Sleepless

by Charlie Huston

  When Park had suggested to one of these couriers that he was looking for some part-time work before his wife had their first baby, the kid had scratched his belly under his Abercrombie & Fitch T-shirt and told him guys were always flaking out and that the service always needed new couriers. So the next time Park called, instead of leaving his code number and hanging up and waiting for a callback, he left a message.

  “This is Park Haas, number six-two-three-nine. I talked to Rohan; he said you might be hiring. I’m interested.”

  Which did lead to a callback, but instead of being asked where he was and how long he would be there and being told how long it would take for a courier to arrive, he spent fifteen minutes talking with a young woman about reliability and time management and being asked if he’d gone to college and what his major had been and, finally, if he was a police or other law enforcement officer.

  And Park lied. Which, as Captain Bartolome had promised, he’d already found himself getting better at. Though never without some twinge of regret, the voice of his father in the back of his mind: Lying, Parker, is a great weakness in a man. I advise you to never allow it in yourself. Or you will become exposed.

  The danger of being exposed, physically or otherwise, having always been at the forefront of his father’s considerations.

  Following the man’s example, Park had spent the majority of his life trying to restrict any such exposure. The elements of his existence had been few. Few possessions. Few relationships. A streamlined life, one best able to make passage without catching on any dangerous shoals. Beyond his parents, his sister, her rigid husband and two cold children, and an always reducing number of childhood friends, he had no emotional exposure of any measure when he left Philadelphia and headed west to study philosophy, acting upon a desire to better understand the nature of things, if not people.

  Rose had changed that.

  Slamming hard into his side, she had created an irreparable breach, a wound so deep and immediate that he’d nearly collapsed at the impact. Had almost fled, bleeding, to find some quiet place where he could either heal or die. But she hadn’t let him. Instead, ungently, she had battered him, split him, spilled his life about, played among the bits, and convinced him that such a thing could be fun.

  By the time Park was in a Starbucks on Melrose, watching through the window as a parade of sleepless and other night owls shopped the midnight hours away, listening as the young woman who belonged to the voice on the phone described exactly how he would pick up product, how he would be accountable for shortages, how much he would be paid per delivery, and asked him to show her his current driver’s license, vehicle registration, and insurance, by that time Park was exposed on all fronts. Made deeply vulnerable by the wound Rose had opened in him and the things he had come to understand that philosophy had never illuminated, Park was barely present in the coffee chain. Most of him back at the house, in the nursery, where his wife and child, still sharing a single body, were putting together a crib, while he took his first lesson in selling drugs.

  Presentable, educated, white, behind the wheel of a decent car, and, most valuable of all in a dealer, both prompt and reliable, Park was very quickly specializing in deliveries to the service’s top-end clients. Rather than being detailed to a specific geographic locale to maximize the number of deliveries he could make in one day, Park received a larger per-delivery commission and a fuel stipend and found himself often eyeballed by private security, buzzed through locked gates, ushered into exclusive clubs, ranging from what was left of Malibu, between the rising waters and sloughing hillsides, to Beverly Hills, Bel Air, Hancock Park, the Hollywood Hills, certain blocks of West Hollywood, the Los Feliz homes of bright young reality TV stars, and the changing rooms of Rodeo Drive boutiques.

  Then he became a buyer again. Making a move that his employers took for granted, he purchased three kilos of Canadian crippleweed. Agreeing not to pursue any of their clients, but not promising to turn down business that came to him, he left the service and began almost instantly to receive texts from those clients.

  As SLP spread, increasingly aggressive chemical responses were caught in its draft and pulled along. The not surprising desire shared by many to bubble-wrap their awareness and muffle any intrusions regarding what was happening in the world at large was compounded by the desire of many others to match the pace and awareness of the sleepless. The population was becoming rapidly segregated by personal taste: uppers, downers, or stridently clean.

