In room 6314, as if to demonstrate all of the preceding, Mr. Crescent City leans over his cache of powdered K. One of his hands holds his braided pigtail to the side of his head lest it flop. His other hand squishes one nostril shut while the other nostril tracks the dusty trail. Like an upstate farmer plowing a dirt field, he completes one line and begins the next. When his nose has left the glass table clean, still bent double at the waist, Mr. Crescent City freezes for a moment. Not looking up, not standing upright, he says, “Don’t be scared, little dead girl….” His voice muffled near the tabletop, he says, “I’m a professional. This is what I do for a living….” His arms go limp. His braid flops loose.
“It’s ironical,” he says, “but I’ve got to die to make a living.” At that Mr. Psychic Bounty Hunter pitches forward, crashing face-first through the glass.
DECEMBER 21, 8:35 A.M. EST
Hail, Maddy
Gentle Tweeter,
In room 6314 a dead scarecrow lies splayed in an explosion of broken coffee table. Strange as this admission may seem, this is not the first time I’ve stood alone in a room with a dead man on the floor at my feet, surrounded by shattered glass. Be patient, and a pattern will soon emerge.
How to describe what happens next? To date, I’ve suffered as an inmate of Hell. I’ve done battle with demons and tyrants and stood atop lofty cliffs overlooking majestic oceans of bodily fluids. Alive, I’ve been born aloft from Brisbane to Berlin to Boston in a Gulfstream as groveling minions plied my greedy mouth with peeled grapes. I’ve watched, albeit unimpressed, as my mother rode the back of a computer-generated dragon to a castle built of simulated rubies while drinking a Diet Coke in dramatic slow motion. Still, none of that has prepared me for the following. I step around the fallen Mr. Crescent City and crouch for a closer look. The floor is graveled in crystals of shattered safety glass. The rolled paper, the cover from Parade magazine, has slipped from his nose and slowly opens, blossoming against the sparkling nuggets. My mom, the perfect version of hair and teeth and human potential for everyone in the whole world. Me, the bane of her existence.
The naturalist in me—the supernaturalist; call me the Charles Darwin of the afterlife—I take careful regard of what occurs. The heap of junkie-filled laundry begins to shine. Something as faint as a memory shimmers on the surface of the body. A glow as insubstantial as a thought begins to rise from the fallen figure. Please note, Gentle Tweeter, that memories and thoughts are the stuff of ghosts. For souls are nothing if not pure consciousness. This spirals up to shape the translucent form I first saw in the foyer of the Rhinelander penthouse. The wasted, wrinkled body remains on the floor, but above it stands a shimmering double. It looks at me and smiles, rapt. “Little dead girl.”
Sitting on the bed, I say, “My name is Madison Spencer.” I nod toward the photo of me and my mother unfurled on the floor.
The figure, I’ll venture, is Mr. Crescent City’s spirit. Anecdotal evidence suggests that ketamine users can depart their physical selves. The consciousness of the intoxicated person detaches. The soul leaves the sedated body and is free to travel, according to the not-exact testimony of numerous drugged-out Special K abusers.
The spirit glances from me to the photo and back to me. He drops to his ghost knees and touches his forehead to the carpet at my feet, his hairy braid flopping against my Bass Weejuns. His voice muffled by the carpet, he says, “Little dead girl… it’s you!”
Out of pure meanness I put a ghost foot forward and step on his vile pigtail.
A foul sputtering noise rends the air.
A second trumpeting blast follows.
The prostrate underling, he’s breaking wind. “Oh, great Madison Spencer,” he whispers. “Hear my prayer.” He lets loose a fresh—fresh?—round of flatulence. “Hurry and accept my tribute and praise, okay? I need to make this quick, because I only have a couple minutes before I go back in my body, but I need to tell you about my holy mission….”
And the vile monster, he lets another rip.
DECEMBER 21, 8:38 A.M. EST
Boorism: The New World Disorder
Gentle Tweeter,
The pigtailed phantom of Mr. Crescent City kowtows on the floor at my feet, clearly demented. His face pressed to the carpet, the ghost softly mutters the words, “Piss. Shit. Shit. Fuck. Pussy. Tits. Fucker…” A mantra of expletives. He’s whispering, “Motherfucker. Butthole. Crap. Crap. Crap…” It’s Tourette’s syndrome suffered in an attitude of prayer. In time with his obscene utterances he lifts his open hands, stretching his fingers toward me, beseeching. Nearby lies the inert heap of his earthly body, starfished flat atop a sparkling sea of shattered glass.
From my position, sitting on the bed, I extend one chubby ghost leg and push the toe of a Bass Weejun against his supplicating head. Not kicking him in the skull, not exactly, I just push. I ask, “What’s your problem?”
In response, Mr. Crescent City, his rude ghost, passes gas. A real honker, a real Canadian goose call. Tranced out, he’s muttering, “Please accept the reverent song of my stale bunghole, dear Madison. Accept the humble praise of my ‘Hail, Maddy….’”
Hail, Maddy? Gentle Tweeter, these words form an instant blockage within my brain. Somehow, my name has come to be synonymous with making a stinky?
I say, “Let me confirm something: You’re saying my mom hired you?”
“Accept my butt prayer,” he says, “Sacred angel Millicent Spencer, I petition for your divine guidance.”
I say, “You are disgusting.” I say, “And for your information my name is ‘Madison,’ you pestilent worm.”
“Forgive me, little pissed-off angel girl.”
Me, an angel. As if. I ask, “How much is my mom paying you?” I stand and step closer, asking, “What did my parents tell you?” After all the Gaia agitprop my parents have spouted in Vanity Fair, my former-pagan, former-Buddhist, former-atheist mom and dad, I can’t imagine what faith they espouse now. I snap my fingers to get his attention.
“Camille, great Camille,” the kowtowing ghost says, “mother of the little messiah who will guide all mankind to paradise…” He belches. “Hear my prayers.”
I lift one ghost foot and plant it on the back of his glowing phantom neck. “Let me get this straight. So you toot a fat rail of K and drop into a K-hole. Your soul leaves your body for, let me guess, an hour?” Through my clenched teeth, I warn, “If you break wind again, I’ll rip that mangy pigtail right off your scalp.”
“Thirty, maybe forty minutes,” he says, still facedown. One of his outstretched hands tilts side to side, a gesture of hedging. “I found Marilyn Monroe this way. I found Elvis,” says the spirit, tapping his breastbone, a note of pride in his voice. “I’m the best.”
I say, “That’s a lot of ketamine.”
“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck,” he says.
“Stop that!” I say.
“But it’s how I pay tribute,” he whines.
“To me?”
“We don’t have much time,” he says. “I pilgrimaged here on behalf of your old lady. My sacred duty is, I’m supposed to deliver you safely to the Pantages.”