Fic: To Live and Die in Los Angeles (3/8)
“To Live and Die in Los Angeles”
Author: DJ_the_Writer
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Cursing, Drugs, PTSD
Pairings: None yet
Beta: wikdsushi
Characters: Charles, Pickles, OCs
Summary: Charles attempts to recover from his ordeal during a legal tussle in LA.
[ Start back at the beginning]
Chapter 3
Charles woke exceptionally late, and got up even later, hiding under the covers against the morning light for almost an hour. Granted, he did take his Dethphone with him to check his messages and deemed none of them pressing first. It was Saturday, when most of the local invitations would be to golf, from people who didn’t know he wouldn’t be swinging clubs for a long time. For the moment, the idea was soothing, because it meant he could keep his head down with the reasonable excuse of being injured and just a little hung over.
He really fucking hated LA.
The restraining order against Rikki Kixx, which was just for show, would undoubtedly go through. What Charles was waiting on was a court date for the lawsuit against Kixx, or at least a meeting with the lawyers and a judge. Hopefully it would end in arbitration. That wouldn’t happen before Monday, and if it was a ways off, he could return to cold, dark Mordhaus with Pickles, get him back in the recording studio, and not worry about the case until it reared its head again. Charles knew Nathan and Skwisgaar would use any excuse, including Pickles being gone, to avoid work. The sooner they were back in Mordhaus, the better.
There were still things on the schedule. There were always things on his schedule. He was negotiating with two venues, one in Tbilisi and another in Budapest. The latter was easy because they’d played there before, but the country of Georgia had never hosted Dethklok, and all kinds of requirements had to be met for the safety of the musicians - and maybe the citizens, if Charles had time, but he didn’t always have time.
After lunch, which was technically breakfast, and a conference all with promoters in Budapest, Charles went to check on Pickles. It was a standard hotel requirement that the room either come with a hot tub or the hotel’s hot tub be made exclusively available for Dethklok members, and that’s where he found Pickles, in up to collarbone, with empty beer bottles spread across the tile floor beside him.
“Where’ve you been, dude?”
“Working for you,” Charles said. His headache had long abated, but that didn’t exactly put him in a good mood. “Are you going to Timmy Twizzlesticks’s party tonight?”
“Uh, yeah?”
“Just ... be careful. You’ve already OD-ed once this week.”
Pickles sank even lower, so his dreads floated on the water, making him look like he had a spider on his head. And he was always going on about his spirit animal being a squid or something like that. No, wait, octopus. “Yeh could come.”
“I don’t think Mr. Twizzlesticks would really want me there.”
“Tim’s too coked up ta have a fuckin’ opinion,” Pickles said. “Yer goin’. And yer gettin’ inna hot tub.”
Charles would have crossed his arms, but he couldn’t. He could just kind of weed the left one around the cast. “I think I’ve had all the heat my body can stand in one week, thank you very much.”
“Yer supposed ta be relaxin'.”
“And I’m supposed to watch my blood pressure,” he replied. “I’m popping enough pills at it is.”
“I dunno. You haven’t been ta Timmy’s pahrty yet.”
Charles, on occasion, could get very angry at that oafish grin, which he knew to be far less innocent than it appeared, but frankly he didn’t have it in him. “Last time I got in the hot tub with you guys, I was rewarded with an STD. Somehow. I’m still trying to figure that one out.”
“Prabably from Skwisgaar. Wait - can yeh get STDs from feet?”
“No.”
“Then not Murderface. Poor guy.”
Charles was about to say that Murderface brought a lot of it on himself, but stopped himself just in time. “If I make an appearance at the party, will you promise not to OD?”
Pickles sipped at whatever drink came with four umbrellas and a plastic monkey hanging off the glass. “I pramise to OD if you don’t go.”
And he would do it, too.
“Fine. But if anyone asks, I’m telling them I’m an undercover cop,” he said, and left Pickles to prune.
********************************************
Timmy Twizzlesticks’s place on overlooking the ocean was a post-modern nightmare of white and fake plants. It was labyrinthine, leading Charles to the assumption that the man had an excellent manager and accountant, because there was no way an aging glam rock star could possibly have this much money if left to fend for himself. Maybe be bought big into Google on the ground floor or something and was smarter than he looked, but Charles severely doubted it.
“Who the fuck are you?” one of the greeters said. That Charles was standing next to Pickles should have given it away, but this was not exactly his crowd, nor was he dressed to make it his. He had shown up in a suit that looked like all his others, but he knew it already had some invisible stains and might need to be scrapped.
Rather than let Pickles vouch for him, he said, “I’m an undercover cop.” Then he pushed past him, dismissing his bodyguard as he went. “Just find somewhere to park.” 82 saluted him and did so.
Pickles tried admirably to get him into the party spirit, but it wasn’t happening. He was still tired, he was thinking about all of the meetings to reschedule, and his arm itched and there wasn’t shit he could do about it. Eventually Pickles found his own amusement with a pile of unidentified white powder being snorted off a naked Asian woman, and Charles went to the bar and ordered a Sprite so there would be something in his free hand. People were less likely to bother him that way.
He also learned that fading rock stars did not like the phrase, “I used to listen to you in high school,” and proceeded to use it as many times as possible.
It wasn’t that he despised parties - they came with the job - but the more he thought about it, the more he wanted to crawl back into his bed and sleep forever. He settled for sitting at a tiny table in the bar area, listening to a publicist with a lethal tan and white sandals talk about Twitter feeds. It wasn’t a conversation that required much on Charles’s end, with the bonus that the guy didn’t seem to know who he was and wasn’t clawing at him, trying to take a bite of Dethklok. There were enough of those people in LA.
“You really don’t have an account?” the guy said. His name was Rick, or Rich, or something with an R. Or possibly not.
“No.” It was a lie; he did have an account, to which he had never, ever posted. He used it to keep his feeds organized, highlighting when William said something stupid. Homoerotic he didn’t mind, but giving away band scheduling secrets was starting to be a real problem.
“You probably don’t have a Facebook page, either.”
“No.” He had a fan page, though. Fans of him. It was very weird and disturbing and he tried not to visit it. “Clearly, newfangled gadgets for young whippersnappers frighten and confuse me. Or maybe I just have shit to do.”
The publicist laughed, either not aware that he was the target of the joke or trying to lessen it.
A waiter offered to freshen his drink. “I want to see it poured,” Charles said. “And yes, it is Sprite.”
“Al Anon?” the douchebag publicist said.
“I can get better alcohol than they have here,” he replied, which was true. The only reason he was even talking to this guy was because he was sitting across from him and didn’t want to move. The waiter returned with an open can and poured it, and Charles drank because he wasn’t fucking touching those cocktail hour leftovers, and relied on the sugar to fill him up. “I have to go find my client,” he said, wondering why he gave the publicist a reason for leaving. Boredom, he supposed.
Back outside, the music was very loud. It wasn’t particularly bad, but it would be better played a few decibels (or ten) lower. He needed to find Pickles. It was hot, but the darkness and the breeze from the ocean made it bearable, and he wasn’t taking off his jacket in front of these people. A couple people asked about his cast to be polite. “An alligator bit me,” he said, which was technically true, just not related to being shot in the arm. The wounds on his leg from Snackers were old but taking a long time to fully heal.
“What happened to him?”
“It’s a she,” he said, and moved along. A girl walked past him clothed in nothing but gold body paint, which really shouldn’t have shocked him so much, but the glare from the hot lights hurt his eyes. He turned away and found a glittering ball, like a disco ball but at the height of a table. It must be for atmosphere. It was very enticing, like a treasure that he wanted to hold, but it would burn him if he did. Or a rock would come down on him like in Indiana Jones.
A couple of people bumped into him as he stood on the walkway, and he didn’t like to be touched. He wanted to tell them that and make them go away, but then they would touch him more. He was sure of it. And then they would shoot him.
********************************************
“Hey! Pickles!”
The voice was not inviting, but come to think of it, neither was the girl he was playing tonsil-inspection with. She was very aggressive, something he found amusing more than anything else, and he didn’t have a lot of willpower when he was drunk. It was a bad sign for her that he was already sober enough to have his attention drawn so easily what. “Dood, what?”
“You know that guy you came with?”
“He’s my manager.”
“Yeah, he’s pretty fucked up.”
This warranted getting off the skank of the evening and finding Charles. It was not as if he’d never seen Charles drunk or passed out before, but your heart went out to a guy with a broken arm. And Pickles would never hear the end of it if the arm was somehow broken further. After a lot of confused looks from inebriated or stoned party-goers, Pickles finally found Ofdensen in a coat closet.
“We shoved ‘im in there after he decked someone,” the security guard said rather unapologetically. Pickles wondered how the guard was still alive, a pretty un-mellow thing to wonder, but this was all harshing his buzz. He hadn't invite Ofdensen just so the guy could get kicked around by a has-been’s wannabe SWAT team.
Everything would be OK if the manager looked like he has having a good time; fun things could happen in closets. The Charles that emerged did not look like he was having a good time. He was twitchy, his pupils almost as big as his eyes, and he was holding a chunk of hair in his left hand. It took Pickles a moment to realize it was his. “You OK der, chief?”
“I have to go in that hut,” Charles said. “I have to find out ... what’s inside.” His words were crisp and he was standing tall. He wasn’t drunk. He gestured in some general direction, but not anywhere in particular. There were no huts around. He also didn’t seem to care that he’d ripped a huge chunk of his hair from his head and now the hair was falling on Timmy’s floor.
