White Tiger on Snow Mountain

by David Gordon

  “So good to see you. I love the beard. I’ll tell Yoel you’re here.”

  “Thanks, Katie,” he said, stroking.

  She pressed something, and a small, shiny, round man in a black suit popped out of a great big door.

  “Hey, bro,” he bellowed, hugging Derek, who introduced me, vaguely.

  “This is my, um . . . companion.”

  “Hi,” I said. “We can’t legally marry yet.”

  “Ha,” Yoel said. “Good one.”

  “He’s a writer too,” Derek offered by way of explanation.

  “Awesome,” Yoel exclaimed. “I’d love to see your stuff.” He led Derek back to his vault. Katie turned to me.

  “Would you like coffee? Water?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Thanks, Katie.”

  “Which one?”

  “Coffee. No, water. Well, both actually.” I laughed. “I got very dry on the plane.”

  “I understand.” A light on her headset glowed bluely, as if ordering her to vaporize me. “Sparkling or flat?”

  “Ever notice,” I rattled on, unable to stop, “how euphemistic English is? In French or Spanish, for water with bubbles, they say ‘with gas.’ ‘Con gaseoso.’ Americans would rather die than say ‘gas.’ ”

  “So you want gas or not?” she asked me, smile deflated, as if she had suddenly realized how much she hated her job. I have that effect on people.

  “Yes,” I said. “Thanks. Please give me gas.”

  I sipped espresso. The sun bled out. Katie worked the phone. Derek and Yoel emerged, laughing, and I sprang up, reflexively chuckling too.

  “Thanks for waiting,” Derek said. “Let’s roll.”

  Yoel waved. “Great meeting you. Don’t forget to send me your stuff.”

  “Right. Thanks. I will.”

  Katie validated my parking ticket, and we rolled down the elevator and over to Hollywood, where Derek had an apartment in a building full of transients on their way up or down. His place was nice but unloved. The shelves held only a few self-help books. The never-lit candles on the mantel still had their price tags affixed. The one odd note was that the couch cushions were on the floor, propped against the furniture. Throw pillows leaned against the coffee table, and there was even a towel spread over the corner of the desk.

  “Do you have a dog?” I asked.

  “No, why? Should I?” he yelled from the bedroom. “Do you recommend it?”

  “That’s not what I meant.” I opened the empty fridge. A cleaning crew had scoured the place for drugs and booze as well as mildew.

  “I hope you don’t think this is stupid,” Derek said, returning. “But do you think you could sign this?” He held out a copy of my book.

  “Wow,” I said, in a whisper.

  “I found it in a used bookstore. It’s worth a lot on the Internet now. Like fifty bucks or more, with your signature.” He seemed to blush under his beard. “Not that I’d ever sell it. I read it when I was fifteen and suicidal. It made me want to be a writer.”

  I took the small volume in my hand. I hadn’t even seen a copy in forever. I turned it around like an artifact, afraid to look at the author’s photo.

  “I’ll be right back,” Derek said. “I’ve got to hit the can.”

  I sat on a stool at the kitchen counter. What could I write to this smart-ass no-talent upstart who, it turned out, was the only fan I had left? “Dear Derek, Avenge Me!” Or, “Save Yourself, Get Out Now.” Or, “Bring Me With You, Please.” Or just: “Take the Money and Run.”

  A few minutes later, Derek came out of the bathroom, and I looked up shyly from the book. I’d written “Keep Up the Good Fight,” forgetting that I hadn’t found his work good particularly. But I was reassessing his writing skills as well as his personality: As a general policy, if you like me, I like you too.

  “Here you go.” I sauntered over, having decided to play the moment casually cool. “I didn’t know what to write.” I handed him the book and waited for—who knows? A hug, maybe. Instead, he accepted it indifferently, like a ticket stub, and gave me a quizzical look, as though trying to place my face. Then, as if seized by a fury, he lurched backward, twisting the cheap paperback in both hands. His eyes rolled up, white, like a slot machine. Jackpot.

  “Hey, are you OK?”

  “Yes,” he said, then went rigid and fell like a tree, banging his forehead on the padded coffee table. He bounced once and landed on the floor, knocking his skull on the cushions there, then commenced shaking and flopping while foam bubbled from his lips.

