The Swan Song of Doctor Malloy (23 page)

‘Listen to me,' I talk slowly but my words still slur a bit, ‘listen to what I have to say. What you've just said. It's like an exhibition I once saw in a cathedral. A film was projected onto a large screen below a huge stained-glass window. Do you get stained-glass windows here? I mean real stained glass? It doesn't matter. That doesn't matter. I mean, if you have real stained glass or not. Well, the film started off with deep blue water. The entire screen covered with the deepest blue, and there was a bubbly sound, like air bubbles, like the sea breathing. And way down the bottom, deep down at the seabed, was a fragmented white image, like a mosaic. As it moved up to the surface it became clear it was a man's body. After some time. It seemed like a lifetime. It was for him, I suppose. The man's face broke the surface and he exhaled. He had a look of wonder on his face and fear or awe. Surprised at what he saw perhaps. At what he saw around him. He didn't smile, but something in his expression made me wonder if he had seen it all before.'

Jose is asleep, slumped on the bar. We are the only ones left.

The image stays with me as we take a taxi back to town. The man deep at the bottom of the blue water. The pressure of so much water pushing him down. Fragmenting him, compartmentalising him, so he is barely distinguishable as a man. Yet he forces himself, something forces him, to the surface. Until gradually the mosaics of his body knit together. Slowly he emerges to the surface. He breathes. One long breath. His eyes are wide open. He looks around to see what is new and different in this world above the water, in this world where his body is whole, where he can breathe the air. And nothing is different.

The Longstone brothers will have nothing to do with it. They are wild mountain men, huge bodies framed from boulders of the Rockies. But what Don offers them is beyond the limits of their wildness. Same goes for Don's familiar, Fred, who is perched by his side, a tiny man with beady reddened eyes. When he sees the bottle on the table, he shakes his head and recounts how the last time he drank from it he tried to kill his girlfriend.

‘You can keep your Lucifer's Elixir,' he says, his eyes popping from his head. ‘You and the devil can drink together,' he says to Don, who caresses the top of the bottle with the sensuous touch of a lover.

Nor did Priss try any of the drink, or so I recall when I come to reconstruct the way the night panned out.

Jose and I had finally left the bar and taken a cab to Priss's place, where we drank more and took cocaine. Not Jose. No cocaine for Jose. The drink had done for him. And that's how Jose came to be slumped in the corner. But I was steaming, secretly disappointed at the implications of what Sandro had said. So I insisted on more white powder, the whiter the better. Priss was not so sure. Even he'd had enough and was ready to turn in for the night, to snuggle up against his young wife. But he was a good host. He tried his regular dealer, a contact on the Southside, but no luck. So he told me about Don's house and his ‘Museum'. We finished off the beers over one last game of pool. Then we wheeled out the Harley Davidson that was resting in the garage next to the little red Corvette. The huge guard dog shifted in his sleep. He knew where we two were headed.

I must give it to him, Dr Drugs, he had forewarned me of the ‘Museum' with its Satanism, armaments, and other surprises. But it was to be one of those days where I sought out the company of wolves, where I would venture deep into the darkest corner of the cave to find them. The more deliciously dangerous the better. The wildest side of wild, please, and then some more. All the better to eat you with, I thought, after those first two grams of finest quality cocaine. After that first taste we are given a tour of the armoury, bristling with guns bought from the Israeli army to sell to the Chicago gangs, hidden away in a room behind the quiet exterior of this sleepy suburban house.

The ‘Museum' walls are lined with photos of the spirits of long-dead first nation Americans in war paint and headdress. A shrunken head sits in one corner, its lips stitched in silence, next to a brightly coloured glass bubblegum machine. And when Don, the Satanist, with the bust of his master above his head (mocking the ‘Last Supper' on the wall opposite) produces the bottle from the cupboard and places it in the middle of the table, when the assembled group recoils in horror, when, with a smile, he refuses to say whose virgin's blood has been mixed and diluted, when all the others say “No,” including Dr Drugs himself, I say, “Yes,” give me some, let me swallow it up, let me be changed. And as I gulp from the bottle of Lucifer's Elixir, I know my heart will turn black, and it will all, once again, be a long time mending.

