excerpt from Monkeytown

3.

AN AWAY MESSAGE. A text message. A Facebook wall post. A voicemail. A rushed Skype call with questionable European voices in the background. This was Lauren, the basic properties of what she’d become, what we’d become, after I’d graduated and she’d decided to spend her senior year abroad in Barcelona. A virtual relationship, an illusion of intimacy. Faced with moments alone in my car, at a party, I scanned the screen, the call history, desperate for shreds of evidence that someone, somewhere needed or wanted me. Switch on the mobile, switch off the real. When nothing happened, I switched off both.

I still don’t know why she took the job in Fairport. The desire for security, the need for a complete identity – college graduate, businesswoman, girlfriend-slash-caretaker of damaged, neurotic, substance-loving moron. Maybe a genuine sense of pity or a genuine need for touch. Deep-seeded masochism? If she expected fulfillment from us being together, then she should have kept her distance. Keep all doors open, all the time. I couldn’t see past myself.

Now it’s over, and introspection is useless. She was the last strand, the severed tie. For me, there’s no longer a contradiction between feeling and not feeling. There are no contradictions.

THE BLACK RANGE Rover chugs to a stop in the driveway. Davis. He opens the drivers’ side door, wearing the same suit from last night, cigarette in mouth, fumbling with the safety mechanism of a green Bic. Billy gets out, too. He’s already smoking a small joint, rubbing a spot on his head above his temple. Baggy no-sleep eyes, patches of dead leaves plastered, sandals caked in organic sludge.

“What happened?” I ask as I open the porch door. “You look like shit.”

“You motherfucker,” Billy hisses, “if you still didn’t have my crate, I’d –”

Davis cuts in. “After you left Kenyon’s,” he says, “Billy tried to walk home. I drove around until I found him passed out in a bus shelter next to the highway bridge on Asylum Street.”

“So let me get this straight,” I say, “you fell into a compost pile? Or did you get jumped by a bum in Bushnell Park and have to wrestle him for the dimebag in your pocket? Come on, mess, tell me what happened?”

Billy stares at his feet. “I fell,” he mumbles. “And it was a quarter-ounce, dick. Whatever, go fuck yourself.” He tosses the joint, stomps it out.

“All right,” I admit, “I’m the asshole for sketching out and not answering my phone, but Lauren was here, locked out, and I –”

“And she didn’t try the back door?” Billy sneers. “Does she even know you?”

“That’s a good question,” I say. “Maybe you should ask her, because I don’t think we’re –”

“Just open the trunk,” he snaps. Why the trunk? The metal crate from the parking lot yesterday. Why… “Is that too hard a request, numbfuck?” He rubs at the spot above his left temple.

“OK, fine!” I throw up my hands. “I’m sorry I didn’t take you home, I’m sorry you can’t take a joke, and I’m sorry that my life is an unkempt place filled with cruel and indifferent psychopaths. OK?”

“My life?” he repeats. I point my keychain, the hatch swings open. Billy limps toward the Audi.  

Davis finishes his cigarette, steps out of his silence. “Let’s go inside,” he says, “there’s something I want to talk to you about.” I ignore the creepy invitation, watch Billy until Davis grabs my shoulder.

“All he needs is another joint and a nap and he’ll be fine,” he says as he opens the porch door. “You have anything to drink?”

I GRAB TWO bottled waters from the refrigerator, swallow a Xanax before heading back into the living room. Davis doesn’t booze, never has.

On the TV is a rerun of a History Channel program about a psychologist named Henry Harlow who, for several mid-century decades, conducted experiments on baby rhesus monkeys that involved rearing the animals in social isolation. Deprived them of social contact with other monkeys and humans for months, sometimes years. Quivering, shriveled brains behind the box. A black-and-white photograph of a monkey being removed from a light-restricting metal crate Harlow nicknamed the “pit of despair,” its unused eyes squinting, huddled against the wall in dread at the gloved hands descending into the chamber, its sharp teeth bared in the ghoulish grimace of incurable psychosis. Lonely brains boiling in the dark.

I sit next to Davis, scan my open laptop. A series of AIM messages:

MFKRASHTEST24 (10:35:07 AM): to be passing is to live – to remain and continue is to die

MFKRASHTEST24 (10:36:45): love is not consolation

MFKRASHTEST24 (10:40:28 AM): is it light?

MFKRASHTEST24 signed off at 10:42:06 AM. 47

“Who is MFKRASHTEST24?” I ask.

“Huh?”

“Somebody’s screen name. MFKRASHTEST24. Do you know who that is?”

“I don’t think I’ve instant messaged anyone in like half a decade,” Davis says. “Maybe it’s one of those IM bots, remember those? You friend a program and it automatically sends you uplifting quotes, relationship advice, whatever your pathetic, lonely nerd ass desires.”

“Maybe,” I mumble. “I would remember doing something like that.”

“You’re coming to Virginia, right?” he asks. “No pussying out now.”

