Slide

Twenty-One

Max took twenty minutes to fill out the Cocaine Anonymous addiction test, twenty-three questions asking him things like whether his cocaine use was interfering with his work (Nope. Moolah rolling in), whether he’d experienced sinus problems or nosebleeds (Occasionally), and whether he felt obsessed with getting coke when he didn’t have any (Si, señor). He tallied up the yeses-only eight out of twenty-three, nine if you counted the nosebleeds one. Hell, he wasn’t an addict, not even close. What the fuck had he been stressing about? And, to think, he’d been seriously considering the idea of cleaning up, going into rehab. Whew, dodged a bullet there.

Max ripped up the addiction test and did three quick lines. Whoops, what was that blood coming out of his nostrils? Nine yeses. Eh, what the fuck ever.

The only downside of not being an addict was he couldn’t do one of those rehab gigs. People magazine had done a piece saying you were, like, nobody unless you’d done at least one stint. That bony Brit chick, Kate Moss-yeah, she’d fucked up big time by being photographed shoving mountains of coke up her dainty little nose. It looked like she was gonna lose all those lucrative contracts-so what’d she do? Yup, that’s right, headed right to rehab in Arizona, and voila-not only did the dumb-ass public admire her for her courage but shit, get this, she scored more gazillion-dollar contracts. Now that was class. Them Brits, they had some sneaky moves-no wonder they’d once owned India.

So, Max thought, when he had his movie career up and humming, he might do a stretch in one of those places anyway, just for the PR bump. Not long-come on, how long could The M.A.X. be out of the game? — but yeah, some time to deal with “personal issues” would do him good. He could see the cover of Entertainment Weekly, The M.A.X. looking contrite and yes, suffering, in real, physical pain, but was he denying it? Fuck no, here he was fessing up, admitting-and this would make a killer headline-I’m human, too. A tear would be rolling down his cheek, of course, though they’d probably have to Photoshop that in. God, it would be beautiful and word was, in those clinics, you made the best dope connections so he could, you know, combine business and healing in the one package. And, chances were, he’d meet one of those babes like Paris Hilton, have her hanging on his recuperating arm. Nah, not Paris; he liked the way she’d talked into the mike in that sex video, but she was way too flat-chested and way too bitchy, a bad perfecta if there ever was one. He’d rather have that other one with the implants, Tara Reid? Yeah, that Tara babe would be all over him, oozing love for The M.A.X., and when the press asked he’d simply say coolly, “We’re just good friends.”

Yeah, he’d be all set if only the blood would just, like, freaking STOP. That stuff, it totally ruined your shirts. He was wearing a white Van Heusen number-it was fucking Goodwill for that baby. How many fucking shirts had he bled on and had to donate? A hundred bucks each for those shirts and they went right down the shitter. Maybe he’d have to start buying black ones, go the Johnny Cash route.

Max was totally gone on this whole vision when his thirst kicked in, an overwhelming, all-consuming passion for gallons of water. Ah, screw that, make it a brew, lots of vitamins in those hops and lots of yeast too, right? Yeah, just a cold one-hell, maybe a few cold ones-and didn’t that prove he wasn’t a cokehead? You never see a junkie gasping for a Bud, right?

“Kyle, The M.A.X. needs a brewski!”

Kyle was back at the apartment, but the sushi chef was gone. Maybe he ran back to Japan, or at least back to Nobu. Max had given Kyle Katsu’s room but, man, Max hoped the kid had changed those sheets.

Max shouted for him again, then pounded down the hall to his room. The kid was watching Meg Ryan movies, a stack of ’em back to back-said he was having himself “a Megathon”-and he actually asked Max, “You think she’d be hard to find in Seattle?”

The schmuck really believed she lived there and, fucking with him, Max went, “I’ll ask Hanks if you can have her address.”

The kid’s eyes got huge and he stuttered, “You know T-T-Tom Hanks?”

Times like this Max wondered-was he fucking with Kyle or was it the other way around? Could someone be alive and functioning and yet be so brain dead?

But Max said, “Me and the Hankster go way back. Yeah, he was unsure about doing this movie with a fucking mermaid, and I told him, go for it Tommy, it’ll make a splash.”

The kid was stunned and Max had to jar him out of it, going, “The brewski. You know before, like, Tuesday?”

Rooming with Kyle, having to dumb it down on a daily basis, was stretching Max’s patience mighty thin, but it wasn’t like he had a choice. The cops had released Kyle along with Max, with instructions that they couldn’t leave town. Max didn’t want Kyle living alone someplace where he could fuck up and do something stupid. Max figured he knew the cops’ big game plan. They’d searched the apartment while Max and Kyle were being questioned but, guess what, they hadn’t taken anything. They could’ve nailed The M.A.X., but for what? It was his first offense and they could get possession but could they have gotten intent to sell? Maybe, but maybe not. Maybe Max would’ve gotten six months or, if he had a good lawyer, community service. No, Miscali and those assholes didn’t want to send Max up on bullshit charges. They wanted the Big Kahunas, the Colombian suppliers, the behind-the-scenes players. So they figured they’d leave Max and Kyle on the loose for a while-see where that led them. Little did they know that The M.A.X. was one step ahead of the game.

