The Price of the Ticket Read online

  If the snake was putting up such a fight because it was trapped, Horseknocker surmised, all he had to do was take the pressure off the poor thing and it would relax. This is how he told the story in the bar afterwards. Cool as a keg on ice he would open the door enough to let the snake’s head drop out of the pinch.

  It might have happened like that. In any case, Scotty the python must have been at least partially wrapped around the closet dowel because, the pressure on the door eased by Horseknocker’s terrified recoil, the snake’s head swung freely, through an arc, down through the widened slot between the edge of the door and the jamb, and disappeared.

  Then Horse slammed the door. In fact he was so nervous he slammed it, convulsively opened it again, screamed at himself, and slammed it closed again. After a few seconds he relaxed enough to release the knob. The latch clicked home.

  Much to his surprise he found the white mouse still dangling by its tail from his left hand, and beads of sweat encircled Horseknocker’s scalp like a tonsure. He eyed the mouse, which had gone limp with fear. No wonder, he thought, the little fuckers are born with white hair.

  Then he looked at the mouse more closely.

  It was dead.

  As he stared there was a crash against the back of the closet door. Horse jumped a foot and dropped the mouse, which bounced once on the threadbare carpet and lay still.

  He jammed his foot against the bottom of the door. What did this mean? Is this where the expression “scared to death” came from, from incompetent people feeding mice to snakes? Was he supposed to go back to the mouse store and get another mouse? And go through this all over again? He shook his head. “No way,” he said aloud. Keeping one foot against the closet door he bent to retrieve the unmoving mouse. Upright again, mouse-tail in one hand, he placed his right shoulder firmly against the upper door panel, and removed the foot to about four inches from the threshold. Then, gripping the door knob with his right hand, he quietly turned it until it would turn no more. If this damn snake is hungry enough, he reasoned, it will eat this damned dead mouse. He snapped open the door until it hit the foot, swung the mouse through the resulting vertical crack, and kneed the door shut again, gripping the knob with both hands and applying the weight of his shoulder to the upper panel. A resounding crash impacted the back side of the door, almost directly opposite his shoulder, which stung like he’d fired both barrels of a shotgun butted against it. A thrashing ensued within. He clicked home the barrel bolt.

  Horseknocker staggered across the room, found an easy chair and fell into it.

  He produced a calico bandanna and mopped his shaved head. He didn’t feel worth a damn, he was actually trembling, and for the first time he realized what bad shape his nerves were really in. How could anything good possibly come out of the past week? Simple: nothing could or would. Best not to think about it. Maybe there was something here to drink. He stood up again.

  The answering machine was still blinking on the table, between the two glass cages. Even though there weren’t that many places for it to hide in its cage, the scorpion was nowhere to be seen. Peachy. It was probably under the easy chair knitting mouse bones, or whatever it was domesticated scorpions did. He should have brought along a gun. The snake, on the other hand, had arranged itself into businesslike coils from which its head cantilevered about half way across the cage, toward the glass corner in which the cowering mouse was endeavoring to make itself smaller and invisible, without success or hope.

  He considered the blinking light. Maybe this was somebody who needed to be informed of Pauley’s death. Or somebody who could find Celeste some bail money. He punched the button labeled STOP. The red light extinguished. As he mulled the other buttons a dragging sound came from the Engine Room, like Scotty the python was trying to move a mattress or a stack of phone books in there. Whatever it was that domesticated pythons did. Horse shivered and tapped the PLAY button. The machine beeped. The cassette clicked, whirred for a long time, stopped.

  Beep beep beep beep.

  Four beeps, then nothing. Horse shook his head and moved into the kitchenette, growling. Behind him the machine clicked and began to whir. He wanted a serious drink but the only obvious hard stuff in the kitchen was Sangre di San Sebastiani brandy. He’d never understood how Pauley could stand to drink that red shit, except to think that he’d acquired a taste for pruno in the joint. Thumps, clicks and a loud hiss emanated from the answering machine. No fucking good at all, Horse was thinking, as he scanned the contents of the refrigerator. Blighted lettuce, a single deflated tomato; Vitamin C, chelated Zinc, Stress B; three kinds of salsa, Monterey jack, sharp cheddar, white flour tortillas hosting a greenish mold; Tiger’s milk, cow’s milk, blueberry jelly, cranberry juice, margarine, two brown eggs.… More thumps and then a long, faraway dial tone. A clumsy hangup. Mayonnaise, pickle relish, horseradish, beer. Two beers. One Bud, one Negra Modelo. Thank you, Pauley.

