The Nightmare Factory (12 page)

Well, I wouldn’t say that this part of town is simply a
pit
. It is, of course, that; but the word doesn’t begin to describe the various dimensions of decrepitude in the local geography.
Decrepitude
, Ro. It has your
pit
in it and a lot more besides. I speak from experience, more than you would believe. This whole city is a pitiful corpse, and the neighborhood outside the walls of this bar has the distinction of being the withering heart of the deceased. Yes, I’ve gotten to know it over the years. I’ve gone out of my way to note its outlandish points of interest.

For instance, have you ever been to that place not far from here called Speakeasy? Well, then you have some acquaintance with the beautiful corruption of nostalgia, the putrescence of things past. Yes, up a flight of stairs from a crooked little street facade is a high echoey hall with a leftover Deco decor of silvery mirrors and sequined globes. And there the giant painted silhouettes of bony flappers and gaunt Gatsbys sport about the curving ballroom walls, towering over the dance floor, their funereal elegance mocking the awkward gyrations of the living. An old dream with a shiny new veneer. It’s fascinating, you know, how an obsolete madness is sometimes adopted and stylized in an attempt to ghoulishly preserve it. These are the days of second-hand fantasies and antiquated hysteria.

But there are other sights in this city that I think are much more interesting. Not the least of which are those storefront temples of dubious denomination. There’s one on Third and Snoville called the Church of the True Dividing Light, not to be mistaken, I presume, with that false light which dazzles so many searching eyes. Oddly enough, I’ve yet to see any light at all shining through the windows of this gray dwarfish building, and I always look for some sort of illumination as I ride by. I tell you, no one worships this city as I do. Especially its witticisms of proximity, one strange thing next to another, adding up to a greater strangeness. One of the more grotesque examples of this phenomenon occurs when you observe that a little shop whose display window features a fabulous array of prosthetic devices is right next-door to Marv’s Second Hand City. Then there are those places—you’ve noticed them, I’m sure—that are freakishly suggestive in a variety of ways. One of them is that pink and black checkerboard box on Bender Boulevard that calls itself Bill’s Bender Lounge, where a garish marquee advertises Nightly Entertainment. And if you stare at that legend long enough, the word “Nightly” will begin to connote more than the interval between dusk and dawn. Soon this simple word becomes truly evocative, as if it were code for the most exotic and unspeakable entertainments of the infinite night. And speaking of entertainment, I should cite that establishment whose owner, no doubt an epicure of musical comedy, gave it the title of Guys and Dolls, Inc. What a genius of vulgarity, considering that this business is devoted solely to the sale and repair of manikins. Or is it really a front for a bordello of dummies? No offense intended, Rosalie.

I could go on—I still haven’t mentioned Miss Wanda’s Wigs or a certain hotel that boasts a “Bath in Every Room”—but maybe you’re becoming a bit bored. Yes, I can understand what you mean when you say you don’t notice that stuff after a while. The mind becomes dull and complacent. I know. Sometimes I get that way myself. But it seems that just when I’m comfortably mired in complacency, some good jolt comes along.

Maybe I’m sitting in my car, waiting for a red light to change. A derelict, drunk or brain-diseased or both, comes up to my defenseless vehicle and pounds on my windows—with both fists, like so—and demands a cigarette. He touches his ragged lips with scissored fingers to convey his meaning, having left speech behind him long ago. A cigarette? Indeed! The traffic signal changes and I drive on, watching the bum’s half-collapsed form shrinking in my rearview mirror. But somehow I’ve taken him on as a passenger, a ghostly shape sitting cozily beside me and raving about all kinds of senseless and fascinating things, the autobiography of confusion. And in a little while I’m back on the lookout once more.

Touching story, don’t you—Yes, I suppose it is getting a bit late and we haven’t made much progress. Your apartment? I think that would be fine. No, nothing else in mind as far as places go. Yours is okay. Where is it, though? No kidding? That’s the old Temple Towers with a new cognito. Excellent, our ride will take us through the neighborhood in the shadow of the brewery. What floor of the building do you live on? Well, a veritable penthouse, an urban aerie. The loftier the better, I say.

Shall we go, then? My car is parked right out front.

