Miss Misery (16 page)

“Do you think I could get a lime, please?”

“Sure,” she said, and gave me a flirtatious wink.

I moved away from the bar and slurped the first few centimeters off of my vodka. It wasn't a bad drink, really. It lacked the calming fire of whiskey and the solid, carb-filled grounding of beer, but it seemed to quiet the terror in my gut and provide a pleasant, energetic hum to my head. The air was cooler in the back, so I dodged the bathroom line and leaned against the wall. The Madrox was divided into two rooms, and the DJ booth was located in the other one. I decided to get my bearings for a bit, get another drink in me before risking a very public confrontation. Also, I still had no idea what I was going to say. “Shattered” by the Rolling Stones started up and I tapped my foot to the rhythm.

“There you fucking are! I've been looking all over you.”

I turned and saw Pedro pushing through the crowd to get to me. His face was shining and his head was freshly shaved. Behind him was a miniature man who, as he approached, revealed himself to be the oldest person I had seen in months. His long face was lined with deep crevices, and the purplish skin that surrounded his eyes seemed to be crumbling away. He had three hoop earrings in each ear, a leather vest over his sunken chest, and a red bandanna tied around his upper left arm.

“Hey,” I said. “Here I am.”

“I thought you ran off, baby. I knew it couldn't take you that long to get cigarettes!” Pedro gave me a half hug, then threw his arm around his friend. “This is Screwie Louie.”

I offered my hand and shook something clammy and calloused. “Nice to meet you,” I said.

“Nice to meet you, David,” said Screwie Louie in a high-pitched voice eerily reminiscent of Señor Wences. “I hear a lot about you.”

Pedro grabbed my drink, took a big sip of it, then coughed dramatically. “What the hell is this? Vodka?”

“Yep,” I said, taking it back from him.

“I thought it was water!”

Screwie Louie giggled like a schoolgirl.

“Yuck,” said Pedro, wiping his mouth. “C'mon, finish that up and come with us.”

“I just got it,” I said.

“Finish it, bitch!”

I raised the glass to my lips and did as I was told.

“Good boy,” said Pedro. “Now come with us.”

He grabbed my wrist and led me toward the very back of the bar, past the line right up to the bathroom door. A guy on deck, dancing back and forth from leg to leg, grabbed at us as we passed.

“Hey!” he shouted. “There's a line here! What the fuck?”

“Sorry,” said Screwie Louie, patting him on the back. “Health inspectors. We won't be long.”

Without even pausing, Pedro led us all inside the tiny bathroom, then slammed the door shut and bolted the lock. I felt sweaty and more than a little drunk.

“Pedro,” I said.

“Shhhh,” said Pedro. “Don't worry. This is the good stuff I promised you.”

Screwie Louie reached deep in the front pocket of his jeans and extracted a small plastic bag filled with white powder. He handed it to Pedro, who in turn handed Louie a wad of twenties.

“This
is
the good stuff, right, Louie? I don't want that baby-powder shit.”

Screwie Louie giggled. “I promised you—don't get uptight.”

Pedro removed his keys from his pocket and dug one of them deep into the bag. When he pulled the key out, it was crowned with a generous mound of white. In one quick motion he raised it to his right nostril and inhaled the entire pile. He fell back a bit, snorted air. Shook his head. Then he looked up at both of us with a maniacal grin.

“Oooooooh,” he purred. “Mama likes!”

Screwie Louie smiled a toothy grin. “What'd I tell you?”

I had been around people who were on it, but I had never actually seen someone take cocaine before. It was—like fistfights, breakups, and the city of Los Angeles—almost depressingly the same as it was in the movies.

Pedro hit his other nostril, then offered me an equally generous bump. I stepped backward.

“No, no.” I said. “Thanks. I'm cool.”

Screwie Louie giggled. Pedro frowned.

“What do you mean, you're cool?” he said. “You asked me to go get it!”

“I did?”

“Of course you did!” The pile of white balanced precariously on the key between us. It was flaky and almost sparkled in the harsh bathroom light. “Whose money do you think that was, anyway?”

Jesus, I thought. Someone pounded on the door, causing Pedro's hand to shake, and a dusting of white fell onto the tile.

“Don't be a bitch, David.” Pedro leaned in closer. “Time to take your medicine.”

Undercover, I said to myself. Belly of the beast.

Tentatively, I hovered my nose over the key. The last thing I wanted to do was be like Woody Allen in
Annie Hall
and sneeze it over the entire room. I raised my hand to my face and pushed my left nostril closed as I had seen Pedro do, then sucked in the powder with my right.

Screwie Louie giggled.

I felt nothing at first, just a taste in my mouth like dissolved aspirin. Then a burn back in my sinuses and a trickle down my throat.

“Beautiful,” said Pedro, as someone outside resumed pounding on the door. “Now one more for the road…”

 

I found it much easier to talk to Screwie Louie after our trip to the bathroom together. Actually, I found it much easier to talk to
everyone.
It's not that I felt particularly different from when I had arrived—though I noticed by the empty glasses that I had somehow put away two more vodkas in between return trips to the bathroom—I just seemed to be enjoying myself more. A lot more. Gone was the burning desire to go into the other half of the bar and confront my evil doppelgänger. Gone, in fact, was the burning desire to do anything other than sit here with my friends—old and new—and talk. About anything. At length. And at great speeds.

