“I’m sorry.” I want her to hear me, but I hate raising my voice. I slide three Jacksons through the tip slot. “I’m cool. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“You didn’t scare me.” She takes my money, tucks it into the front of her panties. “Want a dance?”
“No.”
“Good.” She starts to walk away and I tap the glass again.
“Wait, can I just talk to you for a sec?”
“I have customers. You want to talk, then get a number out of a newspaper.”
“I just gave you sixty dollars.”
She rolls her eyes, crouches down so her face is almost level with mine. “Go.”
“Do you recognize me?
“You’re the guy with the booth tokens and the chafed cock, right?”
“Yeah, I mean no, not really. You might have me confused with somebody else.
“I was joking,” she says. She hasn’t stripped yet, but what little she’s wearing I could ball up into my fist. More sleight of hand, she pulls a cigarette and a lighter out of thin air. She lights up with a deep drag, but says nothing else.
“Desiree, please. Just look at me. Have we ever met before, outside of this place?”
“I’m not Desiree.” She blows a cloud of smoke against the glass.
“I know. Your name isn’t Desiree. It’s a stage name. I won’t ask your real name.”
“Yes, you won’t ask my real name and no, you don’t know my stage name. My name is Charlene on the dance roster. And that’s the only name you’ll get from me.”
“No, I asked for Desiree. He sent me to you.” I jut my thumb behind me, back where the Token Man sits outside the booth doors.
“Of course he did. And yes, of course I recognize you.”
Good. She understands me, at least.
“So you know I’m cool.” I’m calmer now, and I speak in a whisper. “And your name is Desiree, right?”
The booth flashes blue with the noise of a cracking whip and my nose burns with electricity. I was staring at her eyes or following the glowing cigarette tip, I don’t know, but I was right up against the window trying to whisper to her when this sleight-of-stripper had one hand free and out of sight, and now she’s poking the chrome teeth of a stun gun through the tip slot, right against my belly after the warning snap that sent me all the way back to a smoking pear tree that might or might not have ever existed.
“Don’t move,” she says. “Who sent you?”
There’s no move I can make that’s faster than her squeeze of the trigger. Out of reflex, my hands are in the air and a cascade of brass coins hits the floor of the booth, a sound I know with more certainty than anything I’ve felt without a brain load of Skin.
“Some guys from my hotel,” I tell her. “They said to ask for you.”
“You mean Desiree.”
“Yeah. Desiree.” The one thing worse than being wrong is being uncertain.
“What hotel?”
“The Firebird.” Strange, I haven’t told anyone where I’ve been until this moment. “It’s about a half mile from here.”
“I know where it is.”
“A couple of guys who live there. Jack. He’s got a friend. A skinny guy who doesn’t talk.”
“I know them.”
“So you know his friend’s name?”
“No.” Then she whispers, “And you cleaned me out last time.”
“Who’s your supplier?”
“Not a chance,” she says, and stands to leave.
“Wait, please. Who is Desiree?” I need to hear it, I need to know for certain.
“Nobody. It’s code. You should know that.”
“Code for what?”
Her eyes freeze, glassy like the camera eyes of the elk head. She grinds her cigarette out with her stiletto toe. The edge of the pink carpet by my window is burned and blackened with dead cigarette butts.
“I’m clean,” I tell her. “I’m not setting you up,” and I loosen my tie, start to unbutton my shirt but she shakes her head, waves her hands at me to stop.
“You have to go now.”
I button my shirt, then ask her, “Can you read palms?”
She says nothing, but mouths the word “go” at the glass.
“I know it’s a strange question. But do you read palms? Or can you tell someone’s fortune with cards? Yes or no.”
Another lightning blast flares in the booth. She’s holding the miniature cattle prod at her own waist level, behind the glass where it can’t possibly touch me but the sight and sound of the microlightning still threatens to burst my heart open.
“No,” she says. “Now get out.”
