Read Kingdom Online

Authors: Anderson O'Donnell

Kingdom (8 page)

The limo turned another corner, past the hordes of glitterati, those Gucci-clad vampires ready to devour each other whole, held at bay only by the modern-day talismanic magic of the red velvet rope, then another, before turning onto Chiba Street: playground of Tiber City’s mega-elite, ground zero of which was the infamous Hotel Yorick—the same hotel in which his old man ate a bullet years ago.

The limo was not supposed to take this route; there were other ways to go, other paths through the Glimmer district that could take the revelers to whatever destination they desired—any way but past the Yorick.

And then Dylan saw it: Illuminated against the glow of the city, his father stared back at him from the side of one of the anonymous skyscrapers, the man’s face blown up and expanded to cover several stories, framed by reds and blues and whites, vague hints of Soviet-era realism and a single word spelled out underneath his face in bold lettering—
PROGRESS.
As the building drew closer, the face’s similarities to Dylan’s father blurred and then, as the limo sailed past, faded—except for the eyes: Those were his father’s eyes. Dylan swallowed hard and considered demanding the limo halt its march through the city, then ordering everyone to inspect the massive ad—was it for a movie? A band? A brand? Was it a misguided attempt at art? Was it some sort of, oh fuck,
a statement
for Christ’s sake?—and assure him that the man staring out across the horizon, staring in the direction of the Ferris wheel on fire, past the Hotel Yorick, was not his father, that the confusion, or was it a hallucination, was simply the result of having done too much coke and because tonight, after all, was not only his birthday but the anniversary of his father’s death although, depending on the exact time, the exact anniversary of those events—of Dylan’s birth and his father’s death—may have been yesterday but what the fuck was the difference? Ever since his old man had shoved the barrel of a Beretta into his mouth and pulled the trigger, Dylan’s birthday had nothing to do with celebration: only oblivion.

The PROGRESS ad was receding into the distance and when Dylan turned his attention back to the limo, it was clear that no one had noticed. The limo turned off Chiba Street, heading down a poorly lit alleyway, and the Hotel Yorick vanished, obscured by the neon and the looming, terrible skyscrapers. He was still sweating though, his heart slamming into his rib cage with a frightening ferocity, and then he was trying to ask which club they had settled on—Void or Absolution—because he needed to say something, anything.

His mouth—dry and numb, a bitterness lingering in the back of his throat, under his swollen, fat tongue—was moving and he was saying something, asking about where the limo was going but no one seemed to know; he mentioned something about the fight, trying to distance himself from the PROGRESS ad, from the Hotel Yorick sighting, but people were shaking their heads: What fight? It dawned on him he had no idea who he was speaking to: Chase and Mikey were on the other side of the cavernous car, miles of leather and mirrored glass slapped over wet bars illuminated by dozens of weak white lights separated them from Dylan, and there were other people in the car, people he had never met or maybe he had and their names were already forgotten and then a girl—blonde, beautiful in that way only American girls can be beautiful but wearing too much makeup, too much leather, too much silver—was whispering in his ear, asking if he had any more coke before confiding in him that she was afraid because she heard that in London the government was considering stacking corpses in graves because they were running out of space but that the whole situation might be OK because only abandoned graves dating back more than 100 years would be disturbed.

Her hand was on his thigh as she was telling him this, her fingers—immaculately manicured, her nails adorned with a garish red—crawling toward his crotch but then the limo was stopping and people were getting out and the girl was trying to pull Dylan toward the door but he resisted, hanging back until the last possible second, until the point where if he waited any longer there would be concerned inquires, knowing looks exchanged followed by encouragement to bump another line because like, after all, everyone’s waiting.

Not that another bump was a bad idea: He couldn’t shake the memory of the PROGRESS poster, of the man’s eyes boring a hole in the horizon, eyes that reminded him so much of his father. Reaching into the breast pocket of his suit jacket he produced a small glass vile half-filled with white powder, a little bit of which he proceeded to dump out on the faux granite surrounding the wet bar. He used a credit card to divide the coke into two fat lines, one for each nostril. Seconds later both lines were gone and the memories of those eyes staring back at him from that monstrous skyscraper? Fucking irrelevant.

