Nightlife Read online

  “After everything started falling apart, my ex-wife told me I could drink all I wanted but I was never going to be able to forget.”

  “Maybe she had you all wrong. Maybe you don’t drink to forget at all.”

  “To numb it, then. Same thing.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe you do it to remember.”

  He smiled, relishing the ease of the conversation. No accusations, no reproachments. Almost as if they were discussing someone else. He looked curiously at her.

  “What would I be trying to remember?”

  “Your true self,” she said softly.

  He played it over in his mind. “I don’t even know what my true self is anymore.”

  “There you go, then.” April resumed her vigil over the water. “I hardly know you, but it seems like you’ve spent a lot of time trying to shoehorn yourself into places that don’t really fit you, deep inside. Like the fraternity. And whether you realize it or not, you sound relieved to be out of the agency game. And that whole upwardly mobile track that burns people out and eats ulcers into them before they’re thirty.” A long pause. “I’m sorry. I don’t have any right to try and figure you out like that.”

  Justin told her not to apologize, that she was probably more on target about him than he’d managed to be about himself in quite some time. Maybe that was it. And maybe it was just the easy way she laid it out. As a friend, instead of someone doing some coldly analytical dissection.

  “So maybe you drink to breach those walls inside and get back to yourself,” she went on. Confidence renewed. “Kind of the same principle I was talking about last night at the club. Substance abuse as a way of returning to the forgotten. The things buried so deep in your unconscious that they might never see daylight again.”

  He grinned into the sangria as he drank. “I get the feeling that the Betty Ford Center will never call to hire your services.”

  “And if they did, I’d turn them down.”

  Justin mulled her theorizing over, testing its merits, probing its weaknesses. He had no reason to believe the latter outweighed the former. It held water surprisingly well. I drink, therefore I am. Can you see the real me? Couched in April’s terminology, it sounded almost romantic. Reality was likely far more mundane. Firewater simply anesthetized sensibilities offended by his backstabbing belief that happiness was a component of more than material acquisitions, status, and employer perks. He’d known who he was all along — had just tried to live some other yuppie’s lifestyle.

  The sangria was gone by the time the sun gave up and sank into the bay. Taking with it more of the day’s warmth, stealing the rest of their light. Scrubbing clean the unflinching stare of day in favor of the guarded cloak of night.

  For better or for worse, he felt different now. Unburdened. Even if things went no further between them, he would always thank her for that.

  A bit later, April told him she had to make an early night of it. Had to be up early in the morning, meetings with a couple of clients were scheduled. That was okay. He didn’t mind. The evening had already given him far more than he had expected.

  Chapter 7

  HOUSE CALL

  The Lincoln was smoky gray, always washed, always waxed, and as it glided through the night, Tony thought the Town Car felt like a shark. The streets were their seas, the other, lesser cars fleeing before this king of predators. The tinted windows, opaque from the outside, hinted of no mercy. Traffic lights were merely suggestions. Cruising, cool and confident. Waiting for the proper trigger to snap hunger and need beyond containment.

  Not just anyone would do, however. There had been a couple of promising possibilities earlier in the eve, but these had gone belly-up. Friends had been in the vicinity, witnesses who might remember.

  Shortly after they had turned onto East Seventh, Lady Luck did an abrupt U-turn. There, up ahead, outside Masquerade…

  “Pull over here,” he told Lupo, and the car slowed and veered, smooth as butter. “Looky what we got here.”

  “Sasha, as I live and breathe,” said Lupo. “Heavily.”

  “And all alone too. Pobrecita,” Tony murmured, pursing his lips. Poor little thing.

  Masquerade was a dance rock club, part metal, part punk, all gloom. The predominant philosophy was nihilism, the predominant sartorial color black. Music at nuclear-holocaust sound levels. He should have thought to cheek here first. All these goths and gloom rockers, sounded just like Sasha’s kind of magnet. Little blond chippy, she had no reservations about professing to anybody who’d listen that death was just about the most romantically sensual thing she could conceive of.

  Sasha was leaning up against an ebony Jag outside the club, wearing a short leather skirt, black fishnets, and lace glovelets. Hair teased into a mane. Red, red lips.

