Are You Loathsome Tonight? (15 page)

“Yeah, I bet you'll show us."

“I show you that too, if you like. But first I show you new drug."

Franzz's “room” was an enormous luxury flat overlooking the gaudiest stretch of Oudezijds Voorburgwal, lent to him by an unnamed friend who had chosen to ring in the Millennium elsewhere. Through a vast picture window the pink smear of neon, the stone arches lit with globes of electric red, the shimmering black canal, the peristalsis of the crowds could be seen or blotted out with the touch of a button that turned the glass into a mirror. We left the view on.

Never one to waste time, Franzz produced a tiny plastic bag from somewhere and tapped its contents onto a glass coffee table. A scatter of white powder, which he began to caress with a razor blade. Trevor looked interested, but I backed off.

“Nuh-uh, you guys. Not if it's any kind of coke or speed, or even X, you never know what that shit's cut with. You know me and stimulants."

Franzz didn't look up from his task, but spoke without moving his lips to avoid blowing the powder, which made his indefinable accent even weirder. “Yezzz, yezzz, ZZach. I know you and stimulants. No coffee, no crystal, no Coca-Cola. This is something safe for you high-strung types."

I let that one pass, since my personality isn't particularly high-strung but my body undoubtedly is. “So what exactly—"

Franzz interrupted me with something so full of Z's that I could make no sense of it.

“Say again?"

He looked up, pronounced the two words carefully.
"Sssynthetic ayahuasca."

Trevor really perked up then. “That's in Burroughs."

“Impossible,” said Franzz, “since it was only synthesized to perfection one week ago."

“Not the designer version. The real article in the rain forest. He called it
yage
, and he went to Colombia to look for it at the end of
Junky
."

“Und?"

“Well, he found it, of course. He's written some stuff about it since then. A strange hallucinogen.” Trev frowned. “Doesn't it cause projectile vomiting?"

“Fortunately,” said Franzz, “they have synthesized that out."

He scraped up three large, sloppy lines. I noticed that the powder didn't have the icy glint of coke or the eggshell tint of heroin; rather, it gave off a pearly, subtle iridescence that I could have been imagining but didn't think I was.

“Gentlemen?"

Franzz was holding out, I swear to God, a gold-plated cocaine straw. Probably a vintage model from the seventies. What the hell. I turned my head and exhaled, put a finger over my left nostril, bent over the coffee table and snorted my line of jungle powder.

I was ready for pain. The handful of times I'd snorted anything, my sinuses always seemed to think I'd jammed a flamethrower up my nose. But this went down
cool
.

“A touch of eucalyptus,” said Franzz.

“That sounds healthy."

“Yezzz. Drugs are zo good for you."

I watched Trevor do his line, stray pieces of ginger-colored hair escaping his ponytail and dabbling in the powder. He threw his head back, closed his eyes, inhaled sharply, and smiled. I reached over and squeezed his hand as Franzz did up his own dose. His long pencil-callused fingers enfolded mine in a familiar grip. Whatever happened, he was there. I knew he was thinking the same thing.

“Zee very first thing this drug does,” Franzz announced, “is to make you unbearably horny."

I glanced at Trev. His eyes were open, but narrowed. Was Franzz going to hit us up for a
ménage à trois
? He'd never tried anything like that before—seemed to know better. And, hell, he was in Amsterdam; he could have younger, kinkier stuff than us.

“So,” Franzz continued with a smile, perhaps sensing our apprehension, “I leave you
zwei
alone for a little while. Maybe I bring someone back later. I will enjoy using the bed more if I know two beautiful boys have warmed it!"

Snapping up the collar of his leather jacket for emphasis, he strode over to the door, tipped us a salute, and left the flat before either of us could say anything.

“Uh,” I finally managed, and then the ayahuasca hit.
White
, but iridescent, like the powder: a streaming, swarming rush of it. White white white, and maybe a fleck of color here and there but you couldn't be sure, it was all going so fast, it was so white, it dazzled the mind. I felt something warm and wet against my lips, realized it was Trevor's mouth, realized Franzz had been right.

We didn't warm up the bed for him, because we never made it that far: we fucked in front of the big picture window with the neon going insane down below. I could taste every pore of his cock in my mouth; I could feel the heat of his come pulsing through the various tubes and up and out over my tongue in a flood of sweet and salt.

