The Speed Chronicles (24 page)

and the 405 freeway where the world was darkened by red lights. Rosa seemed a trifle disappointed in him, so he put on lipstick.

(the meth shining loyally in his being, the lights calm)

and high dark towers whose rectangular windows were usually yellow but sometimes silver gathered them in like the arms of a harbor or moonbase, the red blear of the Beverly Hilton promising them that their night could be as dirty, fun, or sinister as they cared to make it; and then it grew extremely dark on Wilshire Boulevard. This long grayish-white rectangular building over there against the dirty dark cubes, what would that have meant to anyone whose gaze had not been so enhanced by meth? And what did it mean?
He
knew, but what he knew he never told me, so I cannot put it into this book. His eyesight was getting keener by the instant. His best friend Luke used to have 20-10 vision, although now that was going away. Now he understood what it must have been like for Luke, this confidence and competence; and already they were crossing Rodeo Drive. Los Angeles was flat and white and cool.

He experienced a glowing feeling, deviled warm and deviled dark, but no, neither dark nor cool—perfectly at ease, with a faintly bitter taste in his mouth, his lipstick greasy—

(not to mention the glowing massage parlor on La Cienega, then Love Connection, Love Correction, Tasty Donuts, Crescent Heights Boulevard, Hollywood Electric Vacuum and Sewing, Paris House Nude Adults Only, Fat Burger—and then the velvet grid)

—and on Western a police car screamed by—

I want to go to Dr. Skin, he thought; but what if he's creepy, and instead of improving my skin into womanly smoothness he skins me alive or turns me into a tattooed mummy?

They parked and went to a bar which had been recommended by an expert drinker named Mr. Joseph Mattson. It was called the Black Hole, and indeed it was a narrow, lightless place, deserving of the dark fumigation recommended by the fifteenth-century
Book of Buried Pearls
for those who wish to find the invisible pathway beneath the white mountain north of the Great Pyramid of Giza; here refined gold awaits the seeker who has escaped Dr. Skin. The little Japanese barmaid wore bigger breasts than Dolores. On the hot black stinking sticky walls, dancing girls had been painted in phosphorescently artificial hues. They could have been ancient terra-cotta Sirens from whose flesh the pigment was flaking. The black picnic tables were empty, but four men sat drinking quietly at the bar. It was almost Halloween. He sat down beside Rosa, gazing at a plastic jack-o'-lantern while they drank beer in plastic cups. Rosa laughingly said: I wonder why it is that the toilet seat is always up in the women's room? Around midnight the T-girls began to swish in; he especially liked the long-haired girl in the snappy dress shaking her hair, acned rough face. On the black man's lap, the white legs of two capering girls opened and closed, speaking to him like lips whose tongues were hiding. There was a curtain like a pair of nylon stockings, and it kept wavering and the busiest T-girl kept wavering through it in and out of the street, from which came another T-girl in a black skirt who took her by the hand and they went into the ladies' room. Not all of them were tall; some little young ones reminded him of black ducks swimming and pecking in the green water. There was a woman whose eyes were so white in the darkness; Rosa also loved her, so that when they gazed at her together his heart became as blue and pure as her eyeliner. Rosa, seeing how shy he felt, rose and entered this woman's golden screaming glow; she whispered into her ear, and the woman smiled, at which he began to glow at once, staring into her eyes. The woman accepted Rosa's hand. They approached him.

What's your name? she asked him.

Dolores, he replied. And yours?

Luz María Salcido.

Do you like the Black Hole?

Better than picking grapes all day in Coachella.

Soon they were in the woman's apartment, playing with her cosmetics.

