Happy Mutant Baby Pills (9 page)

FIFTEEN

The Usual Motel

I should probably skip the part where we end up in a motel room for three days, shooting speedballs and watching MSNBC. Nora said she wanted to lick Lawrence O'Donnell's forehead. To show him her respect. Harold explained his whole Chomsky “fuck jerky” thing as a way of keeping some levity in the proceedings. The trouble was, Occupy America didn't have any Yippies.

“So,” I asked Harold, running bleach through the needle, rinsing it at the roachy motel sink, “you're going to be the Jerry Rubin of your generation? You're not even a ninety-nine percenter. Are you? You must have Bruckheimer money.”

“I got a little Fuck You account. Nothing major. Only Bruckheimer has Bruckheimer money. Bruckheimer doesn't ask about my politics, and I don't tell him.”

“Then basically you're just being a dick out there. Fucking with other people who are struggling, willing to transcend trendy ironic hipsterism and be sincere.” Even gowed on smack I was disgusted. And junkies, let me tell you, aren't disgusted by much. But Harold looked so hurt, I didn't press it. A guy wants to put on a mask and be a douche bag to people trying to change the fucking world and stop corporations from screwing them, who am I to judge? Especially when he's paying for the drugs.

It's not like I was lifting a finger to stop the foreclosure of human souls. Looking interested was part of the dynamic of free drugs. You learned all kinds of things you didn't want to know that way. I once sat and listened to a legless Vietnam vet in a SF hotel sing new lyrics to “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” for three hours, because he was giving me free speedballs. After the “Battle Hymn” he moved to “God Bless America,” which in his condition came out
“Gommessamekka.”
I had to listen, then sing along, then listen, then sing along some more. And didn't mind a bit. I was bored, I was hoarse, I was losing my family and wasting my entire fucking life, but I was
high
.

So I ignored Harold's public dickishness. Just let it go. I remembered now how my ex-coworker got maudlin when the opiates faded—that he was just lonely, and no doubt self-conscious about a toast-colored lip herpes. The Chomsky faces made him comfy and anonymous among the Occupy Crowd. Where everybody else was in
V for Vendetta
Guy Fawkes masks.

“So, you know Bruckheimer, huh?” Not that was I even semi-interested, but I needed to keep Harold engaged. We had nowhere to stay, besides this motel.

“Yeah, I met him,” he said. “Once. I got the call. It was exciting. But I was worried, too. 'Cause I thought it was a
CSI
thing. Back then
CSI Vegas
was super hot, and JB and the genius who dreamed it up—dude was a jitney driver on the Strip, regular guy—were all over the news.”

As he talked he turned the red balloons the dope had come in inside out, smearing any residual tar on the edge of his spoon. “They shot the show out of a studio in Santa Clarita, so I figured I'd have to go to Santa Clarita. Where all the white supremacists live. You don't want to be a black kid wearing a hoodie in Santa Clarita. Up there, Trayvon Martin wouldn't have made the news. They got guys wear white hoods to pick up Bud and chips at the 7-Eleven. But turns out they weren't calling about a
CSI
-type deal; it was something else. So instead of having to suck fumes up the 5 from LA, this one day I got to go to Jerry's office in Santa Monica, a converted airplane hangar with some kind of World War One plane hanging from the ceiling by a wire. The way the place was set up, the Sopwith Camel, or whatever it was, dangled right above the guest waiting area, over a big white couch low to the floor. So low you couldn't turn your head without bumping your kneecaps. Plus you knew, under the Airplane of Damocles, if there was an earthquake you'd be the first to go. The wire would probably snap and you'd be splacked underneath, one of those embarrassing deaths, you know? Like the guy who jumps out of a building and pancakes another guy taking a leak when he lands. Die with a dick in your hands, where's the dignity?”

“Depends whose dick,” I said.

“Your own, obviously.”

“Obviously.” The last thing I wanted was to annoy Harold. I remembered my mission. “So, uh, why were you seeing Bruckheimer again?”

“Well, it was kind of just that one time. And not just Bruckheimer. Michael Bay was there. You know, the
Transformers
guy?
Bad Boys One
and
Two
?”

“All classics,” I said.