“Against my better judgment, yes.” I nod in the direction of a loaded North Face backpack resting against the couch.

“Bullshit!” he laughs. “Billy would never let you get away with missing out on a good time.”

“Nothing to do with him,” I say. I keep forgetting that Davis invited Billy. Maybe it’s because it was out of character for him to agree so quickly to leave his old man alone for a week. “I couldn’t think of anything better to do around here,” I say, “so…”

“Forget here,” Davis says, “forget her.”

“So what’s up?” I change the subject, lower my voice in case Billy is by the window. “Why the secret pow-wow minus Sob Story out there?”

“This is going to sound so Cruel Intentions, but there have been some, er, issues with the trust fund,” he mumbles, looking out the bay window toward the strip-of-sand excuse for a private beach at the end of the street. “It appears that my family and their legal team have finally decided that my collegiate performance, or lack-thereof, in addition to a lingering, ah, extra-legal issues, have sort of voided any chances of me receiving future payments, according to the limitations set by my great-great-grandfather and blah blah…” he sighs. “Unless we do something big, I may be fucked, Josh.” He knocks a cigarette out onto the tablecloth.

“We?” He doesn’t say anything. “You’ve been getting payments for what, three years now?” No response. “You’ve made investments, mutual funds. And you’ve been shit-talking to me for six months about how big Kenyon’s getting. You can’t be that bad.”

“Forget Keyon!” Davis hisses. “Fifty thousand YouTube hits and ten thousand sheeple following you on Twitter is great, it’s won-der-ful, Josh, but it doesn’t make you shit. Neither does making piece-of-garbage home videos in some hoodrat's basement, or booking shows at fifty-person clubs in Bridgeport and New Haven. Don’t even bring up the iTunes sales, I can see you want to. They’re also shit. Curb your curiosity.”

“According to your latest sales pitch,” I say, “the hip-hop industry seemed a little more lucrative.”

“It is,” he says, “it is. It comes down to doing the right kind of promoting, viral marketing, touring, constant recording, et cetera, et cetera. But all of that requires a significant short-term investment without any payoff. And that would have worked for months, but my fucking family…” He slurps his water, a little too dramatically.

“So a six-hundred-mile road trip is going to, what, line your pockets, make your wildest schemes come true?”

“At the very worst,” he says, “getting a little fresh highway air for a few days wouldn’t be the worst thing for any of us.”

“Amen.”

Outside, muckstained Billy hugs himself, scratches at some scar tissue on his elbow. He mutters something that evaporates into a cool noon drizzle.

*

From: Lauren

Can we talk pls??

Mon, Jun. 16 1:46pm

To: Lauren

Sorry on vacation

Mon, Jun. 16 1:48pm

I’M RIDING SHOTGUN, breeze-happy in the Automatic Climate Control. Billy’s chiefing on a joint in the back, bobbing along to Big L’s “The Heist”.

The plan is to spend the night in southwest Harlem – four avenue blocks from Columbia – at the apartment of one of Davis’ friends. A pit stop on the nostalgia train for me, and, more importantly for Billy, a sweet squirt of debauchery in the Lecherous Apple. It just feels good to get out, to be moving again, like running downhill. No more vibrations in my pocket.

I-95 South is an asphalt hell-hole, suffocating, fume-laden at the tail-end of rush hour. A twenty-foot black-and-white Derek Jeter eye-bangs his new Movado timepiece. McDonald’s crucifixes coax their congregations with promises of the holy trinity– High Trans-fat! High Sodium! Free Happy Meal Toys! Billy tosses the roach out amidst a blue-gray cloud. An elderly couple in a Lincoln glare. “At least we’re not going to die soon!” he screams at them, clown-smiling. They pull off the highway. Davis’s iPod cycles endlessly through his brand of nineties minutiae – Mobb Deep, Smashing Pumpkins, Pavement, Nas, variations of alternative, jangle-pop, post-hardcore punk, trip-hop. The Ghosts of Genres Past. I drift in the familiar guitar chords, the middle-school-dance mystique. A breath of old-fresh air.

Traffic crawls.

Davis keeps checking his iPhone – Google Maps or something. Just after we pass Exit 18 in Southport we see the cause of the congestion, across the median in the oncoming lanes. A truck has skidded perpendicular to the road, four huge tracks of burnt rubber streak the asphalt.

The cab is facing us, windshield smashed. Gobs of blood, earth-toned pieces of clothing are splattered across the white hood, a messy abstract canvas. A compacted heap – what might have been a yellow Nissan Altima – rests against the median. Pieces of glass litter the road like parade confetti. People are talking on two-ways, drinking Dunkin Donuts coffee.

