Drawing Dead (36 page)

Okay, then. Autistic. Time to get literal.

Uh, excuse me? I said.

He looked up.

What’s your name?

Bob, he said.

Bob. Perfect. I should have known.

Okay, Bob, I said. Listen, I need some clothes.

Yes.

And I’d like you to help me, Bob. Can you help me find some clothes? Are there any clothes around there? That I could borrow?

He seemed to think for a while.

No, he said.

Damn.

I wandered from room to room. I seemed to know the place. Of course I knew the place, I’d been there all night. But my knowledge had the dreamy, fitful aspect of déjà vu.

I opened some cabinets. I looked under fixtures. I didn’t find anything resembling clothing that wasn’t made of vinyl or latticed black leather and studs. Nothing that wouldn’t frighten any normal cab driver away.

There was only one thing to do.

I promised myself I wouldn’t enjoy it.

I found an iron bar on the floor next to what looked like a small trapeze. Something with a handcuff on each end. I picked it up. I hefted it. It weighed enough to do the job. I padded softly back to the big room. Bob had his back to me. The sweeping seemed to take all his concentration. This was good.

I stepped up silently behind him. I raised the bar over my head. I hesitated. Bob, clearly, was an innocent. He’d been good to me, even. He’d undone the shackles.

But damn, I needed to get the hell out of there.

I apologized to Bob. I’m deeply sorry, I said.

I said it to myself.

I brought down the bar.

I pulled back at the last second. I didn’t want to hurt the poor guy. Just knock him out a bit.

It worked.

He fell face-first. I checked his pulse. Strong and steady. No problem. I stripped off the overalls. Hauled them on. They seemed to weigh ten pounds. As I figured out how the snaps worked, I looked for a mirror. To see just how stupid I looked. There was no mirror. But there was a mammoth arched wooden door, painted red and covered in what looked to be Inca-style—or Aztec, how would I know the difference?—etchings, burnt in or carved so skillfully they seemed an organic part of the wood. Two mammoth vintage fifties surgical lamps stood on either side of it.

I didn’t want to speculate.

I tried the door. It was locked. I wandered about. The place was a warren of narrow hallways and small rooms. In one of the rooms the walls and ceiling were all mirror. I saw myself.

I looked like a reject from a
Hee Haw
casting call. Maybe a junkie. A junkie reject from a
Hee Haw
casting call.

I found the exit door. It led to a door that led to a hallway that led to a door that led to a spiral staircase—yes, I was beginning to remember—at the top of which was a door that opened onto the bracing hundred-ten-degree Las Vegas air. The overalls hung ludicrously heavy on my afflicted bones. I wanted to crumple down onto the sidewalk. Sleep. Rest. Have nothing more to do with it.

I had no clue where I was. But wherever it was, it was civilized enough that a taxi rolled by. I overcame the lethargy, tried to hail a cab. It passed me by. I sat down. I saw another. I didn’t have time to stand up. I waved at it. I could feel my desperation. The cab driver could see it, too. He sped away. I staggered to my feet.

About two years later, another one came by. I conjured a confident taxi wave. He stopped. A guy not offended by overalls. Must have been from Oklahoma.

I managed to communicate my destination.

At which point I asked myself how I was going to pay the fare. I thought of asking if he would take a credit card, or a check, but it didn’t take me more than five minutes to remember that I didn’t have those on me any more than cash.

I shivered. It wasn’t the air-conditioning, which didn’t seem to be functioning. It came from inside of me. Frostbite of the liver, or something. I put my hands in the pockets of the overalls.

And discovered that they were stuffed with change. Silver. Coins.

The poor fucker’s life savings.

No wonder the damn overalls felt so heavy.

Ah, shit, I said to myself.

But at least I could pay for the cab.

The cab smelled of old metal and dust.

Or I thought it did, until I got out at the Dusty Rathole. Where I realized that it was me.

I stopped in the lobby. The floor was moving. Earthquake? I thought. They don’t have earthquakes in Las Vegas, do they?

Ah, but it was only me again.

I stumbled to one of the two beige chairs that graced the lobby. The one next to the potted palm. The real one that looked like a fake one.

That one.

I
MUST HAVE FALLEN ASLEEP
. Hell, I admit it. I did fall asleep.

I shuddered awake.