  “You bastard!” I yelled. My first day on the job, and the client was throwing a seizure. I’d been around enough to know what this was, but not enough to remember if it was fatal. His arms and legs shot out like a puppet’s, and his head rattled, tongue wriggling like a fish trying to escape the net. I knew he could choke if he swallowed it, so I wrenched my book from his fist and jammed it between his jaws. He bit down hard, chewing the cover while his eyeballs strained their veins.

  Ambulance. I ran to the phone. It was dead. No doubt the bill had gone unpaid while he’d been in rehab. I pulled out my cell. No signal in these hills. I ran back to the body and began searching for his phone. I tore through the pockets and found it: a Ziploc bag of white powder. I fell to my knees, eyes shut.

  “Oh God,” I prayed, “save this fucking moron.”

  Then, miraculously, the storm cleared. He was no longer shaking; in fact he was breathing nicely, bubbling snot through his mustache. I felt his pulse. I didn’t know what normal was, or how to take a pulse really, but I was fairly sure he had one. Now there was nothing to do but wait and see what kind of brain damage he’d suffered. With a little luck, no one would even notice.

  I dropped into the couch, banging my ass bone on the cushionless frame, and caught my breath. Slick with sweat, I realized how scared I’d been, and immediately, as if some wire in my brain had jiggled loose, I wondered where Derek’s cigarettes were. Then I noticed the plastic baggie in my hand. What was in there anyway? Speed, coke, dope? Some new drug that only rich and famous people knew about? Whatever it was, it had to be good. The proof lay right at my feet, snoring peacefully. I gazed at the pretty powder sparkling in my palm once more. Then I hauled myself up and I flushed it.

  Back in the living room, Derek was groaning. He rolled over, spit out the rare, half-eaten copy of my book, and abruptly puked all over it.

  “What happened?” he moaned.

  “You had a seizure. I’m guessing it’s not the first?”

  He nodded, eyes closed. “It’s a medical condition.” He coughed up a bit more of my writing. “Get me a glass of water.”

  “Get it yourself.” This time I put a cushion on the couch before I sat back down. He stood carefully, as though we were in a rowboat, and felt his pockets.

  “What are you looking for?” I asked.

  “Nothing. Cigarettes.”

  “ ’Cause if you’re looking for that baggie, I flushed it.”

  “What?” He instantly recovered. “Holy shit, why? That was . . . ” He paused.

  “What? Splenda for your tea? Baby powder for your chapped ass?”

  He slumped in a chair. “It was a thousand bucks, for one thing.”

  “Who gave it to you, your agent?”

  “No. It wasn’t Yoel.”

  “No wonder you were both so excited to see my work. You were wasted.”

  “That was for real. He totally respects you even when he’s not wasted.”

  “Whatever. You know they’re going to urine-test you at the studio tomorrow.”

  “Is that what you’re worried about?” He laughed. “I got it covered.” He strode into the kitchen and opened the freezer. “What the . . . ” Murmuring, he stuck his head in the icy hole, as if there were more room back there. When he pulled it out, he looked scared.

  “The bastards stole my urine. I had six bags of clean piss in there.”

  “Who did?”

  “Fucking Dr. T. They sai
d they’d search for drugs and alcohol, OK, fair enough. But why take piss?” He stared at me, hands clutched together, outraged at the injustice. “It’s just harmless piss.”

  “Of course they took it. Why would any normal person be hoarding urine?”

  “Oh God, I’m fucked. Oh God, I’m fucked.” He kept mumbling this as he ran his hands over his face and through his hair, as if he could erase what he’d done. “I’m so fucking stupid,” he said, switching themes. “Why am I so fucking stupid?” He gonged his temple with a closed fist. “Why? Why?”

  “Hey, that’s enough,” I said from the couch. “It’s not the end of the world.”

  “It’s not?”

  “You’re alive. You could have OD’d just now.”

  “That’s true.” He sat down again.

  “Everything will work out.”

  “How?” he asked, face splotchy, hair sticking out.

  “Maybe it’s for the best. You’ll get honest, get humble . . .”

