Dr. Adder Read online

  “Huh?” inquired the little whore clutching his arm. She was eighteen, having come to L.A. a week ago, the day after her birthday.

  “That dude there,” said Leslie, pointing him out, as the thin figure reappeared for a moment at the opposite curb.

  “He’s a pimp?”

  “Yeah, but not a local.”

  She pondered this a moment. “What’s he doing here?” she asked. “Nobody but big GPC officials and army brass fly that far. You sure he’s from New York?”

  Smiling, he studied the serried rows of stroke books arranged in the racks outside of a little porn shop. Behind him and the girl, the Interface milled and jostled slowly. The bright covers, pink like some soft, edible candy, pleased him. Stuff, he thought, two-dimensional stuff. The phrase had popped whole into his mind, filling him with a sense of satisfaction. “Where else?” he mocked gently. “Phoenix, I suppose?”

  “Okay, so he’s from New York, but what’s he doing here?” At least, she thought, looking up into his face, he’s in a good mood. This is the longest conversation I’ve ever had with him.

  He shrugged. “Who knows. I’ve been watching him cruise up and down the Interface a dozen times already. Like he’s waiting for someone or something. Whatever it is, it must be important. When pimps start winging transcontinental, something’s up for sure.” A sudden, unarticulated thought came upon him, a sense of previously unintimated levels of pimpdom beyond this first barrier he, with all the force of his own eighteen years, was trying to penetrate. He wondered if the girl suspected that she was his first number.

  She pressed her face into his leather sleeve. “Does this change our plans?”

  The fleshy magazine covers flared for a split-second in his eyes, the harsh chemical lights lining the Interface perhaps receiving a momentary surge of current. “Shit. It would take more than that spooky asshole for me to pass up an opportunity like this. When those gates open up and Dr. Adder pulls out his machine, you’re going to be standing right there. If we pull this off, we’ll get you a free job that’ll make every other hooker on this street look sick.” His voice dropped a few cycles in pitch. “And isn’t that what you want? Hmm? For your own true friend?”

  A tear formed a round dot, like ink, upon the leather. She lowered her face so he wouldn’t see. “I’m still... a little scared,” she said, her voice muffled, staring fixedly at her own slim, pale legs.

  “Don’t worry,” he said, turning away from the porn shop’s racks, and drawing her by her bare arm into the street’s flow. He felt a pleasing, expectant tension within himself. As if, he thought, I know I’ll make it tonight, at last. My big break. An L.A. pimp can change two-dimensional fantasies to this; feeling the pressure of the girl’s arm upon his.

  Behind them, the short, balding man inside the porn shop switched on the small television that hung over the cash register. Glancing back, the girl could see the luminous gray screen clearly through the shop’s door, her vision interrupted only by the figures passing by on the sidewalk.

  From the air, Orange County and L.A. had appeared to Limmit to be slowly combusting, tinged like glowing coals with the last red rays from the sun. Sitting up front with the pilot, a madly grinning girl with ALICE stenciled on her breast pocket, he watched the land approach while half listening to her descriptions of it.

  Orange County seemed to consist of randomly grouped pyramids of varying sizes, but all looming massive even from this altitude. The residential complexes, explained the pilot. Surrounding them were the remains of whatever suburbs or towns had not yet been reclaimed by decay and the hills’ patient, rugged foliage. To the north of them were the rectangular units of the industrial zones. They seemed absurdly small in comparison to the pyramids: she told him that the main parts were underground. She pointed out the small landing strip for which they were headed.

  L.A. appeared to flow, like an avalanche of rubble, right up to the edge of Orange County. Cancerous, thought Limmit, slightly stunned by its horizontal immensity. Like the remains of some malignant growth, it spread haphazardly over the ground below. As the last light turned violet and faded, the intricate, convoluted details of L.A.’s tightly packed buildings and streets faded also, replaced, as darkness advanced, by the image of some thick, coagulated fluid staining the earth. Small, almost undetectable points of light appeared in the dead city’s northern section. At the southern edge, just barely within the dark mass, a narrow line of artificial light glowed.