Two paramedics rush past, wheeling a man in a stretcher toward a nearby ambulance. A third paramedic, his sleeves and latex gloves soaked, tries to hold in the strings of glistening hamburger meat seeping out of a gash below the man’s ribcage. Billy rolls up his window, lights another joint, keeps saying Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ between hits. I riffle through my backpack, open a few of the orange bottles, swallow what I hope are a Zoloft, a Percocet, and a Prozac. Davis gives me this look in the rear-view mirror and we all know what he’s thinking. In front of us, an old beige Chevy truck with a navy blue bumper sticker that says, I’m Gonna Miss Me When I’m Gone…

…and I’m walking past the baggage claim at JFK two-and-a-half years ago, talking on my flip phone to Lauren who’s at school, trying to avoid the young couple that had been sitting in front of me on the flight, making out the entire time, exchanging handjobs under the complimentary blanket. Lauren’s trying to hold it together, but she’s sobbing, telling me she loves me and I’m not crying and I can tell she’s really drunk. Maybe it’s because, given what’s happened, she feels extra bad about getting fingered by Archer Hamilton on the back seat of a charter bus headed to a Young Democrats formal the night before, something I won’t find out about until I get back to school two weeks later.

Lauren’s saying that everything is going to be fine in between sobs and swallows of what I’m assuming is a mixed drink involving watermelon vodka or something equally sinister. My mother’s sister, Susan, is on the other line. She’s calm, sticking to facts, mapping out the next couple of days, the lawyers, the medical examiner’s office, the funeral director in East Fairport, which of my cousins are staying with me for the service and I’m not really listening to any of it and the couple in front of me is sweaty, gleaming, making out roughly on the escalator.

Davis is waiting outside the automated doors in a dark gray suit, leaning against his father’s plum-blue Aston Martin that he never lets him drive. He tucks away his cell phone, smiles sadly, takes my bag.

“Thanks,” I say, “I really appreciate you coming to –”

“It’s the least I could do,” he says. “Your parents, you know how much they meant to Dad, to the whole company. It’s…” he trails off, looks at the ground.

“I know, it’s been –” I stop and realize everything. I’m starting to fall, not faint, but toppling against the weight of my own legs. Davis is pulling me up and saying I’m here, I’m here, don’t worry before I feel the taste of tears running down my cheek and neck, staining my tee shirt and Davis is taking three Lexapros out of a bottle he’d had in his pocket and is feeding them to me and I’m swallowing and the ride back to East Fairport takes no time at all.

DAVIS’ LEG TWITCHES. iPhone vibrations. He reads the text message, smiles. “It appears that my friends have started the festivities without us.”

Billy’s drooling on himself in the backseat.

We swoop under an overpass. The rectangular Manhattan skyline expands in a blood-orange glow. The Empire State Building, a giant syringe injecting the night, its patriotic needle burning red, white, and blue. Davis pushes a button, cracks Billy’s window open. His head slips, jolts against the glass. For a second his face is suspended over the crooked asphalt.

“What-the-fuck!” he howls over the music. Davis and I cackle.

“I didn’t want you to miss the party,” Davis says, “I figured I had to take drastic measures.”

“Next time just nudge me, dick,” Billy mumbles, still loopy from the Hydrocodone.

We pass the northernmost tip of Central Park. The city air is mothy but cool, refreshing. Dominican hip-hop blasts, Jamaican and Puerto Rican flags hang from balconies. 115th Street. Davis says we’re here. He parallel parks in front of an ill-kept tenement sandwiched between luxury condo buildings still in relatively early stages of construction. A white couple passes, the pregnant wife pushing a Burberry baby stroller, the man babbling into the mouthpiece of his Blue Tooth like a paranoid schizophrenic. Pioneers of the reverse white flight.

“So Roberto is some kind of musician, right?” Billy asks as he looks through his backpack for something.

“More like a producer, makes beats.”

“And his roommate?”

“Andrew?” Davis asks. “Uh, he mostly sticks to photography or sculpture or something, I’ve only really met him once.”

“Great,” Billy moans. “I didn’t realize you were taking us straight to fagtown.”

“You of all people should be thanking me,” Davis says, grinning. “I’m sure you’ll, ah, fit right in.”

A loud bell rattles inside a building across the street. Green and white awning above the front door that says MASJDID al-AQSA and several lines of Arabic script. Streams of men, women, and small children spill out onto the street, hooting out a weird, musical language I may have heard in a late-night genocide infomercial. The children run past the buildings, laughing, jumping on each other’s backs, playing tag in between parked cars. The women, onyx-skinned and wearing head-wraps, keep their heads low, focused on the gangs of kids hopping ahead. The men stay huddled in groups outside of the mosque, lighting cigarettes.

“God,” Billy says. “I didn’t sign up for this safari, regardless of the half-ass attempts at gentrification.”

“You are so lame,” Davis snarls. “I need to talk to Roberto about a couple of things regarding some other projects I’m trying to put together. He’s plugged into the New York scene, not just outer Brooklyn or Harlem, all of it.” Billy rolls his eyes. “Also, I just thought we cold have a fun night in the city, a nice dinner, go to a few bars, mingle with some loose ladies, get freaky, who knows? That’s what this road trip is about – having fun.”

Billy shrugs. Davis walks up the front steps of the crumbling tenement, pushes one of the buttons protruding from a scratched metallic box next to the door.

