Riding BART under the bay, he watched their pale reflections in the dark glass, whited out in beats of safety lights as they swept down the tunnel. Dressed as an especially tawdry Raggedy Ann, Rose put her head on his shoulder.
He was thinking that he was a fool, that it was absurd to imagine that he knew what those people’s lives were like, that his inability to relax and enjoy himself had nothing to do with self-confidence and everything to do with immaturity and insecurity. Only a weak child would be afraid at a party. Stand in the corner. Not talk to anyone. Project his fears onto the people who were enjoying themselves. He added another entry to his personal accounting of his weaknesses. And swore to be better.
But crossing Denizone, turning sideways, plastering himself to the waste-high chains meant to keep people from tumbling onto the dance floor, finding an eddy in the crowd in which he felt for a moment almost alone, he could only look at them all and wonder which had kids at home, unattended, while their parents reveled.
Lost for a moment, he almost didn’t feel his phone vibrating, the tiny sensation lost in the whomping bass notes. When he answered, he could hear only the slightest tinny chatter. Clicking a button on the side of the phone, boosting the volume to max, and sticking a finger in his other ear, he shouted.
“Beenie?”
A barely audible scream.
“Yeah, man. What’s up?”
Overwhelmed by the combination of the noise, the crowd, fatigue, and the speed he’d taken, Park found honesty coming out of his mouth.
“Not much. Just standing here judging people I don’t know.”
He heard Beenie’s gulping laugh.
“Yeah, kinda hard not to in here, isn’t it?”
Park raised himself on his toes and scanned the crowd.
“Where are you?”
“I’m in the main dance hall. You?”
“Same.”
“Do you see, look up at the catwalks, do you see the girl dressed like classic Mortal Kombat Sonya?
Park looked up at the catwalks, and in a stutter of strobes found the girl, shaggy blond hair, big dangling earrings, green headband and matching spandex jazzercise gear, dancing, mixing crunk with choreographed kicks and punches straight from the old video game.
“Yeah, I see her.”
“Well I’m pretty much right under her, trying to decide if it’s worth going up there and risking getting my spine ripped out for a shot at living a junior high sex fantasy.”
Park started moving.
“I’m west of you, circling around the tables.”
“Good call, man. You don’t want to be on the floor right now. Not unless you had your shots and got a lifetime supply of condoms and dental dams with you. Swear to God, man, I have never seen it get so freaky in here.”
Park took a look at the dance floor, a single heaving mass, no way to tell who was meant to be dancing with whom, people clinging to one another, hoping not to get dragged down alone.
He stopped moving, looked up at the catwalks, found the Sonya.
“I’m about ten yards southeast of your dream girl. Can’t see you.”
“Draw a line from her to the back wall, where they’re flashing that tavern fight.”
“Okay.”
“Look straight down from there.”
“Okay.”
“See the sconce that’s been knocked crooked?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m just to the, wait, I see you. Don’t move.”
Park didn’t move, and a moment later Beenie was in front of him, buzzed head dripping sweat, narrow almond-shaped eyes bloodshot and dark-bagged, wearing his usual biking shorts and powder blue Manchester City FC jersey.
Beenie slid his phone closed and tucked it into the pouch on one of the shoulder straps of his tightly cinched backpack, leaning close to shout in Park’s ear.
“Good to see you, bro.”
Their hands met, the little ball of opium passing.
Beenie wrapped an arm around Park’s shoulders and gave him a light squeeze.
“Thanks for hitting me back so fast on this shit. That’s above and beyond, man. What do I owe you?”
Park looked around, found an archway that led to one of the alternative spaces in the club, and pointed. Beenie nodded and followed him around a knot of bodies, through the arch, into the reduced volume of a room shaped like the interior of a conch shell, center reached after a swirl of corridor, walls ringed with cushions and pillows, a haze of incense added to the cigarette and pot smoke, all of it fluoresced by a lighting system that was cycling slowly through various cool shades of green and blue. Clubbers reclined on the pillows or swayed to a slow trance beat.
Park moved them away from the arch, found an acoustic pocket where he could speak.
“You said something the other day.”
Beenie shook his head.
“Okay.”
“You said Hydo maybe knew the guy.”
Beenie winced.
“Yeah, I guess, but I don’t know if I knew what I was talking about.”
Park stared at him.
He liked Beenie. Liked him better than was smart. Knowing that Beenie was someone he’d have to bust eventually, Park shouldn’t have liked him at all. Not because Beenie was a criminal, which he barely was, but because no one wants to put the cuffs on someone he almost thinks of as a friend. Most undercover cops are vastly skilled at compartmentalization. It is a talent as valued as lying. They seal off their real feelings and create imitation emotions. Easily torn down when it’s time to show the badge, drag someone downtown, and sit across from him in an interrogation cell and tell him how fucked he is now.
That is what they tell themselves, anyway. Talking up how deep they can get, how far into their cover. Bragging about the secrets their friends on the other side of that cover have revealed to them. Not the criminal stuff, but the real dirt.
Park had heard them when he was in uniform. Undercovers playing shuffleboard at the Cozy Inn, off duty, sharing secrets about assholes who had cried on their shoulders as they told about the time they tried it with another guy, lost their temper and hit their kid, screwed their brother’s wife, wished their old man would hurry up and die, had their mother put in a home so they could sell her house and use the money for gambling debts, turned the wheel of a car to hit a stray dog to see what would happen. They laughed about it, talked about how they’d use the information to break the assholes when they made their busts.
Coming away from the bar with a beer and a seltzer, Park had watched how they slammed their Jack and Cokes, shots of Cuervo, double Dewars on the rocks, and had recognized the fierce talk and drinking of troubled men. Returning to the corner table where he and Rose were going over lists of baby names, he’d been grateful that he didn’t have to concern himself with such deceptions. With his badge on his chest, his job was not easy, but it was straightforward.
Without a badge, his default setting of cool and distant actually attracted rather than held off his customers. Most illegal drugs are used socially or for self-medication. Social users find it hard to get a word in edgewise with other social users. Conversely, the isolationists are entirely alone. Without trying to, Park projected his natural aura of trustworthiness. And his customers responded, sharing more than their shames and petty crimes, exposing themselves in ways that the undercovers at the Cozy would not have recognized as valuable. But they were treasures for Park, those tales: secret dreams of an artist’s life abandoned for money, the detailed story of an epiphany that changed a lifetime of faith, a revelation about receiving a healthy kidney from a deeply estranged sister, and the recitation of a poem that had won an award when the writer was thirteen.