CHAPTER 12

I Was a Psychic Spy for the FBI Part I

(October 3-4, 2014)

The bar was at the very back of the club. I allowed Eddie to babble on about future bookings while I watched Esthra swaying back and forth to the slow chords of a demented love song entitled “Melanoma Heartbreak.” In the back of my mind I wondered if the brief physical contact I’d had with her was a foreshadowing of things to come. You idiot, I told myself, just because a girl touches you for a second doesn’t mean she wants to go to bed with you. You’re an egotistical jerk to think you can steal her away from a fuckin’ rock star, no matter how screwed up he is. You basically live a boring life. He lives on the edge every day. Girls love that kind of lifestyle, even if they have to submit to being a punching bag a few days out of the week to maintain it.

After a few beers I had changed my position. While watching her swing her hips to the free form, jazz-like rhythm of “Suicide on Sunday, Poolside on Monday” I was convinced she was transmitting secret signals to me through subtle thrusts of her groin, giving me (and me alone) The Eye from over two hundred feet away. Though the idea that she could even see me through those lights was rather improbable, I believed it nonetheless. Or at least I wanted to. Hell, so did every other guy in that room over six years of age. Imagine a woman like that casting her wayward gaze on my sorry ass. It was silly to even think about it, but that didn’t stop me. Probably didn’t stop anyone else either. That’s why most of these kids had come to the show, after all. Esthra hadn’t been lying when she’d told Ogo that she was the main draw.

I wondered what it felt like to be on that stage in front of all those hungry eyes, knowing that each one of them was undressing you, touching you, perhaps even fucking you in the darkest alcoves of their minds. I was a bit disgusted by the idea that I was one of them, only one of hundreds upon hundreds of psychic rapists.

To my right I heard Eddie saying, “Fuckin’ A, I don’t even know why I try to have a conversation with you.”

“Huh?” I said, not taking my eyes off the stage.

“Huh, huh?” He imitated my voice. “Your fucking tongue’s hanging out of your head, man. Could you be any more obvious?”

“About what?” I tried to look confused and annoyed as I downed another swig of beer.

“About what.” He laughed. “She’s one hot tottie, isn’t she?”

“Who?”

“You know damn well who.”

I shrugged. “She’s okay.”

“Okay, hell! She’s perfect. What more could you ask for?”

“How about the sudden disappearance of a certain boyfriend with a hair-trigger temper?”

Eddie waved his hand. “Don’t worry about him. Just wait until he nods out, then you can make your move. She looks like she’d be up for anything. I think you know what I mean by anything.”

I looked up at the ceiling. “Uh … Super Mario Galaxy 2?”

“What?” He drew the word out to three syllables. “No, no. I’m sayin’ she’s up for some backdoor action, man.”

“Backdoor action, hm … she wants to play Super Mario Galaxy 2 near the backdoor?”

“Quit with the jokes already, I know you’re interested in her. Let me tell you a secret, the feeling’s mutual.”

“Who are you trying to kid?”

“I’m tellin’ you. I could see it in her eyes when she was watching you from backstage. Man, you were the only person in the world to her while you were doing your act.”

“Sure, while I was doing my act. That’s natural.”

“Nah, it was more than just you being funny. Her poontang was dripping, I could smell it.”

I wrinkled my nose in disgust. “Jesus Christ, Eddie!”

“It’s true! I’ve got a hyper-sensitive sense of smell, I always have. It’s a blessing and a curse. It’s nice to know when a girl’s hot for you, but when it’s time to do the unspeakable act and you’ve got your nose hovering over a real musty one sometimes you almost gag the god damn scent is so overwhelming.”

“And to think I actually had an appetite a couple of seconds ago.”

“Don’t play innocent with me, I can tell you’ve been around the block a few times. There’s a lot of girls out there who like funny guys.”

“Yeah, harelips and lepers are the first two examples that leap immediately to mind.”

“Okay, okay, keep downplaying it. I know it’s all part of your routine. It’s easier to get girls if they think they’re doing you a favor.”

“You think so? Hell, maybe I should cut off my arms and legs and act like a retard, then I’ll have a whole chorus line of charitable broads camped out on my doorstep day and night.”

“You’re quick with a comeback, I have to admit, but that doesn’t change the facts. Esthra was giving you the verifiable, guaranteed, one and only Look of Love backstage and it was pissin’ off Punk Boy something awful.”

For the first time I began to take Eddie’s meanderings seriously. “Mike noticed it?”

“He sure as hell did. He looked like he was gonna haul off and deck her right then and there. Perhaps that was just the cocaine kickin’ in, but I don’t think so. I’ve seen a lot of jealous rages break out at this club from time to time, and he looked like about twelve of them waiting to happen all at once.” “That’s reassuring.” He waved his hand again. “Like I say, don’t worry about it. After this performance he’ll taper off again pretty fast. Jumping around up there takes a hell of a lot out of you. You want my advice?” I gestured for him to continue; I knew he was going to give it to me no matter what I said. “When I was in the bathroom trying to wake Punk Boy out of Slumberland, Ogo told me they were planning on going to a party after this. I suggest you tag along. Why not? You heard them, they all loved you (except for Punk Boy, of course). How could they say no? At the party Punk Boy will be more interested in scoring some more junk than anything else. While he’s having pleasant dreams you can move right in.”

“Seems kind of underhanded.”

Eddie spread out his hands. “All’s fair… .”

“Yeah, but I’m not in love and nobody’s at war.”

“Aw, everybody’s always in love with somebody. They may not know it, but they are. Same with the other thing. There’s always a war on, though not everyone is always aware of it.”

“Are you getting philosophical on me? That’s when you know you’ve had too much to drink, particularly when you’re not making any sense.”

“I’ve only had three beers.”

“Yeah, in the last half-hour. I don’t know how much you had before I arrived.”

Eddie swivelled his rheumy eyes back toward the stage, where the band was starting up a new song. He watched Esthra dancing to the repetitious, hypnotic beat of “I Was a Psychic Spy for the FBI Part I.”

“Yeah, I’d fuck that bitch,” he mumbled, “I’d fuck that bitch in a second.”

“Hey, you’re talking about the woman I love,” I said in a listless voice. I settled back against the bar, closed my eyes, and allowed the music to wash over me. I was impressed by how distinct each of the songs were from each other. The band’s repertoire appeared to span a number of different musical forms. I listened to Mike belt out a droning chant in a flat, sleep-inducing tone that was rather unique compared to the voice he had used on all the songs preceding it… .

