Page 245 - Flaunt175-diana

served from when Oscar Wilde roamed the hallways looking for some high stakes billiards. Dark wood, leather chairs, cente- narian waiters, and barmen. The members, on the other hand, resembled a gift bag of extras from a mélange of Tim Burton films. Abnormally tall women, several sets of twins, fetish masks, you know the usual. We sat engulfed in our chairs, the waiter dropped off a couple of Corpse Revivers (no. 2) without his hand snapping from his arm, Chun-Hei lit a large cigar, and we stared at each other in silence.
“Hell of a party.”
She smoked.
‘‘These friends of yours?’’
Nothing. The drink was good, not too much Absinthe
masking the Gin. I was about to finish it in a gulp and say my goodnights when her eyes caught something of interest behind me. I turned and saw a velvet smoking jacket attached to a pen- cil thin mustache striding towards our table.
“I am Pantucci.”
Now, here was the most devilishly handsome man in the room. I stood up and held out my hand, which he didn’t take, so I sat back down and reintroduced myself to my cocktail.
“What do you know about the Spanish conquest?” he asked.
“Sixteenth century; Caribbean to South America, then Cen- tral, then Mexico, that’s about it.”
‘‘They brought the greatest gift Europe had to offer.” “Smallpox?”
“Distillation. A new world of spirits, a triumph. Come with
me.”
We exited down a long hallway to an absurdly large door
unlocked with an absurdly large key. Inside, the bones of some sort of ice-age creature held up a black marble table. Baby wooly mammoth? Perhaps. The shiny surface was laden with papers, many looked to be ancient. Pantucci put on a pair of white cot- ton gloves and bade me to do likewise.
“What we have assembled here is a recipe. The Spaniards took Inca and Aztec mystics, locked them in a castle in pres-
ent day Honduras, and had them work their magic. What they achieved was known as El Portador de Alegría, the bringer of joy. There are rumors, snippets of remembered conversations; one sip brought euphoria followed by death, one cup—eternal life. Cristobál de Olid was a visionary ruler. It was he who assembled the shamans and gave them the freedom to create. This, as you can imagine, was not universally popular with the Spaniards, and soon after Olid had his throat cut in the public square of Naco. The shamans disappeared and their work along with them. Some wise men tried to preserve as many of the documents of the day as possible, and this is what we have collected.”
I spent the better part of an hour staring at yellowed folios scratched with obscure writing and drawings. Pantucci un- wrapped the mysteries for me. Mostly they concerned plants, bark, roots, and fruits. There were notes on preparations and vague allusions to formulas and recipes, but they were, to me, incomprehensibly vague. Take this: the Loofestrife, known as the “Sun Opener” or the “Plant of the Yellow Vision”. It allows one to hear the thoughts of others and to lift emotional burdens from the heart. A strong tincture should be made of both the flowers and the leaves and no more than a hummingbird’s skull full should be added to each flacon of raw spirit.
What the hell did any of this mean?
“This seems to you like a folly? An old man tilting at a windmill full of booze?”
“Far fetched crosses the mind.”
“Well, proof is at hand.”
Pantucci moved to the wall and pushed open a secret com-
partment revealing a combination lock. He turned his back to me as he worked the tumblers, but I could tell the last one was 19. A column descended from the ceiling. It was a warm brown, lit from within. He told me it was Dominican Amber more
than 20 million years old, and I had no reason to doubt him. A small altar was carved into the column, and in this sat a single small black glass bottle. He placed the bottle on the table and retrieved a tiny cup, which appeared to be some sort of bone
wrapped in silver.
“A hummingbird skull.”
Now I’ll know how much it actually holds. The spirit was
almost the same color as the column, rich orange and brown. The nose was herbal, vegetal, not astringent at all.
“Go ahead.”
I picked up the tiny cup and downed it in one go. He watched longingly as the elixir slid down my throat.
Have you ever been tasered while taking any sort of psyche- delic? The initial feeling was very similar, like someone break- ing electric rainbows inside your body. Suddenly I could see everything, feel everything; all my past selves were right there, standing with me. And then; nothing.
I woke up feeling refreshed, ebullient even. A slight sur- prise, Chun-Hei was in bed with me, smoking a small clay pipe and writing furiously in a notebook. She was fully dressed, I was naked. A larger surprise, we were in my bedroom in Los Ange- les, or an impeccable copy; it even had the bullet hole by the window where Simone tried to kill me. By accident, she claims.
“Are we in LA?”
“Yes.”
“Weren’t we in London yesterday?”
“You were in London last week. Since then you were in the
Dominican Republic, Honduras, Tijuana and now you are here.” “I don’t remember most of it.”
“You had an excellent time. I believe there are photos
somewhere.”
She didn’t get up to look for them, so I had to take her at
her word.
“Any chance there is some of that magic elixir kicking
around?”
“Portador? No. What you tasted was not close to the fin-
ished product. There are maybe four more components we still need.”
“If that stuff gets any more potent your head would explode. You know I met another me, a Venetian from the 17th century, we played chess, I think, and drank some abysmal red wine, which apparently I used to make.”
She closed the notebook and looked at me and smiled for the first time. It did not make me warm and fuzzy.
I took to studying Brittlebush in earnest. Why I was picked for this task still eluded me, but I was all in. Self-awareness was out the door; the mission was my only waking thought. I would do anything for another sip at the teat of happiness.
There was still snow in the forest, but I trudged through it almost every other day looking for the exact plant in the exact perfect conditions, and then waiting for the sap to run.
The stems of the Brittlebush secrete a clear resin which, when dried and ground into a paste, was used by the Seri people as a pain reliever and mood enhancer. After a few weeks, I found what I was looking for and only needed to monitor the daytime temperatures to arrive at perfect sap running condi- tions.
Chun-Hei kept me more or less updated on the progress
of the Syndicate. Two of the four missing components had been delivered to the club, and a third was on its way. In fact, I was told, the woman who had collected it was stopping over in Los Angeles and we would meet.
Officially, nothing was open, but there were a few hidden spots for those who just couldn’t help themselves. I treated the plague very seriously, but I knew a few comrades who just had to get out even at the cost of their lives. We met at The Igloo,
a speakeasy in the Arts District, hidden inside a hangar-sized warehouse. After passing security you got a fur robe and hat and were escorted into a geodesic dome made completely of ice.
Annie was very French and very nervous. She chain-smoked and chain-drank as well. She didn’t want to go to London
and hand over her ingredient without some assurances. First: access to the finished product, she wanted a case, but Chun-
Hei laughed this off, telling her there were only plans to make three bottles at first and everybody would have access to “some”. Second was security; she told a rambling story about meeting up with Martine, a Lebanese businessman living in Singapore who
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