Then Trevor was fucking me, inside me, and our eyes were locked, and suddenly time slid sideways and we were both looking at this TV set. It was a rounded, small-screened model from the fifties, a Jetsons TV, and William S. Burroughs was on it.

“Yage,” he intoned. “Ayahuasca. Harmine. Vine of the soul.” He looked even thinner and gloomier than he had when alive. “Said to increase telepathic sensitivity. A Colombian scientist isolated from yage a chemical he called
telepathine
. Legend claims that the Sun-father impregnated a woman through the eyesocket and the foetus became yage, the narcotic plant, while still in the womb. Yage is the god of semen, both sexual and foetal. Yage may be the final fix."

“That last line was from
Junky
,” Trevor said, and then Bill and the cartoon TV were gone and there we were on the soft carpet in front of the window, bodies intertwined, nerves thrumming in synchronicity. I grabbed his ass and pulled him deeper into me, and we came at the same time and could
feel
each other coming, feel every jot and fiber of all the voltage flowing between us, and it was so intense I think we lost consciousness.

Thunder woke us. We could feel the vibrations in our bones. The sky over the whorehouses blossomed with multicolored points of light. Fireworks. Midnight.

We pulled a comforter off the sofa and wrapped ourselves up in front of the window to watch the show. The fireworks were purple, green, gold, Mardi Gras colors, making me briefly homesick. Trevor looked at me, looked
into
me the way he always has, only this time there was something more to it. For an instant I sensed a kind of tattered aura surrounding us, connecting us, smoky blue and rent with electricity.

“Mardi Gras colors,” he said.

I just smiled and hugged him closer.

It wasn't more than another half hour before Franzz came back. He was alone, but in good spirits. We were treated to
"I VASS BORN TO KEEL UND MAKE LOVE!"
again, in case we had forgotten, but we felt comfortable enough unwrapping the comforter from our sticky bodies and getting dressed in front of him. He'd been kinder than we could have expected.

“So did you see any planes falling out of the sky?” I asked.

Franzz thought about it. “No ... only a cashier who couldn't ring up my Dr. Pepper because his machine, his register was broken."

Only one thing about this really surprised me. “You drink Dr. Pepper, Franzz?"

He shrugged, and this time his grin wasn't so much wicked as faintly embarrassed. “I had a boyfriend once who came from Texas. My boyfriends all leave, but their bad habits live on in me."

A pang of sadness flashed between me and Trevor. Was Franzz lonely? We had never imagined him so. The idea depressed us, and we responded—not deliberately—by flashing on a scrap of an old Beatles song that stayed stuck in our heads for hours.
Can't buy me looo—ove, nonono, NO—

“Oh yes,” said Franzz, “and many of the prostitutes have signs in their windows: No Credit Cards. Tonight Only."

“I don't blame them,” I said.

Mussolini and the Axeman's Jazz

After “Triads,” I decided I liked writing historical fiction and wanted to give it another try. This story plays fast and loose with the facts of World War I, Freemasons, and New Orleans' only verified serial killer, the Axeman. Two things in it are undeniably real: Detective D'Antonio's statement and the Axeman's letter to the editor, reprinted from the New Orleans
States
and
Times-Picayune
, 1918-19.

Mussolini and the Axeman's Jazz

Sarajevo, 1914

Stone turrets and crenelated columns loomed on either side of the Archduke's motorcade. The crowd parted before the open carriages, an indistinct blur of faces. Francis Ferdinand swallowed some of the unease that had been plaguing him all day: a bitter bile, a constant burn at the back of his throat.

It was his fourteenth wedding anniversary. Sophie sat beside him, a bouquet of scarlet roses at her bosom. These Serbs and Croats were a friendly crowd; as the heir apparent of Austria-Hungary, Francis Ferdinand stood to give them an equal voice in his empire. Besides, Sophie was a Slav, the daughter of a noble Czech family. Surely his marriage to a northern Slav had earned him the sympathy of these southern ones.

Yet the Archduke could not divest himself of the notion that there was a menacing edge to the throng. The occasional vivid detail—a sobbing baby, a flower tucked behind the ear of a beautiful woman—was lost before his eyes could fully register it. He glanced at Sophie. In the summer heat he could smell her sweat mingling with the
eau de parfum
she had dabbed on this morning.

