Burn Down The Night (22 page)

Murderously

Learn to close the
door

To the
room

You do not return
to

You must not hope
to arrive

Without
exile

The future is a
world that trys to live without the engine of the heart (writes Morrison).

And we, being
young only once, see it, for we see an enormous string attached to the puppets of the world. The
string stretches out undiminished before us like a fat man climbing a light year.

And the string is
the future and we cannot help but see it.

The
string.

In Germany, the
string begins, the string continues, passing through a large oven, as big as a house, that reeks
faintly of gas. The string is coiled around a factory that makes walls in Berlin.

In America, the
string ties itself into colored words that say, "You can't eat here. You can't sleep here. You
can't marry my sister."

In Canada, the
string is woven up in Tuberculosis­infected blankets that the Hudson Bay Company passes out to
Indians.

In the courts of
the land, the string is a lynch rope that keeps the mice from seeing the cat.

In South America,
the string is a highway that mows down the grass that hides tiny statues made out of wind and
night. In South America, the string is a ribbon that rich people cut that lets the first car
drive across the broken bodies of dying animals, dying dreams.

In Spain, the
string is a cure for venereal disease the natives call the INQUISITION. Everyone the string
touches is ultimately cured when the grass grows back over their bodies.

In Florida, the
string is a roll of tickets to the alliga­tor farm where the last of the Seminoles lives off tips
tourists give him, when he puts his head inside the alligator's jaws. He puts his head inside and
prays the alligator will swallow.

How can we not see
the string?

In Nebraska, the
string is a rosary a Catholic priest ties to a dead Indian baby. In Nebraska, the string is a
rosary that builds two churches for every Indian child, with the financial support of a God who
ultimately says, "I can't see your face in my mind."

Stretched before
us are the visual puppets of the fu­ture, a world gone mad, dancing on string.

And the string
colors all that we see, all that we pre­tend to feel.

And the string
touches all things. Beauty and death and hate and love are all knots on the endless surface of
the string. All of it is there from the cruelty of children to the kindness of men who kill
cattle with hammers in slaughterhouses.

And I
write:

You and I 
and those who run with us, all of us who run, soon to be dead.

Dead.

I am a killer on
the highway of an L.A. night. I want to hold beautiful girls in my arms, and when I touch them,
my hands will touch them the way a sniper caresses the trigger.

"I'm
bored."

The writing is
stopped, wiped out as the drugs get too intense.

"I'm bored," says
Deirdre again, putting her hand on the inside of my leg. Her hand is like a tarantula, a
sensuous, many-legged rush, lighting a fire under my skin.

Morrison is bored
of her being bored.

"You're the girl
with the graveyard heart."

"I'm the girl
who's sick of this writing bulishit. Poetry is for faggots."

"Faggots are for
faggots," says Morrison, not looking at her.

Her fingernails
drag across my skin. "Let's go someplace else," she says.

"Call your broom,"
says Morrison, sounding bitter. "Fly us out of here, witch bitch."

"Fuck you," she
says, putting one leg on top of mine. I am too uncomfortable in my too-tight bathing suit.
Morrison gets up. "You gonna jump his bones right here on the beach?"

"What do you
care?" she says.

"I don't," says
Morrison. "What a bring-down you are. Let's go someplace that fits your personality."

"Like a
racetrack," I say, moving my leg out from under hers. I stand up, head aswim in the summer and in
LSD.

We are all
gloriously wrecked. But bummed out with each other's vibrations. This heavy sexual tension
between us, driving us apart. Ugly situation.

Sun's going down.
Soon be dark. Getting cold. Time to be moving on anyway.

"Let's go to a
cemetery. Let's invoke the dead," says Morrison. "I want her to feel comfortable. She should be
with her own kind."

I stand up too,
and pull on my pants and shirt. I'm game for anything, anywhere.

"How we gonna get
there?" I stare at them, wonder­ing if they are going to punch each other out or some­thing
ridiculous like that. "I don't have a car, and even if I did, I wouldn't trust any of us to walk,
let alone drive."

"I'll go call a
taxi when I go in to change," says Deirdre, gathering up her stuff. She picks up the bottle of
suntan lotion that had made my hands sticky when I spread it on her golden brown body.

My blue jeans made
me ache. Their tightness pressing on the hard lump that had grown when I spread the oil on her
back and legs made walking no fun.

Deirdie is the
kind of girl who knows what she does to those who touch her, to those who see her, and she likes
it all. She is always touching everyone, promising, enticing. She likes being in a place where
everyone pants.

Morrison doesn't
like her very much.

"You should open
up a dog kennel in the tropics," says Morrison, pulling his shirt on over his head.

"What?" She just
stares at him.

"Seeing how much
you like making tongues hang out with lust, a lot of overheated dogs would make you feel
loved."

She stalks off to
find someplace to change her clothes.

Mad as
hell.

"Why do you keep
picking on her?"

"'Cause she's a
bitch."

"Yeah. But what a
bitch!" She's got me half crazy with desire.

"We'll let her get
a taxi," says Morrison, in some drug world of his own. "Take us where we want to go, then we'll
scare the shit out of her."

I don't say
anything. It's his trip. I'm just along for the ride, even if I am getting scorched by some of
the heat.

"Who's gonna pay
for the taxi? Me, I'm broke."

"She'll pay for
it," says Morrison. "She's rich. She'll buy us anything we want as long as it's something we
don't really need."

