*
I DIDN’T BLACK OUT. Not really. Technically, it was more of a swoon. Head reeling, sweating buckets, most of me sloughed out of my chair. She grabbed me by my lapels and—surprisingly strong—heaved me back up.
“Are you okay?” Her face was a foot away. Her breath smelled like cigarettes. “You look like you saw a ghost.”
I’d never had anything ESP-like happen to me, ever, so I gaped, open-mouthed, unable to process what had just happened. I was knocked sideways, non compos mentis, struggling to come to terms with the relentless cavalcade of gristly death I’d just witnessed on closed circuit telepathic TV—so she played me. I was the accordion at the Ukrainian wedding.
“You look like you could use a drink.” She gestured in the direction of the bar. “C’mon. Creepy Guy’s gone. Let’s go sit there.” She backed away, watching to see if I’d topple again.
Mouth thick with saliva, I swallowed and swallowed again.
“What did you see?” She looked concerned.
“I don’t know,” I said. “It was horrible.”
“Let’s get some cold ethyl inside you. Don’t worry about freebies—I’ll buy.”
I stood. My body was more or less fine, but my brain was not. An event had occurred, in real-time, right before my eyes, and I was blanking. I could not process it. It was outside my frame of reference. The information would not fit into my worldview—there was no hook on which to hang the idea. So, I flew deadstick and did what was easy, following the path of least resistance.
“Age before beauty,” she said, gesturing.
I put one foot in front of the other, a cup of nickels in each hand. The creepy guy was indeed gone—nowhere in sight—and, at the end of the bar, there were two empty places, one of them the chair he’d so recently occupied, still warm from the heat of his ass. She sat there, in his residual heat, signaling the bartender, and I sat next to her, setting my cups-full on the bar in front of me.
The bartender came over—an old guy in a red vest—and she ordered: “I’ll have a Bloody Mary and...” She and the bartender both turned, focusing on me, waiting for me to tell them what I wanted. I searched for inspiration and it was like Aladdin’s cave: hundred of bottles lit from beneath.
I said: “I’ll have a Lagavulan on ice.”
“Give him a double,” she said. “It’s his first time in town.”
“Sure thing,” the bartender spieled, wheeling away, going to work.
She arranged herself and glanced over, checking on me. “So...” she said, by way of preamble. “Been in town long?”
I leaned against my forearms. “Don’t you know? You know everything else about me. Like this is my first time here. I never told you that.”
“I guessed,” she said, opening her purse, a beaded bag the size of a CD wallet, and extracting a curious package of cigarettes, flatter and wider than a regular American pack. “Would you care for one?” She flipped open the lid, offering.
They were beyond glamorous: smooth, perfect, ivory-white cylinders, tipped with cork and banded with gold—works of art.
“Whoa,” I said. “What are those?”
“They’re special. Go ahead. Try one. Fill your boots.”
They were tempting, but there was something wrong. “No thanks.” I said, fishing my long-suffering pack of Marlboros out of my rear pocket. “But I will take a light if you don’t mind.”
“Seriously?” She looked disappointed. “I guarantee you’ll find these a lot more interesting.”
“Thanks anyway. I’ll make do.”
She had a Zippo—an old one with an eagle’s head in a black crest, the chrome worn through on the edges to polished brass. She sparked it into flame, lit hers, and passed it over, still burning.
It was like touching a live wire—another vision. I was on fire, burning alive and belted into the co-pilot’s seat of a smoke-filled, shot-down, Huey helicopter gunship, whirling like a midway ride, plummeting into the jungle below. The agony was, quite literally, breathtaking, but gone in less than an instant. I was shaken, but still sitting in the same chair, alive and uninjured.
Hands shaking, I lit my Marlboro. “Is this real?” I asked, my voice almost normal. “Viet Nam—Hundred and first Airborne?”
“It is,” she laughed. “How did you know?”
I shrugged.
“Are you some kind of war buff?” She paced the syllables out: “An an-ti-quar-i-an?”
“No,” I confessed. “I … felt something.”
“Interesting.” She smiled, showing teeth.
Our drinks arrived. The bartender set them down and raised a hand. “No charge,” he said, “First time in town is on the house.” He drifted away, out of earshot.
Hers had a pickled green bean in it; mine was in a heavy glass. I inched my chair forward a little and that’s when she pulled a trick on me, something right out of grade school. Eyes wide, aghast, fist to her mouth, she stared at something behind me and hissed: “Creepy Guy—he’s still here!”
I looked, but couldn’t see him anywhere.
“I thought he was all fucked off.”
“He’s not here,” I said.
“No. He is. Over by the blackjack tables.”
“No.” I turned to face her. “He is not.”
She nibbled her pickled bean. “You’re not scared?”
I laughed.
She smiled. “What would you say if I told you he really is over by the blackjack tables? It’s just that you can’t see him.”
“I’d call you a liar.”
“Nevertheless...” She arched an eyebrow. “I assure you. He is. And, at the same time, he also is not—not in the flesh and blood sense of the word.”
