Butcher Bird

When the driver tried to engage him in tourist chitchat, Spyder ignored him and stared out the window. It was dusk. The sky was midnight blue and shot through with glowing stripes of salmon. Lights were coming on as they drove through North Beach. Strip clubs, punk clubs, sports bars and Italian restaurants hissed by. On the corners were groups of tourists shivering as fog came down upon them in their Alcatraz Swim Team T-shirts. Fidgety clusters of students, street kids and sailors in dress whites ran through the traffic, eager to get on to the next good time.

And there were the mutilated, sipping cappuccinos at sidewalk cafes. The beautiful Volt Eater from the night market was being ferried down Broadway on a glittering sedan chair. Outside a twenty-four-hour sex shop at Broadway and Columbus, a blue-robed angel sat atop a sacrifice pole holding a pale, bloody angel in its arms and weeping.

Spyder dug the crumpled pack of cigarettes from his pocket and lit one. He thought of something Lulu had said when he first discovered her awful secret: "After a while, no matter how messed up it is, everything becomes normal." There's a lot of truth in that, he thought, watching the animal-shaped airships drift through the evening sky. Nothing was bothering him at that moment. With a little practice and the right drugs, he was certain that nothing would ever bother him again.

At his place, Spyder handed the driver a wad of bills and got out of the cab without waiting for change. Inside, the warehouse was cold and not all that comforting. As much as Spyder loved to travel, he was always thrilled and relieved to be back in his own comfortable, messy rooms. As he flicked on the light, however, the familiar piles of books and DVDs, the scattered clothes, felt odd and alien. He grabbed a fresh pack of cigarettes from the kitchen counter and hit the button that rolled up the big garage door that took up most of the west wall of the warehouse. Dropping onto the seat of the Dead Man's Ducati was the first thing that felt right to Spyder since leaving the boat at Fisherman's Wharf. He hit the button to lower the door and popped the clutch. Ducking at the last possible moment, Spyder cleared the weather stripping on the bottom of the door by an inch. He roared onto the 101 Freeway.

Shooting off at the first exit, Spyder headed up to Haight Street with the throttle wide open, blowing red lights and double-parked trucks the whole way. He didn't let up on the gas until he was a block from the tattoo parlor. Fog was drifting in when he rolled the bike between an SUV and a battered El Camino with NUESTRA RAZA stenciled high on the windshield.

Spyder was standing in the street before he realized that Route 666 Tattoos was gone. The area where the parlor once stood was a charred ruin cordoned off with yellow caution tape.

Spyder's mind was a complete blank as he ducked under the tape and stood where his customers had scanned the walls, looking over the flash designs. What he felt eventually was surprise. He'd only been gone a day, yet the place had burned and all the debris had been hauled away. Street people had already started a little colony of shopping carts where the back of the shop had stood. A couple of them (Men? Women? He couldn't tell in their layers of bulky coats.) stared at him while passing a bottle of Four Roses back and forth. Spyder kicked at the garbage that had begun to accumulate on the site. In the trash, he found the fried remains of one of his tattoo guns. He picked it up and weighed the thing in his hand. Dead metal. Worthless. Spyder stood up and let the tattoo gun fall back into the debris.

Jogging back to the Ducati, he gunned it to life and tore across Haight Street, up onto the sidewalk and through the caution tape into the shop, scattering trash and splinters of blackened wood. Revving the throttle, Spyder turned donuts in the debris, smoking his rear tire and scaring the winos enough to huddle together in the back. As a foot patrol cop came running into the burned shop, Spyder slammed back onto the street and away.

****

The light was on in Lulu's Mission District apartment. Spyder rang her bell and, when there was no answer, yelled up at her window. When that didn't work, he climbed the fence into her backyard and went across a neighbor's roof until, with a jump, he could reach the bottom of the fire escape. Spyder hauled himself up to the bottom landing and climbed the stairs to Lulu's apartment on the fourth floor.

Through the half-open window, he could see Lulu in her old orange robe, passed out on the couch. Pushing open the window the rest of the way, Spyder stepped inside. There were little packets of foil on the coffee table, along with burnt spoons, medical tubing and a syringe with a white, crusted tip. Spyder shouted angrily at Lulu.

"Wake up, asshole. Move. Look at me."