“Now der, yeh don’t have ta go anywhere - “
“I have to ... fucking kill everyone. Or they’re going to kill me.” He tried to list his hands to his head to protect him, but only succeeded with one arm. Somehow, his sling was already tangled. “Who killed my arm?”
Pickles was not a man of letters (despite having a BA in music composition), but he was a man lettered in a life of hallucinogens, uppers, downers, and every color of the drug rainbow. “Gimme yer phone.” Because if he took it off him, Charles might punch him. Or worse.
“Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with my arm?!?”
“'Kay der.” Pickles dialed his bodyguard and minder, who was probably somewhere at the party, looking inconspicuous. “Don’ make a big deal outta dis, but da boss is havin’ a bad trip.” He spent the next five minutes talking down the hoodie from black helicopters and tactical strikes, as that would only make the situation worse. “Come on, Charlie. We’re goin’ somewhere quiet. Do you know what yeh took?”
Charles Ofdensen clearly did not understand the question, if he even heard it.
No one immediately around them seemed to know what he’d taken, or been given, most likely. That wasn’t his concern; the people were freaking Charles out and Pickles had to get him out of there without touching him. It involved a lot of herding, and fuck the spectacle, because the boss would probably call in an air strike when he came around.
The limo was waiting for them. It was big and black and scary, and Pickles glared at Charles’s assistant and told her it wasn’t acceptable. “Go inside. Tim’s gat dis room for takin’ LSD - get da curtains and pillows an’ stuff. You,” he pointed to another hoodie, “find out what dey gave him. Fuckin’ now, dood!”
Charles had stopped talking, but his expression indicated that he wasn’t in a good place. It would spiral down from there if it wasn’t stopped. “Dood, yer gonna be OK.” It was said with a lot less insistence than the tone he used with the hoodies. “Jest ... maintain.”
The hoodies did quick work. There were a lot of drugs around, but Tim’s flavor of the week was Ketamine, and everyone was getting their chance. No one would admit to giving any to Charles, who was smart enough not to take it and once said he never took hallucinogens, but they didn’t have time to interrogate everyone. They did quick work on the limo, turning into a makeshift hippie paradise with warm colors draped over red and black cushions, and silver spikes obscured by pillows. They put a sheet over the inside light, typically red, and made it purple instead.
Charles had trouble sitting down. Not because he couldn’t find the seat, but he seemed to have trouble with the concept. “I’m floating.”
“I know, I know, it feels dat way. It’s an illusion,” Pickles said, sitting across from him with 3201. “It’s nat real.”
Charles didn’t look pleased with this situation, and started scratching at his cast as if he could get through to his arm. His left hand was already raw, and starting to bleed. 3201, who knew better than to touch her boss, grabbed a stolen sheet and dabbed at the wound.
“We should take him to the hospital,” she said in a lowered voice.
“Why? Dey’re nat gonna have an antidote. The hospital might freak him out. All bright lights an’ stuff. We got the green guys, right?”
“The medics, yes.”
“Hotel then,” Pickles said, realizing he was commanding her after he said it, and she was already dialing. Not that he had to apologize - she was just a hoodie, after all - but she was less drunk than he was, and maybe she knew something about Charles that he didn’t.
It was a painfully long ride to the hotel. Charles talked in spurts, something about huts and what blood tasted like. He was in favor of it. Pickles only responded with gentle reassurance, whether Charles heard it or not. He probably heard, but didn’t understand the words, just the tone. He didn’t seem to see either of them even though they were both right in front of him. At some point on the highway, he started asking for someone called Ejvind.
“Ejvind?”
“His brother,” the assistant said.
“He has a brother?”
“He’s dead. He died when the Commander was two.”
Pickles generally thought it was pretty funny that the hoodies called Ofdensen that behind his back, but he didn’t feel like laughing. At the hotel, they managed to guide him out of the limo and to his room. By now he was far gone enough not to be able to strike when someone touched him. Pickles removed his tie and his jacket and 3201 removed his shoes, and he sat on the floor on several pillows, surrounded by last-minute acquisitions of psychedelic accoutrements either stolen from Tim’s mansion or located so late at night in a shop, this being LA and all. The medics took his blood pressure and did some other non-invasive stuff, but had the same pronouncement. “Probably Ketamine or a similar downer. He needs to wait for it to leave his system. If he was going to have any respiratory depression, he would have had it already, but still, we should watch him for that if he falls asleep.”
Pickles put on Indian sitar music, the very mildest of what he was on his playlist, and sat on the floor across from Charles. “Dood. Maintain.”
Charles buried his hand, which had stopped bleeding, under his other arm. He was not so much cold as frightened.
He was in a very bad place.
“Charlie,” Pickles said, gently probing him. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t want to kill anybody,” his manager replied. It was hard to tell if he was answering him or just speaking whatever was on his mind. “I’m sure I don’t.”
“Yer not going to - “
“Everyone’s going to die. I’m going to kill them.”
The problem was, Pickles didn’t know if Ofdensen was hallucinating some very metal future concert or he was somewhere in his past. The latter was a possibility, he supposed. “Yer not there. Yer here, with me.”
“No. No no no.”
“Come on, Charlie. Remember when we stole dat drum set?” He waited for Charles to contradict him, but he didn’t. It wasn’t stolen so much as borrowed and not returned because it was destroyed during the show. Charles made sure the legal paperwork showed it was not the fault of any band member. Disasters just happened around them, even in the early days, destroying equipment and injuring fans. They had needed a drum set that night, and Magnus had the brilliant idea to lift it from a music store. They pulled it off before Charles, who was too busy making people sign pre-show contracts, could stop them. “Yer face went like, red. Funny stuff.”
Charles began to sway back and forth, like a druggie jonesing for another hit.
“OK, OK, I got one. The time we found out I couldn’t eat lobster. Nat’an really wanted lobster an’ he ordered fer us. Made a big fuckin’ deal out of our expensive lobster dinner at dis shack restaurant, said he would pay fer it but he couldn’t pay. An’ I had ta go to the emergency room. My face was all blown up.” Come to think of it, it was Charles who managed to stay in the hospital for more than five minutes, the other guys making excuses even after some of the swelling went down. He stayed the whole night, and was there in the morning in the same clothes when Pickles was discharged. Back when a cheap meal at a crappy seafood restaurant in Florida was considered splurging ...
His manager didn’t smile, but he was listening.
“Yeh sit der, I’m ganna tell all kinds of embarrassing stories,” Pickles said, and looked up at the assistant hovering near the door. “Get lost.”
After a brief pause she said, “No.”
“I said - “
“I’m Mr. Ofdensen’s assistant, and I know his medical history better than you do.” She kept her voice down, but it was still pretty damn confrontational. “I can’t consider myself to be doing my job if I leave him in this state.”
On another day, he might have talked her out of it, but damn, was there a lot of conviction in her voice. Fine, let her stay in the corner and not bother him. It wasn’t as if he ran his mouth off about stupid shit in front of listening hoodies anyway. “Charlie? You der?”
Charles shook his head, a direct response, even if it wasn’t the accurate one.
“Come on, yer in der. Yer right here with me.” He put his hand on the ground very close to Charles, inviting him to put his hand over it, but the manager just shook his head harder, trying to will everything away. “Yer so cute when yer bewildered.”
For the briefest moment, Charles stopped shaking. So he could understand him, beyond just syllables and sounds.
“You,” Pickles said, forgetting the hoodie’s number. “You think Charlie’s cute?”
“Uh...”
“The carrect answer’s ‘yes.’”
“Yes.” She added, “You didn’t know I wasn’t going to say it anyway.”
“Well, yeh didn’t.”
“Maybe I was trying to show a little professionalism in front of my boss,” she said, and crossed her arms.
Pickles didn’t have time to yell at her and didn’t really want to, when he thought about it. She was just doing her job, and this probably wasn’t in her job description when she applied. He refocused on Charles, who was still shaking but was more fascinated with his tongue at the moment. “Charlie?”
Charles picked his head up a little but his attention was scattershot at best.
“How do yeh feel?”
It was probably not something he could put into words, and Charles knew a lot of big words. When it came to contracts, he could be a very descriptive person. “I don’t know where I’m supposed to be.”
“Right here, chief.”
Charles resumed rocking back and forth. He wasn’t shaking as badly and he wasn’t hurting himself, so Pickles turned the music up and let things ride for a little while.
Christ, he needed a joint. This was going to be a long night.
********************************************
Charles woke to someone pressing against his arm, and his instincts demanded he grab that person and snap his wrist. His secondary instincts prevented this, and he merely grabbed the wrist and opened his eyes to the medic in a green hoodie. “What are you doing?”
“Taking your pulse, sir. Sorry, sir.”
He released his death grip on the poor Gear and nodded into the pillow, trying to chase a lot of nightmares from his consciousness. He was not in a jungle in Guatemala, or a mental hospital, or any kind of hospital, or a bad party with lame people, or Timothy Leary’s rec room. He was in his bed at the hotel, wearing his undershirt and boxers, and there were a couple people around him but it was obvious they were leaving. 3201 offered him apple juice with a straw. How did she know he was so thirsty? “Thank you.” There wasn’t a lot he could do for his dignity now. The room was pink because a bedsheet was pinned across the window and the sun's glare had a pink hue to it. 3201, as if reading his mind, moved to take it down.
