Fogtown Read Online Free Page B

Guattari?”
    “Nah.”
    “They were like pioneers in their field. They’d say the hallucinations weren’t a problem.”
    “Really?”
    “You bet. It’s how your subconscious is trying to heal itself.”
    This was mildly interesting to Stiv. “How’s that?”
    “By coming up with history. The truth is, you’re experiencing a period of mental instability.”
    It was the last thing Stiv needed to hear. “What are you going to give me for this, uh, mental stuff.”
    “Haldol. You’ll love it.”
    As the rain battered the window, Stiv became fearful. He hadn’t talked to Norbert Deflass since yesterday. At the social worker’s request his shrink gave him a script for Haldol, but the stuff hadn’t been so wonderful. The drug plagued him with muscle spasms andcottonmouth. His brain was reduced to glue. Haldol benumbed his arms and legs and killed all feelings in his hands and feet. He stopped taking it after a day.
    The baby was fussing in the bed and distracted Stiv. He turned around to see what was up. Straining to get at his mother’s tits, the brat was tremulous, as though he had Parkinson’s disease. His mouth was open; the glaze in his eyes was rabid. Sharona unbuttoned her black satin nightgown and whispered, “There, now, it’s okay, Booboo.”
    Unhooking her nursing bra, she poked a breast in the infant’s tyrannical mouth and he began to suck, gurgling heartily. Sharona half-closed her eyes and let the baby go to work, feeling the rhythm of her milk draining down his throat. She patted his fanny, and he dug his fingers in her hair, drooling on her gown. Finished with her tit, he chortled once and fell asleep.
    Stiv walked over to the bed and sat down next to his son and wife. Sharona regarded him and the baby. The father of her child was a recent graduate of a six-month stint in county jail for selling nickel bags. Stiv often seemed no older than the infant. He had the same mindless expression on his face. It was a disconcerting comparison exacerbated by the fact that Stiv hadn’t had a job in seven months. There was no food in the icebox. No money in the bank. She said to him, “You all right?”
    He didn’t answer her. How was he supposed to know if he was okay? His mind was a sieve, a Pandora’s box. You opened it and ghosts came out. He got up and wandered to the closet, selected a pair of black Dickies, and stepped into them. He then went to the table and flipped on the radio. While absentmindedly listening to a news reporter talk about the Brinks truck robbery, Stiv concocted a scheme to get some cash. That was the number-one order of the day: improve his finances and pay the rent.
    The radio newscaster was interviewing the chief of police about the Brinks caper. The chief’s voice was impassioned with anger as he made a plea for the public to get involved. He said the robbers were criminals of the worst kind. Before the policeman went off theair, he gave out a snitch number for citizens to call if they had any information. Stiv fiddled with the radio dial and changed it to a jazz station, KCSM in San Mateo. Horace Silver’s “Tokyo Blues” flowered into the room.
    Listening to the music, Stiv flashed on Friedrich Nietzsche, the German philosopher. He liked fiction, Turgenev and Gogol, novelists whom his grandmother had advocated, but whenever Stiv was feeling blue, reading Nietzsche cheered him up. A quote came to mind: “Find an exalted and noble
raison d’être
in life; seek out destruction for its own sake.”
    Getting the rent together was going to be a bitch. The last time Stiv had gone out looking for money, he’d attempted to rob a mom-and-pop store in the Mission, a hole in the wall at Nineteenth and Lexington. It was an easy target. Nothing fancy. The place was empty. The street outside was quiet. It was a cakewalk. All he had to do was stick a gun in the proprietor’s face and demand the loot. He’d done it before. He could do it in his sleep.
    The minute he walked in the