There wasn’t anyone in sight. I had no idea what time it was. I had a vague recollection that someone had shaken me awake earlier. Brendan? Yes. He’d been there. But that was all I had. A thought that he’d been there. A conviction. That I’d talked to him. I had no idea what was said. Except. He was in trouble.

Maybe he was in the suite.

I stumbled out of the chair. Called the room on the house phone. No answer. I negotiated a room key from the disbelieving desk clerk. Headed for what looked like the right hallway. There was an elevator there. I pressed some buttons. My subconscious didn’t let me down. Or muscle memory. Maybe it was muscle memory. Was there a difference? One the subset of the other? I got out on a floor. I headed down another hall. I found a room. I opened the door. It took three tries.

Everything was black.

There was nobody there.

I looked at my watch. Six, it said. Morning or evening, I didn’t know. Shit.

I staggered to the bathroom. I scrubbed my face with cold water. It didn’t do a thing for me.

I went to the bedroom. I fell into bed. I slept. I slept a dark sleep troubled only by dreams of a menacing, predatory sort. In short, nothing unusual.

I
WOKE UP SLOWLY
. Very slowly. I looked around. The ancient flip-number bedside clock said 6:23. Morning or evening, I had no idea. Had I slept for twenty-three minutes? Twelve hours and twenty-three minutes? I listened. Nothing. I was still the only one home, it seemed.

And as hard as I tried, I couldn’t remember a damn thing about the previous night. At least, nothing after … what was her name, Ruby? Diamond. That was it. I remembered Diamond leaning over me. I was lying down. I could see down her gangster suit jacket. She was wearing nothing underneath. She was tiny. Delicious tiny breasts. I had turned my head. Saw another pair of legs. Nice, muscular, naked legs. And something about a door. The red door. Bodies going in and out of it.

And that was all I remembered. Other than some vague thing about a conversation in the lobby. I’d been sitting in the beige chair, next to the fake real palm tree. But I couldn’t remember who it was, or what was said, or how I felt about it. Could have been a dream. I didn’t know.

I might have been a sick boozehound, but I never had blackouts. I might misremember a name or two; call somebody named Diamond, Ruby; wonder where the ticket stub for the Cardinals game in my jacket pocket came from—having never been to St. Louis in my life—or the rubber bunny with a faint but discernible scent of hashish. But a whole night gone? Never.

This called for commiseration.

I had to call Sheila.

While Sheila’s phone rang, while I listened to her interminable voice mail message—if this is urgent, call X, if this is an emergency, call Y;
what the fuck was the difference between urgent and emergent?—I felt somewhere in between. I thought about the etymology of the expression ‘placing a call.’ Calls used to be placed, I surmised, because you had to call the operator to place it for you. Put the plug in its proper receptacle. Place the plug. Place the call. Hah. I might even be right. But who would care, four hundred years from now? Somebody might care about the phrase, I suppose. Some ridiculously cloistered graduate student studying Twentieth-Century English Anachronisms. But they’d neither know, nor care, that I’d figured it out, here in the Ashcroft, I meant the Stardust, the Dust-Filled Monk, Motel, in Las Vegas, Nevada, at some god-awful time of the day—was there any other kind?—in some god-awful state of drugged inebriation, unsure of anything anymore. Unsure whether I would even live to see the next day.

I called the emergency number. Could she speak to me by phone? It was urgent.

She called back within ten minutes. She had an opening. Not a surprise, but pleasant anyway. More than pleasant. Damn, I began to realize, I was fairly close to what some people might call desperate.

I told Sheila the story. The whole damn thing. Or as much of it as I could remember. Which wasn’t all that much.

Oh dear, she said.

She was always sympathetic. No matter how debauched, demented and deluded I got, she never went judgmental on me.

I loved her for that. Not that kind of love, mind you. Don’t get me wrong.

If you abuse alcohol long enough, she said, the blackouts will start. Maybe without warning.

Sure, I said. But that extreme? All of a sudden? One night, memory as clear as a—let’s be honest—clear as a frog pond, anyway, once you pushed away the lily pads? And then, the next night, nothing? All night, nothing? Blackness? That’s never happened to me before. Nothing even close.

Not to mention, she said sympathetically, that whatever happened, it appears, must have been rather … memorable.

There’s that too. Jesus Christ on a stick.

I haven’t heard that one before.