I’m undercover with a psychic coven

I eat young trim like chocolate chip muffins

I commune with spirits like Marilyn Monroe

I play poker with the Egyptian Tarot

I’m undercover with a psychic coven

I stuff young boys into microwave ovens

I follow the order of the FBI

I’m down with nirvana and the occultic third eye

I’m undercover with a psychic coven

I lure in hippies for a Leary-style love-in

I dope ’em all up with Ecstasy and smack

I strip off their clothes and tie ’em to a rack

I’m undercover with a psychic coven

I staple open vaginas and shove a white dove in

I perform this ritual as a sign of peace

I could’ve used eagles or vultures or geese

I’m undercover with a psychic coven

I castrate penises as small as a nubbin

I don’t waste time with organs like that

I require members as large as Iraq

I’m undercover with a psychic coven

I cook baby flesh until it browns and toughens

I need the skin to stitch a vast fleshy robe

I can give it to Christo who will blanket the globe

I’m undercover with a psychic coven

I mate with serpents smokin’ and puffin’

I hypnotize hippies in a cave near Reno

I conspire with colonels like Michael Aquino

I’m undercover with a psychic coven

I hope to find a nun with whom to have a run-in

I hope to strip her of her virgin pure habit

I plan to introduce her to a destructive drug habit

I’m undercover with a psychic coven

I grow so tired of choppin’ and stuffin’

I think I’ll bloat up, become fat ‘n rolly polly

And soon I’ll be as flabby as Aleister Crowley

Ogo was right, Mike did have a strange sense of humor. The man was clearly gifted, I had to give him that much. But what was a guy like that doing living with his abusive father in Torrance? Was it just the heroin? Could very well be. Any money he made from the CDs or the live shows probably went right into his arm.

I sat in that stool listening to each and every song for almost two hours. The ultimate strangeness came when they ended the show with a hardcore punk version of the Groucho Marx song “Whatever It Is, I’m Against It” from Horse Feathers. I wondered if that was Ogo’s or Mike’s idea.

When they began the song Eddie stood up and said, “Well, I’ve got to go up there and do the outro. I’ll tell them you’re still here so they can invite you along to the party.”

“No, no, you don’t have to do that,” I said, rising from the stool. “Maybe I should just head on out of here—”

Eddie pressed his meaty hands on my shoulders and pushed me back onto the stool. “Sit. I’m tellin’ you, this is going to be as easy as key lime pie.” He snapped his fingers, then headed backstage. For a moment I considered bailing through the front entrance. Only the half-full glass of beer sitting in front of me prevented that. I can’t stand to waste things, particularly not beer. I told myself I’d wait until I drained the glass. If Esthra and the others hadn’t approached me by then I’d take off.

I drank slowly.

I still had quite a lot left by the time I felt Ogo’s gloved hand on my shoulder. “Hey, Bunky,” I heard him say, “we’re headed on over to a friend’s house on Pier Avenue. They’re havin’ a little party or somethin’. You want to tag along?”

“Will there be wild music and nubile young native girls?”

“Sure. We’ll even be having animal sacrifices at midnight. That’s always a treat.”

“It’s difficult for me to pass up a good animal sacrifice, I have to admit.” I slid off the stool, ready to follow him out of the club.

“Wait a second.” Ogo pointed at my beer. “You haven’t finished your drink.”

I waved my hand. “Eh, it doesn’t matter, I didn’t pay for it.”

“Hey, whoa, hold on there.” Ogo lifted the glass to his blood-red lips, tilted his head back, and consumed the contents in one gulp. He brushed his forearm across his mouth, then smacked his rubbery lips together. “I’m sorry, I just can’t stand to see perfectly good beer go to waste. By the way, do you have a car?”

“No.”

“How did you get here then?”

“I had to take the bus.”

“The bus? Jesus, how do you stand it? All you meet on the bus are freakin’ weirdos.” This as I left The Brink side by side with a clown.

The beach air hit me like a cold glass of water on a hot day. It was such a relief compared to the stifling confinement of the smoke-filled club.

“I used to take the bus to kids’ birthday parties,” Ogo said. “Those were the only gigs I could get when I first moved to Los Angeles. It was a real bitch, let me tell you. One time I had to work all day in the pouring rain—some friggin’ outdoor birthday party. Rain or shine, the kid had to have his god damn party. Shit, I never had a birthday party when I was a kid. The best I got was a broken beer bottle in the back, but that’s a whole nother story.”

“How’re we getting to the party?” I said.

“Don’t worry, we’ll take my van.” He jerked his thumb toward the right and motioned for me to follow him. We rounded the club and began strolling toward the back parking lot. The narrow area to the side of the club was quite dark. None of the street lamps were on for some reason, causing me to imagine sinister muggers lurking behind every trash bin waiting for the best opportunity to relieve me of my cash. I had a fantasy of Ogo saving me at the last second by whipping out a submachine gun from his bag o’ tricks and blowing the vagabonds away, yet another example of my tendency to digress from the point… .

“Yep, takin’ the bus was a real bitch,” Ogo continued. “I had to take the bus home in the friggin’ rain. Even the winos were laughing at me. At one point I took off one of my shoes and held it upside down and a bunch of rainwater fell out. The driver got pissed and wanted to throw me off, so I took a gun out and kicked his fat olive-skinned ass off instead. I took the bus on a joy ride around town doing about fifty miles per hour down one-way streets. Those winos weren’t laughin’ any more—no, they were scared shitless! Ho, it was a laugh riot, let me tell you.” He raised his knee high enough to slap it, cracking himself up. “I got arrested, of course, but that was okay. I’d spent time in the slammer before, so I knew how to handle myself. It was worth it just to see the look on that asshole driver’s face as I left him choking on his own exhaust fumes.”

I was still stuck one sentence back on the slammer comment. “When you were in jail didn’t they make you take off your face paint?”

Ogo’s entire demeanor changed. He suddenly became quite somber. He paused awhile before answering, “Yes. But I’d rather not talk about that.”

I backed off from the question immediately; I didn’t want him turning a gun on me. Nonetheless I couldn’t help but think that if he’d stayed in jail sans face paint he might never have come down with cancer. I thought it might be dangerous to voice this opinion out loud, though.

Ogo led me behind the club into a parking lot reserved only for employees. A few yards away I could see Jesse, who had slipped his shirt back on, piling the instruments into the back of a brightly colored van decorated with images of happy happy clowns and hula-hoops and monkeys in bellboy outfits juggling torches.

“Yorkshire pudding wile T-man gesticulate imputable bacillary,” Ogo said.

“Excuse me?” I thought I was going nuts.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “I lapsed into harlequinese for a moment.”

