Mission: Impissible

Unearthing a short story I wrote in the late 80s

Mookie Spitz
43 min readJan 14, 2024

Quick backstory to the short story:

After my latest move, from the Lower East to Upper West Side of NYC, I had no more room for dozens of three-ringed binders, so digitized thousands of pages of my unpublished writing. Creative juices flowing, I’ve started dipping into this long-forgotten vault, finding blemished gems. A few are worthy of polishing, and bringing to the light of day.

I wrote the story below when I was twenty-two, living in the San Fernando Valley. The zany Pynchon influences are glaring, as are my many novice mistakes: Telling not showing, writing for writing’s sake, trying to sound smart, forcing the drama through narration instead of setting the characters loose to solve their problems, among others.

Recently unearthing this and cleaning it up a bit has been revealing. I sensed at the time I wasn’t ready for prime time, yet for a first crack at a finished story I give myself mild retroactive kudos. Finding one’s unique voice is the essence of every artist’s quest, emulation and experimentation as steps along that tortuous but rewarding path.

The journey back also triggers images and emotions from my early 20s. I observe and feel the same “me,” but with the manic energy and relentless enthusiasm of youth, hedging the inertia of inexperience and fear of failure. The expression “young, dumb, and full of come” permeates every line of this tediously impulsive, lazily over-wrought story.

What I do like about this quirky fossil are the inchoate techniques and themes explored later in life as I’ve matured as a writer, and as a person. A filmmaker like Richard Linklater could rotoscope it; a novelist like Bret Easton Ellis could supercharge its whiffs of depravity and gore; while a self-critic like Mookie Spitz wants to rewrite it from scratch.

Perhaps you’ll enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed rebirthing it. Out on a limb, I’m seeing this frolicking, self-conscious mess as a chipped cubic zirconia jewel. If nothing else, exposing the vulnerabilities of my youth encourages me to further indulge those of my older, bolder self. Everything has changed, while nothing has: I love writing.

Here goes…

OZONE HOLES

An exercise in black, white, and Day-Glo, in which Veronica Floss discovers electric love, Merlin Schrewdinger comes into existence long enough to flip back out, and Bobby Ozone falls into a hole he can never get back out of…

A good deal could be said about Bobby Ozone’s Venice Beach flat, starting with the view.

The pad had three windows: a smoky latticework portal in the kitchen, too small for bodily escapes, but versatile enough for the evacuation of contraband seven floors down to the alley where his accomplices could pick it up after a raid; a large, double-paneled bay window in the living room, ideal for jumps to the wrought iron fire escape landing a few feet below; and the nearly opaque stained glass window in the can that was frozen shut, unable to release the noxious fumes produced by whatever happened to be brewing in Ozone’s chipped tub.

Standing on crates of citrus fruit haphazardly stacked in a corner next to the dilapidated refrigerator and directly across from the stove that leaked, the Curious Observer could gaze out and down to the alley that separated the building where Ozone’s Crew camped from the back doors of several stores facing Overland Boulevard, a block to the north.

Among the rancid trash bins strewn about, and the homeless calling the few yards or so between the brick walls home for an evening, was placed an innocuous looking white, cylindrical plastic bucket that once housed ten gallons of distilled water, but which now had stenciled on it DRUGS, and serving as a drop target in case of Emergencies.

The container was Sergio Fanatic’s idea, a welcome alternative to impulsively flushing their goods down the toilet, costing the gang major coins. The plastic bucket had originally been a small rusty iron barrel before James Underworld used it to create an improvised explosive device that demolished their apartment a few days earlier. The smashed furniture was still strewn about, the dust not yet settling.

Ha-wahwahwahwahwah!” taunted Sergio from the alley below, intensity in his beady bloodshot eyes, the coast again declared clear, at least for today.

“Wha,” a tense Ozone exclaimed, waving down for his partner in crime to bring the shit back up, another false alarm precipitating their most recent utilization of the backup bail-out bucket.

“Give me your woman, amigo, then maybe I give you back your smack,” teased Fanatic, referring to Veronica Floss, Ozone’s girlfriend — a slight to which Bobby responded by hurling a gluttonous, two-and-a-half pound frozen grapefruit, launched with a telemetry accurate enough to force The Serge into evasive action behind the nearest trash bin.

BOOM!” said the grapefruit upon impacting the pavement at thirty feet per second, sending scintillating shards of frozen pink pulp and yellow rind into amorous convulsions against brick, stone, and garbage.

“I come back when you change your mind, Roberto!” yelled Fanatic as he grabbed the large baggy from the drop bucket, the goodies inside still dry. He dashed through the alley, out of sight in a flash.

Ozone wasn’t phased, the ruse all-too familiar, the Mad Italian and his boys faking a police raid to have Bobby freak, throw his drugs out the kitchen window, then snatch his stash to make their own cash.

Without fail, Sergio and his boys would eventually return the goods, but not until selling what he deemed his cut with the help of his twisted associates. They hung out only a few blocks away, working their trade, often getting their kicks near Muscle Beach by throwing beer bottles at teenagers and Japanese tourists naive enough to walk near Santa Monica pier After Hours.

No, what actually worried Bobby was Veronica, whom he remembered was still in the bathroom, using the excuse of the bullshit DEA raid to do lines by herself off the salmon-colored sink. She was a precocious young woman who had sacrificed the puerile bliss of Hollywood High School for lower grade decadence, for the chic of bigger time drugs, for an older boy trying to get his Sugar Daddy chops, for — gulp — Ozone’s love.

So he got down off the citrus crates, scurried across the cluttered room trying to be a kitchen, hung a sharp left past the hocked electric guitars, amplifiers, and various audio-visual equipment strewn about in various states of stolen or loaned complexity, then made his way into the ravaged living room resplendent with a once green, once fully intact sofa that Billy California had borrowed from the nearby Salvation Army warehouse.

Along the way Ozone almost stepped on the tattered remains of Jim Underworld’s nearly unrecognizable, rancid sleeping bag, an action that would no doubt entail dire consequences to the steppee, to be perpetrated by the stepper (should he ever return). The menace to Ozone’s Crew had vanished after he planted and detonated his IED, all of them hoping this time he would be gone forever.

Bobby sighed, and leaped over the rubble that was once the wall separating his bedroom from the living room, made a right down the hallway leading to the apartment’s lone bathroom. A picture of Frank Zappa sitting on a toilet was hung over same. Frank was naked, hairy, grimacing gleefully and guitarless, the very embodiment of the cheapnis he glorified.

Ozone finally entered the bathroom and found Veronica, now in the tub, slightly overweight with affection and other loveliness, alluringly so, busy blowing bubbles. “Hi hi Bobby,” she chortled, in between bloops and pops. “Serge on your nerves?”

Bloop, bloop. Pop, pop.

“Naw, just target practice, sweetie,” said Bobby, scoping out Ms. Floss, majestically covered with zillions of shiny translucent air pockets, gripping every pore, hugging every orifice.

Veronica looked seductive, in a contrived way, as if she had plenty of time to prepare the alluring scene during the fake vice raid and thwarted reverse airlift. At first terrified of getting busted by the cops, Veronica lost all of her fears about hanging out with these eccentric misfits and incompetent hooligans every time Sergio’s shenanigans cried wolf.

Sighing heavily, as if either bored or enamored by herself or both, Veronica leaned back, her long black hair wet and clinging, baby fat shimmering, thickly layered pink Day-Glo lipstick with sparkles scintillating, knees bent as a 60 degree angle. She sported a bubble bra, bubble blanket, navel exposed and winking hi, big smile whispering “love me” to long awaited Bobby O. and his head full of smack.

