[pirate witch]: 524.Novels.NaNoWriMo 2007 chapter 9

It had gotten very late, and most of the people who had been in the bar when the Karaoke King and Queen had been crowded were now at home having sex or in another bar. Livia and Daniel were still at their original table, though, drinking scotch sours and having a contest to see who had told the most intricate lie in their lifetime. It seemed as though there would be a draw, since the lies that they were talking about happened to be very detailed lies that they were making up on the spot, so the contest was pretty much pointless. They were having a terrific time despite the lack of honesty, and no one had checked their watch in what could have been an hour or could also have been four. 

“I’m telling you, the shark bit my foot nearly in half,” Daniel was explaining, trying his best to illuistrate the situation with his hands without actually labeling one hand shark and the other labeled Daniel. Livia laughed as he told this, because she had seen him walk and although he may sway a bit when he was drunk, his feet both worked perfectly fine, much better than they would if one of them had been attached with a staple gun.

The two of them stopped talking when David came over to the table. His hand was out and low to the ground, as though he were holding onto something that was near his thigh, but the air around him was empty. Neil stared too, but instead of acting confused the way Livia was, he seemed startled at what he saw.

“Lessa, what are you doing here?” he asked someone who Livia couldn’t see, “Where’s Jamie?” There was a seconds pause as his gaze shifted and then he seemed relieved. “Thank goodness,” he said, “you know I’ve told you that you mustn’t go without him Lessa,”

There was nothing there. Livia knew this for a fact. She stared at the place where both David and Daniel were directing their attention, and saw nothing but the reflection of a gold table lamp on the polished hardwood floor. The shimmer off the golden light reminded her of gold dust. She stood up suddenly.

“You’re both crazy,” she said as her voice shook. The two men turned to look at her and she said, “You’re talking to nothing. You’re hallucinating,” To herself, Livia sounded forceful, as though she were demanding them to be crazy. She was begging them to be crazy, so that she wouldn’t be. “You’re both on it, aren’t you?” That question could solve a lot, but it sure as hell ruined Livia’s evening. “And your names aren’t Daniel and David. How could I have been so stupid? One of you, one of you nearly killed my father, and here I am practically on a date with you! What was I thinking?” What was she thinking? What was she thinking? Livia tried her best to calm down.

She didn’t particularly care for the overly skeptical look that was exchanged between them.  Daniel sighed and told her, “Look, Livia, I won’t deny that my name is not Daniel, but I quite honestly have no idea of what you are talking about. I’ve never killed anyone in my entire life, and I hope I never have to.” Livia still didn’t sit down, and he gestured to the seat significantly. “ You need to sit down, calm down, and tell us what this is about. Calmly. You’re attracting attention.”

This was true and nearly every face in the room was turning away from Livia as she scanned the building with her eyes. She plopped herself back down into the chair and faced the two people who’s names she now didn’t know. Instead of speaking and doing something even more stupid, she opted to stay silent and let these guys explain themselves before she went mental. 

They didn’t speak to her. The man who decidedly wasn’t named Daniel turned to the guy who definitely wasn’t David and dropped his voice to a low whisper. Livia listened intently, trying to make herself look busy by twirling a coaster around on the table. “Wren,” he hissed, “Wren, don’t look at me funny. Don’t judge me! I might be going insane, but maybe not. Look,” he said and pointed at nothing, the same nothing that he had been staring at intently before hand, “can you see the person that I’m pointing at?”

David-now-Wren looked and his face brightened slightly. “Of course! That’s Alessandra. I have no idea who she is or where she came from, but of course I can see her. She’s right there,” When his friend, who still didn’t have a name, didn’t look comforted, he continued. “She’s playing with her parasol, it’s pink and yellow, and it matches her dress. She’s got golden hair and her brother is standing right behind her. He’s quite the little guardian, is Jamie.”

There was no girl in pink and yellow, no parasol, no brother, no nothing there, but the two of them didn’t seem to notice. Although Livia would have certainly considered these visions signs of insanity, Daniel-no-more seemed to find this news very uplifting. “Wren! Wren do you know what this means? It means I’m not insane. I thought I was insane, but it turns out I’m not the only one who can see them. This is the best day ever!”

