No Sleep till Wonderland Page 4

  It’s 7:00 p.m., and I wake up thinking about how I’m getting to the Pour House. Transportation is always an issue, an incident waiting to happen. Instead of a cab, I could pick up the number 9 bus at the stop right across from my building, and ride the 9 all the way in to the Prudential. It’d be easy and much cheaper than a cab, but I don’t do well on buses.

  I take out Gus’s gift bag and dry swallow an amphetamine. Yeah, just like that. There is no soul-searching or deliberation. I summarily dismiss the nagging question, What if these aren’t amphetamines? because I can. Swallowing the pill is a complete what’s-the-worst-that-could-happen gesture on my part. Amphetamines are essentially the same stuff I tried before, and probably only have a little extra hot sauce. So why am I clutching the edge of my desk, expecting a Wolfman soft dissolve and transformation?

  While waiting for the fangs to sprout, I do a Web search on amphetamines, which is something I should’ve done first. Apparently amphetamines are habit forming with both physical and psychological dependence. That’s nice. The drug has an impressive and familiar list of side effects that I jot down in my handy-dandy palm-sized notebook. I might need this list later. If I start freaking out, I’ll know why.

  The list:

  I wonder if diarrhea or constipation is user’s choice.

  I close up the office and step outside. It’s another scalding-hot night, but lower humidity and there’s a coastal breeze. I limp across the street to the bus stop and light up a cigarette as the 9 bus surfaces and beaches itself on the corner. I make my first and only drag count before grinding it under my heel. What a waste.

  Inside the bus, the lights flicker with the sputtering AC. It’s cooler in the tin can, but no one feels cool. I lay claim to a seat in the back, behind a couple of giggly teenage boys wearing crooked baseball hats, listening to iPods, and carrying on a loud semiverbal conversation. They’ll annoy me enough to keep me awake.

  The bus rolls away from the curb, and we’re off. Should be a ten-minute trip. Fifteen tops. I’m growing more nervous that I’m too trusting of Gus’s little green pill. Is it too late to change my mind? I have a second pill in my pocket just in case I rechange it later. Gus never did tell me the recommended dosage. As a bike messenger/bartender, he makes a lousy pharmacist.

  It’s a slow ride down Broadway with too many stops. I look out the bus window, but the interior lights reflect my mug on the glass. I’m having trouble focusing, a sentiment I should have tattooed on my tongue. My heart beats louder, knocking its Morse code against my chest. I check my pulse, and it feels quicker than normal, and seems to be gaining momentum, but I don’t usually check my pulse so I don’t really know what is normal.

  I’m multiple-shots-of-espresso wired, but I’m also withdrawn, a step back from reality, whatever that is. My field of vision has a frame on it. I’m in a window. No, I am my own window, and I’m not making any goddamn sense.

  The bus hits a pothole, and I almost scream out. Wait, there is no “almost” about my scream as the two teens turn and look at me, clearly a-scared of the hairy, sweaty, screaming man on speed. At least I’m not driving.

  Okay, calm down, Genevich. I think we passed over Interstate 93 and are getting closer to Copley. I pull out my collection of side effects, and it reads like a checklist. I know some of what I’m experiencing is the placebo effect, me and my damaged gray matter simply cooperating with the list of symptoms, but it doesn’t make me feel any better.

  I curl and pass the paper between my fingers. My fingers feel big and clumsy, and that’s because they are. The “may only hide symptoms of extreme fatigue” is a particularly ominous side effect.

  Ten minutes past forever the bus stops at the Prudential. My fingers are vines, choking the seat in front of me, but I made it. I step off the bus on legs that are skittish and easily spooked. The fresh night air mixed with bus exhaust is a welcome splash of cold water on my face. Released into the expanse of the city, I relax.

  The walk is short, two blocks, and I’m feeling good, confident, focused, the near meltdown on the bus already forgotten. The Pour House is a big place with an upstairs and a downstairs. It’s early, but most of the booths are full of late diners. Graffiti and collected kitsch cover the brick walls. The staff is dressed in black, with a few wearing neon plastic leis around their necks. I hate this place: it tries to be a dive, but it’s too happy, too young. The contrived spontaneity motif rubs me all the wrong ways. I need a smoke, but if I were to light up here the kids would throw their mojitos and appletinis at the grumpy old man.

