I was in the office when the call came—feet up on the desk, hat on my rack, whiskey in my mitt. The sun was setting outside through my perpetually clean window, looking like fiery oils of purple and red all blending together, reminding me of the time I asked my partner to marry me, standing on the dock of El Reyes while a guitarist on the beach sang Sting’s marvelous ballad “Until,” an acoustic number that sounds schmaltzy at first—the kind of thing some pinhead in a monkey suit would listen to while crushing a union push in his company’s ranks—but there’s real feeling under all that polish and gloss. I mean, just look at me. Don’t I feel things, even if I can’t breathe? You bet your burnt-to-a-crisp Maddur vada fritters I do. People always say a private eye needs to be objective: stable, calm, like a glass of water on a marble table, never touched, never hassled by anything as vulgar as a human hand, or history. But I say that’s some Grade-A malarkey cooked up by a drunk bunch of yahoos who used to have power. The art of detection (although maybe not the business) is the business of feelings, and I’ll piss in the wind on my printmake before I tell you otherwise, got that? So when I say that my eve leapt straight into my nexus when I heard that voice, I’m saying that I knew this case was going to be big. Godly.
“I’m looking for Cleanskin Chris.”
I sipped my whiskey, because it was filled with the dead souls of my alcoholic ancestors, and then said, “I might as well be the guy to find him.”
The other voice said, “Good,” and then hung up. I knew it was a quality relationship because we didn’t need to talk, there wasn’t any coy dialogue or flirting. I hated physical contact, and that included voice on voice. I only did it for my job, because I wanted to get independent and quit being a burden on my own conscience.
My client sent me an encrypted file with everything I needed to know, plus a deposit that covered my next month’s rent and then some. For no reason at all, I thought about the time I tried killing myself by driving my car into a guardrail. I thought about it for a long time, longer than was strictly healthy, and I found a satisfaction in it now that I wasn’t married, now that I didn’t have to have fucking sex and remember every time that my uncle had touched me when I was eight—ha ha, get your laughs in now, asshole.
I understood why Kafka’s protagonist was a bug, and why it was so fucking funny.
There was nothing else to do, so I got to work. Well, first I dumped my whiskey down the drain and thanked it for not killing me, and then I washed out the tumbler and put it back on the shelf, along with my bumblebee spatula and a copy of the Upanishads, which I never showed to anyone because I hated the thought of being seen as a contemplative gentleman, I hated men generally because I was one and because I was mentally broken, and I didn’t have the skills yet to haul myself out of that linguistic prison yet, which really meant that I couldn’t switch off the constant flow of thoughts that had plagued me ever since I felt the angry air of my middle-class childhood home in the suburbs, a nothing place in a nothing time that disgusted me with its familial blandness, disgusted to the point I tried killing myself by driving into a guardrail, and then my rich uncle (the one who touched me) paid for me to have a brand-new corpus, some bio but mostly plastic, which was why I didn’t breathe, strictly speaking, anymore. But don’t squeeze out any tears for me, I was dirt my whole life but I had a rich uncle, and most of the families where I’m from die a little bit a time, busing to work, and not in one fabulous go like I did, although I’ve worked my share of joint-killing shame-filling jobs. All the other uncles I knew who touched their nephews were poor, so there’s a silver lining in everything, I guess.
Shit. Even now I was swimming in self-oriented cognitions, when I should’ve been working. So I shut up and logged into Xiande, which was the world I hated but couldn’t quit. Sorry to say I hate so many things—it’s just an emotional reaction, and men are nothing if not emotionally stunted and fragile. I often think of us as twisted trees in a swamp that’s slowly burning, we’re stuck out into the fog and not even angry at the fire now, we actually crave it because our skin feels grafted onto us by a surgeon from hell, plus there’s no fun, we’re television shows that we watch out of boredom until we fall apart, Abraham’s ex-wife pillar of salt.
As I woke up in my bed, I realized I’d forgotten to look out of my real-life window for luck. But luck was just as fake as love or hatred, or even my jaded put-on.
The sun was rising in Tejon Amado, putting a mist of pink into my small rented silver room, making it beautiful like the jail cell of a convicted killer when he’s finally seen the shape of his life and how funny it is that he’s trapped in a giant box, because we’re all trapped in boxes, and really he’s protected from the wildness of the outside world, its monstrous stock markets and clubs stuffed with sweating, happy people grateful for the chance to dance outside of the uniform they’re forced to wear during the week, the overalls or cheap, scratchy branded polo.
I went for a run in the quiet silver streets, before the morning rush enacted, because I saw a commercial one time about not being an addict where the young woman went out for a run when it was still dark, and when she got back she picked up the morning paper from her driveway and gave it to her dad, who was just getting up. My life has been defined by foreign objects, I am the architecture for housing narcotics, and it is my lot in life to make sense of that. You might think I’m mopey or crummy but I don’t even care, I accept this mantle like a student nodding blankly at the topic for a paper she’s been assigned, and I don’t even think about it except now, before I run.
See via empty shell, a busted mannequin, I have no eyes or mouth, the light gleams off me like bullets off the rail of a fire escape, I breathe because running inspires it. (In this fake world is the only place I can still breathe, where I remember how to breathe.) There is no flesh but my flesh, the knocks of my soles hitting the pavement are small and perfect, I view the art of violence as an art of fear, even you marines with your bloody rifles, you’re just fucking scum, every one of you.
Slowly the sheath of my own life falls away, and I lean into the glint of sun that cuts across a skyscraper, dividing me into color and shadow, which means nothing, duality is a bum’s barfly joke. I keep moving, I turn the corner and jog past an old woman pushing a stroller, I run under signs that promise jewelry and coffee. My life is a melting stream of metal, and as it boils I feel like singing, I am so lightened.