  Tony, riding shotgun, hit the electric window, and it whirred down just as Lupo eased the Town Car to a halt beside her. She broke into a broad smile when she saw who it was.

  “Waiting for me, baby?” he said.

  Sasha puckered up and blew him a kiss across the four feet separating them. “Just waiting.”

  “Hot lady like you, all alone? Crying shame. You tied to this place tonight? Or can you come out and play?”

  She looked back toward the club’s entrance. Rockers, both headbangers and morbids, hither, thither, and yon. “I had plans.” Sasha adjusted the tiny purse riding one hip, hung from a shoulder by a long, thin strap. She looked him straight on with a wet red grin. “But, like, maybe they’ve changed.”

  Mendoza stepped from the car as Lupo punched another button to unlock the back doors. Tony opened the door for her, ever the gentleman. She told him he looked sharp himself, and wasn’t it the absolute truth. He was dressed to the nines tonight. White silk suit and tie, pale blue shirt. Definite inspiration for respect. He got in after her and had one hand exploring the upper limits of her fishnets by the time Lupo was back in traffic.

  “Where are we going?” She teased a red fingernail along the zipper of his slacks.

  “No limits tonight. Wherever you want.” He leaned in, helped himself to a taste of that ripe mouth. “I got some business to take care of down here around Ybor first. Wanna tag along?”

  Her eyes lit up, Nordic blue. “Do I get party favors?”

  “Hey, you know me. I’ll take good care of you.”

  Sasha sighed and leaned back into the Lincoln’s upholstery, shutting her eyes a moment as he twirled a finger inside her. Opened them again, rolled her head to gaze blissfully out the window. At life, lowlife, and neon.

  “I wish night could go on forever.” Her longing was almost childlike. “I hate daylight.”

  Tony pulled his fingers free, tweaked one down her lips. Give her a taste of herself. “The trick,” he said, “is to never open your eyes.”

  Ybor City was a Spanish district in southeastern Tampa, mostly Cuban and Colombian. Lots of quaint, historically relevant renovations in the globe-lit cobblestoned Latin Quarter. Mere blocks away, however, were slums that no tourist brochure ever pictured. It was here that Tony Mendoza had grown up and come of age, learning the ins and outs of the real world. Learning that nothing much in life means jack shit unless backed up with cold cash. The green stuff.

  Whenever he came back to the old neighborhoods, he felt like a conquering hero returning from the Crusades. Local boy makes good, discovers truth, free enterprise, and Keynesian economics beyond the dusty narrow streets.

  Lupo glided the Lincoln to park near one of Tony’s cash cows, a two-story house of scabrous brick and grime. Not much to look at, but the patrons were less concerned with appearances than results. Same principle as the corner tavern. Just like Cheers, only more potent. The phrase crack house seemed so accusatory.

  Tony reaped its profits on a daily basis but was rarely here himself. Always sent trusted runners, usually driven by Lupo. Kids, mostly. Eleven, twelve, thirteen at most. Minimize the danger, maximize the buffer zone between himself and illegalities. A kid gets pinched by th
e law, they can’t do a whole lot but ask some futile questions and let him go. The kids knew the score. Knew that a job well done now meant better work and pay as they got older. Also knew that screw-ups were very costly. In terms of fingers. Toes. Lives. Never let it be said that Tony Mendoza wasn’t investing in the future of youth. Let Nancy Reagan suck on that one awhile.

  Tony and Sasha got out, left Lupo behind to guard the car.

  “It stinks here, Tony.” Sasha was clinging close to his side. You had to appreciate the humor — suburban baby way out of her element. “Are we gonna be here long?”

  He took a deep breath. A gaseous mix of urine, feces, smoke, sweat, despair. He didn’t mind it. “That’s the smell of money in the making. Don’t bitch.”

  As they paced up the house’s walk, a gaggle of very young kids swarmed around their legs. They chattered excitedly. White suits got them every time. Tony dug into a pocket and flipped them a handful of loose change, and they scattered like beggars in India. Being a role model was such a burden sometimes.

  An older boy sat beside the door on the stoop, unreadable behind his wraparounds. He idly flipped a butterfly knife through its various configurations. He was better security than he looked. Kid had already killed four times by age fifteen, that anybody knew about.