  “The Interface,” said the pilot, pointing to the line and grinning at him. “Hope you find what you want.”

  Limmit said nothing, trying to gauge the distance from the landing strip in the Orange County industrial zone to the other, almost parallel strip of light.

  “Don’t worry about it,” said the pilot, reading his thoughts. The plane started to descend with them and its cargo of eggs aboard. “There’s no hassle getting from Orange County to the Interface.”

  She had been right. A sullen youth, one of a number loitering around the buildings near the airstrip, had, upon receiving a bill peeled off Limmit’s savings rolled up in his pocket, driven him and the black briefcase to the nearest end of the Interface and deposited him there without a word. The kid had then noisily motored off, back to the not-distant fringe of Orange County for more passengers.

  That had been more than an hour ago; closer to two hours, Limmit realized, looking at his watch. In the interval he had paced slowly, propelled in part by the jostling crowd on the sidewalk, up and down the length of the Interface. At first, he had been approached by dozens of other youths, not sullen like the first, who offered him in succession an array of tablets, capsules, and vials of liquids unfamiliar to him. He declined, keeping one hand in his pocket on his roll of bills and the other clutching the briefcase, until they all had at last given up on him and left him alone.

  The hookers were another thing. Their blank faces and the sharp, unnatural eyes of their pimps seemed to penetrate through him, waiting for him to approach like the other customers, or to pass on down the sidewalk. Limmit passed on, a sense of unease growing within him. Amputees, he thought, glancing covertly at another one; it must be that nearly half of them are missing something. A leg or an arm, or both, or more. He watched in fascinated revulsion as a legless hooker emerged from the doorway of one of the shabby buildings lining the street, and, under the watchful gaze of one of the older, more expensively dressed pimps on the street, began pulling her way through the crowd.

  Christ, thought Limmit, what’s going on? Are they battle casualties or something? So many of them. And there was something strange about the intact ones as well: some undetectable sign of kinship with their mutilated sisters. What’s stranger, thought Limmit, is that the amputees seem to be doing the better business.

  The rest of the Interface, Limmit saw, sorting out its gestalt in his mind, consisted of the innumerable porn shops and skin flick theaters that, apart from the dealers and hustlers in the street, seemed to comprise the street’s entire business; the scattered, unlit building fronts into which the hookers disappeared with their clients; a single obscenely greasy hamburger and taco stand surmounted by a neon sign that flashed the words HARRY’S HOT shit over and over (a joke, surmised Limmit, through unwilling to experiment to see just how perverted L.A. actually was); and the straights from Orange County, male, constituting the majority of the street crowd, in the classic ratio of herbivores to meat eaters. The crowd was dotted by a few random uniformed police who, as far as Limmit could see, seemed to do nothing but stand around and watch. No vehicles other than the bedraggled cars ejecting more straights at either end of the street; the crowd was too thick, clear across the width of the street, for any progress to be made except on foot.

  Only one other thing, thought Limmit, watching for a moment his boots moving through the slowly accumulating layer of trash on the street, to constitute the entirety of the Interface. He felt suddenly cold, thinking of it. It was the black wrought-iron gates set directly
in the middle of the street’s north side. An old man had pointed them out to him when Limmit, upon arriving, had inquired where he could find Dr. Adder.

  Before the old man could do anything but point across the street at the gates, a young, bulky man in a gray coat had approached them and thrust a leaflet at them from a pile held under one arm. “Here,” said the young man in a sour, rehearsed monotone. “Save yourself.”

  “Fuck off,” snapped the old man, retracting his outstretched arm.

  “To hell with it,” muttered the leafleteer, as if coming to a decision deep inside himself. He had then flung the stack of leaflets at the old man, knocking him down in a flurried explosion of paper, then stalked off into the crowd.

  “Who was that?” had asked Limmit, raising the old man from the sidewalk.

  The old man snorted. “Street evangelist. One of John Mox’s damn MFers.”

  The description had puzzled Limmit. “Are they always like that?”

  ‘Forget it.” The old man had clutched his arm tightly. “Why are you asking about Dr. Adder anyway?”

