Book of the Dead (29 page)

BY DOUGLAS E. WINTER

People are afraid to live on the streets of Los Angeles. This is the last thing I say before I get back into the car. I don’t know why I keep saying this thing. It’s something I started and now I can’t stop. Nothing else seems to matter. Not the fact that I’m no longer eighteen and the summer is gone and it’s raining and the windshield wipers go back and forth, back and forth, and that Skip and DJ and Deb will soon be sitting with me again. Not the blood that splattered the legs of my jeans, which felt kind of hot and tight, as I stood in the alley and watched. Not the stain on the arm of the wrinkled, damp sweater I wear, a sweater that had looked fresh and clean last night. All of this seems meaningless next to that one sentence. It seems easier to hear that people are afraid to live rather than Skip say “This is real” or that song they keep playing on the radio. Nothing else seems to matter but those ten, no, eleven words. Not the rain or the cold wind, which seemed to propel the car down the street and into the alley, or the faded smells of marijuana and sex that still flow through the car. All it comes down to is that the living are dying and the dying are living but that people, whether alive or dead, are still fucking afraid.

It’s actually the weekend, a Saturday night, and the party by this guy named Schuyler or Wyler was nothing and no one seems to know just where Lana is having her party and there’s nothing much else to do except go to a club, go to a movie, go to the Beverly Center, but there aren’t any good bands playing and everyone’s seen all the movies and we went to the Beverly Center last night so I’ve been driving around and around in the hills overlooking Sunset and Skip is telling me that we’ve got to score some crystal meth. DJ does another line and he’s running his finger over his teeth and gums and he asks Skip whatever happened to his friend Michael and Skip says “Really?” and DJ laughs and Skip pushes in my Birthday Party tape and twists up the volume and Nick Cave starts to scream.

I light a cigarette and remember something, a dream maybe, about running down the streets of Los Angeles, and I pass the cigarette to Skip and he takes a drag and passes it back to Jane and Jane takes a drag and passes it back to Skip. DJ lights a cigarette of his own and just ahead a billboard reads Your Message Here and beneath it is an empty space. A car is stopped at the next light, a silver Ferrari, and when I pull up next to it, I turn my head to see two guys inside wearing sunglasses and one of them looks at me and I look back at him and he starts to roll down his window and I drive fast out of the hills and back into the city. The rain is pouring harder and the sidewalks are empty and the streets shine like black mirrors and I start thinking about last summer and I make a couple of wrong turns and end up back on Sunset.

Summer. There is nothing much to remember about last summer. Nights at clubs like Darklands, Sleepless, Cloud Zero, The End. Waking up at noon and watching MTV. A white Lamborghini parked in front of Tower Records. The Swans concert, DJ pissing in the aisle at the Roxy in the middle of “Children of God.” A prostitute with a broken arm, waving me over on Santa Monica and asking me if I’d like to have a good time. Breakfast at Gaylords, Mimosas with Perrier-Jouet. Lunch with my mother at the Bev-erly Wilshire and then driving her to LAX for the redeye back to Boston. Dinner with Deb and her parents at R.T.’s, blackened mahimahi, Cobb salad, Evian water, and feeling Deb up under the table while her father talked about the Dodgers. The new S.P.K. album. Going to Palm Springs with Skip over Labor Day weekend and getting fucked up and watching a lizard crawl along a palm tree for about an afternoon. Jane’s abortion. Monster billboards of Mick Jagger grinning down on Hollywood Boulevard like the skull of a rotting corpse. Clive getting busted, DWI and possession, and his father getting him off and buying him a new 380SL. Hearing the Legendary Pink Dots on AM radio. And, oh yeah, the thing with the zombies.

It’s ten
P.M.
and I’m sitting at the bar in Citrus with Skip and DJ and Jane and the television down at the end is turned to MTV but the sound is off. I order a Stoly straight up and DJ orders a Rolling Rock and Jane orders a Kir and Skip orders a champagne cocktail and Jane changes her mind and orders a champagne cocktail. We look at the menus for a while but we’re not very hungry since we did a half a gram at this guy Schuyler’s or Wyler’s party so we sit at the bar and we talk about new videos and this girl I don’t know comes up to me and thanks me for the ride to Bel Air. Jane digs in her purse and I think she takes some Quaaludes and I look down the bar and out the window and I see nothing at all. “What are we going to do?” I ask no one in particular. “What are we going to do?” Skip asks back and he gives me a match-book and shows me the handwritten address on the back, some place in the Valley, and he tells the bartender that we’ll take the check.