“Just tell me again, your name isn’t Desiree. Your real name. I don’t care what it is, as long as you tell me it’s not Desiree.”
If she says anything, I don’t hear it. My time runs out and the guillotine window drops, shutting out the pink light for the last time. As soon as I step from booth number four, the Token Man has one hand around the back of my neck and the other around my wrist, twisting my arm behind me and I go limp with fear, feeling my healing burns stretched to near ripping at the edges. I land on the sidewalk. A mailbox stops my tumble into the street.
twenty-five
I NEED TO FORGET EVERYTHING ALL OVER AGAIN. THE STASH OF SKIN BACK IN my room could have me time-traveling inside my skull for weeks, but I want it nowhere near me. There is a very real possibility that every second I’ve reconstructed has been a prolonged and vivid dream, but a dream nonetheless. There is a very real possibility that I was, in fact, alone at the lab from the very beginning, that Skin was my brainchild and if I wanted to sell out everyone I ever came into contact with, I couldn’t because there was no everyone. There is an equally real possibility that I was standing too close when Oz blew, though I had nothing to do with it myself. That Anslinger simply collected the evidence, found the name attached to the Galaxie and decided whoever I was, I would become Eric Ashworth, is not out of the question. I could have been in a car wreck on the way back from church, or taken a stray brick to the head on a construction site, and it’s my own bad luck that I have no memory, insurance or next of kin, my own bad luck that Anslinger has a high-profile case he needs sewn shut, water-tight. That White and Anslinger know each other is not unlikely. Anything is possible and nothing is possible. They’re the same thing.
Lou hasn’t moved. He’s behind the bar wiping a glass, the same one for all I know. Like the Glass Stripper never leaves her pink room and Jack and the Beanstalk never venture forth from the Firebird, Lou stands in the same spot, with the same expression, polishing the same glass with the same towel, each time I enter the bar. The universe is stuck and I’m the monkey wrench in God’s gears. Lou asks if I’m having the usual and I say yeah, but hold the Coke.
“Throw in a Scotch and soda.” Manhattan White takes the barstool beside mine, opens his wallet.
“And a Scotch and soda.” I wave his money away. “No, I got it.” The closest to feeling anything good today is not feeling either horror or hatred in the presence of White.
“Mind if I join you?” he asks.
“Yes.”
“Do I see a glimmer of recognition?” He smiles, punching me on the shoulder like a Little League coach. I nod. More than a glimmer.
“You here to snuff me,” Lou sets our drinks down and I take a stiff swallow of whiskey. “Now’s your chance. You won’t get a fight out of me.”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here.” White smiles. He doesn’t touch his drink. “First things first. How are you doing? You get your brain plugged back in or do we need to do the whole song and dance from the beginning?” I’m having a bad day, and his jocular attitude is making it worse. “We had ice cream a few days ago, remember?”
“I remember,” I say. “And before that I met you at a house out near Littlerock, off Highway 138. And I called you for help another time because somebody got hurt and that somebody disappeared.”
“This is good
news.”
“No, it’s not.”
“It sounds as though your memory’s returned,” he says. “You got hit on the head but you’re all better now.”
“I was not hit on the head. I overdosed. I was brain dead for eight seconds.”
“Your mind seems pretty clear to me.”
“That’s a relief, assuming what I remember about you is correct, because everything else is a blank. I thought my memory was coming back but I was wrong.”
“Then it’s none of my concern, your other business. My immediate concern is our compensation, and that you relinquish the intellectual property we spoke of last week.”
“I can’t help you.” I drain my glass and ask Lou for a refill.
“Wrong answer. You owe us money and a chemistry lesson. Or you have a play date with my son.”
“The chemistry lesson you’re looking for was lost in those eight seconds.” I can see pieces of the model in my mind, pieces that could as easily belong to a vitamin or a molecule of plastic, as likely as anything else. “If you’re looking for a sample, I can provide it.”
