He glanced at both sides of the street while lighting a cigarette

Darker Shades of Fear

(Installment 19)

I've got a day and a reason
Why I should not believe in… anything, anymore
What's this for?
My time well spent
I've got all these memories that I cannot believe in
Cause I don't know where I've been all these years
All these years

* * *

He glanced at both sides of the street while lighting a cigarette. Fluorescent blurs illuminated the stretch, accompanied by neon signs and streetlights. It was a shame though, because these halogen suns cheapened the night sky, which would have been an absolutely overwhelming sight. However, it’s beauty remained unnoticed and unappreciated as it often did, opaque and blinded by the artificial glow. Not that anyone in particular would be looking at the sky, anyway. Especially those present. After all, the sole reasons for being there in the first place were booze, drugs and sex, and there was certainly an abundance of all three.

He smiled as he weaved his way through the sidewalk, making his way toward the bar. The lights made his world feel less real than usual. It was almost as if everyone had stepped into a giant Hollywood-esque set, which metaphorically, they had. When the lights went out it would all be over. All the pretense, the facades, the deceit and feigned perfection would disappear, and all that would be left was a lost soul or a broken heart or a hopeless failure, or perhaps all three. They all shared something in common, these people who paraded the streets during the hours when the lights glowed brighter than the sun. They all hated themselves. They wouldn’t be here if they didn’t. Kenny had been around long enough to understand that. Self-love was an alien concept, lost long ago or never learned at all. If you can’t love yourself, you can’t love anything else – and the more you search, the less you feel. So that was the genuine motivation for being here, the reason why whorehouses and bars and dealers will never go out of business.

It was sincerely pathetic.

He smiled, exhaling the smoke from his lungs as the crowd seemed to pass through him. What made them different, what separated them from him was that he had stopped searching. Kenny understood the illusory nature of emotion, and simply detached himself from it. He didn’t deserve anything good, so where was the point in searching for it? False hope is perhaps the most destructive force know to man.

The bar was more crowded than Kenny could ever remember it being. His memory was shit, though, he thought as he took his usual seat. He’d almost forgotten about it when the first thing placed before him was a copy of the day’s newspaper. He could not suppress the grin brought about by the day’s headline,

Smuggling Ring Exposed After Boss O’Connor’s Death

The article said that someone by the name of Phil Rizado was being charged O’Connor’s with murder, a twenty-something year old who had a supply of GHB – the drug responsible for O’Connor’s overdose. He’d been an addict, or something.

“I don’t know how you do it, but you do a damn good job.” The voice of the bartender interrupted his thoughts.

“Everyone’s good at something.” He replied, scanning the remainder of the article.

They were interrupted by what they concluded was a new customer who absentmindedly sat in the seat beside Kenny. He evaluated the man dressed in jeans and a simple t-shirt and smiled to himself, summoning the bartender.

“What?” he asked.

Kenny gestured for him to come closer, as it was something best not said aloud. “He’s a cop.”

The bartender drew back, “No fucking way…”

Kenny nodded, that grin tugging at the corners of his lips.

The bartender knew it was probably best to disappear into the back for a while, as to avoid identification and interrogation. Nothing terribly illegal went on… just some smuggling, but hey, who wasn’t guilty of something nowadays. What he feared more was the possible investigation of O’Connor’s death. It had been obvious that bad blood was between them. Kenny stayed behind and sighed, still smiling as he turned toward the new face.

“I haven’t seen you here before. Are you new to the neighborhood?”

“You could say that.”

Oh yeah. Definitely a cop. “Nice to meet you. I’m Kenny.” He said, extending a hand.

The man took it, offering a firm shake and Kenny caught a glimpse of his badge which had been previously obscured. The man who usually worked the other end of the bar took over their side, and the uncover cop ordered a drink, “Whiskey, straight up.”

“Make it two.” Kenny said, paying for both. “You’re new, relax. Think of it as a ‘welcome to the neighborhood’ gift.” He said, having too much fun.

Their glasses were placed before them and Kenny downed his in one gulp, which surprised the cop, but anyone who had seen Kenny drink before wouldn’t have thought twice about it.

“Good shit they got here.”

“Yeah. But Kelley’s Pub is where you gotta go if you really want the best stuff… if you know what I mean.” He said.

This caught the man’s attention. “What? Better than this?”

“Fuck yeah.” He replied, “Hit me again.” He said to the man behind the bar who obliged. He downed the second glass and continued, “All that shit comes right across the border. Tequila from Mexico, the strong shit, not like the weak local ‘liquor-store-brand’ here. Vodka from Russia to Canada straight into the good ole USA… you haven’t gotten drunk in this town until you’ve been to Kelley’s.” He was lying of course, but he couldn’t help it. This amused him so.