“What?”

“Harlequinese. It’s a language I made up in jail. What you do is, you replace every word in the English language with the third word up in the dictionary.”

“Why?”

“What do you mean, why? Isn’t it obvious? To open your mind. Break it free of the constraints imposed upon it by the unnecessary and false impediments of language. I mean, think about it. Why do we use the word ‘chair’ to describe a chair? We could easily pick the word ‘chainsaw’ and use that to describe the concept represented by chair. It’s the same thing.”

“No … no it’s not at all. ‘Hi, welcome to my abode. Pull up a chainsaw and relax.’ That’s absurd.”

“To you. But only because you’ve grown up thinking chairs are ‘chairs’ and not ‘chainsaws.’ See what I mean?”

“You’re mad.”

“Or ‘maculate.’”

“You should be a philosopher.”

“Yeah, maybe. Or President.”

“Is ‘President’ the third word up from ‘philosopher’?”

“No, ‘Philomena’ is. I’m speaking English now. I’m serious, chum. I want to run for President someday.”

“Whatever. I wish you a lotta luck, man.”

“Wharfmaster. Hysteron proteron wisenheimer yorkshire pudding zymosthenic loss leader oestrogen luciferous, mammon.”

“What’s that … a translation?” He nodded. “Hey, wait a minute, what the hell were you gonna say before?”

“Before what?”

“Before you lapsed into … whatever the fuck you call it… .”

“Oh … yeah. I was just going to say that you’ll have to get in back,” Ogo said. “Jesse’s riding up front with me.”

Jesse tossed the last amp inside, then gestured for me to enter. I climbed into the darkness, looking forward to a few moments of peace and quiet after such a brain-warping, raucous event. I was to be disappointed. Inside the van, sitting side by side on a little red love sofa, were Mike and Esthra. Esthra’s hand was draped over Mike’s, as if his hand had just been lying there on the seat and she had been attempting to hold it. He was staring off into space, not looking at anything.

“Hi,” Esthra said. She seemed a bit drained. “I’m glad you decided to tag along.”

“Wouldn’t miss it for the Seventh Coming,” I said. In contrast to the bright colors of the van’s exterior, the interior was entirely black and had a pentagram painted in blood on the ceiling. The horns of Baphomet’s goat-like head filled the two upward points of the pentagram, but the ominous nature of the sigil was off-set somewhat by the googly eyes someone had painted beneath the goat’s bushy brow. “Mighty nice place you have here,” I said, stepping over the musical equipment and plopping down in a gold-colored love sofa opposite Mike and Esthra. I pointed up at the pentagram. “Is that, uh … ?”

“Don’t worry,” Esthra said with a smile. “It’s just goat’s blood.”

“Oh, is that all.” I settled back into the sofa, slipping my hands behind my head. “Now I can rest easy.” I flashed back to Ogo’s comment about animal sacrifices at midnight. Of course, I’d assumed he was being sarcastic, but now I was beginning to wonder.

Mike continued to stare at a space on the wall somewhere just to the left of me as I said, “That was a great show. Better than I expected.”

“Were you expecting us to suck or something?” Esthra asked.

“Oh, no no no … well, yeah.”

Esthra shrugged. “S’okay. Most bands do suck. I’d probably expect the same thing.”

I turned to Mike and said, “Your lyrics are, like, really great. Even Leonard Cohen and Tom Lehrer would be proud.”

Mike said nothing. I figured I might as well do the same.

Staring downwards, I couldn’t help but notice a pile of old flyers covering the floor like a carpet. Most of them advertised Doktor Delgado performances long out of date. One of them stood out from the mess. It was a sophisticated drawing of two immense crows perched upon a full moon. The moon was so detailed, deep craters could be seen pitting its ivory surface like scars. Both of the crows seemed to be staring directly at the viewer, as if daring you not to believe in their existence. There was something powerful and mysterious about the look in those deep set, onyx eyes. Woven into the craters were these words: DON’T FIGHT DESTINY—HAVE SEX WITH IT! The artwork reminded me of those weird murals I had seen around town, the one with the talking dog and the other one with the sparkling purple mouse. Was this illustration created by the same artist? I wondered if Mike knew who the hell had painted those murals. But I could tell he was definitely not in a mood to answer such trivial questions. He remained silent during the entire ride.

The party was at a house near The Lighthouse Café on Pier Avenue, only a few blocks away from the ocean. Sounds of music and laughter grew louder and louder as we approached the house. I would’ve hated to be the people living on either side of that place. Ogo parked at a crazy angle, one of the front wheels resting on the curb; anyone who’s ever been to a circus knows that clowns aren’t the best drivers. We piled out of the van and followed Mike up the pathway. Mike walked on ahead of us, not talking to Esthra, not even looking at her. Esthra and I walked side by side behind Ogo and Jesse.

“Is there a problem?” I whispered to Esthra.

“He just gets jealous easily, that’s all. Now he’s going to punish me by not talking to me for awhile. It has nothing to do with you. He gets jealous of everyone, even Ogo sometimes, which is flat-out bizarre. We don’t know what the hell Ogo’s into. We’ve never seen him with a girl, or anything else for that matter.”

Mike opened the front door of the house without even knocking. He was immediately greeted with a series of cheers and Heys and How’s it goin’ and Great show, Mike and You blow everyone else away, man and other variations of these same salutations. Ogo whipped out his bag o’ tricks and began performing magic for the crowd. Someone handed Jesse an acoustic guitar, on which he started improvising strange new riffs. Someone tried to hand Esthra a guitar, but she just waved them away. She grabbed a beer instead, pulled away from the crowd, motioning for me to follow her. We stood in the corner of the room, watching the commotion swirl around us.

“I hate crowds,” she said. “I like playing in front of people, but I’m a lot more uncomfortable with them when I have to be face to face.”

“I know exactly what you mean. It’s difficult for me to talk to people.” I laughed. “For some reason I push people away, even when they’re going out of their way to be kind to me. I don’t know why that is. I guess I don’t trust them.”

Esthra shrugged. “Everyone mistrusts each other. Everyone hates each other for things they haven’t even done yet.”

“The problem is other people. I once toyed with the idea of declaring myself my own separate nation, that way if someone attacked me it would be an international event and the UN would have to get involved.”

“Well, that’s the ultimate way to cut yourself off from the world, isn’t it?”

“There are better ways. More permanent ways.”

“What does that mean?”

I shrugged. “Doesn’t matter.”

“Have you ever tried to … you know … ?”

I furrowed my brow. “What?”

“You know … damage yourself? Permanently?”