“Spooky,” I said. “Ooooo.” I lifted my scotch and pretty much drained it in one. It tasted like peat fires and the rain in the heather.
She took a sip of Bloody Mary and smirked into her glass. “There’s a good boy,” she said. “Drink up.”
Her woman-of-mystery shtick had lost its charm. I looked for the nearest exit and there it was, not eight steps away. The whole front of the casino was open to the street and it was crowded. People milled in and out, and it couldn’t have been more public. It made me believe I was actually safe.
“Tell me something,” I said, finishing the last of my drink. “How is it you know things about me?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Try me,” I said. “Use little words. Maybe I’ll understand.”
She laughed. “I think you already know.”
“Really.”
“You sound skeptical, but you felt something—didn’t you—when you touched me?”
Suddenly, I felt lightheaded. Woozy.
“What did you see? If you don’t mind me asking.”
I needed to lie down. It was like I’d poured way too much hard liquor on an altogether too empty stomach. Things were getting weird as well—hallucinatory. The gears of her tattoo were ticking in full swing, ratcheting, actually keeping time.
“You’re almost exactly the same,” she said, and I didn’t have a clue what she was talking about. It made no sense. I frowned, trying to force-fit the pieces together.
She continued. “You might be more talented, but he’s more accomplished.” She grinned up at something—somebody over my head. “My apprentice.”
I slurred the words: “Gotta go.” Clumsy, I pushed my glass away and made to leave, but suddenly, there were big, meaty hands on my shoulders, pressing me down, pinning me in my chair.
It was Creepy Guy.
“Hey Leo,” she said. “Say hi to Gary. Or is it already too late for that?”
Gary pressed down, shifting more weight onto me and talking directly into my ear: “You’re not going to make trouble—are you?” His breath stank of poor dental hygiene and his voice was a surprise—an octave higher than I would’ve expected.
“He’s taken his medicine,” she said, dispassionately. “He’ll be fine.” She d
oused her cigarette, hissing, in her unfinished drink, repacked her purse and stood, ready to go. Gary straightened, lifting his hands off my shoulders, releasing the pressure.
I managed to focus. It took a real effort, but, sure enough, there were crumbs of something floating in the dregs of my drink. My vision swirled, tunneling around the edges, and then I felt not just really drunk, but anesthetized—dimensions beyond alcohol. After that, I don’t remember much, just random eidetic flashes—events strobe-lit by lightning:
Flash—I was the life of the party, waving my arms and standing in the middle of Freemont Street, loudly proclaiming something particularly ignorant to everyone at large.
Flash—Six shadows, all around, dogging me as I zoomed, arms out like airplane wings, through a car park lit like a stadium. The asphalt under my feet was blue-black and brand-new.
Then, I was emptying my pockets onto the hood of a bottle green, late-model Chrysler, and Gary was going through my stuff. He held up my bankcard and asked: “Hey douche-nozzle—what’s your PIN number?”
I spilled the beans, confessing everything. “Sixth day,” I said, “fifth month, seventy-second year—it’s Anna’s birthday and she’s my ex-wife, and it’s not just checking and savings, there’s a line of credit account too. You can access all of them with that card, from any bank machine.”
Gary licked his lips. “How much are we talking about here?” His swinish little eyes narrowed.
Everything was all swimmy. I struggled to remember. “Checking’s a couple hundred, maybe. Savings is eighty-six thousand and there’s a line of credit as well. You can borrow a hundred grand, no questions asked.”
As I explained the nuances of how best they should rob me blind, Gary snorted, bursting out laughing. They both cracked up then, howling and hooting, holding their sides. I was the world’s most hilarious thing.
Teary-eyed, still chuckling, the woman took me by the arm and turned me around to face a gleaming, lipstick-red, sixty-eight Thunderbird with suicide doors—a lovingly restored museum piece. She popped the trunk. It opened with a two-tone squeak and there were shovels inside.
Apparently, whatever they’d Mickey Finned me with hadn’t entirely shut me down. There was still a vestige of consciousness. I made a noise like a kitten meowing, nothing at all like an adult male’s cry of alarm, and stumbled back, slamming—oof—into a wall of meat. It was Gary, playing zone defense, ready and waiting for me.
He grabbed and spun me, snarling: “Learn who’s boss.” Very professionally, he pivoted at the hips and slugged me in the guts—a mighty wallop. It woofed the wind clean out of me, folding me over, retching, spasming, unable to breathe. He steered me backwards, tipping me into the open trunk and slamming the lid.
I fought for it, and got no air. I fought for another breath and vomited everything up, from the very bottom; spewing like the town pump, rush after rush, tasting medicine, puking up the unprocessed remains of whatever they’d drugged me with.
When I was done and breathing again, I rested my cheek against the slant of a shovel blade, porridge-slick with the erstwhile contents of my stomach. It was dark and peaceful, and exquisitely comfortable. I sighed, letting it all out, letting the medicine carry me off to an altered state of unconsciousness.