THE LUST DAMNED
or:
Long Island Iced Tea
by
Michael Hemmingson
Rominna Books
2012
copyright © 2012 Michael Hemmingson
Smashwords Edition
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Originally published as “Long Island Iced Tea” in The Urban Bizarre (Prime Books, 2004) and
Hardboiled Magazine #34 (2008)
Cover art by Robert Macguire, reprocessed. Used by permission.
“I don’t mind a reasonable amount of trouble.”
—Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon
1.I was close to thirty and things weren’t going good for me; they hadn’t for a long time.
On my twenty-ninth birthday, I drove from Los Angeles to Las Vegas in my crappy station wagon. I was divorced, alone, without any prospects; I had some money from stock options and figured I might as well piss it all away.
In a traffic jam on the Strip, I rear-ended a black Cadillac. A large, muscular bald man in a neon green suit got out. He looked pissed-off.
“Oh shit,” I said.
I couldn’t drive anywhere to escape.
The big man in green opened my door and yanked me out. He smashed my face onto the hood. I tasted blood.
“Bitch,” he said, “I’m gonna kill you.”
I heard a gun shot.
I wasn’t the one shot.
The big man stepped back, touching the bleeding bullet hole in his side.
“Leon—in—neon!” a Rastafarian with plenty of long dirty dreds said. He was standing on the sidewalk, dressed in white leather. He was holding a handgun with a silencer.
No one on the Strip paid attention except me.
“Bitch,” Leon in neon green said, “you shot me.”
“Yah, and I’s gonna shoot you again, mon.”
The Rasta guy did just that, shooting Leon in neon three times in the chest.
Leon went down.
Red blood, like the blood that would be on my windshield a few days later.
Rasta pointed his gun at me.
“I don’t know him,” I said.
“I just saved your life.” Rasta smiled, his gun down. “One of these days, you owe me, mon. Be ready for that day.”
He turned, and walked away very fast.
There was a break in the traffic. I jumped into my car and got the hell out of there.
I went straight to the Stardust Hotel and checked into a room.
2.What I needed was a massage and a blowjob. I looked in the Vegas Yellow Pages and called Dial A Perky Blonde.
I gave my Visa Card number over the phone. It was a new card with plenty of credit.
There was still blood in my mouth. I checked for missing teeth. There were a few loose ones, but I knew they’d hold in there.
The escort arrived forty minutes later. She was nineteen or twenty; blonde and perky. The hair on her head was too blonde. Her tits were small and perky. Her body and voice were also—perky.
“So,” she said, “so so so.”
“A massage,” I said, “and then I’d like you to suck my dick.”
“Three hundred.”
“Two.”
“Deal!”
“I want you to eat my cum, too.”
“You’re crazy,” she said, “that will cost you an extra hundred—and I won’t swollow it. I’ll hold it in my mouth. But I’m spitting it in the sink. The world’s just too dangerous to be eating the cum of strangers.”
“A hundred bucks,” I said, “forget it.”
She shrugged.
“And I’m not wearing a condom,” I said, “I don’t want a blowjob with a condom, I mean what’s the point?”
“No condom, an extra fifty.”
“Deal.”
When she left, I went down to the casino and played some blackjack.
***
I left Vegas with two hundred and three dollars more to my name than I’d arrived with. This was a good sign. This was a turning point. The drive back to L.A. was pleasant.
On the freeway, I called my friend Sammy on the cell phone.
“Riker!” he said.
“Sammy.”
“Hey hey hey,” said Sammy.
“I’m feeling good,” I told him, “I’m feeling real good.”
“Me too,” said Sammy. “I had this great XTC last night. Not in a pill. Powder. You snort it. And—”
“You don’t understand,” I said, “I’m feeling good. No bipolar shit here. I’m feeling—positive.”
He said, “Adrian is having a party tonight.”
“Yeah?”
“You should go.”
“I think I will.”
“See you there?”
“See you there,” I said, and pressed the “End” button on the cell.
He didn’t even say happy birthday. Well, I didn’t tell him, and I didn’t expect him to know. We weren’t good friends.
I had no friends, really.
3. Adrian’s party in Santa Monica was infested with a lot of Los Angeles wannabes: indie film actors, sit-com extras, theater throwaways, budding screenwriters bullshitting about their first sale around the corner, neophyte directors who couldn’t find their way out of their own assholes without a guide-dog.
The usual riff-raff.
But there I was, in fresh clothes, showered, drink in hand, chatting away with these folks. I had the smile on my face. You learn the L.A. smile fast if you want to maintain idle party-talk.
I was making myself a second drink—I was drinking Long Island Iced Teas—when I ran into Sammy.
“Come with me,” he said.
I followed him into the bathroom. He had a vial in his hand. He poured some powder onto the basin and started cutting up lines.
“Wait,” I said, “that isn’t the snortable XTC you were talking about, is it?” I wasn’t in the mood for E.
“Nah, it’s blow.”
“Okay.”
Sammy handed me a rolled up fifty dollar bill. I bent down and snorted a line off the sink. When I stood, I looked at my reflection in the mirror. Thin long hair, a beard. Twenty-nine years old and going nowhere, but I knew that was all about to change.
“What do you think?” Sammy asked.
“It’s good.”
“Better than usual.”
A young lady in a thin emerald dress opened the bathroom door. “Ooops,” she said. “I just wanted to pee.” She saw the coke. “Hey, can I join?”
“Sure,” Sammy said, handing her the bill.
She bent and snorted. She smelled nice, and she smelled like trouble. I decided to leave her and Sammy alone.
I had been married to a woman like the young woman in the emerald dress—the aspiring actress/model/singer/artist who loves her drugs. I was in the rut that I was in because of that marriage.
I felt something bad in my gut. The coke was making my scalp tingle.
I didn’t want to be around these people anymore. I loathed these people. I fucking hated every one of them and what they stood for and all their crap and it seemed like I just couldn’t get away from them; this was L.A. and there was just no getting away from them. I told myself long ago that I would stop coming to these parties.
I could get away from them now. I could take action and just leave. So what if I’d only been here for half an hour? Who would notice? Who would care? I’d rather be alone.
I left the party. I got into my car and drove home.
I was on Wilshire ten minutes later. There was a lot of traffic but traffic was moving fast and steady.
I turned on the radio.
Something jumped in front of my car. A large object. I thought someone had thrown something at my car. I hit the object with a thud. My windshield cracked. The object flew away. I kept driving. I was driving faster. What the fuck was that? There was blood on my windshield. Did I hit something that was alive? It was awfully big. Was it a person? Did I hit a person?
I turned around at the first light. I had to go back and find out what that was.
Traffic was at a still up ahead. People were gathering. On the street lay the body of a woman with dark skin—a tan, I think, or was that just the blood? She wore a dress and a coat. Her body was twisted. I’d hit her with my car all right. What was she doing in the middle of Wilshire and Santa Monica where there was no cross-walk?
I turned my car around, took a side road, and got the hell out of there.
I don’t know what I was thinking. I wasn’t thinking.
4. I parked my car at my apartment building. I inspected the vehicle—evidence of the impact was on the hood: a dent, more blood. Blood on the windshield.
I was fucked, and it wasn’t sinking in how really fucked I was, and how badly I had just fucked up.
I went up to my apartment and tried to think of whom I could call about this. Like I said, I had no friends.
I called my step-father in Palm Springs. That bastard would get a kick out of this. He didn’t answer the phone, and I didn’t leave a message.
I’d just returned to L.A. and now I had to leave again. There wasn’t anything else I could do.