Up Jumps the Devil (24 page)

“You're trying too hard to control things,” soothed Dr. Ray. “That's the addiction talking.”

“I'm an addict because I point out this fucker is an abusive coward?”

“She's right,” whispered Wounded Puppy. “But I'm here to talk about it, aren't I?”

Dr. Ray said something about Responsibility, but Memory was on her feet.

She tried hard not to storm out. The tabloids loved to write articles when famous people stormed out of places.

She stormed out.

As the alley door closed behind her, she felt broken concrete through her socks, and realized she'd forgotten her shoes.

Fuck!

No way was she going back. Not this week.

MEMORY WAS HAVING
a year full of shitty moods.

A week before, she had read an article in a music-industry magazine. The writer had marveled at how fast Memory Jones had aged, after the collapse of Purple Airplane. She wasn't like a grandma, yet, said the writer, but a far cry from the willowy space child she had been just five years ago.

“She's more like one of those barmaids with five kids you run into all the time,” the article said. “That's the kind of ‘old' she is.”

Memory missed being treated with respect. She wanted to storm out again, but she was already out. She was home.

She took some pills.

THE BAY AREA
Buddha had contacted Memory through her old L.A. studio, after reading about her amnesia. It had taken the studio a month to deliver the message.

“No promises,” he told her, “but I might be able to help. I've had some success with that kind of thing.”

Sometimes, since the end of Purple Airplane and the beginning of the unforgiving magazine articles, Memory felt like a model of something or a picture of something, rather than a person. Dr. Ray saw beyond the Story of the Willowy Space Child, and for that she was willing to trust him for five minutes at a time.

On her first visit, Dr. Ray had her lie on her back and kick the hell out of an old, heavy gymnastics mat.

“Harder!” he urged, until her pelvis heaved and she tossed her head violently from side to side, screaming. After a minute of this, he said, “Now stop. Quick, say the first thing that comes to mind! Now! Don't think, just do it!”

“Cracker desert Jesus drain!” she blurted.

“Again!”

“Furk!”

Which, while it was all very advanced and spontaneous, yielded nothing in the way of results.

Then, the seventh time they tried this, something had broken open in her. She had a momentary visual, like an acid flash or a dream, of being in a long hall or even an alleyway, with people crowding one another to hear her play music on an instrument, or to sing. It was like a dream, unclear.

And gone. It zipped itself up and she couldn't get it back. But they kept trying, and she kept kicking the mat until Dr. Ray finally said “Huh,” and put the mat away for good.

She had been going back for a month, now, trying one strategy or another. In the meantime, Memory's agent had convinced the studio to gamble on disco.

Why not?

AFTER THE PILLS
, she found some healed territory between her gum and her bottom lip, and gave herself a long, slow dose of something they were calling “King George.”

Heroin was like fashion. It changed. It had names.

She fell asleep standing up in her kitchen. She awakened when she fell and hit the floor hard. The glass in her hand rolled away without shattering.

She stayed on the floor and slept there until it was time to get up and go do the disco album.

That would be a kind of therapy, too, she imagined.

AFTER A WEEK
, the master tapes were ready for the final mix.

A drunk Andy Gibb had told her at a party six months ago:
“You can make a disco song out of anything. Anything.”

She had laughed her new whiskey-voiced laugh, and he sang “Ring Around the Rosie” in a falsetto voice, and damned if it didn't make her want to dance.

She had written what was more or less an album of surreal folk songs. Listening to them in the studio, overproduced, bursting with techno-noise, they sounded like robot anthems.

“It's good,” she remarked to the producers. “It's not going to change the world or anything, but hey.”

“You can dance to it,” the producers said.

“Yeah, but is that all?”

“What else do you need?” they asked, looking at her as if she had two heads.

MEXICO
. All of a sudden everything was about Mexico.

The studio heavies knew about a party in Mexico that had been going on since 1870. Always, there were new people floating in and out. Always, somehow, there was beer and wine and solid gold everything you could want. There were girls and boys of all persuasions. There was a talking dog named Fidel.

“If you wanna be somebody again,” the producers told Memory, “you gotta be seen there.”

And Memory thought, Fuck you, but what she said was “Fine.”

The producers, Memory, and an entourage of studio dancers climbed aboard a company jet, flew south across the Sea of Cortés, and landed at midnight in the backyard of the ancient party.

Memory wore sunglasses and a wide-brimmed hat, the armor from her Purple Airplane days. And for a while, the party throbbed around her like the parties of the old times. It was nice, because her armor worked, and she wasn't mobbed or surrounded.

Until it became plain that either no one recognized her or no one really cared.

She dug out her kit and shot up.

In the old days, the drug had made parties more intense. Now she used it like coffee: just to get her started, get her through.

Wandering the party's many corridors, she encountered the talking dog, Fidel.

He stared up at her with eyes as deep and black as the sea.

“Why do dogs always look like they have really, really old souls?” she rasped.

Fidel blinked. He said nothing.

Memory sat down beside him on the shaggiest carpet she'd ever seen. The dog lay down beside her, and when he laid his massive head on her knee, she almost cried. She stroked the back of his neck.

“I'm not really famous anymore,” she told him. “You know? I mean, I'm famous, but not
famous
famous, like before.”

