The Moondust Sonatas Read online

  “Surely you’ve heard the life-as-a-dream idea before.”

  “Of course. But, I want what you meant, not what I’ve heard before.”

  “Everyone is living from a narrow bandwidth. People believe that everything they believe is true, and everything they don’t believe is false. Which is understandable. But, it limits them.

  “Me, I’ve experienced feeling things I don’t believe being true. You sneered when you said drug culture. Do you understand that my experience with hallucinogens is the only thing that kept me sane after moondust?”

  “How so?”

  A long pause. “Flexibility. Having taken moondust, I believe—I know—that everything, every possible belief or experience, is true. Even when they contradict each other. There is nothing false.”

  I’d never heard such sophistry in all my life. “So… moondust is some kind of super-hallucinogen, is that what you’re saying?”

  He sighed. “Like I said, it’s not a hallucinogen at all.”

  “So, you say that we should know our lives are all dreams. Do you intend to wake us up?”

  “What I intend doesn’t matter a bit. Moondust is the truth, if you take it, you understand.”

  And with that, we were back where we started. I needed some time to reassess. “I think we should take a break,” I said. “Will you stick around for a while?”

  To my surprise, he grinned, wolfishly. “Yeah, sure. You going to order that pizza?”

  I laughed. It’s funny how the people you’re using think they’re using you.

  I went into the next room, presumably to order a pizza. But, instead, I called Justine.

  She didn’t answer. I left no message. If she wouldn’t talk to me, then I had nothing to say.

  42. JUSTINE

  I left the confessional, the church, my faith. Lacking aim or direction, I drifted, something like a ghost, ending up in Union Square. I wandered into a theatre, I saw a movie.

  A comedy.

  It’s an empty feeling you’re left with, when you lose the things you take for granted.

  Where are you, when everything you struggle to believe in is challenged—so completely—you don’t know sunshine from rain?

  43. HAILEY

  My adrenaline kicked in three blocks or so away from Percival’s apartment. My hands wouldn’t stay still. For a minute, I felt like a little girl, putting herself in serious danger, in over her head.

  I hoped take a photo of some dangerous people, with only Cameron watching my back, because they were after Percival, one of my partners in moondust.

  Luckily for me, I now had a wealth of experiences to draw on. Moondust rides. Of intrigues, war, dangerous situations: seen through eyes of victors and victims.

  So, like I learned in India, I controlled my breathing. And like I learned in Africa, I emptied my mind, by focusing on the sensory input around me. The brisk fall wind on my face. My sneakers hitting the concrete, denim rubbing the skin of my legs. The rushing, layered sounds of New York: ten thousand stories happening all at once.

  Unexpectedly, my fingers twitched in the pattern of a Welsh thief, whose fingers would jerk before “it was off,” and he broke in someplace. Was I taking a piece of these people with me every time I came back from a moondust trip?

  How could I not do so? It probably happened automatically.

  Cameron stood next to me, looking stoic, cracking his knuckles. I made my thoughts stay steady. Even if the people chasing Perce were still outside his place, I had no reason for us to expect confrontation. They didn’t even know who we were.

  “Hey,” I said, “It’s going to be all right.”

  He smiled. “I know.”

  “So, did you have any specific game-plan ideas? Anything I need to know?”

  “I say we walk around the block once. Look for anything out of the ordinary, like people hanging out in a parked car or something. Maybe we should go up to his floor and see if anyone’s around.”

  “Sounds good.”

  I redoubled my efforts to quiet the butterflies in my stomach when we reached Percival’s street. Not many people were around. We walked, casually scanning everything. A few people walked a brisk New York pace.

  One person, however, stayed still. A ratty looking dude. Definitely something shifty about him, which made me think he could be our guy.

  Still, I ran through other possibilities. Maybe he was waiting for someone. Maybe he sold drugs.

  I said to Cam, on the sly, “Let’s cross the street now and turn around.”

