“You may recall, Mr. Wagner,” he said in a solemn tone, “that you agreed to provide me a new line pass no cover membership card to this fine establishment upon my triumphant return from Europe…”
“Continue.”
“…in exchange for a new or only slightly used Bradean-4 Injector. Is my understanding correct?”
“Yes, your lordship,” Tyler replied, bowing deeply with a sweep of his hand.”It shall be yours just as soon as you tender said device.”
“How about the card first?”
“Stoney, be my man. Give me the Brad, and I’ll get you a card.”
“When?”
“Tonight. Now, quit stalling. Those memberships are going up to $500 next month. They’re getting serious here at Sirius.”
Both of them laughed.
“Five hundred? That’s pretty steep. What’re they now? $300?”
“Three, hundred” Tyler replied.”But for you, one injector. These things are going for $475…”
“Now.”
Stonetree reached into his pocket and removed it.
Tyler popped open the lid and peered into the chambers. He pressed the injection button and grinned.
“Nice. Very nice. Compliments of our favorite company, sweet, sweet SUE?”
“Now, would I do that?” Stonetree retorted.”Of course I would!”
They laughed again, then Tyler began to cough.
“You okay?”
“How do I look?”
“Like shit. The hairpiece looks pretty sharp, though. When did you get it?”
“A couple of weeks ago,” Tyler replied, patting the top of his head gently.”One hundred percent human hair. None of that Barbie Doll crap.”
“How much?”
“Too much. But what are you going to do? I can’t go walking into here looking like a Madame Tussaud’s reject”
“You’ve got the brains of one, so why not look like one?”
“Easy for you to say, you fucking deezer. Just wait until all of your hair falls out. You’ll be singing a different tune.”
“Come on,” he chided.”What’s the big deal. It’s only hair.” He thought about how Sharon might look.
“Only hair to you, but not to me. You know the policy here. No hair, no chair!”
They both roared, then Tyler broke into a fit of coughing that lasted close to 30 seconds.
“So what are we going to do?” he continued after taking a few uninterrupted breaths.”Are we going to get a drink?”
“So how does the membership deal work?”
“Let me go talk to the guy.” He hesitated a moment, then moved closer, speaking in a conspiratorial tone.”Here’s what I’m gonna do. There’s this kid who cleans up the place, buses glasses and stuff, who got hold of a couple cards, signatures and everything. So I was talking to him and I said. ‘What do you want for them?’ And he said ‘You can have them both for an injector’, and I asked him ‘Which model?’ And he says ‘Anything.’”
Stonetree shook his head. He knew his friend well enough to be able to predict the outcome.
“So what I’m gonna do,” Tyler continued, looking innocent, “is go downstairs and give this little guy my Bradean-2, which I cleaned today, and he’ll give me the cards and I’ll give you one. He gets my deuce, you get your card, and I get a new Brad-4 plus an extra card to use at my discretion, hopefully…” he smiled as two young women passed them, “…to help convince one of those two I am a man of integrity and wealth, if not bubbling health.” He coughed again.
“Are your symptoms coming on or going?”
“Coming on,” Tyler responded.”I’ve been fine for the last six weeks or so. God, even longer than that. I started feeling it again last night.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a half-dozen capsules.”I…was…on fire,” he continued.”Feel better today, though. Let’s see. What shall we use to baptize the new unit? How about an 800 and a thousand?”
“You’ve got thousands?” Stonetree asked.”I thought those were still in the testing stage. Are you in a program?”
“Nah. I’ve got a guy who can get anything. They’ve been on the streets for a couple weeks if you know where to look. And they are something. Much better than the niners. A lot smoother, longer tail.” He loaded the two capsules into the injector and placed it against his wrist.”You’re next,” he added, then activated.
“No, not now. Maybe later. I think I’m more in the mood for some Chivas.”
Tyler stared at him blankly.
“And then maybe we can run down the street, catch some rats and eat them raw,” Stonetree added, realizing that Tyler was probably oblivious to what he was saying.”And then we could invite those two ladies over there to join us for a discussion concerning the pros and cons of life here at Sirius.”
“You want to what?” Tyler finally replied after blinking his eyes a few times.
“I want you to go get my membership card, you drug head.”
“Oh, yeah.” Tyler smiled.”I must have iced over a little. You gotta check it out, Stoney. Try it later, okay? Probably lots of fun for a Sixer.”
“Maybe.”
Tyler left via the right side stairs while Stonetree made his way to the small upstairs bar to order the scotch. Drink in hand, he returned to the balcony railing and gazed down into the club. It was as they always billed it a piece of heaven and a piece of hell on earth.
The Sirius Club had been opened a year earlier by Kennard and Raynard Brown, two of the sleazier worms inhabiting the Western world. Collectively they’d been arrested for every known vice crime, plus a few others, but always seemed to land on both feet when the charges against them were eventually tossed out of court with the able assistance of top defense attorney Eugene Vincent Mannherz.
Kennard was married to a large, cross-looking Japanese woman who now ran the place when neither brother was in town. Raynard could more often than not be found slumped in a comer unconscious each night, long before the 2:00 a.m. closing time.
