Out Through the Attic (6 page)

Everyone was dancing and laughing, having a great time. There was food and booze all over the place. Cakes, candies, just about anything you could put in your mouth was laid out on every surface or tucked away in nooks and crannies. They’d even brought in hookers—male
and
female—of damn near every species you could schtupp. There were dwarves, elves, humans, fairies, ogres … all walking around in red silk drawers and high boots. You ever see a female ogre in a red thong and knee-high red boots? It sure is something …. I’ll tell you that for nothing.

I doubt there was a single appetite that didn’t get satisfied that night, including my own.

As the sun started to set, the
Hoffer
Director pulled me aside. He said he had a surprise for me … job well done and all that. He led me through a maze of hallways into a back room. As we approached, this drone pricked up my ears. It’s a chatter, mostly high-pitched, and I eventually figured out it’s people talking … lots of them … like they’re on fast-forward or something.

We walked into a wide room with low lighting above, a rainbow of multi-colored lamps lining every wall. I’d never seen anything like it. There were sofas and sectionals, a few day beds, and even some beanbags scattered around the place. Most were occupied, and a few occupied by folks doing the horizontal mambo. Like I said, it was a hell of a party.

Along one side of the room was a table. On the table someone had laid out every bit of contraband you ever heard of. Right in the middle, the centerpiece of the whole thing, was a pile of gold dust that would cover a dinner plate. Set on a little swing above it was a tiny fairy wearing a top hat … doing her business … and her business was the pile of gold dust. She just kept shooting it out as if she was sitting on a toilet. She was even reading a newspaper, a bored look on her face. I barely noticed the small, silver chain attached to her ankle and anchored to the swing.

My eyes got wide, and the Director had to pull me along towards the table.

I’d done grass and mushrooms before. Hell, who hasn’t? But pixie dust as a drug was new back then. The bee’s knees in the drug world. Up till that moment I’d only ever heard about the stuff.

The Director guided me to the table, picked up a short, silver tube from a stack of them next to the dust and handed it to me. The pixie raised her eyes from the newspaper, gave me a fake wink and a strained smile, and then went back to the paper.

“Ever done PD?” the Director asked, whispering it in my ear. He’s got this weird look on his face, like he’s excited and scared and hungry … all at once.

“PD?” I replied.

“Pixie dust.” He patted me on the back and nudged me forward. “Once you try PD, you’ll never go back to anything else.”

I don’t think truer words were ever spoken to me.

I took the tube … took a snort.

Fireworks, thunder and orgasms cooked off inside my head, all at once.

I staggered. I smiled.

Every line, every crease, every color in that room was magnified a thousand times. I felt invincible, like there was nothing I couldn’t do.

The Director smiled right along with me. “Welcome to the club,” he said. He took a snort himself and led me back down the labyrinth to where the rest of the party was ramping up. Inside my head, the whole place is on fire. And I love it. I slowly start to understand what it must feel like to be a god.

O O O

Birdsong filled the air. Sunlight warmed my skin. I heard a waterfall. In the background someone shuffled about.

I thought,
Shit, I’m gonna die
.

As I lay there, eyes closed, wondering where the hell I was, that phrase rattled around inside my head, mixed in with what felt like ball bearings ricocheting as if they’d been fired out of a cannon. I waited for the rapid pounding behind my eyes to slow to a dull, sporadic thud and raised my eyelids just a hair.

Blue sky.

A cloud shaped like a zeppelin swam through the blue. Or was it a white zeppelin? I couldn’t tell.

A bee trundled over me, oblivious of my agony.
Selfish bastard
, I thought.

With a groan I sat up, wished I hadn’t and looked around. Lounge chairs lay scattered everywhere, some on their sides. In a few that were upright I spotted a troll, an ogre and two dwarves. Each of them was completely naked. In the middle of it all was a swimming pool … from the party.

The
party.