  “What’s the plan?” he asked.

  “We’re going to sit here and watch that guy. Wait, I changed my mind about turning around. We’re going to sit on this stoop like we live here, and kick it. Can I bum a cigarette?”

  He got the picture without me having to draw it out for him and pulled out two Camels. I took one and sat down on the steps. We played the part of the smoking couple, hanging out on their stoop for a while. It was a little cold for it. But, it didn’t matter. We sat far enough away from the guy that he couldn’t see us in any detail, even if he did notice us, which he wouldn’t. One of the laws of New York: our city was filled with so many stimuli, people hardly noticed anything.

  We stayed for twenty minutes or so. He didn’t move, he didn’t make any calls—he wasn’t waiting for anyone. That eliminated one option. Cameron and I discussed and decided on the direct approach to eliminate the other. We screwed up our courage and went for it.

  I gave him my phone, because it had a great camera. He took it out, set the camera, and primed the flash. Then he started faking a conversation. Finally, we started walking toward our mark.

  “Hey,” I said to the prospective hooligan, when we reached him, “What are you selling, dude? I’m buying ludes, coke, e, and smack. The works.”

  “Beat it.” He didn’t even look at me. Good sign.

  “Come on,” I said. “Do we look like cops to you? Since when do they hire five-foot two-inch high white girls?”

  “Scram. I ain’t selling shit.”

  “My mistake, bruddah.”

  At that, the code word, bruddah, I started running, and Cameron snapped the guy’s picture.

  “Art project,” Cam yelled over his shoulder. “Thanks for the help!”

  44. WILLIAM

  This stake-out bullshit really got on my nerves. There were some real dumb-asses in this city, I tell you. “Art project.” Snap a picture and run. Fucking bohemians.

  The saddest part, it was the most eventful thing that had happened since we started watching this place.

  While it seemed like the thing to do after we’d lost the guy, I wasn’t feeling very hopeful about our mark ever coming back. I figured he was long gone. Only a dummy would come back.

  Still, a job was a job. I should have been a dentist or something.

  45. PERCIVAL

  When my phone beeped to tell me I had a text, I got the most intense déjà vu. It lasted for like ten seconds, and I seemed to know, before I picked up, that it was Hailey. Her text said, “bon appetite,” which I felt like I’d read before. And the picture seemed familiar even though I’d never seen the person in it. White, tallish, lanky type of guy, darkish hair, some kind of scraggly beard. The photo itself was blurry. You couldn’t see his face all that well; just well enough to identify a stranger.

  Searching his picture for detail, I kept having this weird feeling I’d done it all before. The sensation didn’t pass as it usually did. Instead, it lingered. I wondered why.

  But that question had no answer, and so I put my mind on things that mattered. Like, what to do now? I still didn’t have a clue who was messing with my life. But, just because I didn’t recognize the guy in the picture, didn’t mean he was unknown to my friends. Since my working theory was that I met the dude at a party on my roof, there was a good chance one of my friends might know who he was.

  So I pushed some buttons until I forwarded the message to everyone on my global distribution list. Usuall
y I used that list for notifications about batches of moondust. But, today’s message read, “Have you seen this boy?” It included the picture Hailey had taken, and stressed how important it was to get back to me with intel.

  Moondust tended to be a powerful incentive, and my people tended to trust me. So I figured I would hear from someone, if there was something to hear.

  I put my phone back in my pocket and kicked my feet up on the arm of the couch. In this stranger’s apartment, the television mutely blared a movie, Devil in a Blue Dress, I think. It was an averaged size Manhattan apartment, which is to say small and cramped, probably the ancient parlor of a long-dead Dutchman’s brownstone. The walls sagged and leaned with age, never once meeting at right angles. It was a bachelor’s kind of apartment, messy and sparsely decorated; but, like the man himself, it was preppy, and the few decorative touches tried to keep up appearances. Still the attempt at décor would not pass anything but the most casual inspection. A rug that seemed Persian. But, was probably made in Jersey. Some of those mass-produced retro art-deco posters featuring French words, chic drawings of cocktail beverages and tasteful silhouettes of women. A wet bar stood under one such poster, featuring whisky, vodka, and fancy little used alcohols and ingredients for martinis, bitters, and the like. The bitters collected dust. But, the bottle of Maker’s Mark sparkled like new.