“We’ve got samples. That’s not the problem.”
“Then there is no problem. You have someone break it down, isolate and analyze the active alkaloid, then do a reverse synthesis. Someone with the time and equipment. I’d love to help but my laboratory’s in a billion tiny pieces sealed up in an evidence locker and I seem to have forgotten my higher education while undergoing CPR.”
“‘Someone.’ Like we put an ad in the paper for this someone?”
“Sure. Qualifications include an extensive background in organic chemistry as well as large-scale production and operations. Must have no brain damage or life-threatening enemies. Accused felons need not apply.”
White laughs, as though he’s genuinely enjoying my company.
“You’re irreplaceable, Eric,” he says. “Among the things you forgot was just how unique you were. You could have cured cancer but, lucky for us, we found you first. I’m going to miss you. Never thought I’d say that.”
“Get it over with.”
“Would you slow it down? You’re really paranoid.”
“You have no idea.”
“What about the money?” White asks.
“What about it?”
“The money to cover the damage you caused. This will allow us to hire your mysterious someone.”
“There is no money.”
White says nothing, his face blank, waiting for me to continue, to fill in the rest.
“There’s no punch line either. I’ve got some cash and some science projects back in my room. You’re welcome to them.”
“Don’t force my hand, Eric. The joke’s over.”
“It never began. The money is gone. All of it.”
White helps himself to a cocktail napkin, removes a pen from his pocket and slides them both to me.
“Jot the account number down,” he says. “Right here. Write it down, I’ll cover your bar tab and room rent for the rest of the month and you’ll never see me again.”
“The money was at the house.” Everything’s quiet. “Now you get it. It’s gone.”
“It’s burned.” White says.
“It was in a floor safe.”
“The Feds seized it.”
“Otto seized it.”
“One more time.” He forces a smile, like a car salesman who’s been kicked in the shin.
“Otto,” I repeat. “He introduced us, remember? The gambling freak. He’s been skimming from the beginning. If I were you, I’d recount every bag he ever dropped off to you. He vanished a couple of weeks before the fire. Got to Oz first and cleaned me out. Haven’t seen him since. You find him, your boy can be my guest, and make sure to give him my regards.”
“I have business to take care of.” White slips his pen back into his pocket and stands. “Let’s reconvene in three days, right here. Same time. You’ve had your fun. I realize it might take time, but I trust you’ll be carrying a very large canvas bag when we next meet.”
I’m deciding on some flavor of “you haven’t been listening to me,” or “you must be more brain damaged than I am,” but White stops me.
“Don’t. I’ve lost my sense of humor about this. Good afternoon, Eric.”
I finish my drink, then dial Anslinger. It’s after hours, so I’m once more dumped to his voice mail.
“For what it’s worth,” I tell him, “I was left holding the bag. I had a partner, Otto, who let me take the fall. I don’t know his last name. But he was there for everything, right up until he ripped me off and jumped ship. I doubt that’s helpful to you right now, and I know it’s too late as far as my case is concerned. But if you ever get your hands on him, I’ll say or sign anything you want, if it will help you to bury him.”
twenty-six
LIKE WAKING UP SICK FROM A DRUNKEN FEVER, WEARING CLOTHES YOU don’t recognize and a stranger’s blood on your shirt, the chaos follows a trail you don’t remember leaving, right to your feet. I step into my room and it’s putrid, my own stink out-stinking that of the previous occupants. The acrid smell of boric acid hangs in the air, mixing with the chemical sweat print from my body on the bed like a burial cloth, the smell sealed inside by the paper stuffed into window cracks and the steel wool in the baseboards. My collage, cardboard box flaps and pieces of torn paper, covers my walls, a floor-to-ceiling display of dead and dissected roaches, diagrams labeled with bits of string pointing to for theoretical placement of tracking chips, signal boosters and recording devices. The Blattella transmitus. It made sense at the time.
