by Todd Grimson
Christine got the hint and talked about something else. A new photography show. Lisa was wearing black cotton tights under this special pair of ultrademolished shredded faded jeans, and a NO FUN black T-shirt. She had on a couple of bracelets, along with an expensive watch Lou had given her when he’d been infatuated, at the beginning—he’d probably found a way to have his accounting firm write it off. Christine had on a crayon-bright overlarge green and yellow top, a blue skirt, and red tights. No shoes. She stretched out on the couch as Lisa sat there in the bamboo chair, frowning, plotting revenge.
She couldn’t let herself be fucked with in this way. It was important that Lou understand. She should have stuck that fork in his face. Gone for an eye. Fuck. The glass coffee table reflected the afternoon rays of tired sun.
FOUR
That evening Lisa drove over to see Code. He knew a lot of people; maybe he could help. He was one third of the Painkillers, who’d had two dance-club hits: ‘‘Imitation Ho Chi Minh,” the remix, and “Gilded Youth,” with its timely chorus “jeunesse doree.” The band’s sound was synthesizers, sequencers, samples, and drum machines, though Code had actually started out as a guitar player. Their first album was old news, though it continued to sell. But now the future of the band was in jeopardy: One of the others—Wendy Right, who sang on a few songs and who had been Code’s girlfriend for a while— had hired a lawyer, trying to keep the trademark and get rid of Code. Wendy had hated him since they’d stopped sleeping together; lately she’d been working on the one in the middle. Sterling Music, who worked out most of the drum programs.
Lisa had once had a crush on Code, and they’d fucked nearly every day for a month or so, at one point spending a week together in Jamaica. Code wanted to get more work in commercials or films. He was a fairly gorgeous young man. Lisa liked him; they were still good friends.
Recently it seemed like he just hung around Hollywood or West Hollywood, bringing young girls up into his rented pad. He had the whole top floor of a seven-story building, and he was doing demos there, waiting to see if he’d still be part of the Painkillers or not.
Outside, on the street, everyone was glam, the S&M hurt-me look a constant. Rouged children, baby-faced under the makeup, the metal fatigue girls in mesh hose and garter belts and microminiskirts, guys with wild teased hair. All this ready flesh like bruised raspberries, glazed, unborn faces, faces waiting to be born in twisted noise.
Lisa had a key to Code’s building. After she’d parked her beat-up red Trans Am, she went up on the big freight elevator, wondering what kind of scene she might find. More than once she’d come in on weird stuff.
Tonight there was no sex scene in progress when Lisa came in. But Code was with some friends. It was a long walk, through a maze of sound baffles and abandoned office furniture, big wooden crates, to the space Code had made his own. He had brightly colored sci-fi sheets and pillowcases on his queen-sized bed, and he sat there wearing a padded-shoulder pearl gray corduroy jacket, no shirt, white trousers with a drawstring, bare feet.
“Lisa,” he said, “I want you to meet Freak, and that’s Alvin Sender, and uh, Vladimir One. Vladimir Two went out to get an effects box. What are you up to? Hey, I like your T-shirt. Can I have it? Trade? Look in the closet: anything you want.”
“You told me once,” Lisa said, taking off her jacket, heading to the closet, pulling the T-shirt over her head, “about some guy … who, if you ever wanted to do harm to somebody …” She threw the T-shirt at him. He smiled and took off his jacket to put the T-shirt right on, see how it felt. Lisa was now naked from the waist up, but not flaunting herself, not really giving anyone a good look at her—she picked out a conservative sports-shirt, good fabric, dark blue. Italian disco was playing. Cool beat. Lisa turned back to them, buttoning up as Code gave her a knowing little leer.
“We’ve just been arguing about spilling paint on the floor,” he said, and did not elaborate, as Lisa went to the brand-new refrigerator and came back with a crimson can of Coke.
Freak was a lanky model type, with short pale blond hair, a seventies-style silver minidress, whitish silver metallic stockings, silver high heels. Bare arms. Beautiful, sure. Alvin Sender was maybe thirty-seven, thirty-eight, artistic but probably not an artist, thin, with delicate bones. It seemed like she should know more clearly who he was. Vladimir I was tan, maybe twenty-five, good-looking in a Red Army kind of way, wearing a jumpsuit that might have been the favored uniform in some science fiction film in 1973, canary yellow with a red zipper, red belt, and red hightop athletic shoes. Maybe he was a musician.