Too much for now, thought Ozone, his senses overloaded. He would have leaped into the warm tub with Veronica, if not for the the battle royale with Underworld still fresh, the debris from the blast still covering most of the apartment in a layer of bad memories.

“How ‘bout a song, babe?” was all Veronica could hear him mumble as Ozone turned around in overdrive, and ended up back down the hall in the living room, slouched on Billy’s sofa. He grabbed a guitar, started playing “Mister Tambourine Man” all wrong and too loud before Veronica could get the bubbles off and a robe on, joining him, flustered.

She approached, horny and sultry, like Cleopatra wooing Marc Anthony, who, not yet a Caesar, nonetheless had a shot and warranted the princess’ affection. Veronica liked being pursued, and loved being teased by a lover who wanted to pursue her, but was often too intimidated or wasted to do so. Living for the game, endlessly titillated by oscillating binges of attention and rejection, she sat down next to him, purring, the sofa going creeeeeek.

Silence and a stare, she asked.

Raunchy chord progressions on an out of tune guitar was his only response.

“Bo-bby,” she pleaded, exasperated, nerve racking tugs at a denim collar.

“Baby Face,” nodded Bobby, still strumming. “What up.”

“Did you miss me?”

“Every damn day.”

“You saw me yesterday,” said Veronica, calling bullshit.

“I missed you then, too,” replied Bobby, blushing.

Good an-swer!”

Sudden rapping and tapping at the door. “Not again,” thought Bobby.

Frozen hands, a quick Ozone glance to the door, at Veronica, then a reflex G-major chord, somehow fingered into a tweaked suspended fourth that rang out from the amplifier innards, sound waves emanating into a room with the acoustic properties of a living arrangement recently minus a wall.

Another rap, more urgent, another look at Veronica.

“Polizia!” shouted a voice behind the door, instantly flipping the mood from terror to trust back to terror. The accent should have been obvious, let alone the annoucement, ha ha.

“You’ll never take me alive, you bastards!” screamed credulous, paranoid Ozone, acting on pure impulse, not a thought in his head, Our Hero having learned nothing from the fire drill escapades only moments before.

Bobby dashed to the living room window, flung it open, gave Veronica a reassuring wink and salute that tried to say “Be Brave, Love,” as he jumped to the fire escape sanctuary of rickety, rusted iron, designed to save lives.

Veronica watched her lover transform from serenading stud to drug-addled loser and sighed, retreating to the bliss of bubbles and bathroom, stopping for a few bumps along the way. She didn’t bother opening the front door on her way past it, and left the room free for Sergio and his pals Alberto and Koko to open the unlocked door and stroll right in, their laughter paving the way inside.

Short and enormous Alberto went right to the fridge, finding nothing but empty coffee cans and frozen citrus. Tall and lanky Koko sat right down on the disintegrating tatty sofa, singing “Volare” using a hash pipe for microphone, waving his arms around.

No sign of life, and not bothering to look for any, the Tres Amigos made themselves at home. Koko shuffled through Ozone’s records, appalled, compromising with some scratchy Jimi Hendrix. Alberto popped a cassette into the VCR and sloppily devoured grapefruit, while Sergio plotted his next caper. He wondered whether or not to toss a crate of grapefruit out the bay window to squash Signore Bob, injury to the insult of his fake drug bust. Ozone was certainly still hiding there, ten feet below, listening, gazing up up up the stairs, imagining the cops bursting into his apartment, salvation and common sense long ago giving up on him.

Veronica sauntered back out of the bathroom squish squish squish and sat right next to Sergio and his boys on the sofa as if they had already been hanging out together all day long. Feeling the same way, Koko winked at her and nonchalantly got up and strolled back down the corridor to take her place in the bathroom. Climbing onto the toilet seat and standing on the throne, he started taking a piss, staring at Frank, leaving the bathroom door wide open for all to see.

“I feel bueno bueno,” sighed Koko with satisfaction, fully armed, poised in action, addressing his two dimensional genius N of 1 audience, then peering down, tracking his warm glistening stream. “And will feel much better when I deliver myself to you, my white Porcelain Goddess. May the vitality of my soul not be diluted… May the driving force of Being, my raw, effervescent essence flow through you, into you… May my passion for life become renewed, enriched with new found purity, momentary bliss…”

Ha-wahwahwahwahwah!” blurted Veronica, taking another bong hit with the grace of an anorexic ballerina, which she was the opposite of, sacrificing life for art, which she never did. “Is that the way to act with a Lady around?”

“Si si, off the trono, my poet,” commanded Sergio, throwing a copy of de Sade’s Juliette someone had stolen from the Santa Monica Public Library, the salacious novel impacting square against Koko’s ass.

“Carajo!” shouted Koko.

Sergio smiled at Veronica, still calmly seated next to him on the sofa, these transitions in Ozone’s pad somehow both awkward and effortless. “Pardon my associate, for he is but a child.”

There they lurked, smoking and bullshitting amid the high technology. Veronica felt at ease again for the first time since the apartment exploded, Sergio and the boys still ruminating over the incident but having endured far, far worse. Before the fake raid they created earlier, the dream team had been downtown, taking care of business and hustling in the streets below, and now appreciated coming up and in from the heat. Triggering another fake raid, and sending Bobby out the window and plummeting onto the fire escape felt like reclaiming their normal, bringing them all back to baseline.

Ozone’s pad was always good for an entertaining chillax, for many months the Tres Amigos second home, a place to return to, to remember, to laugh, then to forget. Sergio would sometimes arrived by himself, climbing the shadowy and noisome stairwell, reading the graffiti, gladly taking in the smell of urine and garbage, a scent as familiar as it remained rank, fitting welcome to the two bedroom dump above and everything it contained — and didn’t.

His favorite part of these impromptu visits was rekindling his friendship with Bobby, and his favorite part of his friendship with Bobby was Bobby dating Veronica. The couple’s Flying Dutchman, he loved to depart and return, feel their ongoing passion, gawk at Veronica’s lovely if unwarranted adoration of all things Ozone, then leave. Naive yet somehow wise in her pink lipstick, she wore her heart on her sleeve, a beautiful sight for his jaded soul to behold. Satiated, he’d vanish until hungry again, returning.

Veronica looked forward to his visits, too, even if annoyed by his and his boys’ incessant pranks. She had fled the alienation and boredeom of her bougie world for this new adventure, this Cowardly New World, and had found her place. At first she took simple delight in being accepted within their ranks, reveling in the shattering of norms, and the freedom found near the edge. After her initiation, the place became Home, and Bobby became her Manchild.

Things got officially real for Veronica when Bobby’s mannerisms and desires became hers, and his denim and stale cigarette breath became theirs. She had fallen in love, and that love was the love of losing herself and everything she had once valued, everything she ran away from, not wanting to ever look back.

Sergio understood and took his own solace from her desire. Despite his ongoing act of stealing her away for himself, holding Ozone’s drugs hostage as bait, he honestly didn’t desire her in any way, at least that way. He knew that her passionate attraction to someone else — a best friend, a frequent rival— was what drew him to unfamiliar heights. Their naive and innocent romance offered him safety at a distance, the indulgence of observation, even if picant and titillating. Getting a bit jelly triggered feelings Sergio couldn’t find anywhere else.

