Nightlife Read online

  The people of Mabori-teri thought of such things as decorated leaves. But Kerebawa knew better. It was the white man’s method of trade. And Barrows gave it to him.

  “Maybe you can run around the jungle in Colombia without this green stuff. But you can’t get by in America very long without it. Do you know how it works?”

  Kerebawa flipped through the bills. Some with twenty written across them, some with ten, several fives, a few ones. He nodded, uncertain.

  “I learned how to count in the mission school.”

  Barrows nodded. “Just take your time with it, it won’t go that far. Don’t spend any more than you have to. And remember, just because they’re all the same size don’t mean they’re all the same value.”

  “I know that.” Exasperated, Kerebawa grinned at the pilot, bared one eyeball by pulling down the lower lid.

  Barrows laughed and returned the American equivalent: an upraised middle finger. He stood, moved for the cockpit door.

  “Won’t be long now,” he said.

  “Could you find me something when we get there?”

  “What do you need?”

  “A map of Miami?”

  “That can be arranged,” Barrows said, and shut the door behind him.

  More tales to tell his children and grandchildren.

  Kerebawa looked at the money in his hands. Green, so green. He understood that men killed each other over it. Just as he had seen them kill for the green powder. Men, acting as savage and violent as could the hekura. Or using Angus’s word, demons.

  He wondered if they knew their name had been affixed to a powder that did much more than show visions. And if they did, if they were angered or flattered.

  Hekura-teri.

  Village of the demons.

  Chapter 6

  WATCHING THE TIDE ROLL AWAY

  The morning after the slaughter at Apocalips, while Tony Mendoza and Lupo were making sure the piranha got their Recommended Daily Allowance of white mice, Justin was finding that awakening was even more fitful than sleep.

  The bathroom mirror showed bloodshot eyes. The inside of his nose burned like a freshly paved road. His muscles were out of kink from sleeping on Erik’s couch. A queasy stomach was the least of his worries. The price of fun — he’d paid it often.

  Erik had risen fifteen minutes earlier and was fixing breakfast in the kitchen. Wearing rumpled gym shorts, Justin shuffled in and joined him.

  “It’s days like this I wish my mom had had me aborted,” he said.

  Erik tilted a skillet. “Want me to fix you some too?”

  Justin peered toward the stove. French toast, bacon, OJ on the side. His stomach roiled at the sight, the very idea. “No thanks.” He found a beer in the refrigerator, cracked it open, and slumped at the table. Let George Killian’s settle his stomach. Hair of the wildebeest.

  “I don’t think I’ve started the morning with a beer since college,” Erik said.

  “You’re a wise lad.” Justin’s mouth felt leathery and dry, eluding control. “Paula used to tell me I belonged in AA.”

  Erik flipped his sizzling toast. “Was she right?”

  “I don’t know. Don’t care.” Justin leaned heavily, elbows on table, looking at his bare arms. Too pale, severe deficiency of Florida sun. “Mornings-after like this, sometimes I’ll concede she might have had a point.” A long pause, while thoughts cleared and a mental spotlight shone on last night. Highlighting memories he hoped were bad dreams but feared were not. “Was I blown out of my mind last night, or did some people get killed?”

  “You’re right on both counts.”

  Justin stared morosely into his bottle while Erik recounted what had been publicly broadcast. The body count, the eyewitness reports. The uneasy consensus that someone had turned a wild cat loose within the club. It didn’t entirely correlate with all the witness claims, but a roomful of eyes yields at best inconsistencies, while forensics results don’t lie.

  “Did you see anything last night, what happened?” Justin asked.

  “Not until it was pretty much all over.”

  Justin tried to reconcile the truths released for public consumption with his own distorted memories. A poor match. Although Mendoza had undoubtedly fed him some sort of hallucinogen. That had to be the culprit in the way he remembered things. Geeks just don’t stumble out of bathrooms and go lycanthrope on dance floors.

  Still, the sensations remained vivid. That feeling of plummeting toward a pit of primordial ooze from which anything could have evolved and crawled forth.