I took a deep breath. I nodded. “When I was eighteen.” “Really? May I ask why?”

I sighed. “Same reasons anyone else does. I was feeling lonely and confused. God, I don’t think I’ve ever felt more alone than at that time in my life. I had isolated myself from everyone in the world. I was too ashamed to talk to anyone. Ashamed of my looks, ashamed of my clothes, ashamed of my personality, ashamed of everything. I almost went through my entire four years in high school without talking to a single person. I don’t think anyone even knew I was there. I was Peripheral Boy. You could only see me out of the corner of your eye as I zipped past in the hall. But it’s not like people didn’t come up and talk to me. Sometimes they would, but I would just find some excuse to push them away. I think that’s why I do what I do today. I can interact with people through my humor, and at the same time keep a safe distance from the rest of the world.” While saying all this I had been staring at the crowds of people wandering past, all of them laughing and talking. I was reeling off this monologue more to myself than to Esthra. Then I suddenly glanced to my left and saw Esthra staring at me with a blank expression. I wondered if I’d become too morose. “Sorry,” I said. “I must sound like a wingnut.”

“Nah, I don’t think so. I act the same exact way. I think everyone in the band does to some extent or another. The only difference is we’re hiding behind music instead of humor.” She chugged back a gulp of beer then belched.

“But you get to release a whole bunch of different emotions on stage. I wish I had your job. I mean, sometimes I feel like screaming for hours at a time, but I’m sure the neighbors would probably arrest me if I did that. Now if I was on a stage with a guitar in my hand… .”

“What frustrations do you have?”

“Plenty. More than you can know.”

“Really? Are you dying of a terminal illness too? If so maybe you can join the band. You can be our go-go girl.”

I remembered what Ogo had told me about the various illnesses of which the band members were dying. He hadn’t mentioned Esthra’s condition. For some reason this didn’t occur to me until that moment. Perhaps I hadn’t wanted to think about it. What if she was dying of AIDS?

“I know what you’re thinking,” Esthra said.

“Is that so?”

“You’re wondering what I’m dying of.”

“No, of course … well, yeah, I guess I am.”

Esthra opened her mouth as if she were about to speak, but then she glanced around the room and said, “I can’t stand all this smoke, can you?”

Cigarette smoke mixed with acrid clouds of marijuana fumes wafted throughout the room. There was more smoke in here than in your average night club, pre-Orwell. My eyes were already beginning to water, but I had been reluctant to say anything. I just pointed to my eyes as an answer.

“Let’s get out of here,” she said, leading me through the crowd and back toward the front door. In my peripheral vision I could see Mike playing acoustic versions of his songs for the crowd. He spotted us walking through the door, but continued playing his song anyway.

It was nice to get outside. We strolled down the path until we reached the sidewalk, then headed west. It’d been so long since I’d taken a walk at night. It’s not wise to take such walks alone in Hollywood after, oh … sundown, I’d say. In Hermosa Beach it’s a bit different.

“It’s hard to have a private conversation with a hundred people listening,” Esthra said. “So what were we talking about? Terminal illnesses, right?” I nodded. “The doctors say I’m suffering from a completely unique degenerative disease, a variation of a C type RNA tumor virus. You know what that is?” I shook my head. “It causes life to remain in stasis, actually freezes the human body in whatever state of development it was in when it became susceptible to the virus. Some people would think of that as a godsend, but there’s a major drawback. I’ll remain twenty-two for five, ten, even fifteen years—but then all those accumulated minutes, hours and months will converge on me all at one time, in a single second, and then cause my life to reel backwards at an incredibly fast pace until there’ll be nothing left of me but a human cell undetectable to the eye.”

A long silence followed as we passed a diner on Pier Avenue that looked as if it had been picked up by a UFO in the 1950s and set down here in the middle of 2014. Next door was a funky used bookstore. During the day one could usually pass by the windows and see a black cat lounging in a sunbeam atop a stack of books, the color of the dust jackets being leached away by the sun. At the moment all the lights were out and there was a sign that read CLOSED hanging in the door. We stopped anyway to look at the books in the window. I was perusing the cover of an oversized collection of M.C. Escher drawings when I said, “You know, I think I’ve finally discovered someone who has more of an overactive imagination than I do.”

“Say what you want. All I know is that the doctors wanted to study me, to show me off to their colleagues like a freak, but there was no way in hell I was going to let myself be turned into a living trophy for a group of fucking men all over again, not after I—” She stopped herself before she could say more. She turned away from the window and continued walking westward, toward the pier. I followed her.

She said, “I left that hospital as fast as possible. I swore I’d never enter such a sterile place again. I mean, think about it, if hospitals are so fucking great how come people are always dying in them?”

I have to admit I never looked at it that way before. Esthra seemed so distraught, so serious, that I began to believe her unbelievable tale. If she was lying she was one of the best actresses I’d ever seen. But what reason would she have to lie?

We crossed the street, passed the elegant 1920s Art Deco building that once housed the eclectic Bijou Theater where I remember seeing City of Lost Children when I was eleven years old (it’s now a branch of the Chase National Bank, alas), a coffee shop where I could hear a woman playing acoustic versions of Janis Joplin tunes, and a series of quaint oceanside cafes. We strolled down the pier and paused only when we could go no farther without drowning. We leaned over the railing and stared down into the night-black waters. The moon wasn’t visible. The night was so black you couldn’t tell where the ocean ended and the sky began; it was as if an infinite dark void lay out beyond the beach.

I said, “When did you first find out that you had the disease?”

Esthra sighed. “Oh, about six months after I met Mike and joined his band. That was the best six months of my life. Then everything turned to crap.”

“How’d you hook up with him?”

“Now there’s a story. I met Mike in San Francisco. He’d been singing in another band called Lavender Brain Tumor. He has a knack for horrible band names. Anyway, I came to the show to avoid going home to another beating. I was living with a guy named Daniel at the time. No one called him Daniel, though—not if you wanted to stay alive. He liked to be called

D. He was pimping me out to raise money for our heroin habit. I went along with it because I thought I loved him.” Though I was slightly shocked she was telling me all this, I found her total lack of self-consciousness refreshing. “Go ahead, feel free to call me stupid, everybody else does.”

“I don’t think you’re stupid.”

“Well, you’re in a minority. But maybe you’re right. Maybe I was just temporarily insane. So, like I was saying, I went to the show just to have a place to hang out. I saw Mike up there on stage, lookin’ so fine with all his tattoos. He was in much better shape back then. He was well-cut and had these huge arms that looked like they could just scoop you up, wrap around you, protect you from the rest of the world. I went backstage specifically to talk to him, though I hate doing such stupid little groupie things. I hate feeding the egos of attention-starved rock gods. But somehow I thought Mike was different. I think it was his lyrics, and the way he carried himself on stage. He didn’t dance around like a monkey on speed, he was very reserved, almost shy. It was so refreshing, so different from what you usually see in places like that.”