Fidel heaved a sigh. Memory's dress puffed out like a balloon.

“I think it's supposed to happen like that. I mean, it's supposed to be okay, when they stop screaming for you and it all sort of falls apart, you know? You know? But guess what?”

“What?” asked Fidel in a smooth, oily baritone, but Memory wasn't paying attention, and was high, and missed it.

“It's
not
okay. They scream and dance and follow you around because they need you, they need something you have, right, until they make you need them, too. And then they bail on you. That's cold. That's a cold thing to do. If one person did something that cold, people would let them know how uncool it was. But if a million people turn their back on you, it's anonymous; it's supposed to be okay. I used to think if a zillion people listened to me sing, it would make up for not remembering most of my life.”

The thing was, it had. While it lasted. But nothing lasted. Which would be fine, except the human mind seemed geared to miss what it no longer had, miss it so much that memories, if you really thought about it, mostly
hurt
.

She imagined what the dog must be thinking. Aw shit, he must be thinking. Another whining, washed-up, spoiled loser with a pile of money in the bank crying the blues in her heroin. Wouldn't know a real problem if it bit her leg off.

At least the dog was a good listener.

Fidel rose to his feet, drenched Memory with a sloppy kiss, and loped away.

Memory's head crystallized for a second, and her brow furrowed.

“Hey, man!” she shouted after Fidel. “Did you fucking
say
something?”

AS SHE WAS COMING BACK
through customs at the San Diego airport, the drug dog sniffed out her drugs and equipment, and they arrested her.

They frog-marched her as gently as possible between rows of flashing cameras, and stashed her in a federal marshal's cruiser.

She was a little high, still. She barked like a dog at the marshal.

“You barked at me,” he observed.

Like the talking dog, Memory had little to say.

The marshal drove her downtown to jail.

JAIL WAS EVERYTHING
the party had not been. It was the nicest twenty hours she had spent in a long time.

The women recognized her, and it made a difference. They paid her respect, the same way they paid respect to the rough bull dykes who ran the jail. Later, they could say they were in jail with Memory Jones. Extra upside-down cake came her way at mealtime. They brought a hose and a spike and a spoon for a cooker, and got her high. The stuff they got her high with was so bad, it left her mouth tasting like rusty copper, and just put her to sleep. But it was good to be treated that way. She slept without dreaming.

THE NEXT DAY
, the Devil bailed her out.

He, himself, didn't look so hot. He was pale, but with red sores here and there. He looked as if he might cry.

“Where have you been hiding?” Memory asked.

The Devil offered a sad, thin smile, and didn't answer.

Memory was allowed to shower, and allowed to change into a wildflower sundress the Devil had brought. The sundress came with a plastic top hat.

The Devil, sniffling in a T-shirt and a Chargers ball cap, spirited her away in the Kennedy limo.

“The court's going to want to put you in rehab,” he told her. “Can I give you some advice?”

“What?”

“Kick
before
you go in. It'll be ten times harder if you actually go through withdrawal their way.”

“How do you know?”

The Devil fidgeted, looking out the window. “I'm fifteen billion years old,” he said. “I know things.”

Memory's eyes narrowed. She gave the Devil a hard stare.

He watched the road go by. They passed out of San Diego, past mountains of cracked boulders, and turned right, into Arizona.

“I'll do it if you will,” the Devil said.

“All right,” she said, nodding. The plastic hat had a giant plastic daisy glued to the rim. The daisy bobbed up and down whenever her head moved.

Miles passed in great leaps beneath them.

Before she stopped expecting the Devil to say something else, or maybe take her hand, or just look at her, fifty miles had gone by.

Arizona was like that.

THE PLACE HE PICKED OUT
for them to detox was a dusty hotel with a fiberglass horse rearing on top of the office. Across the highway was a general store and a taco restaurant shaped like a huge sombrero.

When you hunkered down and tried to work heroin out of your system, the Devil insisted, you needed orange juice.

As the heroin leaves your body, it leaves all kinds of hungry places behind. Orange juice helps fill in some of those hunger holes with vitamins and other nice things.

For the first five hours, they sat on the double bed together watching TV, and just when Memory thought it was going to be easy, it started.

Shivers and sweats. She didn't make it to the bathroom to puke up the orange juice. The Devil cleaned up after her, looking a little shaky himself.

“Wh-why are you d-doing this?” She shuddered.

“Doing what?”

“Helping m-me.”

“Maybe you're h-helping me. Ever think of th-that?”

She considered. She fought back a dry heave.

“Why would you need my help?” she said.

“‘Need' is a strong w-word,” he answered, wrapping his arms around his belly, rocking back and forth, shivering.

Memory crawled up to him. She put her hands on his knees, partly to keep from falling over. She gave him a long, jittery stare, and he had no choice but to stare back. There was nothing else to look at.

“Why me?” she asked.

He looked as if he were trying to find words. How strange it was, watching him struggle. Memory turned, leaning back against his legs, giving him some privacy.

At length, his crooked hand found her head, and stroked her hair. She felt his knees shake.

“There's m-more than one kind of addiction,” he whispered.

Memory reached over her shoulder, took his hand, and pressed it against her cheek.

The Devil lurched sideways, and vomited on the cheap carpet.

At least he'd made sure not to hit her.

Acts of love come in many different forms.