Nightlife (13 page)

Justin knew something was different about this when the edges of his field of vision seemed to go green. Fuzzy green, pale green. He knew immediately where he’d seen that hue before, that it had mostly disappeared into Trent’s nostrils.

And his own, as well.

It’s still in my system. . . .

He echoed a memory of Trent at the club, on the dance floor. Wildly exultant, savagely so.

Transcendent.

Breaking through between known and unknown.

Justin felt as if he were leaving his body behind him on the couch, abandoning it while his mind soared to commingle with another. Linked, perhaps. But not perfectly. It was like forcing two gears to work together that meshed only on every fifth or sixth revolution. Windows of passage to glimpse through, doors of perception to traverse.

Infinity.

It was sensation, snippets of emotion, fragments of thought.

. . . pain . . .

. . . betrayal . . .

. . . fingers sliding down wet filmy wall, brick . . .

. . .
Help me, somebody nobody will . . .

It felt as if he were being pulled against his will. He knew he could sever contact if he wanted; it wasn’t that strong. Whoever it was—she, it was a she—was likely unaware of what she was doing. Just as he too was an innocent, receiving, as it were, via an open channel in his consciousness.

He knew her pain. Her fear. As only one who has already experienced them was able. Only she was going
so
much farther in. And he was along for the ride, with no safety bar.

. . . freely running nose . . .

. . . burning in the muscles, liquid flames . . .

. . . silhouette of a man in a white suit . . .

. . . with a familiar face . . .

. . .
“What did you give me?” . . .

. . .
high-tensile bones rearranging . . .

He clung to the roller coaster of her being, slung this way, then that. She was turmoil, and together they tumbled, toward the darkness at the center of the past, aeons hurtled in moments.

Walls of confinement loomed in, the prisons of flesh and brick maddening. He hung with it as long as he could, even when her thoughts dwindled to mere lightspecks of rationality and coherence, displaced by impulses that could only be described as instinctive.

To run.

To howl.

To mate.

To feed.

And then he was ready to lift his voice with hers, when all at once the unrecorded tape in the VCR ran out. The machine kicked off
play
and onto automatic
rewind,
and the overridden channel beneath roared through screen and speaker alike. Jarring. It blew him right out of the spectator’s seat, leaving him to fall away while the ride went on, and on, and on. . . .

Without him.

Justin sat up, rubbed a mild headache at his temples into submission. Checked his peripheral vision. No green.

There was relief, though. And at the same time, sorrow.

Who had she been? Despite the oppressive feeling that bad news was befalling someone, somewhere, and that he knew precisely whom to blame for it, it was still the. most exhilarating high he had ever known.

The next day, Justin and Erik heeded the call of the tourist wild and went to Busch Gardens in northeastern Tampa. Three hundred acres of theme park, Disney World meets Africa. An interesting experiment in transworld hybrid capitalism.

The place was doing boffo business, and they were just two more splotches of roaming color amid the rest of the gawkers, rubberneckers, and sandals-with-black-socks crowd. Erik fixated on a parrot perched amiably near a palmetto. The bird’s colors were almost too bright to be real, red merging to yellow to blue to draping red tailfeathers. Erik tried to teach it dirty words, and when a blue-haired woman chastised him, Erik tried to teach it to say, “Geritol causes cancer.”

They watched a snake charmer along a stretch simulating a Moroccan street bazaar, nestled in between low blocky buildings the color of desert earth. Shortly thereafter, they were treated to a quartet of belly dancers and got to fantasize about what wonders those undulating tummy muscles could perform under more intimate circumstances. Then they strolled onward.

“Do you think Morocco really looks like this?” Justin asked.

“Maybe if you squint,” Erik said. “Somehow I doubt Morocco has janitors patrolling with those little lever-action contraptions to sweep up the cigarette butts.”

“Point,” said Justin, and then an enormously obese behemoth passed before them, sunburned and greased with sunscreen and wearing plaid Bermudas. He was sucking down an ice-cream cone, and all remaining Moroccan integrity died in his wake.

They boarded the Trans-Veldt Railroad, and it took them across the Busch Serengeti Plain. Watch the wild animals roaming freely in their natural habitat. Somehow Justin doubted that their natural habitat was within easy view of Skyride cable cars and a monorail. Zebras, giraffes, gazelles, camels. He liked the white tigers best, though, lazing about their island in a pit in the park’s northwestern corner. They looked otherworldly, as if despite captivity in these bizarre surroundings, they were
still
in charge.

Late afternoon saw them at the Hospitality House. Seven sides, almost an octagon. They got beers—no shortage of Anheuser-Busch products here—and settled onto the outer patio. The enormous peaked eaves on this side made the house look like a huge origami sculpture. They lucked into grabbing a small table along the railing overlooking the pond. The best of both worlds: they could watch waterfowl or halter-topped girls passing by on the patio, alternating at their leisure.

“What do you know about that Tony Mendoza guy?” Justin asked out of the blue.

Erik looked momentarily taken aback. “I don’t know. Not much. Why him?”

Good question. Justin didn’t really know why. Just a strange compulsion to get a handle on the guy, for whatever elusive reasons it seemed important. He tried to explain that the best he could.

