Destroy (7 page)

Kat, who is wearing this short plaid skirt with bright-yellow socks pulled past her knees and this tiny brown button-up coat, flips when she sees me. “Yes!” she screams. “My boy is here! Yes!”

“I love this girl,” I say back, which is a total lie, considering I never talked with her after I scored with her the second time.

But whatever. I deal with it. I lie.

Again, I say, “I love this girl.”

“So why don't you just fucking marry her?” that Joshua dude snaps, like he's pissed off or something.

Whatever, man.

Destroy.

And she goes, “Where you been, baby?”

“I just got back from LA.”

“What were you doing down there?”

“Taking care of the film rights for the book.”

“Was it awesome?”

“It was okay until this morning, when I was checking out of my hotel room. This fat girl kept asking me if all these things that happened in the book had happened to me in real life. It was so goddamn annoying.”

And Daniel says, “None of it did, right?”

“None of it except the part where my main character's cousin gets kicked off
Jeopardy!
That part really happened to me.”

“Wait,” Marco says. “Your cousin was on
Jeopardy!
?”

“No. I was. It was before my book came out. And I got kicked off for threatening Alex Trebek.”

“Shut up,” says Kat.

“I'm serious,” I say. “The footage used to be on YouTube until NBC filed that lawsuit and all of their clips came down.”

“Why did you get kicked off?” Kat asks.

I light a cigarette and take another swig of the whiskey and say, “We got into it over some remarks he made to me after I got a question wrong.” Drag. Drink. “The answer was, ‘A term for a gardening tool that was also used to describe women in seventeenth-century England.' And I buzzed in immediately and said, ‘What's a hoe?' Everyone started laughing at me. The answer was, ‘What is a rake?' At that point, I was already down considerably, like by nine, ten thousand dollars, and then Trebek went, ‘Well, we've obviously figured out where Mr. Morgan's head has been all afternoon.' So I was like, ‘What's that supposed to mean, man?' And Trebek said, ‘It
was only a joke. I was just making a reference to the fact that you're lagging so far behind.' And I said, ‘But that ain't your job, man. Your job is to ask questions. That's it.' And he said, ‘You shouldn't be angry at me because you're so far down.' And that's when I threw my buzzer to the side and went, ‘What's up, Trebek? You want a piece of me? Is that it?' Then I started walking at him, and all these security guards rushed the stage and escorted me off and threw me out of the studio, and when the show came back on air, Trebek claimed that I had gotten ill and could not continue on, which was bullshit. I was in handcuffs in the back of a security car, trying to explain to some officer named Hank why Tom Petty is better than Bob Dylan.”

“That is fucking awesome,” Marco says.

And Kat's like, “I love you. See. This is why I love you.”

“So anyway,” I say with a grin. “Besides what happened this morning during checkout, LA was, ya know, fabulous.”

Even that Joshua guy is laughing now.

Marco hands Daniel two grams for eighty dollars, and Daniel surveys the room before stuffing the coke into his pockets.

And that Becky girl goes, “Hey, Daniel, do you have any bumps?”

Daniel looks at Becky really hard for a few seconds and says, “Marco has half grams for twenty-five dollars and full ones for fifty.”

Becky blushes and rolls her eyes and says, “Forget it.” Then she walks out of the room.

“Dude,” Jimmy bitches. “Don't be mean to her. She might actually help the band at some point.”

“Whatever,” says Daniel, pulling his coke back out. “Until she does something for us, I'm kinda through with her, unless one of you two wanna fuck her. I'm sure that would be much more effective than giving her free cocaine.”

“We were actually talking about that earlier,” Sebastian says. “How one of us might have to take one for the team to get her price down. And we thought it should be you, Daniel.”

“Fuck that.”

And I say, “I'm sure she'd buy you a leather jacket for your birthday or something.”

“Fuck you, man,” Daniel says again, laughing, while Kat squeezes my thigh and winks at me.