“This material feels great,” Code said, rubbing his hand over the surface of the tee. “It’s kind of funky, ‘cause you were outside and it’s warm. I love it.”
Lisa was not about to be embarrassed in front of these people. She’d perspired in her leather jacket, and Code dug it. That was OK.
“What about this guy?” she asked, not to be distracted from her point.
“What guy?”
“You told me about this guy. He has a 900 number or something. 1-900-1 Kill for Cash. Something like that.”
Vladimir I laughed. Freak continued to kind of sulk, stretching her long legs on the bed so the juncture of her silver tights came into view. Alvin Sender smiled, a little too observant but very relaxed. Lisa decided she didn’t like him, no matter what drug he was on.
“I’m just doing research,” she announced.
Code nodded and said, “Oh. Sure. Well, I think I know who you mean, but I don’t know how to get in touch with him directly. You know Zed, don’t you? Zed might know. Tell him you’re looking for the cat who does the psychic tattoos.”
“Where’s Zed doing business these days? Pomona?”
“Zed, uh—shit, go see Ultra Jim at Overplus. That place is a trip, but Ultra Jim is, like, the distributor for a lot of hardware, software, mood elevators, and reality softeners. You ever had Stairway to Heaven? It’s pretty new. You should try it. Freak here would give you a testimonial, but she’s using Candy 2000, and that’s not a very verbal type of experience.”
“Stairway to Heaven is great,” Vladimir I testified. “It doesn’t leave you stupid, and as soon as it’s over, it’s over. I’ve used it and logged on, and I was fine, I did some interesting work.”
“I’ve seen you in something,” Alvin Sender said, and Lisa had the impression he’d known this all along.
“She was the third hooker cut up in The L.A. Ripper ” Code helpfully remarked.
“That’s right, and then you’re in the morgue,” Sender went on; Lisa flashed for a second on that scene. “You were good,” he said. “We’re very sympathetic to you … your murder is the one that hurts the worst.”
“Thanks,” Lisa replied, eyes flashing dark at Code, wishing she’d had a drink. Maybe it was worth going to Overplus just to have some vodka on the rocks. Without being alone with him, she couldn’t tell if Code was on one of these new wonders of chemistry or not. Most likely they all were. Waiting for Vladimir II to come back with some kind of a box. She got up and left.
It was about eleven o’clock. Ultra Jim was one of the DJs at Overplus. It was supposed to be a total experience, and it would probably have a life span of about two months. The clientele was mostly gay and lesbian, and Lisa’d heard there was a fair amount of S&M action in the back rooms. You could easily end up getting fistfucked on a trapeze. You could have a life-changing experience. Anyway, going in by herself, it might be assumed that she was looking for … uh, love.
There wasn’t any real reason to go through with all this. But if it was reasonably easy, she’d like something to disturb Lou’s orderly ride. She didn’t like the idea that he thought he knew her limits and had written her off. It only demonstrated his lack of fucking imagination.
Iggy Pop said that one time he had met Raquel Welch, backstage at Letterman or something, and that it was like trying to have a conversation with Hitler; seeing two people having what looked like an unsatisfactory exchange, Lisa though
t of this for one brief, disconnected instant as she paid to go into the club, presented with the loudness of the music and the kinetic, kinaesthetic reality of the crowd. She felt more than heard the vast, wide thud of the bass drum, silver-crisp splat of the hi-hat circuit, smack of the snare, dancers moving from side to side, up and down, heads bobbing, shoulders dipping, heads shaking, elaborate little pantomime routines at hyper-speed, same-sex couples for the most part, gyrating and contorting, as if the ceremony really meant something to them, like they’d remember this moment tomorrow, it fulfilled some intrinsic need … the lighting went hot pink, gold, hot turquoise, and otherworldly, blinking science fiction double red.
In the Old South, during slavery, drums were banned because they could be used, the slave-owners reasoned, to signal revolt. Now that simple rebellion in the U.S. meant nothing, the fertility beat invoked some much more complex conditioned response.
Lisa had a vodka and asked the bartender where she could find Ultra Jim. The bartender said, “Is he expecting you?” and she said, “Yeah, sort of.” The bartender gestured toward a stairway that she had not noticed before.