Laughing at nothing, his world suddenly very bright, tight, and shiny, Dylan kicked open the car door and launched himself into the street. A crowd had gathered outside the entrance to the club—there was no name anywhere on the building’s exterior, not even a symbol ripping off some long-forgotten
culture, some kind of ancient totem turned marketing gimmick. There were velvet ropes running in every direction but each time Dylan approached one a voice crackled over a headset and an instant later a hand appeared from nowhere, removing the rope, allowing Dylan to continue past the crowds, past the voices shouting—he heard Spanish, English, Russian, Arabic—the different languages all conveying a single frenzied emotion: want. Several flashes went off, prompting Dylan to turn in the direction of the light. Someone was shouting his name and he was smiling at no one, at everyone, his jaw clenched tight from the coke.

Dylan pushed forward into the club, confused, the coke racing through his nervous system. And then someone was welcoming him—not to any specific destination, simply “welcome”—offering to take the coat he wasn’t wearing before ushering him through the doorway and propelling him into a shadowy hallway, the only light coming from a chandelier hanging overheard, a security camera nestled between the fake candles. The hall was empty, serving only to funnel customers toward a staircase 30 or 40 feet beyond the entrance. Dylan proceeded down the hallway, one hand on the wall, tracing the bumps of plaster under the yellowed, peeling wallpaper—pre-aged for effect by an interior design company—imagining they were a new form of Braille, a secret language capable of providing an answer, some wisdom or guidance, if one knew how to interpret the patterns hidden behind the paper. But such divination was beyond Dylan and he began to climb the stairs, nodding at another bouncer stationed at the top of the flight.

The main room of the club reminded Dylan of every other bar in Tiber City’s Glimmer district: dance floor in the middle of the room, with several tables and three bars framing the perimeter. On the far end of the dance floor, three or four steps off the floor, was the VIP area. The aesthetic was a schizophrenic mess, a victim of several ownership changes and desperate attempts to graft edginess and authenticity onto an otherwise nondescript building. Genuine was not a necessary trait however; illusion was the only requirement. Allow the 20-somethings, or even the Peter Pans pushing 40, to believe they were somewhere happening, somewhere hip: That was the goal. So, vague concepts were slapped together to procure capital and then half-heartedly implemented, the illusion of exclusivity manufactured, and—voila—you have Void or Absolution or No Exit or wherever the fuck Dylan now was.

The current décor was Victorian mansion: low lighting with lots of plush, over-stuffed chairs and couches, chandeliers with electric candles, a fireplace, velvet drapes, several ancient London newspapers with giant headlines—Jack the Ripper had struck again; the dance area was smaller than usual, in order to make room for the couches. Ambient trance washed across the room as Dylan cut across the dance floor toward the VIP area, sliding between couples and groups of single women as he continued toward the back of the room. Someone was screaming “happy birthday” and then Dylan was doing a shot—piss-poor tequila that went down rough—but he was saying thank you anyway, nodding to someone he had never seen before in his life, smiling at beautiful girls writhing on the dance floor who were watching themselves in the mirrors over the bar, and then Chase and Mikey were there, asking where the fuck he had been, and for fuck’s sake guy—smile: It’s your birthday.

The VIP section consisted of a dozen canopy beds stacked with pillows and serving trays: Some of the canopies’ dark silk covers were up; others were down, rendering the beds’ occupants mere shadows. Waiters buzzed from bed to bed, delivering orders to the open canopies, tactfully ignoring the moans and sniffling noises emanating from the others. In the far corner of this VIP wonderland a girl was crying hysterically, rolling around on one of the beds, gnawing on a pillow while everyone looked in another direction.

Although he didn’t recall making a reservation, four beds had been set aside in Dylan’s name. The beds were arranged in a square, with two or three feet separating each bed, and though Dylan wasn’t even sure he wanted to spend the rest of the night sitting on a bed he didn’t really have any alternative to suggest so he grabbed two of the girls from the limo—the one with the red nails and brunette he assumed was her friend—and jumped onto the bed furthest from the entrance. Chase and Mikey and a girl they grabbed off the dance floor took up residence in the bed across from his.