She sighed again, grabbed a pile of pebbles off the planks of wood, then began tossing them into the sea one by one. Her red lips arced into a wistful smile. “We were only talking to each other for a little while when I happened to mention that I’d played guitar a little bit as a kid. Right then and there he asked me to play in the very next set to replace the original guitarist who’d fallen face down on stage in a drunken stupor only a few minutes before. I told him I hadn’t played in years, but he said, ‘Don’t worry about it. Just make as much noise as possible and no one will notice.’ It was good advice. I still follow it to this day. After the show he asked me to play at their next gig up north after they decided to abandon the original guitarist in Golden Gate Park. I didn’t even pick up my things from D.’s apartment, I just took off.

“Six months later I came down with the disease. In a weird bit of synchronicity we met Ogo and Jesse that same week. When we realized what we all had in common we decided to dissolve Lavender Brain Tumor (by that point we were ready to kill the drummer and the bass player anyway) and formed Doktor Delgado’s All-American Genocidal Warfare Against The Sick And The Stupid. That name was Mike’s idea too.”

“What the hell does it mean?”

“The name Delgado comes from José Delgado. He was a mad scientist who moved from Spain to research electrical stimulation of the brain at Yale University. Most of his research went to the military, or so Mike says. Delgado wrote a book called Physical Control of the Mind. You might want to check it out, just for the hell of it.”

“Mike’s really into conspiracies, isn’t he?”

She tossed the last pebble into the ocean, then shrugged. “Yeah. Some of the conspiracies are imaginary, some of them aren’t. Just like everything else.”

“He’s really paranoid about you.”

The smile left her face. She stared up at the stars and said, “I’m a man-killer. I don’t know why, I just am. I don’t think I’m the most attractive woman in the world. I can be in the worst shape and men are still falling all over me. When I was in the hospital kicking heroin the doctors had me on all this weirdass medication that made me gain forty pounds. Yeah, hard to believe, isn’t it? My belly was hanging over my belt as if it were trying to run away. Not only that, acne broke out all along my forehead right here. Looked like someone had tattooed the Milky Way on my skin. Not to mention the track marks on my ass, but we needn’t go into that. Anyway, even in this sorry condition guys still seemed to be attracted to me. Hell, more than attracted—obsessed. This one guy I know named Zack (short for Prozac), who I met when I was locked up in this mental ward, wouldn’t leave me alone after I kicked my drug habit and realized he was a fuckin’ shithead. He even burned all my clothes when I told him I didn’t love him anymore, as if I ever did. He asked me to marry him every fuckin’ day and wouldn’t stop calling.”

“Guys get attached very easily. They’re screwy that way.”

“I think it’s more than that. Even if I’m dressed like a slob and walking down the street without any make-up on guys still come onto me. I’ve developed a theory.” She held up her index finger like a college professor, then coughed into her fist. “My theory is this: My body gives off some weird-ass pheromones that attract men to me no matter what. I could be wearing a potato sack or a barrel, I could be three feet tall with a harelip and a hole in the middle of my fuckin’ forehead and it wouldn’t make a difference. Penises would still be slithering down the sidewalk after me like snakes. What the hell is it with penises? They’re such funny looking things too. I always thought they looked like roosters, roosters without legs.”

I know it may sound cockeyed, but I wanted to say I loved her right then and there. Guys get attached very easily. They’re screwy that way.

We talked for a long time out on that pier. There were more than a few times when I felt like leaning over and kissing her, but I didn’t think she wanted that, despite what that schmuck Eddie had said. Besides, it felt nice just listening to her, talking to her. I had never talked to anyone as openly as I had with Esthra, except perhaps for Heather. Even with Heather it had taken me months to get past the joking phase with her, while with Esthra it had taken me only a few hours. I thought it might be kind of nice to have a girl who was just a friend. I was usually too busy trying to con girls out of their pants to ever allow such a relationship to develop. In the back of my mind I wondered how many potential friendships I’d passed up on because of my single-mindedness; of course, I was also wondering what Esthra would look like naked. I’m sorry, I can’t be reformed in a couple of hours.

Once our little talk began to wind down Esthra suggested we return to the party. “Before Mike comes out looking for me,” she added. Since I knew such a scenario could only end with me being dumped in the drink, I followed her advice. On the way there I suggested we enter through the back so as not to draw attention to ourselves.

“That’ll look like we’re trying to hide something,” she said, horrified. “I’m not slinking around like some filthy whore. I’m walking right through the front door.”

What could I do except go along with her and pray she knew what she was doing? We walked through the front door to find Mike still at the center of attention. In fact, he had about a dozen pretty young groupies circled around him on their knees. They gazed up at him with lovey-dovey moon-eyes as he said, “Here’s a new little ditty I’ve been playing around with. It’s not quite finished, but … well, tell me how you like it. It’s called ‘Masonic Stew.’” With a hip-hop delivery he belted out the following lyrics:

Freemasons here

Freemasons there

Freemasons everywhere

Freemasons from all parts of the world

Comin’ to Washington just to unfurl

An esoteric flag and rape a young girl

Punch her big belly and cause her to hurl

Up comes a fetus for a weird Masonic stew

A bubbling witches liquid, a black mystic brew

Filled with yeti armpits plus an undiscovered flu

Two copper Tesla coils and nigger lips too

Bubble and bubble, toil and trouble

Masons in orbit and lurking inside the Hubble

They’re floatin’ out there just waitin’ to perform

A ritual most rare to make us conform

They’ll heat up the ionosphere and conjure up a storm

That’ll wipe out Jupiter and its alien lifeforms

Freemasons here

Freemasons there

Freemasons hiding in your girlfriend’s hair

Freemasons at the post office, Freemasons at work

Freemasons at the Pentagon love to circle jerk

Bubble and bubble, toil and trouble

Masons kill Washington, replace him with a double

Hop to your feet for the Masonic sockhop

Bop to the beat of Adam Weishaupt

Freemasons here

Freemasons there

Freemasons lurking in their underground lairs

Hip to hip, cheek to cheek

Masonic feet dancin’ to a weird wild beat

Bubble and bubble, toil and trouble

Masons dancing in the nuclear rubble

Jitter-bugging fast to an ancient tune

Amid the lost remains of Solomon’s tomb

Fuck, we’re dying while they’re flying to the moon

The world’s ending, couldn’t happen too soon

All the groupies laughed and clapped as if they were in on a private joke I didn’t fully understand.

