Dermaphoria

  They followed me from the diner. They were doing panic recon. The crickets tipped them off. I stood still, cleared my head, starting at the top of the list: television jingles, sitcom one-liners and grade school jokes to bury the blood-symphony of thought giving them nothing to hear but a false alarm.

  A tentative step, then a second, then a third until a firefly blinked on again. The worst kind of firefly, the alpha, the quivering red sniper dot. It landed dead-center on my heart, smoke curling from my jacket as it burned through. Another blinked on, then another, my chest and arms lighting up with angry red pinpoints, metropolitan Hell seen from a burning airplane. The glowing bugs covered me, their hot feet grazing my cold skin as they swarmed to my kill zones, a thousand of them for the thousand snipers a thousand miles away with their night vision scopes trained on my head and chest, awaiting the signal to leave my steaming corpse for the coyotes.

  “Pull your goddamned triggers already.”

  Nothing. The fireflies gone in a blink. My jacket was cool to my touch in the night air. A cricket chirped, a coyote howled. I measured their sounds for a discernible code but heard none, so continued back to Oz.

  The clock read 3:30 A.M. I remembered something about food and a head with enormous glowing eyes. I’d been abducted. The aliens fed me a tuna melt.

  Your dog stared at me from the floor, his pink tongue hanging out of his little salon-groomed, rodent face. He wanted me to pick him up. He wanted to lick me. He wanted a DNA sample from my face.

  “No go,” I said. “Mommy Machine sold you out. She must be a prototype because they’re not supposed to fall in love.” He didn’t get it, he just worked those pathetic, cartoon baby seal eyes and twitched his tail. “Are you listening? I know who you are. Mommy caved and told me everything. Mommy’s going to be shut down and sold for scrap.”

  My diagram was tacked to the wall, a black marker map of a tryptamine molecule with my insect-inspired brainstorm written below. A green nitrogen roach tapped at its corner. I flicked it and tucked the drawing into my pocket.

  “I wish you hadn’t seen this,” I said. “I’ve got no problem with you. I’m not gonna hurt you, but I’m not taking you with me. Mommy knows where we are and she’ll come for you. You can tell her whatever you want, once I’m long gone.”

  Fuzzface barked. I filled four bowls with water, covered the kitchen floor with newspaper, sliced open the fifty-pound bag of dog food and dumped it on its side, then checked all of the locks, unplugged the fax machine and police scanners. I didn’t need them anymore. I changed into a clean shirt then emptied my overnight bag, heading down to the basement to make my last withdrawal.

  The projector keeps skipping. It might be my memory, it might not.

  My hands shook and I couldn’t hold the numbers in my head. The hairline gap around the edge of the tumbler hissed like a punctured tire. The numbers, six, two, one, crowded each other out of the scant space left in my brain. I couldn’t form pairs and, once I could, I dialed the same six-digit sequence in the same direction, right, right, right. The dog licked my arms and yelped. The sound hitting my eardrums like a knitting needle and when I stomped down on the safe door out of sheer frustration, he ran for cover and left me alone.

  If I could shut my eyes for an hour, I could pull it together. I had everything I needed to walk away and give Hoyle what he wanted, but I wasn’t leaving behind $630,000 in the safe simply because I was too wired to remember the combination. Leaving. Left. Left. Left. Right, left, right.

  A quick bump and all was right with the world. Right, left, right. The tumbler hummed, the handle gave and I heaved the door open, laughing with relief. A candy bar wrapper, a ballpoint pen and a lone AA battery lay inside the safe. Bundled Jacksons, sequentially serialized, face up, in blocks of a thousand, fifty each—$630,000 altogether gone. Along with my stomach and pulse. Nobody but Otto and I knew a safe existed in the lab. Nobody but Otto and I knew the numbers for it.

  You and your dog had been clocking me from day one, Desiree. You read my mind, used your cards to know every move I made before I made it, didn’t you? Your dog fed you everything else you needed to know and now Otto had jumped ship with everything I’d saved. Otto, stay far away from here because when I call White and ask for Toe Tag myself, I’ll know exactly what I’m doing.

