Rock Bottom (21 page)

Darlo disappeared from view and she tried to pick up the pace, yelling for him to stop. She hadn’t been this out of breath since she’d had that threesome with the two interns from
Rolling Stone.

Clouds turned over and over in the sky, shapes wrestling, tumbling.

Darlo stood at an intersection like a mad, tweaked-up mouse in a maze, smelling for the right direction. He saw her hobbling toward him. His hair lay in a greasy mop, and he laughed, exhilarated. She couldn’t help but hear strings as she slouched toward him.

“Fredericks!” he yelled, panting. “Holy shit! What the fuck was that?”

“Gonna fucking kill someone or something!”

“Fucking Dutch!”

“Praise it!” she yelled. “Sing it!”

They laughed like they were back in the Spaceland bar, the world spread before them, happenstance and skill throwing elbows for bragging rights at the helm of their ship. Laughing, two friends at the dawn of their reign, having just lit a fresh wick on their explosive, dynamic future. Laughing, and Joey heard the joyous howl of introductions in a hundred sold-out arenas.

Can you hear me, San Francisco?

Blood Orphans!

Can you hear me, New York?

Blood Orphans!

Can you hear me, Los Angeles? At the back of the arena, way back there in the nosebleed seats, we love you, Los Angeles, can you hear me?

Blood Orphans!

Their name in pulsing lights above them, huge lights pulsing their name.

Blood … Orphans … Blood … Orphans.

Laughing like it was all to be just … like … that.

“What the fuck, babe!” Darlo yelled, smile wide as the Nile. “Trying to get us killed!”

“Fuck them!” she said. “Bitching and moaning like record company publicists! An army of them right there. Every face like a fucking Steadman.” She growled. “Fucking Steadmans, the whole bunch of them.”

Darlo shook his head. “You’ve lost it. Lost it!”

“I have lost it. Absolutely goddamned right.”

Darlo looked up. Joey saw watery eyes.

“I love you, Joey,” he said.

Oh, no. That was dewy. Dewy eyes.

“I really love you,” he said, and inhaled.

What she wondered was, How did this never happen before? How could we go years without Darlo going dewy?

“Don’t be a fag!” she yelled, and massaged her ankle.

His face went dark. “Bitch,” he said, “I mean it!” And then he went running off again.

“Darlo!” she yelled, and hobbled after him. “No, come on!”

Darlo ran like he had a thousand volts up his ass, bolting by all the old buildings, all the fashionable Dutch youth, all the protesting Euro complainistas.

“Darlo!” she yelled, limping, pathetic. “I’m sorry!”

Back in the halcyon days, they’d raced down the beach at Venice like two boxers in training, right along the shore, laughing at the freaks and turds, the waste cases, the whole throng of those born without the gene of opportunity in them. Joey would run along that beach and think, That’s right, I
am
running right the fuck by you, I
am
leaving you in the rotting dust, I
will
make something of myself. I won’t be an executive like my dad or a banker like my mother, I won’t be a dentist like Uncle Phil or a philosophy professor at UCLA like Aunt Grace, I won’t be a premed like sister Annie or an engineer like brother Rob, but I will have use, have a point, be a legend.

Running, leaving them all in the dust. Pacific mist and spray.

I
will be remembered.

Darlo ran, barreling through the entrance to Vondelpark, plowing right through those few mellow park revelers, over blankets spread out and students reading. Seconds later, Joey came hobbling by, sweating hard, passing a family of four — a man, a woman, and two toddlers — who’d been swamped in the undertow of Darlo’s pure rude-itude, and they looked at her for some explanation as she yelled for her friend like a dog owner who’d let go of the leash.

“Sorry!” she said. “So sorry!”

The drummer had straightened out his path, and he ran as if he actually had a destination. And it turned out, he did have a destination, for at the end of the field, as Joey’s leg and ankle started working together to screw her, at the end of the field in the shade of some trees, two skinheads were kicking some helpless dude who appeared, in Joey’s shaky running vision, to be putting up no resistance.

“Hey!” she screamed, and picked up the pace.

The matter of virtue had appeared. The chance to do something selfless was upon her. The opportunity to transcend her navel-gazing had reared its rosy-cheeked face. So she found a second wind, fought against the weight of the various aches and pains, and charged in to help save the day.