Sirius was the top club in the city. It permitted very limited access to nonmembers and was surely the most spectacular facility, outdoing its private rival Roulette. The Brown brothers named the club after the brightest star in the sky on the advice of a strung-out fortuneteller they’d met in the holding pen one night.
They incorporated their philosophy of life into the place: We’re all going to burn in hell eventually, so let’s enjoy life while we can. They were the perfect Pied Pipers for a generation of people with short fuses and often shorter life spans. But it wasn’t the dying they sought for clients, however; it was the survivors.
The brothers were both in their early 40’s and didn’t have any compassion for people afflicted with CYD. They made no bones about the fact that they weren’t fond of admitting persons with red eyes into their establishment. In fact, the club was at one time planned around a U.S. Cavalry motif and was to be called White Eyes, a phrase the Browns liked to use affectionately toward their customers.
White Eyes. How ironic. Stonetree remembered seeing a video of an ancient television show, Amos and somebody. Blacks with huge white eyes, a comic creation of some white producers. It wouldn’t surprise him in the least if pretty soon there would be a renegade television show called Amos and Somebody, whites with huge red eyes, the comic creation of a black producer. Because now they were taking over larger parts of the game.
No one had divined the answer to the riddle, but everyone knew the result. The more grade A, as in African, blood a person possessed, the more the CYD attacker was held at bay. Same for Hispanics. Same for Asians. Same for most of mixed race. They were the survivors. They were the ones getting into the top schools, the top training programs, the top jobs. It started out as economics, but now was part of the culture. All things considered, your Average Dude of Color would outlive and outperform your Average White Dude any day of the week. And survival of the fittest was no longer an exercise limited to the fans of Chuck Darwin. It was
becoming a driving force propelling much of everyday life. Non-Caucasians—NCs in shorthand—were in ascendance.
Employment alone demonstrated a microcosm of the shift. The four major professional sports, including the NHL, had been eliminating rookie white players for years, as had college squads. The armed forces, conversely, were having great difficulties filling entry level positions while new officer positions were mostly being assigned to those thought better prepared for a $20 year hitch. Menial jobs in the private sector that in the past might have been taken by others were now almost exclusively the province of whites.
And an old stereotype—successful black men wanting to pair up with white women—had been flipped upside down.
Stonetree had his chance a year earlier. Her name was Denae. He met her at Sirius one night, somehow getting her attention after she brushed off a half-dozen other Average White Suitors over the space of an hour. She liked his tie. After a few drinks and a few dances, she agreed to go out for dinner with him the following night.
The date turned out to be half a date. They met back at Sirius and she got his life story out of him during the course of a 15-minute interview. He cleared as a Sixer but came up short on some other points. Wrong job, wrong place to live; what did she call him? Not quite up in front. She suggested he ought to save his money and go home, but in a very nice way. He persisted, then was brushed off just like all the pretenders the night before.
White Eyes. Those Brown brothers were funny guys. And black as a barrel of Saudi primo crude.
It took the owners a few months to get their in-house policies in place, but once they did, they rarely made exceptions.
Initially almost anyone could get into the club with a $10 cover charge and a fairly regular clientele was established. Membership passes were distributed to the most attractive females with a tacit understanding that those passes were subject to revocation if the women brought around too many friends with no hair or bloodshot eyes. Males needed a $50 temporary membership, but were still required to pay the varying cover charges, and despite the white eyes only policy, there wasn’t a lack of takers.
Sirius quickly obtained a reputation as a special club and after a while it became a hangout for upper-income males and healthy looking females. The Browns soon raised the male memberships to $150 every six months, then $200. New applicants were told quite bluntly that they shouldn’t waste their money if they were sensitive to bright lights, and the owners were not beyond throwing out customers they reckoned to be liars. They found the $10 cover was keeping out some otherwise qualified females, so unescorted women were eventually admitted free, while Escorted Chicks were charged $10. Tyler would always have a home there because he was friendly with the owners but still avoided Kennard when his CYD was acting up.
Stonetree’d noticed the crowd had changed in the past few months. Although there were always a few celebrity types around, their numbers seemed to be on the rise; show people, athletes, politicians. There had been a few high paid call girls frequenting Sirius but their numbers were waning. The most striking change was in the women who now called Sirius home. They were getting younger, and not as in early 20’s; younger as in 17 or 16.
The after-work crowd of professional women and their imitators was being pushed out by a growing group of regulars who literally had no other interests except the show which was part of Sirius the day it opened but was now becoming more bizarre with each passing week.
What used to be high fashion was now outrageous, 1980s fashion. What used to be trendy hairstyling gave way to incredibly elaborate wigs. Opaque contact lenses in luminescent colors that covered the entire eye were the rage. The place was getting spooky.
The club offered many other attractions. Below the small upper landing encountered when entering the club, there stretched a massive lower level where most of the action took place. Directly below the balcony were two octagonal bars with seating for 50 at each. To the sides were groups of tables, couches, and lounge chairs used by those who were not up on the generous, cleverly illuminated dance floor that occupied the center of the room. The sound system was an engineering marvel, structured in such a way that those dancing were treated to high-energy sound while those not gyrating to the music heard it only as background, easily spoken over with normal conversation.