Then this Asian girl with fake tits and braces hands Daniel a mirror, and Daniel dumps an entire gram onto it, so I take a full g out myself and go, “Let me contribute to the fun,” and dump it all out as well.

“You hit up Ryan, didn't you?” Marco says.

“Yep.”

And Daniel snaps, “Dude, fuck him. That guy is such a fucking party killer. He's a fucking loser. I won't even talk to him anymore. I mean, the bullshit that spews out of that guy's mouth—like him and his band are actually gonna do something because they brought some heads to 12 Galaxies on a Tuesday night. Yippety-yeah! We sold that shit out a week in advance the last time we played there. None of the shit him and his band claim is gonna happen ever actually does happen. None of it. Not the contact with the A and R people from Sub Pop. And definitely not the big radio interview on Live 105. But yet they claim they're somehow, after like six live shows in one year, the best band in the city, and they talk shit on my band, but the funny thing is that every time I run into that asshole at a show or at a bar he's trying to get on a bill with us that's already been booked. Fuck him.”

“Yeah, well,” I say, “I agree with some of the stuff you just said, but the guy cuts me major deals on coke. I mean, he slashes the price big-time.”

“I know he does,” Daniel says.

The Joshua guy walks to his record player and starts flipping through his records and asks if there are any requests.

“You got any Ritchie Valens?” I ask.

“I actually do.”

“What album?”

“
Come On, Let's Go
.”

“That's the best one,” I say. “Put it on.”

“Done.”

A huge mirror gets passed around, and Kat hands it to me and I take a line and pass it to Marco, and Marco does one and passes it to Sebastian.

And I'm really digging the feel of this room. Like, a lot. A whole lot. It has this striking aura of familiarity about it—the Buddy Holly and Al Green and Will Oldham posters on the wall—furniture pushed into corners and covered with cigarette burns—dirty clothes and spilled ashtrays and porn magazines and empty bottles of everything smeared all over the floor—dirty dishes on the computer desk—a collection of Melvins and Neil Young album covers pinned to the back of the door.

The mirror and my Jim Beam keep going and going and at one point, this older dude, maybe late forties, missing some teeth from obviously grinding them out, who looks like he's been up for a few days doing speed, pulls me aside and says, “Hey, man. I read your book. I really dug it. I mean, there were some things that I would've done differently, but I still dug it.”

“Thanks, dude.”

“My name's Only Owen.”

“You write?”

“A little bit,” he says. “I've been working on this collection of haikus and a journal about ramen noodle recipes.” Pause. I watch him grind his teeth together super hard. Then, “I do have a great story idea for a screenplay I wanna get cracking on.”

“What's the story?”

“What?”

“Your story.”

“What story?”

“The one you just told me you were gonna start working on for your screenplay.”

“Oh right. The screenplay.”

“What's the idea?”

The guy slides his purple-tinted tongue over his white-caked lips and goes, “It's about this guy who really likes this girl and becomes obsessed with her and starts, like, really losing his mind over her. He, like, wigs out and tries to kill that band the Darkness because she's really into them a lot, and then he tries to burn down her house and shit.” Pause. “That's it. What do you think?”

“It's pretty all right.”

“Thank you.”

“You're welcome.”

“Anyway,” he says. “You know that guy Jared, the dude who plays bass for King Cobra and the Beershits? That's what he told me. I used to live with him a few years back in the Loin.”

“I know him. I haven't seen him in a while. How's he doing?”

“He's just livin' his life, ya know. The last time I saw him was outside Hotel Utah last week. He was walking back and forth between a light pole and a fire hydrant, and then he stopped and just leaned against the pole. His body was still maneuvering all right, it was just waiting for his mind to turn back on.”

“Sounds like the right dude.”

“I know, man. Totally. Sounds about right cos it is about right.”

“Absolutely,” I say.

• • •

I'm in the bathroom taking a leak when Kat walks in and locks the door behind her.

“Why don't you ever call me back?” she wants to know.

“Jesus Christ, Kat. I'm pissing.”