“Nazi punks!” she screamed. “Nazi punks, fuck off!”

The guy the two skinheads were attacking was up now. His backpack whirled about, exploding with pens and paper, and a sketchbook went airborne. He was up and trying to fight back, but with little success. The entire contents of his backpack fell out like from a shattered piñata and he screamed, “Leave me alone!”

She knew that voice.

She knew that lament.

“Adam!” she yelled from across the green. “Adam!”

The guitar player flailed and rolled like a kid being dragged underwater by a great white. He didn’t seem to have any idea that half of the people he knew in all of Holland were barreling crazily toward him.

“Leave me alone!” he howled, spinning.

Ahead of her, Darlo was just about to hit the beach. He gurgled a cry of attack, lifted his arms, and hurled himself into the scene.

17

COVERING HIS HEAD
with his arms, Adam figured that his assailants would soon grow bored and move on to whatever pint of neo-Nazi beer awaited them on the other side of town. They were angry, but they weren’t psychopaths — except that they were. The kicks kept coming, and Adam realized that this was for real. He windmilled his arms, hands in fists, flailing.

“Help!”

The short one tried to tackle Adam, but he pushed him off. The Nazis smelled like beer and cigarettes and vomit.

“Help me!”

Pizza Face came at him the other way and threw him down, tried to get on top of him, pin him down. Each moment escalated Adam’s panic, and he felt a hum in the back of his neck.

Is that my soul leaving?

“Help!” he yelled, struggling under Pizza Face, whose dog collar was too tight around the neck. Adam heard the crowd again, alive and free, and a charge went through him. He threw Pizza Face off, but then the short one was wrestling him down and he was screaming again. He heard the crowd coming toward him, stomping in unison. Voices rose up out of the crowd, and he screamed back in a blues. The skinhead reached for Adam’s throat, put pressure on his windpipe as the hum in his neck grew, rubbing against the sounds of the crowd, but the crowd was going to cover them all.

From nowhere, some guy came charging in, followed by a hobbling girl, a cut-and-paste out of some dreamscape. He thought, with his soul leaving and all, that his mind was playing tricks. But then the skinheads held up their hands in pointless protest, and this black-haired guy tackled Pizza Face, tackled him and started punching, a whirling dervish of anger.

“I’ll kill you!” he guttered. “I’ll ghill-yuuuuu!!”

The hobbling girl ran at the other skinhead, bopping and howling like a Caucasian Pocahontas, and sprayed pepper gas in his face. “Die, you fuck!” she screamed, and sprayed him, sprayed him, sprayed him until he fell back against a tree, clutching and clawing at his face.

Adam scampered back while these transports from a dream railed against his attackers.

“Ghill youuuuu!” the black-haired guy said.

Darlo?

Adam felt the hum in his neck move to his spine as the Astroglide sweat poured down. This was a fantasy his mind was enacting, brought on by lack of oxygen. It was all wrong and soon he would be back underneath Pizza Face, being strangled. Soon he would wake up from his suffocation-induced delusion and find himself dying.

But no. That was Darlo. And that was Joey. And he was here, in a foreign place, at the end of many things. And he was going to live.

Joey’s skinhead writhed against the tree in a spasm, grabbing at his cheeks, whimpering like a dog. She had her arms out, shaking, and every few seconds she hobbled in and sprayed him again, as if he were a big wasp that wouldn’t die.

“Sick fuck!” she said in a phlegmy growl. “Nazi fuck!”

Darlo had Pizza Face pinned and punched away, little spats of blood rising up under his blows. Adam’s ears were pressuring up, like on airplanes, and sound went murky. He watched Darlo take out that knife of his, that scimitar switchblade, the so-called Magic Wand. And truly it glittered with the spirit dust of the lonely Sioux spirit plain from which it had been forged. It glittered even in dour Dutch fog.

Darlo raised the knife up high, like he raised up a drumstick at the start of a song, counting off before they blasted into power-chord infinity.

“Ghill yuuuu!” the caveman gurgled, and reared up to strike.

18

JOEY HAD ALMOST DECIDED
against taking the pepper spray with her to Amsterdam; the damn thing was so old she wondered if it even worked. Now she pulled it from her bag and fired away.

“Die!” she screamed. “Die!”

That little atomizer packed a real punch.

“Die! Die! Die!”