  With over thirty million sleepless in the United States, spanning all ages, economic classes, ethnicities, religions, or any other readily know-able demographic, the twenty-four-hour marketplace was in high gear. Needing not only to be staffed but fueled as well.

  Staked to an evidence room nest egg of some of the rarer exotics, Park was able to enhance his already rock-solid reputation as a reliable source of the basics with equally glowing word of mouth as a finder of impossible things. A reputation that engendered, as it turned out, only one major problem: an unwillingness on the part of many of his clients to share his number.

  No one wants to lose their good thing.

  But no matter. Unable to do less than bring every ounce of his father’s work ethic to bear on any effort, Park found that his market share grew.

  Having spent most of his life around people with great deals of money, he knew more than he cared to about distractions such as box office receipts, celebrity infidelities, luxury cars, flux in the stock market, designer brands, real estate prices, workout routines, and the ever-increasing popularity of radical elective plastic surgery. He found, unexpectedly, that this chatter, the same kind that could be expected between retailers and customers everywhere, began to segue into the intimacies one would have expected to hear passing in a hair salon, or a doctor’s exam room, or a therapist’s office.

  Observant and still, saying little, but that little always relevant and as likely to be an apt layman’s reference to Descartes, Lao Tzu, Sontag, or Aquinas as it was to be taken from a recent episode of a given client’s half-hour, single-camera sitcom, Park’s customers found him to be a comforting presence. None suspecting that the keenness of his insights was largely based on the depth of his concentration, his desire to record everything that he saw and heard in his book of evidence.

  So it was with the special aura of both a reliable source and a good listener that he had been invited to the party where Beenie had introduced him to Hydo. Where he’d had a conversation that led him to first suspect that the world’s descent into madness was neither random nor the natural consequence of humanity’s excesses, that there was a hand behind the wheel steering us into deepening misery. That someone, massive and unseen, was drawing profit from the piles of suffering dead. And that they must pay a price for their greed. If only he could find them.

  7/9/10

  ALMOST MIDNIGHT.

  I was thinking about how Beenie told me about the Craigslist personals. The new category that appeared in late ’08. Sleepless-related. Mostly about treatment.

  Has anyone tried? Someone told me. Is it true that? Twelve hour yoga to replace sleep. SLP acupuncture. SLP is mental not physical! SLP is an environmental allergy, stop using chemical, go organic!

  Sales classifieds that I printed:

  Selling one king size bed-Hardly used. $100.00 or swap for a tank of gas.

  4sale, thousands of comic books-These were my husbands. I’m not sure what they are worth, but we don’t have room for them and I’m afraid they are a fire hazard and our area keeps losing services from the DWP and the fire department can’t get pump trucks up our access road. I just want to get rid of them. Bring a truck and as much bottled water as you can carry and you can have them all.

  All my worldly possessions-The things I have spent a lifetime acquiring. Everything from my baby blanket to the house I paid off just last year. Fifty-two years worth of material objects. My letters and business papers. My 2007 BMW 6 series. My 56 inch plasma screen. My sectional. A
collection of 12 numbered Hockney prints, framed. My Talor Made graphite clubs. My three Armani suits, 44 long jacket, 42/34 pants. My All-Clad pots and pans. My grandmother’s wedding shoes. A really nice mountain bike that I never use. My letterman jacket, lettered in both football and track. My first tooth and a lock of my baby hair. A glass jar with a fistful of sand from a beach in France from my honeymoon. My divorce papers. A penny squashed flat after I put it on a train track. I have no family. I’m giving it all away. But only to someone willing to move into my house and live here with these things and use them. These are my things. These are what I’m leaving. I want them to stay together. Call me and tell me why you should have my things.

  Personals:

  SLPM 4 SLPF-up late. LOL! Keep me company?

  SLPM 4 ANYONE-I’m a virgin, you’re experienced and gentle. Hold me.

  SLP 4 ???-Alone in my apartment, the front door unlocked. I give you the address and tell you that I’ll be in bed with my eyes closed and headphones on. I can’t see you or hear you. How will you send me someplace better? Serious responders only, please. I don’t have time to waste on anyone without the nerve. And, no, this is not a call for help.

