King in exile in his own land. Alone. And most cruel.
There’s a worm at the heart of the world, eating itself.
Did you know that?
It’s true.
And with each bite it does itself injury. Kills itself a little more. Digests another mouthful of its own intestine. Its howls are muffled by its body. But, being as it’s at the heart of the world, people still hear it. They get driven mad from listening to the damn thing eat itself. They want to make it stop so they won’t have to hear it anymore. And the way you kill what’s at the heart of the world is, you kill the world.
Tell me you don’t know the people I’m talking about.
Driving down Harlem River Drive, traffic breaking now, the Impala growling to itself about the pace, I let the radio scan the frequencies. A year underground and a man misses out on a lot. Arts and culture. Science and technology. Politics and finance. Most of the music puts my teeth on edge. But it always has. The news doesn’t so much put them on edge as make me wish for something bloody to sink them into.
I think in verbs while I listen to the news. Rend. Rip. Tear.
I hear that worm in the news, eating itself, choking on a bite, puking it back up, eating it again. And I wonder where it all starts. This cycle. What I feel on the streets, the tension, does it start with what people like me are doing just around the corner, the almost immediate danger of things that feed on blood going to war? Or does it start with what people completely not like me are doing, far away and out of touch, blood feeders of a different sort, going to war?
The scan hits the Jam, “That’s Entertainment.” I turn it up and let the subwoofers in the trunk of the Impala pound bass through my spine.
Fuck the worm. I have a gun and a knife and a couple feet of braided wire that can saw through bone. Get that worm between my teeth, eat it before it can eat itself. Like finding it at the bottom of a bottle of mescal.
Mescal.
I need a bar.
I’m not a complicated guy.
What it takes to keep my hackles down is mostly a drink, a smoke, no one fucking with me, and at least a pint of blood a week. Although on one a week I’ll be getting pretty cranky by Thursday night. Right now what I need is the drink. A plain drink. Booze. There wasn’t much of it to be found the last year. I had a couple guys I could slip a couple bucks to and they’d do my shopping for me up top, but you couldn’t much trust those sterno suckers to bring back a bottle for you and expect to find anything in it. Now, once I start thinking about how good a drink would go down, I can’t get clear of the thought.
I need a drink. And a place to have it in where I won’t get fucked with.
The HRD became the FDR around Gracie Mansion. Like that’s a surprise. At Seventy-third I slip off to an exit lane, take it two blocks to Seventy-first, cut west and over to First Avenue and back uptown. I’ve only been on the Upper East a couple times in my life, but it’s a part of Manhattan, so I know there are bars. I go with a pub this time out. Safest choice when you’re going in blind. Yeah, they’ll likely serve you your drink in a stemmed glass, but they have every flavor of whiskey, at least one good-looking girl with a brogue, and the Pogues on the juke.
There’s a guy parked just up the street in an idling car, waiting for someone to come out from a building. I pull in alongside him and beep. He looks, I hand signal, asking if he’ll clear the space while he waits so I can park. He turns away, acting like he didn’t see.
There’s a bunch of change at the bottom of one of the cup holders between the seats. I dig out a handful, roll down my window, and throw it at the guy’s door. He jumps and looks at me with that Oh no, I’ve upset a crazy person look that all New Yorkers get once or twice a year. I give him a new hand signal, pointing at him, pointing at the street, hoisting my middle finger. Sign language gets through this time as he begins to pull from the spot, clear on the fact that he’s supposed to fuck off now before I hurt him.
I park, lock the Impala, walk into the Banshee Pub, pass the happy-hour cluster of dart-playing ex-frat boys, order a double, and a guy drinking something light blue looks at me and points at my eyepatch.
– Hey, you look like a pirate.
I swallow my drink, put the glass down, look at the bartender, point at the glass, and look back at the guy with the blue drink.
– You look like a punching bag.
I get my second drink, and no one else fucks with me.
Bliss.
• • •
Tick-tick-tick.
I drink.
Tick-tick-tick.
I smoke.
Tick-tick-tick.
I know people in Cure. I know the top ladies. I just don’t know where I stand with them these days. Call them, could be they sound all happy to hear from me, Sure, Joe, come on in, we got a secret passage all set up, just say open sesame. Come through to the other side and find Sela with her favorite machine gun. Or just her bare hands. Hard to say which would kill me quicker. Figure she’d be happy to see me gone no matter the situation. Her main squeeze is the big question mark.
Amanda Horde. Founder and true believer of Cure.
How she feels about me, it all depends on what she remembers now. And how insane she is these days.
But I got other phone numbers. One of them, it’s always been pretty lucky for me. Another woman, for fuck sake. But it’s not like that with us.
Lydia.
Good thing about Lydia, you know how she’ll play her hand every time. Straight.
No pun intended.
– Who is this?
– Hey, Lydia.
– Who is this?
– Me.
There’s this pause, the kind of pause it’s easy to imagine the person on the other end of the line wishing they could reach through the phone and grab you by the throat and shake you up and down until you break.
There’s a hiss of held breath being released and pushed through a word.
– Coward.
Could be. Could be. Either way, it’s not a word that skins my feeling.
– Good to hear your voice too, Lyd. Hey, I got a joke for you.
– Pitt.
– How do you know a lesbian is on a second date?
– Was it a lie?
– Hang on, this is OK material.
– Was it?
– You know a lesbian is on a second date when she shows up with a pickup truck full of stuff to move in.
– Is it there?
I try to think of another joke.
She doesn’t wait.
– Are those kids really out there? Was it a lie, Pitt? Was it an angle you were playing? I don’t care about what it’s done to everything. It doesn’t matter. But the kids, Joe. Are they really in that hole? Is it real? Tell me. Did you make it up? You made it up. Tell me. You made it up.
I can’t think of another joke.
All I can think of is the truth.
Damn.
– No. I didn’t make it up. It’s there.
She’s someplace quiet, I can hear her breathing. The breathing stops like she might say something, but she doesn’t.
Then she does.
– You left them there.
She’s right about that. Isn’t she.
– Well. I tell ya, Lydia. If I’d had my Pied Piper gear with me, I’d have played ‘em a tune they could have all followed me out to. Just didn’t happen that way.
– Fucker.
Again, she’s right about that.
– Want to get this all off your chest now, or you gonna keep dragging it out? I only ask ‘cause if you’re gonna drag it out I might set the phone down while I go to the bar for a drink.
– Hey, Joe?
– Yeah.
– Have you noticed something?
– Tell me.
– I’m not laughing at your jokes. Know why?
– Because you never have?
A plucked-wire tone comes into her voice, making me glad I’m not in the same room with her.
– I’m not laughing because the idea of someone uncovering an underground concentration camp and spreading news of that camp, setting off a war, and then running away from the consequences and responsibilities embodied in his discovery and subsequent actions, I’m not laughing because the idea of that doesn’t leave room for anything to be funny anymore. I’m not laughing, Joe, because you’re not funny. Sad. Pathetic. Cowardly. But not funny.