None of them would consciously acknowledge it, let alone say it out loud, but they had become Family. Snuggled on the tatty couch, The TV and stereo were both on, everybody talking simulttneously about Koko’s poetic urinary habits, and arguing whether or not Frank Zappa was a genius. Apocalypse Now blazed on screen, Marlon Brando sweating and chanting “the horror, the horror,” as the film’s already epic soundtrack was loudly and randomly supplanted by Jimi Hendrix, cranked through a jerry-rigged amp, singing “let me stand next to your fire…”

Ozone crawled back up from the fire escape and leaped into the room a few moments later as if nothing had happened, visibly disoriented but no worse from his scare. He felt stupid for yet again falling for Sergio’s obvious prank, but was soon over it after getting wasted with the same people who just tried to steal all his drugs.

“You once ate a million-Scoville habanero pepper, didn’t you, Alberto?” teasted Koko.

Two million,” boasted Alberto.

“Bullshit,” said Ozone as he scrunched into the sofa. on the opposite side from Veronica, acting coy, reaching for the pipe.

“He didn’t ask you,” giggled Veronica.

“He did, he did,” insisted Koko, pointing, sticking fingers in his throat, holding his breath long enough to turn a shade red, then going “Glahhhhhghhhhh…

The five foot nothing, two hundred pound, deep raspy-voiced Mexican frowned, as if to demonstrate the arduousness of the challenge. “Si si,” said Alberto, “but I only did it because you say it clear the clap, pocito. Anyway, I bust your head in a sewer to let you know that it didn’t.”

Wide as he was tall, Alberto reached over for another frozen grapefruit, and shattered it against his forehead.

Koko laughed until he started gasping on the smoky and stale, reefer-baked air. The burned out electrical outlet odor created by Underworld’s exploded bomb still permeated Ozone’s pad, the irony lost on everyone, especially Bobby.

“Wow,” said Veronica, yawning. She’d already seen this stunt at least a dozen times, now as predictable and boring as Sergio’s fake drug busts.

“Can you do that again?” asked Ozone.

Koko and Alberto dived into an iced-grapefruit shard reconnaissance mission, stoned and using hammers to smash the remains around them into oblivion.

Bam! Bam! Bam!

The loud noises reminded them of their half-demolished apartment, the conversation turning to the now legendary and intensely feared perpetrator as the napalm scene hit on the TV screen, and Jimi started feeding back on the stereo.

“Have you seen Crazy Man since the boom-boom?” Sergio asked Bobby, who was now picking his teeth with a glistening switchblade.

“Billy and me bolted downtown last night in his VW Bug to pick up some mushrooms from this weird dealer, Merlin Schrewdinger,” stammered Bobby, his habit of starting a story too late and ending it too early again on full display. “Some times you saw him, some times you didn’t.”

“Hey, let me see the blade,” interrupted Koko, taking a break from his frozen grapefruit shard seek-and-destroy stoner assignment, in between pulverizations.

Silencio,” snapped Alberto, grabbing Koko by the neck and addressing him with tender delicacy. “Maybe we practice polizia party again, and this time I throw you down to the bucket. You like?”

“Schrewdinger didn’t show up, like he sometimes didn’t,” continued Bobby, taking a hit between breaths, exhaling, “until he showed up, which he sometimes did.”

“No shit,” said Koko, unable to contain himself.

Sergio stared him back into smashing frozen grapefruit with a hammer.

Bam! Bam!

“Merlin was acting sketchy after he showed up,” continued Bobby, “like he couldn’t wait to not show up. Feeling suss, I rolled down my window, wanted to get the deal over with — the flashing cop car lights helping to speed things up.”

“Po Po!” shouted Alberto.

“Did you shit your pants?” asked Koko.

Again?” said Veronice, bursting into an hysterical giggle.

“So Schrewdinger chills at the side of the road, lets the squad car roll right by us, ‘Hi, Officer,’ Billy waving like some dumb surfer, which, I guess, he is, the police finally at a safe distance when Merlin comes running across to the car. He reaches into his jacket, and pulls out his stash, real bulging like, too big to be just what we wanted.”

Ozone uses hands and facial expressions to graphically depict approximate volume and mass, respectively, though slightly exaggerated for the purpose of effective narration.

“‘Here’s your shrooms,’” continued Bobby, imitating Merlin’s distinctive drawl, “‘and here’s something else you need to take…’”

“Since when is a drug dealer giving you drugs?” asked Sergio.

“You just never know with that weirdo,” suggested Koko.

“I call bullshit,” said Alberto, balancing a frozen grapefruit on his head.

“And what does any of this have to do with Jim?” asked Veronica, bringing the meandering story back down to Earth, or at least their ruined apartment.

“Check this out,” said Ozone, standing up, walking over to Veronica’s side of the sofa, and reaching under her cushion.

“Hey, there, Big Boy,” winked Veronica. “I’m a nice girl, remember?”

Ozone grabbed the stash and tossed it onto the small busted card table, another piece of Early Californiesque. Out poured handfuls of multicolored twisters, gristors, resistors; dozens of encapsulated zoners, groners, heavy-duty muscle and brain toners; one sheet of blotter LSD decoratively covered with differential equations; at least an ounce of cocaine that Alberto would gladly have sprinkled over his morning Cheerios; and several ounces of Lebanese hash, aroma so sweet that Koko lost complete control, making the lunge, this time Sergio neutralizing the savant with a quick wrist slap — pendejo!

“That shit has James written all over it,” cautioned Sergio.

“That’s what I thought, too,” agreed Bobby.

“Why the fuck would he give you his drugs?” asked Koko.

Veronica asked the even more obvious. “Did he get busted by the cops?”

“More like trying to avoid that possibility,” replied Ozone, responding more to the group than to Veronica, “we don’t know for sure.”

“We did give him a place to stay,” said Veronica, suddenly nostalgic despite the carnage around them, and the freakiness of having him living there for a few months.

“Yeah, and now he must be on the streets again,” said Koko.

“As well he should be,” added Alberto. “He blew our fucken place up!”

My fucken place,” clarified Ozone.

“Come on, Bobby,” frowned Sergio. “After all that we do for you?”

The Crew stared at the little mountain of drugs on the table in front of them, which felt like tainted treasure. Remnants of Underworld’s handiwork surrounded them like the set of a B-movie or the stage of a bad community theatre production: paint peeled, furniture destroyed, layers of dust and debris on every surface, the missing wall exposing Bobby and Veronica’s exposed, unmade bed.

Ozone’s Crew knew that Underworld didn’t need friends to do his dirty work. Born and raised in the South, James had drifted to the West Coast a loner, bolsered by degrees in chemistry and electrical engineering, and pursued by several legit gigs he got easily and lost quickly, plus other uncertain, rather mysterious circumstances.

Several months prior to his bombing of Bobby’s pad, Ozone and Fanatic were minding their own business, dealing tea-reefers and heebie-jeebies near the beach, when they were intercepted by several members of the Latino biker gang whose territory they inadvertently — and quite literally — stumbled into.

Blitzed, in no shape to rumble and hopelessly outnumbered, they made a dash for an underpass. Bad idea. The rest of the gang, at least a dozen in number, were waiting at the other side, rumbling motorcycles, drawn chains, knives, leather, mean looks of marginalization, power in a powerless world. Lights out would have been their fate had not Mr. James Underworld, homeless at the time for reasons beyond his control, of course, been sleeping on a bench nearby, black bandana covering his bearded face, garbage bag for a blanket.

Waking from with the commotion and siding with the weak for the sole sake of joining a more challenging confrontation, Underworld set upon his arbitrary enemies with the gusto and streetwise finesse of one completely obsessed, most comfortable in his own wickedness, letting the beast out.