  Thunder outside. The universe decided to rain now that I had to walk until sunrise. The house shook from another rumble and your dog yelped and whined, scared out of his wits, afraid of shorting out and smoking his circuits if the lightning came too close. Me, I could dance on the rooftops with a golf club. The wrath of the angels hit me when I was younger, so they couldn’t touch me a second time.

  They weren’t giving up, though. The thunder clapped louder and Oz trembled under the boot heels of more angry angels like those who’d chased Dad and me into the cellar when I was a boy, only this one kept shouting my name. I heard it a second time, my name muffled by the storm. Your dog circled my feet, whining. More thunder, then my name again. The gas station phone was crawling with tapeworms, the diner was monitored by the Head who’d signaled the helicopters who’d followed me back to Oz. They were outside. No mistaking it. No mistaking the sound of my name and the meaty end of an angry fist hammering against the door, shaking the windows.

  I was too far panicked for more. The next threshold would either be death because my heart or some vessel in my brain exploded or a Zen priest’s calm that preceded some rash, violent flip of a self-destruct switch.

  The surveillance dog kept barking, louder and louder, hot puffs of electric dog breath like smoke signals in the cold air, calling them down to the basement. They’d catch me while I stood helpless and staring at the fading string of air barks from the spy dog. If he saw me leave, he’d tell them where I went, and he’d bark it out in that TV dog bark code. Code. The pulses dissolved midair, the chain never longer than four or five at once, but that was enough. Bark, bark, bark, bark. Long, short, long, long and indeed, I was calm, as tranquil as deep space and just as clear:

  The basement lab had a full pound of pharmaceutical-grade MDMA, unpressed and uncut, and twelve pounds of methamphetamine in various stages of recrystallization, together worth over $150,000.

  I shut off the cooling.

  The six, uncut blotter sheets of LSD had a wholesale value of more than $36,000 for more than five-thousand individual hits.

  I opened each of the eight five-gallon drums of ether. The dog would stop barking any second.

  Three hundred Mad Hatters awaited pickup, along with an equal amount of White Rabbits and Mr. Toads, as well as a hundred Yellow Submarines and Blue Meanies. Their combined street value came to $28,000. The lab gear was worth just under $75,000.

  The barking stopped.

  I cut the power.

  I had an open gallon of toluene and a one percent chance of not being shot when I opened the cellar door. A quick peek through the cracks and I opened the door slowly—no sparks—and stepped out into the night and my one percent of luck. I dumped the toluene behind me, let it cascade down the steps to the pooling ether fumes below. Your photograph was in my pocket. I kissed your picture once, lit the corner and dropped it onto the concrete stairs. That picture of your face saved me, for a little while.

  I ran. Between the flash and the roar, there wasn’t any space at all. The desert lit up daylight for four seconds and I ran as fast I could for each one. Every night creature imaginable was all at once exposed beneath the screaming light of the burning houses: coyotes, prairie dogs, spiders the size of my open hands and rattlesnakes like ropes of liquid muscle. Without the light from Oz, I would have died.

  The fire lulled and a wave of darkness followed that lasted for no more than a few moments. I slowed my run and when the second blast sounded, a hot wind bent the sage and the desert shrubs to the ground. Stopping to breathe, I looked back. A ball of fire, half the size of the house itself, rose to the sky. Beautiful.

  The desert life burrowed from the apocalypse
, and the massive fireball dispersed into angry tongues of flame scattering in every direction and then, in a whirlwind motion, they came back together. The bats were on fire, they were pissed and looking for me. I had to outrun my own echo.

  I ran until the fire was too far behind me to light my way, and then walked in the dark, ducking off the road when I saw headlights. Fatigue pulled at my feet, the sluggish quicksand of delirium wrapped around my chest and neck, choking me. A distant streetlight shone over the highway intersection, the abandoned gas station from where I’d called you earlier. The line was contaminated, but I had no other option. As I felt my pockets for change, the tablets I’d been carrying at the diner turned up again, the only incriminating evidence left. Lab or not, they were enough to send me to jail. I should have thrown them away but I couldn’t think clearly. I panicked and swallowed them.