Ultra Jim was not the kind of DJ who talked much. He was known for his interesting mixes, but tonight he was just creating an environment, sort of on automatic pilot, maybe as a gesture in reverse. He seemed to recognize Lisa, beckoning for her to sit down next to him. From the window in his booth and a couple of video monitors one could oversee different aspects of activity within the club.
“Code called me, said you might drop by. You’re looking for a hit man or some bad-ass medication. I couldn’t really tell. Ever chewed on actual fresh-cut coca leaf? It’s a lot more subtle, but it makes you solid with the Incas, and you never know when you might need that in your life.”
“Do you know where Zed lives?”
“I’ll write down his address. Here, try this. It’s very light. Instead of a hundred-watt bulb, it’s like, soft white, forty or twenty-five. See, it’s a green Chiclet.”
Lisa put it in her mouth. It didn’t taste minty. She took a sip from Ultra Jim’s iced tea, if it was iced tea. He segued into a new Interpol computer handcuff beat, a spunky clone of African buzz-tones and sampled rhythmic yelps. He had a chain with a padlock around his neck and a pullover in a Stuart Davis pattern of vibrant yellow, red, white, and black. The chain went down to around his waist. He had a little mustache. Lisa couldn’t see his eyes. He was of Hispanic descent, a mixture, maybe Venezuelan or Brazilian mixed with Minnesota strip. Lisa’s father, Dr. Nova, lived in Brazil.
“I was chastised today,” Jim said. “I can’t say I didn’t deserve it, but I didn’t really enjoy it. Or maybe I did. Tell me, Lisa Nova, Nova Lisa, is every sadist really a masochist, secretly desiring to have the tables turned? I really have no idea. I don’t know. I’m asking you.”
“I’d just be making a guess,” Lisa said flatly, seeing something in one of the monitors that caught her eye, something she’d never thought of anyone wanting to have done.
“All this urban riffraff,” Ultra Jim mused, his attention following hers to the same scene. “I like to look at them, though. I want to watch these total strangers, all the time. I don’t really know why, except that it’s there. Exhibitionists want to see themselves as others see them, right? It would be nice to gently detach their eyeballs, set them down on the table, on a napkin, they could watch themselves and go from there. I have no imagination, Lisa, none at all. Look at that. What is it? I have no idea. What I do is, I make people dance.”
This sounded sinister. Lisa took Zed’s address, thanked him, and said goodbye. Down among the dancers she felt a strange euphoria coming over her. A beautiful black woman in a velvet bustier gave her a challenging but seductive stare. The lights went to strobe white, and she felt crazy, crazed. By the time she made it out into the night, it seemed an empty elsewhere, a vacuum after a plenum, like she was on the streets of Pluto after cruising the steamy pubic Venusian maze. The cassette deck had long ago been stolen from her junky car. Someone had now left her a statuette, on the passenger seat, of the Virgin Mary. Only this Mary was hot. Mass-produced down in Mexico, sexy, wanton, breasts falling out of her vamp’s dress. Lisa held it, savoring the plastic contours in her hand. After she started the car, she put the figurine under her seat. A mohawked kid with a thin chain going from his nostril to his bare nipple walked past with his friend. There were other strangers all over, like personalized bacteria, which was OK. The night for most was young.
FIVE
The sky the next day in Pomona was the color of bleached bones, and a lot of buildings and homes and stores seemed to be painted orange. Lisa saw kids wearing lime green, fuchsia, tangerine, black, and cerise. Skinheads and airheads, innocents and dorks. Spray-painted on a low cement-block wall, interspersed with gang shorthand and satanic graffiti, was the message Debbie is a dickhound, which Lisa thought was unkind. Unfortunately she found herself recalling how she had willingly sucked the penis of Lou Greenwood, Lou Adolph, Lou Burke. And then she had allowed her body to be visited … she blushed faintly to herself, glad she had on sunglasses, feeling embarrassed, rather a slut. One hand on the steering wheel, wearing an embroidered linen shirt and amber necklace, brown skirt, chocolate brown stockings and lace-up shoes with a backward heel. Some touches of makeup, since she wanted to look businesslike but not butch.