Next day there is a minor hurricane in Chicago. The rain lashes the sidewalks, flooding the well-kept lawns. The men of the houses stay indoors with their womenfolk and sit it out. The troops postpone their triumphant march up Madison Avenue. But I am oblivious to it all. I stay in the darkness of the den (Jose having disappeared), the demons locked inside my soul. Most of the time I lie in bed, waiting for my own storm to subside, waiting for some equilibrium. I tell Priss and his wife I have a migraine, I need rest. I have travelled and worked too hard and too long, I mumble. They leave me alone, save to entice me with small meals and regular cordials. Priss looks sheepish, but says nothing of the excursion to Don's place. He is afraid Charlene might get upset with him again, withdraw into her secret world, and that the wizened therapist from Lake Shore Drive would once more be at the door. All in all, migraine is the best solution for everyone concerned.

11

Alligators on the jukebox

Caitlin cannot sleep, but she cannot wake. Her hair is matted; her lips are cracked. The eczema she had as a child is back with a vengeance and is raging. Her fingers are dirty, but she has to scratch the backs of her hands, they itch so. The skin is red raw and bleeds at the touch. She lies on her back on the mattress. There is a small lamp beside her and a pile of books. The One with Eyebrows brought them the other day, after there were no more sounds of people walking about above, after he pulled the tape from her mouth, taking skin and hair with it.

He said, ‘Here are some books, and a torch to read by.' She was turned away from him then, staring at the bricks in the wall. But after he left and the door was locked shut she looked to see what was there. Three books. Book club editions, with mock leather and gilt covers. Romance seemed to be the theme, if the titles were anything to go by. She turned the torch light on and off. On and off. Spotlighting the rough wood ceiling. Shining the light into her own face. The bulb was sealed into the head of the lamp, which was made of hard transparent plastic. No chance of breaking glass, of slitting wrists. Not that she had any intention of doing that. It would be okay. Anthony would save her. She leaves the books in a pile, unread.

Much later. Days later. The door opens. ‘Here's a radio. You can listen to the radio,' he says. Caitlin stares at the bricks in the wall. ‘There's a pizza here for you.' She hears the turn of a knob and then the quiet refrain of a cello. ‘I've set the volume, you can't turn it any higher,' he says. ‘It's fixed. You understand? You can turn it down or off, but not up any louder.'

A short silence and the door closes and is locked. Caitlin turns to look at the radio. It is an old Bakelite, the type she remembers as a child. She puts her ear to the speaker. A cello is playing a deep melodic tune she does not recognize. She picks up the pizza and chews on the dry crust. Afterwards, she feels fat with dough. She longs for fresh vegetables. Spinach, sugar snap peas and broccoli. Most of all for broccoli.

My hangover lasts for days. When I emerge from my room, Priss, as bright and breezy as a new button, hands me the letter that's arrived in the post. It's from Taneffe, instructing me to check in to a reserved hotel room in a sleepy town just outside of Milwaukee, one hundred miles north, where the biggest river in the state empties itself into Lake Michigan. It is, the note reads, to be a working weekend break, with the emphasis on the latter. The weekend in question is only a day away. So, still feeling the worse for wear, but relieved to be given a reason to move on, I hire a convertible, tune the radio to the first country station I find, and head out of the city. It is still windy from the aftermath of the storm and the drive is long and straight and hot. When I arrive there's only one hotel in town, so I can hardly go wrong. The streets are quiet and empty. The only things missing are tumbleweed and Anthony Perkins. I park, leave my luggage in the boot and head across the street for the Lucky Strike Saloon.

The Wurlitzer plays ‘Blueberry Hill'. The morning sun pierces the slatted walls of the bar, fighting against the neon lights advertising beers past and present. The bartender casts a cursory glance at me as I stand in the open doorway. He continues to toss peanuts into the air, catching and crunching them in his mouth. The eight ball clunks into the bottom right pocket of the pool table, a ten-dollar bill passes between the players. In the corner, a bear of a man squats by the TV watching
Roger Rabbit.
Against the wall four men sit clutching their surfboards like sentinel guards. Each is blond and tanned. Each wears a sleeveless T-shirt, Bermuda shorts and reflective sunglasses in a variety of electric colours. One nods to me to join them. I sit down at their table.