I hope it hasn’t decided to rain. Nope, it’s a beautiful night. But look, that’s my car where that cop is standing. Just stay calm. I certainly won’t say anything if you don’t. You’re not, by chance, a vice officer in disguise, are you, Rosiecrantz? You wouldn’t betray this unsuspecting Hamlet. A simple “no” would have been sufficient. If you use that kind of language again I’ll turn you in to the cops right now, and then we can see what sort of arrest record you’ve accumulated in your brilliant career. Silence, that’s good. Just let me do the talking. Here goes.

Hi, officer. Yeah, that’s my car. It’s parked okay, isn’t it? Geez, that’s a relief. For a second I thought—My driver’s license? Sure thing. Here you go. Beg pardon? Yeah, I guess I am a little far from home. But I work real close to here. I’m a stockbroker, here’s my card. You know, I’ve been in the business for some time now, and I can almost tell just by the look of a guy if he’s got something invested in the market. I’d bet that you have. See there, I knew I was right. Doesn’t matter if you’re just small-time. Listen, have you been in touch with an investment counsellor lately? Well, you should. There’s a lot going on. People talk about inflation, recession, depression. Forget it. If you know where to put your finances, I mean really know, it doesn’t matter if it’s Friday the thirteenth and the streets are bloody with corporate corpses.

Smart advice is what you need. It’s all anyone needs. For example—and I tell you this just to make a point—there’s an outfit right in this city, not a half-mile from here in fact, by the name of Lochmyer Laboratories. They’ve been working on a new product and are just about ready to market it. ’Course I don’t understand the whole technical end of it, but I know for sure that it’s going to revolutionize the field of—what d’you call it—psychopharmaceutics. Revolutionize it the way tranquilizers did in the Fifties. It’ll be bigger than tranquilizers. Bigger than LSD. You know what I mean? That’s the kind of thing you got to know.

That’s right, officer, Lochmyer Laboratories. And they’re on the New York Exchange. Good outfit all around. I own stock in it myself. What tip, hell? Hey, you don’t have to thank me. Beg pardon? A tip for me? Well, now that you mention it, probably there are better neighborhoods for a man like me to be frequenting. I guess you probably
won’t
be seeing me around here anymore. I appreciate that, officer. I’ll remember. And you remember Loch Lab. Right, then. ’Night to you.

Wait for his car to turn the corner, Rosie, before getting in mine. We’ll let the lawman maintain the illusion that his warning has set me straight with regard to the dangers of this seamy area and your seamy self. He looked at you like an old friend. Could have been trouble for both of us. You’re a smart girl to have sat at my table tonight. I think my briefcase impressed him, don’t you? Okay, we can get in the car now.

Yes, I did get us out of a touchy situation with that cop. But I hope when you just mentioned my
B.S.
apropos of that scene with the policeman, you were referring to the Bachelor of Science degree I received when I was sixteen years old. This is your last warning about unclean idioms. Now roll down your window and let’s air your words out of this car as we drive. And as far as my deceiving that fine officer goes—I actually didn’t. No, I’m not really a stockbroker. I told you the truth about being in chemicals. And I told that mole-eyed patrolman the truth when I advised him to put his money in Lochmyer Lab, for we
are
about to market a new mind medicine that should make our investors as pleased as amphetamine addicts at an all-night coffee shop. How did I know he owned stock in the first place? That is strange, isn’t it? I guess I was just lucky. This is just my lucky night—and yours too.

You don’t much like the
policía
, do you, Rrrosa? Yes, of course I can blame you. Without them, where would all of us outlaws be? What would we have? Only a lawless paradise…and paradise is a bore. Violence without violation is only a noise heard by no one, the most horrendous sound in the universe. No, I realize you don’t have anything to do with violence. I didn’t mean to imply you did. Yes, I can drop you off back at the bar when we’ve finished at your apartment. Of course.

Right now let’s just enjoy the ride. What do you mean “so what’s to enjoy”? Can’t you see we’re nearing the brewery? Look, there’s its beer-golden sign, advertising the alchemical quest to transmute base ingredients into liquid gold.
Alchemical
, Rosetta. And I’m not referring to that shoddy firm of Allied Chem. Just look around at these hollowed-out houses, these seedy stores, each one of them a sacred site of the city, a shrine, if you will. You won’t? You’ve seen it all a million times? A slum is a slum is a slum, eh? Always the same.
Always?

Never.