His memories were fairly intact, at least of what he thought happened but didn’t, and they were awful. He didn’t want to think about them. Instead he said, “What did I take?”
“We think it was Ketamine or something in that family.”
“Christ, someone drugged my Sprite.”
“We have no reason to think it was malicious at this time, though we are looking into it.” 3201 folded the sheet as if she were doing ordinary laundry.
“Where’s Pickles?”
“Asleep, sir.”
He wondered what time it was, but not that hard. It was daylight, and that was all he cared about. “When did I pass out?”
“You fell asleep at six. Lord Pickles left you a few minutes later.”
“He talked me down from a bad trip, didn’t he?”
“He seemed to have a great deal of experience on the subject.”
It had been very bad, but it could have been much worse. It could have put him back in the hospital, but it hadn’t. Actually, he felt manageably OK, just mentally exhausted. He owed Pickles one. “What do I have to do today?” Charles really should have known but he didn’t want to flex his brain too much, and bring everything up to the surface again.
“You have the invitation to your sister’s starting at three.”
“Mmmm.” He did not pick his head off the pillow. “When do I have to leave?”
“Assuming you don’t want to cancel, in about two hours.”
“Fine. I can do it.” He was trying to will himself to get up, but it wasn’t happening. “Thank you.”
“Yes, sir.” She finally left. He was grateful, not because she was annoying him but because he desperately wanted to continue resting, or at least not thinking, for as long as possible.
Memories came unbidden; he was entirely sure of what happened but quite sure of what he thought happened. It was different from medicine designed to shut you down, or cocaine, which was an upper, but the Ketamine (apparently) altered his sense of reality, and the angrier it made him, the more vicious his interpretation got. At one point, he was wandering around the guerrilla camp in Guatemala, fully lost in the hallucination except for Pickles’s voice. Blood was oozing out of his cast, which did not turn out to be real.
He would not call it a good trip.
Charles finally crawled out of bed and into the bathtub, his cast hanging over the side. He tried to focus on his schedule, which would be harried tomorrow with court decisions coming in, but his brain was too exhausted and thoughts went nowhere. Thank G-d it was Sunday and he had a good excuse not to go golfing.
When two rolled around, Pickles was up and already a little drunk. He just kind of cocked his head at Charles’s entrance as if nothing was abnormal about any recent events. “What’s up? Yer all ...”
“All what?”
“Not dressed up.”
He wasn’t wearing a suit, just slacks and a button-down, which was about as casual as he got. “I’m going to my sister’s.”
“Say hello. Or, says hellos. Fer Skwisgaar and Toki.”
“Do you want to come?” It was the easiest way to manage Pickles while he was out. “They have a new pool.”
“You’d let me?”
“If you obey all the rules. You know, minimal drinking, no passing out, no throwing up in their house, and lying outrageously around my nephew about how many drugs you do.”
“I kin manage dat,” Pickles said. “Can I demand embarrassin’ baby pictures?”
“Of him, sure,” Charles said, and they left. It was a bright and sunny day and that meant, like all other days, traffic was terrible. “Uh, Pickles?”
“Yeah?”
“Why are there lava lamps all over the floor of the limo?”
“’cuz we stole ‘em from Timmy’s house,” Pickles said. “They can be real relaxing.”
“I am very grateful for your considerable ... contribution last night.” Charles tried to at least stack them in the corner so they didn’t roll around. “And for not taking me to the hospital.”
“You would have freaked out.”
“Yes. I definitely would have.” He narrowed his eyes. “Making my assistant call me ‘cute’ was not absolutely necessary.”
“You remember dat, huh?” Pickles grinned. “I don’t think I really had ta make her - “
“Pickles.”
“She’s a Gear, right? So she’ll do anything yeh say?”
“She is my employee and this is not an appropriate discussion.”
“Jeez, don’t get all shook up aboot it.” But it sounded like that was precisely what Pickles wanted him to do. “So I take it I should nat tell Sarah about last night?”
“While it wasn’t technically my fault, no, you should not do that.”
“Baby pictures,” Pickles said between swigs of beer. “Blackmail.”
“I was not the fascinating baby you imagine me to have been.”
“Babies aren’t fascinatin,’ der cute,” Pickles replied. “Did you have glasses?”
“No. I was not born with glasses.”
“No little baby glasses?”
“I told you it would be disappointing.”
“Eh, I’ll take my chances.”
They pulled up just on time. Charles gave his assistant the rest of the day off (barring emergencies). She deserved it. The only hoodie who came in with them was Pickles’s bodyguard after an argument (Charles wouldn’t call it an argument, precisely) with his overprotective bodyguard, 82.
Charles rang the doorbell and Sam answered. “Oh my G-d!” But he stifled his instinctual response to Pickles’s presence and managed to bring his voice down an octave to say, “Uh, hi, Uncle Charlie.”
“We’re here ta use yer pool!” Pickles was way too excited and a little drunk, having tried to get his fill in on the way over. “’cuz we paid fer it!”
“Technically, you did,” Charles said. “Hi, Sam.”
His nephew stepped sideways so they could enter the massive ranch house. “Mom and Dad are still at Temple, but they said you should make yourself at home or whatever. Can I show Pickles - “
“They’re at synagogue? It’s Sunday. How Reform is it?”
“They’re meeting with the rabbi,” Sam said. He was definitely getting better at not being starstruck, though it probably helped that Pickles was alone. “Can I show Pickles my room? Who’s that guy?”
“Pickles’s bodyguard. Leave him alone,” Charles said. “Pickles?”
“Yeah?”
“You know the rules.”
“Dood, right. Lie about stuff.” He gave his manager a thumbs up. “Fine, kid. Five minutes.”
If this kept up, he was going to owe Pickles a week in Colombia, no restrictions and no spending limit. In other words, Charles was in trouble.
On the porch, he was reminded why he could stand Orange County when he couldn’t stand LA. The house was on a cliff overlooking the ocean, making for a gentle breeze, and there was a path down to the beach for Josh to surf, something he’d invited Charles to do precisely once. The rejection was enough to make sure he never did it again. The pool was repaired from the Thanksgiving antics, and the pool house entirely rebuilt. In other words, it was not a bad place to sit in a beach chair with sunglasses and space out to whatever came up next on his iPod, when it mind still wanted very much to space out. He still didn’t care for being unclothed in public, but he did take his socks and shoes off, which counted for something. He wanted some G-ddamn credit for showing his pale feet.
He must have fallen asleep, because when he opened his eyes the sun was in a different position and there was a mild metallic taste in his mouth. Also Josh was standing beside him, holding his phone up.
“What are you doing?”
“Taking a picture of Pickles passed out in my pool,” his brother-in-law said. “For blackmail.”
Charles sat up a little and squinted. “He’s not passed out. He’s just asleep.”
“So?”
“I’m saying I wouldn’t count that as blackmail. And don’t go looking for more blackmail material; you already get one fifteenth of my earnings.” Actually, Charles wired the money to an account with only Sarah’s name on it, more in principle than anything else. “And I’m a better lawyer than your golfing buddies.”
He did get up, to check that Pickles was OK, which it seemed he was. The drummer was in a very, very deep sleep, the kind with his head tossed back and his mouth wide open. He was in an inner tube that drifted in the pool. He was also wearing most of his clothing, a green trucker hat, sunglasses, had a towel over the areas that weren’t clothed, and had apparently duck-taped several beach umbrellas to the raft to avoid his mortal enemy, the sun. But he was definitely just asleep. Charles could tell from the snoring.
“Did he have a rough night?” Sarah appeared from inside, and kissed her brother on the cheek.
“Not for him, no. How long was I out?”
“About an hour. You look like you needed it.”
He just answered, “I hate LA.”
“That’s because it’s LA. And why does your cast look like a Lisa Frank poster?”
Usually people couldn’t see it, because it was in the sling and under his jacket. “Who’s Lisa Frank?”
“Remember when I went through that whole unicorn phrase in grade school? Binders and folders and pencils and I tried to get hot pink wallpaper?”
“...Yes.” It took him a moment, but he remembered because it was a rare request that their parents utterly refused even though it was within their budget.
“That’s what your cast looks like.”
“Oh.” He supposed it did. “Toki. The answer is Toki.”
“Why am I not surprised? And Josh is going to light the grill because it takes a while to heat up. So expect dinner in an hour.” She didn’t cook. Ever. “How are you?”
He didn’t lie to her. “Tired. But hopefully we’ll get a court date on Monday. Or just not go to court.”
“And then you can go back to your floating castle and spikes and yard wolves.”
“Yes.” He really was looking forward to that. Anything dark and cool sounded good to him now. “As much as I love visiting, if this whole state fell off the country and sank into the ocean, I wouldn’t really mind.”
“San Francisco is OK.”
“Hmm, some of us do need to go somewhere to get our psychedelics.”
“It has other purposes as a city!” she said, but Sarah and San Francisco had a bit of history. A short but exciting one that involved a college boyfriend named Skylar. “Cultural ... things.”
“Uh huh. Do you still hand out those pamphlets on what ecstasy does to your brain with the X-Rays that have been debunked?”
“We don’t hand them out, but they’re in the office. And why are you so drug happy all of the sudden?”
Rather than actually answer the question, Charles just nudged his head in the direction of Pickles. “Also, he said he’d be on his best behavior if I brought him.”
“He’s passed out in our pool.”
“He’s sleeping. Which for him is very good behavior. And he may make noises about baby pictures, but I’m pretty sure you don’t know where they are.”
