God Hates Us All

14

NEW YEAR’S DAY TURNS OUT TO BE work as usual, or unusual, as the Motorola buzzes all day. Everyone in New York City has a hangover to nurse, and it’s on me to play Doctor Feelgood. I reluctantly leave K. in my bed and try to lose myself in the flow.

I probably would have forgotten all about Ray’s proposed adventure if chance hadn’t intervened.

A lot of artists take crap for their “creative temperament,” and probably rightly so. But in a city like New York, the cost of living requires its starving artists to be true pioneers: It takes real guts to settle the kinds of neighborhoods where most right-thinking folks would soil their pants if they were caught there past sundown. That’s what I’m thinking, anyway, as a delivery to a metal sculptor south of Houston leads me through what not too long ago must have felt like a combat zone. Only now I see trendy boutiques popping up like weeds through the cracks in the sidewalks. Maybe art really can change the world.

After the Meet-Up, I pass a travel agency that looks like it caters to the NYU crowd. An easel in front lists international fares to exotic cities that sound only vaguely familiar. Where the hell is Machu Picchu? Christchurch? I know from a music video that a night in Bangkok can “make a hard man humble,” but that doesn’t mean I could find it on a globe. Seoul, Korea, is about three-quarters of the way down the list and, at $599, well out of financial reach. But a sign in the window promises passport photos, immunization cards, and air courier jobs. Ten minutes, five missed pages, and ninety-nine dollars later, I leave the agency with instructions to pick up an expedited passport and to meet a Mr. Yi, this Friday night at eight P.M., in front of the Korean Air desk at Kennedy’s International Terminal. The agent warns me not to be late. “Mr. Yi is a stickler for schedule.”

The night before K. departs, we go out for a farewell dinner in the West Village. It’s a nook on Barrow Street, the kind of place that only last week I would have mocked without mercy, full of violins and suggestive artwork to serve up manufactured romance for moneyed stiffs lacking passion or originality. Instead, I feel myself smiling along with the rest of the suckers as two couples become engaged before we’ve had a chance to see the menu. After dinner, K. and I walk back to the hotel. She wraps her arm in mine and leans against my shoulder like an old lover. I feel like I’m floating in a warm bath of endorphins. Less cynically, I am falling in love.

“I can’t believe I’m leaving tomorrow,” she says later, from our postcoital cuddle. “I don’t want to leave you alone.” I want to tell her everything: about my surprise trip; about my feelings for her. But then she climbs on top of me for another round. “I’m just going to have to exhaust you before I go.”

When I wake the next morning, she’s already left for the airport. A funny and sentimental note promises more good times upon her return. Then my pager buzzes, another unfamiliar number from Long Island. It turns out to be Danny Carr.

“Welcome back, Danny. How was Florida?”

“Too much snow,” Danny replies, clearly not meaning precipitation. “A lot of fake tits. When did that happen? Not that I’m complaining. A lot of girls, it makes them fuckable, you know? I need double this week.”

“Double? I don’t know that I can even give you the regular. You didn’t exactly tell me when you were coming back.”

“You’ve got to think ahead, man. Look, I’ll pay you triple.”

“Even if I could, Danny, I don’t have that kind of money to lay out for you.”

“Quadruple. Come meet me in Bridgehampton and I’ll front you what you need.”

I call Billy and tell him that I can’t make it in to work, using my mother as an excuse. An hour later, I’m on the train to Long Island, continuing past Levittown to the Hamptons. I exit to weather cold and unbeachlike and take a taxi to the address Danny gave me. When I ring the doorbell, I’m greeted by a distinguished old man who might have been the butler, had he been wearing something more than a banana hammock.

“Yello!” I say, startled by the sight of so much wrinkled skin.

“Hallo!” says the old man. He speaks with a heavy accent, German I think. “You are him? You are older than I ask for.”

“Uh, I think I might have the wrong house.” “Take it easy, Hans,” says Danny, who appears behind him wearing, I’m thankful to see, a much more modest bathing suit. “Go back to the sauna. I’ll let you know when the entertainment arrives.”

Hans frowns and disappears into the back of the house, but not quickly enough for me to save my eyes from confirming that, yes, his swimsuit is a thong. “Fucking Germans,” Danny says. “You wouldn’t believe the things I’ve got to do to keep them happy. Thanks for coming all the way out here. Normally I’d make Rick do it, but dickweed has the week off. You want a drink or a bump? I’ve got the Bolivian.”