  “No, that won’t work.” He snapped his fingers. “I know. You can do it.”

  “Do what?”

  “Piss. You can give me yours. You’ve been clean a million years. You must piss Evian by now.”

  “No way,” I said. “Forget it.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s illegal. It’s immoral. And it’s not my problem.”

  “But it is. You need money, right? You’re poor, or why would you be here? If I test dirty tomorrow, you’re fired. I’ll talk to Yoel. I bet he can get your book reprinted . . .”

  Anyhow, he went on like that, and eventually I relented. What did I care? It was just a job. But I did have one condition:

  “You have to stay clean. Totally clean. I won’t lie about that to anyone.”

  Derek raised his hand, as if pledging to the flag. “I promise.”

  I laughed. “Your promises aren’t worth shit.”

  “True,” he allowed. “So what do we do?”

  “Take me to your nearest sex shop.”

  “What?”

  “You know, a store that sells sex toys. Hollywood is full of them.”

  He frowned. “Like gay or straight? Because I’m straight.”

  “Fine. Take me to a straight one.”

  “Listen, when I said I’d do anything, I meant almost anything.”

  “Hey, Lionheart,” I said, starting to enjoy this new career. “Just between us straight dudes, do you want my piss or not?”

  And so, we paid a visit to Kinky Planet, where I selected a pair of handcuffs, some leg restraints, and, just because I was having fun and Derek was paying, one of those ball gags with the dildo attached to the front. It was pink and wobbly and looked like something you’d wear to a Halloween party at Caligula’s. It made Derek’s eyes go wide, and I figured it was wise to keep him guessing. I let him change into sweats before cuffing him, ankle and wrist, to his bed.

  “Ow, that’s tight.”

  “Quit whining. I got the fur-lined ones, you baby.”

  “What if there’s a fire?”

  “Hey!” I shook the dildo gag in his face, and the pink tuber bounced off his nose. “Another peep and you get this.”

  He quieted down after that. I turned out his light and went to the couch, where I spent the next two hours on Derek’s laptop, fighting the urge to write Sunhi. I sent two lines: “I’m in LA working. I miss you.” Too bad I didn’t have another set of cuffs for myself. Then I curled up with Derek’s memoir. I was out by page thirteen.

  The next morning, before Derek’s meeting at Warner Bros., I filled a jelly jar with fresh, pure urine and held it between my legs to keep it body temperature on the ride over. We were met by another black-clad assistant and a nurse, who sent Derek to the restroom with a specimen bottle while we waited expectantly like relatives at a difficult delivery. He emerged triumphant. Then I consumed more free coffee and water while the young author decided which world-famous actor reminded him most of himself.

  Next I watched him get a haircut and beard shaping. Then we met his trainer, and I read the paper while they squatted and thrust. It was a pleasant enough way to earn three hundred bucks and, feeling magnanimous, I agreed to hit the 101 Coffee Shop for fried chicken and black-and-white milkshakes before strapping him in for the night. As soon as our food arrived, he started to rebutter me.

  “I know this sounds like a bunch of crap now, but your book really did change my life.”

  I stuffed my mouth with fries and gravy. “You’re right, it does sound like crap.”

  “Anyway, I fully intend to buy another copy, no matter how hard it is to find. I still remember that story where you shoplifted Burroughs and Ginsberg and everyone. It was like a reading list to me. I got every book. Except I paid.”

  So had I. The story was based on an incident I had witnessed, when a clerk at St. Mark’s Books caught a punk kid stealing but let him go because his taste was so good. In my story the clerk, an old-time beatnik, befriends the kid and turns him on to dope.

  “I actually read Kerouac first,” I said, “and immediately ran away to hop a freight train, but the cops brought me home. Then I started on Burroughs. I read Junky and ran right out to cop dope.”

  “Me too.” Derek laughed. “I couldn’t wait to try heroin.”

  “I took the bus to Avenue B and got ripped off.”

  “I got ripped off in Hollywood, trying to buy acid after I read The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.”

  “Me too. In Washington Square.” I hadn’t thought of it in ages. “I bought a Disney sticker and licked it.”

  “I paid twenty bucks for a piece of gum.”