She had a vaguely scheduled appointment later that afternoon with Jerry Dolphin at his office, but he’d put her off and rescheduled her so many times that she felt like standing him up. None of these meetings ever actually led to any work. Just more promises. All false.
She reached the address in Pomona, took off her shades, and got out of the car. She had bought the Trans Am used, after it had been in a wreck; since then she had given it some hard use herself. The engine was good, though she wasn’t so sure about the transmission. Still, she was used to it; she liked shifting gears and accelerating, velocity for its own sake when she could find some open road.
The lawn was scorched yellow and brown; a big pastel blue aluminum trailer stood in front of a smallish pink house that was blackened and almost burned down to the ground. A dog, some kind of ugly, mutant dog, was tied to the door of the trailer, he was growling … and then he started barking, frightening her. She really did not like mean, threatening dogs. This dog was white, with pink skin showing through.
Zed came out, smiling at her and telling the dog to shut up, wearing tartan plaid pants and a plain white clean T-shirt with a pocket, a skinny guy with blondish hair and a darker beard. The dog behaved itself, and Lisa slipped past it into the trailer, smelling what turned out to be grilled cheese and catsup sandwiches, served by a tall, spectacularly proportioned woman named Joey—who had a completely bandaged head and face. She asked if Lisa wanted a sandwich, and there was something funny about her low-pitched voice. Lisa declined the offer, lying that she had already eaten lunch. She sat down with them, a kind of booth situation, like a minimalist diner, across from Joey and next to Zed. Lisa figured out that Joey was a transsexual.
“When the bandages come off, she’ll look like Daryl Hannah,” Zed proudly proclaimed.
“Cher wasn’t built in a day,” Joey intoned cheerfully, the only things not wrapped in gauze being mouth and eyes and a slit at nose level for breathing. It was a little creepy, but Lisa continued to look.
“I haven’t seen you since you broke up with Code,” said Zed. “How have you been?”
“Oh, not so bad. I was hoping to be AD on Selwyn Popcorn’s new film, Call It Love. I got screwed out of it, though … and I was wondering, I remember you mentioning once some guy, some weird guy who would, like, help you get revenge?”
“Sure. Boro.” Zed took another bite of his sandwich. “I don’t know if you want to mess with him, Lisa. Why don’t you just nod out for a few days, take a vacation in your own apartment? I’ve got some great new items, you can hardly keep up with the chemistry majors these days. Nonaddictive, very few side effects. If yo
u haven’t done it before, try Stairway to Heaven. That’s a greatest hit. Or Obsession, if you want to have sex. Wait a second. There’s also Joy Division, which is great, Heaven 17, or MC.”
“Sometime I’ll really score a pharmacy’s worth from you, but right now I just want to see this Boro, see if he can come up with anything. Code says he does, what, psychic tattoos?”
“Some deep background here. Boro is way, way fucking out. He’s from the Amazon jungle, and he’s got all these very strange vines he grows, he eats flowers and shit. He’s a flat-earth expert, I’m telling you. And his gang!”
“Listen, honey,” Joey said, “you’d be better off, if you’ve got a hard-on against some guy, let’s call him up, get him to come over here, and we’ll cut off his dick and stick it in his mouth. And then when the cops come, we’ll say, That’s the way he came in!’”
Lisa laughed, liking Joey more, stubbornly intrigued, however, with the concept of Boro, more intrigued the more they tried to put her off.
Zed digressed. “There’s a rumor, I mean I’m hearing it from three-four different people, that there’s this new procedure they can do, they discovered it from fucking around with chimpanzees and baboons … they stick a thin gold wire in your brain, directly into your pleasure center … and then it just stays there. Unless they X-ray you or do a magnetic scan, it’s just invisible, and you activate it by running a little electric current in with a remote control. It’s supposed to be, uh, indescribable.”
“It feels real good,” Joey explained as Zed nodded, and Lisa just smiled. She remembered when Zed and an earlier partner had been selling star memorabilia, secret photos of Drew Barrymore on the toilet, or her used tampons, stolen dirty panties, all kinds of stuff that fit under the broadly defined rubric of celebrity skin. Lisa was curious about how the little pink house had burned down.
“We can’t talk about that while it’s under litigation,” commented Zed. “Some jokers … well, if you really want to see Boro, I’ll send you to him. Don’t blame me if he turns you into a zombie biker chick with three hundred tattoos.”
