Joe Pitt 2 - No Dominion (8 page)

--What guy?

He presses his fingers to PJs lips and she kisses them. He chucks her under the chin and
goes back to the couch.

--Look, bro, we got a good thing going here. This.

He holds up the syringe.

--This is so good. You have no idea. And our hookup is solid. But he's a
hookup.
That means all I have is a pager number. He either calls me back or he doesn't. And when
he does call me back, if he's holding, he just sends a delivery guy. Some guy who doesn't
even know what he's carrying. The delivery guy, he's a civilian, not infected, not even a
Renfield. He just thinks he's carrying dope. Different guy every time.

--How did you get the hookup?

He swabs his arm with an alcohol-drenched cotton ball.

--All this sterilization, not really necessary. Not like we can get infected, right? Just
makes it better, part of the ritual.

--The hookup.

He picks up the tubing.

--From another fish. Look, can we talk about this later?

--Who was the fish gave you the hookup?

He slaps a vein.

--I heard you were at Doc's last night.

--So?

--I hear a kid freaked out. A fish.

--Yeah.

--You see that?

--Yeah.

--He probably hit too much. Or waited too long and the Vyrus was dead.

--What of it?

--Well, that was the kid who got me the hookup.

He holds the tip of the needle at the vein.

--I don't want to be a bad host or anything, but I'm gonna hit this shit now. You don't
have to go. Stick around. The girls come out of it, they'll set you up. You can see what
it's all about.

I look at my watch. If I stay any longer I'll be here all day. He's pressing the tip of
the needle to his vein. I reach over and grab his wrist.

--Any idea where the hookup is? Where it comes from?

He looks at my hand on his wrist, up at my eyes.

--Hey, man. I been a good host, right? You mind moving that?

I take my hand away.

He nods, smiles again.

--Thanks. All I hear, the only rumor I ever hear, is that it comes from Uptown.

I'm standing up, slipping on my jacket. I freeze.

--Uptown. The Coalition?

He shakes his head.

--No, no. Up. Town. Above One-ten. All the way up. The Hood, bro. And that's what I know.
Now, you can stay, go, whatever, but I'm gonna zone out here.

He puts the needle in, pushes the plunger, and unties the tubing. Before he can pull the
needle free, he's out.

PJs squirms over to him and removes the syringe from his arm. She leans her head against
his thigh, looks at me and holds up the syringe.

--Do me again.

I walk out the door.

How you die, one of the easiest ways, one of the very easiest ways, you go off your
reservation. Go outside the territory you know and you may as well be cutting your way
through the Amazon. Sun comes up, you got no safe house. Run into the local Clan, and you
will, they'll chop you down, a Rogue on their turf. Go to ground, find some hole to hide
in, get caught without blood and try to poach something, you won't just be chopped, you'll
be put out in the sun. Do not go off the reservation. You're a Rogue lucky enough to have
an arrangement with a Clan, do not leave that turf.

Above One-ten. That's way off the reservation. That's Hood turf. Haven't been up there
since I was a kid. Since I was a kid from the Bronx. Since I was something you might
consider human.

--Hey, Lydia.

--Pitt?

--Yeah.

Silence on the other end. Then.

--Where'd you get this number?

--You gave it to me.

--That was awhile back.

--Guess I'm lucky it still works.

--Yeah, you are.

I sit at my desk, spinning my Zippo around and around on my heavily doodled blotter.

--You still there, Pitt?

--Yeah.

I spin some more.

--You called me, Pitt.

--Yeah, I did.

Spinning.

--Just wanted to say hi, or something on your mind?

I stop spinning.

--You still have people in the straight world?

She grunts.

--Straight's not really my thing.

--Not like sex-straight. Uninfected. I hear you still have a public face.

--Yeah. Heard that, did you?

I tap a Lucky on my thumbnail.

--You used to do gay rights and stuff.

--I used to fight against ignorance. I still do.

--Sure, sure. I know you got that covered in the Society, but out there, in the world, you
still do that?

--Yeah. I still got a face. Me, some of the other members of the Lesbian, Gay and Other
Gendered Alliance still have faces. We still work out there.