I drive to Jane’s house. Nobody’s home. Jane forgets the security code and Skip is telling her to try typing the year, it’s always the year, and she types one nine eight nine into the little box and the red light goes green and the front door’s open and we’re inside. We walk through the darkness of the hall to get to the kitchen and there’s a note on the table with the telephone number of the hotel where her mother and father, or her mother and her mother’s lover, are spending the holidays. There’s a stack of unread newspapers and a can of Diet Coke and an empty box of Wheat Thins and then the three videotapes.

“Deal with it” Skip says and he picks up the videotapes and he walks into the living room and he starts on the vodka and tries to turn on the television. I sit on the floor with DJ and Jane, and her parents have one of these big-screen TVs, forty-five inches maybe, with a pair of video-tape machines on top, and Skip finds the right buttons and the first tape is rolling. I think that maybe DJ got the tapes or probably Jane, she was at Claremont for a while and had a friend who knew some guy whose brother worked one time at a video store, a film student, and this guy stuck them away when the lists came out, and Jane maybe balled him and got the tapes, so we’re watching them, all in a row, three of them, lying on the floor of this high-ceilinged living room with this antique furniture and this print by Lucian Freud and Jane keeps telling us that she’s seen all these movies before even though she hasn’t. Skip is sitting with the remote control in his hand and he doesn’t say a word, he keeps flicking the fast forward, jumping ahead to the best scenes, and the first one is called
Dawn of the Dead
and right away this zombie’s head gets blown apart by a shotgun blast and this other zombie gets its head chopped off and the next one is just called
Zombie
and the last one I can’t remember much about except the part where this doctor blew away this little girl, she was a zombie, and he put the pistol almost right to her head and the pieces of head and brains and blood went spraying away across the inside of an elevator and just for a moment you could see right through the space where her brain used to be and I look at Jane right after this happens but she isn’t looking at me, she’s looking at Skip and DJ, and I guess she knows what she wants, don’t we all?

An hour later, there’s no more vodka and there’s no more beer and the television is turned to MTV and Jane just lays there on the floor of her parents’ living room, staring at the ceiling, while DJ fucks her for about the third time. Skip is on the telephone in Jane’s bedroom, trying to score some meth from a dealer in the city, and after a while I’m in there with him, looking at the poster of The Doors and the poster of The Smiths and listening to him say “Deal with it” over and over before he slams the telephone back onto the cradle and rolls his eyes at me and looks at the posters and says “Strange days and strange ways” and then he starts to smile and I think I get it.

The telephone rings and Skip answers and it’s Deb. Skip sighs and waves me to the phone and I say hello and she says hello and asks me what I want for Christmas and can I she talk to Jane. I tell her I don’t know and that Jane can’t talk right now and she says that’s okay, she’s coming over, don’t go, she’ll be right there and I say okay and good-bye and she says good-bye. I watch Skip go through the drawers of Jane’s desk. He stuffs a pack of cigarettes and a I lighter into his pocket and hands me a Polaroid picture and it’s Jane when she was a little girl and she’s standing in front of a fat birthday cake with eight blue-and-white candles and she is smiling a big smile and I don’t tell him that that’s me standing next to her, the little blond kid with the burry haircut and the thick black glasses. He isn’t looking at the photograph anyway, he’s looking at me, and all he says is “You faggot” and then he has his hands on the buckle of my jeans and he’s pulling me onto the bed on top of him.

Afterward, we smoke a couple of cigarettes and I follow Skip back downstairs. DJ has found another bottle of beer somewhere and he’s sitting on the couch watching MTV. Jane is still lying on the carpet, staring at the ceiling, and the fingers of her right hand are moving, clutching into a fist, flattening, then clutching into a fist again. Skip walks over to her and unzips his jeans and says that Deb is on her way and doesn’t anybody know how we can score some meth. Jane’s right hand flattens, then curls into another fist, then flattens again, and she looks up at Skip and says “Well?” and DJ looks up from the television and says “Well what?”