‘You here for the wave?' asks one of the men with a deeply lined face and bleached shoulder-length hair. ‘It's about to break any day.'

‘Not that I know of,' I reply.

I look up at the fan whirring above. I wipe the sweat and grime from my forehead, squashing a mosquito in the process. Examining the mixture of blood, sweat and insect in the palm of my hand, I pull some crumpled notes from my trouser pocket and stand up.

‘I need a drink, how about you guys?'

No response, just a realignment of surfboards, like Zulu warriors awaiting Rorke's Drift.

The barman lifts the lid of the icebox, pulls out a bottle of beer, cracks off the top on the edge of the counter and hands it to me. He licks the froth from his fingers and flicks another peanut into the air.

‘If you're standing on the river's edge,' says the barman, cleaning a dirty glass on a dirtier cloth, ‘and you're fishing or watching the water, feeling good about things, feeling alive, and an alligator comes swimming up to you, you've got three choices. Did you know that?'

I shake my head, letting the icy cold beer run slowly down my throat. The barman runs his hand over his unshaven face and takes the remnants of a cigar from his waistcoat pocket. He lights it and sucks deeply.

‘Alligators prefer smaller animals, mammals mainly. Dogs, deer, raccoons, that sort of thing. So one choice is to stand your ground and blow yourself up as big as you can. Like this. It kinda confuses them, they might just slink away.'

He blows out his cheeks, inflates his chest, stands on his tiptoes, stretches out his arms, then slowly deflates to his normal size. He throws and catches another peanut. I drain my bottle of beer; the man reaches into the icebox for another.

‘You need a lot of nerve for that one though. You gotta out-stare a twelve-foot dinosaur. The second thing to do is turn and run for it. But if you run in a straight line it'll get yer. They may be big, but they're hellish fast. To stand a chance you gotta swerve from side to side, like a football player making for the end zone. Them alligators have a low centre of gravity. They have big trouble turning on land.'

The barman flips off the bottle top and hands me the beer. We both turn at the sound of a car pulling up outside the bar. I listen as the engine dies and a door opens and slams. A woman dressed in a tight black dress with a body to match walks into the room and sits on a stool at the far end of the counter. The barman takes a glass from the shelf and pours tequila from a dark brown bottle.

‘No bean,' she says, and he lays the drink down on the bar beside her.

‘So what's the third choice?' I ask the barman.

‘Why, you take a deep breath of that wet Mississippi air and you walk right into the mouth of the sonofabitch,' replies the man, laughing heartily at his own joke.

Still laughing, he reaches beneath the counter, pulls up a tattered lump of horsemeat and tosses it through the air to the farthest corner of the room. There is a rustle and clattering in the darkness, a swish of tail and scales. I can just make out the silhouette of the alligator behind the bars of the cage as it tears and thrashes at the meat.

The woman looks over to where I stand, indicating with a shake of her head we should sit at an empty table away from the bar. And away from the alligator. The eyes of all the men, even those of the surfers behind their sunglasses, follow the woman as she walks across the wooden floor.

She sits down next to me and continues to drink her tequila in silence. The alligator rattles the bars of its cage, excited by the newly charged atmosphere. I fancy I catch a glimpse of its teeth flashing in the sunlight. The juke box switches to Waylon Jennings.

‘Care for a Camel?' I ask, offering a packet to the woman. ‘I'm Anthony Malloy,' I say, as she takes a cigarette, accepting the strike of my match.

‘I know. I've seen your photo, been following you in the news. I've been waiting for you.'

‘Not long I hope.'

‘No, not long. I knew you'd be along.'

There is a commotion in the corner over the pool table. Two men in denims, grubby vests and braces argue over a foul shot. The woman, ignoring the scene, sips on her drink and turns to me.

‘I'm from the Company. This is my patch, so I was asked to meet with you to clarify everything's in place.' She looks long and hard at me. ‘Can I assume everything is in place? That all your luggage arrived safely from Bangkok?'

‘Yes,' I respond, realising a simple answer is all that is required. ‘It's waiting in transit at the airport.'