The gang members were caught off guard, found themselves on the receiving end of several racial slurrs, and splashes of a searing substance James dispensed from a plain glass bottle, the hooligans quickly and randomly dispersing with roaring cycles, burning rubber, smoke, and insults in Spanglish.

“What the hell was that?” asked Ozone, impressed.

“Concentrated sulfuric acid,” said Underworld, tossing the empty bottle into a trash heap. “Effective for cleaning motorcycle parts, and parting ways with motorcyclists.”

“You’re the Freako Bandito!” exclaimed Fanatic.

Ozone and Sergio took Underworld and his sleeping bag home, and the three became fast friends. For a few months he thrived as the crew’s strategic muscle and certified chemical engineer. The scientist soon got put to work testing then spiking their stash. A whiz kid, James figured out how to make acid and bennies in the tub. Meth was on his list, but the initial stench freaked Veronica out, and put a kibosh on his chemistry.

Her frequent visits made having Jim around a bit awkward, but he proved to be respectful, kept to himself, and was never a problem. Veronica considered him strange but nice enough, eerily silent and kind of creepy.

“He walks around here like a serial killer,” she told Bobby one night, huddled inside his blankets, feeling paranoid.

“How are serial killers supposed to walk?” asked Bobby, really wanting to know.

“Serial killers aren’t supposed to walk,” replied Veronica, noticing his sudden erection. “They just walk.”

Despite a few lingering fears, Underworld became a great addition to the crew — until he began talking Revolution. A lifestyle that was for Ozone, Fanatic, and friends just a way of making a few bucks while copping a buzz was for Underworld another vehicle of destruction, another outlet for hate. Whether society had somewhere done him wrong, or whether his need for its negation came from some internal force, remained open to speculation. What remained certain was the intensity and relentlessness of this nihilist drive, and Underworld’s complete enslavement to it.

Enthusiastic membership to various subversive groups soon degenerated into non-partisan terrorism, Underworld utilizing reason and technical know-how from his previous existence in corporate R&D to execute vile actions, and remain aloof from the bounds of Law & Order.

“This fucken guy has got to stop fucken shit up,” said Koko, alarmed by the word he was hearing on the street.

“Is he the one who ate the leftovers in the fridge?” wondered Alberto.

Madonna!” cried out Sergio.

Love her,” grinned Veronica.

“He’s cool,” insisted Bobby, in denial of his excesses to maintain access to his mad skills. “Jimmy B. Good.”

Ozone and Fanatic tolerated and ignored Jame’s shady escapades, as long as he kept to himself and was available when needed. But Underworld realized that if one maniac with a mission could wreak havoc, several more under his direction could produce real mayhem, and sought to recruit his companions as anarchist underlings.

“We can destroy Hollywood High School,” Jim suggested over organic pizza, procured by Veronica. Ozone’s Crew was surprised, their creepy roommate usually taciturn and brooding, not plotting world destruction. “We can use gelled gasoline. I can make it in the bathtub.”

“I hate that place,” smiled Veronica. “Go for it.”

“How the hell you gonna do that?” smirked Ozone, munching away, another bout of the munchies in full force.

“We can utilize various seemingly innocuous household substances,” Underworld explained, stone cold sober. “A combination of gasoline, whiskey, and bar soap would do the trick. We merely pour gasoline into the tub, adding the ethyl alcohol and flaked cakes in specific proportions, stirring until the mixture congeals against the top and sides of the bathtub.”

“Wha,” said Ozone.

“Other possibilities are also available,” continued Underworld. “Substituting egg whites for the whiskey, we can use cocoa, sugar, dried tea. leaves, even aspirin.”

“I have no headache, amico,” countered Sergio.

I do,” winked Veronica at Bobby, who shrugged and rolled his eyes.

Underworld’s enthusiasm increased as he spoke, eyes glazed, beard bristling with anticipation. “With latex paint we can mix salad dressing or battery acid. Here we need to be more careful, adding seven parts by volume of paint,” gazing at Sergio, “or only one part by volume of Italian dressing.”

“That’s racist,” said Koko.

“Shut the fuck up,” said Alberto.

“We could take out the whole high school in one pop,” boasted Underworld. He visualized sonic concussion, shattering glass, searing flames, collapsing buildings, screaming girls.

“And, and — and then what, Jim?” said Bobby, concerned. “I mean, what the hell do we do with that stuff once we got it?”

“That’s when the real fun begins,” continued Underworld as entrepreneur, teacher, messiah, giving a Death 101 lecture. For whatever reason he thought his enthusiasm for mass murder would excite his roommates, motivate them to join him.

“Is this guy for real?” laughed Veronica, blowing smoke rings, referring to Underworld in the third person as she often did when people around her were annoying, inscrutable, or arousing.

“We remove the material from the bathtub, then place it into a container, perferably metallic to maximize the shrapnel potential,” continued Underworld, pantomiming the processes as he spoke. “Another option is to securely fasten large and long carpenter’s nails along the outside, or placing the entire device inside a glass vessel, translucent. Detonators are no problem. Matchbook, perhaps an electric light bulb.”

“I don’t really knew there, Jim,” worried Ozone. “Right now business is pretty good in that neighborhood, school vacations and all, and I don’t think we need the extra heat or a real bust, ya know? Remember the close call we had just last week when — ”

“ — We can also use blood,” interrupted Ozone, pulling heavily on his cigarette. “Real human blood.”

Underworld looked at Ozone, Ozone whispered to Fanatic, Fanatic and Ozone now pretty nervous. Ms. Floss, usually sensitive to crazy shit like this, still couldn’t take Underworld seriously.

“Yessir,” added James. “Lime or baking soda. works well with that, too.”

“Uh, no,” replied Ozone, feeble, shaking his head, sweating, but having enough. “Forget it. We appreciate the service in the park, Jimmy, the muscle, the hustle, the lab work, but forget it. We take enough risks as it is, and I kinda like Hollywood High School, kind of sentimental, you know?”

Veronica blushed, curtseyed, blew Bobby a kiss.

Underworld’s body language changed, his discomfort making the whole crew uncomfortable. Veronica finally felt the threat, too, especially after mention of her alma mater getting blasted sank in.

“We need that business, too,” added Bobby. “Besides, I think the street would look pretty weird without the building and all, or it turned to a smoking mound of rumble cause of us.”

Underworld’s disappointment and anger toward society instantly shifted to anger and disappointment toward Ozone’s Crew, making them cringe. None of them liked the idea of becoming James’ new target.

Enraged, Underworld extinguished his cigarette in the card table, leaped up, and stormed out the door without a passing glance, middle finger salute, or reply.

“Phew,” sighed Sergio.

Pinche cabron,” said Koko.

“Let’s order a pizza,” suggested Alberto.

“I got a bad feeling about this,” said Bobby.

“I told you he’s a serial killer,” frowned Veronica.

Mamma mia!” shouted Sergio. “He’s a serial killer?”

“No,” said Bobby, shaking his head. “I just think he’s a terrorist.”

“My bet is on Hollywood High School,” said Veronica, half-joking, half-terrified. “That place will kick anyone’s ass.”

Not without appreciation for metaphor, James Underworld pissed off decided to construct a deadly weapon from piss.

Before taking off to the legit drug and old school hardware stores to buy the needed ingredients, Underworld grabbed the rusty iron barrel from the alley, and noticed that within the squat metal cylinder sat a cellophane baggy full of discarded marijuana seeds, which he pocketed. He took the bag and the bucket with him.