  I mosey downstairs. Here, it’s darker, and with less crap smeared on the walls. No crowd. The bar takes up most of the square footage with small tables for two tightly lined along the walls. TVs hang in the corners, each tuned to the Sox game, volume muted. Upstairs is the play room. This is the bar. I decide to lean on it.

  Ekat works alongside a male bartender who is completely uninteresting. She’s pretty in an everywoman kind of way. Her face mixes a sharp nose with rounded cheeks. No makeup and her brown hair tied up tight. She sees me, jogs to my end of the bar, and says, “What can I get you?”

  I’m doing okay, but I don’t know about mixing amphetamines, alcohol, and surveillance, oh my. I ask for a beer, Sam Adams. Can’t exactly sit at a bar and order water, now, can I?

  Ekat is a few inches shorter than I am, but moves a hell of a lot faster. She drops my full glass onto the bar without spilling and asks, “Do I know you?” She doesn’t cock her head to the side or send her voice up a few unsure octaves. She says it like she’s mad at herself for not knowing the answer to a stupid question.

  I throw a five on the bar. “Don’t think so. But I get that all the time because I look like everyone else.”

  I went into this assuming Gus wasn’t going to tell her about me. She lives in Southie, so maybe she’s seen me around, or she knows of me because the DA died in my stairwell. Everyone in Southie knows who I am even if they never see me. I’m their Sasquatch, only no one collects my footprints. It’s hard being so popular.

  She laughs—at me or with me, I don’t know. “You’re right. I get your types all night long, usually only on Wednesdays, though. You’re off a night.”

  “I’m usually off.” I retreat to one of the small square tables up against the wall. I’m going to be here for a while and don’t want to be more conspicuous than I already am. I’m the only person in the joint not wearing a tight T-shirt and tighter jeans.

  I think about calling Gus but decide against it. I poke and prod my beer through a couple of hours, then have the waitress bring me ginger ale on the rocks and without a straw. The Red Sox lose. People come and go, and Ekat and her partner serve the drinks. Nothing new, and even the randomness of who orders what and who gets served first seems regimented and predetermined if you watch for too long.

  All around me there are pockets of conversations, some animated, some quiet and subdued, whispers in a crowd, but all the participants are engaged, effortlessly so. They know what to do and how to act. It has all been done and said before.

  As the evening moves on past eleven, my companion fatigue returns, coming back like it’s mad at me for ditching it. I hurt its feelings, and it will not be ignored. It’s been four hours since I took the first amphetamine. I can’t fall asleep here. Taking the other pill isn’t even a choice now. This one, I swallow with ginger ale. I’m sure the carbonation will make it behave.

  Ekat waves at me from the bar. She wants me to come over. Did she see me take the greenie? She’s wearing an I-gotcha smile.

  She says, “Aren’t you the private detective from Southie?”

  “I’m Peter Parker, but I’m all out of special powers.”

  “Come on…”

  “Okay. Don’t know if I’m the”—and I pronounce the as thee because I’m so fancy—“PI of Southie, but I do work there.”

  “I knew it. You’ve only had the one beer since coming in. I’ve been watching you. You’re on a case, aren’t you?
” She points a finger at me.

  Her act tastes a little hammy. I still don’t know whether Gus told her I was coming or not. Maybe now that the night’s getting later, the threat of Eddie showing up seems more real and she wants her presumed protection closer. Or maybe she’s just fucking with me.

  I sit at the bar. There’s room. I say, “You’re my case.”

  “If that’s a pick-up line, it’s terrible and not funny.” Ekat wipes the bar with a rag, angry at the spill that I can’t see.

  “All my pick-up lines are terrible and not funny, but that wasn’t a pick-up line. Our mutual friend Gus…”

  She throws her bar rag, and it bounces off my chest. I didn’t deserve that. “Gus? Gus sent you here?” She swears and talks under her breath, and I’m too polite to eavesdrop.