I point over my shoulder. “The cab’s waiting for me.”

“Right, right, right, right,” says Danny. He disappears into the back of the house, returning a moment later with three thousand dollars in cash.

The rest of the week is a blur. My imaginary smokers are inhaling like chimneys as I scramble to put together ten extra bags for Danny. There’s a return trip to the agency to pick up my passport. A guilty phone call to my mother, although her mood brightens considerably when I hint at a female presence in my life.

By Friday afternoon, just a few hours before my flight to Korea, I’ve managed to pull together the package for Danny. I load my jacket with more than two pounds of weed and take the train downtown. When I reach Danny’s building, the security guard is away from the desk. Smirking, I sign myself in as “Mr. Green” and board the elevator.

When the doors open again, I’m looking at two policemen.

Every instinct I have tells me to run. But the simple geometry of the elevator box dictates otherwise. Besides, they’re looking right at me.

“It’s okay,” one of them says. “It ain’t a bomb or nothing.”

I plaster on what I hope is a convincing smile. My rapidly escalating body temperature feels like it might ignite the two pounds of marijuana in my jacket, whose unmistakable aroma, I’m certain, is wafting up through my collar. I am definitely going to jail.

I’m not really conscious of walking down the hallway, but suddenly I’m in front of Rick’s desk. I haven’t evaded the storm but sailed right into its epicenter: Danny’s office is awash with blue uniforms.

In contrast to my own internal horror show, Rick looks relaxed, maybe even wide-eyed, like we’re watching actors film an episode of a TV cop show. He’s about to say something else when Danny gets escorted from his office, a sober man in a gray suit attached to each arm.

Danny looks through me as if I’m not there, a gesture I quickly find myself grateful for. “Mark my words, Ricky,” he says to his assistant. “I’m going to fuck you.”

“You might want to save some of the romance for your cellmate,” Rick replies.

Danny cackles. “What cellmate? You think I’m going to wind up in prison? Worstcase scenario is a country club vacation, you dumb, ignorant fuck-face.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” says another sober-suited man, defined by his posture and attitude as the Man in Charge. He holds Danny’s vaporizer in his hand. “I’ve already identified at least three Class A narcotics in that cabinet of yours back there. Your white collar’s gonna look a lot dirtier to the judge. Hope you got a good lawyer, Danny.” The Man in Charge turns to one of the uniforms. “Clear off one of these desks, willya? Lay out the drugs and the paraphernalia. The Post will want a picture.” Then he turns to me. “Who the hell are you?”

There are a lot of ways to answer the question, and none of them seem good. “You know this guy?” he asks Danny.

“I don’t know anything,” Danny says defiantly. “From here on out you’re talking to lawyers.” He mimes the act of zipping his mouth and throwing away the key.

“Get him out of here,” says the Man in Charge, sniffing the air. “Mother Mary and Joseph. The whole floor smells like grass.” He returns to Danny’s office, leaving me face-to-face with Rick.

“I don’t think Danny’s going to be able to take your meeting,” Rick says. “Let me walk you to the elevator.”

Rick is bursting to share. “Those Germans he kept meeting?” he says as soon as we’re out of earshot of the police. “Fronting money from Iran. Fucking communists.”

I resist the urge to tell him Iran’s a theocracy. “Crazy,” I say instead.

“Whatever. Hey, I know you were his drug dealer, but as far as I’m concerned, the drugs were incidental. Live and let live, right? Fucking weed. Who smokes fucking weed anymore? Now if you could score me some blow….”

I glance at the various law enforcers still milling about the office, mercifully oblivious to our conversation. “I don’t…”

“Don’t have any idea what I’m talking about. Whatever. Play it your way. Happy New Year.”

“See you around, Rick,” I say, managing to wedge myself into the elevator.

“He got what was coming to him!”

“Nobody gets what’s coming to them,” I say as the doors slide shut. “And what they do get they probably didn’t deserve,” I add, aloud, to no one.

I fast-walk for maybe a dozen blocks, looking nervously over my shoulder, but I don’t think I’m being followed. I hail a cab.

“Kennedy,” I say, climbing in. It’s already almost six o’clock, two hours until my meeting with Mr. Yi. “How long do you think it will take?”

The cabbie, a burly guy with an unpronounceable name, examines me with glazed eyes. “Depends on traffic,” he says, nearly slamming into a parked car. He spits a series of what must be profanities in a foreign language, something Eastern European.

