Burn Down The Night (11 page)

His wife's dancing
around, absolutely delighted.

"Bastard!" she
shrieks at him. She's still spraying him, covering his face and hands and getting it in his
mouth.

He's choking,
gasping for breath.

Some marriage
these two got. I haven't seen anything like it since the Roman Arena where the early Christian
got the hungriest lion. And I don't want to see anything like it. It's too much fun all at
once.

I get up as quick
as possible, try to edge around them both and get the fuck out of there. I stumble around.
Suddenly the big guy lunges forward, rams into me, and I get shoved back. Off balance, I teeter
on the back of my heels and fall heavily into the bathtub.

Hot burst of pain
in my right shoulder as it slams into the bathtub faucet.

The girl is still
dancing around him, emptying the can on him. He's blindly reaching out with one hand the size of
a basketball, trying to grab her.

They are both
still screaming obscenities at each other, having a lovely weekend, I guess, L.A.
fashion.

I crawl out of the
tub, wait for an opening and a clear shot at the door. I got a profound urge for
distance.

I duck under his
arms, stumble over his feet and fetch up against the side of the door, past them, if not
completely on my feet.

She sees me go.
"Wait! You and me can—"

Her husband
centers in on her voice, grabs her. She screams. She tries to wriggle away but he gets a hand on
her throat and starts choking her, his other hand still covering his dripping flame-red
face.

I stand at the
door for a second on legs so shaky they are barely able to hold me up. I feel I ought to help her
or something. He takes his hand away from his face. I can see in the medicine cabinet minor that
his eyes, still shut tight, look like two pieces of raw red meat.

He starts slapping
her. Hard, vicious blows. Blood bursts from her nose, her lips get cut open. He's literally
beating her to a pulp as I stand there. Think he's gonna kill her. I step toward them, for a
second there thinking I'll come back into the room and help her. But stop myself. I have never
been much of a human being and have always been a little less than kind. The hell with
her.

I turn around and
walk out. I don't look back.

I stumble through
the party wreckage, stepping over stunned and stoned bodies. I shut the front door behind me,
take some real air into my lungs for a change and stagger off to find my car, just one big
bruise.

I don't think
about the brown-haired girl getting pounded by her husband, probably getting killed. I just climb
in my car and drink a warm beer. Real tired. Tired.

There is no sign
of Morrison. Think I'll split without him. Beer tastes like bear piss, but I drink it
anyway.

Some asshole left
a six-pack of beer on the hood so I crawl out and throw it away. All empty bottles any­way.
Weary, I get up on the hood of the car and rest. Can hear music from the party very clearly from
where I sit. Just sprawl there, tapping time to the music and feeling the ache in my shoulder
where I hit the bathtub faucet.

The night is going
down to defeat. Me too, starting to crash. I finish my beer and try to throw the empty bottle
through the front window of the house where the party is, but miss by at least ten yards.
Shoulder too sore.

Sit there for a
while, glad to be alive but wishing it wasn't so painful. Asking myself what my next move
is.

I'm on my last
bottle of beer. No wine left in the car either. Think maybe I ought to go back inside and try to
put the snatch on some booze before I split. I ought to come home with something or other.
Probably the chick I am living off of is getting worried about me by now anyway. I haven't seen
her in two or three days.

Might find
Morrison, that weird dude. Figure he might know some good parties to go to for next week. Sitting
here is just making me tired of being tired, so drag my ass off the car, aching everyplace, and
head back to the party.

I better put the
snatch on a whole lot of booze. Chick I'm living with gets on my nerves. I like her better when
I'm loaded and I try to stay loaded.

Truck back inside.
Being careful. Don't want to meet up with old whatsisname with the Ford station wagon fists no
matter how blind he probably is. Shouldn't probably even be back in here taking this chance, but
I got this firm rule. Never go to a party unless you rip something off.

Inside, looking
around, don't see Morrison anywhere. Ask him if he wants a ride home, wherever that is, maybe
even get him to drive me, 'cause I am pretty wasted. Could fall asleep standing up.

Ask this fat dude,
in a suit no less, where the booze is. He tells me to go into the kitchen, so I do.

Jesus H. Retail
and Wholesale Christ! Enough booze to refloat the Spanish Armada!

I tuck a quart of
rum and a six-pack of beer under one arm. Snatch up a huge bottle of Chianti and two more
six-packs with the other arm. But then hesitate. This whole frigging table full of goodies. Too
much good stuff to waste on these assholes. I put down two six-packs and the Chianti and grab up
a pint of fine old bourbon. Force it down into my tight back pants pocket. Snatch a pint of
Southern Comfort and stash it down inside my pants. Put another pint of rum in one cowboy boot, a
pint of scotch in the other. Stuff a bot­tle of white wine down my shirt.

Then grab up the
six-packs of beer and the Chianti again and start making tracks. Get out into the living room,
clanking like an overloaded milk delivery man, feeling self-conscious at all the bulges in my
clothes. Get through the crowd and then there's some kind of commotion at the door. Can't get
through so I step back against the wall. Don't know what's going on, probably some frigging fight
or other.

The front door
booms open and suddenly the room is full of blue uniforms. Cops pouring in the door like hordes
of army ants. Seems like a hundred of them but that's only 'cause they're moving fast and my eyes
are seeing slow.

Turns out there's
just four of them. Too few for a raid. Too many for a friendly warning about the noise level.
Somebody is in trouble.

I try not to
panic, wondering if it is me.

Lots of reason why
it could be.

I start looking
for a place where I can get rid of the booze and fast. These jerks just may be looking for me.
They had reason enough, but how could they have found me this fast? Did someone see me? Oh,
shit!

