accompanied by a sound effect he hoped would diffuse the tension. “SPROING,” he shouted.
“Oh,” Libby said. “Jesus.”
But then?
Laughing at him.
Not.
Sexy.
Fury, instead. Accident-level fury. Put that cunt in her place, a stentorian voice like the late actor John Houseman. Make her pay for her offensive laughter.
“BILLY, LET HER GO.” Ruck’s voice, raw and huge, came booming from outside in the fire lane.
Libby shrieked anew—Devin fell past the open window.
Billy, untethered and busted; the one thing that could not happen: getting caught. Because then his life would be over. Except, the accident hadn’t happened.
Thank god.
Frantic, shoving his dick into his jeans, begging and pleading I’m sorry I’m sorry but Libby, slapping at him and cursing, bolting out the doorway.
Ruck had swooped in to save Libby.
God-damn, man. Like a superhero. Like 007. Like a freaking movie.
Shoving his dick dow into his jeans, best he could, Billy rushed to chase after Libby and Devin, to straighten out this fortunately forgivable—surely, certainly forgivable—misunderstanding among friends.
Yes—Billy could explain himself. This LSD, it gave him pathways to new space. They would all stay friends. This incident wouldn’t queer the deal. It couldn’t—Billy would be lost without these folks. He’d be left alone with himself again.
Thirty-One
Devin
Devin, staring into the hotel bathroom mirror, regarded his pasty haggard killah ghostface. Scowling, disgusted, sick. Vague unpleasant memories of the past few days. Lots of drinking.
Which meant: All was right in his world.
Mostly.
At the moment, his feelings, hurt:
Late Friday night on the other side of their two-day haul across the southern tier of American states, that jackleg Steeple had deposited Devin at a downtown hotel in Columbia, checked his ass in like baggage and said, well-sir old Ruck old fella, gimme a shout sometime tomorrow. Had a blast driving from Texas, pal. A dry handshake, and gone.
Fucker.
Devin, struggling all through the day Saturday, paralyzed, depressed, freaked at being back in South Carolina, especially downtown Columbia. Emptying the hotel mini-fridge as he had back in San Antonio.
Not enough to do the trick.
He’d considered ordering a bottle of liquor from room service, but with costs starting at fifty bucks, saying, forget it, you thieves. Once Devin had refused to be driven to Edgewater County, the whole stupid reason for this ungodly clusterfuck, as Billy kept saying through a forced smile and bulging cartoon eyes, he had been dumped like an unwanted pet. And so, despite Billy’s pledges, he might or might not show back up to settle the bill. No room service liquor, then.
Devin, sitting in morose repose. Turning on the television, flicking it off again. Sipping away at the minis and feeling unnerved—hotel rooms were like cages.
To pass the time, trying, for once, to sort through the clutter of his mind. To see back into the past with clarity, with veracity. No mean feat.
Cracking open the last mini-bottle, Beefeater gin. Gin sucked. But all he had left.
Sharp pains, exploding in his gut. A fluttery feeling as the tissues struggled to remain living in the face of constant onslaught from the toxic elixirs constituting Devin’s waters of life, his flowing, forgetful waters of the blessed Lethe.
Devin, knowing he’d see Dobbs soon enough now that he was home. Well, he’d be seeing everyone, even Libby, but most definitely Dobbs. Ready to have matters out with that priapic, cheating, lying little bastard who seduced her out from under him.
Next, to deal with Libby: You broke my heart, you disloyal Delaware yankee bitch. We were lovers in mind, spirit, body. But you left me behind.
Panic, an adrenal eruption, full body tremors, images rushing through his mind.
Blood.
Glass.
Sunlight.
Now we were getting somewhere.
Sunlight bleeding in through the slatted blinds of the corner room to which Billy had insisted on upgrading, Devin made haste for the outside world. He exited the hotel in a daze, stopping only long enough to ask the bellman the precise whereabouts of the nearest liquor store, and thanking God in his Heaven that the day was not Sunday—in South Carolina, as in Colorado, the Lord’s day remained a dry day, except in bars and restaurants.
The bellhop, probably a college student, recoiled from Devin’s crisply astringent breath. “Around the corner,” gesturing, shooing, offering a forced smile to a pair of well-tended guests exiting past the odiferous drunk fumbling around with a crushed soft-pack of Reds from the jean jacket pocket stained brown from the many packs of smokes that had gotten wet therein. The jacket, far from necessary on this nice spring afternoon, but a character like Devin needed a costume so the studio audience would recognize him as he walked onstage in his side-character comic relief role, a Latka Gravas or Steve Urkel for the modern age.