Esthra pushed her way to the very front of the crowd. I stood beside her. Mike couldn’t miss us. Upon seeing Esthra he said, “This is a song I just made up on the spot. It’s called ‘Kiss Me, Kill Me.’”

Esthra grabbed my hand and pulled me away from the crowd, while behind us Mike improvised a clever little song about a girl who “gives head to get ahead”; she clings onto a talented rock star just to get famous, then abandons him when he needs her most. The entire song was a not-too-subtle insult against Esthra and it seemed as if everybody in the room knew it. The entire mood of the party had become quite uncomfortable.

Esthra cleared a path through the crowd and dragged me into the hallway. I didn’t know where she was taking me. She swung open various doors in the hall. The first was a closet, the second a bedroom filled with strange people smoking pot, the third a bathroom. There was a teenage boy and girl sitting cross-legged and smoking pot on the fluffy white rug. Esthra yelled, “Get the fuck out!” and kicked the guy in the ass with her boot. They both scrambled to their feet and dashed out of the room. Esthra slammed the door shut, then locked it.

“What are you doing?” I said.

“If he wants me to be a whore so bad, then maybe I should become one.” She pressed her face up against the door and moaned loud enough for everyone in the neighborhood to hear, “Oh yeah, Elliot, yeah, that feels so good, touch me right there, right there, oh yeah, yeah, fuck me like a monkey in heat, unh, unh… .”

My right hand shot to my mouth as my other hand gestured wildly for her to stop. Who knew what they could hear outside? “Esthra, please, what’re you doing?”

She whispered, “Giving him what he wants,” then yelled, “Oh yeah, baby, that’s it, give it to me good, give it to me hard, harder … !”

I grabbed her by the shoulders and forced her to turn around. Despite the tears streaming down her cheeks, she persisted in her act.

“Oh yes, slap me, Elliot, hit me!”

As softly as possible I said, “Please. Stop.”

In mid-sentence Esthra broke off and looked at me with such sad eyes. Such sad, wounded eyes. She fell into my embrace, wrapped her arms around my shoulders, held on tightly, as if she might fall if she let go. She buried her head into my chest and cried for a very long time. I stroked her long auburn hair, whispered in her ear: “Shh, shh … it’s okay, Esthra … it’s okay.”

After awhile she calmed down, stepped away from me a bit, keeping her palms pressed against my chest. I lifted my fingers to her cheeks and brushed the tears away as best I could.

“God, I don’t know,” she said, “I don’t know what else I can do. I’ve stuck by him every step of the way, I’ve taken care of him when he was junk sink, I’ve never cheated on him, but it’s not enough, nothing’s ever enough. Do you know how hard it was for me to kick heroin? I was locked up in a psych ward for ten fucking months. I almost hung myself with an electrical wire I dug out of the plaster wall in my room ’cause I thought the nurses were going to rape me and cut off my toes. A couple of them did rape me.” She released a weak laugh. “At least they didn’t cut off my toes; I guess I was only halfway paranoid. They had me pumped full of so many drugs I didn’t know what the fuck was going on. I lived in a weird-ass cartoon world for almost a year. I endured all of that just to kick heroin. But with heroin you don’t give a shit about the past, or how much pain you went through the first time … or the second time, or the third time… . I still crave that damn spike, you know? Every day is a struggle, and it’s a lot more difficult if your idiot boyfriend is waving a needle in your face every two seconds. God damn it, he’s made me sit there and watch him shoot up. ‘C’mon, baby, it’s no fun without you there.’ Did he ever stop to consider what that was doing to me, ever?”

I stroked her hair for a few minutes more, then she pulled away entirely, giving me one last pat on the chest. “Thank you for listening to me babble,” she said.

“It didn’t sound like babbling to me,” I said. “I think you needed to get a lot off your chest. I think you’re stuck in a fucked-up relationship and you need to get out.”

She nodded while looking at the floor. “Maybe you’re right. I don’t know.”

“What more does he have to do to you until you’re sure?”

“I don’t know.” I had a feeling she said those words a lot. I felt like kissing her: first a gentle peck on the cheek (when was the last time someone kissed her on the cheek?), then her forehead, her other cheek, her neck, her chin, and at last her lips. I pictured all of this as I stared at the contours of her beautiful face, but I didn’t act on the impulse. I didn’t think it was the right time. I figured she needed a friend at that moment, not another fucked-up lover.

I brushed the hair out of her eyes and said, “You don’t have to worry about it now. You’ll know when it’s time to dump him.”

“You must think I’m stupid.”

“No, I don’t think that at all. I think you’ve got yourself trapped in a situation you can’t find your way out of. That happens to a lot of people every day. Most of them didn’t get that way because they were stupid.”

“Why, then?”

“Because they trusted somebody too much.”

Esthra laughed her usual sad laugh. “That’s me, all right. I’ve trusted a lot of people I shouldn’t have.”

“But that doesn’t mean you give up on everyone, does it?”

“No, of course not. I think—”

Esthra’s next words were cut off by a pounding at the door followed by an angry voice: “Hey, why don’t you move it somewhere else! I need to take a piss!”

Esthra and I exchanged amused glances, then burst out laughing. “Well, maybe we should rejoin the party,” she said.

“Maybe so.”

As the pounding continued Esthra took my hand and led me to the door. Just as she was about to open it I gestured toward our hands and said, “Uh, what if Mike thinks … ?” I allowed the sentence to trail off.

“Who cares what Mike thinks?” She swung open the door and dragged me into the hall. A hefty biker dude with an incongruous tattoo of Alice in Wonderland on his hairy forearm pushed past us, flashing us an annoyed glance. A whole line of people were waiting outside, sighing and tapping their feet against the carpet. I could see them looking at us sideways. I ignored them as best as possible.

Esthra took me into the bedroom at the end of the hall. I don’t think she cared where she was going, just as long as it wasn’t the room where Mike was holding court. A half-dozen spacecases were lounging about on a circular waterbed, smoking marijuana and listening to an old Tom Waits album.

In the darkest corner of the room were a clump of empty beanbags near a closed door. Esthra was about to plop down in one of the beanbags when I heard a familiar, hyena-like laugh. Karen Griffin rarely laughed, but when she did she sounded like a pack of hyenas giggling to themselves as they fought over the corpse of a baby tiger.

