|
... "Besides by the time I could correct the error... Lazarus go home.... Pay The Man and go home.... What I want to see your old borrowed meat for?' "Well it's great to see you off....Do yourself a favor." Miguel was swimming around the room spear- ing fish with his hand.... "When you're down there you never think about horse." "You're better off like this," said Lee, dreamily caress- ing a needle scar on the back of Miguel's hand, follow- ing the whorls and patterns of smooth purple flesh in a slow twisting movement.... Miguel scratched the back of his hand.... He looked out the window.... His body moved in little, gal- vanized jerks as junk channels lit up.... Lee sat there waiting. "One snort never put anybody back on, kid." "I know what I'm doing." "They always know." Miguel took the nail file. Lee closed his eyes: "It's too tiresome." "Uh thanks that was great." Miguel's pants fell to his ankles. He stood there in a misshapen overcoat of Hesh that turned from brown to green and then color- less in the morning light, fell off in globs onto the floor. Lee's eyes moved in the substance of his face... a little, cold, grey Hick.... "Clean it up," he said. "Enough dirt in here now." "Oh uh sure," Miguel fumbled with a dustpan. Lee put the packet of heroin away. Lee lived in a permanent third-day kick, with, of course, certain uh essential intermissions to refuel the fires that burned through his yellow-pink-brown ge- latinous substance and kept off the hovering flesh. In the beginning his flesh was simply soft, so soft that he was cut to the bone by dust particles, air currents and brushing overcoats while direct contact with doors and chairs seemed to occasion no discomfort. No wound healed in his soft, tentative flesh.... Long white ten- drils of fungus curled round the naked bones. Mold odors of atrophied testicles quilted his body in a fuzzy grey fog.... During his first severe infection the boiling thermom- eter Hashed a quicksilver bullet into the nurse's brain and she fell dead with a mangled scream. The doctor took one look and slammed steel shutters of survival. |