The DJ—me? Andre? the red-haired kid with the broken back?—was playing a tune called “Beating Heart Baby,” and I had never heard it before but it seemed to be one of the two or three greatest songs ever recorded. Pedro was sitting to my left on the black banquette telling me about his latest conquest, the closeted lead singer of a screamo band that he was being paid to publicize. He kept rolling his eyes and laughing hysterically. He kept hitting my knee. I wasn't following the story—my brain was focused on the music and how I felt like the blood in my head was surging to the beat of the drums—but I agreed that whatever it was he was telling me was definitely hilarious.

I heard someone shout my name from the bathroom line, and I looked up. It was a tall, skinny Arab woman with curly hair and legs like skyscrapers. She said my name again and smiled and waved. I smiled dumbly and waved back. What was her name again? The one who didn't smoke? Cats. Empires. Zelda?

“How do you know Zaina?”

Zaina! That was it! I turned to face Screwie Louie on my right.

“I don't,” I said. “I mean, I just met her outside. I think she thought I was someone else.”

Screwie Louie giggled. “Who'd she think you were?”

“Oh…,” I said, mind racing. “I guess she thought I was some guy named David!” We both laughed.

“The thing about that girl,” said Screwie Louie lasciviously, “is that from what I hear she's…” He leaned in close. “She's mad docile.”

I paused. “Docile?”

Screwie Louie leered at me. “Yep. She's real docile.”

I scratched my face, ran my tongue along the smooth fronts of my teeth. “You mean, like, obedient? She's obedient?”

Screwie Louie frowned. “No, man! She's docile. Look at those legs! She's docile.”

I stared at him. He looked confused.

“Doesn't that mean, like, flexible?”

I laughed harder. “Nope!”

Screwie Louie's wrinkly face fell. “Damn…I've been telling
everybody
that.”

I shook my head. I couldn't seem to stop laughing. There was a strange incessant ringing in my ears and a cottony thickness in my throat. Pedro gave my shoulder a push.

“You're not even listening to my story!”

“I'm sorry, dude,” I said. “I'm just…all over the place.”

“That's OK,” he whispered. “I'm fucking high out of my mind right now!”

I laughed. “Is that what it is?”

“See what you've been missing? It's fun to leave the house sometimes, isn't it?”

“Yeah,” I said. “It really is.”

And I believed it. It was fun. It was, in fact, better than fun. It was fucking fantastic. The heat. The sweat. The volume. The shouting. The drinks. The girls. All of it seemed to make sense now—it was as if I had been living at the wrong rpm. Sped up as I was, I finally got it. So this is why people went out all the time. This is what it felt like. I could barely catch my breath for smiling.

A new song started then, a familiar rhythm and vocal line. It was the beginning of “Temptation” by New Order. Drugs or no, this was
absolutely
one of the two or three best songs of all time. I turned to Screwie Louie to make sure he knew it too.

“Holy shit,” I yelled at him. “I love this song!”

Screwie Louie stopped talking to a girl twenty years his junior and put his arm around me. “I love this song too!” he yelled.

“Wait, wait.” I scratched my head, rubbed my nose. “Someone else loves this song too.”

“I love it,” said Pedro. “What about me?”

“No, no,” I said, darting my eyes around the room. “Not you. Someone else. Someone important. She's always talking about it.”

I looked around more. The song was building and people around us were starting to hoot in recognition; some stood and began to dance.
Heaven. A gateway. A hope…

And then I saw Cath Kennedy bearing down on me from the other side of the bar.

“Her!” I shouted excitedly. “This is
her
favorite song too.”

Pedro looked up. “Her? The chick you were with the other night?”

Cath was wearing a white tank top with a red bra underneath. Her jeans were black and extremely tight, almost melting into her high-heeled boots. Her hair was swept up from her face and she was wearing giant hoop earrings that made her look like she was playing dress-up in her mom's closet. She looked ravishing. And she was headed straight for me.

When she arrived, she yelled.

“There you are! Where the fuck have you been?”

I smiled happily. “Hi, Cath.”

“Don't fucking ‘hi, Cath' me, creepo! I can't cover for you forever. This is
your
DJ night, remember?”

Something lurched in my chest. “Oh, yeah,” I said. “I remember.”

She leaned forward across the table and grabbed my arms.

“Come on!” She pulled and I let her lift me up off the couch.

I turned to Pedro and Screwie Louie.

“Bye, guys,” I said. “I'll be in the other room. I'll be DJing.”

“OK,” said Pedro. “Bye!” Screwie Louie giggled.

Cath put her arm around me and cut a swath through the crowd toward the other side of the bar. She was taller in her boots; her head pushed against my shoulder. I liked the way her arm felt around my back, too; its pressure, warm and constant, reminded me of something, of someone, but I didn't have time to figure out what or whom. We kept walking; we kept moving.

“Cath,” I said. “You totally love this song.”

She laughed. “I know I love it, creepo. Why do you think I'm playing it?”

We ducked under a crowd of meatheads near the entrance and cut left.

“I love this song too!” I said.

“Well, I also love it because it's six minutes long, and that gave me enough time to scour this entire fucking place for you. Where the hell have you been? You left me there like forty minutes ago!”

I laughed. This was hilarious!

“Don't be a jerk.” Cath slapped my side where her arm was resting, but it only made me laugh harder. “Seriously! God, I hate it when you do that.”

The other side of the Madrox was much like the one I had been in, only darker and slightly more mysterious. The entire middle of the room, however, was filled with dancers—gyrating kids twirling, touching, jumping up and down to the beat.
Oh, you've got blue eyes / oh, you've got green eyes / oh, you've got graaaaay eyes.
Cath led me back to the DJ booth against the far wall, but I stopped her before we got there.

“Wait!” I said, giddy. “Dance with me!”