But the cops don't
look around for me, they go on through the living room and on out of sight into the interior of
the house.

That settles it. I
am definitely getting out of here. Just gather up my goodies and get the hell out of here. Any
party with walk-in cops is a party that is too complicated for me.

Start pushing
through to the door, but have to stop, get pushed aside again. This time it's the ambulance crew,
carrying a stretcher. Don't have to wonder too much about what's happening. Maybe somebody OD'd,
or suicided or old mad Jack, the irate husband and all that jazz, did his number and went too
far. Probably the son of a bitch killed her.

Some guy is
standing next to me, explaining to a pimple-faced girl exactly what happened. I listened in,
couldn't help overhearing.

"Jesus! He really
beat her up! She might die." He looks righteous, taps himself on the chest proudly. "I was the
one called the cops."

The cops come out
with good old Jack, all nicely handcuffed. Being led away like a prize hog at the fair. His eyes
are still fire red, looking like raw meat that is beginning to spoil. He stumbles along like he
is blind. He probably is. Cops are none too gentle in guiding him through the crowd. One fat cop
with a thick neck keeps jabbing him in the side with his nightstick.

As for me, I'm not
interested in this whole scene. The pimple-fated girl turns away from the cop caller and looks
directly at me. "I think that's terrible, really terrible, don't you?"

I shrug. "Don't
ask me. White people are all in an obstacle race with themselves as the biggest
obstacle."

She frowns at me,
decides she thinks I'm terrible too and turns her back on me.

I mean it, though.
Are white people human beings? I know what their civilization is all about but my jury is out on
whether or not I'm gonna join it. A secret part of me stays Indian, no matter how hard I try to
lose it.

But this is rock
and roll, this is L.A. summer, this is the dreamland we all run to, and you don't have to act
like a human being if you don't want to.

Right?

Eventually I get
out the door ignoring some nasty looks as a couple of people see me exiting with all that
booze.

I stash it all in
the back seat of the car. I'm ready to crash. Too much of everything. I lean against the car.
Feel like I'm going to pass out.

Dawn is coming.
Don't know how long it's been since I've really slept in a bed. Last night I was at the beach.
Maybe I was at the beach. Vaguely remember but I'm not sure.

Think maybe I'll
just get in the car, crawl into a comfortable coma. Too tired to drive. Music from the party
still blaring, people passed out all over the yard, couples, several threesomes he-ing and
she-ing it.

Got to be speed
freaks. Who else would be awake at this time in the morning? I am ready to concede the night to
the cocaine crew.

I slide down the
side of the car on my knees. Such an effort to get the door open.

Course back of my
mind is telling me that if I cash in here, I'll wake up tomorrow in the slammer. Hell with that.
I've no fondness for becoming conscious in the nick.

So like the maniac
that I am, I make myself get up and busy myself. Another trip back to the party. Cop some more
booze and maybe pop a bennie so I can get wired enough to make it home.

I crawl back to
the house. Crawl is the right word. I'm real wasted, whole body threatening to shake to
pieces.

Get to the front
door, only somebody's been screw­ing around since the cops have been here. The door's knocked off
its hinges, and some guy's stretched across it snoring in three-part harmony.

Inside, lots of
people sprawled out on the floor, about half of them naked and some of them not too compe­tently
trying to be. Looks like one rock-and-roller is trying to take his pants off over his head and is
succeeding. Everything's busted up. Place looks like ground zero at Hiroshima or Keith Moon's
birthday party, whichever comes first.

A tall white cat
in a white robe staggers up to me, carrying an ax. He looks at me, cross-eyed, takes a step back,
and then falls solidly on his ass.

"I'm Woody
Woodpecker," he says, holding up the ax. With those words, he tilts over on his back, out
cold.

Surprisingly,
there's still a few people standing, leaning against walls, shattered furniture.

I go up to four
guys rapping intensely in the corner about quality control on acid manufacture, something heavy
and intellectual, you know.

"Anybody got a
Christmas tree? A bunny? I mean a bennie?"

They all ignore
me.

Somebody puts an
arm around my shoulder, leans on me from behind. I almost fall flat on my back.

I turn around,
stumbling.

There's a chick
with blue face and blood around the corners of her mouth. She's wearing black lipstick. Hair dyed
white on one side, red on the other. Looks like the Sudden Death Queen of New Orleans.

She's dressed in a
black 1930s-style ballroom gown that's slit in the middle down past her navel. In the center of
two of the whitest breasts, like two lumps of flaccid butter, is a tiny tattoo, a
death's-head.

Her face is
painted blue, with her eyes outlined in blazing blood red. She's the kind of chick you meet at a
weinie roast in hell.

"You want some
speed?" She has her arms around my neck, facing me. A thin dead voice that would have scared God
(if he existed).

I´m so stunned I
almost choke, my tongue jamming up against my teeth. "Uh, yeah. I'd, uh, like to buy a hit
of—"

"No" She puts one
hand on my face, running inch-long green fingernails up the side of my face caress­ingly, moving
up toward my eyes. "I don't sell. Give. But no selling."

"I could use
some." I'm glad I'm not tripping. If I met her under acid I'd be checking into the first padded
ho­tel for the Mentally Bewildered.

She's got her
fingernails under my eyes, lightly scratching the skin, scaring the shit out of me.

"Who are you?" I
ask.

"You don't know
me? This is like, you know, my party, you dig? So you crashed my party."

She drops one hand
and digs her fingernails into my chest. I jump, surprised.

"Did that
hurt?"

"Yeah." She damn
near drew blood.

"Good," she says
with a strange smile. "I like it when it hurts. That's the part, the best part."