I opened the door to find myself staring at another bathroom. This one was a lot smaller than the one in the hall, or perhaps it just seemed that way because there were so many people packed inside it. Griffin was sitting on the counter with her legs dangling over the edge, laughing uproariously at Twee-Boy19, he of the now-infamous Neo-Gothic Hipster Peanut Gallery. TweeBoy19 was leaning against the wall across from Griffin, sinking a needle into his pale arm. Danny sat behind Griffin, his hands resting on her stomach, his long legs wrapped around her slender waist. The rest of the Peanut Gallery was sitting on the edge of the bath, watching TweeBoy19 with a strange, dull-eyed fascination. On the lowered toilet seat sat a burly, olive-skinned man who seemed somewhat familiar, though I couldn’t quite place his face right off the bat. Black wraparound sunglasses obscured the top half of his face.

Danny’s eyes grew wide when he saw me. He smiled and said, “Hey, Elliot, what brings you here?”

“Oh, I was just passing through,” I said as casually as possible.

“How the hell did you get here?”

“Well, I was hitchhiking along the side of the freeway and this clown just happened to pick me up—”

Esthra peeked over my shoulder and said, “Don’t listen to him, he exaggerates by nature. He opened for our band, so we decided to drag him here. We’re thinking of making him our mascot.” She mussed up my hair as if I were a little kid.

Almost every eyeball in the room popped out of its socket upon seeing Esthra. Even the Peanut Gallery (whose sexual proclivities might have fallen anywhere in between total asexuality and forced group orgies with hairless Filipino boys—it was hard to tell which) seemed to oggle Esthra’s scantily-clad body with an obvious amount of prurient interest.

“Hey, you’re in that Doktor Delgado band, aren’t you?” Griffin said. Esthra just nodded. “You’re pretty damn good. You want a fix? On the house.”

By this time TweeBoy19 had drawn another shot into the needle from a moist cotton ball perched upon a blackened spoon. He offered the needle to Esthra, who held up her hand in a gesture of refusal. TweeBoy19 seemed confused.

“She already had some with her Cocoa Puffs this morning,” I said, which was meant to be an absurd non sequitur, but Twee-Boy19 actually appeared to accept this as a rational answer.

Esthra leaned toward me and whispered, “A Cocoa Puff is a mixture of PCP, coke, and marijuana.”

I slapped myself on the forehead and said, “Jesus Christ, you can’t say anything anymore! You mention dog food and it turns out to be code for crack cocaine.”

Esthra said, “No, no, dog food is heroin. At least in Cincinnati.”

I could only roll my eyes at the ceiling. In this day and age any random noun is suspect. You could get raided by the DEA just for trying to order food for your kid’s poodle over the phone.

I mentioned earlier that almost every eyeball in the room popped out upon seeing Esthra. The only person who didn’t seem to care was the burly man sitting on the toilet. His gaze hadn’t left the needle since we’d entered the room, like a house bound cat watching a bird skip along a tree branch just outside the window. When Esthra refused the heroin the man said, “Shit, pass it here then, man.”

I did a double take upon hearing the voice. I’m not sure why I didn’t recognize him before; perhaps it was the sunglasses. Without a moment’s hesitation the man unzipped his pants and whipped out a thirteen-inch dick with the circumference of a beer can. Yes, it was Chino, the strange Mexican who had molested me on the bus! I had the urge to run screaming from the room, the initial symptoms of Posttraumatic Stress Syndrome already triggering a mental meltdown in my crumbling skull. Instead my feet remained glued to the linoleum floor as my eyes locked onto the grotesque, phantasmagoric scene before me.

Chino said, “Please excuse my manners, but all the surface veins have collapsed on my body so I, uh, kind of have to jab the needle through the veins in my dick, you see. Sorry. Please look away if you can’t handle it.”

I didn’t look away. I was both repulsed and fascinated as I watched Chino ease the needle into a bulging blue vein that ran along the top of the penis before disappearing into a wild forest of curly black pubic hair. I glanced up at the Peanut Gallery. Judging by their stoic expressions their interest seemed far more clinical than mine. A tension-charged silence filled the air; I could sense that even the most blasé junkies in the room were holding their breath. At the exact second that Chino pressed the plunger on the syringe I released a low whistle that sounded like the descent of an incoming missile. Esthra burst out laughing. Even the Peanut Gallery cracked a smile. A mixture of a smirk and a scowl appeared on Chino’s face as he attempted to keep his hand steady. After the brownish liquid had disappeared into his vein, he slipped the needle out with a doctor’s care. Pure, undiluted rage flared up in his bloodshot eyes. I suspect his rage was fueled by a whole pharmacy of mind-altering substances.

Chino slammed the needle down on the counter. “What the fuck’re you doing?” he screamed. “I could’ve missed that shot, man!”

Griffin was now staring at Chino with a bemused look on her face. “Who the hell are you anyway? We didn’t invite you in here, did we?” She glanced around at her friends as if looking for an answer.

Chino opened his mouth to respond, but before he could do so I said, “Oh, that’s Chino. He likes little boys.” I don’t know why I chose to say that. I guess I thought it was funny (but of course that’s always my excuse).

Chino’s anger filled eyes swivelled toward me as he rose from the toilet, his pants dropping to the floor. Then his anger turned to puzzlement. “Hey, don’t I know you from somewhere?”

I began to reach into my jacket. “That’s right. I’m connected to the Mexican Mafia and we don’t like you mouthin’ off about those two guys you killed.”

Chino backed up against the counter, raising his hands until they were level with his chest. Sweat began to trickle down his forehead. “Uh, look, man, I-I didn’t tell no one important… .”

“Only every commuter on the Rapid Transit Authority!” I poked my index finger into the inner lining of my jacket, hoping he’d think it was a gun. “Shut your pie hole, Chewey. This is your last warning. The next time we catch you mouthin’ off about those corpses, we’ll saw off that horse-dick of yours and feed it to you like a kielbasa. Now get the hell out of here!” Chino nodded and reached down to pull up his pants. “Forget that!” I said. “Just scoot on out of here and don’t look back.” To my surprise, Chino proceeded to do exactly that. When he was halfway through the door I said, “Oh, and if we catch you with your hands on the little boys again we’ll tie your dick to the fender of a Jaguar and floor it, ya hear?”

Chino nodded as he scrambled out of the bathroom in an awkward, crouched position with his giant schlong swinging back and forth in the air like a clock pendulum. The spacecases lying on the bed watched Chino dash past them, then erupted into nonstop giggles, no doubt thinking they were having some kind of shared hallucination. At that moment Tom Waits’s “The Piano Has Been Drinking (Not Me)” began playing on the stereo—one of those odd details that happens to stick in your brain during surreal moments such as this.