  “He didn’t tell me there would be flying bar rags.” I think I’m speaking louder than normal, my normal anyway. The second amphetamine has kicked in. Its charge and voltage hum through my system. I’m itching in my stool, toe tapping, both eyes dancing in their sockets. This will work as long as my blood doesn’t explode from my veins.

  She says, “I can take care of myself,” and points at herself with that finger. I’m much more comfortable with that thing pointing away from me.

  I try to sound relaxed, even if I’ve been deported from the island nation of Relaxed. “Gus said the same thing. He also said he thought you could use a little help tonight, that’s all.”

  “I don’t need any help.” Ekat stalks to the other end of the bar, but there’s no one to serve. Any customer would be scared of her anyway.

  I hold up my empty glass, and she comes back with her arms folded over her chest. It’ll be hard to pour drinks that way. I order another ginger ale, no ice this time. I’m so sophisticated. She puts it down in front of me, and I ask her, “How are you taking care of it?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “The Eddie problem. You said you could take care of yourself, and I want to know what your plan is for tonight.”

  Ekat pours herself a glass of water from the soda gun. It’s a good way to spend a pause. “I’m leaving early tonight, before closing, soon if they’ll let me.”

  “Good idea. Mind if I follow you home? You could help me out, make sure I don’t fall asleep on the way back.” Oh hell, that sounds like a line when it isn’t. I shrug and hold up my empty palms as I really don’t know what I’m doing or saying.

  “How am I supposed to do that?”

  “I don’t know. But if you figure it out, please tell me.”

  Ekat finishes her water and throws a quick, spinning look around the bar. “Fuck it. Let’s go now. You get to pay for the cab ride.”

  Nine

  I’m suffocating. I try to cover up my gasps with some fake coughs, but I can’t cover any of it up. It goes without saying I shouldn’t have taken the second little pill. What a drag it is getting old.

  Ekat sits pressed up against the passenger door, as far away from me as possible. I wish I could sit far away from me too. Her posture is granite hard; a statue could take lessons from her.

  We’re in the cab for days, and then she turns to me and asks, “What’s your name again?” She’s as formal as a free clinic doctor.

  “Mark Genevich.”

  “Do you know who Eddie is, Mark Genevich?”

  “He’s the shady bouncer at Gus’s shady bar.”

  “Does that make Gus shady? Or me?”

  Good questions, ones that I’ve been too compromised to fully consider. “I think everyone is shady. Sorry, that wasn’t very nice of me.”

  That last bit teases a smile out of her. She’ll probably regret it. “How much is Gus paying you?”

  “Enough.”

  Ekat shakes her head, expels her disappointment as a sigh through her nose. “I can’t believe he did this. He should’ve asked me first. I’m very mad at him.”

  It’s not my job to defend my employer, new drinking buddy or not. “How do you know Gus?”

  “We’re both from Hull, been friends since middle school.”

  Hull is a coastal town on the south shore, and Hull to Southie is a common migratory path for wannabe urbanites. I say, “Isn’t that sweet?”

  “You’re not funny.”

  Maybe loss of humor is a symptom of narcoleptic speed freaks. I’d write that down on my list of side effects, but my hands are shaking too much. “I was only hired for tonight. What’s your plan for tomorrow?”

  “You mean besides sleeping in and going to the gym?”

  “What are you going to do about Eddie? You can’t leave work early every night.”

  “I can do whatever I want.” Ekat crosses and uncrosses her arms, then her legs. Her anger is making everything uncomfortable. She pivots in her seat, turning to face me head on, as in the collision. “I might look into getting a restraining order. Or I might just buy a gun and shoot him in the face if he ever comes near me.” I don’t know if she’s giving herself a win-one-for-the-Gipper pep talk or if she’s serious. I don’t think it matters, because right now, when she says it, she is serious.

  She turns away and asks, “Are you feeling okay?”

  “I’ve been better. Has Eddie confronted you, in person, since that night you met him?”

  “No, only the phone calls.”

  We don’t speak for the rest of the ride. We’re in Sartre’s No Exit, only we’re in a cab, which adds the elements of potholes and random acceleration and deceleration to our quaint Hell. I wish I could smoke a cigarette, even if my chest is getting tighter with each breath, each strained heartbeat.