“HELLLLO?” a garbled voice crackles.

Davis says his name.

“Ooooh Jee-sus,” the voice squeals. “Come on up here boyyys!”

“Andrew,” Davis grins. Billy mumbles something about Europeans and Capri pants. The door buzzes open.

AN IRON ROW of coat hangers with nothing hanging on them, a small kitchen, a dark, narrow hallway leading to a large main room. Nothing on the whitewashed walls. No windows.

A cute, possibly Scandinavian blonde in her early twenties kneels next to a white leather beanbag chair. Her mouth is getting skewered by a massive black dildo attached to a metal chain hanging from the ceiling, a penis more suitable for certain breeds of domestic cattle. Gobs of saliva drip onto her strapless black corset and matching crotchless g-string. She’s posing for an ostrich-like man wearing a sleeveless Iron Maiden concert tee and ball-hugging jeans who’s positioning a digital camera on a miniature tripod. Farther back in the room is a black minimalist dining table. An unambiguously Hispanic late 20s dude in a wifebeater types on the keyboard of a white iMac, headphones on. The three of us freeze like high schoolers freshly stumbled into the girls’ locker room, in awe of something only meant to be viewed through Pay-Per-Squirt porn.

The photographer notices us first, grabs Davis’s shoulders and kisses the air around his face. He runs his fingers through the beginnings of a bad, bad mullet. “Davis baby,” he says, “it’s been far too long!”

He grins when he catches me gawking. “In all of my work,” he says, winking, or maybe twitching, “I like to set a tone, an attitude. The art that comes is entirely the result of the tone that I set.”

When he says comes the woman snorts, takes her mouth off the rubber cock, giggles. Her makeup is thick, caking under the hot lights, glistening with sweat and what looks like glitter.

The photographer ignores her. “So you’re Josh and Billy,” he says. “I’m Andrew. Davis didn’t tell me he was bringing this much Connecticut Grade Beef with him.” He pounds his hips in faux frustration. “But I can’t figure out which one I’d rather –”

“Hmph,” the woman groans, “would it be possible to keep your tiny hard-on down for two seconds? Maybe we could get in at least one decent shot before my nipples fall off from frostbite.”

“Bitch please,” Andrew says. “If the cellulite graveyard you call your ass didn’t look like the rotting scrap-pile at a cheese factory, maybe it wouldn’t take me all day to find an angle that I can actually use without wanting to puke first.”

The woman smiles, brushes something off her glowing shoulder. “Don’t pay attention to Andrew. It’s that time of the month. I’m Sophia.” She gets up, walks over and moves in like she wants a smooch, but I pull back awkwardly at the last second, shake her hand. She giggles, purses her full lips together in a fake pout.

The man who’d been at the computer stands up, scurries across the room in silent Chinese slippers. He grabs Sofia’s neck, pushes her face into his. Billy grins stupidly. Sofia pulls away after a few moments, adjusts her g-string, struts out of the room without looking at anyone. The man extends a hand to Billy, then me. “Roberto Ruiz,” he says. “Rob’s cool though.” I glance at Billy. He gives me a slight what-the-fuck nod. I wonder if he’s as bugged out by these people as I am. I haven’t been in Manhattan in a long time. You’re not in East Fairport anymore, Josh!

Rob and Davis bump fists. “Thought you guys would never get here,” Rob says.

“The night is young,” Davis grins.

Rob nods. “Andrew!” he yells.

“On it!” Andrew shouts from behind a small doorway that must lead to the kitchen. A nutty aroma filters in the room, settles below the dildo chain, above our heads. My mouth waters.

“Where’s the shitter?” Billy asks, breaking the food-inspired silence, eloquent as usual.

“Down the hall, first door on your right,” Rob says. “Make sure you jiggle the handle after you flush.”

Andrew darts in carrying an unopened bottle of Patrón and cube-filled glasses, almost crashes into limping Billy. “Everyone sit down!” he says when he recovers himself, ignoring Billy’s scowl before he disappears. “We all have to get to know each other!”

The four of us sit, Andrew across from me, Davis across from Rob. “Soo…Josh?” he says, looking at me.

“Josh.”

“So Josh,” he squints, “What do you do?”

I take a swig of the tequila, grimace. “Well I –”

“Josh is an investor,” Davis cuts me off.

“Davis, wait your turn,” Andrew says. “We aren’t finished with the quiz yet. Where did you go to school?” he asks.

“Down the street,” I say. Blank stare. “Columbia.”

“Finance and econ major,” Davis says, offhandedly. “Kid used to be a business whiz.”

“Ohhh,” Andrew pretends to be interested while he tugs at an unraveling strand of his tee shirt. “So how do you two know each other?”

