High Life (15 page)

We fucked hard. Like some need in both of us fed off our humping, driving us deeper into each other. It was the first time I’d done it with anything approaching emotional involvement since the early days with Karen.

She whispered obscenities through our long panting until, as though we were juddering back from some years-long trip in hyperspace, the present folded in around us again and she jerked and moaned and came. I was set to pump seed as far in as I could get it, but the reality we’d come back to took a wrong turn. Hands grabbed my shoulders and wrenched me out of her. I spurted my load over her belly and the outside of her cunt.

Laratin. In a rage. With a couple of hefty guys in waiter’s uniforms, both of them jostling to be the one with the best grip on me.

“You fucking swine. You … fucking swine. You said you loved me. I trusted you.”

I could see a vein swelling on his bald head. Behind him, through the doorway, the Mexican maid peered in then jerked back out of sight. The woman finished wiping herself down with a tissue and began arranging her clothes. She seemed supremely unconcerned about the intrusion.

“Really, Peter …”

Laratin turned on her. “This is my house! My house! Do you know how upsetting this is for me? Everyone knowing that he doesn’t love me?”

“Of course he doesn’t love you, you moron. No one does.”

Laratin shrieked and covered his ears with his hands.

“That isn’t true, that isn’t true. You can’t say that.” Then to the waiters: “Get him out of here. I won’t stand him in the house a second longer.”

I managed to get my pants back up and they dragged me out of the room. The woman didn’t say anything or try to stop them. The last shot I caught of her she was doing up a button on her blouse. Laratin came out into the corridor and stood there watching as I was hustled along.

“You slut! You piece-of-shit slut!”

He was punching the air as the guys dragged me around a corner.

When we got near the party again the waiters gave me the option of continuing to the door without assistance—supervised, of course. As a result the embarrassment factor wasn’t too high. I did feel bad, though, when I saw Dean slumped on a couch with his face in his hands.

Outside. I hung around for a while, hoping the woman would show. She didn’t. I looked up at the house and around at the grounds, at the slick cars still arriving. A piece of the world behind the TV screen—straight out of dreamtime. Right in front of me. And I was as far away from it as ever.

I was tired. I went to the fountain and splashed water on my face, leaned there looking for messages in the drifting reflections. Tough luck—messages are for drunks and madmen. I knew it that night driving along Ocean Avenue, why should anything have changed?

I walked down the drive. The guy at the gates let me out but wouldn’t speak to me. I started the long walk down out of the hills to somewhere I could call a cab from.

Chapter Fifteen

Twilight, and Rex had an empty hour before a gig. They’d tweaked his medication and he was a little smoother than last time I’d seen him. We went driving in his yellow cabriolet Porsche. On the boulevards neon glowed in rainbows and the billboard stars looked down without caring what they saw, too far removed from the endless street hassle to understand it anyway.

The sidewalks were full of girls for a guy in a fast car, but if they weren’t paying I wasn’t interested. Californian tits and ass in skintight clothes—nice to look at, but only one percent of it would get you anywhere. And I didn’t have the energy to weed out the dross. Rex didn’t even look at it.

“You fucked it with the Latin.”

“I know.”

“He doesn’t want you to call again.”

“Look, I’m sorry if it comes back on you.”

“I only introduced you. You want to chuck it away, it’s up to you.”

“I didn’t want to chuck it away, I didn’t have any choice. Some things just have to happen.”

“God, don’t tell me you’ve got a view of the universe now.”

“Just the Californian universe.”

“No other agency’ll touch you.”

“There’s still the drag.”

“Jesus, I hope she was worth it.”

“She was loaded, man. Loaded. You could tell.”

“Don’t go looking for a ready-made life, dude, they don’t exist. Crawling out of the swamp ain’t that easy. And you know what? When you think you have finally crawled out, you look around and everything’s still exactly the same.”

We drove a little while longer, then Rex had to split. I got him to drop me at a drugstore on La Brea Avenue. It was a big place with a lot of displays—photo presentations for shampoo and perfume—dream material that was almost better than the movies. The models were always perfect, always happy in beautiful clothes and exotic locations. One look and you knew what type of lives they led—jet set, million-dollar apartment, night-clubbing, kisses on the cheek, mixing with other people just as good, restaurants, first-class, five star, step out of a shiny car and snap go the cameras to pay for it all, then, wow, oh dizzy me, on it all goes …

Yeah, perfume ads are the best. Smooth dark guys and wind-blown women, life in places like Malibu and Beverly Hills and Paris and London. Sure, I knew the pictures were staged, but the thing was, the people in them actually lived like that. The ads weren’t fake in any way, they were a true representation of what the world was like for the lucky.

