I staggered against the desk, then lurched upright leaning heavily on my hands. They splayed across the wood like two dying squid. I looked at them, they were crusted with dried blood, and the skin was torn from the knuckles. I gagged, but managed to baby-walk my way around the desk. The floor surged. I kicked a boot at it. The boards tried to twist up again; I stamped them flat. The walls leaned in at me, they wavered, and the blinds vibrated like an eye-test. The horizontal rhythm, the blind, space, blind, space, blind, space-had my guts churning. The air was thick and sour, thick like water-it suffocated me. And it was hot. It was so hot. I was overboard. I thrashed forward-my hands, arms and legs a million miles away. I was working them by satellite. But I was attached. Each motion worked the fissures in my shattered skull against each other with terrifying painful screeches. Finally, exhausted, I dropped into the chair and fumbled for the phone. In a mechanical voice I ordered coffee-lots of it, then flailed out and picked up a cold cup that I had knocked on the floor. It came free of a sticky black puddle with a slight tug. I tore the plastic lid free. The coffee was bitter and icy, so it fit right into my state of mind.
I was drunk-ripped. Tommy had polished off a bottle of whiskey in an effort to find sleep. Not wishing to miss a day's work, I had taken over before he passed out. There had been no struggle for control that time. I could sense his relief when I entered. Of course, it meant I had to deal with a zero to ninety sensation of complete sobriety to rip-roaring drunkenness. My guts rumbled. I didn't want to throw up, but Tommy's body didn't want cold coffee. I felt bile rise; doubling over I painted the inside of the wastepaper basket. I stared at it, wondering who the idiot was that thought wicker was a suitable material to build them out of. I came to the conclusion that he had never been sick in one. I felt better, but I knew that feeling would pass. I was full of poison.
I decided sorting through the case might sober me up. All that would come to me was Cane's strange behavior. "Who was he?" I thought, and then, "I wonder if I have a new girlfriend?" My hands trembled as they lit a cigarette. The smoke was dry and acrid, and caught at the back of my throat like plastic. I put it out. Too hot. Water. I needed water. My lips felt heavy with vomit. The phone rang. I nearly dislocated my shoulder when I swung a dead arm at it.
"Good morning, Mr. Wildclown." It was Mary Redding. "I trust you're as well this morning as you were hung last night." Her voice was so perky and cheerful I wanted to shoot her.
"Yeah, not bad-and you?" I was stalling for time. My tongue was behaving like a strip of leather. I had to get my act together. "Are you at the office?" I asked absently. My brain was a toaster that wouldn't pop up, it was set on high, and the toast was burning, burning, burning.
"Yes, tired as hell, but here. How about you, are you coming down?"
"Yeah, in about an hour." I felt my whole body turn to about eighteen per cent liquid. My bowel rippled with explosive pain. "Maybe an hour and a half. What time is it now?"
"It's about ten, but let's not run any races. You sound like shit. Make it one o'clock; just ask for me at reception. They'll show you to the newsroom."
"Okay, thanks." I said good-bye, hung up. Elmo brought in the coffee. Distaste wrinkled his face when he saw the wastebasket.
"Boss, you should sleep," he said finally.
"Supermen don't need sleep. You never read comics, Elmo?" I was trying to engage my mind, to push past the nausea. I had done it before. Push hard enough and the poison could still work for me.
"Sure." He cracked a puzzled grin as recollection crossed his features. "Back before the end happened. When I was a boy."
He set the coffee on the desk, crossed to the window, opened it, and sat down. There must have been a miraculous clearing because the early morning light was intense enough to push through the blinds and softly divide him into fuzzy lines of light and dark. Of course, everything was pretty intense. My optic nerves were howling. I could hear the coffee cups settling on the desk. I noticed Elmo's skin held an oily sheen. "Some type of leather polish," I thought, then wrestled my guts. I reached out, tasted the hot coffee. It almost didn't go down. The brew brushed the tongue like rusted metal, but I welcomed its warmth.
