Jonathan Lethem - The Wall of the Sky, the Wall of the Eye

Don curled his shoulder protectively around the pipe and glared back at the alien. “Fuck you want?”

The Sufferer nudged at his elbow with its hand-like paw.

“Leave me the fuck alone.”

“Don, what are you doing? It can’t help it. What are you trying to do, bait it?”

Don ignored me. He flicked his lighter again, tried to get a hit. The Sufferer jogged his elbow. Don kicked at it. The alien danced back easily out of the way, like a boxer, then stepped back in, trying to square its face with Don’s, trying to look him in the eye.

Don kicked out again, brushing the Sufferer back, then pocketed the pipe and drew out his gun.

The alien cocked his head.

“Hey, Don—”

Don fired the gun straight into the Sufferer’s chest, and the alien jumped back and fell onto the cobblestones, then got back on its feet and walked in a little circle, shaking its head, blinking its eyes.

Don said: “Ow, fuck, I think I sprained my arm.”

“How? What happened?”

“The gun, man. It bucked back on me. Shit.”

“You can’t kill it, Don. Everybody knows that. The shots’ll just bring the police.”

Don looked at me. His expression was dazed and cynical at the same time. “I just wanted to give it a piece of my fuckin’ mind, okay, Paul?”

“Okay, Don. Now what about going back to the airport?”

“Nah. We gotta lose this thing.”

The Sufferer circled back around to where Don sat still holding the gun, kneading his injured forearm with his free hand. The alien sat up like a perky cat and tapped at Don’s jacket pocket, rattling the load of bottles.

“I guess it just wants to see you get clean, Don. If you get rid of the bottles it’ll leave us alone and we can fly to California.”

“You believe that shit, Paul? Where’d you read that, Newsweek? ”

“What?”

“That this thing is like some kind of vice cop? That it wants me to kick?”

“Isn’t that the idea?” The stuff I’d read about them wasn’t clear on much except that they followed users around, actually.

“Yeah? Watch this.” Don clicked the safety on the gun and handed it to me, then got out his pipe and loaded it. He braised the rock with flame from the lighter, but this time when he got it glowing he turned it around and offered it to the Sufferer. The alien grasped the pipe in its dexterous paw and stuck the end in its mouth and toked.

“I think I read about that,” I said, lying. “It’s like an empathy thing. They want to earn your trust.”

Don just smirked at me, then snatched his pipe away from the Sufferer, who didn’t protest.

“I’m cold,” I said. “You think that cab is coming back?”

“Fuck yes,” said Don. “You kidding? We’re a fucking gold mine.” He shook out another rock.

The Sufferer and I both watched. Suddenly I wanted some. I’d done a lot of uncooked coke with some of my Upper West Side friends the last year of high school, but I’d only smoked rock twice before, with Don each time.

“Give me a hit, Don,” I said.

He loaded the pipe and handed it and the lighter to me, ungrudgingly.

I drew in a hit, and felt the crazy rush of the crack hit me. Like snorting a line of coke while plummeting over the summit of a roller coaster.

The Sufferer opened its weird, toothless black mouth and leaned towards me, obviously wanting another hit.

“Maybe the idea is to help run through your stash,” I said. “Help use up your stuff, keep you from O.D.ing. Because their bodies can take it, like the bullets. Doesn’t hurt them.”

“Maybe they’re just fucking crackheads, Paul.”

The cab’s reappearance startled me, the sound of its approach masked by the rush of cars overhead. And of course, I was thinking of cops.

Don took his gun back, jammed it in his waistband, and we got into the back. Don held the door open for the Sufferer. “Might as well get it off the freeway,” he said. “Gonna be with us next place we go either way.” The Sufferer didn’t hesitate to clamber in over our feet and settle down on the floor of the back, pretty much filling the space.

“Okay, but we need a plan, Donnie.” I heard myself beginning to whine.

“Where to?” said the cabbie.

“Back to Manhattan,” said Don. “East, uh, 83rd and, uh, Park.” He turned to me. “Chick I know.”

“You can’t go back to the city.”

“Manhattan is a big place, Paul. Ear as Randall and Kaz is concerned, 83rd Street might as well be California.”

“Don’t talk to me about California. Like you know something about California.”

“Paul, man, I didn’t say shit about California. I’m just saying we can hide out uptown, figure some shit out, okay? Take care of the Crackhead from Space here, right?”

“Uptown. New York is a world to you, you don’t know anything but uptown or downtown or Brooklyn. California’s a whole other place, Donnie, you can’t imagine. It’ll be different. The things you’re dealing with here, they don’t have to be — you don’t have to have these issues , Donnie. Randall, uptown, whatever.”

“Okay, Paul. But I just wanna take care of two things, okay, and then we’ll go, let’s just get rid of the Creature and just move this stuff to some people I know, okay? Get cash for this product, then we’ll go.”

The Sufferer shifted, stepping on my foot, and looked up at us.

“Okay.” I was defeated, by the two of them. It was like they were in collusion now. “Just don’t talk about California like it’s Mars , for God’s sake. We’re going there, you’ll see how it is, and then you can tell me what you think. It’ll blow your mind, Donnie, to see how different it can be.”

“Yeah,” he said, far away.

We were silent into Manhattan. At 83rd Street and Park Avenue Don paid the cab fare, and we got out. The three of us. The street was full of cars, mainly cabs, actually — nobody up here owned a car — but the sidewalk was dead, except for doormen. In a way Don was right about New York. This was another place. The thought of him selling crack on Park Avenue gave me a quick laugh.

Don led us into a brightly lit foyer. “Annette Sweeney,” he told the doorman.

The doorman eyed the Sufferer. “Is she expecting visitors?”

“Tell her it’s Light.”

We went up to the ninth floor and found Annette Sweeney’s door. Annette Sweeney lived well — I knew that before we even got inside.

She opened the door before we could knock. “You can’t just always come up here, Light.”

“Annette, chill out. I got some stuff for you. If it’s not a good time—”

Annette baited easily. Don’s hook gave me an idea what they had in common. “No, Light, I’m just saying why don’t you call? Why don’t you ever call me? What do you have?”

“Just some stuff.” He stepped in. “This my brother.”

“Hi.” She was staring at the Sufferer. “Light, look.”

“I know. Forget it.”

I stepped in, and so did the Sufferer. Like it owned the place.

“What do you mean? When did this happen?”

“Shut up, forget it. It’s a temporary thing.”

“What did you do?”

Don went past her, left the rest of us in the doorway, and flopped on her couch. The apartment was big and spare, the architectural detail as lush as the outside of the building, the furniture modern, all aluminum and glass.

“I haven’t seen you for weeks, Annette. What did I do? I did a lot of shit, you want to know it all? I come here and you ask me questions?”

Annette fazed easily. She tilted her head so that her hair fell, then brushed it away and pursed her lips and said: “ Sorry , Light.” I saw a rich girl who thought that when she hung out with my brother she was slumming. And I saw my brother twisting her incredible need around his fingers, and hated them both for a second.