  It wasn’t until Erik was carrying his plate of food to the table that he told Justin about a call from work earlier in the morning. About Trent having hanged himself.

  “Oh, man … I’m sorry.” Justin reached across the table, touched Erik’s arm for a moment.

  Erik shrugged. “Yeah. He wasn’t exactly a friend. Nice enough guy, I suppose, but — well, forget it. Shouldn’t speak ill of the dead.” He frowned. “I keep thinking I should feel worse about it. It’s like I think, ‘Hey, that’s too bad, that’s awful.’ And then I go on about my business. Sometimes I think I’m dead inside.”

  “If there’s no love lost, you can’t pretend. If it had been me, you’d feel bad then, wouldn’t you?”

  Erik nodded vigorously, mouth full of French toast. Swallowed hard. “You know I would.”

  “Okay then. Case closed.” He leaned across to rap knuckles on Erik’s chest, over his heart. “It still works in there.”

  Watching Erik eat, he drank the ale, rolling the bottle between his palms. A minute later he groaned. Mortal anguish, wounds deep in the soul.

  “I bet I really blew it last night with April. Shit, I hope she didn’t see me blow chow like that.”

  Erik rattled his fork against the plate. “Please? I’m not quite done here?”

  “I didn’t even say goodbye.”

  “Under the circumstances, I’m sure she’ll understand. She’s kind of bohemian, real easygoing.” Erik mopped up the last of the syrup, downed the final bite. “Give her a call today, ask her out.”

  “Mm. Maybe.”

  Erik tossed his dishes into the sink, sprayed them with water. “Knock it off with the bashful-puppy routine, okay? Look at it from this perspective: How long have you been celibate?”

  “Too long.” Justin chucked his empty bottle into the trash. “I passed a construction site last week. Even the knotholes in the fence looked pretty good.”

  “Mayday, mayday! You’re in the danger zone, spud.”

  Justin agreed, and the conversation roamed onward as they moved from kitchen to living room. Justin stared out the windows, past the palm tree, down at the traffic on Davis Boulevard. Wondering who was in the cars, where they were going. If any would die soon. How their lives were progressing, satisfactorily or otherwise.

  The airflow from bedroom to living-room windows brought warming winds from outside, a clammy trickle of humidity. Justin shut his eyes, letting it work its way inside him to fight the residual chill left by this long, cold winter. And that was when the phone rang.

  It jangled once before Erik’s machine caught it. He always left it on to screen his calls, weed out the sales pitches and other personae non gratae. The speaker broadcast the outgoing message, Erik’s rhythmically breathless voice apologizing for his unavailability. In the background was the sound of squeaking bedsprings and moaning sighs that could’ve come from any of several million porn films. Then the beep.

  “Cute, cute. That’s a new one, isn’t it?” At April’s voice they both perked up. “Does she have all of her permanent teeth yet?”

  “You want to catch that for me?” Erik rose, rapidly backing toward, the hallway and bathroom beyond. Grinning. “Emergency! Gotta take a power-dump.”

  Justin cursed him as April went on.

  “I just wanted to make sure you guys got home okay. You’ve probably heard all the news by now. And about Trent? Wow.”

  Justin had heard enough. This didn�
��t sound like a girl who thought too ill of him, and he killed the machine and cut in. They talked for a few minutes, mostly about the previous night, what the media had to say on the subject. He felt comfortable, no pressure. Was she bohemian? He couldn’t tell. Easygoing? Definitely. Fabulous. Lately he wasn’t feeling up to the challenge of icy walls of poise, unbreachable to all but the most self-assured.

  “I’m sorry we cut out last night, left you there,” he said. “That was my fault, a hundred percent.”

  “Come on, no apologies. You did look pretty bad all of a sudden.”

  Ever the manipulator, Erik decided to make his presence felt. “Oh Juuus-tiiin!” he called, his voice sing-song. “Don’t forget that feee-eeence, those knooot-hoooles!”

  Justin clamped his hand over the mouthpiece, but it was too late. Barn door open, horse already escaped.

  “What did he say?” she asked.