“Right on.” Devin, extending a wrinkled, thin dollar. “For your trouble, ace.”
The bellman, eyes narrowed and hard, really didn’t like Devin or his
breath. “Keep it, sir.”
Shakes coming on now. It always made Devin emotional: “You little cunting bastard. Too good for my motherfucking tip, are we?”
“Sir—the bill was wet.”
“I’m-a tell you what, son, as goddurn guest of this here fine hotel-iery, I demand to tip ye this dollar.” Devin produced his card-key, held it up like ID at a checkpoint. In the other, he held the dollar by one limp corner. “I’ll not have such impertinence. Now take it. And spend it wisely.”
Now the slits widened. “If you insist.”
“That’s more like it.”
Devin, crumpling the bill up and tossing it onto the hotel driveway, skipped away in one of his little drunk-dances. He called over his shoulder, “You best watch that disrespectful shit, buddy-row. I’ll fuck you up six ways to next Wednesday.”
Now, where’d that twink say the liquor store was? Guess he shouldn’t go back to ask again. Bridge, burned.
Maybe he should call Creedence to come get him. Instead of buying liquor.
Nah. He’d show when he showed. That had been the agreement. Far as he could remember.
Wandering west until crossing Main Street, after another block turning onto the wide, six-lane thoroughfare of Assembly Street, he froze in mid-step. Shock flooded in.
In front of the glass and chrome of the modernist public library glimmering in the midday sun, rows of mature Bradford pear trees stood in full bloom. White blossoms shimmering brilliant in the Carolina springtime light dropped in clusters and clouds in the morning breeze. Beautiful, if diseased trees; Devin recalled that the local paper called their planting a poor longterm planning decision on the part of prior city leaders.
The wind picked up—the blossoms, falling like snow.
Devin, hotfooting his way back toward the hotel. Away from those damn trees and their white blossoms.
He stumbled on the liquor store, tucked away on a side street. A five-spot from Billy’s wallet later and Devin had procured a pint—only a pint, worrywarts—of crisp, clean Skol vodka, affordable sweet relief and peace of mind. They had said you couldn’t buy it. Bullshit, he thought.
Ducking into an alley and cracking the seal, he gulped the hot liquor. Guts in spasm, gurgling with pleasure and yet not, he retched, coughing, but somehow forced his gullet to receive the vodka with the goodwill in which he’d offered the sacrament. Drinking another couple of good solid toots.
The nausea abated.
Ah.
Heavenly trumpets sounded; no, only the siren of a passing ambulance.
A sense memory, vague and unsettling.
Ambulances, fire trucks; their sound set him off.
Walking east away from downtown, shaking off the hellish image of the pear trees, he knew the campus of Southeastern University lay only blocks away. Not going there. No way.
And wherever he looked, yea, unto him: more white blooms, pink dogwoods, other vibrant displays of color sprouting from the rich and loamy Carolina soil. Devin, unnerved by the indicators of the earth’s annual renewal; drinking, walking, trying to blank out his mind. Swatting at a display of wisteria flowers dangling like a bunch of lavender grapes, this at a law office in one of the few historic old houses Columbia still had, the lot of them full of lawyers and dentists and real estate companies; he crossed through a whole oaktree-canopied district of such structures, what passed for historicity in a city whose antebellum form had been otherwise rendered to ash by Sherman and his gang of retributive avenging yankee angels.
Feeling a modicum of steadiness, Devin now headed across the downtown plateau toward the hilly Southeastern campus and the flood-prone basin of the Old Market beyond. Danger lurked—these stomping grounds lay lousy with ghosts which might be impossible to drink away, to ignore. Devin, pretending to be a wandering drunk instead of one heading straight down into the hellish heart of the emotional maelstrom that’d gotten him into this condition.
Devin struggled down the long incline of Gervais—too steep, sidewalk root-bound and uneven, he kept almost face-planting his way to the low point underneath the train trestle.
Deciding to ankle the hillside, he braved a skulk through the nice Victorians and Craftsmans of University Hill. More huffing and shuffling took him by a tall, white condo building. He felt steadier on a level street, now. He noticed the pyramid-shaped shrubbery art out front; he saluted Old Glory hanging limp from a flagpole, all the while nipping the vodka. Hot belches, stomach sloshing. But in a good way. Mostly.