The sun is a
burning ocean, dreaming itself into a drug night. Our eyes have been in the sky all day, lifted
there by an acid river that runs our heads.

"It's all so
beautiful," says Morrison, looking at sunset-washed sky.

"Yeah."

Morrison's the
only one really in control. I am drifting. So I ask him, as we sit there waiting, "When the taxi
comes to get us, where is it that we want to go?"

"To a graveyard,"
he says, standing there in some wicked mask of his own devising. "I'm going to teach that bitch
how to give birth to her heart."

I shuddered,
feeling an icy wind coming from him, cold enough and dark enough to freeze my insides.

The night is going
to be very dark and I am glad I am not her. She travels with two diseased creatures from a dollar
hotel. She rides with two dark walkers from the nightlands.

And we ourselves
are not kind.

Down on the beach
Morrison, Deirdre and I are not hoping to arrive without exile. Deirdre, all golden girl in the
summer, all dressed up with no place to go, has dialed us a chariot.

"Here it comes,"
she says, her soul on vacation, her mind all at sea and her eyes on the parking lot. "He took his
own sweet time getting here, didn't he?"

A yellow taxicab
pulls into the parking lot. It stops a little ways from us and the driver eyes us
suspiciously.

We stumble inside
the taxi's womb and settle back against the smelly seats, acid beginning to steal the world from
us.

"Driver, where are
you taking us?" whispers Morrison under his breath, in some drug underworld of his own
choosing.

"Where do we want
to go?" asks Deirdre, acting as if she's bored by wherever it is already. Her journey into
electricity is a cold one. She's the first person I ever met who could be bored while
tripping.

"Hey, driver! Do
you know any nice graveyards?" asks Morrison. "Maybe in some secluded deserted res­ervation of
the heart somewhere?" Morrison sounds like a killer in a bad movie, as if half of his mouth is
wired shut.

The driver tips
his cap back on his head and stares back at us in his rearview mirror.

"Fruitcakes!" he
says, thinking out loud. "Why do I always get the fruitcakes?"

"You watch your
mouth, driver!" says Deirdre.

"Sorry," says the
driver, not meaning it. "I didn't mean nothing personal. Where you kids want to go?"

"Let's just drive
around," says Deirdre. "We'll figure it out on the way."

The driver turns
around in his seat, gives us the ice-age-once-over with his eyes. "Cabs ain't cheap, you know.
Takes money to go joyriding. You sure you kids got—"

Deirdre interrupts
his sentence by pulling out a roll of big bills from her purse. Must be all of eight hundred
bucks there and the driver opens his eyes so wide they almost fly off the top of his
head.

"Here we go," he
says, watching Deirdre put the money back in her purse, licking his lips. A simple soul with
basic greed. He would take us to a speakeasy in hell if we had the fare.

"You want I should
drive into L.A.?" asks the driver, heading there with the cab already.

"In search of
ancient aphrodisiacs," says Morrison.

The driver shrugs,
not understanding a single thing Morrison's said so far, aiming the cab toward L.A.
any­way.

Deirdre yawns,
bored. "Nothing ever happens. Even my hallucinations are repetitive."

Morrison laughs at
her, as Santa Monica flies by the cab windows. "That's because your breach of promise is mixed
with sunshine when you say goodbye," he says, still living on some other planet.

Deirdre blinks,
not understanding.

"What are you
talking about?" she asks. "You sound like a frigging four-year-old!"

"When you die and
they make a movie of your life," says Morrison, "Annette Funicello will play you in the
movie."

"Well, fuck you
too," she says.

"Peace," I say,
wishing I wasn't sitting between them.

"Rich girls," says
Morrison. "Mentally you're always on the rag 'cause your parents are so fucking rich."

"Wine!" I suggest,
desperate for some kind of diversion. One thing I can't stand when I'm drugged up is a lot of
heavy personality sandblasting. I always get sand in my eyes. "Let's all go get some wine! It'll
mellow us all out."

Everybody nods and
I'm glad. This whole dialogue has degenerated into a dream of Thanksgiving in steerage and who
needs it.

"Find us a
carry-out, " I tell the driver.

"A what?" says the
driver.

"Oh. I forgot. You
don't call them that out here. Find us a liquor store. We want to buy some booze."

We exit off some
trigging freeway or other and soon pull into the parking lot of a liquor store.

Morrison and I
jump out. "I'll wait here," says Deirdre.

"Money?" says
Morrison, sticking his hand through the cab window at her.

She shrugs,
indifferent, hands him a couple of big bills.

Morrison and I go
inside.

Walking up and
down the aisles, watching the wine bottles in the cooler glowing with neon cold, Morrison and I
become fellow conspirators in a Roman plot.

"We get cheap
wine. Split up the money," says Morrison, handing me one of the bills she gave him. "Take what
you can get when you can get it."

Morrison reaches
into the cooler and starts handing out bottles. My arms quickly fill up. "Jesus! Who do you think
we are? The whole frigging Seventh Cavalry! Custer with arrow drainage holes in him couldn't
drink this much wine."

I'm ready to
collapse under the weight of all the bottles he's handed me.

Morrison's got an
armful too. We stagger up to the counter, dumping the bottles in front of the clerk, a skinny
Mexican with knives for eyes.

"Having a party?"
asks the Mexican, taking our money.

"A surprise
autopsy," says Morrison, splitting up the change so that we each get half.

The Mexican
shrugs. After all, why not?