I just made it up. Pretty good, no?

I’ll reserve judgement on that one, she said.

I expected you would.

Let’s get back on topic.

Okay. I’m easy.

Frankly, from everything you told me, it sounds very much like someone might have slipped you some benzodiazepines.

What’s that?

What they call the date rape drug. It’s a family of drugs, actually. They incapacitate you, and often affect your memory.

Yeah, I’ve read about it. But it could have been other things, no? I mean, I don’t know anything about all this …

Well of course, we don’t know. But whether it was that or something else, trauma, alcohol, autonomic repression, there are techniques for recovering lost memory. I assume you want to know what happened?

Damn straight I do.

That’s another new expression. For me.

Your sheltered life. It’s kind of a common phrase amongst certain denizens of the more cretinous dark corners of society. Places you haven’t been to.

I’ll let that one go by too, then. Have you spoken to the police about this?

The police? Christ, no. Why would I want to call the police?

It appears that something criminal might have taken place.

Let’s just say that if criminal acts took place, I’m not entirely sure I didn’t commit one or two myself.

I see. Well, I guess I’m out of my territory there. So, let’s get back to the memory loss.

That might be helpful.

Okay, let’s try a little exercise.

Fine with me.

Close your eyes.

I closed my eyes.

Picture the last thing you remember of that night.

I tried to picture the last thing I remembered.

I’m not sure, I said, that I consciously, let alone subconsciously, want to remember anything about it. Now that I think about it.

I understand. But shame is not appropriate here. I’m your therapist, not your mother.

Yeah, but aren’t I supposed to be confusing the two, or something? Isn’t that what that transference thing is supposed to be all about?

Now I know you’re joking. Let’s get back to the memory, shall we? It’s not about what it is. It’s about the details. Focusing on the details may bring the memories back. The picture will fill in. If you prefer not to know—

No, no, I said. Let’s go on.

Keep going.

There’s something about a door.

What about a door?

I don’t know. I just know it’s … a very important … thing. Door.

Is it red?

Is it red, did you say?

Yes.

It is, actually. Why would you ask that?

Silence.

Oh, I said.

Yes, she replied.

The Case of the Red Car Door.

We’d talked about it.

The subconscious works in mysterious ways, she said.

Almost as much as you do, I replied.

She laughed. Think about it, she said. Is there a connection?

I’ll think about it, I said. Well, actually.

Yes?

The door really was red. The door in the club. I saw it this morning. When I came to.

I see.

Actually, let’s go back to this last-night thing.

Okay.

I’m not really sure it was last night.

You’re not.

No. I’ve been sleeping. On and off. And what with that, and the discombobulation and all, I really don’t even know. What day it is.

Wednesday.

I see. I’m not sure that helps me.

It will come back to you.

I hope so. You know, this memory stuff, it reminds me.

Of?

Back in the hippie days, when I was homeless and all? Living in a tent in northern Alberta?

Yes?

We had this thing. I don’t know where it came from. There was this schizophrenic guy in the group, very nice, very entertaining guy, we didn’t know he was psychotic then, he didn’t know it, I mean, he knew there was something wrong with him, or maybe he didn’t, I don’t know, he knew he was different, I mean, he even looked different, he was one of those skinny, ropy muscular guys, with a skeleton head and those awful pustular acne scars, and he knew all sorts of shit that seemed fascinating back then, Zen stuff, and theosophy, and gestalt, and all those wonderful words, and he had this trick.

Yes?

You would be falling asleep, and you would see your hands. Best would be if you put them together, prayer-like, and stared at them as you fell asleep. And then, later, in your dreams, you would glimpse your hands and,
poof
, like some fairy tale, really, I’m not making this up, you’d be there, in your dream. I mean, you’re always in your dreams, in a way, but you have no control over them. They go off in their crazy dream directions and you can’t do anything about it, you don’t even think about doing anything about it. You’re at the mercy of that dream logic. But if you do it this way, you’re suddenly in control. You’re there. You can decide things. You can turn left, instead of right. You can say, Around the bend there’ll be a castle, and in the castle … Well, I never got to the point that I could control everything—the dream logic resists you—but I could do a lot. Damn. It’s funny to think about. It was so cool. Why did I stop doing it? It just went away. Never thought about it. Years ago. Decades. It just faded away. I wonder if I could do it again, now?