Crossing the railroad tracks, the smell from the fast food joint a block away either nauseating or tantalizing, here, the Old Market lay spread out before him—bars, stores, restaurants, shoppers. They called the area that because it’d been anchored by a Winn Dixie grocery store, a newfangled supermarket serving Herndon Hill, Columbia’s first actual suburb built back around the turn of the twentieth century, making this area the area’s first commercial shopping hub of the modern age; now it offered much more character as a college ghetto than the corporate big box-anchored strips choking out every traditional merchant neighborhood the country over. Going farther back, it was said that slave trading had gone on at the far top of the hill, in a market building up that way, so maybe that, too, had informed the naming of the neighborhood.
Only one or two newer buildings loomed over the old one-story rows of family-owned businesses he remembered. A lovely, lovely Saturday afternoon. The soul of the Old Market remained uncorrupted by corporate tenants. It was a relief.
Devin, shuffling by a smoothie stand called The Spotted Banana, glared inside at the young girl behind the counter busy operating a whirring blender. Cute as a button. No booze to be had here.
A blatant jaywalking decision carried him nimble-footed across the busy highway to a lovely bricked fountain, one built in the interim since he’d last haunted these streets. A couple of crusty, red-eyed dudes, African-american men from the nearby poor neighborhood, panhandled him. He told them to open their eyes wider and check out who they were asking; that they should shine it on. That there was hope right around the next corner, but not in his threadbare pockets. It was half-true.
Making his way down the block toward a coffee shop, mostly college kids sat at the tables outside sipping and smoking and reading.
Devin, staring through the open door. A figure inside, catching his eye—an avuncular-acting, heavyset man, a pleasant smile, laughing and talking to a customer. The voice came familiar and unforgettable, a voice beside which Devin had slept on camping trips and sleepovers, a best friend from back when friendship was more than a word:
“This Sumatran is so good it’ll make you want to slap your mama. That’s the one I take home with me at the end of the day.”
Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle—Roy Earl. My old buddy. Can’t be. I must be dreaming.
But, I’m home now.
So I guess this is real.
Devin, seizing the moment: marching in through the open doors, mumbling a string of nonsense syllables, waving his skinny drunk’s arms around in a gesture of pleasant surprise.
Rather than embracing him, his old pal hustled around the counter like a shot. His cheeks had reddened: “I done told you fellas to keep out. Now get on before I call my boys in blue. Again.”
Devin, freezing in mid-chortle. Backing out of the doorway. “I wasn’t bothering no one.”
“Sure you weren’t. Skedaddle.” Roy Earl, tough and mean. “And I don’t mean five seconds from now. I mean now. Sir.”
Acquiescing; unlike Devin’s peers shucking and jiving up at the fountain, Roy’s peepers were working right.
What an a-hole.
Some friend.
Slipping into the cool dim comfort and succor of the first bar to cross his path, Devin, down to it money-wise, would cocoon inside for as long as he could get away with it; to forget, divine.
They all wanted to forget about him, it seemed. Why not forget about himself for once? Only one way to do that; a liquid lunch in order. A hearty on
e, as much as he could swallow.
Thirty-Two
Billy
By the time Ruck’s clunking, smoking Jetta finally crossed the Savannah River into South Carolina, Billy, descending into paranoid near-madness from exhaustion; swearing he could smell the radiation from the government’s upriver nuclear-bomb factory. Seeing glowing shapes in the water flowing under the long interstate bridge. Malformed mutant cartoon animals leaping out from the side of the road. Startled into lucidity by the crack of another in an unending series of beers opened in the back seat. A running monologue of horseshit and lies and filth. Ruck, for two days, on a roll.
He didn’t seem like the same guy Billy had known in school. For one, he looked about sixty, at least first thing in the morning. By the time of his first drink, Ruck seemed to lose about ten or fifteen years. Also: the more the fucker drank? Yep. He got downright lucid. One of those types.
All too lucid.
Gaslighting Billy. Pretending not to remember what happened.
They managed a decent night’s sleep in New Orleans after the first leg. On day two Billy expected to be better rested, but wasn’t.
Teeth on edge the whole time.
Waiting.
Waiting for Devin to stick a knife into the back of his head, or putting him in a headlock, jerking the wheel and running them into a concrete abutment or off the long bridge over Lake Pontchartrain leading from the west into New Orleans, or all through rural Alabama, or on the beltway skirting around the Atlanta megapolis.
But his old drunk, deranged compadre hadn’t made any such moves, nor shown any antipathy or ill will. Had only sipped beer, told filthy stories and farted. Pissed into the liter-sized bottles of Aquafina Billy sucked down. Wept or cursed to himself, occasionally; went into twitchy fugue states, episodes Billy worried were leading to a full-blown seizure. Another beer or three usually took care of the problem.
Mansion of High Ghosts Page 23