“We’ve known each other forever,” I say. “Our fathers used to work together and our families –”

A buzzer goes off in the kitchen. Andrew hops up, scurries off, almost knocks into Billy again as he limps back from the bathroom. Billy, still trying to shake off the sleepy ride from Connecticut, plops next to me, finishes half of the tequila in front of him in one Billy-size gulp. He glares at Davis. “Are you fucking serious about this?” he hisses. “You never told me that –”

“Hey,” Davis cuts him off, “it’s not my fault Andrew has a crush on you. You should take it as a compliment.”

“That’s not what I’m talking –”

“I know.”

Before I can ask them what that’s all about, Andrew and a now fully clothed Sophia storm in from the kitchen, carrying steamy, sharp-smelling platters. She’s pulled a complete one-eighty from a few minutes ago – low-cut black and white cotton top, hip-hugging black denim, hair back, two melting icicles for eyes. The makeup’s been scrubbed away except for lip gloss and that eerie sparkling sheen. Andrew’s explaining the menu: “…cage-free poached eggs over flourless-sprouted tortillas stuffed with black beans and spinach, tofu with pineapple and peanuts over basmati rice…”

Billy and I stare at each other with fear in our eyes. He stabs at something that looks like a dead octopus with herpes, decides it’s not worth it, passes the dish to me. Davis shakes his head. Sophia snickers. “Not a big fan of organic food, are you?” she laughs again. Everyone’s digging in, heaping piles of the unidentifiable chunks and sauces, ripping through the booze. Things are happening fast, the real time closing in. Sophia’s melting eyes.

“I’ll eat anything,” I say. “Billy’s the wuss when it comes to food.”

“I didn’t say I wouldn’t try it,” he hisses. He turns to Sophia. “It’s different, that’s all. Anyway, I don’t want to hurt your buddy over there’s feelings.” He points at Andrew with his fork. Andrew’s already two glasses deep and demolishing a squishy pile of what must be the eggs. He nods.

“Andrew’s getting off a starvation diet,” Rob says.

“When, like ten minutes ago?” I ask.

“Yeah.” Dead serious.

“You get used to it after while,” Sophia says. “At first I thought it tasted like Army food.” Billy puts his fork down.

“The fuck is wrong with Army food?” he asks. Davis and I look at each other.

“For one thing I think it’s sad we even need to have an army to feed,” she says, cutely, oblivious to what Davis and I know might be coming.

“Have you ever been in a firefight?” Billy asks.

“Uh…no?” she mumbles.

“Have you ever ducked behind a stall in an outdoor market,” he says, strangling his drink, “bullets whizzing, the stink of burning hair and skin, the bodies piling in the dust, and there’s a mother and her son walking towards where you and your buddies are trying to defend a checkpoint, and the boy pauses next to a discarded rifle lying in the dirt, and your sergeant is whispering ‘Don’t pick it up, kid, don’t pick it up’ but it doesn’t matter because the mother pulls out a joystick from her robe, shoves the boy at you and they’re both wearing homemade explosives strapped on with pieces of duct tape and they’re connected by wires, and they start screaming in this crazy fucking language, and the only word you can understand is Allah? Have you seen that?”

“N-n-no?” she mumbles like she’s got a few chromosomes loose, or wondering what this drunk cripple from the boonies is really capable of.

“What would you do?” Billy snarls. “Would you shoot them in the legs? Just the mother? The kid? Would you kill them? Head-shots or knee caps? What-would-you-do?”

“I don’t –”

“All right,” Rob cuts in, “maybe it’s time to ah, change the subject. I think we all need to keep drinking, lighten up a bit.”

Silence for at least a minute. The scrape of forks. This is starting to go better than I expected.

“I was on the subway today and this bum threw himself in front of the train,” Andrew says.

“Way to lighten things up, puta,” Rob rolls his eyes.

“Whatever,” Andrew replies, mouth half-full, “I was just trying to bring up something that actually affects some of us.”

Billy clamps his mouth.

The conversation moves from which aging television actress was the best-dressed at a recent PETA protest on the steps of a laboratory that conducts orangutan lobotomies, to whether or not the person smoking PCP with the third-place finisher in last year’s American Idol in a recently posted online photo is a member of the Spanish royal family or just the bassist for Passion Pit. I look around the table, nod and laugh, the humor negligent, surface-dwelling, fuzzy-warm. I decide that I like these people, even Andrew. Glad that Davis brought us here. Forget Billy’s weird outburst. Float on the moment.

“We’re all here now,” Davis says, reverting to his deal-maker voice, “and I want to start out by apologizing to Josh. Because,” he looks at me, “I haven’t been exactly honest with you about why we’re taking this trip.” I groan. Here it comes. Cut the theatrics. How much of my dead parents’ money do you want to keep your dreams afloat? Where do I sign? “Don’t worry, I’m not asking for anything,” he says, seeing my reaction. “The reason we’re going to Virginia is still to try to get money from potential investors, but not solely because of my parental-slash-whatever issues. The reason is also because Rob and I, after several months of research, planning, and development, have decided to jumpstart our own indie record label, and we want all of you to be a major part of it.”

Andrew claps obnoxiously loud. Everyone knew about this? I groan louder.