  I found myself getting thirsty.

  While my host hadn’t exactly used the words, “Make yourself comfortable,” I figured the invitation was out there anyway. I went to his kitchen and found a high-ball glass, grabbed some ice from the freezer, and poured myself a few fingers.

  Déjà vu. It was a fascinating and strange thing. Science types said it wasn’t real, just some specific pattern of random brain activity. Still, every once in a while, with a strong one, it went beyond that. At least it felt that way.

  And in these troubled times, I took it as a good sign. I needed positive omens, because I was in the middle of trouble escalating quickly, now beyond my control. I supposed something like this happening was only a matter of time. We had tried to keep our operation as small as possible so we could keep the lid on everything. Assuming the small theatre we’d created could last forever—that was our folly.

  If I’d learned anything from life, both mine and other people’s, it was this: When the currents begin raging, you couldn’t fight them. So I took a drink of whiskey and began to analyze the situation.

  Here’s how the ground lay: My friends and I were the only people we knew of who had the recipe to produce moondust. While there was, in theory, at least one other person who knew it—while we were on acid, someone had given us the powder and the instructions—we didn’t know who that person was and whether he or she had told anyone else. Logic dictated that, if not the only outfit, we were one of a small number of people involved in making and selling moondust.

  And we weren’t hurting on profits by any means. Only our desire to stay small-time and focus on our artistic endeavors had kept us living humbly. This drug was a new front, and it was highly lucrative.

  And so we tried to avoid attention, because any criminal, organized or otherwise, would kill for a gravy train like this. When it came to customers we stuck to people we knew and told them to keep our existence under the most severe wraps, on punishment of being dropped from our clientele. And for the most part, we selected our customers very carefully. And in this way, for a while, we were successful and invisible at the same time.

  Our first mistake had been Wally Beaver. It’d been Hailey’s call. They’d had a thing, and she let him ride the moon. Mark and I thought he was an idiot, and would never have included him on our list. But, by the time we’d met him, the damage was done.

  But, all things considered, it seemed that damage was minimal, the reporter was the only person outside our circle who’d had contact with Wally.

  The second mistake was the issue. Somehow, someone who wanted the moondust business for themselves figured out who I was and where I lived. They’d used my tattoo to describe me, which suggested they’d seen me. So that mistake was likely mine.

  For the sake of covering all bases, I considered that maybe one of my client-friends had let my identity slip. It also might have been one of my friends chasing me, betraying me with some group of thugs.

  But if one of my friends was directly involved somehow, the guys would know my name, and they would know Mark and Hailey, who hadn’t run into any problems. The only logical assumption was that my antagonists had seen me with moondust. And because they knew only that I lived where I lived and had moondust and this tattoo, it was also logical to assume it’d been at my building that they’d seen me. Therefore, this was all my fault.

  But, as the wise man said, “Where you stumble, so too is your treasure.” If I hadn’t messed up, then they never would have chased me out of my place. And, if they hadn’t chased me out of my place, then I never would have met the reporter. The opportunity was here to turn this into a boon.

  And so, using Wally Beaver’s name, I was going public with moondust. Check that: I wasn’t going public with it, Max was going public with moondust, and I would help him. It would let me manipulate the flow of information and be ahead of the events this would cause. Because I couldn’t stop it even if I wanted to, advanced knowledge might be everything.

  In the process, I learned something invaluable: Moondust was not illegal and could never be.

  A flash of inspiration said, we needed to incorporate. If it couldn’t be illegal, then we could use all legal business protections—for example, getting our manufacturing process patented—and business techniques to our advantage.