--AIDS?

--What?

--You work with AIDS people?

--
AIDS people?

--People who are sick. HIV positive.

--I do some needle exchange. Talk to sex workers sometimes.

I balance the Lucky on top of the Zippo.

--Got a destination with this, Pitt?

I pick up the cigarette and light it.

--Say I had a friend who was sick.

--You got a friend?

--Use your imagination.

--OK.

--This friend is HIV-positive, medication isn't working, could be trouble with her
insurance company, that kind of stuff.

--OK.

--There other options? This person needed to get meds and whatever, there other options?

--Well, there are exchanges, mostly run online. People with meds they don't use anymore, or
they have understanding doctors who write them scrips for whatever, they swap meds. Try
things the HMOs would never allow. But it's all pretty catch as catch can, you know.

A flake of tobacco gets stuck to my tongue; I spit it on the floor.

--So you want a number? Some web addresses for your friend?

--Sure.

I find a pen. She rattles off numbers and letters. I draw a series of boxes on the
blotter, one inside another.

--Anything else my friend could try?

--Depends.

--On what?

--Your friend got money?

--Why?

--There's a black market for meds. You have the money, you can get anything. Experimental
stuff that's not even approved yet. Anything.

--No, no money.

--Hunh. You knowÉ

--Yeah?

--You could ask the girl. For money.

The girl.

--No.

--She'd give it to you. The girl would give you anything you needed. You know she would.

--Not the girl.

--Sela says she asks about you all the time.

I look at the butt end of my smoke, watch as the cherry consumes the little LUCKY printed
on the paper.

--Sela talks to her?

--All the time, she's like her personal trainer now. The girl got her to move up there,
wanted her close.

--That's Coalition turf.

--I know. Sela renounced the Society.

--She renounced?

--Had to. She would have Rogued-it up there, but you know the Coalition:
No dogs allowed.
Pledged the Coalition.

--Jesus.

--She loves the girl. Only way she could stay close to her. Figured better to join the
Coalition so she could keep an eye on her.

--Terry must have shit.

She laughs.

--Not half as much as Tom.

--Fuck him.

--You fuck him, Pitt. He's not my type. Fucking fascist.

--Still not getting along?

--It's not just me anymore. I hear you were around to see Terry.

--Yeah.

--I hear you didn't have an appointment.

--Yeah.

--Picture how that kind of stuff goes over with the members. Terry's always been open-door.
You need to talk to him, he's there. Part of his appeal. Part of why so many of us trust
him. Now Tom wants all contact to go through his security desk. Not popular at all.

--So how's he keep the job?

--He's got his supporters. Younger members mostly, guys mostly, machos that like the idea
of
a strong and independent Society.

--Younger members. I hear there's been a lot of that going around lately.

I hang on the line while she doesn't say anything. I hear a clicking sound, like maybe
she's flicking her thumbnail against her front teeth. The sound stops.

--We got a little off the subject, Pitt.

--Just saying, seems there's a lot of new fish in the pond.

--Hadn't noticed. Anyway. You have a friend who's sick and needs help, I'm happy to give
you some advice; that's something I do anyway. Society politics, that's for members only.

--Just passing the time.

--I know what you're doing. I may have helped you out once, done something that wasn't
strictly by the book, but don't think I'm not a believer. I'm Society, Pitt, through and
through. Got it?

--Sure.

--Good. So. You want me to talk to Sela, have her talk to the girl?

--No.

--It's your business, but if you've got a friend who's HIV-positive, money always helps.
The girl would love to do something for you. This isn't the time to get stuck on your
pride, Joe.

--Thanks for the advice, Lydia.

--I'm just saying. If you want to help your friend, then help.

--Like I say, thanks, for the numbers and such. I owe you one.

--Right. Whatever you say, Pitt.