With money made from his work with his friends, he started the process of blowing up his friends: He bought a small jar of Italian hot peppers, two screws, a thin round metal plate that he estimated would approximately fit snug inside the pepper bottle, a small bottle of nitric acid, a lantern battery, plastic gloves, some G.I. Joe toy blasting caps, several wires with weird psychdelic patterns all over them, a hand drill, and a screwdriver.

He then walked over near the pier to where several old drunkard acquaintances were huddled by a small fire, fueled by several discarded Sunday editions of the Times. An improvised grill had been set up in case any edible charity were offered by tourists or local residents not already fed up with their squatting.

Pete, one of the bums, was sitting on an upside down, innocuous looking, white, cylindrical plastic container that once housed ten gallons of distilled water, but which now had written upon it “FOOD,” hoping to be filled up with anything even close to that description. Originally used for donations, now being adapted for a somewhat less idealistic, though infinitely more practical, aim, the bucket acted like a magnet, the nexus of their operations, drawing and keeping the group together. For now Pete had declared himself King, and was the first to catch Underworld approaching with his potpourri of items.

“Going to visit your parents, Jimmy?” he asked, looking up from the flame.

“Nope,” replied Underworld. “I’m on my way to making a deadly weapon.”

“Sounds good,” said Snyde, lying in the grass half asleep. At some point a marketing consultant, he was the only one in the group who claimed to be without a drinking or drug problem. “How can we help?”

Pete was summarily dethroned, the container inverted, all the bums directed by Underworld to urinate into it, single file. Seeing that he would probably not have his seat back for a good while, Pete tossed the funnies he wasn’t reading into the flames, and they went up with a whooosh.

Underworld was the last to piss into the plastic container. He poured the urine into the hollow metal shaft of the rusty bucket, then set the odd conglomeration on top of the rickety grillwork set over the fire, allowing its foul contents to slowly evaporate with the heat. Flames danced yellow and orange beneath it.

As the wino piss simmered, he covered the plastic container’s top with his black bandana, securing it with some shoelace string most generously supplied by Snyde, who was by now taking keen interest in the whole process. As the urine continued to steam, he distributed the peppers to his friends and emptied the peppino juice onto the grass.

“Don’t do that,” blirted Pete, “it’ll kill the grass.”

“Why’d you bring the peppers?” asked Charlie.

“I needed another bottle,” said James.

“Why didn’t you just buy a bottle, then?” asked Snyde.

“I thought you boys would like some peppers,” said James.

“Some food would have been nice,” quipped Pete.

“I love me some peppinos!” shouted Charley excitedly.

“At least now I don’t have to worry about getting syphilis,” added Snyde, wiggling his upper between index finger and thumb, biting down hard, the distinct aroma of bum, piss, and hot peppers now enveloping them.

Underworld poured a handful of seeds from the cellophane baggie into the empty glass jar, placed the metallic disk inside, then screwed the plastic cap back on the jar. With the hand drill he bored two holes about an inch apart through the lid, screwed one screw in each, both about an inch or so down into the jar.

A small crowd had gathered to watch the spectacle: three-pieced business execs on lunchbreak, secretaries also on lunchbreak fleeing business execs, students fleeing their studies, housewives just fleeing, other bums just bumming, pigeons pigeoning — Underworld’s science experiment gave everyone something to do. They thought he a sorcerer, doing some sort of black magick.

“What the hell is that?” asked Charley, feeling as though he had a right to know, having personally contributed to the project by supplying some of the raw material.

“That is the detonator,” responded Underworld, pointing to the transformed pepper jar.

“Oh,” said Charley.

After a while the boiling urine was close to one tenth its original volume. Wearing the plastic gloves, Underworld removed the rusty bucket from the ersatz grill, poured its simmering contents through the black bandana filter, and into the white plastic container. Removing the cloth, he added most of the nitric acid to the purified piss, and shrouded the rusty bucket with the bandana, again tying it down with the help of Snyde’s generosity.

Allowing the mixture to cool down some, James then again poured it back through the bandana, this time small crystals collecting, caught by the cloth sieve. Taking the plastic container to the waves, he washed it out with a stroke of an arm, then filled it with briny, polluted ocean water, with which he promply poured over the urea ntirate crystals that had formed, cleansing them. Allowing the crystals to dry for a few moments, he dropped them into a clean cellophane baggy.

The crowd that had gathered around him applauded.

“I sincerely thank all of you for your assistance in this matter,” bowed Underworld, giving Snyde back his shottlaces. “I could not have done it without you.”

“Whatcha gonna blow up?” asked Pete.

“Just some friends,” replied Underworld.

“Oh,” said Pete.

Underworld gathered up the baggy full of crystals, reefer seed activated detonator, assorted wires, blasting caps and lantern battery, and placed them all inside the white plastic container that he then heaved atop his shoulders.

“You guys can keep the rest,” he said, electrical schematics and apartment structural integrity floating in his mind. “Hope they will help some.”

“Help how?” asked Pete.

“Figure it out,” said Snyde.

“Easy for you to say,” said Charley.

“I didn’t say anything at all,” said Pete.

“I wasn’t asking you,” said Charley.

“Carry on, men,” said Underworld, waving goodbye.

The leftovers actually did help, at least the rusty iron bucket that Pete fastidiously sat upon, and the same one that Snyde shortly thereafter kicked over, trying to drink the remainder of the nitric acid.

Underworld made his way across town with great haste, fending off curious looks with a wave of an arm and sinistral growl.

Finally reaching the alley beneath Ozone’s flat, he set the plastic container and its sinistral contents down, and gazed up with a pernicious smirk. The living room’s bay window was open, narcotic smoke floating out in an even swap for city smog, gateway to and away from an innocent decadence he couldn’t wait to obliterate.

He removed the various components from the container, and undertook the last stage of preparation. First he removed the lid and metal disc from the jar, and attached a wire to the top of each exposed screw, one wire leading to the battery, the other to the blasting caps. He closed the circuit by affixing one end of the remaining third wire to the second pole of the battery, the other end to the blast pops. He tested for a good contact with an eager, moist tongue.

Bzzzzzt.

The now primed blasting caps he gently dropped into the baggy full of the purified crystals. Replacing the metal disc and very carefully screwing the lid back on the jar, his weapon was wired, ready for action.

All he needed was to add water and seal the jar, then wait for the marijuana seeds to saturate, grow in size, and in so doing lift the metal plate to close the contact between the wires, detonating the bomb. Since he couldn’t be exactly sure about the timing, he’d do that at the last second possible to ensure the thing didn’t blow prematurely.

As a coup de grâce to this eccentric procedure, he took a black Sharpie and wrote “DRUGS” onto the white plastic containter, and set it into the same spot where the rusty iron bucket used to sit. Tucking the entire IED contraption under his jacket, he started up the stairs…

After James Underworld stormed out, Billy California bopped in. He, Sergio, and Koko caught up in the living room while Bobby and Veronica were in the bedroom on the opposite side of the western wall, going through their amorous motions.

The wall separating the two rooms was in about as bad a shape as the rest of the apartment building, but still structurally sound enough to block most of the sounds and all of the vision. Added unsteadiness was due more to the team’s weird habit of gouging small crevices into it, than to any neglect or mismanagement by the landlord.