  Limmit had instinctively tightened his grip on the briefcase’s handle. Before he could say anything, the old man spoke again.

  “That’s a lot of crap about him and what he does. Believe me, I used to run this street, before Adder ever came along; wasn’t even called the Interface back then. You can trust me. I had those iron gates put up myself, special. So save your money.”

  Uncomprehending, Limmit had managed to pull his arm free.

  “Wait,” cried the old man as Limmit back-pedaled away. “I can find what you want—you don’t need that crap from Adder.” He had tried to pursue Limmit, but was swallowed up in the milling, unnoticing crowd.

  Since then, Limmit had crossed the street and passed back and forth a dozen times or more in front of the black iron gates the old man had indicated. Inside them, across a small courtyard containing a few desiccated wall-clinging plants and what Limmit recognized as a motorcycle, propped up rigid and vaguely phantasmical upon its center stand, he could see the front door of Dr. Adder’s combined residence and place of business. He had come, complete with black briefcase, all the way from Phoenix to enter it.

  But how, thought Limmit, gazing at and through the wrought iron. That idiot Goonsqua and his stupid plans. The gate had a lock on it the size of a small potato, and Limmit could see no button or other means of getting inside. How do I call for an appointment? he said to himself acidly. But the sarcastic note fell hollow inside him. Christ, he thought, I don’t even know what Dr. Adder does. An enigma, a complete, dark vacuum beyond the name. The black iron gates had, upon every subsequent passage, loomed larger and more ominous in his mind. Together with the amputee hookers, the old man’s strange babble, and the entire Interface itself, they were almost enough to make him wish he had never left Phoenix.

  But not quite, he thought grimly. That would be death by suffocation; even this strange exile could be buffered by enough money. He glanced down at the briefcase, its solid weight in his hand raising his spirits. I might even get to enjoy it after a while. He looked up and saw, a little ways down the sidewalk, a whore and her pimp gazing idly in his direction.

  Unlike most on the Phoenix Egg Ranch, Limmit had knowledge of coitus beyond that provided by the company brothel: one fumbling, guilt-inspiring session with Joan, bulky even back in grade school, and more memorable sessions during his brief career in the Army of the Southwest.

  What the hell, speculated Limmit, running a thumb over the edge of the roll of bills in his pocket; when in L. A. This one seemed to have all her limbs intact, even if she did share the strangely bovine, blank expression somehow endemic to all the hookers on the street. He started to push his way through the crowd toward her. Perhaps, he thought, it’ll revitalize me. In L.A., maybe you have to lose your cherry all over again. A business expense. After her, he thought, I’ll know, just like a native, how to get in to see Dr. Adder.

  Up in the shabby room she led him to (after he had deposited several bills in the palm of her “friend”), she switched on a small television sitting on a bureau. It was the only piece of furniture besides a large bed that seemed to have been frozen halfway through a process of disintegration. A totally tensionless bed, thought Limmit, sitting on its edge; soft, like adipose tissue. In the gray light from the television, the girl’s skin emerged section by section, her constant, vacant half-smile reflecting the TV’s somehow fungal luminescence. The incomplete spectrum made her nipples appear dark, coinlike. Like a dream, thought Limmit, watching her body by the television’s illumination. She seemed to be moving in slow motion, half real-time. The room’s dim spaces brought the strangely satisfying thought of grottoes to him.

  Becoming bored, Dr. Adder watched his assistant, Pazzo, cleaning his fingernails with a surgical scalpel. He suddenly saw which particular scalpel Pazzo was using and reached across the desk to snatch it out of the smaller, older man’s hands. “Do that again,” said Adder, placing the instrument on the desktop, “and I’ll cut your fuckin’ colon out.” He laid his hands beside the scalpel, vaguely pleased with the effect. Like tools, he thought; cutting edges. They were both narrow, angular, like his own face and body.

  “What is it with that knife anyway,” asked Pazzo irritably. They were both sitting in Adder’s front office.

  “It’s not a knife, ass. Besides which I have a sentimental attachment for it.”

