The Spider Inside (16 page)

“Ma, wait, can I...can I see you? Can I come by?”

She stopped then, sitting in the car, the door still open,
gripping the handle she would pull to close it so hard her knuckles were white.

“You’re not my son anymore,” she said. “Not the way you are
now.” She slammed the door.

Jim stood there, staring in the driver’s side window,
watching his mother cry through his own reflection. What he saw in that glass wasn’t
himself. He saw a young man, much too thin, with wild bulging, eyes, with hands
hooking into claws and fists and then relaxing and starting over again.

In that glass he saw his father, so skinny, lying in a
hospital bed, all full of tubes, and Jim wondered if now he was just bones in
the coffin or if there was anything left of his skin and at least now Jim knew
where all that extra money had come from last spring.

His mother looked at him one more time before putting the
car into gear. Jim watched her drive away, and part of him left with her.

They hadn’t been on the highway in over an hour, having
turned off at some obscure exit, the number of which of course had been
provided to them by Xander. Nik checked the dashboard clock and wondered how
much longer it would be. The wind howled and the empty truck rocked a little on
the road, nothing major, just enough for the world to let you know it was
there, and if it wanted, it would just go right ahead and make you its bitch.
Nik had always hated nature, for the most part. He felt uncomfortable in wide
open spaces, or in areas where there were no power and phone lines
crisscrossing in the sky. He wanted hot pavement under his feet and a
McDonald’s within walking distance. He didn’t want to be anywhere he could be
hunted down and eaten. He wanted to be at least a member of the species that
was at the very top of the food chain.

But nature wasn’t the worst thing out here, on the edges of
desert bordering California and Nevada...this is where the real fucking crazy
people were, too. Rednecks, hicks and shit, crazy on bathtub speed and huffing
gas, just as happy to lock you in a box under the stairs as they would be to
give you directions. This is where the Manson Family planned on coming once the
race war started. Out here the constant sun and wind cooked your brains and
scrambled them, and though he did his best not to show it, Nik wanted nothing
more than to get this fucking truck filled and be back in L.A., back around the
boob jobs and the mansions and the cars that cost six hundred thousand dollars,
even though he didn’t have any of these things, they made him comfortable.
Truth was, when he was at home those were the things and the people he would
complain about, that and the traffic and the smog and every other cliché
fucking problem Los Angeles had, but he loved it there, deep down. He would be
more comfortable in a traffic jam. At least then there were people around in
case something happened. Like if you broke down. They might not help you, they
might shoot you or scream or give you the finger for holding up their day or
just ignore you, but eventually someone would come. Nik couldn’t remember
seeing another car since they left the highway, and this bothered him, plagued
him. What if the wind really did kick up and flipped the truck? The thought of
bleeding to death, crushed and burning, his intestines pushed out his ass and
his eyes bulging in his face amongst the broken glass and twisted metal of the
cab did not appeal to him. The fact that the scorpions and the buzzards would
be there to eat him after he died long before help arrived did nothing for his
nerves.

Nik cleared his mind and just drove.

Ten minutes later he saw the glint of sun off glass or metal
in the distance and breathed a quiet sigh of relief. Ten minutes after that
they were turning past a boarded-up gas station where the pumps had been
removed and driving down the dusty back road to a motel with a NO VACANCY sign
flickering in red neon.

They had arrived.

There were no cars in the parking lot, and the only light
from the motel was from the light above the office door. Nik stepped out of the
cab and closed his door, the echo of it coming back at him.

The motel was a squat little one story job, laid out in an L
shape with the office at one end and maybe ten other rooms. All the blinds in
all the windows were drawn.

They cook out of here, Nik thought. All that good shit comes
out of here twice a month.

There was a creak of a screen door and Nik turned.

A man squeezed out the door sideways. He was chewing on an
unlit cigar and wearing a stained apron. His arms and neck were a deep brown
but the rest was so white that Nik thought he was wearing a t-shirt until he
saw the belly button and the nipples.

The fat man nodded his head at Gomez, seeming to recognize
him, and then looked at Nik.

“You boys need a room?” he asked.

“Just directions,” Gomez said.