  “Who can fathom?” Maybe the floor would open up and swallow him, phone and all. “I think he’s trying to serenade me from the shower. His mind and libido work in strange ways.”

  April said she agreed completely, and he decided to dive right in and ask her out. Get it over with before Erik blurted out something even more embarrassing to nudge him along. And in the end he was grateful for Erik’s persistence.

  Especially since April said yes.

  April had graciously offered to drive, since Justin was without wheels. She picked him up late that afternoon. He’d stayed sober all day, a minor triumph, and felt much improved over the ghoul he had been upon awakening. Clean, shaved, comfortable, wearing baggy blue slacks with a drawstring and a simple white shirt. All-purpose, hard to go wrong. The only thing he knew to expect was that they definitely wouldn’t be going dancing.

  They decided to eat Cajun, and she wheeled to what she said was one of her favorite restaurants, in a quieter stretch of Tampa. The restaurant’s little microcosm felt more like New Orleans. Stately two-story red-brick building with white wooden trim. Surrounding willow trees dripping Spanish moss. They ate at a black wrought-iron sidewalk table while down-south jazz wafted out from a piano inside.

  April taught him the finer points of eating boiled crayfish as they shared a plateful for an appetizer. They looked like a mound of tiny lobsters, red of shell and beady of eyes. Ready to swarm across the table and mount a counteroffensive. That the menu informed him of their colloquial name, mudbugs, was of limited charm.

  “Nothing to it,” she told him, delighted either to introduce him to something new or inflict subtle tortures. “Just break off the tail, suck the juice out of the head, and peel the meat out of the tail.” She demonstrated, then laughed as he massacred one with his first attempt.

  They were good, once initial aversions were overcome. By the time the plate was empty he was a seasoned pro, and he found that he liked this April Kingston very much.

  Main courses were next. Blackened redfish for him, barbecued shrimp for her, sides of red beans and rice. By the time these were gone he felt he had a better fix on her.

  April was almost a Tampa native. She’d grown up across the Old Bay in St. Pete. The dusting of Asian influence in her features wasn’t imagination. She had a Japanese grandmother, who had fallen in love with a GI while in a California internment camp during World War II. Grandpa had married her, despite lots of glaring resentment and downright nasty hatred directed his way. Very romantic stuff; she seemed to enjoy the story a lot.

  She was self-employed as a commercial artist, working out of a portion of her loft apartment. April had gone freelance after doing a few years of dues-paying and contact-making at the Tribune’s ad department. It was better than the creative department of an ad agency because she didn’t feel compelled to accept anything that might offend her sensibilities. A bit less stable a career move, perhaps, but a lot of businesses preferred to get their advertising services on an a la carte basis rather than put an entire agency on a fat retainer. She had kissed the Tribune good-bye eighteen months before Erik.

  “How do you know him?” she asked. “I know you’re not, but you almost look like you could be brothers.”

  “People have said that. And I’m the fairer-skinned, darker-haired twin.” He pushed his plate away across the wrought iron. Feeling, for the first time in a long while, that people just might be looking at him with envy. This was nirvana — fed and sober and happy to be in the company of a lovely woman who wasn’t dragging him through ugly litigation. “We used to say we were supposed to be brothers, but biology and genetics conspired against us. And that fate won out in the end.”

  April smiled. “That’s kind of sweet.”

  “We met in college, at the University of Illinois. Almost eleven years ago, first week there as freshmen. We both started off trying the fraternity route — different houses — and we both hated it. With me, it was like, four days in and I knew I wasn’t cut from that cloth. We both walked out of our houses the same morning with our bags packed and threw ourselves on the mercy of the university housing system. We ended up assigned to the same temporary housing room.”

  “Neither one of you strikes me as the Greek type.”

  “I don’t know what we were thinking.” He drained his water glass, and someone was there to refill in moments. “Temp housing was bizarre. It was this double-size room that was supposed to be used as a dorm lounge. They crammed five of us in there. Makeshift bunk beds, freestanding clothes racks, desks everywhere there wasn’t a bed. Sardines go to college. The rest of the guys on the floor called it the Refugee Camp.”