Along with the spacecases I watched him run out of the bedroom, then glanced back at my friends in the bathroom. They were all staring at me as if I possessed some sort of mystical power. Since I couldn’t quite imagine being able to top that particular performance (every comedian knows the value of quitting on a high-note), and since I didn’t really want to engage in further flatlining experiments with Danny’s little post-mortem pals, I decided to bail out while I still could.

“Well, gotta go bust in some heads for the Santiago Boys,” I said, cracking my knuckles. “See you later, Danny, Griffin, et al.!” I turned on my heel and walked right out of there, Esthra following close behind me.

“What the hell was all that about?” she said.

“Oh, I never told you about my ties to the Mexican Mafia? They call me Elliot ‘The Fighting Enchilada’ Greeley. I’m infamous in the Tijuana underground.”

Once again we found ourselves in the hallway. This hallway was so packed full of people it took a hell of a long time just to fight our way through half of it. At one point I was looking at Esthra and not really paying attention to where I was going, so I crashed into someone coming out of the bathroom. “Oh, excuse me,” both of us said at once. Since my face was smashed into his chest, the first thing I saw of the man was his tie. I thought it was pretty damn snappy; it consisted of striking, fractal-like geometric patterns that immediately caught one’s eye, particularly if your eye was pressed up against it.

I took a few steps back and looked up at the man’s bloody face. “Brother Lundberg?” I said.

The blond-haired, blue-eyed Mormon glanced from side to side as if searching for a convenient escape route. “Uh … ,” he said.

I asked him exactly what Danny had asked me only a few minutes before: “How the hell did you get here?”

He said, “Uh … well, I was handing out copies of the Book of Mormon door to door when I came to this house. I deduced from the loud music that this was some kind of den of iniquity and knocked on the door. Some strange bearded man invited me in and gave me this funny cigarette.” He held up a fat roach that was giving off as much smoke as a brush-fire in Malibu. “I began wandering around the house, preaching the word of Joseph Smith while looking at all the weird colors on the wall.” The walls, by the way, were bare and white. “Then I felt myself getting hungry all of a sudden, so I went into the kitchen to find some Oreos. As I’m opening up the refrigerator this half-naked Mexican with what looked like a thirteen inch member zipped past me and rushed out the back door. It was at this point that I began to suspect there was something odd about this cigarette. I felt myself having a panic attack, and whenever I have a panic attack I throw up, so I ran into the bathroom past a whole line of people and puked all over the toilet. If only someone hadn’t been sitting on it at the time everything would’ve been fine. I’m not sure what happened next. All I know is that this clown leaped up off the toilet and began beating me with a leather bag packed full of heavy objects. At this point I knew I was hallucinating. What other explanation could there be? But I’m not quite sure I understand how a hallucination can beat you as hard as this.” He touched his fingertips to the streams of blood still trickling down his face.

“What happened to the clown?” I asked.

Lundberg gestured toward the bathroom with his thumb. “He caught one whiff of my cigarette and collapsed.”

Sure enough, Esthra and I peeked into the bathroom to see Ogo sprawled out on the floor, pinkish vomit staining his black and white outfit. I looked at Esthra and said, “Okay, that’s it, things are getting way too weird around here.”

I patted Lundberg on the shoulder and said, “Give my regards to Brother Fleetwood if you ever get home again,” then made a bee-line through the living room, past the groupies surrounding Mike, who was now singing an acoustic version of Lou Reed’s “I Wanna Be Black,” and out the front door.

When I reached the porch I heard Esthra’s voice behind me. She said, “Where are you going?”

I turned to see her standing in the doorway. I could still hear Mike singing within; he hadn’t wavered for one second, not even while seeing his girlfriend chase another man out of the house.

“I’m gettin’ the hell out of this nuthouse,” I said. “You want to join me? I’ve got some vintage Marx Brothers movies back home. We can cuddle, drink hot cocoa, and watch Duck Soup (Paramount, 1933). What do you say?”

Esthra closed the door behind her and joined me out on the porch. She smiled. “It sounds lovely, but how are you going to get back home?”

“Well, I was thinking of stealing Ogo’s van.”

“Mmmm, I don’t think he’d like that.”

“Really? Maybe it’s a bad idea then. I don’t want to end up with a nose like Lundberg’s.”

“Who was that guy?”

“He’s a member of the Mormon Mafia. They’re fighting with the Mexican Mafia to take over the dope trade in Southern California.”

Esthra laughed. “Do you ever give a serious answer?”

“What makes you think that wasn’t a serious answer?”

“Okay,” she said, holding up her hands, “I’ll just accept anything you say as true. It’ll probably be easier that way.”

“So if I say that Mike’s a putrid scumbag you’ll accept that as true?”

She glanced back over her shoulder at the closed door, then said, “Yes, but I can’t promise I’ll do anything about it.”

“Not even hop into a cab with me and head on back to my place for a quick screening of Duck Soup?”

She stared at the ground and shook her head. “Mike wouldn’t like it.”

“Wouldn’t like Duck Soup? C’mon, how could you not like Duck Soup?”

“No, I mean he wouldn’t like me going home with you.”

“Why? My intentions are entirely honorable.” This was true, of course, as true as the gang warfare between the Mexicans and the Mormons.

“I know that, but I don’t want to give him any more ammunition than he already has.”

“What was that whole scene in the bathroom for then?” She began pouting. “I know. I feel guilty about that now. I was just so angry… .”

“You had a right to be. He was making fun of you in front of all those—” I saw her biting on her red thumbnail, looking down at the ground with worry lines creasing her brow, and realized she was beyond reason. She was hooked into Mike as much as Mike was hooked into junk. “Oh, forget it,” I said, fed up with the madness, and walked away.

I got all the way to the sidewalk before I heard Esthra’s voice again. “Where are you going?” she repeated, this time with an edge of desperation like a whiny little child who wants two dolls instead of one. I knew then that she was never going to make up her mind. She didn’t know what she really wanted.

I turned to face her. Even in the dark, with an entire driveway separating us, you could tell she was a beautiful woman, the kind of woman you’d risk your life for just to hold in your arms for the briefest of moments. I contemplated the situation, then said, “There’s a scene in A Day at the Races where Groucho lays his watch down on the table beside him to wash his hands. When he sees Dr. Steinberg staring at the watch, Groucho grabs it and tosses it into the water. ‘I’d rather have it rusty than missing,’ he says.” I smiled. “I think that applies to this situation just as well. Au revoir!”

And I walked away as fast as possible before I could hear her voice again.