Fuzzy images flashed through my memory, bouncing around so fast I couldn’t focus on any of them clearly. The King, in all his dwarfish majesty … shots of something fiercely alcoholic … the King clapping me on the back … a tall human female on his arm—a brunette beauty in a red dress. Trips back to the PD table … oftentimes led by that same brunette. And every time she was there I remember her goading me on and the pixie looking scared. It was a mad calliope of images and sensations … none of which made much sense.

I leaned forward, trying to remember more details from the party, and something sharp poked into my hip. Looking down I realized that all I had on was red underwear—women’s underwear. Once I got over my surprise, I realized that a business card was tucked into the waistband. I slid the card out and saw the image of a pixie, dead center, with a chain on her tiny little ankle that led to a copturier number in the lower left hand corner.

Copturiers were a new invention that had made courier pigeons obsolete. Made from brass and clockwork, they were roughly the same size as a pigeon. You put a message or small object inside and then filled its tiny reservoir with water. Once you punched in the number, all you had to do was hit the activator switch. Fan blades on top spun like crazy, and the little gizmo would fly off, bound for whatever destination indicated by the number.

So who had given me the card? I massaged my temples, trying to remember.

The brunette. The dealer.

I remembered her giving me the card. She would always be just one copturier away. I also remembered her introducing me to one of the human females in red underwear and boots … a blonde. I remembered the blonde and me dancing by the pool … and then …

I groaned and covered my face with my hands as I remembered putting on a porn-show by the side of the pool,
with
the blonde.

At least I knew where the underwear came from.

“Are you okay?” It was a delicate voice from behind me. Sweet. Almost childlike. The sound of it made some of the pain in my head fade away. I turned around in the lounge chair.

And fell in love.

O O O

Wendy was sunlight filtering through storm clouds. She was starshine on the blackest night. Sweet as honey. Kind as a grandmother. Brown hair, green eyes and a smile that melted hearts like butter. She wasn’t gorgeous. She wasn’t plain. She was that perfect in-between that good men—smart men—spend the rest of their lives with. She was …
everything
. My best friend, my biggest fan, my staunchest supporter … I could do no wrong in her eyes.

Even back then I knew I didn’t deserve her.

She quit as a maid at that big house, and we were married practically overnight. We set out in earnest making babies. We travelled whenever my schedule permitted, and when I was home we did everything together, everything except the PD. She never touched the golden stuff. I suppose she figured that one of us had to be lucid. Or maybe she wasn’t interested in feeling like a god.

Instead of doing PD she raised our daughters, conceived and born back to back. I can’t really take any credit for my children. I loved them all, but the truth is I rarely saw them. I was too busy being a movie star … and throwing parties.

Lots
of parties.

The more movies I made, the more parties I threw. The more parties I threw, the more friends I had. The friends got me auditions, and the auditions got me movies.

Money rolled in, more than I ever imagined. Wendy and I ended up buying that big house … where it all began … and that house—that palace—became our own little kingdom.

Days rarely went by that I didn’t take a hit. Then days when I didn’t take two. Then three. I always threw parties at least as extravagant as that first one. I spared no expense. And the PD was as easy to lay my hands on as it was to send a copturier.

To the brunette.

Back then I knew her as Stella. Stella Davincourt. She was my source, my pipeline into feeling like a god. I would send a note saying how much I needed, and we would exchange paper bags on my front porch—hers full of gold dust and mine full of gold coin. After a while I didn’t even need to call. It became the Thursday delivery. And then bi-weekly. On and on.

At the time it all seemed like a small price to pay for being a god … or feeling like one, anyway. It didn’t take long for Stella to start showing up with first one troll bodyguard and then another. Then it was a stretched, steam-powered carriage gilded in gold, with a brutish driver and the other trolls along for the ride. Bigger and bigger she got.

So did the trolls.

About that time rumors started to surface in the PD community that she was the only source left in the kingdom. Rumor also had it that the other dealers had mysteriously left town, without a word, never to be heard from again. I didn’t think much about it at the time. And nobody said a word. We all just kept taking delivery. From Stella. Happy as fairies dancing around her particular tree.