“Just answer the question, James.”

“Do you even call?” I ask. “I don't think you do. I don't think you call.”

“Well, I haven't for a little while.”

“So what the hell are you asking me a question like that for?” I say, zipping my pants back up and moving to the sink to wash my hands.

“Because I used to. A lot. And you never tried to get in touch with me.”

“Well, I have a lot of things going on. You know this, lady. My life is super hectic. Sometimes phone calls fall between the cracks.”

“Fuck that. You haven't even come out with anything new.”

Whipping around from the sink, I say, “Fuck you, Kat. You're gonna come at me about my writing now?”

“No,” she says, very defensively.

“It sounds like you are.”

“I'm only trying to point out how you're not doing anything new right now, so when you use the whole, ‘Woe is me. My life is super hectic at the moment, excuse me for blowing people off,' no one is buying it.”

“You don't know what you're talking about.”

“Yes I do, James.”

“What the hell are you doing with your life?” I ask. “Cutting hair at MasterCuts.”

“Good one, James. I'm actually at Edo in the Lower Haight now. Maybe you should come in and get a touch-up.”

“I would never let you touch my hair.” Quick pause. “And you know what else?”

“What?”

“I'm just getting started with my writing.”

“Right. Keep telling yourself that. If it makes you feel better, then go for it, but everyone else can see what I'm talking about. Everyone talks about it behind your back, James. How you've wrapped your entire identity into the fact that you wrote a book and got published, but now that people are expecting something better, you've decided to distract yourself with all this pseudo celebrity because you're scared to do something else. You're afraid to write. You're scared of your own words because you're not writing to write anymore, you're trying to write to maintain your status.”

“Fuck you!” I scream so hard a line of drool blows out of my mouth. “You have no right to say what you just said. You do not know what it's like to destroy yourself over a story. To put everything you have into something and then allow the world to see what's inside of you. To
really strive to write something that means shit to people. It fucking hurts, and sometimes it's hard to do it all over again.”

“Don't yell at me,” Kat snaps. “I'm not the only one who thinks this. I'm only one of the people who has the guts to say it to your face.”

“Oh yeah?” I tell her.

“Yeah.”

“How about this, Kat?”

“What?”

“I hate you. Okay? I fucking hate your cunt ass right now. I hate you.”

I fly out of the bathroom, down the hallway, and bump into Daniel.

“Yo, you doing all right?” he asks.

“I'm fine. What's up with you?”

“We're all gonna go over to Sebastian's and hang out until Zeitgeist opens. Then we're gonna have some Bloody Marys there, and maybe even hit up Amoeba later. You coming?”

“I'm gonna go home,” I tell him, patting his shoulder.

“What?”

“Yeah, man. It's been a long day, and I'd like to make it home before sunrise.”

“You sure you're all right?”

“I'm fine. I'm just tired is all. Long day. Long night.”

“Okay, dude. But call me tomorrow or something. Or maybe the day after tomorrow. I might be sleeping by the afternoon.”

“I hope you are,” I tell him, then make my way out of the apartment and hit the street just as a cab is pulling up to a stoplight.

“Nineteenth and Valencia,” I say, after climbing in.

“Sure thing, pal.”

I drop my head against the window and rub my eyes and notice that the fog is beginning to clear up.

• • •

Back at my apartment, I cannot unlock the front gate again. It still won't fucking work. Shit! So I stand there, contemplating what to do, when this guy from my floor walks outside.

“Thank you so much,” I tell him.

“Lose your keys?” he asks.

“No. They just don't work, and I'm pissed off about it. My keys don't work.”

“Let me see them,” he says.

I hand them over and he goes, “I think I know the problem.”

“What's that?”

“Look,” he tells me, pointing at the front gate key.

The thing is absolutely covered in cocaine.

And the guy goes, “That's most likely your problem,” handing the keys back to me.

“You're probably right,” I say, and walk inside after digging the residue out with my finger and rubbing it over my gums.