  The heady smell thickened inside the house until it was almost solid. In dim light, smokers lined the walls and what furniture was left. A docile crowd, for the most part, many of them lean to the point of emaciation. Somebody in another room had a boom box with Ice-T thumping at full volume.

  Tony sought out the homeboy that managed the place, a scarecrow of a guy named Freddy. His wife hung behind him, face sunken and a baby at her chest sucking on one wrung-out tit.

  Tony leaned in close to Freddy. “You got everybody out of the basement?”

  Freddy nodded. “Cleaned it out this afternoon. I been making sure it stays that way.” He smiled hopefully, teeth scummy and gray.

  “Good man.” Tony peeled out a fifty and stuffed it into one of Freddy’s pockets.

  He looked back at Sasha. She was leaning down toward some other homeboy sitting in a corner, and he was pawing at her. She kept pushing his hands away but didn’t seem to mind. All up in the guy’s face and asking him what it felt like to be rotting from the inside out. No answers, just mindless groping. Autopilot.

  “Hands off the lady,” Tony said. He chopped his foot across loverboy’s face, driving him back into the wall. The guy was so far gone, he thought it was funny that his nose bled into his vacant smile.

  “Come on.” Tony grabbed Sasha by the wrist and started pulling her along, deeper into the house. “One quick stop downstairs and then we’re out of here.”

  “There’s no hurry,” she pouted.

  Glad you feel that way.

  Tony led her to a back stairway that took them to the basement. It was cooler down here, fresher than upstairs but it compensated with a musty odor. Brick walls wept moisture, and somewhere in the darkness a pipe dripped into a puddle with cavernous plinks. Tony flipped on a light bulb dangling from a cord. Little good it did; forty watts at best.

  He led her into a side room, its heavy iron door hanging open like the entrance to a meat locker. He switched on another weak bulb. Made a show of checking some nonexistent merchandise in some scrap crates in a corner. Muttered meaningless satisfaction to himself and stood up to rejoin her.

  “I could live here,” she whispered, looking around with those baby blues. “It’s like a dungeon.” She stretched her hands open, ran them down her sides, her thighs. What a sight. This pesthole was actually getting her hot.

  Better strike while the moment was prime.

  Tony pulled her to him, grabbed another taste of her mouth. She breathed into him with mounting passion. He let his hands burn across her thin shoulders, down her back, around to her belly. Sasha was ready to melt. He pulled back from her suction-cup mouth and grinned and baited the hook:

  “You wanna do some lines?”

  She nodded, eyes wide. Eager. He was more than happy to oblige. He brought out the gold cigarette case and let her roll a crisp bill while he dumped out some skullflush and cut it into sharp lines. As dim as the light was, she didn’t even notice that it was pale green instead of white.

  Ever since last night’s slaughterhouse and this morning’s news updates, he’d been thinking it might be wise to hang on to this particular product for a bit longer. Long enough, at least, to find out more about it, run another test or two. On the proper subject, under more controlled circumstances.

  She coughed after she did the first line, fanned her nose like someone who’d eaten too hot a bite of food. “That’s not coke,” she said.

  He smiled, placating. “It’s a new kind. Little cruder, yeah, but it’s gonna be cheap as hell. You gotta do more to get the same kick, but it’s worth it.” He held it up, and she dived in for more. Lies were easy when someone wanted so much to believe in you.

  Sasha’s eyes were watering after the fourth line. “Don’t you want some?”

  “You know me, I don’t touch it. It’s just for special friends.”

  Happy to be one of the anointed few, she bent over to hoover the last two lines. Straightened up. Staggered on her high heels. Her nose gushed, and she wiped at it with her palm. She stared at the residue staining her hand, then looked at him. Blank-faced.

  “Tony?” she whispered. “Tony?” Slivers of fear were starting to emerge as her nose flowed away. “What did you give me?”

  He didn’t answer, only peered intently at her growing panic. Her revulsion at how badly she was messing herself. Sasha lurched backward into a wall, slid down, and left a trail in the clinging slime. Pleading up at him with her eyes.