Back at Emmet Terrace I phoned into a radio quiz about movie trivia and won it hands down. The prize was a subscription to a magazine. I got my photo out and jerked off over it.

On the drag again. For money now, pure and simple. I mouthed cock and jammed it into buttholes—fagboy extraordinaire. I fell into a routine—get up late, hang out till I had some dollars, buy food, booze, occasionally some drugs, make it back to the apartment, and fry myself with TV. Then get up and do it again. Simple pleasures. But one night there was a variation.

I was a few paces down from a convenience store, waiting for somebody to rent my dick, when a black Jag pulled up to the curb. I’d been daydreaming, so a fucked-up surfer beat me to it. He leaned in at the window and blathered for a while with the silver-haired driver. I moved closer, like I was bored with standing still, and watched the scene go down. A few bucks changed hands, but too few for any kind of genital interaction. It puzzled me until the surfer headed for the store, then I clicked—a bottle for company.

I was beside the surfer at the liquor counter before the door closed on its pneumatic hinge. A few seconds pretending to check out the high-octane booze to make things look good, then in with a bit of sincere hustler-to-hustler chat.

“Say, did I see you with that guy out there? In the black Jag?”

Surfman recognized me as a fellow bum-boy so his reaction wasn’t quite as fuck-off as it might have been.

“Yeah, the cunt sprung for some booze.”

I waited while he made an intelligent selection—maximum specific gravity per dollar, change straight into his pocket.

“He’s an old geezer with silver hair, right? You want to watch yourself, man.”

“Huh?”

“Haven’t you heard about him? Fuck, they call him the Silver Slicer.”

“Whaaat?”

Surfman didn’t want to believe this because a guy in a Jag was certain to lay out bread, but hustling is a vulnerable profession and too many boys turn up dead in vacant lots for advice to be taken lightly.

“No shit, man. I tricked with him once and I was lucky to get out alive. I’m sucking away, right, and the fucker pulls out this razor and slices me across the shoulders. Right through my fucking shirt.”

“No shit!”

Surfman’s eyes were wide and round and his mouth hung open like something in a cartoon.

“You want to see the scar?” I started pulling my shirt out of my pants. He stopped me quickly.

“No, man, I don’t want to see the scar, he might be looking through the window. And he’ll know I know.”

“And if he knows, you’re fucked. You’ll have him on your ass every time you look over your shoulder. It’ll happen, man, it’ll happen. Look at me, he’s been trying to finish me off ever since I split with my back hanging open.”

“Motherfuck.”

“Yeah, it don’t make things easy, I can tell you. But, shit, I was lucky, I didn’t get the full Slicer treatment.”

“The full treatment …”

Surfman was off in his head conjuring possible Slicer death scenarios.

“Yeah, the full fucking treatment. You hear about that kid they found behind a liquor store on De Longpre?”

“What kid?”

“Young Mexican kid, used to work down here.”

“Yeah, man, I think I did.”

“The Slicer, man. The full fucking treatment. Cut his dick into strips and peeled it back like a banana. Peeled his whole fucking body like a banana.”

“Motherfuck. I’m not getting in that car.”

“Fuck, man, don’t even go out on the street. Just stay where it’s good and bright and pray he ain’t feeling bold tonight.”

“Bold?”

“Came after me in McDonalds one night.”

“Holy shit, McDonalds …” Surfman was momentarily lost for words, then: “I’m taking the backdoor, man. You coming?”

“Can’t do it. He got his first taste of street blood through me. I feel like I owe you. I’ll hang out here and slow him down if he makes a move. You split. Just … Just have a drink for me if I end up in the papers.”

Surfman gripped my forearm and looked hard into my face like this was all real-life
Dirty Dozen.

“Thanks, man.”

Then he was gone, dust at his heels and me the farthest thing from his mind.

Outside and up to the Jag, looking earnest and like I only wanted to help.

“Er, excuse me. You give that blond guy some bread?”

English coachwork and soft brown leather, walnut dash around LCD readouts. The guy sitting in it was definitely the man I was after. Sixty, maybe—but looking good for it—light tan, thick silver hair swept back from the forehead, strong face with noble features, pale eyes that looked odd under the streetlight—less responsive than you’d expect. He wore a dark suit, conservatively tailored, and a tie.

He looked up at me, not fazed at all by a new face at his window, even in that part of town.

“I beg your pardon.”

“That surfer guy, just went into the store. You give him some money?”

“He wanted to buy something to drink. I gave him ten dollars, yes.”