  A voice piped from the answering machine. “Mr. Paulos? This is Sergeant Vitalli again. Police Benevolent League? I need to remind you of your pledge of twenty-five dollars for tickets for a family of four to attend our annual basketball game with the Gay Farmers of Castro Valley. All proceeds to benefit our Emotionally Crippled Children’s Fund? I have a man in your area tonight collecting donations. He’ll have proper identification and is authorized to receive your contribution and drop off your tickets. If you get home before 9:00 p.m. would you give me a call please? 441-9123. That’s Sergeant Gene Vitalli at 441-9123. We appreciate your pledge Mr. Paulos, and we’re looking forward to your contribution. Give us a call tonight. Thanks.”

  Sergeant Vitalli rang off. Horse found an opener in a drawer and levered the top off the squat Negra Modelo. More clicks, beeps, and hangups. He let the opener fall back into the drawer and dropped the cap into the sink.

  “Celeste?” It was a woman’s voice. “Celeste, are you there, Honey…? It’s Camille. Hello…?”

  Hey Camille, Horse thought, that’s a nice, maternal voice you have there. You’re just going to baby these here snakes when you get ahold of them, aren’t you. He sat back down in the easy chair facing the answering machine and the two cages. The snake had moved its head maybe an eighth of inch closer to the mouse. Hard to tell. Camille, eh? Horse sipped his beer.

  There was a loud clatter on the recording and Celeste’s voice said “Hey, Camille, hello. Hang on, I’m here.”

  Her voice startled him. It meant that these were old messages, dating back to … before.

  “Turn off the machine.”

  “Fuck it, I’m in the bathroom.”

  “Charmed,” said Camille brightly. “What’s up? You guys wanna go get a drink tonight?”

  A maternal voice, Horse was thinking, and she likes to drink socially. He took a long pull on the dark beer.

  “Well,” said Celeste rather rapidly. “Sure. I could use something to take the edge off. Are you in town? What time is it?”

  This must be Friday night, thought Horse. She would be wired on that coke the cops found here and didn’t report.

  “Oh, yeah. I’m in the City. And it’s.… Hang on.” There were jazz and noise in the background. Horseknocker cocked an ear. It sounded like Ben Webster, along with people talking, ice hitting the side of a glass, receiver-fumbling. “It’s eleven-thirty-five, egg-zactly.”

  “What?” said Celeste. “Eleven-thirty? How’d it get so late?”

  “I dunno. Who says it’s late?”

  “Well I mean, it’s.… Pauley left at least.…”

  “He’s not there?”

  “No. The bastard’s not here.”

  “Okay, okay. Is it my fault he’s not there? Camille to the rescue. Don’t generate a bunch of dandruff about it. C’mon out and boogie.”

  Hey, thought Horseknocker, she’s domestically tolerant.

  “Except he’s supposed to be here. Yeah, I’d love to go get a drink but I.… Jeez.… Fuck.…”

  Excepting the ambiance there was silence on the line for a few
seconds. Indeed it was Ben Webster, playing on a recording he made with Sweets Edison. Their cover of My Romance, a classic. He could get to like a girl who enjoyed a drink and listened to such music. He had some obscure recordings he would like to share with her. These, and the passenger seat in his van.

  “Hello?”

  “Yeah, yeah. I’m here. I’m just thinking. We were up to some stuff ourselves. Pauley said he’d be right back. He was going to see a guy about some money and come right back.”

  “Oh, well. Cut him some slack. Some kind of a big deal?”

  “No, no big deal. Straight ahead. Guy ripped him off and Pauley was going to get it back. I think he.…”

  There was silence for a moment. Someone laughed at Camille’s end.

  “Yeah?”

  “Damn. He’s been gone since eight-thirty. I’m so into housework, time slipped away.…”

  “Housework?”

  Go get her, girl, Horse thought sadly. Housework. Celeste was trying to be funny and not mention drugs over the phone at the same time, but she was obviously distracted.

  “Hey Celeste,” said Camille, “you all right?”

  “I’m fine. Great! It’s just.…” Celeste’s voice suddenly lost its indecision. “Listen. Give me a number. I’ll call you back.”

  Camille gave her a number. They hung up. More clicks, more beeps, two hang-ups. Probably that cop, looking for his twenty-five bucks.

  Come to think of it, Horse reflected, he himself had called this number from The Gyre at about nine-thirty last Friday, on behalf of Max, who had sobered up enough to be looking for his Chevy truck. He hadn’t left a message.

  More beeps, hangups, clicks, wailing dial tones and the sound of a ringing telephone, far away. Then Camille’s voice.