When Max had been released from the precinct, he’d spotted the tail on him right away. Spotted the tail-man, he had this shit down cold. He’d also seen cops around outside when he went out for chores-i.e., to buy cigars and load up on booze. The cops weren’t uniforms and they weren’t holding up NYPD signs, but they might as well have been. Max, especially when he was coked up, knew everything that was going on around him and he had amazing instincts. Put one cop in Yankee Stadium with fifty thousand screaming fans and Max would pick the cop out, no problem. It was like Max was born with sonar for this shit.

One afternoon, when Max left his apartment, he did his usual cop search, immediately spotting the son of a bitch-the black guy sitting at the table in the sidewalk café across the street and up the block. Then, as Max headed up the block, he spotted something else. Blonde hair, big knockers-could that possibly be…?

Max’s hand was up, hailing a cab, and a cab pulled up, nearly running over his goddamn foot. When Max looked over again she was gone.

“Come on, buddy, get in my cab,” the driver said. “I don’t have all day.”

Max got in, trying to look back to confirm, Was it her?

It couldn’t’ve been, Max decided later. What the hell would she be doing in America, after all this time? Nah, it wasn’t her-it had to have been a hallucination. Or maybe it was just paranoia. Okay, okay, so now he was up to 10 out of 23 on that coke addiction test. Maybe he shouldn’t’ve ripped the thing up so quickly.

The hallucination, or whatever it had been, reminded Max of how lonely he was. Yeah, he had Kyle around, but Max was physically lonely. Since Felicia had been killed there had been a big gap in Max’s life-well, two gaps, about the size of a pair of 44-double-E’s. The thing was, Max was a relationship guy. Without a loving, caring, big-titted woman at his side he felt incomplete. Yeah he was a metropolitan dude, but at heart he was a romantic, a one-woman man. Sure he played around, but no biggie, that was just for show, to impress the troops. But deep down he was a Paul Newman type really-one woman, one love. Damn straight and, hey, maybe he’d invent a salad dressing too. Fuck, the possibilities were, like, endless.

Funny thing was, Max had been thinking about Angela for a couple of weeks now, wondering where she was, who she was with, if she was happy. Maybe that’s why he’d thought he’d seen her, because she was prominent in his thoughts. So much had happened since the last time they’d spoken that it was hard for him even to remember what had gone wrong between them. He couldn’t remember any fights they’d had or any real conflict. Okay, she’d given him herpes, but aside from that Max could only remember the good times-the blowjobs, the quickies on his desk at his old office. You know, the Hallmark moments.

The next morning Max couldn’t get out of bed, depression kicking in big time. Even the thought of getting up for a little nose candy and some Scarface didn’t have any appeal. Kyle, God bless the kid, noticed Max’s state and tried to help, but The M.A.X. just couldn’t be reached. Max was even thinking about retiring the The in The M.A.X. He just didn’t feel worthy.

Man, this being depressed shit sucked big time.

Then, the next morning, Max noticed Kyle was gone. He thought maybe the kid had gone out shopping or to Blockbuster to get another Meg Ryan movie, but then it got to be afternoon and there was no sign of him. It was very unlike Kyle to disappear for even a couple of hours without leaving a note, or saying where he was going and when he’d be back. Sometimes Max felt like he was the stupid kid’s father. And there was another virtue right there, his fathering side, his nurturing streak. No wonder people flocked to him-he had enough love to go around.

Max wondered if the cops had picked Kyle up and Kyle was busy confessing, implicating Max in the shootings, but the sad thing was that Max didn’t really care. Having to spend the rest of his life as some queer’s fuck hole seemed like a better option to Max than lying around in bed all day, feeling so, so…so worthless.

Sometime in the afternoon, the doorman called up, said there was a package for Max at the front desk marked URGENT AND PERSONAL. Max didn’t have the energy to go down to get it so he had one of the porters bring it up. Max was so not himself that he gave the porter a five-buck tip. The porter, shocked, went, “You feeling okay today, Mr. Fisher?”

Max couldn’t even muster the energy to fire back with one of his usual zingers. He just smiled meekly and muttered, “Have a good day.”

The package was about shoebox size-actually, it seemed to be a shoebox. But there weren’t shoes in it-it was way too light for that. An envelope was attached to the box and there was a note inside the envelope. Max took out the note. It read:

NOW WHO’S A DICK?

Even more confused, Max opened the package. It was wrapped up with lots of tape, and then inside there was crumpled-up newspaper. Max was starting to think it was some prank, maybe that cop Miscali playing head games with him, and then he got to the plastic bag, looked like one of those Ziplock things. There was something inside the bag, something long and pink.

Max held up the bag, studying the contents, and then it hit him. If he hadn’t been so depressed he would’ve screamed-fuck, he probably would’ve run for his life-but in his current state his only reaction was to drop the bag on the floor and back away very slowly.