Dylan slumped back into the pillows stacked against the headboard, the two girls sitting a bit further down on the bed, one on either side of him, handbags, iPhones, and packs of cigarettes occupying every available section of the bed. The brunette leaned over and, placing her hand behind his head, began kissing him, her tongue flicking in and out of his mouth, her lips a combo of cherry and cigarette.

“Happy Birthday,” she said when she pulled away.

“Yes! Happy Birthday,” the other girl said.

“Thanks,” Dylan mumbled, distracted, looking for one of the trays he had seen on the other beds, spying one on the floor next to the bed. He leaned over the side to retrieve it and when he pulled himself back up two bottles of champagne—uncorked and set into ice buckets arranged between his bed and his friends’ bed—had appeared, and everyone had a glass. One of the girls in the bed—the one he hadn’t met yet—handed him a flute filled to the brim and simultaneously everyone screamed “Happy Birthday!”

Mildly embarrassed, Dylan just smiled and drained his glass in a single gulp. He noticed the two other beds adjacent to his were full: a mix of girls, guys, and even a dog—he thought he was hallucinating but someone had not only brought a small dog to the club but had actually been allowed to enter with said small dog—all of whom he had never seen before in his life. Still, he considered, it could be worse: Chase and Mikey could have brought the ponytail guy from the last party.

Dylan placed the tray—the kind on which his mother used to bring him saltines and flat ginger ale when, as a child, he was home sick from school—at the bottom of the bed before again reaching into his pocket, taking out the vial and snorting a massive line of blow.

The music in the bar was changing, an aggressiveness creeping into the lounge beats, and Dylan dumped more white powder onto the tray, again chopping it up into several lines but this time he turned back to the two girls who were eyeing the coke like starving orphans from a Dickens novel.

“I’m sorry,” Dylan said, as he gestured to the coke, “I’m being a terrible host. Please.”

The blonde from the limo, the one with the red nails, swooped in, one hand holding back her hair, the other pressing her right nostril as the left hovered up two lines. She tilted her head back, her eyes shut, and a smile slowly crept across her face.

“Wow,” she said. “Just…Wow. That is killer coke. I’m Sarah by the way.”

“And I’m Brandi,” said her friend, who had better tits but a less pretty face. “Is it cool if we hang out and party?”

“Yeah, it’s cool. How did you guys wind up in the limo?”

“Um, that guy,” Sarah replied, pointing across toward the other bed at Chase.

Chase waved, giving Dylan the thumbs-up before snorting a line off his own tray.

“Cool. Are you guys…models?”

“Yes!” they shrieked in unison.

“Oh my God,” Sarah said, “You are like, so perceptive. I mean, a lot of people eventually figure out that we’re models. I mean—hello, right? Look at this bod!” She reached over and squeezed Brandi’s right tit, smiling at the other girl and sniffling once, twice, before continuing.

“But not right away and they’re usually just guessing by that point. And yeah it’s not like either of us are doing Fashion Week or anything like that and success doesn’t just come overnight but Brandi knows this guy who has a lot of connections in the industry and he thinks we both could be stars, easily. By the way, this is killer coke. Did I already say that? Sorry if I did but baby this shit is to die for.”

Sarah leaned back over the tray, did another massive line, a line Dylan had cut for himself because the situation was deteriorating quickly. He glanced over at Chase and Mikey’s bed: Mikey was rolling an enormous joint while Chase and the slightly overweight girl they picked up did bump after bump after bump, any sort of discretion abandoned, his hand creeping up her thigh, moving under her leather mini skirt.

“So, are you famous or something?” Brandi asked, not even waiting for Dylan’s answer before diving forward and taking another bump.

“No,” Dylan replied, “Not famous. Not famous at all.”

“Are you sure? I think you’re lying…”

Sarah leaned over to Brandi and whispered something in her ear. Brandi’s eyes got big and she leaned forward, her mouth open, her lips glistening.

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