It was also about that time when Wendy split our little kingdom in two, one side for the family, and one side for the PD. The stuff was always there. In piles. On
my
half. I guess you could say that I had two lovers, and Wendy was smart enough to keep my other lover the hell away from our daughters.

The parties continued.

More and more money went from my coffers into Stella’s. I introduced her to damn near everyone in the movie business. I guess most of the industry was on the hook by then … because of those parties.

It was also at those parties where Stella spent her
public
time with the King. I never did find out how they had first met … or even what they saw in each other. We all knew he was married. We also knew he was getting a little side-action … from Stella. Nobody said a word about that either.

For the first few years, the two of them never showed up together, court etiquette being what it was back then. But they certainly left together, touching the way only lovers can. Eventually, though, they started showing up together. Unashamed. Unabashed. Arm-in-arm.

That was about when the Queen got sick.

It was in all the papers, and the whole kingdom was saddened by her illness. Everyone got the blues, well, almost everyone. I was sort of out of it. The Queen was human and had been born a commoner. I guess the King had a soft spot for humans. Their wedding had been a spectacle, and the entire kingdom fell in love with the soft-spoken lady that had so enchanted our King.

As her illness progressed, songs were written and a litany of well-wishes sent to the palace. I’m sure Wendy sent more than one. She loved the Queen as much as anyone, I guess. Frankly, I was too wired most of the time to know what was going on … and too stupid to see where everything was headed.

I made one blockbuster after another, and money rolled in. The parties continued, bigger every time. Wendy had another baby. She also stopped coming to the parties. I remember feeling sad about that, torn between the love of my life and the PD. And yes, I was torn, but the PD flowed like a great, golden river … from Stella, through me, out into the film industry and beyond. I was the center of the universe, and didn’t want that to ever change.

It took a year for the Queen to die.

When she did, Wendy never said a word. She just laid the Queen’s obituary on my chest and walked away while I was passed out in a lounge chair by the pool.

O O O

The beginning of the end of my life was a headline:

CORNELIUS OVERDOSES ON SET

We were on location … a big-budget production. The whole crew had been dropped in by zeppelin smack dab in the middle of a hot, desert shithole where the character I was playing had to save a damsel in distress from steam-driven automatons. I was so high in those days that I don’t even remember getting on board the zeppelin. I do remember blinding sunlight and dry air that hurt my lungs, though.

More PD made the pain go away.

On the third night of shooting, most of the cast dropped by my trailer for a party … as usual. The PD was there, and yes, in piles. I’d brought enough shit with me to kill a herd of elephants. I always did, and everyone knew it. The party got out of hand, again, as usual, and it was still hot, and still dry. I guess I wanted to make the pain go away, so I kept snorting and snorting … and snorting.

The next thing I remember is waking up in a hospital bed thinking my head was going to come apart. The room was empty except for Wendy, and she held my hand like she never wanted to let go. There were no flowers from the crew, no well-wishes from the Director or Producers.

Just Wendy.

A smart dwarf would have figured out that it meant something. That it was important. I’ll never forget the look on her face. There were a thousand words on her lips, a thousand things she wanted to say to me. I could see it, even feel it.

She never said a word.

A tear traced down her cheek instead, just one tear, and we sat there in silence for a while. I finally asked about the girls, and she said they were fine. I asked about the house. It was fine too. After a while we got to talking about the little things, the stuff that always got us laughing together and loving every second of it. We talked about people and life and the kingdom. We touched on every aspect of our lives and the lives of the people around us.

We talked about everything … except the PD. We just never seemed to get around to talking about that.

I was out of the hospital the following day. Wendy went home, and I went back to the set. But nothing was the same after that. Everything was subdued, just a little less exciting, a little less full of the vigor that had carried my career up to that point. I could feel it every time the Director said
Action
! or
Cut!
The crew looked at me like I was damaged goods … just a little broken here and there around the edges.