“No smoking,” the fat man said with a smile, showing his
mostly empty gums, and turned to go back in the office door. Gomez followed
him, and Nik went after Gomez.

They walked around the counter and through a door that Nik
at first assumed led to the manager’s quarters. Instead he realized the entire
innards of the motel had been, for the most part, removed. As far as he could
see there was a complicated network of vats and pipes and tubing, and people
attending to all of it. The stink was incredible.

Nik waited by the door with Gomez while the fat man
consulted a man that appeared to be his foreman on the job. They spoke, nodded,
shared a laugh. The foreman went the other direction and the fat man came back
toward them.

“They call me Boyardee,” he said, sticking a fat meaty paw
out. His hand swallowed Nik’s and Nik gave the head cook of God’s meth ring a
smile and introduced himself, then Gomez.

“You wanna pull yer rig round back we’ll git it loaded for
ya,” Boyardee said.

Nik did as he was asked, and then went back inside, where
Boyardee offered him a cold beer and a soft chair. The cook told dirty jokes
and laughed at all of them. Gomez handed him the suitcase that Xander’s
money-man had given them. Boyardee thanked him and set it aside, not bothering
to count it, instead he tipped Nik a wink.

“In God we trust,” Boyardee said.

About an hour later Nik stared with his mouth slightly agape
at the back of the truck. The truck itself about the size of a small U-Haul,
Nik thought, like the one he’d needed to move from his last one bedroom
apartment to the one he was in now. The back end was filled with bricks, all of
it pure meth. He felt like he was going to have an aneurysm or come in his
pants or something. He’d simply never seen that much of the drug--of any
drug--all at once before. Gomez rolled the door down and Nik tried to play it
cool, hoping he hadn’t already blown it. He needed to be nonchalant.

“Lot a shit,” Gomez said.

“Yeah,” Nik said, trying to sound unimpressed.

“You ready?”

“Yeah,” Nik said. “Let’s go.”

The two of them climbed in the truck, Nik driving, Gomez
riding shotgun, and headed back toward L.A.

At his request Cherry stopped at Jim’s apartment when they
got back to town. The ride home had been horrible, just one long, black silence
like a hole between them that got wider and wider with each passing moment.

Nothing she had said or done had gotten through to him. They
sat in the car in the parking lot to his building, the car idling, his eyes
closed, head leaning back against the rest on top of the seat.

The flash of lightning lit up the darkening day. It was
still early afternoon but the light was fading, the clouds above were a solid
charcoal wall. Cherry could feel the electricity in the air, could feel the
coming storm. She’d always loved the rain, and there was nothing she wanted
more than for Jim to come back to her place so they could curl up in bed and
make love to the sounds of the rain and thunder. The hair on her arms stood
out.

“Jim--”

“I can’t,” he said. “I need to...I don’t know. I just need
to be by myself right now.”

“No, you don’t,” Cherry said. “That’s the last thing you
need. You need to be with me.”

Jim was silent.

“Won’t you come to my home with me? Jim?”

He turned and opened his eyes and looked at her.

“Won’t you come home with me and make love with me? Please?”

At this he finally smiled and she put the car in gear and
drove the last few miles to her house. Jim grabbed their bags out of the
back-seat and the lightning flashed and the thunder rolled and the sky opened
up and the rain started to fall like cold darts and there were little pieces of
hail rattling against the cars in the lot and the pavement and off of
everything.

They dropped their bags inside the door and Cherry basically
attacked him, pushing him back against the door hard enough so he bumped the
back of his head on it and she bit his lower lip and put her hands up his shirt
and pinched his nipples and then started rubbing him through his pants and
afterward, while they lay in bed, Cherry felt like she did after she
masturbated...completely satisfied for sure, but also a little ashamed and a
little alone, this with her head resting on Jim’s chest and her sweat not yet
dry on her skin.

Outside the storm raged on and both of them thought about
scoring. No matter what they did or what they talked about it was on their
minds the rest of the day, neither one wanting to bring it up in case the other
wasn’t thinking about it. Finally Jim broke the silence on the subject because
if he didn’t start looking for some fucking gack he was going to go mental.