  Pazzo snorted. “Don’t take out your ill temper on me. If you weren’t so damn tight, we wouldn’t have to wait an hour for that machine back there to warm up.”

  Grinning ferally, Adder said, “They don’t make them anymore. It’s unique.” That pleased him.

  “I give up,” said Pazzo. The conversation didn’t seem to be making any sense, as if his own fatigue had caught up with him in this slack moment, waiting for things to be ready again in the operating room. How does Adder do it? he wondered, thinking of all the small blue capsules, amphetamine analogs, that he, Pazzo, had had to take to keep up with Adder for the last two days. He felt tired, or even more. Drained, he thought. Or even ... sucked dry. He rose and walked over to the office window. “Hey,” he said, looking out into the black iron gates and the night-covered Interface. “Guess who’s coming.”

  “Shitfire,” said Adder disgustedly from behind his boots, which had taken the place of the scalpel on the desk. It could be only one person. “That pain in the ass.” He weighed the scalpel in his hand, then extended his arm and sank its point into the edge of the desk. “I’ve got a good mind to dump on him and his money. Do I need the aggravation?” He drew a meditative forefinger through the right angle formed by the blade and the desktop, and watched as Pazzo, Chaplinesque, pantomimed turning empty pockets inside out. Adder sighed. “Go down and let him in.”

  All my old clown tricks, thought Pazzo, wearily descending the stairs. All of Adder’s screwed games. I can’t take it anymore.

  Adder removed his feet from the desk and brushed a few stray crumbs from his clothes. He balled up a few greasy food wrappings, marked HARRY’S, and tossed them across the room. Personally fastidious, he affected a degree of slovenliness about the nonsurgical part of his working quarters that appalled everyone except Pazzo, who was used to it. A layer, ankle-deep at points, of trash and other lesser and larger debris was randomly interrupted by stacks of yellowing stroke books, empty bottles, and unidentified objects. Black-and-white photographs of his work, like a catalog, were haphazardly tacked to the walls. It was, in actuality, a studied effect: Adder’s attempt to simulate some sort of archetypal and ultimate abortionist’s den-tattoo-parlor-sink of iniquity. He enjoyed degrading his clientele in these small ways.

  Pazzo reentered, followed by a large, tailored military uniform. Its occupant had a slightly disintegrating look, as if facial sinews were being cut beneath the skin. The effects of imminent kainine collapse, Adder knew. “Good evening, General,” he said.

  The general flopped down bonelessly in the chair
across the desk from Adder. “I’ve got,” he said, “half of what you asked for. That’s all V m going to pay.”

  Adder shrugged. “Pay as you please. You don’t even have to pay at all. Since you won’t be getting anything until I get my price.”

  The general started to sweat. The chair he sat in was permeated with the nervous perspiration of Adder’s clientele. “Look,” he blustered, “nobody futzes around with Romanza. I know what I want and you’re going to regret it if I don’t get it.” His lower lip swelled out like a blister, catching the salt sweat from his gray cheeks.

  Adder had a patrician distaste for melodrama in real life. He winked at Pazzo leaning in the door frame, and pointed a thumb at the general. “A big man,” he said. Pazzo, with a curiously blank expression, formed a small circle with his left thumb and forefinger and in an automatic rhythm thrust his right forefinger through it.

  The general’s eyes, porcine, swiveled back and forth between the two faces he felt mocking him. “You punks—”

  “Nyeh, cram it,” said Adder, warming to his role. He leaned across the desk, hands flat against it, bringing his face a few inches away from the general’s.

  “Jam it on!” shouted Pazzo unexpectedly from the doorway. Adder looked up for a second, surprised and momentarily baffled, then returned his concentration to the general.

  “I’ve got enough customers,” said Adder, snarling theatrically, “to crack your ass for a favor anytime I want. As a matter of fact”—he jerked out the scalpel—“I might slice you up right now and just let them get me off the hook. Which can be done.” “You tell him,” interjected Pazzo again. “Show ’im that two can play these hyperthyroid games—you’ve seen enough of Betreech’s old movies.”