  But that wouldn’t stop underworld types from using illegal methods to get into the moondust business. This danger would increase if the article came out, and if they chased down Wally to get to me. (I made a mental note to tell the reporter not to use my real name, which he thought was Wally Beaver, so we’d be under a double-blind.)

  I continued sipping my bourbon and ruminating. After ninety minutes or so, I texted Hailey and Mark to tell them no one had responded to my text looking for a name for our enemies, and to set up a meeting tomorrow. I suggested Mark’s place.

  46. MAXWELL

  Looking over what Beaver gave me, writing my article as previously envisioned seemed less than realistic. The simple story I’d imagined, hallucinogen ravages New York, would stand little scrutiny. When lesser journalists went into a moondust feeding frenzy, I would be exposed.

  The true story was confusing, boundless, and hopelessly existential. Not exactly the lead on local news affiliates.

  The themes were broad. There was the science of it. There was a hint at religious implications, there was a social psychology angle, and there was something else I couldn’t quite name. I went through the audio and reread my notes one more time, this time with an eye for the themes, the threads, the load-bearing walls. I found some common threads in both Peter’s and Beaver’s statements.

  Beaver, “They should know that their lives are all a dream.”

  Peter, “Or science should consider whether we’re living in a dream-world.”

  Beaver, summarizing): Every time one’s mind interfaces with moondust, one’s mind experiences the life of a different conscious entity.

  Peter (summarizing): Every time one’s equipment interfaces with moondust, one’s equipment measures the composition of a different chemical or element.

  I made a note that I needed to make a strong theme of the ramifications on society of such an ungovernable, variable substance: a scientific revolution in a powder, and in terms of so-called right and wrong, a watershed for anyone who experienced it. Thus, any agency with a stake in morality or belief systems, such as churches or governments, would likely be threatened.

  The takeaway was that the moondust phenomenon was disturbing on multiple levels. So disturbing, I realized, that if I played this right, I could write multiple nationally syndicated articles, Newsweek pieces, a
nd appear in CNN segments as a talking head.

  I needed to start churning out articles. I could probably write three articles before anyone else had one out. The trick was going to be appealing to different types of media outlets.

  This was a good time for brain-lubricant, aka whiskey. When I went out to the living room, I saw a glass already on the coffee table. But, no Beaver drinking it. Instead, a mute television played to an empty room. I caught a whiff and saw him sitting outside on the fire escape, smoking. Guess he’d climbed out the window.

  Whiskey in hand, I went back to my task.

  Looking at my options, I decided my best was to start with two articles. One for my own paper, The New York Globe, and the other a higher-end piece, for a marque outfit such as the New Yorker, The Economist, or Newsweek.

  I needed to establish the themes and basic outlines for my articles. While the outlines could change, I needed them to map what information to gather. I finished off the whiskey and set about my business.

  47. PERCIVAL

  I was beginning to think the guy wasn’t going to order pizza after all, which would make me a lot less cooperative. But, eventually the doorbell rang and Maxwell, prep school wonder boy, pulled in a large half-cheese, half-pepperoni pie with a large Coke. I had to appreciate his classic taste. The pizza was typically New York, cheesy and delicious.

  “Pie to your liking?” he asked.

  “Sure,” I said. “You can never go wrong with the half-and-half.”

  “Indubitably,” he said. He actually said that. I don’t think I’ve heard that word since I was a kid, watching Gilligan’s Island reruns. I’d met the real-life Thurston Howell. I could only shake my head in wonder.

  We ate our pizza in silence for a time. I greatly enjoyed my Coke as well, all the more because I’d poured whiskey into it when the guy went to the bathroom to wash up for dinner. Somehow, the deception made the flavor sweeter. I really didn’t like Max. He was judgmental. Being an anything-goes type myself, the only prejudice I tolerated was against people who believed they peed ambrosia, and everyone else was always wrong.