At that moment it was impossible for me to understand how I had stayed away from this drug—we called it “The Tik”—for all those years. I had never heard of it outside this room and had never looked for it elsewhere. Somehow I knew that it existed nowhere but here. This place was as much a part of The Tik as I, moments before, had been a part of Melinda. She lived here in a desert oasis with it, and the whole scene had always been one great, indivisible, seductive, eternal entity to me. I had once believed that I could escape it by running. Now I had run back, and was going to try to escape another way.
Melinda tapped the needle of the syringe with a long red fingernail. The sexual tension and my own anticipation had my heart nearly beating out of my chest. My bloodstream was primed to rush the drug to my brain. Melinda turned, ready with the needle. I closed my eyes and offered my arm.
The beautiful pinch.
As the hot fluid rushed through my veins, Melinda prepared another hypo and injected herself. Then she dropped the syringe onto the tray and kicked it, lunging into me. As the stainless steel and empty vial clattered to the floor, Melinda clutched my waist and took me into her mouth. The heat of The Tik inside of me and the heat of Melinda’s tongue outside of me combined into that perfect euphoria I’d known only within these walls. She held me on the brink for as long as she could. Then I yelled out, pumping into her.
The feeling of being alive poured over me, elemental and singular. We were finally together again.
The Tik.
We blinked in the aftermath, verifying it was real. I lay on my back, Melinda’s head on my stomach. Then she reared up and playfully bit me. I laughed and pushed her off. Full of new energy, I bounded out of the bed and down the stairs, returning with the bottle of bourbon. Melinda already had her panties on and was rolling up her fishnets. I sucked the bottle as I watched her dress. She grabbed it from me and took a big swallow.
“I have a surprise for you,” she said. She shoved the bottle back into my hand and pulled open the door of what had been my closet. I was stunned. Before me hung all my old clothes, just as I had left them.
I laughed. “Unfuckingbelievable. Do you still have the Jag too?”
“In the garage,” she said.
Nothing had changed.
Melinda and the drug were working in perfect harmony. My head spun with satisfaction and lust. I grinned wildly and shook on the leather jacket that had always fit me like a second skin. It still did. My boots, my jeans, everything was in place. I gulped some more bourbon and pounced on Melinda. We fell onto the bed and I ripped off the black lace bra she had just put on. She laughed as the zipper on my jacket scratched her. We fucked again, more perfunctorily this time, then got dressed.
After finishing the bottle of bourbon we went down to the garage. Melinda’s vintage Jag, a black 1967 XKE, was still in perfect shape, just as I, by now, expected everything to be. The car had also fit me. I slid into the driver’s seat and palmed the bulb of the stick shift. Melinda’s perfume blended with the smell of leather and night air. We squealed down the driveway and onto the moneyed side street. The ragtop was down and the wind blew Melinda’s hair all around. I flew through a red light. We vanished into the night.
We headed for the Strip, battling traffic. I didn’t mind. I basked in the stares this beautiful woman and car garnered beneath the streetlights and neon.
“Let’s go to the Barbary Coast,” I said.
“The Barbary Coast? You’ve got to be kidding,” said Melinda. “Why?”
“Dunno,” I said, shrugging my shoulders. “The $3.99 prime rib dinner?”
Melinda laughed, throwing her head back. “Oh, Timmers,” she said. “I’d forgotten how you make me laugh.”
We parked off the Strip and started walking hand in hand through the crowd. The Tik pulsed inside me and mixed with the bourbon. Melinda was on my arm. I was ten feet tall.
Overweight Midwesterners stared at the two of us, wishing they could be us. We were the Las Vegas they came to see. A middle-aged man in Bermuda shorts eyed Melinda’s long legs.
“Loosest slots on the Strip,” I said to him with a conspiratorial nod as we passed. Completely stunned, he looked up at me, his mouth agape. Melinda and I folded with laughter, then broke into a run.
After a few minutes, Melinda stopped, breathless, and turned to me. She squeezed my hand. Her nails broke the skin.
“It feels so good to have you back, Tim,” she said.
I pushed her against the cold brick wall and put my mouth on hers while pressing my thigh between her legs.
“I love you,” I whispered. My hand was sticky with blood.
She returned my kiss, our tongues rolling together until Melinda pulled back.
“Why then,” she said, “are you going to make me go in there?” She nodded toward the billowing entrance of the Coast.
“Come on,” I said. “I feel so good. I feel like slumming. And if we don’t find any action in there”—I indicated the space in front of me with a grandiose sweep of my arm—“the entire Strip awaits us.” We stepped through the forced air plenum and into the clanging miasma of the casino.
A semi-attractive blonde with a very large chest caught my attention. She was sitting alone at a blackjack table.
“I’m going to the girls’ room,” Melinda shouted over the cacophony of bells and chimes that rang from the slot carousels. “I’ll catch up to you in a couple of minutes.”
I nodded and watched her meander off, as did most of the people she passed. The fishnet stockings had that effect.
I sat down next to the blonde and threw a hundred dollars on the table. The dealer set a short stack of chips in front of me as a cocktail waitress in a bad pirate costume appeared at my elbow.
“A double bullshot,” I said, placing a chip on her tray.
“What’s that?” said the blonde as she slurped at a frothy blender drink.
“It’s beef bouillon and vodka,” I said, peering at my cards.
She wrinkled her nose into a grimace. “Ewww! Why are you drinking that?” The end of her straw was coated in waxy orange lipstick.
“I’m hungry,” I said. After all, I was. I nodded yes to a hit from the dealer.
“That’s so gross,” she said.
“Fuck you,” I said. Maybe semi-attractive was too generous a description for her, stacked or not. The bad casino lighting wasn’t shoring up her odds either. “Now shut up and finish your snow cone.”
“Okay, I will,” she said. “And then you can.”
“I can what?” I said, rolling my eyes. The waitress set down my drink with exactly the speed a pre-tip buys. I placed another chip on her tray and turned back to the blonde.
“You can fuck me,” she said as the dealer flipped over his jack and ace.
“Who the fuck are you?” With characteristically perfect timing and an equally perfect brunette, led by the hand, Melinda intervened. The blonde sized up the two women and picked up her drink. “I’m more than you could handle anyway,” she said, then collected her remaining chips and walked away, flipping us off.
“Tim, this is Teena,” said Melinda, not even looking after the blonde. “She’s new in town. Just got a job as a waitress over at the Peppermill.”
“After I finish the training course,” said Teena. “Of course,” she added, giggling at her own quip.
“Right,” said Melinda. “After you finish the training course.” She wrapped an arm around Teena’s waist and turned to me. “She’s coming home with us for a nightcap.” One look at Teena and I could see that Melinda had bribed her with the coke she always kept in her purse.