You can’t buy RPM or acetylated neocorticine on the street. There isn’t much of a market for either drug. They both have the same long-term effect: After repeated doses of these drugs, a person’s nervous system begins to degenerate. They compete for the binding sites in the human brain that are normally used by acetylcholine, a neuro-transmitter. These new psychedelics attack and occupy the binding sites like a victorious army swooping down upon a conquered city; they cannot be removed, either by the body’s own processes or by any form of medical therapy. The hallucinatory experiences are unparalleled in pharmacological history, but the price in terms of damage is exorbitant. The user, more literally than ever before, burns out his brain, synapse by synapse. The resulting condition is symptomatically indistinguishable from advanced Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases. Continued use, when the drugs begin interfering with the autonomic nervous system, probably proves fatal.
Bill hadn’t reached that state yet. He was living a daylong, nightlong dreamlife. I remembered what it had been like sometimes, when I had dropped a less-dangerous psychedelic and had been struck by the crippling fear that “I would never come down,” a common illusion that you use to torture yourself. You feel as if this time, this particular drug experience, unlike all the pleasant experiences in the past, this time you’ve gone and broken something in your head. Trembling, terrified, promising that you’ll never take another pill again, you huddle up against the onslaught of your own darkest dreams. At last, however, you do recover; the drug wears off, and sooner or later you forget just how bad the horror was. You do it again. Maybe this time you’ll be luckier, maybe not.
There were no maybes with Bill. Bill was never coming down, ever. When those moments of utter, absolute dread began, he had no way to lessen the anxiety. He couldn’t tell himself that if he just held out long enough, in the morning he’d be back to normal. Bill would never be back to normal. That’s the way he wanted it. As for the cell-by-cell death of his nervous system. Bill only shrugged. “They all gonna die someday, right?”
“Yes,” I replied, clinging nervously to the rear seat of his taxi as he plunged through narrow, twisting alleys.
“And if they go all at once, everybody else has a party at your funeral. You don’t get nothin’. You get buried. This way, I get to say good-bye to my brain cells. They all done a lot for me. Good-bye, good-bye, farewell, it’s been good to know ya. Give each goddamn little fucker its own little send-off. If you die like a regular person, bam! you’re dead, violent stopping of every goddamn part of you, sugar in the gas tank, water in the carburetor, come to a grinding halt, you get one second, maybe two seconds, to scream to God that you’re on your way. Awful way to come to an end. Live a violent life, live a violent death. Me, I’m sneaking across the bar one neuron at a time. If I have to go into that good night, I’m goin’ gentle; the hell with whoever said not to. That sucker’s dead. man, so what did he know? Not even the courage of his convictions. Maybe after I’m dead the afrit won’t know I’m there if I keep my mouth shut. Maybe they’ll leave me alone. I don’t want to be fucked with after I’m dead, man. How can you protect yourself after you’re dead? Think about that, man. I’d like to get my hands on the guy who invented demons, man. And they call me crazy.”
I didn’t want to discuss it any further.
Bill drove me out to Seipolt’s. I always had Bill drive me when I went into the city for any reason. His insanity distracted me from the pervasive normalness all around, the lack of chaos imposed on everything. Riding with Bill was like carrying a little pocket of the Budayeen around with me for security. Like taking a tank of oxygen with you when you went into the deep, dark depths.
Seipolt’s place was far from the center of the city, on the southeast edge. It was within sight of the realm of the everlasting sand, where the dunes waited for us to relax just a little, and then they’d cover us all like ashes, like dust. The sand would smooth out all conflicts, all works, all hopes. It would swoop down, a victorious army upon a conquered city, and we would all lie in the deep, dark depths beneath the sand forever. The good night would come — but not just yet. No, not here, not yet.
Seipolt saw that order was maintained and the desert held back; date palms arched around the villa, and gardens bloomed because water was forced to flow in this inhospitable place. Bougainvillea flowered and the breeze was perfumed with enticing aromas. Iron gates were kept in repair, painted and oiled; long, curving drives were kept clean and raked; walls were whitewashed. It was a magnificent residence, a rich man’s home. It was a refuge against the creeping sand, against the creeping night that waits so patiently.
I sat in the back of Bill’s taxi. His engine idled roughly, and he muttered and laughed to himself. I felt small and foolish — Seipolt’s mansion awed me, despite myself. What was I going to say to Seipolt? The man had power — why, I couldn’t hold back even a handful of sand, not if I tried with all my might and prayed to Allah at the same time.
I told Bill to wait, and I watched him until I saw that somewhere down in his careening mind he understood. I got out of the taxi and walked through the iron gate, up the white-pebbled drive toward the front entrance to the villa. I knew that Nikki was crazy; I knew that Bill was crazy; I was now learning that I wasn’t entirely well, either.
As I listened to my feet crunching the small stones, I wondered why we all just didn’t go back where we’d come from. That was the real treasure, the greatest gift: to be where you truly belonged. If I was lucky, someday I would find that place. Inshallah. If Allah willed.
The front door was a massive thing made of some kind of blond wood, with great iron hinges and an iron grille. The door was swinging open as I raised my hand to grasp the brass knocker. A tall, lean, blond European stared down at me. He had blue eyes (unlike Bill’s, this man’s eyes were the kind you always hear described as “piercing” and, by the Prophet’s beard, I felt pierced); a thin, straight nose with flaring nostrils; a square chin; and a tight-lipped mouth that seemed set in a permanent expression of mild revulsion. He spoke to me in German.
I shook my head. “ ‘Anaa la ’alham.” I said, grinning like the stupid Arab peasant he took me for.
The man with the blond hair looked impatient. He tried English. I shook my head again, grinning and apologizing and filling his ears with Arabic. It was obvious that he couldn’t make any sense out of my language, and he wasn’t going to try any harder to find another that I might understand. He was just on the point of slamming the heavy door in my face, when he saw Bill’s taxi. That made him think. I looked like an Arab; to this man, all Arabs were pretty much the same, and one of their shared qualities was poverty. Yet I had hired a taxi to drive out to the residence of a rich and influential man. He was having trouble making sense of that, so now he wasn’t so ready to dismiss me out of hand. He pointed at me and muttered something; I supposed it was “Wait here.” I grinned, touched my heart and my forehead, and praised Allah three or four times.