She met his gaze and smiled faintly. Beneath her veil, her sweet face shone with perspiration. Back in Vienna, Sophie was snubbed by his court because she had been a lady-in-waiting when she met the Archduke, little better than a servant in their eyes. Francis Ferdinand's uncle, the old Emperor Francis Joseph, forbade the marriage. When the couple married anyway, Sophie was ostracized in a hundred ways. Francis Ferdinand knew it was sometimes a painful life for her, but she remained a steadfast wife, an exemplary mother.

For this reason he had brought her on the trip to Sarajevo. It was a routine army inspection for him, but for her it was a chance to be treated with the royal honors she deserved. On this anniversary of their blessed union, Sophie would endure no subtle slights, no calculated cruelties.

The Archduke had never loved another human being. His parents were hazy memories, his uncle a shambling old man whose time had come and gone. Even his three children brought him more distraction than joy. The first time he laid eyes on Sophie, he discerned in her an empathy such as he had never seen before. Her features, her mannerisms, her soft ample body—all bespoke a comfort Francis Ferdinand had never formerly craved, but suddenly could not live without.

The four cars approached the Cumuria Bridge. A pall of humidity hung over the water. The Archduke felt his skin steaming inside his heavy uniform, and his uneasiness intensified. He knew how defenseless they must look in the raised carriage, in the Serbian sun, the green feathers on his helmet drooping, Sophie's red roses beginning to wilt.

As they passed over the bridge, he saw an object arc out of the crowd and come hurtling toward him. In an instant his eye marked it as a crude hand bomb.

Francis Ferdinand raised his arm to protect Sophie and felt hot metal graze his flesh.

Gavrilo Princip's pistol left a smell on his palm like greasy coins, metallic and sour. It was a cheap thing from Belgium, as likely to blow his hand off as anything else. Still, it was all Gavrilo had, and he was the only one left to murder the villainous fool whose good intentions would crush Serbia.

He had known the other six would fail him. They were a young and earnest lot, always ready to sing the praises of a greater Serbia, but reluctant to look a man in the face and kill him. They spoke of the sanctity of human life, a short-sighted sentiment in Gavrilo's opinion. Human life was a fleeting thing, an expendable thing. The glory of a nation could endure through the ages. What his comrades failed to fully comprehend was that it must be oiled with human blood.

He raked his dirty hair back from his face and stared along the motorcade route. It looked as if the cars were finally coming. He took a deep breath. As the wet, sooty air entered his lungs, Gavrilo was seized with a racking cough that lasted a full minute. He had no handkerchief, so he cupped his hand over his mouth. When he pulled it away, his fingers were speckled with fresh blood. He and his six comrades were all tubercular, and none of them expected to live past thirty. The fevers, the lassitude, the night sweats, the constant tickling itch deep in the chest—all these made the cyanide capsules they carried in their pockets a source of comfort rather than of dread.

Now the task was left to him. Mohammed and Nedjelko, the first two along the route, were carrying hand bombs. One of them had heaved his bomb—Gavrilo had seen it go flying—but the motorcade had continued toward City Hall with no apparent damage. His comrades between Cumuria Bridge and City Hall—Vasco, Cvijetko, Danilo, Trifko—had done nothing.

The Archduke's carriage moved slowly through the crowd, then braked and came to a standstill less than five feet from Gavrilo. This struck him as nothing short of a miracle, God telling him to murder the villains for the glory of Serbia.

He fired twice. The pistol did not blow his hand off. He saw Countess Sophie sag against her husband, saw blood on the Archduke's neck. The deed was done as well as he could do it. Gavrilo turned the pistol on himself, but before he could fire, it was knocked out of his hand. The crowd surged over him.

Gavrilo got his hand into his pocket, found the cyanide capsule and brought it to his mouth. Hundreds of hands were ripping at him, pummeling him. His teeth cracked the capsule open. The foul taste of bitter almonds flooded his mouth. He retched, swallowed, vomited, convulsed. The crowd would surely pull him to pieces. He felt his guts unmooring, his bones coming loose from their sockets, and still he could not die.

Sophie stood on the steps of City Hall between her husband and Fehim Effendi Curcic, the burgomaster of Sarajevo. Though Sophie and several of her attendants were bleeding from superficial cuts obtained from splinters of the bomb casing, and twelve spectators had been taken to hospital, Curcic obviously had no idea that the motorcade had come close to being blown up. He was surveying the crowd, a pleased look on his fat face. “Our hearts are filled with happiness—” he began.