Six Bad Things Part 31

The bartender with the lowriders is in front of me. She places a Coors Light on the bar.

--Burt Light.

She places a Coors Original next to it.

--Burt Heavy.

I pull out another twenty.

--I'll take one of each.

She pops both tops, puts the beers next to my almost full Bud, takes the twenty, and looks at the three beers.

--Got some catching up to do.

--Baby, I've been resting up for this.

A hand lands on my shoulder and I slip off my stool. T catches me.

--Whoa!

--T! T, where ya been? This place is great! I'm having a great time.

I guzzle beer and some of it slops onto my s.h.i.+rtfront. T grins.

--I thought you weren't drinking.

--Who me? No, you have me confused with some limp-d.i.c.k, p.u.s.s.y motherf.u.c.ker who doesn't know what's good for him.

--Well, what ain't good for you is drinking while you're on Percocet. You're lucky you can stay on that stool at all.

--Stay on the stool? Stay on the stool! That's the least of what I can do.

I start climbing up to stand on the stool and T pulls me back down.

--C'mon, King Kong, let's get you back in your head.

He's tugging me from the bar.

--Wait a sec, wait a sec.

I grab at my beer, but it's not where it looks like it is and I knock it over.

--Aww, f.u.c.k man, look what ya made me do ta Burt.

My head bobs around on the end of my neck. Colored lights whirl through the air, cowboys and pole-dancing beauties...o...b..t irregularly around me. The sweat covering my body goes cold-hot-cold-hot.

T leads me into the john. We walk past the condom machine and the line of occupied urinals, to the second of three stalls. We both squeeze in and he closes the door. I lean against the part.i.tion and start to slide down. T grabs me and sets me on the toilet seat. He takes a fold of magazine paper about half the size of a matchbook from his vest pocket, leans over me, and shakes its contents onto the back of the toilet tank. A tiny heap of rough yellowish crystals. He gets out his lighter and presses it flat against the pile and rocks it firmly side to side, the crystals making little crunching noises as he pulverizes them into powder. He lifts the lighter away and licks some dust that is clinging to its side. Finally, with an old Kinko's copy card from his wallet, he shapes the brown powder into two fat lines, gets out a twenty, rolls it into a tight cylinder, and hands it to me.

--Batter up.

I look at the twin lines of crank.

--I don't think I'm up to that, T.

--Hank, this is your doctor speaking. We have people to talk to, things to do, and you're about set to go all gape-mouthed and drooly on me. You need to wake up and get your head back in the game, superstar, and this is what's gonna get you there.

What is he talking about? People to talk to? Man, I just want to relax at the bar. I look again at the crank. But hey! I seem to remember being able to drink like a maniac on this s.h.i.+t. I stick the rolled bill in my nose, place the other end against one of the lines, and inhale.

It burns. It burns like a motherf.u.c.ker. Like a hot razor blade being dragged down my nasal pa.s.sage to the top of my esophagus, where it stops and a bitter, mucousy poison drips down the back of my throat. I rip my face away from the line and tilt it back and press the heel of my palm against my nostril.

--f.u.c.k me!

T laughs. He grabs the bill, neatly whiffs half of the other line into his right nostril, half into the left, and hands the bill back to me.

--Clean your plate.

The burn has crept up behind my right eyeball. I look down at the half line left on the toilet tank. I do the remainder into my left nostril and it feels like scrubbing ground gla.s.s into an acid burn.

--Jesus! Jesus f.u.c.k!

T runs his finger over the specks of crank left on the tank, licks it clean, and does the same with the residue on the inside of his twenty.

--C'mon. Let's go see my friend.

He leads me out of the bathroom, and I'm already starting to think he was right about the crank because things are really starting to fall into place and make sense to me, who I am, why I'm here, what I'm doing, how, in an amazing way the s.h.i.+t I'm in has given my life purpose and meaning; I mean, here I am, a man with a mission, a real mission, how many people can say the same, I mean, for the first time I can remember, I know exactly who I am, where I am, and what I'm doing.

I'm Henry Thompson.

I'm in a strip club.

And I'm trying to save my parents' lives.

SHE'S A big girl, probably five ten in her bare feet, but well over that with her f.u.c.k-me stripper heels on. She's all t.i.ts and a.s.s and pale white skin, her black hair clipped in a Betty Page. There are Vargas-style pinups tattooed on both of her shoulders and a row of emerald-green, quarter-sized stars trace the edge of her collarbone above the bustline of her black vinyl minidress.

--This is Sandy Candy. Give her three hundred dollars.

The Champagne Lounge is a small, very dark room set off from the main club. I'm half-blind in here, what with the sungla.s.ses still on my face, but I make out big padded chairs, small c.o.c.ktail tables, and a handful of cowboys getting some serious full-contact lap dances from their strippers.

--Why?

--Because it costs three hundred dollars to be in the Champagne Lounge.

I peel three bills off my depleted bankroll and hand them to Sandy.

--Sandy, what do I get for three hundred?

She tucks the bills into a miniature h.e.l.lo Kitty! lunch box she's carrying.