Ozone had come up with the idea one evening in the midst of one of Sergio’s faux vice raids, stuff too precious to risk a drop. Panicking, with a swift kick he plunged a steel-toed foot into the wall, just behind the sofa, cleared out the chalk dust rubble, and deposited that week’s livelihood into its new, momentarily surreptitious home. Before discerning Fanatic’s characteristic ha ha and realizing the raid was yet another false alarm, he pushed the sofa back against the wall, and sat down to read Juliette, feigning ignorance while reading about depravity as he waited for the cops to bust in.

After debunking Sergio, and rebuking him and his boys who poured back into the apartment with threats of banishment and an extra turn doing the dishes, Ozone pulled out the sofa and reached for their stash, no worse for wear under there.

“Bueno idea, Roberto! Perfecto for storage, no?” said Fanatic, gazing over the tattered sofa.

“Yeah, not bad,” observed Bobby, congratulating himself for his accidental discovery. “We could kick in some more holes to stow away our stolen electrical equipment. Keep it away from the underdesirables, don’t ya think?”

The strategy stuck, their precious stash transfered from several of Bobby’s mangled tennis shoes in the closet to the area behind the sofa. Veronica thought the idea of using the wall as additional shelf space was pretty neat, a new approach to decadent interior decoration, so she had Ozone kick her a few more, somewhat less drastic holes, too. Into them she placed miscellaneous makeup, perfume, secret notes to her lover and to God.

Sergio, Billy, and Koko now sat appreciating Jim’s absence, unseen holes behind them, their conversation covering a wide spectrum, this time floundering in art appreciation.

Billy thoroughly enjoyed such discussions, and considered himself, much like Veronica, as an integral part of the group. His surfing had made a strong impression on Koko earlier in the summer, when the team searched for fresh game at Zuma beach, inland markets being oversupplied from the Latino biker gangs and common criminals.

That afternoon, Billy was maneuvering his Hobie with the skill of a master, riding the undulating waves with fiberglass acting as a mere extension of his Pacific Palisades body, feeling most at home during high tide.

“Look!” shouted Koko from the beach, wearing some funky sandles heisted from a Vietnamese street vender. “He is a genius, an impressario beyond compare. I must speak with him, learn his trade, so that I might one day connect with nature so gracefully.”

“He is not for us,” countered Sergio. “His father, surely a successful lawyer.”

“We could probably use a lawyer,” wondered Bobby.

“Is he rich?” asked Veronica, making Ozone jelly.

“He is a naive beachboy,” suggested Alberto.

“Aren’t we all,” said Koko.

“You guys get high?” asked Billy after dismounting his ride and parking it on the sand. “Can you turn me on? My dad’s a successful lawyer.”

Veronica winked at Sergio, Sergio grinned at Alberto, Alberto smirked at Koko, and Koko offered Billy a joint. Bobby got annoyed.

“Right on,” said Billy.

Billy thought these guys were rad. They took him to Ozone’s. He thought that was rad, too. Since then he would occasionally drop in, providing the boys with social commentary, vintage furniture, and a Volkswagen Bug unregistered with the police.

An anti-James Underworld, Billy California was an entitled, often annoying punk, but utterly unthreatening. Veronica liked him. Bobby sensed she “liked” him, making Ozone jelly, especially when very high and particularly paranoid. Yet far as anyone could tell Billy never got laid, or if he did, then kept his personal life to himself. Bobby and his bunch seemed like cool older hippies with better than average drugs — and as far as Ozone’s Crew figured, Billy was a teen surfer punk who reminded them of their own lost innocence and youth.

That fateful afternoon, sun shining bright in the clear sky, Billy parked his orange VW Bug a few blocks down, deciding to catch some exercise down Overland Boulevard, check out the scene. Resplendent in his Sinclairs white floppy painter’s cap, Bing Surfboard t-shirt, and streamlined soft pink clamdigger knee-length shorts, Billy saw several men hanging around outside a liquor store, talking in tongues. The store front had been done up nicely by some local grafitti artists, and Billy dug the ambience, so different from his LA suburban neighborhood, many light years away, up in the Valley.

At that moment and for no apparent reason, into Billy’s blond Max Headroom head appeared Ozone’s strange business associate Merlin Schrewdinger — and just as suddenly there he actually was, ambling toward him on the sidewalk, weird. With a perfunctory wave to Billy, as if beckoning him for some sort of future contact, or sending him a cryptic message, Schrewdinger darted back down a side alley, disappearing once again, as rapidly and randomly as he had just appeared.

Accustomed to the bizarre, to the point of engineering his entire lifestyle to welcome and embrace it, Billy didn’t think much of Merlin’s sudden manifestation and visit, and kept going nowhere in particular, and everywhere in general.

Playfully jumping over a mound of garbage, Billy did an improvised drum roll against some brick, found a discarded child’s skateboard by the curb, and sidewinded, weaving and winding a block to an empty lot, full of cars. He peeked in a few, looked under others, and found a brown dune buggy that he gleefully christened “Overland Cruiser,” making a note of the time and location to perhaps come back around and try and “borrow” it later. Moving on, he saw kids playing adjacent to an partment building, several aged men milling around nearby. Feeling loose, he finally scooted over to Ozone’s to see what was going down.

Knock, knock.

“Get the door, amico,” said Sergio. “Could be the cops.”

“I’m busy,” replied Koko, doing a handstand.

“I’m hungry,” said Alberto, rifling through the fridge.

Sergio sighed, got up off the sofa and wandered over to the front door. “If you want a job done right, do it yourself,” he said under his breath, then out loud, ear to the door: “Who the fuck is it?”

“The one and only!” shouted Billy California.

“At least he’s not the Po Po,” said Koko.

Sergio, doing everything himself, swung open the door, letting the kid inside.

Withing a few minutes, they were lost in a haze of reefer smoke.

“You see the new Pavarotti?” wondered Sergio.

“Helllllll yeah!” exclaimed Billy.

“Resonance, depth, passion,” added Koko. “Makes me cry out, sing along, the sound penetrating into my very bowels.”

“You bet!” said Billy. “You’ll hear it alright! Just hit the four-wheel-drive, crank into action the four-cam, twenty-four valve, 3.8-liter V6 that pumps 230 horsepower without turbocharging!”

“I saw him last week in La Boheme,” said Fanatic, oblivious, doing another bong hit. “He play Rodolfo, the poet.”

“My favorite part,” added Koko.

Knock, knock, knock.

“Get the door, amico,” said Sergio. “Could be the cops.”

“I’m busy,” replied Koko, balancing himself one-legged on a chair.

“I’m hungry,” said Alberto, digging through an old pizza box.

“Could be the dry heat,” wondered Billy, answering a question that nobody had asked.

Sergio sighed, got up off the sofa and wandered over to the front door. “Who the fuck is it now?” he asked, profound sense of deja vu almost flooring him until he realized Billy had just knocked on the door minutes ago.

“LAPD!” shouted a gruff voice. “We have a warrant! Open up!”

Ozone’s Crew immediately and instinctively sprung into action. Koko flung open the bay window, him and Alberto immediately leaping out. Sergio pushed the sofa aside, grabbed their stash, and ran to the kitchen. Bobby and Veronica skittered out from his bedroom, still putting their clothes back on as they joined the others outside, jumping onto the grates outside the window and running down the fire escape steps.

Sergio stuck his head out the small kitchen window, and saw the white plastic bucket assuredly in its place. Terrified of getting busted with the week’s goodies, which included the Underworld-laced expansive haul, he hurled the drugs toward it, hitting its mark.

“He shoots!” smiled Sergio. “He scores!”

“Open up!”

Knock! Knock! Knock!