“Then you’re going to be disappointed, because I went rooting around for stuff for my Facebook ...”
“You have a Facebook account? I thought we agreed, no Facebook accounts.”
“I have to know what my patients are talking about.”
“I completely believe you.”
Sarah rolled her eyes. “Anyway, I do have a couple pictures of you in a pile near my scanner. If you want to make Pickles happy, they’re not that embarrassing.”
He sure did owe Pickles. “I’ll keep that in mind. What am I doing in them?”
“You had some sort of obsession with trying to pick me up, but you weren’t really big enough for it. So I’m crying a lot in them. And also because I’m a baby and babies cry.”
Sarah seemed to not be on her usual bent about his general health, having done that enough recently. Maybe she could see he was recovering, though he would be a lot more recovered if he hadn’t gone to that party, but she didn’t know that and hopefully Pickles would keep his mouth shut. He was starting to feel like himself again, albeit a less wound up version, and she left him alone to check the messages on his phone and return a few calls before dinner. Josh wasn’t some weird food network-watching gourmet, but he could grill a steak - and hot dogs, which Pickles could enjoy without Murderface around to make comments.
“Should I ask how the meeting with the rabbi went?” Charles said because they hadn’t brought it up yet, at least to him.
“Rabbi Silverberg is very supportive of the idea of Sam having a Bar Mitzvah, and the Reform Movement does consider him a Jew,” Sarah answered. “He also thinks that Josh’s aversion to the idea might have more to do with his rebellion against his upbringing than actual religious beliefs.”
“I thought we agreed not to bring that up!” Josh looked flustered at the head of the table. “Since when are rabbis psychoanalysts anyway? This is why we were married by a Justice of the Peace.”
“And because your mother was against a pastor,” Sarah said, in a far less aggressive tone.
“Is this why we’re eating Hebrew National hot dogs?” Charles had to ask. Mostly to bother Josh.
“We always eat Hebrew National. You don’t know what’s in non-kosher hotdogs. Like, rat droppings and stuff. You do not eat treif hotdogs. Ever.”
“They won’t even let me order one at the ballpark,” Sam said. “I checked on the internet and you can have, like, less than one percent rodent parts in unkosher food and they don’t have to put it on the packaging.”
“That’s an urban legend,” Charles said. “You can’t believe everything you see on the internet.”
“Dood, one time on da internet I saw this - uh, nothing.” Pickles gave it a second thought, apparently. “Forgit it. Uh, good hotdogs Mrs. O.” He still called her that, even though she’d never been a married Ofdensen, and Charles never corrected him.
“Josh is the cook in the family,” she admitted without hesitation.
“Den uh, good job Mr. ... Josh.”
“Awesome.” Josh’s hands went beneath the table.
“Are you twittering at the table?” Sarah said.
“Pickles just called me by my first name; that’s a way better tweet than the stuff I usually post about. Hey Charles, do you have an acco - “
“No.”
“Are you telling me no, or do you actually not have one?”
“I actually do not have one,” he lied without a shred of guilt.
“If I have a Bar Mitzvah - “
Charles interrupted his nephew. “Dethklok will not play at your reception.”
“Oh yeah, Nat’an hates ‘em,” Pickles said between bites. “He had ta go ta like, a lot of ‘em as a kid. Said they were brutal. Bad brutal, not good brutal.”
“You didn’t?” Josh asked. “You grew up in America. How did you escape the rounds of Bar Mitzvah parties of your Jewish friends? Squirming during the confusing service and then spending five hours watching his relatives try to dance the Macarena?”
“Dood, I’m from Wisconsin. The only Jewish kid in our school didn’t want to invite anybody to anything after we beat him up for eating crackers fer a week.”
“Ah, homespun anti-Semitism,” Josh said. “More based on making fun of someone for being different than anything else. But I bet you didn’t have to attend a sensitivity seminar. And your parents didn’t have to tag along for the ‘good of the community.’”
Charles just raised his eyebrows.
“Some kids ganged up on Sam’s friend Ali for fasting on Ramadan,” Sarah explained. “Parental attendance was required for the seminar and I had to rotate my surgical schedule to have the Five Pillars of Islam explained to me as if I was twelve and completely culturally oblivious.” Sarah had the same attitude about her surgical schedule as Charles had about his business hours - they were sacred. Only she saved lives, so they actually kind of were.
“Man, I held back so many inappropriate jokes,” Josh said semi-triumphantly. “My dad emails me all kinds of racist humor, because he’s old enough that he can say this stuff and we can blame it on senility. Also if he throws Yiddish into it, that somehow makes it more OK. Welcome to our beautiful culture which Sam wants to get involved in so he can make thirty thousand dollars.”
“Wait, what? Thirty thousand dollars?” Pickles was suddenly very interested. “I want a Bar Mitzvah!”
“Pickles, I will give you thirty thousand dollars to not have this discussion.”
“Hey! How come he gets money just by asking?” Sam cried.
“Because it’s coming from his weekly allowance anyway,” Charles said.
Sam just started at his rock idol. “You have an allowance?”
Pickles shrunk into his seat. “Yeah. How dat happened ... I have no idea.” Because he wasn’t allowed to bring up the endangered species room to anyone, ever. That included Sam.
“Well, I think it’s a good idea,” Charles said, changing directions on behalf of his belittled client. “Having a Bar Mitzvah, that is. Heritage is important.”
“Says the man who won’t touch Danish food,” Sarah said. “You probably won’t even eat actual Danishes.”
“I make exceptions.”
“Oh yeah? Put up or shut up. Next time I’m serving pickled eel.”
“Tokhis oyfn tish,” Pickles said.
Everyone stared.
“It means dat. Da put up or shut up thing.” He stabbed at his grilled vegetables with the fork. “Knubbler said it a bunch of times so I asked what it meant.” More silence followed. “I’m allowed ta know things!”
“Oh my G-d, I can’t believe I forgot that one! It’s such a good one!” Josh shouted. “But really, if the most Yiddishe guy in here is the goy from Wisconsin, I think this family’s Jewish identity is in trouble.”
“And it only took you thirteen years to admit that,” Sarah said. “Good for you.”
The rest of dinner went remarkably well. Pickles made a good dent in Josh’s collection of Grey Goose wine, but did not pass out, vomit, or destroy anything. On a full stomach, his tolerance was just incredible. Charles was inclined to stay away from mood-alternating substances and that seemed to please his sister with her knowledge of his psychiatric regimen. And he only caught Sam trying to snap photos of Pickles with his camera twice, which showed a lot of restraint. That or the Dethklok percussionist eating dinner was not particularly interesting.
While cleaning up after dinner, Charles realized the adults were out of earshot and said to his nephew, “We should have a talk about drugs.”
“Uncle Charlie - “
“I know you’re going to be in college in a few years and you’re already going to parties and smoking weed. And you shouldn’t do drugs. But I want you to make me a promise.”
Sam just grumbled.
“Don’t do Ketamine.”
“What?”
“Ketamine. It’s called Special K sometimes. It’s a hallucinogen. Look, if you’re at a party, and someone says, ‘Hey, try this,’ I want you to say no. For me. Just take my word on this.”
“Um, OK.” Sam was hesitant in his response. “Is this ... coming from anywhere?”
“I’m afraid I can’t answer that question without breaking a promise to your mother. Just ... don’t do Ketamine. And don’t do any psychedelics without a sitter.”
“What’s a sitter?”
“Someone who doesn’t get high and sits with you to make sure you don’t get into medical trouble or have a bad trip. And uh, don’t do drugs in general. But I’m serious about this. What are you promising?”
“Not to do Ketamine.”
“Yes. Promise?”
“I promise. You’ve totally done drugs, haven’t you?”
“I also keep promises,” Charles said, and that ended the conversation.
The evening ended and they had to return to the hotel. Pickles was drunk enough that he could be talked out of finding new parties because of the possible court date in the morning, and Charles wanted to get back to work now that his mind was a lot clearer. For once, his sister didn’t give him the speech about taking care of himself, or anything medical related. “What do you think about the Bar Mitzvah?”
“I’ll go. And be the awkward goyisha uncle who knows more Yiddish than the two of you combined because I work in the entertainment industry.”
“It’s going to make Josh’s side of the family really happy. But they’re probably going to give him all the credit for making it happen.”
That was unfair but it was also life. Life was unfair. “It’s about what Sam wants, right? Not what his grandparents want. And it seems to be the opposite of what Josh wants, so I’m all for it.”
Sarah could not avoid cracking a smile at that. “I think the rabbi was right. About the whole rebellion thing. It’s not like Josh is a diehard atheist. He was just bored in Hebrew school like every other Jewish kid has ever been and he wants religion to be convenient. I don’t think the synagogue’s going to ask a lot of him. The rabbi plays a guitar during services and their ark opens via remote control, for Crissakes.”
“Really? Then maybe I’ll reconsider.”
She didn’t take the comment remotely seriously, and rightfully so. “It’s good to have beliefs. What do you believe in?”
“Finnish lake trolls.”
“What?”
“I believe in Finnish lake trolls.”
“And ... you worship them? Because my Neo-Pagan friends are all about some Mother Goddess. Or is that Wiccans?”
“I didn’t say I worship them. I just say they exist. And are very annoying and bad for publicity,” he said. “Oh look, my ride’s here. Gotta go!” He tried to hug her but it was more of a shoulder pat before climbing into the limo, leaving her on the front steps still awaiting an answer. It was cruel, but she shouldn’t have put him on the spot like that.