“Exactly,” he said, “Bay wanted to hear about self-heating shaving cream. The kind that gets hot on your face? It's a chemical thing. I guess he wanted to use it in a script.”

“And you know about it how? You were a chemistry major?”

“My father invented the shit. He flunked out of dermatology school. Came up with hot gel and sold the formula to Gillette. It was my first techno-copy. Dad made me write it thirty-seven times.” Here he recited, voice dope-froggy like a white James Earl Jones.
“The heat source in the new self-heating shaving cream is a chemical reaction involving hydrogen peroxide and a reducing agent. A small polyethylene bottle filled with hydrogen peroxide is placed inside the aerosol can, followed by a propellant. Not only is it safe, it's convenient, and saves more time for the things that matter . . .”

I chimed in: “Cut to fresh-shaved handsome guy smooching his pretty girl.”

Harold snorted—that's how he laughed. “Go ahead, laugh it up, big shot. I think Bay actually wanted my father. But when he Googled thermal shaving cream he got me.”

Nora didn't say anything. Just sat on the second bed, watching us talk. At first I thought she was sulking. But it seemed more than that. For all I know she was mourning. But I couldn't ask. Something about her kept me off-kilter. From the minute we met, we went from total strangers to sharing some kind of secret life together. So secret, now that I thought about it, even I wasn't sure if this was true, or in my head . . . When she got off on dope, her face softened a little, so she just looked angry. Not sad. But she wasn't talking much now. No sooner was the needle out of her arm than she lit a Tareyton and aimed a she-sneer at us. Nora not saying anything could fuck with you more than somebody else saying something. I couldn't help but admire Harold, his ability to stay chemically oblivious.

“I'm impressed that you remember all this,” I told him. “The polyethylene especially. Who remembers polyethylene?”

“I did,” Harold said, “and it's a good thing. From that one little question I got in as a consultant. Became a forensics cosmetic specialist. Kind of invented the field. I guess you could say I'm the go-to dye guy. Before
moi
, somebody wanted to stage a death by makeup, they'd cook up some nonsense about arsenic-laced pancake powder, tainted dandruff shampoo, stuff like that. Me, I took it to the next level. Chemicals I used? All FDA approved. That's the kicker. Ingredients are all right there on the Health & Beauty aisle. One time I even came up with the idea for hair tint that gave you scalp Ebola.”

Nora perked up. “There is such a thing?”

Harold smiled crookedly. Proud. “That's exactly what Marg Helgenberger said. The victim was normal one day—a week later, his gray was gone, but so was the flesh over his brain. How can you not love show business?”

Nora scowled at me when Harold wasn't looking. When she spoke to him her voice was pleasant. As pleasant as Nora could be when she was trying to be pleasant. “So, Harold, you don't do any actual work work?”

“I don't dig ditches, if that's what you mean.”

Harold chuckled again and licked the tip of his needle. I'd never seen anybody do that before, and it made me a little sick. (He had other creepy habits, like lubricating his non-reusable plastic needles with earwax every time he reused them. The last thing I wanted to think about was ears, or earwax, with the image of that bloody paper clip still fresh in my brain. But none of this mattered. Harold had the heroin.)

Somewhere outside a guy screamed in Spanish. Harold leaned forward and lowered his voice, as though international makeup killers might be listening in to see what he was up to. “You don't think what I do is work? Well, let me tell you a secret. You know what's harder than coming up with cool ways to fuck somebody up via hair and skin care? Trying
not
to fuck yourself up with hair and skin care. Example. Let's say you wanna dye your hair.
Let's go blond, America!
Well, like it or not, you're going to be splashing on everything from Diaminodiphenylamine to Chloro-2-Aminophenol to Acid Orange 24. Stuff's banned in Europe, but over here, thanks to the chemical lobby, you can soak your head in that swill till your brain swells up like a marinated elephant spleen. Won't even take you long. Drip a little red solvent number one in your ear, you'll be aphasic and walking sideways before anybody can admire your new look. Happens all the time. Open secret. Your big health and beauty corpos keep a fund for shutting up folks who just wanted to get their hair shiny and ended up with festering scalp cankers the size of frogs.”