  Finally, and right before the walls implode, we stop and idle in front of her I Street apartment. Ekat jumps out. I’m blinded by the interior light but manage to scrape together twenty-five dollars of Gus’s money for the cabbie.

  Her building is a well-kept two-family house with yellow vinyl siding. It’s between Fifth and Sixth streets, and about the halfway point between Carson Beach and East Broadway. New and trendy cars and SUVs fill the street parking spots on both sides of the one-way.

  Ekat is already past a chain-link fence, the basement bulkhead, and stands on a small wooden staircase, key in the side door lock. She says, “What are you doing?”

  I stand outside the fence on the sidewalk, in the shadows. “Just making sure you get inside.”

  “Don’t be an asshole; I’m fine. Seriously, why didn’t you just stay in the cab? You’re not staking out my apartment. I’m dismissing you, Mark. Say goodnight, tip your hat, get a cab, go home.”

  I like that she used the term staking out, but I won’t tip my hat for anyone. I don’t say anything and only give a slight nod of my head. I’m too far away and out of focus for her to see it. She doesn’t wait for my long slow goodbye and disappears into her apartment.

  Hostile client notwithstanding, a gig successfully completed. I’ll reward myself with a midnight trek home. As much as I hate walking—and I’ll probably hate it more in the morning—the outside air cools down my melting reactor core. That’s how it works, right? Simply walk off the speed like it was a big meal.

  I make my way up I Street and take a left on Fifth. I turn on my cell phone, and there are no messages. Maybe I’ll call Gus when I get back to the apartment. He’s probably still at work. I walk behind a church, Gate of Heaven. It’s a big gate, taking up most of the block, its restored spire and turrets propagating the lie that they’ll forever point skyward.

  Something’s off, and it’s not me for a change. The spire. There’s a light at its base, but there’s a dirty fog obscuring most of that holy pointing finger. Wait. It’s smoke, and I smell it too. I turn and stumble around, an aimless weather vane, and there, up ahead, at the end of the block, on the corner of H and Fifth, is a two-family with bright orange lights dancing in its first-floor windows, smoke billowing out of the second floor, and a stick-woman staggering around the street screaming for help.

  I call 911. The presumably interested operator liste
ns to my Timmy’s in the well spiel, then requests I stay on the phone. I hang up because I was never good at following directions.

  I can’t really run or jog. My best is an awkward speed-walk crossed with a follow-the-yellow-brick-road skip. I’m off to see the grand and terrible wizard. I almost fall down, my weaker right leg buckles a few times, but I stay up and make it to the corner.

  The woman, she’s young and skinnier than the scarecrow. Tears and mascara form twin muddy rivers on her contorted face. She bounces around like a panicky electron, all angular momentum. She peaks too fast for complete sentences. Alone and just a boy and upstairs are her verbal shrapnel.

  I mumble something noncommittal, I think, and it works. She takes off down the street, screaming. I hope I didn’t say “I can help,” because that’s a promise I can’t make, nobody can make. Sirens harmonize with her screams, but they’re still the backup singers here, and they sound Rhode Island far away.

  I climb the short set of wooden front stairs, fully aware that the worst of my symptoms—cataplexy and the hypnagogic hallucinations—attack when my anxiety levels go toxic. The burning building in front of me is likely to present as a stressful situation.

  But with the amphetamines, I’m the new me, Genevich 2.0. I’ve been a physical wreck at times tonight, but I’ve made it without any real narcolepsy symptoms, without any gaps or naps or missing time. But the list, the side effects, that bit about amphetamines only hiding or masking the symptoms. But and but and but…Screw it. I open the door.

  A blast of heat and smoke lands a devastating one-two punch, and I have a glass chin. I swoon into a standing eight count. Goddamn, I actually feel my consciousness want to detach and hide like a turtle retreating into a hopelessly soft shell that won’t save anyone.

  I hike up my jacket to protect my head. Cotton is just so flame retardant. The front stairwell looks like my own brownstone’s stairwell. I can’t see the second-floor landing because of the smoke. I’ve seen this picture before. Orange flames chew their way up the left wall.