“I know,” Davis says, “I know what you might be thinking. With the massive corporate consolidation of labels, with album sales falling drastically, mainly due to, um, file sharing, torrents, iTunes, the recession, et cetera, it seems like a pretty idiotic idea to build something like this from scratch…”

Yes it does. I pour myself another full glass, tune in and out of Davis’s latest idiocy. From what does filter through, Rob and Davis have apparently signed half a dozen “artists,” including Keyon. They’ve got big names, studio owners in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Westchester, in addition the Virginia connection, ready to splooge out of their respective pockets. Everyone’s got roles in this debacle – art and photography direction for Andrew, human resources and marketing for Sophia.

Huh?

Rob walks over to the computer, hilariously throwing out geeky jargon like pro-user and cloud-friendly in a Puerto Rican accent. He clicks the mouse a few times, types something. The address of the spanking-new company web site. Yippie.

“Wow, that’s really coo-ol,” Sophia says.

I realize I forgot my glasses in the Range Rover. The screen is a blur of swirling lights and primary colors. I try to focus on one corner of the monitor and finally see something that looks like a green monkey dancing on a pile of dinosaur bones.

“Um, yeah,” I say, “sweet.”

Davis starts talking again. I zone out. The phrases preliminary qualifications and appropriate analog reverb float freely over my head, meaningless. There’s a pause. All eyes on me.

“…well,” Davis says, “what do you think?”

“It’s a nice gig, man,” Rob says.

“It would be good for you,” Sophia whispers, touches my hand.

The stares surround me, nail me to the center of attention. A brief panic rumbles under my chest. “I’m…in?” I sputter. Everyone grins. What they wanted. Why not humor them?

“Yay! We need to cel-e-brate!” Andrew shouts, runs out of the room.

“You knew about this?” I ask Billy.

“I’m just along for the ride,” he mumbles, takes a long swig, belches. “I listen to the radio. Sometimes that old iPod you gave me. I don’t even have a fucking computer.”

Andrew hurdles back, cradling a fat bag of what looks like some very high-quality weed, strewn with white and crystals. “Anyone have any papers?” he asks.

“Zig-zag double-wides,” Billy says, tosses an orange pack across the table. Rob goes over to the computer, turns off the ambient trance music that’s been playing the entire time, puts on a dubstep remix of Kanye West’s “I Wonder,” turns it up.

The final twist and lick. Andrew hands me the joint and lighter, grins. “Guests first.” My stomach turns over – tequila murmurs.

“Are you sure?” I ask, “It’s your weed, and I don’t think I should –”

“Don’t disrespect me,” Andrew says, faux-serious. “It’s not like I’m asking you into the bathroom to –”

“Yeah,” Billy cuts him off, breath reeking against my face, “don’t be a pussy, pussy.”

“Fine,” I mumble. The tip of the joint’s fattest side is darker, dipped, a candy apple. Andrew’s uneven saliva deposit? I twirl it around.

“Other people are trying to hit that, too,” Billy moans. Sophia chuckles.

I flame up. Strong, acidic invasion. Deeper burn. I gag, spit up a little. After-school amateur hour. Billy laughs. I flip him off, hit the joint again.

“What… kind of shit is this?” I sputter after exhaling a large cloud.

“Really good shit, apparently,” Andrew says. “Canadian. Southwestern Canadian. Strawberry Cough I think was what the guy called it.”

“Tastes fine to me,” Billy gasps, after his own phlegmy bout.

The joint cycles around three or four more times, skipping Rob and Davis. The first wave is powerful, brain-bruising. Sophia sings along with the music, clinking her glass in no discernable rhythm. Andrew moves colonies of guacamole across his plate. He checks his phone.

“OK guys,” he says, “we need to get out of here, like now. I’m thinking Lower East, something low-key, not too gross, maybe Painkiller or The Delancey.”

“The Lower East Side is a cesspool of coke-zombie yuppies and unappealing trust-fund hipsters,” Rob snickers, satisfied at the accurate generalization.

“Where do you want to go then, Mr. Yelp?” Andrew snarls. “West Village? Chelsea? East Village? TriBeCa? Murray Hill? There’s hipsters and yuppies everywhere. This is Manhattan. This is Disney World North. Get over yourself or move back to the Bronx, Papi. And speaking of blow…”

Rob shudders, reaches into his pocket.

“Let’s just figure it out in the cabs,” Sophia says, notices a speck of something on her blood-red nails.

“Obviously,” Andrew mutters, horrified at something on his phone.

I’M NAVIGATING THE front steps of the building when it hits me. It is something I don’t know and nothing is familiar. Everyone – Davis and Rob hailing cabs, Sophia texting on her BlackBerry, Andrew, Billy – begins to shrivel like shrinkwrap around a frozen slab of meat until they morph into scowling four-foot dwarfs. A rupturing roll of still-lifes behind fractured retinas. Cabs materialize. I blink. Clicksnap. Four-foot Sophia sliding into the black pleather interior. Clicksnap. The first cab screeching off. Clicksnap.