It may have been the best day ever for him, but Livia’s day was getting progressively worse, not to mention eternally confusing. She snorted, the situation becoming clearer to her every second. “You honestly thought you were insane?” she asked, “You’re dealers! Shouldn’t you at least know the what the drug you deal does?” If she were a drug dealer, she thought, she would make sure to get a history of it before selling it to unsuspecting people on the street.

They seemed impressed by her guesses, which just enraged her more. The entire situation was becoming more and more ridiculous. Wren said, “Livia, I think you need to explain a few things to us,”

Under her breath, Livia muttered, “Well that makes three of us and some invisible children,” When Wren paused and waited for her attention to be returned to him, she sat up straight and smiled as best she could.

“First of all, how the hell did you know that our names weren’t what we said they were? I mean, you’re right, but how did you know? What gives you the idea that we’re dealers, and of what drug? Please speak quietly, I don’t want to get thrown out for causing a commotion.” 

Livia was baffled. These people had to be some sort of joke concocted by a god who was angry at her. What had she done? Was it the fact that she stole the ribbons from her arch nemesis’s dancing shoes when she was twelve? That didn’t make much sense, but it was the only thing that she could think of that would make her deserve crazy fortune tellers following her and suspicious guys forcing her to sing Karaoke with their charms and alcohol.  As she thought about Katrina, the way no one else had known about her, the store that had been closed while she was in it, everything began to make sense. She had only started seeing Katrina after her father brought the packet of gold dust into the house....

“I came across Gold Dust a few days ago. My dad’s a cop, and he brought some home. He’s been trying to track down the dealer for ages. I guess he’d maybe had it in the house for a long time, because I think a bottle broke in our closet. It’s all over everything in there. I think he was addicted or something, but I have no idea if it was on purpose or not,” She still hoped that it wasn’t his fault, but that wasn’t shaping up to be true. “Anyway, he got into a horrible car crash. It killed done of his buddies and nearly killed him. He’s a good driver so it must have been the gold dust. It must have!

“It was after that when I found it in the closet. It was all over everything. Everything! All of his coats, my outerwear. And there’s this woman, a fortune teller and a psychic, her name is Katrina. I’ve been seeing her everywhere in places where she couldn’t possibly be. She predicted an earthquake, but it didn’t happen. She said my dad would be ok. She showed up drunk in my hotel room. She vanished, though, and I have no idea where she went.

“I’ve figured it out, though. It’s the gold dust. I’m not stupid. It makes you hallucinate. I guess I must be accidentally addicted to it too, so I decided that I had to find out where it was coming from. This way I might be able to figure out how to get off of it, and what it does, and pretty much everything. I went looking and I found a guy in a restaurant who was talking to someone who wasn’t there. I’m pretty sure that I saw him take a bottle of it under the table, I saw it! I followed him and made me give me the place where he had gotten it. He told me 43 Willow street and told me that a David Mountcastle had given it to him,”

She looked at Wren, who she had assumed was David Mountcastle, accusingly. He raised his hands in what could have been a defensive position but could also have been one of those nondescript ‘I give up’ gestures. “I guess you must be David Mountcastle?” She asked when she could get no more of an answer from him.

“No, no. I use various names but Mountcastle isn’t one of them. That’s him,” Wren said, and pointed to his friend. “Neil, you dealt right outside your front door? What the hell were you thinking?”

Neil! Inside Livia’s head there was a victory bell ringing loudly. She had found out the other guy’s name, Neil, and now she even knew that he was the dealer. This was turning out to be a very profitable day after all. 

Neil shifted and looked extremely uncomfortable. “I dunno...I don’t remember that guy,” he said, “You were probably sick, you know. I always have to take over for you when you’re sick. I don’t like running in tunnels and things, I’m not like you. I tend to deal a little closer to home, although I admit, right outside my front door is a little stupid,”

Wren snorted, which caused Livia to jump. She was on high alert right now, no matter how much alcohol was having a party in her head and trying to make her tired. “A little, just a little,” he said, “Anyway, that’s beside the point. Livia, that is an impressive story. But you said we were talking to nothing, and the guy in the restaurant was talking to nothing. Are you saying that you can’t see Lessa and Jamie?”