The music. It was amazing how much and how quickly the popular landscape had changed in a few short years. Rap, and its sibling hip-hop, were rarely heard any more on contemporary radio stations nor on the many popular internet music platforms. Country still had a foothold, but good old-fashion pop and rock were once again the favored genres of the listening public.
Ringing the far side of the dance floor was a long, narrow ledge on which patrons could set their drinks, and stand and watch.
About 30 feet beyond the ledge, against the far wall, was the furnace. The 12-foot-high, 50-foot-long inferno immediately caught the eye of anyone entering the club and often stopped first-timers in their tracks. From its base rose hundreds of jets of pure, hot glowing fire spaced closely together in three staggered lines, presenting one massive, foreboding wall of flame. The color was occasionally brought to pure white, but the disc jockey who controlled it usually kept it shimmering in blues and greens and reds.
The only sound the furnace made was a deep rumble that could be heard if one was beyond the rail, and the heat it emitted was more sensed than actually felt, at least from farther away than the 20 yards known as the Penalty Zone. Although the practice was frowned upon, customers who purchased bottles of champagne or expensive cognacs were allowed to toss their empties into the flames and watch them instantly vaporize.
The past New Year’s Eve, a despondent couple had elected to avoid paying their tab by diving into the furnace, a gesture that brought the club to a close early and some thought permanently. But a few days later Sirius was open for business as usual, the furnace lit with the addition of a large reproduction of the headline describing the event hung above the steel gray mantel.
Sharon didn’t enjoy Sirius the first time Stonetree took her there, and after a second visit she told him he was welcome to go whenever he wanted but not with her. So Friday was now their free night. He sometimes went to the club while Sharon went out with her friends, worked, or simply stayed at home. She said she hated the crowd, which he interpreted to mean the women. That was her choice and he respected it. In some ways he even liked it. She was too good for the place.
In a few moments Tyler returned, looking refreshed and relaxed, and handed over the membership card.
“Pretty good group tonight,” he offered.
Stonetree nodded.”So what’s new in the workplace these days, Ty? When are you getting off the unemployment rolls?”
“Uh, let’s see. I talked to Smitty a couple of days ago, and he says that he ought to have his license back in another month. Then we’re gonna put together a group, you know, maybe 20 grand from 50 people…”
“Twenty grand each?”
“Yeah, 20 grand each. A million. Then we’re going to dig in, recoup some losses and build up some profits. Interested?”
“Who, me? Climb off on this one. I don’t have $20,000 to give to anyone, let alone to finance one of your harebrained schemes.”
“No, no, wait a minute, Stoney. This is the real thing. We’re going to do it right. We just made some bad moves last time.”
“Lemme think about it. So what else is new?”
“How about hair?” Tyler asked excitedly.”I know a guy who’s got about ten pounds of primo, grade A Spanish hair. Probably hot. He’s in a hurry to unload it. We could turn it around in a couple days and pick up $5,000 each, easy. What do you say?”
“Too risky. So what else is new?”
“I know this other character, he’s got blasting caps. Things keep going the way they are out on the streets, if we hold them in a couple of months we could clean up. He’s got two cases. All he wants is eight grand.”
“Too dangerous. So what
else is new?”
“Uhhhhh…got a line on a box…box and a half of Shadoweze. Figure 75 gram tubes worth. Not the crap from India, not counterfeit. The real thing. We pick it up…the stuff retails for $1500 per…we pick it up for say $900, $950, flip it for ten and a quarter. That’s what? We split five large?”
The potion was part of one of the more unusual trends falling under the umbrella of what sociologists had termed Reverse Appearance Assimilation. While NCs were making their way up multiple ladders, leaving their white brethren beneath, many nonetheless desired to look like them. Plastic surgeons were performing thousands of rhinoplasties, cheiloplasties and noninvasive laser lipos a week for those who could afford the cosmetic reductions. Likewise, dermatologists were turning away prospective clients due to the high demand for skin lightening treatments coupled with the continuing shortages of the most effective gels and the devices used to enhance their effectiveness. NCs partaking in multiple options were often said to be Jacksonizing. Shadoweze was literally worth more than its weight in gold.
“Is it stolen?”
“You tell me.”
“Nah. Too risky. So what else is new?”
“Well... oh, I know. I was in here Wednesday night and this guy I’d never seen before, I think he’s with one of the ball clubs or something, decides that he has to be a big act. So he walks downstairs and sets a bowling ball down on the bar and has a couple drinks. Then he pulls out the old injector, loads it up twice with four capsules, probably 900’s, refrigerates his brain, and then his pal starts buying him shooters. I go over to Kennard and I tell him Kennard, this guy over here is looking for trouble. He tells me thanks and just ignores this jerk. About 15 minutes later the guy picks up the bowling ball…”
“Don’t tell me. I can guess.”
“He picks up this huge bowling ball and walks across the dance floor over to the ledge, sets the ball down, and orders another drink with his pal.”
“I know what’s coming,” Stonetree said, shaking his head.
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