All Tomorrow's Parties

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. 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, but 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.

'You're bigger.

'Size ain't everything.

'Sure, Rydell had said.

ALL that summer Rydell and Durius had been night security at the Lucky Dragon, a purpose-built module that had been coptered into this former car-rental lot on the Strip. Before that, Rydell had been night security at the Chateau, just up the Street, and before that he'd driven a wagon for IntenSecure. Still farther back, briefly and he tried not to think about it too often, he'd been a police officer in Knoxville, Tennessee. Somewhere in there, twice, he'd almost made the cut for Cons in Trouble, a show he'd grown up on but now managed never to watch.

Working nights at the Lucky Dragon was more interesting than Rydell would have imagined. Durius said that was because it was the only place around, for a mile or so, that sold anything that anyone actually needed, on a regular basis or otherwise. Microwave noodles, diagnostic kits for most STDs, toothpaste, disposable anything, Net access, gum, bottled water… There were Lucky Dragons all over America, all over the world for that matter, and to prove it you had your trademark Lucky Dragon Global Interactive Video Column outside. You had to pass it entering and leaving the store, so you'd see whichever dozen Lucky Dragons the Sunset franchise happened to be linked with at that particular moment: Paris or Houston or Brazzaville, wherever. These were shuffled, every three minutes, for the practical reason that it had been determined that if the maximum viewing time was any more, kids in the world's duller suburbs would try to win bets by having sex on camera. As it was, you got a certain amount of mooning and flashing. Or, still more common, like this shit-faced guy in downtown Prague, as Rydell made his exit to do the curb check, displaying the universal finger.

'Same here, Rydell said to this unknown Czech, hitching up the neon-pink Lucky Dragon fanny pack he was contractually obligated to wear on duty. He didn't mind that though, even if it did look like shit: it was bulletproof, with a pull-up Kevlar baby bib to fasten around your neck if the going got rough. A severely lateral customer with a ceramic switchblade had tried to stab Rydell through the Lucky Dragon logo his second week on the job, and Rydell had sort of bonded with the thing after that.

He had that switchblade up in his room over Mrs. Siekevitz's garage. They'd found it below the peanut butter, after the LAPD had taken the lateral one away. It had a black blade that looked like sandblasted glass. Rydell didn't like it; the ceramic blade gave it a weird balance, and it was so sharp that he'd already cut himself with it twice. He wasn't sure what he should do with it.

Tonight's curb check looked dead simple. There was a Japanese girl standing out there with a seriously amazing amount of legs running down from an even more amazingly small amount of shorts. Well, sort of Japanese. Rydell found it hard to make distinctions like that in LA. Durius said hybrid vigor was the order of the day, and Rydell guessed he was right. This girl with all the legs, she was nearly as tall as Rydell, and he didn't think Japanese people usually were. But then maybe she'd grown up here, and her family before her, and the local food had made them taller. He'd heard about that happening. But, no, he decided, getting closer, the thing was, she wasn't actually a girl. Funny how you got that. Usually it wasn't anything too obvious. It was like he really wanted to buy into everything she was doing to be a girl, but some subliminal message he got from her bone structure just wouldn't let him.

'Hey, he said.

'You want me to move?

'Well, Rydell said, 'I'm supposed to.

'I'm supposed to stand out here convincing a jaded clientele to buy blow jobs. What's the difference?

Rydell thought about it. 'You're freelance, he decided, 'I'm on salary. You go on down the street for twenty minutes, nobody's going to fire you. He could smell her perfume through the complicated pollution and that ghostly hint of oranges you got out here sometimes. There were orange trees around, had to be, but he'd never found one.

She was frowning at him. 'Freelance.

'That's right.

She swayed expertly on her stacked heels, fishing a box of Russian Marlboros from her pink patent purse. Passing cars were already honking at the sight of the Lucky Dragon security man talking to this six-foot-plus boygirl, and now she was deliberately doing something illegal. She opened the red-and-white box and pointedly offered Rydell a cigarette. There were two in there, factory-made filter tips, but one was shorter than the other and had blue metallic lipstick on it.

'No thanks.

She took out the shorter one, partially smoked, and put it between her lips. 'Know what I'd do if I were you? Her lips, around the tan filter tip, looked like a pair of miniature water beds plastered with glittery blue candy coat.

'What?

She took a lighter from her purse. Like the ones they sold in those tobacciana shops. They were going to make that illegal too, he'd heard. She snapped it and lit her cigarette. Drew in the smoke, held it, blew it out, away from Rydell. 'I'd fuck off into the air.

He looked into the Lucky Dragon and saw Durius say something to Miss Praisegod Satansbane, the checker on this shift. She had a fine sense of humor, Praisegod, and he guessed you had to, with a name like that. Her parents were some particularly virulent stripe of SoCal NeoPuritan, and had taken the name Satansbane before Praisegod had been born. The thing was, she'd explained to Rydell, nobody much knew what 'bane' meant, so if she told people her last name, they mostly figured she was a Satanist anyway. So she often went by the surname Proby, which had been her father's before he'd gotten religion.

Now Durius said something else, and Praisegod threw back her shoulders and laughed. Rydell sighed. He wished it had been Durius' turn to do curb check.

'Look, Rydell said, 'I'm not telling you you can't stand out here. The sidewalk's public property. It's just that there's this company policy.

'I'm going to finish this cigarette, she said, 'and then I'm calling my lawyer.

'Can't we just keep it simple?

'Uh-uh. Big metallic-blue, collagen-swollen smile.

Rydell glanced over and saw Durius making hand signals at him.

Pointing to Praisegod, who held a phone. He hoped they hadn't called LAPD. He had a feeling this girl really did have herself a lawyer, and Mr. Park wouldn't like that.

Now Durius came out. 'For you, he called. 'Say it's Tokyo.

'Excuse me, Rydell said, and turned away. 'Hey, she said.

'Hey what? He looked back. 'You're cute.