She had thought that much was obvious. “No, I can’t see them, either of them. They are your hallucinations though, I didn’t expect to be able to,” Something dawned on her. She pointed at Wren. “You’re Wren, eh? Did you ever leave bottles of Gold Dust for cops to find?”

He looked guilty the moment she asked. “Well, yeah. It’s a great escape strategy, when they’re after you, you know? Toss a bottle of dust at them, it goes all over the place and they have to backtrack to avoid the cloud. Sometimes on windy days I would just open a bottle in front of them. Same effect.  It shouldn’t make them crash cars, though, should it Neil?” He turned to his friend, “You’re more of an expert than me. I’m not even on it. You probably know more about the symptoms and things. But I dunno... none of my clients seem to be at all addled,”

Livia snorted with derision. She hadn’t quite expected to know more about a drug than the dealer. “Not on it? You can see Less and Jamie, can’t you? You’re hallucinating, Wren. That is what the cursed stuff makes you do! Of course you’re on it. Maybe not intentionally, but I’m not intentionally on it either, am I?” 

Neil interrupted before Livia could yell at Wren any more. Although he had been enjoying the shouting for a little while, marveling at Wren’s inability to control a girl for the first time in a long while, there was something that he needed to clear up before Livia kicked a whole in Wren’s head. “No, it doesn’t do anything bad to you,” he said in response to her earlier question about the side effects, “It just makes you incredibly addicted, and makes you...hallucinate. Like Livia said, smart girl. And, well, I had guessed I was on it, but I didn’t actually know. Thanks for clearing that up, Livia,”

She didn’t buy it. “No problem,” she said but didn’t ease up yet. “But I have a question. Do you make it yourselves? Where does it come from? I still want to find out more about it. I need to find someone who knows how to get me off the bloody stuff,” she asked. She didn’t mention it at the risk of sounding sentimental, but she cared more about getting her father off of it. As a cop, he couldn’t afford to be hallucinating on an illegal drug. Katrina would be much more of a bother to him than she ever was to Livia.

Neil spoke this time after clearing his throat. “You won’t find anyone else. It’s a two man operation that we have here. Wren deals, I make. I deal when Wren’s sick or when we have an overload of orders in one night.” He scrutinized Livia closely, “I would take it as a kindness if you didn’t tell anyone about us. I mean, they wouldn’t catch us anyways, but it would suck to have to make whole new identities again. The last time that happened we ended up having to live in an abandoned subway station for two months.” He paused to take a sip of his drink, enjoying the silence. Livia was hanging on to his every word, eager for more information. He decided that he would really have to speak to audiences more often. “Thank god, if there is one, that it was summer then. That sucked a lot. I gained a new respect for homeless people, I can tell you. I always give them something now,”

“To tell you the truth, I kind of enjoyed it,” Wren said, “I mean, once we got your bed out, Neil, it wasn’t so bad. I must admit that I didn’t much like the sleeping on the ground bit. But really, with the bed it was just fine and dandy. You just like your little comforts too much, boyo,”

Neil punched Wren on the arm. It should have been one of those genial, friendly punches that hockey players give each other on the helmets, but he over estimated the damage that a punch could cause when a shot glass is in one’s hand, and it made a loud, painful noise. “Idiot,” he said, “only you would enjoy sleeping in a small, disused, train station. I missed all my comforts. Especially the bathroom. Have you forgotten that little problem? Oh, and the rats, of course. The rats as big as friggin’ cats!” He shuddered at the memory, “those things were not our friends, no matter how many times you said that they were,”

Livia relaxed slightly, but she hadn’t completely forgiven them. It was all very nice, their charming tales of subway living and rats that could be house pets, but it didn’t stop the fact that they were dealers of the drug that was her enemy. She wanted another drink, but knew that she would be drunk if she had another.

“Speaking of dealing,” Wren said as he checked his watch. Livia stiffened. “I’ve got a couple more tonight. Anyone who wants to tag along can, but you gotta remember to act like nothing is out of the ordinary.” He paused for a moment to think, and then a smile lit up his face a little mischievously. “Actually, Livia, if you come you should probably pretend to be my girlfriend. Neil has the look of inspiration in his eye, so I don’t think he’ll be coming,”

This seemed to be the case, for he had stood up as though he were in a haze. The room didn’t seem to completely hold him in. He was getting ready to leave when Wren shouted, “Neil! I’m staying at your place tonight!” Neil didn’t reply to this, instead he just waved over his shoulder and left the building.