  She laughed. “Grandma would sympathize.”

  “I guess it gave Erik and me a strong common bond. Because our backgrounds were pretty different. I came from St. Louis, and he was from some tiny little place in Ohio. We ended up rooming together until we graduated. Apartments after that first year.”

  April was leaning in, chin atop laced fingers. “I love happy endings.”

  He whipped out his MasterCard Gold to take care of dinner. Had to smile at the imagined horror of the First National Bank of Wilmington should he apply for one under his present circumstances. After dinner they grabbed a bottle of sangria. She drove back to Davis Island but bypassed Erik’s building, kept going to the south rim. Left a winding two-lane drive and veered onto a broad expanse of lawn overlooking Hillsborough Bay. She stopped a few yards from the abrupt shoreline, where a layer of chunky rock was land’s last bastion before sea.

  They got out, strolled to the edge, sangria in hand. The day had cooled down to the low seventies, and salt breezes skimmed off the water. Behind them was the small Peter Knight Airport. Angled across the bay was some sort of shipyard, a huge freighter docked. Farther out on the horizon, there came another one, its guttural basso horn rolling across the water. Sailboats and catamarans milked what they could from the dying sunlight and waning winds, wedges of brilliant color flashing to and fro.

  Justin and April sat on the grass. It was as close to paradise as he’d found recently.

  Justin unscrewed the top of the sangria bottle. “Want to sniff the bottle cap?”

  “I’ll trust your selection.”

  He took a pull from the bottle. Chilled, fruity; the original wine cooler. He passed it to her. “We should’ve thought to get cups.”

  She drank, smiled. “I don’t mind your germs if you don’t mind mine.”

  “Deal.”

  The bottle was on its third go-around when she drew her knees up beneath her chin and gazed out over the water. A pair of miniature speedboats were playing cat and mouse.

  “You don’t talk much about yourself, do you,” she said.

  “Not much lately.” He felt them heading out over thin ice. “Did Erik say much about me? Why I was moving down here and all?”

  “Not a lot, no.” She laughed. “He said he wasn’t going to defame your character, he was going to leave that up to you.”

  “Always thoughtful, that Erik. I love him a lot, you know.”

  April was si
lent. Waiting, he supposed, for him to fill in some blanks regarding his life. At no point this evening had she seemed judgmental about anything, so maybe the revelations wouldn’t be as disastrous as he had feared. Maybe the ice would bear up under the weight of his guilt after all.

  So he spilled it, without resorting to sugar coating, without whining that it wasn’t really his fault. Facts only. Here sits a stupid guy who made a very stupid mistake and paid dearly for it and still realizes he got off lucky.

  “So that’s it,” he said in conclusion. “If you feel like driving off and leaving me sitting here, I’ll understand.”

  April leaned in to knock shoulders with him. It went far deeper than words. You don’t touch someone you revile, not like that.

  “I admire you, in a way,” she finally said.

  This was a real shocker. “Why?”

  April looked his way, head slightly atilt. Such depth in the almond eyes. “It must have taken a lot of courage to pull together what you had left, instead of just sinking lower and lower. Picking up and moving somewhere to make a fresh start. That takes guts.”

  “It was a necessity.”

  “It still took guts. Sometimes I wish I had the guts to do the same thing, just pack up and find somewhere else. Someplace where I don’t know anyone and nobody knows me. That would make us even.”

  Justin wondered why, what emotional dirty laundry she could be toting around. Maybe the rift with her former fiancé. Brad. So what if people called him Dickless; the ties had to have been strong. From the outside, no one else can truly know how deep your rivers run.

  So he wondered, but got no answers. He would not press, not dig. If it was important, meant to be shared, she would offer it freely. As he had.

  After he got the sangria back, he held it up to the west, let the sinking sun play through the reddish-purple. Half gone. Not half full, he realized. Pessimism still reigns.

  “You may have noticed last night, I’m not exactly without faults. I do too much of this sort of thing, for one.”

  She nodded. “I wondered about that.”