T o Be Continued...
Author: DJ_the_Writer
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Cursing, Drugs, PTSD
Pairings: None yet
Beta: wikdsushi
Characters: Charles, Pickles, OCs
Summary: Charles attempts to recover from his ordeal during a legal tussle in LA.
[ Start back at the beginning]
Chapter 3
Charles woke exceptionally late, and got up even later, hiding under the covers against the morning light for almost an hour. Granted, he did take his Dethphone with him to check his messages and deemed none of them pressing first. It was Saturday, when most of the local invitations would be to golf, from people who didn’t know he wouldn’t be swinging clubs for a long time. For the moment, the idea was soothing, because it meant he could keep his head down with the reasonable excuse of being injured and just a little hung over.
He really fucking hated LA.
The restraining order against Rikki Kixx, which was just for show, would undoubtedly go through. What Charles was waiting on was a court date for the lawsuit against Kixx, or at least a meeting with the lawyers and a judge. Hopefully it would end in arbitration. That wouldn’t happen before Monday, and if it was a ways off, he could return to cold, dark Mordhaus with Pickles, get him back in the recording studio, and not worry about the case until it reared its head again. Charles knew Nathan and Skwisgaar would use any excuse, including Pickles being gone, to avoid work. The sooner they were back in Mordhaus, the better.
There were still things on the schedule. There were always things on his schedule. He was negotiating with two venues, one in Tbilisi and another in Budapest. The latter was easy because they’d played there before, but the country of Georgia had never hosted Dethklok, and all kinds of requirements had to be met for the safety of the musicians - and maybe the citizens, if Charles had time, but he didn’t always have time.
After lunch, which was technically breakfast, and a conference all with promoters in Budapest, Charles went to check on Pickles. It was a standard hotel requirement that the room either come with a hot tub or the hotel’s hot tub be made exclusively available for Dethklok members, and that’s where he found Pickles, in up to collarbone, with empty beer bottles spread across the tile floor beside him.
“Where’ve you been, dude?”
“Working for you,” Charles said. His headache had long abated, but that didn’t exactly put him in a good mood. “Are you going to Timmy Twizzlesticks’s party tonight?”
“Uh, yeah?”
“Just ... be careful. You’ve already OD-ed once this week.”
Pickles sank even lower, so his dreads floated on the water, making him look like he had a spider on his head. And he was always going on about his spirit animal being a squid or something like that. No, wait, octopus. “Yeh could come.”
“I don’t think Mr. Twizzlesticks would really want me there.”
“Tim’s too coked up ta have a fuckin’ opinion,” Pickles said. “Yer goin’. And yer gettin’ inna hot tub.”
Charles would have crossed his arms, but he couldn’t. He could just kind of weed the left one around the cast. “I think I’ve had all the heat my body can stand in one week, thank you very much.”
“Yer supposed ta be relaxin'.”
“And I’m supposed to watch my blood pressure,” he replied. “I’m popping enough pills at it is.”
“I dunno. You haven’t been ta Timmy’s pahrty yet.”
Charles, on occasion, could get very angry at that oafish grin, which he knew to be far less innocent than it appeared, but frankly he didn’t have it in him. “Last time I got in the hot tub with you guys, I was rewarded with an STD. Somehow. I’m still trying to figure that one out.”
“Prabably from Skwisgaar. Wait - can yeh get STDs from feet?”
“No.”
“Then not Murderface. Poor guy.”
Charles was about to say that Murderface brought a lot of it on himself, but stopped himself just in time. “If I make an appearance at the party, will you promise not to OD?”
Pickles sipped at whatever drink came with four umbrellas and a plastic monkey hanging off the glass. “I pramise to OD if you don’t go.”
And he would do it, too.
“Fine. But if anyone asks, I’m telling them I’m an undercover cop,” he said, and left Pickles to prune.
********************************************
Timmy Twizzlesticks’s place on overlooking the ocean was a post-modern nightmare of white and fake plants. It was labyrinthine, leading Charles to the assumption that the man had an excellent manager and accountant, because there was no way an aging glam rock star could possibly have this much money if left to fend for himself. Maybe be bought big into Google on the ground floor or something and was smarter than he looked, but Charles severely doubted it.
“Who the fuck are you?” one of the greeters said. That Charles was standing next to Pickles should have given it away, but this was not exactly his crowd, nor was he dressed to make it his. He had shown up in a suit that looked like all his others, but he knew it already had some invisible stains and might need to be scrapped.
Rather than let Pickles vouch for him, he said, “I’m an undercover cop.” Then he pushed past him, dismissing his bodyguard as he went. “Just find somewhere to park.” 82 saluted him and did so.
Pickles tried admirably to get him into the party spirit, but it wasn’t happening. He was still tired, he was thinking about all of the meetings to reschedule, and his arm itched and there wasn’t shit he could do about it. Eventually Pickles found his own amusement with a pile of unidentified white powder being snorted off a naked Asian woman, and Charles went to the bar and ordered a Sprite so there would be something in his free hand. People were less likely to bother him that way.
He also learned that fading rock stars did not like the phrase, “I used to listen to you in high school,” and proceeded to use it as many times as possible.
It wasn’t that he despised parties - they came with the job - but the more he thought about it, the more he wanted to crawl back into his bed and sleep forever. He settled for sitting at a tiny table in the bar area, listening to a publicist with a lethal tan and white sandals talk about Twitter feeds. It wasn’t a conversation that required much on Charles’s end, with the bonus that the guy didn’t seem to know who he was and wasn’t clawing at him, trying to take a bite of Dethklok. There were enough of those people in LA.
“You really don’t have an account?” the guy said. His name was Rick, or Rich, or something with an R. Or possibly not.
“No.” It was a lie; he did have an account, to which he had never, ever posted. He used it to keep his feeds organized, highlighting when William said something stupid. Homoerotic he didn’t mind, but giving away band scheduling secrets was starting to be a real problem.
“You probably don’t have a Facebook page, either.”
“No.” He had a fan page, though. Fans of him. It was very weird and disturbing and he tried not to visit it. “Clearly, newfangled gadgets for young whippersnappers frighten and confuse me. Or maybe I just have shit to do.”
The publicist laughed, either not aware that he was the target of the joke or trying to lessen it.
A waiter offered to freshen his drink. “I want to see it poured,” Charles said. “And yes, it is Sprite.”
“Al Anon?” the douchebag publicist said.
“I can get better alcohol than they have here,” he replied, which was true. The only reason he was even talking to this guy was because he was sitting across from him and didn’t want to move. The waiter returned with an open can and poured it, and Charles drank because he wasn’t fucking touching those cocktail hour leftovers, and relied on the sugar to fill him up. “I have to go find my client,” he said, wondering why he gave the publicist a reason for leaving. Boredom, he supposed.
Back outside, the music was very loud. It wasn’t particularly bad, but it would be better played a few decibels (or ten) lower. He needed to find Pickles. It was hot, but the darkness and the breeze from the ocean made it bearable, and he wasn’t taking off his jacket in front of these people. A couple people asked about his cast to be polite. “An alligator bit me,” he said, which was technically true, just not related to being shot in the arm. The wounds on his leg from Snackers were old but taking a long time to fully heal.
“What happened to him?”
“It’s a she,” he said, and moved along. A girl walked past him clothed in nothing but gold body paint, which really shouldn’t have shocked him so much, but the glare from the hot lights hurt his eyes. He turned away and found a glittering ball, like a disco ball but at the height of a table. It must be for atmosphere. It was very enticing, like a treasure that he wanted to hold, but it would burn him if he did. Or a rock would come down on him like in Indiana Jones.
A couple of people bumped into him as he stood on the walkway, and he didn’t like to be touched. He wanted to tell them that and make them go away, but then they would touch him more. He was sure of it. And then they would shoot him.
********************************************
“Hey! Pickles!”
The voice was not inviting, but come to think of it, neither was the girl he was playing tonsil-inspection with. She was very aggressive, something he found amusing more than anything else, and he didn’t have a lot of willpower when he was drunk. It was a bad sign for her that he was already sober enough to have his attention drawn so easily what. “Dood, what?”
“You know that guy you came with?”
“He’s my manager.”
“Yeah, he’s pretty fucked up.”
This warranted getting off the skank of the evening and finding Charles. It was not as if he’d never seen Charles drunk or passed out before, but your heart went out to a guy with a broken arm. And Pickles would never hear the end of it if the arm was somehow broken further. After a lot of confused looks from inebriated or stoned party-goers, Pickles finally found Ofdensen in a coat closet.
“We shoved ‘im in there after he decked someone,” the security guard said rather unapologetically. Pickles wondered how the guard was still alive, a pretty un-mellow thing to wonder, but this was all harshing his buzz. He hadn't invite Ofdensen just so the guy could get kicked around by a has-been’s wannabe SWAT team.
Everything would be OK if the manager looked like he has having a good time; fun things could happen in closets. The Charles that emerged did not look like he was having a good time. He was twitchy, his pupils almost as big as his eyes, and he was holding a chunk of hair in his left hand. It took Pickles a moment to realize it was his. “You OK der, chief?”
“I have to go in that hut,” Charles said. “I have to find out ... what’s inside.” His words were crisp and he was standing tall. He wasn’t drunk. He gestured in some general direction, but not anywhere in particular. There were no huts around. He also didn’t seem to care that he’d ripped a huge chunk of his hair from his head and now the hair was falling on Timmy’s floor.