  “Celeste? You there? Pauley? Anybody?” She waited. Dead air. In the background was Coltrane’s cover of Every Time We Say Goodbye. She hung up.

  A couple of more hangups. No messages.

  Then Camille again. “Hey guys?”

  Camille’s voice had thickened appreciatively. Coltrane had given way to Bird Parker and his blistering cover of I Cover the Waterfront. How fast can a saxophone go?

  “Just to let you know, they’re calling it quits over here and going to bed and I’m going back to Oakland. So don’t call and um.… you know.… wake them… um.… wake them up. I mean, don’t wake them up. Everybody’s too loaded to keep it … up. The story of my life. Get me? Am I making sense? It’s one-thirty. Hope everything’s.… Okay…?” She sighed. “Byeee.…”

  One-thirty, thought Horse. His brooding had hardened into a stare, with the snake as its object. The snake hadn’t perceptibly moved since Horse had opened the Negra Modelo. Neither had the mouse. One-thirty Saturday morning. By one-thirty Saturday morning it was finished.

  One of the appalling things about a razor, Horse considered sullenly, and it’s told by nearly everyone who’s survived one, is that you don’t feel the blade as it cuts you. Later there may be a slight sting; but what you notice long before the sting is the blood, flowing from a wound you didn’t know you had. Add to this phenomenon the numbing of the senses by cocaine–for which, after all, cocaine was originally intended. It was said the Seam guy was so blasted on coke he was probably conscious for a long time after Celeste cut him to ribbons, conscious even after most of the blood had drained from his body.…

  By one-thirty even that was probably over. Two at the latest.

  Pauley hadn’t suffered at all, it was said.

  He upended the bottle over his mouth and didn’t lower it until it was empty. He swallowed hard and lowered the bottle and sighed heavily at the snake, and as he did so the snake’s head shot eighteen inches across the cage and had the mouse half devoured, head first, before the beer bottle Horse dropped as he jumped a foot out of the chair had time to hit the floor.

  He stumbled to his feet and cursed out loud. “Goddamn motherfucking snakes!”

  The answering machine beeped and another voice came on. Chattering cheerfully, this voice sounded disk-jockey bright, like its job was to come on at six o’clock every weekday morning and rally brain-dead commuters come hell or high congestion.

  “Heeeeeyyy Pauley-baby! Rise and shine! It’s nine o’clock! Where are you? You in synagogue or what? It’s Willie! How ya doin, beautiful?”

  Horse recognized the voice of Willie the Funnel, Pauley’s semi-permanent employer, and so-called genius designer of torture racks. He sighed raggedly and picked up the beer bottle, giving a wide berth to the snake with a mouse’s ass sticking out of its throat, cage or no cage. He had a strange fluttering sensation in his chest, like he often experienced with intense hangovers since he had turned forty. He covered his chest with his palm. Maybe it was his heart. Maybe there were only nerves where his heart was supposed to be. Murdered friends and their goddamn girlfriend’s snakes didn’t help much. Another beer wouldn’t help either but it was better than nothing. He returned to the kitchenette and put the empty in the sink. He pulled the long-necked Bud out of the fridge and smacked off its twist-off cap off between the edge of the counter and the side of his hand. Willie’s electrified voice was still prattling merrily in the other room. Willie was just the kind of fun-loving guy to call up a working stiff at nine o’clock on a Saturday morning to talk business. Bright and chipper like he slept a straight eight in a rubber room every third night, the other two likely spent in some fist-fucking marathon in one of the clandestine suicide bathhouses still operating around the city. While Celeste would tell him to fuck right off if she even bothered to wake up and answer the phone, Pauley was just the kind of guy to take the call and write up the order, or get a few details straight on the new design for a goddamn torture rack. He’d listen to anything Willie had to say. Willie was Pauley’s friend, and Pauley was Willie’s friend. They had an affinity that Horse had never quite understood, but may in fact have stemmed from a shared alienation and disgust with defeat and survival, revenge against which was best expressed by designing and building and selling torture racks made out of railroad ties to people with as much money as they had proclivities. Pauley probably likes–liked–Willie because Willie managed to metabolize his warped personality into something lucrative, whereas Pauley only ever saw a hard time out of the deal.

  Ah, fuck, Horseknocker sighed. Who knows? Psychoanalyzing the dead.

  He took a long swallow of beer and sat down again, trying to avoid looking into the snake cage. But after a moment he couldn’t resist. The feet were sticking out, and little haunches, and the tail, which quivered. Horseknocker belched uncomfortably. Pretty long tail. Willie was going on and on about something, too.