"Trouble, Boss?" Elmo asked. I realized he had been studying my features.
"Yeah, it's just too fucking hard to be a detective this way. In and out of reality. I can't take it." A cool breeze finally made its way across the room. It was lukewarm when I got it.
His face went blank. "What's that, Boss?"
"Nothing, Elmo. I just hate the world sometimes. It's such a garbage pail. Why does the human race have to be this pack of greedy, evil pigs slashing and chewing at each other in a thoughtless rush for the trough? Shit, there's only slop and garbage in there anyway! What the hell's wrong with us? Why can't we just sit back and enjoy this immortality we've found ourselves with? No, we're never happy unless we can tear into each other. What makes me tick? Why don't you slash open my guts and look for meaning in my intestines. Har-haru-what did they call it? Haruspices or something, yeah, the meaning of life in a pile of guts. We haven't changed. We haven't. Not since the Romans. God, probably before that.
"Look at it, Elmo. We stopped aging, we stopped dying and staying dead. But what do we do? We figure out ways to make a buck off it. We slash, burn and rape everything before we know what it is. It's like the way they made hamburger out of Adrian. People don't go into the ground when they die, so hey, let's find a way to make eternal life worse than death." I stopped. I realized I was talking to two Elmos. I breathed deeply until the double vision disappeared. "Sorry, Fatso." The image of Adrian's slithering corpse coagulated in my mind. "I'm just sobering up. Gotta clean out all the poison."
"Yeah, Boss," he said, nodding sadly. "You had a couple."
I opened the top drawer to the desk, pulled out the mirror and started to reapply my makeup. First, I rubbed off as much of the old stuff as I could, without having Tommy expel me. He was sleeping deep though. As soon as I could feel his spirit start to quiver, I stopped.
I saw a plain, wide face in the mirror. Fortyish, it was pale in the smeared greasepaint, and hollow around the eyes. The chin was trowel-shaped; the nose was long and aquiline. The dark blue-green eyes stared back, ringed with care, worry and self-hate. I wondered for a moment, as I reapplied my smile and goggling eyes, what could chase a good looking boy like Tommy, hound him so, that he had to hide behind this insane persona. It was not the first or last time I posed the question.
I looked up at Elmo. "How long have you known Tommy, er-me?" Now, if your partner of a number of years said this in all earnestness it might phase you. Elmo only smiled.
"I've worked for you, or known you, for fourteen years now. Course, there were the times you disappeared. But about two straight now, years that is. No interruptions. And two straight now, when you has been wearin'…" Elmo moved a hand in a delicate caressing motion over his face. He was referring to the makeup. "And of course, we ain't always been in business, like this." He gestured to the office. "But I like things fine like this, Boss. No interruptions, just w-work. Is there a p-problem?"
He had referred to the early days, when Tommy would disappear on gargantuan drinking binges for months at a time. Elmo found him on numerous occasions-drunk and down and out with some group of fellow alley rats in the worst section of Downings. Not that Elmo had looked for him. That was another one of his rules. If the Boss wants to be alone, he's alone. He had only stumbled upon him. "From time to time." Elmo had also informed me that when Tommy used to go without makeup-and he did so frequently-he had gone by the name of JJ. Elmo had been unable to explain the initials, only that during those times, Tommy had been up to activities of questionable legality.
"I appreciate that. If I didn't tell you… Those times you picked me up." It was Tommy whom he had rescued, but I knew Tommy would never thank him.
Elmo only nodded and looked shy. "It's been good workin' for you. Always interesting. If you don't m-mind m-my saying, you're a changing man, Boss, and these times n-need that."
I stood up. The room broke into separate images for a moment, and then resolved into one. I was feeling numb, and sick, but better. I knew that in about an hour I would be chain-smoking again. "I've gotta take a shower. Let's go down to the bath house shall we."
Before I left, I deposited the wastebasket in the Dumpster in front of the building where I knew it would be next year, if I needed it.