“That fucker,” Wren said angrily, “Left me to pay his bill for him. Well? Are you coming or not?” He asked Livia.

She didn’t really see a reason not to go, so she shrugged and said, “Guess I might as well. I don’t really have anything better to do. I can’t go home, and it’s possible that my hotel room has expired. Anyway, Katrina is probably up there again, and I really don’t want to talk to her right now. Did you say earlier that you were going to a strip club?” It had been hard to hear while the bar was so busy, but she was pretty sure that he had mentioned something like that to Neil when she was coming back from singing “All That Jazz.”

“Yeah,” he said, “I love setting up deals in strip clubs. I get a real bonus that way,”

Livia raised her eyebrows. It was time, she decided, to impress this sketchy fellow with her knowledge of the shadier places in town. “Which one?” she asked.

“The Cat Scratch Club,” he said with a smile, “It’s my favorite. The lead dancer is definitely the best around,”

This was funny to Livia, who happened to be quite good friends with the lead dancer and knew exactly how she had landed that position so early on in her career. “I’ll tell her you said so,” she told Wren. When he looked extraordinarily shocked at this, she decided to explain after a few seconds of enjoying feeling important. “I never told you what my job was, did I?” She asked him, but backtracked when he raised his eyebrows suggestively. “You are such a boy. I’m a ballerina, you idiot! The lead dancer there is my friend, she’s the lead in our ballet too. She just works there for the extra money,”

He looked thoughtful and asked hopefully, “Do you think you could get me a backstage tour of the place? I mean, since you know her and all...”

“No!” she shouted, waving her arms to stop the thought from even entering his head. “I absolutely will not get you a backstage tour. That is my friend that you’re molesting in your mind! How dare you even imagine that I would put her through that?”

“In case you have forgotten, dear, your friend is a stripper,” he said. “They display themselves for money. The whole point is that boys molest them in their minds. And you know, I bet I could pick her up. I’m awfully good at picking up chicks. I’ll have to try that sometime.” He drifted into his imagination, where he was charming the stripper girl into a romantic date and then his apartment...

Livia was furious, and it was written all over her face. There was a lot that she put up with as a dancer, but this was just too much. Sometimes guys really pissed her off. It didn’t make it much better when he laughed at her expression.

“You really don’t like me, do you?” He asked, but didn’t sound like he cared much. Well, darling, if you’re coming along with me then you will have to pretend to be my girlfriend. If we have to convince anyone, I will grope and/or kiss you,” Livia wrinkled up her nose at the thought but he continued, “so be forewarned. I don’t particularly like you either, so I don’t really care if you like it. You don’t have to come,”

It was amazing that the bottles above the bar didn’t spontaneously combust from the heat that was issuing from Livia’s glare. She didn’t know what had happened to the charming and funny Wren that she had been laughing and drinking with earlier, but this certainly wasn’t anything like him. “You arrogant bastard!” she hissed with fury, “You think every girl just falls at your feet, don’t you? Well, I am not one of your swooning damsels,” she did her best to forget the fact that she had been swooning earlier, and passed that off as the effects of the drug. “I’m coming along to make sure that you don’t hurt my friend, and if you do, so help me, I’ll bring the entire police department down on your ass,”

Wren was glaring at her too, and she had to try very hard to keep from flinching. “I would never, ever, ever, do anything to a girl without her consent. Do you understand me?” He seemed unbelievably insulted, and this was the most serious that Livia had seen him the entire night. It was quite frightening, to be completely honest. “Rape is not my speciality. I do not rape, I do not harass, I hardly even catcall. You should be much more careful when you accuse someone you hardly even know of things like that.” He stood up, “I am leaving. Come with me or stay,”

Livia was just as furious as he was, because she hadn’t made the assumption without anything to go on. Hadn’t he just told her how he liked strip clubs? Didn’t he just glorify how easy it was for him to get girls in the sack? These weren’t things that someone who respected womankind normally did. She stood up angrily and took his offered arm stiffly. They walked arm in arm out of the Karaoke bar into the night, steaming with fury at each other. A car horn honked, but the sound petered out and died when it sped past them.