On the east side of the Willamette River, among the graffiti-riddled warehouses and bridge stanchions, there are unlit streets that sparkle with broken glass, that flutter and scuttle with sun-blanched newspapers and plastic bags like desiccated jellyfish. There are rusted-out shopping carts, boarded-up windows, and the occasional figure cutting in and out of the shadows.
Puddles reach across the roads, retreating slowly into drains clogged with trash. Juniper splashes through one now. He wears a black ball cap and a black shell with the collar turned up. He’s a big enough man that when he walks the streets, no one bothers him, though he hears voices in doorways whispering, sees the silver flash of a knife blade. The power zaps back on across Portland—and the sudden glow is like the blue hint of dawn—but all the streetlamps in the Hadal remain black, knocked out by bullets or bricks.
He turns down an alley so dark the shadows feel palpable, like something cool that licks and caresses. A pile of garbage bags oozes something foul. A rat scuttles away from his tromping approach. A distant yowling makes him go still—listening—until he is satisfied it is a dog he hears, not a hound.
He turns the corner and finds what he’s looking for. In between a moneylender and a pawnshop sits a squat brick building with moss springing from the mortar joints. BLOOD BANK, the sign reads in red lettering. “O Negative, Be Positive,” “U Give Blood, We Give $.”
You let them prick you with a needle and fill a pint bag, you get fifty bucks. Officially, you can’t do it unless you test clean, unless you’re eighteen, unless you show your license, your social security card, your proof of address. Unofficially, as long as your blood isn’t diseased, you’re welcome. This isn’t exactly the Red Cross.
A woman walks out the door. The side of her head is buzzed and tattoos reach down her legs in the design of fishnet stockings. Her arm is bandaged at the elbow. She goes to the bodega on the corner. It sells everything from ice cream to coffee to booze, pretzels, candy, bananas, decorative bongs, Lotto scratch tickets, T-shirts silk-screened with wolves and marijuana leaves. The shelves behind the register are stacked with cigarettes as brightly and neatly arranged as crayons. Juniper knows how it works. You knock on the counter—two slow raps followed by a fast one—and the clerk will know what you’re there for. Skulls. He’ll push you an Altoids tin crammed with little white pills blackened at their center. They’re supposed to make every nerve in your body feel like it’s having a mellow orgasm that lasts twenty-four hours.
The bodega and Blood Bank are owned by the same person. That’s who Juniper is here to see. He pushes into the brightly lit space. The walls are decorated with graffiti art that shows monsters eating each other. The waiting area is empty except for an old man snoring in a corner chair. A flat-screen TV mounted on the wall plays music videos with the sound off. A clerk stands behind the counter, smiling vaguely. He is as hairless as a mannequin. No eyebrows even. His cheeks are pierced on either side so that you can see his molars. A sketchbook lies open before him, and he has scrawled in it, with a black pen, a portrait of himself. “Have you given to us before, or are you a first-time donor? Can I get you a form?”
“I need to talk to Sarin.”
The man’s teeth are too long and black-rooted. “I’m afraid I don’t know who you mean.”
Juniper knows how he looks. Old and oversize and squarely dressed, so that people guess him a preacher or a cop. In a way he supposes he’s both. “I’m not police, if that’s what you’re wondering.”
The receptionist cocks his head. Juniper thinks he sees a flutter of movement in the corner of his eye, like a worm peeking out and then retreating. “Then, what are you?”
Juniper almost says, Friend, I’m a friend, but catches himself. He isn’t sure what to call Sarin. “We go way back.”
“If I knew a woman by the name of Sarin, I would not presume her to be here, in a place like this, on a night like this.”
Two doors frame either side of the desk. The left hallway leads to a large room in which a nurse moves on slippered feet from padded table to padded table, tapping veins, checking bags, asking donors to squeeze a racquetball to get the blood flowing and telling them they’re welcome to treat themselves to the complimentary apple juice and cookies. The right hallway leads to the refrigerators stacked with blood bags, an accountant’s office with a walk-in safe, and finally, at the end of the hall, a black door. Both entries are controlled by wireless locks and keyless remotes.
“It’s urgent.”
“She’s not here.”
“Yes, she is. I need to talk to her. It’s an emergency.”
The holes in the receptionist’s cheeks bunch up, each one toothy, his grin a grin of many mouths. “Don’t you think you’re a little out of your element?”
“I’m only telling you as a courtesy. You can ignore me or you can warn her. Either way, I’m going through that door.”
The man’s hands are pale, the fingers like knitting needles, and they slip off the counter, reaching somewhere below, likely to a mounted spring holster.
Juniper throws his body across the desk—quick for a big man—and with both hands he takes hold of the receptionist by the head. He then slams his face down onto the sketchpad—once, twice, three times—until he goes limp and slumps to the floor. A splat of blood brightens the nose of his self-portrait. “Sorry,” Juniper says. “No time to argue.”
The old man in the corner keeps snoring. Juniper leans over the desk and spots the remote switches. He flips them both, and the doors give a metallic shout as they come unlocked. He yanks the right one open and heads down the hallway to its end.
Here a black door awaits. The knob of it is a brass knob shaped like a skull. He hesitates only a second before twisting it.
?
She sits in the center of the room. The adjustable chair—like something out of a dentist’s office—is upholstered in cracked black leather that matches the color of her tank top and pants and motorcycle boots. At first glance, she appears fifty, maybe sixty—her skin creased and beginning to droop, her hair white except for a stripe of black that runs back from her temple—but she is older by decades. Her voice is rough and deep-throated, the sound smoke should make rising from a chimney. “What’s it been? A year?”
“Something like that.”
“I lose track of time.”
“Good to see you.”
“I’d offer to give you a hug, but I’m caught up in something.” She lifts her arms to indicate the IV lines, all bright with blood, at least ten of them. The pint bags dangle from hooks overhead, arranged in the shape of a chandelier, feeding into her wrists, her elbows, her neck, her back. That’s why she looks sixty instead of ninety or a hundred or a hundred and ten, whatever her actual age is. The constant transfusions keep her young. She says it’s not because she’s afraid of dying. It’s that she’s sick to death of it. She likes this life, she says. She doesn’t want another one. And she’s had many.
“Something’s happened,” he says. “I need your help.”