The rapping on the door more frequent and urgent, Sergio rushed out of the kitchen and into the living room to join his fellow crew members out the bay window and down the iron steps. They hoped to make it downstairs before the cops caught up to them, prayed an extra squad weren’t waiting for them down at the foot of the building below.

Back in Ozone’s pad, the loud knocking had stopped, as had the shouting from outside. Had you been inside, you would have heard a key then being slid into the lock, the tumblers turning, and the latch sliding open.

The door slowly swung open, and James Underworld entered, carrying his eclectic gear. He closed the door behind him, and cased the entire joint, checking if anyone was left home.

Confident he was alone, Underworld placed his accoutrements onto the card table, dragged the furniture out. He checked the detonator, then took it to the kitchen, where he opened the jar, and gently poured tap water into it and onto the seeds, beginning to saturate them. James then returned to the living room, made sure all systems were operational, and placed the piss-powered IED into one of Veronica’s larger and less used niches, and pushed the sofa back.

Underworld cleaned up after himself, removed any sign of his visit, and left the way he came, right through the front door, which he locked behind him. He knew the success of his plan was contingent on Ozone’s Crew returning in time. Behind the sofa, in Veronica’s niche, the marijuana seeds were slowly but steadily absorbing the water, expanding, pushing up the metal disc to eventually make contact with the two screws, completing the circuit and detonating the caps that in turn would set off the urea nitrate crystals.

Tick, tock…

Hearing and seeing zero cops in the lobby or anywhere near the building, Sergio rushed out to the alley to grab their stash from the plastic drop bucket, and the Ozone Crew creeped back up the fire escape. Back to their floor, they sent Koko out for a quick recon, he declared the coast clear and their place safe, and welcomed the rest of his friends back through the bay window and into the apartment.

“That was weird, man,” said Alberto, headed for the kitchen, a false alarm and just about anything else making him hungry.

“Maybe it was your boy Schrewdinger,” gestured Sergio to Bobby. “He left before he came.”

“That’s what she said!” guffawed Veronica, so accustomed to these faux freak outs that she considered them a part of their odd if endearing routine.

Either way, the immediate goal now was to forget their troubles, their aimless stoned bullshitting commencing once again. After a few minutes Bobby and Veronica got listless and gropey, and excused themselves to go and fuck in Ozone’s bedroom. Koko returned to the heavy dog-eared copy of Juliette, and flipped through it as Sergio brought up the topic of Love.

“I do not understand — this thing, Love,” piped Fanatic.

“You are not alone! The subject has inspired and vexed the most gifted of artists,” elaborated Koko in between snatches of reading. “Has anyone ever revealed the true nature of such passion?”

“How do I know you really love me’?” giggled Veronica in the bedroom, lying with Bobby on the floor next to the bed on the opposite side of the holey wall. A liter jug of dry Carlo was freshly opened, and passed between them.

“We talk of love as timeless and powerful,” offered Alberto, sprawled out on the sofa, diligently smoking a Cuban cigarette.

“That’s fresh,” said Billy. “I love the ancient, rad Duesenbergs. The 1928 Model SJ ones were awesome! Groucho Marx owned one, I believe.”

“I love you out of respect for your wisdom and beauty,” jibed Bobby back in his bedroom, trying to pull off Veronica’s bra. “Let’s investigate my bed, so I can fill you in on all the pertinent details.”

“Love must be beyond an intense instant,” claimed Sergio, “a mighty moment.”

“Si si, so much more, padrone!” agreed Koko, reading one of the several hundred good parts, getting horny. “Amor is powerful!”

“You make me feel so wonderful,” urged Veronica, her blushed cheeks beginning to match lipstick. “I’m so happy…”

“Not all power is good,” Alberto said, between tokes.

“Yeah, those old Duesies were the finest ever made,” said Billy, reaching for the pipe, then realizing he was already holding it.

“You blitz my mind, babe,” whispered Bobby, now on top of Veronica on top of the bed. “You’re the prettiest girl in the whole world…”

“How do you know?” quipped Veronica, pushing him away. “Have you had slept with all of them?”

“We didn’t get a chance to sleep,” said Billy, playing along, holding her closer. “Too many…”

“ls simple fulfillment all we want?” wondered Sergio.

“Love is so much more than that,” said Koko.

Life is so much more than that,” added Sergio.

“Let’s order a pizza,” suggested Alberto.

“I love you, so so much,” said Veronica, gasping.

“Not all love is good,” cautioned Sergio.

“The straight-8 engine had 420 cubic inches of swept volume, twin overhead camshafts,” said Billy, remembering that Dune Buggy he wanted to steal.

“You have such strong arms, shoulders, rough sexy hands,” panted Veronica.

“One must be leery of intent, and see all,” nodded Sergio, remembering he still had their stash on him, but forgetting before he returned it to a niche behind the sofa.

“They also had four valves per cylinder, 265 bhp at fourty-two hundred revs a minute, Dude.”

“You have such a great body, mmmmm,” reciprocated Bobby, swept away. “Such nice legs, round thighs, soft hips…”

“But I feel something missing.”

“No no! Nothing missing. All here, vivid.”

“You make me so happy…” Veronica looked Bobby in the eyes. “You make me feel so good…”

“Calm before the storm to sit down, then cry.”

“I once had a girl in the back of a ’68 Corvette convertible,” reminisced Billy. “Not quite a Duesy, but she blew my mind.”

“You take my breath away!”

At the exact moment of the explosion, Bobby Ozone emptied his seminal vesicles into Veronica Floss. The living room wall collapsed right after. In retrospect, a causal relationship between these two events seems highly unlikely, however stylistically apropos.

Ozone was not aware of the Big Picture as he lay there with Veronica, who was also initially oblivious about the blast, more worried whether Bobby’s orgasm would lead to an organism. Screaming blissfully, Bobby felt like the world moved, which it did, at least the building, though not to the extent, nor in the direction and for the reason he thought.

“Ahhhhhhhhhhh!” he shrieked.

On the other side of the now collapsed wall, the blast hit the sofa hard, sending Sergio, Koko, his Juliette, and Billy sailing across the room.

Miraculously no one was seriously injured. Koko sustained a mild nose break, Alberto bounced off Billy, and Billy rolled against the flimsy card table, which fell over with an anti-climactic clunk. The de Sade novel was torn between all three libertine enthusiasts.

As the plaster and hardboard wall fell to the ground, a huge cloud of chalk dust arose from the rubble and slowly settled on everything and everybody, making the room and everyone in it part of some surreal Los Angeles snow blizzard scene.

Oddio!” cried out Sergio.

“What the fuck just happened?” asked Koko, pulling himself together, brushing himself off, holding his broken nose as blood trickled from it.

“It’s the end of the world, as we know it,” sang Billy.

“And I don’t feel fine,” sighed Alberto. “Somebody get me a doctor…”

Through the chalk dust, Sergio and the boys could see Bobby and Veronica, entwined, naked, and covered in dust and debris. Conversely, Bobby and Veronica looked over and could see Sergio and the boys similarly covered in dust and debris, albeit still clothed and not in the act of having sex with each other.

“OMG!” screamed Veronica. “The apartment blew up!”

“I feel like I just came and went,” said Bobby, not even trying to be funny.

“Ha ha ha ha ha,” laughed Koko, not trying to laugh.

The very last person in the world they expected to see poke their face up from the fire escape and through the bay window was the shroom dealer Schrewdinger, so given who Schrewdinger was and whom he wasn’t, and that he was the last person in the world they expected to see, that’s exactly the face that poked up from the fire escape and through the bay window.