“Now der, yeh don’t have ta go anywhere - “
“I have to ... fucking kill everyone. Or they’re going to kill me.” He tried to list his hands to his head to protect him, but only succeeded with one arm. Somehow, his sling was already tangled. “Who killed my arm?”
Pickles was not a man of letters (despite having a BA in music composition), but he was a man lettered in a life of hallucinogens, uppers, downers, and every color of the drug rainbow. “Gimme yer phone.” Because if he took it off him, Charles might punch him. Or worse.
“Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with my arm?!?”
“'Kay der.” Pickles dialed his bodyguard and minder, who was probably somewhere at the party, looking inconspicuous. “Don’ make a big deal outta dis, but da boss is havin’ a bad trip.” He spent the next five minutes talking down the hoodie from black helicopters and tactical strikes, as that would only make the situation worse. “Come on, Charlie. We’re goin’ somewhere quiet. Do you know what yeh took?”
Charles Ofdensen clearly did not understand the question, if he even heard it.
No one immediately around them seemed to know what he’d taken, or been given, most likely. That wasn’t his concern; the people were freaking Charles out and Pickles had to get him out of there without touching him. It involved a lot of herding, and fuck the spectacle, because the boss would probably call in an air strike when he came around.
The limo was waiting for them. It was big and black and scary, and Pickles glared at Charles’s assistant and told her it wasn’t acceptable. “Go inside. Tim’s gat dis room for takin’ LSD - get da curtains and pillows an’ stuff. You,” he pointed to another hoodie, “find out what dey gave him. Fuckin’ now, dood!”
Charles had stopped talking, but his expression indicated that he wasn’t in a good place. It would spiral down from there if it wasn’t stopped. “Dood, yer gonna be OK.” It was said with a lot less insistence than the tone he used with the hoodies. “Jest ... maintain.”
The hoodies did quick work. There were a lot of drugs around, but Tim’s flavor of the week was Ketamine, and everyone was getting their chance. No one would admit to giving any to Charles, who was smart enough not to take it and once said he never took hallucinogens, but they didn’t have time to interrogate everyone. They did quick work on the limo, turning into a makeshift hippie paradise with warm colors draped over red and black cushions, and silver spikes obscured by pillows. They put a sheet over the inside light, typically red, and made it purple instead.
Charles had trouble sitting down. Not because he couldn’t find the seat, but he seemed to have trouble with the concept. “I’m floating.”
“I know, I know, it feels dat way. It’s an illusion,” Pickles said, sitting across from him with 3201. “It’s nat real.”
Charles didn’t look pleased with this situation, and started scratching at his cast as if he could get through to his arm. His left hand was already raw, and starting to bleed. 3201, who knew better than to touch her boss, grabbed a stolen sheet and dabbed at the wound.
“We should take him to the hospital,” she said in a lowered voice.
“Why? Dey’re nat gonna have an antidote. The hospital might freak him out. All bright lights an’ stuff. We got the green guys, right?”
“The medics, yes.”
“Hotel then,” Pickles said, realizing he was commanding her after he said it, and she was already dialing. Not that he had to apologize - she was just a hoodie, after all - but she was less drunk than he was, and maybe she knew something about Charles that he didn’t.
It was a painfully long ride to the hotel. Charles talked in spurts, something about huts and what blood tasted like. He was in favor of it. Pickles only responded with gentle reassurance, whether Charles heard it or not. He probably heard, but didn’t understand the words, just the tone. He didn’t seem to see either of them even though they were both right in front of him. At some point on the highway, he started asking for someone called Ejvind.
“Ejvind?”
“His brother,” the assistant said.
“He has a brother?”
“He’s dead. He died when the Commander was two.”
Pickles generally thought it was pretty funny that the hoodies called Ofdensen that behind his back, but he didn’t feel like laughing. At the hotel, they managed to guide him out of the limo and to his room. By now he was far gone enough not to be able to strike when someone touched him. Pickles removed his tie and his jacket and 3201 removed his shoes, and he sat on the floor on several pillows, surrounded by last-minute acquisitions of psychedelic accoutrements either stolen from Tim’s mansion or located so late at night in a shop, this being LA and all. The medics took his blood pressure and did some other non-invasive stuff, but had the same pronouncement. “Probably Ketamine or a similar downer. He needs to wait for it to leave his system. If he was going to have any respiratory depression, he would have had it already, but still, we should watch him for that if he falls asleep.”
Pickles put on Indian sitar music, the very mildest of what he was on his playlist, and sat on the floor across from Charles. “Dood. Maintain.”
Charles buried his hand, which had stopped bleeding, under his other arm. He was not so much cold as frightened.
He was in a very bad place.
“Charlie,” Pickles said, gently probing him. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t want to kill anybody,” his manager replied. It was hard to tell if he was answering him or just speaking whatever was on his mind. “I’m sure I don’t.”
“Yer not going to - “
“Everyone’s going to die. I’m going to kill them.”
The problem was, Pickles didn’t know if Ofdensen was hallucinating some very metal future concert or he was somewhere in his past. The latter was a possibility, he supposed. “Yer not there. Yer here, with me.”
“No. No no no.”
“Come on, Charlie. Remember when we stole dat drum set?” He waited for Charles to contradict him, but he didn’t. It wasn’t stolen so much as borrowed and not returned because it was destroyed during the show. Charles made sure the legal paperwork showed it was not the fault of any band member. Disasters just happened around them, even in the early days, destroying equipment and injuring fans. They had needed a drum set that night, and Magnus had the brilliant idea to lift it from a music store. They pulled it off before Charles, who was too busy making people sign pre-show contracts, could stop them. “Yer face went like, red. Funny stuff.”
Charles began to sway back and forth, like a druggie jonesing for another hit.
“OK, OK, I got one. The time we found out I couldn’t eat lobster. Nat’an really wanted lobster an’ he ordered fer us. Made a big fuckin’ deal out of our expensive lobster dinner at dis shack restaurant, said he would pay fer it but he couldn’t pay. An’ I had ta go to the emergency room. My face was all blown up.” Come to think of it, it was Charles who managed to stay in the hospital for more than five minutes, the other guys making excuses even after some of the swelling went down. He stayed the whole night, and was there in the morning in the same clothes when Pickles was discharged. Back when a cheap meal at a crappy seafood restaurant in Florida was considered splurging ...
His manager didn’t smile, but he was listening.
“Yeh sit der, I’m ganna tell all kinds of embarrassing stories,” Pickles said, and looked up at the assistant hovering near the door. “Get lost.”
After a brief pause she said, “No.”
“I said - “
“I’m Mr. Ofdensen’s assistant, and I know his medical history better than you do.” She kept her voice down, but it was still pretty damn confrontational. “I can’t consider myself to be doing my job if I leave him in this state.”
On another day, he might have talked her out of it, but damn, was there a lot of conviction in her voice. Fine, let her stay in the corner and not bother him. It wasn’t as if he ran his mouth off about stupid shit in front of listening hoodies anyway. “Charlie? You der?”
Charles shook his head, a direct response, even if it wasn’t the accurate one.
“Come on, yer in der. Yer right here with me.” He put his hand on the ground very close to Charles, inviting him to put his hand over it, but the manager just shook his head harder, trying to will everything away. “Yer so cute when yer bewildered.”
For the briefest moment, Charles stopped shaking. So he could understand him, beyond just syllables and sounds.
“You,” Pickles said, forgetting the hoodie’s number. “You think Charlie’s cute?”
“Uh...”
“The carrect answer’s ‘yes.’”
“Yes.” She added, “You didn’t know I wasn’t going to say it anyway.”
“Well, yeh didn’t.”
“Maybe I was trying to show a little professionalism in front of my boss,” she said, and crossed her arms.
Pickles didn’t have time to yell at her and didn’t really want to, when he thought about it. She was just doing her job, and this probably wasn’t in her job description when she applied. He refocused on Charles, who was still shaking but was more fascinated with his tongue at the moment. “Charlie?”
Charles picked his head up a little but his attention was scattershot at best.
“How do yeh feel?”
It was probably not something he could put into words, and Charles knew a lot of big words. When it came to contracts, he could be a very descriptive person. “I don’t know where I’m supposed to be.”
“Right here, chief.”
Charles resumed rocking back and forth. He wasn’t shaking as badly and he wasn’t hurting himself, so Pickles turned the music up and let things ride for a little while.
Christ, he needed a joint. This was going to be a long night.
********************************************
Charles woke to someone pressing against his arm, and his instincts demanded he grab that person and snap his wrist. His secondary instincts prevented this, and he merely grabbed the wrist and opened his eyes to the medic in a green hoodie. “What are you doing?”
“Taking your pulse, sir. Sorry, sir.”
He released his death grip on the poor Gear and nodded into the pillow, trying to chase a lot of nightmares from his consciousness. He was not in a jungle in Guatemala, or a mental hospital, or any kind of hospital, or a bad party with lame people, or Timothy Leary’s rec room. He was in his bed at the hotel, wearing his undershirt and boxers, and there were a couple people around him but it was obvious they were leaving. 3201 offered him apple juice with a straw. How did she know he was so thirsty? “Thank you.” There wasn’t a lot he could do for his dignity now. The room was pink because a bedsheet was pinned across the window and the sun's glare had a pink hue to it. 3201, as if reading his mind, moved to take it down.
His memories were fairly intact, at least of what he thought happened but didn’t, and they were awful. He didn’t want to think about them. Instead he said, “What did I take?”
