At 6:57, Ariel pushed into the Canal Street entrance of the Harlequin Hotel and strutted across the lobby, tsk-tsk-ing at its twee “N’Awlins” decor. He dodged a pair of gay husbands fussing over a stroller, which emitted a stream of earsplitting shrieks.
Who on earth would seek out such a responsibility? Ariel wondered.
The elevator clattered open and disgorged a tourist family of three. The mother and father wore helmets of heavily-sprayed hair; their reedy teenaged son slouched behind them, cap pulled down, nose in his phone, wearing a hoodie with the words “JESUS U” across the front. He bumped into Ariel and proceeded without looking up.
Poor kid, Ariel thought as he entered the elevator, considering that his own childhood raised by drug dealers might have been worse; at least they weren’t Fundamentalists.
Emerging on the uppermost floor, he took a hit of Binaca as he sauntered toward Room 805. He took a centering breath outside the door and knocked, waiting in a pool of harsh downlight.
Footsteps creaked behind the door, then stopped; his client was looking through the peephole, Ariel figured, whereupon the door opened to reveal a ruggedly handsome silver-Daddy type, a mat of chest hair curling from beneath a robe.
I can be into him, Ariel thought. This might even be fun.
“Hol’ up, there, cowboy,” the john drawled in an affected manner.
“Howdy, pardner,” Ariel responded playfully - but not too.
The man darted his eyes at Ariel, top-to-tail. “T’ain’t your first time at the rodeo.”
“If you want a virgin, the turnip truck’s outside,” Ariel replied lightly.
“So, ah, how old are you?”
“How old do I look?”
“Forties.”
“I slept like shit.”
“Pushing fifty,” the man sneered. “Definitely not what your madam advertised.”
“I was filling in last-minute.” Blood rushed to Ariel’s face. “Look, I can give you a discount, or-”
“Y’know one thing I don’t have much of? Time. I can’t do this at home. And you have wasted my fucking time.”
“It’s the goddamn light,” Ariel gestured at the cruel LED directly overhead. “Nobody looks good in a downspot.”
“Brother, your ass is way past its sell-by date. I ain’t sticking my dick in that dusty cunt.”
Ariel gasped.
“Get yourself some Geritol and consider your life choices.” The man threw a handful of twenties in Ariel’s face and slammed the door before they touched the ground.
For a long moment Ariel didn’t move. Then he turned, catching his reflection in a full-length mirror down the hall. The man reflected there was drawn, gaunt; the flesh on his cheeks hung from the bone in a way he never noticed before.
The queen in the mirror looked sad, standing there. He looked like he was trying.
Fucking hag.
Ariel glanced at the handful of bills scattered at his feet, then back up at the mirror, locking eyes with his reflection.
His reflection considered his options for a moment.
Ariel reached down.
#
As dusk receded into night over the Warehouse District, Ariel walked northeast past the steamships docked at the Woldenberg Park piers. He hopped down a wide cement staircase leading down to a beach of small boulders before the river shore.
He took a seat on the bottommost step, swinging his legs over the edge, gazing out at the river and the lights twinkling on the bridge beyond. A scabby male addict sprawled on the step a stone’s throw away, jaw ajar, nodded out.
Ariel ruminated over the gay fathers from the Harlequin lobby. As he sidestepped them en route to Room 805, their child was screaming like an air-raid siren and Ariel felt triumphant about his life choices.
But minutes later, as he passed the family on the slow march out, the fathers teased the now-giggling babe, raising her to the light with beatific grins on their faces, rocking her side to side, eyes shining all around.
I could be a grandfather by now, Ariel realized.
He had friends, sure, but no one to look after, nobody to mentor, none with whom he could break the centuries-long spell of dysfunction that cursed the Hooks lineage.
Hell, he could barely look after himself.
A blurry dread, once-fleeting, was harder to dismiss these days as it came inexorably into focus.
It’s never too late to admit it’s too late.
Glancing right and left, Ariel searched the vicinity. The immediate coast was clear. Who’s gonna give a fuck anyway?
He withdrew a sunglasses case from his front pocket and snapped it open. He shook a rolled-up hanky onto his lap and unrolled the fabric. A small medical serum bottle dropped out, followed by a fresh one-CC, 29-gauge half-inch syringe.
Ariel’s eyes followed the Canal Ferry as it chugged across the Mississippi to Algiers Point. He expertly uncapped the point by feel, held the cap between his ring and pinky finger, plunged the needle into the vial’s rubber membrane and flipped it over. Gripping the syringe with his thumb and fourth finger, he withdrew the plunger with his second and third, never once looking down. He’d done it a million times.
A full CC bubbled into the vacuum. When the plunger ceased to tug, he withdrew the point and raised the needle to his left shoulder, faking a yawn as he penetrated the meat of the muscle, toughened from countless prior injections.
He glanced eastward as the liquid penetrated, then west - locking eyes with the addict sprawled on the bottommost step, who woke up for some fucking reason. He blinked at Ariel in disbelief.
“Yo.” The stranger’s eyes were concerned. Paternal, even. “You gotta find a vein, bro. You fixin’ for an abscess.”
With the plunger fully depressed, Ariel plucked the point from his shoulder and capped it. “Not with this. It’s Ketamine. Goes in the muscle.”
The addict squinted. “Ain’t that horse tranquilizer?”
Ariel returned his rig to his pocket. “Neiggghhh, not in my case.” He rubbed the injection site and smirked:
“It’s whore’s tranquilizer.”
Ariel locked eyes with the stranger, who gaped back at Ariel, then fell out again, his head dropping to the cement step with a clunk.
Tough crowd, Ariel thought.
He put his hands behind his head and leaned back, stretching his legs, as the Mississippi lapped at the shore beyond his heels.
The humiliations of the prior hour trickled from Ariel’s awareness as a gentle rain of fractal hallucinations washed over his mind’s eye, developing into a shower, then a summer storm, now a flood, all-encompassing, rising to crescendo without ending until he just wasn’t Ariel any more.
###
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