He has no wish to see it again.
As he lowers his eyes from the walls of light, the mediated faces, he feels his contacts move, changing as they monitor his depth of focus. This still unnerves him.
Not far from the station, down a side street bright as day, he finds the sort of kiosk that sells anonymous debit cards. He purchases one. At another kiosk, he uses it to buy a disposable phone good for a total of thirty minutes, Tokyo-LA.
He asks his notebook for Rydell’s number. 0 2. Lucky Dragon ‘HEROIN.” declared Durius Walker, Rydell’s colleague in security at the Lucky Dragon on Sunset. “It’s the opiate of the masses.”
Durius had finished sweeping up. He held the big industrial dustpan carefully, headed for the inbuilt hospital-style sharps container, the one with the barbed biohazard symbol. That was where they put the needles, when they found them.
They averaged five or six a week. Rydell had never actually caught anyone shooting anything up, in the store, although he wouldn’t have put it past them. It just seemed like people dropped used needles on the floor, usually back by the cat food. You could find other things, sweeping up in the Lucky Dragon: pills, foreign coins, hospital identification bracelets, crumpled paper money from countries that still used it. Not that you wanted to go poking around in that dustpan. When Rydell swept up, he wore the same Kevlar gloves that Durius was wearing now, and latex underneath that.
He supposed Durius was right though, and it made you wonder: all the new substances around to abuse, but people didn’t forget the ones that had been around forever. Make cigarettes illegal, say, and people found a way to keep smoking. The Lucky Dragon wasn’t allowed to sell rolling papers, but they did a brisk trade in Mexican hair-curler papers that worked just as well. The most popular brand was called Biggerhair, and Rydell wondered if anyone had ever actually used any to curl their hair. And how did you curl your hair with little rectangles of tissue paper anyway?
“Ten minutes to,” Durius said over his shoulder. “You wanna do the curb check?”
At four o’clock, one of them got to take a ten-minute break, out back. If Rydell did the curb check, it meant he got to take his break first, then let Durius take one. The curb check was something that Lucky Dragon’s parent corporation, back in Singapore, had instituted on the advice of an in-house team of American cultural anthropologists. Mr.
7 I Park, the night manager, had explained this to Rydell, ticking off points on his notebook. He’d tapped each paragraph on the screen for emphasis, sounding thoroughly bored with the whole thing, hut Rydell had supposed it was part of the job, and Mr. Park was a definite stickler. “‘In order to demonstrate Lucky Dragon’s concern with neighborhood safety, security personnel will patrol curb in front of location on a nightly basis.'” Rydell had nodded. “You not out of store too long,” Mr. Park added, by way of clarification. “Five minute. Just before you take break.” Pause. Tap. “Lucky Dragon security presence will be high-profile, friendly, sensitive to local culture.'”
“What’s that mean?”
“Anybody sleeping, you make them move. Friendly way. Hooker working there, you say hello, tell joke, make her move.”
“I’m scared of those old girls,” Rydell said, deadpan. “Christmastime, they dress up like Santa’s elves.”
“No hooker in front of Lucky Dragon.”
“‘Sensitive to local culture’?”
“Tell joke. Hooker like joke.”
“Maybe in Singapore,” Durius had said, when Rydell had recounted Park’s instructions.
“He’s not from Singapore,” Rydell had said. “He’s from Korea.”
“So basically they want us to show ourselves, clear the sidewalk back a few yards, be friendly and sensitive?”
“And tell joke.”
Durius squinted. “You know what kinda people hang in front of a convenience store on Sunset, four in the morning? Kids on dancer, tweaked off their dimes, hallucinating monster movies. Guess who gets to be the monster? Plus there’s your more mature sociopaths; older, more complicated, polypharmic .
“Say what?”
“Mix their shit,” Durius said. “Get lateral.”
“Gotta be done. Man says.”
Durius looked at Rydell. “You first.” He was from Compton, and the only person Rydell knew who had actually been born in Los Angeles.