“Hurry up, tardboy!” Billy’s tiny fist. Get inside!

“I…don’t think I can,” I groan. “I don’t have my glasses, I need…”

“What?” Billy the Incredulous Dwarf. His face liquefies, drips chin residue into a polychromatic pool. I gasp. “You can’t be that high, come on,” the words dribble, splash away. I manage to fold myself into the cab, focus on the driver’s raven-dwarf skull.

“Does he normally get like this?” Rob asks. “Maybe I should bring him back upstairs and let –”

“Don’t worry,” Billy assures him, “sometimes he just can’t hold his shit.”

“OK,” Rob echoes. A cavern of space. Clicksnap.

Central Park West to the left, black and seamless. Rows of erratic trees strain noiselessly to tap the piano-key buildings sprouting across the avenue. Rob’s cigarette mouth. Smoke exits with an incredible depth. Follow the snapshots as it rises. Clicksnap. I see Billy in the cloud. Camouflaged in darkness. Screaming. Bleeding.

“You’re-going-to-die!” I grope Billy’s shirt, his face. Clicksnap. Clicksnap. “You’re going to die!”

“No shit,” Billy grumbles. “The hell is wrong with you?” The driver frowns, slows down.

“It’s fine,” Rob says, glaring down the shadow-face in the rear-view. “Drive.”

The trees breathe from black lungs, twisting in their sinister dance of gravity. I spin into it. Clicksnap.

Midtown boils over, electric cartoons that spiral until there is no longer pure black over white, but primary colors on the edges. Like out-of-focus background objects in photographs, pulsing. GOD BLESS AMERICA! LARGE SELECTION OF ADULT DVDS & VIDEOS! PRIVATE VIEWING BOOTHS! NOTHING! HI-TECH ELECTRONICS! PLASTIC! T-SHIRTS! TIMELESS TREASURES! ATM! SONY! IBM! PASSPORT PHOTOS! LINGERIE! HALLOWEEN COSTUMES! VISIT MY BASEMENT! 30 MIN. PHOTO! NOTHING! Sweat builds, eyes convulse. I keep sobbing. Billy ignores me.

“Here’s good,” Rob says as he gouges the neon strip with his credit card.

“Get out, freakshow!” Billy opens the door, pushes me onto the pavement. The cackle of traffic, the rank heat of Manhattan summer. A redbrick bar with a long awning. Vague figures flitting, gawking, follow the snapshots towards the door. Leering cat-eyes, the bouncer in black leather. Rob’s fist-bump. Clicksnap. Show IDs? No? Inside – bombastic dance beat, intermingled with old-school Nintendo samples. The room pulses with the rhythms, contracts. My hand turns into a baseball mitt.

Billy and Rob vanish. I’m locked in, absorbing the music, sucking the carbon of vinegar-scented atoms. Billy returns hours later with a copper-colored drink. The cubes rubbing each other in their oblivious melting world. He presses it into my hand. “Look at the tail in here! Goddamn!” he yelps, disappears, limping after a pair of utterly fake breasts in a tee shirt that says Designated Smoking Area.

The churning mass of indefinite bodies.

I shake the glass, dazzled by the mysterious courtship of ice friction. The music stops. Then, suddenly, Marky Mark’s “Good Vibrations” – bullet-blast drum intro, euphoric frat-boy squeals. I gasp, terrified. Where’s Billy? The snapshots speed up, semi-automatic, dirty dark fingerprints. The back wall of the room, a row of circular tables. A cluster of depraved Smurfs at each one, snarling, hooting. What do Sophia and Rob look like?

The snapshots tunnel around a head of long, chocolate-colored hair, baby-blue spaghetti-string top, a small but noticeable mole on the left shoulder blade. She tugs on a few strands of hair. Four-inch heels. Nooo… Talking to an orange-tanned giant in a charcoal-colored pinstriped suit, Wall Street’s Bluto. Is that John? His sausage fingers grip a Heineken. A holstered BlackBerry blinks neon green. Clicksnap.

I creep along the wall, sniff her hair. Body Envy by Herbal Essences.  

“Lauren?” I whisper. She doesn’t hear me, or doesn’t want to. The giant does. He lets go of his beer. I try again, arch my neck sideways until my lips brush her hair. “Lauren?” She turns her head, but not before the giant’s steak-like palm crushes my skull, effortlessly acquaints me with the mold-scarred floor. Another pair of hands drag me like a human squeegee, while Boy George asks someone if they really want to hurt him over a remixed club beat.

“Get the fuck-out-of-here,” a voice spits. I’m snapped onto the street, a blind ball of elastic non-energy. I stagger for blocks, retinas reconstructing themselves gradually. Clicksnap. I’m on a curb. The traffic is an immense coordinated structure, a double helix.

For a second I want to jump, to disintegrate, revert to the molecules – yellow and red – that spin so carelessly in the fire. An SUV chugs to where I’m standing. Ford Explorer, windows down. The driver is clean-shaven, mobile headset in his left ear, black suit.

