Sick City Read Online Free

said.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œThat’s the place I’m going to tomorrow. Clean and Serene in Pasadena.”
    Â· · ·
    Tyler looked at Jeffrey. He whistled. “For real?”
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œWow, that’s a nice place. Did the old man pay for it?”
    â€œWell, yeah. Kind of.”
    â€œThat’s wild. You’ll probably see tons of famous people in there. Can you take pictures?”
    â€œI don’t think so.”
    â€œThat sucks.”
    Jeffrey watched the television for a moment. Dr. Mike was talking about his television show, telling the women of The View that Detoxing America is reality television that saves lives.
    â€œWanna smoke some crack?” Jeffrey said.
    â€œOh, sure. Hey, dude, you should totally fuck Dr. Mike.”
    â€œYeah, maybe I should . . . ,” said Jeffrey, as he started pulling the coke and the pipe out of his bag.

Chapter Four
    In the dream Randal was looking out toward a perfectly clear horizon. The powder blue sky lay hard against the sapphire blue of the farthest point of the ocean. The water was crystalline, lapping at the shoreline with a gentle undulation. He was sitting on a beach chair. The one-eared girl was sitting in front of him, just as she had been before. Her single earring, a large hoop bearing the legend “Esmeralda” in script, twinkled in the sunlight. This hypnotic twinkling, in time with the bus’s steady lurches, had lulled him to sleep originally. It kept up its steady rhythm here, as he ran his hands over her smooth, oiled back.
    Then they stood up on the hot sand and walked toward the water hand in hand. The water was warm. As they walked, their feet at first smushed into the soft white sand. Farther on, they found themselves in a patch of dark green sea grass. Here they stopped. She sat, so only her head was poking above the water. As Randal sat beside her, he felt the warm slush of the sand and the slimy weeds collecting around his ass and his thighs. It was this sensation, warm, viscous, that began to bring him around. That and the driver with the bulldog neck, who applied the brakes and frantically looked back over his shoulder, barking, “YOU! SIR! Wake up! Get off my goddamned bus!!!”
    He blinked. The mid-afternoon sunlight burned his face through the scarred glass. Someone had scrawled “FUCK THE LAPD” in Magic Marker here. There was a rank stench. Esmeralda was here, too, on her feet and looking down on him with unconcealed disgust. The smell of his own shit made him gag. He looked over toward the driver, who was standing now, about to walk toward Randal and physically drag him off the bus. An old Latin lady stood behind the driver guiltily, having informed him of what had happened. Half retching, Randal staggered to his feet and said, “I’m going!”
    Delirious, he staggered off the bus and onto the sidewalk, leaving a trail of excrement in his wake. He sat under the Hollywood sun with crap leaking from the legs of his destroyed $1,500 Yves Saint Laurent suit. The bus tore away from him, and he was alone on the hard plastic bench.
    Randal’s receding hair was dyed platinum. His once handsome face was hollowed out beyond recognition. He still had the eyes, though. Soulful eyes. Eyes that earned more forgiveness than even he thought he deserved.
    He was on the corner of Hollywood and Highland. He walked toward a pay phone, noting the dinosaur bursting from the roof of Ripley’s Believe It or Not, with a clock clamped between its jaws. He called his brother collect. Across the city, white-knuckled behind the wheel of his Lexus, Harvey accepted the charges.
    â€œYou’re a motherfucker,” Harvey said.
    â€œHarvey. It’s Randal!”
    â€œI know who it is. Nobody else calls me collect on a regular basis. I guess you’re calling to see how the funeral went? It was good. A lot of people showed up. Susan Sarandon was there, the Cruises,