He laughed again, while Nora studied him with an expression I couldn't quite peg. Harold laughed a lot when he was high, before throwing up and passing out and weeping about how it had all gone wrong, in no particular order. The man could go catatonic fast.

A few minutes, maybe a few hours later, feeling expansive on smack and Thunderbird, Harold announced he would get me a job on
CSI
. Based, he proclaimed, on my extensive pharma-scribbling experience.

To hear Harold tell it—he was rehearsing what he was going to say about me, in his dulcet, James Earl Jonesy Mexican-tar tones—I hadn't just composed the copy for Restless-Knee Syndrome, I was the brains behind the syndrome itself: the genius who concocted the disease to justify selling a cure. Not true, sadly. Had it been, I wouldn't have been scarfing motel dope crumbs from the likes of Harold. I'd have been spending the Squibb Inc. “naming bonus” on limo-delivered China white and a pharmaceutical-grade girlfriend. (There's no way to exaggerate: RKS marked new and lucrative territory. Restless Knee went beyond branding. It represented free pharmarketeers tossing out TV bait for folks looking for a disease to call their own. Lyrica was a treatment in search of a disease.) In full SESSIE mode, I could feel the copy coming back to me, like a catchy tune.
Some of the most common side effects of LYRICA are dizziness, blurry vision, weight gain, sleepiness, trouble concentrating, swelling of your hands and feet, dry mouth, and “feeling high.”

That's right.
“Feeling high”
! And how much did I love writing that? Seriously. How many people decided their knees were restless just to get
that
feeling? Once in a while we all get to do our bit for humanity, and who knows how many legions of euphoria seekers dove into the as-yet-unsuspicious world of Restless Knee pills thanks to my little hint? I imagined doctors' offices flooded with otherwise healthy—if slightly skeeved—individuals rolling in with sudden, uncontrollable, loafer-throwing twitches in their lower limbs. “Doctor I need help. This dang knee of mine just won't behave itself. It's all, y'know . . .
restless
!”

Given that any promise a junkie makes has a shelf life shorter than a space heater in a bathtub, I wasn't banking on Harold
really
nailing me a
CSI
gig. I would have been surprised had he remembered that he offered. In the meantime I had to sweat through a bout of my own brain-eating Ebola—otherwise known as my immediate future.

SIXTEEN

Fresh Dead Man Shit (Memory Issues)

And yes, yes, I'm trying to tell the story here, but things occasionally wander. Did I mention that I have—what do you call them?—memory issues? No doubt too much bad shampoo had altered my brain chemistry. Forget the tainted heroin, Plexiglas-cut crack, questionable E, and bathtub crank, not to mention all the preteen hallucinogens and booze. Fucking Head and Shoulders has left me linear-thought-fucked and incapable of spinning a straight narrative without veering left and right, careening over the median like a lush behind the wheel on New Year's Eve.

I can say this: not a minute went by when I did not think about the murder . . . or think about the fact that I wasn't thinking about it. (Which is the same thing—the old Guilt-Over-Not-Feeling-Guilty routine.) Here's what lingers: the Lysol and stale urine stink of the men's room. The ear hair and scalp flecks on Spectacles when I stood above him, wielding my paper clip. The odd way he cupped himself, his “manhood,” with both hands while he relieved himself. Detail upon detail. Enough to drown a man in memory if he wasn't careful. But was it guilt? Was it remorse? Well . . . no. It's too late to try and look good, Father. In truth, what I felt after murdering was about what I felt before murdering. Only more.

Does that make sense?

If not, let me, as famously popular and charismatic two-term president and former Screen Actors Guild snitch Ronald Reagan used to say, restate and reiterate. What I felt was a niggling, occasionally-more-than-niggling—okay,
gnawing—
sensation that I had risked Death Row, retribution, and eternal damnation for killing an innocent man out of my new companion's fantasy and paranoia; that I had smelled fresh dead man shit; that, in fact, Steeple Fingers had no connection to Nora whatsoever, let alone the intention of taking her life. And all of it, all of it, was too brutal and soul-soiling to let rise to the surface of my brain. So, naturally, I kept it down, weighted with carefully arranged anvils (well, actually heroin) on the bottom of that roiling cesspool that passed for consciousness.

As for my Greyhound date—she and I didn't speak about the murder. Until the next one.