  There wasn’t the euphoria that Trent had seemed to experience. Of course, Trent had been in a party mood to begin with. But Sasha just looked plain frightened. Disoriented. Like her eyes were trying to keep pace with a spinning room and losing. She scrabbled away from him across the floor.

  “What did you give me?”

  “What’s it feel like?” he asked. “What does it feel like?”

  She spluttered mucus; it streaked her hands, her blouse, her hair. Could she even see him anymore? He couldn’t tell.

  “Feels like … like … falling,” she quavered. Then her head tilted up as if sensations had overtaken her, spirited her from the room. “I’m back — back in the womb…”

  Man, this was some heavy-duty stuff.

  “…this is before I was born…”

  Tony felt like Carl Sagan discovering a new universe. Fascinating stuff. He watched as she groaned, writhed, wept. Slimed herself with mildew from the brick walls and concrete floor. Not exactly what he’d want to bury his bone in anymore, but anybody could function in that capacity. This was a rare diversion.

  And then something else entirely started to take over.

  This was the sort of thing that popped your eyes right out of their sockets. The sort of thing where, if there was the slightest doubt that your faculties were operating at full capacity, you surrendered and said no way. Because this just didn’t happen.

  But there it was, and he was straight as a priest — she was changing.

  Her whimpering cries grew throatier, deeper. And as he stared, facial bone structure crackled and flesh rippled and stretched, then sprouted fur. Pale blond, like her hair. Her nose and mouth started to merge into a conical snout that pushed out from her face, while tufted ears eased out from between locks of teased hair. Her hands, still clutching at the wall, compressed in on themselves. The black lacy fingerless gloves she wore pulled apart at the seams, then ripped as blond-furred paws replaced her hands.

  Face, hands … that was it, no more.

  Holy fuck, but what was this stuff?

  When she started to rise from the floor, still on two good feminine legs, delicate ankles and spiked pumps, Tony decided he had seen quite enough. He turned tail and vacated the room as fast as he could
. Slammed the iron door as if he were closing a prison cell.

  And in essence, that was precisely what it was. No inside handle, just a small opening at head level for peep-checks. Installed a couple years ago for situations where somebody might need a bit of isolation. Reevaluate some priorities, maybe.

  He had no idea it would ever double as a zoo.

  But such was the case, and as what looked like some blue-eyed, blond-pelted Nordic she-wolf hit the door from the other side, he wondered what to do next. Go out, bring Lupo and his MAC-10 along, and blow her apart? Terminate the experiment right now?

  No. No. There were still plenty of unanswered questions. Give it time. After all, Trent hadn’t been found wearing the head of a jaguar. He had come down, and so would she.

  A few moments later, Tony had to wonder if perhaps gold didn’t come in shades of green, as well.

  Justin, drifting somewhere in the vicinity of the threshold of sleep, thought that Erik could stand a more comfortable couch.

  He’d come home a few hours ago, fresh from the truncated evening with April, and taken Erik by surprise by doing a Fred Astaire through the doorway and whistling happy tunes. It felt delightfully spontaneous. That was probably the biggest difference between them: Erik could turn anything into a game, no advance notice required; Justin felt as if he’d been slave-bound to deliberation, even in the dumber things he’d attempted. Erik applauded, needing no further cues that the all-important Date Number One had gone well. Justin Gray’s life really was returning back to the upswing. Minor celebration was in order.

  They split a six-pack and let the VCR assume the responsibility of entertainment. Erik had a sizable collection of videocassettes. Legitimate, self-dubbed bootlegs, films taped off cable TV — somewhere around five hundred titles. They watched a couple, and Erik bowed out to go to bed.

  Justin, meanwhile, stayed the course.

  Back in St. Louis, insomnia had become a way of life. He didn’t know why. Stress, maybe. Or perhaps residuals from various self-prescribed chemicals still chugging through his bloodstream, thwarting sleep in hopes of an invitation to another party. He was every bit the videophile Erik was, and back in the days when all his material acquisitions were still intact, he could consume three, sometimes four films a night. He used to lie with Paula until she fell asleep, then grimly retire to the living room as an alternative to the slow torture of waiting for sleep that never came. After there was no Paula, there was no need of going to bed at all.