“We think it was Ketamine or something in that family.”
“Christ, someone drugged my Sprite.”
“We have no reason to think it was malicious at this time, though we are looking into it.” 3201 folded the sheet as if she were doing ordinary laundry.
“Where’s Pickles?”
“Asleep, sir.”
He wondered what time it was, but not that hard. It was daylight, and that was all he cared about. “When did I pass out?”
“You fell asleep at six. Lord Pickles left you a few minutes later.”
“He talked me down from a bad trip, didn’t he?”
“He seemed to have a great deal of experience on the subject.”
It had been very bad, but it could have been much worse. It could have put him back in the hospital, but it hadn’t. Actually, he felt manageably OK, just mentally exhausted. He owed Pickles one. “What do I have to do today?” Charles really should have known but he didn’t want to flex his brain too much, and bring everything up to the surface again.
“You have the invitation to your sister’s starting at three.”
“Mmmm.” He did not pick his head off the pillow. “When do I have to leave?”
“Assuming you don’t want to cancel, in about two hours.”
“Fine. I can do it.” He was trying to will himself to get up, but it wasn’t happening. “Thank you.”
“Yes, sir.” She finally left. He was grateful, not because she was annoying him but because he desperately wanted to continue resting, or at least not thinking, for as long as possible.
Memories came unbidden; he was entirely sure of what happened but quite sure of what he thought happened. It was different from medicine designed to shut you down, or cocaine, which was an upper, but the Ketamine (apparently) altered his sense of reality, and the angrier it made him, the more vicious his interpretation got. At one point, he was wandering around the guerrilla camp in Guatemala, fully lost in the hallucination except for Pickles’s voice. Blood was oozing out of his cast, which did not turn out to be real.
He would not call it a good trip.
Charles finally crawled out of bed and into the bathtub, his cast hanging over the side. He tried to focus on his schedule, which would be harried tomorrow with court decisions coming in, but his brain was too exhausted and thoughts went nowhere. Thank G-d it was Sunday and he had a good excuse not to go golfing.
When two rolled around, Pickles was up and already a little drunk. He just kind of cocked his head at Charles’s entrance as if nothing was abnormal about any recent events. “What’s up? Yer all ...”
“All what?”
“Not dressed up.”
He wasn’t wearing a suit, just slacks and a button-down, which was about as casual as he got. “I’m going to my sister’s.”
“Say hello. Or, says hellos. Fer Skwisgaar and Toki.”
“Do you want to come?” It was the easiest way to manage Pickles while he was out. “They have a new pool.”
“You’d let me?”
“If you obey all the rules. You know, minimal drinking, no passing out, no throwing up in their house, and lying outrageously around my nephew about how many drugs you do.”
“I kin manage dat,” Pickles said. “Can I demand embarrassin’ baby pictures?”
“Of him, sure,” Charles said, and they left. It was a bright and sunny day and that meant, like all other days, traffic was terrible. “Uh, Pickles?”
“Yeah?”
“Why are there lava lamps all over the floor of the limo?”
“’cuz we stole ‘em from Timmy’s house,” Pickles said. “They can be real relaxing.”
“I am very grateful for your considerable ... contribution last night.” Charles tried to at least stack them in the corner so they didn’t roll around. “And for not taking me to the hospital.”
“You would have freaked out.”
“Yes. I definitely would have.” He narrowed his eyes. “Making my assistant call me ‘cute’ was not absolutely necessary.”
“You remember dat, huh?” Pickles grinned. “I don’t think I really had ta make her - “
“Pickles.”
“She’s a Gear, right? So she’ll do anything yeh say?”
“She is my employee and this is not an appropriate discussion.”
“Jeez, don’t get all shook up aboot it.” But it sounded like that was precisely what Pickles wanted him to do. “So I take it I should nat tell Sarah about last night?”
“While it wasn’t technically my fault, no, you should not do that.”
“Baby pictures,” Pickles said between swigs of beer. “Blackmail.”
“I was not the fascinating baby you imagine me to have been.”
“Babies aren’t fascinatin,’ der cute,” Pickles replied. “Did you have glasses?”
“No. I was not born with glasses.”
“No little baby glasses?”
“I told you it would be disappointing.”
“Eh, I’ll take my chances.”
They pulled up just on time. Charles gave his assistant the rest of the day off (barring emergencies). She deserved it. The only hoodie who came in with them was Pickles’s bodyguard after an argument (Charles wouldn’t call it an argument, precisely) with his overprotective bodyguard, 82.
Charles rang the doorbell and Sam answered. “Oh my G-d!” But he stifled his instinctual response to Pickles’s presence and managed to bring his voice down an octave to say, “Uh, hi, Uncle Charlie.”
“We’re here ta use yer pool!” Pickles was way too excited and a little drunk, having tried to get his fill in on the way over. “’cuz we paid fer it!”
“Technically, you did,” Charles said. “Hi, Sam.”
His nephew stepped sideways so they could enter the massive ranch house. “Mom and Dad are still at Temple, but they said you should make yourself at home or whatever. Can I show Pickles - “
“They’re at synagogue? It’s Sunday. How Reform is it?”
“They’re meeting with the rabbi,” Sam said. He was definitely getting better at not being starstruck, though it probably helped that Pickles was alone. “Can I show Pickles my room? Who’s that guy?”
“Pickles’s bodyguard. Leave him alone,” Charles said. “Pickles?”
“Yeah?”
“You know the rules.”
“Dood, right. Lie about stuff.” He gave his manager a thumbs up. “Fine, kid. Five minutes.”
If this kept up, he was going to owe Pickles a week in Colombia, no restrictions and no spending limit. In other words, Charles was in trouble.
On the porch, he was reminded why he could stand Orange County when he couldn’t stand LA. The house was on a cliff overlooking the ocean, making for a gentle breeze, and there was a path down to the beach for Josh to surf, something he’d invited Charles to do precisely once. The rejection was enough to make sure he never did it again. The pool was repaired from the Thanksgiving antics, and the pool house entirely rebuilt. In other words, it was not a bad place to sit in a beach chair with sunglasses and space out to whatever came up next on his iPod, when it mind still wanted very much to space out. He still didn’t care for being unclothed in public, but he did take his socks and shoes off, which counted for something. He wanted some G-ddamn credit for showing his pale feet.
He must have fallen asleep, because when he opened his eyes the sun was in a different position and there was a mild metallic taste in his mouth. Also Josh was standing beside him, holding his phone up.
“What are you doing?”
“Taking a picture of Pickles passed out in my pool,” his brother-in-law said. “For blackmail.”
Charles sat up a little and squinted. “He’s not passed out. He’s just asleep.”
“So?”
“I’m saying I wouldn’t count that as blackmail. And don’t go looking for more blackmail material; you already get one fifteenth of my earnings.” Actually, Charles wired the money to an account with only Sarah’s name on it, more in principle than anything else. “And I’m a better lawyer than your golfing buddies.”
He did get up, to check that Pickles was OK, which it seemed he was. The drummer was in a very, very deep sleep, the kind with his head tossed back and his mouth wide open. He was in an inner tube that drifted in the pool. He was also wearing most of his clothing, a green trucker hat, sunglasses, had a towel over the areas that weren’t clothed, and had apparently duck-taped several beach umbrellas to the raft to avoid his mortal enemy, the sun. But he was definitely just asleep. Charles could tell from the snoring.
“Did he have a rough night?” Sarah appeared from inside, and kissed her brother on the cheek.
“Not for him, no. How long was I out?”
“About an hour. You look like you needed it.”
He just answered, “I hate LA.”
“That’s because it’s LA. And why does your cast look like a Lisa Frank poster?”
Usually people couldn’t see it, because it was in the sling and under his jacket. “Who’s Lisa Frank?”
“Remember when I went through that whole unicorn phrase in grade school? Binders and folders and pencils and I tried to get hot pink wallpaper?”
“...Yes.” It took him a moment, but he remembered because it was a rare request that their parents utterly refused even though it was within their budget.
“That’s what your cast looks like.”
“Oh.” He supposed it did. “Toki. The answer is Toki.”
“Why am I not surprised? And Josh is going to light the grill because it takes a while to heat up. So expect dinner in an hour.” She didn’t cook. Ever. “How are you?”
He didn’t lie to her. “Tired. But hopefully we’ll get a court date on Monday. Or just not go to court.”
“And then you can go back to your floating castle and spikes and yard wolves.”
“Yes.” He really was looking forward to that. Anything dark and cool sounded good to him now. “As much as I love visiting, if this whole state fell off the country and sank into the ocean, I wouldn’t really mind.”
“San Francisco is OK.”
“Hmm, some of us do need to go somewhere to get our psychedelics.”
“It has other purposes as a city!” she said, but Sarah and San Francisco had a bit of history. A short but exciting one that involved a college boyfriend named Skylar. “Cultural ... things.”
“Uh huh. Do you still hand out those pamphlets on what ecstasy does to your brain with the X-Rays that have been debunked?”
“We don’t hand them out, but they’re in the office. And why are you so drug happy all of the sudden?”
Rather than actually answer the question, Charles just nudged his head in the direction of Pickles. “Also, he said he’d be on his best behavior if I brought him.”
“He’s passed out in our pool.”
“He’s sleeping. Which for him is very good behavior. And he may make noises about baby pictures, but I’m pretty sure you don’t know where they are.”
“Then you’re going to be disappointed, because I went rooting around for stuff for my Facebook ...”