Lydia 's alright. She may have fallen for the Society line, she may be a pain in the ass
PC crusader dyke, but she's alright. She helped me with that Coalition mess last year. She
helped me with the girl. The girl and her fucking sick-ass father andÉ

I need to stop thinking about this stuff. I think about this stuff, that means thinking
about the thing that took out the girl's father. The thing that shouldn't exist. The thing
that was in the same room with the girl, that got a look at her. Don't think about it. The
girl's OK. She's got Sela as her angel. Sela, the baddest pre-op Vampyre on the Island.
Anyone tries to mess with the girl, Sela's gonna improvise a sex change on their ass. The
girl's OK.

And I got other problems now.

I manage a couple hours' sleep. I don't dream about the girl, so that's good. But I do
dream about Evie. Normally dreaming about Evie is as good as it gets, but these aren't
those kind of dreams. These are the other kind. When I wake up I have hours to go to
sundown. And still no idea how I'm gonna get my ass above One-ten.

Figure I call Terry, tell him the trail leads Uptown, he'll have some way of getting me
across Coalition territory. I go to the Hood with Terry's blessing, things won't be so
bad. The Society and the Hood have a relationship. Both Clans were born out of the same
revolution, both were snapped off from the Coalition. So yeah, figure that's how to go
about this. Except for the way Lydia got all touchy at the end there. She's Society, sure.
But she's not rank and file. That queer alliance she put together within the Society has
some pull, and she often pulls it her own direction, has her own ideas about how things
should be done. She clammed up tight when I started talking new fish. Figure that means
something's up. As if I hadn't already got that. But now I figure it's something to do
with Terry and Tom. Something to do with the way Tom is trying to put a wall around Terry.
And this thing with the new high? Figure that's Terry's angle, figure it has something to
do with his play, whatever it turns out to be. Fine. But if that's the case, if this is an
angle, if it's
Terry's angle,
it's worth something. And not just whatever he's planning to slip me. So figure I don't
want to go to Terry for help getting Uptown. I got time before I need to fill him in on my
findings. Let him wait. I work this alone? I could end up with the angle, make it pay out,
get me some serious money maybe. Money I can use not just for fucking rent, but for Evie.

Got to be that way.

Cause there's no way in hell I'm going anywhere near the girl.

--Hey, babe.

--Hey.

--How you feeling?

--Fine.

--Good.

I'm upstairs in the big apartment, wandering from living room to kitchen to bedroom to
bathroom. Picking up odds and ends of garbage: take-out bags piled on the counter, cards
for locksmiths and dog-walkers slipped under the door, an empty Kleenex box on the back of
the toilet, stuffing it all into a huge, green plastic garbage sack.

Over the phone I can hear a TV in the background, something with a laugh track; just that
and her breathing.

--What're you doing?

--Watching the tube. What about you?

--Cleaning.

--Excuse me?

--Not with a mop or anything. Just picking up trash upstairs.

--Cleaning the fake apartment.

The channels flip in the background: a commercial, a music video, an infomercial; faster
and faster, and then the TV is silent.

--You left me hanging, Joe.

--I know.

--Had a pretty bad fucking day.

--I know.

--And your response was to bail.

--I know.

--One thing about you.

--What's that?

--When I really need you, you always come through. Makes it so I can take the other shit,
you know?

I take a white grocery bag that hangs off the back of the bathroom door, serving as a
wastebasket, and stuff it into the sack. It's full of lipstick-smeared tissues and old
tampon wrappers.

--Yeah, I know.

--If that's not gonna be the case anymore, if it's getting too stiff now, I need to know.
You can't take it the rest of the way, I need to know now. It's OK. But I can't be
counting on you if you're not going to be there.

I flip the lid down on the toilet and sit.

--I hear you, baby.

--Do you? Are you sure? I thought you did, but disappearing on me like you did last night,
that made me wonder if you get it.

I feel my breast pocket for my smokes. I left them downstairs.

--I get it.

--Then you need to tell me, Joe. I need you to tell me what it's gonna be. I'm sick, and,
this, this is it, this is the way it's going to be. It's not going to get any better than
this. It might not get really bad, but this is as easy as it will ever be. If you want to
stick around, I need you to do some things. I need you to find out what your blood type is
so I know if you can help me with that. I need you to back me up when I have a day like
yesterday. I need you to. Oh shit, Joe. Just. I need you, you know? To be there.