I run until my lungs force me to stop, which is further than yesterday, at least. Then I wait for my junky elevator to take me upstairs, and I brew coffee and shower and sit on my bed staring out the blinds with the cup in my hand, one knee up, thankful for my penis because it’s mine and no one gets to touch it. I hate touch and I hate the idea of love. My ex-partner said I had a heart of glass, and they’re right, it isn’t muscle.
I wrote the number 346 in my notebook, because that’s how long I’d been sober inside Xiande. That many days in a row, which was pretty cool. Then I got up and danced, running my hands up to my neck and pushing them over my head, stepping back and forth in front of my mirror, trying to escape myself through timed movement.
Too many I-cognitions, I thought. So I needed friends, which would force me to care about something outside my skull. I was tired of skulls.
“Louis?” I said, calling.
“Present,” he said.
“Want to go to the art museum?” I said.
“I’m already there,” he said. “I’m on acid.”
“Cool,” I told him. “I’ll meet you there in 20.”
“Make it 25, man. I gotta take a huge, steaming shit.”
I spent five minutes playing with the tongue of my left sneaker, wondering why it felt different from the right. Then I went downstairs and walked out the door and took the 7 train to Holstander Clock, which loomed over the plaza like a dinosaur’s bones.
I went in through the automatic glass doors and paid by looking at the screen and went up to the third floor, where the kitsch exhibit was still going. Louis knew all the drug dealers in town, or he at least knew three, and that was good enough for now.
I found him standing in front of a giant clown made out of papier-mache. The thing was sitting down with its upper body leaning towards its toes, like it was trying to stretch but wasn’t flexible yet. One of its eyes had a big red star painted around it. It wore a rainbow-colored floppy cap with a pom-pom stuck on the end of it. I looked into the clown’s face and saw that the artist had made it look like a middle-aged man, creased and slightly frowning, but more through exertion than despair. It reminded me of Degas’ ballet dancers for some reason, but maybe that’s because almost everything does, they’re my favorite paintings.
“Punchinello,” said Louis, his torso perpendicular to his legs. His hair was a wild mass of curls, and he had a small piece of cardboard stuck in them. He wore a long blue corduroy jacket whose sleeves went past his wrists, and a pair of tight green pants that showed off his calves, he was an excellent hiker. I had no idea who he was in real life. It didn’t matter here. Doxian was fake.
“Pagliacci,” I said, rubbing my beard. I looked around at the cream-colored walls of the room, at the security guard. She wore a black uniform with a white nametag on it: Brandi, it said. There was a couple behind me staring appreciatively at a 5×5 canvas covered in rabbit blood.
“No,” said Louis, turning his head while still keeping himself bent forward. It was like he was trying to be creepy on purpose, but then I remembered he was on acid. “His name’s Punchinello. I checked.”
“Sounds like plagiarism to me,” I said. “Louis, I need to ask some capitalists some questions.” My dick started to hurt, who knew why. I had a lot problems with my dick these days, that was why I was protective of it.
Louis picked his nose and then, stealing a glance at Brandi, who was watching, jammed the dried snot in his coat pocket. If she hadn’t been watching, he probably would’ve flicked it on the clown, but Louis was a sucker for authority. “You think she’ll go out with me?” he asked, sweating.
“Louis, you look like a goddamn psychopath,” I said. “Take a shower and come back tomorrow with a haircut. And pop some of the pimples on your neck.”
“In front of her? That’s gross.”
“Louis, I need a name.”
“Punchinello,” he said, pointing. I wondered how long he could keep a position like that, bent like an L. Maybe he’d been doing yoga. Maybe he didn’t have any fucking bones.
“I don’t think he can sell me drugs,” I said.
“Oh, drugs?” He finally stood up straight. He was taller than me by a head. His hair was completely purple, and I saw now that he had a new tattoo on his throat that said “toni” in elegant script. “Got to go to Mav for that. She’s got this new thing called englishclass that makes you see all these weird words.”
Surreptitiously I adjusted my belt, but my dick kept hurting. “Sounds preppy. Is there a test at the end?”
Louis looked at me seriously. He grabbed my arm, he was breathing heavily. “Every second of your life is a test. And you always pass.”
I smiled at him. He was maybe my only friend. “Thanks, Louis. Can you take me to see Mav right now? I’ll buy you a hotdog.”
Louis slapped my cheek and strolled away towards the stairwell. “I want a hotdog, please,” he said. Before he left the room, he snapped his fingers, twisted his long, lanky body around so the coat flapped, and waved at the security guard. “Bye Brandi!” he said. Then he whispered to himself, loudly, “Maybe I should make my tattoo say Brandi.”
I guided him gently but purposefully out of the room, hand in the middle of his back. “Let’s wait until you ask her on the date before you get more tattoos, bud. And don’t bother her at work, or anywhere. See things from her perspective, you know? Look at yourself through her eyes.” I wasn’t sure if he knew she was a non-playable character, but it didn’t matter.
Louis grinned and lifted his arms in the air, wiggling his fingers. Luckily he was out of Brandi’s sight by now, we were in a room where red stalactites made of melted-together prosthetic limbs hung from the ceiling, which if you know your stalactites from your stalagmites you already knew they were the ceiling ones, congratulations.
“You’re very wise, you know. You’ve got talent.”
The skin under Louis’ eyes was pink. He looked like he’d been living under someone’s stairs for about a year. If he was an animal, I think he’d be a frog, but not a bullfrog. Something smaller.
“I don’t have any talent,” I said. “I just float.”
Louis broke into a grin. Then he hugged me, and I stopped feeling icy and shut-down, so I hugged him back.
… CHAPTER CONTINUES