“I don’t think I could tell you much more than what you could figure out just by looking at him.” Erik stretched in his seat and let his gaze get sidetracked by a well-modeled pair of cutoffs. “Just some midlevel coke distributor. From what I hear, he’s decently connected around here.” Erik pulled his eyes back, let his face wilt into concern. “Man, you’re not thinking about getting back into things like you were in St. Louis—”

“Noooo. No way.” Justin frowned. “But something’s been bugging me about him. If he’s doing midlevel deals—say ten, twenty keys at a time—what’s he doing piddling around with tiny individual portions in bathroom-stall deals?”

“I didn’t know he was.”

“Sure. Two nights ago, at Apocalips. Right there in the john he was quoting Trent a price on some of that stuff we sampled. By the ounce. The gram, even. A guy like that shouldn’t be dorking with penny-ante bathroom deals. If he passes out a little for party- dust, I can understand that, but—”

“Maybe he does it as a favor to some people. ’Cause he used to be lower level, selling on a more one-to-one basis. He’s not a stupid guy, he’s pretty sharp, I think. I guess he parlayed his way on up into bigger time. I used to buy every now and then from him, like, four years ago or so. That’s when most all of us know him from.” Erik drank some more, wet his mouth. “From what I hear, he was trying to diversify his interests a while back, couple years, maybe. Porno’s pretty profitable. And fun, if you don’t mind AIDS roulette. I hear he sunk some money into that. If you want my views on the guy, I think he just likes to play big shot and spread some dust here and there to have his fun. You know, meet someone with more boobs than brains and lead her around by the nose for the night, have his fun, then cut her loose in the morning. If he’s paid wholesale on the stuff, his cost is pretty negligible.”

“Charming guy,” Justin said.

“Oh yeah. Real old-world gentlemanly sort, isn’t he?” Erik shook his head. “I meant what I said Tuesday night. Just stay clear of him. I have the feeling he wouldn’t be healthy for your future.”

“Hey. Don’t have to club me in the head twice.” Justin drained his first beer, looked sorrowfully at the empty. “Wish I knew what it was he gave us in the john. That was weird stuff.”

“Just let it go.”

“I think I had a flashback from it last night.”

This one grabbed Erik’s attention. Forgotten was a busty girl with a clinging damp T-shirt, probably fresh from the rapids on one of the river rides.

“Flashback? You’re sounding like sixties vintage now.”

“Don’t I, though? You’d think I’d dropped acid. Don’t know why I’d get a flashback out of this stuff.”

Erik hunched closer to the table, lowered his voice. “You ever hear what causes flashbacks?”

“No.”

“I learned this from a guy who used to work at the
Trib.
You want to talk sixties vintage, now
this
guy was a relic. We used to call him Quivering Bob. I think the sixties frazzed his nerves for good. But he told me that hallucinogens get dissolved into your system, and some gets absorbed into body fats. It can lie there dormant for a long long time. And then, bam, if a little bit of the fat gets broken down by the body, the stuff gets squirted right back into your system. Instant trip on the leftovers.”

“Just like a time-release cold capsule.”

Erik nodded. “But scarier. So what happened to you last night?”

Justin puffed a sigh. Trying to bring it all back as clearly as possible. Sensations. Thoughts. Emotions. Was it live or Memorex? He was no longer sure. He ran it by Erik. A second opinion was always valued. . . .

“Hell, I don’t know what to make of
that.”

. .
. Sometimes.

“A lot of help you are.”

“Sorry. But it just doesn’t sound like a typical flashback. I never heard of a flashback ending because a noise startled you.” Erik cocked an eyebrow, playful skepticism. “Sounds more like you got awakened from a dream. Are you sure that’s not what happened?”

“Positive.” Justin steepled his fingers together, watched them for inspiration. Flex, back and forth. “I sleep so little anymore, you can bet I know when I do and when I don’t.” Watched his fingers until he grew bored by them. Didn’t take long. “Of course, there’s another option, but it sounds
really
out to lunch.”

“Yeah? Try me.”

“Say Mendoza gave some to somebody else—and somehow it linked us. A shared-consciousness kind of thing. But a real shaky one.”

“My my. We
are
talking Twilight Zone here, aren’t we.”

“But do you think it’s possible?”

“Anything’s
possible.”
Erik scratched his head, classic heavy-thought poise. “It’s just when you start looking at
probable
that a lot of things break down.”

Justin kept reaching for his empty beer cup, then having to remind himself it was empty. Hope springs eternal for the spontaneous refill. An alcoholic’s wet dream.

“Look at it this way,” Justin said quietly. “It was a drug, a hallucinogen, I think we’re safe in saying. And they do some pretty freaky things to the mind and the consciousness. Now, suppose whatever skullflush is, it’s natural. Not synthetic. A lot of natural hallucinogens provoke a similar reaction in people.” He gave a big smile, he was on a roll. “Like mescaline. A lot of people who take that report seeing a vision of the same figure: Mescalito, the demon of mescaline. They give the same description of the ugly spud and everything. It’s a time-honored vision, man. And it stays consistent.”