Are you okay?” I ask.

He grunts. “Double shift.”

“Just get us there in one piece.”

“You don’t like, you find other cab,” he says, turning around to face me.

“Can you keep your eyes on the—” Too late. I hear a sickening screech as the cab scrapes against a parked car. The cabbie throws the wheel in the other direction, overcompensating enough to slam into a town car in the next lane. I’m thrown forward, then sideways as the cabbie pulls the wheel the other way, sending the car into a spin. We bounce off two more cars before coming to a stop, facing oncoming traffic. Several more cars collide around us.

We sit for a minute in silence. “I’m going to find that other cab now,” I tell him, hopping out of the backseat and sprinting to the safety of the sidewalk. Traffic on First Avenue has come to a complete halt.

“The fare!” he screams after me, climbing out of the cab with what looks like a police baton. I flip him the bird and scramble over the hood of the dented town car. I sprint two long blocks to the next uptown avenue and stop another cab.

“Kennedy,” repeats my new driver, a turbaned Pakistani who at least doesn’t seem dangerously fatigued. “Do you want we take the tunnel or the bridge?”

“Which is faster?”

He shrugs. “That is not for me to decide.”

“Which is usually faster?”

“Sometimes the bridge, sometimes the tunnel.”

“Okay, the tunnel.”

“I think maybe the bridge is faster.”

“Fine,” I say. “The bridge.”

The taxi pulls up to JFK’s International Terminal ten minutes past my appointed meeting time with Mr. Yi. “We should have taken the tunnel,” says the cabbie. “You never know, you know what I’m saying, man?”

“How much?”

“Forty-two dollars.” I toss three twenty-dollar bills at the cabbie. “You don’t have change?” When I shake my head no, he sighs. He makes a show of fumbling through his pockets. “I hope you’re not in a hurry!”

“Well played,” I tell him. I leap out of the cab, leaving him a nearly 50 percent tip.

“God bless you!” he yells.

As promised, the punctual Mr. Yi is nowhere to be found. “Fuuuuuck!” I scream at no one in particular.

“Watch the language,” warns a passing transit cop.

By the time I’ve paged Mr. Yi over the public-address system and called the courier agency—both misses—the flight is less than an hour away. I slump to the floor near the ticket counter. You’ll see her again in a couple of weeks, I say to myself. I rest my head in my hands.

“Are you okay?” asks a woman from behind the ticket counter. She’s Korean, approaching middle age, dressed in the uniform of the airline I’m supposed to be flying.

“My mother is dying,” I say, surprising myself.

Suddenly, we’re both crying. “And you missed your flight?” she asks, holding out a tissue box.

“I was supposed to meet the guy with my tickets here, but my cab got into an accident and I was late.” I accept a tissue and dab my eyes. My conscious brain is no longer in control of my speech. “She’s in the hospital in Seoul…,” I hear myself saying. I’ll spare you the rest of the performance; suffice to say that it’s desperate, shameless, and in the end, effective.

“There is one thing I can do for you,” she says. “The flight is not full. I could sell you a seat.”

“I don’t have much money.”

“I can charge you bereavement fare, because of your mother. Can you afford three hundred and fifty dollars?” I nod that I can—I still have nearly a thousand dollars left over from my aborted deal with Danny. After checking my passport, she scribbles a series of numbers and letters onto my ticket. “When do you want to come back?”

“Monday morning?”

“So little time!” she says, pausing to look at me. I nod gravely with puppy-dog eyes. She begins to cry again. “There’s one last thing,” she adds, tears streaking down her cheeks. “I can only get you a ticket in first class.”

A minute later I’m sprinting through the airport like O. J. Simpson in that Hertz commercial, arriving at the gate just before it closes. I show my ticket to a stewardess, who ushers me to a large leather chair that would have been too big to fit in my apartment.

“Cocktail?” she asks.

And then we’re taking off. We’re in the air for nearly an hour before an old lady sitting next to me offers me a huge smile. “Don’t you just love these international trips?” she says. “So exciting. Even the air on the plane smells different. It re-minds me of my garden.”

I take a whiff of the air. It suddenly dawns on me that what she’s smelling is the two pounds of marijuana I’m still carrying on my person. I excuse myself for the bathroom, where I flush two thousand dollars’ worth of drugs down the toilet.