She heard the crunch of sticks in Darlo’s direction. Darlo, on top of his skinhead, was in the process of losing his mind, bearing down like Godzilla over Bambi. He’d pinned the kid, put his arms under his legs so he was defenseless, and was throwing his fists.

“That’s my friend!” he screamed. “My friend! My friend!”

She realized that Darlo was crying.

“My friend! My fra-heh-heh-hend!”

Joey went numb. For a second this had been fun, high adventure, but now she bore witness to a meltdown.

Adam crawled away like a man emerging from quicksand.

“Oh, God,” she said. “Darlo, stop!”

Darlo raised his red hands above his head like a rabid ape.

“My friend! Rrrruuuggghhhh!”

Darlo landed punch after punch, and blood peppered the drummer’s face. Then he leaned back and, from his back pocket, took out the Magic Wand.

Joey realized that Darlo was going to kill the skinhead. Rage had taken him. The knife, built by those who struggled every day merely to exist, snapped open in a rich boy’s hand.

The dream was over.

“Darlo!” she yelled. “Stop!”

She kicked the knife out of the drummer’s red paw, then tackled him.

“We have to go now!” She put her hands on Darlo’s face. He looked like a panicking dog, eyes rolling in his sockets. “Now! Look in my eyes! Look in my eyes! Now!”

Darlo’s cries were sorrowful. He rolled and sputtered, rage and anguish going at each other behind mad eyes.

“Think of his mother!” Joey said, because that’s what an ex-con she’d dated had said to say to a person contemplating the taking of life. “Think of his mother!”

“No I can’t no!”

“A mother, come on!”

She looked around. Adam had disappeared, and the skinhead she’d pepper-sprayed crawled to his friend, who was just a bloody mess. The knife was barely visible in the grass, had blended back into the ground, was melting back into the earth.

“Oh I’m sorry!” Darlo said. “Oh God I’m sorry Oh God I’m so sorry —”

“Run!” she yelled.

“Sorry oh my god oh no —”

“Now!” she said, and heard the roar of protesters calling themselves to arms against the evil empire. Adam appeared on his bike downfield, escaping from them, getting all the distance he could between him and them and every little thing they were. Wind blew through the bare trees.

“My hands!” Darlo yelled, already running. “My hands!”

19

BLOOD WAS ALWAYS STICKIER
than he expected. Fighting was always more fun. They balanced themselves out.

Darlo kept swinging. He’d swing until his father went straight, his cock quit straining against his pants, and Aerosmith took them out on tour. He’d swing until that girl from the dungeon was safe at home, in her bed, at peace. He’d swing until Adam was safe from harm.

Below him, a face lay covered in red, the bones shifting to the left side, sliding like a seashell into the ebb tide. Now he was an artist like Adam, painting it black.

The skinhead made a noise, whimpering, the sound of fear before the time of the wheel, stripped down, raw tracks unmixed, just like the girl Darlo had found in the basement among the thugs, blubbering in her nakedness, scores on her back, sweat burning down her face.

Darlo thought, You may not share that noise with her, and took out the Magic Wand. You may not dare make that noise. I am a good person. I am not my father. I do not hurt the weak.

He took a second to look at the curve of his precious possession, and the barbs along the blade, and then Joey kicked the knife out of his hand.

“No, Darlo, no no no!”

Joey threw him off the skinhead, and Darlo heard the sound of his own crying and babbling and felt the wetness on his cheeks.

“No, Darlo, no, come on, no!”

Joey pulled him up and he was running. The world rushed at him, mistakes on mistakes, ill-fitting. Darlo fell to the ground again, his legs jelly, but Joey pulled him as if he were weightless.

“Can’t stay, come on, cops, come on!”

He looked back. The skinhead rolled on the ground, no longer imitating the innocent. Darlo had done what needed to be done. Though his father would be putting on gloves right now, wetting his lips, laughing at another nervous girl in black negligee right off the damn bus and there was nothing he could do, he had started to make things right. His proof lay there, in crimson, wiped out.

“Now Darlo,
get
the fuck
up!
”

He ran past Joey. He couldn’t wait for her. He bolted into the mass of well-dressed unbloodied Dutchies, over another lovely canal, and spun on the sidewalk.

God if you exist deliver that girl from him. God if you exist deliver that girl from him. God if you —