What about when it’s raining and the brown bricks
of
these old places start to drip and darken? And the smoke-gray sky is the smoky mirror of your soul. You give a lightning blink at a row of condemned buildings, starkly outlining them. And do they blink back at you? Or does that happen only in another type of storm, when windows are slyly browed with city-soiled clumps of snow. Was it under such conditions that you first thought of all the cold and dark places in the universe, all the clammy basements and gloomy attics of creation? Maybe you didn’t want to think about those places, but you couldn’t help yourself at the time. Another time you could have. No two times are the same. No two lives are alike: you have yours and others have theirs. And when you’re traveling through these streets with some stranger, you have to contend with the way someone else sees things, the way you now must deal with my 20-20 visions and I with your blasé nearsightedness. Are these the same gutted houses you saw last night, or even a second ago? Or are they like the fluxing clouds that swirl above the chimneys and trees, and then pass on?

The alchemical transmutations are infinite and continuous, working all the time like slaves in the Great Laboratory. Tell me you can’t perceive their work, especially in this part of the city. Especially where the glamor and sanity of former days wears a new mask of rats and rot, where an old style is transformed by time into a parody of itself which no man could foresee, where greater and greater schisms are forever developing between past shapes and future shapelessness, and finally where the evolution toward ultimate diversity can be glimpsed as if in a magic mirror.

This is, of course, the
real
alchemy, as you’ve probably gathered, and not that other kind which theorized that everything was struggling toward an auric perfection. Lead into gold, lower matter into higher spirit. No, it’s not like that. Just the opposite, in point of fact. Please don’t put that hunk of gum in your mouth; throw it out the window, now! As I was saying, everything is just variation without a theme. Oh, perhaps there is some solid and unchanging ideal, shining very dimly and very far off. Scientifically, I suppose, we should allow for that improbability. But to reach that ideal would mean a hopeless stroll along the path to hypothetically higher worlds. And on the way our ideas become feverish and confused. What begins as a solitary truth soon proliferates like malignant cells in the body of a dream, a body whose true outline remains unknown. Perhaps, then, we should be grateful to the whims of chemistry, the caprices of circumstance, and the enigmas of personal taste for giving us such an array of strictly local realities and desires.

No, I didn’t always think this freaky, as you put it. But I can tell you almost precisely when I began to see the truth of things. I was a callow freshman in college, even callower than most, given my precocious progress. One day something seemed to change in my chemistry, as I like to think of it. It was quite horrible for a while. Eventually, though, I realized that the alteration was from a false chemistry to a true one. Yes, that’s when I decided to pursue the subject as my career, my calling. But that’s a story in itself, and here we are now at your apartment tower.

Please don’t slam the car door the way you were about to. No need to draw attention to our presence. You’re right, there’s really no one around to be attentive anyway. The local street vermin seem to have withdrawn into their holes. Very good: “But their holes are not their vessels,” indeed. Not the hole of man but the whole man is the true vessel, as some pompous sage might have said. And the
right
vessel is the whole point of the thing, for the best vessel will ultimately take the shape of its contents.

Never mind what I’m talking about. I just like to talk, as you may have noticed. Oops, almost forgot my briefcase. Wouldn’t want to leave it unattended in this neighborhood, isn’t that right? You’re smiling about my briefcase, aren’t you, Maryrose? You think you know something again. Well, go ahead and think that if you like. Everybody likes to think he has inside information. That policeman, for example. You could see how pleased he was to instantly become a man of knowledge, even if it’s only by way of a knowledgeable tip on the stock market. Everybody wants to know the secret truth,
scientia arcana
, the real dope.

Maybe I do have some dope in my case. Then again, maybe it’s just an empty prop, a leather vessel with a void inside. But you already know that I work for a dope company. You were thinking that, weren’t you? Well, let’s go up to your place and find out.

Cozy little lobby you have here; but I’m afraid the atmosphere is doing strange things to that pot of ferns over there. Of course I know they’re artificial. Which only means that Nature, one of the Great Chemists, made them at one remove, that’s all. Here, this elevator seems to be working, though a little noisily. After you, Lady R. The twenty-second floor if I remember right, and I always do. Uh, I believe there’s to be no smoking in this elevator, if you don’t mind. Thank you. And here we are. I’ll bet your place is down this way. See, I
am
always right. Isn’t that funny? Yes, I’m coming, I’m coming.