“You have a Facebook account? I thought we agreed, no Facebook accounts.”
“I have to know what my patients are talking about.”
“I completely believe you.”
Sarah rolled her eyes. “Anyway, I do have a couple pictures of you in a pile near my scanner. If you want to make Pickles happy, they’re not that embarrassing.”
He sure did owe Pickles. “I’ll keep that in mind. What am I doing in them?”
“You had some sort of obsession with trying to pick me up, but you weren’t really big enough for it. So I’m crying a lot in them. And also because I’m a baby and babies cry.”
Sarah seemed to not be on her usual bent about his general health, having done that enough recently. Maybe she could see he was recovering, though he would be a lot more recovered if he hadn’t gone to that party, but she didn’t know that and hopefully Pickles would keep his mouth shut. He was starting to feel like himself again, albeit a less wound up version, and she left him alone to check the messages on his phone and return a few calls before dinner. Josh wasn’t some weird food network-watching gourmet, but he could grill a steak - and hot dogs, which Pickles could enjoy without Murderface around to make comments.
“Should I ask how the meeting with the rabbi went?” Charles said because they hadn’t brought it up yet, at least to him.
“Rabbi Silverberg is very supportive of the idea of Sam having a Bar Mitzvah, and the Reform Movement does consider him a Jew,” Sarah answered. “He also thinks that Josh’s aversion to the idea might have more to do with his rebellion against his upbringing than actual religious beliefs.”
“I thought we agreed not to bring that up!” Josh looked flustered at the head of the table. “Since when are rabbis psychoanalysts anyway? This is why we were married by a Justice of the Peace.”
“And because your mother was against a pastor,” Sarah said, in a far less aggressive tone.
“Is this why we’re eating Hebrew National hot dogs?” Charles had to ask. Mostly to bother Josh.
“We always eat Hebrew National. You don’t know what’s in non-kosher hotdogs. Like, rat droppings and stuff. You do not eat treif hotdogs. Ever.”
“They won’t even let me order one at the ballpark,” Sam said. “I checked on the internet and you can have, like, less than one percent rodent parts in unkosher food and they don’t have to put it on the packaging.”
“That’s an urban legend,” Charles said. “You can’t believe everything you see on the internet.”
“Dood, one time on da internet I saw this - uh, nothing.” Pickles gave it a second thought, apparently. “Forgit it. Uh, good hotdogs Mrs. O.” He still called her that, even though she’d never been a married Ofdensen, and Charles never corrected him.
“Josh is the cook in the family,” she admitted without hesitation.
“Den uh, good job Mr. ... Josh.”
“Awesome.” Josh’s hands went beneath the table.
“Are you twittering at the table?” Sarah said.
“Pickles just called me by my first name; that’s a way better tweet than the stuff I usually post about. Hey Charles, do you have an acco - “
“No.”
“Are you telling me no, or do you actually not have one?”
“I actually do not have one,” he lied without a shred of guilt.
“If I have a Bar Mitzvah - “
Charles interrupted his nephew. “Dethklok will not play at your reception.”
“Oh yeah, Nat’an hates ‘em,” Pickles said between bites. “He had ta go ta like, a lot of ‘em as a kid. Said they were brutal. Bad brutal, not good brutal.”
“You didn’t?” Josh asked. “You grew up in America. How did you escape the rounds of Bar Mitzvah parties of your Jewish friends? Squirming during the confusing service and then spending five hours watching his relatives try to dance the Macarena?”
“Dood, I’m from Wisconsin. The only Jewish kid in our school didn’t want to invite anybody to anything after we beat him up for eating crackers fer a week.”
“Ah, homespun anti-Semitism,” Josh said. “More based on making fun of someone for being different than anything else. But I bet you didn’t have to attend a sensitivity seminar. And your parents didn’t have to tag along for the ‘good of the community.’”
Charles just raised his eyebrows.
“Some kids ganged up on Sam’s friend Ali for fasting on Ramadan,” Sarah explained. “Parental attendance was required for the seminar and I had to rotate my surgical schedule to have the Five Pillars of Islam explained to me as if I was twelve and completely culturally oblivious.” Sarah had the same attitude about her surgical schedule as Charles had about his business hours - they were sacred. Only she saved lives, so they actually kind of were.
“Man, I held back so many inappropriate jokes,” Josh said semi-triumphantly. “My dad emails me all kinds of racist humor, because he’s old enough that he can say this stuff and we can blame it on senility. Also if he throws Yiddish into it, that somehow makes it more OK. Welcome to our beautiful culture which Sam wants to get involved in so he can make thirty thousand dollars.”
“Wait, what? Thirty thousand dollars?” Pickles was suddenly very interested. “I want a Bar Mitzvah!”
“Pickles, I will give you thirty thousand dollars to not have this discussion.”
“Hey! How come he gets money just by asking?” Sam cried.
“Because it’s coming from his weekly allowance anyway,” Charles said.
Sam just started at his rock idol. “You have an allowance?”
Pickles shrunk into his seat. “Yeah. How dat happened ... I have no idea.” Because he wasn’t allowed to bring up the endangered species room to anyone, ever. That included Sam.
“Well, I think it’s a good idea,” Charles said, changing directions on behalf of his belittled client. “Having a Bar Mitzvah, that is. Heritage is important.”
“Says the man who won’t touch Danish food,” Sarah said. “You probably won’t even eat actual Danishes.”
“I make exceptions.”
“Oh yeah? Put up or shut up. Next time I’m serving pickled eel.”
“Tokhis oyfn tish,” Pickles said.
Everyone stared.
“It means dat. Da put up or shut up thing.” He stabbed at his grilled vegetables with the fork. “Knubbler said it a bunch of times so I asked what it meant.” More silence followed. “I’m allowed ta know things!”
“Oh my G-d, I can’t believe I forgot that one! It’s such a good one!” Josh shouted. “But really, if the most Yiddishe guy in here is the goy from Wisconsin, I think this family’s Jewish identity is in trouble.”
“And it only took you thirteen years to admit that,” Sarah said. “Good for you.”
The rest of dinner went remarkably well. Pickles made a good dent in Josh’s collection of Grey Goose wine, but did not pass out, vomit, or destroy anything. On a full stomach, his tolerance was just incredible. Charles was inclined to stay away from mood-alternating substances and that seemed to please his sister with her knowledge of his psychiatric regimen. And he only caught Sam trying to snap photos of Pickles with his camera twice, which showed a lot of restraint. That or the Dethklok percussionist eating dinner was not particularly interesting.
While cleaning up after dinner, Charles realized the adults were out of earshot and said to his nephew, “We should have a talk about drugs.”
“Uncle Charlie - “
“I know you’re going to be in college in a few years and you’re already going to parties and smoking weed. And you shouldn’t do drugs. But I want you to make me a promise.”
Sam just grumbled.
“Don’t do Ketamine.”
“What?”
“Ketamine. It’s called Special K sometimes. It’s a hallucinogen. Look, if you’re at a party, and someone says, ‘Hey, try this,’ I want you to say no. For me. Just take my word on this.”
“Um, OK.” Sam was hesitant in his response. “Is this ... coming from anywhere?”
“I’m afraid I can’t answer that question without breaking a promise to your mother. Just ... don’t do Ketamine. And don’t do any psychedelics without a sitter.”
“What’s a sitter?”
“Someone who doesn’t get high and sits with you to make sure you don’t get into medical trouble or have a bad trip. And uh, don’t do drugs in general. But I’m serious about this. What are you promising?”
“Not to do Ketamine.”
“Yes. Promise?”
“I promise. You’ve totally done drugs, haven’t you?”
“I also keep promises,” Charles said, and that ended the conversation.
The evening ended and they had to return to the hotel. Pickles was drunk enough that he could be talked out of finding new parties because of the possible court date in the morning, and Charles wanted to get back to work now that his mind was a lot clearer. For once, his sister didn’t give him the speech about taking care of himself, or anything medical related. “What do you think about the Bar Mitzvah?”
“I’ll go. And be the awkward goyisha uncle who knows more Yiddish than the two of you combined because I work in the entertainment industry.”
“It’s going to make Josh’s side of the family really happy. But they’re probably going to give him all the credit for making it happen.”
That was unfair but it was also life. Life was unfair. “It’s about what Sam wants, right? Not what his grandparents want. And it seems to be the opposite of what Josh wants, so I’m all for it.”
Sarah could not avoid cracking a smile at that. “I think the rabbi was right. About the whole rebellion thing. It’s not like Josh is a diehard atheist. He was just bored in Hebrew school like every other Jewish kid has ever been and he wants religion to be convenient. I don’t think the synagogue’s going to ask a lot of him. The rabbi plays a guitar during services and their ark opens via remote control, for Crissakes.”
“Really? Then maybe I’ll reconsider.”
She didn’t take the comment remotely seriously, and rightfully so. “It’s good to have beliefs. What do you believe in?”
“Finnish lake trolls.”
“What?”
“I believe in Finnish lake trolls.”
“And ... you worship them? Because my Neo-Pagan friends are all about some Mother Goddess. Or is that Wiccans?”
“I didn’t say I worship them. I just say they exist. And are very annoying and bad for publicity,” he said. “Oh look, my ride’s here. Gotta go!” He tried to hug her but it was more of a shoulder pat before climbing into the limo, leaving her on the front steps still awaiting an answer. It was cruel, but she shouldn’t have put him on the spot like that.
T o Be Continued...