There was no reason in the world I would want to discover their purpose, so I limped back to the Zode and went back to our pipe-pounding operation.
Frank, the biggest guy on the Blowfish crew, had broken through for us. Something was definitely escaping from the pipe. If you held your hand over it, the warm, moist draft made your skin crawl. I had everyone stand back, lit a 4th of July sparkler, and threw it toward the pipe from about ten feet away. I didn't see the rest, because I turned away instinctively, but I heard a large but quiet thwup as a big ball of gas went up. Then there was a mild roaring sound, like distant traffic. The crew of the Blowfish applauded and I turned around. We had a nice flare going, a big raggedy yellow flame.
We lengthened the pipe so that its outlet was about ten feet off the ground and then we left it there, burning. In my fantasies, I wanted to encircle Spectacle Island with a blazing corona of yellow flares, a beacon to ships at sea, a landmark for airline pilots, permanent fireworks for the yuppies in the new waterfront condos. It wouldn't really accomplish that much, other than to remind people: Hey. There's a harbor out here. It's dirty.
Zodiac
13
WHEN I GOT HOME I washed my foot again, applied vodka (a particular brand that I keep around strictly as an organic solvent) and rebandaged. My dreams were hallucinatory nightmares about fleeing from oversized, heavily perfumed PR flacks with chrome revolvers. I got up three times during the night to vomit, and when my alarm went off I couldn't move my arm to hit the snooze button because all my joints had gone stiff. My vision was blurry and I had a 104° fever. My muscles and joints were all welded into a burning, smoking mass. I lay there and moaned “two hundred pounds of tainted meat” until Bart came in and brought me a Hefty. When I took enough nitrous to get to the bathroom and finish up with the vomiting and diarrhea, I looked in the mirror and found that my tongue was carpeted with whitish-brown fuzz.
Bart drove me to the big hospital downtown to see Dr. J., my old college roommate. He'd gotten his M.D. on the six-year shake-and-bake program, done an Ivy League residency, and now he worked ERs. Not very prestigious, but the pay is steady. A fine way to subsidize other life projects.
When I explained how I'd cut my foot, he looked at me as though I had just taken both barrels from a twelve-gauge.
“There's some very serious stuff out there in the Harbor, man. I'm not kidding. All those decay organisms? They work on your body too, S.T.,” he said, shooting me up with some kind of stupendous antibiotic cocktail. He gave me more of the same in pill form, but in the end I was to take only about half the bottle. Whatever those antibiotics were, they just blew the shit out of whatever, was in my system. That included the natural bacteria in my colon, the E. coli, so I had continuing diarrhea. Life is too short to spend on a toilet, wondering if there's more, so I stopped taking the pills and let my own defenses handle the mop-up work. And yes, I got a tetanus shot.
“I ran into some people you'd like,” I told Bart as he drove me home. “Poyzen Boyzen fans.”
He sniffed the air and frowned slightly. Bartholomew was a sommelier of heavy metal. “Yeah. Not bad for a two-umlaut band. First album was so-so. Then they ran out of material - they write maybe two songs a year. Got into a black magic thing for their videos. Already passé.”
“Isn't that the whole point of heavy metal?”
“Yeah. I'm the one who told you that,” he reminded me. “Heavy metal will never leave you behind.”
“Where are they from?”
“Long Island somewhere. Not the Brooklyn end.” He looked at me. “Who were these dudes? How'd you know they were fans?”
“Instinct.” I told him about the barge.
“Shitty bargainers,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“These people sold their souls to the Devil and all they got was a rusty old barge? I would've held out for something with a wet bar. Close to the T.”
When we got home, he went to his racks of albums and tried to remember whether Poyzen Boyzen was filed under P or B. The answering machine was blinding, so I rewound it, listening to the message fast and backwards. And when you run it backwards, it's supposed to be gibberish. But this wasn't. It was a melody, a song with a strong beat that was compressed into a tinny tik-tik-tik by the machine. And above that rhythm, a little high-pitched voice was babbling: “Satan is coming. Satan is coming.”
When it rewound all the way, I played it forward. It was heavy-metal thrash. Bart came running in, amazed. “What the fuck?” he was saying. “That's on the machine?”
“Yeah.”
“That's Poyzen Boyzen, man. Second album. It's called 'Hymn.'”
“Nice song.”
They'd left the entire song for us. When it was over, there was about ten seconds of a woman screaming. And that was it.
It didn't sound like Debbie, really, but then I'd never heard Debbie scream. She wasn't the type. So I dialed her number and she answered the phone, sounding fine.
“I'd like to talk to you,” she said, and I knew I was in trouble.
“You want to get together?” I said.
“If that's okay with you.” Okay, so I was in trouble.
We had dinner at the Pearl. She let me twist for a long time before she got down to business.
“Are you still interested in seeing me?” she asked.
“Shit, of course I am. Jesus!”
She just fixed me with a big-eyed stare, penetratingly cute, yet one of keen intelligence.
“I'm sorry that I haven't been calling you enough,” I said. “I realize that I don't call enough.”
“How about if I just stopped calling you? Would that give you any more incentive?”
“Isn't that what you did?”
“Not like that, I didn't.”
“You lost me, Debbie. Explain.”
“I like you, S.T., and I've tried, a few times, to reach out and get in touch with you. And now you're addicted to it.”