Стивен Бойетт - Mortality Bridge

Jeans blown out at knees and ass. Clothes all mottled with filth and shit and blood dried brown. Pale skin bruised and scabbed and scraped and draping from the skeleton that wears it. The knuckles of both hands swollen and arthritic. His ragged beard is streaked with gray and his face is purely haunted. The expression of a sole survivor of some epic rout. A patch of scar across his forehead. Recently broken nose healed out of true. He looks old and tired and sore abused.

Niko drops his guitar case and the man drops his guitar case. Niko is facing a mahogany wall dominated by a tall mirrored door where a moment ago there was a corridor.

Niko silently regards the silent mirror’s gaunt inspection. But for the filthy beard his face is nearly that of his demon self on board the train. Every painful step of his descent etched there. A strange flat light of calm acceptance in the dark unblinking eyes. Long past surprise or horror. Some mad prophet gone into the desert looking for his god and come back having found him terribly.

To the mirror’s left a lone round button:

He’s in an elevator. Beside him his guitar case. Battered and scarred and stained and filthy, ancient faithful bloodhound still and patient on the floor. All right. Okay.

Niko reaches out a hand. Beyond the mirror’s border his and his reflection’s fingers meet unseen and push the single button and the button lights. A faint suck of air drawn into an enormous long wet fleshy throat. Niko’s stomach floats. He jumps up and his reflection leaves the floor and takes too long to come back down. Apart from the hollow in his stomach and a strange tight feeling in his balls there’s no other indication of the car’s plummet. He can sense it though. The deepening earth around him.

Cool air softly blows and cheesy Muzak plays from unseen speakers overhead. It takes a while for him to recognize the Muzak as attenuated versions of his own work.

He sighs, he stands, he waits.

Twenty minutes later the elevator still drops. Niko leans back against the wall and wearily slides down until he’s sitting beside his guitar as a Muzak version of Roll the Bones from his first album with Perish Blues begins. Christ. He shuts his eyes. He dreams he’s sitting on the leather couch of his Hollywood Hills living room. Beside him Van reads the Sunday paper. He’s still dead but it’s okay. Niko asks Have you finished the sports section? and Van hands it over. Niko says Thank you but somehow it is understood he means I love you and I miss you. Van nods absently and searches for the funnies.

Niko wakes up crying. The elevator still drops. Niko has to piss. An hour later he has no choice and pisses in the corner. The Muzak plays. Niko sits beside his guitar case and caresses the scarred curves. He thinks of taking out the Dobro and strumming some sad old tunes but doesn’t. He’ll either be playing along with the Muzak or against it. Either way he wants no part of it. And to be honest he’s a bit afraid to play right now. Swollen knuckles and unsteady hands. He’s coming down from his rush and he’s got the shakes. It only took one fix. He’s sweating like a lathered horse. The Muzak’s driving him insane. The elevator drops.

All that day, assuming it is day, he paces in the elevator and clears his throat and spits and blows his nose. He tries stretching out to ease the fidgets and avoids the wet spot in the corner. He studies his reflection and makes faces and flips himself off. He sings along with the Muzak. His stomach cramps. He dryheaves. He takes a tortured nap and is grateful not to dream. The elevator drops.

Niko wakes with chapped lips and growling stomach. The elevator reeks. He’s thirsty and he’s hungry. But he no longer wants a fix either, so that’s something. Always looking on the bright side, that’s me. He wonders if this is the private hell that has awaited him. Trapped forever in an elevator listening to Muzak versions of his own music. At one point he tries to pry open the mirrored door, to no avail. Probably best.

He’s counting hairs on the back of his hands when some change in sound and motion makes him look up. He feels heavier as he struggles to his feet and presses his back against the wall. He shuts his eyes and feels for changes in the elevator’s motion. A soft chime sounds and he opens his eyes. The down button is no longer lit. His knees buckle with returning weight as the elevator slows and stops. He watches himself watching. No fear and neither arrogance. Not impatient but not calm. He looks like someone begging at the back door. Well, that’s what I am. Sing for my supper.

The door glides open and wipes him away. He looks out on an executive office, Danish Modern furniture, high ceilings, lots of right angles. Well-appointed in muted gray and russet with teal accents and brightly lit in afternoon sunlight streaming in from the lightly tinted glass that takes up all the back wall. Basking in the sun outside the window is Los Angeles.

THE VIEW IS from on high and facing south. Niko sees the tangled bands of Harbor, Golden State, and Santa Monica freeways. Something wrong though. To his left stands the ranked array of downtown skyscrapers through which he was ferried by the Checker Cab, chasing Jem a life ago it seems. Library Tower rises pale green above the other buildings. In the distance straight ahead lies the long geometry of LAX. Beyond it angled coastline. Past that he can even see the outline of Catalina Island. In the middle distance the miniature downtown of Century City, and immediately before him Beverly Hills. But to the right are the Hollywood Hills, the three domes of the Griffith Observatory, the crooked teeth of the Hollywood sign. He shouldn’t be able to see all of this at once from the same window. And certainly not from this high up.

No cars on the freeways. No motion on the streets. No toy planes stacked up for LAX approach. No street traffic or police helicopters. Ten million people gone.

Nonetheless as Niko looks out on his adopted city a sudden knife of homesickness slides between his ribs. I want to wake up in our bed with Jem beside me. I want to make her a cup of that nasty lapsang souchong tea she drinks. I want to be stuck in traffic on the 405. I want to hear the breaking waves on Malibu and watch the sun sink toward Japan. The living map of half his life is spread before him, so unexpected and heartbreakingly real that Niko simply stares until nearby motion brings him back.

Behind a curved executive desk is a black leather swivel chair, and Niko has a moment as the chair turns toward him to discern with fevered distinction the desktop cluttered with papers, opened envelopes, Post-Its, a pencil cup holding scissors and a letter opener, stacked in and out trays, an Apple laptop, an intercom phone, a cherrywood display rack holding antique fountain pens, a placard reading THE LUCK STOPS HERE. A moment as the chair turns toward him to note the room is strident with the ticking of an unseen clock. An awful moment before the chair turns around in which he knows who he’ll see sitting in it.

Niko stares at retro shades above a perfect grin. “Niko-mancer. What took you so long?”

NIKO PICKS UP his guitar case and leaves the stinking elevator. It closes silently behind him. He firms his grip and heads slowly toward the son of a bitch behind the desk. He wonders how he feels.

“Sit down, sit down.” Phil waves at one of the chairs facing his desk and presses a button on his intercom and says, “Salome.” A door opens and a sad abomination enters the room. Long and tan and lean and lovely, a naked pair of woman’s legs strides across the plush gray carpet with a jingle of bells. The pubis is sparse haired, the wide hips end bluntly at the waistline. A silver edged glass tray rests on top. A woman sawn in half and made into furniture. The tray bears a Waterford ship’s decanter filled with gently sloshing brown liquor, a matching oldfashioned glass, a matching ashtray holding a book of matches and a pack of Swisher Sweets, a baggie of white powder, a floral patterned silver teaspoon, and an antique glass hypodermic syringe with fingerloops on the barrel and plunger.