“Why do you come here, then?” the cop asked.

Kenny looked at him as if to say, ‘duh’, “Electric is right down the street.”

The man appeared confused.

“The best strip club this side of town? Damn, you don’t get out much do you?”

“I’m married.”

Kenny laughed. “Like that means anything around here. Listen, I’ve gotta tell you, there’s nobody who’s ‘happily married’ here. Married, maybe, but there ain’t no ‘happy’ about it. Nobody comes just for the drinks.”

With that the man left, and Kenny broke into a fit of long-suppressed laughter. The bartender returned to find him in such a state and questioned what in the hell was so freakin funny.

“You don’t have to worry about that anymore.”

“What’d you do?”

“Let’s just say I took care of it.”

“You’re drunk.”

“Not yet.” He replied, “But you might need to think about expanding business a bit.”

“…And why is that?”

“After Kelley’s closes, you might have some more business than usual.” He replied, lighting a new cigarette.

He processed this information, and revelation spread across his features. “Kenny, you are fucking amazing.”

Kenny, you’re fucking amazing. You know that?

“So I’ve been told.” He replied quietly.

The bartender narrowed his eyes, trying to figure the sudden change in his customer. He’d seen it happen a few times, but was still unsure of the trigger. “Are you okay?”

“…Yeah, yeah, I’m fine.” He replied, distracted. “Another one of these.” He said, motioning to the empty glass.

“You drink too much.” He said, obliging his request anyway.

Kenny rolled his eyes, finishing half the glass and shaking his head at the buzzing sensation it created on it’s way down. “I know.” He replied, obviously indifferent about it, “But we all have our own little vices.”

“You know what I think?”

“Do I really care?”

The man sighed, “You’re gonna hear it anyway.”

Kenny groaned, finishing the glass.

“I think you avoid facing a lot of things.”

He laughed, “No fucking kidding. Me and the rest of the world. Did you need a PhD to figure that out?”

“Do you even know who the hell you are?”

Kenny paused, achieving eye contact, “I’m just like everyone else in the god-forsaken world. I’m just a person – that’s really all anyone is. Just a person with something to hide.” He said, allowing a moment for dramatic effect and then wordlessly exiting the bar.

Suddenly, the world didn’t seem so complicated. When you stripped everything away: money, labels, social status… all you had was a human being. A human being with something they’d give anything to forget.

By some miracle (if that’s really what it was), Kenny had overcome this condition and succeeded in the human struggle against memory. Whether for better or worse, he refused to allow concern for the past. All that mattered was here and now. On second thought, even ‘here and now’ didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. And he was fine with that. Or so he reasoned.

As he idly paced the streets an incredible wave of tiredness nagged at his mind. That conversation had been surprisingly draining… maybe it was the three glasses of whiskey. He was pretty certain that he had a much higher tolerance, but something had to be the scapegoat. Maybe he did drink too much. Upon further reflection, he realized that he didn’t give a shit. Alcoholics drank too much.

What the fuck did it matter, anyway?

He grimaced, running a hand through his hair. I can’t take this, he thought. He needed something, what that was remained unidentified at the moment, but he had managed to establish that he needed an unspecified something. This accomplished absolutely nothing and left him still at the start without an inkling of where or how to begin.

He lit another cigarette, which served as a mild sedative for his random anxiety. While putting the box of Reds in his pocket, he thought of Leah, a thought as random as his current anxiety.

“You smoke?” He asked.

She looked at the box warily. “Not anymore.”

He shrugged, about to put the cigarettes away,

“…But maybe once, for old time’s sake.”

He smiled, offering her a smoke and a light. She inhaled deeply, coughed twice and relaxed. “You know, I used to smoke these because they reminded me of you.”

He laughed, “You’re kidding.”

“No, I was really that pathetic.”

He had no idea of how he should reply. It was pathetic in a way, but also very… flattering? “When did you quit?”

“Sometime during college.”

He nodded.

“I can see you never stopped.”

He smiled, “Nope.”

“Why?”

“What?” he asked.

“Why do you still smoke?”

He took a long drag and exhaled, “Because I can.”

She just grinned.

“What?”

“It’s nothing.”

“It’s something. Tell me.”

“It’s not important, it’s just something I noticed – you probably won’t even remember it.”

Still, for some unknown reason, he persisted.

She sighed, finally giving in. “It’s just… what you said before, it sounded like something Clark would have said. But you can’t remember him, or me, or high school, or anything so consider yourself lucky.”

Somehow, the uneasy feeling stirring within him seemed to say, ‘you can’t or you won’t remember it?’

Sighing in a puff of smoke, he set these thoughts aside. He could deal with this himself. Or at least, he thought he could.