  That’s right about where my memory gets fuzzy.

  twenty-four

  MY MEMORY BITES ITS OWN TAIL AMID THE FLAMING BATS AND MELTING nails as Oz implodes into a smouldering bruise in the desert. The distant flames die down and the phone booth goes dark. I can’t see anything except the black metal and plastic of the phone itself, though I don’t remember it having a green light. My eyes adjust, and I’m not in the phone booth. The green light is from the coin box of booth number four and, in the dark, I feel the wood from the guillotine panel protecting the Glass Stripper from the world outside her pink room.

  Either I’m dropping through the floor, or the coin box is floating away. I reach for it, catching a light switch and the overhead bulb washes out the glow from the black light, and a painted green roach scurries down the wall, behind my bed.

  I blink, and my life is over.

  I’m sober, though I can’t say I’m clearheaded. Morrel meets me at the courthouse and gives me a sport jacket, dress shirt and tie, and I change clothes in the bathroom. Morrel says I look like death, and he’s right. After I change, we go across the street to a lunch counter where I drink a pot of coffee and Morrel flags the waitress and says something I can’t hear. She returns with two jalapeno peppers on a saucer.

  “Eat these,” says Morrel.

  “You’re joking.”

  “No, I’m not. Just one, you can do it in two bites.”

  After the first bite, my face flushes with heat, sweat runs from my forehead and my nose feels like it’s bleeding

  “What was that for?”

  “You need to get some color in your face.” He takes a travel pack of aspirin from his pocket and slaps it in front of me. “Take a couple of those and finish your coffee. We need to go.”

  My trial proceeds. Morrel and the prosecutor approach the bench, resume positions, argue over a display of evidence tagged and spread across two end-to-end cafeteria tables near the bailiff’s desk like the recovered traces of an airline crash. They dispute the admissibility of each and every vial, bag, envelope, soil sample, glass shard, tire track cast, my vehicle registration and nearby phone booth records. The list seems infinite, though the court can’t produce a single witness identifying me at the scene. They have no record or witness of a transaction into, or out of, the lab. Each piece of evidence is a scorched fragment of something larger and more incriminating, but on its own is shaky and open to disputes which Morrel, much to my shock, conjures out of thin air: Each exhibit’s discovery location and loose proximity to the lab, fire department testimony as to the indeterminate strength of the blast and how far it could have sent certain fragments, the quantifiable, vaporizing heat at ground zero. Morrel recites a litany of raids and arrests in the surrounding area, all of which could have led to discarded or abandoned evidence. The pieces are nothing individually, but collectively they tell me what I already know. The proof of arson is absolute but, beyond that, it’s a line-item fight for enough evidence to prove the rest.

  I scan the courtroom for signs of anyone I recognize, hoping for you. Anslinger is nowhere to be seen, though if he’s going to testify, he won’t be present during the other proceedings. Manhattan White and Toe Tag, I suspect, will observe, but they’re not here yet. Sometimes I look over my shoulder as the courtroom doors swing shut, and someone has either just sat down or just walked out but I never catch anyone in between. It’s startling how many familiar faces I’ve amassed in my short time starting from nothing. The courtroom feels lonely without them. Perhaps I’ll invite the Glass Stripper to come by and sit in for an afternoon when she’s not working.

  “Desiree,” says the prosecutor.

  I’ve completely tuned out at this point. I’m about to ask for a bathroom break, but forget it the instant I hear your name. I look behind me, hoping for your flaming hair among the spectators, but you’re not there, nor are the doors swinging in your wake. My heart pounds with a mixture of hope and horror but everything’s stalled. The prosecutor confers with his aide, scanning a sheet of paper and looking at a small evidence pouch.

  “Your Honor,” Morrell steps to the podium and addresses the judge, “the defense moves to have the exhibit stricken from the proceedings.”

  “These specimens were gathered by the same team, from the same burn site as part of the same investigation,” says the prosecutor.

  He holds up a small, glassine envelope with a property sticker affixed to one side. I could spot them from a thousand miles away: the shiny blue tablets, the reigning media scourge that brought me back into your arms at the Firebird. Their connection to me is tenuous at best, but this man plans on making his career by putting me away, the mastermind behind the latest drug scare.