  SLP 4 DR33M3R-I’ll do anything u want.

  Thousands of listings.

  I looked around. I tried to find out something that Rose and I hadn’t already learned about SLP. I looked at a forum for family members of sleepless, but I could never post. Mostly I looked at the Dreamer listings. All the people looking to buy or trade for it. I placed a couple ads. The only responses I got that went further than one email were from obvious scammers:

  I HAVE RECEIVED YOUR EMAIL AND WILL BE HAPPY TO ACCEPT YOUR OFFER!!! I AM TRAVELING ABROAD AND CANNOT MEET WITH YOU IN PERSON!!! SEND ME YOUR BANK ROUTING AND ACCOUNT NUMBERS AND I WILL ARRANGE A TRANSFER IN THE OFFERED AMOUNT!!! A COURIER WILL DELIVER THE ITEMS!!!

  People were often directed to Dreamer and SLP forums where they could get more information. Mostly identity theft scams. A few were legitimate but primarily concerned with counseling, online group therapy. Religious sites, preaching acceptance, conversion, hope, and, most of all, resistance to the temptation of suicide.

  Rumors permeated almost all those sites. An insistence that Dreamer was out there, a large supply of it that other sleepless were tapping into. Captain Bartolome said it was “to be expected bullshit.” Of course the sleepless were sharing rumors about a secret supply of Dreamer; what else would you expect? It would have been far stranger if there were no rumors. He said, “Look for the money.” The money, he didn’t need to say, would lead to busts of scale.

  But there should be something. Sleepless spend so much time online, there should be something about black market Dreamer. CL is a natural place for dealers to look for customers. But I couldn’t find anything.

  At the party Hydo had said something about Dreamer that stuck in my head. Passing a bottle of Jack Daniels around a table, he’d said Dreamer was “on a special wavelength.” He said part of that was literal. He was stoned, but it caught my attention, and I asked Beenie for an introduction. Hydo got more stoned, explained what he meant. Talking about how the RFID tags on the cases and bottles mean there are actual traceable radio signals that tell you where the Dreamer is. “The whole history of each bottle is in the air,” is what he said. Which I already knew, but hadn’t thought of that way. Not that it really helped.

  Why isn’t there an audible signal? A visible signal?

  There’s always a slang at work in drug deals. On CL people talk about 420 and going skiing and taking a vacation, when what they want is pot, cocaine, or LSD, but that was the kind of stuff you could get from an LAPD training pamphlet. I’d been able to pick up most of the cues I needed for my assignment by listening carefully and parsing what I heard. It was like philosophy. You don’t glean anything useful with a surface reading of Nietzsche; you have to spend some time thinking about an idea like “God is dead” for it to be anything but a knee-jerk catchphrase.

  But no trace of Dreamer slang or lingo can be picked up. Nothing that could hit the cops’ radar and start them asking around the way they would if a new tag started showing up on top of old graffiti.

  Dreamer has to be out there. Bartolome said the demand was too great and “the money’s too high” for there not to be black market Dreamer. Real DR33M3R.

  But if it is there, it is also somehow invisible. Not just down low, but without a trace. And that requires organization: a consciously designed distribution system for the only drug that law enforcement has any real interest in controlling.

  Real Dreamer. Actual DR33M3R, in large and reliable quantities. Pills straight from the factories, stolen in the supply chain. Their absence should be known. The individual pills are traceable through the batch and production sequence codes stamped into them. Bottles and boxes, crates and pallets, all have their own RFID tags. Wherever a large amount of Dreamer may have slipped out of the system, someone must be aware of the shortage. Several people must be aware.

  Afronzo-New Day DR33M3R being sold on a large scale. Several people within the production and distribution chain have to be involved in this trade in DR33M3R. Someone, somewhere, inside or outside of A-ND designed the system, recruited those involved and is reaping the bulk of the reward.