He didn’t even really jones for the high itself, but for the
comfort that came in knowing he had the shit in his possession. Oh course they
both had a little baggie set away, but neither had more than a little bump, and
Jim could not fathom doing just a little bump right now. No way. Only a little
would be worse than none. Still…he could almost taste it in the back of his
nose and not having it was killing him, he wanted to have a bag set aside so
when he was finally ready to do it, he could do it, and wouldn’t have to then
start the search, that fucking scavenger hunt that could take minutes or days,
that could lead you straight into the heart of fucking nothingness and down a
back alley that smelled like shit or to a trailer park underneath the highway
where the stink of exhaust was so overbearing it brought tears to your eyes. He
wanted to do that now, to get it over with and his mother’s sad face would
flash into his mind every once in a while, he would see the tears in her eyes
and think,
I no longer have a father
, and he would see her shaking her
head back forth and the look of disgust and fright she’d given him before she
recognized him. How thin he was, that was what she’d talked about. And here
that morning he’d felt like Charles fucking Atlas, thought he was looking
better and feeling better and knew he still was not the picture of health but
had no idea he was so horrible looking that his own fucking mother could walk
right by him in a gas station and not even recognize him. All this and the
thunder outside and the roar of the rain and it came down in torrents.

There was no cleansing with this rain. It choked Los
Angeles, it brought hail and smashed her windows and dented her cars and hurt
her children, it was not a shower, it was a fucking beating and before the
night was over Jim and Cherry and Two Step and Soup and his friend Doug from
Portland were dividing out the bag they’d all went in on, sitting at Soup and
Two Step’s, Motorhead blasting out the stereo and still the rain fell and it
fell and it fell, but at some point they became oblivious of it.

All that mattered was their little circle. All that mattered
was that the music was fast and loud and never stopped and the lines kept
coming and at one point Jim took Cherry in the bathroom and they fucked each
other as hard as they could and when they came out an hour later they were both
covered in sweat and under their clothes there were scratches and bite marks
and Jim had a little bit of blood crusted around the inside of one of his
nostrils and still the rain poured down.

The storm had finally come, Jim felt it, it was the storm
that had been brewing inside him ever since that day all those years ago that
he spun and spun on the funeral home lawn, spun until he thought he was dying
and he fell over and got sick. Inside he’d never stopped spinning and that
storm had finally escaped him.

Cherry felt this, she felt the storm that she’d always
thought of as Jim’s passion, his love, she wondered now how she could have been
so wrong, she felt it shooting out his eyes and the tips of his fingers and
breathing like fire out the pores of his skin and he put some of that storm
inside of her when he fucked her, and between them the storm built and grew and
the sky got blacker and the rain came harder and the hail got bigger and the
gutters overflowed and ran with water the color of shit and though Cherry was
part of this storm, it scared her.

They didn’t know how long the rain lasted but the storm
between the five of them was still moving, still growing. When they could
finally get hold of Nik they went to his house and both Cherry and Jim smoked
it once in a while, alternating between that and just snorting it. All Soup and
Doug and Two Step did was smoke it. Nik seemed happy enough to hang out and
though he took a little bump now and then he didn’t smoke it. None of them
really paid this any mind. None of them knew how much he’d gotten from Sue’s
house, or that he was trying to move to the other side, turn that wide fucking
corner from junky to pusher.

In fact, Nik thought as he took his first small hit of the
session off the pipe, I don’t even know if Jim and Cherry know Sue is fucking
dead yet, unless Soup and Step were stupid enough to say something.

They spun their way down into the hole they were all so
comfortable living in. There was no light, there was no outside, there was no
nothing but them, but each other and the drug, the drug, the drug.

When the hole went as deep as they could dig it, meaning
until they were either out of money or on the brink of utter and complete
physical and mental collapse, the hole became a cave. Valium was procured and
distributed. Nik went to bed. Two Step lay down in the middle of the hardwood
floor, where he always did if they crashed at Nik’s, putting only a balled-up
jacket under his head for a pillow. Two Step fell asleep working that little
silver medal back and forth in his fingers. Doug fell asleep in one chair, Soup
the other. Cherry and Jim fell asleep together on the couch, lying together as
spoons on their sides. The cave became the tide, and darkness washed over them,
doing its best to clean them out and give them what strength it could.