  “We got this new van, Pauley. The company bought her and, cowabunga my man, you ought to have a look. Of course she’s a her. A real beauty, goddamn honeymoon suite on wheels! Almost as nice as that Econoline you just let go! Hah! Yeah! Can’t have everything! Hardehardehar.…”

  Motherfucker, brooded Horseknocker, how’d you get so up?

  Willie’s voice caromed on. “So! You remember Tanktop? Sure you do. That tall blond towheaded guitar-strumming winsome lithe languid dilatory lackadaisical indolent sans-souci beachcombing piece of ass I introduced you to, hey? He who signed on with the company a mere six months ago and is already completely in charge of the mail-room? Up that corporate ladder and, careful, Mary, I can see up your skirt! Who indeed! Well, Tanktop and I are cruising in this new van, see? We got the stereo pumping, six-speaker surround with subwoofers under each seat and astrotweeters up where the skylight oughta be and–I mean, you gotta put your prostate on ice before you even get near Puccini in this machina! Listen to this!”

  Total distortion, possibly music.

  Horseknocker sipped beer.

  “Oh yeah! Did anybody fax you we figured out how to package a mild smallpox bacillus with the Junipero Serra model?”

  Hysterical laughter.

  “Just kidding, Pauley! We know you don’t have a fax machine.…”


  More laughter.

  “I love making this kid laugh! Such beautiful tonsils–”

  Total distortion.

  “–Soprano me, baby!”

  Horseknocker stared at the snake.

  “Anyway, so yesterday Tanktop says let’s take her out on the freeway, Daddy, and let the free winds blow. You only live once! The kid’s a philosopher! Besides, we had to run two gross of No. 3 cockrings down to that leather waterbed store in Redwood City and pick up this new car phone over to Iwo Jima Cellular in Mountain View, best prices in the Bay Area, which is why you haven’t heard from us lately. How’s the reception? Am I just beating my gums?”

  Gales of laughter. What the hell was so funny?

  “Get this! Tanktop says we should score one of those little four-sided yellow signs to hang in the back window, says–” Tanktop was laughing so hard Horseknocker could barely hear Willie, and Willie was laughing so hard Horseknocker could barely understand what he was trying to say, but what he was trying to say was, “Amyl On Board–Hey! Pop goes the weasel!–Get it?”

  Here a loud inhaling, a thorough filling of the lungs, then a long rodeo yell, as if Tanktop had just come out of a chute clinging to the hump of an enraged Brahma bull.

  Aha, thought Horseknocker, it’s still true, Willie the Funnel never stops stimulating himself, and right then it was amyl nitrite. Behind most human behavior there’s always a chemical, and how about that for a philosophy? But amyl nitrite at nine o’-clock on a Saturday morning? That’s pretty hard core. Not bad for Willie the Funnel, who is a guy at least fifty years old.

  Horseknocker looked at his bottle of pale Budweiser. How tacky, he thought, and he took a prudish sip of the wan beer.

  “No, wait! Wait! Only at Christmas! You know? Amyl and the Night Visitors!” More hysterical laughter. “–I’m dying…!”

  It took them a minute to get past that one.

  “So we.… Oh Christ. I’m choking! So we hit the on-ramp last p.m. and varoom, wow, this thing walks up that Oak St. ramp like it’s flatter than Mary off steroids, the scenery’s blasting past so fast we can’t even pay attention to it, there’s hardly any traffic, we just beat rush hour. And man, the fog’s not in yet, the sun’s bright, air quality’s good, we got the windows down and baby, the music’s pumping and this thing’s doing eighty before we know it! Slow down darling, yells Tanktop, you’re going to get yourself busted! He’s so practical, never done any hard time. So I slow it down to a pout, Pauley. Smooth as can be. I’ll tell you what, honey: this ride’s slicker than jalapeño lube on a brass bannister! Yeeouch! Okay. Now we’re doing the speed limit, or within ten percent. And I was just saying to Tanktop, You know Tank, I said, when I get tired of this van thing, I might just get a wild hair and give it to old Pauley. What’s a good guy like me do to express himself, huh? Give this van to old Pauley and buy myself another one and start a little fleet of vans. Drive these vans tout ensemble into the sunset, right out of this civilization and into a better world where everybody’s a pansexual hitchhiker and we got the only two vehicles in the whole universe. Am I a Vehicular Utopian, or what? Maybe even let the company pick up the insurance and license for Pauley, too, huh? Why not! He’s a good guy. Besides, we got a fleet policy. It’s cheap! It’s a write-off ! Expense it out!”