  Hydo said, “On a special wavelength.” Beenie said he thought Hydo knew “the guy.”

  I get that far, and it slips apart. Because Hydo is dead. Anything he knew about the “special wavelength” is gone.

  Why am I writing this? It looks like paranoia.

  Sleep deprivation.

  I fell asleep on my way downtown. At least I think I must have. I don’t remember driving here. I remember driving from Bel Air to a bungalow in West Hollywood (754 King). The girl who answered the door was in perfect “Like a Virgin” Madonna drag. Not dressed for a party or anything, just that’s what she wears. That’s what her mom told me. She said her daughter and her daughter’s friends are all into the same stuff she thought sucked when she was their age. She said she was a punk in the eighties, hated Madonna. She said it doesn’t really matter, because her daughter thinks Madonna is just this crazy “old lady that believes in magic and adopts African babies and needs to start acting more her age cuz it’s kind of gross when she dresses up in underwear.” She said her daughter just likes the old music and loves the clothes. She asked if I had kids, and I told her yes. She said, “Wait and see, whatever you thought sucked when you were a teenager, that’ll be what’s cool.” Then she asked how old my kid is and I told her that I have a baby, and she stopped talking about it.

  Her yard is all poppies. She raises them. When the blooms fall off, she slits the bulbs with a razor over and over, letting the sap ooze out and dry in layers. Then she scrapes it off and collects it. Homegrown opium. I traded her ketamine (10 milliliters, liquid) for a ball of opium roughly the size of a marble (weight indeterminate). Then I left as two boys arrived, one dressed in “Thriller” red and black leather, the other in “Purple Rain.” At least that’s what I think happened. I don’t remember getting into the car or driving here. It’s possible I dreamed the two boys.

  I fell asleep behind the wheel.

  I could have died. I would have left Rose and the baby alone.

  I need to sleep. But I don’t know when that will be. I have to meet Beenie. I need to find out what is going on. Something is going on. The world didn’t just spin off its axis by itself. It didn’t happen all by itself. Not now. Not just in time for Rose to get pregnant. Not just in time for my baby. The world didn’t decide to end just in time for my baby to be born.

  I need to sleep. But I can’t now. So I need to stay awake.

  I took two 5-milligram dexamphetamine sulfate tablets. My tongue is dry and my stomach feels tight. I’m grinding my teeth. I don’t feel stupid like I did the few times I smoked pot with Rose before I joined the force. I never liked pot, but Rose liked the idea of smoking it together. I never told her how unpleasant it was for me. Thi
s feels different. I still feel tired, but not sleepy.

  I shouldn’t be writing this down. Except that it would be a lie not to.

  It’s midnight. Time to go inside and find Beenie.

  First I’ll call Rose and tell her I love her. I’ll tell her to put the phone next to the baby’s ear so she can hear me tell her I love her. So she can hear me when I tell her that I don’t care how she dresses when she grows up. Or who she thinks is cool. Or if she goes out with boys who dress like Michael Jackson and Prince. I’ll tell her she can be and do whatever she wants when she grows up. Just that she has to grow up. She has to grow up.

  I’m going to stop writing now. I don’t think I’m making much sense.

  But I know I’m right. I know the world is like this for a reason. I know that someone did something to sicken the world.

  And it’s not too late. It’s not too late. It’s not too late. I say that it is not too late.

  9

  THE MOST STRIKING THING ABOUT THE TWO YOUNG MEN ON the security recording was the tremendous amounts of stress under which they were both obviously laboring. In the first of them, this stress was clearly etched in the the jittery suddenness of his movements, in the habit of constantly raking a comb across his head, defining and redefining the side part in his assiduously composed geek haircut. Finally, and most decisively, his stress was revealed in the way he yanked his Olympic from his retro leather book satchel and sprayed the room without giving any warning that he intended to do so.

  It was, for the record, a K3B-M4. So I got the make but not the model.