“Looks like a bad beat,” said Merlin, as if he were appraising a poker game in Vegas.

Sergio got triggered, and darted out after the face, cutting around poor Koko still holding his bleeding nose, and a very stunned Billy California, “Wha happened?”

Catching another glance at Bobby and Veronica, huddled bleached white and naked in the now exposed bedroom, Sergio flung himself out the bay window, and hurled himself down the steps of the fire escape. But in his fury, Fanatic didn’t pause and realize that Schrewdinger must have bolted back up the escape, and was now on the roof, peering over the side at Sergio and his misguided resentment going down to the street below.

Koko, Billy, and Alberto quickly followed Sergio down the fire escape, all of them eager to get the hell out of Ozone’s wrecked apartment. Merlin watched them descend, just as James said they would.

Racing into the alley, Sergio almost knocked over the white plastic container, calmed down. His fury subsided with his human target nowhere to be found. Familiar, unchanged surroundings directed his glance back to the heights, counting windows. Uno, due, tre, quattro, cinque, sei, sette — sette, settled, seen, perhaps sentimental. In each window another life, another perspective, a different, confused outlook. The seventh was Ozone’s pad, focal point, the beginning and the end.

His boys and Billy joined him, everyone trying to take stock of what had just happened. How had things gotten this fucked up, this fast?

Up to now, Sergio had mostly obsessed over Veronica and her love, reveled in the passion on display in such innocent grandeur. Standing there, feeling helpless, he now thought about Ozone, his dear friend and rival Bobby O., covered from head to toe in chalky guilt, entwined and connected to a girl who meant so little, and so much.

Bobby had nothing in common between him and his lover Veronica but the attraction that required closeness, maybe engendered some purity, though a purity that separated as well as joined them together. Sergio realized that those two had fascinated and obsessed him because his love was Bobby’s style of love, an intensity of the here and now, a belief in the love of fate, the fanatical, shocking beauty of action-at-a-distance.

Making his way to the rooftop, jumping on top, dome of sky as natural companion, Merlin Schrewdinger was not alone. Never himself surprised, this moment he twirled around with a start, only to find James Underworld, leaning against an air conditioning fan, raising an inquisitive eyebrow, waving a friendly greeting.

“What are you doing up here?” asked Schrewdinger, completely taken aback.

“This is familiar turf for me,” said Underworld, “feeling comfortable at the extremes, both high and low. I should ask you the same question, then.”

“I feel most comfortable when least certain,” replied Schrewdinger. “So I guess it’s inevitable that I’ve run into you here.”

“Just having a bit of amusement downstairs,” smiled James. “Made possible with your help, thank you.”

“Just coming and going,” nodded Merlin. “As usual.”

“We should work more together.,” nodded James. “We should talk.”

“Yes,” replied Merlin, passively gazing at the slowly spinning fan. “Talk.”

“I should be going back down,” said Underworld, motioning toward the edge of the rooftop, and toward the top of the fire escape. “Finish the job.”

But Schrewdinger had already taken off before Underworld could turn back to say goodbye.

Veronica’s screams sent Sergio and the boys racing back to Ozone’s pad. He and Billy leaped up the steps of the fire escape, while Koko and Alberto ran into the lobby to make sure the heat hadn’t arrived yet, and took the elevator up to Bobby’s floor.

A minute later, Alberto kicked open the front door. Sergio, Koko, and Billy stood in the living room, gazing dumbfounded into the now exposed bedroom. Alberto walked over, stood next to his companions, and looked as if viewing a crime scene on television.

Veronica sat next to Bobby, grasping a pale white hand, her screams collapsing into even more agonizing wails.

The bloodied switchblade lay next to Bobby’s inert body. His right lung had collapsed, convuvlsive breathing crescendoing to no breathing at all. Blood had flowed down to the floor, where a pile of cocaine had spilled after the explosion, blending with the chalk dust. Before coagulating, the blood had combined with the white powders, a slowly spreading pink wave.

Sergio ran over, bent down. Whispering, tears flowing, he held up Bobby’s head. Koko was on his knees, shaking, hands covering his ears, silent. Billy came close, reached over to the body, sprawled on the bloodied bed, and touched it. He felt the warm wound, shuddered, then ran suddenly past Alberto, out the door, into the street, headed for the ocean.

Their restless, relentless energy created their lifestyle, which then reinforced and justified it. Buying, selling, doing drugs were sources of income and identity. They ironically provided a sense of accomplishment, something to do. The world outside Ozone’s Crew would condemn them as corruptors, decadents, miscreants, and losers, and to this same world they now turned, to relieve themselves of Underworld’s bagged burden, their own unresolved guilt, sadness, and anxiety.

The explosion in Bobby’s apartment and collapse of the wall meant more than a violation, inconvenience, or harbinger of Bobby’s murder, and were infinitely more damaging than any cleanup could vanquish. The ceiling still held, the rubble could be removed, but the foundation of their gently balanced and frail existence became painfully obvious. Their bubble of security had been popped, the world had thrust a violative and destructive fist into their beloved sanctuary, and had taken away their reluctant and imperfect, lovingly endearing leader.

An organized, coherent decision to sell all their stash was never made, not necessarily consciously, as a team. Carrying the load was difficult for all of them to bear. The bags stuffed with Underworld’s laced drugs taunted them, remained a representation of everything they were fleeing from, a reminder of the blackness and uncertainty that each of them had burning inside. They didn’t know what to do with the murderer’s hoard, or what it might actually have contained.

At first they began to use the stuff themselves, virtually without a second thought, its perverse magnetism so obvious, so open. The toxic effects were not yet felt, the poisoning slow and patient. Soon Veronica distributed screamers to her already goggly-eyed, hyperactive classmates; Koko and Alberto hit up tourists by the pier with dreamers; even Billy, muting competiton on the waves by giving away various shades of streamers. Sergio himself finally sold away the bulk, as if Bobby’s memory and Underworld’s terror could be released back out to the world, all their agony and ecstasy carried away with it, eventually forgotten, sight unseen, eventually leaving nothing but death in its wake.

Billy is walking down Overland Boulevard. The sun tears through the sky, blazing. He walks for many blocks, looks at his hand, remembers when it was red with Bobby’s blood. He wipes his dry hand on his clothes, as if he could make the memory go away.

Around him young men are living in pain, speaking hushed words, huddled together against the world. The once gorgeous and expressive store fronts are now seen as vandalized, covered in broken glass, shattered lives. He cannot think of anything but that bedroom, the bleeding body, the mourning girlfriend, the sorrow of his companions. These thoughts, and the desolation around him now, overwhelm him.

Schrewdinger is sought, but is nowhere to be found. Billy steps over the waste, the symbols of pestilence and senseless destruction, emptiness. No children here. He continues to walk, his legs heavy. He feels the hard pavement press against him. The lot with the abandoned, stolen cars now lies before him again. Rust eats into them, through them, his favorite car a hunk of junk, a heaping wreck.

Children stare at nothing. Old, dying men take a notice of Billy as he shambles past. He wonders if he’s somehow visible from the small portal in Ozone’s kitchen across town, and if so, if Veronica might be back there, throwing the rest of their stash down to the white plastic container below, bringing herself and the rest of Ozone’s Crew a moment of solace.

But Billy is ailing, and no one is looking.

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Mookie Spitz
Mookie Spitz

Written by Mookie Spitz

Author and communications strategist. His latest book SUPER SANTA is available on Amazon, with a sci fi adventure set for Valentine's Day 2025...

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