I was wrong about the bugs, but not about being followed. Someone powerful saw to it that my bail was too low and too easy to make for the charges against me. Someone saw to it that the role of cash I’d been arrested with was returned. It should have been seized, skimmed down to a quarter of the real amount and then booked as evidence, but they handed back every last dollar. Neither White nor Anslinger have that much pull, but Hoyle does. I need to get out of here, and they know that. When anyone refers to they, they’re referring to Hoyle, whether they know it or not.
On my way in, a couple of new guys in the lobby asked where the rehab group was meeting. Big guys with muscles and work boots claiming they’d hit bottom, that the court had ordered them into a program. Either one of them was healthier than a whole floor of Firebird residents. Then another guy came to check the plumbing. He was running back and forth to his van but his hands weren’t dirty and his clothes weren’t wet. He was lugging a pipe wrench without fixing anything. The wrench was pristine, without a trace of lime or rust, an underused prop collecting dust in storage.
The warden seemed too friendly.
“Hey,” he’d said. “Guy dropped this off for you.” He handed me a white envelope with my name typed on the outside. My hands were shaking but I took it, then ran to my room before the plumber could follow me.
The whisper says, “jump,” only louder this time and when I hear it again, it’s no longer whispering. I step away from the window, pull the cards from the desk and spread a game in front of me. On cue, there’s a knock at the door but I’m not startled this time. I know that knock.
“Nice of you gentlemen to drop by.”
Jack and the Beanstalk step into my room once more, as though someone’s waiting to take their hats and offer them a brandy.
“Good afternoon, sir,” says Jack, spooky cordial. “It’s a change to see you so engaged. I take it from your wardrobe that your trial has begun.” My trial has begun in the same sense an airplane has begun flying toward a mountain.
“And it’s not going well, I gather.”
“Jack, I’m not up for it today. What do you want? Or are you just here to say that you warned me?”
“I’d say you’ve been salting your own wounds quite well, on your own.”
“Something like that.”
Beanstalk examines my diagrams and dissections, writing down his observations on my elusive s
pecies in his black notebook, his headphones clamped to his ears.
“How much longer do you have left?”
“I don’t know. It could be tomorrow or a week. They’re still arguing the admissibility of evidence. There’s a lot of it.”
“And you have no disposition on the outcome?” Jack cocks his head, like someone placating a wounded child.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Are you guilty?”
Straight away, I know Jack’s looking for me to spill while Beanstalk digs for evidence. Hoyle needs to know what I know. Hoyle had me cut loose. Hoyle sent me to the same hotel where Jack and the Beanstalk live who, in turn, introduced me to the Glass Stripper, who gave me back my memory.
In the next instant, my house-of-cards conspiracy theory collapses beneath a feather of doubt, and I know I’m wrong.
“I’m clean, if that’s what you’re wondering,” Jack says. “I can show you.”
“That’s not it. It doesn’t matter now anyway,” I say. Then the words leave my mouth, “Yes, I’m guilty.” No weight lifts from my shoulders, I feel no sense of relief. It’s as though I’d confessed to murdering Snow White. “I thought I remembered all of the things that made me guilty, but I don’t.”
“Desiree isn’t always reliable, that way.”
“Please,” I say, holding my hand up to stop Jack from saying anything else. Until the reality sinks in on its own, I want to savor the bliss of your illusion for as long as I can.
“I did projects with my dad when I was younger.” I sit down on the edge of my bed and piece together what I think I know. “I learned about the way the universe works because of him. But he and my mom taught me to believe in God and those things didn’t…” I’m not sure how to continue, not sure whether the Mom and Dad I remember ever existed. The white envelope from the warden sits on my bed. I’d forgotten about it, so I pick it up and I tear it open while I talk to Jack. “What I learned about God and what I learned about science didn’t match. I figured out that the one place where the two ideas touch is in chemistry, in the brain.”