  “We do see why these should be exempt,” he says.

  “Counselor?” The judge removes his glasses to address Morrel.

  “Your Honor,” Morrel begins, “if the prosecution wishes to accuse my client of any wrongdoing, especially with respect to the illegal manufacture of drugs, then the prosecution should be able to correctly identify,” Morrel stresses correctly identify as he holds aloft a photocopied sheet, “beyond urban slang or street lingo, the illegal substance that my client is being accused of manufacturing.” The prosecutor stands to speak but Morrel doesn’t pause. “If you can show me court records that document a conviction of possession of ‘reefer,’ or ‘doobie,’ I’ll reconsider.” The courtroom chuckles, everyone but me.

  “Your Honor,” the prosecutor jumps at the opening. Morrel tries to stop him again but the judge silences him. “The presence of this drug is well-known and documented, as is its very recent entry into the black market. It is a new analogue without any known medical production.” Once more, Morrel tries to interrupt but the prosecutor continues with his voice raised. “The speculation that it came from a pharmaceutical manufacturer is still speculation. Your Honor, whether or not the drug has an origin in a legitimate source, the fact remains that all available evidence points to it being a purely black market product. The state has nothing but its street terms with which to identify it.” He produces a photocopied sheet. From a distance, it looks to be identical to the one Morrell is using. “Skin,” says the prosecutor. He dons his glasses and begins reading a litany of street terms—I already know them— “Touch, Cradle, Derma, D,” until Morrel cuts him short.

  “The prosecution is using a girl’s name, Your Honor.” The courtroom breaks into laughter. “They haven’t even begun to identify the substance, so it stands to reason they’re not prepared to levy a charge of manufacture for something they can’t identify. I will not have a client be charged with making ‘Peggy Sue’ in a laboratory.” The courtroom bursts into outright hysterics. The judge beats the laughter into submission with his gavel, then calls the opposing attorneys to his bench, yet again.

  Several minutes of mumbling and gesturing follow, a ball of lead forming in my stomach and growing heavier by the second. Morrel returns and the judge adjourns until the following day while he considers the issue at hand.

  “You know anything about this?” Morrel whispers to me.

  “About what?”

  ??
?The street names. Apparently it’s hip to call it by a woman’s name.”

  “It sounds familiar. You know how it is with me.”

  “I do. At least we know what ‘Desiree’ means.”

  I don’t hear anything else. The ball of lead is falling into a gorge at terminal velocity, taking me with it, and I grip the edge of the table to keep from being pulled into the black hole below the courtroom carpet.

  “Things are looking up,” says Morrel. “They’ve got a scary mountain of evidence, but the pieces break easily. We just need to chip away at them.” This is good news, I know. I’m facing a lifetime trafficking conviction and the court-appointed lawyer is showing optimism, but I don’t feel it. “Loosen up, Eric. Remember, you’re not even on trial, yet. We’re still arguing evidence. Be here bright and early.”

  I’ve sweated through my dress shirt by the time I arrive at the theater. My head is screaming. Court adjourned around 4:00, and I haven’t seen this much sunlight since ever, as far as I know. I remember seeing sunlight before the fire, but I can’t trust those memories anymore. It’s a long shot the Glass Stripper is working right now, but I can’t bear the thought of my room. The allure of Skin is gone. I don’t want to remember anymore because my memories keep getting worse.

  I step into booth number four with a handful of tokens. I don’t ask for Desiree this time. The Token Man assumed nothing, so extracted no toll and gave me my full change. I slide the latch shut with my bare fingers, dropping a few of the brass tokens in the dark as I’m fumbling for the coin box. The looking-glass guillotine slides up. The Glass Stripper faces away from me, entertaining someone in a window on the opposite side of the pink room. I recognize her ass. I knock on the glass once, then again harder, not caring whether or not the mop man has been slacking. She doesn’t hear me. When the guillotine window opposite mine drops, I hammer the glass with my fist. She spins quickly and scowls at my window, her dancing booth charm turned to ice.