His typical remedy for such situations was to get completely shitfaced, but he recalled the horrible repercussions of the last time he’d used that option. There were always drugs… but he wasn’t yet that desperate. He held an unsubstantiated aversion to them. Yeah, he was sure he’d used them before, and he knew that heroin had scared the living shit out of him, but why and when was unknown. Maybe it was because of his attitude toward the users. Even those who paraded about as “casual” users were not only pathetic, but downright annoying as well. The addicts were too ashamed to confront whatever problem led them to using, and he showed no sympathy. There was a reason for that, a very logical argument, but he couldn’t really remember it. Not that he had any desire to.

Sex was another option… but he found himself too exhausted to even think about fucking. The process of finding somebody decent, getting through the bullshit, and by the time they would reach his place, he wouldn’t be conscious at this rate. He crossed Leah off the list, and for what he hoped would be permanently. It wasn’t that he didn’t like her, or enjoy her company. He’d already had her. He’d debated a ‘friends-with-benefits’ scenario, or something similar to his ‘arrangement’ with Isabel, but he found that he regarded her too highly for something so demeaning. Using her for sex was low, even for him. She deserved better than he could offer, and he decided that leaving her twice would be redundant.

So she was out of the picture… the only remaining possibility was to either keep walking or go home.

He ended up in the park. How he ended up in the park, not even the chronicler knows, but he ended up there just the same. He had opted for walking, because though he felt tired, it at least provided a distraction. If he were to retire to the Shitsville Motel for the remainder of the evening (or morning), he’d either be bored out of his skull or driven into delirium by his insanely irritating thoughts.

So, he ended up in the park. Sitting on a bench painted offensively bright forest green, the color peeling to reveal splintering brown wood. He absentmindedly picked at the peeling paint, which he realized has an almost rubbery consistency to it. Flecks of green lodged themselves under his nails, but he paid no attention to the slight discoloration. He just sat in silence, watching the sun rise over the trees most likely planted by some environmental activist’s group. A group of pigeons pecked at the grass, bobbing their heads and making their trademark sound.

It was a sight, all of nature (or manmade nature) in harmony for one blissful moment… and he seriously thought he would be sick. The sky, the earth, the trees, the fucking pigeons were all too perfect to be real. He’d never really liked sunrises. They conjured a certain, unnamed feeling. Sure, this was perfect now – but it would peak, explode into a brilliant sunset, and descend into unfathomably dark depths. It was a mocking reminder of beginnings, and how every beginning was really an end. Which is the beginning of something else entirely.

Laugher dissolved as the dark of the sky faded into pink-purple-ish shades. It was cool, but the temperature didn’t matter. They’d been there all night, waiting for this.

“You gotta look over that way,” he said, “the sun rises in the east. The view from here is incredible.”

“Do you come up here a lot?”

“Whenever my dad’s not in jail.”

“…I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked.”

He laughed, “Don’t be sorry, Ken, you didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I’m sorry.”

He sighed, inhaling from his cigarette. “You really gotta stop being sorry for everything.” He said, “And if you apologize for that, I’ll throw you off the roof right now.”

Kenny opened his mouth, the other narrowed his eyes as if to say, ‘I’m serious’ and he immediately closed it. “Force of habit, I guess.”

“You don’t have to take his shit, you know.”

Kenny turned to face his friend, wordlessly asking him to clarify what he meant.

“You can do what I do. Don’t come home. Or sneak in through you window or something.”

He reflected on this a moment. “I wish it would work.” He sighed, defeated.

“How do you know it won’t?”

“Nothing I do ever works.”

“That’s not true.” He said, “You stayed up all night naming constellations with me. I can’t do that. And the shit you read, come on Kenny, I can’t read anything more eloquent than Playboy.”

He laughed.

“So what if your parents don’t appreciate you. I do.”

Kenny smiled. “Thanks.”

A brief pause. “You want a smoke?”

“Got my own.” He said, revealing a pack of Marlboro Reds from his pocket. He took one from the pack and used the other’s lighter.

He shook his head, smiling.

“What?”

“Marlboro?” He questioned.

“What’s wrong with ‘em? Better than Newports.” He said, jokingly emphasizing distain on the brand name.

“And what’s so wrong with Newports?”

“You smoke ‘em.” Kenny joked.

The other offered a harmless jab at his friend’s shoulder as they both laughed.

“Hey Clark,” Kenny said as they watched the sun peek over the horizon, “let’s get the fuck out of here.”

He laughed, “Okay. But we’ll have to wait till we can dive first.”

Kenny sighed, defeated.

“What’s wrong?”

He was too frustrated to reply.

“Things will get better. The sun always rises.”

“But it sets again, too.” Kenny reminded despondently.

Clark sighed, “We’ll see.” He said, “We’ll see.”