EVERYTHING UNDER THE MOON EVERYTHING UNDER THE MOON A NOVEL JEFF JOHNSON Copyright © 2016 by Jeff Johnson All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available. ISBN 978-1-59376-648-1 Cover design by Michael Fusco Straub Interior design by XXXXX SOFT SKULL PRESS An imprint of Counterpoint 2560 Ninth Street, Suite 318 Berkeley, CA 94710 www.softskull.com Printed in the United States of America Distributed by Publishers Group West 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 For tomorrow night Part ONE The Hiding Moon CHAPTER ONE he Experiment wasn’t working. I stared at my funhouse reflection in the bathroom T mirror. It was different than a bad hair day. The mir- ror was smeared and speckled with any number of things, and some inept dildo had keyed “Rupe” across the surface in square, uneven ghetto script. The white scratches hummed with the tiny vibrations from the throbbing jukebox on the other side of the door. Somehow around that time of the month, I invariably found myself snorkeling a dive bar made temporarily popular by the red zero on its hipster horoscope, and I didn’t even know the name of this one. Odds were Rupe didn’t, either. Some kind of clear slime was coming off my scalp, and while it concerned me, it did give my hair an extra special sheen. I leaned in closer and examined my new teeth. I could smell my breath on the mirror, a mixture of rain and pine needles and the discount whiskey I’d been pounding all night. Rust and mustard and darkly molding cake mix roiled up from the dry sink drain in 1 2 JEFF JOHNSON dense little curlicues. The sweaty humanity outside, empowered by the perfect shittyness of everything, were ultimately afraid of the sink, so their experiment wasn’t a complete success, either. Experiment. Experiment. The Experiment wasn’t working. I’d only have a minute before some downward-spiraling cre- tin came crashing through the door, and then I’d loose my last marble. I knew it. Grooming is a sacred thing, even in a nameless public bathroom with my face pointing back at me. I listened through the swell of grind and the screams and the laughter for a heartbeat. Bass hurricane wreck, tittering I’m sexy, oh man I might puke, fuck I forgot . Sound soup. Larynx stew. Babble sauce. A social slurpee with a coke chaser. I’d selected an orange jacket for the evening, an oversized thing that fashionably blended mystic Okie duck hunter and deadbomb urban junkie. It had big pockets, which I needed, and I thought it went well with my black jeans and my black tee shirt, the shiny black rain boots. I wanted to project a vague warning signal that complemented my aura of steely shoplifter and possible dime-bag dipshit, but still look good enough to get laid. I took a pair of shortened tin snips out of one of my pockets and opened my mouth again. Always the left incisor. I bared it and neatly snipped off the end. The sharp piece of enamel skit- tered around in the sink and went down the sighing drain hole. I studied the results. Passable. Then I held out my left hand. I’d noticed it while I was drinking. Left pinky nail, way too fucking long. Made me look like a Mandarin coke dealer from a Swiss B movie. It was too thick for toenail clippers, so I snipped it back and it bounced into the assorted crap on the floor. There was no EVERYTHING UNDER THE MOON 3 point in picking it up. I didn’t feel like carrying around one of my new fingernails all night long, and I didn’t want to get any of whatever was down there on my fingers, either. Fast. I put the snips away and took out my new shaving razor, turned on the water. It was a cold rusty trickle and there was no soap, but it didn’t really matter. I had the new hair slime to work with, so I wetted my face and ran my hand through my hair, then rubbed the new stubble with it and got to scraping. I was just about halfway through when the door opened on the raging landscape of jabbering drunks and the mule staggered in. He was bigger than me. With my boots on I’m almost a six- footer, so he only had a few inches, but I ran on the lean side and he was definitely fat. Bald, too, and he smelled as bad as everything else in the place. Flabby skinhead, out on a full moon trolling for pussy and fueled by cheap beer and what could only be French fries. He went straight to the reeking urinal trough and unzipped, let fly a manly arc of yellow. He glanced over at me midway through. “The fuck you doing?” he asked. Slurred, but pro. Mean, but also genuinely curious. I tapped the safety razor on the edge of the sink. A clump of hair came free. I examined my face and got to carving on the other cheek. “Impressive,” I said. He just kept staring. His horse bladder maintained a steady output. He was close to a pitcher. “What?” A tiny crease, high on the bridge of his flat nose, right where it shook hands with the rest of his face. “Your question.” Don’t pick a fight. “You must have a big- ass brain in that bald thing on your neck. Scooter.” 4 JEFF JOHNSON “What?” A second tiny furrow appeared between his beady brown eyes. He didn’t really have much of a neck, I noticed, and it looked like his eyebrows were gone. Got carried away main- taining his dome, which was shining with meat oil. “I’m shaving, fuckin’ retard.” Maybe too late. I turned fully to him. “How’s my hair look?” He stared and finally shook his head. I turned back to Rupe and heard him zip up. I watched in the crusty surface reflection as he passed behind me. Not even a bump. I rubbed my face down, pocketed my razor, wiped my face with the top of my shirt, and studied my reflection. No nicks. Slime worked like an expensive Euro super lube. Interesting. I’d already taken fifteen Xanax, a Thorazine, and I’d added two roofies to the mix, just to see what happened. The roof- ies were behind the hair-gel look, and the odd glossiness in the vision of my right eye, which rimmed everything in the dark with Spanish-orchid pink. Another new addition. I took two more and dry-swallowed them. They smelled weird, brown and greasy and as alien as the roaches in the wall behind me. Done. I put my sunglasses back on. The explosion of light and sound and smell when I opened the door slapped me like an electrified shockwave of hot mud, but I swanned right into it. That was the Thorazine. The place was packed with overheating bodies, even though it was sleet- ing outside. Maximum capacity for a place that size was around sixty, but the washed-out beardo doorman had crammed in a dozen few more. I’d noticed him selling coke earlier. He certainly smelled like it. A train smell, wintery and surgical, with a touch of tragedy. How many people had died to get it into the noses of the people flirting and scowling in this shithole was anyone’s guess. EVERYTHING UNDER THE MOON 5 No one had taken my barstool. Five bucks had secured it for five minutes. I settled back in place and picked up my drink. The bartender was sort of good-looking, slightly sweaty, with too much makeup and not enough shirt. Flouncy dyed-brown hair, hoop earrings, chipped emerald fingernails, and an iPhone bulge on her round but heading-south ass. I could smell her molars when she flashed her low-pro, all-mouth smile. “Another?” Skeptical. I’d lost count at sixteen. “Yep,” I wheezed after I downed number whatever. I slid the glass over. “Glad I’m not your liver,” she said, dumping instead of pour- ing. It was close to cutoff time, she was saying, which was fine because it was almost time for me to go. “I’m glad, too. It’s always so dark in there. You’d be miser- able.” Conversationally, she was crappy for someone behind the stick. Giving a power drinker health advice from the other side of the bar was financially irresponsible and borderline provoca- tive. Rookie. I’d give her one more year before burnout or the place around her caved in, whichever came first. “The hell you talkin’ about?” She looked perplexed and slightly disgusted, like I’d just given her a sticky debit card. “You ever want to swallow one of those little LED lights? I saw them at the Dollar Store.” I tossed another five on the bar. It was loud, but she heard me.