Just as a line or two of meth on the second day, no matter how beautifully it stings the nasal passages or even how well one has just slept, is never as thrillingly joyous as on the first—nasal secretions run down into the throat, bitter rather than salty; and the feeling with which one is presently gifted is no high, merely a sort of weary steadfastness, as if consciousness has squared its shoulders; then slowly, slowly, one comes to feel a trifle better, more wide awake, but impurely so, lacking well being—so Dolores, who had now become a woman to the best of her capabilities, now began to take herself for granted, feeling sometimes almost bored with her lips, anus, and nipples: I'm a woman, and who cares? Do I particularly care about my downstairs neighbor Adelina? Are whatever pieties her wrinkled old brain produces any more or less of a miracle than the fact that between her legs rides a dried-up gray-haired slit? Who am I to be impressed by her, myself, or anything? What I live is merely life, nothing better. Anyway, I don't dislike Adelina; I'm even fond of myself; my life is quite fine in that way. What do I wish for? Is nothing better than sexual ecstasy, or self-love, or the love of others? Is boredom my failure or simply a requirement for not dying? I'm
sweating
with boredom! I don't feel good. I must be getting old; I'm hot and achy. No, it must be the hormones, or perhaps some disease.

By degrees her customers had become peculiarly ungrateful, even insulting at times. But then she discovered something nearly as good as Concentrax, and possibly even better. They called it
the green angel
. It was a little pill, you see, a darling little pill, and whenever she took two, or at most three, then no matter whom she was with and whatever she did, she screamingly enjoyed herself. Sometimes
the green angel
even focused her mind so that she could remember any number of ways of being a woman, for instance a certain young girl, so shy, a whispering face-averter, who in the time when Dolores was still a man would gallop upon his face so freely, and just before she came would always whisper
fuck!

A man was sodomizing Dolores, and she loved it. Oh, how she loved it with the deep joy and purity of desire fulfilled, the animal present triumphing over the deathly future … Wiggling her bottom for him, leaning on her elbows, she covered her eyes with both hands as if she felt extremely reserved, then suddenly drew her hands away, wiggled her bottom as rapidly as she could, and whispered
fuck!
The man was enchanted.

But soon afterward her big male hands began stinking of sweat; her aging face went red and ugly; she felt as if contaminated liquefied fat were oozing out of the bags under her eyes, her febrile forehead salty wet, her tongue and glottis tasting like metal. She blew her nose, and there were flecks of blood in the mucus. She grew more hot and nauseous by the instant. These unpleasant sensations seemed to have come from nowhere, but don't they always? When she lay down, the granules of the popcorn ceiling refused to stop enlarging themselves. She closed her eyes, but her eyelids hurt her aching eyeballs, which sweated and sweltered in that too-hot darkness. Her face seemed to feel better when she locked it into a grimace. Why was that? She couldn't think. When would this go away? It was the third day since she had last inhaled a line of crystal. The sweat on the backs of her hands and between her fingers afflicted her almost intolerably. It felt gummy and corrosive at the same time. She wished to lie perfectly still on her back in a cool dim room. With considerable fortitude she managed to take a shower. Then she put on a clean loose dress and lay down. Instantly she could smell the stench of her armpits, which she had cleaned many times with a bar of stinging soap. The sweat on her upper lip stung almost intolerably. Sores broke out on her tongue. Twin crescent zones of hideous sweat erupted beneath her eyebrows, whose fine, almost imperceptible hairs exuded foulness. Her heart was beating very rapidly. The hairs on the backs of her arms began to sting. In her breastbone, a wide hot oval of tenderness now manifested itself, not entirely unpleasantly. Dolores lay as motionless as she could, waiting for these symptoms to pass. Now it was the backs of her wrists which felt the hottest and wettest. The insides of her elbows stung numbly. Her dress clung to her flesh like the burning poison shirt of Nessus. Her back ached. Each bone within her fingers threatened to shatter. She wanted to wipe away the sweat on her upper lip, but feared that the side of her hand might adhere there. She would have used yesterday's panties, which lay on the floor beside her, but although she could see them, she could not reach them. How hot it was here, how impure! She could not escape from feculence.