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

Then she turned to me and smiled weakly and said: “Hi. I’m Annette… I didn’t know Light had a brother,” and I felt immediately guilty for judging. It didn’t hurt that she was beautiful, really striking, with black hair and big black eyes.

I took her hand. The Sufferer pushed past us, brushing my hip, and leapt onto the couch beside Don. “Yeah, well, he does,” I said. “I’m Paul.”

“It’s funny, ’cause my brother is staying with me right now. That’s why I was so weird about Light just dropping by.”

“You got a brother?” said Don, distractedly. He’d pulled all the little bottles out of his pockets and piled them on her rug. The Sufferer just sat upright on the couch and watched him.

“Yeah. He’s out right now, but he might come back.”

“That’s cool,” said Don. “We’ll party.”

“Um, Douglas might not really wanna… Jesus , Light.”

“What?”

“Well, just — your new friend. And all that stuff.”

“I guess the two kind of go together,” I said.

“Very funny,” said Don. “He’s harmless, he’s our — what, mascot. Like Tony the Tiger. Smoke rock — it’s grrrreat!”

“Doesn’t it freak you out?”

“Nah.” Don chucked the Sufferer on the chin. “You can’t believe all that shit you hear. It just wants to hang. That’s all they want. Came from space to party with me. You should of seen it following the cab, though — it was like a video game.”

Annette shook her head, grinning.

“Hey, Paul, come here for a minute,” said Don, jumping up, nodding his head at the door to the bedroom.

“What?”

“Nothing. Lemme talk to you for a minute though.”

We left Annette and the drugs and the Sufferer in the living room, and sat on the edge of the bed. “Don’t talk about this California thing,” Don said in a low voice. “Don’t let Annette hear about us leaving because she’ll fucking flip out if she hears I’m going away and I don’t need that, okay?”

“Okay,” I said, then: “Don?”

“What?”

“Maybe we should call Jimmy and Marilla. Let them know you’re okay.”

“They kicked me out. They don’t care.”

“Just because they couldn’t let you live there anymore doesn’t mean they don’t worry about you. Just to let them know you’re still alive —”

“Okay, but later, okay?” He had a distracted expression, one I was beginning to recognize: I want a hit.

“Okay.”

Don tapped me on the back and we went back out. The Sufferer had the pipe, but Annette looked like she’d had possession of it recently enough. The room was filled with that sour ozone smell.

She didn’t ask what we’d been talking about in private. Didn’t even seem to wonder. In general, her self-esteem around my brother seemed kind of low.

“Here,” said Don, plucking the pipe away from the alien. I knelt down on the carpet with them and accepted the offer. Between Don and Annette and the Sufferer it was seriously questionable whether any of the drugs would get sold — which was fine with me. Whether or not using up Don’s supply was part of the alien’s strategy — assuming the alien had a strategy — didn’t matter. It could be my strategy.

Annette got up and found her cigarettes and brought one back lit, adding to the haze. Then she brushed her hair back and, seemingly emboldened by the cocaine and nicotine, began talking. “Really, though, Light, you should look out, with this thing hanging around you. I heard about how there are people who’ll beat you up just because you’ve got one of these things following you around. It’s a reactionary thing, like AIDS-bashing, you know, blaming the victim. Also won’t the police, like, search you or something, hassle you, if they see it?”

“The police know me. They already hassle me. I don’t mean shit to the police. Tony the Tiger doesn’t change that.”

“It’s just weird, Light.”

“Of course it’s weird,” said Don. “That’s why we love it, right, Paul? It’s from another dimension, it’s fucking weird, it’s science fiction.” The Sufferer cocked its head at Don as if it was considering his words. Don raised his fists like a boxer. The Sufferer opened its mouth at him, a black O, and its ears, or what I was mistaking for its ears, wrinkled forward. Now that I could see it up close, it really didn’t look so much like a cat. The face was really more human, like the sphinx with a toothless octopus mouth.

Don waved his hands in its face and said: “Dee-nee dee-nee, dee-nee dee-nee”—Twilight Zone Theme.

“Well, when’s it going to leave you alone?” She took another rock of crack and stuffed it into the end of an unlit cigarette.

“I’m gonna lose it,” he said.

“That’s supposed to be pretty hard, Light. I mean, it’s like an obsession for them.”

“Would you stop quoting the, whatever, the Geraldo Rivera version, or wherever you got that crap? I said I’m gonna lose it. You can help. We can trap it in your bedroom and I’ll cut out.”

“I think it can hear you, Don,” I said.

“That’s so fucking stupid, man. It’s from another planet.”

Of course we all turned to look at it now. It stared back and then pawed at the pile of bottles on the carpet.

“Hey, cut it out,” said Don. He reached out to push it away, then winced. “Fuck.”

“What?”

“You think you could rub my arm? I sprained it or something.” He reached under his sweatshirt and freed himself of the gun, dropping it with a clatter on a little table beside the couch.

“Uh, sure, Light,” Annette said absently, goggling at the gun. She put her cigarette in her mouth and scooted up beside Don and took his arm in her lap. The Sufferer went on rattling the bottles.

“What about at the airport?” Don said. “You didn’t think it could understand us then.”

“I’m wrong, it was just a feeling.”

“Why’d you have to say that? You creeped me the fuck out.”

“Airport?” said Annette.

“Uh, that’s where we had to go to get the stuff,” I said, gesturing at the rug, taking up the burden of covering Don’s slip out of guilt, out of habit.

“You scored at the airport? ”

Don shrugged at her, and said: “Sure.”

Annette lit the loaded cigarette. The rock hissed as it hit the flame. “What are you doing with all this?”

“Well, I really gotta sell some,” said Don. “I was wondering if you wanted to call some of your friends. I don’t wanna go downtown now.”

“I don’t know, Light.” She looked at the Sufferer, who was still rattling at the vials. “Won’t it narc on us?”

“Don’t be stupid.”

“Even if it doesn’t, that’s what everybody’ll think if they see it here.”

“Just set it up, okay? We can arrange something so they don’t have to meet Tony the Tiger.” He lit a rock and toked.

“Well, anyway, my brother is coming back tonight so I don’t think you can deal out of my house, Light.”

“What does that have to do with it? It’s your house, right?”

“Well, I don’t know. He’s my older brother.”

“Paul is my older fucking brother,” Don said. “So what?”

Maybe Annette’s older brother knows how to take care of his sibling, I thought. Like I obviously don’t.

There was a sound of a key fumbling in a lock. “Speak of the devil,” said Annette.

Douglas turned out to be quite a bit older than Annette, or at least the way he dressed and held himself made it seem that way. He came up to where we all were sprawled on the couch and the carpet and said, to me: “Are you Light?”

“No,” said Don, “that’s me.”