--Tonight, you get to talk to me while I get off my feet.

--That's some expensive talk.

--I'm known for my conversation.

T takes the little plastic pot box from his pocket and puts it on the table.

--We're looking for a guy.

She picks up the box and shakes her head.

--f.u.c.king Timmy.

I lean forward.

--Yeah, f.u.c.king Timmy, that's the guy.

SHE WORKS for the same guy as Timmy.

--What the h.e.l.l is your name anyway?

My name? I open my mouth. Nothing comes out.

--Wade.

I look at T. He keeps his eyes on Sandy.

--His name is Wade.

Sandy nods.

--OK, Wade, here's the deal. Like I told you, I work for the same guy as Timmy, guy named Terry. What we do, the delivery guys, we show up at work, which is this small warehouse over in Paradise. We don't all come in together, we have different times. Staggered. Like, I used to see this therapist because I used to be bulimic because I had all these food issues because when I was a baby my mom didn't want to mess with feeding me so she tied my bottle to the side of the crib like a hamster bottle so I could feed myself, so because of that I saw this therapist and she would stagger the patients so you didn't have to run into anyone if you didn't want anyone to know that you were coming to see her. I didn't care myself, but some of them were freaky about it. Like, I came in early once and this lady was coming out of the office and saw me in the waiting room and the therapist had to come out and ask me to turn my back while this woman left. Weird. So, Terry, the boss, he does the same thing so that not all the delivery guys know each other, which is the way some of them want it in case someone gets busted. But me, I'm pretty mellow, and so is Tim. So we run into each other over there a couple times and find out that we're both cool. So sometimes if I came up short on my stash, I might call Timmy and he'd front me so I could take care of my customers. He's cool like that. So, the point is, we never all come in at once to get our stuff. But!

She holds her hands up like she's about to deliver a dual karate chop. She's a big hand-talker, Sandy is.

--But! This one day I show up and everybody is there. All the delivery guys are in there, the ones I know and the ones I don't know. Terry, the boss, he's not even really a boss, he's just a dealer who pays us a commission to make these deliveries, but we call him a boss. But Terry, he's been making us all stay until everybody is there, except Tim. And that's when he asks if anyone has seen him around. And it looked to me like Terry did it that way so he could watch everyone all together when he asked, to see if anyone looked at each other, like they maybe knew something they weren't telling. But no one did. And that's pretty much it.

She peels her lips away from her teeth and grinds her molars.

--s.h.i.+t, T, this is serious stuff.

I shake my head.

--So, wait, but where's Tim?

--h.e.l.l if I know.

--That's, that's all you?

--For now. I tried to get ahold of Terry, you know, see if anything had popped up, but he ain't around. I can try him in the morning, I mean after the sun comes up. But.

She shrugs.

--But, what was the last time someone saw him?

She slaps her forehead.

--Oh, s.h.i.+t. Right. Well, maybe Sat.u.r.day because Tim always takes Sunday off and Monday was when he was missing, but that's not what I was gonna. This other guy! I forgot to tell you.

--What other?

--Hang ooooon. OK, this other guy was in there, in the office I guess, this morning, when I went in for my pickup, and I heard him talking to Terry a little, and I think I heard him say Tim's name, and then he left.

--Who was he?

--Well! At first, I thought the guy was a cop collecting a payoff because he was in a suit, but then when the guy left I heard him say good-bye and he can't have been a cop, because of he had a Russian accent.

My heart jackhammers. I could say it's just the speed. But I'd be lying.

I WALK out of the stall. At the sink, I splash water on my face and inhale, sucking it into my nose to ease the chemical burn from the b.u.mp I just did. I look in the mirror and there I am: Stetson pulled low, sungla.s.ses still on, skin waxy and drawn under my Mexico tan, jaw muscles flexing as I grind my teeth. I turn off the sink and walk out of the bathroom, water still dripping from my moustache.

Coming out of the tiled calm of the bathroom, I am hit by the ceaseless wave of slots racket. Gding-gding-gding, punctuated by the occasional mechanical cry, "Wheel of Fortune!" or the chang-chang of a nickel machine paying out. My heart leaps arhythmically in my chest, trying to match time with the din. I freeze.

Where am I? I stand in place and turn in a slow circle and look around the Western-themed casino. I see a sign. Sam's Town Gambling Hall. Oh, right. Sam's Town. This is the place Sandy wanted to hang while . . . While? We're waiting for something. For . . .

--Where have you been, baby?

Sandy grabs me from behind and wraps her arms around me, I rotate within her grasp, feeling our bodies slide against each other, and put my hands on her hips.

--Got me.

She smiles, puts a finger on the bridge of my sungla.s.ses and pushes them down. She looks at my eyes.

--Oh, baby, you are tweaked aren't you?

--Got me.

She laughs.

--Well, hand it over, it's mama's turn.

I dig in my pocket for the bindle T gave me and pa.s.s it to her. She points at the tables.

--T's right over there.

And she walks toward the bathrooms. I turn and find T at a ten-dollar c.r.a.ps table.

--T, what are we doing here, man?