“I don’t want to offend you, but this part of town and all, you were probably expecting to take a ride with him somewhere. Right?”

“I had something I wanted to talk to him about, though perhaps not what you imagine.”

“Whatever it was you can’t do it now. He split with your bread. There’s a back way out of there.”

No anger, just a small “Oh.”

“Yeah, I’ve seen him pull it a hundred times.”

“You know him well?”

“I couldn’t tell you his name, but you hang around here long enough, you see things.”

Silverhair clicked on with a smile.

“Do you spend a lot of time on the streets?”

“Man’s got to eat.”

“Where are you from?”

“Detroit.”

“Ah. That is where your family lives?”

“They’re all dead.”

“And you live by prostitution?”

“That’s what happens on this side of the street, man.”

“Of course. I ask only to see if I might be in a position to offer you some help.”

“Help?”

“I was about to offer it to our thirsty friend before he ran off. I can see you are in a similar situation, so I’ll offer it to you. Would you like to get into the car while we talk?”

“Sure, man.” I said it like I knew what he really wanted was to score some butt and opened the door.

“I’d prefer it if you sat in the back.”

“Uh, okay.”

Silverhair pulled away from the curb, he talked as he drove.

“I work for a doctor whose usual practice caters to the wealthy of our society, but occasionally we like to do a little charity work. To pass on our good fortune, so to speak. To this end I search the streets for suitable candidates. Are you interested?”

“What do I have to do?”

“You don’t have to do anything. We offer a free medical checkup, any minor treatment you might require, vitamin shots, a clean bed, and two hundred dollars.”

“How long do I have to stay?”

“It usually takes the doctor about two days to run tests and administer treatment.”

“No sex?”

“Absolutely not. Hard to believe these days, I know, but all we want to do is to help people.”

“This, er, medical treatment, I don’t have to have it if I don’t want to, do I?”

His eyes flashed up in the mirror, reassuring, shocked at the suggestion that anything might be forced on me.

“Of course not. It’s there for you only if you choose it.”

I took a long breath and wondered what the fuck I was doing.

“Okay. I could use two hundred bucks. Let’s go.”

We’d been circling aimlessly during our conversation, now he pointed the Jag out of Hollywood and toward the wide quiet of Beverly Hills. Just after we turned off Sunset he twisted sideways in his seat and stuck his hand out like he was offering me something.

“You should look at this before we arrive.”

I leaned forward, trying to work out what it was. He seemed to be holding some kind of aerosol, like one of those purse-size cans of deodorant. When I saw where its nozzle was pointed I started to think that maybe having my head so close to it wasn’t the best idea. But it was too late by then. A hail of tumbling pin-prick droplets coned out of Silverhair’s hand and into my face.

I jerked back. The stuff didn’t hurt, but it tasted chemical, and it went to work right away. Seemed like old Joey had left a little piece out of his story back at Bar Ramses—the part where you got drugged on the way to the clinic. I reached for the door handle. Guess what? Central locking. I tugged weakly at it once or twice, but my motor skills were already too corroded. My body relaxed in spite of itself and increasing waves of anesthetic warmth rippled out from my hips and spine into the soft matter of my cells. In any other situation it would have been yummy, but rolling toward a place where people got things cut out of them it was alarming to say the least. I slumped in my seat moronstyle and thought about shouting, until I realized I didn’t know what shouting meant. Breathing looked to be about the maximum achievable level of function, so I stuck with that and forgot about things like vocalization and limb mobility.

“Do you like it? Most of you seem to, once you stop panicking. In a minute you’ll become unconscious. Don’t worry, nothing will happen to you. This is just a precaution to safeguard the doctor’s anonymity. I repeat, nothing will happen to you. You’ll wake up shortly between clean sheets …”

His words didn’t reassure me. I stopped listening. And then I passed out.

Zap. Out of no thought into too much. Too much feeling, anyhow. Hard road surface under me, cutting into my cheek and elbows. Clothes damp, muscle-ache from head to toe. And something tugging at my ass, pulling at the material of my jeans.

I opened my eyes. Dawn light on backstreet tarmac. Weeds growing through cracks. Belly-down between trash cans. And that fucking tugging …

I groaned and moved my arms. The tugging stopped and someone behind me said, “The cunt’s still alive,” and someone else said, “Hurry the fuck up, then.” Cracked voices—too much street time and Thunderbird. They started on my back pockets again. Material ripped. My head felt foggy and my eyes were gummed, but gut instinct took over and put my body to work.

I rolled onto my back and kicked without aiming. Thin air. Two scuzzy winos in scuzzed-up coats—gabardine once, perhaps, but now just something to soak up piss and sweat.