“Hey!” he yells. I’m frozen. Again, “Hey! You need ride?”

I open the door, crawl into the backseat, hug myself. The driver’s face in the rear-view, taut and empty. I realize something. “Oh!” I huff. Try to remember… “One-fifteenth street and, uh, Eighth?” I stammer. Before I finish, he’s blended back into the stream, steering us uptown, jabbering away. “Huh?” I grunt. He keeps talking into his headset.

“Allo ? Oui ? Qu'est-ce que tu veux ? Non, j'ai un des singes... Donc, est-ce qu'il...Ce sera le première fois que…Non! Ce n'est pas necessaire...”

I slump my face against the window, try to focus on the sad, compressed masses of gray and black squares. Are we getting closer or moving farther away? Then the gnarled rows of trees, morphing into other trees, shooting at me in still life.

Follow the snapshots.

THE DRIVER HITS the brakes, my head knocks against the passenger seat.

“We are here.” I’m on the pavement, reaching into my wallet but the driver slams the gas, screeches into the blackness. I turn around. Rob and Andrew’s building, most of the windows barred and black. I squint to read the numbers on the buzzer.

“Oo-eez-it?” a nasally voice squawks from the speaker. The same accent as the driver’s.

I slump my face against the box. “Joshh…” The door buzzes me in. Formaldehyde smells on the stairs. The apartment door is open. Candle shadows flicker in the main room. A blonde girl whose body looks like Sophia’s is sprawled on the beanbag chair wearing lacy panties and a skin-tight tee shirt. Another specter, this one masculine, sits in the shadows by the back wall. The woman gets up.

“Having fun?” she whispers.

I try to make the sounds. “Y-y-yes?”

“Good.” She walks up to me, strokes my belt buckle, rubs my crotch. “Good?” Her voice is an echo folded over itself. I try to pull away. She guides my hand over her panties. The outline of spongy lips, a growing moistness. I’m hard. She pushes me onto the beanbag chair.

“Wait,” I mumble, “who are –”

“Shut the fuck up,” she hisses, giggles. She straddles my lap, traces a path down my stomach with her tongue, unbuckles my belt with her teeth. An electric ripple from somewhere in the hall. She pulls my boxers off and licks the tip in a figure-eight pattern. I groan.

The man in the chair – Rob? Andrew? Davis? – is watching us, calmly jerking off. The woman turns, says something to him, arches her ass. He gets up and kneels behind her, grins at me, takes off her panties. The woman chokes on my cock, spits up a little. The man grabs her hair, licks her sweaty cheek, whispers something in her ear. She pivots in slo-mo.

“Suck me!” she grunts. I spread her cheeks open, my hands trembling, flick my tongue in and out then trace the line to her asshole. She moans, reaches around and guides me inside. The man walks off to another part of the room. I sense the oncoming eruption, moan.

“Not yet,” she whispers over her shoulder. She grates her red nails across my hips. My brain twirls. Brief black-out then I’m pumping hard, missionary-style, harder, rabbit-speed, and she’s whimpering, and a wet finger is slipping into my asshole, then something much bigger, and I clench against the pressure, and she’s beating the beanbag chair with tiny balled fists, and everything is spinning, bright but undefined. The woman leaps away. I can’t hold back and I’m coming, bucking my hips, shaking, shivering, and everything shuts off.

THE ROOM IS parched, vacant. The only light is a blinking spiral on the computer’s screensaver. I’m sunk into the folds of the beanbag chair, covered by a thin blanket, naked. I stand up. A flash of nausea latches onto my skull, shakes it hard. I lurch forward, grope for the wall. Follow it until the first door.

It’s not the bathroom. In the far corner is a life-size department store dummy in a military uniform, bent over a coffee table. Two men in black sweat suits and ski masks are grabbing the dummy’s arms, pretending to hold it down even though both of its plaster wrists have been nailed onto the table. A third man in a ski mask crouches behind, fingering the blade of a rusty knife. The dummy’s eyes are forced shut, mouth open. Fake blood dribbles out, stains the front of its uniform, collects in an expanding puddle on the hardwood. The dummy’s pants are around its ankles, its flaccid rubber penis flopping in the gusts from the air conditioning vent. A tangled web of glistening spaghetti strings where the scrotum should be. Two tall, athletic men in dark suits – one of them holding a camcorder, filming, while the other smokes a cigarette.

The man with the knife screams, raises the rusty blade over the dummy’s neck. It whines, crackles, digs through skin into the fleshy pink.

The dummy – Andrew – opens his eyes and squeals.

My stomach gives out and I retch. The men in suits jerk their heads. The one without the camcorder yells “Cut! Cut!” rushes over, pushes me back into the hallway.“Putain! Tu ne dois pas être ici! Vas-tu! Maintenant! Vas!”

Something metal-solid whacks me from behind. Knee-cap fireworks and a sickening pop. I crumble. Everything spotty, then the fade.