Kem Nunn - Tapping the Source

He saw her by the light of the strobe, so it was like seeing a series of still photographs. It was the slender brunette he’d seen earlier with Frank Baker. She was in the doorway and there was some sort of movie camera in her hands. The camera made a soft whirring sound. Hound Adams was standing behind the girl, his arms folded across his chest, his blond hair and jewelry coming alive in the white light, vanishing in the darkness.

Ike woke up on the floor. The room was already warm and the sunlight was spilling in a window and forming a pool near his head. The minute his eyes opened, the pain began. His eyes burned and his neck felt like someone had stepped on it. He sat up slowly, trying to keep the room from spinning too rapidly. He blinked hard, bringing back the night, and the first thing he thought about was the redhead getting sick.

They had made more movies, smoked more dope. And then one of the Samoans had come in and started doing cocaine. The girls had all sniffed some with him, taking hits out of a tiny silver spoon. Ike had declined. He had begun mixing gin and tonics and had elected to stay with that. Then at some point, later, an hour or two after the first business with the little spoon, Hound Adams had come back into the room and he and the Samoan had started mixing the cocaine with a few drops of water, filling a teaspoon, getting ready to shoot the stuff, and the redhead had wanted in on it. Ike had been sitting right next to her on the couch as the Samoan pushed the needle into her arm. He’d watched the substance disappear, then watched the syringe fill back up with blood, red like the shade of her nails against her white skin, and then that was gone too, shot back inside as the Samoan booted it. And that was what did it, the boot, that blood rushing back in to send it all on its way. All of a sudden she was out, stiff, frozen, as if someone had just shot a bolt of electricity into her body, and Ike was certain she was dead. He was looking right at her and her skin was whiter than it had been all night, so white it was like chalk, and all he could think of was that he had done it and for a moment he was not even drunk, or stoned, just alone with this terrible knowledge and guilt. And then she was not dead anymore, but staring at him, shaking uncontrollably, and then sick, sick all over everything, the couch, his arm, before they could get her into the bathroom off the hall. Damn, he could close his eyes now and bring back that whole scene: Hound and the Samoan trying to figure out what had happened, Hound Adams suddenly looking more scared there, in his own house, than he had ever looked out on the parking lot, standing up to those bikers who had him outnumbered three to one. And when things had quieted down, and there was just the sound of the girl being sick in the other room, they’d decided someone must have crossed the spoons, given her Hound’s or the Samoan’s instead of the lightweight dose they had made up for her. She’d pulled out of it okay, finally coming out of the bathroom and acting very wired up, still shaking but wired, and that was about the last he could remember, how everybody was wired up except him and how he’d finally crashed on the floor while the rest of them partied around him. And he was there now, the room quiet and warm and smelling still from where the girl had gotten sick. And for some dumb reason, as he was standing up, he remembered her name; it was Debbie. Christ. She had nearly died on top of him and he could just now remember her name.

He found them in the living room, Debbie and the two skinny blondes, all three seated on a couch beneath a huge Indian rug hung on the wall with a quotation from the Book of Changes pinned to the middle of it. They still looked slightly wired, staring at him out of blasted eyes while the smell of breakfast drifted back into the room. The scent made him sick.

He walked past the girls without speaking and into the kitchen. The slender brunette was scrambling eggs. “Rise and shine,” she said. Ike ignored her. He had in mind going out the back way and slipping out the gate in the side yard.

There was a large screened-in porch off the kitchen, which had to be crossed to get to the yard. But as Ike came out into the porch he saw that Hound Adams was seated on the grass outside the door. He was seated Indian style, his face to the sun, his back to the house, and Frank Baker was standing over him. Neither of them had seen Ike and he stopped in the center of the porch. For a moment he thought that they were talking, but then he saw that it was Frank Baker who was doing the talking, that Hound was just sitting, staring into the yard, and that Frank was angry. “You’re fucking blowing it, man,” Ike heard him say. “Letting that chick shoot coke. I mean, things are gettin’ too loose around here. You know? I thought you said you could keep Terry’s family in line.”

Frank was dressed in a pair of trunks, and behind him, Ike could see a couple of boards lying in the yard. Frank was standing close to Hound, almost bending over him. His arms were held out, away from his body, with the palms turned up, so that the sun was hitting him in the chest and on the white palms of his hands.

When Hound spoke, his voice was quiet and Ike had to strain to hear. It sounded like only one word, like later , or something like it. He could not be sure.

Frank shook his head and it seemed to Ike that he was about to speak again when he looked up and saw Ike on the porch. He turned away then, walked back into the yard to pick up his board. He passed Hound Adams without another word, but stopped as he reached the gate at the fence. He was nearly even with Ike now, slightly shorter due to the elevation of the porch, and he looked up into Ike’s face as he reached for the latch. “You get that board paid for last night?” he asked.

The question took Ike by surprise. Frank seemed to be waiting for an answer. He shrugged. “I don’t know.”

Frank laughed when he said that, a short, barking laugh that ended as quickly as it had begun. “Might take a long time to pay for a board like that one.” He went out through the fence, leaving the gate open behind him.

When Ike looked back toward the yard, he saw that Hound was standing now, that he also was dressed in trunks. He was again amazed, as he had been after Hound’s first party, that Hound was able to find the energy to surf after a night like the last one.

Ike stepped out of the porch, into the light. He studied Hound’s face for signs of anger, some response to what Frank had said. But his face was empty. He was only squinting against the light as he looked at Ike. “Where’s your stick?”

Ike had felt something go out of him with Frank’s words about the board, about how it might take a long time to pay it off. He was not sure how many more nights like the last one he had in him.

Hound shook his head. “You spend energy where you don’t have to, brah. We’ll have to talk about that sometime.” Then he went out the gate, leaving Ike alone on the concrete step.

Ike went out through the yard. He stood for a moment watching Hound Adams moving away from him, toward the beach, then he turned and headed for home. The longer he was awake, the worse he felt. For one thing, the longer he was awake the more he remembered, and the more he remembered the more he wanted to forget what had gone on, but he couldn’t forget and it was like some vicious circle in his head. And when he thought that all the while Michelle had been waiting, hot waves of guilt swept over him. And yet, somewhere in the midst of all that guilt and disgust, there was this other feeling that was in some way connected to that curiosity about himself he had felt earlier, a dark sense of satisfaction lurking in the gritty morning, a sense of awe almost, at what he had done, him, Low Boy, picking up girls in the heart of surf city and fucking their brains out in the heat of a California night. He had done that. It was like finding some new power suddenly at one’s disposal. It was strange. One minute he felt incredibly guilty and the next he felt this crazy elation. It was enough to complicate an already serious hangover and he paused to retch behind a bush at the corner of Fifth and Rose.