Another video flashes by. Another. Then another. Love and Rockets has no new tale to tell by the time Deb shows up. She’s wearing a silk blouse and a brown leather miniskirt that she bought at Magnin’s in Century City. “Love you” she says to no one at all. She kisses DJ on the cheek and sticks out her tongue at Skip and Skip acts like he doesn’t notice and keeps on fucking Jane. She says hello to me and I say hello back and she tries on my sunglasses. She walks across the room and starts searching through a stack of CDs. She holds up an old album by Bryan Ferry, puts it down, and picks up one by This Mortal Coil. She says “Can I play this?” and when nobody answers, she slides it into the player and punches a few buttons and cranks the stereo up loud. DJ is watching MTV and Skip is watching MTV while he’s fucking Jane and Jane is still looking at the ceiling and I’m trying not to look at Deb. She is singing along with Elizabeth Fraser, swaying back and forth in a kind of dance. I dreamed, she is singing, you dreamed about me. Then she sits down in front of the fireplace and slips a joint out of the pocket of her skirt and she takes off my sunglasses and squints her eyes and she looks a long time at the joint before lighting it. “Song for the Siren” winds down and there’s a moment of silence and Skip is pulling himself off Jane with a sound that is hot and wet.

“Next” he says, and he looks first at Deb, then at me.

I dream, but I dream about me. I see myself walking through the streets of downtown Los Angeles and the day is cloudy and the sun goes out and it starts to rain and I start to run and I see myself start to run. In my dream I am chasing myself, running past the Sheraton Grande, past the Bonaventure, past the Arco Tower, and for a minute I think I am going to catch up but the streets are slippery with rain and I fall once, twice, and when I stand again I can’t see anyone but this teenager at the opposite corner of the intersection and when I look again it’s me, a younger me, and he’s fifteen years old and he turns away and starts to run and I start chasing him and now he’s thirteen years old and he runs and I run and now he is eleven years old and he is getting younger with each step, younger and smaller, and now he’s nine years old and he’s eight years old and he’s seven years old and I’ve almost caught him and he’s six years old and he turns into this alley and I’m right behind him and he’s four years old and it’s a dead-end street and he’s three years old and he can just barely run and I catch him and he’s two years old and I pull him up into my arms and I’m at the end of the alley and he’s one year old and I’m standing on the porch of our house, the house where I grew up in Riverside, and he’s six months old and I’m knocking on the door and I can hear footsteps inside and he’s three months old and my mother is coming to the door and I can’t wait for her to see me and he’s just a baby and he’s getting smaller and he’s disappearing and the door is opening and my mother is looking out and he’s gone and I’m gone and then there’s nothing. Nothing at all.

It’s midnight. Still raining. Jane’s parents live in the Flatlands, next door to the French actor in that new CBS sitcom, and his dog is barking as we get in the car and Skip shows me the matchbook and the handwritten address and gives me some directions. I drive toward West-wood and take a right onto Beverly Glen and somewhere in the hills I stop at a liquor store for some cigarettes and a bottle of Freixenet and then I’m back at the wheel and I’m driving onto Mulholland and into the Valley and onto the Ventura Freeway and I look at Skip and he acts like he’s smiling, his left hand keeping beat on his leg and it’s right on target, one two three four, one two three four, but I don’t know the song on the radio, I’ve never heard it before. I look into the rearview mirror and I see that Deb is all over Jane and I see that DJ is watching them and I see that Deb’s tongue is in Jane’s mouth and I look at Skip and I see that he is watching me while I’m watching DJ who is watching Deb and Jane and I still don’t know the name of that song.

Skip taps me on the shoulder and we’re coming up on the exit and he has just popped something into his mouth and he downs it with the last of the Freixenet. He drops the black bottle onto the floor and opens his palm to me as if to say “Want some?” and I look at the little yellow pill and I wonder if I could use some Valium. The music is loud with guitars, it sounds like the Cult, and Skip is pounding out the big electric beat on the window, harder and harder, and spiderwebs are running across the glass and he hits the window one more time and it shatters and he shows me his hand. Little cuts run along his knuckles but he hasn’t started bleeding and the song ends and the commercial begins and he turns the volume back down. We go to the Lone Star Chili Parlor in Hidden Hills and sit there drinking coffee and wait awhile because we’re early and then we go back to the car.