officer?’ gasped Joanna, reeling. ‘It’s a piranha, man! Bit my arm!’
‘Count yourself lucky pal,’ queased the fish in its synthetic voice. ‘Gemme off the floor Taff - spit on my gills someone I can’t breathe down here!’
‘Jed Helms is a credit to his species,’ Atom stated, stepping from behind the desk.
‘It aint duty Taff I was hungry is all.’
Atom retrieved the fish, spreading its pectoral fins. ‘All the best operatives are hungry - you’re in peak condition.’ He dumped the beast into the tank. It sculled languidly to the bottom, its eyes closing. Atom turned his fierce attention to Joanna.
Joanna staggered backward, clutching his arm. ‘Now don’t come near me you sonofabitch! This place is crazy - you both crazy!’
The wall-shadow behind Atom seemed to swell with malevolence as Atom declaimed. ‘You swan in here mouthing off about your phony name, your phony predicament, your phony pants, all the while telling me how I should dress - then you torture my colleague Jed Helms almost beyond his attention span. Get the hell out of here, or so help me I’ll ...’
‘What is wrong now with that imbecile?’ thought Turow as he saw Joanna slam out of the building and wheel toward him through the rain.
Joanna tore open the door and stuck his head in. ‘Drive, Dumpy, drive - there’s monsters in dah house!’
‘What?’ Turow spat as Joanna crammed himself into the car - he plucked the key from the ignition before Joanna could turn it, and held it behind him as the giant made a grab. ‘Calm down you fool, you’ll attract attention!’
‘He didn’t bite, Mr Turow - but looka dis toothmark.’ And he displayed what looked like the bite radius of a young shark, arced on his arm. ‘Don’t go in there Dumpy.’
‘Scared of a little yappy dog or something, a brute like you,’ Turow sneered. ‘And don’t call me Dumpy - stay here while I do a man’s work as it should be done.’ He unlocked and pushed out of the car, scuttling through the rain to the brownstone.
In the lobby he smartened himself up, then entered the elevator. Joanna probably called on some old woman whose only companion was a spaniel temperamental in the head. Simple enough. Fourth floor.
Well alright the place was a little creepy but was this not America land of the free? Let them have their dim wallpaper and dense doors.
Everything cruised around his own movements as he walked the hallway, so dreamlike he looked down to check for rollers. Microdread pinwheeled over the carpet, approaching him like a tide. His hair strained to stand on end, curling to question marks under its freight of grease.
Here was the door - ATOM AND DROWNER stencilled on blurglass. He rang the bell and after a pause the door burst open like an exit wound, gusts of methane clouding past him.
He stepped into the waiting room, which was a sky churning with fire and sonic explosions. Igniting magnesia stained the air and wind ripped expectation into ribbons. Here were heavens gone astray and panicking like bats, blinding his forehead and releasing a hailstorm of crisis. ‘Mr Atom?’ called Turow above the storm, his clothes ballooning with superstatic. ‘Are you available for business!’ He knuckled airtrash from his eyes, squinting agog through an atmosphere churning with near release. And the wind re-directed, buffing a sight-line through the roiling smog.
A resinous spine and ribs were suspended in midair, levitating in theatrical smoke. And amid the creeping fluorescence, inquisition fumes and white hot theta flashes, boomed a voice as though amplified through 50,000 watt speakertowers. And it said:
‘An office is a machine for dying.’
Turow began screeching like a vulture, mouth dry. He saw himself, diaphanous in his lack. This encounter was the very litmus of his courage and his face turned reflex blue. He found himself running, beyond his control. The building spat him out like an olive.
2 THE NUMB TOWN
Atom pulled on his pants and took the firepole to the garage. Drove through a dogma pageant, Cockroach Centrefold on the stereo. A bullet licked the paintwork. ‘What happens,’ he thought, ‘when the hitcher and the driver are equally murderous?’ Looking at this town with an honest eye was like biting into candy with a mouthful of cavities.
A bricolage block on Crane housed Madison Drowner’s apartment. Two guys were sparring on the sidewalk with boxing gloves made of tempera meringue. Passing them, Taffy saw the gloves were actually wooden heads removed from statues of the Virgin Mary.
Upstairs, Maddy ushered him in, walking away. ‘How they hanging.’
‘Geometrically.’
‘And I was just mixing some antifreeze.’
‘Guess I could use it. Guess we all could. Jed needs servicing.’
‘Of all the wild suggestions.’
‘Just a torn gill. We had a visitor came asking for it. It’s a cliché out there, baby.’
Maddy built a freeze to the sacred dimensions. Sometimes Atom wished he could kiss her brain directly. Her eyes, in defiance of the prevailing trend, were open. She was an angel as real as the bones in her body. ‘You’re warped, Taff. All that glee - it aint healthy.’
Atom took the glass of blue. ‘Health is subjective. I believe I’m evolving.’
‘Sure - into a dead man.’
‘Where’s your imagination?’
‘In the medicine cabinet.’ She regarded him over a drink. ‘You on a prank, Taff? Your forehead’s beating like a heart.’
‘Sanity’s a virginity of the mind, baby. Gimme a shock absorber.’ She lit one up between her lips and passed it to him. He breathed it in. ‘You know a girl by the name of Kitty Stickler?
‘Sure. Standard-issue blonde. All distinguishing marks removed. Rejects men who never noticed her. Rumours of a brain but nothing conclusive. Sings at the Creosote Palace.’
‘That a gun club?’
‘All the charm of a live bait store. The chandeliers are rubber - they don’t take any chances.’
‘Sounds like my kinda venue.’
‘Yeah - crash dummy heaven.’
‘That’s what I’m counting on. The greatest high in this graveyard nation is to have an effect.’
‘Effectiveness.’ She stood close to him, looking into and through his eyes. ‘They got a detox program for that?’
Atom chuckled. ‘You and your wet mouth.’ He pensively regarded his gasper. ‘I nearly depend on you, baby.’
‘You make me laugh,’ she said, ‘with your threats.’
The Creosote Palace was the last word in public disorder. Espousers of philosophies as diverse as Malraux gathered under one roof to engage in boisterous