  “What about Cain’s Book?” I asked him.

  “Great. Though being a junkie on a tugboat sounds nauseating. What about Basketball Diaries?”

  “I loved it. Though I didn’t love his poems.”

  We went on to discuss Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Jesus’ Son, and Confessions of an English Opium Eater, dipping too into the whiskey-logged volumes of that fine old American firm Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner and Wolfe.

  “And Bukowski!”

  “Right, the Poet-King of Beers.”

  What was it, this subterranean river that flowed between addiction and literature, those two measureless seas? And which was the costlier habit? Did I inspire young Derek, up in his bedroom, to start writing or to start sniffing glue? I remembered another story, this one unwritten but true: I no longer owned a single one of those books. I’d sold them all to buy drugs.

  Derek and I drove home in a stupor, burping contentedly, and he seemed almost comforted when I locked him to his bed and said good night. Then I checked my email, and there it was:

  Thank you for a letter. I am happy to receive. Miss you too

  You are in LA writing the movie? Excite! See you maybe soon

  Sunhi

  I was so excite I had to read twenty pages of Derek’s book before I fell asleep.

  We sat side by side on the plane. The Lionheart ceremony was tomorrow, when I’d toast his success with one last cup of pee. Although it should have been a victory lap, our mood was a bit melancholic. Derek confessed that he felt safer with me around to tuck him in and keep him in line with dildos. For my part, though I’d made a decent chunk of money, I still saw a vast, hopeless void ahead. Except for one bright spot: Sunhi.

  I’d answered her last email, sidestepping the question about my screenwriting job, and mentioned how I’d be staying at a swanky hotel in Manhattan. To my delight, she agreed to visit that midnight.

  We put up at the Pierre. Afraid of losing my charge so close to home, I didn’t even visit my apartment. The suite was far larger anyway, with a view of Central Park, and I had my own room. It was as if I were visiting some other, finer city, also by chance called New York.

  Lionheart folks came and went. Derek’s suit was tried on and adjusted. We ordered room service, and I perched on the couch, mooning for Sunhi in my head while I forget which Star Wars movie played on the
grand TV. At last, after an intergalactic millennium, Derek yawned.

  “Better get some sleep,” I told him. “Big day tomorrow.”

  “But it’s only dinnertime in LA.”

  “Still, you don’t want to be jet-lagged. Biggest day of your life.”

  “Really? I assumed you thought it was bullshit.”

  “Well, yeah, but big bullshit, you know. The biggest.”

  A few light-years later, I bundled a happy lion off to dream-land. “Hey,” he said, as I buckled his ankle restraint, “I want to be serious for a second.”

  “Uh-huh.” I pulled the blanket up to his chin.

  “I know this is all a lie and you don’t respect my work and I don’t give a shit about staying sober, but still I want to say thanks. I couldn’t have done it without you.”

  “It’s not a total lie. That book’s inspiring lots of people to change, even if you’re not one of them. You still wrote it.”

  “Yeah, that’s true. Good night.”

  “Good night.” I gently shut the door. Then I slathered my armpits with deodorant, brushed my teeth, and trimmed my ear hair. I was drawing back the drapes, to impress Sunhi with the view from “my” suite, when there came a gentle tapping on the door. I checked my warm but raffish smile in the mirror and opened up. My visitor punched me in the gut.

  My eyes crossed in pain, but as I clutched my burning belly and gasped, like a drowning man, for air, I ascertained the following: My visitor was indeed young and Asian, but he was not Sunhi Moon. He was a big, muscular, and very angry dude in a Marine Corps T-shirt.

  “Surprise, you old perv,” he called in perfect Americanese, and struck me again on the nose. I felt a sickening crunch, like tasting a bone in your chicken salad, and a flower of pain bloomed across my world. I fell on the floor, which was thickly carpeted, and felt much better.

  “Who are you?” I asked the floor, softly, as my blood seeped in.

  “Not who you expected, huh, asshole? I’m Tony Moon, Sunhi’s cousin. She told me all about you.”

  “Oh.” Satisfied, I shut my eyes. Tony admired the view.

  “Some place you got, for a teacher. This a two-bedroom or what?”